Univ. of 111. Library 
 
A HISTORY 
 OF OUR OWN TIMES 
 
 BY 
 
 JUSTIN McCAKTHY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 ''THE FOUR GEORGES,-' "SIR ROBERT PEEL," ETC. 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MERRILL & BAKER 
 74 Fifth Avenue 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD ! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN ! 
 
 Before half-past two o'clock on the morning of June 
 20th, 1837, William IV. was lying dead in Windsor Castle, 
 .vhile the messengers were already hurrying off to Ken- 
 sington Palace to bear to his successor her summons to 
 the throne. The illness of the King had been but short, 
 and at one time, even after it had been pronounced alarm- 
 ing, it seemed to take so hopeful a turn that the physi- 
 cians began to think it would pass harmlessly away. But 
 the King was an old man — was an old man even when he 
 came to the throne — and when the dangerous symptoms 
 again exhibited themselves, their warning was very soon 
 followed by fulfilment. Tlie death of King William may 
 be fairly regarded as having closed an era of our history. 
 With him, we may believe, ended the reign of personal 
 government in England. William was, indeed, a constitu- 
 tional king in more than mere name. He was to the best 
 of his lights a faithful representative of the constitutional 
 principle. He was as far in advance of his two predeces- 
 sors in understanding and acceptance of the principle as 
 his successor has proved herself beyond him. Constitu- 
 tional government has developed itself gradually, as every- 
 thing else has done in English politics. The written 
 principle and code of its system it would be as vain to 
 look for as for the British Constitution itself. King Wil- 
 liam still held to and exercised the right to dismiss his 
 ministers when he pleased, and because he pleased. His 
 father had held to the right of maintaining favorite miu- 
 
6 
 
 A HISTOEY OF QUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 isters in defiance of repeated votes of the House of Com- 
 mons. It would not be easy to find any written rule or 
 declaration of constitutional law pronouncing decisively 
 that either was in the wrong. But in our day we should 
 believe that the constitutional freedom of England was 
 outraged, or at least put in the extremest danger, if a 
 sovereign were to dismiss a ministry at mere pleasure, or 
 to retain it in spite of the expressed wish of the House of 
 Commons. Virtually, therefore, there was still personal 
 government in the reign of William IV. With his death 
 the long chapter of its history came to an end. We find 
 it difficult now to believe that it was a living principle, 
 openly at work among us, if not openly acknowledged, so 
 lately as in the reign of King William. 
 
 The closing scenes of King William's life were undoubt- 
 edly characterized by some personal dignity. As a rule, 
 sovereigns show that they know how to die. Perhaps the 
 necessary consequence of their training, by virtue of which 
 they come to regard themselves always as the central 
 figures in great State pageantry, is to make them assume 
 a manner of dignity on all occasions Avhen the eyes of their 
 subjects may be supposed to be on them, even if the 
 dignity of bearing is not the free gift of nature. The 
 manners of William IV. had been, like those of most of 
 his brothers, somewhat rough and overbearing. He had 
 been an unmanageable naval officer. He had again and 
 again disregarded or disobeyed orders, and at last it had 
 been found convenient to withdraw him from active service 
 altogether, and allow him to rise through the successive 
 ranks of his profession by a merely formal and technical 
 process of ascent. In his more private capacity he had, 
 when younger, indulged more than once in unseemly and 
 insufferable freaks of temper. He had made himself 
 unpopular, while Duke of Clarence, by his strenuous 
 opposition to some of the measures which were especially 
 desired by all the enlightenment of the country. He was, 
 for example, a determined opponent of the measures 
 for the abolition of the slave-trade. He had wrangled 
 publicly, in open debate, with some of his brothers in the 
 House of Lords ; and words had been interchanged among 
 the royal princes which could not be heard in our day 
 even in the hottest debates of the more turbulent House 
 of Commons. But William seems to have been one of the 
 
TBE mm is MAD / LONG LIVE THE qtft:EN! 7 
 
 men whom increased responsibility improves. ITe was 
 far better as a king than as a prince. lie proved that he 
 was able at least to understand that first duty of a con- 
 stitutional sovereign which, to the last day of his active 
 life, his father, George III., never could be brought to 
 comprehend — that the personal predilections and preju- 
 dices of the King must sometimes give way to the public 
 interest. 
 
 Nothing perhaps in life became him like to the leaving 
 of it. His closing days were marked by gentleness and 
 kindly consideration for the feelings of those around him. 
 When he awoke on June 18th he remembered that it was 
 the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. He expressed a 
 strong pathetic wish to live over that day, even if he were 
 never to see another sunset. He called for the flag which 
 the Duke of Wellington always sent him on that anniver- 
 sary, and he laid his hand upon the eagle which adorned 
 it, and said he felt revived by the touch. He had himself 
 attended, since his accession, the Waterloo banquet ; but 
 this time the Duke of Wellington thought it would perhaps 
 be more seemly to have the dinner put off, and sent accord- 
 ingly to take the wishes of his Majesty. The King declared 
 that the dinner must go on as usual, and sent to the Duke 
 a friendly, simple message expressing his hope that the 
 guests might have a pleasant day. He talked in his 
 homely way to those about him, his direct language seem- 
 ing to acquire a sort of tragic dignity from the approach 
 of the death that was so near. He had prayers read to 
 him again and again, and called those near him to witness 
 that he had always been a faithful believer in the truths 
 of religion. He had his despatch-boxes brought to him, 
 and tried to get through some business with his private 
 secretary. It was remarked with some interest that the 
 last official act he ever performed was to sign with his 
 trembling hand the pardon of a condemned criminal. 
 Even a far nobler reign than his would have received new 
 dignity if it closed with a deed of mercy. When some of 
 those around him endeavored to encourage him with the 
 idea that he might recover and live many years yet, he 
 declared, with a simplicity which had something oddly 
 pathetic in it, that he would be willing to live ten years 
 yet for the sake of the country. The poor King was 
 evidently under the sincere conviction that England could 
 
8 
 
 A Bl STORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 hardly get on without him. His consideration for his 
 country, whatever whimsical thoughts it may suggest, is 
 entitled to some, at least, of the respect which we give to 
 the dying groan of a Pitt or a Mirabeau, who fears with 
 too much reason that he leaves a blank not easily to be 
 filled. " Young royal tarry-breeks " William had been jocu- 
 larly called by Robert Burns fifty years before, when there 
 was yet a popular belief that he would come all right and 
 do brilliant and gallant things, and become a stout sailor 
 in whom a seafaring nation might feel pride. He disap- 
 pointed all such expectations ; but it must be owned that 
 when responsibility came upon him he disappointed ex- 
 pectation anew in a different way, and was a better sover- 
 eign, more deserving of the complimentary title of patriot- 
 king, than even his friends would have ventured to antic- 
 ipate. 
 
 There were eulogies pronounced upon him after his death 
 in both Houses of Parliament, as a matter of course. It is 
 not necessary, however, to set down to mere court homage 
 or parliamentary form some of the praises that were be- 
 stowed on the dead King by Lord Melbourne and Lord 
 Brougham and Lord Grey. A certain tone of sincerity, not 
 quite free, perhaps, from surprise, appears to run througli 
 some of these expressions of admiration. They seem to say 
 that the speakers were at one time or another considerably 
 surprised to find that, after all, William really was able 
 and willing on grave occasions to subordinate his personal 
 likings and disUkings to considerations of State policy, and 
 to what was shown to him to be for the good of the nation. 
 In this sense at least he may be called a patriot-king. We 
 have advanced a good deal since that time, and we require 
 somewhat higher and more positive qualities in a sovereign 
 now to excite our political wonder. But we must judge 
 William by the reigns that went before, and not the reign 
 that came after him ; and with that consideration borne 
 in mind, we may accept the panegyric of Lord Melbourne 
 and of Lord (Ti'ey, and admit that on the whole he was 
 better than liis education, his early opportunities, and his 
 early promise. 
 
 Wilham IV. (tliird son of George III.) had left no chil- 
 dren wlio could have succeeded to tlie throne, and the crown 
 passed, th(a'efore, to the daughter of his brother (fourth 
 son of George), the Duke of Kent. This was the Princess 
 
THE KING IS DEAU! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 9 
 
 Alexandrina Victoria, who was born at Kensington Palace 
 on May 24th, 1819. The Princess was, therefore, at this 
 time Uttle 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. Pru- 
 dence and economy were inculcated on her as though she 
 had been born to be poor. One is not generally inclined 
 to attach much importance to what historians tell us of 
 the education of contemporary princes or princesses ; but 
 it cannot be doubted that the Princess Victoria was trained 
 for intelligence and goodness. 
 
 " The death of the King of England has everywhere 
 caused the greatest sensation. . . . Cousin Victoria is 
 said to have shown astonishing self-possession. She 
 undertakes a heavy responsibility, especially at the 
 present moment, when parties are so excited, and all rest 
 their hopes on her." These words are an extract from a 
 letter written on July 4tli, 1837, by the late Prince Albert, 
 the Prince Consort of so many happy years. The letter 
 was written to the Prince's father, from Bonn. The young 
 Queen had, indeed, behaved with remarkable self-posses- 
 sion. There is a pretty description, which has been often 
 quoted, but will bear citing once more, given by Miss 
 Wynn, of the manner in which the young sovereign 
 received the news of her accession to a throne. The Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamber- 
 lain, the Marquis of Conyngham, left Windsor for Kensing- 
 ton Palace, where the Princess Victoria had been resid- 
 ing, to inform her of the King's death. It was two hours 
 after midnight when they started, and they did not reach 
 Kensington until five o'clock in the morning. " They 
 knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time 
 before they could rouse the porter at the gate ; they Avere 
 again kept waiting in the court-yard, then turned into one 
 of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by every- 
 body. They rang the bell, and desired that the attendant 
 of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform her Royal 
 Highness that they requested an audience on business of 
 importance. After another delay, and another ringing 
 to inquire the cause, the attendant was suiamoned, who 
 
jO A niSTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep that 
 she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, 
 ' We are come on business of state to the Queen, and even 
 her sleep must give way to that.' It did ; and to prove 
 that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she 
 came into the room in a loose white night-gown and 
 shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon 
 her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but 
 perfectly collected and dignified." The Prime-minister, 
 Lord Melbourne, was presently sent for, and a meeting of 
 the privy council summoned for eleven o'clock, when the 
 Lord Chancellor administered the usual oaths to the 
 Queen, and her Majesty received in return the oaths of 
 allegiance of the cabinet ministers and other privy coun- 
 cillors present. Mr. Greville, who was usually as little 
 disposed to record any enthusiastic admiration of royalty 
 and royal personages as Humboldt or Varnhagen von Ense 
 could have been, has described the scene in words well 
 worthy of quotation : 
 
 " The King died at twenty minutes after two yesterday 
 morning, and the young Queen met the council at Ken- 
 sington Palace at eleven. Never was anything like the 
 first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and 
 admiration which is raised about her manner and behav- 
 ior, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraor- 
 dinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. 
 Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of 
 the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curi- 
 osity to see how she would act on this trying occasion, 
 and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace, 
 notwithstanding the short notice which was given. The 
 first thing to be done was to teach her her lesson, which, 
 for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. . . . She 
 bowed to the lords, took her seat, and then read her speech 
 in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any 
 appearance of fear or embarrassment. She Avas quite 
 plainly dressed, and in mourning. After she had read 
 her speech, and taken and signed the oath for tlie security 
 of the Church of Scotland, the privy councillors were 
 sworn, the two royal dukes first by themselves ; and as 
 these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing 
 allegiance and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the 
 eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil an(l 
 
THE KING IS DEAD! LONQ LIVE THE QUEEN! 11 
 
 their natural relations, and this was the only sign of emo- 
 tion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very 
 graceful and engaging ; she kissed them both, and rose 
 from her chair and moved toward the Duke of Sussex, 
 who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. 
 She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men 
 who were sworn, and who came, one after another, to kiss 
 her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she 
 make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any 
 in her countenance, to any individual of any rank, station, 
 or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne 
 and the ministers, and the Duke of Wellington and Peel 
 approached her. She went through the whole ceremony, 
 occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when 
 she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, 
 and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the 
 same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particu- 
 larly interesting and ingratiating." 
 
 Sir Robert Peel told Mr. Greville that he was amazed 
 at " her manner and behavior, at her apparent deep sense 
 of her situation, and at the same time her firmness." The 
 Duke of Wellington said in his blunt way that if she had 
 been his own daughter he could not have desired to see 
 her perform her part better. " At twelve," says Mr. Gre- 
 ville, " she held a council, at which she presided with as 
 much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her 
 life ; and though Lord Lansdowne and my colleague had 
 contrived, between them, to make some confusion with 
 the council papers, she was not put out by it. She looked 
 very well ; and though so small in stature, and without 
 much pretension to beauty, the gracefulness of her man- 
 ner and the good expression of her countenance give her, 
 on the whole, a very agreeable appearance, and, with her 
 youth, inspire an excessive interest in all who approach 
 her, and which I can't help feeling myself. ... In short, 
 she appears to act with every sort of good taste and good 
 feeling, as well as good sense ; and, as far as it has gone, 
 nothing can be more favorable than the impression she 
 has made, and nothing can promise better than her manner 
 and conduct do ; though," Mr. Greville somewhat super- 
 fiuously adds, " it would be rash to count too confidently 
 upon her judgment and discretion in more weighty mat- 
 ters." 
 
12 
 
 A HISTORY OF OtfB OWJ^ TIMES. 
 
 The interest or curiosity with which the demeanor of 
 tlie young Queen was watched was all the keener because 
 the world in general knew so little about her. Not merely 
 was the world in general thus ignorant, but even the 
 statesmen and officials in closest communication with court 
 circles were in almost absolute ignorance. According to 
 Mr. Greville, whose authority, however, is not to be taken 
 too implicitly except as to matters Avhich he actually saw, 
 the young Queen had been previously kept in such seclu- 
 sion by her mother — " never," he says, " having slept out 
 of her bedroom, nor been alone with anybody but herself 
 and the Baroness Lehzen " — that " not one of her acquaint- 
 ance, none of the attendants at Kensington, nor even the 
 Duchess of Northumberland, her governess, have any idea 
 what she is or what she promises to be." There was 
 enough in the court of the two sovereigns who went be- 
 fore Queen Victoria to justify any strictness of seclusion 
 which the Duchess of Kent might desire for her daughter. 
 George IV. was a Charles II. without the education or the 
 talents ; William IV. was a Frederick William of Prussia 
 without the genius. The ordinary manners of the society 
 at the court of either had a full flavor, to put it in the 
 softest wa3% such as a decent tap-room would hardly ex- 
 hibit in a time like the present. No one can read even 
 the most favorable descriptions given by contemporaries 
 of the manners of those two courts without feeling grate- 
 ful to the Duchess of Kent for resolving that her daughter 
 should see as little as possible of their ways and their 
 company. 
 
 It was remarked with some interest that the queen sub- 
 scribed herself simply " Victoria," and not, as had been 
 expected, "Alexandrina Victoria." Mr. Greville men- 
 tions in his diary of December 24th, 1819, that " the Duke 
 of Kent gave the name of Alexandrina to his daughter in 
 compliment to the ICmperor of Russia. She was to have 
 had the name Georgiana, butthe Duke insisted upon Alex- 
 andrina being her first name. The Regent sent for Lie- 
 ven" (the Russian ambassador, husband of the famous 
 Princess de Lieven), " and made him a great many com- 
 pliments, e/i le persijfmit^ 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 
 
THE KING IS BEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! IB 
 
 simply the name of Victoria, around wliicli no ungenial 
 associations of any kind hung at that time, and which can 
 have only grateful associations in the history of this coun- 
 try for the future. 
 
 It is not necessary to go into any formal description of 
 the various ceremonials and pageantries which celebrated 
 the accession of the new sovereign. The proclamation of 
 the Queen, her appearance for the first time on the throne 
 in the House of Lords when she prorogued Parliament in 
 person, and even the gorgeous festival of her coronation, 
 which took place on June 28th, in the following year, 1838, 
 may be passed over with a mere word of record. It is 
 worth mentioning, however, that at the coronation proces- 
 sion one of the most conspicuous figures was that of 
 Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, the opponent of Moore 
 and Wellington in the Peninsula, the commander of the 
 Old Guard at Ltitzen, and one of the strong arms of 
 ISTapoleon at Waterloo. Soult had been sent as ambas- 
 sador-extraordinary to represent the French Government 
 and people at the coronation of Queen Victoria, and noth- 
 ing could exceed the enthusiasm with which he was 
 received by the crowds in tlie streets of London on that 
 day. The white-haired soldier was cheered wherever a 
 glimpse of his face or figure could be caught. He 
 appeared in the procession in a carriage, the frame of 
 which had been used on occasions of state by some of the 
 Princes of the House of Conde, and which Soult had had 
 splendidly decorated for the ceremony of the coronation. 
 Even the Austrian ambassador, says an eye-witness, 
 attracted less attention than Soult, although the dress of 
 the Austrian, Prince Esterhazy, "down to his very boot- 
 heels, sparkled with diamonds." The comparison savors 
 now of the ridiculous, but is remarkably expressive and 
 effective. Prince Esterhazy's name in those days sug- 
 gested nothing but diamonds. His diamonds may be said 
 to glitter through all the liglit 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 
 
14 
 
 A IlISTOnY OF OUn OWN TIMES. 
 
 a London pageant his war-worn face drew attention aWay 
 from Prince Esterhazy's diamonds. Soult, himself, felt 
 very warmly the genuine kindness of the reception given 
 to him. Years after, in a debate in the French Chamber, 
 when M. Guizot was accused of too much partiality for 
 the English alliance. Marshal Soult declared himself a 
 warm champion of that alliance. " I fought the English 
 down to Toulouse," he said, " when I fired the last cannon 
 in defence of the national independence; in the mean- 
 time I have been in London, and France knows the recep- 
 tion which I had there. The English themselves cried 
 ' Vive Soult ! ' — they cried ' Soult forever ! ' I had learned 
 to estimate the English on the field of battle; I have 
 learned to estimate them in peace ; and I repeat that I am 
 a warm partisan of the English alliance." History is 
 not exclusively made by cabinets and professional diplo- 
 matists. It is highly probable that the cheers of a Lon- 
 don .crowd on the day of the Queen's coronation did 
 something genuine and substantial to restore the good 
 feeling between this country and France, and efface the 
 bitter memories of Waterloo. 
 
 It is a fact well worthy of note, amidst whatever 
 records of court ceremonials and of political change, that 
 a few days after the accession of the Queen, Mr. Monte- 
 fiore was elected Sheriff of London, the first Jew who had 
 ever been chosen for that office ; and that he received 
 knighthood at the hands of her Majesty when she visited 
 the City on the following Lord Mayor's day. He was the 
 first Jew whom royalty had honored in this country since 
 the good old times when royalty was pleased to borrow 
 the Jew's money, or order instead the extraction of his 
 teeth. The expansion of the principle of religious liberty 
 and equality, which has been one of the most remark- 
 able characteristics of the reign of Queen Victoria, could 
 hardly have been more becomingly inaugurated than by 
 the compliment which sovereign and city paid to Sir 
 Moses Montefiore. 
 
 The first signature attached to the Act of Allegiance 
 presented to the Queen at Kensington Palace was that 
 of her eldest surviving uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumber- 
 land. The fact may be taken as an excuse for intro- 
 ducing a few words here to record the severance that 
 then took place between the interests of this country, or 
 
THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN ! 15 
 
 at least the reigning family of these realms, and another 
 State, which had for a long time been bound up together 
 in a manner seldom satisfactory to the English people. 
 In the whole history of England it will be observed that 
 few things have provoked greater popular dissatisfaction 
 than the connection of a reigning family with the crown 
 or rulership of some foreign state. There is an instinc- 
 tive jealousy on such a point, which, even when it is 
 unreasonable, is not unnatural. A sovereign of England 
 had better be sovereign of England, and of no foreign state. 
 Many favorable auspices attended the accession of Queen 
 Victoria to the throne ; so meat least of these were associ- 
 ated with her sex. The country was in general disposed 
 to think that the accession of a woman to the throne would 
 somewhat clarify and purify the atmosphere of the court. 
 It had another good effect as well, and one of a strictly 
 political nature. It severed the connection which had 
 existed for some generations between this country and 
 Hanover. The connection w^as only personal, the succes- 
 sive kings of England being also by succession sovereigns 
 of Hanover. 
 
 The crown of Hanover was limited in its descent to the 
 male line, and it passed on the death of William IV. to his 
 eldest surviving brother, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. 
 The change was in almost every way satisfactory to the 
 English people. The indirect connection between Eng- 
 land and Hanover had at no time been a matter of gratifi- 
 cation to the public of this country. Many cooler and 
 more enlightened persons than honest Squire Western 
 had viewed with disfavor, and at one time with distrust, 
 the division of interests which the ownership of the two 
 crowns seemed almost of necessity to create in our English 
 sovereigns. Besides, it must be owned that the people of 
 this country were not by any means sorry to be rid of the 
 Duke of Cumberland. Not many of George III.'s sons 
 were popular : the Duke of Cumberland was probably the 
 least popular of all. He was believed by many persons to 
 have had something more than an indirect, or passive, or 
 innocent share in the Orange plot, discovered and exposed 
 by Joseph Hume in 1835, for setting aside the claims of the 
 young Princess Victoria, and putting himself, the Duke of 
 Cumberland, on the throne ; a scheme which its author.^* 
 pretended to justify by the preposterous eissertion that they 
 
16 
 
 .1 II IS TO BY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 feared the Duke of Wellington would otherwise seize the 
 crown for himself. His manners were rude, overbearing, 
 and sometimes even brutal. He had personal habits which 
 seemed rather fitted for the days of Tiberius, or for the 
 court of Peter the Great, than for the time and sphere to 
 which he belonged. Rumor not unnaturally exaggerated 
 his defects, and in the mouths of many his name was the 
 symbol of the darkest and fiercest passions, and even 
 crimes. Some of the popular reports with regard to him 
 had their foundation only in the common detestation of his 
 character and dread of his influence ; but it is certain that 
 he Avas profligate, selfish, overbearing, and quarrelsome. 
 A man with these qualities would usually be described 
 in fiction as at all events bluntly honest and outspokq(R ; 
 but the Duke of Cumberland was deceitful and treacher- 
 ous. He was outspoken in his abuse of those with whom 
 he quarrelled, and in his style of anecdote and jocular con- 
 versation ; but in no other sense. The Duke of Welling- 
 ton, whom he hated, told Mr. Greville that he once asked 
 George IV. why the Duke of Cumberland Avas so unpopu- 
 lar, and the King replied, " Because there ncA^er was a 
 father well with his son, or husband with his wife, or 
 lover with his mistress, or friend with his friend, that he 
 did not try to make mischief between them." The first 
 thing he did on his accession to the throne of Hanover 
 was to abrogate the constitution which had been agreed 
 to by the Estates of the kingdom, and sanctioned by the 
 late King, William IV. " Radicalism," said the King, 
 writing to an English nobleman, " has been here all the 
 order of the day, and all the lower class appointed to 
 office were more or less imbued with these laudable prin- 
 ciples. . . . But I have cut the wings of this democracy." 
 He went, indeed, pretty vigorously to work, for he dis- 
 missed from their offices seven of the most distinguished 
 professors of the University of Gottingen, because they 
 signed a protest against his arbitrary abrogation of the 
 constitution. Among the men thus pushed from their 
 stools were — Gerviiuis,.the celebrated historian and Shak- 
 spearian critic, at tliat time professor of history and litera- 
 tui-e ; Ewald, tlie Orientalist and thelogian ; Jacob Grimm ; 
 and Frederi"k Dahhnann, professor of political science. 
 Gervinus, (irimm, and Dahlmann were not merely de- 
 prived of ihvAv offices, but Avere actually sent into exile, 
 
THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 17 
 
 The exiles were accompanied across the frontier by an 
 immense concourse of students, who gave them a trium- 
 phant Geleit in true student fashion, and converted what 
 was meant for degradation and punishment into a pro- 
 cession of honor. The offence against all rational prin- 
 ciples of civil government in these arbitrary proceedings 
 on the pii'rt of the new King was the more flagrant because 
 it could not even be pretended that the professors were 
 mterfering with political matters outside their province, 
 or that they were issuing manifestoes calculated to dis- 
 turb the public peace. The University of Gottingen at 
 that time sent a representative to the Estates of the king- 
 dom, and the protest to which the seven professors at- 
 tached their names was addressed to the academical senate, 
 and simply declared that they would take no part in the 
 ensuing election, because of the suspension of the con- 
 stitution. All this led to somewhat serious disturbances 
 in Hanover, which it needed the employment of military 
 force to suppress. 
 
 It was felt in England that the mere departure of the 
 Duke of Cumberland from this country would have made 
 the severance of the connection with Hanover desirable, 
 even if it had not been in other ways an advantage to us. 
 Later times have shown how much we have gained by 
 the separation. It would have been exceedingly incon- 
 venient, to say the least, if the crown worn by a sovereign 
 of England had been hazarded in the war between Austria 
 and Prussia in 1866. Our reigning family must have 
 seemed to suffer in dignity if that crown had been roughly 
 knocked off the head of its wearer, who happened to be 
 an English sovereign ; and it would have been absurd to 
 expect that the English people could engage in a quarrel 
 with which their interests and honor had absolutely noth- 
 ing to do, for the sake of a mere family possession of their 
 ruling house. Looking back from this distance of time, 
 and across a change of political and social manners far 
 greater than the distance of time might seem to explain, 
 it appears difficult to understand the passionate emotions 
 which the accession of the young Queen seems to have 
 excited on all sides. Some influential and prominent 
 politicians talked and wrote as if there were really a pos- 
 sibility of the Tories attempting a revolution in favor of 
 the Hanoverian branch of the royal family; and if houio 
 
18 
 
 A HIS TOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 certain Irish Roman Catholics respecting the success 
 of their warfare against Church and State under the aus- 
 pices of these not untried ministers, into whose hands the 
 all but infant Queen has been compelled by her unhappy 
 condition to deliver herself and her indignant people, are 
 to be taken for nothing, and as nothing, but the chimeras 
 of a band of visionary traitors." The Times even thought 
 it necessary to point out that for her Majesty to turn papist, 
 to marry a papist, " or in any manner follow the footsteps 
 of the Coburg family, whom these incendiaries describe 
 as papists," would involve an "immediate forfeiture of the 
 British crown." On the other hand, some of the Radical 
 and more especially Irish pa^Dcrs talked in the plainest terms 
 of Tory plots to depose, or even to assassinate, the Queen, 
 and put the Duke of Cumberland in her place. O'Connell, 
 the great Irish agitator, declared in a public speech that 
 if it were necessary he could get " five hundred thousand 
 brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the per- 
 son of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne 
 is now filled." Mr. Henry Grattan, the son of the famous 
 orator, and like his father a Protestant, declared, at a 
 meeting in Dublin, that "if her Majesty were once fairly 
 placed in the hands of the Tories, I would not give an 
 orange-peel for her life." He even went on to put his 
 rhetorical declaration into a more distinct form : " If 
 some of the low miscreants of the party got round her 
 Majesty, and had the mixing of the royal bowl at night, I 
 fear she would have a long sleep." This language seems 
 almost too absurd for sober record, and yet was hardly 
 more absurd than many things, said on what may be 
 called the otlier 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." "Tliese are the men 
 who represent tlie bigf)ted savages, hardly more civilized 
 than the natives of New Zealand, but animated with A 
 
TE[E king is DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QlfEEN ! 19 
 
 fierce, undying hatred of England. Yet on tliese men are 
 bestowed tiie countenance and support of the Queen of 
 Protestant England. For, alas ! her majesty is Queen 
 only of a faction, and is as much of a partisan as the Lord 
 Chancellor himself." At a Conservative dinner in Lan- 
 cashire, a speaker denounced the Queen and her ministers 
 on the same ground so vehemently, that the Commander- 
 in-chief addressed a remonstrance to some military offi- 
 cers who were amongst the guests at this excited ban- 
 quet, pointing out to them the serious responsibility they 
 incurred by remaining in any assembly when such lan- 
 guage was uttered and such sentiments were expressed. 
 
 No one, of course, would take impassioned and inflated 
 harangues of this kind on either side as a representation 
 of the general feeling. Sober persons all over the country 
 must have known perfectly well that there was not the 
 slightest fear that the young Queen would turn a Roman 
 Catholic, or that her ministry intended to deliver the 
 country up as a prey to Rome. Sober persons every- 
 where, too, must have known equally well that there was 
 no longer the shghtest cause to feel any alarm about a Tory 
 plot to hand over the throne of England to the detested 
 Duke of Cumberland. We only desire, in quoting such 
 outrageous declarations, to make more clear the condition 
 of the public mind, and to show what the state of the 
 political world must have been when such extravagance 
 and such delusions were possible. We have done this 
 partly to show what were the trials and difficulties under 
 which her Majesty came to the throne, and partly for the 
 mere purpose of illustrating the condition of the country 
 and of political education. There can be no doubt that ail 
 over the country passion and ignorance were at work to 
 make the task of constitutional government peculiarly 
 difficult. A vast number of the followers of the Tories 
 in country places really believed that the Liberals were 
 determined to hurry the sovereign into some policy tend- 
 ing to the degradation of the monarchy. If any cool and 
 enlightened reasoner were to argue with them on this 
 point, and endeavor to convince them of the folly of 
 ascribing such purposes to a number of English statesmen 
 whose interests, position, and honor were absolutely 
 bound up with the success and the glory of the State, the 
 indignant and unreasoning Tories would be able to cite 
 
20 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWK TlMlSt;, 
 
 the very words of so great and so sober-minded a states- 
 man as Sir Robert Peel, who, in his famous speech to the 
 electors of Tamworth, promised to rescue the constitution 
 from being made the " victim of false friends," and the 
 country from being "trampled under the hoof of a 
 ruthless democracy." If, on the other hand, a sensible 
 person were to try to persuade hot-headed people on the 
 opposite side that it was absurd to suppose the Tories 
 really meant any harm to the freedom and the peace of 
 the country and the security of the succession, he might 
 be invited, with significant expression, to read the 
 manifesto issued by Lord Durham to the electors of 
 Sunderland, in which that eminent statesman declared 
 that " in all circumstances, at all hazards, be the personal 
 consequences what they may," he would ever be found 
 ready when called upon to defend the principles on which 
 tlie constitution of the country was then settled. We know 
 now very well that Sir Robert Peel and Lord Durham 
 were using the language of innocent metaphor. Sir 
 Robert Peel did not really fear much the hoof of the 
 ruthless democracy ; Lord Durham did not actually expect 
 to be called upon at any terrible risk to himself to fight 
 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 tlie Times on the one 
 side, and that of O'Connell on the other, came to read the 
 calmer and yet sufficiently impassioned words of respon- 
 sible statesmen like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Durham, 
 they might be excused if they found rather a confirmation 
 than a refutation of their arguments and their fears. 
 
 The truth is that the country was in a very excited con- 
 dition, and that it is easy to imagine a succession of events 
 which might in a moment have thrown it into utter 
 confusion. At home and abroad things were looking 
 ominous for the new reign. To begin with, the last two 
 reigns had, on the whole, done much to loosen, not only the 
 personal feeling of allegiance, but even the general con- 
 fidence in the virtue of monarchical rule. The old plan 
 of personal government had become an anomaly, and the 
 system of a genuine constitutional government, such as we 
 know, liad not yet been tried. The very manner in which 
 the Reform I>ill had been carried, the political stratagem 
 which had been resoi'ted to when further resistance 
 
STATESMm AND PAnTlES. 
 
 '21 
 
 seemed dangerous, was not likely to exalt in popular 
 estimate the value of what was then gracefully called 
 constitutional government. Only a short time before, 
 the country had seen Catholic emancipation conceded, 
 not from a sense of justice on the part of ministers, but 
 avowedly because further resistance must lead to civil 
 disturbance. There was not much in all this to impress 
 an intelligent and independent people with a sense of the 
 great wisdom of the rulers of the country, or of the indis- 
 pensable advantages of the system which they represented. 
 Social discontent prevailed almost everywhere. Economic 
 laws were hardly understood by the country in general. 
 Class interests were fiercely arrayed against each other. 
 The cause of each man's class filled him with a positive 
 fanaticism. He was not a mere selfish and grasping 
 partisan, but he sincerely believed that each other class 
 was arrayed against his, and that the natural duty of 
 self-defence and self-preservation compelled him to stand 
 firmly by his own. 
 
 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, somewhat indolent nature; fair and 
 even generous toward his political opponents ; of the most 
 genial disposition toward his friends. He was emphati- 
 cally not a strong man. He was not a man to make good 
 grow where it was not already growing, to adopt the 
 expression of a great author. Long before that time his 
 eccentric wife. Lady Caroline Lamb, had excused herself 
 for some of her follies and frailties by pleading that her 
 husband was not a man to watch over any one's morals. 
 He was a kindly counsellor to a young Queen ; and, hap- 
 pily for herself, the young Queen in this case had strong, 
 clear sense enough of her own not to be absolutely 
 dependent on any counsel. Lord Melbourne was not a 
 
22 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 statesman. His best qualities, personal kindness and 
 good-nature apart, were purely negative. He was unfor- 
 tunately not content even with the reputation for a sort 
 of indolent good-nature which he might have well de- 
 served : he strove to make himself appear hopelessly idle, 
 trivial, and careless. When he really was serious and 
 earnest, he seemed to make it his business to look like one 
 in whom no human affairs could call up a gleam of inter- 
 est. He became the /anfaron of levities which he never 
 had. We have amusing pictures of him as he occupied 
 himself in blowing a feather or nursing a sofa-cushion 
 while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensi- 
 tive deputation from this or that commercial " interest." 
 Those who knew him insisted that he really was listening 
 with all his might and main ; that he had sat up the 
 whole night before, studying the question which he 
 seemed to think so unworthy of any attention ; and that, 
 so far from being, like Horace, wholly absorbed in his 
 trifles, he was at very great pains to keep up the appear- 
 ance of a trifler. A brilliant critic has made a lively and 
 amusing attack on this alleged peculiarity. " If the truth 
 must be told," says Sydney Smith, " our viscount is some- 
 what of an impostor. Everything about him seems to 
 betoken careless desolation ; any one would suppose from 
 his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with 
 human happiness ; that he was always on the heel of pas- 
 time ; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and 
 decide by the method of teetotum whether my lords the 
 bishops should or should not retain their seats in the 
 House of Lords. All this is but the mere vanity of sur- 
 prising, and making us believe that he can play with 
 kingdoms as other men can with ninepins. ... I am 
 sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away the 
 magnificent fabric of levity and gayety he has reared ; 
 but I accuse our minister of honesty and diligence; I 
 deny that he is careless or rash : he is nothing more than 
 a man of good understanding and good principle disguised 
 in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a 
 political rotiey 
 
 Such a masquerading might perhaps have been excu- 
 sable, or even attractive, in the case of a man of really 
 brilliant and commanding talents. Lookers-on are always 
 rather apt to be fascinated by the spectacle of a man of 
 
STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 
 
 23 
 
 well recognized strength and force of character playing 
 for the moment the part of an indolent trifler. The con- 
 trast is charming in a brilliant Prince Hal or such a Sar- 
 danapalus as Byron drew. In our own time a consider- 
 able amount of the popularity of Lord Palmerston was in- 
 spired by the amusing antagonism between his assumed 
 levity and his well-known force of intellect and strength 
 of will. But in Lord Melbourne's case the affectation 
 had no such excuse or happy effect. He was not by any 
 means a Palmerston. He was only fitted to rule in the 
 quietest times. He was a poor speaker, utterly unable to 
 encounter the keen, penetrating criticisms of Lyndhurst 
 or the vehement and remorseless invectives of Brougham. 
 Debates were then conducted with a bitterness of person- 
 ality unknown, or at all events very rarely known, in our 
 days. Even in the House of Lords language was often 
 interchanged of the most virulent hostility. The rushing 
 impetuosity and fury of Brougham's style had done much 
 then to inflame the atmosphere which in our days is 
 usually so cool and moderate. 
 
 It probably added to the warmth of the attacks on the 
 ministry of Lord Melbourne that the Prime-minister was 
 supposed to be an especial favorite with the young Queen. 
 When Victoria came to the throne the Duke of Welling- 
 ton gave frank expression to his feelings as to the future 
 of his party. He was of the opinion that the Tories would 
 never have any chance with a young woman for a sover- 
 eign. " I have no small-talk," he said, " and Peel has no 
 manners." It had probably not occurred to the Duke of 
 Wellington to think that a woman could be capable of as 
 sound a constitutional policy, and could show as little re- 
 gard for personal predilections in the business of govern- 
 ment, as any man. All this, however, only tended to em- 
 bitter the feeling against the Whig government. Lord 
 Melbourne's constant attendance on the young Queen was 
 regarded with keen jealousy and dissatisfaction. Accord- 
 ing to some critics, the Prime-minister was endeavoring 
 to inspire her with all his own gay heedlessness of char- 
 acter and temperament. According to others, Lord Mel- 
 bourne's purpose was to make himself agreeable and indis- 
 pensable to the Queen ; to surround lier with his friends, 
 relations, and creatures, and thus get a lifelong hold of 
 power in England, in defiance of political changes an4 
 
24 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 parties. It is curious now to look back on much that was 
 said in the political and personal heats and bitternesses of 
 the time. If Lord Melbourne had been a French mayor of 
 the palace, whose real object was to make himself virtual 
 ruler of the State, and to hold the sovereign as a puppet in 
 his hands, there could not have been greater anger, fear, 
 and jealousy. Since that time we have all learned on the 
 very best authority that Lord Melbourne actually was 
 himself the person to advise the Queen to show some con- 
 fidence in the Tories — to " hold out the olive-branch a little 
 to them," as he expressed it. He does not appear to have 
 been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means 
 of getting or keeping it. The character of the young sov- 
 ereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or 
 affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to 
 make her life as happy, and her reign as successful, as he 
 could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and 
 gratitude for him, and showed it long after the public had 
 given up the suspicion that she could be a puppet in the 
 hands of a minister. 
 
 Still, it is certain that the Queen's Prime-minister was 
 by no means a popular man at the time of her accession. 
 Even observers who had no political or personal interest 
 whatever in the conditions of cabinets were displeased to 
 see the opening of the new reign so much, to all appear- 
 ance, under the influence of one Avho either was or tl-ied 
 to be a mere lounger. The deputations went away 
 offended and disgusted when Lord Melbourne played 
 with feathers or dandled sofa-cushions in their presence. 
 The almost fierce energy and strenuousness of a man 
 like Brougham showed in overwhelming contrast to the 
 happy-go-lucky airs and graces of the Premier. It is 
 likely that there was quite as much of affectation in the 
 one case as in the other ; but the affectation of a devour- 
 ing zeal for the public service told at least far better than 
 the other in the heat and stress of debate. When the new 
 reign began, the ministry had two enemies or critics in 
 the House of Lords of the most formidable character. 
 Either alone would have been a trouble to a minister of 
 far stronger mould than Lord Melbourne ; but circum- 
 stances threw them both, for the moment, into a chance 
 alliance against him. 
 
 One of these was Loi'd Brougham, No stronger and 
 
BTATESMEN AND I^AnTlEB. 
 
 25 
 
 stranger a figure than his is described in the modern his- 
 tory of England. He was gifted with the most varied and 
 striking talents, and with capacity for labor which some- 
 times seemed ahnost superhuman. Not merely had he 
 the capacity for labor, but he appeared to have a positive 
 passion for work. His restless energy seemed as if it 
 must stretch itself out on every side seeking new fields of 
 conquest. The study that was enough to occupy the 
 whole time and wear out the frame of other men was only 
 recreation to him. He might have been described as one 
 possessed by a very demon of work. His physical strength 
 never gave way. His high spirits never deserted him. 
 His self-confidence was boundless. He thought he knew 
 everything, and could do everything better than any other 
 man. He delighted in giving evidence that he understood 
 the business of the specialist better than the specialist 
 himself. His vanity was overweening, and made him 
 ridiculous almost as often and as much as his genius made 
 him admired. The comic literature of more than a gen- 
 eration had no subject more fruitful than the vanity and 
 restlessness of Lord Brougham. He was beyond doubt a 
 great Parliamentary orator. His style was too diffuse and 
 sometimes too uncouth to suit a day like our own, when 
 form counts for more than substance, when passion seems 
 out of place in debate, and not to exaggerate is far more 
 the object than to try to be great. Brougham's action 
 was wild, and sometimes even furious ; his gestures were 
 singularly ungraceful ; his manners were grotesque ; but 
 of his power over his hearers there could be no doubt. 
 That power remained with him until a far later date; 
 and long after the years when men usually continue to 
 take part in political debate, Lord Brougham could be 
 impassioned, impressive, and even overwhelming. He was 
 not an orator of the highest class : his speeches have not 
 stood the test of time. Apart from the circumstances of 
 the hour and the personal power of the speaker, they could 
 hardly arouse any great delight, or even interest ; for 
 they are by no means models of English style, and they 
 have little of that profound philosophical interest, that 
 pregnancy of thought and meaning, and that splendor of 
 eloquence, which make the speeches of Burke always 
 classic, and even in a certain sense always popular among 
 us. In truth, no man C(Uild have done with abiding success 
 
26 A HIS f DRY OF Om OWN TIMM. 
 
 all the things which Brougham did successfully for the 
 hour. On law, on politics, on literature, on languages, on 
 science, on art, on industrial and commercial enterprise, 
 he professed to pronounce with the authority of a teacher. 
 
 If Brougham knew a little of law," said O'Connell, when 
 the former became Lord Chancellor, he would know a 
 little of everything." The anecdote is told in another 
 way too, which perhaps makes it even more piquant. 
 " The new Lord Chancellor knows a little of everything in 
 the world — even of law." 
 
 Brougham's was an excitable and self-asserting nature. 
 He had during many years shown himself an embodied 
 influence, a living, speaking force in the promotion of 
 great political and social reforms. If his talents were 
 great, if his personal vanity was immense, let it be said 
 that his services to the cause of human freedom and 
 education were simply inestimable. As an opponent of 
 slavery in the colonies, as an advocate of political reform 
 at home, of law reform, of popular education, of religious 
 equality, he had worked with indomitable zeal, with resist- 
 less passion, and with splendid success. But his career 
 passed through two remarkable changes which, to a great 
 extent, interfered with the full efficacy of his extraordinary 
 powers. The first was when from popular tribune and 
 reformer he became Lord Chancellor in 1830; the second 
 was when he was left out of office on the reconstruction of 
 the Whig Ministry 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 sudden- 
 ly threw over Brougham. The common belief is that his 
 eccentricities and his almost savage temper made him 
 intolerable in a cabinet. It has been darkly hinted that for 
 awhile his intellect was actually under a cloud, as people 
 said that of Chatham was during a momentous season. 
 
 Lord Brougham was not a man likely to forget or for- 
 give the wrong which he must have believed that he had 
 sustained at the hands of the Whigs. He became the 
 fiercest and most formidable of Lord Melbourne's hostile 
 critics. 
 
 The other opponent who has been spoken of was Lord , 
 Lyndhurst. Lord Lyndhurst resembled Lord I^rougham 
 in the length of his career and in capacity for work, if in 
 
STATESMEN AND PARTIES, 
 
 27 
 
 nothing else. Lyndhurst, who was born in Boston the 
 year before the tea-ships were boarded in that harbor 
 and tlieir cargoes flung into the water, has been heard 
 addressing the House of Lords in all vigor and fluency 
 by men wlio are yet far from middle age. He was one of 
 the most effective Parliamentary debaters of a time which 
 has known such men as Peel and Palmerston, Gladstone 
 and Disraeli, Bright and Cobden. His style was singu- 
 larly and even severely clear, direct, and pure; his man- 
 ner was easy and graceful ; his voice remarkably sweet 
 and strong. Nothing could have been in greater contrast 
 than his clear, correct, nervous argument, and the impas- 
 sioned invectives and overwhelming strength of Broug- 
 ham. Lyndhurst had, as has been said, an immense capa- 
 city for work, when the work had to be done ; but his 
 natural tendency was as distinctly toward indolence as 
 Brougham's was toward unresting activity. Nor were 
 Lyndhurst's political convictions ever very clear. By the 
 habitude of associating with the Tories, and receiving 
 office from them, and speaking for them, and attacking 
 their enemies with argument and sarcasm, Lyndhurst 
 finally settled down into all the ways of Toryism. But 
 nothing in his varied history showed that he had any 
 particular preference that way ; and there were many 
 passages in his career when it would seem as if a turn of 
 chance decided what path of political life he was to fol- 
 low. As a keen debater he was, perhaps, hardly ever 
 excelled in Parliament ; but he had neither the passion 
 nor the genius of the orator ; and his capacity was narrow 
 indeed in its range when compared with the astonishing 
 versatility and omnivorous mental activity of Brougham. 
 As a speaker he was always equal. He seemed to know 
 no varying moods or fits of mental lassitude. Whenever 
 he spoke he reached at ouce the same high level as a 
 debater. The very fact may in itself, perhaps, be taken 
 as conclusive evidence that he was not an orator. The 
 higher qualities of the orator are no more to be sum- 
 moned at will than those of the poet. 
 
 These two men were without any comparison the two 
 leading debaters in the House of Lords. Lord Melbourne 
 had not at that time in the Upper House a single man of 
 flrst-class or even of second-class debating power on the 
 bench of the ministry. An able writer has well remarked 
 
28 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 that the position of the ministry in the House of Lords 
 might be compared to that of a water-logged wreck into 
 which enemies from all quarters are pouring their broad- 
 sides. 
 
 The accession of the Queen made it necessary that a 
 new Parliament should be summoned. The struggle be- 
 tween parties among the constituencies was very ani- 
 mated, and was carried on in some instances with a re- 
 course to manoeuvre and stratagem such as in our time 
 would hardly be possible. The result was not a very 
 marked alteration in the condition of parties ; but, on the 
 whole, the advantage remained with the Tories. Some- 
 where about this time, it may be remarked, the use of the 
 word " Conservative," to describe the later political party, 
 first came into fashion. Mr. Wilson Croker is credited 
 with the honor of having first employed the word in that 
 sense. In an article in the Quarterly JRevieio some years 
 before, he spoke of being decidedly and conscientiously 
 attached " to what is called the Tory, but which might 
 with more propriety be called the Conservative party." 
 During the elections for the new Parliament, Lord John 
 Russel, speaking at a public dinner at Stroud, made 
 allusion to the new name which his opponents were 
 beginning to affect for their party. " If that," he said, 
 " is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old 
 distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept 
 up, I am ready, in opposition to their name of Conserva- 
 tive, to take the name of Reformer, and4o stand by that 
 opposition." 
 
 The Tories, or Conservatives, then, had a slight gain 
 as the result of the appeal to the country. The new Par- 
 liament, on its assembling, seems to have gathered in the 
 Commons an unusually large number of gifted and prom- 
 ising men. There was something, too, of a literary stamp 
 about it, a fact not much to be observed in Parliaments 
 of a date nearer to the present time. Mr. Grote, the his- 
 torian of Greece, sat for the city of London. The late 
 Lord Lytton, then Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, had a 
 seat — an advanced Radical at that day. Mr. Disraeli 
 came then into Parliament for the first time. Charles 
 BuUer, full of high spirits, brilliant humor, and the very 
 inspiration of keen good-sense, seemed on the sure way to 
 that career of renown which a premature death cut short. 
 
STATESMEN AND PARTIES, 
 
 29 
 
 Sir William Molesworth was an excellent type of the 
 school which in later days was called the Philosophical 
 Radical. Another distinguished member of the same 
 school, Mr. Roebuck, had lost his seat, and was for the mo- 
 ment an outsider. Mr. Gladstone had been already five 
 years in Parliament. The late Lord Carlisle, then Lord 
 Morpeth, was looked upon as a graceful siDCcimen of the 
 literary and artistic young nobleman, who also cultivates 
 a little politics for his intellectual amusement. Lord John 
 Russell had but lately begun his career as leader of the 
 House of Commons ; Lord Palnierston was Foreign Secre- 
 tary, but had not even then got the credit of the great 
 ability which he possessed. Not many years before Mr. 
 Greville spoke of him as a man who " had been twenty 
 years in office, and had never distinguished himself 
 before." Mr. Greville expresses a mild surprise at the high 
 opinion which persons who knew Lord Palmerston inti- 
 mately were pleased to entertain as to his ability and his 
 capacity for work. Only those who knew him very inti- 
 mately indeed had any idea of the capacity for governing 
 Parliament and the country which he was soon afterward 
 to display. Sir Robert Peel was leader of the Conserva- 
 tive party. Lord Stanley, the late Lord Derby, was still 
 in the House of Commons. He had not long before broken 
 definitely with the Whigs on the question of the Irish 
 ecclesiastical establishment, and had passed over to that 
 Conservative party of which he afterward became the 
 most influential leader, and the most powerful Parliament- 
 ary orator. O'Connell and Shell i-epresented the eloquence 
 of the Irish national party. Decidedly the House of Com- 
 mons first elected during Queen Victoria's reign was 
 strong in eloquence and talent. Only two really great 
 speakers have arisen, in the forty years that followed, 
 who were not members of Parliament at that time — Mr. 
 Cobden and Mr. Bright. Mr. Cobden had come forward 
 as a candidate for the borough of Stockport, but was not 
 successful, and did not obtain a seat in Parliament until 
 four years after. It was only by Avhat 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 
 had added no first-class name to the records of Parlia- 
 mentary eloquence. 
 
30 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUIC OWN TIMES. 
 
 The ministry was not very strong in the House of Com- 
 mons. Its conditions, indeed, hardly allowed it to feel 
 itself strong even if it had had more powerful representa- 
 tives in either House. Its adherents were but loosely 
 held together. The more ardent reformers were disap- 
 pointed with ministers ; the Free-trade movement was 
 rising into distinct bulk and proportions, and threatened 
 to be formidably independent of mere party ties. The 
 Government had to rely a good deal on the precarious 
 support of Mr. O'Connell and his followers. They were 
 not rich in debating talent in the Commons any more than 
 in the Lords. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the Opposi- 
 tion, was by far the most powerful man in the House of 
 Commons. Added to his great qualities as an adminis- 
 trator and a Parliamentary debater, he had the virtue, 
 then very rare among Conservative statesmen, of being a 
 sound and clear financier, with a good grasp of the funda 
 mental principles of political economy. His high austere 
 character made him respected by opponents as well as by 
 friends. He had not, perhaps, many intimate friends. 
 His temperament was cold, or at least its heat was self-con- 
 tained ; he threw out no genial glow to those around him. 
 He was by nature a reserved and shy man, in whose man- 
 ners shyness took the form of pompousness and coldness. 
 Something might be said of him like that which Richter 
 said of Schiller : he was to strangers stony, and like a pre- 
 cipice from which it was their instinct to spring back. It 
 is certain that he had warm and generous feelings, but 
 his very sensitiveness only led him to disguise them. 
 The contrast between his emotions and his lack of demon- 
 strativeness created in him a constant artificiality which 
 often seemed mere awkwardness. It was in the House of 
 Commons that his real genius and character displayed 
 themselves. The atmosphere of debate was to him what 
 Macaulay says wine was to Addison, the influence which 
 broke the spell under which his fine intellect seemed other- 
 wise to lie imprisoned. Peel was a perfect master of the 
 House of Commons. He was as great an orator as any 
 man could be who addresses himself to the House of Com- 
 mons, its ways and its purposes alone. He went as near, 
 perhaps, to the rank of a great orator as any one can go 
 who is but little gifted with imagination. Oratory has 
 been well described as the fusion of reason and [)assion. 
 
STATESMEN AND PARTItJS. 
 
 31 
 
 Passion always carries sometliingof the imaginative along 
 with it. Sir Robert Peel had little imagination, and 
 almost none of that passion which in eloquence sometimes 
 supplies its place. Ilis style was clear, strong, and stately ; 
 full of various argument and apt illustration drawn from 
 books and from the world of politics and commerce. He 
 followed a difficult argument home to its utter conclusions ; 
 and if it had in it any lurking fallacy he brought out the 
 weakness into the clearest light, often Avith a happy touch 
 of humor and quiet sarcasm. His speeches might be de- 
 scribed as the very perfection of good-sense and high prin- 
 ciple clothed in the most impressive language. But they 
 were something more peculiar than this, for they were so 
 constructed, in their argument and their style alike, as to 
 touch the very core of the intelligence of the House of 
 Commons. They told of the feelings and the inspiration 
 of Parliament as the ballad-music of a country tells of its 
 scenery and its national sentiments. 
 
 Lord Stanley was a far more energetic and impassioned 
 speaker than Sir Robert Peel, and perhaps occasionally, in 
 has later career, came now and then nearer to the height 
 of genuine oratory. But Lord Stanley was little more 
 than a splendid Parliamentary partisan, even when, long 
 after, he was Prime-minister of England. He had very 
 little, indeed, of that class of information which the 
 modern world requires of its statesmen and leaders. Of 
 political economy, of finance, of the development and the 
 discoveries of modern science, he knew almost as little as 
 it is possible for an able and energetic man to know who 
 lives in the throng of active life and hears what people 
 are talking of around him. He once said good-humoredly 
 of himself, that he was brought up in the pre-scientific 
 period. His scholarship was merely such training in the 
 classic languages as allowed him to have a full literary 
 appreciation of the beauty of Greek and Roman literature. 
 He had no real and deep knowledge of the history of the 
 Greek and the Roman people, nor probably did he at all 
 appreciate the great difference between the spirit of 
 Roman and of Greek civilization. He had, in fact, what 
 would have been called at an earlier day an elegant schol- 
 arship ; he had a considerable knowledge of the politics of 
 his time in most European countries, an energetic, intrepid 
 spirit, and with him, as Macaulay well said, the science of 
 
32 
 
 A HISTORY OF OlIB OTF^V TIMES. 
 
 Parliamentary debate seemed to be an instinct. There 
 was no speaker on the ministerial benches at that time 
 who could for a moment be compared with him. 
 
 Lord John Russell, who had the leadership of the party 
 in the House of Commons, was really a much stronger 
 man than he seemed to be. He had a character for daunt- 
 less courage and confidence among his friends ; for bound- 
 less self-conceit among his enemies. Every one remem- 
 bers Sydney Siiiith's famous illustrations of Lord John 
 Russell's unlimited faith in his own power of achievement. 
 Thomas Moore addressed a poem to him at one time, when 
 Lord John Russell thought or talked of giving up politi- 
 cal life, in which he appeals to " thy genius, thy youth, 
 and thy name," declares that the instinct of the young 
 statesman is the same as " the eaglet's to soar with his 
 eyes on the sun," and implores him not to " think for an 
 instant thy country can spare such a light from her darken- 
 ing horizon as thou." Later observers, to whom Lord 
 John Russell appeared probably remarkable for a cold and 
 formal style as a debater, and for lack of originating 
 power as a statesman, may find it difficult to reconcile the 
 poet's picture with their own impressions of the reality- 
 But it is certain that at one time the reputation of Lord 
 John Russell was that of a rather reckless man of genius, 
 a sort of Whig Shelley. He had, in truth, much less 
 genius than his friends and admirers believed, and a great 
 deal more of practical strength than either friends or foes 
 gave him credit for. He became, not indeed an orator, 
 but a very keen debater, who was especially effective in a 
 cold, irritating sarcasm which penetrated the weakness of 
 an opponent's argument like some dissolving acid. In the 
 poem from which we have quoted, Moore speaks of the 
 eloquence of his noble friend as " not like those rills from 
 a height, which sparkle and foam and in vapor are o'er ; 
 but a current that works out its way into light through 
 the filtering recesses of thought and of lore." Allowing 
 for the exaggeration of friendship and poetry, this is not 
 a bad description of what Lord John Russell's style 
 became at its best. The thin bright stream of argument 
 worked its way slowly out, and contrived to wear a path 
 for itself through obstacles which at first the looker-on 
 mi^'lit liave felt assured it never could penetrate. '^^>r.l 
 Jolm Itussell's swordsmanship was the swordsman.;!:;- Ji' 
 
STATESMEN AND PAllTlES. 
 
 83 
 
 Salaclin, and not tliat of stout King Richard. But it was 
 vei'}^ effective sword-play in its own way. Our English 
 system of government by party makes the history of 
 Parliament seem like that of a succession of great political 
 duels. Two men stand constantly confronted during a 
 series of years, one of whom is at the head of the Govern- 
 ment, while the other is at the head of the Opposition. 
 They change places with each victory. The conqueror 
 goes into office ; the conquered into opposition. This is 
 not the place to discuss either the merits or the probable 
 duration of the principle of government by party ; it is 
 enough to say here that it undoubtedly gives a very ani- 
 mated and varied complexion to our political struggles* 
 and invests them, indeed, with much of the glow and pas- 
 sion of actual Avarfare. It has often happened that the 
 two leading opponents are men of intellectual and oratori- 
 cal powers so fairly balanced that their followers may 
 well dispute among themselves as to the superiority of 
 their respective chiefs, and that the public in general may 
 become divided into two schools, not merely political, but 
 even critical, according to their partiality for one or the 
 other. We still dispute as to whether Fox or Pitt was 
 the greater leader, the greator 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 Russell and Sir Robert Peel stood 
 thus opposed. They will often come into contrast and 
 comparison in these pages. For the present it is enough 
 to say that Peel had by far the more original mind, and 
 that Lord John Russell never obtained so great an in- 
 fluence over the House of Commons as that wdiicli his 
 rival long enjoyed. The heat of political passion after- 
 ward induced a bitter critic to accuse Peel of lack of origi- 
 nality because he assimilated readily and turned to account" 
 the ideas of other men. Not merely the criticism, but the 
 principle on which it was founded, was altogether wrong. 
 It ought to be left to children to suppose that nothing is 
 original but that which we make up, as the childish phrase 
 is, " out of our own heads." Originality in politics, as in 
 every field of art, consists in the use and application of the 
 ideas which we get or are given to us. The greatest proof 
 Sir Robert Peel ever gave of high and genuine states- 
 manship was in his recognition that the time had come to 
 
 3 
 
34 A mSTOBY OF OUB OHW TIMES. 
 
 put into practical legislation the principles which Cobden 
 and Villiers and Bright had been advocating in the House 
 of Commons. Lord John Russell was a born reformer. 
 He had sat at the feet of Fox. He was cradled in the 
 principles of Liberalism. He held faithfully to his creed ; 
 he was one of its boldest and keenest champions. He had 
 great advantages over Peel, in the mere fact that he had 
 begun his education in a more enlightened school. But 
 he wanted passion quite as much as Peel did, and remained 
 still farther than Peel below the level of the genuine orator. 
 Russell, as we have said, had not long held the post of 
 leader of the House of Commons when the first Parlia- 
 ment of Queen Victoria assembled. He was still, in a 
 manner, on trial ; and even among his friends, perhaps 
 especially among his friends, there were whispers that his 
 confidence in himself was greater than his capacity for 
 leadership. 
 
 After the chiefs of Ministry and of Opposition, the 
 most conspicuous figure in the House of Commons was 
 the colossal form of O'Connell, the great Irish agitator, of 
 whom we shall hear a good deal more. Among the fore- 
 most orators of the House at that time was O'Connell's 
 impassioned lieutenant, Richard Lalor Shell. It is curi- 
 ous how little is now remembered of Shell, whom so 
 many well-qualified authorities declared to be a genuine 
 orator. Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his novels, speaks of 
 Shell's eloquence in terms of the highest praise, and dispar- 
 ages Canning. It is but a short time since Mr. Gladstone 
 selected Shell as one of three remarkable illustrations of 
 great success as a speaker, achieved in spite of serious 
 defects of voice and delivery; the other two examples 
 being Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Newman. Mr. Gladstone 
 described Shell's voice as like nothing but the sound pro- 
 duced by " a tin kettle battered about from place to place," 
 knocking first against one side and then against another. 
 "In anybody else," Mr. Gladstone went on to say, "I 
 would not, if it had been in my choice, like to have listened 
 to that voice ; but in him I would not have changed it, 
 for it was part of a most rema]*kable whole, and nobody 
 ever felt it painful while listening to it. He was a great 
 orator, and an orator of much preparation, I believe, car- 
 ried even to words, with a very vivid imagination and 
 an enormous power of language, and of strong feeling. 
 
STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 
 
 35 
 
 There was a peculiar character, a sort of half-wildness in 
 his aspect and delivery ; his whole figure, and his delivery, 
 and his voice and his matter, were all in such perfect keep- 
 ing with one another that they formed a great Parlia- 
 mentary picture; and although it is now thirty-five years 
 since I heard Mr. Shell, my recollection of him is just as 
 vivid as if I had been listening to him to-day." This surely 
 is a picture of a great orator, as Mr. Gladstone says 
 Shell was. Nor is it easy to understand how a man, with- 
 out being a very great orator, could have persuaded two 
 experts of such different school as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
 Disraeli that he deserves such a name. Yet the after- 
 years have in a curious but unmistakable way denied the 
 claims of Shell. Perhaps it is because, if he really was an 
 orator, he was that and nothing more, that our practical 
 age, finding no mark left by him on Parliament or politics, 
 has declined to take much account even of his eloquence. 
 His career faded away into second-class ministerial office, 
 and closed at last, somewhat prematurely, in the little 
 court of Florence, where he was sent as the represent- 
 ative of England. He is worth mentioning here, because 
 he had the promise of a splendid reputation ; because the 
 charm of his eloquence evidently lingered long in the 
 memories of those to whom it was once familiar, and be- 
 cause his is one of the most brilliant illustrations of that 
 career of Irish agitator, which begins in stormy opposition 
 to English government, and subsides after awhile into 
 meek recognition of its title and adoption of its ministerial 
 uniform. O'Connellwe have passed over for the present, 
 because we shall hear of him again ; but of Shell it is not 
 necessary that we should hear any more. 
 
 This was evidently a remarkable Parliament, with Rus- 
 sell for the leader of one party, and Peel for the leader of 
 another ; with O'Connell and Shell as independent sup- 
 porters of the ministry ; with Mr. Gladstone still compar- 
 atively new to public life, and Mr. Disraeli to address the 
 Commons for the first time ; with Palmerston still unrec- 
 ognized, and Stanley lately gone over to Conservatism, 
 itself the newest invented thing in politics ; with Grote 
 and Bulwer, and Joseph Hume, and Charles Buller ; and 
 Ward and Villiers, Sir Francis Burdett, and Smith 
 O'Brien, and the Radical Alcibiades of Finsbury, Tom " 
 Duncombe. 
 
36 
 
 A HISTOBY OF QUE OWJS^ TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CANADA AND LORD DUEHAM. 
 
 The first disturbance to the quiet and good promise of 
 the new reign came from Canada. The ParUament which 
 we have described met for the first time on November 
 20th, 1837, and was to have been adjourned to February 
 1st, 1838 ; but the news which began to arrive from 
 Canada was so alarming, that the ministry were com- 
 pelled to change their purpose and fix the reassembling 
 of the Houses for January 16th. The disturbances in 
 Canada had already broken out into open rebellion. 
 
 The condition of Canada was very peculiar. Lower or 
 Eastern Canada was inhabited for the most part by men 
 of French descent, who still kept uj) 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-fashioned 
 France, such as he had known otherwise only in books 
 that tell of France before '89. Nor is this only in small 
 sequestered towns and villages which the impulses of mod- 
 ern ways have yet failed to reach. In busy and trading 
 Montreal, with its residents made up of Englishmen, 
 Scotchmen, and Americans, as well as the men of French 
 descent, the visitor is more immediately conscious of the 
 presence of what may be called an old-fashioned Catho- 
 licism than he is in Paris, or even indeed in Rome. In 
 Quebec, a city which for picturesqueness and beauty 
 of situation is not equalled by Edinburgh or Florence, 
 the curious interest of the place is furtlier increased, 
 the novelty of the sensations it produces in the visitor is 
 made more piquant, by the evidences he meets with 
 everywhere, through its quaint and steepy streets and 
 
CANADA AND LORD l)UBIIAi\L 
 
 37 
 
 under its antiquated archways, of the existence of a 
 society which has hardly in France survived the Great 
 Revolution. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign, 
 the undiluted character of this French medisevalism was, 
 of course, much more remarkable. It would doubtless 
 have exhibited itself quietly enough if it Avere absolutely 
 undiluted. LoAver Canada would have dozed away in 
 its sleepy picturesqueness, held fast to its ancient ways, 
 and allowed a bustling, giddy world, all alive with com- 
 merce and ambition, and desire for novelty and the 
 terribly disturbing thing which unresting people called 
 progress, to rush on its wild path unheeded. But its 
 neighbors and its newer citizens were not disposed to 
 allow Lower Canada thus to rot itself in ease on the 
 decaying wharves of the St. Lawrence and the St. 
 Charles. In the large towns there were active traders 
 from England and otlier countries, who were by no means 
 content to put up with Old- World ways, and to let the 
 magnificent resources of the place run to waste. Upper 
 Canada, on the other hand, was all new as to its popula- 
 tion, and was full of the modern desire for commercial 
 activity. Upper Canada was peopled almost exclusively 
 by inhabitants from Great Britain. Scotch settlers, with 
 all the energy and push of their country ; men from the 
 northern province of Ireland, who might be described as 
 virtually Scotch also, came there. The emigrant from 
 the south of Ireland went to the United States because 
 he found there a country more or less hostile to England, 
 and because there the Catholic Church was understood to 
 be flourishing. The Ulsterman went to Canada as the 
 Scotchman did, because he saw the flag of England flying, 
 and the principle of religious establishment which he 
 admired at home still recognized. It is almost needless to 
 say that Englishmen in great numbers were settled there, 
 whose chief desire was to make the colony as far as pos- 
 sible a copy of the institutions of England. When Canada 
 was ceded to England by France, as a consequence of the 
 victories of Wolfe, the population was nearly all in the 
 lower province, and therefore was nearly all of French 
 origin. Since the cession the growth of the population 
 of the other province had been surprisingly rapid, and 
 had been almost exclusively the growth, as we have seen, 
 of immigration from Great Britain, one or two of the 
 
38 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 colonizing states of tlie European continent, and the 
 American Republic itself. 
 
 It is easy to see on the very face of things some of the 
 difficulties which must arise in the development of such 
 a system. The French of Lower Canada would regard 
 with almost morbid jealousy any legislation which ap- 
 peared likely to interfere with their ancient ways and to 
 give any advantage or favor to the populations of British 
 descent. The latter would see injustice or feebleness in 
 every measure which did not assist them in developing 
 their more energetic ideas. The home Government, in 
 such a condition of things, often has especial trouble with 
 those whom we may call its own people. Their very 
 loyalty to the institutions of the Old Country impefs 
 them to be unreasonable and exacting. It is not easy to 
 make them understand why they should not be at the 
 least encouraged, if not indeed actually enabled, to carry 
 boldly out the Anglicizing policy which they clearly see 
 is to be for the good of the colony in the end. The Gov- 
 ernment has all the difficulty that the mother of a house- 
 hold has when, with the best intentions and the most 
 conscientious resolve to act impartially, she is called 
 upon to manage her own children and the children of her 
 husband's former marriage. Every word she says, every 
 resolve she is induced to acknowledge, is liable to be 
 regarded with jealousy and dissatisfaction on the one 
 side as well as on the other. " You are doing everything 
 to favor your own children," the one set cry out. " You 
 ought to do something more for your own children," is 
 the equally querulous remonstrance of the other. 
 
 It would have been difficult, therefore, for the home 
 Government, however wise and far-seeing their policy, to 
 make the wheels of any system run smoothly at once in 
 such a colony as Canada. l>ut their policy certainly does 
 not seem to have been either wise or far-seeing. The 
 plan of government adopted looks as if it were especially 
 devised to bring out into sharp relief all the antagonisms 
 that were natural to the existing state of things. By an 
 Act called the Constitution of 1791, Canada was divided 
 into tAvo provinces, the Upper and the Lower. Each 
 province had a separate system of government — consist- 
 ing of a governor ; an executive council appointed by tlie 
 Crown, and supposed in some way to resemble the Privy 
 
CANADA AND LOllD LUUlIAM. 
 
 Council of this country ; a legislative council, the mem- 
 bers of which were appointed by the Crown for life ; and 
 a representative assembly, the members of which were 
 elected for four years. At the same time the clergy 
 reserves were established by Parliament. One-seventh 
 of the waste lands of the colony was set aside for the 
 maintenance of the Protestant clergy — a fruitful source of 
 disturbance and ill-feeling. 
 
 When the two provinces were divided in 1791, the inten- 
 tion was that they should remain distinct in fact as well as 
 in name. It was hoped that Lower Canada would remain 
 altogether French, and that Upper Canada would be exclu- 
 sively English. Then it was thought that they might be 
 governed on their separate systems as securely and with 
 as little trouble as we now govern the Mauritius on one 
 system and Malta on another. 
 
 Those Avho formed such an idea do not seem to have 
 taken any counsel with geography. The one fact, that 
 Upper Canada can hardly be said to have any means of 
 communication with Europe and the whole Eastern world 
 except through Lower Canada, or else through the United 
 States, ought to have settled the question at once. It was 
 in Lower Canada that the greatest difficulties arose. A 
 constant antagonism grew up between the majority of 
 the legislative council, who were nominees of the Crown, 
 and the majority of the representative assembly, who 
 were elected by the population of the province. The 
 home Government encouraged, and indeed kept up, that 
 most odious and dangerous of all instruments for the 
 supposed management of a colony — a " British party " 
 devoted to the so-called interests of the mother country 
 and obedient to the word of command from their mas- 
 ters and patrons at home. The majority in the legisla- 
 tive council constantly thwarted the resolutions of the 
 vast majority of the popular assembly. Disputes arose as 
 to the voting of supplies. The Government retained in 
 their service officials whom the representative assembly had 
 condemned, and insisted on the right to pay them their 
 salaries out of certain funds of the colony. The repre- 
 sentative assembly took to stopping the supplies, and the 
 Government claimed the right to counteract this measure 
 by appropriating to the purpose such public moneys as 
 happened to be within their reach at the time. The colony 
 
40 
 
 A niSTOHY OF OUR OWN TlMES. 
 
 — for indeed on these subjects the population of Lower 
 Canada, right or wrong, was so near to being of one mind 
 that we may take the declarations of public meetings as 
 representing the colony — demanded that the legislative 
 council should be made elective, and that the colonial 
 government should not be allowed to dispose of the moneys 
 of the colony at their pleasure. The House of Commons 
 and the Government here replied by refusing to listen to 
 the proposal to make the legislative council an elective 
 body, and authorizing the provincial government, without 
 the consent of the colonial representation to appropriate 
 the money in the treasury for the administration of justice 
 and the maintenance of the executive system. This was, 
 in plain words, to announce to the French population, who 
 made up the vast majority, and whom we had taught to 
 believe in the representative form of government, that 
 their wishes would never count for anything, and that the 
 colony was to be ruled solely at the pleasure of the little 
 British party of officials and Crown nominees. It is not 
 necessary to suppose that in all these disputes the popular 
 majority were in the right and the officials in the wrong. 
 No one can doubt that there was much bitterness of feel- 
 ing arising out of the mere differences of race. The 
 French and the English could not be got to blend. In 
 some places, as it was afterwards said in the famous re- 
 port of Lord Durham, the two sets of colonists never 
 publicly met together except in the jury-box, and then 
 only for the obstruction of justice. The British residents 
 complained bitterly of being subject to French law and 
 procedure in so many of their affairs. The tenure of land 
 and many other conditions of the system were antique 
 French, and the French law worked, or rather did not 
 work, in civil alf airs side by side with the equally impeded 
 British law in criminal matters. At last the representa- 
 tive assembly refused to vote any further supplies or to 
 carry on any further business. They formulated their 
 grievances against the home Government. Tlieir com- 
 plaints were of arbitrary conduct on the part of the gov- 
 ernors ; intolerable composition of the legislative council, 
 which they insisted ought to be elective ; illegal appro- 
 priation of the public money ; and violent prorogation of 
 the provincial Parliament. 
 
 One of the leading men in the movement which after- 
 
CANADA AND LORD DURHAM, 
 
 41 
 
 ward became rebellion in Lower Canada was Mr. Louis 
 Joseph Papineau. This man had risen to high position 
 by his talents, his energy, and his undoubtedly honorable 
 character. He had repi-esented Montreal in the Repre- 
 sentative Assembly of Lower Canada, and he afterward 
 became Speaker of the House. He made himself leader 
 of the movement to protest against the policy of the gover- 
 nors, and that of the Government at home, by whom they 
 were sustained. He held a series of meetings, at some of 
 which undoubtedly rather strong language was used, and 
 too frequent and significant appeals were made to the 
 example held out to the population of Lower Canada by 
 the successful revolt of the United States. Mr. Papineau 
 also planned the calling together of a great convention to 
 discuss and proclaim the grievances of the colonies. Lord 
 Gosford, the governor, began by dismissing several militia 
 officers who had taken part in some of these demonstra- 
 tions ; Mr. Papineau himself was an officer of this force. 
 Then the governor issued warrants for the apprehension 
 of many members of the popular Assembly on the charge 
 of high-treason. Some of these at once left the country ; 
 others against whom warrants were issued were arrested, 
 and a sudden resistance was made by their friends and 
 supporters. Then, in the manner familiar to all who 
 have read anything of the history of revolutionary move- 
 ments, the resistance to a capture of prisoners suddenly 
 transformed itself into open rebellion. 
 
 The rebellion was not, in a military sense, a very great 
 thing. At its first outbreak the military authorities were 
 for a moment surprised, and the rebels obtained one or 
 two trifling advantages. But the commander-in-chief at 
 once showed energy adequate to the occasion, and used, 
 as it was his duty to do, a strong hand in putting the 
 movement down. The rebels fought with something like 
 desperation in one or two instances, and there was, it must 
 be said, a good deal of blood shed. The disturbance, how- 
 ever, after awhile extended to the upper province. Upper 
 Canada too had its complaints against its governors and 
 the home Government, and its protests against having its 
 offices all disposed of by a " family compact ; " but the 
 rebellious movement does not seem to have taken a 
 genuine hold of the province at any time. There was 
 some discontent ; there was a constant stimulus to excite- 
 
42 
 
 A HIS TOBY OF QUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 ment kept up from across the American frontier by sym- 
 pathizers witli any republican movement ; and there were 
 some excitable persons inclined for revolutionary change 
 in the province itself whose zeal caught fire when the 
 flame broke out in Lower Canada. But it seems to have 
 been an exotic movement altogether, and, so far as its 
 military history is concerned, deserves notice chiefly for 
 the chivalrous eccentricity of the plan by which the 
 governor of the province undertook to put it down. The ♦ 
 governor was the gallant and fanciful soldier and traveller, 
 Sir Francis, then Major, Head. He who had fought at 
 Waterloo, and seen much service besides, was quietly per- 
 forming the duties of Assistant Poor Law Commissioner 
 for the county of Kent, when he was summoned, in 1835, 
 at a moment's notice, to assume the governorship of 
 Upper Canada. When the rebellion broke out in that 
 province. Major Head proved himself not merely equal to 
 the occasion, but boldly superior to it. He promptly 
 resolved to win a grand moral victory over all rebellion 
 then and for the future. He was seized with a desire to 
 show to the whole \i'orld how vain it was for any dis- 
 turber to think of shaking the loyalty of the province 
 under his control. He issued to rebellion in general a 
 challenge not unlike that which Shakspeare's Prince 
 Harry offers to the chiefs of the insurrection against 
 Henry IV. He invited it to come on and settle the 
 controversy by a sort of duel. He sent all the regular 
 soldiers out of the province to the help of the authorities 
 of Lower Canada ; he allowed the rebels to mature their 
 plans in any way they liked ; he permitted them to choose 
 their own day and hour, and when they were ready to 
 begin their assaults on constituted authority, he summoned 
 to his side the militia and all the loyal inhabitants, and 
 with their help he completely extinguished the rebellion. 
 It was but a very trifling affair ; it went out or collapsed 
 in a moment. Major Head had his desire. He showed 
 that rebellion in tliat province was not a thing serious 
 enougli to call for the intervention of regular troops. The 
 loyal colonists were for the most part delighted with the 
 spirited conduct of their leader and his new-fashioned way 
 of dealing with rebellion. No doubt the moral effect 
 was highly imposing. The plan was almost as original 
 as that described in Herodotus and introduced into one 
 
CANADA AND LOllD DVBBAM, 
 
 43 
 
 of Massinger's plays, when the moral authority of the 
 masters is made to assert itself over the rebellious slaves 
 by the mere exhibition of the symbolic whip. But the 
 authorities at home took a somewhat more prosaic view 
 of the policy of Sir Francis Head. It was suggested that 
 if the fears of many liad been realized, and the rebelliVm 
 had been aided by a large force of sympathizers from the 
 United States, the moral authority of Canadian loyalty 
 might have stood greatly in need of the material presence 
 of regular troops. In the end Sir Francis Head resigned 
 his office. His loyalty, courage, and success were acknowl- 
 edged by the gift of a baronetcy ; and he obtained the 
 admiration not merely of those who approved his policy, 
 but even of many among those who felt bound to con- 
 demn it. Perhaps it may be mentioned that there Avere 
 some who persisted to the last in the belief that Sir 
 Francis Head was not by any means so rashly chivalrous 
 as he had allowed himself to be thought, and that he had 
 full preparation made, if his moral demonstration should 
 fail, to supply its place in good time with more common- 
 place and effective measures. 
 
 The news of the outbreaks in Canada created a natural 
 excitement in this country. There was a very strong feel- 
 ing of sympathy among many classes here — not, indeed, 
 with the rebellion, but with the colony which complained 
 of what seemed to be genuine and serious grievances. 
 Public meetings were held at which resolutions were 
 passed ascribing the disturbances, in the first place, to the 
 refusal by the Government of any redress sought for by 
 the colonists. Mr. Hume, the pioneer of financial reform, 
 took the side of the colonists very warmly both in and out 
 of Parliament. During one of the Parliamentary debates 
 on the subject. Sir Robert Peel referred to the principal 
 leader of the rebellion in Upper Canada as " a Mr. Mac- 
 kenzie." Mr. Hume resented this Avay of speaking of a 
 prominent colonist, and remarked that " there was a Mr. 
 Mackenzie as there might be a Sir Robert Peel," and 
 created some amusement by referring to the declarations 
 of Ijord Chatham on the American Stamp Act, A\'hicli he 
 cited as the opinion of " a Mr. Pitt." Lord John Russell, 
 on the part of the Government, introduced a bill to deal 
 with the rebellious province. The bill proposed, in brief, 
 to suspend for a time the constitution of Lower Canada, 
 
44 
 
 A lilSTOEY OF Omi OWN TIMES. 
 
 and to send out from this country a governor-general and 
 high-commissioner, with full powers to deal with the rebel- 
 lion, and to remodel the constitution of both provinces. 
 The proposal met with a good deal of opposition at first 
 on very different grounds. Mr. Roebuck, who was then, 
 as rt happened, out of Parliament, appeared as the agent 
 and representative 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 
 Commons, and then of the Lords, and opposed the bill on 
 the grounds that it unjustly suspended the constitution 
 of Lower Canada in consequence of disturbances provoked 
 by the intolerable oppression of the home Government. 
 A critic of that day remarked that most orators seemed 
 to make it their business to conciliate and propitiate the 
 audience they desired to win over, but that Mr. Roebuck 
 seemed from the very first to be determined to set all 
 his hearers against him and his cause. Mr. Roebuck's 
 speeches were, however, exceedingly argumentative and 
 powerful appeals. Their effect was enhanced by the 
 singularly youthful appearance of the speaker, who is 
 described as looking like a boy hardly out of his teens. 
 
 It was evident, however, that the proposal of the Govern- 
 ment must in the main be adopted. The general opinion 
 of Parliament decided, not unreasonably, that that was not 
 the moment for entering into a consideration of the past 
 policy of the Government, and that the country could do 
 nothing better just then than send out some man of com- 
 manding ability and character to deal with the exist- 
 ing condition of things. There was an almost universal 
 admission that the Government had found the right man 
 when Lord John Russell mentioned the name of Lord 
 Durham. 
 
 Lord Durham was a man of remarkable character. It 
 is a matter of surprise how little his name is thought of 
 by the present generation, seeing what a strenuous figure 
 he seemed in the eyes of his contemporaries, and how 
 striking a part he played in the politics of a time which 
 has even still some living representatives. He belonged 
 to one of the oldest families in England. The Lambtons 
 liad lived on their estate in the North, in uninterrupted 
 succession, since the Conquest. The male succession, it 
 
CANADA AND LOUD DURHAM, -\o 
 
 is stated, never was interrupted since the twelfth century. 
 They were not, however, a family of aristocrats. Their 
 wealth was derived chiefly from coal mines, and grew up 
 in later days ; the property at first, and for a long time, 
 was of inconsiderable value. For more than a century, 
 however, the Lambtons had come to take rank among the 
 gentry of the county, and some member of the family 
 had represented the city of Durham in the House of Com- 
 mons from 1727 until the early death of Lord Durham's 
 father in December, 1797. William Henry Lambton, Lord 
 Durham's father, was a stanch Whig, and had been a 
 friend and associate of Fox. John George Lambton, the 
 son, was born at Lambton Castle in April, 1792. Before 
 he was quite twenty years of age, he made a romantic 
 marriage at Gretna Green with a lady who died three years 
 after. He served for a short time in a regiment of Hus- 
 sars. About a year after the death of his first wife he 
 married the eldest daughter of Lord Grey. He was then 
 only twenty-four years of age. He had before this been 
 returned to Parliament for the county of Durham, and 
 he soon distinguished himself as a very advanced and 
 energetic reformer. While in the Commons he seldom 
 addressed the House, but when he did speak, it was in 
 support of some measure of reform, or against what he 
 conceived to be antiquated and illiberal legislation. He 
 brought out a plan of his own for Parliamentary reform 
 in 1821. In 1828 he was raised to the peerage, with the 
 title of Baron Durham. When the ministry of Lord Grey 
 was formed, in November, 1830, Lord Durham became 
 Lord Privy Seal. He is said to have had an almost com- 
 X^lete control over Lord Grey. He had an impassioned and 
 energetic nature, which sometimes drove him into out- 
 breaks of feeling which most of his colleagues dreaded. 
 Various highly-colored descriptions of stormy scenes 
 between him and his companions in office are given by 
 writers of the time. Lord Durham, his enemies and some 
 of his friends said, bullied and browbeat his opponents in 
 the cabinet, and would sometimes hardly allow his father- 
 in-law and official chief a chance of putting in a word on 
 tlie other side, or in mitigation of his tempestuous mood. 
 He was thorough in his reforming purposes, and would 
 have rushed at radical changes with scanty consideration 
 for the time or for the temper of his opponents. He had 
 
46 
 
 A HISTOnY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 very little reverence indeed for what Carlyle calls the 
 majesty of custom. Whatever he wished he strongly 
 wished. He had no idea of reticence, and cared not much 
 for the decorum of office. It is not necessary to believe 
 all the stories told by those who hated and dreaded Lord 
 Durham, in order to accept the belief that he really was 
 somewhat of an enfant terrible to the stately Lord Grey, 
 and to the easy-going colleagues who were by no means 
 absolutely eaten up by their zeal for reform. In the 
 powerful speech which he delivered 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 legalized liberty. Lord 
 Durham was especially roused to anger by some observa- 
 tions made in the debate of a previous night by the Bishop 
 of Exeter. He described the ]3relate's speech as an exhibi- 
 tion of " coarse and virulent invective, malignant and false 
 insinuation, the grossest perversions of historical facts 
 decked out with all tlie choicest flowers of pamphleteer- 
 ing slang." He was called to order for these words, and 
 a peer moved that they be taken down. Lord Durham 
 was by no means dismayed. He coolly declared that he 
 did not mean to defend his language as the most elegant 
 or graceful, but that it exactly conveyed the ideas regard- 
 ing the bishop which he meant to express ; that he believed 
 the bishop's speech to contain insinuations which were as 
 false as scandalous ; that he had said so ; that he now 
 begged leave to repeat the words, and that he paused to 
 give any noble lord who thought fit an opportunity of 
 taking them down. Not one, however, seemed disposed 
 to encounter any further this impassioned adversary, and 
 when he had had his say. Lord Durham became somewhat 
 mollified, and endeavored to soften the pain of the impres- 
 sion he had made. He begged the House of Lords to make 
 some allowance for him if he had spoken too warmly ; for, 
 as he said with much pathetic force, his mind had lately 
 been tortured by domestic loss. He thus alluded to the 
 recent death of his eldest son — " a beautiful boy," says a 
 writer of some years ago, " whose features will live forever 
 in the well-known picture by Lawrence." 
 
 The whole of this incident — the fierce attack and the 
 sudden pathetic expression of regret — will serve well 
 
CANADA AND LORD BUBHAM, 
 
 47 
 
 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 Avhich every householder 
 should have a vote. When Lord Grey had formed his 
 reform mhiistry, Lord Durham sent for Lord John Russell 
 and requested him to draw up a scheme of reform. A 
 committee was formed on Lord Durham's suggestion con- 
 sisting of Sir James Graham, Lord Duncannon, Lord John 
 Russell, and Lord Durham himself. Lord John Russell 
 drew up a plan, which he published long after, with the 
 alterations which Lord Durham had suggested and written 
 in his own hand on the margin. If Lord Durham had had 
 his way the ballot would at that time have been included 
 in the programme of the Government ; and it was, indeed, 
 understood that at one period of the discussion he had 
 won over his colleagues to his opinion on that subject. 
 He was, in a word, the Radical member of the cabinet, 
 with all the energy which became such a character ; with 
 that " magnificent indiscretion" which had been attributed 
 to a greater man — Edmund Burke ; with all that courage 
 of his opinions which, in the Frenchified phraseology of 
 modern politics, is so much talked of, so rarely found, and 
 so little trusted or successful when it is found. 
 
 Not long after Lord Durham was raised in the peerage 
 and became an earl. His influence over Lord Grey contin- 
 ued great, but his differences of opinion with his former 
 colleagues — he had resigned his office — became greater 
 and greater every day. More than once he had taken the 
 public into his confidence in his characteristic and heed- 
 less way. He was sent on a mission to Russia, perhaps 
 to get him out of the way, and afterward he was made 
 ambassador at the Russian court. In the interval between 
 his mission and his formal appointment he had comeback 
 to England and performed a series of enterprises which in 
 the homely and undignified language of American politics 
 would probably be called " stumping the country." He 
 was looked to with much hope by the more extreme 
 Liberals in the country, and with corresponding dislike 
 
48 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 and dread by all who thought the country had gone far 
 enough, or much too far in the recent political changes. 
 
 None of his opponents, however, denied his great ability. 
 He was never deterred by conventional beliefs and habits 
 from looking boldly into the very heart of a great political 
 difficulty. He was never afraid to propose what, in times 
 later than his, have been called heroic remedies. There 
 was a general impression, perhaps, even among those who 
 liked him least, that he was a sort of unemployed Caesar," 
 a man who only required a field large enough to develop 
 great qualities in the ruling of men. The difficulties in 
 Canada seemed to have come as if expressly to give him 
 an opportunity of proving himself all that his friends 
 declared him to be, or of justifying forever the distrust of 
 his enemies. He went out to Canada with the assurance of 
 every one that his expedition would either make or mar 
 a career, if not a country. 
 
 Lord Durham went out to Canada with the brightest 
 hopes and prospects. He took with him two of the men 
 best qualified in England at that time to make his mission 
 a success — Mr. Charles Buller and Mr. Edward Gibbon 
 Wakefield. He understood that he was going out as a 
 dictator, and there can be no doubt that his expedition 
 was regarded in this light by England and by the colonies. 
 We have remarked that people looked on his mission as 
 likely to make or mar a career, if not a country. What 
 it did, however, was somewhat different from that which 
 any one expected. Lord Durham found out a new alter- 
 native. He made a country, and he marred a career. He 
 is distinctly the founder of the system which has since 
 wwked 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. ]3ut the singular quality which in home politics 
 had helped to mar so much of Lord Durham's personal 
 career was in full work during his visit to Canada. It 
 would not be easy to find in modern political history so curi- 
 ous an example of splendid and lasting success combined 
 with all the appearance of utter and disastrous failure. 
 The mission of Lord Durham saved Canada. It ruined Lord 
 Durham. At the moment it seemed to superficial observ- 
 ers to have been as injurious to the colony as to the man. 
 
CANADA AND LOED DURHAM, 
 
 49 
 
 Lord Durham arrived in Quebec at the end of May, 
 1838. He at once issued a proclamation, in style like that 
 of a dictator. It was not in any way unworthy of the 
 occasion, which especially called for the intervention of a 
 brave and enlightened dictatorship. He declared that he 
 Avould unsparingly punish any one who violated the laws, 
 but he frankly invited the co-operation of the colonies to 
 form a new system of government really suited to their 
 wants and to the altering conditions of civilization. Un- 
 fortunately, he had hardly entered on his work of dicta- 
 torship when he found that he was no longer a dictator. 
 In the passing of the Canada Bill through Parliament the 
 powers which he understood Avere to be conferred upon 
 him had been considerably reduced. Lord Durham went 
 to work, however, as if he were still invested with ab- 
 solute authority over all the laws and conditions of the 
 colony. A very Caesar laying down the lines for the 
 future government of a province could hardly have been 
 more boldly arbitrary. Let it be said, also, that Lord 
 Durham's arbitrariness was for the most part healthy in 
 effect and just in spirit. But it gave an immense oppor- 
 tunity of attack on himself and on the Government to 
 the enemies of both at home. Lord Durham had Hardly 
 begun his work of reconstruction when his recall was 
 clamored for by vehement voices in Parliament. 
 
 Lord Durham began by issuing a series of ordinances 
 intended to provide for the security of Lower Canada. 
 He proclaimed a very liberal amnesty, to which, however, 
 there were certain exceptions. The leaders of the rebel- 
 lious movement, Papineau and others, who had escaped 
 from the colony, were excluded from the amnesty. So 
 likewise were certain prisoners who either had voluntarily 
 confessed themselves guilty of high-treason, or had been 
 induced to make such an acknowledgment in the hope of 
 obtaining a mitigated punishment. These Lord Durham 
 ordered to be transported to Bermuda; and for any of 
 these, or of the leaders who had escaped, who should re- 
 turn to the colony without permission, he proclaimed that 
 they should be deemed guilty of high-treason, and con- 
 demned to suffer death. It needs no learned legal argu- 
 ment to prove that this was a proceeding not to be justi- 
 fied by any of the ordinary forms of law. Lord Durham 
 had not power to transport any one to Bermuda. He had 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 no authority over Bermuda ; he had no authority which 
 he could delegate to the officials of Bermuda enabling 
 them to detain political prisoners. Nor had he any power 
 to declare that persons who returned to the colony were 
 to be liable to the punishment of death. It is not a capi- 
 tal offence by any of the laws of England for even a trans- 
 ported convict to break bounds and return to his home. 
 All this was quite illegal ; that is to say, was outside the 
 limits of Lord Durham's legal authority. Lord Durham 
 was well aware of the fact. He had not for a moment 
 supposed that he was acting in accordance with ordinary 
 English law. He was acting in the spirit of a dictator, at 
 once bold and merciful, who is under the impression that 
 he has been invested with extraordinary powers for the 
 very reason that the crisis does not admit of the ordinary 
 operations of law. For the decree of death to banished 
 men returning without permission, he had, indeed, the 
 precedent and authority of acts passed already by the 
 colonial Parliament itself ; but Lord Durham did not care 
 for any such authority. He found that he had on his 
 hands a considerable number of prisoners whom it would 
 be absurd to put on trial in Lower Canada with the usual 
 form'fe of law. It would have been absolutely impossible 
 to get any unpacked jury to convict them. They would 
 have been triumphantly acquitted. The authority of the 
 Crown would have been brought into greater contempt 
 than ever. So little faith had the colonists in the im- 
 partial working of the ordinary law in the governor's 
 hands, that the universal impression in Lower Canada 
 was that Lord Durham would have the prisoners tried by 
 a packed jury of his own officials, convicted as a matter 
 of course, and executed out of hand. It was with amaze- 
 ment people found that the new governor would not stoop 
 to the infamy of packing a jury. Lord Durham saw no 
 better way out of the difficulty than to impose a sort of 
 exile on those who admitted their connection with the 
 rebellion, and to prevent by the threat of a severe penalty 
 the return of those who had already fled from the colony. 
 His amnesty measure was large and liberal ; but he did 
 not see that he could allow prominent offenders to remain 
 unrebuked in the colony ; and to attempt to bring them to 
 trial would have been to secure for them, not punishment, 
 but public honor. 
 
CANADA AND LORD DUllUAM. 51 
 
 Another measure of Lord Durham's was Ukewise open 
 to the charge of the excessive use of power. 1 he act 
 which appointed liim prescribed that he should be advised 
 bv a council, and that every ordinance of his should be 
 sioned by at least five of its members. There was already 
 a council in existence nominated by Lord Durham s pre- 
 decessor, Sir J. Colborne— a sort of provisional govern- 
 ment put together to supply for the moment the place ot 
 the suspended political constitution. This council Lord 
 Durham set aside altogether, and substituted for itone ot 
 his own making, and composed chiefly of his secretaries 
 and the members of his staff. In truth, this was but a 
 part of the policy which he had marked out for himself. 
 He was resolved to play the game which he honestly 
 believed he could play better than any one else. He had 
 in his mind, partly from the inspiration of the gifted and 
 well-instructed men who accompanied and advised him, a 
 plan which he was firmly convinced would be the salva- 
 tion of the colony. Events have proved that he was right. 
 His disposal of the prisoners was only a clearing of the 
 decks for the great action of remodelling the colony. He 
 did not allow a form of law to stand between him and his 
 purpose. Indeed, as we have already said, he regarded 
 himself as a dictator sent out to reconstruct a whole 
 system in the best way he could. When he was accused 
 of having gone beyond the law, he asked with a scorn not 
 wholly unreasonable : " What are the constitutional prin- 
 ciples remaining in force where the whole constitution is 
 suspended? What principle of the British constitution 
 holds good in a country where the people's money is taken 
 from them without the people's consent ; where represent- 
 ative government is annihilated ; where martial law has 
 been the law of the land, and where trial by jury exists 
 only to defeat the ends of justice, and to provoke the 
 rio-hteous scorn and indignation of the community ? 
 
 "still there can be no doubt that a less impetuous and im- 
 patient spirit than that of Lord Durham might have found 
 a way of beginning his great reforms without provoking 
 such a storm of hostile criticism. He was, it must always 
 be remembered, a dictator who only strove to use his 
 powers for the restoration of liberty and constitutional 
 government. His mode of disposing of his prisoners was 
 arbitrary only in the interests of mercy. He declared 
 
 LIBRARY ■ — -- • 
 UNIVERSITY OF 1LUN01S 
 
52 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWJSt TIMES. 
 
 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 a]3proved, and 
 whose cause, until they broke into rebellion, had far more of 
 right on its side than that of the authority they complained 
 of could claim to possess. He sent them to Bermuda 
 simply as into exile ; to remove them from the colony, but 
 nothing more. He lent the weight of this authority to the 
 colonial Act, which prescribed the penalty of death for 
 returning to the colony, because he believed that the men 
 thus proscribed never would return. 
 
 But his policy met with the severest and most unmeas- 
 ured criticism at home. If Lord Durham had been guilty 
 of the worst excesses of power which Burke charged 
 against Warren Hastings, he could not have been more 
 fiercely denounced in the House of Lords. He was accused 
 of having promulgated an ordinance which would enable 
 him to hang men without any trial or form of trial. None 
 of his opponents seemed to remember that whether his 
 disposal of the prisoners was right or wrong, it was only 
 a small and incidental part of a great policy covering the 
 readjustment of the whole political and social system of a 
 splendid colony. The criticism went on as if the promul- 
 gation of the Quebec ordinances was the be-all and the 
 end-all of Lord Durham's mission. His opx^onents made 
 great complaint about the cost of his progress in Canada. 
 Lord Durham had undoubtedly a lavish taste and a love 
 for something like Oriental display. He made his goings 
 about in Canada like a gorgeous royal progress ; yet it was 
 well known that he took no remuneration whatever for 
 liimself, and did not even accept his OAvn ]3ersonal travel- 
 ling expenses. He afterward stated in the House of Loi'ds 
 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 liad never before known to raise their voices against 
 any prodigality of expenditure. 
 
 The ministry was very weak in debating power in the 
 House of Lords. Lord Durham had made enemies there. 
 The oppoi'tunity was tempting for assailing him and tlie 
 ministiy together. Many of the criticisms were undoubt- 
 edly tiie conscientious protests of men who saw danger in 
 
CANADA AND LORD DUlillAM, 
 
 5a 
 
 any departure from the recognized principles of constitu- 
 tional law. Eminent judges and lawyers in the House of 
 Lords naturally looked, above all things, to the proper 
 administration of the law as it existed. But it is hard to 
 doubt that political or personal enmity influenced some of 
 the attacks on Lord Durham's conduct. Almost all the 
 leading men in the House of Lords were against him. 
 Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst were for the time 
 leagued in opposition to the Government and in attack on 
 the Canadian policy. Lord Brougham claimed to be con- 
 sistent. He had opposed the Canada coercion from the 
 beginning, he said, and he opposed illegal attempts to deal 
 with Canada now. It seems a little hard to understand 
 how Lord Brougham could really have so far misunder- 
 stood the purpose of Lord Durham's proclamation as to 
 believe that he proposed to hang men without the form of 
 law. However Lord Durham may have broken the tech- 
 nical rules of law, nothing could be more obvious than the 
 fact that he did so in the interest of mercy and generosity, 
 and not that of tyrannical severity. Lord Brougham 
 inveighed against him with thundering eloquence, as if he 
 were denouncing another Sejanus. It must be owned 
 that his attacks lost some of their moral effect because of 
 his known hatred to Lord Melbourne and the ministry, 
 and even to Lord Durham himself. People said that 
 Brougham had a special reason for feeling hostile to 
 anything done by Lord Durham. A dinner was given to 
 Lord Grey by the Reformers of Edinburgh, in 1834, at 
 which Lord Brougham and Lord Durham were both 
 present. Brougham was called upon to speak, and in the 
 course of his speech he took occasion to condemn certain 
 too-zealous Reformers who could not be content with the 
 changes that had been made, but must demand that the 
 ministry should rush forward into Avild and extravagant 
 enterprises. He enlarged upon this subject with great 
 vivacity and with amusing variety of humorous and 
 rhetorical illustration. Lord Durham assumed that the 
 attack was intended for him. His assumption was not 
 unnatural. When he came in his turn to speak, he was 
 indiscreet enough to reply directly to Lord Brougham, to 
 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. 
 
54 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUB OWJST TIMES. 
 
 The effect of Brougham's speech was wholly spoiled. 
 Brougham was made to seem a disturber of order by the 
 indiscretion which provoked into retort a man notoriously 
 indiscreet and incapable of self-restraint. It is not unfair 
 to the memory of so fierce and unsparing a political 
 gladiator as Lord Brougham, to assume that when he felt 
 called upon to attack the Canadian policy of Lord Dur- 
 ham, the recollection of the scene at the Edinburgh dinner 
 inspired with additional force his criticism of the Quebec 
 ordinances. 
 
 The ministry were weak, and yielded. They had in the 
 first instance approved of the ordinances, but they quickly 
 gave way and abandoned them. They avoided a direct 
 attempt on the part of Lord Brougham to reverse the 
 policy of Lord Durham by announcing that they had 
 determined to disallow the Quebec ordinances. Lord Dur- 
 ham learned for tlie first time from an American paper 
 that the Government had abandoned him. He at once 
 announced his determination to give up his position and 
 to return to England. His letter announcing this resolve 
 crossed on the ocean the dispatch from home disallow- 
 ing his ordinances. With characteristic imprudence, he 
 issued a proclamation from the Castle of St. Louis, in the 
 city of Quebec, which was virtually an appeal to the public 
 feeling of the colony against the conduct of her Majesty's 
 Government. When the news of this extraordinary pro- 
 clamation reached home. Lord Durham was called by the 
 Times newspaper "the Lord High Seditioner." The rep- 
 resentative of the sovereign, it was said, had appealed 
 to the judgment of a still rebellious colony against the 
 policy of the sovereign's own advisers. Of course Lord 
 Durham's recall was unavoidable. The Government at 
 once sent out a dispatch removing him from his place as 
 Governor of British North America. 
 
 Lord Durham had not waited for the formal recall. He 
 returned to England a disgraced man. Yet even then there 
 was public spirit enough among the English people to 
 refuse to ratify any sentence of disgrace upon him. When 
 he landed at Plymouth he was received with acclamations 
 by the population, although the Government had prevented 
 any of the official honor usually shown to returning gov- 
 ernors fi'om l)eing offered to him. Mr. John Stuart Mill 
 has claimed with modest firmness and with perfect justice 
 
CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 
 
 55 
 
 a leading share in influencing public opinion in favor of 
 Lord Durham. " Lord Durham," he says in his autobiog- 
 raphy, " was bitterly attacked from all sides, inveighed 
 against by enemies, given up by timid friends ; while those 
 who would willingly have defended him did not know what 
 to say. He appeared to be returning a defeated and dis- 
 credited man. I had followed the Canadian events from 
 the beginning; I had been one of the prompters of his 
 prompters ; his policy was almost exactly what mine 
 would have been, and I was in a position to defend it. I 
 wrote and published a manifesto in the [Westminster] 
 llemew^ 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 Avas a portion of truth in what Lord 
 Durham soon after, with polite exaggeration, said to me, 
 that to this article might be ascribed the almost triumphal 
 reception which he met with on his arrival in England. 
 I believe it to have been the word in season, which at a 
 critical moment does much to decide the results ; the touch 
 which determines whether a stone set in motion at the top 
 of an eminence shall roll down on one side or on the other. 
 All hopes connected with Lord Durham as a politician 
 soon vanished ; but with regard to Canadian and generally 
 to colonial policy the cause was gained. Lord Durham's 
 report, written by Charles Buller, partly under the inspira- 
 tion of Wakefield, began a new era ; its recommendations, 
 extending to complete internal self-government, Avere in 
 full operation in Canada within two or three years, and 
 have been since extended to nearly all the other colonies 
 of European race which have any claim to the character 
 of important communities." In this instance the victa 
 causa pleased not only Cato, but, in the end, the gods as 
 well. 
 
 Lord Durham's report was acknowledged by enemies 
 as well as by the most impartial critics to be a masterly 
 document. As Mr. Mill has said, it laid the foundation of 
 the political successand social prosperity not only of Can- 
 ada but of all the other important colonies. After hav- 
 ing explained in the most exhaustive manner the causes 
 of discontent and backwardness in Canada, it went on to 
 recommend that the government of the colony should be 
 put as much as possible into the hands of the colonists 
 
6(5 
 
 A HIS TO BY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 thejnselves, that they themselves should execute as well 
 as make the laws, the limit of the Imperial Government's 
 interference being in such matters as affect the relations 
 of the colony with the mother- country, such as the con- 
 stitution and form of government, the regulation of foreign 
 relations and trade, and the disposal of the public lands. 
 Lord Durham proposed to establish a thoroughly good 
 system of municipal institutions ; to secure the indepen- 
 dence of the judges ; to make all provincial officers, except 
 the governor and liis secretary, responsible to the colonial 
 ^ legislature ; and to repeal all former legislation with re- 
 spect to the reserves of land for the clergy. Finally, he 
 proposed that the provinces of Canada should be reunited 
 politically and should become one legislature, conta^ining 
 the representatives of both races and of all districts. It 
 is significant that the report also recommended that in any 
 act to be introduced for this purpose, a provision should 
 be made by which all or any of the other North American 
 colonies should, on the application of their legislatures and 
 with the consent of Canada, be admitted into the Canadian 
 Union. Thus the separation which Fox thought unwise 
 was to be abolished, and the Canadas were to be fused 
 into one system, which Lord Durham would have had a 
 federation. In brief. Lord Durham proposed to make the 
 Canadas self-governing as regards their internal affairs, 
 and the germ of a federal union. It is not necessary to 
 describe in detail the steps by which the Government grad- 
 ually introduced the recommendations of Lord Durham 
 to Parliament and carried them to success. Lord Glenelg, 
 one of the feeblest and most apathetic of colonial secreta- 
 ries, had retired from office, partly, no doubt, because of 
 the attacks in Parliament on his administration of Cana- 
 dian affairs. He was succeeded at the Colonial Office by 
 Lord Xormanby, and Lord Nornianby gave way in a tew 
 months to Lord John Russell, who was full of energy and 
 earnestness. Lord Durham's successor and disciple in the 
 work of Canadian government. Lord Sydenham — best 
 known as Mr. Charles Poulett Thomson, one of the 
 pioneers of free-trade — received Lord John Russell's cor- 
 dial co-operation and support. Lord John Russell intro- 
 duced into the House of Commons a bill which he described 
 as intend (Ml to lay the foundation of a permanent settle- 
 ment of the affairs of Canada. The measure was post- 
 
CANA1)A AND LOllD hURltAM, 
 
 57 
 
 polled for a session because some statesmen thought that 
 it would not be acceptable to the Canadians themselves. 
 Some little sputterings of the rebellion had also lingered 
 after Lord Durham's return to this country, and these for 
 a short time had directed attention away from the policy 
 of reorganization. In 1840, however, the Act was passed 
 which reunited Upper and Lower Canada on the basis 
 proposed by Lord Durham. Further legislation disposed 
 of the clergy reserve lands for the general benefit of all 
 churches and denominations. The way was made clear 
 for that scheme which in times nearer to our own has 
 formed the Dominion of Canada. 
 
 Lord Durham did not live to see the success of the 
 policy he had recommended. We may anticipate the close 
 of his career. Within a few days after the passing of the 
 Canada Government Bill he died at Cowes, in the Isle of 
 Wight, on July 28th, 1840. He was then little more than 
 forty-eight years of age. He had for some time been in 
 failing health, and it cannot be doubted that the mortifi- 
 cation attending his Canadian mission had worn away 
 his strength. His proud and sensitive spirit could ill 
 bear the contradictions and humiliations that had been 
 forced upon him. His was an eager and a passionate 
 nature, full of that smva indignatio which, by his own 
 acknowledgment, tortured the heart of Swift. He wanted 
 to the success of his political career that proud patience 
 which the gods are said to love, and by virtue of which 
 great men live down misappreciation, and hold out until 
 they see themselves justified and hear the reproaches 
 turn into cheers. But if Lord Durham's personal career 
 was in any way a failure, his policy for the Canadas was a 
 splendid success. It established the principles of colonial 
 government. There were undoubtedly defects in the 
 construction of the actual scheme which Lord Durham 
 initiated, and which Lord Sydenham, who died not long 
 after him, instituted. The legislative union of the two 
 Canadas was in itself a makeshift, and was only adopted 
 as such. Lord Durham would have had it otherwise if 
 he might ; but he did not see his Avay then to anything 
 like the complete federation scheme afterward adopted. 
 But the success of the policy lay in the broad principles 
 it established, and to which other colonial systems as 
 well as that of the Dominion of Canada owe their strength 
 
58 
 
 A mSTOUY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 and security to-day. One may say, with little help from 
 the merely fanciful, that tlie rejoicings of emancipated 
 colonies might have been in his dying ears as he sank 
 into his early grave. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCIEIS^CE AND SPEED. 
 
 The opening of the reign of Queen Victoria coincided 
 with the introduction of many of the great discoveries 
 and applications in science, industry, and commerce which 
 we consider specially representative of modern civiliza- 
 tion. A reign which saw in its earlier years the applica- 
 tion of the electric current to the task of transmitting 
 messages, the first successful attempts to make use of 
 steam for the business of transatlantic navigation, the 
 general development of the railway system all over these 
 countries, and in the introduction of the penny-post, must 
 be considered to have obtained for itself, had it secured 
 no other memorials, an abiding place in history. A dis- 
 tinguished author has lately inveighed against the spirit 
 which would rank such improvements as those just men- 
 tioned with the genuine triumphs of the human race, 
 and has gone so far as to insist that there is nothing 
 in any such which might not be expected from the self- 
 interested contrivings of a very inferior animal nature. 
 Amidst the tendency to glorify beyond measure the mere 
 mechanical improvements of modern civilization, it is 
 natural that there should arise some angry questioning, 
 some fierce disparagement of all that it has done. There 
 will always be natures to which the philosophy of con- 
 templation must seem far nobler than the philosophy 
 which expresses itself in mechanical action. It may, how- 
 ever, be taken as certain that no people who were ever 
 great in thought and in art wilfully neglected to avail 
 themselves of all possible contrivances for making life 
 less laborious by the means of mechanical and artificial 
 contrivance. The Greeks were, to the best of tlieir oppor- 
 tunity, and when at the highest point of their glory as an 
 artistic race, as eager for the application of all scientific 
 and mechanical contrivances to the business of life as the 
 
SCIENCE AND SPEED, 
 
 59 
 
 most practical and boastful Manchester man or Chicago 
 man of our own day. We shall afterward see that the 
 reign of Queen Victoria came to have a literature, an art, 
 and a philosophy distinctly its own. For the moment we 
 have to do with its industrial science ; or, at least, with 
 the first remarkable movements in that direction which 
 accompanied the opening of the reign. This at least must 
 be said for them, that they have changed the conditions 
 of human life for us in such a manner as to make the 
 history of the past forty or fifty years almost absolutely 
 distinct from that of any preceding period. In all that 
 part of our social life which is affected by industrial and 
 mechanical appliances, the man of the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century was less widely removed from the 
 Englishman of the days of the Paston Letters than we are 
 removed from the Avays of the eighteenth century. The 
 man of the eighteenth century travelled on land and sea 
 in much the same way that his forefathers had done hun- 
 dreds of years before. His communications by letter with 
 his fellows were carried on in very much the same method. 
 He got his news from abroad and at home after the same 
 slow, uncertain fashion. His streets and houses -were 
 hghted very much as they might have been wiien Mr. 
 Pepys was in London. His ideas of drainage and ventila- 
 tion were equally elementary and simple. We see a com- 
 plete revolution in all these things. A man of the present 
 day suddenly thrust back fifty years in life would find 
 himself almost as awkwardly unsuited to the ways of that 
 time as if he were sent back to the age when the Romans 
 occupied Britain. He would find himself harassed at 
 every step he took. He could do hardly anything as he 
 does it to-day. Whatever the moral and philosophical 
 value of the change in the eyes of thinkers too lofty to 
 concern themselves with the common ways and doings of 
 human life, this is certain at least, that the change is of 
 immense historical importance ; and that even if we look 
 upon life as a mere pageant and show, interesting to wise 
 men only by its curious changes, a wise man of this school 
 could hardly have dons better, if the choice lay with him, 
 than to desire that the Hues of his life might be so cast as 
 to fall into the earlier part of this present reign. 
 
 It is a somewhat curious coincidence that in the year 
 when Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke took out their 
 
60 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 first patent "for improvements in giving signals and 
 sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric 
 currents transmitted through metallic circuit," Professor 
 Morse, the American electrician, applied to Congress for 
 aid in the construction and carrying on of a small electric 
 telegraph to convey messages a short distance, and made 
 the application without success. In the following year he 
 came to this country to obtain a patent for his invention ; 
 but he was refused. He had come too late. Our own 
 countrymen were beforehand with him. Very soon after 
 we find experiments made with the electric telegraph 
 between Euston Square and Camden Town. These experi- 
 ments were made under the authority of the London and 
 North- western Railway Company, immediately on the 
 taking out of the patent by Messrs. Wheatstone and 
 Cooke. Mr. Robert Stephenson was one of those who 
 came to Av^atch 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 Liverpool and 
 Preston line was opened in the same year. The Liver- 
 pool 'and Birmingham had been opened in the year before ; 
 the London and Croydon was opened the year after. The 
 Act for the transmission of the mails by railways was 
 passed in 1838. In the same year it was noted as an un- 
 paralleled, and to many an almost incredible, triumph of 
 human energy and science over time and space, that a 
 locomotive had been able to travel at a speed of thirty- 
 seven miles an hour. 
 
 " The prospect of travelling from the metropolis to Liver- 
 pool, a distance of two hundred and ten miles, in ten hours, 
 calls forcibly to mind the tales of fairies and genii by which 
 we were amused in our youth, and contrasts forcibly with 
 the fact, attested on the personal experience of the writer 
 of this notice, tliat about the commencement of the pres- 
 ent century this same journey occupied a space of sixty 
 hours." These are the words of a writer who gives an 
 interesting account of the railways of England during the 
 first year of the reign of Queen Victoria. In the same 
 volume from which tins extract is taken an allusion is 
 made to the possibility of steam communication being 
 su(;cessfully established bc^tween England and the United 
 States. " Preparations on a gigantic scale," a writer is able 
 
SCIENCE AND SPEED. 
 
 61 
 
 to announce, " arc now in a state of great forwardness for 
 trying an experiment in steam navigation which has been 
 the subject of mucli controversy among scientific men. 
 Ships of an enormous size, furnished with steam-power 
 equal to tlie force of four hundred horses and upward, 
 will, before our next volume shall be prepared, have prob- 
 ably decided the question whether this description of 
 vessels can, in the present state of our knoAvledge, profit- 
 ably engage in transatlantic voyages. It is possible that 
 these attempts may fail — a result which is indeed predicted 
 by high authorities on this subject. We are more san- 
 guine in our hopes ; but should these be disappointed, we 
 cannot, if we are to judge from our past progress, doubt 
 that longer experience and a further application of inven- 
 tive genius will, at no very distant day, render practicable 
 and profitable by this means the longest voyages in which 
 the adventurous spirit of man will lead him to embark." 
 The experiment thus alluded to was made with perfect 
 success. The Sirvus^ the Great Western^ and the Royal 
 William accomplished voyages between ^^ew York and 
 this country in the early part of 1838; and it was 
 remarked that " Transatlantic voyages by means of steam 
 may now be said to be as easy of accomplishment, with 
 ships of adequate size and power, as the passage between 
 London and Margate." The Great Wester?i crossed the 
 ocean from Bristol to New York in fifteen days. She was 
 followed by the Sirius^ which left Cork for New York, 
 and made the passage in seventeen days. The controversy 
 as to the possibility of such voyages, which Avas settled by 
 the Great Western and the Siritts^ had no reference to the 
 actual safety of such an experiment. During seven years 
 the mails for the Mediterranean had been despatched by 
 means of steamers. The doubt was as to the possibility 
 of stowing in a vessel so large a quantity of coal or other 
 fuel as would enable her to accomplish her voyage across 
 the Atlantic, where there could be no stopping-place and 
 no possibility of taking in new stores. It was found, 
 to the delight of all those Avho believed in the practicability 
 of the enterprise, that the quantity of fuel which each 
 vessel had on board when she left her port of departure 
 proved amply sufficient for the completion of the voyage. 
 Neither the Sirius nor the Great Western Avas the first 
 vessel to cross the Atlantic by means of steam propulsion. 
 
62 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 Nearly twenty years before, a vessel called the Savannah 
 built at Xew 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 vessel in the service of that Govern- 
 ment. Indeed, a voyage had been made round the Cape 
 of Good Hope more lately still by a steamship. These 
 expeditions, however, had really little or nothing to do 
 with the problem which was solved by the voyages of the 
 Sirius and the Great Western. In the former instances 
 the steam-power was employed merely as an auxiliary. 
 The vessel made as much use of her steam propulsion as 
 she could, but she had to rely a good deal on her capacity 
 as a sailer. This was quite a different thing from the 
 enterprise of the Sirius and the Great Western^ which 
 was to cross the ocean by steam propulsion, and steam 
 propulsion only. It is evident that, so long as the steam- 
 power was to be used only as an auxiliary, it would be 
 impossible to reckon on speed and certainty of arrival. 
 The doubt was whether a steamer could carry, with her 
 cargo and passengers, fuel enough to serve for the whole 
 of her voyage across the Atlantic. The expeditions of the 
 Sirius and the Great Western settled the whole question. 
 It was never again a matter of controversy. It is enough 
 to say that two years after the Great Western went out 
 from Bristol to New York the Cunardline of steamers was 
 established. The steam communication between Liverpool 
 and New York became thenceforth as regular and as un- 
 varying a part of the business of commerce as the journeys 
 of the trains on the Great Western Railway between 
 London and Bristol. It Avas not Bristol which benefited 
 most by the transatlantic voyages. They made the great- 
 ness of Liverpool. Year by year the sceptre of the 
 commercial marine passed away from Bristol to Liverpool. 
 No port in the world can show a line of docks like those 
 of Liverpool. There the stately Mersey flows for miles 
 between the superb and massive granite walls of the 
 enclosures within whose shelter the ships of the world are 
 arrayed, as if on parade, for the admiration of the traveller 
 who has hitherto been accustomed to the irregular and 
 straggling arrangements of the docks of London or of New 
 York. 
 
 On July 5ih, 1839, an unusually late period of the 
 
SCIENCE AND SPEED. 
 
 C3 
 
 year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward 
 his annual budget. The most important part of the finan- 
 cial statement, so far as later times are concerned, is set 
 out in a resolution proposed by the finance minister, 
 which, perhaps, represents the greatest social improve- 
 ment brought about by legislation in modern times. The 
 Chancellor proposed a resolution declaring that " it is ex- 
 pedient to reduce the postage on letters to one uniform 
 rate of one penny charged upon every letter of a weight 
 to be hereafter fixed by law ; Parliamentary privileges of 
 franking being abolished and official franking strictly reg- 
 ulated; this House pledging itself at the same time to 
 make good any deficiency of revenue which may be occa- 
 sioned by such an alteration in the rates of the existing 
 duties." Ill) to this time the rates of postage had been 
 both high and various. They were varying both as to 
 distance and as to the weight and even the size or the 
 shape of a letter. The district or London post was a 
 separate branch of the postal department ; and the charge 
 for the transmission of letters was made on a different 
 scale in London from that which prevailed between town 
 and town. The average postage on every chargeable 
 letter throughout the United Kingdom was sixpence far- 
 thing. A letter from London to Brighton cost eight- 
 pence; to Aberdeen one shilling and threepence half- 
 penny ; to Belfast one shilling and 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 un- 
 limited extent. It is, perhaps, as well to mention, for the 
 sake of being intelligible to all readers in an age which 
 has not, in this country at least, known practically the 
 beauty and liberality of the franking privilege, that it con- 
 sisted in the right of the privileged person to send his 
 own or any other person's letters through the post free of 
 charge by merely writing his name on the outside. This 
 meant, in plain words, that the letters of the class who 
 could best afford to pay for them went free of charge, and 
 that those who could least afford to pay had to pay 
 double — the expense, that is to say, of carrying their own 
 letters and the letters of the i)rivileged and exempt. 
 
A msTonr of ovn own time^. 
 
 The greatest grievances were felt everywhere because 
 of this absurd system. It had along with its other disad- 
 vantages that of encouraging what may be called the 
 smuggling of letters. Everywhere sprang up organiza- 
 tions for the illicit conveyance of correspondence at lower 
 rates than those imposed by the Government. The pro- 
 prietors of almost every kind of public conveyance are 
 said to have been engaged in this unlawful but certainl}^ 
 not very unnatural or unjustifiable traffic. Five-sixths 
 of all the letters sent between Manchester and London 
 were said to have been conveyed for years by this process. 
 One great mercantile house was proved to have been in 
 the habit of sending sixty-seven letters by what we may 
 call this underground post-office for every one on which 
 they paid the Government charges. It was not merely to 
 escape heavy cost that these stratagems were employed. 
 As there was an additional charge when a letter was 
 written on more sheets than one, there was a frequent 
 and almost a constant tampeijing 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. (afterward Sir Rowland) Ilill is the man to whom 
 this country, and, indeed, all civilization, owes the adop- 
 tion of the cheap and uniform system. His plan has been 
 adopted by every State which professes to have a postal 
 system at all. Mr. Hill belonged to a remarkable family. 
 Ilis father, Thomas Wright Hill, was a teacher, a man 
 of advanced and practical' views in popular education, a 
 dev^oted lover of science, an advocate of civil and reli- 
 gious li])erty, and a sort of celebrity in the Bh'mingham 
 of his day, where he took a bold and active part in try- 
 ing to defend the house of Dr. Priestley against the mob 
 
SCIENCE AND SPEED. 
 
 65 
 
 who attacked it. He liad five sons, every one of whom 
 made himself more or less conspicuous as a practical 
 reformer in one path or another. The eldest of the sons 
 was Matthew Davenport Hill, the philanthropic recorder 
 of Birmingham, who did so much for prison reform and 
 for the reclamation of juvenile olt'enders. The third son 
 was Rowland Hill, the author of the cheap postal system. 
 Rowland Hill when a little weakly child began to sliow 
 some such precocious love for arithmetical calculations 
 as Pascal shoAved for mathematics. His favorite amuse- 
 ment, as a child, w^as to lie on the hearth-rug and count 
 up figures by the hour together. As he grew up he 
 became teacher of mathematics in his father's school. 
 Afterward he was appointed Secretary to the South Aus- 
 tralian Commission, and rendered much valuable service 
 in the organization of the colony of South Australia. His 
 early love of masses of figures it may have been which 
 in the first instance turned his attention to the number 
 of letters passing through the Post-office, the proportion 
 they bore to the number of the population, the cost of 
 carrying them, and the amount which the Post-office 
 authorities charged for the conveyance of a single let- 
 ter. A picturesque and touching little illustration of the 
 veritable hardships of the existing system seems to have 
 quickened his interest in a reform of it. Miss Martineau 
 thus tells the story : 
 
 " Coleridge, wdien a yomig man, was walking through 
 the Lake district, when he one day saw the postman 
 deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The 
 woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned 
 it, saying she could not pay the postage, which was a 
 shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, 
 Coleridge paid the postage, in spite of the manifest un- 
 willingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was 
 out of sight she showed Coleridge how his money had 
 been wasted as far as she was concerned. The sheet 
 was blank. There was an agreement between her brother 
 and herself that as long as all went well with him he 
 should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter ; 
 and she thus had tidings of him without expense of 
 postage. Most persons would have remembered this in- 
 cident as a curious story to tell ; but there was one mind 
 which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance 
 
 5 
 
G6 
 
 A BISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 of the fact. It struck Mr. Rowland Hill that there must 
 be somethmg wrong m a system which drove a brother 
 and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to 
 hear of one another's welfare." 
 
 Mr. Hill gradually worked out for himself a compre- 
 hensive scheme of reform. He put it before the world 
 early in 1837. The public were taken by surprise when 
 the. plan came before them in the shape of a pamphlet, 
 which its author modestly entitled " Post-office Reform ; 
 its importance and practicability." The root of Mr. Hill's 
 system lay in the fact, made evident by him beyond dis- 
 pute, that the actual cost of the conveyance of letters 
 through the post was very trifling, and was but little 
 increased by the distance over which they had to be car- 
 ried. 
 
 His proposal was, therefore, that the rates of postage 
 should be diminished to the minimum ; that at the same 
 time the speed of conveyance should be increased, and 
 that there should be much greater frequency of despatch. 
 His principle, was, in fact, the very opposite of that 
 which had prevailed in the calculations of the authorities. 
 Their idea Avas that the higher the charge for letters the 
 greater the return to the revenue. He started on the 
 assumption that the smaller the charge the greater the 
 profit. He, therefore, recommended the substitution of 
 one uniform charge of one penny the half-ounce, with- 
 out reference to the distance witliin the limits of the 
 United Kingdom which the letter had to be carried. The 
 Post-office authorities were at first uncompromising in 
 their opposition to the scheme. The Post-master-general, 
 Lord Lichfield, said in the House of Lords, that of all the 
 wild and extravagant schemes he had ever heard of, it 
 was the wildest and most extravagant. "The mails," he 
 said, " will have to carry twelve times as much weight, 
 and therefore the charge for transmission, instead of 
 £100,000, as now, must be twelve times that amount. The 
 walls of the Post-office would burst; the whole area in 
 which the building stands would not be large enough to 
 receive the clerks and the letters." It is impossible not 
 to be struck by the i)aradoxical peculiarity of this argu- 
 ment, l^ecause the (change would be so nmch welcomed 
 by the public, ]/)rd Lichfield argued that it ought not to 
 be made. He did not fall back upon the then familiar 
 
SCIENCE AND SPEED. 67 
 
 assertion that the public would not send anything like 
 the number of letters the advocates of the scheme expected. 
 He argued that they would send so many as to make it 
 troublesome for the Post-office authorities to deal with 
 them. In plain words, it would be such an immense ac- 
 commodation to the population in general that the officials 
 could not undertake the trouble of carrying it into effect. 
 Another Post-office official, Colonel Maberley, was, at all 
 events, more liberal. " My constant language," he said 
 afterward, "to the heads of the departments was — This 
 plan we know will fail. It is our duty to take care that 
 no obstruction is placed in the way of it by the heads of 
 the departments, and by the Post-office. The allegation, 
 I have not the least doubt, will be made at a subsequent 
 period, that this plan has failed in consequence of the un- 
 willingness of the Government to carr}^ it into fair execu- 
 tion. It is our duty, as servants of the Government, to 
 take care that no blame eventually shall fall on the Gov- 
 ernment through any unwillingness of ours to carry it 
 into proper effect." It is, perhaps, less surprising that 
 the routine mind of officials should have seen no future 
 but failure for the scheme, when so vigorous and untram- 
 melled a thinker as Sydney Smith spoke with anger and 
 contempt of the fact that "a million of revenue is given 
 up in the nonsensical Penny-post scheme, to please my 
 old, excellent, and universally dissentient friend, Xoali 
 Warburton." Mr. Warburton was then member for 
 Bridport, and, with Mr. Wallace, another member of 
 Parliament, was very active in supporting and promoting 
 the views of Mr. Hill. " I admire the Whig Ministry," 
 Sydney Smith went on to say, "and think they have 
 done more good things than all the ministries since 
 the Revolution; but these concessions are sad and un- 
 worthy marks of weakness, and fill reasonable men with 
 alarm." 
 
 It will be seen from this remark alone that the ministry 
 had yielded somewhat mo]*e readily than might have been 
 expected to the arguments of Mr. Hill. At the time his 
 pamphlet appeared a commission was actually engaged 
 in inquiring into the condition of the Post-office depart- 
 ment. Their attention was drawn to Mr. Hill's plan, and 
 they gave it a careful consideration, and reported in its 
 favor, although the Post-office authorities were convinced 
 
68 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 that it must involve an unbearable loss of revenue. In 
 Parliament Mr. Wallace, whose name has been already 
 mentioned, moved for a committee to inquire into the 
 whole subject, and especially to examine the mode recom- 
 mended for charging and collecting postage in the pam- 
 phlet of Mr. Hill. The committee gave the subject a very 
 patient consideration, and at length made a report recom- 
 mending uniform charges and prepayment by stamps. 
 That part of Mr. Hill's plan which suggested the use of 
 postage-stamps was adopted by him on the advice of Mr. 
 Charles Knight. The government took up the scheme 
 with some spirit and liberality. The revenue that year 
 showed a deficiency, but they determined to run the 
 further risk which the proposal involved. The commer- 
 cial community had naturally been stirred greatly by the 
 project which promised so much relief and advantage. 
 Sydney Smith was very much mistaken, indeed, when he 
 fancied that it was only to please his old and excellent 
 friend, Mr. Warburton, that the ministry gave Avay to the 
 innovation. Petitions from all the commercial commu- 
 nities were pouring in to support the plan, and to ask 
 that at least it should have a fair trial. The Government 
 at length determined to bring in a bill which should pro- 
 vide for the almost immediate. introduction of Mr. Hill's 
 scheme, and for the abolition of the franking system ex- 
 cept in the case of official letters actually sent on business 
 directly belonging to her Majesty's service. The bill 
 declared, as an introductory step, that the charge for post- 
 age should be at the rate of fourpence for each letter, 
 under half an ounce in weight, irrespective of distance, 
 within the limits of the United Kingdom. This, however 
 was to be only a beginning; for on January 10th, 1840, 
 the postage was fixed at the uniform rate of one penny 
 per letter of not more than half an ounce in weight. The 
 introductory measure was not, of course, carried without 
 opposition in both Houses of Parliament. The Duke of 
 Wellington, in his characteristic way, declared that he 
 strongly objected to the scheme ; but, as the Government 
 had evidently set their hearts upon it, he recommended 
 the House of Lords not to offer any opposition to it. In 
 the House of Commons it was opposed by Sir Robert Peel 
 and Mr. Goulburn, l^oth of whom stroiigly condemned 
 the whole scheme as likely to involve the country in vast 
 
SCIENCE AND SPEED, 
 
 69 
 
 loss of revenue. The measure, however, passed into law. 
 Some idea of the effect it has produced upon the postal 
 correspondence of the country may be gathered from the 
 fact that in 1839, the last year of the heavy postage, the 
 number of letters delivered in Great Britain and Ireland 
 was a little more than eighty-two millions, which included 
 some five millions and a half of franked letters returning 
 nothing to the revenues of the country ; whereas, in 1875, 
 more than a thousand millions of letters were delivered in 
 the United Kingdom. The population during the same 
 time has not nearly doubled itself. It has already been 
 remarkable that the princi]3le of Sir Rowland Hill's reform 
 has since been put into operation in every civilized coun- 
 try in the world. It may be added that before long we 
 shall, in all human probability, see an interoceanic post- 
 age established at a rate as low as people sometimes 
 thought Sir Rowland Hill a madman for recommending 
 as applicable to our inland post. The time is not far dis- 
 tant when a letter will be carried from London to San 
 Francisco, or to Tokio in Japan, at a rate of charge as 
 small as that which made financiers stare and laugh 
 when it was suggested as profitable remuneration for 
 carrying a letter from London to the towns of Sussex or 
 Hertfordshire. The " Penny-post," let it be said, is an 
 older institution than that which Sir Rowland Hill intro- 
 duced. A penny-post for the conveyance of letters had 
 been set up in London so long ago as 1683f and it was 
 adopted or annexed by the Government some years after. 
 An effort was even made to set up a half-penny post in 
 London, in opposition to the official penny-post, in 1708; 
 but the Government soon crushed this vexatious and in- 
 trusive rival. In 1738 Dr. Johnson writes to Mr. Cave 
 " to entreat that you will be pleased to inform me, by the 
 penny-post, whether you resolve to print the poem." 
 After awhile the Government changed their penny-post 
 to a twopenny-post, and gradually made a distinction 
 between district and other postal systems, and contrived 
 to swell the price for deliveries of all kinds. Long before 
 even this time of the penny-post, the old records of the 
 city of Bristol contain an account of the payment of one 
 penny for the carriage of letters to London. It need 
 hardly be explained, however, that a penny in that time, 
 or even in 1683, was a payment of very different value 
 
70 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 indeed from the modest sum which Sir Rowland Hill was 
 successful in establishing. The ancient penny-post 
 resembled the modern penny-post only in name. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHARTISM. 
 
 It cannot, however, be said that all the omens under 
 which the new Queen's reign opened at home were as auspi- 
 cious as the coincidences which made it contemporary with 
 the first chapters of these new and noble developments in 
 the history of science and invention. On the contrary, it 
 began amidst many grim and unpromising conditions in 
 our social affairs. The winter of 1837-38, was one of 
 unusual severity and distress. There Avould have been 
 much discontent and grumbling 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 under the influence of a 
 frivolous and selfish minister, who occupied her with 
 amusements while the poor were starving. It does not 
 appear that there was at any time the slightest justifi- 
 cation for such a belief; but it prevailed among the 
 working-classes and the poor very generally, and added to 
 the sufferings of genuine want the bitterness of imaginary 
 wrong. Popular education was little looked after ; so far 
 as the state was concerned, might be said not to be looked 
 after at all. The laws of political economy were as yet 
 only within the appreciation of a few, who were regarded 
 not uncommonly, because of their theories, somewhat as 
 phrenologists or mesmerists might be looked on in a more 
 enlightened time. Some writers have made a great deal 
 of the case of Thom and his disciples as evidence of the 
 extraordinary ignorance that prevailed. Thom was a 
 broken-down brewer, and in fact a madman, who had for 
 some time been going about in Canterbury and other parts 
 of Kent bedizened in fantastic costume, and styling himself 
 at first Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham Castle, 
 Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, king of the gypsy 
 races, and we know not what else. He announced himself 
 
CIIABTISM. 
 
 71 
 
 as a great political reformer, and for awhile he succeeded 
 in getting many to believe in and support him. He was 
 afterward confined for some time in a lunatic asylum, and 
 when he came out he presented himself to the ignorant 
 peasantry in the character of a second Messiah. He found 
 many followers and believers again, among a humbler 
 class, indeed, than those whgm he had formerly won over. 
 Much of his influence over the poor Kentish laborers was 
 due to his denunciations of the new Poor Law, which was 
 then popularly hated and feared with an almost insane 
 intensity of feeling. Thom told them he had come to 
 regenerate the whole world, and also to save his followers 
 fronf the new Poor Law; and the latter announcement 
 commended the former. He assembled a crowd of his 
 supporters, and undertook to lead them to an attack 
 on Canterbury. With his own hand he shot dead a 
 policeman who endeavored to oppose his movements, 
 exactly as a savior of society of bolder pretensions and 
 greater success did at Boulogne not long after. Two com- 
 panies of soldiers came out from Canterbury to disperse 
 the rioters. The officer in command was shot dead by 
 Thom. Thom's followers then charged the unexpecting 
 soldiers 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 afterward tried for murder, con- 
 victed, and sentenced ; but some pity was felt for their 
 ignorance and their delusion, and they were not consigned 
 to death. Long after the fall of their preposterous hero 
 and saint, many of Thom's disciples believed that he would 
 return from the grave to carry out the promised work of 
 his mission. All this was lamentable, but could hardly 
 be regarded as specially characteristic of the early years 
 of the present reign. The 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 cultured Germany who still cherish 
 the hope that their idol Ferdinand Lassalle will come back 
 from the dead to lead and guide them. 
 
 But there were political and social dangers in the open- 
 ing of the present reign more serious than any that could 
 have been conjured up by a crazy man in a fantastic dress. 
 
72 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 There were delusions having deeper roots and showing a 
 more inviting shelter than any that a religious fanatic of 
 the vulgar type could cause to spring up in our society. 
 
 Only a few weeks after the coronation of the Queen a 
 great Radical meeting was held in Birmingham. A mani- 
 festo was adopted there which afterward came to be known 
 as the Chartist petition. With that movement Chartism 
 began to be one of the most disturbing influences of the 
 political life of the country. It is a movement which, 
 although its influence may now be said to have wholly 
 passed away, well deserves to have its history fully 
 written. For ten years it agitated England. It some- 
 times seemed to threaten an actual uprising of all the 
 proletaire against what were then the political and social 
 institutions of the country. It might have been a very 
 serious danger if the state had been involved in any 
 external difficulties. It was backed by much genuine 
 enthusiasm, passion, and intelligence. It appealed 
 strongy and naturally to whatever there was of discontent 
 among the working-classes. It afforded a most acceptable 
 and convenient means by which ambitious politicians of 
 the self-seekiiig order could raise themselves into tem- 
 porary importance. Its fierce aiid fitful flame went out 
 at last under the influence of the clear, strong, and steady 
 light of political reform and education. The one great 
 lesson it teaches is, that political agitation lives and is 
 formidable only by virtue of what is reasonable in its 
 demands. Thousands of ignorant and miserable men all 
 over the country joined the Chartist agitation who cared 
 nothing about the substantial value of its political claims. 
 They were poor, they were overworked, they were badly 
 paid, their lives were altogether wretched. They got into 
 their heads some wild idea that the People's Charter would 
 give them better food and wages, and lighter work if it 
 were obtained, and that for that very reason the aristocrats 
 and the officials would not grant it. No political con- 
 cessions could really have satisfied these men. If the 
 Charter had been granted in 1838, they would no doubt 
 have been as dissatisfied as ever in 1839. But the discon- 
 tent of these poor creatures would have brought Avith it 
 little dangei" to the state if it had not become part of the 
 support of an orgfuiization wliich could show some sound 
 and good reason for the demands it made. Tlie moment 
 
CH AUTISM. 
 
 73 
 
 that the clear and practical political grievances were dealt 
 with, the organization melted way. Vague discontent, 
 however natural and excusable it may be, is only formi- 
 dable in politics when it helps to swell the strength and 
 the numbers of a crowd which calls for some reform that 
 can be made and is withheld. One of the vulgarest 
 fallacies of state-craft is to declare that it is of no use 
 granting the reforms which would satisfy reasonable 
 demands, because there are still unreasonable agitators 
 whom these will not satisfy. Get the reasonable men on 
 your side, and you need not fear the unreasonable. This 
 is the lesson taught to statesmen by the Chartist agitation. 
 
 A funeral oration over Chartism was pronounced by 
 Sir John Campbell, then Attorney-general, afterward- 
 Lord Chief-justice Campbell, at a public dinner at Edin- 
 burgh on October 24th, 1839. He spoke at some length 
 and with much complacency of Chartism as an agitation 
 which had passed away. Some ten days afterwards oc- 
 curred the most formidable outburst of Chartism that had 
 been known up to that time, and Chartism continued to 
 be an active and a disturbing influence in England for 
 nearly ten years after. If Sir John Campbell had told his 
 friends and constituents at the Edinburgh dinner that the 
 influence of Chartism was just about to make itself really 
 felt, he would have shown himself a somewhat more acute 
 politician than we now understand him to be. Seldom 
 has a public man setting up to be a political authority 
 made a worse hit than he did in that memorable declara- 
 tion. Campbell was, indeed, only a clever, shrewd lawyer 
 of the hard and narrow class. lie never made any pre- 
 tension to statesmanship, or even to great political knowl- 
 edge ; and his unfortunate blunder might be passed over 
 without notice were it not that it illustrates fairly enough 
 the manner in which men of better information and judg- 
 ment than he were at that time in the habit of disposing 
 of all inconvenient political problems. The Attorney- 
 general was aware that there had been a few riots and a 
 few arrests, and that the law had been what he would call 
 vindicated ; and as he had no manner of sympathy with 
 the motives which could lead men to distress tliemselves 
 and their friends about imaginary charters, he assumed 
 that there was an end of the matter. It did not occur to 
 him to ask himself whether there might not be some un- 
 
74 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 derlying causes to explain, if not to excuse, the agitation 
 that just then began to disturb the country, and that con- 
 tinued to disturb it for so many years. Even if he had 
 inquired into the subject, it is not likely that he would 
 have come to any wiser conclusion about it. The dramatic 
 instinct, if we may be allowed to call it so, which enables 
 a man to put himself for the moment into the condition 
 and mood of men entirely unlike himself in feeling and 
 conditions, is an indispensable element of real statesman- 
 ship ; but it is the rarest of all gifts among politicians of 
 the second order. If Sir John Campbell had turned his 
 attention to the Chartist question, he would only have 
 found that a number of men, for the most part poor and 
 ignorant, were complaining of grievances where he could 
 not for himself see any substantial grievances at all. 
 That would have been enough for him. If a solid, wealthy, 
 and rising lawyer could not see any cause for grumbling, 
 he would have made up his mind that no reasonable 
 persons worthy the consideration of sensible legislators 
 would continue to grumble after they had been told by 
 those in authority that it was their business to keep quiet. 
 But if he had, on the other hand, looked with the light of 
 sympathetic intelligence, of that dramatic instinct which 
 has just been mentioned, at the condition of the classes 
 among whom Chartism was then rife, he would have seen 
 that it was not likely the agitation could be put down by a 
 few prosecutions and a few arrests, and the censure of a pros- 
 perous Attorney-general. He would have seen that Char- 
 tism was not a cause but a consequence. The intelligence 
 of a very ordinary man who approached the question in 
 an impartial mood might have seen that Chartism was 
 the expression of a vague discontent with very positive 
 grievances and evils. 
 
 We have, in our time, outlived the days of political 
 abstractions. The catchwords which thrilled our fore- 
 fathers with -emotion on one side or the other fall with 
 hardly any meaning on our ears. We smile at such 
 phrases as " the rights of man." We hardly know what 
 is meant by talking of " tlie j)eople " 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 o})pressed by privilege and the aristo- 
 cracy. AV e seldom talk of " liberty ; " any one venturing 
 
(JM Autism, 
 
 75 
 
 to found a theory or even a declamation on some supposed 
 deprival of liberty would soon find himself in the awk- 
 ward position of being called on to give a scientific defini- 
 tion of what he understood liberty to be. He would be as 
 much puzzled as were certain English working-men, who, 
 desiring to express to Mr. John Stuart Mill their sym- 
 pathy with what they called in the slang of Continental 
 democracy the Revolution," were calmly bidden by tiie 
 great Liberal thinker to ask themselves what they meant 
 by " the Revolution," which revolution, what revolution, 
 and why they sympathized with it. But perhaps we are 
 all a little too apt to think that because these abstractions 
 have no living meaning now they never had any living 
 meaning at all. They convey no manner of clear idea in 
 England now, but it does not by any means follow that 
 they never conveyed any such idea. The phrase which 
 Mr. Mill so properly comdemned when he found it in the 
 mouths of English working-men had a very intelligible 
 and distinct meaning when it first came to be used in 
 France and throughout the Continent. " The Revolu- 
 tion " expressed a clear reality, as recognizable by the in- 
 telligence of all who heard it as the name of Free-trade 
 or of Ultramontanism to men of our time. " The Revolu- 
 tion" was the principle w^hich was asserting all over 
 Europe the overthrow of the old absolute power of kings, 
 and it described it just as well as any word could do. It is 
 meaningless in our day, for the very reason that it was 
 full of meaning then. So it was with " the people " and 
 "the rights of the people," and the "rights of labor," and 
 all the other grandiloquent phrases which seem to us so 
 empty and so meaningless now. They are empty and 
 meaningless at the present hour; but they have no 
 application noAV chiefly because they had application then. 
 
 The Reform Bill of 1832 had been necessarily, and per- 
 haps naturally, a class measure. It had done great things 
 for the constitutional system of England. It had averted 
 a revolution which without some such concession would 
 probably have been inevitable. It had settled forever the 
 question which was so fiercely and so gravely debated 
 during the discussions of the reform years, whether the 
 English Constitution is or is not based upon a system of 
 popular representation. To many at present it may seem 
 hardly credible that sane men could have denied the 
 
7G A HISTOBT OF OlTE OWJST TIMES, 
 
 existence of the representative principle. But during the 
 debates on the great Reform Bill such a denial was the 
 strong point of many of the leading opponents of the 
 measure, including the Duke of Wellington himself. The 
 principle of the Constitution, it was soberly argued, is 
 that the sovereign invites whatever communities or inter- 
 ests he thinks fit to send in persons to Parliament to 
 take council with him on the affairs of the nation. This 
 idea was got rid of by the Reform Bill. That bill abolished 
 fifty-six nomination or rotten boroughs, and took away 
 half the representation from thirty others ; it disposed 
 of the seats thus obtained by giving sixty-five additional 
 representatives to the counties, and conferring the right 
 of returning members on Manchester, Leeds, Birming- 
 ham, and some thirty-nine large and prosperous towns 
 which had previously had no representation; while, as 
 Lord John Russell said hi his speech when he introduced 
 the bill in March, 1831, "a ruined mound" sent two 
 representatives to Parliament ; " three niches in a stone 
 wall" sent two representatives to Parliament ; "a park 
 where no houses were to be seen " sent two representa- 
 tives to Parliament. The bill introduced a £10 house- 
 hold qualification for boroughs, and extended the county 
 franchise to lease-holders and copy-holders. But it left 
 the working-classes almost altogether out of the franchise. 
 Not merely did it confer no political emancipation on 
 them, but it took away in many places the peculiar fran- 
 chises which made the working-men voters. There were 
 communities — such, for example, as that of Preston, in 
 Lancashire — where the system of franchise existing 
 created something like universal suffrage. All this was 
 smoothed away, if such an expression may be used, by the 
 Reform Bill. In truth, tlie Reform Bill broke down the 
 monopoly which the aristocracy and landed classes had 
 enjoyed, and admitted the middle classes to a share of 
 the law-making power. The representation was divided 
 between the aristocracy and the middle class, instead 
 of T)eing, as ])efore, the exclusive possession of the former. 
 
 The working-class, in the opinion of many of their ablest 
 and most influential representatives, were not merely left 
 out but shouldered out. 1'his was all the more exasperat- 
 ing l)ecause the excitement and agitation by the strength 
 of which the Reform Bill was carried in the teeth of so 
 
Oil AUTISM, 
 
 much resistance were kept up by the working-men. There 
 was, besides, at the time of the Reform Bill, a very high 
 degree of what may be called the temperature of the 
 French Revolution still heating the senses and influencing 
 the judgment even of the aristocratic leaders of the move- 
 ment. What Richter calls the " seed-grains " of the revo- 
 lutionary doctrines had been blown abroad so widely that 
 they rested in some of the highest as well as in most of 
 the lowliest places. Some of the Reform leaders — Lord 
 Durham, for instance — were prepared to go much farther 
 in the way of Radicalism than at a later period Mr. 
 Cobden or Mr. Bright would have gone. There was more 
 than once a sort of appeal to the working-men of the coun- 
 try which, however differently it may have been meant, 
 certainly sounded in their ears as if it were an intimation 
 that in the event of the bill being resisted too long it 
 might be necessary to try what the strength of a popular 
 uprising could do. Many years after, in the defence of 
 the Irish state-prisoners at Clonmel, the counsel who 
 pleaded their cause insisted that they had v^^arrant for 
 their conduct in certain proceedings which were in prepara- 
 tion during the Reform agitation. He talked with un- 
 disguised significance of the teacher being in the ministry 
 and the pupils in the dock ; and quoted Captain Macheath 
 to the effect that if laws were made equally for every 
 degree, there might even then be rare company on Tyburn 
 tree. It is not necessary to attach too much importance to 
 assertions of this kind, or to accept them as sober contribu- 
 tions to history ; but they are very instructive as a means 
 of enabling us to imderstand the feeling of soreness which 
 remained in the minds of large masses of the population 
 when, after the passing of the Reform Bill, they found 
 themselves left out in the cold. Rightly or wrongly, they 
 believed that their strength had been kept in reserve or 
 in terrorem to secure the carrying of the Reform Bill, and 
 that when it was carried they were immediately thrown 
 over by those whom they had thus helped to pass it. 
 Therefore, at the time when the young sovereign ascended 
 the throne, the working-classes in all the large towns were 
 in a state of profound disappointment and discontent, 
 almost, indeed, of disaffection. Chartism was beginning to 
 succeed to the Reform agitation. The leaders who liad 
 come from the ranks of the aristocracy had been discarded 
 
78 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 or had withdrawn. In some cases they had withdrawn in 
 perfect good faith, believing sincerely that they had done 
 the work which they undertook to do, and that that was 
 all the country required. Men drawn more immediately 
 from the working-class itself, or who had in some way 
 been dropped down by a class higher in the social scale, 
 took up the popular leadership now. 
 
 Chartism may be said to have sprung definitively into 
 existence in consequence of the formal declarations of the 
 leaders of the Liberal party in Parliament that they did 
 not intend to push Reform any farther. At the opening 
 of the first Parliament of Queen Victoria's reign the 
 question was brought to a test. A Radical member of 
 the House of Commons moved as an amendment to the 
 address a resolution declaring in favor of the ballot and of 
 shorter duration of Parliaments. Only twenty members 
 voted for it ; and Lord John Russell declared distinctly 
 against all such attempts to reopen the Reform question. 
 It was impossible that this declaration should not be re- 
 ceived with disappointment and anger by great masses of 
 the people. They had been in the full assurance that the 
 Reform Bill itself was only the means by which greater 
 changes were to be brought about. Lord John Russell 
 said in the House of Commons that to push Reform any 
 farther then would be a breach of faith toward those who 
 helped him to carry it. A great many outside Parliament 
 not unnaturally regarded the refusal to go any farther as 
 a breach of faith toward them on the part of the Liberal 
 leaders. Lord John Russell was right from his point of 
 view. It would have been impossible to carry the Reform 
 movement any farther just then. In a country like ours, 
 where interests are so nicely balanced, it must always 
 happen that a forward movement in politics is followed 
 by a certain reaction. The parliamentary leaders in Par- 
 liament were already beginning to feel the influence of this 
 law of our political growth. It would have been hopeless 
 to attempt to get the upper and middle classes at such a 
 time to consent to any further changes of considerable 
 importance. But the feeling of those who had helped so 
 materially to bring about tlie Reform movement was at 
 least intelligible when they found that its effects were to 
 stop just short of tlie mejisures wliich alone could have 
 any direct influence on their political position. 
 
CHAETISM. 
 
 79 
 
 A conference was held almost immediately between a 
 few of the Liberal members of Parliament who professed 
 radical opinions and some of the leaders of the working- 
 men. At this conference the programme, or what was 
 always afterward known as " the Charter," was agreed 
 upon and drawn up. The name of " Charter " appears to 
 have been given to it for the first time by O'Connell. 
 " There's your Charter," he said to the secretary of the 
 Working-men's Association ; " agitate for it, and never be 
 content with anything less." It is a great thing accom- 
 plished in political agitation to have found a telling name. 
 A name is almost as important for a new agitation as for 
 a new novel. The title of " The People's Charter " would 
 of itself have launched the movement. 
 
 Quietly studied now, the People's Charter does not seem 
 a very formidable document. There is little smell of gun- 
 powder about it. Its " points," as they were called, were 
 six. Manhood Suffrage came first. It was then called 
 universal suffrage, but it only meant manhood suffrage, 
 for the promoters of the movement had not the slightest 
 idea of insisting on the franchise for women. The second 
 was Annual Parliaments. Vote by Ballot was the third. 
 Abolition of the Property Qualification (then and for 
 many years after required for the election of. a member to 
 Parliament) was the fourth. The Payment of Members 
 was the fifth ; and the Division of the Country into Equal 
 Electoral Districts, the sixth of the famous points. Of 
 these proposals some, it will be seen, were perfectly 
 reasonable. Not one was so absolutely unreasonable as to 
 be outside the range of fair and quiet discussion among 
 practical politicians. Three of the points — half, that is 
 to say, of the whole immber — have already been made 
 part of our constitutional system. The existing franchise 
 may be virtually regarded as manhood suffrage. We 
 have for years been voting by means of a written paper 
 dropped in a ballot-box. The property qualification for 
 members of Parliament could hardly be said to have been 
 abolished. Such a word seems far too grand and dignified 
 to describe the fate that befell it. We should rather say 
 that it was extinguished by its own absurdity and vicious- 
 ness. It never kept out of Parliament any person legally 
 disqualified, and it was the occasion of incessant tricks 
 and devices which would surely have been counted dis- 
 
80 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OW^N TIMES. 
 
 rei)utable and disgraceful to those who engaged in them, 
 but that tlie injustice and folly of the system generated a 
 sort of false public conscience where it was concerned, 
 and made people think it as lawful to cheat it, as at one 
 time the most respectable persons in private life thought 
 it allowable to cheat the revenue and wear smuggled lace 
 or drink smuggled brandy. The proposal to divide the 
 country into equal electoral districts is one which can 
 hardly yet be regarded as having come to any test. But 
 it is almost certain that sooner or later some alteration of 
 our present system in that direction will be adopted. Of 
 the two other points of the Charter, the payment of mem- 
 bers maybe regarded as decidedly objectionable ; and that 
 for yearly parliaments as embodying a proposition which 
 would make public life an almost insufferable nuisance to 
 those actively concerned in it. But neither of these two 
 proposals would be looked upon in our time as outside the 
 range of legitimate political discussion. Indeed, the dif- 
 ficulty any one engaged in their advocacy would find 
 just now Avould be in getting any considerable body of 
 listeners to take the slightest interest in the argument 
 either for or against them. 
 
 The Chartists might be roughly divided into three • 
 classes — the political Chartists, the social Chartists, and 
 the Chartists of vague discontent, who joined the move- 
 ment because they were wretched and felt angry. The 
 first were the regular political agitators, who wanted a 
 wider popular representation ; the second were chiefly 
 led to the movement by their hatred of the "bread-tax." 
 These two classes were perfectly clear as to what they 
 wanted : some of their demands were just and reasonable; 
 none of them were without the sphere of rational and 
 peaceful controversy. The disciples of mere discontent 
 naturally swerved alternately to the side of those leaders 
 or sections who talked loudest and fiercest against the 
 law-makers and the constituted authorities. Chartism 
 soon split itself into two general divisions — the moral 
 force, and the x)hysical force Chartism. Nothing can be 
 more unjust tlian to represent the leaders and promoters 
 of the movement as mere factious and self-seeking dema- 
 gogues. 8()me of them were men of great abihty and elo- 
 (j^uence ; some were impassioned young poets drawn from 
 the class whom Kingslcy has described in his "Alton 
 
CH AUTISM, 
 
 81 
 
 Locke ; " some were men of education ; many were earnest 
 and devoted fanatics ; and so far as we can judge, all, or 
 nearly all, were sincere. Even the man who did the move- 
 ment most harm, and who made himself most odious to 
 all reasonable outsiders, the once famous, now forgotten, 
 Feargus O'Connor, appears to have been sincere, and to 
 have personally lost more than he gained by his Chartism. 
 Four or five years after the collapse of what may be called 
 the active Chartist agitation, a huge, white-headed, vac- 
 uous-eyed man was to be seen of mornings wandering 
 through the arcades of Covent Garden Market, looking at 
 the fruits and flowers, occasionally taking up a flower, 
 smelling at it, and putting it down, with a smile of 
 infantile satisfaction ; a man who might have reminded 
 observers of Mr. Dick in Dickens's " David Copperfield ; " 
 and this was the once renowned, once dreaded and detested 
 Feargus O'Connor. For some time before his death his 
 reason had wholly deserted him. Men did not know at 
 first in the House of Commons the meaning of the odd 
 pranks which Feargus was beginning to play there to the 
 bewilderment of the great assembly. At last it was seen 
 that the fallen leader of Chartism was a hopeless madman. 
 It is hardly to be doubted that insanity had long been 
 growing on him, and that some at least of his political follies 
 and extravagances w^ere the result of an increasing disorder 
 of the brain. In his day he had been the very model for 
 a certain class of demagogue. He was of commanding 
 presence, great stature, and almost gigantic strength. He 
 had education ; he had mixed in good society ; he belonged 
 to an old family, and, indeed, boasted his descent from a 
 line of Irish kings, not without some ground for the claim. 
 He had been a man of some fashion at one time, and had 
 led a life of wild dissipation in his early years. He had 
 a kind of eloquence which told with immense power on a 
 mass of half-ignorant hearers ; and, indeed, men who had 
 no manner of liking for him or sympathy with his doctrines 
 have declared that he was the most elfective mob orator 
 they had ever heard. He was ready, if needs were, to fight 
 his way single-handed through a whole mass of Tory 
 opponents at a contested election. Thomas Cooper, the 
 venerable poet of Chartism, has given an amusing de- 
 scription, in his autobiography, of Feargus O'Connor, who 
 >vas then his hero, leaping from a wagon at a Nottingham 
 
82 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 election into the midst of a crowd of Tory "butchers, and 
 with only two stout Chartist followers fighting his way 
 through all oppositions, flooring the butchers like nine- 
 pins." Once," says Mr. Cooper, " the Tory lambs fought 
 off all who surrounded him and got him down, and my 
 heart quaked — for I thought they would kill him. But 
 in a very few moments his red head emerged again from 
 the rough human billows, and he was fighting his way as 
 before." 
 
 There were many men in the movement of a nobler 
 moral nature than poor, huge, wild Feargus O'Connor. 
 There were men like Thomas Cooper himself, devoted, im- 
 passioned, full of poetic aspiration, and no scant measure ^* 
 of poetic inspiration as well. Henry Vincent was a man 
 of unimpeachable character and of some ability, an effec- 
 tive popular speaker, who has since maintained in a very 
 unpretending way a considerable reputation. Ernest 
 Jones was as sincere and self-sacrificing a man as ever 
 joined a sinking cause. He had ]3roved his sincerity more 
 in deed than word. His talents only fell short of that 
 height which might claim to be regarded as genius. His 
 educati(m was that of a scholar and a gentleman. Many 
 men of education and ability were drawn into sympathy, 
 if not into actual co-operation, with the Chartists by a 
 conviction that some of their claims were well-founded, 
 and that the grievances of the working-classes, which were 
 terrible to contemplate, were such as a Parliament better 
 representing all classes would be able to remedy. Some 
 of these men have since made for themselves an honorable 
 name 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 under- 
 stand how genuine was the poetic and political enthusiasm 
 which was at the heart of the Chartist movement, and how 
 bitter was the suffering which drove into its ranks so many 
 thousands of stout working-men who, in a country like 
 England, might well have expected to be able to live by 
 the hard work they were only too Avilling to do. One 
 must read the Anti-Corn-law rhymes of Ebenezer Elliot to 
 understand how the " bread-tax " became identified in 
 the minds of the very best of the working-class, and iden- 
 tified justly, with the system of political and economical 
 legislation which was undoubtedly kept up, although not. 
 
CHARTISM. 
 
 83 
 
 of conscious purpose, for the benefit of a class. In tlie 
 minds of too many, the Britisli Constitution meant hard 
 work, and lialf -starvation. 
 
 A whole literature of Chartist newspapers sprang up to 
 advocate the cause. The Northern IStai\ owned and con- 
 ducted by Feargus O'Connor, was the most popular and 
 influential of them ; but every great town had its Chartist 
 press. Meetings were held at which sometimes very vio- 
 lent language was employed. It began to be the practice 
 to hold torch-light meetings at night, and many men 
 went armed to these, and open clamor was made by the 
 wilder of the Chartists for an appeal to arms. A formi- 
 dable riot took place in Birmingham, where the authori- 
 ties endeavored to put down a Chartist meeting. Ebene- 
 zer Elliott and other sensible sympathizers endeavored to 
 open the eyes of the more extreme Chartists to the folly 
 of all schemes for measures of violence ; but, for the time, 
 the more violent a speaker was, the better chance he had 
 of becoming popular. Efforts were made at times to 
 bring about a compromise with the middle-class Liberals 
 and the Anti- Corn-law leaders ; but all such attempts 
 proved failures. The Chartists would not give up their 
 Charter : many of them would not renounce the hope of 
 seeing it carried by force. The Government began to 
 prosecute some of the orators and leaders of the Charter 
 movement ; and some of these were convicted, imprisoned, 
 and treated with great severity. Henry Vincent's im- 
 prisonment at Newport, in Wales, was the occasion of an 
 attempt at rescue which bore a very close resemblance 
 indeed to a scheme of organized and armed rebellion. 
 
 Newport had around it a large mining population, and 
 the miners were nearly all physical-force Chartists. It 
 was arranged among them to march in three divisions to 
 a certain rendezvous, and when they had formed a junc- 
 tion there, which was to be two hours after midnight, to 
 march into Newport, attack the jail, and effect the release 
 of Vincent and other prisoners. The attempt was to be 
 under the chief command of Mr. Frost, a trader of New- 
 port, who had been a magistrate, but w\as deprived of the 
 commission of the peace for violent political speeches — a 
 man of respectable character and conduct up to that time. 
 This was on November 4th, 1839. There was some mis- 
 understanding and delay, as almost invariably happens in 
 
84 
 
 A BISTOBY OF OVR OWN TIMES. 
 
 such enterprises, and the divisions of the httle army did 
 not effect tlieir junction in time. When they entered 
 Newport, they found tlie autliorities fully prepared to 
 meet them. Frost entered the town at the head of one 
 division only, another following him at some interval. 
 The third was nowhere, as far as the object of the enter- 
 prise was concerned. A conflict took place between the 
 rioters and the soldiery and police, and the rioters were 
 dispersed with a loss of some ten killed and fifty wounded. 
 In tlieir flight they encountered some of the other divi- 
 sions coming up to the enterprise all too late. Nothing 
 was more remarkable than the courage shown by the 
 mayor of Newport, the magistrate, and the little body of 
 soldiers. The mayor, Mr. Phillips, received two gunshot 
 wounds. Frost was arrested next day along with some 
 of his colleagues. They were tried on June 6th, 1840. 
 The charge against them was one of high-treason. There 
 did really appear ground enough to suppose that the 
 expedition led by Frost was not merely to rescue Vincent, 
 but to set going the great rebellious movement of which 
 the physical-force Chartists had long been talking. The 
 Chartists api^ear at first to have numbered some ten 
 thousand — twenty thousand, indeed, according to other 
 accounts — and they were armed with guns, pikes, swords, 
 pickaxes, and bludgeons. If the delay and misunder- 
 standing had not taken place, and they had arrived at 
 their rendezvous at the appointed time, the attempt might 
 have led to very calamitous results. The jury found 
 Frost and two of his companions, Williams and Jones, 
 guilty of high- treason, and they were sentenced to death ; 
 the sentence, however, was com^muted to one of transpor- 
 tation for life. Even this was afterward relaxed, and 
 when some years had passed away, and Chartism had 
 ceased to be a disturbing influence. Frost was allowed to 
 return to England, where he found that a new generation 
 had grown up, and that he was all but forgotten. In the 
 mean time the Corn-law agitation had been successful ; 
 the year of revolutions bad passed harmlessly over ; Fear- 
 gus OXvonnor's day was done. 
 
 But the trial and conviction of Frost, Williams, and 
 Jones did not put a stop to the Chartist agitation. On 
 the contrary, that agitation seemed rather to wax and 
 strengtlien and grow broader because of the attempt at 
 
CII AUTISM. 
 
 85 
 
 Newport and its consequences. Thomas Cooper, for 
 example, had never attended a Chartist meeting, nor known 
 anytliing of Chartism beyond what he read in the news- 
 papers, until after the conviction of Frost and his com- 
 panions. There was no lack of what were called energetic 
 measures on the part of the Government. The leading 
 Chartists all over the country were prosecuted and tried, 
 literally by hundreds. In most cases they were convicted 
 and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. The imprison- 
 ment served rather to make the Chartist leaders popular, 
 and to advertise the movement, than to accomplish any 
 purpose the Government had at heart. They helped to 
 make the Government very unpopular. The working- 
 classes grew more and more bitter against the Whigs, 
 who, they said, had professed Liberalism only to gain their 
 own ends, and were really at heart less Liberal than the 
 Tories. Now and then an imprisoned representative of 
 the Chartist movement got to the end of his period of 
 sentence, and came out of durance. lie was a hero all 
 over again, and his return to public life was the signal for 
 fresh demonstrations of Chartism. At the general elec- 
 tion of 1841, the vast majority of the Chartists, acting on 
 the advice of some of their more extreme leaders, threw 
 all their support into the cause of the Tories, and so helped 
 the downfall of the Melbourne Administration. 
 
 Wide and almost universal discontent among the work- 
 ing-classes in town and country still helped to swell the 
 Chartist ranks. The weavers and stockingers in some of 
 the manufacturing towns were miserably poor. Wages 
 were low everywhere. In the agricultural districts the 
 complaints against the operation of the new Poor Law 
 were vehement and passionate ; and although they were 
 unjust in principle and sustained by monstrous exaggera- 
 tions of statement, they were not the less potent as recruit- 
 ing agents for Chartism. There was a profound distrust 
 of the middle class and their leaders. The Anti-Corn-law 
 agitation which was then springing up, and which, one 
 might have thought, must find its most strenuous support 
 among the poor artisans of the towns, was regarded with 
 deep disgust by some of the Chartists, and with down- 
 right hostility by others. A very temperate orator of the 
 Chartists put the feeling of himself and his fellows in clear 
 terms. ''We do not object to the repeal of the Corn 
 
86 
 
 A IIISTOBY OF OUR OJVJSf TIMES. 
 
 Laws," he said ; " on the contrary, when we get the Char- 
 ter we will repeal the Corn Laws and all the bad laws. 
 Bnt if you give up your agitation for the Charter to help 
 the Free-traders, they will never heljj you to get the Char- 
 ter. Don't be deceived by the middle classes again ! 
 You helped them to get the Reform Bill, and where are 
 the fine promises they made you ? Don't listen to their 
 humbug any more. Stick to your Charter. Without 
 your votes you are veritable slaves." The ^ Chartists 
 believed themselves abandoned by their natural leaders. 
 All manner of socialist doctrines began to creep in among 
 them. Wild and infidel opinions were proclaimed by 
 many. Thomas Cooper tells one little anecdote which he 
 says fairly illustrates the feelings of many of the fiercer 
 spirits among the artisan Chartists in some of the towns. 
 He and his friends were holding a meeting one day in 
 Leicester. A poor religious stockinger said : " Let us be 
 patient a little longer ; surely God Almighty Avill help us 
 soon." "Talk to us no more about thy Goddle Mighty," 
 was the fierce cry that came, in reply, from one of the 
 audience ; "there isn't one ! If there was one, he wouldn't 
 let us suffer as we do?" About the same time a poor 
 stockinger rushed into Cooper's house, and throwing him- 
 self wildly on a chair, exclaimed : " I wish they would hang 
 me ! I have lived on cold potatoes that were given me 
 these two days, and this morning I've eaten a raw potato 
 for sheer hunger. Give me a bit of bread and a cup of 
 coft'ee, 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 ]iow in the Market-place on Sunday 
 evenings ! My heart often burned with indignation I knew 
 not how to express. I began, from sheer sympathy, to feel 
 a tendency to glide into the depraved thinking of some of 
 the stronger but coarser spirits among the men." 
 
 So the agitation went on. We need not follow it 
 through all its incidents. It took in some places the form 
 of industrial strikes ; in others of socialistic assemblages. 
 Its fanaticism liad in many instances a strong flavor of 
 nobleness and virtue. Some men under the influence of 
 thoughtful leaders pledged themselves to total abstinence 
 from intoxicating drinks, in the full belief that the agita- 
 tion would never succeed until the working-classes had 
 
CHARTISM. 
 
 87 
 
 proved themselves, by their self-control, to be worthy of 
 the gift of freedom. In other instances, as has been 
 already remarked, the disappointment and despair of the 
 people took the form of infidelity. Thei-e were many riots 
 and disturbances ; none, indeed, of so seemingly rebellious 
 a nature as that of Frost and his companions, but many 
 serious enough to spread great alarm, and to furnish fresh 
 occasion for Government prosecutions and imprisonments. 
 Some of the prisoners seem to have been really treated 
 with a positively wanton harshness and even cruelty. 
 Thomas Cooper's account of his own sufferings in prison 
 is painful to read. It is not easy to understand what 
 good purpose any Government could have supposed the 
 prison authorities were serving by the unnecessary 
 degradation and privation of men who, whatever tlieir 
 errors, were consx3icuously and transparently sincere and 
 honest. 
 
 It is clear that at that time the Chartists, who repre- 
 sented the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large 
 towns, did in their very hearts believe that England was 
 ruled for the benefit of aristocrats and millionaires who 
 were absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. 
 It is equally clear that most of what are called the ruling 
 class did really believe the English working-men who 
 joined the Chartist movement to be a race of fierce, 
 unmanageable, and selfisli communists who, if they were 
 allowed their own way for a moment, would prove them- 
 selves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and all 
 established securities of society. An ignorant panic pre- 
 vailed on both' sides. England was indeed divided then, 
 as Mr. Disraeli's novel described it, into two nations, the 
 rich and the poor, in towns at least ; and each hated and 
 feared the other with all that unthinking hate and fear 
 which hostile nations are capable of showing even amidst 
 all the influences of civilization. 
 
88 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 * CHAPTER VI. 
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 
 
 Meanwhile things were looking ill with the Melbourne 
 Ministry. Sir Robert Peel was addressing great meetings 
 of his followers, and declaring with much show of justice 
 that he had created anew the Conservative party. The 
 position of the Whigs would in any case have been diffi- 
 cult. Their mandate, to use the French phrase, seemed 
 to be exhausted. They had no new thing to propose. 
 They came into power as reformers, and now they had 
 nothing to offer in the way of reform. It may be taken 
 as a certainty that in English politics reaction must 
 always follow advance. The Whigs must just then have 
 come in for the effects of reaction. But they had more 
 than that to contend with. In our own time, Mr. Glad- 
 stone had no sooner passed his great measures of reform 
 than he began to experience the effects of reaction. But 
 there was a great difference between his situation and 
 that of the Whigs under Melbourne. He had not failed to 
 satisfy the demands of his followers. He had no extreme 
 wing of his party clamoring against him on the ground 
 that he had made use of their strength to help him in 
 carrying out as much of his programme as suited his own 
 coterie^ and that he had then deserted them. This was 
 the condition of the Whigs. The more advanced Liberals 
 and tlie whole body of the Chartists, and the working- 
 classes generally, detested and denounced 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 Whigs 
 Ministry. On the other hand, the support of O'Connell 
 was a serious disadvantage to Melbourne and his party 
 in England. 
 
 But the Whig ministers were always adding by some 
 mistake or other to the difficulties of their position. The 
 Jamaica l^>ill put them in great perplexity. This was a 
 measure brought in on April Oth, 1839, to make temporary 
 
QUESTION DE JlfPONS. 
 
 89 
 
 provision for the government of the island of Jamaica, by 
 setting aside the House of Assembly for live years, and 
 during that time empowering the governor and council 
 with three salaried commissioners to manage the affairs 
 of the colony. In other words, the Melbourne Ministry pro- 
 posed to suspend for five years the constitution of Jamaica. 
 No body of persons can be more awkwardly placed than a 
 Whig Mmistry proposmg to set aside a constitutional gov- 
 ernment anywhere. Such a proposal may be a necessary 
 measure ; it may be unavoidable ; but it always comes 
 with a bad grace from Whigs or Liberals, and gives their 
 enemies a handle against them which they cannot fail to 
 use to some purpose. AVhat, indeed, it may be plausibly 
 asked, is the raiso7i d'^etre of a Liberal Government, if 
 they have to return 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 advising the suspension of constitutions. 
 
 In the case of the Jamaica Bill there was some excuse 
 for the harsh policy. After the abolition of slavery, the 
 former masters in the island found it very hard to reconcile 
 themselves to the new condition of things. They could 
 not all at once understand that their former slaves were 
 to be their equals before the law. As we have seen much 
 more lately in the Southern States of America, after the civil 
 war and the emancipation of the negroes, there was still a 
 pertinacious attempt made by the planter class to regain 
 in substance the power they had had to renounce in name. 
 This was not to be justified or excused ; but, as human 
 nature is made, it was not unnatural. On the other hand, 
 some of the Jamaica negroes were too ignorant to under- 
 stand that they had acquired any rights ; others were a 
 little too clamorous in their assertion. Many a planter 
 worked his men and Avhipped his women just as before the 
 emancipation, and the victims did not understand that 
 they had any right to complain. Many negroes, again, 
 were ignorantly and thoughtlessly "bumptious," to use a 
 vulgar expression, in the assertion of their newly-found 
 equality. The imperial governors and officials were gen- 
 
90 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TUim, 
 
 erally and justly eager to protect the negroes ; and the 
 result was a constant quarrel between the Jamaica House 
 of Assembly and the representatives of the home Govern- 
 ment. The Assembly became more insolent and offensive 
 every day. A bill, very necessary in itself, was passed by 
 the Imperial Parliament for the better regulation of prisons 
 in Jamaica, and the House of Assembly refused to submit to 
 any such legislation. Under these circumstances, the Mel- 
 bourne Ministry proposed the suspension of the constitu- 
 tion of the island. The measure was opposed not only by 
 Peel and the Conservatives, but by many Radicals. It 
 was argued that there were many courses open to the 
 ministry short of the high-handed proceeding they pro- 
 posed ; and, in truth, there was not that confidence in the 
 Melbourne Ministry at all which would have enabled 
 them to obtain from Parliament a majority sufficient to 
 carry through such a policy. The ministry was weak and 
 discredited ; anybody might now throw a stone at it. They 
 only had a majority of five in favor of their measure. 
 This, of course, was a virtual defeat. The ministry acknowl- 
 edged it, and resigned. Their defeat was a humiliation ; 
 their resignation an inevitable submission ; but they came 
 back to office almost immediately under conditions that 
 made the humiliation more humbling, and rendered their 
 subsequent career more difficult by far than their past 
 struggle for existence had been. 
 
 The return of the Whigs to office — for they cannot be 
 said to have returned to power — came about in a very odd 
 way. Gulliver ought to have had an opportunity of telling 
 such a story to the king of the Brobdingnagians, in order 
 the better to impress him with a clear idea of the logical 
 beauty of constitutional government. It was an entirely 
 new illustration of the old cherchezla femnie principle, the 
 ferayne 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 (Jueen sent for the Duke of Wellington, who advised 
 her to apply to Sir IiOl)ert Peel, for the reason that the 
 chief difficulties of a Conservative Government would be 
 in the House of Commons. The Queen sent for Peel, and 
 when he came, told him, witli a sim])le and girlish frank- 
 ness, that she was sorry to have to part with her late 
 
QUESTION BE JUFONS. 
 
 91 
 
 ministers, of whose conduct she entirely approved, but that 
 she boAved to constitutional usage. This must have been 
 rather an astonishing beginning to the grave and formal 
 Peel ; but he was not a man to think any worse of the 
 candid young sovereign for her outspoken ways. The 
 negotiations went on very smoothly as to the colleagues 
 Peel meant to recommend to her Majesty, until he hap- 
 pened to notice the composition of the royal household 
 as regarded the ladies most closely in attendance on the 
 Queen. For example, he found that the wife of Lord 
 Normanby and the sister of Lord Morpeth were the two 
 ladies in closest attendance on her Majesty. Now it has 
 to be borne in mind — it was proclaimed again and again 
 during the negotiations — that the chief difficulty of the 
 Conservatives Avould necessarily be in Ireland, where their 
 policy Avould be altogether opposed to that of the Whigs. 
 Lord Normanby had been Lord-lieutenant of Ireland under 
 the Whigs, and Lord Morpeth, whom we can all remem- 
 ber as the amiable and accomplished Lord Carlisle of later 
 time, Irish Secretary. It certainly could not be satis- 
 factory for Peel to try to work a new Irish policy while 
 the closest household companions of the Queen were the 
 wife and sister of the displaced statesmen who directly 
 represented the policy he had to supersede. Had this 
 point of view been made clear to the sovereign at first, it 
 is hardly possible that any serious difficulty could have 
 arisen. The Queen must have seen the obvious reason- 
 ableness of Peel's request ; nor is it to be supposed that 
 the two ladies in question could have desired to hold their 
 places under such circumstances. But unluckily some 
 misunderstanding took place at the very beginning of the 
 conversations on this point. Peel only desired to press 
 for the retirement of the ladies holding the higher offices ; 
 he did not intend to ask for any change affecting a place 
 lower in official rank than that of lady of the bedchamber. 
 But somehow or other he conveyed to the mind of the 
 Queen a different idea. She thought he meant to insist, 
 as a matter of principle, upon the removal of all her famil- 
 iar attendants and household associates. Under this im- 
 pression she consulted Lord John Russell, who advised 
 her on what he understood to be the state of the facts. 
 On his advice, the Queen stated in reply that she could 
 not " consent to a course which she conceives to be con- 
 
92 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 trary 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 Mel- 
 bourne and his colleagues had to be recalled ; and at a 
 cabinet meeting they adopted a minute declaring it rea- 
 sonable " that the great offices of the Court and situations 
 in the household held by members of Parliament should 
 be included in the political arrangements made on change 
 in the Administration ; but they are not of opinion that a 
 similar principle should be applied or extended to the 
 offices held by ladies in her Majesty's household." 
 
 Tlie matter was naturally made the subject of explana- 
 tion in both Houses of Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was 
 undoubtedly right in his view of the question, and if he 
 had been clearly understood the right could hardly have 
 been disputed; but he defended his position in language 
 of what now seems rather ludicrous exaggeration. He 
 treated this question de jupons as if it were of the last 
 importance not alone to the honor of the ministry, but even 
 to the safety of the realm. " I ask you," he said, " to go 
 back to other times : take Pitt or Fox, or any other min- 
 ister of this proud country, and answer for yourselves the 
 question, is it fitting that one man shall be the minister, 
 responsible for the most arduous charge that can fall to 
 the lot of man, and that the wife of the other — that other 
 his most formidable political enemy — shall, with his ex- 
 press consent, hold office in immediate attendance on the 
 sovereign?" "Oh, no ! " he exclaimed, in an outburst of 
 indignant eloquence. "I felt that it was impossible; I 
 could not consent to this. Feelings more powerful than 
 reasoning told me that it was not for my own honor or 
 for the public interests that I should consent to be min- 
 ister of England." This high-flown language seems oddly 
 out of place on the lips of a statesman who, of all his con- 
 temporaries, was the least apt to indulge in bursts of over- 
 wrought sentiment. Lord Melbourne, on the other hand, 
 defended his action in the House of Lords in language of 
 equal exaggeration. " I resume office," he said, " unequiv- 
 ocally and solely for this reason, that T avjU not desert 
 my sovereign in a situation of difficulty and distress, es- 
 pecially when a demand is made upon her Majesty with 
 which I think she ought not to comply — a demand incon- 
 sistent with her personal honor, and which, if acquiesced 
 
QUESTION BE JUPONS, 
 
 93 
 
 in, would render her reign liable to all the changes and 
 variations of political parties, and make her domestic life 
 one constant scene of unhappiness and discomfort." 
 
 In the country the incident created great excitement. 
 Some Liberals bluntly insisted that it was not right in 
 such a matter to consult the feelings of the sovereign at 
 all, and that the advice of the minister, and his idea of 
 what was for the good of the country, ought alone to be 
 considered. On the other hand, O'Comiell burst into 
 impassioned language of praise and delight, as he dwelt 
 upon the decision of the Queen, and called upon the 
 Power above to bless the young creature — that creat- 
 ure of only nineteen, as pure as she is exalted," who con- 
 sulted not her head, but " the over-flowing feelings of her 
 young heart." " Those excellent women who had been 
 so long attached to her, who had nursed and tended to 
 her wants in her childhood, who had watched over her in 
 her sickness, whose eyes beamed with delight as they 
 saw her increasing daily in beauty and in loveliness — 
 when they were threatened to be forced away from her — 
 her heart told her that she could as well part with that 
 heart itself as with those whom it held so dear." Fear- 
 gus O'Connor went a good deal farther, however, Avhen 
 he boldly declared that he had excellent authority for the 
 statement that if the Tories had got the young Queen 
 into their hands by the agency of 'the new ladies of the 
 bedchamber, they had a plan for putting her out of the 
 way and placing " the bloody Cumberland " on the throne 
 in her stead. In O'Connell's case, no mystery was made 
 of the fact that he believed the ladies actually surround- 
 ing the young Queen to be friendly to what he considered 
 the cause of Ireland ; and that he was satisfied Peel and 
 the Tories were against it. For the wild talk represented 
 by the words of Feargus O'Connor, it is only necessary 
 to say that, frenzied and foolish as it must seem now to 
 us, and as it must even then have seemed to all rational 
 beings, it had the firm acceptance of large masses of 
 people throughout the country, who persisted in seeing in 
 Peel's pleadings for the change of the bedchamber women 
 the positive evidence of an unscrupulous Tory plot to get 
 possession of the Queen's person, not indeed for the 
 purpose of violently altering the succession, but in the 
 hope of poisoning her mind against all Liberal opinions, 
 
di 
 
 A HIS TO BY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 Lord Brougham was not likely to lose so good an 
 opportunity of attacking Lord Melbourne and his col- 
 leagues. He insisted that Lord Melbourne had sacrificed 
 Liberal principles and the interest of the country to the 
 private feelings of the sovereign. "I thought," he de- 
 clared, in a burst of eloquent passion, " that we belonged 
 to a country in which the government by the Crown and 
 the wisdom of Parliament was everything, and the per- 
 sonal feelings of the sovereign were absolutely not to be 
 named at the same time. ... I little thought to have 
 lived to hear it said by the Whigs of 1839, 'Let us rally 
 round the Queen ; never mind the House of Commons ; 
 never mind measures ; throw principles to the dogs ; 
 leave pledges unredeemed ; but for God's sake rally round 
 the throne.' Little did I think the day would come when 
 I should hear such language, not from the unconstitu- 
 tional, place-hunting, king-loving Tories, who thought the 
 public was made for the king, not the king for the public, 
 but from the Whigs themselves ! The Jamaica Bill, said 
 to be a most important measure, had been brought for- 
 ward. The Government staked their existence upon it. 
 They were not able to carry it ; they therefore conceived 
 they had lost the confidence of the House of Commons. 
 They thought it a measure of paramount necessity then. 
 Is it less necessary now ? Oh, but that is altered ! The 
 Jamaica question is to be new-fashioned ; principles are 
 to be given up, and all because of two ladies of the bed- 
 chamber." 
 
 Nothing could be more undesirable than the position in 
 which Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had allowed the 
 sovereign to place herself. The more people in general 
 came to think over the matter, the more clearly it was 
 seen that Peel was in the right, although he had not made 
 himself understood at first, and had, perhaps, not shown 
 all through enough of consideration for the novelty of the 
 young sovereign's position, or for the difficulty of finding 
 a conclusive precedent on such a questicm, s(3eing that 
 since the principle of ministerial responsibility liad come to 
 be recognized among us in its genuine sense, tliere never 
 l)efore had been a woman on tlie throne. I]ut no one could 
 deliberately maintain the position at first taken up by the 
 Whigs ; and, in point of fa(;t, tliey were soon glad to drop 
 it as quickly and quietly as possible. The whole ques- 
 
QUESTION BE JUPONS. 
 
 95 
 
 tioii, it may be said at once, was afterward settled by a 
 sensible compromise which the Prince Consort suggested. 
 It was agreed that on a change of ministry the Queen 
 would listen to any representation from the incoming 
 Prime-minister as to the composition of her household, 
 and would arrange for the retirement, " of their own 
 accord," of any ladies who were so closely related to the 
 leaders of Opposition as to render their presence inconven- 
 ient. 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 trying to do something with the Jamaica bus- 
 iness. They, therefore, introduced a new bill, which was 
 a mere compromise put together in the hope of its being 
 allowed to pass. It was allowed to pass, after a fashion ; 
 that is, when the Opposition in the House of Lords had 
 tinkered it and amended it at their pleasure. The bed- 
 chamber question, in fact, had thrown Jamaica out of per- 
 spective. The unfortunate island must do the best it 
 could now ; in this country, statesmen had graver matter 
 to think of. Sir Robert Peel could not govern with Lady 
 Normanby ; the Whigs would not govern without her. 
 
 It does not seem by any means clear, however, that 
 Lord Melbourne and his colleagues deserved the savage 
 censure of Lord Brougham merely for having returned to 
 office and given up their original position with regard to 
 the Jamaica Bill. What else remained to be done ? If 
 they had refused to come back, the only result would have 
 been that Peel must have become Prhiie-minister, with a 
 distinct minority in the House of Commons. Peel could 
 not have held his ground there, except by the favor and 
 mercy of his opponents ; and those were not merciful 
 days in politics. He would only have taken office to be 
 called upon at once to resign it by some adverse vote of 
 the House of Commons. The state of things seems, in 
 this respect, to be not unlike that which existed when Mr. 
 Gladstone was defeated on the Irish University Bill in 1873. 
 Mr. Gladstone resigned, or rather tendered his resigna- 
 tion ; and by liis advice her Majesty invited Mr. Disraeli 
 to form a cabinet. Mr. Disraeli did not see his way to 
 undertake the government of the country with the exist- 
 
96 
 
 A msTonr of oub owjst times. 
 
 ing House of Commons ; and as the conditions under 
 which he was wilHng to undertake the duty were not con- 
 veniently attainable, the negotiation came to an end. The 
 Queen sent again for Mr. Gladstone, who consented to re- 
 sume his place as Prime-minister. If Lord Melbourne re- 
 turned to office with the knowledge that he could not carry 
 the Jamaica Bill, which he had declared to be necessary, 
 Mr. Gladstone resumed his place at the head of his minis- 
 try without the remotest hope of being able to carry his 
 Irish University measure. No one ever found fault with 
 Mr. Gladstone for having, under the circumstances, done 
 the best he could, and consented to meet the request of 
 the sovereign and the convenience of the public service by 
 again taking on himself the responsibility of government, 
 although the measure on which he had declared he would 
 stake the existence of his ministry had been rejected by 
 the House of Commons. 
 
 Still, it cannot be denied that the Melbourne Govern- 
 ment were prejudiced in the public mind by these events, 
 and by the attacks for which they gave so large an oppor- 
 tunity. The feeling in some part of the country were still 
 sentimentally with the Queen. At many a dinner -table 
 it became the fashion to drink the health of her Majesty 
 with a punning addition, not belonging to an order of wit 
 any higher than that which in other days toasted the King 
 " over the water ; " or prayed of heaven to " send this 
 crumb well down." The Queen was toasted as the sover- 
 eign of spirit who " would not let her belles be peeled." 
 But the ministry were almost universally believed to have 
 placed themselves in a ridiculous light, and to have crept 
 again into office, as an able writer puts it, "behind the 
 petticoats of the ladies in waiting." The death of Lady 
 Flora Hastings, which occurred almost immediately, 
 tended further to arouse a feeling of dislike to the Whigs. 
 This melancholy event does not need any lengthened com- 
 ment. A young lady Avho belonged to the household of 
 the Duchess of Kent fell under an unfounded, but, in the 
 circumstances, not wholly unreasonable, suspicion. It 
 was the classic story of Calisto, Diana's unhappy nymph, 
 I'e versed. Lady Flora was proved to be innocent ; but 
 her death, imminent probably in any case from the dis- 
 ease which had fastent^l on her, was doubtless hastened 
 by the humiliation to which she had been subjected. It 
 
QUESTION BE JUPONS, 
 
 97 
 
 does not seem that any one was to blame in the matter. 
 The ministry certainly do not appear to have done any- 
 thing for which they could fairly be reproached. No one 
 can be surprised that those who surrounded the Queen 
 and the Duchess of Kent should have taken some pains 
 to inquire into the truth or falsehood of scandalous 
 rumors, for which there might have appeared to be some 
 obvious justification. But the whole story was so sad 
 and shocking ; the death of the poor young lady followed 
 with such tragic rapidity upon the establishment of her 
 innocence ; the natural complaints of her mother were so 
 loud and impassioned, that the ministers who had to 
 answer the mother's appeals were unavoidably placed in 
 an invidious and a painful position. The demands of the 
 Marchioness of Hastings for redress were unreasonable. 
 They endeavored to make out the existence of a cruel 
 conspiracy against Lady Flora, and called for the peremp- 
 tory dismissal and disgrace of the eminent court physi- 
 cian, who had merely performed a most painful duty, and 
 whose report had been the especial means of establishing 
 the injustice of the suspicions which were directed against 
 her. But it Avas a damaging duty for a minister to have 
 to write to the distracted mother, as Lord Melbourne 
 found it necessary to do, telling her that her demand was 
 " so unprecedented and objectionable, that even the re- 
 spect due to your ladyship's sex, rank, family, and char- 
 acter would not justify me in more, if, indeed, it author- 
 izes so much, than acknowledging that letter for the sole 
 purpose of acquainting your ladyship that I have received 
 it." The " Palace scandal," as it was called, became 
 known shortly before the dispute about the ladies of the 
 bedchamber. The death of Lady Flora Hastings happened 
 soon after it. It is not strictly in logical propriety that 
 such events, or their rapid succession, should tend to 
 bring into disrepute the ministry, who can only be re- 
 garded as their historical contemporaries. But the world 
 must change a great deal before ministers are no longer 
 held accountable in public opinion for anything but the 
 events over which they can be shown to have some con- 
 trol. 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUB OWJSf TIMES 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE queen's marriage. 
 
 On January 16th, 1840, the Queen, opening Parliament 
 in person, announced her intention to marry her cousin, 
 Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha — a step which she 
 trusted would be " conducive to the interests of my peo- 
 ple as well as to my own domestic happiness." In the 
 discussion which followed in the House of Commons, Sir 
 Robert Peel observed that her Majesty had " the singu- 
 lar good fortune to be able to gratify her private feelings, 
 while she performs her public duty, and to obtain the best 
 guarantee for happiness by contracting an alliance founded 
 on affection." Peel spoke the simple truth ; it was, indeed, 
 a marriage founded on affection. No marriage contracted 
 in the humblest class could have been more entirely a 
 union of love, and more free from what might be called 
 selfish and worldly considerations. The Queen had for a 
 long time loved her cousin. He was nearly her own age, 
 the Queen being the elder by three months and two or 
 three days. Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel 
 was the full name of the young Prince. He was the 
 second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and 
 of his wife Louisa, daughter of Augustus, Duke of Saxe- 
 Gotha- Altenberg. Prince Albert was born at the Rosenau, 
 one of his father's residences, near Coburg, on August 
 26th, 1819. The court historian notices with pardonable 
 complacency the remarkable coincidence " — easily ex- 
 plained, surely — that the same accoucheuse^ Madame 
 Siebold, assisted at the birth of Prince Albert, and of the 
 Queen some three months before, and that the Prince was 
 baptized hy the clergyman. Professor Genzler, who had 
 the year before officiated at the marriage of the Duke and 
 Duchess of Kent. A marriage between the Princess Vic- 
 toria and Prince Albert had been thought of as desirable 
 among the families on both sides, but it Avas always wisely 
 resolved that nothing should be said to the young Princess 
 on the subject unless she herself showed a distinct liking 
 
THE QUEEN'S MAElilAGE. 
 
 99 
 
 for her cousin. In 1836 Prince Albert was brought by 
 his father to England, and made the personal acquaint- 
 ance of the Princess, and she seems at once to have been 
 drawn toward him in the manner which her family and 
 friends would most have desired. Three years later the 
 Prince again came to England, and the Queen, in a letter 
 to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, wrote of him 
 in the warmest terms. "Albert's beauty," she said, "is 
 most striking, and he is most amiable and unaffected — in 
 vshorb, very fascinating." Not many days after she wrote 
 to another friend and faithful counsellor, the Baron 
 Stockmar, to say, " I do feel so guilty I know not how to 
 begin my letter ; but I think the news it will contain will 
 be sufficient to insure your forgiveness. Albert has com- 
 pletely won my heart, and all was settled between us this 
 morning." The Queen had just before informed Lord 
 Melbourne of her intention, and Lord Melbourne, it is 
 needless to say, expressed his decided approval. There 
 was no one to disapprove of such a marriage. 
 
 Prince Albert was a young man to win the heart of any 
 girl. He was singularly handsome, graceful, and gifted. 
 In princes, as we know, a small measure of beauty and 
 accomplishment suffices to throw courtiers and court ladies 
 into transports of admiration ; but had Prince Albert been 
 the son of a farmer or a butler, he must have been admired 
 for his singular personal attractions. He had had a sound 
 and a varied education. He had been brought up as if he 
 were to be a professional musician, a professional chemist 
 or botanist, and a professor of history and belles-lettres 
 and the fine arts. The scientific and the literary were 
 remarkably blended in his bringing-up ; remarkably, that 
 is to say, for some half-century ago, when even in Germany 
 a system of education seldom aimed at being toticsj teres 
 atque rotundas. He had begun to study the constitutional 
 history of states, and was preparing himself to take an 
 interest in politics. There was much of the practical and 
 business-like about him, as he showed in after-life ; he 
 loved farming, and took a deep interest in machinery and 
 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 evenings, of art and poetry, and genial communion 
 
100 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 with Nature. He was made happy by the songs of birds, 
 and deUglited 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 ]narried the queen, he devoted 
 himself at once to what he conscientiously believed to be 
 ^ the duties of his station with a self-control and self-devotion 
 rare even among the aged, and almost unknown in youth. 
 He gave up every habit, however familiar and dear, every 
 predilection, no matter how sweet, every indulgence of 
 sentiment or amusement that in any way threatened to 
 interfere with the steadfast performance of the part he had 
 assigned to himself. No man ever devoted himself more 
 faithfully to the difficult duties of a high and a new situa- 
 tion, or kept more strictly to his resolve. It was no task to 
 him to be a tender husband and a loving father. This 
 was 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 10th, 1840. The reception given by the people 
 in general to the Prince on his landing in England a few 
 days before the ceremony, and on the day of the marriage, 
 was cordial, and even enthusiastic. But it is not certain 
 whether there was a very cordial feeUng to the Prince 
 among all classes of politicians. A rumor of the most 
 absurd kind had got abroad in certain circles that the 
 young Albert was not a Protestant — that he was, in fact, 
 a member of the Church of Rome. In a different circle 
 the belief was curiously cherished that the Prince was a 
 free-thinker in matters of religion, and a radical in poli- 
 tics. Somewhat unfortunately, the declaration of the 
 intended marriage to the privy council did not mention 
 the fact that Albert was a Protestant Prince. The cabinet 
 no doubt thought that the leaders of public opinion on all 
 sides of i)olitics would have had historical knowledge 
 among them to teach them that Prhice Albert belonged to 
 that branch of the Saxon family which since the Keforma- 
 
THE QUEEN'S MABEIAGE. 
 
 101 
 
 tion had been conspicuously Protestant. " There has not," 
 Prince Albert himself wrote to the Queen, on December 
 7th, 1839, " been a single Catholic princess introduced into 
 the Coburg family since the appearance of Luther in 1521. 
 Moreover, the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony was 
 the very first Protestant that ever lived." No doubt the 
 ministry thought also that the constitutional rule which 
 forbids an English sovereign to marry with a Eoman 
 Catholic under penalty of forfeiting the crown, would be 
 regarded as a sufficient guarantee that when they announced 
 the Queen's approaching marriage it must be a marriage 
 with a Protestant. All this assumption, however reason- 
 able and natural, did not find warrant in the events that 
 actually took place. It would have been better, of course, 
 if the Government had assumed that Parliament and the 
 public generally knew nothing about the Prince and his 
 ancestry, or the constitutional penalties for a member of 
 the Royal Family marrying a Catholic, and had formally 
 announced that the choice of Queen Victoria had happily 
 fallen on a Protestant. The wise and foreseeing Leopold, 
 King of the Belgians, had recommended that the fact 
 should be specifically mentioned ; but it was, perhaps, a 
 part of Lord Melbourne's indolent good-nature to take it 
 for granted that people generally would be calm and 
 reasonable, and that all would go right without interruption 
 or cavil. He therefore acted on the assumption that any 
 formal mention of Prince Albert's Protestantism would 
 be superfluous ; and neither in the declaration to the privy 
 council nor 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 al- 
 tercation took place, an altercation the more to be regretted 
 because it might have been so easily spared. The question 
 was bluntly raised by no less a person than the Duke of 
 Wellington whether the future husband of the Queen w^as 
 or was not a Protestant. The Duke actually charged the 
 ministry with having purposely left out the word " Prot- 
 estant " in the announcements, in order that they might 
 not offend their Irish and Catholic supporters, and by the 
 very charge did much to strengthen the popular feeling 
 against the statesmen Avho 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 
 
102 
 
 A HIS TOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 congratulatory address to the Queen, and he carried his 
 point, although Lord Melbourne held to the opinion that 
 the word was unnecessary in describing a Prince who was 
 not only a Protestant, but descended from the most Prot- 
 estant family in Europe. The lack of judgment and tact 
 on the part of the ministry was never more clearly shown 
 than in the original omission of the word. 
 
 Another disagreeable occurrence was the discussion that 
 took place when the bill for the naturalization of the Prince 
 was brought before the House of Lords. The bill in its 
 title merely set out the proposal to provide for the natu- 
 ralization of the Prince ; but it contained a clause to give 
 him precedence for life "next after her Majesty, in Parlia- 
 ment or elsewhere, as her Majesty might think proper." 
 A great deal of objection was raised by the Duke of Wel- 
 lington and Lord Brougham to this clause on its own 
 merits; but, as was natural, the objections were infinitely 
 aggravated by the singular want of judgment, and even 
 of common propriety, which could introduce a clause 
 conferring on the sovereign powers so large and so new 
 into a mere naturalization bill, without any previous 
 notice to Parliament. The matter was ultimately settled 
 by allowing the bill to remain a simple naturalization 
 measure, and leaving the question of precedence to be 
 dealt Avith by Royal prerogative. Both the great political 
 parties concurred, without further difficulty, in an ar- 
 rangement by which it was provided in letters patent 
 that the Prince should thenceforth upon all occasions, and 
 in all meetings, except when otherwise provided by Act 
 of Parliament, have precedence next to the Queen. There 
 never would have been any difficulty in the matter if the 
 ministry had acted with any discretion ; but it would be 
 absurd to expect that a great nation, Avliose constitutional 
 system is built up of precedents, should agree at once and 
 without demur to every new arrangement which it might 
 seem convenient to a ministry to make in a hurry. Yet 
 another source of dissatisfaction to the palace and the 
 people was created by the manner in which the ministry 
 took upon themselves to bring forward the proposition for 
 the settlement of an annuity on the Prince. In former 
 cases — that, for example, of Queen Charlotte, Queen Ade- 
 laide, and l^rince Leopold on his marriage with the Prin- 
 cess Charlotte — the annuity granted had been £50,000. 
 
THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 It SO happened, however, that the settlement to be made 
 on Prince Albert came m times of great industrial and com- 
 mercial distress. The days had gone by when economy in 
 the House of Commons was looked upon as an ignoble prin- 
 ciple, and when loyalty to the sovereign Avas believed to 
 bind members of Parliament to grant, without a murmur 
 of discussion, any sums that might be asked by the minister 
 in the sovereign's name. Parliament was beginning to feel 
 more thoroughly its responsibility as the guardian of the 
 nation's resources, and it was no longer thought a fine 
 thing to give away the money of the tax-payer with mag- 
 nanimous indifference. It was, therefore, absurd on the 
 part of the ministry to suppose that because great sums 
 of money had been voted without question on former oc- 
 casions, they would be voted Mdthout question now. It is 
 quite possible that the whole matter might have been set- 
 tled without controversy if the ministry had shown any 
 judgment whatever in their conduct of the business. In 
 our day the ministry would at once have consulted the 
 leaders of the Opi30sition. In all matters where the 
 grant of money to any one connected with the sovereign 
 is concerned, it is now understood that the gift shall come 
 with the full concurrence of both parties in Parliament. 
 The leader of the House of Commons would probably, by 
 arrangement, propose the grant, and the leader of the 
 Opposition would second it. In the case of the annuity to 
 Prince Albert, the ministry had the almost incredible 
 folly to bring forward their proposal without having 
 invited in any way the concurrence of the Opposition. 
 They introduced the proposal without discretion ; they 
 conducted the discussion on it without temper. They 
 answered the most reasonable objections with imputa- 
 tions of want of loyalty ; and they gave some excuse for 
 the suspicion that they wished to provoke the Opposition 
 into some ex]3ression that might make them odious to the 
 . Queen and the Prince. Mr. Hume, the economist, pro- 
 posed that the annuity be reduced from £50,000 to £21,- 
 000. This was negatived. Thereupon Colonel Sibthorp, 
 a once famous Tory fanatic of the most eccentric manners 
 and opinions, proposed that the sum be £30,000, and he 
 received the support of Sir Eobert Peel atid other eminent 
 members of the Opposition; and the amendment was 
 carried. 
 
104 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 These were not auspicious incidents to prelude the 
 Royal marriage. There can be no doubt that for a time 
 the Queen, still more than the Prince, felt their influence 
 keenly. The Prince showed remarkable good sense and 
 appreciation of the condition of political arrangements in 
 England, and readily comprehended that there was noth- 
 ing personal to himself in any objections which the House 
 of Commons might have made to the proposals of the 
 ministry. The question of precedence was very easily 
 settled when it came to be discussed in reasonable fash- 
 ion ; although it was not until many years after (1857) 
 that the title of Prince Consort was given to the husband 
 of the Queen. 
 
 A few months after the marriage, a bill was passed 
 providing for a regency in the possible event of the death 
 of the Queen, leaving issue. With tlie entire concurrence 
 of the leaders of the Opposition, who were consulted this 
 time. Prince Albert was named Regent, following the pre- 
 cedent which had been adopted in the instance of the 
 Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. The Duke of 
 Sussex, uncle of the Queen, alone dissented in the House 
 of Lords, and recorded his protest against the proposal. 
 The passing of this bill was naturally regarded as one of 
 much importance to Prince Albert. It gave him to some 
 extent the status in the country which he had not had 
 before. It also proved that the Prince himself had risen 
 in the estimation of the Tory party during the few months 
 that elapsed since the debates on the annuity and 
 the question of xn^ecedence. No one could have started 
 with a more resolute determination to stand clear of party 
 politics than Prince Albert. He accepted at once his posi- 
 tion as the husband of the Queen of a constitutional coun- 
 try. His own idea of his duty was that he should be the 
 private secretary and unofficial counsellor of the Queen. 
 To this purpose he devoted himself unswervingly. Out- 
 side that part of his duties, he constituted himself a sort of 
 minister without portfolio of art and education. He took 
 an interest, and often a leading part, in all projects and 
 movements relating to the spread of education, the cul- 
 ture of art, and^the promotion of industrial science. Yet 
 it was long before he was thoroughly understood V)y the 
 country. It was long before lie became in any degree 
 popular ; and it may be doubted whether he ever was 
 
THE QUEEN'S MABEIAGE. 
 
 105 
 
 thoroughly and generally popular. Not, perhaps, until 
 his untimely death did the country find out how entirely 
 disinterested and faithful his life had been, and how he 
 had made the discharge of duty his business and his task. 
 His character was one which is liable to be regarded by 
 ordinary observers as possessing none but negative vir- 
 tues. He was thought to be cold, formal, and apathetic. 
 His manners were somewhat shy and constrained, except 
 when he was in the company of those he loved, and then 
 he commonly relaxed into a kind of boyish freedom and 
 joyousness. But to the public in general he seemed 
 formal and chilhng. It is not only Mr. Pendennis who 
 conceals his gentleness under a shy and pompous de- 
 meanor. With all his ability, his anxiety to learn, his 
 capacity for patient study, and his willingness to welcome 
 new ideas, he never, perhaps, quite understood the genius 
 of the English political system. His faitliful friend and 
 counsellor. Baron Stockmar, was not the man best cal- 
 culated to set him right on this subject. Both were far 
 too eager to find in* the English Constitution a piece of 
 s^'Uimetrical mechanism, or to treat it as a written code 
 from which one might take extracts or construct sum- 
 maries for constant reference and guidance. But this 
 was not, in the beginning, the cause of any coldness 
 toward the Prince on the part of the English public. 
 Prince Albert had not the ways of an Englishman ; and 
 the tendency of Englishmen then as now, was to assume 
 that to have manners other than those of an English- 
 man was to be so far unworthy of confidence. He was 
 not made to shine in commonplace society. He could 
 talk admirably about something, but he had not the 
 gift of talking about nothing, and probably would not 
 have cared much to cultivate such a faculty. He was 
 fond of suggesting small innovations and improve- 
 ments in established systems, to the annoyance of men 
 with set ideas, who liked their own ways best. Thus it 
 happened that he remained for many years, if not exactly 
 unappreciated, yet not thorovighly appreciated, and that 
 a considerable and very influential section of society was 
 always ready to cavil at what he said, and find motive 
 for suspicion in most things that he did. Perhaps he was 
 best understood and most cordially appreciated among 
 the poorer classes of his wife's subjects. He found also 
 
106 
 
 A HIS TOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 
 arbitration to supersede the barbaric recourse to the decis- 
 ion of weapons. He did not succeed in having his courts 
 of honor established. There was something too fanciful 
 in the scheme to attract the authorities of our two serv- 
 ices ; and there were undoubtedly many practical difficul- 
 ties in the way of making such a system effective. But he 
 succeeded so far, that he induced the Duke of Wellington 
 and the heads of the services to turn their attention very 
 seriously to the subject, and to use all the influence in 
 their poAver for the purpose of discouraging and discredit- 
 ing the odious practice of the duel. It is carrying courtly 
 politeness too far to attribute the total disappearance of 
 the duelling system, as one biographer seems inclined 
 to do, to the personal efforts of Prince Albert. It is 
 enough to his honor that he did his best, and that the 
 best was a substantial contribution toward so great 
 an object. But nothing can testify more strikingly to 
 the rapid growth of a genuine civilization in Queen 
 Victoria's reign than the utter discontinuance of the 
 duelling system. When the Queen came to the throne, 
 and for years after, it was still in full force. The duel plays 
 a conspicuous part in tlie fiction and the drama of the 
 reign's earlier years. It was a common incident of all 
 political controversies. It was an episode of most con- 
 tested elections. It was often resorted to for the purpose 
 of deciding the right or wrong of a half-drunken quarrel 
 over a card-table. It formed as common a theme of gossip 
 as an elopement or a bankruptcy. Most of the eminent 
 statesmen who w^ere 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'Coiniell, 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 nmch later 
 period, had been visited Avith a challenge, and had had 
 the good sense and the moral courage to laugh at it. At 
 the ])resent hour a duel in England would seem as absurd 
 and barbarous an anachronism as an ordeal by touch or a 
 
THE QUEm'S MAUmAGE. 
 
 107 
 
 witch-burning. Many years have passed smce a duel Avas 
 last talked of in Parhament ; 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 feeUng and 
 morality. The change was part of the growth of educa- 
 tion and of civilization ; of the strengthening and broaden- 
 mg influence of the press, the platform, the cheap book, 
 the pulpit, and the less restricted intercourse of classes. 
 
 This is, perhaps, as suitable a place as any other to 
 introduce some notice of the attempts that were made 
 from time to time upon the life of the Queen. It is pro- 
 per to say sometiiing of them, although not one possessed 
 the slightest political importance, or could be said to 
 illustrate anything more than sheer lunacy, or that mor- 
 bid vanity and thirst for notoriety that is nearly akin to 
 genuine madness. The first attempt was made on June 
 10th, 1840, by Edward Oxford, a pot-boy of seventeen, 
 who fired two shots at the Queen as she was driving up 
 Constitution Hill with Prince Albert. Oxford fired both 
 shots deliberately enough, but happily missed in each 
 case. He proved to have been an absurd creature, half 
 crazy with a longing to consider himself a political 
 prisoner, and to be talked of. When he was tried, the 
 jury pronounced him insane, and he was ordered to be 
 kept in a lunatic asylum during her Majesty's pleasure. 
 The trial completely dissipated some wild alarms that 
 were felt, founded chiefiy 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 uninterest- 
 ing illustration of the condition of public feeling, that 
 some of the Irish Catholic papers in seeming good faith 
 denounced Oxford as an agent of the Duke of Cumberland 
 and the Orangemen and declared that the object was to 
 assassinate the Queen and put the Duke on the throne. 
 The trial showed that Oxford was the agent of nobody, 
 and was impelled by nothing but his own crack-brained 
 love of notoriety. The finding of the jury was evidently 
 something of a compromise, for it is very doubtful whether 
 the boy was insane in the medical sense, and whether he 
 
108 A EISTOBY OF OXJB OWN TIMES. 
 
 was fairly to be held irresponsible for his actions. But 
 it was felt, perhaps, that the wisest course was to treat 
 him as a madman ; and the result did not prove unsatis- 
 factory. Mr. Theodore Martin, in his "Life of the Prince 
 Consort," expresses a different opinion. He thinks it 
 would have been well if Oxford had been dealt with as 
 guilty in the ordinary way. " The best commentary," 
 he says, " on the lenity thus shown was pronounced by 
 Oxford himself, on being told of the similar attempts of 
 Francis and Bean in 1842, when he declared that if he 
 had been hanged there would have been no more shooting 
 at the Queen." It may be reasonably doubted whether 
 the authority of Oxford, as to the general influence of 
 criminal legislation, is very valuable. Against the philoso- 
 phic opinion of the half-crazy young pot-boy, on which 
 Mr. Martin places so much reliance, may be set the fact 
 that in other countries where attempts on the life of the 
 sovereign have been pvmished by the stern award of death, 
 it has not been found that the execution of one fanatic 
 was a safe protection against the murderous fanaticism of 
 another. 
 
 On May 30th, 1842, a man named John Francis, son of 
 a machinist 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 carriage, which fortunately was driving at a very 
 rapid rate. The Queen showed great composure. She 
 was in some measure prepared for the attempt, for it 
 seems certain that the same man had on the previous 
 evening presented a pistol at the royal carriage, although 
 he did not then fire it. Francis was arrested and put on 
 trial. He was only twenty-tAvo years of age, and although 
 at first he endeavored to brazen it out and put on a sort 
 of melodramatic regicide aspect, yet when the sentence of 
 death for high-treason was passed on him, he fell into a 
 swoon and was carried insensible from the court. The 
 sentence was not carried into efi:*ect. It was not certain 
 whether the pistol was loaded at all, and whether the 
 whole performance was not a mere piece of brutal 
 play-acting done out of a longing to be notorious. Her 
 Majesty, herself, was anxious that tlie death-sentence 
 should not be carried into effect, and it was finally com- 
 
109 
 
 muted to one of transportation for life. The very day 
 after this mitigation of punishment became pubhcly 
 known, anotlier attempt was made by a liunch-backed lad 
 named Bean. As the Queen was passing from Bucking- 
 ham Palace to the Chapel Royal, Bean presented a pistol 
 at her carriage, but did not succeed in firing it before his 
 hand was seized by a prompt and courageous boy who was 
 standing near. The pistol was found to be loaded with 
 powder, paper closely rammed down, and some scraps of 
 a clay pipe. It may be asked whether the argument of 
 Mr. Martin is not fully borne out by this occurrence, and 
 whether the fact of Bean's attempt having been made 
 on the day after the commutation of the caj^ital sentence 
 in the case of Francis is not evidence that the leniency in 
 the former instance was the cause of the attempt made 
 in the latter. But it was made clear, and the fact is 
 recorded on the authority of Prince Albert himself, that 
 Bean had announced his determination to make the 
 attempt several days before the sentence of Francis was 
 commuted, and while Francis was actually lying under 
 sentence of death. With regard to Francis himself, the 
 Prince was clearly of opinion that to carry out the capital 
 sentence would have been nothing less than a judicial 
 murder, as it is essential that the act should be committed 
 with intent to kill or w^ound, and in Francis's case, to all 
 appearance, this was not the fact, or at least it was open 
 to grave doubt. In this calm and wise way did the hus- 
 band of the Queen, who had always shared with her 
 whatever of danger there might be in the attempts, argue 
 as to the manner in which they ought to be dealt with. 
 The ambition which most, or all of the miscreants, who 
 thus disturbed the Queen and the country was that of the 
 mountebank rather than of the assassin. The Queen her- 
 self showed how thoroughly she understood the signifi- 
 cance of all that had happened, when she declared, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Martin, that she expected a repetition of the 
 attempts on her life so long as the law remained unaltered 
 by which they could be dealt with only as acts of high- 
 treason. The seeming dignity of martydom had some- 
 thing fascinating in it to morbid vanity or crazy fanati- 
 cism, while, on the other hand, it was almost certain that 
 the martyr's penalty would not in the end be inflicted. A 
 very appropriate change in the law was effected by which 
 
110 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 a punishment at once sharp and degrading was provided 
 even for mere mountebank attempts against the Queen — 
 a punishment wliich was certain to be inflicted. A bill 
 was introduced by Sir Robert Peel making such attempts 
 punishable by transportation for seven years, or by 
 imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, " the 
 culprit to be publicly or privately whipped as often, and 
 in such manner as the court shall direct, not exceeding 
 thrice." Bean was convicted under this act, and sen- 
 tenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Millbank 
 Penitentiary. This did not, however, conclude the 
 attacks on the Queen. An Irish bricklayer, named 
 Hamilton, fired a pistol, charged only with powder, at her 
 Majesty, on Constitution Hill, on May 19th, 1849, and 
 was sentenced to seven years' transportation. A man 
 named Robert Pate, once a lieutenant of hvissars, struck 
 her Majesty on the face with a stick as she was leaving 
 the Duke of Cambridge's residence in her carriage on May 
 27th, 1850. This man was sentenced to seven years' 
 transportation, but the judge paid so much attention 
 to the plea of insanity set up on his behalf, as to omit 
 from his punishment the whipping which might have 
 been ordered. Finally, on February 29th, 1872, a lad of 
 seventeen, named Arthur O'Connor, presented a pistol 
 at the Queen as she was entering Buckingham Palace 
 after a drive. The pistol, however proved to be unloaded 
 — an antique and useless or harmless weapon, with a 
 flintlock which was broken, and in the barrel a piece of 
 greasy red rag. The wretched lad held a paper in one 
 hand, which was found to be some sort of petition on 
 behalf of the Fenian prisoners. When he came up for 
 trial a plea of insanity was put in on his behalf, but 
 he did not seem to be insane in the sense of being 
 irresponsible for his actions or incapable of under- 
 standing the penalty they involved, and he was sentenced 
 to twelve months' imprisonment and a whipping. We 
 have hurried over many years for the purpose of com- 
 pleting this painful and ludicrous catalogue of the attempts 
 made against the Queen. It will be seen that in not a 
 single instance was there the slightest political significance 
 to ])e attached to them. Even in our OAvn softened and 
 civiHzed time it sometimes happens that an attempt is 
 made on the life of a sovereign which, however we may 
 
THE QUEEN'S MAURI AGE, 
 
 111 
 
 condemn and reprobate it on moral grounds, yet does 
 seem to bear a distinct political meaning, and to show 
 that there are fanatical minds still burning under some 
 sense of national or personal wrong. But in the various 
 attacks which were made on Queen Victoria nothing of 
 the kind was even pretended. There was no opportunity 
 for any vaporing about Brutus and Charlotte Corday. 
 The impulse, where it was not that of sheer insanity, was 
 of kin to the vulgar love of notoriety in certain minds 
 which sets on those whom it pervades to mutilate noble 
 works of art and scrawl their autographs on the marble 
 of immortal monumojits. 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 mt 
 serieux. Prince Albert himself said that " the vindictive 
 feeling of the common people would be a thousand times 
 more dangerous than the madness of individuals." There 
 was not, indeed, the slightest danger at any time that the 
 " common people " of England could be wrought up to any 
 sympathy with assassination ; nor was this what Prince 
 Albert meant. But the Queen and her husband were yet 
 new to power, and the people had not quite lost all 
 memory of sovereigns who, well-meaning enough, had yet 
 scarcely understood constitutional government, and there 
 were wild rumors of reaction this way and revolution that 
 way. It might have fomented a feeling of distrust and dis- 
 satisfaction if the people had seen any disposition on the 
 part of those in authority to strain the criminal law for 
 the sake of enforcing a death penalty against creatures 
 like Oxford and Bean. The most alarming and unnerving 
 of all dangers to a ruler is that of assassination. Even 
 the best and most blameless sovereign is not Avholly 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 Bavaillac did not deter Damiens. 
 The birch in the case of Bean and O'Connor may effectively 
 discountenance enterprises which are born of the mounte- 
 bank's and not the fanatic's spirit. 
 
112 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWJS^ TIMES. 
 
 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 3d, 1843, five huge wagons, eacli 
 of them drawn by four horses, and the whole under escort, 
 of a detacliment of the 60tii Regiment, arrived in front of 
 the Mint. An immense crowd followed the wagons. It 
 was seen that they were filled with boxes ; and one of the 
 boxes having been somewhat broken in its journey, the 
 crowd were able to see that it was crammed full of odd- 
 looking silver coins. The lookers-on were delighted, as 
 well as amused, by the sight of this huge consignment of 
 treasure ; and when it became known that the silver money 
 was the first instalment of the China ransom, there were 
 lusty cheers given as the wagons passed through the gates 
 of the Mint. This was a payment on account of the war 
 indemnity imposed on China. Nearly four millions and a 
 half sterling was the sum of the indemnity, in addition to 
 one million and a quarter which had already been i)aid 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, per- 
 haps, 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 contro- 
 versy; but it may safely be asserted that if the same 
 events were to occur in our day it would be hardly possi- 
 ble to find a ministry to originate a war, for which at the 
 same time it must be owned that the vast majority of the 
 people, of all j^olitics and classes, were only too ready 
 then to find excuse and even justification. The wagon- 
 
THE OPIUM WAE, 
 
 113 
 
 loads of silver conveyed into the Mint amidst the cheers 
 of the crowd were the spoils of the famous Opium War. 
 
 Reduced to plain words, the principle for which we 
 fought in the China War was the right of Great Britain 
 to force a peculiar trade upon a foreign people in spite of 
 the protestations of the Government and all such public 
 opinion as there was of the nation. Of course this was 
 not the avowed motive of the war. Not often in history 
 is the real and inspiring motive of a war proclaimed in so 
 many words by those who carry it on. Not often, indeed, 
 is it seen, naked and avowed, even in the minds of its pro- 
 moters themselves. As the quarrel between this country 
 and China went on, a great many minor and incidental sub- 
 jects of dispute arose, which for the moment put the one 
 main and original question out of people's minds ; and in 
 the course of these discussions it happened more than once 
 that the Chinese authorities took some steps which put 
 them decidedly in the wrong. Thus it is true enough 
 that there were particular passages of the controversy 
 when the English Government had all or nearly all of the 
 right on their side, so far as the immediate incident of the 
 dispute was concerned ; and when, if that had been the 
 whole matter of quarrel, or if the quarrel had begun there, 
 a patriotic minister might have been justified in thinking 
 that the Chinese were determined to offend England and 
 deserved humiliation. But no consideration of this kind 
 can now hide from our eyes the fact that in the beginning 
 and the very origin of the quarrel we w^ere distinctly in 
 the wrong. * We asserted or at least acted on the asser- 
 tion of a claim so unreasonable and even monstrous, that 
 it never could have been made upon any nation strong 
 enough to render its assertion a matter of serious respon- 
 sibility. The most important lessons a nation can learn 
 from its own history are found in the exposure of its own 
 errors. Historians have sometimes done more evil than 
 court flatterers when they have gone about to glorify the 
 errors of their own people, and to make wrong appear 
 right, because an English Goverment talked the public 
 opinion of the time into a confusion of principles. 
 
 The whole principle of Chinese civilization, at the time 
 when the Opium War broke out, was based on conditions 
 which to any modern nation must seem erroneous and 
 unreasonable. The Chinese governments and people 
 
114 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TUIES. 
 
 desired to have no political relations or dealings whatever 
 with any other State. They were not so obstinately set 
 against i^rivate and commercial dealings ; but they would 
 have no political intercourse with foreigners, and they 
 would not even recognize the existence of foreign people 
 as States. They were perfectly satisfied with themselves 
 and their own systems. They were convinced that their 
 own systems were not only wise but absolutely perfect. 
 It is superfluous to say that this was in itself evidence of 
 ignorance and self-conceit. A belief in the perfection of 
 their own systems could only exist among a people who 
 knew nothing of any other systems. But absurd as the 
 idea must appear to us, yet the Chinese might have found 
 a good deal to say for it. It was the result of civilization 
 so ancient that the oldest events preserved in European 
 history were but as yesterday in the comparison. What- 
 ever its errors and defects, it was distinctly a civilization. 
 It was a system with a literature and laAvs and institutions 
 of its own ; it was a coherent and harmonious social and 
 political system which had, on the whole, worked toler- 
 ably well. It was not very unlike, in its principles, the 
 kind of civilization which at one time it was tlie whim of 
 men of genius, like Rousseau and Diderot, to idealize and 
 admire. The European, of whatever nation, may be said 
 to like change, and to believe in its necessity. His in- 
 stincts and his convictions alike tend this way. The sleep- 
 iest of Europeans — the Neapolitan, who lies with his feet 
 in the water on the Chiaja ; the Spaniard, who smokes his 
 cigar and sips his coffee as if life had no active business 
 whatever; the /Idneiir of the Paris boulevards ; the beggar 
 who lounged from cabin to cabin in Ireland a generation 
 ago — all these, no matter how little inclined for change 
 themselves, would be delighted to hear of travel and 
 enterprise, and of new things and new discoverfes. But 
 to the Chinese, of all Eastern races, the very idea of travel 
 and change was something repulsive and odious. As the 
 thought of having to go a day unwashed would be to the 
 educated Englishman of our age, or as the edge of a preci- 
 I)ice is to a nervous man, so was the idea of innovation 
 to the Chinese of that time. The ordinary Oriental dreads 
 and detests change ; but the Chinese at that time went as 
 far beyond the ordinary Oriental as the latter goes be- 
 yond an average Englishman. In the present day a cou- 
 
THE OPIUM WAH. 
 
 115 
 
 siderable alteration has taken place 'in this respect. The 
 Chinese have had innovation after innovation forced on 
 them, until at last they have taken up with the new order 
 of things, like people who feel that it is idle to resist their 
 fate any longer. The emigration from China h.as been as 
 remarkable as that from Ireland or Germany; and the 
 United States finds itself confronted with a question of 
 the first magnitude when it asks itself what is to be the 
 influence and operation of the descent of the Chinese 
 populations along the Pacific slope. Japan has put on 
 modern and European civilization like a garment. Japan 
 eft'ected in a few years a revolution in the political con- 
 stitution and the social habits of her people, and in their 
 very way of looking at things, the like of which no other 
 State ever accomplished in a century. But nothing of all 
 this was thought of at the time of the China War. The 
 one thing which China asked of European civilization 
 and the thing called Modern Progress was to be let alone. 
 China's prayer to Europe was that of Diogenes to Alex- 
 ander — " Stand out of my sunshine." 
 
 It was, as we have said, to political relationships rather 
 than to private and commercial dealings with foreign 
 peoples that the Chinese felt an unconquerable objection. 
 They did not, indeed, like even private and commercial 
 dealings with foreigners. They would much rather have 
 lived without ever seeing the face of -a foreigner. But 
 they had put up with the private intrusion of foreigners 
 and trade, and had had dealings with American traders, 
 and with the East India Company. The charter and the 
 exclusive rights of the East India Company expired in 
 April, 1834; the charter was renewed under different con- 
 ditions, and the trade with China was thrown open. One 
 of the great branches of the East India Company's busi- 
 ness with China was the opium trade. When the trading 
 privileges ceased this traffic was taken up briskly by 
 private merchants, who bought of the Company the opium 
 which they grew in India and sold it to the Chinese. 
 The Chinese governments, and all teachers, moralists, and 
 person's of education in China, had long desired to get rid 
 of or put down this trade in opium. They considered it 
 highly detrimental to the morals, the health, and the pros- 
 perity of the people. Of late the destructive effects of 
 opium have often been disputed, particularly in the House 
 
110 
 
 A niSTOBY OF OUB OWJST TIMES, 
 
 of Commons. It has been said that it is not, on the 
 average, nearly so unwholesome as the Chinese govern- 
 ments always thought, and that it does not do as much pro- 
 portionate harm to China as the use of brandy, whiskey, 
 and gin does to England. It seems to this writer hardiy 
 possible to doubt that the use of opium is, on the Avhole, 
 a curse to any nation ; but even if this were not so, the 
 question between England and the Chinese governments 
 would remain just the same. The Chinese governments 
 may have taken exaggerated views of the evils of the 
 opium trade ; their motives in wishing to put it down 
 may have been mixed with considerations of interest as 
 much political as philanthropic. Lord Palmerston in- 
 sisted that the Chinese Government were not sincere in 
 their professed objection on moral grounds to the traffic. 
 If they were sincere, he asked, why did they not prevent 
 the growth of the poppy in China ? It was, he tersely put 
 it, an " exportation of bullion question, an agricultural 
 protection question ; " it was a question of the poppy in- 
 terest in China, and of the economists who wished to pre- 
 vent the exportation of the precious metals. It is curious 
 that such arguments as this could have weighed with any 
 one for a moment. It was no business of ours' to ask our- 
 selves whether the Chinese Government w^ere perfectly 
 sincere in their professions of a lofty morality, or whether 
 they, unlike all other governments that have ever been 
 known, were influenced by one sole motive in the making 
 of their regulations. All that had nothing to do with the 
 question. States are not at liberty to help the subjects of 
 other States to break the laws of their own governments. 
 Especially when these laws even profess to concern ques- 
 tions of morals, is it the duty of foreign States not to in- 
 terfere with the regulations which a government considers 
 it necessary to impose for the protection of its people. 
 All traffic in o[)ium was strictly forbidden by the govern- 
 ments and laws of China ; yet our English traders carried 
 on a brisk and profitable trade in the forbidden article. 
 Nor Avas this merely an ordinary smuggling, or a business 
 akin to that of the blockade-running during tlie American 
 civil war. The arrangements with the Chinese Govern- 
 ment allowed the existence of all establishments and 
 machinery for carrying on a general trade at Canton 
 and Macao ; and under cover of these arrangements the 
 
THE OPIUM WAR. 
 
 117 
 
 opium traders set up their regular head-quarters in these 
 towns. 
 
 Let us find an illustration intelligible to readers of the 
 present day to show how unjustifiable was this practice. 
 The State of Maine, as every one knows, prohibits the 
 common sale of spirituous liquors. Let us suppose that 
 several companies of English merchants were formed in 
 Portland and Augusta, and the other towns of Maine, for 
 the purpose of brewing beer and distilling whiskey, and 
 selling both to the public of Maine in defiance of the State 
 laws. Let us further sux^pose 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 w^hiskey-sellers, and sent an iron-clad fleet to Port- 
 land to compel the people of Maine to put up with them. 
 It seems impossible to think of any English Government 
 taking such a course as this ; or of the English public 
 enduring it for one moment. In the case of such a nation 
 as the United States, nothing of the kind would be possi- 
 ble. The serious responsibilities of any such undertaking 
 would make even the most thoughtless minister pause, 
 and would give the public in general some time to think 
 the matter over ; and before any freak of the kind could 
 be attempted the conscience of the nation would be 
 aroused, and the unjust policy would have to be aban- 
 doned. But in dealing with China the ministry never 
 seems to have thought the right or wrong of the question 
 a matter worthy of any consideration. The controversy 
 was entered upon with as light a heart as a modern war 
 of still graver moment. The people in general knew 
 nothing about the matter until it had gone so far that the 
 original point of dispvite was almost out of sight, and it 
 seemed as if the safety of English subjects and the honor 
 of England were compromised in some way by the high- 
 handed proceedings of the Chinese Government. 
 
 The English Government appointed superintendents to 
 manage our commercial dealings with China. Unluckily 
 these superintendents were invested with a sort of political 
 or diplomatic character, and thus from the first became 
 objectionable to the Chinese authorities. One of the first 
 of these superintendents acted in disregard of the express 
 instructions of his own Government, He was told that he 
 must not pass the entrance of the Canton River in a vessel 
 
118 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWJ^ TIMES, 
 
 of war, as the Chinese authorities always made a marked 
 distinction between ships of war and merchant vessels in 
 regard to the freedom of intercourse. Misunderstandings 
 occurred at every new step of negotiation. These misun- 
 derstandings were natural. Our people knew hardly any- 
 thing about the Chinese. The limitation of our means of 
 communication with them made this ignorance inevitable, 
 but certainly did not excuse our acting as if Ave were in 
 possession of the fullest and. most accurate information. 
 The manner in which some of our official instructors went 
 on was w^ell illustrated by a sentence in the speech of Sir 
 James Graham, durhig the debate on the whole subject in 
 the House of Commons in April, 1840. It was, Sir James 
 Graham said, as if a foreigner who was occasionally per- 
 mitted to anchor at the Nore, and at times to land at 
 Wapping, being placed in close confinement during his 
 continuance there, were to pronounce a deliberate opinion 
 upon the resources, the genius, and the character of the 
 British Empire. 
 
 Our representatives were generally disposed to be un- 
 yielding ; and not only that, but to see deliberate offence 
 in every Chinese usage or ceremony which the authorities 
 endeavored to impose on them. On the other hand, it is 
 clear that the Chinese authorities thoroughly detested 
 them and their mission, and all about them, and often 
 made or countenanced delays that were unnecessary, and 
 interferences which were disagreeable and offensive. The 
 Chinese believed from the first that the superintendents 
 were there merely to protect the opium trade, and to force 
 on China political relations with the West. Practically 
 this was the effect of their presence. The superinten- 
 dents took no steps to aid the Chinese authorities in 
 stopping the hated trade. The British traders naturally 
 enough thought that the British Government were deter- 
 mined to protect them in carrying it on. Indeed, the 
 superintendents themselves might well liave had the same 
 conviction. The Government at home allowed Captain 
 Elliott, the chief superintendent, to make appeal after 
 a|)peal for instructions without paying the slightest atten- 
 tion to him. Cai)tain Elliott saw that the opium traders 
 were growing more and more reckless and audacious ; 
 that tliey were thrusting their trade under the very eyes 
 of the Chinese authorities. He also saw, as every one on 
 
THE OPIUM WAH. 
 
 119 
 
 the spot must have seen, that the authorities, who had 
 been somewhat apathetic for a long time, were now at last 
 determined to go any lengths to put down the traffic. 
 At length the English Government announced to Captain 
 Elliott the decision which they ought to have made known 
 months, not to say years before, that "her Majesty's Gov- 
 ernment could not interfere for the purpose of enabling 
 British subjects to violate the laws of the country with 
 which they trade ; " and that " any loss, therefore, which 
 such persons may suffer in consequence of the more 
 effectual execution of the Chinese laws on this subject 
 must be borne by the parties who have brought that loss 
 on themselves by their own acts." This very wise and 
 proper ]»esolve came, however, too late. The British 
 traders had been allowed to go on for a long time under 
 the full conviction that the protection of the English 
 Government was behind them, and wholly at their service. 
 Captain Elliott himself seems to have now believed that 
 the announcement of his superiors was but a graceful 
 diplomatic figure of speech. When the Chinese authorities 
 actually proceeded to insist on the forfeiture of an im- 
 mense quantity of the opium in the hand of British traders, 
 and took other harsh but certainly not unnatural meas- 
 ures to extinguish the traffic. Captain Elliott sent to the 
 Governor of India a request for as many ships of war as 
 could be spared for the protection of the life and prop- 
 erty of Englishmen in China. Before long British ships 
 arrived, and the two countries were at war. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe the successive steps by 
 which the war came on. It was inevitable from the mo- 
 ment that the English superintendent identified himself 
 with the protection of the opium trade. The English 
 believed that the Chinese authorities were determined on 
 war, and only waiting for a convenient moment to make a 
 treacherous beginning. The Chinese were convinced that 
 from the first we had meant nothing but war. Such a 
 condition of feeling on both sides Avould probably have 
 made war unavoidable, even in the case of two nations 
 who had far much better ways of understanding each 
 other than the English and Chinese. It is not surprising 
 if the English people at home knew little of the original 
 causes of the controversy. All that presented itself to 
 their mind was the fact that Englishmen were in danger 
 
120 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in a foreign country ; that they were harshly treated 
 and recklessly imprisoned ; that their lives were in 
 jeopardy, and that the flag of England was insulted. 
 There was a general notion, too, that the Chinese were a 
 barbarous and a ridiculous people, who had no alphabet, 
 and thought themselves much better than any other people, 
 even the English, and that on the whole it would be a 
 good thing to take the conceit out of them. Those who 
 remember what the common feeling of ordinary society 
 was at the time, will admit that it did not reach a much 
 loftier level than this. The matter was, however, taken 
 up more seriously in Parliament. 
 
 The policy of the Government was challenged in the 
 House of Commons, but with results of more impo^ance to 
 the existing composition of the English Cabinet than to 
 the relations between this country and China. Sir James 
 Graham moved a resolution condemning the policy of 
 ministers for having, by its uncertainty and other errors, 
 brought about the war, which, however, lie did not then 
 think it possible to avoid. A debate which continued for 
 three days took place. It was marked by the same curious 
 mixture of parties which we have seen in debates on China 
 questions in days nearer to the present. The defence 
 of the Government was opened by Mr. Macaulay, who 
 had been elected for Edinburgh and appointed Secretary 
 at War. The defence consisted chiefly in the argu- 
 ment that we could not have put the trade in opium 
 down, no matter how earnest we had been, and that it 
 was not necessary or possible to keep on issuing fre- 
 quent instructions to agents so far away as our represent- 
 atives in China. Mr. Macaulay actually drew, from our 
 experience in India, an argument in support of his posi- 
 tion. We cannot govern India from London, he insisted ; 
 we must, for the most part, govern India in India. One 
 can imagine how Macaulay would, in one of his essays, 
 have torn into pieces such an argument coming from any 
 advocate of a policy opposed to his own. The reply, in- 
 deed, is almost too olmous 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 
 appliances and forces of rule. In China we had an agent 
 
m:Ei OPIUM wAii 
 
 121 
 
 with a vague and anomalous office dropped down in the 
 middle of a hostile people, possessed neither of recognized 
 authority nor of power to enforce its recognition. It was 
 * probably true enough that we could not have put down 
 the opium trade ; that even with all the assistance of the 
 Chinese Government we could have done no more than to 
 drive it from one port in order to see it make its appear- 
 ance at another. But what we ought to have done is, 
 therefore, only the more clear. We ought to have an- 
 nounced from the first, and in the firmest tone, that we 
 would have nothing to do with the trade ; that we would 
 not protect it ; and we ought to have held to this determi- 
 nation. As it was, we allowed our traders to remain un- 
 der the impression that wo were willing to support them, 
 until it was too late to undeceive them with any profit to 
 their safety or our credit. The Chinese authorities acted 
 after awhile with a high-handed disregard of fairness, and 
 of anything like what we should call the responsibility of 
 law ; but it is evident that they believed they were them- 
 selves the objects of lawless intrusion and enterprise. 
 There were on the part of the Government great efforts 
 made to represent the motion as an attempt to prevent 
 the ministry from exacting satisfaction from the Chinese 
 Government, and from protecting the lives and interests 
 of Englishmen in China. But it is unfortunately only too 
 often the duty of statesmen to recognize the necessity of 
 carrying on a war, even while they are of opinion that 
 they whose mismanagement brought about the war 
 deserve condemnation. When Englishmen are being im- 
 prisoned and murdered, the innocent just as well as the 
 guilty, in a foreign country — when, in short, war is 
 actually going on — it is not possible for English 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 Government would have spared us the 
 beginning of such a war." There was really no incon- 
 sistency in recognizing the necessity of carrying on the 
 war, and at the same time censuring the ministry who 
 had allowed the necessity to be forced upon us. Sir 
 Robert Peel quoted with great effect, during the debate, 
 the example of Fox, who declared his readiness to give 
 every help to the prosecution of a war w^hich the very 
 
122 
 
 A IIISTOUY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 same day he proposed to censure the ministry for having 
 brought upon the country. With all their efforts, the 
 ministers were only able to command a majority of nine 
 votes as the result of the three days' debate. 
 
 The war, however, went on. It was easy work enough 
 so far as England was concerned. It was on our side 
 nothing but a succession of cheap victories. The Chinese 
 fought very bravely in a great many instances ; and they 
 showed still more often a Spartan-like resolve not to sur- 
 vive defeat. When one of the Chinese cities was taken 
 by Sir Hugh Gough, the Tartar general went into his 
 house as soon as he saw that all was lost, made his serv- 
 ants set fire to the building, and calmly sat in his chair 
 until he was burned to death. One of the English offi- 
 cers writes of the same attack, that it was impossible to 
 compute the loss of the Chinese, " for when they found 
 they could stand no longer against us, they cut the throats 
 of their wives and children, or drove them into wells or 
 ponds, and then destroyed themselves. In many houses 
 there were from eight to twelve dead bodies, and I myself 
 saw a dozen Avomen and children drowning themselves in a 
 small pond the day after the fight." We quickly cap- 
 tured the island of Chusan, on the east coast of China ; 
 a part of our squadron went up the Peiho River to threaten 
 the capital ; negotiations were opened, and the prelimina- 
 ries of a treaty were made out, to which, however, neither 
 the English Government nor the Chinese would agree, and 
 the war was reopened. Chusan was again taken by us ; 
 Ningpo, a large city a few miles in on the main-land, fell 
 into our hands ; Amoy, farther south, was captured ; our 
 troops were before Nankin when the Chinese Government 
 at last saw how futile was the idea of resisting our arms. 
 Their women or their children might just as well have 
 attempted to encounter our soldiers. With all the 
 bravery which the Chinese often displayed, there was 
 something pitiful, pathetic, ludicrous, in the simple and 
 childlike attempts Avhich they made to carry on war 
 against us. They made peace at last on any terms we 
 chose to ask. We asked, in the first instance, the cession 
 in perpetuity to us of the island of Hong-Kong. Of course 
 we got it. Then Ave asked that five ports — Canton, 
 Amoy, Foo-Chow-Foo, Ningpo, and Shanghai — should be 
 thrown open to British traders, and that consuls should 
 
THE OPIUM WAR, 
 
 123 
 
 be established there. Needless to say that this, too, was 
 conceded. Then it was agreed that the indemnity already 
 mentioned should be paid by the Chinese Government— 
 ^' some four millions and a half sterling, in addition to one 
 million and a quarter as compensation for the destroyed 
 opium. It was also stipulated that correspondence be- 
 tween officials of the two Governments was thenceforth 
 to be carried on upon equal terms. The war Avas over for 
 the present, and the thanks of both Houses of Parliament 
 were voted to the fleet and army engaged in the opera- 
 tions. The Duke of Wellington moved the vote of thanks 
 in the House of Lords. He could hardly help, one would 
 think, forming in his mind as he spoke an occasional 
 contrast between the services which he asked the House 
 to honor, and the sort of warfare which it had been his 
 glorious duty to engage in so long. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington was a simple-minded man, with little sense of 
 humor. He did not, probably, perceive himself the irony 
 that others might have seen in the fact that the conqueror 
 of Napoleon, the victor in years of warfare against 
 soldiers unsurpassed in history, should have had to move 
 a vote of thanks to the fleet and army which triumphed 
 over the unarmed, helpless, childlike Chinese. 
 
 The whole chapter of history ended, not inappropriately 
 perhaps, with a rather pitiful dispute between the English 
 Government and the English traders about the amount of 
 compensation to which the latter laid claim for their de- 
 stroyed opium. The Government were in something of 
 a difficulty ; for they had formally announced that they 
 were resolved to let the traders abide by any loss which 
 their violation of the laws of China might bring upon them. 
 But, on the other hand, they had identified themselves by 
 the war with the cause of the traders ; and one of the 
 conditions of peace had been the compensation for the 
 opium. The traders insisted that the amount given for 
 this purpose by the Chinese Government did not nearly 
 meet their losses. The English Government, on the other 
 hand, would not admit that they were bound in any way 
 further to make good the losses of the merchants. The 
 traders demanded to be compensated according to the 
 price of opium at the time the seizure was made ; a demand 
 which, if we admit any claim at all, seems only fair and 
 reasonable. The Government had clearly undertaken 
 
121 
 
 A IIISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 their cause in the end, and were hardly in a position, either 
 logical or dignified, when they afterward chose to say, 
 " Yes, we admit that we did undertake to get you redress, 
 but we do not think now that we are bound to give you 
 full redress." At last the matter was compromised ; the 
 merchants had to take what they could get, something 
 considerably below their demand, and give in return to 
 the Government an immediate acquittance in full. It is 
 hard to get up any feeling of sympathy with the traders 
 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 AjSTD FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 
 
 The Melbourne Ministry kept going from bad to Avorse. 
 There was a great stirring in the country all around them, 
 which made their feebleness the more conspicuous. We 
 sometimes read in history a defence of some particular 
 sovereign whom common opinion cries down, the defence 
 being a reference to the number of excellent measures that 
 were set in motion during his reign. If we were to judge 
 of the Melbourne Ministry on the same principle, it might 
 seem, indeed, as if their career was one of extreme activity 
 and fruitfulness. Reforms were astir in almost every di- 
 rection. Inquiries into the condition of our poor and our 
 laboring classes were, to use a cant phrase of the time, the 
 order of the day. Tlie foundation of the colony of New 
 Zealand was laid with a philosophical deliberation and 
 thoughtfulness which might have reminded one of Locke 
 and the Constitution of the Carolinas. Some of the first 
 comprehensive and practical measures to mitigate the 
 rigor and to correct the iiidiscrimiuatcness of tlie death 
 punishment were taken during this period. One of the 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 125 
 
 first legislative enactments which fairly acknowledged 
 the difference between an English wife and a purchased 
 slave, so far as the despotic power of the master was 
 concerned, belongs to the same time. This was the 
 Custody of Infants Bill, tlie 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 curious 
 to notice how long and how fiercely this modest measure 
 of recognition for what may almost be called the natural 
 right of a wife and a mother was disputed in Parliament, 
 or at least in the House of Lords. 
 
 It is curious, too, to notice what a clamor was raised 
 over the small contribution to the cause of national edu- 
 cation which was made by the Melbourne Government. 
 In 1834, the first grant of public money for the purposes 
 of elementary education was made by Parliament. The 
 sum granted was twenty thousand pounds, and the same 
 grant was made every year until 1839. Then Lord John 
 Kussell asked for an increase of ten thousand pounds, and 
 proposed a change in the manner of appropriating the 
 money. Up to that time the grant had been distributed 
 through the National School Society, a body in direct con- 
 nection with the Church of England, and the British and 
 Foreign School Association, which admitted children of all 
 Christian denominations, without imposing on them secta- 
 rian teaching. The money was dispensed by the Lords of 
 the Treasury, who gave aid to applicants in proportion to 
 the size and cost of the school buildings, and the number of 
 children who attended them. Naturally the result of such 
 an arrangement was that the districts which needed help 
 the most got it the least. If a place was so poor as not to be 
 able do to anything for itself, the Lords of the Treasury 
 would do nothing for it. Naturally, too, the rich and 
 powerful Church of England secured the greater part of the 
 grant for itself. There was no inspection of the schools ; 
 no reports were made to Parliament as to the manner in 
 which the system worked ; no steps were taken to find 
 out if the teachers were qualified or the teaching was 
 good. " The statistics of the schools," says a writer in 
 the EcVmburgh Bevieio^ " were alone considered — tJ^e size 
 of the school-room, the cost of the building, and the number 
 
126 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 of scholars." In 1839 Lord John Russell proposed to 
 increase the grant, and an Order in Council transferred its 
 distribution to a committee of the privy council, com- 
 posed of the president and not more than five members. 
 Lord John Russell also proposed the appointment of in- 
 spectors, the founding of a model school for the training 
 of teachers, and the establishment of infant schools. The 
 model school and the infant schools were to be practically 
 unsectarian. The committee of the privy council were to 
 be allowed to depart from the principle of proportioning 
 their grants to the amount of local contribution, to estab- 
 lish in poor and crowded places schools not necessarily 
 connected with either of the two educational societies, 
 and to extend their aid even to schools where the Roman 
 Catholic version of the Bible was read. The proposals of 
 the Government were fiercely opposed in both Houses 
 of Parliament. The most various and fantastic forms of 
 bigotry combined against them. Tlie apjjlicaton of public 
 money, and especially through the hands of the committee 
 of privy council, to any schools not under the control and 
 authority of the Church of England Avas denounced as a 
 State recognition of popery and heresy. Scarcely less 
 marvellous to us now are the speeches of those who 
 promoted than of those who opposed the scheme. Lord 
 John Russell himself, who was much in advance of the 
 common opinion of those among whom he moved, pleaded 
 for the principles of his measure in a tone rather of 
 apology than of actual vindication. He did not venture 
 to oppose point-blank the claim of those who insisted that 
 it was part of the sacred right of the Established Church 
 to have the teacliing all done in her own way or to allow 
 no teaching at all. 
 
 The Government did not get all tliey sought for. They 
 had a fierce fight for their grant, and an amendment 
 moved by Lord Stanley, to the effect that her Majesty 
 be requested to revoke the Order in Council appointing 
 the Committee on Education, was only negatived by a 
 majority of two votes — 275 to 273. Li the Lords, to which 
 the struggle was transferred, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury actually moved and carried by a large majority an 
 address to the Queen praying her to revoke the Order in 
 Council. The Queen replied firmly that the funds voted 
 by Rarliament would be found to bo laid out in strict 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTBY, 127 
 
 accordance with constitutional usage, the riglits of con- 
 science, and the safety of the Established Church, and 
 so dismissed the question. The Government, therefore, 
 succeeded in establishing their Committee of Council on 
 Education, the institution by which our system of pub- 
 lic instruction has been managed ever since. The minis- 
 try, on the whole, showed to advantage in this struggle. 
 They took up a principle, and they stood by it. If, as we 
 have said, the speeches made by the x)romoters of the 
 scheme seem amazing to any intelligent person of our 
 time because of the feeble, apologetic, and almost craven 
 tone in which they assert the claims of a system of na- 
 tional education, yet it must be admitted that the prin- 
 ciple was accepted by the Government at some risk, and 
 that it was not shabbily deserted in the face of hostile 
 pressure. It is worth noticing that while the increased 
 grant and the principles on which it was to be distributed 
 were opposed by such men as Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
 Stanley, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli, it had the sup- 
 port of Mr. O'Connell and of Mr. Smith O'Brien. Both 
 these Irish leaders only regretted that the grant was not 
 very much larger, and that it was not appropriated on a 
 more liberal principle. O' Council was the recognized 
 leader of the Irish Catholics and Nationalists ; Smith 
 O'Brien w^as an aristocratic Protestant. With all the 
 weakness of the Whig Ministry, their term of office must 
 at least be remarkable for the new de]3arture it took in 
 the matter of national education. The appointment of 
 the Committee of Council marks an epoch. 
 
 Indeed, the history of that time seems full of Reform 
 projects. The Parliamentary annals contain the names 
 of various measures of social and political improvement 
 which might in themselves, it would seem, bear witness 
 to the most unsleeping activity on the part of any minis- 
 try. Measures for general registration ; for the reduction of 
 the stamp duty on newspapers ; and of the duty on paper ; 
 for the improvement of the jail system ; for the spread of 
 vaccination ; for the regulation of the labor of children ; for 
 the prohibition of the employment of any child or young 
 person under twenty-one in the cleaning of chimne^^s by 
 climbing ; for the suppression of the punishment of the 
 pillory ; efforts to relieve the Jews from civil disabilities — 
 these are but a few of the many projects of social and polit- 
 
128 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUB OWK TIMES, 
 
 ical reform that occupied the attention of that busy period, 
 wliich somehow appears, nevertheless, to have been so 
 sleex:)y and do-notliing. How does it come about that we 
 can regard the ministry in whose time all these things 
 were done or attempted as exhausted and worthless ? 
 
 One answer is plain. The reformhig energy was in the 
 time and not in the ministry. In every instance public 
 opinion went far ahead of the inclinations of her Majesty's 
 ministers. There was a just and general conviction that 
 if the Government were left to themselves they AVQuld do 
 nothing. When they were driven into any course of im- 
 provement they usually did all they could to minimize 
 the amount of reform to be effected. Whatever they un- 
 dertook they seemed to undertake reluctantly, and as if 
 only with the object of preventing other people from hav- 
 ing anything to do with it. Naturally, therefore, they 
 got little or no thanks for any good they might have 
 done. When they brought in a measure to abolish hi 
 various cases the punishment of death, they fell so far 
 behind public opinion and the inclinations of the commis- 
 sion that had for eight years been inquiring into the state 
 of our criminal law, that their bill only passed by very 
 narrow majorities, and impressed many ardent reformers 
 as if it were meant rather to withhold than to advance a 
 genuine reform. In truth, it was a period of enthusiasm 
 and of growth, and the ministry did not understand this. 
 Lord Melbourne seems to have found it hard to persuade 
 himself that there was any real anxiety in the mind of 
 any one to do anything in particular. He had, appar- 
 ently, got into his mind the conviction that the only sensi- 
 ble thing the people of England could do was to keep up 
 the Melbourne Ministry, and that, being a sensible people, 
 they would naturally do this. He had grown into some- 
 thing like the condition of a pampered old hall-porter, 
 who, dozing in his cliair, begins to look on it as an act 
 of rudeness if any visitor to his master presumes to knock 
 at the door and so disturb him from his comfortable rest. 
 
 Any one who doubts that it was really a time of en- 
 thusiasm in these countries has only to glance at its 
 history. Tlie Ohurch of England and tlie Church of 
 Scotland were alike convulsed by movements whicli were 
 th(i ()ffs[)i'ing of a genuine and irresistible enthusiasm — 
 enthusiasm of that strong, far-reaching kind which makes 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 120 
 
 epochs in the history of a clmrcli or a people. In Ireland 
 Father Mathew, a pious and earnest friar, wlio 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 Avhich are still periodi- 
 cally 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, praying that the 
 British Museum and the National Gallery might be opened 
 to the public after Divine service on Sundays, " at such 
 hours as taverns, beer-shops, and gin-shops are legally 
 open." The motion was, of course, rejected ; but it is 
 worthy of mention now as an evidence of the point to 
 which the spirit of social reform had advanced at a period 
 when Lord Melbourne had seemingly made up his mind 
 that reform had done enough for his generation, and that 
 ministers might be allowed, at least during his time, to 
 eat their meals in peace without being disturbed by the 
 urgencies of restless Radicals, or threatened with hostile 
 majorities and Tory successes. 
 
 The Stockdale case was a disturbance of ministerial 
 rei30se which at one time threatened to bring about a 
 collision between the privileges of Parliament and the 
 authority of the law courts. The Messrs. Hansard, the 
 well-known Parliamentary printers, had published certain 
 Parliamentary reports on prisons, in which it happened 
 that a book published by J. J. Stockdale was described as 
 obscene and disgusting in the extreme. Stockdale pro- 
 ceeded against the Hansards for libel. The Hansards 
 pleaded the authority of Parliament ; but Lord Chief- 
 justice Denman decided that the House of Commons was 
 not Parliament, and had no authority to sanction the 
 publication of libels on individuals. Out of this contradic- 
 tion of authorities arose a long and often a very unseemly 
 squabble. The House of Commons would not give up its 
 privileges ; the law courts would not admit its authority. 
 Judgment was given by default against the Hansards in 
 one of the many actions for libel which arose out of the 
 affair, and the sheriffs of London were called on to seize 
 and sell some of the Hansards' property to satisfy the 
 
130 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 demands of the plaintiff. The unhappy sheriffs were 
 placed, as the homely old saying" would describe it, between 
 the devil and the deep sea. If they touched the property 
 of the Hansards they Avere acting in contempt of the privi- 
 lege of the House of Commons, and were liable to be com- 
 mitted to Newgate. If, on the other hand, they refused to 
 carry out the orders of the Court of Queen's Bench, that 
 court would certainly send them to prison for the refusal. 
 The reality of their dilemma was, in fact, very soon 
 proved. The amount of the damages was paid into the 
 Sheriff's Court in order to avoid the scandal of a sale, but 
 under protest ; the House of Commons ordered the sheriffs 
 to refund the money to the Hansards ; the Court of 
 Queen's Bench was moved for an order to direct the 
 sheriffs to pay it over to Stockdale. The sheriffs were 
 finally committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms 
 for contempt of the House of Commons. The Court of 
 Queen's Bench served a writ of habeas corpus on the 
 sergeant-at-arms calling on him to produce the sheriffs in 
 court. The House directed the sergeant-at-arms to inform 
 the court that he held the sheriffs in custody by order of 
 the Commons. The sergeant-at-arms took the sheriffs to 
 the Court of Queen's Bench and made his statement 
 there ; his explanation was declared reasonable and suffi- 
 cient, and he marched his prisoners back again. A great 
 deal of this ridiculous sort of thing vv^ent on which it is 
 not now necessary to describe in any detail. The House 
 of Commons, what with the arrest of the sheriffs and of 
 agents acting on behalf of the pertinacious Stockdale, 
 had on their hands batches of prisoners witii whom they 
 did not know in the least what to do ; the whole affair 
 created immense jjopular excitement mingled with much 
 ironical laughter. At last the House of Commons had 
 recourse to legislation, and Lord John Russell brought 
 in a bill on March 8d, 1840, to afford summary protection 
 to all persons employed in the publication of Parlia- 
 mentary papers. The preamble of the measure declared 
 that "wliereas it is essential to the due and effectual 
 discharge of the functions and duties of I^irliament that 
 no o])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 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY, 131 
 
 proceedings shall be taken on account of such publication 
 to bring before the court a certificate under the hand of 
 the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker, stating that it was 
 published by the authority of the House, and the proceed- 
 ings should at once be stayed." This bill was run quickly 
 through both House — ^not without some opposition or 
 at least murmur in the Upper House — and it became 
 law on April 14th. It settled the question satisfactorily 
 enough, although it certainly did not define the relative 
 rights of Parliament and the courts of law. No difficulty 
 of the same kind has since arisen. The sheriffs and the 
 other prisoners were discharged from custody after a while, 
 and the public excitement went out in quiet laughter. 
 
 The question, however, was a very serious one ; and it 
 is significant that public opinion was almost entirely on 
 the side of the law courts and the sheriffs. The ministry 
 must have so fallen in public favor as to bring the House 
 of Commons into disrepute along Avith them, or such a 
 sentiment could not have prevailed so widely out-of-doors. 
 The public seemed to see nothing in the whole affair 
 but a tyrannical House of Commons wielding illimitable 
 powers against a few humble individuals, some of whom, 
 the sheriffs, for instance, had no share in the controversy 
 except that imposed on them by official duty. Accord- 
 ingly, the sheriffs were the heroes of the hour, and were 
 toasted and applauded all over the country. Assuredly 
 it was an awkward position for the House of Commons to 
 be placed in when it had to vindicate its privileges by 
 committing to prison men who Avere merely doing a duty 
 which the law courts imx^josed on them. It Avould haA^e 
 been better, probably, if the Government had more firmly 
 asserted the rights of the House of Commons at the begin- 
 ning, and thus alloAved the public to see the real question 
 Avhich the whole controversy involved. jSTothing can be 
 more clear now than the paramount importance of secur- 
 ing to each House of Parliament an absolute authority and 
 freedom of publication. No evil that could possibly arise 
 out of the misuse of such a poAver could be anything like 
 that certain to come of a state of things AA^hicIi restricted by 
 libel laAvs, or otherwise, the right of either House to publish 
 whatever it thought proper for the public good. Not a sin- 
 gle measure for the reform of any great grievance, from 
 the abolition of slavery to the passing of the Factory Acts, 
 
132 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 but might have been obstructed, and perhaps even pre- 
 vented, if the free exposure of existing evils were denied 
 to the Houses of Parliament. In this country, Parliament 
 only works through the power of public opinion. A social 
 reform is not carried out simply by virtue of the decision 
 of a cabinet that something ought to be done. The 
 attention of the Legislature and of the public has to be 
 called to the grievance again and again, by speeches, 
 resolutions, debates, and divisions, before there is any 
 chance of carrying a measure on the subject. When 
 public opinion is ripe, and is strong enough to help the 
 Government through with a reform in spite of prejudices 
 and vested interests, then, and not till then, the reform is 
 carried. But it would be hardly possible to bring the 
 matter up to this stage of growth if those who were inter- 
 ested in upholding a grievance had the power of worry- 
 ing the publishers of the Parliamentary reports by legal 
 proceedings in the earlier stages of the discussion. Nor 
 would it be of any use to protect merely the freedom of 
 debate in Parliament itself. It is not through debate, but 
 through publication, that the public opinion of the. coun- 
 try is reached. In truth, the poorer a man is, the weaker 
 and the humbler, the greater need is there that he should 
 call out for the full freedom of publication to be vested in 
 the hands of Parliament. The factory child, the climbing 
 boy, the apprentice under colonial systems of modified 
 slavery, the seaman sent to sea in the rotten ship ; the 
 woman clad in unwomanly rags who sings her " Song of 
 a Shirt; "the other woman, almost literally unsexed in 
 form, function, and soul, who in her filthy trousers of 
 sacking dragged on all-fours the coal trucks in the mines 
 — these are the tyrants and the monopolists for whom we 
 assert the privilege of Parliamentary publication. 
 
 The operations which took place about this time in 
 Syria belong, perhaps, rather to the general history of the 
 Ottoman Empire than to that of England. But they had 
 so important a bearing on the relations between this coun- 
 try and France, and are so directly coimected with sub- 
 sequent events in which England bore a leading part, that 
 it would be impossible to x)ass them over without some 
 notice here. Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, the most 
 powcrf\il of all the Sultan's feudatories, a man of iron will 
 and great capacity both for war and administration, had 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 133 
 
 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 
 encotmtered 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 obtained 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 unexampled treachery even in 
 the history of the Ottoman Empire. It was evident that 
 Turkey was not able to hold her own against the formi- 
 dable Mohammed and his successful son ; and the policy 
 of the Western Powers of Europe, and of England especial- 
 ly, had long been to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a 
 necessary part of the common State system. The policy 
 of Russia was to keep up that empire as long as it suited 
 her own purposes ; to take care that no other Power got 
 anything out of Turkey ; and to prepare the way for such 
 a partition of the spoils of Turkey as would satisfy Rus- 
 sian interests. Russia, therefore, was to be found now 
 defending Turkey and now assailing her. The course taken 
 by Russia was seemingly inconsistent ; but it was only 
 inconsistent as the course of a sailing ship may be 
 which now tacks to this side and now to that, but has 
 a clear object in view and a port to reach all the while. 
 England was then, and for a long time after, steadily bent 
 on preserving the Turkish Empire, and in a great measure 
 as a rampart against the schemes and ambitions imputed 
 to Russia herself. France was less firmly set on the 
 maintenance of Turkey ; and France, moreover, had got it 
 into her mind that England had designs of her own on 
 Egypt. Austria was disposed to go generally with Eng- 
 land ; Prussia was little more than a nominal sharer in 
 the alliance that was now tinkered up. It is evident that 
 such an alliance could not be very harmonious or direct in 
 its action. It was, however, effective enough to prove too 
 strong for the Pasha of Egypt. A fleet made up of English, 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Austrian, and Turkish vessels bombarded Acre ; an allied 
 army drove the Egyptians from several of their strong- 
 holds. Ibrahim Pasha, with all his courage and genius 
 was not equal to the odds against which he now saw him- 
 self forced to contend. He had to succumb. No one could 
 doubt that he and his father were incomparably better 
 able to give good government and the chances of develop- 
 ment to Syria than the Porte had ever been. But in this 
 instance, as in others, the odious principle was upheld by 
 England and her actual allies that the Turkish Empire 
 must be maintained, at no matter what cost of suffering 
 and degradation to its subject populations. Mohammed 
 Ali was deprived of all his Asiatic possessions, but was 
 secured in his government of Egypt. A convention signed 
 at London on July 15th, 1840, arranged for the imposition 
 of those terms on Mohammed Ali. 
 
 The convention was signed by the representatives of 
 Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, on the one part, 
 and of the Ottoman Polite on the other. The name of 
 France was not found there. France had drawn back from 
 the alliance, and for sometime seemed as if she were Ukely 
 to take arms against it. M. Thiers was then her Prime- 
 minister : he was a man of quick fancy, restless and 
 ambitious temperament, and what we cannot help calling 
 a vulgar spirit of national self-sufficiency — we are speak- 
 ing now of the Thiers of 1840, not of the wise and capable 
 statesman, tempered and tried by the fire of adversity, 
 who reorganized France out of the ruin and welter of 1870. 
 Thiers persuaded himself and the great majority of his 
 countrymen that England was bent upon driving Moham- 
 med Ali out of Egypt as well as out of Syria, and that 
 her object was to obtain possession of Egypt for herself. 
 For some months it seemed as if war were inevitable 
 between England and France, although there was not in 
 reality the slightest reason why the two States should 
 quarrel. France Avas just as far away from any thought of 
 a really disinterested foreign policy as England. England, 
 on the other hand, had not the remotest idea of becom- , 
 ing the possessor of Egypt. Fortunately Louis Pliilippe 
 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 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 135 
 
 Gcream of passionate and almost hysterical declamation. 
 Again and again he declared that his mind had l)een 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 Tliiers carried with him much of the 
 excited public feeling of France. But the King and M. 
 Guizot were happily supported by the majority in and 
 out of the Chambers ; and on July 13th, 1841, the Treaty 
 of London was signed wliich provided for the settlement 
 of the affairs of Egypt on the basis of the arrangement 
 already made, and which contained, moreover, the stipula- 
 tion, to be referred to more than once hereafter, by which 
 the Sultan declared himself firmly resQlved to maintain 
 the ancient principle of his empire — that no foreign ship 
 of war was to be admitted into the Dardanelles and the 
 Bosphorus, with the exception of light vessels for which 
 a firman was granted. 
 
 The public of this country had taken but little interest 
 in the controversy about Egypt, at least until it seemed 
 likely to involve England in a war with France. Some 
 of the episodes of the war were indeed looked upon with 
 a certain satisfaction by people here at home. The 
 bravery of Charles Napier, the hot-headed, self-conceited 
 commodore, was enthusiastically extolled, and his feats of 
 successful audacity were glorified as though they had 
 shown the genius of a Nelson or the clever resource of a 
 Cochrane. Not many of Napier's admirers cared a rush 
 about the merits of the quarrel between the Porte and the 
 Pasha. Most of them would have been just as well pleased 
 if Napier had been fighting for the Pasha and against the 
 Vorte ; not a few utterly ignorant as to whether he was 
 fi^iiting for Porte or for Pasha. Those who claimed to 
 he more enlightened had a sort of general idea that it 
 was in some way essential to the safety and glory of Eng- 
 land that whenever Turkey was in trouble we should at 
 on(3e become her champions, tame her rebels, and conquer 
 her enemies. Unfounded as were the suspicions of 
 Frenchmen about our designs upon Egypt, they can hardly 
 be called very unreasonable. Even a very cool and im- 
 partial Frenchman might be led to the conclusion that 
 free England would not without some direct purpose of 
 her own have pledged herself to the cause of a base and 
 a decaying despotism. 
 
136 
 
 A HISrOBY OF OUB 0W2^ TIMES. 
 
 Steadily, meanwhile, did the ministry go from bad to 
 Avorse. They had greatly damaged their character by the 
 manner in which they had again and again put up with 
 defeat, and consented to resume or retain office on any 
 excuse or pretext. They were remarkably bad adminis- 
 trators ; their finances were wretchedly managed. In later 
 times we have come to regard the Tories as especially 
 weak in the matter of finance. A well-managed revenue 
 and a comfortable surplus are generally looked upon as in 
 some way or other the monopoly of a Liberal administra- 
 tion ; while lavish expenditure, deficit, and increased taxa- 
 tion are counted among the necessary accompaniments 
 of a Tory Government. So nearly does public opinion 
 on both sides go to accepting these conditions, that there 
 are many Tories who take it rather as a matter of pride 
 that their leaders are not mean economists, and who regard 
 a free-handed expenditure of the national revenue as 
 something peculiarly gentlemanlike, and in keeping with 
 the honorable traditions of a great country party. But 
 this was not the idea which prevailed in the days of the 
 Melbourne Ministry. Then the universal conviction was 
 that the Whigs were incapable of managing the finances. 
 The budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. 
 Baring, showed a deficiency of nearly two millions. This 
 deficiency he proposed to meet in part by alteration in the 
 sugar duties ; but the House of Commons, after a long 
 debate, rejected his proposals by a majority of thirty-six. 
 It was then expected, of course, that ministers would 
 resign ; but they were not yet willing to accept the con- 
 sequences of defeat. They thought they had another 
 stone in their sling. Lord John Russell had previously 
 given notice of his intention to move for a committee of 
 the whole House to consider the state of legislation with 
 regard to the trade in corn ; and he now brought forward 
 an announcement of his plan, w^hicli 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 ett'ect 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 \yere just beginning 
 to 1)e powerful, altliough they were not nearly strong 
 enough yet to dictate the policy of a government. We 
 
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 137 
 
 shall have to tell the story of Free-trade hereafter ; this 
 present incident is no part of the history of a great move- 
 ment ; it is merely a small party dodge. It deceived no 
 one. Lord Melbourne had always spoken with the utter- 
 most contempt of the Free- trade agitation. With charac- 
 teristic oaths, he had declared that of all the mad things 
 he had ever heard suggested, Free-trade was the maddest. 
 Lord John Russell himself, although far more enlightened 
 than the Prime-minister, had often condemned and 
 sneered at the demand for Free- trade. The conversion 
 of the ministers into the official advocates of a moderate 
 fixed duty was all too sadden for the conscience, for the 
 very stomach of the nation. Public opinion would not 
 endure it. Nothing but harm came to the Whigs from 
 the attempt. Instead of any new adherents or fresh 
 sympathy being won for them by their pro]30sal, people 
 only asked, "Will nothing, then, turn them out of office? 
 AVill they never have done with trying new tricks to keep 
 in place ? " 
 
 Sir Robert Peel took, in homely phrase, the bull by the 
 horns. He proposed a direct vote of want of confidence 
 — a resolution declaring that ministers did not possess 
 confidence of the House sufficiently to enable them to carry 
 through the measures which they deemed of essential im- 
 portance to the public welfare, and that their continuance 
 in office under such circumstances was at variance with the 
 spirit of the Constitution. On June 4th, 1841, the division 
 was taken ; and the vote of no-confidence was carried by a 
 majority of one. Even the Whigs could not stand this. 
 Lord Melbourne at last began to think that things were 
 looking serious. Parliament was dissolved, and the result 
 of the general election was that the Tories were fomid to 
 have a majority even greater than they themselves had 
 anticipated. The moment the new Parliament was as- 
 sembled amendments to the address were carried in both 
 Houses in a sense hostile to the Government. Lord Mel- 
 bourne and his colleagues had to resign, and Sir Robert 
 Peel was intrusted with the task of forming an adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 We have not much more to do with Lord Melbourne in 
 this history. He merely drops out of it. Between his ex- 
 pulsion from office and his death, which took place in 1848, 
 he did little or nothing to call for the notice of any one. 
 
138 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 It was said at one time tliat his closing years were lone- 
 some and melancholy ; but this has lately been denied, 
 and indeed it is not likely that one who had such a genial 
 temper and so many friends could have been left to the 
 dreariness of a not self-sufficing solitude and to the bitter- 
 ness of neglect. He was a generous and kindly man ; his 
 personal character, although often assailed, was free of 
 any serious reproach ; he was a failure in office, not so 
 much from want of ability, as because he was a politician 
 without convictions. 
 
 The Peel Ministry came into power with great hopes. 
 It had Lord Lyndhurst for Lord Chancellor ; Sir James 
 Graham for Home Secretary ; Lord Aberdeen at the For- 
 eign Office ; Lord Stanley was Colonial Secretary. The 
 most remarkable man not in the cabinet, soon to be one 
 of the foremost statesmen in the country, was Mr. W. E. 
 Gladstone. It is a fact of some significance in the history 
 of the Peel administration, that the elections which 
 brought the new ministry into power brought Mr. Cobden 
 for the first time into the House of Commons. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MOVEMENTS m THE CHURCHES. 
 
 While Lord Melbourne and his Whig colleagues, 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 tendencies were for- 
 mally censured in the condemnation of this tract, was one 
 of the most momentous that had stirred the Church of 
 England since the Reformation. The author of the tract 
 was Dr. John Henry Newman, and the principal ground 
 for its censure, by voices claiming authority, was the 
 principle it seemed to put forward — that a man might 
 honestly subscribe all the articles and formularies of tlie 
 English Church, while yet holding many of the doctrines 
 of the Church of Rome, against which those articles were 
 
MOVEMENTS IK THE CIIURCTIES. 
 
 139 
 
 regarded as a necessary protest. The great movement 
 which was thus brought into sudden question and pub- 
 licity'was in itself an offspring of the immense stirring of 
 thought which tlie French llevolution called up, and 
 which had its softened echo in the English lieform Bill. 
 The centre of the religious movement was to be found in 
 the University 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 colleague of Cambridge. There were two 
 influences then in operation over Enghxnd, both of which 
 alike aroused the alarm and the hostility of certain gifted 
 and enthusiastic young Oxford men. One was the ten- 
 dency to Rationalism drawn from the German theologians ; 
 the other was the manner in which the connection of the 
 Church with the State in England was beginning to 
 operate to the disadvantage of the Church as a sacred 
 institution and teacher. The Reform party everywhere 
 were assailing the rights and property of the Church. In 
 Ireland, especially, experiments were made which every 
 practical man will now regard with approval, whether he 
 be Churchman or not, but which seemed to the devoted 
 ecclesiast of Oxford to be fraught with danger to the free- 
 dom and influence of the Church. Out of the contempla- 
 tion of these dangers sprang the desire to revive the 
 authority of the Church ; to quicken her with a new 
 vitality ; to give her once again that place as guide and 
 inspirer of the national life which her ardent votaries 
 believed to be hers by right, and to have been forfeited 
 only by the carelessness of her authorities, and their 
 failure to fulfil the duties of her Heaven-assigned mis- 
 sion. 
 
 No movement could well have had a purer source. 
 None could have had more disinterested and high-minded 
 promoters. It was borne in upon some earnest, unresting 
 souls, like that of the sweet and saintly Keble — souls 
 " without haste and without rest," like Goethe's star — that 
 the Church of England had higher duties and nobler 
 claims than the business of preaching harmless sermons 
 and the power of enriching bishops. Keble could not bear 
 to think of the Church taking pleasure since all is well. 
 He urged on some of the more vigorous and thoughtful 
 minds around him, or rather he suggested it by his influ- 
 
140 
 
 A IIISTOBY OF OVn OWN TIMES, 
 
 ence and his example, that they should reclaim for the 
 Church the place which ought to be hers, as the true suc- 
 cessor of the Apostles. He claimed for her that she, and 
 she alone, was the real Gatholic Church, and that Rome 
 had wandered away from the right path, and foregone 
 the glorious mission which she might have maintained. 
 Among those who shared the spirit and purpose of Keble 
 were Richard Hurrell Froude, the historian's elder brother, 
 who gave rich promise of a splendid career, but who died 
 while still in comparative youth ; Dr. Pusey, afterward 
 leader of the school of ecclesiasticism which bears his 
 name ; and, most eminent of all. Dr. Newman. Keble 
 had taken part in the publication of a series of treatises 
 called " Tracts for the Times," the object of which was to 
 vindicate the real mission, as the writers believed, of the 
 Church of England. This was the Tractarian movement, 
 which had such various and memorable results. Newman 
 first started the project of the Tracts, and wrote the most 
 remarkable of them. He had, up to this time, been dis- 
 tinguished as one of the most unsparing enemies of Rome. 
 At the same time he was, as he has himself said, " fierce " 
 against the " instruments " and the " manifestations " of 
 the Liberal cause." While he was at Algiers once, a 
 French vessel put in there, flying the tricolor ; Newman 
 would not even look at her. " On my return, though 
 forced to stop twenty-four hours at Paris, I kept in-doors 
 the whole time, and all that I saw of that beautiful city 
 was what I saw from the diligence." He had never had 
 any manner of association with Roman Catholics ; had, 
 in fact, known singularly little of them. As Newman 
 studied and wrote concerning the best way to restore tiie 
 Church of England to her proper place in the national 
 life, he kept the thought before him "that there was 
 something greater than the Established Church, and that 
 that Avas the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from 
 the beginning, of which she was but the local presence 
 and the organ. She Avas nothing unless she was this. 
 She nmst be dealt with strongly, or she would be lost. 
 There was need of a second Reformation." x\t this time 
 the idea of leaving the Church never. Dr. Newman him- 
 self assures us, had crossed his imagination. He felt 
 alarmed for the Church between German Rationalism 
 and man-of- the- world liberalism. His fear was that the 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE CnURCtlES. 
 
 141 
 
 Church would sink to be the servile instrument of a 
 State, and a Liberal State. 
 
 The abilities of Dr. Newman were hardly surpassed by 
 any contemporary in any department of thought. His 
 position and influence in Oxford were almost unique. There 
 was in his intellectual temperament a curious combination 
 of the mystic and the logical. He was at once a poetic 
 dreamer and a sophist — in the true and not the corrupt 
 and ungenerous sense of the latter word. It had often 
 been said of him and of another great Englishman, that 
 a change in their early conditions and training would easily 
 have made of Newman a Stuart Mill, and of Mill a New- 
 man. England, in our time, has hardly had a greater 
 master of argument and of English prose than Newman. 
 He is one of the keenest of dialecticians ; and, like Mill, 
 has the rare art that dissolves all the difficulties of the 
 most abstruse or perplexed subject, and shows it bare 
 and clear even to the least subtle of readers. His words 
 dispel mists ; and whether they Avho listen agree or not, 
 they cannot fail to understand. A penetrating, poignant, 
 satirical humor is found in most of his writings, an irony 
 sometimes piercing suddenly through it like a darting 
 pain. On the other hand, a generous vein of poetry and 
 of pathos informs his style ; and there are many passages 
 of his works in which he rises to the height of a genuine 
 and noble eloquence. 
 
 In all the arts that make a great preacher or orator 
 Newman was strikingly deficient. His manner was con- 
 strained, ungraceful, and even awkward ; his voice was 
 thin and weak. His bearing was not at first impressive 
 in any way. A gaunt, emaciated figure, a sharp and eagle 
 face, a cold, meditative eye, rather repelled than attracted 
 those who saw him for the first time. Singularly devoid 
 of affectation, Newman did not always conceal his intel- 
 lectual scorn of men who made loud pretence witli inferior 
 gifts, and the men must have been few indeed whose 
 gifts were not inferior to his. Newman had no scorn for 
 intellectual inferiority in itself ; he despised it only when 
 it gave itself airs. His influence while he was the vicar 
 at St. Mary's at Oxford was profound. As ]Mr. Gladstone 
 said of him in a recent speech, " without ostentation or 
 effort, but by simple excellence, he was continually drawing 
 undergraduates more and more around him." Mr. Glad- 
 
142 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 stone in the same speech gave a description of Dr. New- 
 man's pulpit style which is interesting : " Dr. Newman's 
 manner in the pulpit was one which, if you considered it 
 in its separate parts, would lead you to arrive at very 
 unsatisfactory conclusions. There was not very much 
 change in the inflection of the voice ; action there was 
 none ; his sermons were read, and his eyes were always 
 on his book ; and all that, you will say, is against efficiency 
 in preaching. Yes ; but you take the man as a whole, 
 and there was a stamp and a seal upon him, there was a 
 solemn music and sweetness in his tone, there was a com- 
 pleteness in the figure, taken together with the tone and 
 with the manner, which made even his delivery, such as 
 I have described it, and though exclusively with written 
 sermons, singularly attractive." The stamp and seal were, 
 indeed, those which are impressed by genius, piety, and 
 earnestness. No opponent ever spoke of Newman but 
 with admiration for his intellect and resj)ect for his char- 
 acter. Dr. Newman had a younger brother, Francis W. 
 Newman, who also possessed remarkable ability and 
 earnestness. He, too, was distinguished at Oxford, and 
 seemed to have a great career there before him. But he 
 was drawn one way by the wave of thought before his more 
 famous brother had been drawn the other way. In 1830 
 the younger Newman found himself prevented by religious 
 scruples from subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles for his 
 master's degree. He left the unversity, and wandered 
 for years in the East, endeavoring, not very successfully, 
 perhaps, to teach Christianity on its broadest base to 
 Mohammedans ; and then he came back to England to 
 take his place among the leaders of a certain school of 
 free thought. Fate had dealt with those brothers as with 
 the two friends in Richter's story : " it seized their bleed- • 
 ing hearts, and flung them different ways." 
 
 When Dr. Newman wrote the famous Tract " No. 90," 
 for Avhich he was censured, he bowed to the authority of 
 his bishop, if not to that of the heads of houses ; and he 
 discontinued the publication of such treatises. But he 
 did not admit any change of opinion ; and, indeed, soon 
 after he edited a publication called The British Critic, in 
 which many of the principles held to be exclusively those 
 of the Church of Rome were enthusiastically claimed for 
 the English Church. Yet a little and the gradual work- 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE CIIUltCTTES. 
 
 143 
 
 ing of Newman's mind became evident to all tlie world. 
 The brightest and most penetrating intellect in the Church 
 of England was Avitlidrawn from her service, and New- 
 man went over to the Church of Home. His secession 
 was described by Mr. Disraeli, a quarter of a century 
 afterward, as having " dealt a blow to the Church of Eng- 
 land under which she still reels." To this result had the 
 inquiry conducted him which had led his friend Dr. Pusey 
 merely to endeavor to incorporate some of the mysticism 
 and the symbols of Rome with the ritual of the English 
 Protestant Church ; which had brought Keble only to seek 
 a more liberal and truly Christian temper for the faith of 
 the Protestant; and which had sent Francis Newman 
 into Radicalism and Rationalism. 
 
 In truth, it is not difficult now to understand how the 
 elder Newman's mind became drawn toward the ancient 
 Church which won him at last. We can see from his own 
 candid account of his earlier sentiments how profoundly 
 mystical was his intellectual nature, and how, long before 
 he was conscious of any such tendency, he was drawn 
 toward the very symbolisms of the Catholic Church. Pas- 
 cal's early and unexplained mastery of mathematical prob- 
 lems which no one had taught him is not more suggestive 
 in its way than those early drawings of Catholic symbols 
 and devices which, done in his childhood, Newman says 
 surprised and were inexplicable to him when he came on 
 them in years long after. No place could be better fitted 
 to encourage and develop this tendency to mysticism 
 in a thoughtful mind than Oxford, with all its noble 
 memories of scholars and of priests, with its picturesque 
 and poetic surroundings, and its never-fading mediae valism. 
 NcAvman lived in the past. His spirit was with mediaeval 
 England. His thoughts were of a time when one Church 
 took charge of the souls of a whole, united, devout people, 
 and stood as the guide and authority appointed for them 
 by Heaven. He thought of such a time until first he 
 believed in it as a thing of the past, and next came to have 
 faith in the possibility of its restoration as a thing of the 
 present and the future. When once he had come to this 
 point the rest followed, " as by lot God wot." No creature 
 could for a moment suppose that that ideal Church was 
 to be found in the English Establishment, submitted as it 
 was to State-made doctrine, and to the decision of the 
 
144 
 
 A HISTOEY OF QUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 Lord Chancellor, who might be an infidel or a free-liver. 
 The question which Cardinal Manning tells us he asked 
 himself years after, at the time of the Gorham case, must 
 often have presented itself to the mind of I\"ewman — 
 Suppose all the Bishops of the Church should decide 
 unanimously on any question of doctrine, would any one 
 receive the decision as infallible? Of course not. Such 
 is not the genius or the ]3rinciple of the English Church. 
 The Church of England has no pretension to be considered 
 the infallible guide of the people in matters even of doc- 
 trine. Were she seriously to put forward any such pre- 
 tension, it would be rejected with contemjot by the common 
 mind of the nation. We are not discussing questions of 
 dogma or the rivals claims of Churches here ; we are 
 merely pointing out that to a man with i^ewman's idea 
 of a church, the Church of England could not long afford 
 a home. That very logical tendency, which in the mind 
 of Newman, as of that of Pascal, contended for supremacy 
 with the tendency to devotion and mysticism, only im- 
 pelled him more rigorously on his way. He could not put 
 up with compromises, and convince himself that he ought 
 to be convinced. He dragged every compromise and 
 every doctrine into the light, and insisted on knowing 
 exactly what it amounted to and what it meant to say. 
 The doctrines and compromises of his own Church did not 
 satisfy him. There are minds which, in this condition of 
 bewilderment, might have been content to find " no foot- 
 ing so solid as doubt." Newman had not a mind of that 
 class. He could not believe in a world without a church, 
 or a church without what he held to be inspiration ; and 
 accordingly he threw his whole soul, energy, genius, and 
 fame into the cause of the Church of Rome. 
 
 This, however, did not come all at once. We are antici- 
 pating by a few years the passing over of Dr. Newman, 
 Cardinal Mamiing, and others to the ancient Church. It 
 is clear that Newman was not himself conscious for a 
 long time of the manner in which he was being drawn, 
 surely itlthough not quickly, in the direction of Rome. He 
 used to 1)6 accused at one time of havhig remained a con- 
 scious Roman Catholic in the English Church, laboring to 
 make new converts. Apart from liis own calm assurances, 
 and from the singularly pure and candid nature of the 
 man, there are reasons enough to render such a charge 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 
 
 145 
 
 absurd. Indeed, that sim[)le and childish conception of 
 human nature which assumes that a man must always 
 see the logical consequences of certain admissions or 
 inquiries beforehand, because all men can see them after- 
 ward, is rather confusing and out of place when we are 
 considering such a crisis of thought and feeling as that 
 which took place in Oxford, and such men as those who 
 were principally concerned in it. For the present it is 
 enough to say that the object of that movement was to 
 raise the Church of England from apathy, from dull, easy- 
 going acquiescence, from the perfunctory discharge of 
 formal duties, and to quicken her again with the spirit of 
 a priesthood, to arouse her to the living work, spiritual 
 and physical, of an ecclesiastical sovereignty. The im- 
 pulse overshot itself in some cases, and was misdirected 
 in others. It proved a failure, on the whole, as to its 
 definite aims ; and it sometimes left behind it only the 
 ashes of a barren symbolism. But in its source it was 
 generous, beneficent, and noble, and it is hard to believe 
 that there has not been throughout the Church of England, 
 on the whole, a higher sx)irit at work since the famous 
 Oxford movement began. 
 
 Still greater was the practical importance, at least in 
 defined results, of the movement which went on in Scot- 
 land about the same time. A fortnight before the deci- 
 sion of the heads of houses at Oxford on Dr. N^ewman's 
 tract, Lord Aberdeen announced in the House of Lords 
 that he did not see his way to do anything in particular 
 with regard to the dissensions in the Church of Scotland. 
 He had tried a measure he said, the year before, and half 
 the Church of Scotland liked it, and the other half de- 
 nounced it, and the Government opposed it ; and he, there- 
 fore, had nothing further to suggest in the matter. The 
 perplexity of Lord Aberdeen only faintly typified the per- 
 plexity of the ministry. Lord Melbourne w^as about the 
 last man in the world likely to have any sympathy AAdth 
 the spirit which animated the Scottish Reformers, or any 
 notion of how to get out of the difficulty which the whole 
 question presented. Differing as they did in so many 
 other points, there was one central resemblance between 
 the movement in the Kirk of Scotland and that which w^as 
 going on in the Church of England. In both cases alike 
 the effort of the reforming party was to emancipate the 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Church from the control of the State in matters involving 
 religious doctrine and duty. In Scotland was soon to be 
 presented the spectacle of a great secession from an Es- 
 tablished Church, not because the seceders objected to the 
 principle of a Church, but because they held that the 
 Establishment was not faithful enough to its mission as a 
 Church. One of the seceders pithily explained the posi- 
 tion of the controversy when he said that he and his fel- 
 lows were leaving the Kirk of Scotland, not because she 
 was too " churchy," but because she was not " churchy " 
 enough. 
 
 The case was briefly this : During the reign of 
 Queen Anne an Act was passed which took from the 
 Church courts in Scotland the free choice as to the ap- 
 pointment of pastors, by subjecting the power of the pres- 
 bytery to the control and interference of the law courts. 
 Harley, Bolingbroke, and Swift, not one of whom cared 
 a rush about the supposed sanctity of an ecclesiastical 
 appointment, were the authors of this compromise, 
 which was exactly of the kind that sensible men of the 
 world everywhere might be supposed likely to accept and 
 approve. In an immense number of Scotch parishes the 
 minister was nominated by a lay patron ; and if the pres- 
 bytery found nothing to condemn in him as to "life, 
 literature, and doctrine," they were compelled to appoint 
 him, however unwelcome he might be to the parishioners. 
 Now it is obvious that a man might have a blameless 
 character, sound religious views, and an excellent educa- 
 tion, and nevertheless be totally unfitted to undertake 
 the charge of a Scottish parish. The Southwark congre- 
 gation, who api^reciate and delight in the ministrations 
 of Mr. Spurgeon, might very well be excused if they 
 objected to having a perfectly moral Charles Honeyman, 
 even though his religious opinions were identical with 
 those of their favorite, forced upon them at the will of 
 some aristocratic lay patron. The effect of the power 
 conferred on the law courts and the patron was simply 
 in a great number of cases to send families away from 
 the Church of Scotland and into voluntaryism. The 
 Scotch people are above all others impatient of any 
 attempt to force on them the services of unacceptable min- 
 isters. Men clung to the National Church as long as it 
 was natural — that is, as long as it reprQsented and pro- 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE CHUliCnES. 
 
 147 
 
 tected the sacred claims of a deeply religious people. Dis- 
 sent, or rather voluntaryism, began to make a progress 
 in Scotland that alarjned thoughtful Churchmen. To get 
 over the difficulty, the General Assembly, the highest 
 ecclesiastical court in Scotland, and likewise a sort of 
 Church Parliament, declared that a veto on the nomina- 
 tion of the pastor should be exercised by the congrega- 
 tion, in accordance with a fundamental law of the Church 
 that no pastor should be intruded on any congregation 
 contrary to the will of the people. The Veto Act, as this 
 declaration was called, worked well enough for a short 
 time, and the highest legal authorities declared it not 
 incompatible with the Act of Queen Anne. But it dimin- 
 ished far too seriously the power of the lay patron to be 
 accepted without a struggle. In the celebrated Auchter- 
 arder case the patron won a victory over the Church in 
 the courts of law, for having presented a minister whose 
 appointment was vetoed by the congregation ; he obtained 
 an order from the civil courts deciding that the presby- 
 tery must take him on trial, in obedience with the Act of 
 Queen Anne, as he was qualified by life, literature, and 
 doctrine. This question, however, was easily settled by 
 the General Assembly of the Church. They left to the 
 patron's nominee his stipend and his house, and took no 
 further notice of him. They did not recognize him as one 
 of their pastors, but he might have, if he would, the 
 manse and the money which the civil courts had declared 
 to be his. They merely appealed to the Legislature to 
 do something which might make the civil law in harmony 
 with the x)rinciples of the Church. A more serious ques- 
 tion, however, presently arose. This was the famous 
 Strathbogie case, which brought the authority of the 
 Church and that of the State into irreconcilable conflict. 
 A minister had been nominated in the parish of Marnoch 
 who was so unacceptable to the congregation that 261 out 
 of 300 heads of families objected to his appointment. The 
 General Assembly directed the presbytery of Strathbogie, 
 in which the parish lay, to reject the minister, Mr. Ed- 
 wards. The presbytery had long been noted for its lean- 
 ing toward the claims of the civil power, and it very 
 reluctantly obeyed the command of the highest authority 
 and ruling body of the Church. Another minister was 
 appointed to the parish. Mr. Edwards fought the ques* 
 
148 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 tion out in the civil court and obtained an interdict 
 against the new appointment, and a decision that the 
 presbytery were bound to take himself on trial. Seven 
 members, constituting the majority of the presbytery, 
 determined, without consulting the General Assembly, to 
 obey the civil power, and they admitted Mr. Edwards on 
 trial. The seven were brought before the bar of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly, and by an overwhelmhig majority were 
 condemned to be deposed from their places in the minis- 
 try. Their parishes were declared vacant. A more com- 
 plete antagonism between Church and State is not pos- 
 sible to imagine. The Church expelled from its ministry 
 seven men for having obeyed the command of the civil 
 laws. 
 
 It was on the motion of Dr. Chalmers that the seven 
 ministers w^ere deposed. Dr. Chalmers became the leader 
 of the movement which was destined within two years 
 from the time we are now surveying to cause the disrup- 
 tion of the ancient Kirk of Scotland. No man could be 
 better fitted for the task of leadership in such a move- 
 ment. He was beyond comparison the foremost man in 
 the Scottish Church. He was the greatest pulpit orator 
 in Scotland, or, indeed, in Great Britain. As a scientific 
 writer, both on astronomy and on political economy, he 
 had made a great mark. From having been in his earlier 
 days the minister of an obscure Scottish village congre- 
 gation, he had suddenly sprung into fame. He was the 
 lion of any city which he happened to visit. If he 
 preached in London, the church was crowded with the 
 leaders of politics, science, and fashion, eager to hear him. 
 The effect he produced in England is all the more surpris- 
 ing seeing that he si)oke in the broadest Scottish accent 
 conceivable, and, as one admirer admits, mispronounced 
 almost every word. We have already quoted what Mr. 
 Gladstone said about the style of Dr. Newman ; let us 
 cite also what he says about' Dr. Chalmers. " I have 
 heard," said Mr. Gladstone, " Dr. Chalmers preach and 
 lecture. Being a man of Scotch blood, I am very much 
 attached to Scotland, and like even the Scotch accent, but 
 not the Scotch accent of Dr. Clialmers. Undoubtedly 
 the accent of Dr. Chalmers in ])reaching and delivery was 
 a considerable impediment to his success ; but notwith- 
 standing all that, it was overborne by the power of the 
 
MOVEMENTS IN THE CHVBCBES, 
 
 149 
 
 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 althougli I would have 
 said that the accent of Dr. Chalmers was distasteful, 
 yet in Dr. Chalmers himself I would not have had it 
 altered in the smallest degree." Chalmers si)oke with a 
 massive eloquence in keeping with his powerful frame 
 and his broad brow and his commanding presence. His 
 speeches were a strenuous blending of argument and emo- 
 tion. They appealed at once to the strong comnion-sen^e 
 and to the deep religious convictions of his Scottish audi- 
 ences. His whole soul was in his work as a leader of 
 religious movements. He cared little or nothing for any 
 pojDularity or fame that he might have won. Some strong 
 and characteristic words of his own have told us what he 
 thought of passing renown. He called it " a popularity 
 which rifles home of its sweets ; and by elevating a man 
 above his fellows places him in a region of desolation, 
 where he stands a conspicuous mark for the shafts of 
 malice, envy, and detraction; a popularity which, with 
 its head among storms and its feet on the treacherous 
 quicksands, has nothing to lull the agonies of its tottering 
 existence but the hosannas of a drivelling generation." 
 There is no reason to doubt that these were Chalmers's 
 genuine sentiments ; and scarcely any man of his time had 
 come into so sudden and great an endowment of popularity. 
 The reader of to-day must not look for adequate illustra- 
 tion of the genius and the influence of Chalmers in his 
 published works. These do, indeed, show him to have 
 been a strong reasoner and a man of original mind ; but 
 they do not show the Chalmers of Scottish controversy, 
 that Chalmers must be studied through the traces, lying 
 all around, of his influence upon the mind and the history 
 of the Scottish people. The Free Church of Scotland is 
 his monument. He did not make that Church. It was 
 not the work of one man, or, strictly speaking, of one 
 generation. It grew naturally out of the inevitable 
 struggle between Church and State. But Chalmers did 
 more than any other man to decide the moment and the 
 manner of its coming into existence, and its success is his 
 best monument. 
 
 For we may anticipate a little in this instance as in that 
 of the Oxford movement, and mention at once the fact that 
 
150 
 
 A m STORY OF OUR OW]^ TiMJES. 
 
 on May 18tli, 1843, some five hundred ministers of tlie 
 Church of Scotland, under tlie leadership of Dr. Chalmers, 
 seceded from the old Kirk and set about to form tlie Free 
 Church. The Government of Sir Robert Peel had made a 
 Aveak elfort at compromise by legislative enactment, but 
 had declined to introduce any legislation which should 
 free the Kirk of Scotland from the control of the civil 
 courts, and there was no course for those who held the 
 views of Dr. Chalmers but to withdraw from the Church 
 which admitted that claim of State control. Opinions 
 may differ as to the necessity, the propriety of the seces- 
 sion — as to its effects upon the history and the character 
 of the Scottish people since that time; but there can be 
 no difference of opinion as to tlie spirit of self-sacrifice in 
 which the step was taken. Five hundred ministers on that 
 memorable d^ went deliberately forth from their posi- 
 tions of comfort and honor, from home and competence^ 
 to meet an uncertain and a perilous future, with perhaps 
 poverty and failure to be the final result of their enter- 
 prise, and with misconstruction and misrepresentation to 
 make the bitter bread of poverty more bitter still. In these 
 pages we have nothing to do with the merits of religious 
 controversies ; and it is no part of our concern to consider 
 even the social and political effects produced upon Scot- 
 land by this great secession. But we need not withhold 
 our admiration from the men who risked and suffered so 
 much in the cause of what they believed to be their 
 Church's true rights; and we are bound to give this 
 admiration as cordially to the poor and nameless ministers, 
 the men of the rank and file, about whose doings history 
 so little concerns herself, as to the leaders like Chalmers, 
 who, whether they sought it or not, found fame shining 
 on their path of self-sacrifice. The history of Scotland 
 is illustrated by many great national deeds. 'No deed it 
 tells of surpasses in dignity and in moral grandeur that 
 secession — to cite the words of the protest — " from an 
 Establishment which we loved and prized, through inter- 
 ference with conscience, the dishonor done to Christ's 
 crown, and the rejection of his sole and supreme author- 
 ity as King in his Church." 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 151 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 The earliest days of tlie Peel Ministry fell upon trouble^ 
 not indeed at home, but abroad. At home the prospect 
 still seemed bright. The birth of the Queen's eldest son 
 was an event welcomed by national congratulation. There 
 was still great distress in the agricultural districts ; but 
 there was a general confidence that the financial genius of 
 Peel would quickly find some way to make burdens light, 
 and that the condition of things all over the country would 
 begin to mend. It was a region far removed from the 
 knowledge and the thoughts of most Englishmen that 
 supplied the news now beginning to come into England 
 day after day, and to thrill the country with the tale of 
 one of the greatest disasters to English policy and Eng- 
 lish arms to be found in all the record of our dealings 
 with the East. There are many still living who can recall 
 with an impression as keen as though it belonged to yes- 
 terday the first accounts that reached this country of the 
 surrender at Cabul, and the gradual extinction of the 
 army that tried to make its retreat through the terrible 
 Pass. 
 
 This grim chapter of history had been for some time in 
 preparation. It may be said to open with the reign itself. 
 Xews travelled slowly then; and it was quite in the ordi- 
 nary course of things that some part of the empire might 
 be torn with convulsion for months before London knew 
 that the even and ordinary condition of things had been 
 disturbed. In this instance the rejoicings at the acces- 
 sion of the young Queen were still going on, when a series 
 of events had begun in Central Asia destined to excite the 
 profoundest emotion in England, and to exercise the most 
 powerful influence upon our foreign policy down to the 
 present hour. On September 20th, 1887, Captain Alexan- 
 der Burnes arrived at Cabul, the capital of the State of 
 Cabul, in the north of Afghanistan, and the ancient cap- 
 
152 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUIi OWN TIMES. 
 
 ital of the Emperor Baber, whose tomb is on a hill out- 
 side the city. Burnes was a famous Orientalist and 
 traveler, the Burton or Bilrnaby of his day ; he had con- 
 ducted an expedition into Central Asia; had published 
 his travels in Bokhara, and had been sent on a mission by 
 the Indian Government, in whose service he was, to study 
 the navigation of the Indus. He was, it may be remarked, 
 a member of the family of Robert Burns, the poet himself 
 having changed the original spelling of the name which 
 all the other members of the family retained. The object 
 of the journey of Captain Burnes to Cabul in 1837 was, 
 in the first instance, to enter into commercial relations 
 with Dost Mahomed, then ruler of Cabul, and with other 
 chiefs of the western regions. But events soon changed 
 his business from a commercial into a political and diplo- 
 matic mission ; and his tragic fate would make his journey 
 memorable to Englishmen forever, even if other events had 
 not grown out of it which give it a place of more than 
 personal importance in history. 
 
 The great region of Afghanistan, with its historical 
 boundaries as varying and difficult to fix at certain times 
 as those of the old Dukedom of Burgundy, has been called 
 the land of transition between Eastern and Western Asia. 
 All the great ways that lead from Persia to India pass 
 through that region. There is a proverb which declares 
 that no one can be king of Hindostan without first becom- 
 ing lord of Cabul. The Afghans are the ruling nation, 
 but among them had long been settled Hindoos, Arabs, 
 Armenians, Abyssinians, and men of other races and 
 religions. The Afghans are Mohammedans of the Shunite 
 sect, but they allowed Hindoos, Christians, and even the 
 Persians, who are of the hated dissenting sect of the 
 Shiites, to live among them, and even to rise to high pos- 
 ition and influence. The founder of the Afghan Empire, 
 Ahmed Shah, died in 1773. He had made an empire 
 which stretched from Herat on the west to Sirhind on the 
 east, and from the Oxus and Cashmere on the north to 
 the Arabian Sea and the mouths of the Indus on the south. 
 The death of his son, Timur Shah, delivered the kingdom 
 up to the hostile factions, intrigues, and quarrels of his 
 sons : the leaders of a powerful tribe, the Barukzyes, 
 took advantage of the events that arose out of this condi- 
 tion of things to dethrone the descendants of Ahmed 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL, 
 
 153 
 
 Shah. When Captam Burnes visited Afghanistan in 18B2, 
 the only part of all their great inheritance which yet re- 
 mained with the descendants of Ahmed Shah was the 
 principality of Herat. The remainder of Afghanistan was 
 parcelled out between Dost Mahomed and his brothers. 
 Dost Mahomed was a man of extraordinary ability and 
 energy. He would probably have made a name as a 
 soldier and a statesman anywhere. He had led a stormy 
 youth, but had put away with maturity and responsibility 
 the vices and follies of his earlier years. There seems no 
 reason to douJ)t that, although he was a usurper, he was 
 a sincere lover of his country, and on the whole a wise 
 and just ruler. When Captain Burnes visited Dost 
 Mahomed, he was received with every mark of friendship 
 and favor. Dost Mahomed professed to be, and no doubt 
 at one time was, a sincere friend of the English Govern- 
 ment and people. There was, however, at that time a 
 quarrel going on between the Shah of Persia and the 
 Prince of Herat, the last enthroned representative, as has 
 been already said, of the great family on whose fall Dost 
 Mahomed and his brothers had mounted into power. So 
 far as can now be judged, there does seem to have been 
 serious and genuine ground of complaint on the part of 
 Persia against the ruler of Herat. But it is probable, too, 
 that the Persian Shah had been seeking for, and in any 
 case would have found, a pretext for making war ; and 
 the strong impression at the time in England, and among 
 the authorities in India, was that Persia herself was but 
 a puppet in the hands of Russia. A glance at the map 
 will show the meaning of this suspicion and the reasons 
 which at once gave it plausibility, and would have 
 rendered it of grave importance. If Persia were merely 
 the instrument of Russia, and if the troops of the Shah 
 were only the advance guard of the Czar, then, undoubt- 
 edly, the attack on Herat might have been regarded as 
 the first step of a great movement of Russia toward our 
 Indian dominion. 
 
 There were other reasons, too, to give this suspicion 
 some plausibility. Mysterious agents of Russia, officers 
 in her service and others, began to show themselves in 
 Central Asia at the time of Captain Burnes's visit to 
 Dost Mahomed. Undoubtedly Russia did set herself for 
 some reason to win the friendship and alliance of Dost 
 
154 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 Mahomed : and Captain Burnes was for his part engaged in 
 the same endeavor. All considerations of a merely com- 
 mercial nature had long since been put away, and Burnes 
 was freely and earnestly negotiating with Dost Mahomed 
 for his alliance. Burnes always insisted that Dost 
 Mahomed himself was sincerely anxious to become an ally 
 of England, and that he offered more than once, on his own 
 free part, to dismiss the Russian agents even without seeing 
 them, if Burnes desire 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 Mahomed prevailed. It was again and again im- 
 pressed on Burnes that he must regard Dost Mahomed as 
 a treacherous enemy, and as a man playing the part of Per- 
 sia and of Russia. It is impossible now to estimate fairly 
 all the reasons which may have justified the English 
 and the Indian Governments in this conviction. But we 
 know that nothing in the policy afterward followed out 
 by the Indian authorities exhibited any of the judgment 
 and wisdom that would warrant us in taking anything 
 for granted on the mere faith of their dictum. The story 
 of four years — almost to a day the extent of this sad 
 chapter of English history — will be a tale of such misfor- 
 tune, blunder, and humiliation as the annals of England 
 do not anywhere else present. Blunders which were, 
 indeed, worse than crimes, and a principle of action which 
 it is a crime in any rulers to sanction, brought things to 
 such a pass with us that in a few years from the accession 
 of the Queen we had in Afghanistan soldiers who were 
 positively afraid to fight the enemy, and some English 
 officials who were not ashamed to treat for the removal 
 of our most formidable foes by purchased assassination. 
 It is a good thing for us all to read in cold blood this 
 chapter of our history. It will teach us how vain is a 
 policy founded on evil and ignoble principles ; how vain 
 is the strength and courage of men when they have not 
 leaders fit to command. It may teach us, also, not to be 
 too severe in our criticism of other nations. The failure 
 of the French invasion of Mexico under the Second Empire 
 seems like glory when compared with the failure of our 
 attempt to impose a hated sovereign on the Afghan 
 people. 
 
 Captain Burnes then was placed in the painful difii- 
 
THE DISA STERS OF CABUL. 
 
 155 
 
 culty of havir.g' 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 
 Barnes if he had simply declined to have anything to do 
 with a course of action which seemed to him at once 
 unjust and unwise. But Burnes was a young man, full of 
 youth's energy and ambition. He thought he saw a 
 career of distinction opening before him, and he v/as 
 unwilling to close it abruptly by setting himself in obsti- 
 nate opposition to his superiors. He was, besides, of a 
 quick mercurial temperament, over which mood followed 
 mood in rapid succession of change. A slight contradic- 
 tion sometimes threw him into momentary despondency ; 
 a gleam of hope elated him into the assurance that all 
 was won. It is probable that after awhile he may have 
 persuaded himself to acquiesce in the judgment of his 
 chiefs. On the other hand, Dost Mahomed was placed in 
 a position of great difficulty and danger. He had to 
 choose. He could not remain absolutely independent of 
 all the disputants. If England would not support him, 
 he must for his own safety find alliances elsewhere — in 
 Russian statecraft, for example. He told Burnes of this 
 again and again, and Burnes endeavored, without the 
 slightest success, to impress his superiors with his own 
 views as to the reasonableness of Dost Mahomed's argu- 
 ments. Runjeet Singh, the daring and successful ad- 
 venturer who had annexed the whole province of Cash- 
 mere to his dominions, was the enemy of Dost Mahomed 
 and the faithful ally of England. Dost Mahomed thought 
 the British Government could assist him in coming to terms 
 with Runjeet Singh, and Burnes had assured him that 
 the British Government would do all it could to establish 
 satisfactory terms of peace between Afghanistan and the 
 Punjaub, over which Runjeet Singh ruled. Burnes wrote 
 from Cabul to say that Russia had made substantial offers 
 to Dost Mahomed ; Persia had been lavish in her biddings 
 for his alliance ; Bokhara and other states had not been 
 backward ; " yet in all that has passed, or is daily trans- 
 piring, the chief of Cabul declares that he prefers the 
 sympathy and friendly offices of the British to all these 
 offers, however alluring they may seem, from Persia or 
 from the Emperor; w^hich places his good-sense in a 
 
156 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 light more than prominent, and in my humble judgment 
 j)roves that by an earlier attention to these countries we 
 might have escaped the whole of these intrigues and held 
 long since a stable influence in Cabul." Burnes, however, 
 was unable to impress his superiors with any belief either 
 in Dost Mahomed or in the policy which he himself advo- 
 cated, and the result was that Lord Auckland, the Gov- 
 ernor-general of India, at length resolved to treat Dost 
 Mahomed as an enemy, and to drive him from Cabul. 
 Lord Auckland, therefore, entered into a treaty with 
 Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, the exiled 
 representative of what we may call the legitimist rulers 
 of Afghanistan, for the restoration of the latter to the 
 throne of his ancestors, and for the destruction of the 
 power of Dost Mahomed. 
 
 It ought to be a waste of time to enter into any argu- 
 ment in condemnation of such a policy in our days. Even 
 if its results had not proved in this particular instance its 
 most striking and exemplary condemnation, it is so grossly 
 and flagrantly opposed to all the principles of our more 
 modern statesmanship that no one among us ought now 
 to need a warning against it. Dost Mahomed was the 
 accepted, popular, and successful ruler of Cabul. No 
 matter what our quarrel with him, we had not the slight- 
 est right to make it an excuse for forcing on his people a 
 ruler whom they had proved before, as they were soon to 
 prove again, that they thoroughly detested. Perhaps the 
 nearest parallel to our policy in this instance is to be 
 found m the French invasion of Mexico, and the disas-"" 
 trous 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 enterprise. 
 But the French Emperor could at least have pleaded in 
 his defence that Maximilian of Austria liad not already 
 been tried and rejected by the Mexican people. Our pro- 
 tege had been tried and rejected. The French Emperor 
 might have pleaded that he bad actual and substantial 
 wrongs to avenge. We had only problematical and possi- 
 ble dangers to guard against. In any case, as has been 
 already said, the calamities entailed on l^'j c^nch arms and 
 counsels by the Mexican intervention icjul like a page of 
 brilliant success when compared with the immediate 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL, 
 
 157 
 
 result of our enterprise in Cabul. Before passing away 
 from this part of the subject, it is necessary to mention 
 the fact that among its many unfortunate incidents the 
 campaign led to some peculiarly humiliating debates and 
 some lamentable accusations in the House of Commons. 
 Years after Burnes had been flung into his bloody grave, it 
 was found that the English Government had presented to 
 the House of Commons his despatclies in so mutilated 
 and altered a form, that Burnes was made to seem as if he 
 actually approved and recommended the policy which he 
 especially warned us to avoid. It is painful to have to 
 record such a fact, but it is indispensable that it should be 
 recorded. It would be vain to attempt to explain how 
 the principles and the honor of English statesmanship 
 fell, for the hour, under the demoralizing influence which 
 allowed such things to be thought legitimate. An Ori- 
 ential atmosphere seemed to have gathered around our 
 official leaders. In Afghanistan they were entering into 
 secret and treacherous treaties ; in England they were 
 garbling despatches. When, years after. Lord Palmer- 
 ston was called upon to defend the policy which had thus 
 dealt with the despatches of Alexander Burnes, he did 
 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 w^ere in nowise bound 
 to publish those passages of his despatches in which he 
 set forth assumptions which they believed to be un- 
 founded, and advised a policy Avhich they looked upon as 
 mistaken. Such a defence is only to be read with wonder 
 and pain. The Government were not accused of sup- 
 l)ressing passages which they believed, rightly or wrongly, 
 to be worthless. The accusation was that, by suppressing 
 passages and sentences here and there, Burnes was made 
 to appear as if he were actually recommending the policy 
 against which he was at the time most earnestly protest- 
 ing. Burnes was himself the first victim of the policy 
 which he strove against, and which all England has since 
 condenmed. ISTo severer word is needed to condemn the 
 mutilation of his despatches than to say that he was 
 actually made to stand before the country as responsible 
 for having recommended that very policy. " It should 
 never be forgotten," says Sir J. W. Ka3^e, the historian 
 of the Afghan War, " by those who would form a correct 
 
158 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 estimate of the character and career of Alexander Burnes, 
 that both had been misrepresented in those collections of 
 State papers which are supposed to furnish the best 
 materials of history, but which are often in reality only 
 one-sided compilations of garbled documents — counter- 
 feits, which the ministerial stamp forces into currency, 
 defrauding a present generation, and handing down to 
 posterity a chain of dangerous lies." 
 
 Meanwhile the Persian attack on Herat had practically 
 failed, owing mainly to the skill and spirit of a young 
 English officer, Eldred Pottinger, who was assisting the 
 prince in his resistance to the troops of the Persian 
 Shah. Lord Auckland, however, ordered the assemblage 
 of a British force for service across the Indus, and issued 
 a famous manifesto, dated from Simla, October 1st, 1838, in 
 which he set forth the motives of his policy. The Gover- 
 nor-general stated that Dost Mahomed had made a sudden 
 and unprovoked attack upon our ancient ally, Runjeet 
 Singh, and that when the Persian army was besieging 
 Herat, Dost Mahomed was giving undisguised support 
 to the designs of Persia. The chiefs of Candahar, the 
 brothers of Dost Mahomed, had also. Lord Auckland 
 declared, given in their adherence to the plan of Persia. 
 Great Britain regarded the advance of Persian arms in 
 Afghanistan as an act of hostility toward herself. The 
 Governor-general had, therefore, resolved to support the 
 claims of the Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, whose dominions 
 had been usurped by the existing rulers of Cabul, and 
 who had found an honorable asylum in British territory ; 
 and " whose popularity throughout Afghanistan " — Lord 
 Auckland wrote in words that must afterward have read 
 like the keenest and cruellest satire upon his policy — " had 
 been proved to his Lordship by the strong and unanimous 
 testimony of the best authorities." This popular sover- 
 eign, this favorite of his people, was at the time living in 
 exile, without the faintest hope of every again being 
 restored to his dominions. We pulled the poor man ou^t 
 of his obscurity, told him that his people were yearning 
 for him, and that we would set him on his throne once 
 more. We entered for the purpose into the tripartite 
 treaty already mentioned. Mr. (afterward Sir W. H.) 
 Macnaghten, Secretary to the Government of India, was 
 appointed to be envoy and minister at the court of Shah 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 159 
 
 Soojah ; and Sir Alexander Burnes (who had been recalled 
 from the court of Dost Mahomed, and rewarded with a 
 title for giving the advice which his superiors thought 
 absurd) was deputed to act under his direction. It is 
 only right to say that the policy of Lord Auckland had the 
 entire approval of the British Government. It was after- 
 ward stated in parliament on the part of the ministry 
 that a despatch recommending to Lord Auckland exactly 
 such a course as he pursued crossed on the way his de- 
 spatch announcing to the Government at home that he 
 had already undertaken the enterprise. 
 
 We conquered Dost Mahomed and dethroned him. He 
 made a bold and brilliant, sometimes even a splendid 
 resistance. We took Ghuznee by blowing up one of its 
 gates with bags of powder, and thus admitting the rush 
 of a storming-party. It was defended by one of the sons 
 of Dost Mahomed,*^ who became our prisoner. We took 
 Jellalabad, which was defended by Akbar Khan, another 
 of Dost Mahomed's sons, whose name came afterward to 
 have a hateful sound in all English ears. As we ap- 
 proached Cabul, Dost Mahomed abandoned his capital 
 and fled with a few horsemen across the Indus. Shah 
 Soojah entered Cabul accompanied by the British officers. 
 It was to have been a triumphal entry. The hearts of 
 those who believed in his cause must have sunk within 
 them when they saw how the Shah was received by the 
 people who. Lord Auckland was assured, were so devoted 
 to him. The city received him in sullen silence. Few of 
 its people condescended even to turn out to see him as he 
 passed. The vast majority stayed away, and disdained 
 even to look at him. One would have thought that the 
 least observant eye must have seen that his throne could 
 not last a moment longer than the time during which the 
 strength of Brita^in was willing to support it. The British 
 army, however, withdrew, leaving only a contingent of 
 some eight thousand men, besides the Shah's own hire- 
 lings, to maintain him for the present. Sir W. Macnaghten 
 seems to have really believed that the work was done, 
 and that Shah Soojah was as safe on his throne as Queen 
 Victoria. He was destined to be very soon and very 
 cruelly undeceived. 
 
 Dost Mahomed made more than one effort to regain his 
 place. He invaded Shah Soojah's dominions, and met the 
 
160 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 combined forces of the Shah and theh^ Enghsh ally m 
 more than one battle. On ^sTovember 2d, 1840, he won 
 the admiration of the English themselves by the brilliant 
 stand he made against them. With his Afghan horse he 
 drove onr cavalry before him, and forced them to seek 
 the shelter of the British gnns. The native troopers 
 would not stand against him: they fled and left their Eng- 
 lish officers, who vainly tried to rally them. In this battle 
 of Purwandurrali victory might not unreasonably have 
 been claimed for Dost Mahomed. He Avon 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 Avell 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 uj) by a seeming triumph over a 
 great Power, and is led to his destruction by the vain 
 hope that he can hold out against it to the last. Dost 
 Mahomed had no such ignorant and idle notion. Perhaps 
 he knew well enough, too, that time was wholly on his 
 side ; that he had only to wait and see the sovereignty of 
 Shah Soojah tumble into pieces. The evening after his 
 brilliant exploit in the field Dost Mahomed rode quietly 
 to the quarters of Sir W. Macnaghten, met the envoy, 
 who was returning from an evening ride, and to Mac- 
 naghten's utter amazement announced himself as Dost 
 Mahomed, tendered to the envoy the sword that had 
 flashed so splendidly across the field of the previous day's 
 fight, and surrendered himself a prisoner. His sword was 
 returned ; he was treated with all honor ; and a few days 
 afterward he was sent to India, where a residence and a 
 revenue were assigned to him. 
 
 But the withdrawal of Dost Mahomed from the scene 
 did nothing to secure the reign of the unfortunate Shah 
 Soojah. The Shall was hated on his own account. He 
 was regarded as a traitor who had sold his country to the 
 foreigners. Insurrections began to be chronic. They 
 were going on in the very midst of Cabul itself. Sir W. 
 Macnaghten was warned of danger, but seemed to take no 
 heed. Some fatal blindness appears to have suddenly 
 fallen on the eyes of our people in Cabul. On November 
 2d, 1841, an insurrection l)roke out. Sir Alexander Ihirnes 
 liv«d in the city itselt'; Sir W. Macnaghten and the 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 IGl 
 
 military commander, Major-general Elphinstone, were in 
 cantonments at some little distance. The insurrection 
 might have been put down in the first instance with 
 hardly the need even of Napoleon's famous "whiff of 
 grape-shot." But it was allowed to grow up without 
 attempt at control. Sir Alexander Burnes could not be 
 got to believe that it was anything serious, even when 
 a fanatical and furious mob were besieging his own house. 
 The fanatics were especially bitter against Burnes, because 
 they believed that he had been guilty of treachery. They 
 accused him of having pretended to be the friend of Dost 
 Mahomed, deceived him, and brought the English into the 
 country. How entirely innocent of this charge Burnes 
 was we all now know ; but it would be idle to deny that 
 there w^as much in the external aspect of events to excuse 
 such a suspicion in the mind of an infuriated Afghan. To 
 the last Burnes refused to believe that he was in danger. 
 He had always been a friend to the Afghans, he said, and 
 he could have nothing to fear. It was true. He had 
 always been the sincere friend of the Afghans. It was his 
 misfortune, and the heavy fault of his superiors, that he 
 had been made to appear as an enemy of the Afghans. He 
 had now to ]3ay 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 understood, up to the very last moment, that 
 by reminding them that he was Alexander Burnes, their 
 old friend, he was only giving them a new reason for 
 demanding his life. He was murdered in the tumult. 
 He and his brother anc^ all those with them were hacked 
 to pieces with Afghan knives. He was only in his thirty- 
 seventh year Avhen he was murdered. He was the first 
 victim of the policy which had resolved to intervene in 
 the affairs of Afghanistan. Fate seldom showed with 
 more strange and bitter malice her proverbial irony than 
 when she made him the first victim of the policy adopted 
 in despite of his best advice and his strongest warnings. 
 
 The murder of Burnes was not a climax ; it was only a 
 beginning. The English troops were quartered in canton- 
 ments outside the city, and at some little distance from it. 
 These cantonments were, in any case of real difficulty, 
 practically indefensible. The popular monarch, the dar- 
 ling of his people, whom we had restored to his throne, 
 
 11 
 
162 A mSTORY OF Otin OWN TlME^. 
 
 was in the Balla Hissar, or citadel of Cabul. From the 
 moment when tlie insurrection broke out he may be 
 regarded as a prisoner or a besieged man there. He was 
 as utterly unable to help our people as they were to help 
 him. The whole country threw itself into insurrection 
 against him and us. The Afghans attacked the canton- 
 ments, and actually compelled the English to abandon the 
 forts in which all our commissariat was stored. We were 
 thus threatened with famine, even if we could resist the 
 enemy in arms. We were strangely unfortunate in our 
 civil and military leaders. Sir W. Macnaghten was a man 
 of high character and good purpose, but he was weak and 
 credulous. The commander, General Elphinstone, was 
 old, infirm, tortured by disease, broken down both in mind 
 and body, incapable of forming a purpose of his own, or 
 of holding to one suggested by anybody else. His second 
 in command was a far stronger and abler man, but 
 unhappily the two could never agree. " They were both 
 of them," says Sir J. W. Kaye, "brave men. In anj^ 
 other situation, though the physical infirmities of the one 
 and the cankered vanity, the dogmatical perverseness of 
 the other, might have in some measure detracted from 
 their efficiency as military commanders, I believe they 
 would have exhibited sufficient courage and constancy to 
 rescue an army from utter destruction, and the British 
 name from indelible reproach. But in the Cabul canton- 
 ments they were miserably out of place. .They seem to 
 have been sent there, by superhuman intervention, to 
 work out the utter ruin and prcjstration of an unholy 
 policy by ordinary human means." One fact must be 
 mentioned by an English historian — one which an English 
 historian has happily not often to record. It is certain 
 that an officer in our service entered into negotiations for 
 the murder of the insurgent chiefs, who were our worst 
 enemies. It is more than probable that he believed in 
 doing so he was acting as Sir W. Macnaghten would have 
 had him do. Sir W. Macnaghten was innocent of any 
 complicity in such a plot, and was incapable of it. But 
 the negotiations were opened and carried on in his name. 
 
 A new figure appeared on the scene, a dark and a fierce 
 apj)arition. This was Akbar Khan, the favorite son of 
 Dost Mahomed. He was a daring, a clever, an unscrupu- 
 lous young man. From the moment when he entered 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL, 
 
 163 
 
 Cabal he became the real leader of the insurrection 
 against Shah Soojali and us. Macnaghten, persuaded by 
 the military commander that the position of things was 
 hopeless, consented to enter into negotiations with Akbar 
 Khan. Before the arrival of the latter the chiefs of the 
 insurrection had offered us terms which made the ears of 
 our envoy tingle. Such terms had not often been even 
 suggested to British soldiers before. They were simply 
 unconditional surrender. Macnaghten indignantly re- 
 jected them. Everything went wrong with him, how- 
 ever. We were beaten again and again by the Afghans. 
 Our officers never faltered in their duty ; but the melan- 
 choly truth has to be told that the men, most of wiiom 
 were Asiatics, at last began to lose heart and would not 
 fight the enemy. So the envoy was compelled to enter 
 into terms with Akbar Khan and the other chiefs. Akbar 
 Khan received him at first with contemptuous insolence — 
 as a haughty conqueror receives some ignoble and humili- 
 ated adversary. It was agreed that the British troops 
 should quit Afghanistan at once ; that Dost Mahomed and 
 family should be sent back to Afghanistan ; that on his 
 return the unfortunate Shah Soojah should be allowed to 
 take himself off to India or where he would ; and that 
 some British officers should be left at Cabul as hostages 
 for the fulfilment of the conditions. 
 
 The evacuation did not take place at once, although the 
 fierce winter was setting in, and the snow was falling 
 heavily, ominously. Macnaghten seems to have had still 
 some lingering hopes that something would turn up to 
 relieve him from the shame of quitting the country ; and 
 it must be owned that he does not seem to have had any 
 intention of carrying out the terms of the agreement if by 
 any chance he could escape from them. On both sides 
 there Avere dallyings and delays. At last Akbar Khan 
 made a new and startling proposition to our envoy. It 
 was that they two should enter into a secret treaty, 
 should unite their arms against the other chiefs, and 
 should keep Shah Soojah on the throne as nominal king, 
 with Akbar Khan as his vizier. Macnaghten caught at 
 the proposals. He had entered into terms of negotiation 
 with the Afghan chiefs together; he now consented to 
 enter into a secret treaty with one of the chiefs to turn 
 their joint arms against the others. It would be idle and 
 
164 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 shameful to attempt to defend such a policy. We can 
 only excuse it by considering the terrible circumstances 
 of Macnaghten's position, the manner in which his nerves 
 and moral fibre had been shaken and shattered by ca- 
 lamities, and his doubts whether he could place any reli- 
 ance on the promises of the chiefs. He had apparently 
 sunk into that condition of mind which Macaulay tells us 
 that Clive adopted so readily in his dealings with Asiat- 
 ics, and under the influence of which men naturally hon- 
 orable and high-minded come to believe that it is right to 
 act treacherously with those whom we believe to be treach- 
 erous. All this is but excuse, and rather poor excuse. 
 When it has all been said and thought of, we must still 
 be glad to believe that there are not many Englishmen 
 who would, under any circumstances, have consented even 
 to give a hearing to the proposals of Akbar Khan. 
 
 Whatever Macnaghten's error, it was dearly expiated. 
 He went out at noon next day to confer with Akbar Khan 
 on the banks of the neighboring river. Three of his offi- 
 cers were with him. Akbar Khan was ominously sur- 
 rounded by friends and retainers. These kept pressing 
 round the unfortunate envoy. Some remonstrances was 
 made by one of the English officers, but Akbar Khan said 
 it was of no consequence, as they were all in the secret. 
 Not many words were spoken; the expected conference 
 had hardly begun when a signal was given or an order 
 issued by Akbar Khan, and the envoy and the officers 
 were suddenly seized from behind. A scene of wild con- 
 fusion followed, in which hardly anything is clear and 
 certain but the one most horrible iiicident. The envoy 
 struggled with Akbar Khan, who had himself seized Mac- 
 naghten ; Akbar Khan drew from his belt one of a pair 
 of pistols which Macnaghten had presented to him a short 
 time before, and shot him through the body. The fanat- 
 ics who were crowding round hacked the body to pieces 
 with their knives. Of the three officers one was killed on 
 the 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, 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 165 
 
 did not contemplate more than the seizure of the envoy 
 and his officers. There were jealousies and disputes among 
 the chiefs of the insurrection. One of them, in especial, 
 had got his mind filled with the conviction, inspired, no 
 doubt, by the unfortunate and unparalleled negotiation 
 already mentioned, that the envoy had offered a price for 
 his head. Akbar Khan Avas accused by him of being a 
 secret friend of the envoy and the English. Akbar Khan's 
 father w\as a captive in the hands of the English, and it 
 may have been thought that on his account and for per- 
 sonal purposes Akbar was favoring the envoy, and even 
 intriguing with him. Akbar offered to prove his sincerity 
 by making the envoy a captive and handing him over to 
 the chiefs. This was the treacherous plot which he strove 
 to carry out by entering into the secret negotiations with 
 the easily-deluded envoy. On the fatal day the latter 
 resisted and struggled ; Akbar Khan heard a cry of alarm 
 that the English soldiers were coming out of the canton- 
 ments to rescue the envoy ; and, wild with passion, he 
 suddenly drew his pistol and fired. This was the state- 
 ment made again and again by Akbar Khan himself. It 
 does not seem an improbable explanation for what other- 
 wise looks a murder as stupid and purposeless as it was 
 brutal. The explanation does not much relieve the dark- 
 ness of Akbar Khan's character. It is given here as his- 
 tory, not as exculpation. There is not the slightest reason 
 to suppose that Akbar Khan would have shrunk from 
 any treachery or any cruelty which served his purpose. 
 His own explanation of his purpose in this instance shows 
 a degree of treachery which could hardly be surpassed 
 even in the East. But it is well to bear in mind that the 
 suspicion of perfidy under which the English em^oy 
 labored, and Avhich w^as the main impulse of Akbar Khan's 
 movement, had evidence enough to support it in the eyes 
 of suspicious enemies ; and that poor Macnaghten would 
 not have been murdered had he not consented to meet 
 Akbar Khan and treat with him on a proposition to which 
 an English official should never have listened. 
 
 A terrible agony of suspense followed among the little 
 English force in the cantonments. The military chiefs 
 afterward stated that they did not know until the follow- 
 ing day that any calamity had befallen the envoy. But 
 a keen suspicion ran through the cantonments that some 
 
166 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 fearful deed had been done. No step was taken to avenge 
 the death of Macnaghten, even when it became known 
 that his hacked and mangled body had been exhibited in 
 triumph all through the streets and bazars of Cabul. A 
 paralysis seemed to have fallen over the councils of our 
 military chiefs. On December 24th, 1841, came a letter 
 from one of the officers seized by Akbar Khan, accom- 
 panying proposals for a treaty from the Afghan chiefs. It 
 is hard now to understand how any English officers could 
 have consented to enter into terms with the murderers 
 of Macnaghten before his mangled body could well have 
 ceased to bleed. It is strange that it did not occur to 
 most of them that there was an alternative ; that they 
 were not ordered by fate to accept whatever the conquerors 
 chose to offer. We can all see the difficulty of their posi- 
 tion. General Elphinstone and his second in command, 
 Brigadier Shelton, were convinced that it would be equally 
 impossible to stay where they were or to cut their way 
 through the Afghans. But it might have occurred to 
 many that they were nevertheless not bound to treat with 
 the 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 v/as hardly taken into 
 consideration. It was determined to treat with the Af- 
 ghans ; and treating with the Afghans now meant accept- 
 ing any terms the Afghans chose to impose on their fallen 
 enemies. In the negotiations that went on, some written 
 documents were exchanged. One of these, drawn up by 
 the Englisli negotiators, contains a short sentence which 
 we believe to be absolutely unique in the history of British 
 dealings with armed enemies. It is an appeal to the 
 Afghan conquerors not to be too hard upon the vanquished ; 
 not to ])i'eak the bruised reed. "In friendship, kindness 
 and consideration are necessary, not overpowering the 
 weak with sufferings ! " In friendship ! — we appealed to 
 
THE DISASTEns OF CABUL, 
 
 167 
 
 the friendship of Macnaghten's murderers ; to the friend- 
 ship, in any case, of the man whose father we had de- 
 throned and driven into exile. Not overpowering the 
 weak with sufferings ! Tlie weak were the English ! One 
 might fancy he was reading the plaintive and piteous 
 appeal of some forlorn and feeble tribe of helpless half- 
 breeds for the mercy of arrogant and mastering rulers. 
 " Suffolk's imperious tongue is stern and rough," says 
 one in Shakspeare's pages, when he is bidden to ask for 
 consideration at the hands of captors whom he is no longer 
 able to resist. The tongue with which the English force 
 at Cabul addressed the Afghans was not imperious or 
 stern or rough. It was bated, mild, and plaintive. Only " 
 the other day, it would seem, these men had blown up 
 the gates of Ghuznee, and rushed through the dense smoke 
 and the falling ruins to attack the enemy hand to hand. 
 Only the other day our envoy had received in surrender 
 the bright sword of Dost Mahomed. Now the same men 
 who had seen these things could only plead for a little 
 gentleness of consideration, and had no thought of resist- 
 ance, and did not any longer seem to know how to die. 
 
 We accepted the terms of treaty offered to us. Nothing 
 else could be done by men Avho were not prepared to 
 adopt the advice of the heroic father in Corneille. The 
 English were at once to take themselves off out of Af- 
 ghanistan, giving up all their guns except six, which they 
 were allowed to retain for their necessary defence in 
 their mournful journey home ; they were to leave behind 
 all the treasure, and to guarantee the payment of some- 
 thing additional for the safe-conduct of the poor little 
 army to Pesliawur or to Jellalabad ; and they were to 
 hand over six officers as hostages for the due fulfilment 
 of the conditions. It is of course understood that the 
 conditions included the immediate release of Dost Ma- 
 homed and his family and their return to Afghanistan. 
 When these should return, the six hostages were to be 
 released. Only one concession had been obtained from 
 the conquerors. It was at first demanded that some of 
 the married ladies should be left as hostages ; but on the 
 urgent representations of the English officers this condi- 
 tion was waived — at least for the moment. When the 
 treaty was signed, the officers Avho had been seized when 
 Macnaghten was murdered were released. 
 
168 
 
 A mSTORY Oi^ OUB OWJSf TIME^. 
 
 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 des- 
 perate efforts which Akbar Khan had to make to save 
 him from the fury of the mob, who thronged thirsting 
 for the blood of the Englishman up to the very stirrup of 
 their young chief. " Akbar Khan," says this officer, " at 
 length drew his sword and laid about him right man- 
 fully" in defence of his prisoner. When, however, he 
 had got the latter into a place of safety, the impetuous 
 young Afghan chief could not restrain a sneer at his 
 captive and the cause his captive represented. Turning 
 to the English officer, he said more than once, " in a 
 tone of triumphant derision," some words such as 
 these : " So you are the man who came here to seize my 
 country?" It must be owned that the condition of 
 things gave bitter meaning to the taunt, if they did not 
 actually excuse it. At a later period of this melancholy 
 story it is told by Lady Sale that crowds of the fanatical 
 Ghilzyes were endeavoring to persuade Akbar Khan 
 to slaughter all the English, and that when he tried 
 to pacify them they said that when Burnes came into 
 the country they entreated Akbar Khan's father to 
 have Burnes killed, or he would go back to Hindostan, 
 and on some future day return and bring an army 
 with him, " to take our country from us ; " and all the 
 calamities had come upon them because Dost Mahomed 
 would not take their advice. Akbar Khan either was or 
 pretended to be moderate. He might, indeed, safely put 
 on an air of magnanimity. His enemies were doomed. 
 It needed no command from him to decree their destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The withdrawal from Cabul began. It was the heart of 
 a cruel winter. The English had to make their way 
 through the awful pass of Koord Cabul. This stupendous 
 gorge runs for some five miles between mountain ranges so 
 narrow, lofty, and grim, that in the winter season the 
 rays of the sun can hardly pierce its darkness even at the 
 noontide. Down tlie centre dashed a precipitous moun- 
 tain torrent so fiercely that the stern frost of that terrible 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 169 
 
 time could not stay its course. The snow lay in masses 
 on the ground ; the rocks and stones that raised their 
 heads above the snoAV in the way of the unfortunate 
 travellers Avere slippery with frost. Soon the white snow 
 began to be stained and splashed with blood. Fearful as 
 this Koord Cabul Pass was, it was only a degree Avorse 
 than the road which for two whole days the English had 
 to traverse to reach it. The army which set out from 
 * Cabul numbered more than four thousand fighting men — 
 of Avhom Europeans, it should be said, formed but a small 
 proportion — and some twelve thousand camp followers of 
 all kinds. There Avere also many Avomen and children. 
 Lady Macnaghten, Avidow of the murdered envoy ; Lady 
 Sale, Avhose gallant husband Avas holding Jellalabad, at 
 the near end of the Khyber Pass, toAvard the Lidian fron- 
 tier ; Mrs. Stuart, her daughter, soon to be widowed by 
 the death of her young husband ; Mrs. Trevor and her 
 seven children, and many other pitiable fugitives. The 
 Avinter journey Avould have been cruel and dangerous 
 enough in time of peace ; but this journey had to be ac- 
 complished in the midst of something far Avorse than 
 common Avar. At every step of the road, every opening 
 of the rocks, the unhappy crowd of confused and heteroge- 
 neous fugitives Avere beset by bands of savage fanatics, 
 who Avith their long guns and long knives were murdering 
 all they could reach. It was all the Avay a confused con- 
 stant battle against a guerilla enemy of the most furious 
 and merciless temper, Avho were perfectly familiar with 
 the ground, and could rush forAvard and retire exactly as 
 suited their tactics. The English soldiers, Aveary, weak, 
 and crippled by frost, could make but a poor fight against 
 the savage Afghans. " It Avas no longer," says Sir J. W. 
 Kaye, " a retreating army ; it was a rabble in chaotic 
 flight." Men, Avomen, and children, horses, ponies, camels, 
 the Avounded, the dying, the dead, all croAvded together 
 in almost inextricable confusion among the snoAV and 
 amidst the relentless enemies. " The massacre " — to quote 
 again from Sir J. W. Kaye, " Avas fearful in this Koord 
 Cabul Pass. Three thousand men are said to have fallen 
 under the fire of the enemy, or to have dropped doAA^i par- 
 alyzed and exhausted to be slaughtered by the Afghan 
 knives. And amidst these fearful scenes of carnage, 
 through a shower of match-lock balls, rode English ladies 
 
170 
 
 A IIISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 on horseback or in camel-panniers, sometimes vainly 
 endeavoring to keep their children beneath their eyes, and 
 losing tliem in the confusion and bewilderment of the 
 desolating march." 
 
 Was it for this, then, that our troops had been induced 
 to capitulate? Was this the safe-conduct which the 
 Afghan chiefs had promised in return for their accepting 
 the ignominious conditions imposed on them ? Some of 
 the chiefs did exert themselves to their utmost to protect • 
 the unfortunate English. It is not certain what the real 
 wish of Akbar Khan may have been. He protested that 
 he had no power to restrain the hordes of fanatical 
 Ghilzyes whose own immediate chiefs had not authority 
 enough to keep them from murdering the English when- 
 ever they got a chance. The force of some few hundred 
 horsemen whom Akbar Khan had with him were utterly 
 incapable, he declared, of maintaining order among such 
 a mass of infuriated and lawless savages. Akbar Khan 
 constantly appeared on the scene during this journey of 
 terror. At every opening or break of the long straggling 
 flight he and his little band of followers showed them- 
 selves on the horizon: trying still to protect the English 
 from utter ruin, as he declared ; come to gloat over their 
 misery, and to see that it was surely accomplished, some 
 of the unhappy EngUsh were ready to believe. Yet his 
 presence was something that seemed to give a hope of 
 protection. Akbar Khan at length startled the English 
 by a proposal that the women and children who were with 
 the army sliould be handed over to his custody to .be con- 
 veyed by him in safety to Peshawur. There was nothing 
 better to be done. The only modification of his request, 
 or command, that could be obtained was that the husbands 
 of the married ladies should accompany tlieir wives. Witli 
 this agreement tlie women and children were handed over 
 to the care of this dreaded enemy, and Lady Macnagliten 
 had to undergo the agony of a personal interview with 
 the man wliose own hand had killed her husband. Eew 
 scenes in })()etry 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 tlie married men whose 
 
TBE DiSASTEnS OF CABUL, 
 
 171 
 
 wives were among this party were taken from tlie mifort- 
 nnate army and placed under the care of Akbar Khan. 
 As events turned out, this proved a fortunate thing for 
 them. But in any case it was the best thing that could 
 be done. Not one of these women and children could have 
 lived through the horrors of the journey which lay before 
 the remnant of what had once been a British force. The 
 march was resumed ; new horrors set in ; new heaps of 
 corpses stained the snow ; and then Akbar Khan presented 
 himself with a fresh proposition. In the treaty made at 
 Cabul between the English authorities and the Afghan 
 chiefs there was an article which stipulated that "the 
 English force at Jellalabad shall march for Peshawur 
 before the Cabul army arrives, and shall not delay on the 
 road." Akbar Khan was especially anxious to get rid of 
 the little army at Jellalabad, at the near end of the 
 Khyber Pass. He desired above all things that it should 
 be on the march home to India ; either that it might be out 
 of his way, or that he might have a chance of destroying 
 it on its way. It was in great measure as a security for 
 its moving that he desired to have the women and children 
 under his care. It is not likely that he meant any harm 
 to the women and children ; it must be remembered that 
 his father and many of the women of his family were 
 under the control of the British Government as prisoners 
 in Hindostan. But he fancied that if he had the English 
 women in his hands the army at Jellalabad could not 
 refuse to obey the condition set down in the article of the 
 treaty. Now that he had the women in his power, how- 
 ever, he demanded other guarantees with openly acknowl- 
 edged purpose of keeping these latter until Jellalabad 
 should have been evacuated. He demanded that General 
 Elphinstone, the commander, with his second in command, 
 and also one other officer, should hand themselves over to 
 him as hostages. He promised, if this were done, to exert 
 himself more than before to restrain the fanatical tribes, 
 and also to provide the army 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 
 
172 
 
 A msTOHY OF am own times. 
 
 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 JugduUuk 
 Pass — a dark, steep, narrow, ascending path between crags. 
 The miserable toilers found that the fanatical, implacable 
 tribes had barricaded the pass. All was over. The army 
 of Cabnl 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 th5 number was reduced to 
 six. Of these six, five were killed by straggling maraud- 
 ers on the way. One man alone reached Jellalabad to 
 tell the tale. Literally one man. Dr. Brydon, came to 
 Jellalabad out of a moving host which had numbered in 
 all some sixteen thousand when it set out on its march. 
 The curious eye will search through history or fiction in 
 vain for any picture more thrilling with the suggestions 
 of an awful catastrox^he than that of this solitary survivor, 
 faint and reeling on his jaded horse, as he appeared under 
 the walls of Jellalabad, to bear the tidings of our Ther- 
 mopylae of pain and shame, 
 
 This is the crisis of the story. With this, at least, the 
 worst of the pain and shame were destined to end. The 
 rest is all, so far as we are concerned, reaction and recov- 
 ery. Our successes are common enough; we may tell 
 their tale briefly in this instance. The garrison at Jella- 
 labad had received, before Dr. Brydon's arrival, an inti- 
 mation that they were to go out and march toward India 
 in accordance with the terms of the treaty extorted from 
 Elphinstone at Cabul. They very properly declined to be 
 bound by a treaty which, as General Sale rightly eonject- 
 ured had been " forced from our envoy and military com- 
 mander with the knives at their throats." General Sale's 
 determination was clear and simple. " I propose to hold 
 this place on the part of Government until I receive its 
 order to the contrary." This resolve of Sale's was really 
 the turning-point of the history. Sale held Jellalabad ; 
 Nott was at Candahar. Akbar Khan besieged Jellalabad. 
 Xature 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 de- 
 
WJi: DiSASTEBS OF CABUL. 
 
 struction than the most formidable guns of modern warfare 
 could have done. But the garrison held out fearlessl}^ ; 
 they restored the parapets, re-established every battery, 
 re-trenched the whole of the gates, and built up all the 
 breaches. They resisted every attempt of Akbar Khan to 
 advance upon their works, and at length, when it became 
 certain that General Pollock was forcing the Khyber Pass 
 to come to their relief, they determined to attack Akbar 
 Khan's army ; they issued boldly out of their forts, forced 
 a battle on the Afghan chief, and completely defeated 
 him. Before Pollock, having gallantly fought his way 
 through the Khyber Pass, had reached Jellalabad, the 
 beleaguering army had been entirely defeated and dis- 
 persed. General Nott at Candahar was ready now to co- 
 operate with General Sale and General Pollock for any 
 movement on Gabul which the authorities might advise 
 or sanction. Meanwhile the unfortunate Shah Soojah, 
 \^hom we had restored with so much pomp of announce- 
 ment to the throne of his ancestors, was dead. He was 
 assassinated in Cabul, soon after the departure of the 
 British, by the orders of some of the chiefs who detested 
 him ; and his body, stripped of its royal robes and its many 
 jewels, was flung into a ditch. Historians quarrel a good 
 deal over the question of his sincerity and fidelity in his 
 dealings with us. It is not likely that an Oriental of his 
 temperament and his weakness could have been capable 
 of any genuine and unmixed loyalty to the English stran- 
 gers. It seems to us probable enough that he may at im- 
 portant moments have wavered and even faltered, glad to 
 take advantage of any movement that might safely rid 
 him of us, and yet, on the whole, preferring our friend- 
 ship and our protection to the tender mercies which he 
 was doomed to experience when our troops had left him. 
 But if we ask concerning his gratitude to us, it may be 
 well also to ask what there was in our conduct toward him 
 which called for any enthusiastic display of gratitude. We 
 did not help him out of any love for him, or any concern 
 for the justice of his cause. It served us to have a pup- 
 pet, and we took him when it suited us. We also aban- 
 doned him when it suited us. As Lady Teazle pro- 
 poses to do with honor in her conference with Joseph 
 Surface, so we ought to do with gratitude in discussing 
 the merits of Shah Soojah — leave it out of the question. 
 
174 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 What Shah Soojah owed to us was a few weeks of idle 
 pomp and absurd dreams, a bitter awakening, and a 
 shameful death. 
 
 During this time a new Governor-general had arrived 
 in India. Lord Auckland's time had run out, and during 
 its latter months he had become nerveless and despond- 
 ent because of the utter failure of the policy which, in an 
 evil hour for himself and his country, he had been 
 induced to undertake. It does not seem that it ever was 
 at hea*rt a policy of his own, and he knew that the East 
 India Company were altogether opposed to it. The com- 
 pany were well aware of the vast expense which our enter- 
 prises in Afghanistan must impose on the revenues of 
 India, and they looked forward e^igerly to the earliest 
 opportunity of bringing it to a close. Lord Auckland had 
 been persuaded into adopting it against his better judg- 
 ment, and against even the whisperings of his conscience ; 
 and now he too longed to be done with it ; but he wished 
 to leave Afghanistan as a magnanimous conqueror. He 
 had in his own person discounted the honors of victory. 
 He had received an earldom for the services he was pre- 
 sumed to have rendered to his sovereign and his country. 
 He had, therefore, in full sight that mournful juxtaposi- 
 tion of incongruous objects which a great English writer 
 has described so touchingly and tersely — the trophies of 
 victory and the battle lost. He was an honorable, kindly 
 gentleman, and the news of all the successive calamities 
 fell upon him with a crushing, an overwhelming weight. 
 In plain language, the Governor-general lost his head. 
 He seemed to have no other idea than that of getting all 
 our troops as quickly as might be out of Afghanistan, and 
 shaking the dust of the place off our feet forever. It may 
 be doubted whether, if we had pursued such a policy as 
 this, we might not as well have left India itself once for 
 all. If we had allowed it to seem clear to the Indian popu- 
 lations and princes that we could be driven out of Af- 
 ghanistan with humiliation and disaster, and that we were 
 unable or afraid to strike one blow to redeem our military 
 credit, Ave should before long have seen in Hindostan 
 many an attempt to enact there the scenes of Cabul and 
 Candahar. Unless a moralist is prepared to say that a 
 nation which has committed one error of policy is bound 
 in conscience to take all the worst and most protracted 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 175 
 
 consequences of that error, and never make any attempt 
 to protect itself against them, even a moralist of the 
 most scrupulous character can hardly deny that we were 
 bound, for the sake of our interests in Europe as well as 
 in India, to prove that our strength had not been broken 
 nor our counsels paralyzed by the disasters in Afghanis- 
 tan. Yet Lord Auckland does not appear to have tliought 
 anything of the kind either needful or within the compass 
 of our national strength. He was, in fact, a broken man. 
 
 His successor came out with the brightest hopes of 
 India and the world, founded on his energy and strength 
 of mind. The successor was Lord Ellenborough, the son 
 of that Edward LaAV, afterward Lord Ellenborough, Chief - 
 justice of the King's Bench, who had been leading counsel 
 for Warren Hastings when the latter was impeached 
 before the House of Lords. The second Ellenborough 
 was, at the time of his appointment, filling the office of 
 President of the Board of Control, an ofiice 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 Melbourne Ministry. He was 
 looked upon as a man of great ability and energy. It Avas 
 known that his personal predilections were for the career 
 of a soldier. He was fond of telling his hearers then and 
 since that the life of a camp was that which he should 
 have loved to lead. He was a man of great and, in certain 
 lights, apparently splendid abilities. There was a certain 
 Orientalism about his language, his aspirations, and his 
 policy. He loved gorgeousness and dramatic — ill-natured 
 persons said theatric — effects. Life arranged itself in his 
 eyes as a superb and showy pageant, of which it would 
 have been his ambition to form the central figure. His 
 eloquence was often of a lofty and noble order. Men who 
 are still hardly of middle age can remember Lord Ellen- 
 borough on great occasions in the House of Lords, and 
 can recollect their having been deeply impressed by him, 
 even though they had but lately heard such s^^eakers as 
 Gladstone or Bright in the other House. It was not easy, 
 indeed, sometimes to avoid the conviction that in listen- 
 ing to Lord Ellenborough one was listening to a really 
 great orator of a somewhat antique and stately type, who 
 attuned his speech to the pitch of an age of loftier and 
 less prosaic aims than ours. When he had a great ques- 
 
176 
 
 A IIISTOEY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 tion to deal with, and when his instincts, if not his reason- 
 ing power, had put him on the riglit or at least the effec- 
 tive side of it, he could speak in a tone of poetic and 
 elevated eloquence to which it was impossible to listen 
 without emotion. But if Lord EUenborough was in some 
 respects a man of genius, he was also a man whose love 
 of mere effects often made liim 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 EUenborough was one of these. Far 
 greater men than he must be associated in the same 
 category. The elder Pitt, the first Napoleon, Mirabeau, 
 Bolingbroke, and many others, were men in whom un- 
 doubtedly some of the charlatan was mixed up with some 
 of the very highest qualities of genius. In Lord EUenbor- 
 ough this blending was strongly and sometimes even 
 startlingly apparent. To this hour there are men who 
 knew him well in public and private on Avhom his weak- 
 nesses made so disproportionate an impression that they 
 can see in liim little more than a mere charlatan. This is 
 entirely unjust. He was a man of great abilities and 
 earnestness, who had in him a strange dash of the play- 
 actor, who at the most serious moment of emergency 
 always thought of how to display himself effectively, and 
 who would have met the peril of an empire, as poor Nar- 
 cissa met death, with an overmastering desire to show to 
 the best personal advantage. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough's appointment was hailed by all par- 
 ties in India as the most auspicious that could be made. 
 Here, people said, is surely the great stage for a great 
 actor ; and now the great actor is coming. There would 
 be something fascinating to a temper like his in the 
 thought of redeeming the military honor of his country 
 and standing out in history as the avenger of the shames 
 of Cabul. But those who thought in this way found them- 
 selves suddenly disappointed. Lord EUenborough uttered 
 and wrote a few showy sentences about revenging our 
 losses and "re-establishing in all its original brilliancy 
 our military character." But wlien he had done this he 
 seemed to have relieved his mhid 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 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 177 
 
 said these fine words, and tlien at once he announced that 
 the only object of the Government was to get the troops 
 out of Afglianistan as quicl^ly as might be, and almost on 
 any terms. The whole of Lord Ellenborough's conduct 
 during this crisis is inexplicable, except on the assump- 
 tion that he really did not know at certain times how to 
 distinguish between phrases and actions. A general out- 
 cry was raised in India and among the troops in Afghan- 
 istan against the extraordinary policy which Lord Ellen- 
 borough propounded. Englishmen, in fact, refused to be- 
 lieve in it ; took it as something that must be put aside. 
 English soldiers could not believe that they were to be 
 recalled after defeat ; they persisted in the conviction 
 that, let the Governor-general say what he might, his in- 
 tention must be that the army should retrieve its fame 
 and retire only after complete victory. The Governor- 
 general himself after awhile quietly acted on this inter- 
 pretation of his meaning. He allowed the military com- 
 manders in Afghanistan to pull their resources together 
 and prepare for inflicting signal chastisement on the 
 enemy. They were not long in doing this. They en- 
 countered the enemy wherever he showed himself and 
 defeated him. They recaptured toAvn after town, until at 
 length, on September 15th, 1842, General Pollock's force 
 entered Cabul. A few days after, as a lasting mark of 
 retribution for the crimes which had been committed 
 there, the British commander ordered the destruction of 
 the great bazar of Cabul, where the mangled remains of 
 the unfortunate envoy Macnaghten had been exhibited in 
 brutal triumph and joy to the Afghan populace. 
 
 It is not necessary to enter into detailed descriptions of 
 the successful progress of our arms. The war may be 
 regarded as over. It is, however, necessary to say some- 
 thing of the fate of the captives, or hostages, who were 
 hurried aAvay that terrible January night at the com- 
 mand of'Akbar Khan. One thing has first to be told 
 which some may now receive with incredulity, but which 
 is, nevertheless, true — there was a British general who was 
 disposed to leave them to their fate and take no trouble 
 about them, and who declared himself under the convic- 
 tion, from the tenor of all Lord Ellenborough's despatches, 
 that the recovery of the prisoners was "a matter of 
 indifference to the Government." There seems to have 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 been some unhappy spell working against us in all this 
 chapter of ou^ history, by virtue of which even its most 
 brilliant pages were destined to have something ignoble 
 or ludicrous written on them. Better counsels, howeve,r, 
 prevailed. General Pollock insisted on an effort being 
 made to recover the prisoners before the troops began to 
 return to India, and he appointed to this noble duty the 
 husband of one of the hostage ladies — Sir Eobert Sale. 
 The prisoners Avere recovered with greater ease than was 
 expected — so many of them as were yet alive. Poor Gen- 
 eral Elphinstone had long before succumbed to disease 
 and hardship. The ladies had gone through strange pri- 
 vations. Thirty-six years ago the tale of the captivity of 
 Lady Sale and her companions was in every mouth all 
 over England ; nor did any civilized land fail to take an 
 interest in the strange and pathetic story. They were 
 hurried from fort to fort as the designs and the fortunes 
 of Akbar Khan dictated his disposal of them. They suf- 
 fered almost every fierce alternation of cold and heat. 
 They had to live on the coarsest fare ; they were lodged in a 
 manner which would have made the most wretched prison 
 accommodation of a civilized country seem luxurious by 
 comparison ; they were in constant uncertainty and 
 fear, not knowing what might befall. Yet they seem to 
 have held up their courage and spirits wonderfully well, 
 and to have kept the hearts of the children alive with 
 mirth and sport at moments of the utmost peril. Gradu- 
 ally it became more and more suspected that the fortunes 
 of Akbar Khan were falling. At last it was beyond 
 doubt that he had been completely defeated. Then they 
 were hurried away again, they knew not whither, 
 through ever-ascending mountain-passes, under a scorch- 
 ing sun. They were being carried off to the wild, rugged 
 regions of the Indian Caucasus. They were bestowed in 
 a miserable fort at Bameean. They were now under the 
 charge of one of Akbar Khans soldiers of fortujie. This 
 man had begun to suspect that things were well-nigh 
 hopeless with Akbar Khan. He was induced by gradual 
 find very cautious approaches to enter into an agreement 
 with the prisoners for their release. The English officers 
 signed an agreement Avith him to secure him a large re- 
 ward and a pension for life if he enabled them to escape. 
 He accordingly declared that he renounced his allegiance 
 
THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 179 
 
 to Akbar Khan ; all the more readily seeing that news 
 came in of tlie chiefs total defeat and flight, no one knew 
 whither. The prisoners and their escort, lately their 
 jailer and guards, set forth on their way to General Pol- 
 lock's camp. On their way they met the English parties 
 sent out to seek for them. Sir Robert Sale found his wife 
 again. " Our joy," says one of the rescued prisoners, 
 " was too great, too overwhelming, for tongue to utter." 
 Description, indeed, could do nothing for the elfect of 
 such a meeting but to spoil it. 
 
 There is a very different ending to the episode of the 
 English captives in Bokhara. Colonel Stoddart, who had 
 been sent to the Persian camp in the beginning of all these 
 events to insist that Persia must desist from the siege of 
 Herat, was sent subsequently on a mission to the Ameer 
 of Bokhara. The Ameer received him favorably at first, 
 but afterward became suspicious of English designs of 
 conquest, and treated Stoddart with marked indignity. 
 The Ameer aj)pears to have been the very model of a 
 melodramatic Eastern tyrant. He was cruel and capri- 
 cious as another Caligula, and perhaps, in truth, quite as 
 mad. He threw Stoddart into prison. Captain Conolly 
 was appointed two years after to proceed to Bokhara and 
 other countries of the same region. He undertook to 
 endeavor to effect the liberation of Stoddart, but could 
 only succeed in sharing his sufferings, and, at last, his 
 fate. The Ameer had written a letter to the Queen of 
 England, and the answer was written by the Foreign 
 Secretary, referring the Ameer to the Governor-general 
 of India. The savage tyrant redoubled the ill-treatment 
 of his captives. He accused them of being spies and of 
 giving help to his enemies. The Indian Government were 
 of opinion that the envoys had in some manner exceeded 
 their instructions, and that Conolly, in particular, had 
 contributed by indiscretion to his own fate. Nothing, 
 therefore, was done to obtain their release beyond diplo- 
 matic efforts, and appeals to the magnanimity of the 
 Ameer, which had not any particular effect. Dr. Wolff, 
 the celebrated traveller and missionary, afterward under- 
 took an expedition of his own in the hope of saving the 
 unfortunate captives ; but he only reached Bokhara in time 
 to hear that they had been put to death. The moment and 
 the actual manner of their death cannot be known to 
 
180 
 
 A HISTORY OF Olfn OWJSt TIMES. 
 
 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 i)reserved up to an 
 advanced period of his captivity, and they relieve so far 
 the melancholy of the fate that fell on the unfortunate 
 officers by showing that the horrors of their hopeless 
 imprisonment were so great that their dearest friends 
 must have been glad to know of their release even by the 
 knife of the executioner. It is perhaps not the least 
 bitter part of the story that, in the belief of many, includ- 
 ing the unfortunate officers themselves, the course pur- 
 sued by the English authorities in India had done more 
 to hand them over to the treacherous cruelty of their 
 captor than to release them from his power. In truth, the 
 authorities in India had had enough of intervention. It 
 would have needed a great exigency, indeed, to stir them 
 into energy of action soon again in Central Asia. 
 
 This thrilling chapter of English history closes with 
 something like a piece of harlequinade. The curtain fell 
 amidst general laughter. Only the genius of Lord Ellen- 
 borough could have turned the mood of India and of Eng- 
 land to mirth on such a subject. Lord Ellenborough was 
 equal to this extraordinary feat. The never-to-be-forgot- 
 ten proclamation about the restoration to India of the 
 gates of the Temple of Somnauth, redeemed at Lord Ellen- 
 borough's orders when Ghuznee was retaken by the Eng- 
 hsh, was first received with incredulity as a practical joke ; 
 then with one universal burst of laughter ; then with 
 indignation ; and then, again, when the natural anger had 
 died away, with laughter again. " My brothers and my 
 friends," wrote Lord Ellenborough "to all the princes, 
 chiefs, and people of India," — " Our victorious army bears 
 the gates of the Temple of Somnauth in triumph from 
 Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmoud 
 looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee. The insult of eight 
 hundred years is at last avenged. The gates of the 
 Temple of Somnauth, so long the memorial of your 
 humihation, are become the proudest record of your 
 national glory ; the proof of your superiority in arms over 
 the nations beyond the Indus." 
 
 No words of pompous man could possibly have put to- 
 gether greater absurdities. The brothers and friends were 
 Mohammedans and Hindoos, who were about as likely to 
 
DISASTJERS Oi^ CAB If L. 
 
 181 
 
 agree as to tlie effect of these symbols of triumph as a Fe- 
 nian and an Orangeman would be to fraternize in a toast 
 to the glorious, pious, and immortal memory. To the Mo- 
 hammedans the triumph of Lord Ellenborougli was simply 
 an insult. To the Hindoos the offer was ridiculous, for the 
 Temple of Somnauth itself was in ruins, and the ground 
 it covered was trodden by Mohammedans. To finish the 
 absurdity, the gates proved not to be genuine relics at all. 
 
 On October 1st, 1842, exactly four years since Lord Auck- 
 land's proclamation announcing and justifying the inter- 
 vention to restore Shah Soojah, Lord Ellenborougli issued 
 another proclamation announcing the complete failure 
 and the revocation of the policy of his x^i'edecessor. Lord 
 EUenborough declared that "to force a sovereign upon 
 a reluctant people would be as inconsistent with the policy 
 as it is with the principles of the British Government ; " 
 that, therefore, they would recognize any government ap- 
 proved by the Afghans themselves ; that the British arms 
 would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, and that the Gov- 
 ernment of India would remain " content with the limits 
 nature appears to have assigned to its empire." Dost 
 Mahomed was released from his captivity, and before long 
 was ruler of Cabul once again. Thus ended the story of 
 our expedition to reorganize the internal condition of 
 Afghanistan. After four years of unparalleled trial and 
 disaster everything was restored to the condition in which 
 we found it, exce]3t that there were so many brave Eng- 
 lishmen sleeping in bloody graves. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington ascribed the causes of our failure to making war 
 with a peace establishment ; making war without a safe 
 base of operations ; carrying the native army out of India 
 into a strange and cold climate ; invading a poor country 
 which was unequal to the supply of our wants ; giving 
 undue power to political agents ; want of forethought and 
 undue confidence in the Afghans on the part of Sir W. 
 Macnaghten ; placing our magazines, even our treasure, in 
 indefensible places ; great military neglect and misman- 
 agement after the outbreak. Doubtless these were, in a 
 military sense, the reasons for the failure of an enterprise 
 which cost the revenues of India an enormous amount of 
 treasure. But the causes of failure were deeper than any 
 military errors could explain. It is doubtful whether the 
 genius of a Napoleon and the forethought of a Wellmgton 
 
182 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 could have won any permanent success for an enterprise 
 founded on so false and fatal a policy. Nothing in the 
 ability or devotion of those intrusted with the task of 
 carrying it out could have made it deserve success. Our 
 first error of principle was to go completely out of our 
 way for the purpose of meeting mere speculative dangers ; 
 our next and far greater error was made when we at- 
 tempted, in the words of Lord Ellenborough's proclama- 
 tion, to force a sovereign upon a reluctant people. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 
 
 "The year 1843," said O'Connell, "is and shall be the 
 great Repeal year." In the year 1843, at all events, O'Con- 
 nell and his Repeal agitation are entitled to the foremost 
 place. The character of the man himself well deserves 
 some calm consideration. We are now, perhaps, in a con- 
 dition to do it justice. We are far removed in sentiment 
 and political association, if not exactly in years, from the 
 time when O'Connell was the idol of one party, and the 
 object of all the bitterest scorn and hatred of the other. 
 No man of his time was so madly worshipped and so 
 fiercely denounced. No man in our time was ever the 
 object of so much abuse in the newspapers. The fiercest 
 and coarsest attacks that we can remember to have been 
 made in English journals on Cobden and Bright during 
 the heat of the Anti- Corn-law agitation seem placid, 
 gentle, and almost complimentary when compared with 
 tlie criticisms daily applied to O'Connell. The only vitu- 
 peration which could equal in vehemence and scurrility' 
 that poured out upon O'Connell was that which O'Connell 
 himself poured out upon his assailants. His hand was 
 against every man, if every man's hand was against him. 
 He asked for no quarter, and he gave none. 
 
 We have outlived not the times merely, but the whole 
 spirit of the times, so far as political controversy is con- 
 cerned. We are now able to recognize the fact that a 
 public man may hold opinions which are distasteful to 
 the majority, and yet be perfectly sincere and worthy of 
 
THE REPEAL YEAR, 
 
 183 
 
 respect. We are well aware that a man may differ from 
 us, even on vital questions, and yet be neitlier fool nor 
 knave. But this view of things was not generally taken 
 in the days of O'Connell's great agitation. He and his 
 enemies alike acted in their controversies on the principle 
 that a political opponent is necessarily a blockhead or a 
 scoundrel. It is strange and somewhat melancholy to read 
 the strictures of so enlightened a woman as Miss Martineau 
 upon O'Connell. They are all based upon what a humor- 
 ous writer has called the " fiend- in -human- shape theory." 
 Miss Martineau not merely assumes that O'Connell was 
 absolutely insincere and untrustworthy, but discourses of 
 him on the assumption that he was knowingly and jjur- 
 posely a villain. Not only does she hold that his Repeal 
 agitation was an unqualified evil for his country, and that 
 Repeal, if gained, would have been a curse to it, but she 
 insists that O'Connell himself was thoroughly convinced 
 of the facts. She devotes whole pages of lively and acrid 
 argument to prove not only that O'Connell was ruining 
 his country, but that he knew he was ruining it, and 
 persevered in his wickedness out of pure self-seeking. 
 No writer possessed of one-tenth of Miss Martineau's 
 intellect and education would now reason after that 
 fashion about any public man. If there is any common 
 delusion of the 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, Avasby 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 
 English people was their alleged subserviency to the Irish 
 agitator. We cannot be surprised if the English public 
 just then was little inclined to take an impartial esti- 
 mate of O'Connell. He had attacked some of their public 
 men in language of the fiercest denunciation. He had 
 started an agitation which seemed as if it w^ere direct- 
 ly meant to bring about a break-up of the Imperial sys- 
 tem so lately completed by the Act of Union. He was 
 
184 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 opposed to the existence of the State Church in Ireland. 
 He was the bitter enemy of the Irish landlord class — of 
 the landlords, that is to say, who took their title in any 
 way from England. He was familiarly known in the 
 graceful controversy of the time as the " Big Beggarman." 
 It was an article of faith with the general public that he 
 was enriching himself at the expense of a poor and foolish 
 people. It is a matter of fact that he had given up a 
 splendid practice at the bar to carry on his agitation ; 
 that he lost by the agitation, pecuniarily, far more than 
 he ever got by it ; that he had not himself received from 
 first to last anything like the amount of the noble tribute 
 so becomingly and properly given to Mr. Cobden, and so 
 honorably accepted by him ; and that he died poor, leav- 
 ing his sons poor. Indeed, it is a remarkable evidence of 
 the purifying nature of any great political cause, even 
 where the object sought is but a phantom, that it is 
 hardly possible to give a single instance of a great political 
 agitation carried on in these countries and in modern times 
 by leaders who had any primary purpose of making 
 money. But at that time the general English public 
 were firmly convinced that O'Connell was simply keeping 
 up his agitation for the sake of pocketing "the rent." 
 Some of the qualities, too, that specially endeared him to 
 his Celtic countrymen made him particularly objectionable 
 to Englishmen ; and Englishmen haVe never been famous 
 for readiness to enter into the feelings and accept the 
 point of view of other peoples. O'Connell was a thorough 
 Celt. He represented all the impulsiveness, the quick- 
 changing emotions, tlie passionate, exaggerated loves and 
 hatreds, the heedlessness of statement, the tendency to 
 confound impressions with facts, the ebullient humor — all 
 the other qualities that are especially characteristic of 
 the Celt. The Irish people were the audience to which 
 O'Connell habitually played. It may, indeed, be said 
 that even in playing to this audience he commonly played 
 to the gallery. As the orator of a popular assembly, as 
 the orator of a monster meeting, he probably never had 
 an equal in these countries. He had many of the physical 
 endowments that are especially favorable to success in 
 such a sphere. He had a herculean frame, a stately 
 presence, a face capable of expressing easily and effec- 
 tively the most rapid alternations of mood, and a voice 
 
TBE BEPEAL YEAR. 
 
 185 
 
 which all hearers admit to have been almost unrivalled for 
 strength and sweetness. Its power, its pathos, its passion, 
 its music have been described in words of positive rapture 
 by men who detested O'Connell, and who would rather, if 
 they could, have denied to him any claim on public atten- 
 tion, even in the matter of voice. He spoke without 
 studied preparation, and of course had all the defects of 
 such a style. He fell into repetition and into carelessness 
 of construction ; he was hurried away into exaggeration 
 and sometimes into mere bombast. But he had all the 
 peculiar success, too, which rewards the orator who can 
 speak without preparation. He always spoke right to 
 the hearts of his hearers. On the platform or. in Parlia- 
 ment, whatever he said was said to his audience, and was 
 never in the nature of a discourse delivered over their 
 heads. He entered the House of Commons when he was 
 nearly fifty-four years of age. Most persons supposed 
 that the style of speaking he had formed, first in address- 
 ing juries, and next in rousing Irish mobs, must cause 
 his failure when he came to appeal to the unsympathetic 
 and fastidious House of Commons. But it is certain that 
 O'Connell became one of the most successful Parliament- 
 ary orators of his time. Lord Jeffrey, a professional critic, 
 declared that all other speakers in the House seemed to 
 him only talking school-boy talk after he had heard 
 O'Connell. No man we now know of is less likely to be 
 carried away by any of the clap-trap arts of a false 
 demagogic style than Mr. Roebuck ; and Mr. Roebuck 
 has said that he considers O'Connell the greatest orator 
 he ever heard in the House of Commons. Charles Dickens, 
 when a reporter in the gallery, where he had few equals, 
 if any, in his craft, put down his pencil once when 
 engaged in reporting a speech of O'Connell's on one of 
 the tithe riots in Ireland, and declared that he could not 
 take notes of the speech, so moved was he by its pathos. 
 Lord Beaconsfield, who certainly had no great liking for 
 O'Connell, has spoken in terms as high as any one could 
 use about his power over the House. But O'Connell's 
 eloquence only helped him to make all the more enemies 
 in the House of Commons. He was reckless even there in 
 his denunciation, although he took care never to obtrude 
 on Parliment the extravagant and unmeaning abuse of 
 opponents which delighted the Irish mob meetings. 
 
186 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 O'Connell was a crafty and successful lawyer. The 
 Irish peasant, like the Scottish, is, or at least then was, 
 remarkably fond of litigation. He delighted in the quirks 
 and quibbles of law, and in the triumphs won by the skill 
 of lawyers over opponents. He admired O'Connell all the 
 more when O'Connell boasted and proved that he could 
 drive a coach and six through any Act of Parliament. 
 One of the pet heroes of Irish legend is a personage whose 
 cleverness and craft procure for him a sobriquet which has 
 been rendered into English by the words " twists upon 
 twists and tricks upon tricks." O'Connell was in the eyes 
 of many of the Irish peasantry an embodiment of " twists 
 upon twists and tricks upon tricks," enlisted in their cause 
 for the confusion of their adversaries. He had borne the 
 leading part in carrying Catholic emancipation. He had 
 encountered all the danger and responsibility of the some- 
 what aggressive movement by which it was finally secured. 
 It is true that it was a reform which in the course of civil- 
 ization must have been carried. It had in its favor all 
 the enlightenment of the time. The eloquence of the 
 greatest orators, the intellect of the truest philosophers, 
 the prescience of the wisest statesmen had pleaded for it 
 and helped to make its way clear. No man can doubt 
 that it must in a short time have been carried if O'Con- 
 nell had never lived. But it was carried just then by 
 virtue of O'Connell's bold agitation, and by the wise resolve 
 of the Tory Government not to provoke a civil war. It is 
 deeply to be regretted that Catholic emancipation was not 
 conceded to the claims of justice. Had it been so yielded, 
 it is very doubtful whether we should ever have heard 
 much of the Repeal agitation. But the Irish people saw, 
 and indeed all the world was made aware of the fact, 
 that emancipation would not have been conceded, just then 
 at least, but for the fear of civil disturbance. To an Eng- 
 lishman looking coolly back from a distance, the difference 
 is clear between granting to-day, rather than provoke dis- 
 • turbance, that which every one sees must be granted 
 some time, and conceding what the vast majority of the 
 English people believe can never with propriety or even 
 safety be granted at all. But we can hardly wonder if 
 the Irish peasant did not make such distinctions. All he 
 knew was that O'Connell had demanded Catholic eman- 
 cipation, and had been answered at first by a direct refusal ; 
 
THE REPEAL YEAR. 
 
 187 
 
 that he had said he would compel its concession, and that 
 in the end it was conceded to him. When, therefore, 
 O'Connell said that he would compel the Government to 
 give him repeal of tlie Union, the Irish peasant naturally 
 believed that he could keep his word. 
 
 Nor is there any reason to doubt that O'Connell him- 
 self believed in the possibility of accomplishing his pur- 
 pose. We are apt now to think of the union between 
 England and Ireland as of time-honored endurance. It 
 had been scarcely thirty years in existence when O'Con- 
 nell entered Parliament. The veneration of ancient line- 
 age, the majesty of custom, the respect due to the " wisdom 
 of our ancestors " — none of these familiar claims could be 
 urged on behalf of the legislative union between England 
 and Ireland. To O'Connell it appeared simply as a modern 
 innovation which had nothing to be said for it except 
 that a majority of Englishmen had by threats and bribery 
 forced it on a majority of Irishmen. Mr. Lecky, the author 
 of the " History of European Morals," may be cited as an 
 hiipartial authority on such a subject. Let us see what 
 he says in his Avork on " The Leaders of Public Opinion 
 in Ireland," with regard to the movement for repeal of 
 the Union, of Avhich it seems almost needless to say he 
 disapproves. " O'Connell perceived clearly," says Mr. 
 Lecky, " that the tendency of affairs in Europe was toward 
 the recognition of the principle that a nation's will is the 
 one legitimate rule of its government. All rational men 
 acknowledged that the Union was imposed on Ireland by 
 corrupt means, contrary to the wish of one generation. 
 O'Connell was prepared to show, by the protest of the 
 vast majority of the people, that it was retained without 
 the acquiescence of the next. He had allied himself with 
 the parties that were rising surely and rapidly to power 
 in England — with the democracy, whose gradual progress 
 is effacing the most venerable landmarks of the Constitu- 
 tion — with the Free-traders, whose approaching triumph 
 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 
 
188 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUJR OWN TIMES. 
 
 would be necessarily modified in time of war ; and he pre- 
 dicted that should there be a collision with France while 
 the nation was organized as in 1843, Repeal Avould be the 
 immediate and the inevitable consequence. In a word, he 
 believed that under a constitutional government the will 
 of four-fifths of a nation, if peacefully, perseveringly, and 
 energetically expressed, must sooner or later be triumph- 
 ant. If a war had broken out during the agitation — if 
 the life of O'Connell had been prolonged ten years longer 
 — if any worthy successor had assumed his mantle — if a 
 fearful famine had not broken the spirit of the people — 
 who can say that the agitation would not have been suc- 
 cessful ? " 'No one, we fancy, except those who are always 
 convinced that nothing can ever come to pass which they 
 think ought not to come to pass. At all events, if an 
 English political philosopher, surveying the events after 
 a distance of thirty years, is of opinion that Repeal was 
 possible, it is not surprising that O'Connell thought its 
 attainment possible at the time when he set himself to 
 agitate for it. Even if this be not conceded, it will at 
 least be allowed that it is not very surprising if the Irish 
 peasant saw no absurdity in the movement. Our system 
 of government by party does not lay claim to absolute per- 
 fection. It is an excellent mechanism, on the whole ; it is 
 probably the most satisfactory that the wit of man has 
 yet devised for the management of the affairs of a State ; 
 but its greatest admirers will bear to be told that it has its 
 drawbacks and disadvantages. One of these undoubtedly 
 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 the yielded to 
 pressure rather than to justice ; it is not wonderful if 
 they thought that pressure might prevail as Avell in the 
 matter of Repeal. 
 
 In many respects O'Connell differed from more modern 
 Irish Nationalists. lie was a thorough Liberal. He Avas 
 a devoted opponent of negro slavery ; he was a stanch 
 Free-trader; he was a friend of popular education ; he was 
 an enemy to all excess ; he was opposed to strikes ; he 
 
THE REPEAL YEAR. 
 
 189 
 
 was an advocate of religious equality everywhere ; and lie 
 declined to receive the commands of the Vatican in his po- 
 litical agitation. " I am a Catliolic, but I am not a Papist," . 
 was his own definition of his religious attitude. He 
 preached the doctrine of constitutional agitation strictly, 
 and declared that no political Reform was worth the shed- 
 ding of one drop of blood. It may be asked how it came 
 about that with all these excellent attributes, which all 
 critics now allow to him, O'Connell was so detested by the 
 vast majority of the English people. One reason, undoubt- 
 edly, is, that O'Connell deliberately revived and worked 
 up for his political purposes the almost extinct national 
 hatreds of Celt and Saxon. As a phrase of political 
 controversy, he may be said to have invented the word 
 " Saxon." He gave a terrible license to his tongue. His 
 abuse was outrageous ; his praise was outrageous. The 
 very effusiveness of his loyalty told to his disadvantage. 
 People could not understand how one who perpetually 
 denounced " the Saxon " could be so enthusiastic and rapt- 
 urous in his professions of loyalty to the Saxon's Queen. 
 In the common opinion of Englishmen, all the evils of 
 Ireland, all the troubles attaching to the connection 
 between the two countries, had arisen from this unmiti- 
 gated, rankling hatred of Celt for Saxon. It was im- 
 possible for them to believe that a man who deliberately 
 applied all the force of his eloquence to revive it could be 
 a genuine patriot. It appeared intolerable that while thus 
 laboring to make the Celt hate the Saxon he should yet 
 profess an extravagant devotion to the Sovereign of Eng- 
 land. Yet O'Connell was probably quite sincere in his 
 professions of loyalty. He was in no sense a revolutionist. 
 He had from his education in a French college acquired 
 an early detestation of the principles of the French Revolu- 
 tion. Of the Irish rebels of '98 he spoke with as savage 
 an intolerance as the narrowest English Tories could 
 show in speaking of himself. The Tones, and Emmetts, 
 and Fitzgeralds, whom so many of the Irish people adored, 
 were, in O'Connell's eyes, and in his words, only "a gang 
 of miscreants." He grew angry at the slightest expres- 
 sion of an opinion among his followers that seemed to 
 denote even a willingness to discuss any of the doctrines 
 of Communism. His theory and his policy evidently were 
 that Ireland was to be saved by a dictatorship intrusted 
 
190 
 
 A HIS TOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 to himself, with the Irish priesthood acting as his officers 
 and agents. lie maintained the autliority of tlie priests, 
 and his own autliority by means of them and over them. 
 The political system of the country for the purposes of 
 agitation was to be a sort of hierarchy ; the parish priests 
 occupying the lowest grade, the bishops standing on the 
 higher steps, and O'Connell himself supreme, as the 
 pontiff, over all. 
 
 He had a Parliamentary system by means of which he 
 proposed to approach more directly the question of Repeal 
 of the Union. He got seats in the House of Commons for 
 a number of his sons, his nephews, and his sworn retain- 
 ers. "O'Connell's tail" was the precursor of "the Pope's 
 Brass Band" in the slang of the House of Commons. He 
 had an almost supreme control over the Irish constitu- 
 encies, and whenever a vacancy took place he sent down 
 the Repeal candidate to contest it. He always iiiculcated 
 and insisted on the necessity of order and peace. Indeed, 
 as he proposed to carry on his agitation altogether by the 
 help of the bishops and the priests, it was not possible 
 for him, even were he so inclined, to conduct it on any 
 other than peaceful principles. " The man who commits 
 a crime gives strength to the enemy," was a maxim which 
 he was never weary of impressing upon his followers. 
 The Temperance movement set on foot with such remark- 
 able and sudden success by Father Mathew was at once 
 turned to account by O'Connell. He was himself, in his 
 later years at all events, a very temperate man, and he was 
 delighted at the prospect of good order and disciphne Avhich 
 the Temperance movement afforded. Father Mathew was 
 very fai; from sharing all the political ophiions of O'Con- 
 nell. The sweet and simple friar, whose power was that 
 of goodness and entliusiasm only, and who had but little 
 force of character or intellect, shrank from political agita- 
 tion, and was rather Conservative than otherwise in his 
 views. But he could not afford to repudiate the support 
 of O'Connell, wlio on all occasions glorified the Temperance 
 movement, and called upon his followers to join it, and 
 was always boasting of his " noble army of Teetotallers." 
 It was probably wlien lie found that the mere fact of his 
 having supported the Melbourne Government did so much 
 to discnnlit that Government in the eyes of Englishmen, 
 and to bring about its fall, that O'Connell went deliberately 
 
THE REPEAL YEAH, 
 
 191 
 
 out of the path of mere Parliamentary agitation, and 
 started that system of agitation by monster meeting which 
 has since his time been regularly established among us as 
 a principal part of all political organization for a definite 
 purpose. He founded in Dublin a Repeal Association 
 which met in a place on Burgh Quay, and which he styled 
 Conciliation Hall. Around him in this Association he 
 gathered his sons, his relatives, his devoted followers, 
 priestly and lay. The Nation newspaper, then 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 selected for 
 its historic fame, and with all the picturesque surround- 
 ings of hill and stream. From the dawn of the summer 
 day the Repealers were thronging to the scene of the 
 meeting. They came from all parts of the neighboring 
 country for miles and miles. They were commonly mar- 
 shalled and guided by their parish priests. They all 
 attended the services of their Church before the meeting 
 began. The influence of his religion and of his patriotic 
 feelings was brought to bear at once upon the impression- 
 able and emotional Irish Celt. At the meeting O'Connell 
 and several of his chosen orators addressed the crowd on 
 the subject of the wrongs done to Ireland by "the Saxon," 
 the claims of Ireland to the restoration of her old Parlia- 
 ment in College Green, and the certainty of her having it 
 restored if Irishmen only obe3^ed O'Connell and their 
 priests, were sober, and displayed their strength and their 
 unity. 
 
 O'Connell himself, it is^ needless to say, was always the 
 great orator of the day. The agitation developed a great 
 deal of literary talent among the younger men of educa- 
 tion ; but it never brought out a man who was even spoken 
 of as a possible sjiccessor to O'Connell in eloquence. His 
 magnificent voice enabled him to do what no genius and 
 no eloquence less aptly endowed could have done. He 
 could send his lightest word thrilling to the extreme of 
 the vast concourse of people whom he desired to move. 
 He swayed them with the magic of an absolute control. 
 He understood all the moods of his people ; to address him- 
 self to them came naturally to him. He made them roar 
 
192 A IIlSTOnr 01" QUE OWN TIMES, 
 
 with laughter ; he made them weep ; he made them thrill 
 witli indignation. As the shadow runs over a field, so 
 tlie impression of his varying eloquence ran over the as- 
 semblage. He commanded the emotions of his hearers as 
 a consummate conductor sways the energies of his or- 
 chestra. Every allusion told. When, in one of the meet- 
 ings held in his native Kerry, he turned solemnly round and 
 appealed to " yonder blue mountains where you and I were 
 cradled ; " or in sight of the objects he described he apos- 
 trophized Ireland as the " land of the green valley and tlie 
 rushing riv^r " — an admirably characteristic and complete 
 description ; or recalled some historical association con- 
 nected with the scene he surveyed — each was some special 
 appeal to the instant feelings of his peculiar audience. 
 Sometimes he indulged 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 English audience. But the Irish peasant, Avith all 
 his keen sense of the ridiculous in others, is singularly 
 open to the influence of any appeal to his own vanity. 
 There is a great deal of the " eternal- Avomanly " 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 x3olitical conduct 
 which it would be hard indeed to commend or even to 
 defend. But, in truth, he adopted in his agitation the 
 tactics he had employed at the bar. " A good speech is a 
 good thing," he used to say ; " but the verd.ict is the thing." 
 His flattery of his hearers was not grosser than his abuse 
 of all those whom they did not like. His dispraise often 
 had absolutely no meaning in it. There was no sense 
 whatever in calling the Duke of Wellington " a stunted 
 corporal ; " one might as well have called Mont Blanc a 
 mole-hill. Nobody could have shown more clearly than 
 O'Connell did that he did not believe the Times to be "an 
 obscure rag." It would have been as humorous and as 
 truthful to say that there was no such paper as the Times, 
 But these absurdities made an ignorant audience laugh 
 for the moment, and O'Connell had gained the only point 
 he just then wanted to carry. He would probably have 
 answered any one who remonstrated with liim on tlie di«- 
 ingenuousness of such sayings, as Mrs. Tlirale, says l>urke, 
 once answered her when she taxed him with a want of 
 
THE REPEAL YEAR. 193 
 
 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 England, where, in whatever heat of 
 political controversy, words are supposed to be the expres- 
 sions of some manner of genuine sentiment. Of course 
 many of O'Connell's abusive epithets were not only full 
 of humor, but did, to some extent, fairly represent the 
 weakness at least of those against whom they were 
 directed. Some of his historical allusions were of a more 
 mischievous nature than any mere personalities could 
 have been. " Peel and Wellington," he said at Kilkenny, 
 " may be second Cromwells ; they may get Cromwell's 
 blunted truncheon, and they may — oh, sacred heavens ! — 
 enact on the fair occupants of that gallery " (pointing to 
 the ladies' gallery); " the murder of the Wexford women. 
 Let it not be supposed that when I made that appeal to 
 the ladies it was but a flight of my imagination. No ! 
 when Cromwell entered the town of Wexford by treachery, 
 three hundred ladies, the beauty and loveliness of Wex- 
 ford, the young and the old, the maid and the matron, 
 were collected round the Cross of Christ ; they prayed to 
 Heaven for mercy, and I hope they found it ; they prayed 
 to the English for humanity, and Cromwell slaughtered 
 them. I tell you this : three hundred women, the grace 
 and beauty and virtue of Wexford, were slaughtered by 
 the English ruffians — sacred heaven ! " He went on then 
 to assure his hearers that " the ruffianly Saxon paper, 
 the Times, in the number received by me to-day, presumes 
 to threaten us again with such a scene." One would like 
 to see the copy of the Times which contained such a 
 threat, or, indeed, any words that could be tortured into 
 a semblance of any such hideous meaning. But the great 
 agitator, when he found that he had excited enough the 
 horror of his audience, proceeded to reassure them by the 
 means of all others most objectionable and dangerous at 
 such a time. " I am not imaginative," he said, " when I 
 talk of the possibility of such scenes anew ; but yet I as- 
 sert that there is no danger to our women now, for the men 
 of Ireland would die to the last in their defence." Here 
 the whole meeting broke into a storm of impasssioned 
 cheering. " Ay," the orator exclaimed, when the storm 
 found a momentary hush, " we were a paltry remnant 
 
 13 
 
194 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 then ; we are millions now." At MuUaghmast, 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 peiished here ! They came, confiding 
 in Saxon honor, relying on the protection of the Queen, 
 to a friendly conference. In the midst of revelry, in the 
 cheerful light of the banquet house, they were surrounded 
 and butchered. None returned save one. Their wives 
 were widows, their children fatherless. In their home- 
 steads was heard the shrill shriek of despair — the cry of 
 bitter agony. Oh, Saxon cruelty, how it cheers my heart 
 to think that you dare not attempt such a deed again ! " 
 It is not necessary to point out what the effect of such 
 descriptions and such allusions must have been upon an 
 excitable and an ignorant peasant audience — on men who 
 were ready to believe in all sincerity that England only 
 wanted the opportunity to re-enact, in the reign of Queen 
 Victoria, the scenes of Elizabeth's or Cromwell's day. 
 
 The late Lord Lytton has given, in his poem " St. Ste- 
 phens," a picturesque description of one of these meetings, 
 and of the effect produced upon himself by O'Connell's 
 eloquence. Once to my sight," he says, " the giant thus 
 was given ; walled by wide air and roofed by boundless 
 heaven." He describes " the human ocean " lying spread 
 out at the giant's feet ; its " wave on wave " flowing 
 " into space away." Kot unnaturally, Lord Lytton 
 thought, " no clarion could have sent its sound even to 
 the centre " of that crowd. 
 
 "And as I thought, rose the sonorous swell 
 As from some church tower swings the silvery bell ; 
 Aloft and clear from airy tide to tide, 
 It glided easy as a bird may glide. 
 To the last verge of that vast audience sent, 
 It played with eacli wild passion as it went ; 
 Now stirred the uproar — now the murmur stilled, 
 And sobs or laughter answered as it willed. 
 Then did I know what spells of infinite choice 
 To rouse or lull has the sweet human voice. 
 Then did I learn to seize the sudden clew 
 To the grand troublous life antique — to view, 
 Under the rock-stand of Demostlienes, 
 Unstable Athens heave her noisy seas." 
 
 The crowds wlio attended tlie monster meetings came 
 
THE REPEAL YEAR. 
 
 195 
 
 in a sort of military order and with a certain parade of 
 military discipline. At the meeting held on the Hill of 
 Tara, where O'Connell stood beside the stone said to have 
 been used for the coronation of the ancient monarchs of 
 Ireland, it is declared, on the authority of careful and un- 
 sympathetic witnesses, that a quarter of a million of people 
 must have been present. The Government naturally felt 
 that there was a very considerable danger in the massing 
 together of such vast crowds of men in something like 
 military array and under the absolute leadership of one 
 man, who openly avowed that he had called them together 
 to show England what was the strength her statesmen 
 would have to fear if they continued to deny Repeal to 
 his demand. It is certain now that O'Connell did not at 
 any time mean to employ force for the attainment of his 
 ends. But it is equally certain that he wished the Eng- 
 lish Government to see that he had the command of an 
 immense number of men, and probably even to believe 
 that he would, if needs were, hurl them in rel^ellion upon 
 England if ever she should be embarrassed with a foreign 
 war. It is certain, too, that many of O'ConnelFs most 
 ardent admirers, especially among the young men, were 
 fully convinced that some day or other their leader would 
 call on them to fight, and were much disappointed when 
 they found that he had no such intention. The Govern- 
 ment at last resolved to interfere. A meeting was an- 
 nounced to be held at Clontarf on Sunday, October 8tli, 
 1843. Clontarf is near Dublin, and is famous in Irish his- 
 tory as the scene of a great victory of the Irish over their 
 Danish invaders. It was intended that this meeting 
 should surpass in numbers and in earnestness the assem- 
 blage at Tara. On the very day before tlie 8th the Lord- 
 lieutenant issued a proclamation prohibiting the meeting 
 as " calculated to excite reasonable and well-grounded 
 apprehensions," in that its object was "to accomplish 
 alterations in the laws and constitutions of the realm by 
 intimidation and the demonstration of physical force." 
 O'Connell's power over the people was never shown more 
 effectively than in the control which at that critical 
 moment he was still able to exercise. The populations 
 were already coming in to Clontarf hi streams from all 
 the country round when the proclamation of the Lord- 
 lieutenant was issued. No doubt the Irish Government 
 
196 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 ran a terrible risk when they delayed so long the issue of 
 their proclamation. With the people already assembling 
 in such masses, the risk of a collision with the police and 
 the soldiery, and of a consequent massacre, is something 
 still shocking to contemplate. It is not surprising, per- 
 haps, if O'Connell and many of his followers made it a 
 charge against the Government that they intended to 
 bring about such a collision in order to make an examjDle 
 of some of the Repealers, and thus strike terror through 
 the country. Some sort of collision Avould almost undoubt- 
 edly have occurred but for the iDromptitude of O'Connell 
 himself. He at once issued a proclamation of his own to 
 Avhich the populations were likely to pay far more atten- 
 tion than they would to anything coming from Dublin 
 Castle. O'Connell declared that the orders of the Lord- 
 lieutenant must be obeyed ; that the meeting must not 
 take place ; and that the people must return to their 
 homes. The " uncrowned king," as some of liis admirers 
 loved to call him, was obeyed, and no meeting was held. 
 
 From that moment, however, the great power of the 
 Repeal agitation was gone. The Government had accom- 
 plished far more by their proclamation than they could 
 possibly have imagined at the time. They had, without 
 knowing it, compelled O'Connell to show his hand. It 
 was now made clear that he did not intend to have resort 
 to force. From that hour there was virtually a schism be- 
 tween the elder Repealers and the younger. The young 
 and fiery followers of the great agitator lost all faith in 
 him. It would in any case have been impossible to main- 
 tain for any very long time the state of national tension 
 in whi^h 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 demonstrations, and that 
 nothing was ever to come of them. The eye of an atten- 
 tive foreigner was then fixed on Ireland and on O'Con- 
 nell ; the eye of one destined to play a part in the politi- 
 cal history of our time which none other has surpassed. 
 Count Cavour had not long returned to his own country 
 from a visit made with the express purpose of studying 
 the politics and the general condition of England and Ire- 
 land. He wrote to a friend about the crisis then passing 
 
THE llEPEAL YEAR, 
 
 197 
 
 in Ireland. " When one is at a distance," he said, " from 
 the theatre of events, it is easy to make prophecies which 
 have already been contradicted by facts. But according 
 to my view O'Connell's fate is sealed. On the first vigor- 
 ous demonstration of his opponents he has drawn back ; 
 from that moment he has ceased to be dangerous." 
 Cavour was perfectly right. It was never again possible 
 to bring the Irish people up to the pitch of enthusiasm 
 which O'Connell had wrought them to before the sup- 
 pression of the Clontarf meeting; and before long the 
 Irish national movement had split in two. 
 
 The Government at once proceeded to the prosecution 
 of O'Connell and some of his principal associates. Daniel 
 O'Connell himself, his son John, the late Sir John Gray, 
 and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, were the most conspicuous 
 of those against whom the prosecution was directed. 
 They were charged with conspiring to raise and excite 
 disaffection among her Majesty's subjects, to excite them 
 to hatred and contempt of the Government and Constitu- 
 tion of the realm. The trial was, in many ways, a sin- 
 gularly unfortunate proceeding. The Government prose- 
 cutor objected to all the Catholics whose names were 
 called as jurors. An error of the sheriff's in the construc- 
 tion of the jury-lists had already reduced by a consider- 
 able number the roll of Catholics entitled to serve on 
 juries. It therefore happened that the greatest of Irish 
 Catholics, the representative Catholic of his day, the 
 principal agent \i\ the work of carrying Catholic Emanci- 
 pation, was tried by a jury composed exclusively of Prot- 
 estants. It has only to be added that this was done 
 in the metropolis of a country essentially Catholic; a 
 country five-sixths of whose people were Catholics ; and 
 on a question affecting indirectly, if not directly, the 
 whole position and claims of Catholics. The trial was 
 long. O'Connell defended himself; and his speech was 
 universally regarded as wanting the power that had made 
 his defence of others so effective in former days. It was 
 for the most part a sober and somewhat heavy argument 
 to prove that Ireland had lost instead of gained by her 
 union with England. The jury found O'Connell guilty, 
 along with most of his associates, and he was sentenced 
 to twelve months' imprisonment and a fine of £2000. 
 The others received lighter sentences, O'Connell appealed 
 
198 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 to the House of Lords against the sentence. In the mean- 
 time he issued a x>roclamation to the Irish people com- 
 manding them to keep perfectly quiet and not to commit 
 any offence against the law. " Every man," said one of 
 his proclamations, " who is guilty of the slightest breach 
 of the peace is an enemy of me and of Ireland." The 
 Irish people took him at his word, and remained perfectly 
 quiet. 
 
 O'Connell and his principal associates were committed 
 to Richmond Prison, in Dublin. The trial had been de- 
 layed in various ways, and the sentence was not pro- 
 nounced until May 24th, 1844. The appeal to the House 
 of Lords — we may pass over intermediate stages of pro- 
 cedure — was heard in the following September. Five law 
 lords were present. The Lord Chancellor (Lord Lynd- 
 hurst) and Lord Brougham were of opinion that the sen- 
 tence of the court below should be affirmed. Lord Den- 
 man, Cottenham, and Lord Campbell were of the opposite 
 opinion. Lord Denman, in particular, condemned the 
 manner in which the jury-lists had been prepared. Some 
 of his words on the occasion became memorable, and 
 passed into a sort of proverbial expression. Such prac- 
 tices, he said, would make of the law " a mockery, a de- 
 lusion, and a snare." A strange and memorable scene 
 followed. The constitution of the House of Lords then, 
 and for a long time after, made no difference between law 
 lords and others in voting on a question of appeal. As a 
 matter of practice and of fairness the lay peers hardly 
 ever interfered in the voting on an appeal. But they had 
 an undoubted right to do so ; and it is even certain that 
 in one or two peculiar cases they had exercised the right. 
 If the lay lords were to vote in this instance, the fate of 
 O'Connell and his companions could not be doubtful. 
 O'Connell had always been the bitter enemy of the House 
 of Lords. He had vehemently denounced its authority, 
 its practices, and its leading members. ISTor, if the lay 
 peers had voted and confirmed the judgment of the court 
 below, could it have been positively said that an injustice 
 was done by their interference. The majority of the 
 judges on the writ of error had approved the judgment of 
 the court below. In the House of Lords itself the Lord 
 Chancellor and Lord ]>rougham were of opinion that the 
 judgment ought to be sustained. There would, therefore, 
 
THE REPEAL YEAH. 
 
 have been some ground for maintaining that the sub- 
 stantial justice of the case had been met by tlie action of 
 the lay peers. On the other hand, it would have afforded 
 a ground for a positive outcry in Ireland if a question 
 purely of law had been decided by the votes of lay peers 
 against their bitter enemy. One peer, Lord Wharncliffe, 
 made a timely appeal to the better judgment and feeling 
 of his brethren. He urged them not to take a course 
 which might allow any one to say that political or personal 
 feeling had prevailed in a judicial decision of the House 
 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 as- 
 certain in the usual way whether a division would be 
 necessary, several lay peers seemed as if they were de- 
 termined to vote. But the appeal of Lord Wharncliffe 
 settled the matter. All the lay peers at once withdrew, 
 and left the matter according to the usual course in the 
 hands of the law lords. The majority of these being 
 against the judgment of the court below, it was accord- 
 ingly reversed, and O'Connell and his associates were set 
 at liberty. The propriety of a lay peer voting on a ques- 
 tion of judicial appeal was never raised again so long as 
 the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords was still 
 exercised in the old and now obsolete fashion. 
 
 I^othing could well have been more satisfactory and - 
 more fortunate in its results than the conduct of the 
 House of Lords. The effect upon the mind of the Irish 
 people would have been deplorable if it had been seen that 
 O'Connell was convicted by a jury on which there were 
 no Roman Catholics, and that the sentence was confirmed, 
 not by a judicial but by a strictly political vote of the 
 House of Lords. As it was, the influence of the decision 
 which proved that even in the assembly most bitterly de- 
 nounced by O' Council he could receive fair play, was in 
 the highest degree satisfactory. It cannot be doubted 
 that it did something to weaken the force of O'Connell's 
 own denunciations of Saxon treachery and wrong-doing. 
 The influence of O'Connell was never the same after the 
 trial. Many causes combined to bring about this result. 
 Most writers ascribe it, above all, to the trial itself, and 
 the evidence it afforded that the English Government were 
 
200 
 
 A inSTORY OF OUn OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 History of the English People," countenancing such 
 a belief. If the House of Lords had, by the votes of the 
 lay peers, confirmed the sentence on O'Connell, he would 
 have come out of his prison at the expiration of his j)eriod 
 of sentence more popular and more powerful than ever. 
 Had his strength and faculty of agitation lasted, he might 
 have agitated thenceforth with more effect than ever. If 
 the Clontarf meeting had not disclosed to a large section 
 of his followers that his policy, after all, was only to be 
 one of talk, he might have come out of prison just the 
 man he had been, the leader of all classes of Catholics 
 and Nationalists. But the real blow given to O'ConnelFs 
 popularity was given by O'Connell himself. The moment 
 it was made clear that nothing was to be done but agitate, 
 and that all the monster meetings, the crowds and ban- 
 ners and bands of music, the marshalling and- marching 
 and reviewing, meant nothing more than Father Mathew's 
 temperance meetings meant — that moment all the youth 
 of the movement fell off from O'Connell. The young men 
 Avere very silly, as after-events proved. O'Connell was 
 far more wise, and had an infinitely better estimate of the 
 strength of England than they had. But it is certain that 
 the young men were disgusted with the kind of gigantic 
 sham which the great agitator seemed to have been con- 
 ducting for so long a time. It would have been impossible 
 to keep up forever such an excitement as that which got 
 together the monster meetings. Such heat cannot be 
 brought up to the burning-point and kept there at will. 
 A reaction was inevitable. O'Connell was getting old, 
 and had lived a life of work and wear-and-tear enough to 
 break down even his constitution of iron. He had kept a 
 great part of his own followers in heart, as he had kept 
 the Government in alarm, by leaving it doubtful whether 
 he would not, in the end, make an appeal to the reserve 
 of physical force Avhich he so often boasted of having at 
 his back. When the whole secret was out, he ceased to 
 be an object of fear to the one, and of enthusiasm to the 
 other. It was neither the Lord-lieutenant's proclamation 
 iioi* the prosecution by the Government that impaired the 
 influence of O'Connell. It was O'Connell's own procla- 
 
THE REPEAL YEAR. 
 
 201 
 
 mation, declaring for submission to the law, that de- 
 throned him. From that moment the political monarch 
 had to dispute with rebels for his crown ; and the crown 
 fell otf in the struggle, like that which Uhland tells of in 
 the pretty poem. 
 
 For the Clontarf meeting had been the climax. There 
 was all manner of national rejoicing when the decision 
 of the House of Lords set O'Connell and his fellow-prison- 
 ers free. There were illuminations and banquets and meet- 
 ings and triumphal processions, renewed declarations of 
 allegiance to the great leader, and renewed protestations 
 on his part that Repeal was coming. But his reign was 
 over. His death may as well be recorded here as later. 
 His health broke down ; and the disputes in which he be- 
 came engaged with the Young Irelanders, dividing his 
 party into two hostile camps, were a grevious burden to 
 him. In Lord Beaconsfield's Life of Lord George Bentinck, 
 a very touching description is given of the last speech 
 made by O'Connell in Parliament. It was on April 3d, 
 1846 : " His appearance," says Mr. Disraeli, " was of great 
 debility, and the tones of his voice were very still. His 
 words, indeed, only reached those who were immediately 
 around -him, and the ministers sitting on the other side 
 of the green table, and listening with that interest and 
 respectful attention which became the occasion." O'Con- 
 nell spoke for nearly two hours. " It was a strange and 
 touching spectacle to those who remembered the form of 
 colossal energy and the clear and thrilling tones that had 
 once startled, disturbed, and controlled senates. ... To 
 the House, generally, it was a performance in dumb show : 
 a feeble old man muttering before a table; but respect for 
 the great Parliamentary personage kept all as orderly as 
 if the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhetoric ; and 
 though not an accent reached the gallery, means were 
 taken that next morning the country should not lose the 
 last, and not the least interesting, of the speeches of one 
 who had so long occupied and agitated the mind of na- 
 tions." 
 
 Q'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 
 
202 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 to lie down in the shadow of the dome of St. Peter's 
 and rest there, and there die. His youth had been wild 
 in more ways than one, and he had long been under the 
 influence of a profound penitence. He had killed a man 
 in a duel, and was through all his after-life haunted by re- 
 gret for the deed, although it was really forced on him, 
 and he had acted only as any other man of his time would 
 have acted in such conditions. But now, in his old and 
 sinking days, all the errors of his youth and his strong 
 manhood came back upon him, and he longed to steep the 
 painful memories in the sacred influences of Rome. He 
 hurried to Italy at a time when the prospect of the fam- 
 ine darkening down upon his country cast an additional 
 shadow across his outward path. He reached Genoa, and 
 he went no farther. His strength wholly failed him there, 
 and he died, still far from Rome, on May 15th, 1-847. The 
 close of his career was a mournful collapse ; it was like the 
 sudden crumbling in of some stately and commanding 
 tower. The other day, it seemed, he filled a space of al- 
 most unequalled breadth and height in the political land- 
 scape ; and now he is already gone. " Even with a thought 
 the rack dislimbs, and makes it indistinct, as water is in 
 water." 
 
 CHAPTER Xni. 
 
 PEEL S ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 Some important steps in the progress of what may be 
 described as social legislation are part of the history of 
 Peel's Government. The Act of Parliament which pro- 
 hibited absolutely the employment of women and girls in 
 mines and collieries was rendered unavoidable by the fear- 
 ful exposures made through the instrumentality of a 
 commission appointed to inquire into the wliole subject . 
 Tliis commission was appointed on the motion of the then 
 Lord Ashley, since better known as the Eaii of Shi^ts- 
 bury, a man who during tlie whole of a long career has 
 always devoted himself — sometimes wisely and success- 
 fully, sometimes indiscreetly and to little purpose, always 
 witii disinterested and benevolent hitention — to the task 
 
m 
 
 of brightening the lives and hghtening the burdens of the 
 working-classes and the poor. The commission found 
 many hideous evils arising from the employment of women 
 and girls underground, and Lord Ashley made such 
 effective use of their disclosures that he encountered very 
 little opposition when he came to propose restrictive legis- 
 lation. In some of the coal-mines women were literally 
 employed as beasts of burden. Where the seam of coal 
 was too narrow to allow them to stand upright, they had 
 to crawl back and forward on all-fours for fourteen or 
 sixteen hours a day, dragging the trucks laden with coals. 
 The trucks were generally fastened to a chain which passed 
 between the legs of the unfortunate women, and was then 
 connected with a belt which was strapped around their 
 naked waists. Their only clothing often consisted of an 
 old pair of trousers made of sacking ; and they were un- 
 covered from the waist up— uncovered, that is to say, ex- 
 cept for the grime and filth that collected and clotted 
 around them. All manner of hideous diseases were gen- 
 erated in these unsexed bodies. Unsexed almost literally 
 some of them became ; for their chests were often hard 
 and flat as those of men ; and not a few of them lost all 
 reproductive power — a hapx3y condition, truly, under the 
 circumstances, where women who bore children only went 
 up to the higher air for a week during their confinement, 
 and were then back at their work again. It would be 
 superfluous to say that the immorality engendered by such 
 a state of things was in exact keeping with the other evils 
 which it brought about. Lord Ashley had the happiness 
 and the honor of putting a stop to this infamous sort of 
 labor forever by the Act of 1842, which declared that, after 
 a certain limited period, no woman or girl whatever should 
 be employed iir mines and collieries. 
 
 Lord Ashley was less completely successful in his en- 
 deavor to secure a ten hours' limitation for the daily labor 
 of women and young persons in factories. By a vigorous 
 annual agitation on the general subject of factory labor, 
 in which Lol^d Ashley had followed in the footsteps of Mr. 
 Michael Thomas Sadler, he brought the Government up 
 to the point of undertaking legislation on the subject. 
 They first introduced a bill which combined a limitation 
 of the labor of children in factories with a plan for com- 
 pulsory education among the children. The educational 
 
204 
 
 A mSTORT OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 clauses of the bill had to be abandoned ha consequence ot 
 a somewhat narrow-minded opposition among the Dissen- 
 ters, who feared that too much advantage was given to the 
 Church. Afterward the Government brought in another 
 bill, which became, in the end, the Factories Act of 1844. 
 It Avas during the passing of this measure that Lord 
 Ashley tried unsuccessfully to introduce his ten hours' 
 limit. The bill diminished the working hours of children 
 under thirteen years of age, and fixed them at six and a 
 half hours each day ; extended somewhat the time during 
 which they Avere to be under daily instruction, and did 
 a good many other useful and wholesome things. The 
 principal of legislative interference to protect youthful 
 workers in factories had been already established by the 
 Act of 1833, and Lord Ashley's agitation only obtained for 
 it a somewhat extended application. It has since that 
 time again and again received further extension ; and in 
 this time, as in the former, there is a constant controversy 
 going on as to whether its principles ought not to be so 
 extended as to guard in almost every way the labor of 
 adult women, and even of adult men. The controversy 
 during Lord Ashley's agitation was always warm and 
 often impassioned. Many thoroughly benevolent men 
 and women could not bring themselves to believe that any 
 satisfactory and permanent results could come of a legisla- 
 tive interference with what might be called the freedom 
 of contract between employers and employed. They 
 argued that it was idle to say the interference was only 
 made or sought in the case of women and boys ; for if the 
 women and boys stop ofl working, they pointed out, the 
 men must perforce in most cases stop off working too. 
 Some of the public men afterward most justly popular 
 among the English artisan classes were opposed to the 
 measure on the ground that it was a heedless attempt to 
 interfere with fixed economic laws. It was urged, too, 
 and with much semblance of justice, that the interference 
 of the State for the protection or the compulsory educa- 
 tion of children in factories would have been* much better 
 employed, and was far more loudly called for, in the case 
 of the children employed in agricultural labor. The lot 
 of a factory child, it was contended, is infinitely better in 
 most respects than that of the poor little creature who is 
 employed in hallooing at the crows on a farm. The mill- 
 
PEEVS ADMINISTBATION, 
 
 205 
 
 hand is well cared for, well paid, well able to care for him- 
 self and his wife and his family, it was argued ; but what 
 of the miserable Giles Scroggins of Dorsetshire or Somer- 
 setshire, who never has more in all his life than just 
 enough to keep body and soul together ; and for whom at 
 the close, the work-house is the only haven of rest ? Why 
 not legislate for him — at least for his wife and children ? 
 
 INTeither point requires much consideration from us 
 at present. We have to recognize historical facts ; and 
 it is certain that this country has made up its mind that 
 for the present and for a long time to come, Parlia- 
 ment will interfere in whatever way seems good to 
 it with the conditions on which labor is carried on. 
 There has been, indeed, a very marked advance or 
 retrogression, whichever men may please to call it, in 
 public opinion since the ten hours' agitation. At that 
 time compulsory education and the principles of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's Irish Land Act would have seemed alike impossible 
 to most persons in this country. The practical mind of 
 the Englishman carries to an extreme the dislike and 
 contempt for what the French call /6^^:>micip65 in politics. 
 Therefore we oscillate a good deal the pendulum swinging 
 now very far in the direction of non-interference with 
 individual action, and now still farther in the direction 
 of universal interference and regulation — what was once 
 humorously described as grandmotherly legislation. 
 With our recent experiences we can only be surprised 
 that a few years ago there was such a repugnance to the 
 modest amount of interference with individual rights 
 Avhich Lord Ashley's extremest proposals would have 
 sought to introduce. As regards the other point, it is cer- 
 tain that Parliament will a tone time or another do for the 
 children in the fields something very like that which it 
 has done for the children in the factories. It is enough 
 for us to know that practically the factory legislation has 
 w^orked very well ; and that the non-interference in the 
 fields is a far heavier responsibility on the conscience of 
 Parliament than interference in the factories. 
 
 Many other things done by Sir Eobert Peel's Govern- 
 ment aroused bitter controversy and agitation. In one or 
 two remarkable instances the ministerial policy went near 
 to producing that discord in the Conservative party which 
 we shall presently see break out into passion and scliism 
 
206 
 
 A HISTOBY^OF OUH OWJSf TIMES. 
 
 when Peel came to deal with the Corn-laws. There was, 
 for example, the grant to the Roman Catholic College of 
 Maynooth, a college for the education specially of young 
 men who sought to enter the ranks of the priesthood. 
 The grant A\^as not a new thing. Since before the Act of 
 Union a grant had been made for the college. The Gov- 
 ernment of Sir Robert Peel only proposed to make that 
 which was insufficient sufficient ; to enable the college to 
 be kept in repair, and to accomplish the purpose for which 
 it was founded. As Macaulay put it, there was no more 
 question of principle involved than there would be in the 
 sacrifice of a pound instead of a pennyweight on some 
 particular altar. Yet the ministerial proposition called up 
 a very tempest of clamorous bigotry all over the country. 
 What Macaulay described 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 v/hole controversy has little interest 
 now. Perhaps it will be found to live in the memory of 
 many persons, chiefly because of the quarrel it caused be- 
 tween Macaulay and his Edinburgh constituents, and of 
 the annual motion for the withdrawal of the grant which 
 was so long afterward one of the regular bores of the 
 House of Commons. Many of us can well remember the 
 venerable form of the late Mr. Spooner as year after year 
 he addressed an apathetic, scanty, and half-amused audi- 
 ence, pottering over his papers by the light of two can- 
 dles specially placed for his convenience on the table 
 in front of the Speaker, and endeavoring in vain to arouse 
 England to serious attention on the subject of the awful 
 fate she was preparing for herself by her toleration of 
 the principles of Rome. The Maynooth grant was 
 abolished, indeed, not long after Mr. Spooner's death ; but 
 the manner of its abolition would have given him less 
 comfort even than its introduction. It was abolished 
 when Mr. Gladstone's Government abolished the State 
 Church in Ireland. 
 
 Another of Peel's measures which aroused much clamor 
 on both sides was that for the establishment of what were 
 afterward called tlie " godless colleges " in Ireland. 
 O'Connell has often had the credit of applying this nick- 
 name to the new colleges ; but it was, in fact, from the 
 
PEEV S ADMIN IS TEA TION. 
 
 207 
 
 extremest of all no-popery men, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 
 that the expression came. It was, indeed, from Sir llobert 
 Ingiis's side that the first note sounded of opposition to 
 the scheme, although O'Connell afterward took it vigor- 
 ously up, and the Pope and the Irish bishops condemned 
 the colleges. 
 
 There was objection within the ministry, as well as 
 without. Mr. Gladstone, who had been doing admirable 
 work, first as Vice-president, and afterward as President, 
 of the Board of Trade, and who had supported the Queen's 
 colleges scheme by voice and vote, resigned his office be- 
 cause of the Maynooth grant. He acted, perhaps, with a 
 too sensitive chivalry. He had written a work, as all the 
 world knows, on the relation of Cliurch and State, and he 
 did not think the views expressed in that book left him 
 free to co-operate the ministerial measure. Some staid 
 politicians were shocked ; many more smiled ; not a few 
 sneered. The public in general applauded the spirit of 
 disinterestedness which dictated the young statesman's 
 act. 
 
 The proposal of the Government was to establish in 
 Ireland three colleges — one in Cork^ the second in Belfast, 
 and the third in 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 in- 
 tentions of Peel and his colleagues. Nor could it be 
 denied that there might have been good seeming hope for 
 a plan which thus prox)osed 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 religious education. Nor, surely, 
 could the claim of the Irish Catholics be said even by the 
 warmest advocate of undenominational education to have 
 no reason on its side. The small minority of Protestants 
 in Ireland had their college and their university estab- 
 lished as a distinctively Protestant institution. Why 
 should not the great majority who were Catholics ask for 
 something of the same kind for themselves ? Peel carried 
 his measure ; but the controversy has gone on ever since, 
 and we have yet to see whether the scheme is a success 
 or a failure. 
 
208 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 One small installment of justice to a much-injured and 
 long-suffering religious body was accomplished without 
 any trouble by Sir Robert Peel's Government. This was 
 the bill for removing the test by which Jews were ex- 
 cluded from certain municipal offices. A Jew might be 
 high-sheriff of a county, or sheriff of London, but with an 
 inconsistency Avhich 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, wh(4 had firmly re- 
 jected similar proposals of relief before, passed it without 
 any difficulty. It was of course, passed by the House of 
 Commons, which had done its best to introduce the reform 
 in previous sessions, and without success. 
 
 The Bank Charter Act, separating the issue from the 
 banking department of the bank of England, limiting the 
 issue of notes to a fixed amount of securities, and requir- 
 ing the whole of the further circulation to be on a basis 
 of bullion, and prohibiting the formation of any new banks 
 of issue, is a characteristic and an important measure of 
 Peel's Government. To Peel, too, we owe the establishment 
 of the income-tax on its present basis — a doubtful boon. 
 The copyright question was, at least, advanced a stage. 
 Railways were regulated. The railway mania and railway 
 panic also belong to this active period. The country went 
 wild with railway speculations. The South Sea scheme was 
 hardly more of a bubble, or hardly burst more suddenly 
 or disastrously. The vulgar and flashy successes of one 
 or two lucky adventurers turned the heads of the whole 
 community. For a time it seemed to be a national article 
 of faith that the capacity of the country to absorb new 
 railway schemes and make them profitable was unlimited, 
 and that to make a fortune one had only to take shares in 
 anything. 
 
 An odd feature of the time was the outbreak of what 
 were called the Rebecca riots in Wales. These riots arose 
 out of tlie anger and impatience of the people at the great 
 increase of toll-bars and tolls on the public roads. Some 
 one, it was supposed, had hit upon a passage in Genesis 
 which supplies a motto for their grievance and their com- 
 
PEEVS ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 209 
 
 plaint. " And they blessed Rebekali, and said unto her . . . 
 let thy seed possess the gate of those of which hate them." 
 They set about, accordingly, to possess very effectually 
 the gates of those which hated them. Mobs assembled 
 every night, destroyed turnpikes, and dispersed. They 
 met with little molestation in most cases for awhile. 
 The mobs were always led by a man in woman's clothes, 
 supposed to represent the typical Rebecca. As the dis- 
 turbances went on, it was found that no easier mode of 
 disguise could be got than a woman's clothes, and, there- 
 fore, in many of the riots petticoats might almost be said 
 to be the uniform of the insurgent force. Night after 
 night for months these midnight musterings took place. 
 Rebecca and her daughters became the terror of many 
 regions. As the work went on it became more serious. 
 Rebecca and her daughters grew bold. There were con- 
 flicts with the police and with the soldiers. It is to be 
 feared that men and even women died for Rebecca. At 
 last the Government succeeded in putting down the riots, 
 and had the wisdom to appoint a commission to inquire 
 into the cause of so much disturbance ; and the commis- 
 sion, as will readily be imagined, found that there were 
 genuine grievances at the bottom of the popular excite- 
 ment. The farmers and the laborers were poor ; the tolls 
 were seriously oppressive. The Government dealt lightly 
 with most of the rioters who had been captured, and in- 
 troduced measures which removed the grievances most 
 seriously complained of. Rebecca and her daughters were 
 heard of no more. They had made out their case, and 
 done in their wild mumming way something of a good 
 work. Only a short time before the rioters would have 
 been shot down, and the grievances would have been al- 
 lowed to stand. Rebecca and her short career mark an 
 advancement in the political and social history of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Sir James Graham, the Home-secretary, brought him- 
 self and the Government into some trouble by the manner 
 in which he made use of the power invested in the Ad- 
 ministration for the opening of private letters. Mr. Dun- 
 combe, the Radical member for Finsbur}^, presented a 
 petition from Joseph Mazzini and others complaining that 
 letters addressed to them had been opened in the Post-office. 
 JMany of Mazzini'^ friends, and perhaps Mazzini himself. 
 
210 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 believed that the contents of these letters had been com. 
 municated to the Sardinian and Austrian Governments, 
 and that, as a result, men who were supposed to be im- 
 plicated in projects of insurrection on the Continent had 
 actually been arrested and put to death. Sir James 
 Graham did not deny that he had issued a warrant au- 
 thorizing the opening of some of Mazzini's letters ; but he 
 contended that the right to open letters had been specially 
 reserved to the Government on its responsibility, that it 
 had been always exercised, but by him with special cau- 
 tion and moderation ; and that it would be impossible for 
 any Government absolutely to deprive itself of such a 
 right. The public excitement Avas at first very great ; 
 but it soon subsided. The reports of Parliamentary com- 
 mittees appointed by the two Houses showed that all 
 Governments had exercised the right, but naturally with 
 decreasing frequency and greater caution of late years ; 
 and that there was no chance now of its being seriously 
 abused. No one, not even Thomas Carlyle, who had writ- 
 ten to the Tinires 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 free from innuendoes and attacks on the ground that 
 he had tampered with the correspondence of an exile. 
 One remark, on the other hand, it is right to make. An 
 exile is sheltered in a country like England, on the as- 
 sumption that he does not involve her in responsibility 
 and danger by using her protection as a shield behind 
 which to contrive plots and organize insurrections against 
 foreign Governments. It is certain that Mazzini did make 
 use of the shelter England gave him for such a purpose. 
 It would in the end be to the heavy injury of all ingi- 
 
PEEVS ABMimSTEATION, 
 
 211 
 
 tives from despotic rule if to shelter them brought such 
 consequences on the countries that olferecl them a home. 
 
 The Peel Administration was made memorable by many 
 remarkable events at home as well as abroad. It had, as 
 we have seen, inherited wars and brought them to a close : 
 it had wars of its own. Scinde was annexed by Lord 
 Ellenborough in consequence of the disputes which had 
 arisen between us and the Ameers, whom we accused of 
 having broken faith with us. They were said to be in 
 correspondence with our enemies, which may possibly 
 have been true, and to have failed to pay up our tribute, 
 which w^s very likely. Anyhow we found occasion for 
 an attack on Scinde ; and the result was the total defeat 
 of the Princes and their army, and the annexation of the 
 territory. Sir Charles Napier won a splendid victory — 
 splendid, that is, in a military sense — over an enemy out- 
 numbering him by more than twelve to one at the battle of 
 Meeanee ; and Scinde was ours. Peel and his colleagues 
 accepted the annexation. N^one 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 ISTapier, one of the most bril- 
 liant, daring, successful, eccentric, and self-conceited cap- 
 tains who had ever fought in the service of England since 
 the days of Peterborough. Later on, the Sikhs invaded 
 our territory by crossing the Sutlej in great force. Sir 
 Hugh.Gough, afterward LordGough, fought several fierce 
 battles with them before he could conquer them ; and even 
 then they were only conquered for the time. 
 
 We were at one moment apparently on the very verge 
 of what must have proved a far more serious war much 
 nearer home, in consequence of the dispute that arose 
 between this country and France about Tahiti and Queen 
 Pomare. Queen Pomare was sovereign of the island of 
 Tahiti, 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 in- 
 duced or compelled to put herself and her dominion under 
 the protection of France ; a step which was highly dis- 
 pleasing to her subjects. Some ill-feeling toward the 
 French residents of the island was shown ; arfd the French 
 admiral, who had induced or compelled the Queen to put 
 herself under French protection, now suddenly appeared 
 
212 
 
 A BISTOBY OF OXJR OWN TIMES, 
 
 off the coast, and called on her to hoist the French flag 
 above her own. She refused; and he instantly effected a 
 landing on the island, pulled down her flag, raised that of 
 France in its place, and proclaimed that the Island was 
 French territory. The French admiral appears to have 
 been a hot-headed, thoughtless sort of man, the Commo- 
 dore Wilkes of his day. His act was at once disavowed 
 by the French Government, and condemned in strong 
 terms by M. Guizot. But Queen Pomare had appealed to 
 the Queen of England for assistance. " Do not cast me 
 away, my friend, " she said ; " I run to you for refuge, to 
 be covered under your great shadow, the same, that af- 
 forded relief to my fathers by your fathers, who are now 
 dead, and whose kingdoms have descended to us, the 
 weaker vessels." A large party in France allowed them- 
 selves to become inflamed with the idea that British in- 
 trigue was at the bottom of the Tahiti people's dislike to 
 the protectorate of France, and that England wanted to 
 get Queen Pomare's dominions for herself. They cried 
 out, therefore, that to take down the flag of France from 
 its place in Tahiti would be to insult the dignity of the 
 French nation, and to insult it at the instance of England. 
 The cry w^as echoed in the shrillest tones by a great num- 
 ber of French newspapers. Where the flag of France has 
 once been hoisted, they screamed, it must never be taken 
 down ; which is about equivalent to saying that if a man's 
 officious servant carries off the property of some oue else, 
 and gives it to his master, the master's dignity is lowered 
 by his consenting to hand it back to its owner. In the 
 face of this clamor the French Government, although they 
 disavowed any share in the filibustering of their admiral, 
 did not show themselves in great haste to undo what he 
 had done. Possibly they found themselves in something 
 of the same difficulty as the English Government in regard 
 to the annexation of Scinde. They could not, perhaps, 
 with great safety to themselves have ventured to be honest 
 all at once ; and in any case they did not want to give up 
 the protectorate of Tahiti. While the more hot-headed 
 on both sides of the English Channel were thus snarling 
 at each other, the difficulty was immensely complicated 
 by the seiziiVe of a missionary named Pritchard, who had 
 been our consul in the island up to the deposition of 
 Pomare. A French sentinel had been attacked, or was 
 
P1E:EVS AhMINlsmATlON. til3 
 
 &aid to have been attacked, in the night, and in con- 
 sequence the French commandant seized Pritchard in 
 reprisal, declaring him to be "the only mover and insti- 
 gator of disturbances among the natives." Pritchard 
 was flung into prison, and only released to be expelled 
 from the island. He came home to England with his 
 story ; and his arrival was the signal for an outburst of 
 indignation all over the country. Sir Robert Peel and 
 Lord Aberdeen alike stigmatized the treatment of Prit- 
 chard as a gross and intolerable outrage ; and satisfaction 
 was demanded of the French Government. The King and 
 M. Guizot were both willing that full justice should be 
 done, and both anxious to avoid any occasion of ill-feel- 
 ing with England. The King had lately been receiving, 
 with effusive show of effection, a visit from our Queen in 
 France, and was about to return it. But so hot was pop- 
 ular passion on both sides, that it would have needed 
 stronger and juster natures than those of the King and 
 his minister to venture at once on doing the right thing. 
 It was on the last day of the session of 1844, September 
 5th, that Sir Robert Peel was able to announce that the 
 French Government had agreed to compensate Pritchard 
 for his sufferings and losses. Queen Pomare was nomi- 
 nally restored to power, but the French protection proved 
 as stringent as if it w^ere a sovereign rule. She might as 
 well have pulled down her flag, for all the sovereign right 
 it secured to her. She died thirty-four years after, and 
 her death recalled to the memory of the English public 
 the long-forgotten fact that she had once so nearly been 
 the cause of a war between England and France. 
 
 The Ashburton Treaty and the Oregon Treaty belong 
 alike to the history of Peel's Administration. The Ash- 
 burton Treaty bears date August 9th, 1842, and arranges 
 finally the north-western boundary between the British 
 Provinces of North America and the United States. For 
 many years the want of any clear and settled understand- 
 ing as to the boundary line between Canada and the State of 
 Maine had been a source of some disturbance and of much 
 controversy. Arbitration between England and the United 
 States had been tried and failed, both parties declining 
 the award. Sir Robert Peel sent out Lord Ashburton, for- 
 merly Mr. Baring, as plenipotentiary, to Washington, in 
 1842, and by his intelligent exertions an arrangement was 
 
214 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR 0]VN TIMES. 
 
 come to which appears to have given mutual satisfaction 
 ever since, despite of the sinister prophesyings of Lord 
 Pahnerston at tlie time. The Oregon question was more 
 complicated, and was the source of a longer controvers3^ 
 More than once the dispute about the boundary line in the 
 Oregon region had very nearly become an occasion for 
 war between England and the United States. In Can- 
 ning's time there was a crisis during which, to quote the 
 words of an English statesman, war could have been 
 brought about by the holding up of a finger. The ques- 
 tion in dispute was as to the boundary line between Eng- 
 lish and American territory west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 It had seemed a matter of little importance at one time, 
 w^hen the country west of the Rocky Mountains was re- 
 garded by most persons as little better than a desert idle. 
 But when the vast capacities and the splendid future of 
 the Pacific slope began to be recognized, and the im- 
 portance to us of some station and harbor there came to 
 be more and more evident, the dispute naturally swelled 
 into a question of vital interest to both nations. In 1818 
 an attempt at arrangement was made, but failed. The 
 two Governments then agreed to leave the disputed regions 
 to joint occupation for ten years, after which the subject 
 was to be opened again. When the end of the first term 
 came near, Canning did his best to bring about a settle- 
 ment, but failed. The dispute involved the ownership of 
 the mouth of the Columbia River, and of the noble island 
 which bears the name of Vancouver, ofi: the shore of 
 British Columbia. The joint occupancy 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 question was eagerly taken up by 
 excitable politicians in the American House of Represent- 
 atives. For more than two years the Oregon question 
 became a party cry in America. With a large proportion 
 of the American public, including, of course, nearly all 
 citizens of Irish birth or extraction, any President would 
 have been popular beyond measure who had forced a war 
 on England. Calmer and wiser councils prevailed, how- 
 ever, on both sides. Lord Aberdeen, our Foreign Secre- 
 tary, was especially moderate and conciliatory. He offered 
 a comjjromise which was at last accepted. On June 15th, 
 184G, the Oregon Treaty settled the question for that time 
 
PEEL'S ABMTNISTBATION, 
 
 215 
 
 at least; the dividing line was to be "the forty-ninth 
 degree of latitude, from the Rocky Mountains west to the 
 middle of the cliannel separating Vancouver's Island 
 from the main-land ; thence southerly through the mid- 
 dle of the channel and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific. " 
 The channel and straits were to be free, as also the great 
 northern branch of the Columbia River. In other words, 
 Vancouver's Island remained to Great Britain, and the 
 free navigation of the Columbia River was secured. We 
 have said that the question was settled, "for that thne; " 
 because an important x)art of it came up again for settle- 
 ment many years after. The commissioners ajipointed to 
 determine that portion of the boundary whicli was to run 
 southerly through the middle of the channel were unable 
 to come to any agreement on the subject, and the diver- 
 gence of the claims made on one side and the other con- 
 stituted a new question, which became a part of the 
 famous Treaty of Washington in 1871, and was finally 
 settled by the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany. 
 But it is much to the honor of the Peel Administration 
 that a dispute which had for years been charged with 
 possibilities of war, and had become a stock subject of 
 political agitation in America, should have been so far 
 settled as to be removed forever after out of the category 
 of disputes which suggest an appeal to arms. This was 
 one of the last acts of Peel's Government, and it was not 
 the least of the great things he had clone. We have 
 soon to tell how it came about that it was one of his 
 latest triumphs ; and how an Administration which had 
 come into power with such splendid promise, and had ac- 
 complished so much in such various fields of legislation, 
 was brought so suddenly to a fall. The story is one of 
 the most remarkable and important chapters in the his- 
 tory of English politics and parties. 
 
 During Peel's time we catch a last glimpse of the 
 famous Arctic navigator, Sir John Franklin. He sailed 
 on the expedition which was doomed to be his last, on 
 May 26th, 1845, with his two vessels, Erebus and Terror, 
 Not much more is heard of him as among the living. We 
 may say of him as Carlyle says of La Perouse, " The brave 
 navigator goes and returns not ; the seekers search far 
 seas for him in vain ; onl}^ some mournful, mysterious 
 shadow of him hovers long in all heads and hearts. " 
 
216 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FEEE-TRADE AIS^D THE LEAGUE. 
 
 Few chapters of political history ia modern times have 
 given occasion for more controversy than that which con- 
 tains the story of Sir Robert Peel's Administration in its 
 dealing with the Corn-laws. Told in the briefest form, the 
 story is that Peel came into office in 1841 to maintain the 
 Corn-laws, and that in 1846 he repealed them. The con- 
 troversy as to the wisdom or unwisdom of repealing the 
 Corn-laws has long since come to an end. They who were 
 the uncompromising opponents of Free-trade at that time 
 are proud to call themselves its uncompromising zealots 
 now. Indeed, there is no more chance of a reaction against 
 Free-trade in England than there is of a reaction against 
 the rule of three. But the controversy still exists, and 
 will probably always be in dispute, as to the conduct of 
 Sir Robert Peel. 
 
 The Melbourne Ministry fell, as we have seen, in conse- 
 quence of a direct vote of want of confidence moved by 
 their leading apponent, and the return of a majority hos- 
 tile to them at the general election that followed. The 
 vote of want of confidence was levelled against their 
 financial policy, especially against Lord Jdhn Russell's 
 proposal to substitute a fixed duty of eight shillings, for 
 Peel's sliding scale. Sir Robert Peel came into office, and 
 he introduced a reorganized scheme of a sliding scale, 
 reducing the duties and improving the system, but main- 
 taining the principle. Lord John Russell proposed an 
 amendment declaring that the House of Commons, " con- 
 sidering the evils wliich have been caused by the present 
 Corn-laws, and especially by the fluctuation of the grad- 
 uatcid or sliding scale, is not prepared to adopt the measure 
 of her Majesty's Government, which is founded on the 
 same principles, and is likely to be attended by similar re- 
 sults." Tlie amendment was rejected by a large majority, 
 no less than one hundred and twenty-three. But the ques- 
 
FREE-TBABE AND THE LEAGUE, 
 
 217 
 
 tion between Free-trade and Protection was even more 
 distinctly raised. Mr. Villiers proposed anotlier amend- 
 ment declaring for the entire abolition of all duties on 
 grain. Only ninety votes werfe given for the amendment, 
 while three hundred and ninety-three were recorded 
 against it. Sir Robert Peel's Government, therefore, came 
 into power distinctly pledged to uphold the principle of 
 protection for home-grown grain. Four years after this 
 Sir Robert Peel proposed the total abolition of the corn 
 duties. For this he was denounced by some members of 
 his party in language more fierce and unmeasured than 
 ever since has been applied to any leading statesman. 
 Mr. Gladstone was never assailed by the stanchest sup- 
 porter of the Irish Church in words so vituperative as 
 those which rated Sir Robert Peel for his supposed apos- 
 tasy. One eminent person, at least, made his first fame as 
 a Parliamentary orator by his denunciations of the great 
 minister whom he had previously eulogized and sup- 
 ported. 
 
 " The history of agricultural distress," it has been well 
 observed, " is the history of agricultural abundance." 
 This looks at first sight a paradox ; but nothing can in 
 reality be more plain and less paradoxical. " Whenever," 
 to follow out the passage, " Providence, through the bless- 
 ing of genial seasons, fills the nation's stores with plen- 
 teousness, then, and then only, has the cry of ruin to the 
 cultivator been proclaimed as the one great evil for legisla- 
 tion to repress." This is, indeed, the very meaning of 
 the principle of protection. When the commodity which 
 the protected interest has to dispose of is so abundant as 
 to be easily attained by the common bodj^ of consumers, 
 then, of course, the protected interest is injured in its par- 
 ticular way of making money, and expects the State to do 
 something to secure it in the principal advantage of its 
 monopoly. The greater quantity of grain a good harvest 
 brings for the benefit of all the people, the less the x^rice 
 the corn-grower can cliarge for it. His interest as a mon- 
 opolist is always and inevitably opposed to the interest 
 of the community. 
 
 But it is easy even now, when we have almost forgotten 
 the days of protection, to see that the corn-grower is not 
 likely either to recognize or to admit this conflict of inter- 
 ests ijetween his protection and the public welfare. Apart 
 
218 
 
 A mSTOUY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 from the natural tendency of every man to think that 
 that which does him good must do good to the community, 
 there was, undoubtedly, something very fascinating in 
 the theory of protection. It had a charming give and 
 take, live and let live, air about it. " You give me a little 
 more than the market price for my corn, and don't you 
 see I shall be able to buy all the more of your cloth and 
 tea and sugar, or to pay you the higher rent for your land ?" 
 Such a compact seems reasonable and tempting. Almost 
 up to our own time the legislation of the country was in 
 the hands of the classes who had more to do with the 
 growing of corn and the ownership of land than with the 
 making of cotton and the working of machinery. The 
 great object of legislation and of social compacts of what- 
 ever kind seemed to be to keep the rents of the land- 
 owners and the prices of the farmers up to a comfortable 
 standard. It is not particularly to the discredit of the 
 landlords and the farmers that this was so. We have 
 seen, hi later times, how every class in succession has 
 resisted the movement of the principle of Free-trade when 
 it came to be applied to its own particular interests. The 
 paper manufacturers liked it as little in 1860, as the land- 
 lords and farmers had done fifteen years earlier. When 
 the cup comes to be commended to the lips of each in- 
 terest in turn, we always find that it is received as a poi- 
 soned chalice, and taken with much shuddering and pas- 
 sionate protestation. The particular advantage possessed 
 by vested interests in the Corn-laws was that for a long 
 time the landlords possessed all the legislative power and 
 all the prestige as well. There was a certain reverence 
 and sanctity about the ownership of land, with its hered- 
 itary descent and its patriarchal dignities, which the 
 manufacture of paper could not pretend to claim. 
 
 If it really were true that the legitimate incomes or the 
 legitimate influence of the landlord class in England went 
 down in any way because of the repeal of the Corn-laws, 
 it would have to be admitted that the landlords, like the 
 aristocrats before the French Revolution, had done some- 
 thing themselves to encourage the growth of new and dis- 
 turbing ideas. Before the Revolution, free thought and 
 the equaUty and brotlierhood 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 
 
FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 219 
 
 talk Rousseau, and to affect indifference to rank, and a 
 general faith in a good time coming of equality and 
 brotherhood. In something of the same fashion the aris- 
 tocracy of England were for some time before the repeal 
 of the Corn-laws illustrating a sort of revival of patriar- 
 chal ideas about the duties of property. The influence 
 was stirring everywhere. Oxford was beginning to busy 
 itself in the revival of the olden influence of the Church. 
 The Young England party, as they were then called, 
 were ardent to restore the good old days Avhen the 
 noble was the father of the poor and the chief of his 
 neighborhood. All manner of pretty whimsies were 
 caught up with this ruling idea to give them an appear- 
 ance of earnest purpose. The young landlord exhibited 
 himself in the attitude of a protector, patron, and friend 
 to all his tenants. Doles were formally given at stated 
 hours to all who would come for them to the castle gate. 
 Young noblemen played cricket with the peasants on their 
 estate, and the Saturnian Age was believed by a good 
 many persons to be returning for the express benefit of 
 Old, or rather of Young, England. There was something 
 like a party being formed in Parliament for the realiza- 
 tion of Young England's idyllic purposes. It comprised 
 among its numbers several more or less gifted youths of 
 rank, who were full of enthusiasm and poetic aspirations 
 and nonsense ; and it had the encouragement and support 
 of one man of genius, who had no natural connection with 
 the English aristocracy, but who was afterward destined 
 to be the successful leader of the Conservative and aristo- 
 cratic party ; to be its savior when it was all but down in 
 the dust ; to guide it to victory, and make it once more, 
 for the time at least, supreme in the political life of the 
 country. This brilliant champion of Conservatism has 
 often spoken of the repeal of the Corn-laws as the fall of 
 the landlord class in England. If the landlords fell, it 
 must be said of them, as has been fairly said of many a 
 dynasty, that they never deserved better, on* the whole, 
 than just at the time when the blow struck them down. 
 
 The famous Corn-law of 1815 was a copy of the Corn- 
 law of 1670. The former measure imposed a duty on the 
 importation of foreign grain which amounted to prohibi- 
 tion. Wheat might be exported upon the payment of one 
 shilling per quarter customs duty 5 but importation was 
 
220 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 practically prohibited until the price of wheat had reached 
 eighty shillings a quarter. The Corn-law of 1815 was 
 hurried through Parliament, absolutely closing the ports 
 against the importation of foreign grain until the price of 
 our home-grown grain had reached the magic figure of 
 eighty shillings a quarter. It was hurried through, de- 
 spite the most earnest petitions from the commercial and 
 manufacturing classes. A great deal of popular disturb- 
 ance attended the passing of the measure. There were 
 riots in London, and the houses of several of the support- 
 ers of the bill were attacked. Incendiary fires blazed in 
 many parts of the country. In the Isle of Ely there were 
 riots which lasted for two days and two nights, and the 
 aid of the military had to be called in to suppress them. 
 Five persons were hanged as the result of these disturb- 
 ances. One might excuse a demagogue who compared 
 the event to the suppression of some of the food riots in 
 France just before the Revolution, of which we only read 
 that the people — the poor, that is to say — turned out de- 
 manding bread, and the ringleaders were immediately 
 hanged, and there was an end of the matter. After the 
 Corn-law of 1815, thus ominously introduced, there were 
 Sliding-scale Acts, having for their business to establish 
 a varying system of duty, so that, according as the price 
 of home-produced wheat rose to a certain height, the duty 
 on imported wheat sank in proportion. The principle of 
 all these measures was the same. It was founded on the 
 assumption that the corn grew for the benefit of the 
 grower first of all ; and that until he had been secured in 
 a handsome profit the public at large had no right to any 
 reduction in the cost of food. When the harvest was a 
 good one, and the golden grain was plenty, then the soul 
 of the grower was afraid, and he called out to Parliament 
 to x^rotect him against the calamity of having to sell his 
 corn any cheaper than in years of famine. He did not see 
 all the time that if the prosperity of the country in gen- ^ 
 eral was en(5hanced, 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 resented. The Manchester manufac- 
 turers saw that tlie 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 
 
FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 221 
 
 customers by the system of protective duties. They 
 wanted to sell their goods wherever they could find buyers, 
 and they chafed at any barrier between them and the sale. 
 Manchester, from the time of its first having Parliament- 
 ary representation — only a fcAV years before the founda- 
 tion of the Anti- Corn-law League — had always spoken / 
 out for Free-trade. The fascinating sophism which had 
 such charms for other communities, that by paying more 
 than was actually necessary for everything all round, 
 Dick enriched Tom, while Tom was at the same time en- 
 riching Dick, had no charms for the intelligence and the 
 practical experience of Manchester. The close of the year 
 1836 was a period of stagnant trade and general depres- 
 sion, arising, in some parts of the country, to actual and 
 severe suft'ering. Some members of Parliament and other 
 influential men were stricken with the idea, which it does 
 not seem to have required much strength of observation 
 to foster, that it could not be for the advantage of the 
 country in general to have the price of bread very high at 
 a time when wages Avere very low and work was scarce. 
 A movement against the Corn-laws began in London. An 
 Anti-Corn-law Association on a small scale was formed. 
 Its list of members bore the names of more than twenty 
 members of Parliament, and for a time the society had 
 a look of vigor about it. It came to nothing, however. 
 London has never been found an effective nursery of agi- 
 tation. It is too large to have any central interest or 
 source of action. It is too dependent, socially and econom- 
 ically, on the patronage of the higher and wealthier 
 classes. London has never been to England what Paris 
 has been to France. It has hardly ever made or repre- 
 sented thoroughly the public opinion of England during 
 any great crisis. A new centre of operations soon had 
 to be sought, and various causes combined to make Lan- 
 cashire the proper place. In the year 1838 the town of 
 Bolton-le-Moors, in Lancashire, was the victim of a terri- 
 ble commercial crisis. Thirty out of the fifty manufac- 
 turing establishments which the town contained were 
 closed ; nearly a fourth of all the houses of business were 
 closed and actually deserted ; and more than five thousand 
 workmen were without homes or means of subsistence. 
 All the intelligence and energy of Lancashire was roused. 
 One obvious guarantee against starvation was cheap bread. 
 
222 
 
 A HISrOBY OF OUn OWN TIMES, 
 
 and cheap bread meant, of course, the abolition of the 
 Corn-laws, for these laws were constructed on the prin- 
 ciple that it was necessary to keep bread dear. A meeting 
 was held in Manchester to consider measures necessary 
 to be adopted for bringing about the complete repeal of 
 these laws. The Manchester Chambers of Commerce 
 adopted a petition to Parliament against the Corn-laws. 
 The Anti- Corn-law agitation had been fairly launched. 
 
 From that time it grew, and grew in importance and 
 strength. Meetings were held in various towns of Eng- 
 land and Scotland. Associations were formed everywhere 
 to co-operate with the movement, which had its head- 
 quarters in Manchester. In Newall's Buildings, Market 
 Street, Manchester, the work of the League was really 
 done for years. The leaders of the movement gave up 
 their time day by day to its service. The League had to 
 encounter a great deal of rather fierce opposition from the 
 Chartists, who loudly proclaimed that the whole move- 
 ment was only meant to entrap them once more into an 
 alliance with the middle classes and the employers, as in 
 the case of the Reform Bill, in order that when they had 
 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 pam- 
 phlets by hundreds of thousands, and sent lecturers all 
 over the country explaining the principles of Free-trade. 
 A gigantic propaganda of Free- trade opinions was called 
 into existence. Money was raised by the holding of bazars 
 in Manchester and in London, and by calling for subscrip- 
 tions. A bazar in Manchester brought in ten thousand 
 pounds ; one in London raised rather more than double 
 that sum, not including the subscriptions that were con- 
 tributed. A Free-trade Hall was built in Manchester. 
 This building had an interesting history full of good omen 
 for the cause. The ground on which the hall was erected 
 was the property of Mr. Cobden, and was placed by him 
 at the disposal of the League. That ground was the scene 
 of what was known in Manchester as the Massacre of 
 Peterloo. On August 10th, 1819, a meeting of Manchester 
 Reformers was lield on tliat spot, wliich was dispersed by 
 an attack of soldiers and militia, with the loss of many 
 
FUEE'TRABJE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 223 
 
 lives. The memory of that day rankled in the hearts of 
 the Manchester Liberals for long after, and perhaps no 
 better means could be found for purifying the ground 
 from the stain and the shame of such bloodshed than its 
 dedication by the modern apostle of j)eace and Free- trade 
 as a site whereon to build a hall sacred to the promulga- 
 tion of his favorite doctrines. 
 
 The times were peculiarly favorable to the new sort of 
 propaganda which came into being with the Anti-Corn-law 
 League. A few years before such an agitation would 
 hardly have found the means of making its influence felt 
 all over the country. The very reduction of the cost of 
 postage alone must have facilitated its labors to an extent 
 beyond calculation. The inundation of the country with 
 pam]3hlets, tracts, and reports of speeches would have 
 been scarcely possible under the old system, and would in 
 any case have swallowed up a far larger amount of money 
 than even the League with its*ample resources would have 
 been able to supply. In all parts of the country railways 
 were being opened, and these enabled the lecturers of the 
 League to hasten from town to town and to keep the cause 
 always alive in the x3opular mind. All these advantages 
 and many others might, however, have proved of little 
 avail if the League had not from the first been in the hands 
 of men who seemed as if they came by special appoint- 
 ment to do its work. Great as the work was which the 
 League did, it will be remembered in England almost as 
 much because of the men who won the success as on 
 account of the success itself. 
 
 The nominal leader of the Free-trade party in Parlia- 
 ment was for many years Mr. Charles Villiers, a man of 
 aristocratic family and surroundings, of remarkable 
 ability, and of the steadiest fidelity to the cause he had un- 
 dertaken. Nothing is a more familiar phenomenon in the 
 history of English political agitation than the aristocrat 
 who assumes the popular cause and cries out for the 
 " rights " of the " unenfranchised millions." But it was 
 something new to find a man of Mi*. Villiers's class devot- 
 ing himself to a cause so entirely practical and business- 
 like as that of the repeal of the Corn-laws. Mr. Yilliers 
 brought forward for several successive sessions in the 
 House of Commons a motion in favor of the total repeal 
 of the Corn-laws. His eloquence and his argumentative 
 
224 
 
 A msTOBY OF OUIl OWN TIMES. 
 
 power served the great purpose of drawing the attention 
 of the country to the whole question, and making con- 
 verts to the principle he advocated. The House of Com- 
 mons has always of late years been the best platform from 
 which to address the country. In political agitation it 
 has thus been made to prepare the way for the schemes 
 of legislation Avliich it has itself always begun by repro- 
 bating. But Mr. Villiers might have gone on for all his 
 life dividing the House of Commons on the question of 
 Free-trade, without getting much nearer to his object, if 
 it were not for the manner in which the cause was taken 
 up by the country, and more particularly by the great 
 manufacturing towns of the North. Until the passing of 
 Lord Grey's Reform Bill these towns had no representa- 
 tion in Parliament. They seemed destined after that 
 event to make up for their long exclusion from represent- 
 ative influence by taking the government of the country 
 into their own hands. Of h^te years they have lost some 
 of their relative influence. They have not now all the 
 power that for no inconsiderable time they undoubtedly 
 possessed. The reforms they chiefly aimed at have been 
 carried, and the spirit which in times of stress and struggle 
 kept their populations almost of one mind has less neces- 
 sity of existence now. Manchester, Birmingham, and 
 Leeds are no whit less important to the life of the nation 
 now than they were before Free-trade. But their suprem- 
 acy does not exist now as it did then. At that time it 
 was town against country ; Manchester representing the 
 town, and the whole Conservative (at one period almost 
 the whole land-owning) body representing the country. 
 The Manchester school, as it was called, then and for long 
 after had some teachers and leaders who were of them- 
 selves capable of making any school powerful and re- 
 spected. With the Manchester school began a new kind 
 of popular agitation. LTp to that time agitation meant 
 appeal to passion, and lived by provoking passion. Its 
 cause might be good or bad, but the way of promoting it 
 was the same. The Mancliester school introduced the 
 agitation which appealed to reason and argument only ; 
 which stirred men's hearts with figures of arithmetic, 
 rather than figures of speech, and which converted mob 
 meetings lip political economy. 
 The real leader of the movement was Mr. Richard Cob- 
 
FREE-TEABE AND THE LEAGUE. 225 
 
 den. Mr. Cobden was a man belonging to the yeoman 
 class. He had received but a moderate education. His 
 father dying while the great Free-trader was still young, 
 Richard Cobden was taken in charge^ by an uncle, who 
 .had a wholesale warehouse in the City of London, and 
 who gave him employment there. Cobden afterward 
 became a partner in a Manchester printed-cotton factory ; 
 and he travelled occasionally on the commercial business 
 of this establishment. He had a great liking for travel ; 
 but not by any means as the ordinary tourist travels ; 
 the interest of Cobden was not in scenery, or in art, or in 
 ruins, but in men. He studied the condition of countries 
 with a view to the manner in which it affected the men 
 and women of the present, and through them was likely 
 to effect the future. On everything that he saw he 
 turned a quick and intelligent eye ; and he saw for him- 
 self and thought for himself. Wherever he went he 
 wanted to learn something. He had in abundance that 
 peculiar faculty which some great men of widely differ- 
 ent stamp from him and from each other have possessed ; 
 of which Goethe frankly boasted, and which Mirabeau 
 had more largely than he was always willing to acknowl- 
 edge ; the faculty which exacts from every one with 
 whom its owner comes into contact some contribution to 
 his stock of information and to his advantage. Cobden 
 could learn something from everybody. It is doubtful 
 whether he ever came even into momentary acquaintance 
 with any one whom he did not compel to yield him some- 
 thing in the way of information. He travelled very 
 widely for a time, when travelling was more difficult 
 work than it is at present. He made himself familiar 
 with most of the countries of Europe, with many parts of 
 the East, and, what was then a rarer accomplishment, 
 with the United States and Canada. He did not make 
 the familiar grand tour, and then dismiss the places he 
 had seen from his active memory. He studied them, and 
 visited many of them again to compare early with later 
 impressions. This was m itself an education of the high- 
 jest value for the career he proposed to pursue. When he 
 was about thirty years of age he began to acquire a cer- 
 tain reputation as the author of pamphlets directed 
 against some of the pet doctrines of old-fashioned states- 
 manship — the balance of power in Europe ; the necessity 
 
 15 
 
22G 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OITR OWM TIMES, 
 
 of maintaining a State Church in Ireland; the import- 
 ance of allowing no European quarrel to go on without 
 England's intervention ; and similar dogmas. Mr. Cob- 
 den's opinions thcM 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 Jbe only one opinion as to the 
 skill and force which upheld them with pen as well as 
 tongue. The tongue, however, was his best weapon. If 
 oratory were a business and not an art — that is, if its test 
 were its success rather than its form — then it might be 
 contended reasonably enough that Mr. Cobden was one 
 of the greatest orators England has ever known. Noth- 
 ing could exceed the persuasiveness of his style. His man- 
 ner was simple, sweet, and earnest. It was persuasive, 
 but it had not the sort of persuasiveness which is merely a 
 better kind of plausibility. It persuaded by convincing. 
 *It was transparently sincere. The light of its convic- 
 tions shone all through it. It aimed at the reason and 
 the judgment of the listener, and seemed to be convinc- 
 ing him to his own interest against his prejudices. Cob- 
 den's style was almost exclusively conversational ; but he 
 had a clear, well-toned voice, with a quiet, unassuming 
 power in it which enabled him to make his words heard 
 distinctly and without effort all through the great meet- 
 ings he had often to address. His speeches were full of 
 variety. He illustrated every argument by something 
 drawn from his personal observation or from reading, and 
 his illustrations were always striking, appropriate, and 
 interesting. He had a large amount of bright and win- 
 ning humor, and he spoke the simplest and purest Eng- 
 lish. He never used an unnecessary sentence, or failed 
 for a single moment to make his meaning clear. Many 
 strong opponents of Mr. Cobden's opinions confessed, 
 even during his lifetime, that they sometimes found with 
 dismay their most cherished convictions crumbling away 
 beneath his flow of easy argument. In the stormy times 
 of national passion Mr. Cobden was less powerful. When 
 the question was one to be settled by the rules that 
 govern man's substantial interests, or even by the stand- 
 ing rules, if such an expression may be allowed, of mor- 
 
FREE-TTtADE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 227 
 
 alifcy, then Cobden was unequalled. So long as the con- 
 troversy could be settled after this fashion — " I will show 
 you that in such a course you are acting injuriously to 
 your own interests ; " or " You are doing what a fair and 
 just man ought not to do " — so long as argument of that 
 kind could sway the conduct of men, then there was no 
 one who could convince as Cobden could. But when the 
 hour and mood of passion came, and a man or a nation 
 said, " I do not care any longer whether this is for my 
 interest or not — I don't care whether you call it right or 
 wrong — this way my instincts drive me, and this way I 
 am going" — then Mr. Cobden's teaching, the very per- 
 fection as it was of common-sense and fair play, was out 
 of season. It could not answer feeling with feeling. It 
 was not able to " overcrow," in the word of Shakspeare 
 and Spencer, one emotion by another. The defect of Mr. 
 Cobden's style of mind and temper is fitly illustrated in 
 the deficiency of his method of argument. His sort of 
 education, his modes of observation, his way of turning 
 travel to account, all went together to make him the man 
 he was. The apostle of common-sense and fair dealing, 
 he had no sympathy with the passions of men ; he did 
 not understand them ; they passed for nothing in his cal- 
 culations. His judgment of men and of nations was 
 based far too much on his knowledge of his own motives 
 and character. He knew that in any given case he could 
 always trust himself to act the part of a just and prudent 
 man ; and he assumed that all the world could be gov- 
 erned by the rules of prudence and of equity. History 
 had little interest for him, except as it testified to man's 
 advancement and steady progress, and furnished argu- 
 ments to show that men pros^oered by liberty, peace, and 
 just dealings with their neighbors. He cared little or 
 nothing for mere sentiments. Even where these had their 
 root in some human tendency that Avas noble in itself, he 
 did not reverence them if they seemed to stand in the 
 way of men's acting peacefully and prudently. He did 
 not see why the mere idea of nationality, for example, 
 should induce people to disturb themselves by insurrec- 
 tions and wars, so long as they were tolerably well gov- 
 erned, and allowed to exist in peace and to make an 
 honest living. Thus he never represented more than 
 half the English character. He was always out of 
 
228 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 sympathy with his countrymen on some great political 
 question. 
 
 But he seemed as if he were designed by nature to con- 
 duct to success such an agitation as that against the Corn- 
 laws. He found some colleagues who were worthy of him. 
 His chief companion in the campaign was Mr. Bright. Mr 
 Bright's fame is not so completely bound up with the 
 repeal of the Corn-laws, or even with the extension of the 
 suffrage, as that of Mr. Cobden. If Mr. Bright had been 
 on the wrong side of every cause he pleaded; if his agita- 
 tion had been as conspicuous for failure as it was for 
 success, he would still be famous among English public 
 men. He was what Mr. Cobden was not, an orator of the 
 very highest class. It is doubtful whether English public 
 life has ever produced a man who possessed more of the 
 qualifications of a great orator than Mr. Bright. 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 unspeakable effect to any passages of pathos 
 or of scorn. His style of speaking was exactly what a 
 conventional demagogue's ought not to be. It was pure 
 to austerity ; it was stripped of all superfluous ornament. 
 It never gushed or foamed. It never allowed itself to be 
 mastered by passion. The first peculiarity that struck 
 the listener was its superb self-restraint. The orator at 
 his most powerful passages appeared as if he were rather 
 keeping in his strength than taxing it with effort. His 
 voice was, for the most part, calm and measured ; he hardly 
 ever indulged in much gesticulation. He never, under the 
 pressure of whatever emotion, shouted or stormed. The 
 fire of his eloquence was a white-heat, intense, consuming, 
 but never sparkling or sputtering. He had an admirable 
 gift of humor and a keen ironical power. He had read few 
 books, but of those he read he was a master. The English 
 Bible and Milton were his chief studies. His style was 
 probably formed, for the most part, on the Bible ; for 
 although he may have moulded his general way of think- 
 ing and his simple, strong morality on the lessons he found 
 in Milton, his mere language bore little trace of Milton's 
 stately classicism with its Ilellcnized and Latinized ter- 
 minology, but was above all things Saxon and simple. 
 
FREE-TBADE AND THE LEAGUE. 229 
 
 Bright was a man of the middle-class. His family were 
 Quakers of a somewhat austere mould. They were manu- 
 facturers of carpets in Kochdale, Lancashire, and had 
 made considerable money in their business. John Bright, 
 therefore, was raised above the temptations which often 
 beset the eloquent young man who takes up a democratic 
 cause in a country like ours ; and, as our public opinion 
 goes, it probably was to his advantage, when first he 
 made his appearance in Parliament, that he was well 
 known to be a man of some means, and not a clever and 
 needy adventurer. 
 
 Mr. Bright himself has given an interesting account of 
 his first meeting with Mr. Cobden : 
 
 " The first time I became acquainted with Mr. Cobden 
 was in connection with the great question of education. 
 I went over to Manchester to call upon him and invite 
 him to come to Rochdale to speak at a meeting about to 
 be held in the school-room of the Baptist Chapel in West 
 Street. I found him in his counting-house. I told him 
 what I wanted ; his countenance lighted up with pleasure 
 to find that otliers were working in the same cause. He, 
 without hesitation, agreed to come. He came, and he 
 spoke ; and though he was then so young a speaker, yet 
 the qualities of his speech were such as remained with 
 him so long as he was able to speak at all — clearness, 
 logic, a conversational eloquence, a persuasiveness which, 
 when combined with the absolute truth there was in his 
 eye and in his countenance, became a power it was almost 
 impossible to resist." 
 
 Still more remarkable is the description Mr. Bright has 
 given of Cobden's first appeal to him to join in the agita- 
 tion for the repeal of the Corn-laws : 
 
 " I was in Leamington, and Mr. Cobden called on me. 
 I was then in the depths of grief — I may almost say of 
 despair — for the light and sunshine of my house had been 
 extinguished. 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. Cobden called on me as his friend and addressed 
 me, as you may suppose, with words of condolence. 
 After a time he looked up and said : ' There are thou- 
 sands and thousands of homes in England at this moment 
 where wives and mothers and children are dying of 
 
230 
 
 A III ST OUT OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is 
 passed, I would advise you to come with me, and we Avill 
 never rest until the Corn-laws are repealed.' " 
 
 The invitation thus given was cordially accepted, and 
 from that time dates the almost unique fellowship of these 
 two men, who worked together in the closest brother- 
 hood, who loved each other as not all brothers do, who 
 were associated so closely in the public mind that until 
 Cobden's death the name of one was scarcely ever men- 
 tioned without that of the other. There was something 
 positively romantic about their mutual attachment. Each 
 led a noble life ; each was in his own way a man of genius ; 
 each was simple and strong. Rivalry between them would 
 have been impossible, although they were every day being 
 compared and contrasted by both friendly and unfriendly 
 critics. Their gifts were admirably suited to make them 
 powerful allies. Each had something that the other 
 wanted. Bright had not Cobden's winning persuasive- 
 ness nor his surprising ease and force of argument. But 
 Cobden had not anything like his companion's oratorical 
 power. He had not the tones of scorn, of pathos, of 
 humor, and of passion. The two together made a genuine 
 power in the House of Commons and on the platform. 
 Mr. Kinglake, who is as little in sympathy with the general 
 political opinions of Cobden and Bright as any man well 
 could be, has borne admirable testimony to their argu- 
 mentative xDOwer 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 cany a scientific 
 truth through the storms of politics. They had shown 
 that they could arouse and govern the assenting thousands 
 who listened to them with delight — that they could bend 
 the House of Commons — that they could press their creed 
 upon a Prime-minister, and put upon his mind so hard a 
 stress, that after awhile he felt it to be a torture and a 
 violence to his reason to have to make a stand against 
 them. Nay, more. Each of these gifted men had proved 
 that he could go bravely into the midst of angry opponents, 
 could show them their fallacies one by one, destroy their 
 favorite theories before their very faces, and triumphantly 
 argue them down." It was, indeed, a scientific truth 
 which, in the first instance, Cobden and Bright undertook 
 
FBEE-TItABE AND THE LEAGUE, 
 
 231 
 
 to force upon the recognition of a Parliament composed in 
 great measure of the very men who Avere taught to believe 
 that their own personal and class interests were bound up 
 with the maintenance of the existing economical creed. 
 Those who hold that because it was a scientific truth the 
 task of its advocates ought to have been easy, will do well 
 to observe the success of the resistance which has been thus 
 far offered to it in almost every country but England alone. 
 
 These men had many assistants and lieutenants well 
 worthy to act with them and under them. Mr. W. J. Fox, 
 for instance, a Unitarian minister of great popularity 
 and remarkable eloquence, seemed at one time almost 
 to divide public admiration as an orator with Mr. Cobden 
 and Mr. Bright. Mr. Milner Gibson, who had been a 
 Tory, went over to the movement, and gave it the assist- 
 ance of trained Parliamentary knowledge and very con- 
 siderable debating skill. In the Lancashire towns the 
 League had the advantage of being officered for the most 
 part, by shrewd and sound men of business, who gave 
 their time as freely as they gave their money to the ad- 
 vancement of the cause. It is curious to compare the 
 manner in which the Anti-Corn-law agitation was con- 
 ducted with the manner in which the contemporary agita- 
 tion in Ireland for the repeal of the Union was carried on. 
 In England the agitation was based on the most strictly 
 business principles. The leaders spoke and acted as if 
 the League itself were some great commercial firm, which 
 was bound, above all things, to fulfil its promises and 
 keep to the letter as well as the spirit of its engagements. 
 There was no boasting ; there was no exaggeration; there 
 were no appeals to passion ; no romantic rousings of sen- 
 timental emotion. The system of the agitation was as 
 clear, straightforward, and business-like as its x^^iT^^e. 
 In Ireland there were monster meetings, with all manner 
 of dramatic and theatric effects-^with rhetorical exagger- 
 ation, and vehement appeal to passion and to ancient 
 memory of suffering. The cause was kept up from day to 
 day by assurances of near success sO positive that it is 
 sometimes hard to believe those who made them could 
 themselves have been deceived by them. No doubt the 
 difference will be described by many as the mere result 
 of the difference between the one cause and the other ; 
 between the agitation for Free-trade, clear, tangible, and 
 
232 
 
 A HISTORT of OtlB OW]^ TIMES. 
 
 practical, and that for repeal of the Union, with its 
 shadowy object and its visionary impulses. But a bet- 
 ter explanation of the difference Avill 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 criti- 
 cism of the time, that the guides of public opinion who 
 pronounced the repeal agitation absurd and ludicrous had 
 any better words at first for the movement against the 
 Corn-law. Cobden and Bright on the one side, O'Connell 
 on the other, knew the audiences they had to address. It 
 would have been impossible to stir the blood of the Lan- 
 cashire artisan by means of the appeals which went to the 
 very heart of the dreamy, sentimental, impassioned Celt 
 of the South of Ireland. The Munster peasant would 
 have understood little of such clear, penetrating, business- 
 like argument as that by which Cobden and Bright en- 
 forced their doctrines. Had O'Connell's cause been as 
 practical and its success been as immediately attainable as 
 that of the Anti-Corn-law League, the great Irish agitator 
 would still have had to address his followers in a differ- 
 ent tone of appeal. "All men are not alike," says the 
 Norman butler to the Flemish soldier in Scott's ^' Be- 
 trothed : " " that which will but warm your Flemish 
 hearts will put wildfire into Norman brains ; and Avhat 
 may only encourage your countrymen to man the walls, 
 will make ours fly over the battlements." The most im- 
 passioned Celt, however, will admit that in the Anti-Corn- 
 law movement of Cobden and Bright, with its rigid truth- 
 fulness and its strict proportion between capacity and 
 promise, there was an entirely new dignity lent to popu- 
 lar agitation which raised it to the condition of statesman- 
 ship in the rough. The Reform agitation in England had 
 not been conducted without some exaggeration, much ap- 
 peal to passion, and some not by any means indistinct 
 allusion to the reserve of popular force which might be 
 called into action if legislators and peers proved insensible 
 to argument. The* era of the Anti-Corn-law movement 
 was a new epoch altogether in English political controversy. 
 
 The League, however, successful as it might be 
 throughout the country, had its great work to do in Par- 
 liament. The Free-trade leaders must have found their 
 hearts sink within them when they came sometimes to 
 
FREE'TEADE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 233 
 
 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 representatives of the landlords. The 
 entire House of Lords then was constituted of the owners 
 of land. All tradition, all prestige, all the dignity of 
 aristocratic institutions, seemed to be naturally arrayed 
 against the new movement, conducted as it was by manu- 
 facturers and traders for the benefit, seemingly, of trade 
 and those whom it employed. The artisan population, 
 who might have been formidable as a disturbing element, 
 were, on the whole, rather against the Free-traders than 
 for them. Nearly all the great official leaders had to be 
 converted to the doctrines of Free-trade. Many of the 
 Whigs Avere Avilling enough to admit the case of Free- 
 trade as the young Scotch lady mentioned by Sydney 
 Smith admitted the case of love, " in the abstract ; " but 
 they could not recognize the possibility of applying it in 
 the complicated financial conditions of an artificial system 
 like ours. Some of the Whigs were in favor of a fixed 
 duty in place of the existing sliding-scale. The leaders 
 of the movement had, indeed, to resist a very dangerous 
 temptation coming from statesmen who professed to be 
 in accordance with them as to the mere principle of 
 protection, but who were always endeavoring to persuade 
 them that they had better accept any decent compromise, 
 and not push their demands to extremes. The witty peer 
 who in a former generation answered an advocate of 
 moderate reform by asking him what he thought of 
 moderate chastity, might have had many opportunities, if 
 he had been engaged in the Free-trade movement, of 
 turning his e]3igram to account. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay, for instance, wrote to the electors of 
 Edinburgh to remonstrate with them on what he con- 
 sidered their fanatical and uncompromising adherence to 
 the principle of Free-trade. "In my opinion," Mr. 
 Macaulay wrote to his constituents, " you are all wrong — 
 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 
 rliall do the same ; but because, being in a situation 
 V here your only hope is in a compromise, you refuse to 
 
234 
 
 ^1 HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 hear of compromise ; because, being in a situation where 
 every person who will go a step with you on the right 
 road ought to be cordially welcomed, you drive from you 
 those who are willing and desirous to go with you 
 half-way. To this policy I will be no party. I will not 
 abandon those with whom I have hitherto acted, and 
 without whose help I am confident that no great improve- 
 ment can be effected, for an object purely selfish." It 
 had not occurred to Mr. Macaulay that any party but the 
 Whigs could bring in any measure of fiscal or other 
 reform worth the having; and, indeed, he probably 
 thought it would be sometliing like an act of ingratitude 
 amounting to a species of sacrilege to accepted reform 
 from any hands but those of its recognized Whig patrons. 
 The Anti- Corn-law agitation introduced a game of politics 
 into England which astonished and considerably discom- 
 fited steady-going politicians like Macaulay. The League 
 men did not profess to be bound by any indefeasible bond 
 of allegiance to the Whig party. They were prepared to 
 co-operate with any party whatever which would under- 
 take to abolish the Corn-laws. Their agitation Avould 
 have done some good in this way, if in no other sense. 
 It introduced a more robust and independent spirit into 
 political life. It is almost ludicrous sometimes to read 
 the diatribes of supporters of Lord Melbourne's Govern- 
 ment, for example, against any one who should presume 
 to think that any object 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 Conservative governments 
 in our own days, because the new political temper which 
 Avas growing up in England refused to affirm that the 
 patent of reform rested in the possession of any particular 
 party, and that if the holders of the monopoly did not 
 find it convenient, or were not in the humor to use it any 
 further just then, no one else must venture to interfere in 
 the matter, or to undertake the duty which they had 
 declined to perform. At the time that Macaulay wrote 
 his letter, however, it had not entered into the mind of 
 any Whig to believe it possible that the repeal of the 
 Corn-laws was to be the work of a great Conservative 
 minister, done at the bidding of two Radical politicians. 
 It is a significant fact that the Anti-Corn-law League 
 
FUEE'TRAJbE AND THE LEAGUE, 235 
 
 were not in the least discouraged by tlie accession of Sir 
 Robert Peel to power. To them the fixed duty proposed 
 by Lord John Russell was as objectionable as Peel's slid- 
 ing-scale. Their hopes seem rather to have gone up than 
 gone down when the minister came into power wliose 
 adherents, unlike those of Lord John Russell, were ab- 
 solutely against the very principle of Free-trade. It is of 
 some importance, in estimating the morality of the course 
 pursued by Peel, to observe the opinion formed of his pro- 
 fessions and his probable purposes by the shrewd men 
 who led the Anti-Corn-law League. The grand charge 
 against Peel is that he betrayed his party ; that he induced 
 them to continue their allegiance to him on the promise 
 that he would never concede the principle of Free- trade ; 
 and that he used his power to establish Free-trade when 
 the time came to choose between it and a surrender of 
 office. Now it is certain that the League always regarded 
 Sir Robert Peel as a Free-trader in heart; as one who 
 fully admitted the principle of Free-trade, but who did 
 not see his way just then to deprive the agricultural in- 
 terest of the protection on which they had for so many 
 years been allowed and encouraged to lean. In the de- 
 bate after the general election of 1841— the debate which 
 turned out the Melbourne Ministry — Mr. Cobden, then for 
 the first time a member of the House of Commons, said : 
 " I am a Free-trader ; I call myself neither Whig nor 
 Tory. I am proud to acknowledge the virtue of the Whig 
 Ministry in coming out from the ranks of the monopolists 
 and advancing three parts out of four in my own direc- 
 tion. Yet if the right lionorable baronet opposite (Sir R. 
 Peel) advances one step farther, I will be the first to meet 
 him half-way and shake hands with him." Some years 
 later Mr. Cobden said, at Birmingham, " There can be no 
 doubt that Sir Robert Peel is at heart as good a Free- 
 trader as I am. He has told us so in the House of Com- 
 mons again and again ; nor do I doubt that Sir Robert 
 Peel Jias in his inmost heart the desire to be the man who 
 shaH'carry out the principles of Free-trade in this country." 
 Sir Robert Peel had, indeed, as Mr. Cobden said, again and 
 again in Parliament expressed his conviction as to the 
 general truth of the principles of Free-trade. In 1842, he 
 declared it to be utterly beyond the power of Parliament, 
 and a mere delusion, to say that by any duty, fixed or 
 
236 
 
 A msToitr 0^ oxjB own TiMt:s. 
 
 otherwise, a certain price could be guaranteed to the pro- 
 ducer. In the same year he expressed his belief that " on 
 the general principle of Free- trade there is now no great 
 difference of opinion, and that all agree in the general 
 rule that we should buy in the cheapest and sell in the 
 dearest market." This expression of opinion called forth 
 an ironical cheer from the benches of opposition. Peel 
 knew well what the cheer was meant to convey. He 
 knew it meant to ask him why, then, he did not allow the 
 country to buy its grain in the cheapest market. He 
 promptly added — " I know the meaning of that cheer. I 
 do not wish to raise a discussion on the Corn-laws or the 
 Sugar Duties, which I contend, however, are exceptions 
 to the general rule, and I will not go into that question 
 now." The press of the day, whether for or against Peel, 
 commented upon his declarations and his measures as in- 
 dicating clearly that the bent of his mind was toward 
 Free-trade even in grain. At all events, he had reached 
 that mental condition when he regarded the case of grain, 
 like that of sugar, as a necessary exception, for the time, 
 to the operation of a general rule. 
 
 It ought to have been obvious that if exceptional cir- 
 cumstances should arise, pulling more strongly in the 
 direction of the League, Sir Robert Peel's own explicit 
 declarations must bind him to recognize the necessity of 
 applying the Free-trade principles even to corn. ''Sir 
 Robert Peel," says his cousin, Sir Laurence Peel, in a 
 sketch of the life and character of the great statesman, 
 "had been, as I have said, always a Free-trader. The 
 questions to which he had declined to apply those prin- 
 ciples had been viewed by him as exceptional. The Corn- 
 law had been so treated by many able exponents of the 
 principles of Free-trade." Sir Robert Peel himself has 
 left it on record that during the discussions on the Corn- 
 law of 1842 he was more than once pressed to give a 
 guarantee, " so far as a minister could give it," that the 
 amount of protection established by that law should be 
 I)ermanently adhered to ; " but although I did notT 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 
 
FREE-TUAJDiEl AND THE LEAGUE, 
 
 237 
 
 indeed from that of the ordinary county member or 
 pledged Protectionist, and that Peel had done all he could 
 to make this clear to his party. A minister who, in 1842, 
 refused to fetter the discretion of his Government in deal- 
 ing with the protection of home-grown grain ought not, 
 on the face of things, to be accused of violating his 
 pledges and betraying his party, if, four years latter, 
 under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances, he 
 made up his mind to the abolition of such a protection. 
 Let us test this in a manner that will be familiar to our 
 own time. Suppose a Prime-minister is pressed by st)me 
 of his own party to give the House of Commons a guaran- 
 tee, " so far as a minister could give it," that the prin- 
 ciple of the State Church Establishment in England shall 
 be permanently adhered to. He declines to fetter the 
 discretion of the Government in the future. Is it not 
 evident that such an answer would be taken by nine out 
 often of his listeners to be ominous of some change to 
 the Established Church? If four years after the same 
 minister were to propose to disestablish the Church, he 
 might be denounced and he might even be execrated, but 
 no' one could fairly accuse him of having violated his 
 pledge and betrayed his party. 
 
 The country party, hoAvever, did not understand Sir 
 Robert Peel as their opponents and his assuredly under- 
 stood him. They did not at this time believe in the pos- 
 sibility of any change. Free-trade was to them little more 
 than an abstraction. They did not much care who 
 preached it out of Parliament. They were convinced 
 that the state of things they saw around them when they 
 were boys would continue to the end. They looked on 
 Mr. Villiers and his annual motion in favor of Free-trade 
 very much as a stout old Tory of later times might regard 
 the annual motion for Avoman suffrage. Both parties in 
 the House — that is to say, both of the parties from whom 
 ministers were taken — alike set themselves against the 
 introduction of any such measure. The supporters of it 
 were, with one exception, not men of family and rank. It 
 was agitated for a good deal out-of-doors, but agitation 
 had not up to that time succeeded in making much w^ay 
 even with a reformed Parliament. The country party 
 observed that some men among the two leading sets 
 went farther in favor of the abstract principle thau 
 
238 
 
 A IIISrORY OF OVIi OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 msisted 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 
 mhid of their leader was avowedly in a progressive con- 
 ditii^n on the subject of Free-trade. Because they could 
 not bring themselves to question for a moment the x)rin- 
 ciple of protection for home-grown grain, they made up 
 their minds that it was a principle as sacred with liim. 
 Against that conviction no evidence could prevail. It 
 was with them a point of conscience and honor ; it would 
 have seemed an insult to .their leader to believe even his 
 own words, if these seemed to say that it Avas a merd 
 question of expediency, convenience, and time with him. 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better if Sir Robert Peel 
 had devoted himself more directly to what Mr. Disraeli 
 afterward called educating his party. Perhaps if he had 
 made it part of his duty as a leader to prepare the minds 
 of his followers for the fact that protection for grain, 
 having ceased to be tenable as an economic principle, 
 would possibly some day have to be given up as a practice, 
 he might have taken his party along with him. He might 
 have been able to show them, as the events have shown 
 them since, that the introduction of free corn would be a 
 l)lessing to the population of England in general, and 
 would do nothing but good for the landed interest as well. 
 The influence of Peel at that time, and indeed all through 
 his administration up to the introduction of his Free-trade 
 measures, was limitless, so far as his party were con- 
 cerned. He could have done anything with them. In- 
 deed, we find no evidence so clear to prove that Peel had 
 not in 1842 made up his mind to the introduction of Free- 
 trade as the fact that he did not at once begin to educate 
 his party to it. This is to be regretted. The measure 
 might have been passed by common accord. There is 
 something not altogether without pathetic influence in 
 the thought of that country party whom Peel had led so 
 long, and who adored him so thoroughly, turning away 
 
FREE-TRABE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 239 
 
 from him and against him, and mournfully seeking another 
 leader. There is something pathetic in the thought that, 
 rightly or wrongly, they should have believed themselves 
 betrayed by their chief. But Peel, to begin with, was 
 a reserved, cold, somewhat awkward man. He was not 
 effusive ; he did not pour out his emotions and reveal 
 all his changes of opinion in bursts of confidence even to 
 his habitual associates. He brooded over these things in 
 his own mind ; he gave such expression to them in open 
 debate as any passing occasion seemed strictly to call for ; 
 and he assumed, perhaps, that the gradual changes oper- 
 ating in his views when thus expressed were understood 
 by his followers. Above all, it is probable that Peel him- 
 self did not see until almost the last moment that the 
 time had actually come when the principle of protection 
 must give way to other and more weighty claims. In his 
 speech announcing his intended legislation in 1846, Sir 
 Robert Peel, with a proud frankness which was character- 
 istic of him, denied that his altered course of action was 
 due exclusively to the failure of the potato crop and the 
 dread of famine in Ireland. " I will not," he said " with- 
 hold the homage which is due to the progress of reason 
 and of truth by denying that my oi^inions 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 probable that if the Irish famine had not 
 threatened, the moment for introducing the new legisla- 
 tion might have been indefinitely postponed. The pros- 
 pects of the Anti-Corn-law League did not look by any 
 means bright when the session preceding the introduction 
 of the Free-t rade 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 u]) in our day. Nothing in 1843 
 or in the earlier part of 1845 pointed to any immediate 
 necessity for Sir Robert Peel's testing the progress of his 
 own convictions by reducing them into the shape of prac- 
 tical action. It is, therefore, not hard to understand how 
 even a far-seeing and conscientious statesman, busy with 
 the practical work of each day, might have put off taking 
 definite counsel with himself as to the introduction of 
 measures for which just then there seemed no special 
 necessity, and which could hardly be introduced without 
 bitter controversy. 
 
240 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 Wliigs 
 were steadily gravitating toward it. Their leaders did 
 not quite see their way to accept it as a principle of prac- 
 tical statesmanship, but it was evident that their accept- 
 ance of it was only a question of time, and of no long 
 time. The leader of the Tory party was being drawn day 
 by day more in the same direction. Both leaders, Russeil 
 and Peel, had gone so far as to admit the general principle 
 of Free-trade. Peel had contended that grain was, in 
 England, a necessary exception ; Russell was not of 
 opinion that the time had come when it could be treated 
 otherwise than as an exception. The Free-trade party, 
 small, indeed, in its Parliamentary force, but daily grow- 
 ing more and more powerful with the country, would take 
 nothing from either leader but Free-trade sans phrase ; 
 and would take that from either leader without regard to 
 partisan considerations. It is evident to any one who 
 knows anything of the working of our system of govern- 
 ment by party, that this must soon have ended in one or 
 other of the two great ruling parties forming an alliance 
 Avitli the Free-traders. If unforeseen events had not inter- 
 posed, it is probable that conviction would first have 
 fastened on the minds of the Whigs, and that they would 
 have had the honor of abolishing the Corn-laws. They 
 were out of office, and did not seem likely to get back 
 soon to it by their own power, and the Free-trade party 
 would have come in time to be a very desirable ally. It 
 would be idle to pretend to doubt that the convictions of 
 political parties are hastened on a good deal under our 
 system by the yearning of those who are out of office to 
 get the better of those who are in. Statesmen in England 
 are converted as Henry of Navarre became Catholic : we 
 do not say that they actually change their opinions for 
 
FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 
 
 241 
 
 the sake of making themselves eligible for power, but a 
 change which has been growing np imperceptibly, and 
 which might otherwise have taken a long time to declare 
 itself, is stimulated thus to confess itself and come out 
 into the light. But in the case of the Anti-Corn-law agi- 
 tation, an event over which political parties had no control 
 intervened to spur the intent of the Prime-minister. Mr. 
 Bright, many years, after, when pronouncing the eulogy 
 of his dead friend Cobden, described what happened in a 
 fine sentence : " Famine itself, against which we had 
 warred, joined us." In the autumn of 1845 the potato rot 
 began in Ireland. 
 
 The vast majority of the working population of Ireland 
 were known to depend absolutely on the potato for subsist- 
 ence. In the northern province, where the population 
 were of Scotch extraction, the oatmeal, the brose of their 
 ancestors, still supplied the staple of their food ; but in the 
 southern and western provinces a large proportion of the 
 peasantry actually lived on the potato, and the potato 
 alone. In these districts whole generations grew up, lived, 
 married, and passed away, without having ever tasted 
 flesh meat. It was evident, then, that a failure in the 
 potato crop would be equivalent to famine. Many of the 
 laboring class received little or no money wages. They 
 lived on what was called the " cottier tenant system ; " 
 that is to say, a man worked for a land-owner on condition 
 of getting the use of a little scrap of land for himself, on 
 which to grow potatoes to be the sole food of himself and 
 his family. The news came, in the autumn of 1845, that 
 the long continuance of sunless wet and cold had im- 
 perilled, if not already destroyed, the food of a people. 
 
 The cabinet of Sir Robert Peel held hasty meetmgs 
 closely following each other. People began to ask 
 whether Parliament was about to be called together, and 
 whether the Government had resolved on a bold policy. 
 The Anti-Corn-law League were clamoring for the opening 
 of the ports. The Prime-minister himself was strongly 
 in favor of such a course. He urged upon his colleagues 
 that all restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn 
 should be suspended either by an Order in Council, or by 
 calling Parliament together and recommending such a 
 measure from the throne. It is now knoAvn that in offer- 
 ing this advice to bis colleagues Peel accompanied it with 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 the expression of a doubt as to whether it would ever be 
 possible to restore the restrictions that had once been 
 suspended. Indeed, this doubt must have filled every 
 mind. The League were openly declaring that one reason 
 why they called for the opening of the ports was that, 
 once opened, they never could be closed again. The doubt 
 was enough for some of the colleagues of Sir Robert Peel. 
 It seems marvellous now how responsible statesmen could 
 struggle for the retention of restrictions which were so 
 unpopular and indefensible that if they were once sus- 
 pended, under the pressure of no matter what exceptional 
 necessity, they never could be reimposed. The Duke of 
 Wellington and Lord Stanley, however, opposed the idea 
 of opening the ports, and the proposal fell through. The 
 Cabinet merely resolved on appointing a commission, con- 
 sisting of the heads of departments in Ireland, to take 
 some steps to guard against a sudden outbreak of famine, 
 and the thought of an autumnal session was abandoned. 
 Sir Robert Peel himself has thus tersely described the 
 manner in which his proposals were received: "The 
 cabinet by a very considerable majority declined giving 
 its assent to the proposals which I thus made to them. 
 They were supported by only three members of the cabinet 
 — the Earl of Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and Mr. 
 Sidney Herbert. The other members of the cabinet, some 
 on the ground of objection to the principle of the measures 
 recommended, others upon the ground that there was not 
 yet sufficient evidence of the necessity for them, withheld 
 their sanction." 
 
 The great cr}^ all through Ireland was for the opening 
 of the ports. The Mansion House Relief Committee of 
 Dublin issued a series of resolutions declaring their con- 
 viction, from the most undeniable evidence, that consider- 
 ably more than one third of the entire potato crop in Ire- 
 land had been already destroyed by the disease, and that 
 the disease had not ceased its ravages, but on the contrary 
 was daily expanding more and more. "No reasonable 
 conjecture can be formed," the resolutions went on to 
 state, " with respect to the limit of its effects short of the 
 destruction of the -entire remaining crop ; " and the docu- 
 ment concluded with a denunciation of the ministry for 
 not opening the ports or calling Parliament together before 
 the usual time for its assembling. 
 
FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 
 
 243 
 
 Two or three days after the issue of these resolutions 
 Lord John Russell wrote a letter from Edinburgh to his 
 constituents, the electors of the City of London — a letter 
 which is one of the historical documents of the reign. It 
 announced his unqualified conversion to the principles of 
 the Anti-Corn-law League. The failure of the potato crop 
 was, of course, the immediate occasion of this letter. 
 "Indecision and procrastination," Lord John Russell wrote, 
 " may produce a state of suffering which it is frightful to 
 contemplate It is no longer worth while to con- 
 
 tend for a fixed duty. In 1841 the Free-trade party would 
 have agreed to a duty of Ss, per quarter on wheat, and after 
 a lai^se of years this duty might have been further re- 
 duced, and ultimately abolished. But the imposition of 
 any duty at present, without a provision for its extinction 
 within a short period, would but prolong a contest already 
 sufficiently fruitful of animosity and discontent." Lord 
 John Russell then invited a general understanding, to put 
 an end to a system " which has been proved to be the blight 
 of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter 
 division among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mor- 
 tality, and crime among the people." Then the writer 
 added a significant remark to the effect that the Govern- 
 ment appeared to be waiting for some excuse to give up 
 the present Corn-law, and urging the people to afford 
 them all the excuse they could desire, " by petition, by 
 address, by remonstrance." 
 
 Peel himself has told us in his Memoirs what was the 
 effect which this letter produced upon his own councils. 
 It could not," he points out, " fail to exercise a very 
 material influence on the public mind, and on the-subject- 
 matter of our deliberations in the cabinet. It justified 
 the conclusion that the Whig party was prepared to unite 
 with the Anti-Corn-law League in demanding the total re- 
 peal of the Corn-laws." Peel would not consent now to 
 propose simply ah opening of the ports. It would seem, 
 he thought, a mere submission, to accept the minimum of 
 the terms ordered by the Whig leader. That would have 
 been Avell 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 Avould be futile ; would seem 
 
244 A tUBTORT OF OITM OWIT TIMM. 
 
 like trifling with the question. Sir Robert Peel, therefore, 
 recommended to his cabinet an early meeting of Parlia- 
 ment with the view of bringing forward some measure 
 equivalent to a speedy repeal of the Corn-laws. 
 
 The recommendation was wise : it was, indeed, indispen- 
 sable. Yet it is hard to think that an impartial posterity 
 will form a very lofty estimate of the wisdom with which 
 the counsels of the two great English parties were guided 
 in this momentous emergency. Neither Whigs nor Tories 
 appear to have formed a judgment because of facts or prin- 
 ciples, but only in deference to the political necessities of 
 the hour. Sir Robert Peel himself denied that it was the 
 resistless hand of famine in Ireland which had brought him 
 to his resolve that the Corn-laws ought to be abolished. He 
 grew into the conviction that they were bad in principle. 
 Lord John Russell had long been growing into the same 
 conviction. Yet the League had been left to divide with 
 but small numbers against overwhelming majorities made 
 up of both parties, until the very session before Peel pro- 
 posed to repeal the Corn-laws. Lord Beaconsfield, indeed, 
 indulges in something like exaggeration when he says, in 
 his " Life of Lord George Bentinck," that the close of the 
 session of 1845 found the League nearly reduced to silence. 
 But it is not untrue that, as he says, "the Manchester con- 
 federates seemed to be least in favor with Parliament and 
 the country on the very eve of their triumph." " They 
 lost at the same time elections and the ear of the House ; 
 and the cause of total and immediate repeal seemed in a 
 not less hopeless position than when, under circumstances 
 of infinite difficulty, it was first and solely upheld by th-e 
 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 bad in 
 any way found their hold on the attention of Parliament 
 diminishing. But the loss of elections is beyond dispute. 
 It is a fact alluded to in the very letter from Lord John 
 Russell which was creating so much commotion. " It is 
 not to be denied," Lord John Russell writes, that many 
 elections for cities and towns in 1841, and some in 1845, 
 appear to favor the assertion that Free-trade is not popular 
 with the great mass of the community." This is, from 
 
FAMINE FORCES FFFVS I1ANT>. 
 
 245 
 
 whatever cause, a very common phenomenon in our polit- 
 ical history. A movement which began with the promise 
 of sweeping all before it seems after awhile to lose its 
 force, and is supposed by many observers to be now only 
 the work and the care of a few earnest and fanatical men. 
 Suddenly it is taken up by a minister of commanding in- 
 fluence, and the bore or the crotchet of one Parliament is 
 the great party controversy of a second, and the accom- 
 plished triumph of a third. In this instance it is beyond 
 dispute that the League seemed to be somewhat losing in 
 strength and influence just on the eve of its complete 
 triumph. He must, indeed, be the very optimist of Par- 
 liamentary government who upholds the manner of Free- 
 trade's final adoption as absolutely satisfactory, and as 
 reflecting nothing but credit upon the counsels of our two 
 great political parties. Such a well-contented personage 
 might be fairly asked to explain why a system of protect- 
 ive taxation, i3eginning to be regarded by all thoughtful 
 statesmen as bad in itself, should never be examined with 
 a view to its repeal until the force of a great emergency 
 and the rival biddings of party leaders came to render its 
 repeal inevitable. The Corn-laws, as all the world now 
 admits, were a cruel burden to the poor and the working- 
 class of England. They were justly described by Lord 
 John Russell as " the blight of commerce, the bane of 
 agriculture, the source of bitter division among classes ; 
 the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among 
 the people." All this was independent of the sudden and 
 ephemeral calamity of the potato rot, which at the time 
 when Lord John Russell wrote that letter did not threaten 
 to become nearly so fatal as it is afterward proved to be. 
 One cannot help asking how long would the Corn-laws 
 have been suffered thus to blight commerce and agri- 
 culture, to cause division among classes, and to produce 
 penury, mortality, and crime among the people, if the 
 potato rot in Ireland had not rendered it necessary to 
 do something without delaj^ ? 
 
 The potato rot, however, inspired the writing of 
 Lord John Russell's letter; and Lord John Russell's 
 letter inspired Sir Robert Peel with the conviction that 
 something must be done. Most of his colleagues were 
 inclined to go with him this time. A cabinet council 
 was held on November 25th, almost immediately after 
 
24G 
 
 A UISTOBY OF OUll 0]VN TIMES. 
 
 the publication of Lord John Russell's letter. At that 
 council Sir Robert Peel recommended the summonin<T^ 
 of Parliament with a view to instant measures to combat 
 the famine in Ireland, but with a view also to some 
 announcement of legislation intended to pave the way 
 for the repeal of the Corn-laws. Lord Stanley still hesi- 
 tated, and asked time to consider his decision. The Duke 
 of Welling'ton was unchanged in his i)rivate opinion that 
 the Corn-laws ought to be maintained ; but he declared 
 with a blunt simplicity tliat his only object in public life 
 Avas " to support Sir Robert l^^eFs administration of the 
 Government for the Queen." "A good govenunent for 
 the country," said the sturdy and sim})le old hero, "is 
 more important than Corn-laws or any other considera- 
 tion. " One may smile at this notion of a good Ciovcrn- 
 ment without reference to the quality of the legislation it 
 introduces ; it reminds one a little of the celebrated study 
 of history without reference to time or place. But the 
 Duke acted strictly up to his princii)les of duty, and he 
 declared that if Sir Robert Peel considered the repeal of 
 the Corn-laws to be not right or necessary for the welfare 
 of England, but requisite for the maintenance of Sir Robert 
 Peel's position " in Parliament and in the public view, " 
 he should thoroughly support the i)roposal. Lord Stanley, 
 however, was not to be changed in the end. He took time 
 to consider, and seems really to have tried his best to per- 
 suade himself that he could fall in with the new position 
 which the Premier had assumed. Meanwhile the most 
 excited condition of public feeling prevailed throughout 
 London and the country generally. The Times news- 
 pa])er came out on December 4th Vitli the announcement 
 that the ministry had made up its mind, and that the 
 Royal speech at the connnencement of the session would 
 reconnnend an innnediate consideration of the Corn-laws 
 preparatory to their total repeal. It Avould bo liardly 
 possil)le to exaggerate the excitement caused by this 
 startling i)iece of news. It Avas indignantly and in un- 
 qualified terms declared a falsehood by the ministerial 
 prints. Long arguments were gone into to ])rove that 
 even if the fact announced were true, it could not ])ossibly 
 have been known to the Times, In Disraeli's " Coningsby " 
 Mr. Uigby gives tlie clearest and most convincing reastms 
 to prove, first, that Lord Spencer could not be dead, as 
 
FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S JlANl). 
 
 247 
 
 report said he was; and next, that even if lie Avero dc^ad, 
 the fact could not possibly be known to those avIio took on 
 themselves to announce it. He is liardly silenced even by 
 the assurance of a great duke that he is one of Lord 
 Spencer's executors, and that Lord Spencer is certainly 
 dead. So the announcement in the Times was fiercely 
 and pedantically argued against. It can't be true ; " 
 "the Times could not get to know of it ;" "it must be a 
 cabinet secret if it were true ; " "nobody outside the cab- 
 inet could possibly know of it;" "if any one outside the 
 cabinet could get to know of it, it would not be the 7Hm.es ; " 
 it would be this, that, or the other person or journal ; and 
 so forth. Long after it had Ijeen made certain, beyond 
 even Mr. Rigby's power of disx)utation, tliat the announce- 
 ment was true so far as the resolve of tlie Prime-minister 
 was concerned, people continued to argue and controvert 
 as to the manner in which the Times became possessed of 
 the secret. The general conclusion come to among the 
 knowing was that the blandishments of a gifted and 
 beautiful lady with a dash of political intrigue in her had 
 somehow extorted the secret from a young and handsome 
 member of the cabinet, and that she had communicated 
 it to the Times, It is not impossible that this may have 
 been the true explanation. It was believed in by a great 
 many persons who might have been in a position to judge 
 of the probabilities. On the other hand, there was surely 
 signs and tokens enough by which a shrewd jjolitician 
 might have guessed what was to come without any in- 
 tervention of petticoat diplomacy. It seems odd now that 
 people should then have distressed themselves so much 
 by conjectures as to the source of the information when 
 once it was made certain that the information itself was 
 substantially true. This it undoubtedly was, although it 
 did not tell all the truth, and could not foretell. For 
 there was an ordeal yet to be gone through before the 
 Prime-minister could put his plans into operation. On 
 December 4th the Tim.es made the announcement. On 
 the 6th, having been passionately contradicted, it re- 
 peated the assertion. " We adhere to our original an- 
 nouncement that Parliament will meet early in January, 
 and that a repeal of the Corn-laws will be proposed in 
 one House by Sir R. Peel, and in the other by the Duke 
 of Wellington." But, in the meantime, the opposition in 
 
248 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the cabinet had proved itself unmanageable. Lord Stan- 
 ley and the Duke of Buccleuch intimated to the Prime- 
 minister that they could not be parties to any measure 
 involving the ultimate repeal of the Corn-laws. Sir Robert 
 Peel did not believe that he could carry out his project 
 satisfactorily under such circumstances, and he therefore 
 hastened to tender his resignation to the Queen. " The 
 other members of the cabinet, without exception, I believe " 
 • — these are Sir Robert Peel's own words — " concurred in 
 this opinion ; and under these circumstances I considered 
 it to be my duty to tender my resignation to her Majesty. 
 On the 5th of December I repaired to Osborne, Isle of 
 Wight, and humbly solicited her Majesty to relieve me 
 from duties which I felt I could no longer discharge with 
 advantage to her Majesty's service." The very day after 
 the Times made its famous announcement, the very day 
 before the Times repeated it, the Prime-minister who was 
 to propose the repeal of the Corn-laws went out of office. 
 
 Quern dixere chaos ! Apparently chaos had come again. 
 Lord John Russell was sent for from Edinburgh. His 
 letter had, without any such purpose on his part, written 
 him up as the man to take Sir Robert Peel's place. Lord 
 John Russell came to London, and did his best to cope 
 with the many difficulties of the situation. His party 
 were not very strong in the country, and they had not a 
 majority in the House of Commons. He very naturally 
 endeavored to obtain from Peel a pledge that he would 
 support the immediate and complete repeal of the Corn- 
 laws. Peel, writing to the Queen, " humbly expresses his 
 regret that he does not feel it to be consistent with his 
 duty to enter upon the consideration of this important 
 question in Parliament fettered by a previous engagement 
 of the nature of that required of him." The position of 
 Lord John Russell was awkward. He had been forced 
 into it because one or two of Sir Robert Peel's colleagues 
 would not consent to adopt the policy of their chief. 
 But the very fact of so stubborn an opposition from a man 
 of Lord Stanley's influence showed clearly enough that the 
 passing of Free-trade measures was not to be effected 
 without stern resistance from the country party. The 
 whole risk and burden had seemingly been thrown on 
 Lord John Russell; and now Sir Robert Peel would not 
 even pledge himself to unconditional support of the very 
 
FAMINE FORCES PEEVS MANlX 249 
 
 policy which was understood to be his own. Lord Jol^ 
 Russell showed, even then, his characteristic courage. 
 He resolved to form a ministry without a Parliamentary 
 majority. He was not, however, fated to try the ordeal. 
 Lord Grey, who was a few months before Lord Howick, 
 and who had just succeeded to the title of his father (the 
 stately Charles Earl Grey, the pupil of Fox, and chief of 
 the cabinet which passed the Reform Bill and abolished 
 slavery) — Lord Grey felt a strong objection to the foreign 
 policy of Lord Palmerston, and these two could not get 
 on in one ministry, as it was part of Lord John Russell's 
 plan that they should do. Lord Grey also was strongly 
 of opinion that a seat in the cabinet ought to be offered 
 to Mr. Cobden ; but other great Whigs could not bring 
 themselves to any larger sacrifice to justice and common- 
 sense than a suggestion that the office of Vice-president 
 of the Board of Trade shoald be tendered to the leader 
 of the Free-trade movement. Mr. Macaulay describes the 
 events in a letter to the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. 
 " All our ]3lans were frustrated by Lord Grey, who ob- 
 jected to Lord Palmerston being Foreign Secretary. I 
 hope that the public interests will not suffer. Sir Robert 
 Peel must now undertake the settlement of the question. 
 It is certain that he can settle it. It is by no means cer- 
 tain that we could have done so. For we shall to a man 
 support him ; and a large proportion of those who are 
 now in office would have refused to support us." One 
 passage in Macaulay's letter will be read with peculiar in- 
 terest. " From the first," he says, " I told Lord John 
 Russell that I stipulated for one thing only — total and 
 immediate repeal of the Corn-laws ; that my objections to 
 gradual abolition were insurmountable ; but that if he de- 
 clared for tota.1 and immediate repeal I would be as to all 
 other matters absolutely in his hands ; that I would take 
 any office, or no office, just as suited him best ; and that 
 he should never be disturbed by any personal pretensions 
 or jealousies on my part." No one can doubt Macaulay's 
 sincerity and singleness of purpose. But it is surprising 
 to note the change that the agitation of little more than 
 two years has made in his opinions on the subject of 
 a policy of immediate and unconditional abolition. In 
 February, 1843, he was pointing ovit to the electors of 
 Edinburgh the unwisdom of refusing a compromise, and 
 
250 
 
 A HISTOBY^ OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 41 December, 1845, he is writing to Edinburgh to say that 
 the one only thing for wliich he must stipulate was 
 total and immediate repeal. The Anti-Corn-law League 
 might well be satisfied with the propagandist work they 
 had done. The League itself looked on very composedly 
 during these little altercations and embarrassments of 
 parties. They knew well enough now that let who would 
 take power, he must carry out their policy. At a meet- 
 ing of the League, which was held in Covent Garden 
 Theatre on the 17th of this memorable month, and while 
 the negotiations were still going on, Mr. Cobden declared 
 that he and his friends had not striven to keep one party 
 in or another out of office. " We have Avorked with but 
 one principle and one object in view ; and if we maintain 
 that principle for but six months more, we shall attain to 
 that state which I have so long and so anxiously desired, 
 when the League shall be dissolved into its primitive 
 elements by the triumph of its principles." 
 
 Lord John Russell found it impossible to form a min- 
 istry. He signified his failure to the Queen. Probably, 
 having done the best he could, he was not particularly 
 distressed to find that his efforts were ineffectual. The 
 Queen had to send for Sir Robert Peel to Windsor, and 
 tell him that she must require him to withdraw his resig- 
 nation and to remain in her service. Sir Robert of course 
 could only comply. The Queen offered to give him some 
 time to enter into communication with his colleagues, 
 but Sir Robert very wisely thought that he could speak 
 with much greater authority if he were to invite them to 
 support him in an effort on which he was determined, 
 and which he had positively undertaken to make. He, 
 therefore, returned from Windsor on the evening of De- 
 cember 20th, " having resumed all the fuiictions of First 
 Minister of the Crown." The Duke of Buccleuch with- 
 drew his opposition to the policy which Peel was now 
 to carry out ; but Lord Stanley remained firm. The place 
 of the latter was taken as Secretary of State for the Colo- 
 nies by Mr. Gladstone, who, however, curiously enough, 
 remained without a seat in Parliament during the eventful 
 session that was now to come. Mr. Gladstone had sat 
 for the borough of Newark, but that borough being under 
 the influence of the Duke of Newcastle, who had with- 
 drawn his support from the ministry, he did not invite 
 
FAMINE FORCES PEEVS HAND, 251 
 
 re-election, but remained without a seat in ilic House of 
 Commons for some months. Sir Robert Peel then, to use 
 his own words in a letter to the Princess de Lieven, re- 
 sumed power " with greater means of rendering public 
 service than I should have had if I had not relinquished 
 it." He felt, he said, like a man restored to life after 
 his funeral service had been preached." 
 
 Parliament was summoned to meet in January. In the 
 meantime it was easily seen how the Protectionists and 
 the Tories of the extreme order generally would regard 
 the proposals of Sir Robert Peel. Protectionist meetings 
 were held in various parts of the country, and they were 
 all but unanimous in condemning by anticipation the 
 policy of the restored Premier. Resolutions were passed 
 at many of these meetings expressing an equal disbelief 
 in the Prime-minister and in the famine. The utmost 
 indignation was expressed at the idea of there being any 
 famine in prospect which could cause any departure from 
 the principles which secured to the farmers a certain fixed 
 price for their grain, or at least prevented the price from 
 falling below what they considered a paying amount. Not 
 less absurd than the protestations that there would be no 
 famine were some of the remedies wdiich were suggested 
 for it if it should insist on coming in. The Duke of Nor- 
 folk of that time made himself particularly conspicuous 
 by a beneficent suggestion which he offered to a distressed 
 population. He went about recommending a curry jjowder 
 of his own device as a charm against hunger. 
 
 Parliament met. The opening day w\as January 22d, 
 1846. The Queen in person opened the session, and the 
 speech from the throne said a good deal about the condi- 
 tion of Ireland and the failure of the potato croj). The 
 speech contained one significant sentence. " I have had," 
 her Majesty was made to say, " great satisfaction in giv- 
 • ing my assent to the measures which you have presented 
 to me from time to time, calculated to extend commerce 
 and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal 
 of prohibitive and the relaxation of protective duties. I 
 recommend you to take into your early consideration 
 whether the principle on which you have acted may not 
 Avith advantage be yet more extensively applied." Before 
 the address in reply to the speech from tlie throne was 
 moved, Sir Robert Peel gave notice of the intention of the 
 
252 A HIS TOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 • 
 
 Government on the earliest possible day to submit to the 
 consideration of the House measures connected with the 
 commercial and financial affairs of the country. 
 
 There are few scenes more animated and exciting than 
 that presented by the House of Commons on some night 
 when a great debate is expected, or when some moment- 
 ous announcement is to be made. A common thrill seems 
 to tremble all through the assembly, as a breath of wind 
 runs across the sea. The House appears for the moment 
 to be one body, pervaded by one expectation. The minis- 
 terial benches, the front benches of opposition, are oc- 
 cupied by the men of political renown and of historic 
 name. The benches everywhere else are crowded to their 
 utmost capacity. Members who cannot get seats — on 
 such an ocqasion a goodly number — stand below the bar 
 or have to dispose themselves along the side galleries. 
 The celebrities are ]iot confined to the Treasury benches 
 or those of the leaders of opposition. Here and there, 
 among the independent members and below the gangAvay 
 on both sides, are seen men of influence and renown. At 
 the opening of Parliament in 1846 this was especially to 
 be observed. The rising fame of the Free-trade leaders 
 made them almost like a third great party in the House 
 of Commons. The strangers' gallery, the Speaker's gal- 
 lery, on such a night are crowded to excess. The eye 
 surveys the whole House and sees no vacant place. In 
 the very hum of conversation that runs along the benches 
 there is a tone of x)rofound anxiety. The minister who 
 has to face that House and make the announcement for 
 which all are waiting in a most feverish anxiety is a man 
 to be envied by the ambitious. This time there was a 
 curiosity about everything. What was the minister about 
 to announce ? When and in what fashion would he an- 
 nounce it ? Would the Whig leaders speak before the 
 ministerial annovmcement ? Would the Free-traders ? 
 What voice would first hint to the expectant Commons 
 the course which political events were destined to take ? 
 The moving of an address to the throne is always a formal 
 piece of business. It would be hardly possible for Cicero 
 or Burke to be very interesting when performing such a 
 task. On the other hand, it is an excellent chance for a 
 young beginner. He finds the house in a sort of contempt- 
 uously indulgent mood, prepared to welcome the slightest 
 
FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 
 
 253 
 
 evidence of any capacity of speech above the dullest medi- 
 ocrity. He can hardly say anything absurd or offensive 
 unless he goes absolutely out of his way to make a fool of 
 himself ; and, on the other hand he can easily say his little 
 nothings in a graceful way, and receive grateful applause, 
 accordingly, from an assembly which counts on being 
 bored, and feels doubly indebted to the speaker who is 
 even in the slightest degree an agreeable disappointment. 
 On this particular occasion, however, the duty of the pro- 
 poser and seconder of the address was made specially 
 trying by the fact that they had to interfere with merely 
 formal utterances between an eager House and an ex- 
 citing announcement. A certain piquancy was lent, how- 
 ever, to the performance of the duty by the fact, which 
 the speeches made evident beyond the possibility of mis- 
 take, that the proposer of the address knew quite well 
 what the Government were about to do, and that the 
 seconder knew nothing whatever. 
 
 Now the formal task is done. The address has been 
 moved and seconded. The Speaker puts the question that 
 the address be adopted. Now is the time for debate, if 
 debate there is to be. On such occasions there is always 
 some discussion, but it is commonly as mere a piece of 
 formality as the address itself. It is understood that the 
 leader of opposition will say something meaning next to 
 nothing ; that two or three men will grumble vaguely at 
 the ministry ; that the leader of the House will reply ; and 
 then the affair is all over. But on this occasion it was 
 certain that some momentous announcement would have 
 to be made ; and the question was when it would come. 
 Perhaps no one expected exactly what did happen. Noth- 
 ing can be more unusual than for the leader of the 
 House to open the debate on such an occasion ; and Sir 
 Robert Peel was usually somewhat of a formalist, who 
 kept to the regular ways in all that pertained to the busi- 
 ness of the House. No eyes of expectation were turned, 
 therefore, to the ministerial bench at the moment after 
 the formal putting of the question by the Speaker. It 
 was rather expected that Lord John Russell, or perhaps 
 Mr. Cobden, would rise. But a surprised murmur run- 
 ning through all parts of the House soon told those who 
 could not see the Treasury bench that something unusual 
 had happened ; and in a moment the voice of the Prime- 
 
254 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 de- 
 ferred. The Prime-minister showed a deliberate inten- 
 tion, it might have been thought, not to come to the point 
 at once. He went into long and labored explanations of 
 the manner in which his mind had been brought into a 
 change on the subject of Free-trade and Protection; and 
 he gave exhaustive calculations to show that the reduction 
 of duty was constantly followed by expansion of the 
 revenue, and even a maintenance of high prices. The 
 duties on glass, the duties on flax, the prices of salt pork 
 and domestic lard, the contract jDrice of salt beef for the 
 navy — these and many other such topics were discussed 
 at great length and with elaborate fulness of detail in the 
 hearing of an eager House anxious only, for that night, 
 to know whether or not the minister meant' to introduce 
 the principle of Free-trade. Peel, however, made it clear 
 enough that he had become a complete convert to the 
 doctrines of the Manchester school, and that, in his 
 opinion, the time had come when that protection which 
 he had taken office to maintain must forever be aban- 
 doned. One sentence at the close of his speech was made 
 the occasion of much labored criticism and some severe 
 accusation. It was that in which Peel declared that he 
 found it "no easy task to insure the harmonious and 
 united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud aristocracy, 
 and a reformed House of Commons." 
 
 The explanation was over. The House of Commons 
 were left rather to infer than to understand what the 
 Government proposed to do. Lord John Russell entered 
 into some personal explanations relating to his endeavor 
 to form a ministry, and the causes of its failure. These 
 have not much interest for a later time. It might have 
 seemed that the work of the night was done. It was 
 evident that the ministerial policy could not be discussed 
 then ; for, in fact, it had not been announced. The 
 House knew that the Prime-minister Avas a convert to 
 the principles of Free-trade ; but that Avas all that any one 
 could be said to know except those who were in the 
 
MB. BISBAELL 
 
 255 
 
 secrets of the cabinet. There appeared, therefore, noth- 
 mg for it but to wait until the time should come for the 
 formal announcement and the full discussion of the 
 Government measures. Suddenly, however, a new and 
 striking figure intervened in the languishing debate, and 
 filled the House of Commons with a fresh life. There is 
 not often to be found in our Parliamentary history an ex- 
 ample like this of a sudden turn given to a whole career 
 by a timely speech. The member who rose to comment 
 on the explanation of Sir Robert Peel had been for many 
 years in the House of Commons. This was his tenth 
 session. He had spoken often in each session. He had 
 made many bold attempts to win a name in Parliament, 
 and hitherto his political career had been simply a 
 failure. From the hour when he spoke this speech it 
 was one long, unbroken, brilliant success. 
 
 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 remarkable men the politics of the reign have 
 produced. Perhaps, if the word remarkable were to be 
 used in its most strict sense, and without particular 
 reference to praise, it would be just to describe him as 
 emi)hatically the most remarkable man that the political 
 controversies of the present reign have called into powder. 
 Mr. Disraeli entered the House of Commons as Conserva- 
 tive member for Maidstone in 1837. He was then about 
 thirty-two years of age. He had previously made re- 
 peated and unsuccessful attempts to get a seat in Parlia- 
 ment. He began his political career as an advanced 
 Liberal, and had come out under the auspices of Daniel 
 O'Connell and Joseph Hume. He had described himself as 
 one who desired to fight the battle of the people, and who 
 was supported by neither of the aristocratic parties. He 
 failed again and again, and apparently he began to think 
 that it Avould be a wiser thing to look for the support of 
 one or other of the aristocratic parties. He had before this 
 
256 
 
 A MISTORY OF OUB O^VN TIMES. 
 
 given indications of remarkable literary talent, if indeed 
 it might not be called genius. His novel, " Vivian Grey," 
 published when he was in his twenty-third year, was 
 suffused with extravagance, alfectation, and mere animal 
 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 necessary to 
 charge him with deliberate inconsistency because from hav- 
 ing been a Radical of the most advanced views he became 
 by an easy leap a romantic Tory. It is not likely that at 
 the beginning of his career he had any very clear ideas 
 in connection with the words Tory or Radical. 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 /or^e was sedition. Most clever young 
 men who are not born to fortune, and who feel drawn 
 into political life, fancy too that their /o7'te is sedition. 
 When young Disraeli found that sedition and even ad- 
 vanced Radicalism did not do much to get him into 
 Parliament, he pi-obably began to ask himself whether his 
 Liberal convictions were so deeply rooted as to call for the 
 sacrifice of a career. He thought the question over, and 
 doubtless found himself crystallizing fast into an advocate 
 of the established order of things. In a purely personal 
 light this was a fortunate conclusion for the ambitious 
 young politician. He could not then have anticipated 
 the extraordinary change which was to be wrought in 
 the destiny and the composition of the Tory party by the 
 eloquence, the arguments, and the influence of two men 
 who at that time were almost absolutely unknown. Mr. 
 Cobden stood for the flrst time as a candidate for a seat 
 in Parliament in the year that saw Mr. Disraeli elected 
 for the flrst time, and Mr. Cobden was unsuccessful. 
 Cobden had to wait four years before he found his way 
 into the Ilousje of Commons ; Bright did not become a 
 member- of Parliament until some two years later still. It 
 was, however, the Anti-Corn-law agitation which, by 
 conquering Peel and making him its advocate, brought 
 about the memorable split in the Conservative party, and 
 carried away from the cause of the country squires nearly 
 all the men of talent avIio liad liitherto l)een witli them. 
 A new or middle party of so-called I^eelites was formed. 
 
MB. DISnAELl. 
 
 257 
 
 Graham, Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, Cardwell, and other 
 men of equal mark or promise, joined it, and the country 
 party was left to seek for leadership in the earnest spirit 
 and very moderate talents of Lord George Bentinck. Mr. 
 Disraeli then found his chance. His genius was such 
 that it must have made a way for him anywhere and in 
 spite of any competition ; but it is not too much to say 
 that his career of political advancement might have been 
 very different if, in place of finding himself the only man 
 of first-class ability in the party to which he had attached 
 himself, he had been a member of a party which had 
 Palmerston and Russell and Gladstone and Graham for its 
 captains, and Cobden and Bright for its habitual sup- 
 porters. 
 
 This, however, could not have been in Mr. Disraeli's 
 thoughts when he changed from Radicalism to Conserva- 
 tism. No trace of the progress of conversion can be found 
 in his speeches or his writings. It is not unreasonable to 
 infer that he took up Radicalism at the beginning because 
 it looked the most picturesque and romantic thing to do, 
 and that only as he found it fail to answer his personal 
 object did it occur to him that he had, after all, more affin- 
 ity with the cause of the country gentlemen. The repu- 
 tation he had made for himself before his going into Par- 
 liament was of a nature rather calculated to retard than 
 to advance a political career. He was looked upon almost 
 universally as an eccentric and audacious adventurer, 
 who was kept from being dangerous by the affectations 
 and absurdities of his conduct. He dressed in the extrem- 
 est style of preposterous foppery ; he talked a blending 
 of cynicism and sentiment ; he had made the most reck- 
 less statements ; his boasting was almost outrageous ; his 
 rhetoric of abuse was, even in that free-spoken time, 
 astonishingly vigorous and unrestrained. Even his liter- 
 ary efforts did not then receive anything like the appreci- 
 ation they have obtained since. At that time they were 
 regarded rather as audacious whimsicalities, the fantastic 
 freaks of a clever youth, than as genuine works of a cer- 
 tain kind of art. Even when he did get into the House 
 of Commons, his first experience there was little calcu- 
 lated to give him nuich 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 
 
258 
 
 A HISTORY OF OTTB OTF^Y TIMES, 
 
 it should have called forth nothing but laughter and deri- 
 sion. It is a clever speech, full of point and odd conceits ; 
 very like in style and structure many of the speeches 
 Avhich 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. ITp to this time his 
 life had been, says an unfriendly but not an unjust critic, 
 "an almost uninterrupted career of follies and defeats." 
 The House was probably in a humor to find the speech 
 ridiculous because the general impression was that the 
 man himself was ridiculous. Mr. Disraeli's appearance, 
 too, no doubt, contributed something to the contemptu- 
 ous opinion which was formed of him on his first attempt 
 to address the assembly which he afterward came to rule. 
 He is described by an observer as having been attired " in 
 a bottle-green frock-coat and a Avaistcoat of white, of the 
 Dick Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited a 
 net- work of glittering chains ; large fancy-pattern panta- 
 loons, and a black tie, above Avhich no shirt-collar was 
 visible, completed the outward man. A countenance 
 lividly pale, set out by a pair of intensely black eyes, and 
 a broad but not very high forehead, overhung by cluster- 
 ing ringlets of coal-black hair, which, combed away from 
 the right temple, fell in bunches of well-oiled small 
 ringlets over his left cheek." His manner was intensely 
 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 x^eople regard as the illustration 
 of all that is vehement and unquiet. But whatever the 
 cause, it is certain that on the occasion of his first attempt 
 Mr. Disraeli made not merely a failure, but even a ludi- 
 crous failure. One who heard the debate thus describes 
 the manner in which, baffled by the persistent laughter 
 and other interruptions of the noisy House, the orator 
 withdrew from the discussion, defeated but not dis- 
 couraged. " At last, losing his temper, Avhich until now 
 he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in 
 the midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indig- 
 nantly in the face, raised his hands, and, opening his 
 mouth as widely as its dimensions would admit, said, in 
 
MB. DISRAELL 
 
 259 
 
 a remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, 'I have 
 begmi, several times, many tilings, and I have often suc- 
 ceeded at last ; ay, sir, and though I sit down now, the 
 time will come when you will hear me.' " This final pre- 
 diction is so like what a manufacturer of biography would 
 make up for a hero, and is so like what was actually said 
 in one or two other remarkable instances, that a reader 
 might be excused for doubting its authenticity in this 
 case. But nothing can be more certain than the fact that 
 ]\[r. Disraeli did bring to a close his maiden speech in the 
 House of Commons with this bold prediction. The words 
 are to be found in the reports published next morning in 
 all the daily papers of the metropolis. 
 
 It was thus that Mr. Disraeli began his career as a Par- 
 liamentary orator. It is a curious fact that on that occa- 
 sion almost the only one of his hearers who seems to have 
 admired the speech was Sir Robert Peel. It is by his 
 XDhilippic against Peel that Disraeli is now about to con- 
 vince the House of Commons that the man they laughed 
 at before is a great Parliamentary orator. 
 
 Disraeli was not in the least discouraged by his first 
 failure. A few days after it he spoke again, and he spoke 
 three or four times more during his first session. But he 
 had learned some wisdom by rough experience, and he did 
 not make his oratorical flights so long or so ambitious as 
 that first attempt. Then he seemed after awhile, as he 
 grew more familiar with the House, to go in for being 
 paradoxical; for making himself always conspicuous ; for 
 taking up positions and expounding political creeds which 
 other men would have avoided. It is very difiicult to get 
 any clear idea of what his oi^inions w^ere about this period 
 of his career, if he had any political opinions at all. Our 
 impression is that he really had no opinions at that time ; 
 that he was only in quest of opinions. He spoke on' sub- 
 jects of which it was evident that he knew nothing, and 
 sometimes he managed, by the sheer force of a strong 
 intelligence, to discern the absurdity of economic sophis- 
 tries which had baffled men of far greater experience, and 
 which, indeed, to judge from his personal declarations 
 and political conduct afterward, he allowed before long 
 to baffle and bewilder himself. More often, however, he 
 talked Avith a grandiose and oracular vagueness which 
 seemed to imply that he alone of all men saw into the 
 
260 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 very heart of the question, but that he of all men must 
 not yet reveal what he saw. At his best of times Mr. 
 Disraeli was an example of that class of being whom Mac- 
 aulay declares to be so rare that Lord Chatham appears 
 to him almost a solitary illustration of it — " a great man 
 of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding 
 spirit, without simplicity of character." What Macaulay 
 goes on to say of Chatham will bear quotation too. " He 
 was an actor in the closet, an actor at council, an actor in 
 Parliament ; and even in private society he could not lay 
 aside his theatrical tones and attitudes." Mr. Disraeli was 
 at one period of his career so affected that he positively 
 affected affectation. Yet he was a man of undoubted 
 genius ; he had a spirit that never quailed under stress 
 of any circumstances, however disheartening; he com- 
 manded as scarcely any statesman since Chatham himself 
 has been able to do ; and it would be unjust and absurd 
 to deny to a man gifted with qualities like these the pos- 
 session of a lofty nature. 
 
 For some time Mr. Disraeli then seemed resolved to 
 make himself remarkable — to be talked about. lie suc- 
 ceeded admirably. He was talked about. All the political 
 and satirical journals of the day had a great deal to say 
 about him. He is not spoken of in terms of praise as a 
 rule ; neither has he much praise to shower about him. 
 Any one who looks back to the political controversies of 
 that time will be astounded at the language which Mr. 
 Disraeli addresses to his opponents of the press, and Avhich 
 his opponents addressed to him. In some ca^s it is no 
 exaggeration to say that a squabble between two Billings- 
 gate fish- women 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 literary 
 man and some of his assailants. We have all read the 
 history of the controversy between him and O'Connell, and 
 the savage ferocity of the language with which O'Connell 
 denounced him as " a miscreant," as "a wretch," ''a liar," 
 " whose life is a living lie ; " and, finally, as " the heir-at- 
 law of the blasphemous thief who died impenitent on the 
 Cross." Mr. Disraeli begins his reply by describing him- 
 self as one of those who " will not be insulted even by a 
 Yahoo without chastising it; " and afterward, in a letter 
 to one of Mr. O'ConneU's sons, declares his desire to 
 
MB, BISRAELL 
 
 261 
 
 express "the utter scorn in which I hold his [Mr. O'Con- 
 nell's] character, and the disgust with which his conduct 
 inspires me ; " and informs the son that " I shall take 
 every opportunity of holding your father's name up to 
 public contempt, and I fervently pray that you or some 
 one of your blood may attempt to avenge the inextin- 
 guishable hatred with which I shall pursue his existence." 
 In reading of a controversy like this between two public 
 men, we seem to be transported back to an age having 
 absolutely nothing in common with our own. It appears 
 almost impossible to believe that men still active in politi- 
 cal life were active in political life then. Yet this is not 
 the most astonishing specimen of the sort of controversy 
 in which Mr. Disraeli became engaged in his younger 
 days. N^othing, perhaps, that the political literature of 
 the time preserves could exceed the ferocity of his con- 
 troversial duel Avith O'Connell ; but there are many sam- 
 ples of the rhetoric of abuse to be found in the journals 
 of the time which would far less bear exposure to the 
 gaze of the fastidious public of our day. The duelling 
 system survived then and for long after, and Mr. Disraeli 
 always professed himself ready to sustain with his pistol 
 anything that his lips might have given utterance to, 
 even in the reckless heat of controversy. The social 
 temper which in our time insists that the first duty of a 
 gentleman is to apologize for an unjust or offensive 
 expression used in debate, was unknown then. Perhaps 
 it could hardly exist to any great extent in the com- 
 pany of tfie duelling system. AVhen a man's withdrawal 
 of an offensive expression might be imputed to a want of 
 physical courage, the courtesy which impels a gentle- 
 man to atone for a wrong is not likely to triumph very 
 often over the fear of being accounted a coAvard. If any 
 one doubts the superiority of manners as well as of 
 morals which comes of our milder ways, he has only to 
 read a few specimens of the controversies of Mr. Disraeli's 
 earlier days, when men who aspired to be considered great 
 political leaders thought it not unbecoming to call names 
 like a costermonger, and to swagger like Bobadil or the 
 Copper Captain. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli kept himself well up to the level of his 
 time in the calling of names and the swaggering; but he 
 was making himself remarkable in political controversy 
 
262 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 as well. In the House of Commons he began to be 
 regarded as a dangerous adversary in debate. He Avas 
 wonderfully ready with retort and sarcasm. But during 
 all the earlier part of his career he was thought of only 
 as a free lance. He had praised Peel when Peel said some- 
 thing that suited him, or when to praise Peel seemed 
 likely to wound some one else. But it was during the 
 debates on the abolition of the Corn-laws that he first 
 rose to the fame of a great debater and a powerful Parlia- 
 mentary orator. We use the words Parliamentary orator 
 with the purpose of conveying a special qualification. He 
 is a great Parliamentary orator who can employ the kind 
 of eloquence and argument which tells most readily on 
 Parliament. But it must not be supposed that the great 
 Parliamentary orator is necessarily a great orator in the 
 wider sense. Some of the men who made the greatest 
 successes as Parliamentary orators have failed to win any 
 genuine reputations as orators of the broader and higher 
 school. The fame of Charles Townshend's " champagne 
 speech " has vanished, evanescent almost as the bubbles 
 from which it derived its inspiration and its name. No 
 one now reads many even of the fragments preserved for 
 us of those speeches of Sheridan which those who heard 
 them declared to have surpassed all ancient and modern 
 eloquence. The House of Commons often found Burke 
 dull, and the speeches of Burke have passed into English 
 literature secure of a perpetual place there. Mr. Disraeli 
 never succeeded in being more than a Parliamentary 
 orator, and probably would not have cared to be anything 
 more. But even at this comparatively early date, and 
 while he had still the reputation of being a whimsical, 
 self-confident, and feather-headed adventurer, he soon 
 won for himself the name of one who could hold his own 
 in retort and in sarcasm against any antagonist. The 
 days 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 eloquence with 
 the House of Commons. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli was exactly the man to succeed under the 
 new conditions of Parliamentary eloquence. Hitherto he 
 had wanted a cause to inspire and justify audacity, and 
 on which to employ with effect his remarkable resources 
 
MR. niSBAELL 
 
 263 
 
 of sarcasm and rhetoric. Hitherto he had addressed an 
 audience out of sympathy with liim for the most part. 
 Now he was about to become the spokesman of a large 
 body of men who, chafing and almost choking with wrath, 
 were not capable of speaking effectively for themselves. 
 Mr. Disraeli did, therefore, the very wisest thing he could 
 do when he launched at once into a savage personal attack 
 upon Sir Robert Peel. This speech abounds in passages 
 of audaciously powerful sarcasm. " I am not one of the 
 converts," Mr. Disraeli said. "I am perhajDS a member of 
 a fallen party. To the opinions which I have expressed 
 in this House in favor of Protection I still adhere. They 
 sent me to this House, and if I had relinquished them I 
 should have relinquished my seat also." That was the 
 key-note of the speech. He denounced Sir Robert Peel, 
 not for having changed his opinions, but for having re- 
 tained a position which enabled him to betray his party. 
 He compared Peel to the Lord High- Admiral of the Turk- 
 ish fleet, who, at a great warlike crisis, when he was 
 placed at the head of the finest armament that ever left 
 the Dardanelles since the days of Solyman the Great, 
 steered at once for the enemy's port, and when arraigned 
 as a traitor, said that he really saw no use in prolonging 
 a hopeless struggle, and that he had accepted the com- 
 mand of the fleet only to put the Sultan out of pain by 
 bringing the struggle to a close at once. " Well do we 
 remember, on this side of the House — not, perhaps, with- 
 out a blush — the efforts we made to raise him to the bench 
 where he now sits. Who does not remember the sacred 
 cause of Protection for which sovereigns were thwarted, 
 Parliament dissolved, and a nation taken in ? " "I belong 
 to a party Avhich can triumph no more, for w^e have noth- 
 ing left on our side except the constituencies which we 
 have not betrayed." He denounced Peel as " a man wdio 
 never originates an idea ; a watcher of the atmosphere ; 
 a man who takes his observations, and when he finds the 
 wind in a particular quarter trims his sails to suit it ; " 
 and he declared that " such a man may be a powerful 
 minister, but he is no more a great statesman than the 
 man who gets up behind a carriage is a great whip." 
 
 " The opportune," says Mr. Disraeli himself in his " Lord 
 George Bentinck," " in a popular assembly has sometimes 
 more success than the weightiest efforts of research and 
 
264 A mSTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 reason." He is alluding to this very speech, of which he 
 says, with perhaps a superfluous modesty, that " it was 
 the long-constrained passion of the House that now found 
 a vent, far more than the sallies of the speaker, that 
 changed the frigid silence of this senate into excitement 
 and tumult." The speech was indeed opportune. But it 
 was opportune in a far larger sense than as a timely phi- 
 lippic rattling up an exhausted and disappointed House. 
 That moment when Disraeli rose was the very turning- 
 point of the fortunes of his y)arty. 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 Parliamentary discipline are 
 very clinging. They are hard to tear away. Every im- 
 pulse of association and training protests against the very 
 effort to rend them asunder. A once powerful minister 
 exercises a control over his long obedient followers some- 
 what like that of the heart of the Bruce in the fine old 
 Scottish story. Those who once followed will still obey 
 the name and the symbol even when the actual power to 
 lead is gone forever. If one other night's habitude had 
 been added to the long discipline that bound his party to 
 Peel, if they had allowed themselves to listen to that 
 declaration of the session's first night without murmur, 
 perhaps they might never have rebelled. Mr. Disraeli 
 drew together into one focus all the rays of their gathef- 
 ing anger against Peel, and made them light into a flame. 
 He showed the genius of the born leader by stepping forth 
 at the critical moment and giving the word of command. 
 
 From that hour Mr. Disraeli was the real leader of the 
 Tory squires ; from that moment his voice gave the word 
 of command to the Tory party. There was peculiar 
 courage, too, in the part he took. He must have known 
 that he was open to one retort from Peel that might have 
 crushed a less confident man. It was well known that 
 when Peel was coming into power Disraeli expected to be 
 offered a place of some kind in the ministry, and would 
 have accepted it. Mr. Disraeli afterward explained, when 
 Peel made allusion to the fact, that he never had put him- 
 self directly forward as a candidate for office ; but there 
 had undoubtedly l)een some negotiation going forward 
 
MR, DI^BAELL 265 
 
 which was conducted on Mr. Disraeli's side by some one 
 who supposed he was doing what Disraeli would like to 
 have done ; and Peel had not taken any hint, and would 
 not in any way avail himself of Disraeli's services. Dis- 
 raeli must have known that when he attacked Peel, the 
 latter would hardly fail to make use of this obvious retort ; 
 but he felt little daunted on that score. He could have 
 made a fair enough defence of his consistency in any case, 
 but he knew very well that what the indignant Tories 
 wanted just then was not a man who had been uniformly 
 consistent, but one who could attack Sir Robert Peel 
 without scruple and with effect. Disraeli made his own 
 career by the course he took on that memorable night, 
 and he also made a new career for the Tory party. 
 
 Now that he had proved himself so brilliant a spadassin 
 in this debate, men began to remember that he had dealt 
 trenchant blows before. Many of his sentences attacking 
 Peel, which have passed into familiar quotation almost 
 like proverbs, were spoken in 1845. He had accused the 
 great minister of having borrowed his tactics from the 
 Whigs. " The right honorable gentleman caught the 
 Whigs bathing, and he walked away with their clothes. 
 He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal 
 position, and he is himself a strict conservative of their 
 garments." " I look on the right-honorable gentleman as 
 a man who has tamed the shrew of Liberalism by her 
 own tactics. He is the political Petruchio who has outbid 
 you all." " If the right-honorable gentleman would only 
 stick to quotation instead of having recourse to obloquy, 
 he may rely upon it he would find it a safer weapon. It 
 is one he always wields with the hand of a master, and 
 when he does appeal to any authority in prose or verse, 
 he is sure to be successful, partly because he seldom 
 quotes a passage that has not already received the meed 
 of Parliamentary approbation." We can all readily under- 
 stand how such a hit as the last would tell in the case of 
 an orator like Peel, who had the old-fashioned way of 
 introducing long quotations from approved classic authors 
 into his speeches, and who not unfrequently introduced 
 citations which were received with all the better welcome 
 by the House because of the familiarity of their language. 
 More fierce and cutting was the reference to Canning, 
 with whom Peel had quarrelled, and the implied contract 
 
266 A HISTORY OF QUE OWN TIMES, 
 
 of Canning with Peel. Sir Robert had cited against Dis- 
 raeU Canning's famous hnes praying to be saved from a 
 " candid friend." Disraeli seized the opportmiity thus 
 given. " The name of Canning is one," he said, " never 
 to be mentioned, I am sure, in this House without emotion. 
 We all admire his genius ; we all, or at least most of us, 
 deplore his untimely end ; and we all sympathize with 
 him in his severe struggle with supreme prejudice and 
 sublime mediocrity, with inveterate foes and with candid 
 friends." The phrase "sublime mediocrity" had a mar- 
 vellous effect. As a hostile description of Peel's character 
 it had enough of seeming truth about it to tell most effect- 
 ively alike on friends and enemies of the great leader. 
 A friend, or even an impartial enemy, would not indeed 
 admit that it accurately described Peel's intellect and 
 position ; but as a stroke of personal satire it touched 
 nearly enough the characteristics of its object to impress 
 itself at once as a master-hit on the minds of all who 
 caught its instant purpose. The words remained in use 
 long after the controversy and its occasion had passed 
 away ; and it was allowed that an unfriendly and bitter 
 critic could hardly have found a phrase more suited to its 
 ungenial purpose or more likely to connect itself at once 
 in the public mind with the name of him who was its 
 object. Mr. Disraeli did not, in fact, greatly admire Can- 
 ning. He has left a very disparaging criticism of Canning 
 as an orator in one of his novels. On the other hand, he 
 has shown in his " Life of Lord George Bentinck " that he 
 could do full justice to some of the greatest qualities of 
 Sir Robert Peel. But at the moment of his attacking 
 Peel and crying up Canning he was only concerned to 
 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 minister 
 on the subject of Free-trade. All these brilliant things 
 ]nen now began to recall. Looking back from this dis- 
 tance of time, we can see well enough that Mr. Disraeli 
 had displayed his peculiar genius long before the House 
 of Commons took tlie pains to recognize it. From the 
 night of the opening of tlie session of 1846 it was never 
 .questioned. Thenceforward he Avas really the ]nouth- 
 
MU. msilAELL 
 
 267 
 
 piece and the sense-carrier of his party. For some time 
 to come, indeed, his nominal post might liave seemed to 
 ^ be only that of its bravo. The country gentlemen who 
 cheered to the echo his fierce attacks on Peel during the 
 debates of the session of 1846, had probably not the 
 slightest suspicion that the daring rhetorician who was 
 so savagely revenging them on their now hated leader 
 was a man of as cool a judgment, as long a head, and as 
 complete a capacity for the control of a party as any poli- 
 tician who for generations had appeared in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 One immediate effect of the turn thus given by Dis- 
 raeli's timely intervention in the debate was the forma- 
 tion of a Protection party in the House of Commons. 
 The leadership of this perilous adventure was intrusted 
 to Lord George Bentinck, a sporting nobleman of ener- 
 getic character, great tenacity of purpose and conviction, 
 and a not inconsiderable aptitude for politics, which had 
 hitherto had no opportunity for either exercising or dis- 
 playing itself. Lord George Bentinck had sat in eight 
 Parliaments without taking part in any great debate. 
 When he was suddenly drawn into the leadership of the 
 Protection party in the House of Commons, he gave him- 
 self up to it entirely. He had at first only joined the 
 party as one of its organizers ; but he showed himself in 
 many respects well fitted for the leadership, and the 
 choice of leaders was in any case very limited. When 
 once he had accepted the position, he was unwearying in 
 his attention to its duties ; and, indeed, up to the moment 
 of his sudden and premature death he never allowed him- 
 self any relaxation from the cares it imposed on him. 
 Mr. Disraeli, in his " Life of Lord George Bentinck," has 
 indeed overrated, with the pardonable extravagance of 
 friendship, the intellectual gifts of his leader. Bentinck's 
 abilities were hardly even of the second class ; and the 
 amount of knowledge which he brought to bear on the 
 questions he discussed with so much earnestness and en- 
 ergy was often and of necessity little better than mere 
 cram. But in Parliament the essential qualities of a 
 leader are not great powers of intellect. A man of cool 
 head, good temper, firm will, and capacity for appreciating 
 the serviceable qualities of other men, may always, pro- 
 vided that he has high birth and great social influence, 
 
268 
 
 A IIISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 make a very successful leader, even though he be want- 
 ing altogether in the higher attributes of eloquence and 
 statesmanship. It may be doubtful whether, on the 
 whole, great eloquence and genius are necessary at all to 
 the leader of a party in Parliament in times not specially 
 troublous. Bentinck had patience, energy, good-humor, 
 and considerable appreciation of the characters of men. 
 If he had a bad voice, was a poor speaker, talked absolute 
 nonsense about protective duties and sugar and guano, 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 beca,use he could hon- 
 estly 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 organiza- 
 tion. On January 27th Sir Robert Peel came forward to 
 explain his financial policy. It is almost superfluous to 
 say that the most intense anxiety prevailed all over the 
 country, and that the House was crowded. An incident 
 of the night, which then created a profound sensation, 
 would not be worth noticing now but for the evidence it 
 gives of the bitterness with which the Protection party 
 were filled, and of the curiously bad taste of which gen- 
 tlemen of position and education can be guilty under the 
 inspiration of a blind fanaticism. There is something 
 ludicrous in the pompous tone, as of righteous indigna- 
 tion deliberately repressed, with which Mr. Disraeli, in 
 his " Life of Bentinck," announces the event. The pro- 
 ceedings in the House of Commons, he says, " were ush- 
 ered in by a startling occurrence." What was this por- 
 tentous preliminary? "His Royal Highness the Prince 
 Consort, attended by the Master of the Horse, appeared 
 and took his seat in the body of the House to listen to 
 the statement of the First Minister." In other words, 
 there was to be a statement of great importance and a 
 debate of profound interest, and the husband of the Queen 
 was anxious to be a listener. The Prince Consort did 
 not understand that because he had married the Queen 
 he was therefore to be precluded from hearing a discus- 
 sion in the House of Commons. The poorest man and 
 the greatest man in the land were alike free to occupy a 
 seat in one of the galleries of the House, and it is not to 
 be wondered at if the Prince Consort fancied that he too 
 
Mb. DISRAELI. 
 
 2G9 
 
 might listen to a debate without unhinging the British 
 Constitution. Lord George Bentinck and the Protec- 
 tionists were aflame with indignation. They saw in the 
 quiet presence of the intelligent gentleman who came to 
 listen to the discussion an attempt to overawe the Com- 
 mons and compel them to bend to the will of the Crown. 
 It is not easy to read without a feeling of shame the ab- 
 surd and unseemly comments which were made upon this 
 harmless incident. The Queen herself has given an ex- 
 planation of the Prince's visit which is straightforward 
 and dignified. " The Prince merely went, as the Prince 
 of W ales and the Queen's other sons do, for once, to hear 
 a fine debate, which is so useful to all princes." " But 
 this," the Queen adds, " he naturally felt unable to do 
 again." • 
 
 The Prime-minister announced his policy. His object 
 was to abandon the sliding-scale altogether ; but for the 
 present he intended to impose a duty of ten shillings a 
 quarter on corn when the price of it was under forty- 
 eight shillings a quarter; to reduce that duty by one 
 shilling for every shilling of rise in price until it reached 
 fifty-three shillings a quarter, when the duty should fall 
 to four shillings. This arrangement was, however, only 
 to hold good for three years, at the end of which time 
 protective duties on grain were to be wholly abandoned. 
 Peel explained that he intended gradually to apply the 
 principle of Free-trade to manufactures and every de- 
 scription of i)roduce, bearing in mind the necessity of 
 providing for the expenditure of the country, and of 
 smoothing away some of the difficulties which a sudden 
 withdrawal of protection might cause. The differential 
 duties on sugar, which were professedly intended to pro- 
 tect the growers of free sugars against the competition of 
 those who cultivated sugar by the use of slave labor, 
 were to be diminished, but not abolished. The duties on 
 the importation of foreign cattle were to be at once re- 
 moved. In order to compensate the agricultural inter- 
 ests for the gradual withdrawal of protective duties, there 
 were to be some readjustments of local burdens. We 
 need not dwell much on this part of the explanation. 
 We are familiar in late years with the ingenious man- 
 ner in which the principle of the readjustment of local 
 burdens is worked in the hope of conciliating the agri- 
 
270 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWJSf TlMlSS. 
 
 cultural interests. These readjustments are not usually 
 received with any great gratitude or attended by any par- 
 ticular success. In this instance Sir Robert Peel could 
 hardly have laid much serious stress on them. If the 
 land-owners and farmers had really any just ground of 
 complaint in the abolition of protection, the salve which 
 was applied to tlieir wound would scarcely have caused 
 them to forget its pains. The important part of the ex- 
 planation, so far as history is concerned, consisted in the 
 fact that Peel proclaimed himself an absolute convert to 
 the Free-trade principle, and that the introduction of the 
 principle into all departments of our commercial legisla- 
 tion was, according to his intention, to be a mere question 
 of time and convenience. The struggle was to be be- 
 tween Protection and Free-trade. 
 
 Not that the proposals of the ministry wholly satisfied 
 the professed Free-traders. These latter would have 
 enforced, if they could, an immediate application of the 
 principle without the interval of three years, and the 
 devices and shifts which were to be put in operation dur- 
 ing that middle time. But of course, although they pressed 
 their protest in the form of an amendment, they had no 
 idea of not taking what they could get when the amend- 
 ment failed to secure the approval of the majority. The 
 Protectionist amendment amounted to a distinct proposal 
 that the policy of the Government be absolutely rejected 
 by the House. The debate lasted for twelve nights, and 
 at the end the Protectionists had 240 votes against 337 
 given on behalf of the policy of the Government. The 
 majority of 97 was not quite so large as the Government 
 had anticipated; and the result was to encourage the 
 Protectionists in their plans of opposition. The oppor- 
 tunities of obstruction were many. The majority just 
 mentioned was merely in favor of going into committee 
 of the whole House to consider the existing Customs and 
 Corn Acts ; but every single financial scheme which the 
 minister had to propose must be introduced, debated, and 
 carried, if it was to be carried, as a separate bill. We shall 
 not ask our readers to follow us into the details of these 
 long discussions. They were not important ; they were 
 often not dignified. They more frequentl^^ concerned 
 themselves about the conduct and personal consistency of 
 the minister than al)out the merits of his policy. The 
 
MR, DISEAELL 
 
 271 
 
 arguments in favor of Protection, which doubtless seemed 
 effective to the country gentlemen then, seem like the 
 prattle of children now. There were, indeed, some ex- 
 citing passages in the debates. For these the House was 
 mainly indebted to the rhetoric of Mr. Disraeli. That 
 indefatigable and somewhat reckless champion occupied 
 himself with incessant attacks on the Prime-minister. 
 He described Peel as " a trader on other people's intelli- 
 gence; apolitical burglar of other men's ideas." "The 
 occupants of the Treasury bench," he said, were " political 
 peddlers, who had bought their party in the cheapest 
 market and sold it in the dearest." This was strong 
 language. But it was, after all, more justifiable than the 
 attempt Mr. Disraeli made to revive an old and bitter con- 
 troversy between Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cobden, which, 
 for the sake of the former, had better have been forgotten. 
 Three years before, Mr. Edward Drummond, private secre- 
 tary of Sir Robert Peel, was shot by an assassin. There 
 could be no doubt that the victim had been mistaken for 
 the Prime-minister himself. The assassin turned out to 
 be a lunatic, and as such was found not guilty of the 
 murder, and was consigned to a lunatic asylum. The 
 event naturally had a profound effect on Sir Robert Peel ; 
 and during one of the debates on Free-trade, Mr. Cobden 
 happening to say that he would hold the Prime-minister 
 responsible for the condition of the country. Peel, in an 
 extraordinary burst of excitement, interpreted the words 
 as a threat to expose him to the attack of an assassin. 
 Nothing could be more painfully absurd; and nothing 
 could better show the unreasoning and discreditable hatred 
 of the Tories at that time for any one who opposed the 
 policy of Peel, than the fact that they actually cheered 
 their leader again and again when he made this passionate 
 and half-frenzied charge on one of the purest and noblest 
 men who ever sat in the English Parliament. Peel soon 
 recovered his senses. He saw the error of which he had 
 been guilty, and regretted it ; and it ought to have been 
 consigned to forgetfulness ; but Mr. Disraeli, in repelling 
 a charge made against him of indulging in unjustifiable 
 personalities, revived the whole story, and reminded the 
 House of Commons that the Prime-Minister had charged 
 the leader of the Free-trade League with inciting assassins 
 to murder him. This unjustifiable attempt to rekindle an 
 
272 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 old quarrel had, however, no other effect than *to draw 
 from Sir Robert Peel a renewed expression of apology for 
 the charge he had made against Mr. Cobden, "in the 
 course of a heated debate, when I put an erroneous con- 
 struction on some expressions used by the honorable 
 member of Stockport." Mr. Cobden declared that the 
 explanation made by Peel was entirely satisfactory, and 
 expressed his hope that no one on either side of the House 
 would attempt to revive the subject or make further allu- 
 sion to it. 
 
 The Government prevailed. It would be superfluous 
 to go into any details as to the progress of the Corn Bill. 
 Enough to say that the third reading of the bill passed 
 the House of Commons on May 15th, by a majority of 98 
 votes. The bill was at once sent up to the House of Lords, 
 and, by means chiefly of the earnest advice of the Duke 
 of Wellington, was carried through that House without 
 much serious opposition. But June 25th, the day when 
 the bill was read for a third time in the House of Lords, 
 was a memorable day in the Parliamentary annals of 
 England. It was the fall of the ministry who had carried 
 to success the greatest piece of legislation that had been 
 introduced since Lord Grey's Reform Bill. 
 
 A Coercion Bill for Ireland was the measure which 
 brought this catastrophe on the Government of Sir Robert 
 Peel. While the Corn Bill was yet passing through the 
 House of Commons, the Government felt called upon, in 
 consequence of the condition of crime and outrage in Ire- 
 land, to introduce a Coercion Bill. Lord George Bentinck 
 at flrst gave the measure his support ; but during the 
 Whitsuntide recess he changed his views. He now de- 
 clared that he had only supported the bill on the assur- 
 ance of the Government that it was absolutely necessary 
 for the safety of life in Ireland, and that as the Government 
 had not pressed it on in advance of every other measure — 
 especially, no doubt, of the Corn Bill — he could not believe 
 that it was really a matter of imminent necessity ; and 
 that, furthermore, he had no longer any confidence in the 
 Government, and could not trust them with extraor- 
 dinary powers. In trutli, the bill was placing the Govern- 
 ment in a s(M"ious difficulty. All the Irish followers of 
 O'Connell would, of course, oppose the coercion measure. 
 The Whigs, when out of office, have usually made it a 
 
MB, DISRAELI. 
 
 273 
 
 rule tcrbppose coercion bills if they clo not come accom- 
 panied with some promises of legishitive reform and con- 
 cession. The English Itadical members, Mr. Cobden and 
 his followers, were almost sure to oppose it. Under these 
 circumstances, it seemed probable enough that if the 
 Protectionists joined with tlie otlier opponents of the 
 Coercion Bill, the Government must be defeated. The 
 temptation was too great. • As Mr. Disraeli himself can- 
 didly says of his party, " Vengeance liad succeeded in most 
 breasts to the more sanguine sentiment. Tlie field was 
 lost, but at any rate there should be retribution for those 
 who had betrayed it." The question with many of the 
 indignant Protectionists was, as Mr. Disraeli himself puts 
 it, "How was Sir Robert Peel to be turned out?" It 
 soon became evident that he could be turned out by those 
 who detested him and longed for vengeance voting against 
 him on the Coercion Bill. This was done. The fiercer 
 Protectionists voted with the Free-traders, the Whigs, 
 and the Irish Catholic and Liberal members, and, after a 
 debate of much bitterness and passion, the division on the 
 second reading of the Coercion Bill took place on Thurs- 
 day, June 25th, and the ministry were left in a minority 
 of 73. Two hundred and nineteen votes only were given 
 for the second reading of the bill, and 292 against it. 
 Some eighty of the Protectionists followed Lord George 
 Bentinck into the lobby to vote against the bill, and their 
 votes settled the question. Mr. Disraeli has given a some- 
 what pompous descrix^tion of the scene " as the Protec- 
 tionists passed in defile before the minister to the hostile 
 lobby." " Pallas te hoc vidnere^ Pallas immolat^'^ cries 
 the hero of the ^neid, as he plunges his sword into the 
 heart of his rival. " Protection kills you ; not your Coer- 
 cion Bill," the irreconcilable Protectionists might have 
 said as they trooped past the ministry. Chance had put 
 / within their grasp the means of vengeance, and they had 
 seized it, and made successful use of it. The Peel Min- 
 istry had fallen in its very hour of triumph. 
 
 Three days after Sir Robert Peel announced his resigna- 
 tion of office. His speech " was considered one of giori- 
 tication and i)ique," says Mr. Disraeli. It does not so im- 
 press most readers. It appears to have been full of dig- 
 nity, and of emotion, not usual with Peel, but not surely, 
 under the circumstances, incompatible with dignity. It 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUli OWN TIMES. 
 
 contained that often-quoted tribute to the servi^s 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 advo- 
 cated their cause with untiring energy, and with appeals 
 to reason enforced by an eloquence the more to be admired 
 because it is unaffected and unadorned — the name of 
 Richard Cobden." An added effect was given to this well- 
 deserved panegyric by the little irregularity which the 
 Prime-minister committed when he mentioned in debate 
 a member by name. The closing sentence of the speech 
 was eloquent and touching. Many Avould censure him, 
 Peel said ; his name would perhaps be execrated by the 
 monopolist, who would maintain protection for his own 
 individual benefit ; " but it may be that I shall leave, a 
 name sometimes remembered with expressions of good- 
 will in those places which are the abode of men whose lot 
 it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of 
 their brow — a name remembered with expressions of good- 
 will when they shall recreate their exhausted strength 
 with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is 
 no longer leavened with a sense of injustice." 
 
 The great minister fell. So great a success fallowed by 
 so sudden and complete a fall is hardly recorded in the 
 Parliamentary history of our modern times. Peel had 
 crushed O'Connell and carried Free-trade, and O'Connell 
 and the Protectionists had life enough yet to pull him 
 down. He is as a conqueror who, having won the great 
 victory of his life, is struck by a hostile hand in some by- 
 way as he passes home to enjoy his triumph. 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, AND FOREIGN INTRIGUE. 
 
 Lord John Russell succeeded Sir Robert Peel as First 
 Lord of the Treasury ; Lord Palmerston became Foreign 
 Secretary ; Sir Charles Wood was Chancellor of the Ex- 
 checpier ; Lord Grey took charge of the Colonies ; and Sir 
 George Grey was Home Secretary. Mr, Macaulay acceptQd 
 
PAMtNE, COMMEBCIAL TttOUBLE, ETC. 275 
 
 the office of Paymaster-General, witli a seat in the cabinet, 
 a distinction not nsnally given to tlie occupant of that 
 office. The ministry was not particuhuiy strong in ad- 
 ministrative talent. The Premier and the Foreign Secre- 
 tary were the only members of the cabinet who could be 
 called statesmen of the first class ; and even Lord Palm- 
 erston had not as yet won more than a somewhat doubt- 
 ful kind of fame, and was looked upon as a man quite as 
 likely to do mischief as good to any ministry of which he 
 might happen to form a X3art. Lord Grey then and since 
 only succeeded somehow in missing the career of a lead- 
 ing statesman. He had great talents and some origi- 
 nality ; he was independent and bold. But his independ- 
 ence degenerated too often into impracticability and even 
 eccentricity ; and he was, in fact, a politician with whom 
 ordinary men could not work. Sir Charles Wood, the 
 new Chancellor of the Exchequer, had solid sense and ex- 
 cellent administrative capacity, but he was about as bad 
 a public speaker as ever addressed the House of Commons. 
 His budget speeches were often made so unintelligible by 
 defective manner and delivery that they might almost as 
 well have been spoken in a foreign language. Sir George 
 Grey was a speaker of fearful fluency, and a respectable 
 administrator of the second or third class. He was as 
 plodding in administration as he was precipitate of speech. 
 
 " Peel," wrote Lord Palmerston to a friend a short time 
 after the formation of the new ministry, " seems to have 
 made up his mind that for a year or two he cannot hope 
 to fornf a party, and that he must give people a certain 
 time to forget the events of last year ; in the mean while, 
 it is evident that he does not wish that any other Govern- 
 ment should be formed out of the people on his side of the 
 House, because of that Government he would not be a 
 member. For these reasons, and also because he sincerely 
 thinks it best that we should, for the present, remain in, 
 he gives us very cordial support, as far as he can, without 
 losing his independent position. Graham, who sits up 
 under his old pillar, and never comes down to Peel's bench 
 even for personal communication, seems to keep himself 
 aloof from everybody, and toehold himself free to act ac- 
 cording to circumstances ; but as yet he is not considered 
 as the head of any party. George Bentinck has entirely 
 broken down as a candidate for ministerial position ; and 
 
276 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 thus we are left masters of the field, not only on account 
 of our own merits, which, though we say it ourselves, are 
 great, but by virtue of the absence of any efficient compet- 
 itors." Palmerston's humorous estimate of the state of 
 affairs was accurate. The new ministry was safe enough, 
 because "there was no party in a condition to compete 
 with it. 
 
 The position of the Government of Lord John Russell 
 was not one to be envied. The Irish famine occupied all 
 attention, and soon seemed to be an evil too great for any 
 ministry to deal with. The failure of the potato was an 
 overwhelming disaster for a people almost wholly agri- 
 cultural and a peasantry long accustomed to live upon 
 that root alone. Ireland contains very few large towns ; 
 when the names of four or five are mentioned the list is 
 done with, and we have to come to mere villages. - The 
 country has hardly any manufactures except that of linen 
 in the northern province. In the south and west the 
 I)eople live by agriculture alone. The cottier system, 
 which prevailed almost universally in three of the four 
 provinces, was an arrangement by which a man obtained 
 in return for his labor a right to cultivate a little patch 
 of ground, just enough to supply him with food for the 
 scanty maintenance of his family. The great landlords 
 were for the most part absentees ; the smaller landlords 
 were often deeply in debt, and were, therefore, compelled 
 to screw every possible penny of rent out of their tenants- 
 at-will. They had not, however, even that regularity and 
 order in their exactions that might at least have forced 
 upon the tenants some habits of forethought and exact- 
 ness. There was a sort of understanding that the rent 
 was always to be somewhat in arrear ; the supposed kind- 
 ness of a landlord consisted in his allowing the indebted- 
 ness to increase more liberally than others of his class 
 would do. There was a demoralizing slatternliness in 
 the whole system. It was almost certain that if a tenant, 
 by greatly increased industry and good fortune, made the 
 land which he held more valuable than before, his rent 
 would at once be increased. On the other hand, it was 
 held an act of tyranny to ilispossess him so long as he 
 made even any fair promise of paying up. There was, 
 therefore, a thoroughly vicious system established all 
 round, demoralizing alike to the landlord and the tenant. 
 
FAMINE, COMMEUCIAL TltOUBLE, ETC. 277 
 
 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 undei* 
 which Ireland was placed was one entirely foreign to tlie 
 traditions, the ideas, one might say the very genius, of the 
 Irish people. Whether the system introduced by con- 
 quest and confiscation was better than the old one or not 
 does not in the slightest degree affect the working of this 
 fact on the relations between the landlord and the tenant 
 in Ireland. No one will be able to understand the whole 
 meaning and bearing of the long land struggle in Ireland 
 who does not clearly get into his mind the fact that, 
 rightly or wrongly, the Irish peasant regarded the right 
 to have a bit of land, his share, exactly as other peoples 
 regard the right to live. It was in his mind something 
 elementary and self-evident. He could not be loyal to, he 
 could not even understand, any system which did not 
 secure that to him. According to Michelet, the land is 
 the French peasant's mistress. It was the Irish peasant's 
 life. 
 
 The Irish peasant, with his wife and his family, lived 
 on the potato. Hardly in any country coming within 
 the pale of civilization was there to be found a whole 
 peasant population dependent for their living on one 
 single root. When the potato failed in 1845 the life- 
 system of the people seemed to have given way. At first 
 it was not thought that the failure must necessarily be 
 anything more than partial. But it soon began to appear 
 that for at least two seasons the whole food of the peasant 
 population and of the poor in towns was absolutely gone. 
 Lord John Russell's Government pottered with the difii- 
 culty rather than encountered it. In their excuse it has 
 to be said, of course, that the calamity they had to meet 
 was unprecedented, and that it must have tried the 
 iiesources of the most energetic and foreseeing statesman- 
 ship. Still, the fact remains that the measures of the 
 Government were at first utterly inadequate to the occa- 
 sion, and that afterward some of them were even calcu- 
 lated to make bad worse. Not a county in Ireland wholly 
 escaped the potato disease, and many of the southern and 
 western counties were soon in actual famine. A peculiar 
 form of fever — famine-fever it was called — began to show 
 
278 A BISTORT OF OTTit OWN TIMES. 
 
 itself everywhere. A terrible dysentery set in as well. 
 In some districts the people died in hundreds daily from 
 fever, dysentery, or sheer starvation. The districts of 
 Skibbereen, Skull, Westport, and other places obtained a 
 ghastly supremacy in misery. In some of these districts 
 the parochial authorities at last declined to put the rate- 
 payers to the expense of coffins for the too frequent dead. 
 The coroners declared it impossible to keep on holding 
 inquests. There was no time for all the ceremonies of 
 that kind that would have to be gone through if they 
 made any pretence at keeping up the system of ordinary 
 seasons. In other places where the formula was still kept 
 up the juries added to their verdicts of death by starva- 
 tion some charge of Avilful murder against Lord John Rus- 
 sell, or the Lord-lieutenant, or some other official whose 
 supposed neglect was set down as the cause of the death. 
 Unfortunately the Government had to show an immense 
 activity in the introduction of coercion bills and other 
 repressive measures. It would have been impossible that 
 in such a country as Ireland a famine of that gigantic 
 kind should set in without bringing crimes of violence 
 along with it. The peasantry had always hated the land 
 tenure system ; they had always been told, not surely 
 without justice, that it was at the bottom of all their 
 miseries ; they were now under the firm conviction that 
 the Government could have saved them if it would. 
 What wonder, then, if there were bread riots and agra- 
 rian disturbances ? Who can now wonder, that being so, 
 that the Government introduced exceptional measures of 
 repression ? But it certainly had a grim and a disheart- 
 ening effect on the spirits of the Irish people when it 
 seemed as if the Government could only potter and palter 
 with famine, but could be earnest and energetic when 
 devising coercion bills. 
 
 Whatever might be said of the Government, no one could 
 doubt the good- will of the English people. In every greai 
 English community, from the metropolis downward, sub- 
 scription lists were opened, and the most liberal contribu- 
 tions poured in. In Liverpool, for example, a great num- 
 ber of the merchants of the place put down a thousand 
 pounds each. The Quakers of England sent over a dele- 
 gation of their number to the specially famine-stricken 
 districts of Ireland to administer relief. Many other sects 
 
FAMINE, COMMEBCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 279 
 
 and bodies followed the example. National Relief Asso- 
 ciations were specially formed in England. Relief, indeed, 
 began to be poured in from all countries. The United 
 States employed some of their war vessels to send gifts of 
 grain and other food to the starving places. In one Irish 
 seaport the joybells of the town were kept ringing all day 
 in honor of the arrival of one of these grain-laden vessels 
 — a mournfully significant form of rejoicing, surely. One 
 of the national writers said at the time that the misery of 
 Ireland touched " even the heart of the Turk at the far 
 Dardanelles, and he sent her in pity the alms of a beggar." 
 It was true that from Turkey, as from most other coun- 
 tries, had come some contribution toward the relief of 
 Irish distress. At the same time there were some very 
 foolish performances gone through in Dublin under the 
 sanction and patronage of the Lord-lieutenant — the solemn 
 " inauguration, " as it would be called by a certain class 
 of writers now, of a public soup-kitchen, devised and man- 
 aged by the fashionable French cook, M. Soyer, for the 
 purpose of showing the Irish people what remarkably sus- 
 taining potage might be made out of the thinnest and 
 cheapest materials. This exposition would have been well 
 enough in a quiet and practical way, but performed as a 
 grand national ceremony of regeneration, under the patron- 
 age of the Viceroy, and with accompanhnent of brass- 
 bands and pageantry, it had a remarkably foolish and 
 even offensive aspect. The performance was resented 
 bitterly by many of the impatient young spirits of the 
 national party in Dublin. 
 
 Meanwhile the misery went on deepening and broaden- 
 ing. It was far too great to be effectually encountered by 
 subscriptions, however generous; and the Government, 
 meaning to clo the best they could, were practically at 
 their wits' end. The starving peasants streamed into the 
 nearest considerable town hoping for relief there, and 
 found too often that there the very sources of charity 
 were dried up. Many, very many, thus disappointed, 
 merely lay down on the pavement and died there. Along 
 the country roads one met everywhere groups of gaunt, 
 dim-eyed wretches clad in miserable old sacking, and 
 wandering aimlessly with some vague idea of finding food, 
 as the boy in the fal)le hoped to find the gold where the 
 rainbow touched the earth. Many remained in their 
 
.280 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 empty hovels, and took death there when he came. In 
 some regions the country seemed unpeopled for miles. A 
 fervid national writer declared that the impression made 
 on him by the aspect of the country then was that of " one 
 silent, vast dissolution." Allowing for rhetoric, there was 
 not much exaggeration in the words. Certainly the Ire- 
 land of tradition was dissolved in the operation of that 
 famine. The old system gave way utterly. The landlord- 
 ism of the days before the famine never revived in its 
 former stength and its peculiar ways. For the landlord 
 class there came out of the famine the Encumbered Es- 
 tates Court ; for the small farmer and peasant class there 
 floated up the American emigrant ship. 
 
 Acts and even conspiracies of violence, as we have said, 
 began to be not uncommon throughout the country and 
 in the cities. One peculiar symptom of the time was the 
 glass-breaking mania that set in throughout the towns of 
 the south and west. It is, perhaps, not quite reasonable 
 to call it a mania, for it had melancholy method in it. 
 The workhouses were overcrowded, and the authorities 
 could not receive there or feed there one-fourth of the 
 applicants who besieged them. Suddenly it seemed to 
 occur to the minds of many of famine's victims that there 
 were the prisons for which one might qualify himself, and 
 to which, after qualification, he could not be denied admit- 
 tance. The idea was simple : go into a town, smash 
 deliberately the windows of a shop, and some days of a 
 jail and of substantial food must follow. The plan became 
 a favorite. Especially was it adopted by young girls and 
 women. After a time the puzzled magistrates resolved 
 to put an end to this device by refusing to inflict the pun- 
 ishment which these unfortunate creatures sought as a 
 refuge and a comfort. One early result of the famine and 
 the general breakdown of property is too significant to be 
 allowed to pass unnoticed. Some of the landlords had 
 been living for a long time on a baseless system, on a credit 
 which the failure of the crops brought to a crushing test. 
 Not a few of these were utterly broken. They could 
 maintain their houses and halls no longer, and often were 
 only too happy to let them to the poor-law guardians to 
 be used as extra workhouses. In the near neighborhood 
 of many a distressed country town the great house of the 
 local magnate thus became a receptacle for the pauper- 
 
FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC, 281 
 
 ism which could not find a refuge in the overcrowded 
 asyhims which the poor-law system had already provided. 
 The lion and the lizard, says the Persian poet, keep the 
 halls where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep. The pauper 
 devoured his scanty dole of Indian meal porridge in the 
 hall where his landlord had gloried and drunk deep. 
 
 When the famine was over and its results came to be 
 estimated, it was found that Ireland had lost about two 
 millions of her population. She had come down from 
 eight millions to six. This was the combined effect of 
 starvation, of the various diseases that followed in its path 
 gleaning where it had failed to gather, and of emigration. 
 Long after all the direct effects of the failure of the potato 
 had ceased, the population still continued steadily to 
 decrease. The Irish peasant had in fact had his eyes 
 turned, as Mr. Bright afterward expressed it, toward the 
 setting sun, and for long years the stream of emigration 
 westward never abated in its volume. A new Ireland 
 began to grow up across the Atlantic. In every great city 
 of the United States the Irish element began to form a 
 considerable constituent of the population. From New 
 York to San Francisco, from St. Paul, Minnesota, to New 
 Orleans, the Irish accent is heard in every street, and the 
 Irish voter comes to the polling-booth ready, far too heed- 
 lessly, to vote for any politician who will tell him that 
 America loves the green flag and hates the Saxon. 
 
 Terrible as the immediate effects of the famine were, it 
 is impossible for any friend of Ireland to say that, on the 
 whole, it did not bring much good with it. It first applied 
 the scourge which was to drive out of the land a thoroughly 
 vicious and rotten system. It first called the attention of 
 English statesmen irresistibly to the fact that the system 
 was bad to its heart's core, and that nothing good could 
 come of it. It roused the attention of the humble Irish- 
 man, too often inclined to put up with everything in the 
 lazy spirit of a Neapolitan or a fatalist, to the fact that 
 there was for him too a world elsewhere. The famine 
 had, indeed many a bloody after-birth, but it gave to the 
 world a new Ireland. 
 
 The Government, as it may be supposed, had hard work 
 to do all this time. They had the best intentions toward 
 Ireland, and were alwa:ys, indeed, announcing that they 
 liad found out some new way of dealing with the distress, 
 
282 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 x30or in Ireland ; 
 they modified the Irish Poor-laws ; they agreed at length 
 to suspend temporarily the Corn-laws and the Navigation 
 Laws, so far as these related to the importation of grain. 
 A tremendous commercial panic, causing the fall of great 
 houses, especially in the corn trade, all over the country, 
 called for the suspension of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, 
 and the measures of the ministers were, for the most part, 
 treated considerately and loyally by Sir Robert Peel ; but 
 a new opposition had formed itself under the nominal 
 guidance of Lord George Bentinck, and the real inspiration 
 of Mr. Disraeli. Lord George Bentinck brought in a bill 
 to make a grant of sixteen millions to be expended as an 
 advance on the construction and completion of Irish rail- 
 ways. This proposal was naturally very welcome to 
 many in Ireland. It had a la vish and showy air about 
 it ; and Lord George Bentinck talked grandiosely in his 
 speech about the readiness with wdiich he, the Saxon, 
 would, if his measure were carried, answer with his head 
 for the loyalty of the Irish x)eople. But it soon began to 
 apx^ear that the scheme was not so much a question of the 
 Irish people as of certain moneyed classes who might be 
 helped along at the expense of the English and the Irish 
 people. Lord George Bentinck certainly had no other 
 than a direct and single-minded purpose to do good to 
 Ireland ; but his measure would have been a failure if it 
 had been carried. It was fairly open in some respects to 
 the criticism of Mr. Roebuck, that it proposed to relieve 
 Irish landlordism of its responsibilities at, the expense of 
 the British tax-payer. The measure was rejected. Lord 
 George Bentinck was able to worry the ministry some- 
 what effectively when they introduced a measure to reduce 
 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 l)y Sir Robert 
 Peel in order to enable the planters in our colonies to 
 compensate themselves for tlui loss they might suffer in 
 
FAMINE, COMMEUCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 283 
 
 the transition from slavery to free labor. Lord George 
 Bentinck, therefore, proposed an amendment to the reso- 
 lutions of the Government, declaring it unjust and impol- 
 itic to reduce the duty on foreign slave-grown sugar, as 
 tending to check the advance of production by I3ritish 
 free labor, and to give a great additional stimulus to slave 
 labor. Many sincere and independent opponents of 
 slavery, Lord Brougham in the House of Lords among 
 them, were caught by this view of the question. Lord 
 George and his brilliant lieutenant at one time appeared 
 as if they were likely to carry their point in the Commons. 
 But it was announced that if the resolutions of the Govern- 
 ment were defeated ministers would resign, and there 
 was no one to take their place. Peel could not return to 
 power ; and the time was far distant yet wdien Mr. Dis- 
 raeli eould form a ministry. The opposition crumbled 
 away, therefore, and the Government measures were 
 carried. Lord George Bentinck made himself for awhile 
 the champion of the West India sugar-producing interest. 
 He was a man who threw himself with enormous energy 
 into any work he undertook ; and he had got up the case 
 of the West India planters with all the enthusiasm that 
 inspired him in his more congenial pursuits as one of the 
 principal men on the turf. The alliance between him and 
 Mr. Disraeli is curious. The two men, one would think, 
 could have had absolutely nothing in common. Mr. 
 Disraeli knew nothing about horses and racing. Lord 
 George Bentinck could not possibly have understood, not 
 to say sympathized with, many of the leading ideas of his 
 lieutenant. Yet Bentinck had evidently formed a just 
 estimate of Disraeli's political genius ; and Disraeli saw 
 that in Bentinck were many of the special qualities which 
 go to make a powerful party leader in England. Time 
 has amply justified, and more than justified, Bentinck's 
 convictions as to Disraeli ; Bentinck's premature death 
 leaves Disraeli's estimate of him an untested speculation. 
 
 There were troubles abroad as well as at home for the 
 Government. Almost immediately on their ■ coming into 
 office, the project of the Spanish marriages, concocted be- 
 tween King Louis Philippe and his minister, M. Guizot, dis- 
 turbed for a time, and very seriously, the good under- 
 standing between England and France. It might, so far 
 as this country was concerned, have had much graver 
 
284 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 consequences, but for the fact that it bore its bitter fruit 
 so soon for the dynasty of Louis Philippe, and helped to 
 put a new ruler on the throne of France. It is only as it 
 affected the friendly feeling between this country and 
 France that the question of the Spanish marriages has a 
 place in such a work as this ; but at one time it seemed 
 likely enough to bring about consequences which would link 
 it closely and directly with the history of England. The 
 ambition of the French minister and his master was to 
 bring the throne of Spain in 'Some way under the direct in- 
 fluence of France. Such a scheme had again and again been 
 at the heart of French rulers and statesmen, and it had 
 always failed. At least it had always brought with it 
 jealousy, hostility, and war. Louis Philippe and his 
 minister were untaught by the lessons of the past. The 
 young Queen Isabella of Spain was unmarried, and of 
 course a high degree of public anxiety existed in Europe 
 as to her choice of a husband. No delusion can be more 
 profound or more often exposed than that which inspires 
 ambitious princes and enterprising statesmen to imagine 
 that they can control nations by the influence of dynastic 
 alliances. In every European war we see princes closely 
 connected by marriage in arms against each other. The 
 great political forces which bring nations into the field of 
 battle are not to be charmed into submission by the rub- 
 bing of a princess's wedding-ring. But a certain class of 
 statesman, a man of the order who in ordinary life would 
 be called too clever by half, is always intriguing about 
 royal marriages, as if thus he alone could hold in his 
 hands the destinies of nations. 
 
 In an evil hour for themselves and their fame, Louis 
 Philippe and his minister believed that they could obtain 
 a virtual ownership of Spain by an ingenious marriage 
 scheme. There was at one time a project, talked of ratlier 
 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 Philipi)e. But this 
 would have been too daring a venture on the part of the 
 King of the French. Apart from any objections to be 
 entertained by other states, it was certain that England 
 could not "view with indifference," as the diplomatic 
 phrase goes, the prospect of a son of the Fi'cncih King 
 occupying the throne of Spain. It may be said that after 
 
FAMINE, COMMEKCIAL TROUBLE, ETC, 285 
 
 all it was of little concern to England who married the 
 Queen of Spain. Spain was nothing U) 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 Austria 
 must link herself with the fortunes of the great Napoleon 
 because he had married an Austrian princess. Probably 
 it would have been well if England had concerned herself 
 in nowise with the domestic affairs of Spain, and had 
 allowed Louis PhilipiDC to spin what ignoble plots he 
 pleased, if the Spanish j)eople themselves had not wit 
 enough to see through and power enough to counteract 
 them. At a later period France brought on herself a 
 terrible war and a crushing defeat because her Emperor 
 chose to believe, or allowed himself to be persuaded into 
 believing, that the security of France would be threatened 
 if a Prussian prince were called to the throne of Spain. 
 The Prussian prince did not ascend that throne ; but the 
 war between France and Prussia went on ; France was 
 defeated; and after a little the Spanish people themselves 
 got rid of the prince whom they had consented to accept 
 in place of the obnoxious Prussian. If the French Em- 
 peror had not interfered, it is only too probable that the 
 Prussian prince would have gone to Madrid, reigned there 
 for a few unstable and tremulous months, and then have 
 been quietly sent back to his own countr3^ 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 viev/ 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 elsewhere 
 in which England was not entitled to express an opinion, 
 and to make her influence felt. The marriage, therefore, 
 of the young Queen of Spain had been long a subject of 
 anxious consideration in the councils of the English 
 Government. Louis Philippe knew very well that he 
 could not venture to marry one of his sons to the young 
 Isabella. But he and his minister devised a scheme for 
 securing to themselves and their policy the same effect in 
 another way. They contrived that the Queen and her 
 sister should be married at the same time — the Queen to 
 
286 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 her cousin, Don Francisco d'Assis, Duke of Cadiz ; and 
 her sister to the Puke de Montpensier, Louis Philippe's 
 son. Tliere was reason to expect that tlie Queen, if mar- 
 ried to Don Francisco, would have no children, and that 
 the wife of Louis Philippe's son, or some of her children, 
 would come to the throne of Spain. 
 
 On the moral guilt of a plot like this it would be super- 
 fluous to dwell. Nothing in the history of the perversions 
 of human conscience and judgment can be more extraor- 
 dinary than the fact that a man like M. Guizot should have 
 been its inspiring influence. It came with a double shock 
 upon the Queen of England and her ministers, because 
 they had every reason to think that Louis Philippe had 
 bound himself by a solemn promise to discourage any 
 such policy. When the Queen paid her visit to Louis 
 Philippe at Eu, the King made the most distinct and the 
 most spontaneous promise on the subject both to her 
 Majesty and to Lord Aberdeen. The Queen's own journal 
 says : " The King told Lord Aberdeen as well as me he 
 never would hear of Montpensier's marriag-e with the 
 Lifanta of Spain — which they are in a great fright about 
 in England — until it Avas no longer a political question, 
 which would be when the Queen is married and has 
 children." The King's own defence of himself afterward, 
 in a letter intended to be a reply to one written to his 
 daughter, the Queen of the Belgians, by Queen Victoria, 
 admits the fact. " I shall tell you precisely," he says, 
 " in what consists the deviation on my side. Simply in 
 my having arranged for the marriage of the Due de 
 Montpensier, not before the marriage of the Queen of 
 Spain, for she is to be married to the Due de Cadiz at 
 the very moment when my son is married to the Infanta, 
 but before the Queen has a child. That is the whole 
 deviation, nothing more, nothing less." This Avas surely 
 deviation enough from the King's promise to justify any 
 charge of bad faith that could be made. The whole ques- 
 tion was one of succession. The objection of England and 
 other Powers was, from first to last, an objection to any 
 arrangement which might leave the succession to one of 
 Louis Philippe's children or grand-children. For this 
 reason the King had given his word to Queen Victoria 
 that he would not hear of his son's marriage with Isa- 
 bella's sister until the difficulty about the succession had 
 
FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 287 
 
 been removed by Isabella herself being married and having 
 a child. Such an agreement was absolutely broken when 
 the King arranged for the marriage of his son to the 
 sister of Queen Isabella at the same tune a^i Isabella's 
 own marriage, and when, therefore, it was not certain 
 that the young Queen would have any children. The 
 political question — the question of succession — remained 
 then open as before. All the objections that England 
 and other Powers had to the marriage of the Due de 
 Montpensier stood out as strong as ever. It was a 
 question of the birth of a child, and no child was born. 
 The breach of faith was made infinitely more grave by 
 the fact that in the public opinion of Europe, Louis 
 Philippe was set down as having brought about the 
 marriage of the Queen of Spain with her cousin Don 
 Francisco in the hope and belief that the union would be 
 barren of issue, and that the wifa of his son would stand 
 on the next step of the throne. 
 
 The excuse which Louis Philippe put forward to palliate 
 what he called his "deviation" from the promise to the 
 Queen was not of a nature calculated to allay the ill-feel- 
 ing which his policy had aroused in England. He pleaded 
 in substance that he had reason to believe in an intended 
 piece of treachery on the part of the English Govern- 
 ment, the consequences of which, if it were successful, 
 would have been injurious to his policy, and the discovery 
 of which, therefore, released him from his promise. He 
 had found out, as he declared, that there was an intention 
 on the part of England to put forward, as a candidate for 
 the hand of Queen Isabella, Prince Leopold of Coburg, 
 a cousin of Prince Albert. There was so little justifica- 
 tion for any such suspicion that it hardly seemed possible 
 a man of Louis Philippe's shrewdness can really have 
 entertained it. The English Government had always 
 steadfastly declined to give any support whatever to the 
 candidature of this young prince. Lord Aberdeen, who 
 was then Foreign Secretary, had always taken his stand 
 on the broad principle that the marriage of the Queen of 
 Spain was the business of Isabella herself and of the 
 Spanish people ; and that so long as that Queen and that 
 people w^ere satisfied, and the interests of England were 
 in nowise involved, the Government of Queen Victoria 
 would interfeie in no manner. The candidature of 
 
288 A mSTOBY OF QUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 EngUsh Government had 
 in the most decided and practical manner proved that 
 they took no share in the plans of Queen Christina, and 
 had no sympathy with them. But while tlie whole 
 negotiations were going on, the defeat of Sir Robert 
 Peel's IVIinistry brought Lord Palmerston into the Foreign 
 Office in place of Lord Aberdeen. The very name of 
 Palmerston produced on Louis Philippe and his minister 
 the effect vulgarly said to be wrought on a bull by the 
 display of a red rag. Louis Philippe treasured in bitter 
 memory the unexpected success which Palmerston had 
 won from him in regard to Turkey and Egypt. At that 
 time, and especially in the court of Louis Philippe, for- 
 eign politics were looked upon as the field in which the 
 ministers of great Powers contended against each other 
 with brag and trickery and subtle arts of all kinds ; the 
 plain principles of integrity and truthful dealing did not 
 seem to be regarded as properly belonging to the rules of 
 the game. Louis Philippe probably believed in good faith 
 that the return of Lord Palmerston to the Foreign Office 
 must mean the renewed activity of treacherous plans 
 against himself. This, at least, is the only assumption 
 on which we can explain the King's conduct, if we do not 
 wish to believe that he put forward excuses and pretexts 
 which were wilful in their falsehood. Louis Philippe 
 seized on some words in a despatch of Lord Palmerston's, 
 in which the candidature of Prince Leopold was simply 
 mentioned as a matter of fact ; declared that these words 
 showed that the English Government had at last openly 
 adopted that candidature, professed himself relieved from 
 all previous engagements, and at once hurried on the 
 marriage between Queen Isabella and her cousin, and 
 that of his own son with Isabella's sister. On October 
 10th, 1846, the double marriage took place at Madrid ; and 
 on February 5th following, M. Guizot told the French 
 Chambers that the Spanish marriages constituted the first 
 great thing France had accomplished completely single- 
 handed in Europe since 18)K). 
 
 Every one knows wlmt a failure this scheme proved, so 
 far as the objects of Louis Philippe and his minister were 
 
FAMINE, COMMEBCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 289 
 
 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 
 marriages and the feeling which it provoked in Europe. 
 The fact with which we have to deal, however, is that 
 the friendship between England and France, from which 
 so many happy results seemed likely to come to Europe 
 and the cause of free government, was necessarily inter- 
 rupted. It would have been impossible to trust any 
 longer to Louis Philippe. The Queen herself entered into 
 a correspondence with his daughter, the Queen of the 
 Belgains, in which she expressed in the clearest and most 
 emphatic manner -her opinion of the treachery with which 
 England had been encountered, and suggested plainly 
 enough her sense of the moral wrong involved in such 
 ignoble policy. The whole transaction is but another 
 and a most striking condemnation of that odious creed, 
 for a long time tolerated in state-craft, that there is one 
 moral code for private life and another for the world of 
 politics. A man who in private affairs should act as 
 Louis Philii3pe and M. Guizot acted would be justly con- 
 sidered infamous. It is impossible to suppose that M. 
 Guizot, at least, could have so acted in private life. M. 
 Guizot was a Protestant of a peculiarly austere type, who 
 professed to make religious duty his guide in all things, 
 and who doubtless did make it so in all his dealings as a 
 private citizen. But it is only too evident that he believed 
 the x)olicy of states to allow of other principles than those 
 of Christian morality. He allowed himself to be gov- 
 erned by the odious delusion that the interests of a state 
 can be advanced and ought to be pursued by means which 
 an ordinary man of decent character would scorn to em- 
 ploy for any object in private life. A man of any high 
 principle would not employ such arts in private life to 
 save all his earthly possessions, and his life and the lives 
 of his wife and children. Any one who will take the 
 trouble to think over the whole of this plot — for it can be 
 called by no other name — over the ignoble object which 
 it had in view, the base means by which it was carried 
 out, the ruthless disregard for the inclinations, the affec- 
 tions, the hagpiness, and the morality of its principal 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 CHARTISM AISTD YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 The year 1848 was an era in the modern history of Eu- 
 rope. It was the year of unfulfilled revolution. The fall 
 of the dynasty of Louis Philippe may be said to have set 
 the revolutionary tide flowing. The event in France had 
 long been anticipated by keen-eyed observers. There are 
 many predictions, delivered and recorded before the revo- 
 lution was yet near, which show that it ought not to have 
 taken the world by suri)rise. The reign of the Bourgeois 
 King was unsuited in its good and in its bad qualities 
 alike to the genius and the temper of the French people. 
 The people of France have defects enough which friends 
 and enemies are ready to point out to them ; but it can 
 hardly be denied that they like at least the appearance of 
 a certain splendor and magnanimity in their systems of 
 government. This is, indeed, one of their weaknesses. 
 It lays them open to the allurements of any brilliant 
 adventurer, like the First Napoleon or the Third, who can 
 promise them national greatness and glory at the expense 
 perhaps of domestic liberty. But it makes them peculi- 
 arly intolerant of anything mean and sordid in a system 
 or a ruler. There are peoples, no doubt, who could be 
 persuaded, and wisely persuaded, to put up with a good 
 deal of the ignoble and the shabby in their foreign policy 
 for the sake of domestic comfort and tranquillity. But 
 the French i^eople 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 commissioned to act 
 as tricksters ; the word of a French minister at a foreign 
 court began to be regarded as on a level of credibility with 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IBELAND, 
 
 291 
 
 a dicer's oath. The home policy of the King was narrow- 
 minded and repressive enough ; but a man who played 
 upon the national weakness more wisely might have per- 
 suaded his people to be content with defects at home for 
 the sake of prestige abroad. From the hour when it be- 
 came apparent in France that the nation was not respected 
 abroad, the fall of the dynasty was only a matter of time 
 and change. The terrible story of the De Praslin family 
 helped to bring about the catastrophe ; the alternate weak- 
 ness and obstinacy of the Government forced it on ; and 
 the King's OAvn lack of decision made it impossible that 
 when the trial had come it could end in any way but 
 one. 
 
 Louis Philippe fled to England, and his flight was the 
 signal for long pent-up fires to break out all over Europe. 
 Revolution soon was aflame over nearly all the courts and 
 capitals of the Continent. Revolution is like an epidemic ; 
 it finds out the weak places in systems. The two Euro- 
 pean covmtries 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 Belgia-ns are a people well able to appreciate it. 
 They declared for their King, and the shock of the revolu- 
 tion passed harmlessly away. In England and Ireland the 
 effect of the events in France was instantly made man- 
 ifest. The Chartist agitation at once came to a head. 
 Some of the Chartist leaders called out for the dismissal 
 of the ministry, the dissolution of the Parliament, the 
 Charter and " no surrender." A national convention of 
 Chartists began its sittings in London to arrange for a 
 monster demonstration on April 10th. Some of the 
 speakers openly declared that the people were now quite 
 ready to fight for their Charter. Others, more cautious, 
 advised that no step should be taken against the law until 
 at least it was quite certain that the people were stronger 
 than the upholders of the existing laws. Nearly all the 
 leading Chartists spoke of the revolution in France as an 
 example offered in good time to the English people ; and 
 it is somewhat curious to observe how it was assumed in 
 the most evident good faith that what we may call the 
 wage-receiving portion of the population of these islands 
 
292 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 constitutes exclusively the English people. What the 
 educated, the wealthy, the owners of land, the proprietors, 
 of factories, the ministers of the different denominations, 
 the authors of books, the painters of pictures, the bench, 
 the bar, the army, the navy, the medical profession — what 
 all these or any of them might think with regard to any 
 proposed constitutional changes was accounted a matter 
 in nowise affecting the resolve of the English " i)eople." 
 The moderate men among the Chartists themselves were 
 soon unable to secure a hearing ; and the word of order 
 went round among the body, that " the English people " 
 must have the Charter or a Republic. What had been 
 done in France enthusiasts fancied might well be done in 
 England. 
 
 It was determined to present a monster petition to the 
 House of Commons demanding the Charter, and, in fact, 
 offering a last chance to Parliament to yield quietly to the 
 demand. The petition was to be presented by a deputa- 
 tion who were to be conducted by a vast procession up to 
 the doors of the House. The procession was to be formed 
 on Kennington Common, the space then unenclosed which 
 is now Kennington Park, on the south side of London. 
 There the Chartists were to be addressed by their still 
 trusted leader, Feargus O'Connor, and they were to march 
 in militar}^ order to present their petition. The object 
 undoubtedly was to make such a parade of physical force 
 as should overawe the Legislature and the Government, 
 and demonstrate the impossibility of refusing a demand 
 backed by such a reserve of power. The idea was taken 
 from O'ConnelFs policy in the monster meetings ; but 
 there were many of the Chartists who hoped for some- 
 thing more than a mere demonstration of physical force, 
 and who would have been heartily glad if some untimely 
 or unreasonable interference on the part of the authorities 
 had led to a collision. A strong faith still survived at 
 that day in what was grandiosely called the might of 
 earnest numbers. Ardent young Chartists who belonged 
 to the time of life when anything seems possible to the 
 brave and faithful, and when facts and examples count 
 for nothing unless they favor one's own views, fully 
 believed that it needed but the firing of the first shot, 
 " the sparkle of the first sword drawn," to give success to 
 the arms, though but the bare arms, of the people, and to 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND, 
 
 293 
 
 inaugurate the reign of liberty. Therefore, however dif- 
 ferently and harmlessly events may have turned out, we 
 may be certain that there went to the rendezvous at Ken- 
 nington Common, on that April 10th, many hundreds of 
 ignorant and excitable young men who desired nothing so 
 much as a collision with the police and the military, and 
 the reign of liberty to follow. The proposed procession 
 was declared illegal, and all peaceful and loyal subjects 
 were warned not to take any part in it. But this was 
 exactly what the more ardent among the Chartists 
 expected and desired to see. They were rejoiced that 
 the Government had proclaimed the procession unlawful. 
 Was not that the proper occasion for resolute patriots to 
 show that they represented a cause above despotic law ? 
 Was not that the very opportunity offered to them to 
 prove that the people were more mighty than their rulers, 
 and that the rulers must obey or abdicate ? Was not the 
 whole sequence of proceedings thus far exactly after the 
 pattern of the French Revolution ? The people resolve 
 that they will have a certain demonstration in a certain 
 way ; the oligarchical Government declare that they shall 
 not do so ; the people persevere, and of course the next 
 thing must be that the Government falls, exactly as in 
 Paris. When poor Dick Swiveller, in Dickens's story, is 
 recovering from his fever, he looks forth of his miserable 
 bed and makes up his mind that he is under the influence 
 of some such magic spell as he has become familiar with 
 in the "Arabian Nights." His poverty-stricken little 
 nurse claps her thin hands with joy to see him alive ; and 
 Dick makes up his mind that the clapping of the hands is 
 the sign understood of all who read Eastern romance, and 
 that next must appear at the princess's summons the row 
 of slaves with jars of jewels on their heads. Poor Dick, 
 reasoning from his experiences in the "Arabian Nights," 
 was not one Avhit more astray than enthusiastic Chartists 
 reasoning for the sequence of English politics from the 
 evidence of what had happened in France. The slaves 
 with the jars of jewels on their heads were just as likely 
 to follow the clap of the poor girl's hands, as the events 
 that had followed a popular demonstration in Paris to 
 follow a popular demonstration in London. To begin 
 with, the Chartists did not represent any such power in 
 London as the Liberal deputies of the French Chamber 
 
294 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUIi OWN TIMES. 
 
 did in Paris. In the next place, London does not govern 
 England, and in onr time, at least, never did. In the 
 third place, the English Government knew perfectly well 
 that they were strong in the general support of the nation, 
 and were not likely to yield for a single moment to the 
 hesitation which sealed the fate of the French monarchy. 
 
 The Chartists fell to disputing among themselves very 
 much as O'Connell's Repealers had done. Some were for 
 disobeying the ' orders of the authorities and having the 
 procession, and provoking rather than avoiding a collision. 
 At a meeting of the Chartist Convention held the night 
 before the demonstration, " the eve of Liberty," as some 
 of the orators eloquently termed it, a considerable number 
 were for going armed to Kennington Common. Feargus 
 O'Connor had, however, sense enough still left to throw 
 the weight of his influence against such an insane pro- 
 ceeding, and to insist that the demonstration must show 
 itself to be, as it was from the first proclaimed to be, a 
 strictly pacific proceeding. This was the parting of the 
 ways in the Chartist as it had been in the Repeal agita- 
 tion. The more ardent spirits at once withdrew from the 
 organization. Those who might even at the very last have 
 done mischief if they had remained part of the movement, 
 withdrew from it ; and Chartism was left to be represented 
 by an open-air meeting and a petition to Parliament, like 
 all the other demonstrations that the metropolis had seen 
 to pass, hardly heeded, across the field of politics. But 
 the public at large was not aware that the fangs of Chart- 
 ism had been drawn before it was let loose to play on 
 Kennington Common that memorable 10th of April. 
 London awoke in great alarm that day. The Chartists 
 in their most sanguine moments never ascribed to them- 
 selves half the strength that honest alarmists of the hour- 
 geot^ class were ready that morning to ascribe to them. 
 The wildest rumors were spread abroad in many parts of 
 the metropolis. Long before the Chartists had got to- 
 gether on Kennington Common at all, various remote 
 quarters of London were filled with horrifying reports of 
 encounters between the insurgents and the police or the 
 military, in which the Chartists invariably had the better, 
 and as a result of which they were marching in full force 
 to the particular district where the momentary ])anic pre- 
 vailed. London is worse off than most cities in such a 
 
CBABTISM AND YOUNG IB^LAND, 295 
 
 time of alarm. It is too large for true accounts of things 
 rapidly to diffuse themselves. In April, 1848, the street 
 telegraph was not in use for carrying news through cities, 
 and the rapidly succeeding editions of the cheap papers 
 were as yet unknown. In various quarters of London, 
 therefore, the citizen was left through the greater part of 
 the day to all the agonies of doubt and uncertainty. 
 
 There was no lack, however, of public precautions against 
 an outbreak of armed Chartists. The Duke of W elling- 
 ton took charge of all the arrangements for guarding the 
 public buildings and defending the metropolis generally. 
 He acted with extreme caution, and told several influen- 
 tial persons that the troops were in readiness everywhere, 
 but that they would not be seen unless an occasion actually 
 rose for calling on their services. The coolness and 
 presence of mind of the stern old soldier are well illus- 
 trated in the fact that to several persons of influence and 
 authority who came to him with suggestions for the defence 
 of this place or that, his almost invariable answer was 
 " done already," or " done two hours ago," or something 
 of the kind. A vast number of Londoners enrolled them- 
 selves as special constables for the maintenance of law 
 and order. Nearly two hundred thousand persons, it is 
 said, were sworn in for this purpose ; and it will always 
 be told as an odd incident of that famous scare, that the 
 Prince Louis jSTapoleon, then living in London, was one of 
 those who volunteered to bear arms in the preservation of 
 order. Not a long time was to pass away before the most 
 lawless outrage on the order and life of a peaceful city 
 was to be perpetrated by the special command of the man 
 who was so ready to lend the saving aid of his constable's 
 staff to protect English society against some poor hundreds 
 or thousands of English working-men. 
 
 The crisis, however, luckily proved not to stand in need 
 of such saviors of society. The Chartist demonstration 
 was a wretched failure. The separation of the Chartists 
 who wanted force from those who wanted orderly proceed- 
 ings reduced the project to nothing. The meeting on 
 Kennington Common, so far from being a gathering of 
 half a million of men, was not a larger concourse than a 
 temperance demonstration had often drawn together on 
 the same spot. Some twenty or twenty-five thousand 
 persons were on Kennington Common, of whom at least 
 
290 
 
 A HISTORY OF OlfE OWN TIMES, 
 
 half were said to be mere lookers-on, come to see what 
 was to happen, and caring nothing whatever about the 
 People's Charter. The procession was not formed, O'Con- 
 nor himself strongly insisting on obedience to the orders 
 of the authorities. There were speeches of the usual kind 
 by O'Connor and others ; and the opportunity was made 
 available by some of the more extreme, and consequently 
 disappointed Chartists, to express in very vehement lan- 
 guage their not unreasonable conviction that the leaders of 
 the convention were humbugs. The whole affair, in truth, 
 was an absurd anachronism. The lovers of laAV and order 
 could have desired nothing better than that it should 
 thus come forth in the light of day and show itself. The 
 clap of the hand was given, but the slaves with the jars 
 of jewels did not appear. It is not that the demands of 
 the Chartists were anachronisms or absurdities. We have 
 already shown that many of them were just and reason- 
 able, and that all came within the fair scope of political 
 argument. The anachronism was in the idea that the 
 display of physical force could any longer be needed or 
 be allowed to settle a political controversy in England. 
 The absurdity was in the notion that the wage-receiving 
 classes, and they alone, are " the people of England." 
 
 The great Chartist petition itself, which was to have 
 made so profound an impression on the House of Com- 
 mons, proved as utter a failure as the demonstration on 
 Kennington Common. Mr. O'Connor, in presenting this 
 portentous document, boasted that it would be found to 
 have five million seven hundred thousand signatures in 
 round numbers. The calculation was made in very round 
 numbers indeed. The Committee on Public Petitions 
 were requested to make a minute examination of the docu- 
 ment, and to report to the House of Commons. The com- 
 mittee called in the service of a little army of law-station- 
 ers' clerks, and went to work to analyze the signatures. 
 They found, to begin with, that the whole number of 
 signatures, genuine or otherwise, fell short of two mill- 
 ions. But that was not all. The committee found in 
 many cases that wliole sheets of the petition were signed 
 by the one hand, and that eight per cent, of the signatures 
 were those of women. It did not need nnich investiga- 
 tion to prove that a large proportion of the signatures 
 were not genuine. The name of the Queen, of Prince 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND, 
 
 297 
 
 Albert, of the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
 John Russell, Colonel Sibthorp, and various other public 
 personages, appeared again and again on the Chartist roll. 
 Some of these eminent persons would appear to have car- 
 ried their zeal for tlie People's Charter so far as to keep 
 signing their names untiringly all over the petition. A 
 large number of yet stranger allies would seem to have 
 been drawn to the cause of the Charter. " Cheeks the 
 Marine " was a personage very familiar at that time to 
 the readers of Captain Marryat's sea stories; and the 
 name of that mythical hero appeared with bewildering 
 iteration in the petition. So did " Davy Jones ; " so did 
 various persons describing themselves as Pugnose, Flat- 
 nose, "Wooden-legs, and by other such epithets acknowl- 
 edging curious personal defects. We need not describe 
 the laughter and scorn which these revelations produced. 
 There really was not anything very marvellous in the dis- 
 covery. The petition was got up in great haste and with 
 almost uttet carelessness. Its sheets used to be sent any- 
 where, and left lying about anywhere, on a chance of 
 obtaining signatures. The temptation to school-boys and 
 practical jokers of all kinds was irresistible. Wherever 
 there was a mischievous hand that could get hold of a 
 pen, there was some name of a royal personage or some 
 Cheeks the Marine at once added to the muster-roll of the 
 Chartists. As a matter of fact, almost all large popular 
 petitions are found to have some such buffooneries mixed 
 • up with their serious business. The Committee on Peti- 
 tions have on several occasions had reason to draw atten- 
 tion to the obviously fictitious nature of signatures 
 appended to such documents. The petitions in favor of 
 O'Connell's movement used to lie at the doors of chapels 
 all the Sunday long in Ireland, with pen and ink ready 
 for all who approved to sign ; and it was many a time the 
 favorite amusement of school-boys to scrawl down the 
 most grotesque names and nonsensical imitations of 
 names. But the Chartist petition had been so loudly 
 boasted of, and the whole Chartist movement had created 
 such a scare, that the delight of the public generally at 
 any discovery that threw both into ridicule was over- 
 AvhSlming. It was made certain that the number of genu- 
 ine signatures was ridiculously below the estimate formed 
 by the Chartist leaders ; and the agitation, after terrify^ 
 
298 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ing respectability for a long time, suddenly showed itself 
 as a thing only to be laughed at. The laughter was sten- 
 torian and overwhelming. The very fact that the petition 
 contained so many absurdities was in itself an evidence 
 of the sincerity of those who presented it. It was not 
 likely that they would have furnished their enemies with 
 so easy and tempting a way of turning them into ridicule, 
 if they had known or suspected that there was any lack 
 of genuineness in the signatures, or that they Avould have 
 provided so ready a means of decrying their truthfuhiess 
 as to claim five millions of names for a document which 
 they knew to have less than two millions. The Chartist 
 leaders in all their doings showed a want of accurate 
 calculation, and of the frame of mind which desires or 
 appreciates such accuracy. The famous petition was only 
 one other example of their habitual weakness. It did not 
 bear testimony against their good faith. 
 
 The effect, however, of this unlucky petition on the 
 English public mind was decisive. From that day Chart- 
 ism never presented itself to the ordinary middle-class 
 Englishman as anything but an object of ridicule. The 
 terror of the agitation was gone. There were efforts made 
 again and again during the year by some of the more 
 earnest and extreme of the Chartist leaders to renew the 
 strength of the agitation. The outbreak of the Young 
 Ireland movement found many sympathizers among the 
 English Chartists, more especially in its earlier stages ; 
 and some of the Chartists in London and other great Eng- 
 lish cities endeavored to light up the fire of their agitation 
 again by the help of some brands caught up from the pile 
 of disaffection which Mitchel and Meagher were setting 
 ablaze in Dublin. A monster gathering of Chartists was 
 announced for Whit-Monday, June 12th, and again the 
 metropolis was thrown into a momentary alarm, very dif- 
 ferent in strength, however, from that of the famous 10th 
 of April. Again precautions were taken by the military 
 authorities against the possible rising of an insurrection- 
 ary mob. Nothing came of this last gasp of Chartism. 
 The Times of the following day remarked that there was 
 absolutely nothing to record, " nothing except the blankest 
 expectation, the most miserable gaping, gossiping, mnd 
 grumbling of disappointed listeners; the standing about, 
 the roaming to and fro, the dispersing and the sneaking 
 
CFI AUTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 299 
 
 home of some poor simpletons who had wandered forth m 
 the hope of some miraculous crisis in their affairs." It is 
 unpossible not to pity those who were thus deceived ; not 
 to feel some regret for the earnestness, the hope, the igno- 
 rant, passionate energy which were thrown away. 
 
 ISTor can we feel only surprise and contempt for those 
 who imagined that the Charter and the rule of what was 
 called in their jargon " the people " would do something to 
 regenerate their miserable lot. They had at least seen 
 that up to that time Parliament had done little for them. 
 There had been a Parliament of aristocrats and landlords, 
 and it had for generations troubled itself little about the 
 class from whom Chartism was recruited. The sceptre 
 of legislative power had passed into the hands of a Parlia- 
 ment made up in great measure of the wealthy middle 
 ranks, and it had thus far shown no inclination to distress " 
 itself overmuch about them. Almost every single measure 
 Parliament has passed to do any good for the wages- 
 receiving classes and the poor generally has been passed 
 since the time when the Chartists began to be a power. 
 Our Corn-laws' repeal, our factory acts, our sanitary 
 legislation, our measures referring to the homes of the 
 poor — all these have been the work of later times than 
 those which engendered the Chartist movement. It is 
 easy to imagine a Chartist replying, in the early days of 
 the movement, to some grave remonstrances from wise 
 legislators. He might say, " You tell me I am mad to 
 think the Charter can do anything for me and my class. 
 But can you tell me what else ever has done, or tried to 
 do, any good for them ? You think I am a crazy person, 
 because I believe that a popular Parliament could make 
 anything of the task of government. I ask you what have 
 you and your like made of it already ? Things are well 
 enough, no doubt, for you and your class, a pitiful mi- 
 nority ; but they could not be any worse for us, and we 
 might make them better, so far as the great majority are 
 concerned. We may fairly crave a trial for our experi- 
 ment. No matter how wild and absurd it may seem, it 
 could not turn out for the majority any worse than your 
 scheme has done." It would not have been very easy 
 then to answer a speaker who took this line of argument. 
 In truth there was, as we have already insisted, grievance 
 enough to excuse the Chartist agitation, and hope enough 
 
aOO A mSTOBY OF OUR OWN TUIES. 
 
 ill the scheme the Chartists proposed to warrant its fair 
 discussion. Such movements are never to be regarded 
 by sensible persons as the work merely of knaves and 
 dupes. 
 
 Chartism bubbled and sputtered a little yet in some of 
 the provincial towns, and even in London. There were 
 Chartist riots in Ashton, Lancashire, and an affray with 
 the police, and the killing, before the affray, it is painful 
 to have to say, of one policeman. There were Chartists 
 arrested in Manchester on the charge of preparing insur- 
 rectionary movements. In two or three public-houses in 
 London some Chartist juntas were arrested, and the police 
 believed they had got evidence of a projected xisiug to 
 take in the whole of the metropolis. It is not impossible 
 that some wild and frantic schemes of the kind were talked 
 ' of and partly hatched by some of the disappointed fanatics 
 of the movement. Some of them were fiery and ignorant 
 enough for anything; and throughout this memorable 
 year thrones and systems kept toppling down all over 
 Europe in a manner that miglit well have led feather- 
 headed agitators to fancy that nothing was stable, and that 
 in England, too, the whistle of a few conspirators might 
 bring about a transformation scene. All this folly came 
 to nothing but a few arrests and a few not heavy sen- 
 tences. Among those tried in London on charges of sedi- 
 tion merely was Mr. Ernest Jones, who was sentenced to 
 two years' imprisonment. Mr. Jones has been already 
 spoken of as a man of position and of high culture ; a 
 poet whose verses sometimes might almost claim for their 
 author the possession of genius. He was an orator whose 
 speeches then and after obtained the enthusiastic admira- 
 tion of John Bright. He belonged rather to the school of 
 revolutionists which established itself as Young Ireland, 
 than to the class of the poor Fussells and Cuft'eys and 
 uneducated working-men who made up the foremost ranks 
 of the aggressive Chartist movement in its later period. 
 He might have had a brilliant and a useful career. He out- 
 lived the Chartist era ; lived to return to peaceful agita- 
 tion, to hold public controversy with the eccentric and 
 clever Professor Blackie, of Edinburgh, on the relative 
 advantages of republicanism and monarchy, and to stand 
 for a Parliamentary borough at the general election of 
 1868 ; and then his career was closed by death. The close 
 
GMAllTISM AND YOUNG IUELANIX 
 
 301 
 
 was sadly premature even then. He had plunged imma- 
 turely into politics, and although a whole generation had 
 passed away since his debut, he was but a young man com- 
 paratively when the last scene came. 
 
 Here comes, not inappropriately, to an end the history 
 of English Chartism. It died of publicity ; of exposure 
 to the air ; of the Anti- Corn-law league ; of the evident 
 tendency of the time to settle all questions by reason, 
 argument, and majorities ; of growing education ; of a 
 strengthening sense of duty among all the more influen- 
 tial classes. When Sir John Campbell spoke its obituary 
 years before, as we have seen, he treated it as simply a 
 monster killed by the just severity of the law. Ten years' 
 experience taught the English public to be wiser than 
 Sir John Campbell. Chartism did not die of its own ex- 
 cesses ; it became an anachronism ; no one wanted it any 
 more. All that was sound in its claims asserted itself, 
 and was in time conceded. But its active or aggressive 
 influence ceased with 1848. The history of the reign of 
 Queen Victoria has not any further to concern itself about 
 Chartism. Not since that year has there been serious 
 talk or thought of any agitation asserting its claims by the 
 use or even the display of armed force in England. 
 
 The spirit of the time had, meanwhile, made itself felt 
 m a dift'erent way in Ireland. For some months before 
 the beginning of the year the Young Ireland party had 
 been established as a rival association to the Repealers 
 who still believed in the policy of O'Connell. It was in- 
 evitable that O'Connell's agitation should beget some such 
 movement. The great agitator had brought the tempera- 
 ment of the younger men of his party up to a fever 
 heat, and it was out of the question that all that heat 
 should subside in the veins of young collegians and school- 
 boys at the precise moment when the leader found that 
 he had been going too far, and gave the word for peace 
 and retreat. The influence of O'Connell had been Avaning 
 for a time before his death. It was a personal influence 
 depending on his eloquence and his power, and these of 
 course had gone down with his personal decay. The 
 Nation newspaper, which was conducted and written for 
 by some rising young men of high culture and remarkable 
 talent, had long been writing in a style of romantic and 
 sentimental nationahsm which could hardly give much 
 
302 
 
 A IIISrOBY OF OUn OWN TIMES. 
 
 satisfaction to or derive much satisfaction from tlie some- 
 what cunning and trickish agitation which O'Connell had 
 set going. The Nation and the clever youths who wrote 
 for it were all for nationalism of the Hellenic or French 
 type, and were disposed to laugh at constitutional agita- 
 tion, and to chafe against the influence of the priests. 
 The famine had created an immense amount of unreason- 
 able but certainly not unnatural indignation against the 
 Government, who were accused of having paltered with 
 the agony and danger of the time, and having clung to 
 the letter of the doctrines of political economy when death 
 was invading Ireland in full force. The Young Ireland 
 party had received a new support by the adhesion of Mr. 
 William Smith O'Brien to their ranks. Mr. O'Brien was 
 a man of considerable influence in Ireland. He had large 
 property and high rank. He was connected with or re- 
 lated to many aristocratic families. His brother was Lord 
 Inchiquin ; the title of the marquisate of Thomond was 
 in the family. He Avas undoubtedly descended from the 
 famous Irish hero and king, Brian Born, and was almost 
 inordinately proud of his claims of long descent. He had 
 the highest personal character and the finest sense of 
 honor ; but his capacity for leadership of any movement 
 was very slender. A poor speaker, with little more than 
 an ordinary country gentleman's share of intellect, O'Brien 
 was a well-meaning but weak and vain man, whose head 
 at last became almost turned by the homage which his 
 followers and the Irish people generally paid to him. He 
 was, in short, a sort of Lafayette manque ; under the hap- 
 piest auspices he could never have been more than a suc- 
 cessful Lafayette. But his adhesion to the cause of Young 
 Ireland gave the movement a decided impulse. His rank,- 
 his legendary descent, his undoubted chivalry of charac- 
 ter and purity of purpose, lent a romantic interest to his 
 appearance as the recognized leader, or at least the figure- 
 head, of the Young Irelanders. 
 
 Smith O'Brien was a man of more mature years than 
 most of his companions in the movement. He was some 
 forty-three or four years of age when lie took the leader- 
 sliii) of the movement. Thomas Francis Meagher, the most 
 brilliant orator of the party, a man who under other con- 
 ditions might liave risen to great distinction in public life, 
 was then only about two or three and twenty. Mitchel 
 
CH AUTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 303 
 
 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 afterward rose to some distinction in 
 America, and is long since dead, wrote a poem about the 
 time when the Young Ireland movement was at its height, 
 in which he commemorated sadly his attainment of his 
 eighteenth year, and deplored that, at an age when Chat- 
 terton was mighty and Keats had glimpses into spirit- 
 land — the age of eighteen, to wit — he, this young Irish 
 patriot, had yet accomplished nothing for his native 
 country. Most of his companions sympathized fully with 
 him, and thought his impatience natural and reasonable. 
 The young Ireland agitation was at first a sort of college 
 debating society movement, and it never became really 
 national. It was composed for the most part of young 
 journalists, young scholars, amateur litterateurs^ poets, 
 en herhe^ orators moulded on the finest patterns of Athens 
 and the French Revolution, and aspiring youths of the 
 Cherubino time of life, who were ambitious of distinction 
 as heroes in the eyes of young ladies. Among the recog- 
 nized leaders of the party there was hardly one in want 
 of money. Some of them were young men of fortune, or 
 at least the sons of wealthy parents. Not many of the 
 dangerous revolutionary elements were to be found among 
 these clever, respectable, and precocious youths. The 
 Young Ireland movement was as absolutely unlike the 
 Chartist movement in England as any political agitation 
 could be unlike another. Unreal and unlucky as the 
 Chartist movement proved to be, its ranks were recruited 
 by genuine passion and genuine misery. 
 
 Before the death of O'Connell the formal secession of 
 the Young Ireland party from the regular Repealers had 
 taken place. It arose out of an attempt of O'Connell to 
 force upon the whole body a declaration condemning the 
 use of physical force — of the sword, as it was grandiosely 
 called — in any patriotic movement whatever. It was in 
 itself a sign of O'ConnelFs failing powers and judgment 
 that he expected to get a body of men about the age of 
 Meagher to make a formal declaration against the weapon 
 of Leonidas and Miltiades, and all the other heroes dear to 
 classically-instructed youth. Meagher declaimed against 
 
301 A HISTORY OF OUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 the idea in a burst of poetic rhetoric which made his fol- 
 lowers believe that a new Grattan of bolder style was 
 coming up to recall the manhood of Ireland that had been 
 banished hj the agitation of O'Connell and the priests. " 1 
 am not one of these tame moralists," the young orator ex- 
 claimed, " who say that liberty is not worth one drop of 
 blood. . . . Against this miserable maxim the noblest 
 virtue that has saved and sanctified humanity appears in 
 judgment. From the blue waters of the Bay of Salamis ; 
 from the valley over which the sun stood still and lit the 
 Israelite to victory ; from the cathedral in which the sword 
 of Poland has been sheathed in the shroud of Kosciusko ; 
 from the convent of St. Isidore^ where the fiery hand that 
 rent the ensign of St. George upon the plains of Ulster 
 has mouldered into dust ; from the sands of the desert, 
 where the wild genius of the Algerine so long has scared 
 the eagle of the Pyrenees ; from the ducal palace in this 
 kingdom, where the memory of the gallant and seditious 
 GerpJdine enhances more than royal favor the splendor of 
 his race ; from the solitary grave within this mute city 
 which a dying bequest has left without an epitaph — oh ! 
 from every spot where heroism has had a sacrifice or a 
 triumph, a voice breaks in upon the cringing crowd that 
 cherishes this maxim, crying, Away with it — away with 
 it !" 
 
 The reader will probably think that a generation of 
 young men might have enjoyed as much as they could 
 get of this- sparkling declamation without much harm 
 being done thereby to the cause of order. Only a crowd 
 of well-educated young Irishmen fresh from college, and 
 with the teaching of their country's history which the 
 Nation was pouring out weekly in prose and poetry, could 
 possibly have understood all its historical allusions. 
 No harm, indeed, would have come of this graceful and 
 poetic movement were it not for events which the Young 
 Ireland party had no share in bringing about. 
 
 The Continental revolutions of the year 1848 suddenly 
 converted tlie movement from a literary and poetical 
 organization into a rebellious conspiracy. The fever of 
 that wild epoch spread itself at once over Ireland. When 
 crowns were going down everywhere, what wonder if 
 Hellenic Young Irelandism believed that the moment had 
 come when the crown of the Saxon invader too was des- 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 805 
 
 tilled to fall ? The French Revolution and the flight of 
 Louis Philippe set Ireland in a rapture of hope and rebel- 
 lious joy. Lamartine became the hero of the hour. A 
 copy of his showy, superficial " Girondists " was in the 
 hand of every true Young Irelander. Meagher was at 
 once declared to be the Vergniaud of the Irish revolution. 
 Smith O'Brien was called upon to become its Lafayette. 
 A deputation of Young Irelanders, with O'Brien and 
 Meagher at their head, waited upon Lamartine, and were 
 received by him with a cool good-sense which made Eng- 
 lishmen gi^eatly respect his judgment and prudence, but 
 which much disconcerted the hopes of the Young Ire- 
 landers. Many of these latter appear to have taken in 
 their most literal sense some words of Lamartine's about 
 the sympathy of the new French Republic with the strug- 
 gles of oppressed nationalities, and to have fancied that 
 the Republic would seriously consider the propriety of 
 going to war with England at the request of a few young 
 men from Ireland, headed by a country gentleman and 
 member of Parliament. In the mean time a fresh and a 
 stronger influence than that of O'Brien or Meagher had 
 arisen in Young Irelandism. Young Ireland itself now 
 split into two sections, one for immediate action, the other 
 for caution and delay. The party of action acknowledged 
 the leadership of John Mitchel. T^ie organ of this section 
 was the newspaper started by Mitchel in opposition to 
 the Nation^ which had grown too slow for him. The new 
 journal was called the United Irishman^ and in a short 
 time it had completely distanced the Nation in popularity 
 and in circulation. The deliberate policy of the United 
 Irishman was to force the hand first of the Government 
 and then of the Irish people. Mitchel had made up his 
 mind so to rouse the passion of the people as to compel 
 the Govei-nment to take steps for the prevention of rebel- 
 lion by the arrest of some of the leaders. Then Mitchel 
 calculated upon the populace rising to defend or rescue 
 their heroes — and then the game would be afoot ; Ireland 
 would be entered in rebellion ; and the rest would be for 
 fate to decide. 
 
 This looks now a very wild and hopeless scheme. So, 
 of course, it proved itself to be. But it did not appear so 
 hopeless at the time, even to cool heads. At least it may 
 be called the only scheme which had the slightest chance 
 
 20 
 
306 
 
 A HISTOBY OF QUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 of success ; we do not say of success in establishing the 
 independence of Ireland, which Mitchel sought for, but in 
 setting a genuine rebellion afoot. Mitchel was the one 
 formidable man among the rebels of '48. He was the 
 one man who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was 
 prepared to run any risk to get it. He was cast in the 
 very mould of the genuine revolutionist, and under dif- 
 ferent circumstances might have played a formidable 
 part. He came from the northern part of the island, and 
 was a Protestant Dissenter. It is a fact worthy of note 
 that all the really formidable rebels Ireland has produced 
 in modern times, from Wolfe Tone to Mitchel, have been 
 Protestants. Mitchel was a man of great literary talent ; 
 indeed a man of something like genius. He wrote a clear, 
 bold, incisive prose, keen in its scorn and satire, going 
 directly to the heart of its purpose. As mere prose, 
 some of it is worth reading even to-day for its cutting force 
 and pitiless irony. Mitchel issued in his paper week after 
 week a challenge to the Government to prosecute him. 
 He poured out the most fiery sedition, and used every incen- 
 tive that words could supply to rouse a hot-headed people 
 to arms, or an impatient Government to some act of severe 
 repression. Mitchel was quite ready to make a sacrifice of 
 himself if it were necessary. It is possible enough that he 
 had persuaded himself into the belief that a rising in Ireland 
 against the Government might be successful. But there 
 is good reason to think that he would have been quite 
 satisfied if he could have stirred up by any process a gen- 
 uine and sanguinary insurrection, which would have read 
 well in the papers, and redeemed the Irish Nationalists 
 from what he considered the disgrace of never having 
 shown that they knew how to die for their cause. 
 He kept on urging the people to prej)are for warlike 
 effort, and every week's TInited Irishman contained long 
 descriptions of how to make pikes and how to use them; 
 how to cast bullets, how to make tlie streets as danger- 
 ous for the hoofs of cavalry horses as ]>ruce made the 
 field of Bannockburn. Some of the recipes, if we m^ay 
 call them so, were of a peculiarly ferocious kind. The 
 use of vitriol was recommended among other destructive 
 agencies. A feeling of detestation was not unnaturally 
 aroused against Mitchel, even in the minds of many who 
 sympathized with his general opinions ; and those whom 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND, 
 
 807 
 
 we may call the Girondists of the party somewhat shrank 
 from him, and would gladly have been rid of him. It is 
 true that the most ferocious of these vitriolic articles 
 were not written by him ; nor did he know of the famous 
 recommendation about the throwing of vitriol until it ap- 
 peared in print. He was, however, justly and i^roperly 
 as well as technically responsible for all that appeared in 
 a paper started with such a purpose as that of the United 
 Irishman^ and it is not even certain that he would have 
 disapproved of the vitriol-throwing recommendation if he 
 had known of it in time. He never disavowed it, nor 
 took any pains to show that it was not his own. The 
 fact that he was not its author is, therefore, only men- 
 tioned here as a matter more or less interesting, and not 
 at all as any excuse for Mitchel's general style of news- 
 paper war-making. He was a fanatic, clever and fearless ; 
 he would neither have asked quarter nor given it ; and, 
 undoubtedly, if Ireland had had many men of his desper- 
 ate resolve she would have been plunged into a bloody, 
 an obstinate, and a disastrous contest against the strength 
 of the British Government. 
 
 In the mean time that Government had to do something. 
 The Lord-lieutenant could not go on forever allowing a 
 newspaper to scream out appeals to rebellion, and to 
 publish every week minute descriptions of the easiest and 
 quickest way of killing off English soldiers. The existing 
 laws were not strong enough to deal with Mitchel and to 
 suppress his paper. It would have been of little account 
 to proceed against him under the ordinary laws which 
 condemned seditious speaking or writing. Prosecutions 
 were, in fact, set on foot against O'Brien, Meagher, and 
 Mitchel himself for ordinary offences of that kind ; but 
 the accused men got bail, and went on meantime speak- 
 ing and writing as before, and when the cases came to be 
 tried by a jury the Government failed to obtain a convic- 
 tion. The Government, therefore, brought in a bill for 
 the better security of the Crown and Government, making 
 all written incitement to insurrection or resistance to the 
 law felony, punishable with transportation. This meas- 
 ure was passed rapidly through all its stages. It en- 
 abled the Government to suppress newspapers like the 
 United Irishman^ and to keep in prison without bail, 
 while awaiting trial, any one charged with an offence 
 
308 
 
 A Ills font 01" OVn OWN TIM^S. 
 
 under the new Act. Mitcliel soon gave the authorities an 
 opportunity of testing the efficacy of the Act in liis per- 
 son. He repeated his incitements to insurrection, was 
 arrested and thrown into prison. The climax of the ex- 
 citement in Ireland was reached when MitclieFs trial* 
 came on. There can be little doubt that he was filled 
 with a strong hope that his followers would attempt to 
 rescue him. He wrote from his cell that he could hear 
 around the walls of his prison every night the tramp of 
 hundreds of sympathizers, "felons in heart and soul." 
 The Government, for their part, were in full expectation 
 that some sort of rising would take place. For the time, 
 Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and all the other Young Ire- 
 landers were thrown into the shade, and the eyes of the 
 whole country were turned upon Mitchel's cell. Had 
 there been another Mitchel out-of-doors, as fearless and 
 reckless as the Mitchel in the prison, a sanguinary out- 
 break would probably have taken place. But the leaders 
 of the movement outside Were by no means clear in their 
 own minds as to the course they ought to pursue. Many 
 of them were well satisfied of the hopelessness and folly 
 of any rebellious movement, and nearly all were quite 
 aware that, in any case, the country just then was wholly 
 unprepared for anything of the kind. 'Not a few had a 
 shrewd suspicion that the movement never had taken any 
 real hold on the heart of the country. Some were jealous 
 of MitchePs sudden popularity, and in their secret hearts 
 were disposed to curse him for the trouble he had brought 
 on them. But they could not attempt to give open utter- 
 ance to such a sentiment. Mitchel's boldness and resolve 
 had placed them at a sad disadvantage. He had that 
 superiority of influence over them that downright deter- 
 mination always gives a man over colleagues who do not 
 quite know what they would have. One thing, however, 
 tliey could do ; and that they did. They discouraged any 
 idea of an attempt to rescue Mitchel. Ills 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 
 
CBAunsM And young ibeland. 
 
 Mitchel was well on his way, and far-seeing persons 
 smiled to themselves and said the danger was all over. 
 
 So, indeed, it proved to be. The remainder of the pro- 
 ceedings partook rather of the nature of burlesque. The 
 Young Ireland leaders became more demonstrative than 
 ever. The Nation newspaper now went in openly for 
 rebellion, but rebellion at some unnamed 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 an- 
 nounced themselves ready, then, but not until then, Avould 
 he come forth to fight with them. Smith O'Brien went 
 about the country holding reviews of the " Confederates," 
 as the Young Irelanders called themselves. The Govern- 
 ment, however, showed a contempt for the rules of fair- 
 play, suspended the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, and 
 issued warrants for the arrest of Smith O'Brien, Meagher, 
 and other Confederate leaders. The Young Irelanders 
 received the news of this unchivalric proceeding with an 
 outburst of anger and surprise which was evidently gen- 
 uine. They had clearly made up their minds that they 
 were to go on playing at preparation for rebellion as long 
 as they liked to keep up the game. They were completely 
 puzzled by the new condition of things. It was not very 
 clear what Leonidas or Vergniaud would have done under 
 such circumstances ; it was certain that if they were all 
 arrested the country would not stir fiand or foot on their 
 behalf. Some of the principal leaders, therefore — Smith 
 O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others — left Dublin and 
 went down into the country. It is not certain even yet 
 whether they had any clear purpose of rebellion at first. 
 It seems probable that they thought of evading arrest for 
 awhile, and trying meantime if the country was ready to 
 follow them into an armed movement. They held a series 
 of gatherings which might be described as meetings of agi- 
 tators, or marshallings of rebels, according as one was 
 pleased to interpret their purpose. But this sort of thing 
 very soon drifted into rebellion. The principal body of the 
 followers of Smith O'Brien came into collision with the 
 police at a place called Ballingarry, in Tipperary. They 
 attacked a small force of police, who took refuge in the 
 cottage of a poor widow named Cormack. The police held 
 
310 
 
 A msTOEY OF our, oivjsr timi:s. 
 
 the house as a besieged fort, and the rebels attacked them 
 from the famous cabbage-garden outside. The police fired 
 a few volleys. The rebels fired, with what wretched 
 muskets and rifles they possessed, but without harming a 
 single policeman. After a few of them had been killed or 
 wounded — it never was perfectly certain that any were 
 actually killed — the rebel army dispersed, and the rebellion 
 was all over. In a few days after, poor Smith O'Brien 
 Avas taken quietly at the railway station in Thurles, Tip- 
 perary. He was calmly buying a ticket for Limerick when 
 he Avas recognized. He made no resistance whatever, and 
 seemed to regard the whole mummery as at an end. He 
 accepted his fate with the composure of a gentleman, and, 
 indeed, in all the part which was left for him to play he 
 bore himself with dignity. It is but justice to an unfortu- 
 nate gentleman to say that some reports which were rather 
 ignobly set abroad about his having showed a lack of per- 
 sonal courage in the Ballingarry affray were, as all will 
 readily believe, quite untrue. Some of tlie police deposed 
 that during the fight, if fight it could be called, poor 
 O'Brien exposed his life with entire recklessness. One 
 policeman said he could have shot him easily at several 
 periods of the little drama, but he felt reluctant to be the 
 slayer of the misguided descendant of the Irish kings. 
 It afterward appeared, also, that any little chance of carry- 
 ing on any manner of rebellion was put a stop toby Smith 
 O'Brien's own resolution that his rebels must not seize 
 the private proj)erty of any one. He insisted that his 
 rebellion must pay its w^ay, and the funds were soon out. 
 The Confederate leader woke from a dream when he saAV 
 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 tliey were wandering hopelessly and 
 aimlessly through the mountains of Tipperar}^ The prison- 
 ers were brought for trial before a special commission held 
 at Clonmel, in Tipperary, in the following September. 
 Smith O'Brien was the first put on trial, and lie was 
 found guilty. He said a few words with grave and digni- 
 fied composure, simply declaring that he had endeavored 
 to do his duty to his native country, and that he was 
 prepared to abide the consequences. He was sentenced 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 311 
 
 to death after the old form in cases of high-treason — to 
 be hanged, beheaded, and quartered. Meagher was after- 
 ward found guilty. Great commiseration was felt for him. 
 His youth and his eloquence made all men and women 
 pity him. His father was a wealthy man who had had a 
 respected career in Parliament; and there had seemed 
 at onetime to be a bright and happy life before young 
 Meagher. The short address in which Meagher vindicated 
 his actions, when called upon to show cause why sentence 
 of death should not be passed upon him, was full of manly 
 and pathetic eloquence. He had nothing, he said to re- 
 tract or ask pardon for. " I am not here to crave with 
 faltering lip the life I have consecrated to the independ- 
 ence of my country. ... I offer to my country, as some 
 proof of the sincerity with which I have thought and 
 spoken and struggled for her, the life of a young heart. 
 . . . The history of Ireland explains my crime, and justi- 
 fies it. . . . Even here, where the shadows of death sur- 
 round me, and from which I see my early grave opening 
 for me in no consecrated soil, the hope which beckoned 
 me forth on that perilous sea whereon I have been wrecked, 
 animates, consoles, enraptures me. No, I do not despair 
 of my poor old country, her peace, her liberty, her 
 glory. " 
 
 Meagher was sentenced to death with the same hideous 
 formularies as those which had been observed in the case 
 of Smith O'Brien. No one, however, really believed for a 
 moment that such a sentence was likely to be carried out 
 in the reign of Queen Victoria. The sentence of death was 
 changed into one of transportation for life. Nor was even 
 this carried out. The convicts were all sent to Australia, 
 and a few years after Mitchel contrived to make his es- 
 cape, followed by Meagher. The manner of escape was 
 at least of doubtful credit to the prisoners, for they Avere 
 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 Avas, that he actually went to the police 
 court within whose jurisdiction he was, formally and pub- 
 licly announced to the magistrate that he withdrew his 
 parole, and invited the magistrate to arrest him then and 
 
312 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 accompanied him, and who had 
 planned and carried out the escape. Tliey had horses 
 waiting at the door, and when they saw tliat the magis- 
 trate did not know wliat to do, tliey left the court, mounted 
 the horses, and rode away. It was contended by Mitchel 
 and by his companion, Mr. P. J. Smyth (afterward a dis- 
 tinguished member of Parliament), that they had fulfilled 
 all the conditions required by the parole, and had formally 
 and honorably withdrawn it. One is only surprised how 
 men of honor could thus puzzle and deceive themselves. 
 The understood condition of a parole is that a man who 
 intends to withdraw it shall place himself before his cap- 
 tors in exactly the same condition as he was when on his 
 pledged word of honor they allowed him a comparative 
 liberty. It is evident that a prisoner would never be 
 allowed to go at large on parole if he were to make use of 
 his liberty to arrange all the conditions of an escape, and, 
 when everything was ready, take his captors by surprise, 
 tell them he was no longer bound by the conditions of the 
 pledge, and that they might keep him if they could. This 
 was the view taken by Smith O'Brien, who declined to 
 have anything to do with any plot for escape while he was 
 on parole. The advisers of the Crown recommended 
 that a conditional pardon should be given to the gallant 
 and unfortunate gentleman who had behaved in so honor- 
 able a manner. Smith O'Brien received a pardon on con- 
 dition of his not returning to these islands ; but this con- 
 dition was withdrawn after a time, and he came back to 
 Ireland. He died quietly in Wales, in 1864. Mitchel 
 settled for awhile in Richmond, Virginia, and became an 
 ardent advocate of slavery and an impassioned champion 
 of the Southern rebellion. He returned to the North after 
 the rebellion, and more lately came to Ireland, Avhere, 
 owing to some defect in the criminal law, he could not be 
 arrested, his time of penal servitude liaving expired, al- 
 though he had not served it. He was still a hero with a 
 certain class of the people ; he Avas put up as a candidate 
 for an Irish county, and elected. He was not allowed to 
 enter tlie House of Commons, however ; the election was 
 declared void, and a new writ was issued. He was elected 
 again, and some turmoil was expected, when suddenly 
 
CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 318 
 
 Mitchel, who had long been m sinkmg health, was with- 
 drawn from the controversy by death. He should have 
 died before. The later years of his life were only an anti- 
 climax. His attitude in the dock in 1848 had something 
 of dignity and heroism in it, and even the stanchest 
 enemies of his cause admired him. He had undoubtedly 
 great literary ability, and if he had never reappeared in 
 politics the world would have thought that a really bril- 
 liant light had been prematurely extinguished. Meagher 
 served in the army of the Federal States when the war 
 broke out, and showed much of the soldier's spirit and 
 capacity. His end was premature and inglorious. He 
 fell from the deck of a steamer one night ; it was dark, 
 and there was a strong current running; help came too 
 late. A false step, a dark night, and the muddy waters 
 of the Missouri closed the career that had ox3ened with so 
 much promise of brightness. 
 
 Many of the conspicuous Young Irelanders rose to some 
 distinction. Charles Gavan Duffy, the editor of the JS^a- 
 tion^ who was twice put on his trial after the failure of 
 the insurrection, but whom the jury would on either occa- 
 sion convict, became a member of the House of Commons, 
 and afterwards emigrated to the colony of Victoria. He 
 rose to be Prime-minister there, and received knighthood 
 and a pension. Thomas Darcy M'Gee, another prominent 
 rebel, went to the United States, and thence to Canada, 
 where he rose to be a minister of the Crown. He was 
 one of the most loyal supporters of the British connec- 
 tion. His untimely death by the hand of an assassin was 
 lamented in England as well as in the colony he had served 
 so well. Some of the young Irelanders remained in the 
 United States and won repute ; others returned to Eng- 
 land, and of these not a few entered the House of Com- 
 mons and were respected there, the follies of their youth 
 quite forgotten by their colleagues, even if not disowned 
 by themselves. A remarkable illustration of the spirit of 
 fairness that generally pervades the House of Commons 
 is found in the fact that every one there respected John 
 • Martin, who to the day of his death avowed himself, in 
 Parliament and out of it, a consistent and unrepentant 
 opponent of British rule in Ireland. He was respected 
 because of the purity of his character and the transparent 
 sincerity of his purpose. Martin had been devoted to 
 
J14 
 
 A BISTORT OJP OUn OWN TiMm. 
 
 Mitchel in his lifetime, and he died a few days after Mit- 
 chel's death. 
 
 The Young Ireland movement came and vanished like 
 a shadow. It never had any reality or substance in it. 
 It was a literary and poetic inspiration altogether. It 
 never took the slightest hold of the peasantry. It hardly 
 touched any men of mature years. It was a rather pretty 
 playing at rebellion. It was an imitation of the French 
 Revolution, as the Girondists imitated the patriots of 
 Greece and Rome. But it might, perhaps, have had a 
 chance of doing memorable mischief if the policy of the 
 one only man in the business who really was in earnest, 
 and was reckless, had been carried out. It is another 
 illustration of the fact, which O'Connell's movement had 
 exemplified before, that in Irish politics a climax cannot 
 be repeated or recalled. There is something fitful in all 
 Irish agitation. The national emotion can be wrought up 
 to a certain temperature ; and if at that boiling-point 
 nothing is done, the heat suddenly goes out, and no blow- 
 ing of Cyclopean bellows can rekindle it. The Repeal 
 agitation was brought up to this point when the meeting 
 at Clontarf was convened ; the dispersal of the meeting 
 was the end of the whole agitation. With the Young 
 Ireland movement the trial of Mitchel formed the climax. 
 After that a wise legislator would have known that there 
 Avas nothing more to fear. Petion, the revolutionary 
 Mayor of Paris, knew that when it rained his partisans 
 could do nothing. There were, in 1848, observant Irish- 
 men who knew that after the Mitchel climax had been 
 reached the crowd would disperse, not to be collected 
 again for that time. 
 
 These two agitations, the Chartist and the Young Ire- 
 land, constituted what may be called our tribute to the 
 power of the insurrectionary spirit that was abroad over 
 Europe in 1848. In almost every other European State 
 revolution raised its head fiercely, and fought out its claims 
 .in the very capital, under the eyes of bewildered royalty. 
 The whole of Italy, from the Alps to the Straits of Mes- 
 sina, and from Venice to Genoa, was thrown into convul- 
 sion; "Our Italy" once again "shone o'er with civil 
 swords." There was insurrection in Berlin and in Vienna. 
 The Emperor had to fly from the latter city as the Poj)e 
 had fled from Rome. In I*aris there came a Red Repub- 
 
CHABTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 315 
 
 lican rising against a Republic that strove not to be Red, 
 and the rising was crushed by Cavaignac with a terrible 
 strenuousness that made some of the streets of Paris liter- 
 ally to run with blood. It was a grim foreshadowing of 
 the Commune of 1871. Another remarkable foreshadow- 
 ing of what was to come was seen in the fact that the 
 Prince Louis Napoleon, long an exile from France, had 
 been allowed to return to it, and at the close of the year, 
 in the passion for law and order at any price born of the 
 Red Republican excesses, had been elected President of 
 the French Republic. Hungary was in arms ; Spain was 
 in convulsion ; even Switzerland was not safe. Our con- 
 tribution to this general commotion was to be found in 
 the demonstr^ftion on Kennington Common, and the abor- 
 tive attempt at a rising near Ballingarry. There could 
 not possibly be a truer tribute to the solid strength of our 
 system. Not for one moment was the political constitu- 
 tion of England seriously endangered. Not for one hour 
 did the safety of our great communities require a call 
 upon the soldiers instead of upon the police. Not one 
 charge of cavalry was needed to put down the fiercest out- 
 burst of the rebellious spirit in England. Not one single 
 execution took place. The meaning of this is clear. It is 
 not that there were no grievances in our system calling 
 for redress. It is not that the existing institutions did 
 not bear heavily down on many classes. It is not that 
 our political or social system was so conspicuously better 
 than that of some European countries which were torn 
 and ploughed up by revolution. To imagine that we owed 
 our freedom from revolution to our freedom from serious 
 grievance, would be to misread altogether the lessons 
 offered to 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 justified 
 any appeal to revolution. There, however, we touch upon 
 the lesson of the time. Our political and constitutional 
 system rendered an appeal to force unnecessary and super- 
 fluous. No call to arms was needed to bring about any 
 reform that the common judgment of the country might 
 demand. Other peoples flew to arms because they were 
 driven by despair ; because there was no way in their 
 
816 
 
 A HISTOEY OF QUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 political constitution for the influence of public opinion 
 to make itself justly felt; because those who were in 
 power held it by the force of bayonets, and not of public 
 agreement. The results of the year were, on the whole, 
 unfavorable to jDopular liberty. The results of the year 
 that followed were decidedly reactionary. The time had 
 not come, in 1848 or 1849, for Liberal principles to assert 
 themselves. Their "great deed," to quote some of the 
 words of our English poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
 " was too great." We in this country were skived alike 
 from the revolution and the reaction by the universal rec- 
 ognition of the fact, among all who gave themselves time 
 to think, that public opinion, being the ultimate ruling 
 power, was the only authority to which fin appeal \^as 
 needed, and that in the end justice would be done. All 
 but the very wildest spirits could afford to wait ; and no 
 revolutionary movement is really dangerous which is only 
 the work of the wildest spirits. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 DON PACIFICO. 
 
 The name of Don Paciflco 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 
 Paciflco became famous for a season as the man whose 
 quarrel had nearly brought on a European war, caused a 
 temporary disturbance of good relations between England 
 and France, split up political parties in England in a 
 manner hardly ever known before, and established the 
 reputation of Lord Palmerston as one of the greatest Parlia- 
 mentary debaters of his time. Among the memorable 
 speeches delivered in the English House of Commons, that 
 of Lord Palmerston on the Don Paciflco debate must always 
 take a place. It was not because the subject of the debate 
 was a great one, or because tliere were any grand principles 
 involved. 1'lie question originally in dispute was unut- 
 terably trivial and paltry ; tlierc was no ])articular princi- 
 ple involved ; it was altogetlier wliat is called in commercial 
 litigation a question of account ; a controversy about the 
 
DON PACIFICO. 
 
 317 
 
 amount and time of payment of a doubtful claim. Nor 
 was the speecli delivered 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 pro- 
 voke keen literary controversy, like Sheridan'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 Palmerston's Pacifico speech. Its 
 great merit was its wonderful power as a contribution to 
 Parliamentary argument ; as a masterly appeal to the 
 feelings, the prejudices, and the passions of the House of 
 Commons ; as a complete Parliamentary victory over a 
 combination of the most influential, eloquent, and hetero- 
 geneous opponents. 
 
 Don Pacifico was 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 4th, 1847, by an Athenian mob, who were 
 headed, it was affirmed, by two sons of the Greek Minister 
 of War. The attack came about in this way : It had 
 been customary in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by 
 burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1 847 the police of 
 Athens were ordered to prevent this performance, and the 
 mob, disappointed of their favorite amusement, ascribed 
 the new order to the influence of the Jews. Don Paci- 
 flco'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 Pacifico against it. Don Pacifico made 
 a claim against the Greek Government for compensation. 
 He estimated his losses, direct and indirect, 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 Hastingsj and he settled in 
 Athens when the independence of Greece had been estab- 
 
318 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 lished. Some of his land had been taken for the purpose 
 of rounding off the new palace gardens of King Otho ; and 
 Mr. Finlayhad declined to accept the terms offered by the 
 Greek Government, to which other land-owners in the 
 same position as himself 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 land-owners in Athens. Mr. Finlay, 
 however, had a perfect right to stand out for 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 accept tlie 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 considerable a part in setting up Greece 
 that our ministers 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 diplomatists 
 in Athens. He was convinced that France was perpetu- 
 ally plotting against us there, and that Russia was watch- 
 ing an opportunity to supersede once for all our influence 
 by completely establishing hers. Don Pacifico'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 sub- 
 jects of her Majesty had sent in remonstrances against 
 lawless or higli-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 tliought, was a 
 little open discussion, and tlic exendseof some good sense 
 and moderation on l5oth sides. It cannot be doubted that 
 
DON PACIPICO, 
 
 819 
 
 the Greek authorities were lax and careless, and that acts 
 had been dvone which they could not justify. Tt 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 sustained. The Greeks were very 
 poor, and also very dilatory ; and they gave Lord Palmer- 
 ston a reasonable excuse for a little impatience. Unluckily 
 Lord Palmerston became possessed with the idea that the 
 French minister 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 
 midshipman (who had been released Avitli aj)ologies 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 insisted 
 that Greece must pay up within a given time or take the 
 consequences. Greece hesitated, and accordingly the 
 British fleet was ordered to the Piraeus. It made its 
 appearance very promptly there, and seized all the Greek 
 vessels belonging to the Government and to private mer- 
 chants that were found within the Avaters. 
 
 The Greek Government appealed to France and Russia 
 as Powers joined with us in the 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 Palmer- 
 stous peremptory reply that it was all a question between 
 England and Greece, with which no other Power had any 
 business to interfere. The Russian Government wrote an 
 angry and, indeed, an offensive remonstrance. The Rus- 
 sian Foreign Minister spoke of " the very painful impres- 
 sion produced upon the mind of the Emperor by the 
 unexpected acts of violence which the British authorities 
 had just directed 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 
 toward the weak no other rule but their own will, no 
 other right but their own physical strength." The French 
 
820 A mSTOBY OF OUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 Government, perhaps under the pressure of diflBculties 
 and uncertain affairs at home, in their unsettled state 
 showed a better temper, and intervened only in the in- 
 terests of peace and good understanding. Something 
 like a friendly 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 difficulties 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 there- 
 fore he felt entitled to ask for £26,618, as compensation 
 on that account also. The French commissioner was a 
 little Staggered at this demand, and declined to accede 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 mean time, however, negotiations 
 had still been going on between the Fnglish 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 divided 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 go- 
 ing on in London and Athens simultaneously got in each 
 otlier's way. Instructions as to what had been agreed to 
 in London Ave]'e not forwarded to Athens quickly enough 
 by the Englisli Government, and when the French Govern- 
 ment sent out to their commissioner the news of the con- 
 vention, he found that Mr. Wyse knew notlnng about the 
 matter, and had no authority which, as he conceived, 
 would have warranted him in departing from the course 
 
DON PACIFICO, 
 
 321 
 
 of action he was following out. Mr. Wyse, therefore, pro- 
 ceeded with his measures of coercion, and at length the 
 Greek Government gave way. The convention having, 
 however, been made in the mean time 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 quarrel seemed at one 
 time likely to break out between England and France. 
 The French Government actually withdrew their ambas- 
 sador, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, from London : and there was 
 for a short time a general alarm over Europe. But the 
 question in dispute was really too small and insignificant 
 for any two rational governments to make it a cause of 
 serious quarrel ; and after aAvhile 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 Avas 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 property. 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 fur- 
 niture so luxurious as Don Pacifico represented himself 
 to have in his common use. The jewellery of his wife 
 and daughters he estimated 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 sui)posed by his neighbors to possess such 
 splendor of ornament and household goods. 
 
 While the controversy between the English and French 
 Governments was yet unfinished, a Parliamentary con- 
 troversy between the former Government and the Opposi- 
 tion in the House of Lords was to begin. Lord Stanley 
 proposed a resolution which was practically a vote of 
 censure on the Government. The resolution, in fact, 
 expressed the regret of the House to find that " various 
 
 21 
 
322 
 
 A HISTOBY OF QUE OWN TIMES, 
 
 claims against the Greek Government, doubtful 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 continu- 
 ance of our friendly relations with foreign Powers." The 
 resolution wag carried, after a debate of great spirit and 
 energy, by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord Palmerston 
 Avas not dismayed. A ministry is seldom greatly troubled 
 by an adverse vote in the House of Lords. The Foreign 
 Secretary, 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, theirs 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 inde- 
 pendent 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 calculated 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 24th, 1850, anight memorable in 
 Parliamentary annals as the opening night of the debate 
 which established Lord Palmerston's position as a great 
 leader of party Mr. Roebuck brought forward his resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 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 x^^i'pose 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 expressly censured by the House of Lords ; 
 
DON PACIFICO, 
 
 323 
 
 but Mr. Roebuck proposed to affirm that the general 
 policy of the minstry 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 Liberal Govern- 
 ment. The resolution was so framed as to oiJer to all 
 such an opportunity of supporting the Government, and 
 yet satisfying their consciences. For it might be thus 
 put to them : " You think the Government were too harsh 
 with Greece ? Perhaps you are right. But this resolu- 
 tion 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 admitting that, 
 do you not still think that on the whole they had done 
 very well, and much better than any Tory minister 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 approval 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-inter- 
 vention, 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 denounced the policy of the 
 Government, for which, as every one knew, Lord Palmer- 
 ston was almost exclusively responsible. "The allied 
 troops who led the attack," says Mr. Evelyn Ashley, in 
 his life of Lord Palmerston, " were English Protectionists 
 and foreign Absolutists." It is strange that an able and 
 usually fair-minded man should be led into such absurdity. 
 Lord Palmerston himself called it " a shot fired by a 
 foreign conspiracy, aided and abetted by a domestic in- 
 
324 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 trigue." But Lord Palmerston was the minister person- 
 ally 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. A 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 Protectionists " who took a prom- 
 inent part in condemning the policy of Lord Palmerston 
 were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, Sir Robert Peel, Sir 
 William Molesworth, and Mr. Sidney Herbert. In the 
 House of Lords, Lord Brougham, Lord Canning, and Lord 
 Aberdeen had supported the resolution of Lord Stanley. 
 The truth is that Lord Palmerston's proceedings were 
 fairly open to difference of judgment, even on the part of 
 the most devoted Liberals and the most independent 
 thinkers. It did not need that a man should be a Protec- 
 tionist or an Absolutist to explain his entire disapproval 
 of such a course of conduct as that which had been fol- 
 lowed 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 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 defence. 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 reso- 
 lution treated only of the general policy of the Govern- 
 ment, Lord Palmerston did not fail to make a special 
 defence of his action toward Greece. He based his vindi- 
 caticm of this particular chapter of his policy on the 
 ground which, of all others, gave him most advantage in 
 addressing a Parliamentary 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 England against the oppression of a foreign 
 Government. His speech was an appeal to all the ele- 
 
BON PACIFIC O, 
 
 325 
 
 mentary emotions of manhood and citizenship and good- 
 fellowship. To vote against him seemed to be to declare 
 that England was imable 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 furni- 
 ture. 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 conduct 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 another ; as if 
 because a man was poor he might be bastinadoed and 
 tortured with impunity, 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 
 giveli 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 claim- 
 ing redress for any wrong done to one of its subjects is 
 completely answered 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 understanding is always involved ^ distinct 
 
326 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 assumption that the laws of the State are to be such as 
 civilization would properly recognize, supposing that the 
 State in question professes to be a civilized State. It 
 also distinctly 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 for- 
 eigner has a just claim against some continental Govern- 
 ment, and that Government will not recognize tlie 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 application of such a law to 
 the family of a poor English trader settled in Constan- 
 tinople. There is no clear rule easy to be laid down ; per- 
 haps there can be no clear rule on the subject at all. But 
 it is evident that the governments 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 not be applied or denied to 
 them in a manner 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 bar- 
 barous 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 foreign 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 Palmer- 
 ston 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 Avhich the 
 Government in question administers, and without revolt, 
 to its own people. Lord Palmerston was not the man to 
 lose so splendid an opportunity. He reilly made it 
 
hON PACIFIC O, 
 
 S27 
 
 appear as if the question between him and his opponents 
 Avas that of tlie protection 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 Government 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 nevertheless 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 what- 
 ever 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 over- 
 whelming plaudits of the House foretold the victory he 
 had won. It was, indeed, a masterpiece of telling defence. 
 The speech occupied some five hours in delivery. It was 
 spokeji, as Mr. Gladstone afterward 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 possible, never use notes. He 
 was quite conscious 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 fluency 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 was of minute details, names, dates, 
 figures, references of all kinds, was delivered with the 
 same facility, 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 Palmer- 
 ston's success. " Civis Romanus " settled the matter. 
 Who was in the House of Commons so rude that would 
 
828 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 not be a Roman ? Who was tliere 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 mem- 
 ber of a privileged caste, of a victorious and conquering 
 nation, 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 Avas the position which it would become a civilized 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 common- 
 sense to combat against it. The phrase had carried the 
 day. When Mr. Cockburn, in supporting Lord Palmer- 
 ston's policy, quoted from classical authority to show that 
 the Romans had always avenged any wrongs done to their 
 citizens, and cited the wwds, " Quot bella majores nostri 
 suscepti erint, quot cives Romani injuria affecti sunt, 
 navicularii retehti, mercatores spoliati esse dicerentur," 
 the House cheered more tumultuously than ever. In vain 
 was the calm, grave, studiously moderate remonstrance 
 of Sir Robert Peel, who, while generously declaring 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 endeav- 
 ored 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 tliat 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 Secretary. 
 None tlie less, however, did Lord John Russell defend 
 the policy of the Foreign Office in a speech which Palm- 
 
DON PACIFICO. 
 
 329 
 
 erston himself described as " admirable and first-rate." 
 The ministers felt bound to stand by the actions which they 
 had not repudiated at the time when they were done. They 
 could not allow Lord Falmerston to be separated from 
 them in political responsibility when they had not sepa- 
 rated themselves from moral responsibility for his proc^eed- 
 ings in time. Therefore they had to defend in Parliament 
 what they did not pretend to approve in private. The 
 theory of a cabinet always united wlien 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 simple and unsophisticated mind. 
 No part of our duty calls on us to attempt such a task. It 
 was a famous victory — 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 particular. 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 suddenly, completely, 
 and deservedly made than Mr. Cockburn won by his bril- 
 liant 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 fluency that seemed so easy as to 
 make listeners sometimes fancy that it ought to cost no 
 efi:'ort, and a grace of gestures 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 Palm- 
 erston with an effect only inferior to that produced by 
 Palmerston's own speech, and with a rhetorical grace and 
 finish to which Palmerston made no pretension. In writ- 
 ing to Lord Normanby about the debate. Lord Palmer- 
 ston distributed his praise to friends and enemies 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 
 knovy that I ever, iu the course of my life, heard a better 
 
330 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 purpose of disputing the principles it advocated. Mr. 
 Cobden observed that when Mr. Cockburn 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 Cock- 
 burn'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 Southamption was but the fitting ]3relude to 
 the abiding distinction won by the Lord Chief -justice of 
 England. 
 
 One association of profound melancholy clings to that 
 great debate. The speech delivered by Sir Robert Peel 
 was the last that was destined to come from his lips. 
 The debate closed on the morning of Saturday, June 29th. 
 It was nearly four o'clock when the division was taken, 
 and Peel left the House as the sunlight was already be- 
 ginning 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 meet- 
 ing 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 Commons. He returned home for a short time 
 after the meeting, and then set out for a ride in the park. 
 He called at Buckingham Palace, and wrote his name in 
 the Queen's visiting-book. Then, as he was ridhig 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 
 nnimal fell with its knees on his shoulders. The injuries 
 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 
 
1)0]^ PAClFICiX 
 
 S31 
 
 of July 2d. 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 adequate 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 public 
 honors. But Peel had distinctly declared in his will that 
 he 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, therefore, was 
 to decree a monument to him in Westminster Abbey. 
 The offer of a peerage was made to Lady Peel, but, as 
 might perhaps 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 explained that the express wish of her husband, 
 recorded in his will, was that no member of his family 
 should accept any title or other reward on account of any 
 services Peel might have rendered to his country. No 
 desire 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 un- 
 selfish and unostentatious 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 peerage by one of 
 his family implied a disparagement 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 explanation to any reasonable mind. Peel was 
 impressed 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 
 
832 
 
 A msTOBT OF OtIB OWK TIMES. 
 
 thought the name under which he had made his reputation 
 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 distinction. 
 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 his- 
 toric record, and that a fire-new, specially invented title 
 to a man already great is a disfigurement, or at least a 
 disguise, rather than an adornment. When titles were 
 abolished during the great French Revolution, Mirabeau 
 complained of being called " Citizen Riquetti " in the official 
 reports of the Assembly. With your Riquetti," he said, 
 angrily, " you have puzzled all Europe for days." Europe 
 knew Count Mirabeau, but was for some time bewildered 
 by Citizen Riquetti. 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 remark 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 entangled in the bridle, 
 and to have pulled the horse to step or kneel upon him. 
 The injury to the shoulder Avas severe but curable ; that 
 which killed him was a broken rib forced with great vio- 
 lence inward into the lungs." The cause of Peel's death 
 would certainly not have been adequate, as Lord Palmer- 
 ston put it, if great men needed prodigious and portentous 
 events to iDring about their end. But the stumble of a 
 horse has been found enough in other instances too. 
 J^eel seemed destined for great things yet when he died. 
 He was but in his sixty-third year ; he was some years 
 younger than Lord Palmerston, who may be said, without 
 exaggeration, to have just achieved his first great success. 
 Many circumstances were pointing to Peel as likely before 
 long to l)e summoned again to the leadership in the 
 government of the country. It is superfluous to say that 
 his faculties as Parliamentary orator or statesman were 
 
DON PACIFIC 0. 
 
 333 
 
 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 rider- 
 ship, settled the question of Peel's career between them. 
 We 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 states- 
 man 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 forced on Pitt. He was 
 the minister of a country always peaceful, safe, and pros- 
 perous. 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 his party with dignity 
 and composure. He was undoubtedly, as Lord Beacons- 
 field calls him, a great member of Parliament; but he 
 was surely also a great minister. 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 remark- 
 able career. On August^ 26th, 1850, Louis Philippe, latelj^ 
 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 
 contrasting influence of his father, and of his teacher, 
 Madame de Genlis, a woman full, at least, of virtuous pre- 
 cept and Rousseau-like profession, he showed great force 
 of character during 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 JFils,^' says 
 Carlyle, speaking of the young man at Yalmy — " Equahty 
 Junior, a light, gallant field-officer, distinguished him- 
 self by intrepidity — it is the same intrepid individual 
 
^34 A HISTORY OF OUIl OWl^ TIMES. 
 
 who now, as Louis Philippe, without the Equality, 
 struggles under 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 pre- 
 cepts, would have left her behind to whatever danger. 
 " Behold the young Princely Brother, struggling hither- 
 ward, hastily calling ; bearing the Princess in his arms. 
 Hastily he 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 despair 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 Ega- 
 lite had, indeed, a wild time before him. A wanderer, 
 an exile, a fugitive, a teacher in Swiss and American 
 schools; bearing many and various names as he turned 
 to many callings and saw many lands, always, perhaps, 
 keeping in mind that Danton had laid his great hand 
 upon his head and declared tliat 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 l^ew York sub- 
 urbs, 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 training. All 
 his promise as a man faded when his seeming success 
 began to shine. He had apparently 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 the 
 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 
 ol)tained was inalienable. He seemed at once to have no 
 real faith in anything ])ut cliicane. He made the fairest 
 professions, and did the mean(ist, falsest things. He talked 
 to Queen Victoria in language that might have brought 
 
DON PACIFICO. 
 
 335 
 
 tears into a father's eyes ; and he was all the time plan- 
 ning the detestable juggle of the Spanish marriages, lie 
 did not even seem to retain the courage of his youth. It 
 went, apparently, with whatever of true, unselfish prin- 
 ciple 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 pusillanimous 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 revolution. 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, according 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 main- 
 tain 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 wel- 
 come 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 summoned him to descend, or only the out- 
 cry 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 simply to blundering 
 and to bad advice. But it would have been curiously 
 illustrative of the odd contradictions of human nature, 
 
336 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and especially 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 remonstrance, schemes 
 which tore asunder human lives, blighted human happi- 
 ness, 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 
 acknowledged one pang of remorse. His policy had been 
 unutterably mean and selfish and deceitful. 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 success on the stage by appearing constantly in 
 pieces w^hich compelled the most liberal display 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 
 suffering 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, unwise, grand, 
 mean old man. There was a great deal about him which 
 made him respected in private life, and when he had noth- 
 ing to do with state intrigues and the foreign quality of 
 courts. He was much liked in England, 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 
 Palmerston, and, according to Thiers, was constantly 
 saying witty and spiteful things of the English minister, 
 
BON PACIFICO. 387 
 
 which good-natured friends as constantly brought to 
 Pahnerston's ears. When Lord Pahnerston 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 characteristic. Though I am sorry for the 
 death of Peel from personal regard, and because it is no 
 doubt a great loss to the country, yet, so far as my own 
 political position is concerned, I clo not think that he was 
 ever disposed to do me any good turn." A little while 
 before. Prince Albert, writing to his friend Baron Stock- 
 mar, had spoken of Peel as having somewhat unduly 
 favored Pahnerston's foreign policy in the great Pacifico 
 debate, or at least not having borne as severely 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 suc- 
 ceeding 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 fol- 
 lowers 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, how- 
 ever, to notice how completely Prince Albert and Lord 
 Pahnerston are at odds in their way of estimating Peel's 
 political attitude before his death. Lord Pahnerston's 
 quiet way of setting Peel down as one who would never 
 be disposed to do him a good turn is characteristic of the 
 manner in which the Foreign Secretary Avent in foi' the 
 game of politics. Pahnerston was a man of kindly in- 
 stincts and genial temperament. He was much loved by 
 his friends. His feelings were always directing him to- 
 ward 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 
 put of path : therefore there is no affectation of gener- 
 
 22 
 
338 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ous regret for Louis Philippe. Political rivais, even if 
 private friends, are something like obstacles too. Palm- 
 ers ton is of opinion that Peel would never be disposed 
 to do him a good turn, and therefore indulges in no senti- 
 mental 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 Palmer- 
 ston'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 imxoossibility for the England of 
 our time. The mind has to go back some centuries to 
 put itself into what would appear the proper framework 
 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-popu- 
 lar charms which were believed to hinder witches of 
 their will. The story is extraordinary, 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 toward 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. 
 J>ut it unquestionably made a profound impression in 
 Rome. The court of Rome then saw everything through 
 the eyes of ecclesiastics ; and a Roman Catholic ecclesias- 
 tic not well acquainted with the actual conditions of Eng- 
 lish life might well be excused if, when be found that two 
 or three great Englishmen had gone over to the Church, 
 he fancied that they were but the vanguard of a yast pop- 
 
THE JECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL, 
 
 339 
 
 ular or national movement. It is clear that the court of 
 Kome was quite mistaken as to the religious condition of 
 England. The most 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 jurisdiction of Rome. The Pope 
 had not been fortunate in many things. He had been a 
 fugitive from his own city, and had been restored 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 conver- 
 sion 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 con- 
 trol the political action or restrict the national independ- 
 ence of England. The history of the relations between 
 England and Rome, for long generations before England 
 had any thought of renouncing the faith of Rome, might 
 have furnished 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 ad- 
 visers did not understand England. Accordingly, he took 
 a step, with the view of encouraging and inviting Eng- 
 land to become converted, which was calculated specially 
 and instantly to defeat its own purpose. Had the great 
 majority of the English people been really drawing toward 
 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 filled the English people with a new determma- 
 tion 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 sup- 
 posed pretensions have come to so little, that the most 
 zealous Protestant can afford to discuss the whole question 
 noAV with absolute impartiality and unruffled calmness. 
 Every one can clearly see now that if tlie Pope was mis- 
 
340 A HISTOnY 01" OlTB OWN TIMES. 
 
 taken in the course he took, and if the nation in general 
 was amply justified in resenting even a supposed attempt 
 at foreign interference^ the piece of legislation to which 
 the occasion gave birth was not a masterpiece of states- 
 manship, nor was the manner in which it was carried 
 through always creditable to the good-sense of Parliament 
 and the public. The Papal aggression in itself was perhaps 
 a measure to smile at rather than to arouse great national 
 indignation. It consisted in the issue of a Papal bull, 
 " given at St. Peter's, Rome, under the seal of the fisher- 
 man," and directing the establishment in England " of a 
 hierarchy of bishops deriving their titles from their own 
 sees, which we constitute by the present letter in 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 extrac- 
 tion, 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 hearmg 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 Poj)e gives new titles to his English ecclesi- 
 astics or not? What Protestant is even interested in 
 knowing whether a certain Catholic bishop living in Eng- 
 land is called Bishop of Mesopotamia, or of Lambeth ? 
 There always were Catholic bishops in England. There 
 were Catholic archbishops. 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 English- 
 men cared, they might have been also free to call them- 
 selves 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 oft'ence or concern. 
 Why then should he be expected to disturb his mind be- 
 cause the IV)pe chose to direct that the English Roman 
 Catholics should call a man Bishop of Liverpool or Arch- 
 
THE WCLESlASTtCAL TITLES BILL. ^Ul 
 
 bishop of Westminster ? 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 hier- 
 archy 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 something about the time and manner of 
 the Papal bull calculated to offer the susceptibility of a 
 great and independent nation. The mere fact that a 
 certain movement toward 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 repre- 
 senting territorial distinctions in this country. The agita- 
 tion 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 archbishop and twelve suffragans ; 
 and the new archbishop was Cardinal Wiseman. Under 
 the title of Archbishop of Westminister and Administrator 
 Apostolic of the Diocese of Southwark, Cardinal Wiseman 
 was now to reside in London. Cardinal Wiseman was al- 
 ready 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 family 
 on both sides was of good position ; his father came of a 
 long line of Essex gentry. Wiseman had held the pro- 
 fessorship of Oriental languages in the English College at 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIM^S. 
 
 Rome, and afterward became rector of the college. In 
 1840 he was appointed by the Pope one of the Yicars 
 Apostolic in England, and held his position here as Bishop 
 of Melipotamus inpartibus infi'delhim. He was well known 
 to be a fine scholar, an accomplished linguist, and a power- 
 ful 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 ability. The Pope's action was set down 
 as in great measure thcAvork 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 English 
 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 exist- 
 ing mood of the English people the very title of Cardinal 
 exasperated the feeling against Wiseman. Had he come 
 as a simple archbishop, the aggression might not have 
 seemed so marked. The title of Cardinal brought back 
 unwelcome 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 Englishmen 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 7th, 1850, which was set forth as 
 " given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome." This descrip- 
 tion of the letter was afterward stated to be in accordance 
 Avith one of the necessary formularies of the Church of 
 Rome; but it was then assumed in England to be an ex- 
 pression of insolence and audacity intended 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 Itoman Catholic churches in Lon- 
 don. It addressed itself directly to the English people, 
 and it announced that " your Ix^loved country has received 
 a i)lace among the fair churches which, normally con- 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL, 
 
 343 
 
 stituted, form the splendid aggregate of Catholic com- 
 munion; Catholic England has been restored to its orbit 
 in the ecclesiastical firmament fi-om which its liglit liad 
 long vanished ; and begins now anew its course of regu- 
 larly-adjusted action round the centre of unity, the source 
 of jurisdiction, of light, and of vigor." 
 
 It must be allowed that this was rather imprudent lan- 
 guage to address to a people peculiarly proud of being 
 Protestant; a people of whom their critics say, not wholly 
 without reason, that they are somewhat narrow and un- 
 sympathetic in their Protestantism ; that their national 
 tendency is to believe in the existence of nothing really 
 good outside the limits of Protestantism. In Englahd 
 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 j)art 
 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. We are simply recording the unquestionable 
 historical fact that such was the manner 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 Cardinal Wiseman's letter. But the let- 
 ter had hardly reached England when the country 
 was aroused by another letter coming from a very dif- 
 ferent quarter, and intended as a counterblast to the 
 Papal assumption of authority. This was Lord John 
 Russell's famous Durham letter. Russell had the art 
 of writing letters that exploded like bombshells 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, Xovember the 4th." 
 Lord John Russell condenmed 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 
 
A II I STORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and undivided sway, which is inconsistent with the Queen's 
 supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and 
 with the spiritual independence 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 farther than all this. He declared 
 that there was a danger that alarmed him more than any 
 aggression from a foreign sovereign, and that w^as " 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 for the 
 Church, the superstitious use of the sign of the Cross, the 
 muttering of the Liturgy so as to disguise the language 
 in which it is written, the recommendation of auricular 
 confession, and the administration of penance and absolu- 
 tion?" The letter closed with a sentence which gave 
 a special offence to Roman Catholics, but which Lord 
 John Russell afterward explained, and indeed the context 
 ought to have shown, was not meant as any attack on 
 their religion or their ceremonial : " I have little hope that 
 the propounders and framers of these innovations will 
 desist from their insidious course ; but I rely with confi- 
 dence on the people of England ; 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 l)y tlie great mass of a nation which looks with 
 contempt on tlie munnneries of superstition, and with scorn 
 at the la,l)()i'ious endeavors which are now making to con- 
 fine tlie intellect and enslave the soul." It is now clear, 
 from the very terms of this letter, that Lord John Russell 
 meant to api)ly these words to the practices within the 
 English Church which he had so strongly condemned in 
 the earlier i)assages, and which alone, he said he regarded 
 with any serious alarm. But the Roman Catholics in 
 general, ajid the majority of persons of all sects, accepted 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL. 
 
 345 
 
 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 welcomed 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 j)lace of the 
 regulation "Guy," and were paraded and burnt amidst 
 tumultuous demonstrations. A colossal procession 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 elaborate Anti-Papal demonstration was made. A 
 procession of two hundred persons in character-dresses 
 marched round the venerable cathedral amidst the varied 
 effulgence gf 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 
 tliey 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 fervor against the ministry themselves, 
 by declaring 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 
 liad offered to the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland. 
 " The fact is," Mr. Disraeli said, " the whole question has 
 been surrendered and decided in favor of the Pope by the 
 present Government. The ministers wiio recognized the 
 pseudo- Archbishop of Tuam as a peer and a prelate can- 
 not object to the appointment of a pseudo-Archbishop of 
 Westminster, even though he be a cardinal." As a matter 
 of fact, it was not the existing Government that had recog- 
 nized the rank of the Irish Catholic prelates. The recogni- 
 tion had been formally arranged in January,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 Established Church 
 
346 A msfORT OF OlfR OlVN TIMES. 
 
 of the same degree. But the letter of Mr. DisraeU, 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 generation had there been such an out- 
 burst of anger on both sides of the religious controversy. 
 It was a curious incident in political liistory that Lord 
 John Russell, who had, more than ^ny 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 Catholics 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 without 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, how- 
 ever, was now fairly afoot. The step taken by the Pope had 
 set the country aflame. Every day croAvded and tumult- 
 uous 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 rioting and disturbance. Addresses poured in upon 
 the Queen and the ministers calling for decided action 
 against the assumption of Papal 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 remarkable command of the 
 eloquence of passion and denunciation. Ilis lectures 
 were at first given only in Italian, and therefoi'e did not 
 appeal to a popular English audience. But they were 
 reported in the papers at much length, and they contrib- 
 uted not a little to swell the tide of pul3lic feeling agaihst ^ 
 the Pope and the court of Rome. The new Lord Chan- 
 cellor, Lord Truro, created great applause and tumult at 
 the Lord Mayor's dinner by quoting from Shakspeare the 
 words, " Under my feet I'll stamp thy cardinal's hat, in 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL. 
 
 347 
 
 spite of Pope or dignities of Church." Charles Kean, the 
 tragedian, was interrupted by thundering peals of ap- 
 plause and the rising of the whole audience to their feet 
 when, as King John, he proclaimed tha.t " no Italian 
 priest shall tithe or toll in our dominion." Long after- 
 ward, and when the storm seemed to have wholly died 
 away, Cardinal Wiseman, 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 remembered the Papal assumption 
 and the passions excited by the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. 
 
 The opening of Parliament came. The ministry had to 
 do something. No ministry that ever held power in Eng- 
 land could have attempted to meet the House of Commons 
 without some project of a measure to allay public excite- 
 ment. On February 4th, 1851, the Queen in person opened 
 Parliament. Her speech contained some sentences which 
 were listened to with the prof oundest interest because they 
 referred to the question which was agitating all England. 
 " The recent assumption of certain ecclesiastical titles con- 
 ferred by a foreign Power has excited strong feelings in 
 this country ; and large bodies qf my subjects have pre- 
 sented addresses to me expressing attachment to the 
 Throne, and praying that such assumptions should be 
 resisted. I have assured them of my resolution to 
 maintain the rights of my crown and the independence of 
 the nation against all encroachments, from whatever quar- 
 ter they may proceed. I have at the same time expressed 
 my earnest desire and firm determination, under God's 
 blessing, to maintain unimpaired 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 her- 
 self may be seen from a letter in which, when the excite- 
 ment was at its height, she had expressed her opinion to her 
 aunt, the Duchess of Gloucester. " I would never have con- 
 sented to anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. 
 Sincerely Protestant as I always have been, and always 
 shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call them- 
 • selves Protestants, while they are, in fact, quite the con- 
 trary I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit 
 exhibited by many people at the public meetings. I can- 
 not bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, 
 
348 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 which is so painful and so cruel toward 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 Protestants 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 irrita- 
 tion. What has goaded the nation is the manner, insolent 
 and ostentatious, in which it has been done. . . . We 
 must bring in a measure. The country would not be 
 satisfied without some legislative 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 satisfy 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 con- 
 troversy. They were placed between two galling fires. 
 On the one side were the extreme Protestants, to whom 
 Palmerston alluded as violent and who were eager for 
 severe measures against the Catholics ; and on the other 
 were the Roman Catholic supporters of the ministry, who 
 protested against any legislation 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 
 little or nothing. Two or three days after the meeting of 
 l^arliament. Lord John Russell introduced his bill to pre- 
 vent the assumption by Roman Catholics of titles taken 
 from any territory or place within the United Kingdom. 
 The measure proposed to prohibit the use of all such titles * 
 under penalty, and to render void all ac'ts^ done by or 
 bequests made to persons under such titles. * 1'he Roman 
 Catholic Relief Act imposed a penalty of ouq hundred 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL. 349 
 
 pounds for every assumption of a title taken from an 
 existing see. Lord John Russell proposed now to extend 
 the penalty 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 opposi- 
 tion. On this occasion, however, it was at once made 
 manifest thatno 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 mere sham to bolster 
 up Church ascendency." Mr. Disraeli declared that he 
 would not oppose 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 amidst the patriotic acclamations of the metropolitan 
 municipality ? "• Sir Robert Inglis, on the part of the more 
 extreme 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-live votes were given for the 
 motion and only sixty-three against it. The oi^ponents 
 of the measure had on their side not only the prominent 
 champions of religious liberty, like Sir James Graham, Mr. 
 Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright, but also Protestant 
 politicians of such devotion to the interests of the Church 
 as Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterward Lord Selborne, and Mr. 
 Beresford 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 justification, so far 
 as Parliamentary tactics were concerned, for the introduc- 
 tion of their measure. 
 
350 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUll OWN TIMES. 
 
 If, however, we come to regard the ministerial proposal 
 as a piece of practical legislation, 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 con- 
 fidence in its success. It is probable that Lord John Rus- 
 sell 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 
 necessit}'' or its efficacy, but because they find that some- 
 thing must be done to satisfy public feeling, and they do 
 not know of anything better to do at the moment. The 
 history of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was, therefore, a 
 history of blunder, unlucky accident, and failure from the 
 moment it was brought in until its ignominious and 
 ridiculous repeal many years after, and when its absolute 
 impotence had been not merely demonstrated but for- 
 gotten. 
 
 The Government at first, as we have seen, resolved to 
 impose a penalty on the assumption of ecclesiastical titles 
 by Roman Catholic prelates from places in the United 
 Kingdom, 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 Catholic hierarchy had 
 long been tolerated, and all the functions of a regular 
 hierarchy had been in full and formal operation. To 
 apply the new measure to Ireland would have been virtu- 
 ally 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 withdrawing two of the stringent clauses of 
 the bill, and leaving it little more than a mere declaration 
 against the assumption of unlawful titles. But by doing 
 tiiis they furnished stronger reasons for opposition to 
 both of the two very different parties who had hitherto 
 denounced their way of dealing with the crisis. Those 
 who thought the bill did not go far enough before were, 
 of course, indignant at the proposal to shear it of what- 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL, 
 
 851 
 
 ever little force it had originally possessed. They, on the 
 other hand, who had opposed it as a breach of the principle 
 of religions liberty could now ridicule it with all the greater 
 effect, on the ground that it violated a principle without 
 even the pretext of doing any practical good as a compen- 
 sation. In the first instance, the ministry might i^lead 
 that the crisis was exceptional ; that it called for excep- 
 tional measures ; that something must be done ; and that 
 they could not stand on ceremony even with the principle 
 of religious liberty when the interests 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 nonentity. 
 
 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 Roman Catholic members set up a persistent 
 opposition to it, and vq) 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 with- 
 out mention of the fact that among other elTects produced 
 by the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, perhaps the most distinct 
 was the creation of the most worthless band of agitators 
 who ever pretended 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 distrust by all intelligent Irish Catholics and 
 Irish Nationalists as by the most inveterate Tories. These 
 men leaped into influence by their denunciations of the 
 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. They were successful for a time 
 in palming themselves off as patriots upon Irish constit- 
 uencies. 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-voiced ; 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 pos- 
 sessed marked ability, and was further gifted with an 
 unscrupulous audacity at least equal to his ability. He 
 went to work deliberately to create for himself a band of 
 followers by whose help he might mount to power. He 
 
352 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 was a financial swindler as well as a political adventurer. 
 By means of the money he had suddenly acquired, and by 
 virtue of his furious denunciations of the anti-Catholic 
 policy of the Government, he was, for a time, able to work 
 the Irish popular constituencies so as to get his own fol- 
 lowers 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 sincerity 
 of himself and his gang of swindling adventurers ; and it 
 is only fair to say that by far the most eloquent man of 
 the party appears to have been one of those on whom 
 Sadleir was thus able to impose. Mr. Sadleir's band after- 
 ward came to sad grief. He committed suicide himself 
 to escape the punishment of his frauds ; some of his 
 associates fled to foreign countries and hid themselves 
 under feigned names. James Sadleir, brother and accom- 
 plice of John, was among these, and underwent that rare 
 mark of degradation in our days, a formal expulsion from 
 the House of Conmions. The Pope's Brass Band and its 
 subsequent history, culminating in the suicide on Hamp- 
 stead Heath, was about the only practical result of the 
 Ecclesiastical 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 Avithout delay some measures for its relief. 
 This motion was, in fact, the hist spasmodic cry of Protec- 
 tion. Many influential politicians still believed that the 
 cause of Protection was not wholly lost ; that a reaction 
 was possible ; that the Free-trade doctrine would prove a 
 failure and have to be given up ; and they regarded Mr. 
 Disraeli's as a very important motion calling for a stren- 
 uous effort in its favor. The Government 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 existing 
 in ]K)i'ouglis. Lord John llussell opposed the motion, and 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES lULL. 
 
 853 
 
 the Government were defeated by 100 votes against 52. It 
 was evident that this was only what is called a " snap " 
 vote ; that the House was taken by surprise, and that the 
 result in nowise represented the general feeling of Parlia- 
 ment. But still it was a vexatious occurrence for the 
 ministry already humiliated by the small majority they 
 had obtained on Disraeli's motion. Their budget had al- 
 ready been received with very general marks of dissatis- 
 faction. The Chancellor of the Exchequer only proposed 
 a partial and qualified repeal of the window-tax, an im- 
 post which was justly detested, and he continued the in- 
 come-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 resignation to the Queen. 
 Leaving his Ecclesiastical 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, afterward 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 
 followers 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 existing 
 temper of the country it would be impossible for any 
 Government to get on without 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 
 
 23 
 
354 
 
 A HISTORY OF Oirjl OfFiY TIMES. 
 
 three parties out of which a ministry might be formed. 
 These were the Wliigs, the Conservatives, and thePeehtes. 
 The Peelites were a very rising and promising body of 
 men. Among them were Sir James Graham, Lord Can- 
 ning, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell, 
 and some others almost equally well known. Only these 
 three groups were fairly in the competition 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 ministry 
 formed from a combination of these three ? The Peelites 
 would not coalesce with the Tories because of the Protec- 
 tion question, to which Mr. Disraeli's motion had given 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 pro- 
 tective ideas ; the Whigs would not give up the Ecclesi- 
 astical 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 Welling- 
 ton was consulted; Lord Lansdowne was consulted. The 
 wit of man could suggest nothing satisfactory. The con- 
 ditions 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 
 administering 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 
 change in its conditions which has already been mentioned, 
 «nnd 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 Churcli within the sphere of its own ecclesi- 
 astical operations, and made it simply an Act against the 
 public and ostentatious assumption of illegal titles. The 
 
THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL, 
 
 855 
 
 bill was wrangled over until the end of June, and then a 
 large number, some seventy, of the Irish Catholic mem- 
 bers 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 Tliesiger, afterward 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 resolutions was 
 principally to give the power of prosecuting and claiming 
 a penalty to anybody, 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 amendments, and were put in the 
 awkward position of having to act as antagonists of the 
 party in the country who represented the strongest hos- 
 tility 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 indignation 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 Vas passed, and that the best thing to do was to 
 get the controversy out of the way by any process. He 
 did not, therefore, withdraw the bill, although Sir Fred- 
 erick Thesiger carried all his stringent 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 
 sa far as the House of Commons was concerned. After 
 an eloquent and powerful protest from Mr. Gladstone 
 against the measure, as one disparaging to the great prin- 
 ciple of religious freedom, the bill was read a third tiine. 
 It went up to the House of Lords, was passed there with- 
 out alteration, although not without opposition, and soon 
 after received the Royal assent. 
 
 This Avas practically the last the world heard about it. 
 In the Roman Church everything went on as before. 
 
356 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 The new Cardinal Archbishop still called himself Arch- 
 bishop of Westminster ; some of the Irish prelates made 
 a point of ostentatiously using their territorial titles, in 
 letters addressed to the ministers themselves. The bit- 
 terness of feeling which the Papal aggression and the 
 legislation against it had called up did not indeed pass 
 away very soon. It broke out again and again, some- 
 times in the form of very serious riot.- It turned away, at 
 many an election, the eyes and minds of the constituencies 
 from questions of profound and genuine public interest to 
 dogmatic controversy and the hates of jarring sectaries. 
 It furnished political capital for John Sadleir and his 
 band, and kept them flourishing for awhile ; 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 let- 
 ters. Nothing came of the Papal bull. England was 
 not restored to the communion of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop 
 of London retained their places and their spiritual juris- 
 diction 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 repealed. It died in such obscurity that ttce outer 
 public hardly knew whether it Avas 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 persecuting 
 spirit. They had no -inclination to molest their Catholic 
 neighbors, and only asked to be let alone. The Pope, 
 they believed, had insulted them; they resented the 
 insult ; that was all. 
 
THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK. 
 
 357 
 
 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 asso- 
 ciated 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 "upspringing 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 statuary, the ores, the ingots, the 
 huge blocks of coal, the lace work, the loom- work, the 
 Oriental stuffs — all these made on the mind of the ordi- 
 nary inexpert a confused impression of lavishness, and 
 profusion, and order, and fantastic 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 taken 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 impres- 
 sion which the Hyde Park Exhibition made upon the 
 ordinary mind was like that of the boy's first visit to the 
 play — an impression 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 hope- 
 ful people welcomed the Exhibition of 1851, It was the 
 
358 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 pre- 
 vailed 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 expecta- 
 tions, 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 exhibi- 
 tions that followed it, have not as yet made the slightest 
 perceptible 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 impro- 
 priety 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 Mutiny, and that by the war 
 between France and Austria, the long civil war in the 
 United States, the Neapolitan enterprises of Garibaldi, 
 and the Mexican intervention, until we come to the Avar 
 between Austria, Prussia, and Denmark ; the short, sharp 
 struggle for German supremacy between Austria and 
 Prussia, the war between France and Germany, and the 
 war between Russia and Turkey. Such were in brief 
 summary, the events that quickly followed the great 
 inaugurating 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 Avas 
 the result of genuine enthusiasm. In other instances the 
 extravagance was indulged in by persons not habitually 
 extravagant, but, on the contrary, very sober, methodical, 
 wA. calculating, who by the very fact of their possessing 
 
Tff]^ iJXFIiniTtON IN IIYDK PAUK, 359 
 
 eminently these qualities were led into a total miscon- 
 ception of the inlluence of such assemblages of men. 
 These calm and wise persons assumed that because they 
 themselves, if shown that a certain course of conduct was 
 for their material and moral benefit, would instantly fol- 
 low it and keep to it, it must therefore follow that all peo- 
 ples and states were amenable to the same excellent prin- 
 ciples of self-discipline. War is a foolish and improvi- 
 dent, not to say immoral and atrocious, way of trying to 
 adjust 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 profit- 
 able and noble is the rivalry of peace in trade and com- 
 merce, 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 Exhibition 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 happen 
 that a good deal of unmerited discredit was cast upon the 
 results of the Great Exhibition, for the enterprise was held 
 responsible 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 produc- 
 tion it is very easy to exaggerate the beneficent influences 
 of an international exhibitioUo But that such enter- 
 prises have some beneficial influence is beyond doubt; 
 and that they are interesting, instructive, well calculated 
 to educate and refine the minds of nations, may be 
 admitted by the least enthusiastic of men. 
 
 The first idea of the Exhibition was conceived by Prince 
 Albert ; and it was his energy and influence which suc- 
 ceeded in carrying the idea into practical execution. 
 Probably no influence less great than that which his station 
 gave to the Prince would have prevailed to carry to suc- 
 cess so difficult an enterprise. There had been industrial 
 exhibitions 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 be- 
 fore, as it may well have done, it was merely as a vague 
 thought, a day-dream, without any claim to a practical 
 realization. Prince Albert was President of the Society of 
 
860 
 
 A TtlSTORr OF OTTB OWN TtME^. 
 
 Arts, and this position secured him a platform for the 
 effective promulgation of his ideas. On June 30th, 1849, 
 he called a meeting of the Society of Arts at Buckingham 
 Palace. He proposed that the Society should undertake 
 the initiative in the promotion of an exhibition of the 
 works of all nations. The main idea of Prince Albert 
 Avas that the exhibition should be divided into four great 
 sections — the first to contain raw materials and produce ; 
 the second, machinery for ordinary industrial and pro- 
 ductive purposes, and mechanical inventions of the more 
 ingenious kind ; the third, manufactured articles ; and 
 the fourth, sculpture, models, and the illustrations 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 17th in the same year a meeting of merchants 
 and bankers was lield in London to promote the success 
 of the undertaking. In the first few days of 1850 a for- 
 mal Commission was appointed for the promotion of the 
 Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, to be holden in 
 the year 1851." Prince Albert was appointed President of 
 the Commission. The enterprise was now fairly launched. 
 A few days after, a meeting was held iii 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 21st, in the same year, the Lord Mayor 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 over- 
 come whatever difficulty stood in his way from his foreign 
 birth and education. He never quite lost his foreign 
 accent. No man coming to a new country at the age of 
 manhood as Prince AllDert 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, l^ri^ice Albert may be said to have acquired a 
 perfect mastery of the English language, and he became 
 
THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK, 
 
 361 
 
 a remarkably good public speaker. He had, indeed, noth- 
 ing of the orator in his nature. It was but the extrava- 
 gance of courtliness which called his polished and thought- 
 ful speeches oratory. In the Prince's nature there was 
 neither the passion nor the poetry that are essential to 
 genuine eloquence ; nor were the occasions on which he 
 addressed the English people likely to stimulate a man to 
 eloquence. But his style of speaking was clear, thought- 
 ful, stately, and sometime seven 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 public 
 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 certain 
 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 Albert 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 Exhibition. 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 Avere 
 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 
 developed 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 Sib- 
 throp. Sibthrop was a ]nan who might have been drawn by 
 Smollett. His grotesque gestures, his overboiling energy, 
 his uncouth appearance, his huge mustache, i^iarked him out 
 as an object of curiosity in any crowd. He was the sub- 
 
862 A HISTORY OF OUR OWJST TIMES, 
 
 ject 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 jjoets in 
 three different ages born, and pictured three colonels in 
 three different countries born, winding up Avith : " Tlie 
 force of Nature could no farther go ; to beard the one she 
 shaved the other two." One of the gallant Sibthorp's 
 especial weaknesses was a distrust and detestation of all 
 foreigners. Foreigners he lumped together as a race of 
 beings whose chief characteristics were Popery and im- 
 morality. 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 agglomeration of foreigners as the great- 
 est curse that could fall u]3on England. He regarded 
 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 exclaimed, in the House of Com- 
 mons, of your wives and daughters ; take care of your 
 property and your lives ! " He declared that he prayed 
 for some tremendous hail-storm 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 declared, had inspired us Avith the idea of 
 the Great Exhibition, so that the foreigners who had first 
 robbed us of our trade miglit 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 argu- 
 ment. After some consideration tlie Royal Conunission- 
 ers had fixed upon Hyde I^ark as the best site for the 
 great building, and many energetic and some influential 
 
THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK. 
 
 363 
 
 voices were raised in fierce outcry against what was called 
 the x^rofanation 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 occupa- 
 tion of any part of Hyde Park with the Exhibition build- 
 ing. Lord Brougham supported the petition with his 
 characteristic impetuosity and vehemence. He denounced 
 the Attorney-general with indignant eloquence because 
 that official had declined to file an application to the Court 
 of Chancery for an injunction to stay any proceeding with 
 the proposed building in the park. He denounced the 
 House of Lords itself for what he considered its servile 
 deference to royalty in the matter of the Exhibition 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 painfully " that absolute prostration of the under- 
 standing which takes place even in the minds of the 
 bravest when the word prince is mentioned in this coun- 
 try ! " 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, probably the great majority, of those who 
 supported 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 
 admiration of princes, the excellent project devised 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, 
 
364 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 it is certain that a great many sensible persons tliought 
 the moment singularly inopportune for the gathering of 
 large crowds, and were satisfied that some inconvenient, 
 if not dangerous, public demonstration must be provoked. 
 The smouldering embers of Chartism, they said, were 
 everywhere under society's feet. The crowd of foreigners 
 whom Colonel Sibthorp so dreaded would, calmer people 
 said, naturally include large numbers of the " Reds " of 
 all continental 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 agita- 
 tion 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 
 establishing a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. - 
 These conditions looked gloomy for the project. "The 
 opponents of the Exhibition," w^ote 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, are certain to commence a thorough revolu- 
 tion here, to murder Victoria and myself, and to proclaim 
 the Red Republic in England ; the plague is certain to 
 ensue from the confluence of such vast multitudes, and to 
 swallow up those whom the increased price of everything 
 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 posi- 
 tively prohibited his brother, then Prince of Prussia, now 
 German Emperor, from attending the opening ceremonial ;^ 
 and though he afterward 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 appre- 
 hensions. 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 
 
TBE EXniBITION IN HYDE PA UK. 
 
 365 
 
 immense excitement on tlie subject. If we are driven out 
 of the park the worlc is done for." At one time, indeed, 
 this result seemed highly probable ; but public opinion 
 gradually underwent a change, and the opposition to the 
 site was defeated in the House of Commons 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 ; Punchy in particular, was hardly ever weary 
 of making fun of it. Such a project, while yet only in 
 embryo, undoubtedly furnished many points on which 
 satire could fasten ; and nothing short of complete success 
 could save it from falling under a mountain of ridicule. 
 No half success would have rescued it. The ridicule was 
 unnaturally provoked and aggravated to an unspeakable 
 degree by the hyperbolical expectations and preposterous 
 dithyrambics of some of the well-meaning but unwise and 
 somewhat too obstreperously loyal supporters of the enter- 
 prise. To add to all this, as the time for the opening drew 
 near, some of the foreign diplomatists in London began to 
 sulk at the whole project. There were small points of 
 objection made about the position and functions 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. Tip to 
 the last moment it was not quite certain whether an 
 absurd di]3lomatic quarrel might not have been part of 
 the inaugural ceremonies of the opening day. 
 
 The prince did not despair, however, and the project 
 went on. There was a great deal of difficulty in selecting 
 a plan for the building. Huge structures of brick- work,' 
 looking like enormous railway sheds, costly and hideous 
 at once, were proposed ; it seemed almost certain that 
 some one of them must be chosen. Happily, a sudden 
 inspiration struck Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Paxton, who 
 was then in charge of the Duke of Devonshire'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 contents 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 Commis- 
 
366 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 sioners. He made many improvements afterward 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 Exhibition. It made the build- 
 ing itself as much an objecjb of curiosity and wonder as 
 the collections under its crystal roof. Of the hundreds 
 of thousands who came to the Exhibition, a goodly pro- 
 portion were drawn to Hyde Park rather by a wish to see 
 Paxton's palace of glass than all the wonders of industrial 
 and plastic art that it enclosed. Indeed, Lord Palmerston, 
 writing to Lord Normanby on the day after the opening 
 of the Exhibition, said: "The building itself is far more 
 worth seeing than anything in it, though many of its con- 
 tents are worthy of admiration." 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 competi- 
 tions of peaceful 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 interesting account 
 of the success of the opening day. Her description is inter- 
 esting 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 import- 
 ance 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 fervent expression. " The 
 great event," wrote the Queen, "has taken place — a 
 complete and beautiful triumph — a glorious and touching 
 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, car- 
 riages and troops passing, quite like the Coronation-day, 
 
THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK. 
 
 ?>67 
 
 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 transept 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 man^^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 the industry of all 
 nations of the earth — all this was moving, indeed, and it 
 was and is a day to live forever. 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 thousand people gathered to- 
 gether within the building, and nearly three-quarters of 
 a million of persons lined the way between the Exhibition 
 and Buckingham Palace ; and yet no accident wiiatever 
 occurred, nor had the x^olice any trouble imposed on them 
 by the conduct of anybody in the crowxl. "It was impos- 
 sible," wrote Lord Palmerston, "for the invited guests of 
 a lady's drawing-room to have conducted themselves with 
 more perfect joropriety than did this sea of human bemgs." 
 It is needless to say that there were no hostile demonstra- 
 tions by Red Repu]3licans, or malignant Chartists, or infu- 
 riated Irish Catholics. The one thing which especially 
 struck foreign observers, and to which many eloquent 
 
368 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 concourse 
 large enough to have made the population of a respect- 
 able 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 in- 
 stance, and it was thought something of a patriotic risk 
 when a few spirited citizens combined to secure the accom- 
 plishment of the undertaking by means of a guarantee fund. 
 But the guarantee fund became in the end merely one of 
 the forms and ceremonials of the Exhibition ; for the 
 undertaking not only 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 
 15th. 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 followed by an 
 exhibition in Dublin ; an exhibition of the paintings and 
 sculptures of all nations in Manchester ; three great exhibi- 
 tions in Paris ; the International Exhibition in Kensing- 
 ton 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 enter- 
 prises, that no occasion now rises for the feeling of dis- 
 appointment 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 development, and in 
 promoting the intercourse of peoples, and thus co-operat- 
 ing with various other influences in the general business 
 of civilization. l>ut the hnpressions produced by the 
 Hyde Park Exhibition were unique. It was the first 
 
PALMEBSTON. 
 
 369 
 
 thing of the kind ; the gathering of peoples it brought to- 
 gether was as new, odd, and interesting as the glass 
 building in which the industry of the world was displayed. 
 For the first time in their lives Londoners saw the ordi- 
 nary aspect of London distinctly modified and changed 
 by the incursion of foreigners who came to take part in 
 or to look at our Exhibition. London seemed to be play- 
 ing at holiday in a strange carnival sort of way during 
 the time the Exhibition was open. The Hyde Park enter- 
 prise 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 
 were exactly like it, or could take its place in the recollec- 
 tion of thoi^e who were its contemporaries. In a year 
 made memorable by many political events of the greatest 
 importance, of disturbed 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 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 statesmen of England. Palmerston 's Avas a 
 strenuous, self-asserting character. He loved, whenever 
 he had an opportunity, to make a stroke, as he frequently 
 put it himself, " off his own bat." He had given himself 
 up to the study of foreign affairs as no minister of his 
 time had done. He had a peculiar capacity for under- 
 standing 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 
 ^11 learning for his province, Palmerston seemed to have 
 
370 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 made up his mind that he had taken all European affairs 
 for his province. His sympathies were markedly liberal. 
 As opinions went then, they might have been considered 
 among statesmen 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 sympa- 
 thies were generally with the peoples and against the 
 governments; 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 Avas not more 
 liberal even in his views of foreign affairs than Lord John 
 Russell ; he was probably not so consistently and on 
 principle a supj)orter 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 sympathy than a 
 man of Russell's colder nature could Avell 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 he 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 block- 
 heads for whom no practical man could feel the slightest 
 respect. It would be almost superfluous to say, in describ- 
 ing a man of such a nature, that Lord Palmerston some- 
 times 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 Palmerston was, to all appearance, capri- 
 cious 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 : 
 
PALMEBSTOlSt, 
 
 871 
 
 his blunt, brusque ways of speaking and writing some- 
 times gave downright offence. 
 
 In his later years Lord Palmerston's manner in Parlia- 
 ment and out of it had greatly mellowed and softened and 
 grown more genial. 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 allowed 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 Palmer- 
 ston 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 i3erhaps find it hard to 
 understand how many enemies he made for himself at an 
 earlier period by the levity and flippancy of his manner. 
 Many grave statesmen thought tliat the levity and flip- 
 pancy 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 
 governments and sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was un- 
 sparing 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 pre- 
 vailed in England. He not uncommonly put his admoni- 
 tions 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 Continent of being a supporter, promoter, and patron 
 of all manner of revolutionary movements, and a disturber 
 of the relations between subjects and their sovereigns. 
 
 Lord Palmerston was not inconsistent in thus being a 
 Conservative at home and something like a revolutionary 
 abroad. He was quite satisfied with the state of things 
 in England. He was convinced that when a people had 
 had got a well-limited suffrage and a respectable House 
 of Commons elected by open vote, a House of Lords, and 
 a constitutional Sovereign, they had got all that, in a polit- 
 ical sense, man has to hope for. He was not a far-seeing 
 man, nor a man who much troubled himself about what 
 
872 A inSTOBY Oi^ OUB owjsr time^. 
 
 a certain class of writers and thinkers are fond of calling 
 " problems 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 coMition to 
 aspire after and see the occasion for further reforms as 
 the days go on. But he clearly saw that most Conti- 
 nental countries were governed on a system which was 
 not only worn out and decaying, but which was the source 
 of great practical and personal evils to their inhabitants. 
 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 revolution, and by English Radicals as the 
 steady enemy of political reform. Both were right from, 
 their own point of view. The familiar saying among Con- 
 tinental 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 regarded him as the most formi- 
 dable 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 in- 
 vited 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 serving under such a chief. 
 The good-natured statesman only smiled, and observed 
 that another public man Avho 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 Euro- 
 pean statesmen. It is now certain that the Queen fre- 
 quently 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 Palmerston. The Prince Consort, on whose advice the 
 Queen very naturally relied, was a man of singularly 
 calm and earnest nature. He liked to form his opinions 
 deliberately and slowly, and disliked expressing any opin- 
 ion until his mind was well made up. Lord Palmerston, 
 when Secretary of Foreign Affairs, was much in the habit 
 
PALMEBSTON, 
 
 of writing 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 
 rnarriages 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 policj^ of a 
 State was clearly marked out and well known, it would 
 have been idle to insist that a Foreign Secretary capable 
 of x3erforming the duties of his office should wait to submit 
 for the inspection and approval of the Sovereign and his 
 colleagues every scrap of paper he wrote on before it was 
 allowed to leave England. If such precautions were need- 
 ful. Lord Palmerston contended, it could only be because 
 the person holding the^ office of Foreign Secretary was 
 unfit for his post ; and he ought, therefore, to be dismissed, 
 and some better qualified 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 sud- 
 denly swelled to unprecedented magnitude, the same 
 rules and formalities could be kept up which had suited 
 slower and less busy days. But the complaint made by 
 the Queen was not that Palmerston failed to consult her 
 on every detail, and to submit every line relating to the 
 organization of the Foreign Office for her approval before 
 he sent it olf . 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 acting on his own inde- 
 pendent 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 considering, and would 
 not have approved if she had had such an opportunity ; 
 and that she hardly ever found any question absolutely 
 intact and uncompromised when it w^as submitted to her 
 judgment. The complaint was justified in many cases. 
 Lord Palmerston frequently acted in a manner which 
 almost made it seem as if he were purposely ignoring the 
 authority of the Sovereign. In part this came from the 
 
37 1 A HISTORY OF OTfB OWJ^ TIM^:S. 
 
 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 sometimes 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 Eng- 
 lish people were with the Continental movements against 
 the sovereigns, and tliat the sympathies of the English 
 court were with the sovereigns against the popular move- 
 ments. In the first behef he was undoubtedly right. In 
 the second he was probably right. It is not likely that 
 a man of Prince Albert's peculiar turn of mind could have 
 admitted much sympathy with revolution against consti- 
 tuted authority of any kind. Even his Liberalism, un- 
 doubtedly a deep and genuine conviction, did not lead him 
 to make much allowance for any disturbing impulses. 
 His orderly, intellectu-al nature, with little of fire or pas- 
 sion in it, was prone to estimate everything by the manner 
 in which it stood the test of logical argument. He could 
 understand arguing against a bad system better than he 
 could understand taking the risk of making things worse 
 by resisting it. Some of the published memoranda or 
 other writings of Prince Albert are full of a curious inter- 
 est as showing the way in which a calm, intellectual, and 
 earnest man could approach some of tlie burning questions 
 of the day with the belief apparently that tlie great antag- 
 onisms of system and of opposing national forces could be 
 argued into moderation and persuaded into compromise. 
 In Prince Albert there were two tendencies counteracthig 
 each other. His natural sympathies were manifestly with 
 the authority of thrones. His education taught him that 
 thrones can only exist by virtue of their occupants recog- 
 nizing the fact that they do not exist of their own author- 
 ity, and taking care that they do not become unsuited to 
 tlie time. The influence of Prince Albert would, there- 
 fore, be something very ditt'erent from the impulses and 
 desires of Lord Palmerston. It is hardly to be doubted 
 tliat Palmerston sometimes acted ux)on this conviction. 
 He thought lie understood better than others not only 
 tlie tendencies of events in foreign politics, but also the 
 tendencies of English public opinion with regard to them. 
 
PALMEBSTON, 
 
 375 
 
 He knew well that so long as he had, public opinion with 
 him, no influence could long prevail against him. ITis 
 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 gen- 
 eration, or even a few years. But he was an almost infal- 
 lible guide as to what a majorit}^ of the English people 
 were likely to say if asked at the particular moment when 
 any question Avas under dispute. Palmerston never really 
 guided, but always followed, the English public, even hi 
 foreign affairs. He was, it seems almost needless to say, 
 an incomparably better judge of the direction 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 dictated by the con- 
 viction that he had the general force of that sentiment 
 to sustain him in case his mode of conducting the busi- 
 ness of the Foreign Office should ever be called into 
 account. 
 
 A time came Avhen it was called to account. The Queen 
 and tlie 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 attention of the For- 
 eign Secretary to the fact that his office was constitu- 
 tionally 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 approved of this arrangement, only 
 suggesting — and the suggestion is of some moment in con- 
 sidering the defence of his conduct afterward 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 arrival. 
 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 inijoatient 
 of any delay which seemed to him superfluous. Prince 
 
376 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Albert was slow, deliberate, reflective, and methodical. 
 Lord Palmerston 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. However, 
 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 complain that the 
 new arrangement was not carried out. Things were go- 
 ing on, she thought, in just the old way. Lord Palmer- 
 ston dealt as before with foreign courts according to what 
 seeriied 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 undone. The 
 Prince, at her Majesty's request, wrote to Lord John Rus- 
 sell, complaining strongly of the conduct of Lord Palmer- 
 ston. The letter declared that Lord Palmerston had 
 failed in his duty toward her, " and not from oversight 
 or negligence, but upon principle, 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 before 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 ap- 
 pears to have felt that she could no longer refrain ; 
 and, accordingly, the folloAving important memoran- 
 dum was addressed by her ^fajesty to the Prime- 
 minister. It is well Avorth quoting in full, partly be- 
 cause it became a subject of much interest and con- 
 troversy afterward, and partly because of the tone of 
 peculiar sternness, rare indeed from a sovereign to a 
 minister in our times,, in wliich its instructions are 
 conveyed. 
 
PALMERSTON. 
 
 377 
 
 Osborne, A^ugust 12tli, 1850. 
 
 With reference to the conversation about Lord Palnierston which 
 the Qneen had with Lord Jolm Russell the other day, and Lord 
 Palmerston's disavowal 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 measure, that it be 
 not arbitrarily altered or modified by the minister ; such an act she 
 must consider as failure in sincerity toward the Crown, and justly to 
 be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that 
 minister. She expects to be kept informed of wiiat 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 this letter to Lord Palmerston. 
 
 The tone of the memorandum was severe, but there 
 was notliing unreasonable in its stipulations. On the 
 contrary, it simply prescribed 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 carried on. Custom as well as obvious con- 
 venience demanded such conditions. The Duke of Well- 
 ington declared that when he was Prime-minister no de- 
 spatch left the Foreign Office without his seeing it. No 
 sovereign, one would think, could consent to the respon- 
 sibility 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 func- 
 tions whatever provided by our system of government, 
 and that the sole duty of a monarch is to make a figure in 
 certain state pageantry. It has sometimes been said that 
 the sovereign in a country like England is only the signet- 
 ring of the nation. If this were true, it might be asked 
 with unanswerable force why a veritable signet-ring cost- 
 ing a few pounds, and never requiring to be renewed, 
 would not serve all purposes quite as well, and save ex- 
 pense. But the position of the sovereign is not one of 
 
378 A HlSTOllY OF OUB OWN TIME^, 
 
 meaningless inactivity. The sovereign has a very 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 gi'ows and develops itself 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, sim- 
 ply from personal inclination or conviction, as until a very 
 recent 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 sovereign is always supposed to under- 
 stand the business of the State, to consider its aft'airs, 
 and to offer an opinion, and enforce it by argument, 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 sovereign 
 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 ques- 
 tion every document he laid on the table. 
 
 In the principles which she laid down, therefore, 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 witli what emotions Lord 
 l^almerston must have received it. lie Avas a proud, self- 
 confident man ; and it came on him just in the moment of 
 
PALMEESTON. 
 
 379 
 
 his greatest triumph. Never before, never smce, did Lord 
 Pahiierston 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 Parliament- 
 ary history did a man of years so advanced accomplish 
 such a feat of eloquence, 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 
 memorandum of the Queen. We know, as a matter of 
 fact, from what he himself afterward said, that he did feel 
 it bitterly. But he kept down his feelings. Whether he 
 w^as right or wrong in the matter of dispute, he undoubt- 
 edly showed admirable self-control and good-temper in his 
 manner of receiving the reprimand. He wrote a friendly 
 and good-humored 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 con- 
 tains." The letter then gave a few lines of explanation 
 about the manner in which delays had arisen in the send- 
 ing of despatches to the Queen, but promising to return 
 to the old practice, and expressing a hope that if the re- 
 turn required an additional clerk or two, the Treasury 
 would be liberal in allowing him that assistance. Noth- 
 ing could be more easy and pleasant. It might have 
 seemed the ease of absolute carelessness. But it was noth- 
 ing of the kind. Lord Palmerston had acted deliberately 
 and with a purpose. He afterward explained why he had 
 not answered the rebuke by resigning his oflSce. " The 
 paper," he said, " was written in anger by a lady as well 
 as by a sovereign, and the difference betw^een a lady and 
 a man could not be forgotten even in the case of the occu- 
 pant 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 attack, 
 and had gained a great and signal victory in the House 
 of Commons and in public opinion ; to have resigned then 
 would been to have given the fruits of victory to antag- 
 onists whom I had defeated, and to have abandoned 
 my political supporters at tiie very moment when by 
 their means I had triumphed." But beyond all that, Lord 
 
380 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Palmerston said that by suddenly resigning " I should have 
 been bringing for decision at the bar of public opinion a per- 
 sonal quarrel between myself and my Sovereign — a step 
 which no subject ought to take if he can possibly 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 condemned ; if the 
 Sovereign should be proved to be in the wrong the mon- 
 archy would suffer." 
 
 It is impossible not to feel a high respect for the man- 
 ner in which, having come to this determination, Lord 
 Palmerston at once acted upon it. As he had resolved 
 not to resent the rebuke, he would not allow any gleam 
 of feeling to creep into his letter which could show that 
 he felt any resentment. Few men could have avoided the 
 temptation to throw into a reply on such an occasion 
 something of the tone of the injured, the unappreciated, 
 the martyr, the wronged one who endures much and will 
 not complain. Lord Palmerston felt instinctively 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. Macaulay observes 
 that Warren Hastings, confident that he knew best and 
 was acting rightly, endured the rebukes of the East India 
 Company with a patience which was sometimes mistaken 
 for the patience of stupidity. It is not unlikely that 
 when the Prime-minister received Lord Palmerston's 
 reply he may have mistaken its patience for the patience 
 of downright levity and indifference. 
 
 Lord Palmerston went a step farther in the way of con- 
 ciliation. He asked for an interview with Prince Albert, 
 and he explained to the Prince in the most emphatic and 
 indignant 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 hi 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 con- 
 venience of the system he had lately been adopting in the 
 business of the Foreign Office. 
 
 So for the hour the matter dropped. Other events in- 
 terfered ; there were many important questions of domestic 
 policy to be attended to ; and for some time Lord Palmer- 
 
PALMERSTON. 
 
 381 
 
 ston's policy and his way of conducting the business of 
 the Foreign Office did not invite any particular attention. 
 But the old question was destined to come up again in 
 more serious form than before. 
 
 The failure of the Hungarian rebellion, through the 
 intervention of Russia, called up a wide and deep feeling 
 of regret and indignation in this country. The English 
 people 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 intervention 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 insurrection, and 
 who represented, in the English mind at least, the cause 
 of Hungary and her national independence, came to Eng- 
 land. 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 aj^plied 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 accordingly received at Southampton, in Birmingham, 
 in London, with an enthusiasm such as no foreigner ex- 
 cept Garibaldi alone has ever drawn in our time from the 
 English people. There was much in Kossuth himself, as 
 well as in his cause, to attract the enthusiasm of popular 
 assemblages. He had a, strikingly handsome face and a 
 stately presence. 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 ad- 
 dressed an English popular audience. In one of his im- 
 prisonments Kossuth had studied the English language, 
 chiefly from the pages of Shakspeare. 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 Eng- 
 lish he spoke was the noblest in its style from Avhich a 
 student could supply his eloquence : Kossuth spoke the 
 English of Shakspeare. He could address a public meet- 
 
382 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 ing for an hour or more with a fluency not inferior, seem- 
 ingly, to that of Gladstone, with a measured dignity and 
 well-restrained force that were not unworthy of Bright, 
 and in curiously expressive, stately, powerful, pathetic 
 English, which sounded as if it belonged to a higher time 
 and to loftier interests than ours. Viewed as a mere per- 
 formance, the achievement of Kossuth was unique. It 
 may well be imagined what the effect was on a popular 
 audience, when such eloquence was poured forth in glow- 
 ing eulogy of a cause with which they sympathized, and 
 in denunciation of enemies and princi^jles 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 orations. 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-ftle of Hungary's champions as " unnamed demigods." 
 He prefaced a denunciation of the Papal policy by an im- 
 passioned 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 international 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 another for the purpose of putting down revolu- 
 tion, 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 unjustifiable intervention. As a principle this 
 is nothing more than some of the ablest and most thought- 
 ful Englishmen had advocated before and liave advocated 
 since. But in Kossuth's mind, and in the understanding 
 of those who heard him, it meant that England ought to 
 declare war against Ilussia or Austria, or both ; the former 
 for having intervened between the Emperor of Austria 
 and the Hungarians, and the latter for having hivited and 
 profited by the intervention. 
 
 The presence of Kossuth and tlie reception he got excited 
 a wild anger and alarm among Austrian statesmen. The 
 
PALMEnSTOm 
 
 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 anger and the fears, of Austria 
 with a contempt which he ook no pains to conceal. Be- 
 fore the Hungarian exile had reached this country, while 
 he was still under the protection of the Sultan of Turkey, 
 and Austria was in Avild 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 
 obscurity ; 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 generally with Kossuth's cause, or with the 
 cause which they understood him to represent ; they were 
 taken with his picturesque appearance and his really 
 wonderful eloquence ; they wanted a new hero, and 
 Kossuth seemed positively cut out to supply the want. 
 The enthusiasm cooled down after awhile, as was indeed 
 inevitable. The time was not far olf when Kossuth was 
 to make vain appeals to almost empty halls, and when the 
 eloquence that once could cram the largest buildings witli 
 excited admirers was to call aloud to solitude. There 
 came a time when Kossuth lived in England 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 mis- 
 took, as many another man in like circumstances has 
 done, the meaning of English popular sympathy. The 
 
884 
 
 A HIlSTOBY OF OUU OWN TIMES, 
 
 English crowds who applauded Kossuth at first meant 
 nothing more than general sympathy with any hero of 
 Continental revolution, and personal 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 thoroughly, 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. Kos- 
 suth was the hero of the hour, the comet of the season. 
 The Austrian 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 displayedo " Kossuth's reception," he 
 wrote to his brother, " must have been gall and worm- 
 wood to the Austrians and to the absolutists generally." 
 Some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, however, became 
 greatly alarmed when it was reported that the Foreign 
 Minister was about to receive a visit from Kossuth in per- 
 son, to thank him for the sympathy and protection which 
 England had accorded to the Hungarian refugees 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 tRought that for the Foreign 
 Secretary to receive a formal visit of thanks from Kos- 
 suth would be regarded by Austria as a recognition by 
 England of the justice of Kossuth's cause, and an expres- 
 sion * of censure against Austria. If Kossuth were re- 
 ceived by Lord Palmerston, the Austrian ambassador, 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 Palm- 
 erston reluctantly consented to appease the alarms of 
 his colleagues by promising to avoid an interview with 
 Kossuth. 
 
 It does not seem to us that there was much dignity in 
 the course taken by the cabinet. Lord Palmerston actually 
 used, and very properly used, all the influence England 
 could command to protect tlie Hungarian refugees in Tur- 
 key. ITe had intimated very distinctly, and with the full 
 approval of England, tliat he would use still stronger 
 measures if necessary to protect at once the Sultan and 
 
PALMt:nSTON. S85 
 
 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. Aus- 
 tria's sensibilities must have been of a peculiar nature 
 indeed, if they could bear Lord Palmerston's very distinct 
 and energetic intervention between her and her intended 
 victim, but could not bear to hear that the rescued vic- 
 tim had paid Lord Palmerston a formal visit of gratitude. 
 At all events, it does not seem as if an English minister 
 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 opinion touching the internal dissen- 
 sions of a foreign state on the representatives of that 
 state or the public. But they are not by any means bound 
 to treat the enemies of every foreip^n state as our enemies. 
 They are not expected to conciliate the friendship of 
 Austria, 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 representative of an established government, 
 and had sought an official interview with Lord Palmer- 
 ston in that capacity, then, indeed, it would have been 
 proper for the English Foreign Secretary to refuse to 
 receive him. Our ministers, with perfect propriety, 
 refused to receive Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell, the emissa- 
 ries of the Southern Confederation, as official representa- 
 tives of any state. But it is absurd to suppose that w^hen 
 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 the Queen of Eng- 
 land, and no representatives 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 
 
 25 
 
386 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 whenever he chose to allow common-sense to resume pos- 
 session 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 recep- 
 tions, but public appointments, to Irish refugees after the 
 outbreak of 1848. 
 
 Lord Palmerston, however, gave way, ahd did not re- 
 ceive the visit from Kossuth. The hoped-for result, that 
 of sparing the sensibilities of the Austrian Government, 
 was not attained. In fact, things turned out a great deal 
 worse than they might have done if the interview between 
 Lord Palmerston and Kossuth 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 influence he had exerted in prevent- 
 ing the surrender of Kossuth to Austria. Lord Palmerston 
 consented to receive these addresses from the hands of 
 deputations at the Foreign Office. The deputations repre- 
 sented certain metropolitan parishes, and were the ex- 
 ponents of markedly Radical opinions. Some of the ad- 
 dresses contained strong language with reference to the 
 Austrian Government and the Austrian Sovereign. Lord 
 Palmerston observed, in his reply, that there were ex- 
 pressions 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 adopted. 
 This was the speech containing a phrase which was iden- 
 tified 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 
 Government much generalship and judgment ; and that 
 " a good deal of judicious bottle-holding was obliged to 
 be brought into play." The phrase "bottle-holding," 
 borrowed from the prize-ring, offended a good many per- 
 sons 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 judicious 
 bottle-holder l^ecame more of a popular favorite than ever. 
 Some of the published reports put this a good deal more 
 
PALMEBSTON. 
 
 387 
 
 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 contained 
 in the addresses. Still, the whole proceeding considerably 
 alarmed some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, and was 
 regarded with distinct displeasure by the Queen and Prince 
 Albert. The Queen specially requested that the matter 
 should be brought before a cabinet council. Lord John 
 Russell, accordingly, laid the whole question before his 
 colleagues, and the general opinion seemed to be that Lord 
 Palmerston had acted with want of caution. No formal 
 resolution was adopted. It was thought that the general 
 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 communicating with 
 her Majesty as to the proceedings of the cabinet council, 
 expressed a hope that " it will have its effect upon Lord 
 Palmerston, to whom Lord John Russell has written urging 
 the necessity of a guarded conduct in the present very 
 critical condition of Europe. " This letter was not written 
 when startling evidence was on its way to show that the 
 irresistible Foreign Secretary had been making a stroke 
 off his own bat again, and a stroke this time of capital im- 
 portance in the general game of European politics. The 
 possible indiscretion of Lord Palmerston's dealings with 
 a deputation or two from Finsbury and Islington became 
 a matter of little interest when the country was called 
 upon to consider the propriety of the Foreign Secretary's 
 dealings with the new ruler of a new state system, with 
 the author of the coiqy d'etat. 
 
 The news of the coup cVetat took England by surprise. 
 A shock went through the whole country. Never, prob- 
 ably, was public 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 carried to success. After awhile, 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 Boulevards of Paris, and lost all sense of their horror. 
 
388 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Some disposed of the whole affair after the satisfactory 
 principle so commonly adopted by English people in 
 judging of foreign affairs, and assumed that the system 
 introduced by Louis Napoleon was a very good sort of 
 thing — for the French. After awhile 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 con- 
 demned it as strongly as nearly all men of genuine enlight- 
 enment and feeling condemned it then and since. The 
 Queen Avas particularly anxious that nothing should be 
 said by the British ambassador to commit us to any ap- 
 proval of what had been done. On December 4th the 
 Queen wrote to Lord John Russell from Osborne, express- 
 ing 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 President. 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 suspending his diplomatic functions. 
 Lord Normanby had, in fact, applied for instructions on 
 this point. Next day Lord Palmerston, as Foreign Secre- 
 tary, 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 de- 
 spatch createda 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 instructed 
 by her Majesty's Government not to make any change in 
 his relations with the French Government, the Minister, 
 M. Turgot, told him that he had heard two days before 
 from Count Walewski, the French ambassador 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 sensa- 
 tion produced among Lord Palmerston's colleagues by 
 this astounding piece of news. The Queen wrote at once 
 to Lord John Russell, asking him if he knew anything 
 
PALMERSTON, 
 
 389 
 
 about the approval which " the French Government pre- 
 tend to have received ; " 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 passive- 
 ness 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 w^ritten to Lord 
 Palmerston, " saying that he presumed there was no truth 
 in the report." The reply of Lord Palmerston was de- 
 layed for what Lord John Russell thought an unreason- 
 able 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 cVetat, Lord 
 Palmerston observed, indeed, that Walewski had probably 
 given to M. Turgot a somewhat highly colored report of 
 what he had said, and that the report had lost nothing in 
 passing from M. Turgot to Lord Normanby ; but the sub- 
 stance of the letter was a full admission that Lord Palmer- 
 ston approved of what had been done, and had expressed 
 his approval to Count Walewski. The letters of explana- 
 tion which the Foreign Minister wrote on the subject, 
 whether to Lord Normanby or to Lord John Russell, were 
 elaborate justifications of the coitp cVetat ; thej wevQ^m 
 fact, exactly such arguments as a minister of Louis Napo- 
 leon might with great propriety address to a foreign 
 Court. They were full of an undisguised and character- 
 istic contempt for any one wlio 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 Rus- 
 sell 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 express- 
 ing approval, of it without the knowledge and against the 
 judgment of the Queen and his colleagues, was politically 
 justifiable. Lord Palmerston simply returned to his defence 
 of Louis Napoleon, and his assertion that the Prince Pres- 
 ident was only anticipating 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 
 
390 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Orleans princes for a military rising against Louis Napo- 
 leon. 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, universally 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 Government 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 un- 
 justifiable in their principle or in their severity; the plot 
 may be of insignificant importance, utterly inadequate to 
 excuse any extraordinary measures. The English Gov- 
 ernment 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 scrupu- 
 lously avoided, lest by any chance the French Government 
 should be led to believe that England approved of what 
 had been done. 
 
 Lord Palmerston endeavored to draw a distinction be- 
 tween the expression of a Foreign Secretary in conversa- 
 tion 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 private life, and that Lord 
 Palmerston never said a word to impress him with the 
 belief that their conversation had that colorless and un- 
 meaning 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 conversa- 
 tion, an unqualified opinion in favor of a stroke of policy 
 of which the British Government, 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 manner, 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 remembered further that the For- 
 eign Secretary who did this had been again and again 
 rebuked for acting on his own responsibility, for saying 
 and doing things which pledged, or seemed to pledge, the 
 
PALMEBSTON. 
 
 391 
 
 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 colleagues had cor- 
 dially sympathized with his views on the occasion of 
 former indiscretions ; and even while admitting that he 
 had been indiscreet, yet acknowledged to themselves that 
 their opinion on the broad question involved was not dif- 
 ferent from his. But even these drew back from any ap- 
 proval of his conduct in regard to the coup cPetat. The 
 almost universal judgment was that he had gone surpris- 
 ingly wrong. ISTot 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 Palmer- 
 ston as a colleague in the Foreign Ofiice, and he signified 
 his decision to Lord Palmerston himself. " While I con- 
 cur," 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 
 eft'ect, I cannot but observe that misunderstandings per- 
 petually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too 
 frequently repeated, have marred the eft'ects which ought 
 to have followed from a sound policy and able administra- 
 tion. I am, therefore, 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 unfortunately, 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 
 Palmerston'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 question to 
 
3^2 
 
 A tH^Tonr OF 6VB OWN TIMES. 
 
 suppose that he would consent to bviry himself m 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 various ranks of 
 aspiring traders and shopkeepers and their wives. Lord 
 Palmerston 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 produced 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 every- 
 where that he had been sacrificed to the monarchical and 
 reactionary influences all over the Continent. The states- 
 men of Europe were under the impression that Lord 
 Palmerston was put out of office as an evidence that Eng- 
 land was about to withdraw from her former attitude of 
 sympathy with the popular movements of the Continent. 
 Lord Palmerston himself, fell under a delusion which 
 seems marvellous in a man possessed of his clear, strong 
 common-sense. He conceived that he had been sacrificed 
 to reactionary intrigue. He wrote to his brother to say 
 that the real ground for his dismissal was a " weak truck- 
 ling to the hostile intrigues of the Orleans family, Austria, 
 Russia, Saxony, and Bavaria, and, in some degree, of the 
 present Prussian Government." " All these parties," he 
 said, " found their respective views and systems of policy 
 thwarted by the course pursued by the British Govern- 
 ment, 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 tlie desire of the Queen 
 to remove me from the Foreign Office." So strongly did 
 the idea prevail that an intrigue of foreign diplomatists 
 had overthrown Pahnerston, that the Russian ambassador, 
 Baron Brinmow, took the very ill-advised step of address- 
 ing to Lord Jolni Russell a disclaimer of any participation 
 in such a proceeding. The Queen made a proper comment 
 
PALMEBSTON. 
 
 393 
 
 on the letter of Baron Brunnovv by describing it as " very 
 presuming," inasmuch as it insinuated the possibility " 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 distrust 
 of Palmerston. Nearly two years before, when the French 
 ambassador was recalled 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, however, that Lord Palmerston's mode 
 of doing business should not be borne by the susceptible 
 French Government with the same good-humor and for- 
 bearance as by his colleagues." At the moment when 
 Lord John Russell resolved on getting rid of Lord Palmer- 
 ston, Prince Albert wrote to him to say that " the sudden 
 termination of your difference with Lord Palmerston has 
 taken us much by surprise, as we were wont to see such 
 differences terminated in his carrying his points, and 
 leaving 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 himself to be 
 in antagonism to the court is of importance both in judg- 
 ing of his career and in estimating the relative strength of 
 forces 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 IVIr. Roebuck, 
 " The most marked person in the Administration, he 
 around whom all the party battles of the Administratiou 
 
394 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 had been fought, whose pohtical existence had been made 
 the pohtical existence of the Government itself, the person 
 on whose being in office tlie Government rested their ex- 
 istence 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 ex- 
 planation. Lord John Russell made a long speech, in 
 which he went into the whole history of the differences 
 between Lord Palmerston 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 had so long been hang- 
 ing 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 failure. Far different, indeed, \\ as the effect it 
 produced from the almost magical influence of that won- 
 derful speech on the " Don Pacifico " 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 already 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 memorandum he said nothing. 
 He did not even attempt to explain how it came about 
 that, having received so distinct and severe an injunction, 
 he had ventured deliberately to disregard it in a matter 
 of the greatest national importance. Some of his ad- 
 mirers were of opinion then, and long after, that the read- 
 ing of the memorandum must have come on him by sur- 
 prise ; that Lord John Russell must have sprung a mine 
 upon him ; and that Palmerston was taken unfairly and 
 at a disadvantage. But it is certain that Lord John Rus- 
 sell gave notice to his late colleague of his intention to 
 read the memorandum of the Queen. Besides, Lord Palm- 
 erston was one of the most ready and self-possessed 
 speakers that ever addressed the House of Connnons. 
 During the very reading of tlie memorandum he could 
 have found time to arrange liis ideas, and to inake out 
 some show of a case for himself. The truth, we believe, 
 
PALMEBSTOm 
 
 895 
 
 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. lie 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 
 convhiced that, even though such discretion involved him 
 for the moment in seeming defeat, it would in the long- 
 run reckon to his credit and his advantage. Lord Bailing, 
 better known as Sir Henry Bulwer, 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 returning 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 accused 
 him 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 prejudices. He did not think a statesman would 
 stand any the worse in the general estimation of the 
 
396 
 
 A IIISTOBY OF OlIB OWN TlMM. 
 
 English public, then, because it was known that he was not 
 admired by Prince Albert. 
 
 But the almost universal opinion of the House of Com- 
 mons 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 Bailing met Mr. Disraeli on the staircase of the 
 Russian Embassy, and Disraeli remarked to him that 
 " there was a Palmerston." 
 
 Lord Palmerston evidently did not think so. The let- 
 ters he wrote to friends immediately after his fall show 
 him as jaunty and full of confl'dence as ever. He was 
 quite satisfied with the way things had gone. He waited 
 calmly for what he called, a few days afterward, "my 
 tit-for-tat with John Russell," which came about, indeed, 
 sooner than even he himself could well have expected. 
 
 We have not hesitated to express our opinion that 
 throughout the whole of this particular dispute Lord 
 Palmerston was in the wrong. He was in the wrong 
 in many, if not most, of the controversies which had pre- 
 ceded it ; that is to say, he was wrong in committing 
 England, as he so often did, to measures which had not 
 had the approval of the Sovereign 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 accused were not such as the English peo- 
 ple 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 iYi general as if this was an offence for which his 
 own countrymen were bound to condemn him too severely. 
 There was a general impression that his influence was 
 exercised on behalf of popular movements abroad ; and an 
 impression nearly 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 cVetat certainly was not popular in England. 
 For a long time it was a subject of general reprehension ; 
 but even at that time men- who condemned the coup 
 
BIB Til OF THE EMPIHE ; BE A TTT OP ' ' THE D URE, ' ' ^97 
 
 cT Stat were not disposed to condemn Lord Palmerston over- 
 much because, acting as usual on a personal impulse, he 
 had in that instance made a mistake. There was even in 
 his error something dashing, showy, and captivating to 
 the general public. He made the influence of England 
 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 Eng- 
 land. Neither in war nor in statesmanship does a man 
 suffer much loss of popularity by occasionally disobeying 
 orders and accomplishing daring feats. Lord Palmerston 
 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," said 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 XXIIL 
 
 BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE ; DEATH OF " THE DUKE." 
 
 The year 1852 was one of profound emotion 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 Continental affairs produces on the 
 mood and policy of England. As the astronomer infers 
 the existence and the attributes of some star his keenest 
 glass will not reveal by the perturbations its neighbor- 
 hood causes to some body of light within his ken, so the 
 student of English history might well discover commo- 
 tion 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 
 
398 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWK TIMES. 
 
 was stirring itself in quite an unusual manner. A mili- 
 tary spirit was exhibiting itself everywhere, not unlike 
 that told of in Shakspeare's " Henry the Fourth." The 
 England of 1852 seems to threaten that "ere this year 
 expires we bear our civil swords and native fire as far as 
 France." At least the civil swords were sharpened in 
 order that the country might be ready for a possible and 
 even an anticipated invasion from France. The Volunteer 
 movement sprang into sudden existence. 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 explained 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 unworthy of 
 Tennyson as a poet ; but they express with unmistakable 
 clearness the popular sentiment of the hour ; the condi- 
 tion of uncertainty, vague alarm, and very general deter- 
 mination to be ready at all events for whatever might 
 come. " Form, form, riflemen, form ! " wrote the Laure- 
 ate ; " 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 explanation. 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 (Tetat, He had arrested, imprisoned, banished, 
 or shot his principal enemies, and had demanded from the 
 French people a Presidency for ten years — a ministry 
 responsible to the executive power — himself alone — and 
 two political Chambers to.be elected by universal suffrage. 
 Nearly five hundred prisoners, untried before any tri- 
 bunal, even that of a drum-head, had been shipped off to 
 Cayenne. The streets of Paris had been soaked in blood. 
 The l^resident instituted a plehlscite^ 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 terrible 
 
BIB TH OF THE EMPIRE ; BE A Til OF ' ' THE D LIKE. " 399 
 
 efficiency on the Boulevards. The first clay of the new 
 year saw the religious ceremony at Notre Dame to cele- 
 brate the acceptance of the ten years' presidency by Louis 
 Napoleon. The same day a decree was published 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 confisca- 
 tion of the property of the Orleans family and restored 
 titles of nobility in France. The birthday of the Emperor 
 Napoleon 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 cer- 
 tainly did not surprise many persons, but which neverthe- 
 less sent a thrill abroad over all parts of Europe. If hos- 
 tile 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 
 invested 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 throughout 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 Wellington died the Moniteur announced that the 
 French people were receiving the Prince President every- 
 where as the Emperor elect, and as the elect of God ; and 
 another French journal published an article hinting, not 
 obscurely, at the invasion and conquest of England as the 
 first great duty of a new Najpoleonic Empire. The Prince 
 President, indeed, in one of the provincial speeches which 
 he delivered just before he was proclaimed Emperor, had 
 talked earnestly of peace. In his famous speech to the 
 Chamber of Commerce of Bordeaux on October 9th, 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 
 
400 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 bitter enemy of the new 
 Empire, believe the word of a Bonaparte, unless when he 
 promises to kill somebody. Such was, indeed, the com- 
 mon 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 pos- 
 sible way revived and reproduced 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 govern- 
 ment 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 personal concern to them. But they could not see with 
 indifference the rise of a new Napoleon to power on the 
 strength of the old Napoleonic legend. The one special 
 characteristic of the Napoleonic principle Avas its hostility 
 to England. The life of the Great Napoleon in its greatest 
 days had been devoted to the one purpose of humiliating 
 England. His plans had been foiled by England. What- 
 ever hands may liave joined in pressing him to the ground, 
 there could be no doubt that he owed his fall principally 
 to England. 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 be- 
 cause he bore the name and represented the principles of 
 the First Napoleon would inherit the hatred to Enghind 
 and the designs against England. Everything else that 
 savored of tlio Napoleonic era had been revived; why 
 should this, its ])rinci])al characteristic, be allowed to lie 
 in the tomb of tlie First Emperor ? The policy of the 
 First Napoleon had lighted up a fire of iiatred between 
 
BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE ; DEATH OF " THE BUKEy 401 
 
 England and France wbicli at one time seemed inextin- 
 guishable. There were many who regarded that interjia- 
 tional hate as something like that of the hostile brotliers 
 in the classic story, the very flames of whose funeral piles 
 refused to mingle in the air ; or like that of the rival Scot- 
 tish families, whose blood, it was said, Avould never com- 
 mingle though poured into one dish. It did not seem 
 possible 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 member 
 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 aBtute Lord Palmerston to the most ignorant of the 
 horse- jockeys and ballet-girls with whom he occasionally 
 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 fatuous, 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 
 constantly talked of his expected accession somehow and 
 some time to the throne of France, and people only smiled 
 pityingly at him. His attempts at Strasburg and Bou- 
 logne had covered him with ridicule and contempt. We 
 cannot remember one authentic account of any English- 
 man of mark at that time having professed to see any 
 evidence of capacity and strength of mind in Prince Louis 
 Napoleon. 
 
 When the coit}^ cVetat came and was successful, 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 combina- 
 tion of steady caution and boundless audacity. What a 
 subtlety of design ; 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 
 
 26 
 
402 
 
 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 haste, no delay, no scruple, no remorse, no fear ! And all 
 this was the Avork 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 family, 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 coiq? cFetat was probably neither planned 
 nor carried to success by the cleverness and energy of 
 Louis Napoleon. Cooler and stronger heads and hands 
 are responsible for the execution at least of that enter- 
 l)rise. 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 associ- 
 ates, 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, con- 
 ception, execution, and all. The idea was formed of a 
 colossal figure of cunning and daring — a Brutus, a Talley- 
 rand, a Philip of Spain, and a Napoleon the First 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 invad- 
 ing England ? 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 otlier 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 himself Avith vague, dreamy sug- 
 gestions of plans that might in this, that, or the other 
 case be advantageously 2)ursued, lie had come to power 
 
BIRTB OF THE EMPIRE; DEATII OF THE DUKE.'" 408 
 
 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 himself 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 aveng- 
 ing 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 defeat. He was attacked 
 with all the bitterness of a not unnatural but very un- 
 restrained animosity in the English press for his conduct 
 in the coicp cPetat ; and no doubt he and his companions 
 were greatly exasperated. The mood of a large portion 
 of the French people was distinctly aggressive. Ashamed 
 to some degree of much that had been done and that they 
 had had to suffer, many Frenchmen were in that state of 
 dissatisfaction 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 his 
 people to the war mood ; and it is not to be believed that 
 he did not occasionally contemplate 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 England 
 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 
 nations. 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 loolcs 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 
 
404 
 
 A IlISTOBT OF OUB OWK TIMES. 
 
 public opinion all over Europe specially credited Louis 
 Napoleon when he began his imperial reign. One was a 
 war with Russia. Anotlier was a war with Austria. A 
 third was a war with Prussia. A fourth was the annex- 
 ation of Belgium. The fifth was the invasion of England. 
 Three of these projects Vk^ere carried out. The fourth we 
 know was in contemplation. Our combination with 
 France in the first project probably put all serious 
 thought of the fifth out of the head of the French Em- 
 peror. 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 assurances of Louis Napoleon that 
 he desired 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 circum- 
 stances 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, icrbi et orbi. 
 
 Therefore we do not look upon the mood of England in 
 1852 as one of idle and baseless panic. The same feeling 
 broke into life again in 1859, when the Emperor of the 
 French suddenly announced his determination to go to 
 war with Austria. It was in this latter period, indeed, 
 that the Volunteer movement became a great national 
 organization, and that the Laureate did his best to rouse 
 it into activity in the verses of hardly doubtful merit to 
 which we have already referred. But in 1852 the begin- 
 ning 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 particu- 
 larly x>roud of at that time. It had fallen into decay, and 
 almost into disorganization. Notliing could have been a 
 more pro[)er work for any Government then its restora- 
 tion to efficiency and respectability. Nothing, too, could 
 have been more timely than a measure to make it efficient 
 in view of tlie altered condition of European affairs and the 
 increased diuigcr of disturbance at home and abroad. 
 We had on our hands at the time, too, one of our little wars 
 
BIRTH OF THE mPlBE ; DEATB OF THE BVKE:' 405 
 
 — a Caff re war, which was protracted to a vexatious length, 
 and which was not without serious miUtary difficulty. It 
 began in the December of 1850, and was not completely 
 disposed of before the early part 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 characteristic 
 of Lord John Russell's Government that it attempted so 
 much legislation, not because some particular scheme com- 
 mended itself 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 better at the moment than the first scheme that 
 came to hand. Lord John Russell, accordingly, intro- 
 duced a Militia Bill, which was in the highest degree in- 
 adequate and unsatisfactory. The principal peculiarity 
 of it was that it proposed to substitute a local militia for 
 the regular force that had been in existence. Lord Palm- 
 erston 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 Palm- 
 erston began his speech, he probably intended 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 thor- 
 oughly 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 substitute the word " regular " for the word " local " 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 wenC with Palmer- 
 ston ; the Protectionists followed him as well ; and the 
 result was that 136 votes were given for the amendment, 
 and only 125 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 surprise. Lord 
 
406 
 
 A MisTonr 0^ oirn own times. 
 
 Palmerston had not himself expected any such result 
 from his resolution. There was no reason why the Govern- 
 ment should not have amended their bill on the basis of 
 the resolution passed by the House. The country wanted 
 a scheme of efficient defence, and the Government were 
 only called upon to make their scheme efficient. But 
 Lord John Russell was well aware that his Administra- 
 tion 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 itself, it 
 had been only a Government on sufferance. Ministers 
 who assume office in that stop-gap way seldom retain it . 
 long in England. The Gladstone Government illustrated 
 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 Palm- 
 erston, " 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-f or-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 w^fs compelled to leave the Foreign Office by 
 Lord John Russell. The same influence, oddly enough, 
 was the indirect 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 
 
BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE ; DEATH OF THE B UKE:' 407 
 
 how the mfluence 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 system 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 sihps 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 unex- 
 pected collapse in which the nation 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 may be 
 said, had succeeded 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 prop- 
 position. Nor had Palmerston in any case much inclina- 
 tion to serve under Derby, of whose political intelligence 
 he thought poorly, aiid whom he regarded principally as 
 what he called "a flashy speaker." Lord Derby tried 
 various combinations in vain, and at last had to experi- 
 ment with a cabinet of undiluted Protectionists. He had 
 to take office, not because he wanted it, or because any 
 one in particular wanted him, but simply and solely be- 
 cause there was no one else who could undertake the task. 
 He formed a cabinet to carry on the business of the coun- 
 try for the moment, and until it should be convenient to 
 have a general election, when he fondly hoped that by 
 some inexplicable process 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 Palmerston described it as con- 
 taining 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 gentlemen. One of them, Mr. 
 Ilerries, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in a short- 
 
408 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUll OWN TIMES. 
 
 lived Government, that of Lord Goderich, in 1827 ; and he 
 had held the office of Secretary of War for a few months 
 some time later. He was forgotten by the existing gen- 
 eration of politicians, and the general public only knew 
 that he was still living when they heard of his accession 
 to Lord Derby's Government. 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 posi- 
 tion of chairman 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 Gov- 
 ernment was remarkable 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 circumstances, 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 
 because there is no one ready to relieve it of the respon- 
 sibility of office. Mr. Disraeli himself, 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 experience of office. Rarely, indeed, 
 is the leadership of the House of Commons undertaken 
 by any one who has not previously held office ; and Mr. 
 Disraeli entered upon leadership and office at the same 
 moment for the first time. He became Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Among 
 the many gifts with which he was accredited by fame, 
 not a single admirer had hitherto dreamed of including a 
 capacity for the mastery of figures. In addition to all 
 the ordinary difficulties of the ministry of a minority, 
 there was, in this instance, the difficulty arising from the 
 obscurity and inexperience of nearly all its members. 
 Facetious persons dubbed the xaew administration the 
 
BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE ; DEATH OF THE DUKE:' 409 
 
 "Who? Who? Ministry." The explanation of this odd 
 nickname was found in a story then hi 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 composition of his cabinet. He was over- 
 heard asking the new Prime-minister in the House of 
 Lords the names of his intended colleagues. The Duke 
 Avas 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 the whole House. As 
 Lord Derby mentioned 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 likely to come into political life again 
 with all its old vigor. The Free-traders began to stand 
 together again the moment Lord Derby gave his unlucky 
 hint. Every week that passed over his head did some- 
 thing to show him the mistake he had made when he 
 hampered himself with any such undertaking as the 
 revival of the Protection question. Some of his colleagues 
 had been unhappily and blunderingly outspoken in their 
 addresses to their constituents seeking for re-election, and 
 had talked as if the restoration of Protection itself 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 hope- 
 lessness 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 project. The Government found 
 
410 
 
 A BisTonr OF oun own times. 
 
 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 Chesham 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 Govern- 
 ment 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 Excheq- 
 uer, when he made his financial statement, accepted the 
 increased prosperity of the few years preceding with an 
 unction which showed that he, at least, had no particular 
 notion of attempting to reverse the policy which had so 
 greatly contributed to its progress. Mr. Disraeli pleased 
 the Peelites and the Liberals much more by his statement 
 than he pleased his chief or many of his followers. His 
 speech, indeed, was very clever. A new financial scheme 
 he could not produce, for he had not had time to make 
 anything like a complete examination of the finances of 
 the country ; but he played very prettily and skilfully 
 with the facts and figures, 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 
 Protectionists 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 uncongenial 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 financial statement 
 to leave things as he found them ; to continue the income- 
 tax for another year, as a x)rovisional arrangement pend- 
 ing that complete re-examination of the financial alfairs of 
 the country to which he intimated that he found himself 
 
BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE; DEATH OF " THE BUKEy 411 
 
 quite equal at the proper time. No one could suggest any- 
 better course ; and the new Chancellor came oft', on the 
 whole, with flying colors. His very difficulties had been 
 a source of advantage to him. He was not expected to 
 produce a financial scheme at such short notice ; and if 
 he was not equal to a financier's task, it did not so appear 
 on this first occasion of trial. The Government, on the 
 whole, did not do so badly during this period of their pro- 
 bation. They introduced and carried a Militia Bill, for 
 which they obtained the cordial sup]3ort of Lord Palmer- 
 ston ; and they gave a Constitution to ^N'ew Zealand ; and 
 then, in the beginning of July, the Parliament was pro- 
 rogued and the dissolution took place. The elections 
 were signalized by very serious riots in many parts of the 
 country. In Ireland, particularly, party passions ran 
 high. The landlords and the police were on one side ; the 
 priests and the popular 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. 
 Disraeli — probably had never heard his name, and did not 
 care who led the House of Commons. The question which 
 agitated the Irish constituencies 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 consid- 
 ered 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 supposed the 
 ministry had the slightest intention of proposing to bring 
 back the laws that were repealed in 1846. In fact the 
 time, he declared, 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 evi- 
 
412 
 
 .4 HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 dently spoke in the fulness of their simple faith that Lord 
 Derby was bent on setting up again the once beloved and 
 not yet forgotten protective system. 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 Avould 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 min- 
 istry 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 coun- 
 try would declare for them. They now came back to be 
 a ministry 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 their successors ; and 
 it was evident that a new Government could only be 
 formed by some sort of coalition between the Whigs and 
 the Peelites. 
 
 Among the noteworthy events of the general elections 
 was the return of Macaulay to the House of Commons. 
 Edinburgh elected him in a manner particularly compli- 
 mentary to him and honorable to herself. He was elected 
 without his solicitation, without his putting himself for- 
 ward as a candidate, without his making any profession 
 of faith, or doing any of the things that the most inde- 
 pendent candidate was then expected to do ; and, in fact, 
 in spite of his positive declaration that he would do noth- 
 ing to court election. He had for some years been absent 
 from Parliament. Some difference had arisen between 
 him and certain of his constituents on the subject of the 
 Maynooth grant. Complaints, 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 many of 
 tliose who had supported him. The result of this was, 
 that at the general eleotiou of 1847, Macaulay was left 
 
BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE : DEATH OF " THE BUKE:' 413 
 
 third on the poll at Edinburgh. He felt this deeply. Ho 
 might have easily found some other constituency; but 
 his wounded pride hastened a resolution he had for some 
 time been forming to retire to a life of private literary 
 labor. He therefore remained out of Parliament. In 1 852 
 the movement of Edinburgh toward him was entirely 
 spontaneous. 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 remained in 
 the House of Commons it was as member for Edinburgh. 
 
 On September 14th, 1852, the Duke of Wellington died. 
 His end was singularly peaceful. He fell quietly asleep 
 about a quarter-past three in the afternoon in Walmer 
 Castle, 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. Xo 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 states-craft ; and as 
 an administrator he had made many mistakes. But the 
 trust which the nation had in him as a counsellor was 
 absolutely unlimited. It never entered into the mind of 
 any one to suppose that the Duke of Wellington was 
 actuated in any step he took, or advice he gave, by any 
 feeling but a desire for the good of the State. His loyalty 
 to the Sovereign had something antique and touching in 
 it. There was a blending of personal affection with the 
 devotion of a state servant Avhich lent a certain romantic 
 dignity to the demeanor and character of one who other- 
 wise had but little of the poetical or the sentimental in 
 
414 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 his nature. In the business of poUtics he had but one 
 prevaiUng anxiety, and that was that the Queen's Govern-^ 
 ment 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 carry- 
 ing of it on. This simple fidelity, sometimes rather whim- 
 sically displayed, stood him often in stead of an exalted 
 statesmanship, and enabled him to extricate the Govern- 
 ment 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 unswerv- 
 ing devotion to the national good, that the people of Eng- 
 land admired and revered him. He had not what would 
 be called a lovable temperament, and yet the nation loved 
 him. He was cold and brusque in manner, and seemed 
 in general to have hardly 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 public he had more than once 
 given way to outbursts 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 especially 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 Welling- 
 ton. Of late his form had grown stooped, and he bent 
 over his horse as he rode in the Park or down Whitehall 
 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 carious little cab 
 of his own devising ; but his favorite way of going about 
 London was on the back of his liorse. He was called, 
 excellence^ " the Duke. " The Loudon working-man who 
 looked up as he went to or from his work and caught a 
 
BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE ; DEATH OF THE DITKE:' 4l5 
 
 sight of the bowed figure on the horse, took off his hat and 
 told some passer-by, " There goes the Duke ! " His vic- 
 tories 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 trousers. 
 
 WelUngton belonged so much to the past at the time of 
 his death, that it seems hardly in place here to say any- 
 thing about his character 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 Avinning 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 Napoleon, 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 aj)i3eared to the strong com- 
 mon-sense of the Duke of Wellington as impossible and 
 absurd as they would have looked to the lofty intelligence 
 of Csesar. It can hardly be questioned that in original 
 genius Napoleon far surpassed the Duke of Wellington. 
 But Wellington always 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 con- 
 ceivable conditions, Wellington, pitted against Napoleon, 
 Avas 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 Wellington; and he was never for one 
 moment intoxicated 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 
 
416 
 
 A mSTORT OF OUn OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 liave 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 possi- 
 bility of making a mistake, had consecrated it. No new 
 war under altered conditions tried the flexibility and the 
 endurance of the military genius which had defeated in 
 turn all Napoleon's great marshals 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, Welling- 
 ton was surely that man. He might have found a new 
 contentment in his honors, if he- really cared much about 
 them, in the reflection that he had done nothing for him- 
 self, but all for the State. He did not love war. He had 
 no inclination whatever for it. When Lord John Russell 
 visited Napoleon in Elba, Napoleon asked him whether he 
 thought the Duke of Wellington Avould be able to live 
 thenceforward without the excitement of war. It was 
 l)robably in Napoleon'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 
 Wellington 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 stern duty to be done for his 
 Sovereign and his country, and to be got through as 
 quickly as possible. The difference between the two men 
 cannot be better illustrated. 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 im- 
 pression on history. If that be superior greatness, it 
 would be scarcely possible for any national partiality to 
 chiim an equal ])laco for Wellington. Ikit Englishmen 
 may ])e coiit(nit w itli th(i reflection that their hero saved 
 
BIB TH OF THE EMPIBE ; BE A TII OF ' ' THE D UKE: ' All 
 
 his country, and that Napoleon nearly ruined his. We 
 write this without the slightest inclination to sanction 
 what may be called the British Philistine view of the 
 character of Napoleon. Up to a certain period of his 
 career it seems to us deserving of almost unmingled admi- 
 ration ; 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, steadfast devotion to duty which inspired 
 Wellington always, and which made him seem dignified 
 and great, even in statesmanship for which he was un- 
 fitted, and even when in statesmanship he was acting in 
 a manner that would have made another man seem ridic- 
 ulous rather than respectable. Wellington more nearly 
 ^ resembled Washington than Napoleon. He 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 propor- 
 tions of his personal greatness seem 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 Bona- 
 partes 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 
 Wellington, 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 Wellington 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 admira- 
 tion. On his death it tried to give him such a public 
 
 27 
 
418 
 
 A HISTORY OF OtTR OWN TIMES. 
 
 funeral as hero never had. The pageant was, indeed, a 
 splendid and a gorgeous exliibition. It was not, perhaps, 
 very Avell suited to the temperament and habits of the cold 
 and simple hero to whose honor it was got up. Nor, per- 
 haps, are gorgeous pageants exactly the sort of perform- 
 ance 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 better evidence than page- 
 antry or ceremonial could supply of the esteem in which 
 the living generation held the hero of the last. The name 
 of Wellington had long ceased to represent any hostility 
 of nation to nation. The crowds who filled the streets of 
 London that day had no thought of the kind of sentiment 
 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 Napoleon. The homage to his 
 memory Avas 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 after- 
 ward made some mark in our politics, and whose intellect 
 and debating power seemed at one time to promise 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 order ; and, despite some serious defects of de- 
 livery, he proved to be a debater of the very highest class, 
 especially gifted with the weapons of sarcasm, scorn, and 
 invective. He was a Liberal in the intellectual sens^ ; he 
 was opposed to all restraints on education and on the 
 progress of a career ; but he had a detestation for dem- 
 ocratic 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 town Radical. His opinions were generally rather 
 negative than positive. He did not seem to have any 
 very positive opinions of any kind where politics were 
 concerned. He was governed by a detestation of abstrac- 
 tions and sentimentalities, and " views" of all sorts. An 
 intellectual Don Juan of the political world, he believed 
 
niR TH OF THE EMPIRE ; 1)EA Til OF ' ' THE D UKE. " 419 
 
 with Moliere's hero that two and two make four, and 
 that four and four make eight, and he was impatient 
 of any theory whicli would commend itself to the mind on 
 less rigorous evidence. If contempt for the intellectual 
 weaknesses of an opposing party or doctrine could have 
 made a great politician, Mr. Lowe would have won that 
 name. In politics, however^ criticism is not enough. 
 One must be able to originate, to mould the will of others, 
 to compromise, to lead while seeming to follow, often to 
 follow w^hile seeming to lead. Of gifts like these Mr. 
 Lowe had no share. He never became more than a great 
 Parliamentary critic of the acrid and vitriolic style. 
 
 Almost immediately on the assembling of the new Par- 
 liament, Mr. Villiers 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 indeed made necessary by the 
 errors of which Lord Derby had been guilty, and the pre- 
 posterous vaporings of some of his less responsible fol- 
 lowers. If the resolution had been passed, the Govern- 
 ment must have resigned. Thej^ 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 eulogium 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 acceptance of office 
 under Lord Derby as a not impossible event if once the 
 Derby party could shake themselves quite free of Protec- 
 tion, devised an amendment which afforded them the 
 means of a more or less honorable retreat. This resolu- 
 tion pledged the House to the " policy of unrestricted 
 competition firmly maintained and prudently extended ; " 
 but recorded no panegyric of the legislation of 1846, and 
 consequent condemnation of those who opposed that legis- 
 lation. The amendment 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 
 
420 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 closed. Various commercial and other "interests" did 
 indeed afterwards demur to the application of the princi- 
 ple of unrestricted competition to their peculiar concerns. 
 But they did not plead for Protection. They only con- 
 tended that the Protection they sought for was not, in 
 fact, Protection at all, but Free-trade under peculiar cir- 
 cumstances. The straightforward doctrine of Protection 
 perished of the debate of November, 1852. 
 
 Still, the Government only existed on sufferance. Their 
 tenure of office was somewhat 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 general expectation, that the moment 
 Mr. Disraeli came to set out a genuine financial scheme 
 the fate of the Government would be decided. So the 
 event proved. Mr. Disraeli made a financial statement 
 which showed remarkable capacity for dealing with 
 figures. It was subjected to a far more serious test than 
 his first budget, for that was necessarily a mere stop-gap 
 or makeshift. This was a real budget, altering and recon- 
 structing 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 convinced many even of his strongest opponents 
 that he had the capacity to make a good budget 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 farmers. 
 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 Hogartli's 
 "March to Finchley," between the rival claimants on his 
 attention. He has promised and vowed to the one; but 
 he knows that the slightest mark of civility he offers to 
 her will be fiercely resented by the other. When Mr. 
 Disraeli undertook 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. 
 
MB. GLADSTONE. 
 
 4^1 
 
 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 intro- 
 duced, chiefly with a view to lighten the impost on 
 farmers' profits ; and there was to be a modest reduction 
 of the tea duty. The two points that stood out clear and 
 prominent before the House of Commons were the reduc- 
 tion 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 key-stone of 
 the budget. That reduction created a deficit, which the 
 inhabited house duty had to be doubled in order to supply. 
 The scheme was a complete failure. The farmers did not 
 care much about the concession which had been made in 
 their favor ; those who had to f)ay for it in doubled taxa- 
 tion were bitterly indignant. Mr. Disraeli had exasper- 
 ated the one claimant, and not greatly pleased the other. 
 The Government soon saw how things were likely to go. 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer began to see that he 
 had only a desperate 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 outrcmce. 
 It well suited Mr. Disraeli's peculiar temperament. Dur- 
 ing the whole of his Parliamentary 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 intense. 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 assailed Sir Charles Wood, the late Chan- 
 cellor 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 Avere con- 
 cerned, but which more than once went to the very verge 
 
422 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 business, he has yet 
 to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence 
 is not invective." The House had not heard the conclud- 
 ing 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 Parlia- 
 mentary duel which only knew a truce when at the close 
 of the session of 1876 Mr. Disraeli crossed the threshold 
 of the House of Commons for the last time, thenceforward 
 to take his place among the peers as Lord Beaconsfield. 
 During all the intervening four-and-twenty years these 
 two men were rivals in power and in Parliamentary de- 
 bate 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 acknowl- 
 edge 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 go- 
 ing 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 Osborne, the resig- 
 nation 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-minister ; Lord John Russell 
 took the Foreign Office ; Lord Palmerston became Home 
 Secretary ; Mr. Gladstone was Cliancellor of the Excheq- 
 uer. The public were a good deal surprised that Lord 
 Palmerston had taken such a place as that of Home Sec- 
 retary. His name had been identified with the foreign 
 policy of England, and it was not supposed that lie felt 
 the slightest interest in the ordinary business of the 
 
ME. GLADSTONE, 
 
 423 
 
 Home Department. Palmerston himself explained in a 
 letter to hfs 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 department, 
 and the Home Office deals with the concerns of the coun- 
 try internally, and brings one in contact with one's fel- 
 low-countrymen ; besides which it gives one more influ- 
 ence in regard to the militia and the defences of the coun- 
 try." 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'est pour 
 apprendre ; " " I go to learn." The reader may well sus- 
 pect, however, that it was not only with a view of learn- 
 ing the business of the internal administration and 
 becoming acquainted 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 Government was 
 not, however, centred in Lord Palmerston. The new 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer 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 debater 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 Glad- 
 stone as " a young man of unblemished character and of 
 distinguished Parliamentary talents, the rising hope of 
 those stern^and vmbending Tories who follow reluctantly 
 and mutinously a leader whose experience is indispensable 
 to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions 
 they abhor." The time was not so far away when the 
 
424 
 
 A HISTORY OF OVn OWN TIMES. 
 
 stern and unbending 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 
 illustration that now seem to have been hardly called for. 
 One of the doctrines of the young statesman which Mac- 
 aulay confutes with especial 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 autlior of the 
 disestablishment of the State Cliurch in Ireland. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was by birth a Lancashire man. It is not 
 unworthy of notice that Lancashire gave to the Parlia- 
 ments of recent times their three greatest orators — Mr, 
 Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and the late Lord Derby. Mr. 
 Gladstone was born in Liverpool, and was the son of Sir 
 John Gladstone, a -Scotchman, who founded a great house 
 in the seaport of the Mersey. He entered Parliament 
 when very young as a protege of the Newcastle family, 
 and he soon faithfully attached himself to Sir Robert Peel. 
 His knowledge of finance, his thorough appreciation of the 
 various needs of a nation's commerce and business, 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 
 interval, his whole career may be pronounced one long 
 Parliamentary success. He was from the very first recog- 
 nized as a brilliant debater, and as one who promised to 
 be an orator ; but it was not until after the death of Sir 
 Robert Peel that he proved himself the master of Parlia- 
 mentary eloquence we all now know him to be. It was 
 he who pronounced what may be called the funeral oration 
 upon Peel in the House of Commons ; but, the speech, 
 although undoubtedly inspired by the truest and the 
 deepest feelings, does not seem by any means equal to 
 some of his more recent elforts. There is an appearance 
 
MR, GLADSTONE. 
 
 425 
 
 of elaboration about it which goes far to mar its effect. 
 Perhaps the first really great speech made by Gladstone 
 was the reply 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 
 delivered his first budget, it was regarded as a positive 
 curiosity of financial exposition. It was a performance 
 that belonged to the department of the fine arts. The 
 speech occupied 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 
 except Mr. Gladstone. Each time that he essayed the 
 same task subsequently he accomplished just the same 
 success. Mr. Gladstone's first oratorical qualification was 
 his exquisite voice. Such a voice would make common- 
 place seem interesting, and lend something 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 reaching the ear of 
 the farthest among the audience. 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 never- 
 theless 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 Avords sometimes led him 
 astray. It was often such a fiuency as that of a torrent 
 on which the orator was carried away. Gladstone had to 
 pay for his fluency by being too fluent. He could seldom 
 resist the temptation to shower too many words on his 
 
426 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 subject and his hearers. Sometunes he involved his 
 sentence in parenthesis within parenthesis until the ordi- 
 nary listener began to think extrication an impossibility ; 
 but the orator never failed to unravel all the entangle- 
 ments, and to bring the passage out to a clear and legiti- 
 mate conclusion. There was never any halt or incolier- 
 ency, 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 descrip- 
 tion certainly could not be applied even to Mr. Gladstone's 
 most involved passages; but if some of those were de- 
 scribed as a circumgyration of coherent words, the phrase 
 might be considered germane to the matter. Ilis style 
 was commonly too redundant. It seemed as if it belonged 
 to a certain school of exuberant Italian rhetoric. Yet it 
 was hardly to be called florid. Gladstone 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 characteristic 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 master. 
 
 Often, however, this superb, exuberant rush of words 
 added indescribable strength to the eloquence of the 
 speaker. In passages of indignant remonstrance or denun- 
 ciation, when word followed word, and stroke came down 
 upon stroke, with a wealth of resource that seemed inex- 
 haustible, 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 thinking of what 
 might be said in opposition to the great orator found him- 
 self 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 sul)ject were great or small, he threw his whole soul 
 into it. Once, in addressing a school-boy gathering, he 
 told his young listeners that if a boy ran, he ought always 
 
ME. GLADSTOnK 
 
 427 
 
 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 uttermost strain. 
 
 A distinguished critic once pronounced Mr. Gladstone 
 to be the greatest Parliamentary 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 criticism which posterity never sanctions. 
 The greatest speech, the greatest poem, give the author 
 the highest place, though the effort were but single. 
 Shakspeare would rank beyond Massinger just as he does 
 now, had he written only " The Tempest." We cannot 
 say how many novels, each as good as "Gil Bias," would 
 make La Sage the equal of Cervantes. On this point fame 
 is inexorable. We are not, therefore, inclined to call Mr. 
 Gladstone the greatest English orator of our time when 
 we remember some of the finest speeches of Mr. Bright ; 
 but did we regard Parliamentary speaking as a mere 
 instrument of Parliamentary business and debate, then 
 unquestionably Mr. Gladstone is not only the greatest, but 
 by far the greatest English orator of our time; for he had 
 a richer combination of gifts than any other man we can 
 remember, and he could use them oftenest 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. Perhaps, 
 judged in this way, he never had an equal in the English 
 Parliament. Neither Pitt nor l^ox. ever made so many 
 speeches combining so many great qualities. Chatham 
 was a great actor rather than a great orator. Burke was 
 the greatest political essayist who ever addressed the 
 
428 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR 0]VK TIMES. 
 
 House of Commons. Camiing 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. Glad- 
 stone. 
 
 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 address- 
 ing great public meetings. He loved to look too care- 
 fully at every side of a question, and did not always go 
 so quickly to the heart of it as would suit great popular 
 audiences. 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 addressing popular 
 audiences, he threw away all discrimination, and gave 
 loose to the full force with which, under the excitement 
 of great pressure, he was Avont 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 refine too much, or he did not refine at all. Thus 
 he became accused, and with some reason, of over-refining 
 and all but quibbling in some of his Parliamentary argu- 
 ments ; 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 apolit- 
 ical cause before great meetings of his countrymen with 
 all the passionate blindness of a partisan. The accusa- 
 tions might seem self-contradictory, if we did not remem- 
 ber that they will apply, and with great force and justice, 
 to Burke. Burke cut blocks with a razor, and went on 
 refining to an impatient House of Commons, only eager 
 for its dinner ; and the same Burke threw himself into 
 antagonism to the French Revolution as if he were the 
 wildest of x)artisans ; *as if the question had but one side, 
 and only fools or villains could possibly say it had any 
 other. 
 
MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 429 
 
 Mr. Gladstone grew slowly into Liberal convictions. At 
 the time when he joined the Coalition IMinistry he was 
 still regarded as one who had scarcely left the camp of 
 Toryism, 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 unreasonable 
 in the proi30sition. The first iuipulse toward Liberal prin- 
 ciples was given to his mhid, probably, by his change with 
 his leader from Protection to Free-trade. When a man 
 like Ghxdstone 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 
 endurance in other directions. The whole fabric of belief 
 was built up together. Gladstone's was a mind of that 
 order that sees a principle in everytliing, 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 inquiry 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 Protection 
 became a class interest in England, and how impossible 
 it would have been for it to continue long in existence 
 under an extended 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 became the principal object of a protective duty. 
 But in England the bread on which the poorest 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 harshl}^ on the best of men w^hen it dashed liim down 
 from a height and broke his bones. It would be idle to 
 
430 
 
 A HISTORY OF OITB OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 believe in it was to be guilty of an economic heresy — 
 then it was impossible 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 im- 
 pelled toward Liberal principles at home by seeing what 
 the effects of opposite doctrines had been abroad. He 
 rendered memorable service to the liberal cause of Europe 
 by his eloquent protest against the brutal treatment of 
 Baron Poerio and other Liberals of Naples who were im- 
 prisoned by the Neapolitan king — a protest which Gari- 
 baldi declared to have sounded the first trumpet-call of 
 Italian liberty. In rendering service to Liberalism and 
 to Europe he rendered service also to his own intelligence. 
 He helped to set free from 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 elo- 
 quence, eulogized him as always struggling toward 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 politicians who 
 mistake, as Victor Hugo says, a weather-cock for a flag. 
 With many qualities which seemed hardly suited to a 
 practical politician; Avith a sensitive and eager temper, 
 like that of Canning, and a turn for theological argument 
 that, as a rule. Englishmen do not love in a statesman ; 
 with an impetuosity that often carried him far astray, and 
 a deficiency of those genial social qualities that go so far 
 to make a public success in England, Mr. Gladstone main- 
 tained 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 im- 
 pulsive, and that his intelligence was too restless. He was 
 an essayist, a critic, a Homeric scholar ; a dilettante in 
 art, music, and old china ; he was a theological controver- 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 431 
 
 sialist ; he was a political economist, a financier, a practi- 
 cal administrator whose gifts 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 versatility ; 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 en- 
 tirely ceased to put some faith. The Coalition Ministry 
 was so formed that it was not supposed a man necessarily 
 nailed his colors to any mast when he joined it. More 
 than one of Gladstone's earliest friends and political asso- 
 ciates had a part in it. The ministry might undoubtedly 
 be called an Administration of All the Talents. Except 
 the late Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, it included almost 
 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 constituting one of the 
 elements out of which even a Coalition Ministry might 
 be composed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE EASTERN 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 moment 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 Avar. The new generation were grow- 
 ing 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 wearing of armor and the 
 carrying of weapons in the civil streets. It is not sur- 
 
432 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 prising if it seemed possible to many that the England of 
 the future might regard the instruments and the ways of 
 war Avith the same curious wonder 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 convulsions of the Continent, 
 England had remained undisturbed. When bloody revo- 
 lutions 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 controversy 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 forever out of fashion as a means 
 of settling private controversy in England. Why then 
 should it be unreasonable to believe that the like practice 
 among nations might soon become equally obsolete? 
 
 Such, certainly, was the faith of a great many intelligent 
 persons at the time when the Coalition Ministry was 
 formed. The majority tacitly acquiesced in the belief 
 without thinking much about it. They had never in 
 their time seen England engaged in European war ; and 
 it was natural to assume that what they had never seen 
 they were never likely to see. Any one who retraces 
 attentively the history of English public opinion at that 
 time will easily find evidence enough of a commonly 
 accepted understanding that England had done with great 
 wars. Even then, perhaps, a shrewd observer might have 
 been inclined to conjecture that by the very force of re- 
 action a change would soon set in. Man, said Lord Palm- 
 erston, 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 pliilosophic persons, but wliich never- 
 theless often got at the heart of a question in a rough-and- 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 433 
 
 ready sort of way. In the season of wliicli we are now 
 speaking, it was not, however, tlie common belief that 
 man was by nature a lighting and a quarrelling animal, at 
 least in England. Bad government, the arbitrary power 
 of an aristocracy, the necessity of finding occupation for a 
 standmg 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 nature, 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 Avas the 
 common belief of the year or two after the Great Exhibi- 
 tion — the belief fervently preached by a few and accepted 
 without 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 Ten- 
 nyson'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 convenient way 
 of expressing clearly and precisely the meaning of the 
 crisis which had arisen in Europe. It was strictly the 
 Eastern " 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 Ottoman 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 conqueror ; but he had no 
 capacity or care for the arts of peace. He never thought 
 of assimilating himself to those whom he had conquered, 
 
 28 
 
434 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUll OWN TIMES. 
 
 or them to him. He disdained to learn anything from 
 them ; he did not care whether or no they learned any- 
 thing from him. It has been well remarked, that of all 
 the races who conquered Greeks, the Turks alone learned 
 nothing from their gifted captives. Captive Greece con- 
 quered 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 heretical. In this 
 respect they often contrasted favorably with states that 
 ought to have been able to show them a better example. 
 In truth, the Turk, for the most part, was disposed 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 outburst of fanatical cruelty toward 
 some of the subject-sects horrified Europe, and reminded 
 her that the conqueror who had settled 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 power- 
 ful for a long series of generations, and it seemed for 
 awhile 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 Europe. 
 When he began to decay, and when his aggressive strengtli 
 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 mean time the condition 
 of Europe had greatly changed. No one not actually 
 subject to the Turk was afraid of him any more ; and 
 other States had arisen strong for aggression. The uncer- 
 tainties of these States as to the intentions of their 
 neighbors and each otlier xiroved a better bulwark for the 
 Turks than any warlike strengtli of their own could any 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION, 
 
 435 
 
 longer have furnished. The growth of the great Russian 
 empire was of itself enough to cliange the whole condi- 
 tions of the problem. 
 
 Nothing in our times has been more remarkable than 
 the sudden growth of Russia. The rise of the United 
 States is not so w^onderf ul ; for the men who made the 
 United States were civilized men ; men of our own race 
 who might be expected to nmke a way for themselves 
 anywhere, and wlio were, moreover, put by destiny in 
 possession of a vast and splendid continent having all 
 variety of climate and a limitless productiveness, and 
 where they had no neighbors or rivals to molest them. 
 But Russia was peopled 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 generations ago Russia was literally an 
 inland state. She was shut up in the heart of Eastern 
 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 Russia of his day, and extended her frontier to 
 the sea. He was followed, after a reign or tAvo, by a 
 woman of genius, daring, unscrupulousness, 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 followed the example of 
 Peter the Great, that she extended the Russian frontier 
 in directions which he had not had opportunity to stretch 
 to. By the time her reign was done Russia was one of 
 the Great Powers of Europe, entitled to enter into negotia- 
 tions on a footing of equality with the proudest States 
 of the Continent. Unlike Turkey, Russia had always 
 showed a yearning after the latest developments of 
 science and of civilization. There w^as something even of 
 affectation, provoking the smiles of an older and more 
 ingrained culture, in the efforts persistently made by 
 Russia to put on the garments 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 jDcrsonal habits of herself and of those who 
 surrounded her at court would have seemed too rude and 
 coarse for Esquimaux, and w^hile she was putting do\^^l 
 free opinion at home with a severity worthy only of some 
 
486 
 
 A mSTOBT OF OJJB orJV TIMES, 
 
 mediaeval Asiatic 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 practices of 
 Russia is a familiar subject of satire. But in nations, at 
 least, the homage which imitation pays often wins for 
 half-conscious hypocrisy as much success as earnest and 
 sincere 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 al- 
 liance w^ith England, Austria, Prussia, and other European 
 States of old and advanced civilization. Russia was, dur- 
 ing one part of that great struggle, the leading 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 valuable 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 rebellious Hungarians for her. Russia had 
 already earned the hatred of European Liberals by her 
 share in the partition of Poland and her manner of deal- 
 ing with the Poles. After awhile it grew to be a fixed 
 conviction in the mind of the Liberalism of Western Eu- 
 rope that Russia was the greatest obstacle then existing 
 in civilization to the spread of popular ideas. The Turk 
 was comparatively harmless in that sense. He was well 
 content now, so much had his ancient ambition shrunk 
 and his ancient war spirit gone out, if his strong and rest- 
 less 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 
 
THE EASTEUK QUESTION, 
 
 437 
 
 profoundly religious people. No matter what one may 
 think of their form of faith, no matter how he may some- 
 times observe that religious 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 sub- 
 ject. The Christian populations of Turkey Avere to the 
 Russian sovereigns what the Germans of Schleswig-Hol- 
 stein were to the great German princes of later years, an 
 indirect charge to which they could not, if they would, pro- 
 fess 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 declare his undying resolve to be 
 the protector of the Christian populations of Turkey. 
 Much of this was probably sincere and single-minded on 
 the part of the Russian people and most of the Russian 
 politicians. But the other States of Europe began to sus- 
 pect that mingled up with benign ideas of protecting the 
 Christian populations of Turkey might be a desire to ex- 
 tend 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 com- 
 monly believed that her next object 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 toward that subject. The particular docu- 
 ment which was believed to be a will of Peter the Great 
 enjoined on all succeeding Russian sovereigns never to 
 relax in the extension of their territory northward on the » 
 Baltic and southward on the Black Sea shores, and to 
 encroach as far as possible in the direction of Constanti- 
 nople and the Indies. " To work out this, raise wars con- 
 tinually — at one time against Turkey, at another against 
 Persia ; make dock-yards on the Black Sea ; by degrees 
 make yourselves masters of that sea as well as of the 
 Baltic ; hasten the decay of Persia, and penetrate to the 
 
438 A HISTORr OF OUR OWJST TIMES. 
 
 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 know now that the 
 alleged will was not genuine ; but there could be little 
 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 defects 
 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 move- 
 ment that threatened in any way to interfere with the 
 highway to India ; still more with her peaceful and secure 
 possession 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 manner 
 of collision Avith the interests of England in the East. 
 The days of Turkey's interfering 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 something like a natural an- 
 tagonism between England and Russia in the East. The 
 Russians were extending their frontier toward that of our 
 Indian empire. They were showing in that quarter the 
 same mixture of craft and audacity which had stood them 
 in good stead in various parts of Europe. Our officers 
 and diplomatic emissaries reported that they were con- 
 tinually confronted by the evidences of Russian intrigue 
 in Central Asia. We have already seen how much in- 
 fluence 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 hob- 
 goblin, bewildering the minds of public servants, and 
 making even statesmen occasionally seem like affiriglited 
 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 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 439 
 
 deal in determining the attitude of the English people 
 toward both Turkey and Russia. It was in great measure 
 out of these alarms that there grew up among certain 
 statesmen and classes in this country the conviction that 
 the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish enixjire 
 was part of the national duty of England. 
 
 It is not too much, therefore, to say that the States of Eu- 
 rope 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 encountering 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 wjth Turkey ; England, 
 by reason of her Asiatic possessions, was kept in just the 
 same state of antagonism to Russia. The position of Eng- 
 land was trying and difficult. She felt herself compelled, 
 by the seeming necessity of her national interests, to 
 maintain the existence of a Power which on its own merits 
 stood condemned, and for which, as a Power, no English 
 statesman ever cared to say a Avord. 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 mission and her duty to protect the suffering 
 Christians of Turl^ey. 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 interests. One inconvenient result of this condition 
 of things was that here, among English people, there was 
 always a wide difference of opinion as to the national 
 policy with regard 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 be- 
 cause of any fancied danger that might come tons from its 
 fall. It w\as the simple duty of England, they insisted, 
 to be just and fear not. In private life, they contended, 
 Ave should all abhor a man who assisted a ruffian to live 
 in a house Avhich liejiad 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 be- 
 come the owner of the premises. The duty, they insisted, 
 
440 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 
 national policy. We are not concerned in discussing this 
 question just now; we are merely acknowledging a fact 
 which came to be of material consequence Avhen 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 remarkable 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 vacillat- 
 ing 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 temperament 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 character of 
 a Charles the Bold or a Coeur de Lion. We cannot date 
 the ways and characters of Nicholas's family from the 
 years of Peter the Great. We must, for tolerably obvious 
 reasons, be content to deduce their origin from the reign 
 of Catherine II. The extraordinary and almost unpar- 
 alleled conditions 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 mad- 
 ness, or something very like it, among tlie 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 Eng- 
 land. 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 
 
TliJi iJASfJSm QtTSSTtON. 
 
 441 
 
 anxious to keep on terms of cordial friendship with Eng- 
 land ; 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 predecessor 
 had been in close alliance with England ; 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 consult for their own 
 interests and the peace of the world by making the 
 appropriation a matter of joint arrangement. 
 
 We do not often in history find a great despot explain- 
 iug 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 
 repeated 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 1844, 
 for the second time, Nicholas had several conversations 
 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 imminent. When he 
 returned to Russia, he had a memorandum drawn up by 
 Count Nesselrode, his Chancellor, embodying the views 
 which, according to Nicholas's impressions, were enter- 
 tained alike by him and by the British statesmen with 
 whom he had been conversing. Mr. Kinglake says that 
 he sent this document to England with the view of cover- 
 ing 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 statesmen 
 did not give Nicholas any encouragement, or at least that 
 they did not intend to do so ; but it seems clear to us that 
 he believed they had done so. The memorandum drawn 
 up by Count Nesselrode is much more like a formal re- 
 minder or record of a general and oral engagement than 
 a withdrawal from a proposal Avhich was evidently not 
 likely to be accepted. The memorandum set forth that 
 Russia and England were alike penetrated by the convic- 
 
442 
 
 A iiisTonr op que oivjs' tuies. 
 
 tion that it was for their common interest that the Otto- 
 man empire should maintain itself in its existing independ- 
 ence 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 engagements ; and the memorandum insisted 
 strongly that while she kept up this practice it Avas im- 
 possible for her integrity to be secure ; 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 toward 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 Avill be arranged in 
 a conciliatory manner, without any conflict resulting from 
 them." The memorandum spoke of the imperative neces- 
 sity 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 them- 
 selves the fact that the Ottoman empire contained within 
 itself many elements of dissolution, and that unforeseen 
 events might at any time hasten its fall. " In the uncer- 
 tainty 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 EngUsh Government had always been 
 in possession of the views of Russia in regard to Turkey. 
 It seems to us evident that the Emperor of Russia really 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION, 
 
 443 
 
 believed that his views were shared by English statesmen. 
 The mere fact that his memorandum was received and 
 retained in the English Foreign Office miglit 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, be- 
 tween 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 Nich- 
 olas without saying something very distinct to show that 
 they were not admitting or accepting any combination or 
 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 remarka- 
 ble 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 understood 
 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 ^ind otpourpcm^lo^s 
 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 em- 
 phatic or too precise in conveying to the Emperor of Russia 
 our determination to have nothing to do with any such 
 conspiracy. 
 
 Time w^ent on, and the Emperor thought he saw an 
 occasion for still more clearly explaining his plans and 
 for reviving the supposed understanding with England. 
 Lord Aberdeen came into office as Prime-minister of this 
 country — Lord Aberdeen, who was Foreign Secretary 
 when Nicholas was in England in 1844. On January 9th, 
 
444 
 
 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 manner about the future 
 of Turkey, and the arrangements it might be necessary for 
 England and Russia to make regarding it. The conversa- 
 tion was renewed again and again afterward. Few con-^ 
 versations 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 empire 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 Em- 
 peror, " a sick man — a very sick man ; it will be a great 
 misfortune if one of these days he should slip away from us 
 before the necessary arrangements have been made." The 
 conversations all tended toward the one purpose. The 
 Emperor urged that England and Russia ought to make 
 arrangements beforehand as to the inheritance of the 
 Ottoman in Europe — before what he regarded as the 
 approaching and inevitable 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 reconstruction of Greece in the form 
 of a Byzantine 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 independent 
 States ; that is to say, independent States, such as he 
 considered the Danubian Principalities then to be, 
 " under my protection." If the reorganization of South- 
 eastern Europe made it seem necessary to England that 
 she should take possession of Egypt, the Emperor said he 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 445 
 
 should offer no objection. 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 con- 
 signed to formal treaties ; he only wished for such an 
 understanding as might be come to among gentlemen, as 
 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 understand- 
 ing 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 
 Turkey whose rights he was called upon to watch over, 
 and he remarked — the remark is of significance — that the 
 right of watching over them was secured to him by treaty. 
 
 The Emperor was evidently under the impression that 
 the interests of England and of Russia were united in this 
 proposed transaction. He had no idea of anything but 
 the most perfect frankness, so far as Ave 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 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 anything 
 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 
 ideal of Western honor was as yet new to Russia, and it 
 had not quite got possession of the mind of Mcholas. 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 cer- 
 tain sense to his simplicity. But the English Govern- 
 ment never, after the disclosure of Sir Hamilton Seymour,, 
 put any faith in Mcholas. They regarded him as noth- 
 ing better than a plotter. They did not, probably, even 
 make allowance enough for the degree of religious or 
 
446 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUll OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 if we find a very 
 high degree of fanatical and sincere fervor in company 
 witli a crafty selfishness. The English Government and 
 most of the English people ever after looked on Nicholas 
 as a determined plotter and plunderer, who was not to be 
 made an associate in any engagement. On the other 
 hand, Nicholas was as much disax)pointed 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 hurrying off to Bow Street to tell the whole story. 
 
 The English minister and tlie English Government 
 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 succeed to any of the pos- 
 sessions 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 public at that time. They were, 
 in fact, not made publicly known for more than a year 
 after. But Nicholas had the dissatisfaction of knowing 
 that her Majesty's ministers were now in possession of 
 his designs. He had the additional discomfort of believ- 
 ing that while he had shown his hand to them, they had 
 contrived to keep whatever designs of their own they 
 were preparing a complete secret from him. One un- 
 fortunate admission, the significance of which will be 
 seen hereafter, was made on the part of the English 
 Government 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 9th, 1853, he wound up 
 with the words, "The more the Turkish Government 
 
THE EASTJEUN QV^SftOn. 
 
 U7 
 
 adopts the rules; of impartial law and equal administra- 
 tion, the less will tlie 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 history 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 toward war ; but there were 
 great forces moving toward antagonism in the South-east 
 of Europe that must, in any case, have come into collision. 
 Russia, with her ambitions, .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 
 somewhat critical time we are not under any necessity to 
 persuade ourselves that Russia was actuated in the move- ' 
 raents 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 patriotic English sentiment, that in 
 standing up for the populations so closely afiined to her v. 
 in race and religion, Russia was acting very much as Eng- 
 land would have acted under similar circumstances. If 
 we can imagine a number of English and Christian popula- 
 tions under the sway of some Asiatic despot on the fron- 
 tiers of our Indian empire, we shall admit that it is likely 
 the sentiments of all Englishmen in India would be ex- 
 tremely sensitive on their behalf, and that it would not 
 be difiicult to get us to believe that we were called upon 
 to interfere for their protection. 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 Hamilton Seymour, and for awhile 
 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 disap- 
 
448 
 
 A HISTOnr OF OVU OTFiV TUTEQ, 
 
 pointed when he found that England would not go with 
 him ; and his calculations were put out by the discover3\ 
 He therefore saw himself compelled to act with a certain 
 moderation wliile feeling his way to some other mode of 
 attack. But the natural forces which were in operation 
 did not depend on the will of any empire or government 
 for their tendency. Mcholas would have had to move in 
 any case. Tliere is really no such thing in modern poli- 
 tics as a genuine autocrat. Nicholas of Eussia could no 
 more afford to overlook the evidences of popular and 
 national feeling among his people than an English sover- 
 eign could. He was a despot by virtue of the national 
 will which he embodied. The national will was in decided 
 antagonism to the tendencies of the Ottoman Power in 
 Europe ; and afterward to the policy which the English 
 Government felt themselves compelied 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 protection. France had never taken our views as 
 to the necessity of maintaining the Ottoman 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 making in regard to 
 the Holy Places. There was, unquestionably, downright 
 religious fanaticism 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 minis- 
 ters really concerned itself much about the Latin monks, 
 except in so far as political purposes might be subserved 
 by paying some attention to them. But it happened some- 
 what unfortunately tliat the French Government began 
 to be unusually active in pusliing the Latin claims just 
 then. The whole dispute on which the fortunes of Europe 
 seemed for awhile to depenrl was of a strangely mediaeval 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION, 
 
 449 
 
 character. The Holy Places to which the Latins raised 
 a claim were the great Church in Bethlehem ; the Sanctu- 
 ary 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, truth- 
 ful, 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 Pales- 
 tine, and of the monks of the Latin Church who took on 
 themselves the care of the sacred monuments and memo- 
 rials. But the Greek Church afterward 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 firman might affect the treaties 
 of his predecessors ; 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. Dis- 
 putes were always arising, and of course these were aggra- 
 vated by the fact that France was supposed to be concerned 
 in the protection of one set of disputants and Russia in 
 that of another. The French and the Russian Govern- 
 ments 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 respect- 
 ively 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 superfluously 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 symbol of a religious inheritance 
 to the monastic disputants, and of political power to the 
 diplomatists. 
 
 It was France which first stirred the controversy in 
 
 29 
 
450 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 perceiving that the ambassador of France at 
 Constantinople was the first to disturb the statics 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 political 
 action on the part of France those quarrels would never 
 have troubled the relations of friendly Powers." Lord 
 John Russell also complained that the French ambassador 
 was the first to speak of having recourse to force, and to 
 threaten the intervention of a French fleet. " I regret to 
 say," the despatch continued, "that this evil example has 
 been partly followed by Russia." The French Govern- 
 ment were, indeed, unusually 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 occupation of Jerusalem, " when," 
 as he significantly 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 procuring himself to be installed 
 as Emperor, and he was very anxious to distract the 
 attention of Frenchmen from domestic politics to some 
 showy and startling policy abroad. He was in quest of a 
 policy of adventure. This controversy between the 
 Church of the East and the Church of the West tempted 
 him into activity as one that seemed likely enough to give 
 him an opportunity of displaying the power of France 
 and of the new system without 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 restless 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 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION, 
 
 451 
 
 that the time had come to divide tlie property of the sick 
 man, and he was not likely to remain long witliout an 
 opportunity of quarrelling 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 subse- 
 quent complications in the East came as well, was said to 
 be found in the clause of the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji. 
 During the negotiations for peace that took place in Vienna 
 while the Crimean War was yet going on, the assembled 
 plenipotentiaries declared that the whole dispute was 
 owing to a misinterpretation of a clause in this unfortu- 
 nate treaty. In a time much nearer to our own, the dis- 
 cussion 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, perhaps, give an uninitiated 
 reader any very exalted opinion of tlie utility and beauty 
 of diplomatic 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 defini- 
 tion of the limits of the rights of the separate States as 
 laid down in the Constitution ; the Crimean War was ap- 
 parently 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 considered 
 greater than that of the famous disputed words which 
 provoked the censure of the elansenists 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 
 victorious. Turkey was beaten to her knees. She had 
 to give up Azof and Taganrog to Russia, and to declare 
 the Crimea independent 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 province of Catherine's empire. 
 The treaty of Kainardji, as it is usually called, was that 
 
452 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 ex- 
 istence of the Turkish empire. The treaty hore date 
 July 10th, 1774; and it was made, so to speak, in the 
 tent of the victor. The seventh clause declared that the 
 Sublime Porte promised " to protect constantly the Chris- 
 tian 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 article, as in favor of those who officiate 
 therein, promising to take such representations into due 
 consideration as being made by a confidential functionary 
 of a neighboring and sincerely friendly Power." Not much 
 possibility of misunderstanding about these words, one 
 might feel inclined to say. We turn then to the four- 
 teenth article alluded to, in order to discover if in its 
 wording lies the perplexity 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 damage." 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 difference 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 worshippers in 
 one particular church, the same right extended so far as 
 to cover all the worshippers of the same denomination in 
 every part of the Ottoman dominions. The great object 
 of Russia throughout all the negotiations that preceded 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 453 
 
 the Crimean War was to obtain from the Porte an ad- 
 mission of the existence of such a protectorate. Such an 
 acknowledgment 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 Sultan 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 behalf as constituting a protectorate far more power- 
 ful 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 consented 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. Gladstone, 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 interpretation is obviously erroneous which he 
 has deliberately and often declared to be accurate. 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 protect 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 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 engagement? Because 
 he has been defeated by Russia and compelled to accept 
 terms of peace ; and one of the conditions on which he is 
 admitted to peace is hi§ making this engagement. How 
 
454 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 does he make the engagement ? 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 
 representation 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 argument; 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 history will accept. Lord John 
 Russell, as we have seen, made a somewhat unlucky 
 admission that the claims of Russia to protectorate were 
 " prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty." But this 
 admission seems rather to have been the result of inad- 
 vertence or heedlessness, than of any deliberate intention 
 to recognize the particular claim involved. The admission 
 was afterward made the occasion of many a severe attack 
 upon Lord John Russell by Mr. Disraeli and other leading 
 members of the Opposition. Assuredly, Lord John Rus- 
 selPs admission, if it is really to be regarded as such, was 
 not endorsed by the English Government. Whenever we 
 find Russia putting the claim into plain words, we find 
 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 embodying 
 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 millions 
 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 independ- 
 ence would dwindle into vassalage. Diplomacy, there- 
 fore, was powerless to do good during all the protracted 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTlOlSt. 
 
 455 
 
 negotiations that set in, for the phiin reason that the only 
 object of the Emperor of Russia in entering upon negoti- 
 ation at all was one which the other European Powers 
 regarded as absolutely inadmissible. 
 
 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 Mentschikoft', a 
 man 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 
 insuring their rejection. If the envoy fairly represented 
 the sovereign, the demands must have been* so conveyed 
 with the deliberate intention of immediately and irresist- 
 ibly driving the Turks to reject every proposition coming 
 from such a negotiator. Mentschikoft brought his pro- 
 posals 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 head and told 
 her to sign at once, or else he would pull the trigger. 
 Turkey refused, and Prince Mentschikoff 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. 
 
 Di^Dlomacy, however, did not give in even then. The 
 Emperor announced that he had occupied the principali- 
 ties 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 Avould not 
 concede. The English Government advised the Porte not 
 to treat the occupation as an act of war, although fully 
 admitting that it was strictly a casus hell% 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 unjustifiable language she had 
 employed toward us when we seized possession of mate- 
 rial guarantees from the Greek Government in the har- 
 bor of the Piraeus. In our act, however, there was less of 
 that which constitutes war than in the arbitrary conduct 
 
456 A mSTORT OF OVn OWN TIMJSS. 
 
 of Russia. Greece did not declare tliat 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 nothing 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 declared intolerable ; its principle was absohitely re- 
 pudiated, and any overt act on the i^art of Russia must 
 therefore have had for its object to compel Turkey to submit 
 to a demand which she Avould yield to force alone. This is, 
 of course, in the very spirit of war ; and if Turkey had 
 been a stronger Power, she Avould never have dreamed of 
 meeting it in any other way than by an armed resistance. 
 She was, however, strongly advised by England and other 
 Powers to adopt a moderate course ; and, in fact, through- 
 out the whole of the negotiations she showed a remark- 
 able 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 con- 
 cocted which Russia at once offered to accept. The four 
 great Powers who were carrying on the business of medi- 
 ation 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 Stratford de Red- 
 cliffe 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 conces- 
 sion to Russia of all that she specially desired to have, and 
 all that Europe was unwilling 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 sucii a note could at 
 some future time have been brought out in triumph by 
 Russia as an overwhelming evidence of the European 
 recognition of such a protectorate. 
 
 Let us make tliis a little more plain. Suppose the 
 
THE EASTERN QUESTION. 
 
 457 
 
 question at issue were as to the payment of a tribute 
 claimed by one prince from another. The one had been 
 always insisting that tlie other was his vassal, bound to 
 pay him tribute ; the other always repudiated the claim in 
 principle. This was the subject of dispute. After awhile 
 the question 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 arbitra- 
 tors 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 impartial 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 ambiguous 
 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, acting under the 
 advice of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our ambassador to 
 Constantinople, who had returned to his post after a long 
 absence, declined to accept the Vienna note unless Avith 
 considerable modifications. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe 
 showed great acuteness and force of character throughout 
 all these negotiations. A reader of Mr. Kinglake's history 
 is sometimes apt to become nauseated 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 describing the 
 all-comx^elling movements of some divinity or pro\ddence. 
 A devoted imperial historian would have made himself 
 
458 
 
 A Ills TORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ridiculous by writing of the great Napoleon at the height 
 of his power in language of such inflated mysticism as 
 this educated Englishman has allowed himself to employ 
 when describing the manner in which our ambassador to 
 Constantinople did his duty during the days before the 
 Crimean War. But the extraordinary errors of taste and 
 good-sense into which Mr. Kinglake occasionally descends 
 cannot prevent us from doing justice to the keen judg- 
 ment and the inflexible will which Lord Stratford dis- 
 played 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 engaged 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 un- 
 conscious treachery. They declared that unless certain 
 modifications were introduced they would not accept the 
 note. The reader will at first think, perhaps, that some 
 of these modifications Avere mere splittings of hairs, and 
 diplomatic, worse even than lawyer-like, quibbles. But, 
 in truth, the alterations demanded were of the greatest 
 importance 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 afterward. 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 the Emperor of Russia, 
 could not but be understood as recognizing the interpre- 
 tation of the Treaty of Kainardji on which Russia has 
 always insisted. The Porte, therefore, proposed to strike 
 out these words and substitute 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 protector- 
 ate 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 ^ASTEBN QUJBSTIOjST, 
 
 459 
 
 The Russian Government refused to accept the modifica- 
 tions ; and in arguing against tliem, the Russian minister, 
 Count Nesseh-ode, made it clear to the English Govern- 
 ment that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was right when he 
 held the note to be full of weakness and of error. For 
 the Russian 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 ai)propriate : the 
 AVestern Powers had nearly been caught in a trap. 
 
 From that time all hopes of peace were over. There 
 were, to be sure, other negotiations still. A ghastly sem- 
 blance of faith in the possibility of a peaceful arrange- 
 ment was kept up for awhile 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 describe them. 'Not many persons put any faith 
 or even professed any interest in them. They were con- 
 ducted amidst the most energetic preparations for war on 
 both sides. Our troops were moving toward Malta ; the 
 streets of London, of Liverpool, of Southampton, and other 
 towns, were ringing with the cheers of enthusiastic crowds 
 gathered together 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 between Russia and the allies 
 than Avhen 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 
 emotions 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 genera- 
 tion — a thing to read of and discuss and make poetry 
 and romance out of ; but they could not yet realize what 
 itself was like. 
 
460 
 
 A mSTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 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 taking. He had had from the begin- 
 ning 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 his way, 
 and was satisfied with the prospect. But, according to 
 the supposed nature of his ofiice, he had now nothing to 
 do with the war or with foreign alfairs, except as every 
 member of the cabinet shares 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 Secretary 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 success- 
 ful 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 something to put 
 in its place ; and the plan of granting tickets-of -leave to 
 convicts who had shown that they were capable of regener- 
 ation was the outcome of the necessity and of his adminis- 
 tration. The measures to abate the smoke nuisance by 
 
WHEUK WAf^ LORD PALMKUSTONf 
 
 461 
 
 compelling factories, under penalties, to consume their own 
 smoke, is also the offspring of Palmerston's activity in the 
 Home Office. The Factory Acts were extended him. 
 He went energetically to work in the shutting up of grave- 
 yards in the inetropolis ; and in a letter to his brother he 
 declared that he should like to "put down beer-shops, 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, because it illus- 
 trates, 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 straightforward 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 consequences 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 authoritative 
 regulation, why not beer? The answer to the latter 
 question is plain — because treacle is not beer. So, people 
 said, with Palmers ton'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 Palm- 
 erston was acquiring a new and somewhat odd reputa- 
 tion. 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 correspondence, 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 the 
 deputations of all kinds, and interviews with members of 
 Parliament, militia colonels, etc." Lord Palmerston 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 
 
462 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 thing which set the public wondering and laughing. He 
 gave something like a shock to the Presbytery of Edinburgh 
 when they wrote to him, through the moderator, to ask 
 whether a national fast ought not to be appointed in con- 
 sequence of the appearance of cholera. Lord Palmerston 
 gravely admonished the Presbytery that the Maker of the 
 universe had appomted certain laws of nature for the planet 
 on which we live, and that the weal or woe of mankind de- 
 pends on the observance of those laws — one of them con- 
 necting health " with the absence of those noxious exhala- 
 tions which proceed from overcrowded human beings, or 
 from decomposing 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 breed pestilence and 
 be fruitful in death, in spite of all the prayers and fastings 
 of a united but inactive nation." When Lord Stanley of 
 Alderley applied to Lord Palmercton for a special per- 
 mission for a deceased dignitary of a church to be buried 
 under the roof of the sacred building, the Home Secretary 
 declined to accede to the request in a letter that might 
 have come from, or might have dehghted, Sydney Smith. 
 " What special connection is there between church dig- 
 nities and the privilege of being decomposed under the 
 feet of survivors ? Do you seriously mean to imply that 
 a soul is more likely to go to heaven because the body 
 which it inhabited lies decomposing 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 
 amidst the dwellings of the living; and as to burying 
 bodies under 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 controversy he opened up by 
 some of his arguments, both as to the fasting and as to 
 the burial in church-yards. He only saw, for the moment, 
 what appeared to him the healtliy common-sense aspect 
 of the position he had taken up, and did not think or care 
 about what other positions he might be surrendering by 
 the very act. He had not a poetic or philosophic mind. In 
 clearing his intelligence from all that he would have called 
 
WHERE WAS LORD PALMER8T0N f 
 
 463 
 
 prejudice or superstition, he had cleared out also much of 
 the deeper sympathetic faculty Avhicli 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 disputed subjects 
 offended many pure and simple minds. Yet it was a 
 mistake to suppose that mere levity dictated his way of 
 dealing with the prejudices of others. lie had' often 
 given the question his deepest attention, and come to a 
 conclusion with as much thought as his temperament 
 would have allowed to any subject. The difference be- 
 tween 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 delighted 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 say- 
 ing 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 atmos- 
 phere of war ; and now war is on foot, and Palmerston is 
 m the Home Office pleasantly " 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 manage its foreign affairs, 
 and when he would be good enough to come down from 
 his quiet seat in the Home Office and assume what seemed 
 his natural duties. A famous tenor singer of our day 
 once had some quarrel with his manager. The singer 
 
464 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, / 
 
 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 watching the performance like any 
 other of the audience. 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 
 audience at first were incredulous. It was in a great pro- 
 vincial city where the singer had always 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 leaving his place on the stage, 
 and the other coming down from his box and his easy 
 attitude of unconcern, and resuming what they regarded 
 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 attitude of Lord 
 Palmerston, and the manner in which the public eyes 
 were turned upon him during the early days of the war, 
 could hardly 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 general 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 
 direction 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 stoutly affirmed that the dif- 
 ference of opinion had only to do with the new Reform 
 Bill which Lord John Russell was preparing to introduce. 
 Now it is certain that Lord Palmerston did differ in opin- 
 ion 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 Palmerston's resignation. But 
 it is equally certain that the real cause of the resignation 
 
WHERE WAS LORD PALMERSTON ? 465 
 
 was the conviction in Palnierston's mind that his col- 
 leagues were not up to the demands of the crisis in regard 
 to the Eastern war. Lord Palnierston'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, but had a very 
 different tale to tell to the one being for whom the truth was 
 intended. Lord Palmer ston gives his brother a long and 
 circumstantial account of the differences about the Reform 
 Bill, and about the impossibility of a Home Secretary 
 either supporting by speech a Bill he did not like, or sit- 
 ting silent during the whole discussion on it in the House 
 of Commons. He shows that he could not possibly do 
 otherwise under such trying circumstances than resign. 
 The whole letter, until we come to the very last para- 
 graph, 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 
 resignation, and to remain in the Government ; and then 
 he wrote to his brother again explaining how and all about 
 it. He explains tliat several members of the cabmet told 
 him they considered the details of the Reform Bill quite 
 open to discussion, and so forth. " Their earnest repre- 
 sentations, 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 resigna- 
 tion, which I did yesterday." " Of course," Lord Palmer- 
 ston quietly adds, "what I say to you about the cabinet 
 decision on Turkish affairs is entirely for yourself, and . 
 not to be mentio]:ied to anybody ; but it is very important, 
 and will give the allied squadrons the command of the 
 piack Sea," All thivS was very prudent, of course, and 
 
 30 
 
466 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 very prettily arranged. But we doubt whether a single 
 man in England who cared anything about the whole 
 question was i^n^Dosed upon for one moment. Nobody 
 believed that at such a time Lord Palmers ton would have 
 gone out of office because he did not quite like the details 
 of a Reform Bill, or that the cabinet would have obsti- 
 nately clung to such a scheme just then in spite of his 
 opposition. 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 explanations about the Reform Bill 
 found as impatient listeners among the public at large as 
 the desperate attempts of the young heroine hi " She 
 Stoops to Conquer " to satisfy honest Tony Lumpkin with 
 her hasty and ill-concocted 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 Palmer- 
 ston resumed his place in the ministry, the public at large 
 felt certain that the war spirit was noAV 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 Turkey. Her fleet had been destroyed by the Rus- 
 sians at Sinope, in the Black Sea. Sinope is, or was, a 
 considerable seaport town and naval station belonging to 
 Turkey, and standing on a rocky promontory on the 
 southern shore of the Black Sea. On November 30th, 
 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, 
 consisting of six ships of the line and some steamers, had 
 been cruising about the Black Sea for several days previ- 
 ously, issuing from Sebastopol, 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 re-enforcements ; but nothing 
 was done, either by the Turkish Government or by the 
 ambassadors of the allies at Constantinople. On Novem- 
 ber 30th, however, the Sebastopol fleet did actually bear 
 
WJIEEE WAS LORD PALMEl^tSfONf 467 
 
 down upon the Turkish vessels lyhig* at Sinope. The 
 Turks, seeing 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 fiag, 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 squad- 
 ron, save for the steamer, w\as destroyed. It was asserted 
 on official authority that more than four thousand Turks 
 were killed ; that the survivors hardly numbered four 
 hundred; and that of these every man was wounded. 
 Sinope itself was much shattered and battered by the 
 Russian fieet. 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 treach- 
 ery, consummated amidst conditions of the most hideous 
 barbarity. A clamor arose against the Emperor of Russia, 
 as if he were a monster outside the pale of civilized law, 
 like some of the furious and treacherous despots of me- 
 diaeval Asiatic history. Mr. Kinglake has shown — and, 
 indeed, the sequence of events must in time have shown 
 everyone — that there was no foundation for these accusa- 
 tions. The attack was not treacherously, but openly made ; 
 not sudden, but clearly announced by previous acts, and 
 long expected, as we have seen, by the Turkish commander 
 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 w^ere 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 fortress 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 brilliant success against the Russians at 
 Oltenitza. 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 
 
468 
 
 A HiSTOBY OF OtTB OWK TiMiJS. 
 
 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 overwhelm- 
 ing. Still, there was an impression among English and 
 French statesmen that while negotiations for peace were 
 actually going on between the Western Powers and Rus- 
 sia, and while the fleets of England and France were re- 
 maining peacefully at anchor in the Bosphorus, whither 
 they had been summoned by this time, the Russian Em- 
 peror would abstain from complicating matters by making 
 use of his Sebastopol fleet. iSTothing 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 chapter of i3ast 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 Avith her at the same time ; 
 which would have allowed Turkey to strike her enemy 
 when and how she pleased, and would have restricted 
 the enemy to such time, place, and method of retort as 
 might suit the convenience of the neutral Powers. But at 
 the time, when the true state of affairs was little known 
 in England, the account of the " massacre of Sinope " 
 was received as if it had been the tale of some unparal- 
 leled act of treachery and savagery ; and the eagerness of 
 the country for war against Russia became inflamed to 
 actual passion. 
 
 It was at that moment that Palmerston resigned his 
 office. The cabinet were still not prepared to go as far as 
 he would have gone. They had believed that the Sebas- 
 topol 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 been done, and promise not to do so any 
 more. Lord Palmerston, supported by the urgent pres- 
 sure of the Emperor of the French, succeeded, however, 
 in at last overcoming their determination. It was agreed 
 that some decisive announcement should be made to the 
 
WHEBE WAS LORD PALMtJUSTONf 4G0 
 
 Emperor of Russia on the part of England and France ; 
 and Lord Palmerston resumed his place, master of the 
 situation. This was the decision of which he had spoken 
 in his letter to his brother ; the decision which he said he 
 had long unsuccessfully pressed upon his colleagues, and 
 which would give the allied squadrons the command of 
 the Black Sea. It was, in fact, an intimation to Russia 
 that France and England were resolved to prevent any 
 repetition of the Sinope affair ; that their squadrons would 
 enter the Black Sea with orders to request, and, if neces- 
 sary, to constrain, every Russian ship met in the Euxine 
 to return to Sebastopol ; and to repel by force any act of 
 aggression afterward attempted against the Ottoman ter- 
 ritory 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 tliis. Because it 
 meant war, he accepted it and returned 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 thg 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 sacrifice to avert it. He believed 
 that a Avar with Russia was inevitable, and he preferred 
 taking it sooner to taking it later. He believed 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 deter- 
 mined 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 pre- 
 vailing temper of the English people. 
 
 When tlie resolution of the Western cabinets was 
 communicated to the Emperor of Russia he withdrew his 
 
470 
 
 A HIS TO BY OF OtJR OWN TlMXS. 
 
 representatives from London and Paris. On February 
 21st, 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 interval 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 " monumental style," 
 wrote to the Russian Emperor appealing to him, profess- 
 edly 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 Napoleon, under- 
 taking to speak in the name of the Queen of Great Britain 
 as well as of himself, 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 Em- 
 peror Nicholas replied that he had claimed nothing but 
 what was confirmed by treaties ; that his conditions were 
 I)erf ectly 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 ^s 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 Moscow and the disastrous retreat of the 
 French. We can easily understand what faith in the 
 possibility of a peaceful arrangement the Russian Em- 
 peror 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 faintest 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 correspond- 
 ence might remind one of that which is said to have 
 passed between two Irish chieftains. "Pay me my trib- 
 ute," wrote the one, " or else ! " "I owe you no tribute," 
 replied the other, " and if — " 
 
 England's ultimatum to Russia was despatched on Feb- 
 ruary 27th, 1854. It was conveyed in a letter from Lord 
 
WHERE WAS LORD PALMERSTON f 471 
 
 Clarendon to Count Nesselrode. It declared that the 
 British Government had exhausted all the efforts of ne- 
 gotiation, and was compelled to announce that " it' Russia 
 should decline to restrict within purely diplomatic limits 
 the discussion in which she has for some time past been 
 engaged 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 Avitli 
 a view to recross the Pruth, so that the provinces of 
 Moldavia and Wallachia shall be completely evacuated 
 on April 80th next, the British Government must consider 
 the refusal or the silence of the cabinet of St. Petersburg 
 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 
 document 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 controversy with the Porte 
 should be thenceforward restricted within purely diplo- 
 matic limits was to make a demand with which no Great 
 Power would, or indeed could, undertake to comply. A 
 member of the Peace Society itself might well hesitate to 
 give a promise that a dispute in which he was engaged 
 should be forever confined within purely diplomatic limits. 
 In any case, it was certain that Russia would not now 
 make any concessions tending toward 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 I^esselrode that the Emperor did not think it be- 
 coming in him t6 give any reply to the letter. 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 performance 
 of a ceremonial that had been little known to the living 
 generation. The Sergeant-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. 
 
472 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 The causes of the declaration of war were set forth in 
 an official statement published in the London Gazette. 
 This document is an interesting and a valuable State- 
 paper. It recites with clearness and deliberation the 
 successive steps by which the allieGl Powers had been led 
 to the necessity of an armed intervention in the contro- 
 versy 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 satisfac- 
 torily by her Majesty's ambassador at Constantinople for 
 rendering justice to the claim, " an arrangement to which 
 no exception was taken by the Russian Government." 
 Then came the sudden unmasking of the other and quite 
 different claims of Prince Mentschikoff, " the nature of 
 which, in the first instance, he endeavored, as far as pos- 
 sible, 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 relations to their sovereign the Sultan." The dec- 
 laration recalled the various attempts that were made by 
 the Queen's Government in conjunction with the Govern- 
 ments of France, Austria, and Prussia, to meet any just 
 demands of the Russian Emperor without affecting the 
 dignity and independence of the Sultan ; and showed that 
 if the object of Russia had been solely to secure their 
 proper privileges and immunities for the Christian pop- 
 ulations 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 
 Russia Avas really seeking was not the happiness of the 
 Christian communities of Turkey, but the right to inter- 
 fere in the ordinary relations between Turkish subjects 
 and their sovereign. The Sultan refused to consent to 
 this, and declared war in self-defence. Yet the Govern- 
 ment of her Majesty did not renounce all hope of restor- 
 ing peace between the contending parties until advice and 
 remonstrance proving wholly in vain, and Russia continu- 
 mg to extend her military preparations, her Majesty felt 
 called upon, " by regard for an ally the hitegrity and in- 
 dependence of whose empire have been recognized as 
 essential to the peace of Kurope; by the sympathies of 
 
WHERE WAS LOUD PALMER8T0N 9 
 
 473 
 
 her people with right against wrong ; by a desire to avert 
 from her dominions most injurious consequences, and to 
 save Europe from the preponderance of a Power which 
 has violated 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 invited criticism 
 from English historians. It opens, for example, with a 
 statement of the fact tliat 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 sud- 
 denly breaks off, and announces that in consequence of all 
 that has happened her Majesty has felt compelled to take 
 up arms " in conjunction with the Emperor of the French." 
 What strange diplomatic mismanagement, it was asked, 
 has led to this singular 7io?i seqiiiticr ? Why, after having 
 carried on the negotiations through all their various stages 
 with three other Great Powers, all of tliem supposed 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 tliose Powers as an ally ? 
 
 The principal reason for the separation of the two 
 Western Powers of Europe from the other gr^at 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 overshadowed by Russian 
 influence. Prussia had come to occupy a lower position 
 in Europe than she had ever before held during her exist- 
 ence 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 olfers of the 
 strong national party avIio desired to make him Emperor 
 of Germany, 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 
 afterward " the humiliation of Olmtitz," and so completely 
 revenged at Sadowa, compelled him to drop all his triflings 
 with nationalism and repudiate his former instigators. 
 The King of Prussia was a highly cultured, amiable, liter- 
 
474 A msTOBY OF OUR OM^K TIMES, 
 
 ary man. He loved letters and arts in a sort of 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 mind 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 alf airs went wrong with him he 
 could console 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 philoso- 
 phy 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 popular rumor as well 
 as fate to him, that he got the credit in foreign countries 
 of being a stupid sensualist when he was really a man of 
 respectable habits and refined nature ; and in England at 
 least the nickname " King Clicquot " was long the brand 
 by which the popular 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 probably have taken some timely and energetic 
 decision with regard to the national duty of Prussia during 
 the impending crisis. Right or wrong, he would doubt- 
 less 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 England and France ; but it is likely 
 that his action 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 calculations of the Emperor of the French. The 
 actual King of Prussia, however, went so far with the allies 
 as to lead them for awhile 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 allow him 
 
WHERE WAS LORB PALMERSTON f 475 
 
 to engage in a war, and left France and England to walk 
 their own road. Austria could not venture upon such a 
 war without 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 Principalities ; and for that purpose her terri- 
 torial situation made her irresistible. But w^hen the seat 
 of war was transferred to the Black Sea, and when after 
 awhile the Czar withdrew his troops from the Principali- 
 ties, and Austria occupied them by virtue of a convention 
 with the Sultan, her direct interest in the struggle was 
 reduced almost to nothing. 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 restraining 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 unreservedly into the policy of the Western 
 Powers. It must be remembered that the controversy 
 between Russia and the West really involved several 
 distinct questions, in some of which Prussia had absolutely 
 no direct interest, and Austria very little. Let us set out 
 some of these questions separately. There was the Rus- 
 sian occupation of the Principalities. 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 aggressive purpose which 
 might very seriously threaten the general stability of the 
 
476 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 institutions of Europe ; but Prussia liad 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 protectorate over the Chris- 
 tian 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 subject 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 extremity, a huge, land-locked lake. That little 
 outlet is the narrow channel called the Bosphorus. Russia 
 and Turkey, between them, surround 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 Bosphorus and Russia 
 would be literally locked into the Black Sea. The Bos- 
 phorus is a narrow 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 ail 
 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 Bosphorus then opens into the little Sea 
 of Marmora; and out of the Sea of Marmora the way 
 
WHERE WAS LORD PALMERSTON 1 477 
 
 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 
 Dardanelles is, like the Bosphorus, very narrow and very 
 deep, but it pursues its course for some forty miles. Any 
 one Avho 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 Russian fleet 
 in the Black Sea is absolutely cut off from the Mediter- 
 ranean 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 Bosphorus being alike such narrow 
 channels, and being edged alike by Turkish territory, 
 were not regarded as high seas. The Sultans always 
 claimed the right to exclude foreign ships of war from 
 both the Straits. The Treaty of 1841 secured this right 
 to Turkey by the agreement of the five Great Powers 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 be- 
 tween Russia and Turkey, arising out of Russia's co-opera- 
 tion with the Porte to put down the rebellious movement 
 of Mohammed Ali, the Egyptian vassal of the latter, con- 
 tained 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 leav- 
 ing Russia free to pass the Bosphorus, so far, at least, as 
 that treaty engagement was concerned. Later, when the 
 Great Powers of Europe combined to put down the attempts 
 of Egypt, the Treaty of July 13th, 1841, made in London, 
 engaged that iu time of peace no foreign ships of war 
 
478 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 should be admitted into the Straits of the Bosphorus and 
 the Dardanelles. This treaty was but a renewal of a 
 convention 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 per- 
 mitted 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 vessels of a foreign Power in 
 the Sea of Marmora. By this treaty the Black Sea fleet 
 of Russia became hterally 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 arrange- 
 ment that would leave tlie 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 Constantinople or in the 
 Euxine. Therefore it was natural tliat the ambition of 
 Russia should tend toward the ultimate possession of 
 Constantinople 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 prevent any other 
 Great Power from obtaining the influence and ascend- 
 ency which she coveted for herself. Now the tendency 
 of this ambition and of all the intermediate claims and 
 disputes with regard to the opening or closing of the 
 Straits was of importance 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 sui'prising, therefore, that the 
 two Western Powers were not able to carry their accord 
 with Prussia to the extent of an alliance in war against 
 
WHERE WAS LORD PALMERSTON? 479 
 
 Russia ; and it was hardly possible tlien for Austria to go 
 on if Prussia insisted on drawing back. Thus it came 
 that at a certain point of the negotiations Prussia fell off 
 absolutely, or nearly so ; Austria undertook but a condi- 
 tional co-operation, of which, as it happened, the conditions 
 did not arise ; and the Queen of England announced that 
 she had taken up arms against Russia " in conjunction 
 with the Emperor of the French." 
 
 To the great majority of the English people this war 
 was popular. It was popular x^artly because of the 
 natural and inevitable reaction 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 common saying of foreign 
 capitals that England had joined the Peace Society, and 
 would never be seen in battle any more. Mr. Kinglake 
 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, thought- 
 ful middle-class, who knew how much of worldly happi- 
 ness depends on a regular income, moderate taxation, and 
 a comfortable home, supplied ' most of the advocates of 
 "peace," as it was scornfully said, "at any price." Let us 
 say, in justice to a very noble and very futile doctrine, 
 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 persons 
 who, out of the purest motives of conscience, held that 
 all Avar 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 
 
480 
 
 A msTonr of our own times. 
 
 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 ceremony of trampling on the crucifix, 
 which certain heathen states were said to have sometimes 
 insisted on as the price of a captive's freedom. To the 
 believers in the peace doctrine the act of war was a 
 trampling on the crucifix, which brought with it evil con- 
 sequences unspeakably worse than the mere performance 
 of a profane ceremonial. To declare that they would 
 rather sufl:"er any earthly penalty of defeat or national 
 servitude than take part in a war, was only consistent 
 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 belief, 
 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 organization. 
 Mr. Bright's religious creed made him necessarily a votary 
 of peace ; Mr. Cobden 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 Mcholas 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 unceremonious way 
 to his wife. Such a visit counted for nothing in Russia, 
 and at liome 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 influence, the 
 
WHEBE WAS LORD PALMETt^TON? 481 
 
 peace doctrine as completely broke down as a general 
 resolution against the making 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. Tlie eloquence 
 that had coerced the intellect and reasoning power of 
 Peel into a complete surrender to the doctrines of Free- 
 trade, the eloquence that had roused 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 addressed their constituents 
 and their countrymen in vain. The fact that they were 
 believed 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 
 national 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 brutal and an 
 unchristian occupation ; although his feelings would not 
 have carried him so far away as to prevent his recogni- 
 tion of the fact that Avar might often be a just, a neces- 
 sary, and a glorious undertaking on the part of a civilized 
 nation. The difiiculties 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 Russia and uphold Turkey. Others were 
 specially concerned for the Christian populations 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 
 
 31 
 
482 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 went so far, even, as to proclaim his belief in the endur- 
 ance of her military power. Give Turkey single-handed 
 a fair chance, he argued, and she would beat Russia. He 
 did not believe either in the disaffection 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 Rus^a. He had no half beliefs in the matter at 
 all. The Christian populations and their grievances he 
 regarded, in plain language, 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 sliake 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 intrusted to it. Lord Palmerston 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 any one seriously 
 meant to be so barbarous 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 under- 
 take this war ; the two being, furthermore, concerned far 
 more for the welfare of Turkey's Christian subjects 
 than for the stabihty of Turkey or the humiliation of 
 Russia. On the other side was Lord Palmerston, gay, 
 resolute, clear as to his own purpose, convinced to the 
 heart's core of everything which just then it was for 
 the advantage of his cause to believe. It was impossible 
 to doubt on which side were to be found the materials for 
 the successful conduct of the enterprise which was now 
 so popular with the country. The most conscientious 
 men might differ about the prudence or the moral pro- 
 priety of tlie 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 Society, as 
 to the importance of having Lord Palmerston either at 
 the head of affairs or in charge of the war itself. The 
 moment the war actually broke out it became evident to 
 every one that Palmerston's interval of comparative inac- 
 tion and obscurity was well-nigh over. 
 
THE IN \^ A SIGN OF THE CRIME A. 
 
 483 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 
 
 England, then, and France entered the war as allies. 
 Lord Raglan, formerly Lord Fitzroy Somerset, an old 
 pupil of the Great Duke in the Peninsular War, and who 
 had lost his right arm serving under Wellington at Water- 
 loo, was appointed to command the English forces. Mar- 
 *shal St. Arnaud, a bold, brilliant soldier of fortune, was 
 intrusted by the Emperor of the French with the leader- 
 ship 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 re- 
 markable ability and energy ; and they had in one or two 
 instances received the unexpected aid and counsel of clever 
 and successful Englishmen. A singularly brilliant e]Disode 
 in the opening part of the war was the defence of the 
 earthworks of Silistria, on the Bulgarian bank of the 
 Danube, by a body of Turkish troops under 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 responsibility of the defence. 
 Butler was killed, but the Russians were completely foiled, 
 and had to raise the siege. At Giurgevo and other places 
 the Russians were likewise repulsed ; and the invasion 
 of the Danubian provinces was already, to all intents, a 
 failure. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake and other writers have argued that but 
 for the ambition of the Emperor of the French and the 
 excited temper of the English people the war might well 
 have ended then and there. The Emperor of Russia had 
 found, it is contended, that he could not maintain an in- 
 vasion of European Turkey ; his fleet was confined to its 
 
484 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 ports in the Black Sea, and there was nothing for him but 
 to make peace. But we confess we do not see with what 
 propritey or wisdom the allies, having entered on the en- 
 terprise 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 Avere but a series of what might 
 be called outpost actions. They could not be supposed 
 to have tested the resources of Russia or weakened her 
 strength. They had humbled 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 Rus- 
 sian ambition, supposing 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 ven- 
 geance waiting for a better chance some other time. The 
 allies went on. They sailed from Varna for the Crimea 
 nearly three months after the raising of the siege of 
 Silistria. 
 
 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 Palmer- 
 ston ; 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 great 
 arsenal of Russia. It was the point from which Turkey 
 was threatened ; from which, it was universally believed, 
 the embodied ambition of Russia Avas one day to make its 
 most formidable effort of aggression. Within the fence 
 of its vast sea-forts -the fleet of the Black Sea lay screened. 
 From the moment when the vessels of England and 
 
THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 
 
 485 
 
 France entered the Euxine the Russian fleet had with- 
 drawn 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 together at such cost and labor 
 for the execution of the schemes of Russia, would be 
 shattered at a blow. There seemed a dramatic justice 
 in the idea. It could not fail to commend itself to the 
 po[)ular mind. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake has given the world an amusing picture 
 of the manner in which the despatch of the Duke of New- 
 castle, ordering the invasion of the Crimea — for it really 
 amounted to an order — was read to his colleagues 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 com- 
 mander-in-chief to use his own discretion. It ought to 
 have been considered sentence 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 irresistible. 
 As Sam Weller would have said, iioppies were nothing to 
 it. The statesmen fell asleep ; and there Avas no alteration 
 made in the despatch. All this is very amusing ; and it 
 is Ave believe, true enough that at the particular meeting 
 to which Mr. Kinglake refers there Avas 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 Avith the subsequent events of the war. The reading 
 of the despatch 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, Avas the 
 day of the slumbering cabinet. But Lord Palmerston had, 
 during the whole of the previous fortnight at least, been 
 urging on the cabinet, and on individual members of it 
 separately, the Duke of Newcastle in especial, the project 
 of an invasion of the Crimea and an attempt on Sebas- 
 topol. With all the energy and strenuousness of his 
 nature, he had been urging this by arguments in the cab- 
 inet, by written memoranda for the consideration of each 
 
486 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OUE OWN TIMES. 
 
 member of the cabinet separately, and by long, earnest 
 letters addressed 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 persons 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 better if the most 
 wearied statesman had contrived to pay a full attention 
 to it, but the want of such respect in nowise affected the 
 policy of the country. It is a pity to have to spoil so 
 amusing a story as Mr. Khiglake'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 drowsmess 
 of all the rest. 
 
 The invasion of the Crimea, however, was not a soldier's 
 project. It was not welcomed by the English or the 
 French commander. It was undertaken by Lord Raglan 
 out of deference to the recommendations of the Govern- 
 ment ; 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 runs into the sea. Sebastopol itself lies 
 about thirty miles to the south ; and then more southward 
 still, divided by the bulk of a jutting promontory from 
 Sebastopol, is the harbor of Balaklava. The disembarka- 
 tion began on the morning of September 14th, 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 19th, the allies marched out of their 
 
THl^ INVASION OP THE CmMUA. 
 
 487 
 
 encampments and moved southward in the direction of 
 Sebastopol. They had a skirmish or two with a recon- 
 noitring force of Russian cavalry and Cossacks ; but 
 they had no business of genuine war until they reached 
 the nearer bank of the Alma. The Russians, in great 
 strength, had taken up a sj^lendid position on the heights 
 that fringed the other side of the river. The allied forces 
 reached the Alma about noon on September 20th. They 
 found that they had to cross the river in the face of the 
 Russian battej'ies armed with heavy guns on the highest 
 point of the hills or bluffs, of scattered artillery, and of 
 dense masses of infantry which covered the hills. The 
 Russians were under the command of Prince Mentschi- 
 koff. It is certain that Prince Mentschikoflf believed his 
 position unassailable, and was convinced that his enemies 
 were delivered into his hands when he saw the allies 
 approach and attempt to effect the crossing 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 toward the river. But he 
 did not choose to do anything of the kind. He had care- 
 fully sought out a strong and what he considered an 
 impregnable position. He had found it, as he believed, 
 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, until the 
 great re-enforcements he was expecting could come to 
 him ; and then he w^ould suddenly take the offensive and 
 crush the enemy. He proposed to make of the Alma and 
 its banks the grave of the invaders. But Avith character- 
 istic arrogance and lack of care he had neglected some of 
 the very precautions which were essentially necessary 
 to secure any position, however strong. He had not taken 
 the pains to make himself certam that every easy access 
 to his position w^as 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 
 obstinacy 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 
 
488 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OIJR OWN TIMES. 
 
 was little coherence of action between the allied forces. 
 But there was happily an almost total absence of gen- 
 eralship 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 Mentschikoff's great redoubt was carried, the 
 Russians were driven from the field, the allies occupied 
 their ground ; the victory was to the Western 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 
 wretched 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 failure ; and Prince Napoleon's division got 
 hopelessly jammed up and confused. Perhaps it would 
 be fairer to say that in the confusion 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 to- 
 ward some distant point, one may run against an un- 
 thought-of obstacle and fall down, and so lose his chance, 
 while his comrade happens to meet with no such stum- 
 bling-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 there ; they made for him ; 
 they got at him ; they would not go back ; and so he had 
 to give way. That was the history of the day. The 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 them- 
 selves fully expected a pursuit. They retreated in some- 
 tliing like utter confusion, eager to put the Katcha river, 
 which runs south of the Alma and with a somewhat 
 
THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. 
 
 489 
 
 similar course, between them and the imaginary 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 enter- 
 prise 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 commanders 
 in the Avorld could have failed, under conditions so tempt- 
 ing, 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 consider- 
 ably outnumbered the Russians, although, from the causes 
 we have mentioned, the Englishmen were left throughout 
 the greater part of the day to encounter an enemy numer- 
 ically 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 authorities 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 con- 
 temporaneous descriptions of the great scramble of the 
 Alma. It might almost seem as if, in the imaginings of 
 the enthusiastic historians, Englishmen had never mounted 
 heights and defeated superior numbers before. The sub- 
 lime triumphs against every adverse condition which had 
 been won by the genius of a Marlborough or a Welling- 
 ton could not have been celebrated in language of more 
 exalted ditliyrambic pomp. The gallant medley on the 
 banks of the Alma and the fruitless interval of inaction 
 that followed it were told of as if men were speaking 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 tliat went before it. Science 
 had added many new discoveries to the art of war. Litera- 
 ture had added one remarkable contribution of her own to 
 the conditions amidst which campaigns were to be carried 
 on. She had added the " special correspondent."" The 
 old-fashioned historiographer of wars travelled to please 
 sovereigns, and minister to the self-conceit of conquerors. 
 
490 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 The modern special correspondent had a very different 
 purpose. He watched the movements of armies and criti- 
 cised 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 newspaper when 
 compared with the reward which the public could give 
 to him and to his paper for quick and accurate news and 
 trustworthy comment. The business of the special cor- 
 respondent has grown so much since the Crimean War 
 that we are now inclined to look back upon the war cor- 
 respondents of those days almost as men then did upon 
 the old-fashioned historiographer. The war correspond- 
 ent now scrawls his despatches as he sits in his saddle 
 under the fire of the enemy; 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 describing a 
 review of volunteers in Hyde Park ; and he contrives to 
 send off his narrative 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 statements. In the 
 days of the Crimea things had not advanced quite so far 
 as that ; the war was well on before the submarine tele- 
 graph between Varna and the Crimea allowed of daily 
 reports ; but the feats of the war correspondent 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 papers of London. 
 The Times sent out a representative whose name almost 
 immediately became celebrated — Mr. William Howard 
 Russell, 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 his country, however, which no brilliancy of 
 literary style would alone have enabled him to do. It 
 was to his great credit as a man of judgment and observa- 
 tion that, being a civilian who had never before seen one 
 puff of war-smoke, he was able to distinguish between the 
 confusion inseparable from all actual levying of war and 
 the confusion that comes of distinctly bad administration. 
 
THE iKVASlOJSr OF THE CRIMEA, 
 
 491 
 
 To the unaccustomed eye of an ordinary civilian the whole 
 progress of a campaign, the development of a battle, the 
 arrangements of the commissaiiat, appear, at any moment 
 of actual pressure, to be nothing but a mass of confusion. 
 He is accustomed in civil life to find everything in its 
 proper place, and every emergency well provided for. 
 When he is suddenly plunged into 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 under- 
 stand 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. There- 
 fore, while the fervor of delight in the courage and success 
 of our army was still fresh in the minds of the public at 
 home, w^hile 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 Raglan himself 
 said. ISTo system can charm away all the effects of climate ; 
 but it appeared only too soon that the arrangements made 
 to encounter the indirect and inevitable dangers of a 
 campaign were miserably inefficient. The hospitals were 
 in a wretchedly disorganized condition. Stores of medi- 
 cines 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 — everything 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 authorities and our own war 
 administration. It soon became apparent to every one 
 
492 
 
 A mSTOBY OF OZTR OWK TIMES, 
 
 that the whole campaign had been planned on the assump- 
 tion that it was to be like the career of the hero whom 
 Byron laments, " brief, brave, and glorious." Our military 
 authorities here at home — we do not speak of the com- 
 manders in the field — had made up their minds that 
 Sebastopol was to fall, like another Jericho, at the sound 
 of the war-trumpets' 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 sudden dash had been made at Sebas- 
 topol by land and sea, it might have been taken almost 
 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 shel- 
 ter and try conclusions with the Western ships. But the 
 real purpose of the Russians became soon apparent. Un- 
 der the eyes 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 ap- 
 proach of an enemy's ship. There was an end to every 
 dream of a sudden capture of Sebastopol. 
 
 The allied armies moved again from their positions on 
 .the Alma; but they did not direct their march to the 
 north side of Sebastopol. 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 Bal- 
 aklava, while the fleets appeared at the same time in the 
 harbor. Sebastopol was but a few miles oft*, and prepara- 
 tions were at once made for an attack on it by land and 
 
th:e! invasion op the cniMKA. 
 
 • 
 
 sea. On October ITtli the attack began. It was practi- 
 cally a failure. 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 
 any real effect, because of the shallow water and the 
 sunken ships ; and although the attack from the land was 
 vigorous and was fiercely kept up, yet it could not carry 
 its object. It became clear that Sebastopol was not to be 
 taken by any coni^ de main,, and the allies had not men 
 enough to invest it. They were, therefore, to some extent 
 themselves in the condition of a besieged force, for the 
 Russians had a large army outside Sebastopol ready to 
 make every sacrifice for the purpose of preventing the 
 English and French from getting even a chance of undis- 
 turbed operations against it. 
 
 The Russians attacked the allies fiercely on October 
 25th, in the hope of obtaining possession of Balaklava. 
 The attempt was bold and brilliant, but it was splendidly 
 repulsed. Never did a day of battle do more credit to 
 English courage, or less, perhaps, to English 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 
 " 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 Hussars ; 130 of the 13th 
 Light Dragoons ; and 145 of the 17th Lancers. Of the 607 
 men 198 came loack. 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 admiration of the 
 futile and splendid charge. The poet-laureate sang of it 
 in spirited verses. Perhaps its best epitaph was con- 
 tained in the celebrated comment ascribed to the French 
 General Bosquet, and which has since become proverbial, 
 and been quoted until men are well-nigh tired of it — "It 
 was magnificent, but it was not war." 
 
 Next day the enemy made another vigorous attack, on 
 
494 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWJ^ TIMES. 
 
 a much larger scale, moving out of Sebastopol itself, and 
 were again repulsed. The allies were able to prevent the 
 troops who made the sortie from co-operating with the 
 Russian army outside who had attacked at Balaklava. 
 The latter were endeavoring to intrench themselves at the 
 little village of Inkerman, lying on the north of Sebasto- 
 pol ; but the stout resistance they met with from the allies 
 frustrated their plans. On November 5th the Russians 
 made another grand attack on the aUies, chiefly on the 
 British, and were once more splendidly repulsed. The 
 plateau of Inkerman was the principal scene of the strug- 
 gle. It was occupied by the Guards and a few British 
 regiments, 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 
 obtained 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. Strat- 
 egy, 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 awhile almost absolutely in 
 the dark. There was 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 battle 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. 
 Arnaud, the French commander-in-chief, addressing Gen- 
 eral Canrobert and Prince Napoleon, 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 general 
 principle nn which the commanders conducted the cam- 
 paign. There Avere the enemy's forces — let the men go 
 
THE INVASION OF THE CEIMEA, 
 
 495 
 
 at them any way they could. Nor under tlie circum- 
 stances 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. ISTo 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 
 going to fall all at once ; it was evident, too, that the prep- 
 arations 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 Sebastopol ; and the disap- 
 pointment naturally increased the impatience and dissat- 
 isfaction of Englishmen. The fleet that had been sent 
 out to the Baltic came back without having accomplished 
 anything in particular ; and although there really was 
 nothing in particular that it could have accomplished 
 under the circumstances, yet many x3eople were as angry 
 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, dash- 
 ing, 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 ISTapier was a member of a family famed 
 for its warriors ; but he had not anything like the capacity 
 of his cousin, the other Charles Napier, the conqueror of 
 Scinde, or the intellect of Sir William Napier, the histo- 
 rian of the Peninsular War. He had won some signal 
 and surprising successes in the Portuguese civil war and 
 in Syria ; all under conditions wholly different, and with 
 an enemy wholly different from those he w^ould have to 
 encounter in the Baltic. But the voice of admiring friends 
 Avas 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 
 
496 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES, 
 
 boasting when one is taking off his armor and boasting 
 when one is only putting it on. His friends entertained 
 him at a farewell dinner at the Reform Club. Lord Palm- 
 erston was present, and Sir James Graham, the First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, and a great deal of exuberant non- 
 sense w^s talked. Lord Palmerston, carried away by his 
 natural bonho77iie 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 unbecoming preludes to an expedition that was to 
 be part of a great war and of terrible national 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 prob- 
 able that a Dundonald or even a Nelson could have done 
 much in the Baltic just then ; and Napier was not a Dun- 
 donald or a Nelson. The Baltic fleet came home safely 
 after awhile, its commander having brought with him 
 nothing but a grievance which lasted him all the remain- 
 der of his life. The public were amazed, scornful, wrath- 
 ful ; 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 disap- 
 pointed is almost ahvays indiscriminating and unreason- 
 able in its censure. 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 calum- 
 nies, 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 llussia, 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 
 
THE INVASION OF THE CBIMEA. 
 
 497 
 
 government was under a heavy trial, and could only pass 
 triumphantly through it if the country would grant its 
 confidence to her Majesty's Government. In this observa- 
 tion, as the whole context of the speech showed, the Prince 
 was only explaining that the Queen's Government 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, with- 
 out check, delay, or control on the part of any Parlia- 
 mentary body. But the speech was instantly fastened on 
 as illustrating the Prince's settled and unconquerable dis- 
 hke of all constitutional and popular principles of govern- 
 ment. Those who opposed the Prince had not, indeed, 
 been waiting for his speech at the Trinity House dinner 
 to denounce and condemn him ; but the sentence in that 
 speech to which reference has been made opened upon 
 him a new torrent of hostile 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 ab- 
 surd surmises and cruel suspicions which had been creat- 
 ing so much agitation. The agitation collapsed in a mo- 
 ment. 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, some- 
 thing 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 betrayed, 
 and were clamorous for victims to punish anywhere or 
 anyhow. To many calm Englishmen this seemed mon- 
 strously unreasonable 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 period of the Crimean War was becoming very 
 like that which set Paris wild during the disastrous 
 struggle with Germany. The passions 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, 
 
 32 
 
498 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 on the whole, things went Avell with England, than in 
 consequence of any very great superiority 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 disap- 
 pointment following on extravagant confidence had incited 
 popular passion to call for some victim, will find them- 
 selves slow to set a limit to the lengths that passion might 
 have reached if the Russians had actually been successful 
 even in one or two battles. 
 
 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 Russians — sickness, bad weather, bad management. 
 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 destroyed in vast quantities. The loss of 
 life among the crews of the vessels was immense. A 
 storm was nearly as disastrous in this way as a battle. 
 On shore the sufferings 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 experience or even idea of such cold as they 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 hospitals for the 
 sick and wounded at Scutari were in a wretchedly disor- 
 ganized condition. They were, for the most part, in an 
 absolutely chaotic condition as regards arrangement and 
 supply. In some instances medical stores wei'e left to 
 decay at Varna, or were found lying useless in the holds 
 of vessels in Balaklava Bay, which were needed for the 
 wounded at Scutari. The medical officers were able and 
 zealous men ; the stores Avere provided and paid for, so far 
 as our Government was concerned; but the stores were not 
 brought to the medical men. These liad their hands all but 
 idle, their eyes and souls tortured by the siglitof sufferings 
 which they were unable to relieve for want of the com- 
 monest appliances of the hospital. The most ex;traor- 
 
THE IJStVASIOI^ OF THE CRIMEA. 
 
 499 
 
 dinary instances of blunder and confusion were constantly 
 coming to light. Great consignments of boots arrived, 
 and were found to be all for the left foot. Mules for the 
 conveyance of stores were contracted for and delivered, 
 but delivered so that they pame into the hands of the Rus- 
 sians, and not of us. Shameful frauds were perpetrated 
 in the instance of some of the contracts for preserved 
 meat. " One man's preserved meat," exclaimed Punchy 
 with bitter humor, " is another man's poison." The evils 
 of the hospital disorganization were happily made a means 
 of bringing about a new system of attending to the sick 
 and wounded in war, which has already created something 
 like a revolution in the manner of treating the victims of 
 battle. Mr. Sidney Herbert, horrified at the way in which 
 things were managed in Scutari and the Crimea, applied 
 to a distinguished woman, who had long taken a deep 
 interest in hospital reform, to superintend personally 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 ; and had made 
 herself acquainted with the working of various Continental 
 institutions; and about the time when the war broke 
 out she was actually engaged in reorganizing the Sick 
 Governesses' Institution 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 
 Government for Avhatever she might think necessary to 
 the success of the undertaking. Miss Mghtingale 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 depart- 
 ment of the business of war which was never again a sub- 
 ject of complaint. The spirit of the chivalric days had 
 been restored under better auspices for its abiding influ- 
 ence. 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 Her- 
 bert, in his letter to Miss Nightingale, had said that her 
 
500 A BISTOEY OF Olflt OWJ^ TIME^. 
 
 example, if she accepted the task he had 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 Nightingale'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 nothing. The 
 commissariat system and the land transport system had 
 broken down. The armies were miserably weakened by 
 sickness. Cholera was ever and anon raging anew among 
 our men. Plorses 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 condemnation 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 urg- 
 ing that the War Department should be given to Lord 
 Palmerston. Lord Aberdeen replied that although another 
 person might have been a better choice when the appoint- 
 ments were made in tlie first instance, yet in the absence 
 of any proved defect or alleged incapacity there was no 
 sufficient ground for making a kind of speculative 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 Sebastopol, and into the con- 
 duct of those departments of the Government whose duty 
 it had been to minister to the wants of the army. Lord 
 John Russell did not believe for himself that the motion 
 
THi: iNVASlOJSr OF THE CMMEA. 
 
 501 
 
 could be conscientiously resisted; but as it necessarily 
 involved a censure upon some of his colleagues, lie 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 encountering Mr. Roebuck's 
 motion. Lord Palmerston, 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 carrying 
 on a system of which you disapprove until driven out by 
 Roebuck's announced notice ; and the Government will 
 have the ax)pearance 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 
 impending negotiation, and we shall exhibit to the world 
 a melancholy spectacle of disorganization among our 
 political men at home similar to that which has prevailed 
 among our military men abroad." The remonstrance, 
 however, came too late, even if it could have had any effect 
 at any time. Mr. Roebuck's motion camo on, and was re- 
 sisted with vigor by Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. 
 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 dis- 
 turbance, increased disasters, shame at home and weak- 
 ness abroad; it would convey no consolation to those 
 whom you seek to aid, but it would carry malignant joy 
 to the hearts of the enemies of England." The House of 
 Commons was not to be moved by any such argument or 
 appeal. The one pervading idea was that England had 
 been endangered and shamed by the breakdown of her 
 army organization. When the division took place, 305 
 members voted for Mr. Roebuck's motion, and only 148 
 
502 
 
 A msTORT OF OtfE OWN TIME^, 
 
 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 renewed, counter-cheers of 
 defiance, wild exultation, 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 ignomin- 
 iously defeated. A dead silence followed the announce- 
 ment of the numbers. Then there was a half-breathless 
 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. 
 Suddenly 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 Government laughed ; many of those who had voted 
 with ministers foun* 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 com- 
 bination against him, consoled his party and himself for 
 the imminent fatality awaiting them by the defiant words, 
 " I know that I have to face a Coalition ; the combination 
 may be successful. A combination has before this been 
 successful ; 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 indigna- 
 tion, and amidst sudden shouts of laughter. 
 
THi: CLOSE OF THE WAB, 
 
 503 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. 
 
 On February 15tli, 1855, Lord Palmerston wrote to his 
 brother : " A iiiouth 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 straAvs before the wind ; and so here am I, writing to 
 you from Downing Street, as First Lord of the Treasury." 
 
 Xo 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 aston- 
 ished at the turn of events by which he had become Prime- 
 minister. Indeed, it had long become apparent to almost 
 every one that his assuming that place was only a ques- 
 tion of time. The country was in that mood that it Avould 
 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 invited 
 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 intrusted him. He invited Lord Palmerston 
 to join him, and it was intimated that if Palmerston con- 
 sented Mr. Disraeli would waive all claim to the leadership 
 of the House of Commons, in order that Palmerston 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 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 ijrecipitate retreat 
 from his office had discredited him with most of his former 
 colleagues, and he found that he could not get a Govern- 
 ment together. Lord Palmerston was then, to use his 
 
504 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUli OWN TIMES. 
 
 own phrase, Vinevitable. There was not much change in 
 th^ personnel oi ministry. Lord Aberdeen was gone, 
 and Lord Palmerston 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, combined in his own person the func- 
 tions, up to that time absurdly separated, of Secretary at 
 War and Secretary for War. The Secretary at War 
 under the old system was not one of the principal Secre- 
 taries of State. He was merely the officer by whom the 
 regular communication 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 intrusted 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 
 wholeTarmy system. Lord Palmerston 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 
 commission 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 medical officers, by the men who have charge of 
 the port arrangements and by those who have the cleah- 
 ing of the camp. Their mission will be ridiculed, and 
 their recommendations and directions set aside, unless 
 enforced by the peremptory exercise of your authority. 
 But that authority I must request you to exert 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 hundreds of men, I may, indeed, 
 say of thousands." Lord Palmerston was strongly pressed 
 by some of the more strenuous Reformers of the House. 
 Mr. Layard, wlio had acquired some celebrity before in a 
 very different field — as a discoverer, that is to say, in the 
 ruins of Nineveh and l>abylon — was energetic and inces- 
 sant in his attacks on the administration of the war, and 
 was not disposed even now to give the new Government a 
 moment's rest. Mr. Layard was a man of a certahi rough 
 
TEE CLOSE OF THE WAB. 
 
 505 
 
 ability, immense self-sufficiencj^, 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 moment's doubt on any conceivable question, he 
 never admitted that there could by any possibility be two 
 sides to any matter of discussion. 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 difference of view with the overbearing 
 dogmatism of Sir Walter Scott's Touchwood, or of the pro- 
 verbial man who has been there and ought to know ; and 
 he was in many respects admirably fitted to be the spokes- 
 man 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 recommended in Mr. Roebuck's motion. 
 The Government, he said, would make the needful in- 
 quiries themselves. He reminded the House of Richard 
 ll.'s offer to lead the men of the fallen Tyler's insurrec- 
 tion himself ; and in the same spirit he offered, on the part 
 of the Government, to take the lead in every necessary 
 investigation. Mr. Roebuck, however, would not give 
 way ; and Lord Palmerston yielded to a demand which 
 had, undoubtedly, the support of a vast force of public 
 opmion. The constant argument of Mr. Layard had some 
 sense in it : the Government 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, there- 
 fore, be expected that the House should accept its exist- 
 ence as guarantee enough that everything should be done 
 which its predecessor had failed to do. Lord Palmerston 
 gave way, but his unavoidable concession 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, 
 vacated by Sidney Herbert ; and Sir George Cornewall 
 
506 
 
 A msfonr of" oim own times. 
 
 Lewis followed Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer. 
 
 Meanwhile new negotiations for peace, set on foot under 
 the influence of Austria, had been begun at Vienna, and 
 Lord John Russell had been sent there to represent the 
 interests of England. The Conference opened at Vienna 
 under circumstances that might have seemed especially 
 favorable to peace. We had got a new ally, a State not, 
 indeed, commanding anj^ great military strength, but full 
 of energy and ambition, and representing more than any 
 other, perhaps, the tendencies of liberalism and the oper- 
 ation of the comparatively new principle of the rights of 
 nationalities. 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 Williams — 
 the illustrious Count Cavour. Sardinia, it may be frankly 
 said, did not come into the alliance because of any partic- 
 ular 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 marvellous 
 history of the uprise of the kingdom of Italy there is a 
 good deal over which, to use the words of Carlyle, moral- 
 ities 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 particular care for either side of 
 the controversy, but only to serve an ulterior and personal,, 
 that is to say, national purpose. But, regarding the policy 
 merely by the light of its results, it must be owned that 
 it was singularly successful, and entirely justified the 
 expectations of Cavour. The Crimean War laid the foun- 
 dations 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, obviously, 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 2d, 
 1855, the Emperor Nicholas of Russia died of pulmonary 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE WAB, 
 
 507 
 
 apoplexy, after an attack of influenza. In other clays it 
 would have been said he had died of a broken heart. Per- 
 haps the description would have been more strictly true 
 than the terms of the medical 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 sudden 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 Punchy 
 and which was called " General Fevrier turned Traitor." 
 The Emperor Mcholas had boasted that Russia had two 
 generals on whom she could always rely. General Janvier 
 and General Fevrier ; and now the English artist repre- 
 sented General February, a skeleton, in Russian uniform; 
 turning traitor, and laying his bony ice-cold hand on the 
 heart of the Sovereign 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 expos- 
 ure ; he treated with a magnanimous disdain the remon- 
 strances of his physicians and his friends. As of Max 
 Piccolomini in Schiller's noble play, so of him : men whis- 
 pered that he wished to die. The Ahna 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 
 defeat very much as Lord North took the surrender of 
 Cornwallis — as if a bullet had struck him. Thenceforth 
 he was like one whom the old Scotch phrase would de- 
 scribe as fey — one who moved, spoke, and lived under the 
 shadow of coming death until the death came. 
 
 The news of the sudden death of the Emperor created 
 a profound sensation in England. Mr. Bright, at Man- 
 chester, shortly after rebuked what he considered an ig- 
 noble 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, nothing could have been more 
 decorous and dignified than the manner in which the 
 English public generally received the news that the coun- 
 try's great enemy was no more. At first there was, as 
 we have said, a common impression that Nicholas's son 
 
508 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and successor, 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 him- 
 self to his people in a less patriotic light than his prede- 
 cessor. The prospects of the allies were at the time re- 
 markably gloomy. There must have seemed to the new 
 Russian Emperor considerable ground for the hope that 
 disease, 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 representative, was in- 
 structed 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 Danubian Principali- 
 ties, the free navigation of the Danube, the limitation of 
 Russian supremacy in the Black Sea, and the independ- 
 ence 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 Western Powers were deter- 
 mined not to allow. She declined to have the strength of 
 her navy restricted ; and proposed as a counter- resolution 
 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 letter to Lord 
 John Russell, dryly characterized this proposition, involv- 
 ing as it would the maintenance by England and France 
 of permanent fleets in the Black Sea to counterbalance 
 the fleet of Russia, as a " mauvaise plaisanterieP Lord 
 Palmerston, indeed, believed 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 good deal of the reputation 
 of Lord John Russell. Like the French representative, 
 M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Lord John Russell had been taken 
 by the proposals of Austria, and had supi)orted them in 
 the first instance; but when the Government at home 
 would Biot have them, he was still induced to remain a 
 
TUB CLOSE OF THE WAB. 
 
 509 
 
 member of the Cabinet, and even to condemn in the House 
 of Commons the recommendations he had supported at 
 Vienna. lie was charged by Mr. Disraeli with having 
 encouraged the Russian pretensions by declaring at a crit- 
 ical point of the negotiations that he was disposed to favor 
 whatever arrangement would best preserve the honor of 
 Russia. " What has the representative of England," Mr. 
 Disraeli indignantly asked, to do with the honor of Rus- 
 sia ? " 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 
 considered among nations to be her honor. But he was 
 not able to give any satisfactory explanation of his having 
 approved the conditions in Vienna which he afterward 
 condemned in Westminster. He explained in Parliament 
 that he did, in the first instance, regard the Austrian 
 propositions as containing the possible basis of a satisfac- 
 tory 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 afterward been converted to 
 the opinion of his colleagues and believed them inadmis- 
 sible in principle. This was a sort of explanation more 
 likely to alarm than to reassure the public. What man- 
 ner 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 upon the subject, but are loud in ap- 
 proval of certain conditions one day which they are equally 
 loud in condemning the next ? There was a general im- 
 pression throughout England 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 conscientious scruples of a public man who 
 distrusts the objects and has no faith in the results of 
 some war in which his people are engaged. 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 
 
510 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 must not be eager to conclude 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 dis- 
 closures was practically impossible. 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, ex- 
 tricated his colleagues from any share in the censure, al- 
 though 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, succeeded him as Colonial 
 Secretary ; and the ministry carried one or two triumph- 
 ant 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 enthusi- 
 asm. The Queen seems to have been very favorably im- 
 pressed 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 Europe. The 
 beauty and grace of the Empress likewise greatly Avon 
 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 Emperor, but he 
 foimd him strangely ignorant on most subjects, even the 
 modern political history 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 impression appears to have been left on the mind of 
 the Prince Consort. He also seems to have noticed a cer- 
 tain barrack-room flavor about the Emperor's entourage 
 which was not agreeable to his own ideas of dignity and 
 refinement. 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 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE WATt. 
 
 511 
 
 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 recently been 
 sent out to the Crimea as chief of the staff, and whose 
 admyiistration during the short time that he held the 
 command was at least well qualified to keep Lord Raglan's 
 memory green, and to prevent the regret for his death 
 from losing any of its keenness. 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 displaying any of the qualitie's which his earlier 
 career gave men reason to look for under his command. 
 After St. Arnaud's death the command was transferred 
 for awhile to General Canrobert, who, finding himself 
 hardly equal to the ta^k, resigned it in favor of General 
 Pelissier. The Sardinian contingent had arrived, and 
 had given admirable proof of its courage and discipline. 
 On August 16th, 1855, the Russians, under General Li- 
 prandi, 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 
 X3rincipal weight of the attack ; but the Sardinian contin- 
 gent 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 major- 
 ity, 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 judgement. It is a curious fact that the sug- 
 gestion to send Sardinian troojos 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 suggested it. He thought over it 
 
512 A msTonr of ovu oMm times. 
 
 deeply, resolved to adopt it, and carried it to triumphant 
 success. 
 
 The repulse of the Tchernaya was a heavy, indeed a 
 fatal, stroke for the Russians. The siege had been pro- 
 gressing for some time with considerable activity. The 
 French had drawn their lines nearer and nearer to the 
 besieged city. The Russians, however, had also been 
 throwing up fresh works, which brought them nearer to 
 the lines of the allies, and sometimes made the latter 
 seem as if they were the besieged rather than the besieg- 
 ers. The Malakoff tower and the Mamelon battery in 
 front of it became tfie scenes and the objects of constant 
 struggle. The Russians made desperate night sorties 
 again and again, and were always repulsed. On June 7th 
 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 unsuccess- 
 ful attack on the Redan and Malakoff batteries. There 
 was some misapprehension on the side of the French com- 
 mander, which led to a lack of precision and unity in the 
 carrying out of the enterprise, and it became therefore, a 
 failure on the part of both the allies. A pompous and 
 exulting address 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 enemy will be lowered, their armies swept 
 from our soil like chaff blown away by the wind." 
 
 On September 5th 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 advanced upon the Redan ; but it was a very dif- 
 ferent task from that which the French had had to un- 
 dertake. The French were near the Malakoff ; the Eng- 
 lish were very far away from the Redan. The distance 
 our soldiers had to traverse left them almost helplessly 
 
TEE CLOSE OF THE WAB. 
 
 513 
 
 exposed to the Eussian fire. They stormed the parapets of 
 the Redan despite all the difficulties of their attack ; but 
 they were not able to hold the place. The attacking party 
 were far too small in numbers ; re-enforcements did not 
 come in time; the English held their own for an hour 
 ngainst 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 with- 
 draw 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 nawete 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 renewed because there were too many. The 
 cautious commander resolved to make another attempt 
 the next morning. But before the morrow came there 
 was nothing to attack. The Russians withdrew during 
 the night from the south side of Sebastopol. A bridge of 
 boats had been constructed across the bay to connect the 
 north and the south sides of the city, and across this bridge 
 Prince Gortscliakotf 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 irreparably destroyed. The Rus- 
 sian general felt that it would be impossible for him to 
 hold the city much longer, and that to remain there was 
 only useless waste of life. But, as he said in his own 
 despatch, '4t is not Sebastopol 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 grand-children 
 may recall with pride the remembrance of it and send it 
 on to all posterity." It was some time before the allies 
 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 Sebastopol another 
 Moscow. 
 
 With the close of that long siege, which had lasted 
 
 33 
 
514 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 naturally attracted 
 peculiar attention in this country, it could have no effect 
 on the actual fortunes of such a war. Kars was defended 
 by Colonel Fen wick Williams, an English officer, who had 
 been sent, all too late, to reorganize 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 contend against official stupidity, 
 corruption, delay; he could get nothing done without 
 having first to remove whole mountains of obstruction, 
 and to quicken into life and movement an apathy which 
 seemed like that of a paralyzed system. He concentrated 
 his efforts at last upon the defence of Kars, and he held 
 the place against overwhelming Russian 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 Mouravieff, in a battle that 
 lasted nearly seven hours, and as the result of which the 
 Russians left on the field more than five thousand 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 garri- 
 son were allowed to leave the place with all the honors of 
 w^ar ; 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 compan- 
 ions — Colonel Lake, Major Teesdale, Major Thompson, 
 and Dr. Sandwith — 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 Russia. The new 
 Emperor of Russia was not a man personally inclined for 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE WAR, 
 
 515 
 
 war ; nor had he his father's overbearing and indomitable 
 temper. He could not but see that his father had greatly- 
 overrated the military strength and resources of his 
 country. He had accepted 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 resource, sooner than submit to terms 
 which he considered unsatisfactory. He said so, and he 
 meant it. " I can fancy," Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord 
 Clarendon in his bright, good-humored way, "how I 
 should be hooted in the House of Commons if I were to 
 get up and say that we had agreed to an imperfect and 
 unsatisfactory arrangement. ... I had better beforehand 
 take the Chiltern Hundreds." Lord Palmerston, however, 
 had no occasion to take the Chiltern Hundreds ; the Con- 
 gress of Paris opened on February 26th, 1856, and on 
 March 30th the treaty of peace was signed by the pleni- 
 potentiaries 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 Sebastopol and all other 
 places taken by the allies were to be given back to Russia. 
 The Sublime Porte was admitted to participate in all the 
 advantages of the public law and system of Europe. The 
 other Powers engaged to respect the independence and 
 territorial integrity of Turkey. They guaranteed in com- 
 mon the strict observance of that engagement, and an- 
 nounced that they would in consequence consider any 
 act tending to a violation of it as a question of general 
 interest. The Sultan issued a firman for ameliorating the 
 condition of his Christian subjects, and communicated tg 
 the other Powers the purposes of the firman "emanating 
 spontaneously 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 
 
516 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 marine of every nation, are formally and in perpetuity 
 interdicted to the flag of war, either of the Powers possess- 
 ing its coasts or of any other Power, with the exceptions 
 mentioned in articles fourteen and nineteen." The excep- 
 tions only reserved the right of each of the Powers to 
 have the same number of small armed vessels in the 
 Black Sea to act as a sort of maritime 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 rectification of his 
 frontier in Bessarabia, the territory ceded by Russia to 
 be annexed to Moldlivia under the suzerainty of the Porte. 
 Moldavia and Wallachia, continuing under the suzerainty 
 of the Sultan, were to enjoy all the privileges and immuni- 
 ties they already possessed under the guarantee of the 
 contracting Powers, but with no separate right of interven- 
 tion 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 con- 
 vention the Sultan 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 Bosphorus or the Dardanelles. The Sultan reserved 
 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 Pov/ers ; that is to say, 
 of their diplomatic missions. A separate convention as to 
 the Black Sea between Russia and Turkey agreed that the 
 contracting 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 central 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 concerned in bringing about this result that 
 the arrangements adopted in full congress had been sufR- 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE WAR, 
 
 517 
 
 cient to guarantee Turkey from the enemy they most 
 feared, there was a tripartite treaty afterward agreed to 
 between England, France, and Austria. This document 
 bears date in Paris, April 15th, 1856; by it the contract- 
 ing parties guaranteed jointly and severally the independ- 
 ence and integrity of the Ottoman empire, and declared 
 that any infraction of the general treaty of March 30th 
 would be considered by them as casus belli. It is probable 
 that not one of the three contracting parties was quite 
 sincere in the making 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 treaty, 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 bringing 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 aggression. 
 
 The Congress of Paris was remarkable, too, for the 
 fact that the plenipotentiaries before separating came to 
 an agreement on the subject of the right of search, and 
 the rules generally of maritime war. They agreed to the 
 four following declarations : " First, privateering is and 
 remains abolished. Second, the neutral flag covers ene- 
 mies' goods, with the exception of contraband of war. 
 Third, neutral goods, with the exception of contraband 
 of war, are not liable to capture under an enemy's flag. 
 Fourth, blockades, in order to be binding, must be effect- 
 ive; 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 already virtually 
 given up the claims she once made against neutrals, and 
 which were indeed untenable in the face of modern civili- 
 zation. She gladly agreed, therefore, to ratify, so far as 
 
518 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 her declaration went, the doctrines which would abolish 
 forever 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 acceded or should accede to them. 
 The Government of the United States had previously in- 
 vited the great European Powers, by a circular, 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 America's 
 renouncing the right of privateering. To this the United 
 States raised some difficulty, and the declarations of the 
 Congress were, therefore, made without America's assent- 
 ing to them. 
 
 With many other questions, too, the Congress of Paris 
 occupied itself. At the instigation 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 nation- 
 ality, came the great succession of events which ended in 
 the establishment of a King of Italy in the palace of the 
 Quirinal. The adjustment of the condition of the Danu- 
 bian Principalities, too, engaged much attention and dis- 
 cussion, and a highly ingenious arrangement was devised 
 for the purpose of keeping those provinces from actual 
 union, so that they might be coherent enough to act as a 
 rampart against Russia, without being so coherent as to 
 cause Austria any alarm for her own somewhat disjointed, 
 not to say distracted, political system. All these artifi- 
 cial and complex arrangements presently fell to pieces, 
 and the Principalities became in course of no very long 
 time an independent State under an hereditary prince. 
 But for the hour it was hoped that the independence of 
 Turkey and the restriction of Russia, the security of the 
 Christian provinces, 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 
 
mjE CLOSE OF TTTIS WAM. 
 
 519 
 
 for the cost. Our fleets had liardly any chance of making 
 their power felt. The shijjs of the allies took Bomarsund 
 in the Baltic, and Kinburn in the Black Sea, and bom- 
 barded 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 Decem- 
 ber, 1854, Parliament 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 slightest service. Prussia and America 
 both complained that the zeal of our recruiting function- 
 aries 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 insisted 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 Eng- 
 land. There were not a few in this country who would 
 gladly have seen the peace negotiations fail, in order that 
 England might thereby have an opportunity of reassert- 
 ing her military supremacy in the eyes of Europe. Never 
 during the campaign, nor for a long time before it, had 
 England been in so excellent a condition for war as she 
 was when the warlike operations suddenl}^ came to an 
 end. The campaign had, indeed, only been a training- 
 time for us after the unnerving relaxation 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 Re- 
 dan, despite the very serious disadvantages with which 
 we were hampered in our enterprise, as compared with 
 our allies and their simultaneous operation. With just a 
 little better generalshix) the Redan would have been taken ; 
 
520 
 
 A msTonr of" ovn own times. 
 
 as it was, even with tlie generalship that we had, the 
 next attempt would not have been likely to fail. But the 
 Russians abandoned Sebastopol, and our principal ally 
 was even more anxious for peace than the enemy ; and we 
 had no choice but to accept the situation. The war had 
 never been popular in France. It had never had even 
 that amount of ]3opularity which the French people ac- 
 corded to their Emperor's later enterprise, the campaign 
 against Austria. Louis Napoleon had had all he wanted. 
 He had been received into the society of European sover- 
 eigns, 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 opera- 
 tions. Even in this country it was at the time an almost 
 universal opinion that the French succeeded in everything 
 they tried ; that their system was perfect ; that their 
 tactics were beyond improvement ; that they Avere a con- 
 trast to us in every respect. Much of this absurd delu- 
 sion was no doubt the result of a condition of things 
 among us which no reasonable Englishman would ex- 
 change for all the imaginary triumphs that a court his- 
 toriographer 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 
 criticised ; every weakness was laid open to public obser- 
 vation. 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 political 
 and social systems of Europe — struck its finger upon the 
 weak places, "and said thou ailest here and there." 
 While the official and officious journals of the French 
 empire were sounding paeans to the honor of the Emperor 
 and his successes, to his generals, his officers, his commis- 
 sariat, 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 defects, and blam- 
 ing those who did not instantly remedy them. Unpa- 
 triotic conduct, it may be said. Ay, truly, if the conduct 
 of the doctor be unfriendly when he tells that we have 
 
THE CLOSE OF THE WAH. 
 
 521 
 
 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 inaccu- 
 rate and rash. But their general effect was bracing, 
 healthful, successful. Their immediate result was that 
 which has already been indicated — to leave the English 
 army at the close of the campaign far better able to un- 
 dertake prolonged and serious operations of war than it 
 had been at any time during the campaign'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 col- 
 lapse of 1870. 
 
 Still, there was a feeling of disappointment in this coun- 
 try at the close of the war. This was partly due to 
 dissatisfaction with the manner in which we had carried 
 on the campaign, 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 reputation 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 political results 
 of the war were to many minds equally unsatisfying. 
 We had gone into the enterprise for two things — to re- 
 strain the aggressive and aggrandizing spirit of Russia, 
 and to secure the integrity and inde]3endence of Turkey 
 as a Power capable of upholding herself with credit among 
 the States of Europe. Events which happened more than 
 twenty years later will have to be studied before any one 
 can form a satisfactory oi^inion 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. 
 
522 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 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 con- 
 venient opportunity to cast a glance back uprm the literary 
 achievements of a period so markedly divided in political 
 interest from any that went before it. The reign of 
 Queen Victoria is the first in which the constitutional and 
 Parliamentary system of government came fairly and com- 
 pletely into recognition. It is also the reign which had 
 the good fortune to witness the great modern develop- 
 ment in all that relates to practical invention, and more 
 especially in the application of science to the work of 
 making communication rapid between 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 dis- 
 tinctive literature. So, in truth, it has. Of course it is 
 somewhat bold to predict long and distinct renown for 
 contemporaries or contemporary schools. ' But it may, 
 perhaps, be assumed without any undue amount of spec- 
 ulative venturesomeness that the age of Queen Victoria 
 will stand out in history as the period of a literature as 
 distinct from others as the age of Elizabeth or Anne ; 
 although not, perhaps, equal in greatness 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 sliarply and 
 completely the literature of Victoria separates itself from 
 that of the era whose heroes were Scott, Byron, and 
 Wordsworth. Before Queen Victoria came to the throne, 
 Scott, l^yron, Coleridge, and Keats were dead. Words- 
 worth 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 com- 
 
THE literatuhe of the ueigk. 
 
 523 
 
 pie ted their literary work before Victoria caine 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 litera- 
 ture. Nothing, perhaps, is more remarkable about the 
 better literature of the age of Queen Victoria than its 
 complete severance from the leadership of that which had 
 gone before it, and its evidence of a fresli and genuine 
 inspiration. It is a somewhat curious fact, too, very con- 
 venient for the purposes of this history, that the literature 
 of Queen Victoria's time thus far divides itself clearly 
 enough into two parts. The poets, novelists, and histo- 
 rians 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 
 difference sources, and challenging comparison as antag- 
 onists rather than disciples. 
 
 We si^eak now only of literature. In science 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 con- 
 ferred upon science and the Avorld 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 
 philosopher, who combined in so extraordinary a degree 
 the strictest severity of scientific argument and form Avith 
 a freedom of fancy and imagination which lent pictur- 
 esqueness to all his illustrations, and invested his later 
 writings 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 sincerest spirit of 
 faith and devotion ; the memory of whose delightful im- 
 provisations on the science he loved to expound must 
 rem am forever with all who had the privilege of hearing 
 the unrivalled lecturer deliver his annual discourses at 
 the Royal Institution. It is not likely that the name of 
 Sir John Herschel, a gifted member of a gifted family, 
 would be forgotten by any one taking even the hastiest 
 
524 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWIST TIMES. 
 
 glance at the science of our time — a family of whom it 
 may truly be said, as the German prose-poet says of his 
 dreaming hero, that their eyes were among the stars and 
 their souls in the blue ether. Richard Owen's is, in another 
 field of knowledge, a great renown. Owen has been called 
 the Cuvier of England and the Newton of natural history, 
 and there cannot be any doubt that his researches and 
 discoveries as an anatomist and palaeontologist have 
 marked a distinct era 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 period of Queen Victoria's 
 reign is more remarkable 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 especially 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 historian's sense, most 
 closely associated with the epoch. The value of the 
 labors of men like Owen and Faraday and Brewster is 
 often to be appreciated thoroughly by scientific students 
 alone. What they have done is to be recorded in the his- 
 tory of science rather than in the general and popular his- 
 tory of a day. But the school of scientific thought which 
 Darwin founded, and in which Huxley and Tyndall taught, 
 is the subject of a controversy 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 Fara- 
 day and Brewster ; but the theories of Darwin divided the 
 scientific world, the religious world, and indeed all society, 
 into two hostile camps, and so became 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, 
 
The LlTBUATURE OF THE BEIGN. 
 
 525 
 
 be turned with the keenest interest. This is, one might 
 ahnost think, a scientific law in itself, with which it would 
 be waste of time to quarrel. 
 
 The earher part of the reign was richer in literary genius 
 than the later has thus far been. Of course the dividing 
 line which we draAV 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 cer- 
 tain instances steadily adding to their celebrity, through 
 the succeeding years. The figure of Thomas Carlyle is 
 familiar still to all who live in the neighborhood of Chel- 
 sea. It Avas late in the reign of Victoria that Stuart Mill 
 came out for the first time on a public platform in Lon- 
 don, after a life divided between official work and the 
 most various reading and study ; a life divided, too, 
 between the seclusion of Blackheath and the more poetic 
 seclusion of Avignon, 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 shrinking 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 beau- 
 tiful and romantic home in the bosom of the Lake country 
 to which her celebrity had drawn so many famous visi- 
 tors 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 prema- 
 turely ; but it might well be contended that the fame, or 
 at least the popularity, of Robert Browning 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 dift'erent sort of re- 
 pute 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 
 between the literature of the two periods. We have, 
 
526 
 
 A IIISTOBY 01" OITB OWK TIMM. 
 
 therefore, put in this first part of our history the men and 
 women who liad distinctly made their mark in these for- 
 mer 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 
 afterward, and may come yet, the literature of our time 
 gave its measure, 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, indeed, a 
 monumental piece of work. It has all that patience and 
 exhaustive care which principally mark the German his- 
 torians, and it has an earnestness which is not to be found 
 generally in the representatives of Avhat Carlyle 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 thoroughly into 
 all the political life of Greece as to become now and then 
 the partisan of this or that public man. His own practi- 
 cal acquaintance with politics was undoubtedly of great 
 service to him. We have all grown somewhat tired of 
 hearing the words of Gibbon quoted in which he tells us 
 that " the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion 
 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 Parliamentary career was of much service to the 
 historian of Greece. It has been said, indeed, of him, 
 that he never could quite keep from regarding the strug- 
 gles of parties in Athens as exactly illustrating the prin- 
 ciples disputed between the Liberals and the Tories in 
 England. It does not seem to us, however, that his polit- 
 ical career affected his historical studies in any way but by 
 throwing greater vitality and nervousness into his descrip- 
 tions of Athenian controversies. The difference between 
 a man who has mhigied anywhere in the active life of 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN. 
 
 527 
 
 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 political training enabled 
 Grote to see in the statesmen and soldiers of the Greek 
 peoples men, and not trees, walking. It taught him how 
 to make the dry bones live. Mr. Grote began life as what 
 would have been called in later years a Philosophical 
 Eadical. He was a close friend of Stuart Mill, although 
 he did not always agree with Mill in his opinions. Dur- 
 ing 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 session, 
 as Mr. Charles Villiers did at one time for the repeal of 
 the Corn-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 under- 
 gone modification, and 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 vir- 
 tue 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 toward con- 
 servatism or reaction which comes with advancing 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 ; although Mill re- 
 mained to the close of his career as full of hope in the 
 movement of liberal opinions as he had been in his boy- 
 hood ; 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, curiously 
 ignorant of the very bearings of some of the greatest 
 questions around the settlement of which the passions 
 and interests of another hemisphere were brought into 
 fierce and vast dispute. 
 
528 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 We have already had occasion more than once to speak 
 of Macaulay, the great Parhamentary debater and states- 
 man. It is the less necessary to say much of him as a 
 historian ; 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 Eng- 
 land," whatever 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 
 produced by an Englishman. The successive volumes of 
 Macaulay's " History of England " were run after as the 
 Waverley Novels might have been at the zenith of their 
 author's fame. Living England talked for the time of 
 nothing but Macaulay's "England." Certainly history 
 had never before in our country been treated in a style so 
 well calculated to render it at once popular, fascinating, 
 and fashionable. Every chapter glittered with vivid and 
 highly colored description. On almost every page was 
 found some sentence of glowing eloquence or gleaming an- 
 tithesis, which at once lent itself to citation and repetition. 
 Not one word of it could have failed to convey its mean- 
 ing. 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 comfort 
 in his studies that a votary of the Roman Catholic Church 
 may have. He had an infallible guide. He had no need 
 to vex himself with doubt, speculation, or even conject- 
 ure. This absolute certainty about everything was, be- 
 yond question, one great source of Macaulay's popularity. 
 That resolute conviction which readers of a more intel- 
 lectual class are especially inclined to distrust has the 
 same charm for the ordinary reader that it has for chil- 
 dren, who never care to hear any story if they suppose 
 the narrator does not know all about it in such a way as 
 to render question or contradiction impossible. But al- 
 though this was one of the causes of Macaulay's popular- 
 ity, it was not the most substantial cause. The brilliancy 
 of his style, the variety and aptness of his illustrations, 
 and tlie animated manner in which he contrived to set 
 his ideas of men, places, and events before the reader — 
 thes(3 wgre [imong the sourc(^3 of ^uccesy to which his 
 
THE LITEBATURE OF THE llEIGN. 
 
 529 
 
 admirers must look with the greatest satisfaction. It is of 
 late somewliat the fasliion to disi^arage Macaulay. He 
 was a popular idol so long that in the natural course of 
 tMngs it has come to him to have his title to worship, or 
 even to faith, very generally questioned. To be unreason- 
 ably admired by one generation is to incur the certainty 
 of being unreasonably disparaged by the next. Tlie tend- 
 ency of late is to assume that because Macaulay was 
 brilliant he must necessarily be superficial. But Mac- 
 aulay was not superficial. He was dogmatic ; he was full 
 of prejudice ; he was in all respects a better advocate 
 than judge ; he was wanting in the calm, impartial balanc- 
 ing faculty which a historian of the highest class ought 
 to have ; but he was not superficial. No man could make 
 out a better and stronger case for any side of a contro- 
 versy which he was led to espouse. lie was not good at 
 drawing or explaining complex characters. He loved, 
 indeed, to picture contradictory and paradoxical charac- 
 ters. Nothing 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 prom- 
 inence. This was not describing a complex character. It 
 was merely embodying 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 surpassed. 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, XDompous, and dull. He was not 
 a Gibbon, but he wrote with all Gibbon's delight in the 
 picturesqueness of a subject, and Gibbon's resolve to 
 fascinate as well as to instruct his readers. Macaulay's 
 history tries too much to be a 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, put it is something to know that their splendid 
 
 34 
 
530 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 qualities are for more conspicuous still than their defects. 
 Perhaps very recent readers of history, too, may feel dis- 
 posed to be grateful to Macaulay for having written with- 
 out any profound philosophical theory to expound. He 
 told history like a story. He warmed up as he went along, 
 and grew enamored, as a romancist 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 polit- 
 ical, and the moral world to the duty of bearing witness 
 for him, and proclaiming tlie truth of his message to 
 mankind. 
 
 Macaulay was not exactly what the Germans 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 attempted 
 was done badly. He was as successful in the composition 
 of a pretty valentine for a little girl as he was in his his- 
 tory, his essays, his "Lays of Ancient Rome," and his 
 Parliamentary speeches. In everything he attempted he 
 went very near to that success which true genius achieves. 
 In everything he just fell short of that achievement. But 
 he so nearly attained it that the reader who takes up one 
 of Macaulay's books or speeches for the first time is al- 
 most sure to believe, under the influence of the instant 
 impression, that the genuine inspiration is there. Macau- 
 lay is understood to have for a long time thought of writ- 
 ing 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 impression gradually faded, and they 
 came to read it over again, have found out that Macaulay 
 was not a Scott in fiction any more than he was a Burke 
 in eloquence or a Gibbon 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 influence 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 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN, 
 
 531 
 
 does still. He did not impress the veiy soul of English 
 feeling- as Mr. Carl^de, for example, has done. 
 
 No influence suffused the age from first to last more 
 strongly than that of Thomas Carlyle. England's very 
 way of thinkmg 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 German. At one 
 time it appeared to be so completely moulded on that of 
 Jean Paul Richter, that not a few persons doubted whether 
 the new-comer really had any ideas of his own. But 
 Carlyle soon x)roved 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 continually gleamed or 
 scowled through it. Trutli and force were the deities of 
 Carlyle's especial worship. " The eternal verities " sat 
 on the top of his 01ym]3us. To act out the truth in life, 
 and make others act it out, would require some force 
 more strong, ubiquitous, and penetrating than we can 
 well obtain from the slow deliberations of an ordinary 
 Parliament, 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 detrimental effect upon the public opin- 
 ion of England. It degenerated often into affectation, 
 alike with the teacher and the disciples. But the influ- 
 ence of Carlyle in preaching earnestness and truth, in art 
 and letters and everything else, had a healthy and 
 very remarkable effect entirely outside the regions of the 
 
532 
 
 A msTonr of our own times. 
 
 moralist, who, in this country at least, has always taught 
 the same lesson. It is not probable that individual men 
 were made much moi'e truthful in England by Carlyle's 
 glorification of the eternal verities than they would have 
 been without it. But his influence 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, despite of himself and his rules, to 
 admire. For out of the strange jargon which he seems 
 to have deliberately adopted, Carlyle has undoubtedly 
 constructed a wonderfully expressive medium in which to 
 speak his words of remonstrance and admonition. It is 
 a mannerism, 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 society and 
 literature. No tongue, says Richter, is eloquent save in 
 its own language ; and this strange language which he has 
 made for himself does really appear to be the native tongue 
 of Carlyle's powerfu.1 and melancholy 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 light- 
 ning. Of this remarkable book John Stuart Mill supplied 
 the principal material ; for Mill at one time thought of 
 writing a history of the Revolution himself, but, giving 
 up the idea, placed the materials he had collected at the 
 service of Carlyle. Carlyle used the materials in his own 
 way. He is indebted 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 
 
THE LITEBATUBE OF THE UEIGN. 
 
 533 
 
 Carlyle's style has introduced into this country a thor- 
 oughly false method of writing history. It is a method 
 which has little regard for the "dry light" which ]3acon 
 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 admi- 
 rable ; and the historian proceeds to work this princii)le 
 out. Carlyle's Mirabeau is as truly a creature of romance 
 as the Monte Chris to 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 instruc- 
 tor in the lessons of the times and events it deals with. 
 It only tell 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 
 cannot prevail over truth in the end, nor simulacra 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 outcome of Mr. 
 Carlyle's teaching. His value is in his eloquence, his 
 power, his passion, and pathos ; his stirring and life-like 
 pictures of human character, whether faithful to the his- 
 torical originals or not ; and the vein of poetry which runs 
 through all his best writings, 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 religious creeds are concerned, there can be 
 found no other man in the reign of Victoria who had any- 
 thing like the influence over English thought that Mill 
 and Carlyle possessed. 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 
 ajDOstle of freedom. Pie believed that human society 
 might be brought to something not far removed from 
 perfection by the influence of education and of freedom 
 acting on the best impulses and disciplining the emotions 
 
534 
 
 A JHSTOIIY OF OUR OWN TlME.^, 
 
 of men and women. Mill was a strange blending of 
 political economist and sentimentalist. It was not alto- 
 gether in humorous exaggeration that somebody said he 
 was Adam Smith and Petrarch in one. The curious 
 seclusion in which he was brought up by his father, the 
 Avonderful discipline of study to which in his very in- 
 fancj^ he was subjected, would have made some tiling 
 strange and striking out of a commonplace nature ; and 
 Mill was in any case a man of genius. There was an 
 antique simplicity and purity about his life which removed 
 him altogether from the ways of ordinary society. But 
 the defect of his teaching 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 " Sy tem of Logic " is of course independent of his con- 
 troverted theories and teachings. These works would, 
 if they were all he had written, place him in the very front 
 rank of English thinkers and instructors. 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 emanci- 
 pation 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 fasci- 
 nation 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 authority to ordain silence. Probably no 
 precise boundary line can ever be drawn ; and in this, as 
 in so much else, law-makers and peoples must be content 
 with a compromise. But Mill's is at least a noble plea for 
 the fullest possible liberty of utterance ; and he has 
 probably carried the argument as far as it ever can be 
 carried. There never was a morQ lucid and candid rea- 
 soner. The most difficult and abstruse questions became 
 clear by the light of his luminous exposition. Something, 
 too, of human interest and sympathy became infused 
 into the most seemingly arid discussions of political econ- 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN, 
 
 535 
 
 omy by the virtue of his emotional and half poetic nature. 
 It was well said of him that he reconciled 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 eloquence ; here 
 and there are passages of a grave, keen irony. Into the 
 questions of religious belief which arise in connection with 
 his works it is no part of our business to enter ; 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 desire 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 controver- 
 sies, and it was often remarked that he usually began by 
 stating the case of the adversary better than the adversary 
 could have 'done it for himself. Applying to his own 
 character the same truthful method of inquiry which he 
 apx)lied to others, Mill has given a very accurate descri^D- 
 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 original thinkers, and mediator 
 between them and the public. " I had always a humble 
 opinion of m}^ 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 most of my contemporaries in 
 willingness and ability to learn from everybody; as I 
 found hardly any one who made such a point of examin- 
 ing 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 substratum 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 greatest merit, but it was, 
 perhaps, his most peculiar quality. He was an original 
 thinker, despite 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 
 
536 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 econ- 
 omist, 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 furnished by nature with physical 
 and intellectual 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 Englishwoman who ever achieved 
 distinct and great success as a writer of leading articles 
 for a daily newspaper. Her strong prejudices and dislikes 
 prevent her from being always regarded as a trustworthy 
 historian. Her " History of the Thirty Years' Peace " — 
 for it may be regarded 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 over- 
 wrought hero-worship. Miss Martineau had, to a great 
 extent, an essentially masculine mind. She was often re- 
 proached with being unfeminine ; 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 " History " 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 wlio seems to embody it, and all baseness and 
 stupidity in liis opponents. But when she takes a dislikes 
 to a particular individual, she «eQms to assume that where 
 
THE LITEUATTJUE OF THE BEIGN. 537 
 
 he was wrong he must have been wrong of set malign 
 purpose, and that where he chanced to be in tlie riglit it 
 was in mistake, and in despite of his own greater inclina- 
 tion 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 deeply interesting. 
 Others of her sex there were of greater genius, even in 
 her own time ; but no Englishwoman 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 arrived in this work, described her condi- 
 tion 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 Physical Sciences," and her " Physical Geography," 
 Avould suffice to place any student, man or woman, in the 
 foremost rank of scientific expounders. The " Physical 
 Geography " is the only one of Mrs. Somerville's remark- 
 able works which was published in the reign of Queen 
 Victoria ; but the publication of the other two preceded the 
 opening of the reign by so short a time, and her career 
 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 
 intensely ambitious," Mrs. Somerville says of herself in 
 her earlier days, " to excel in something, for I felt in my 
 own breast that women 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 distinctly raised the world's estimate 
 of woman's capacity for the severest and the loftiest scien- 
 tific pursuits. She possessed the most extraordinary 
 j)0Aver of concentration, amounting to an entire absorp- 
 tion in the subject which she happened to be studying, to 
 
538 
 
 A HiSTOEY OF 6UM OTTJ^ TIMES. 
 
 the exclusion of ' all disturbing sights and sounds. She 
 had m a supreme degree that which Carlyle calls the first 
 quality of genius, an immense capacity for taking trouble. 
 She had also, happily for herself, an immense capacity 
 for finding enjoyment in almost 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 in- 
 tricate calculations after she had passed her ninetieth year ; 
 and one of her chief regrets in dying was that she should 
 not " live to see the distance of the earth from the sun 
 determined 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 Avho first sprang 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 ]3art 
 of the living literature of England. But the knights and 
 ladies whom he paints are refined, graceful, noble, without 
 roughness, without wild or, at all events, complex and dis- 
 tracting passions. It may perhaps be said that Tenny- 
 son has taken for his province all the beauty, all 
 the nobleness, all the feeling that lie near to or on the 
 surface of life and of nature. His object might seem to be 
 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, melan- 
 choly, and rej^ose are the elements of Tennyson's poetry. 
 There is no storm, no conflict, no complication. Mr. 
 J3rowning, on the other hand, delights in perplexed prob- 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN. 
 
 539 
 
 lems of character and life — in studying the effects of 
 strange contrasting forces of passion coming into play 
 under peculiar and distracting conditions. All that lies 
 heneath the surface ; all that is out of the common track 
 of emotion ; all that is possible, that is poetically con- 
 ceivable, but that the outer air and the daily walks of 
 life never see, this is what specially attracts Mr. Brown- 
 ing. In Tennyson a knight of King Arthur's mythical 
 court has the emotions of a polished English gentleman 
 of our day, and nothing more. Mr. Browning would 
 prefer, in treating of a polished English gentleman of 
 our day, to exhibit him under some conditions which 
 should draw out in him all the strange elementary x)as- 
 sions 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 insiiM; 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. None certainly can 
 be more often wanting in grace of form and delight of 
 soft sound than Mr. Browning. There are many pas- 
 sages 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 per- 
 plexing 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 fascination for him which he is 
 seemingly unable to resist. He makes of his poems too 
 often mere searchings into strange deeps of human char- 
 acter and human error. He seldom abandons himself 
 altogether to the inspiration 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." More- 
 over, 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 seldom easy to 
 understand, and that there are times when he is only 
 to be understood at the expense of as much thought 
 
540 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 and study as one might give to a controverted passage 
 in an ancient author. Tliis is a defect of art, and a 
 very serious defect. The more devoted of Mr. Brown- 
 ing'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 
 wdio finds that he can understand Shakspeare and Mil- 
 ton, Dryden and Wordsworth, Byron and Keats with- 
 out 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 lan- 
 guage has been made to do this for the most refined rea- 
 sonings of philosophical schools, for transcendentalists 
 and utilitarians, for psychologists and metaphysicians. 
 No intelligent person feels any difficulty in understand- 
 'ing what Mill, or Herbert Spencer, or Huxley means; 
 and it can hardly be said that the ideas Mr. Browning 
 desires to convey to his readers are more difficult of ex- 
 position 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 penetrating 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, 
 tlie 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, ]VIr. Browning is much superior to Mr. Tennyson. 
 The poet-laureate is the completer man. Mr. Tennyson 
 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 intellect- 
 ual power. He has sweetness and strength in exquisite 
 combination. If a just balance of poetic powers were 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN. 
 
 541 
 
 to be the crown of a poet, then undoubtedly Mr. Tenny- 
 son must be proclaimed the greatest English poet of our 
 time. The reader's estimate of Browning and Tenny- 
 son will probably be decided by his predilection for the 
 higher effort or for the more perfect 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 tri- 
 flings 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. Brown- 
 ing, on the other hand, has chosen to court the approval 
 of his time on terms of such disadvantage as an orator 
 might Avho 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 draAV- 
 ing-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 "vii;ginibus puerisque." One quality ought to 
 be mentioned as common to these two poets w^ho have 
 so little else in common. They are both absolutely faith- 
 ful to nature and truth in their pictures of the earth 
 and its scenes and seasons. Almost all the great poets 
 of the past age, even including Wordsworth himself, 
 were now and tlien 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. 
 
542 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Not the branch of a tree, nor the cry of a bird, nor the 
 shiftmg 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 Tenny- 
 son's description of woodland and forest scenes one might 
 almost fancy that he can catch the exact peculiarities of 
 sound in the rustling and moaning of each separate tree. 
 In some of Mr. Browning'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 uncertain whether he is looking on 
 a page of living reality or recalling to memory a page 
 from the author of " The Ring and the Book." The poets 
 seems 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 described 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 
 account. Mrs. Browning has often been described as the 
 greatest poetess of whom we know anything since Sappho. 
 This description, 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 altogether different from that of 
 any Mrs. Ilemans, or such singer of sweet, mild, and 
 innocent 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 admitted to 
 stand with the foremost even of our modern day. She is 
 one of the most sympathetic of poets. She speaks to the 
 hearts of numbers of readers who think Tennyson all too 
 ^weet, smooth, and trivial, and Robert Browning Iiarsh 
 
LlT:^RATlfRE OF fllE RElGm 543 
 
 and rugged. She speaks especially to the emotional in 
 women. In all moods when men or women are distracted 
 by the bewildering conditions of life, when they feel them- 
 selves alternately dazzled by its possibilities and baffled 
 by its limitations, the poems of Elizabeth Browning ought 
 to find sympathetic ears. But the poems 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 Portu- 
 guese ; " and that what the phraseology 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 thoughtful verse that it is hard sometimes to question 
 his title to be considered a genuine poet. On the other hand, 
 it is likely that the very grace and culture and thought- 
 fulness of his style inspired 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 exactly the intellectual pecul- 
 iarities 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 somewhat 
 apt to be at once fastidious and fantastic. 
 
 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 launch when the reign was well 
 
544 A msTORY OF OVB OWN TIMES. 
 
 on ; and after it appeared " The Bridge of Sighs ; " and in 
 two of Hood's x>oems have done more to make him famou.;. 
 He was a genuine, though not a great poet, in whom 
 humor was most properly 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 monumental place in English sympathies. The 
 " Plea of the Midsummer Fairies " was written 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 intelligence 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 belittle 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, Alex- 
 ander Smith, passed away in a spasm as it came, and is 
 now almost forgotten. " Orion," an epic poem by Richard 
 H. Home, made a very distinct mark upon the time. 
 Home proved himself to be a sort of Landor manque — 
 or perhaps a connecting link between the style of Landor 
 and that of Browning. 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 tlieir piping, and the general effect may well be com- 
 mended ; but it is not necessary that the names of all the 
 
THE LITER ATUBE OF THE BEIGN. 545 
 
 performers in an orchestra should be recorded for the 
 supposed gratification 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 before the world, was entitled 
 " Modern Painters : their superiority in the art of Land- 
 scape-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 opponents. 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 tlie old masters possessed the secret of 
 landscape-painting. When, therefore, a bold young dog- 
 matist involved in one common denunciation " Claude, 
 Caspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Ruysdael, Paul Potter, 
 Canaletto, and the various Van-somethings and Koek- 
 somethings, 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 thunder. 
 The young Oxford Graduate possessed, along with genius 
 and profound conviction, an imperturbable and magnifi- 
 cent self-conceit against which the surges of angry criti- 
 cism 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 proceeding with his self- 
 imposed task, he persuaded 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 philoso- 
 pher, a statesman, a preacher — anything, everything that 
 human intelligence can impel a man to be. All that he 
 
 35 
 
546 A msTonr of oun own times. 
 
 has written since his first appeal to the public has been 
 inspired by this conviction — that an appreciation of the 
 truth in art reveals to him who has it the truth in every- 
 thing. 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 yesterday's assertion may 
 sound, yet the whole career is consistent with its essential 
 principles and beliefs. It may be fairly questioned 
 whether Mr. Ruskin has any great qualities but his elo- 
 quence and his true, honest love of nature. As a man to 
 stand up before a society of which one part was fashion- 
 ably languid and the other part only too busy and greedy, 
 and to preach to it of Nature's immortal beauty, and of 
 the true way to do her reverence, Ruskin has and had a 
 position of genuine dignity. This ought to be enough for 
 the work and for the praise of any man. But the restless- 
 ness of Ruskin's temperament, combined with the ex- 
 traordinary self-sufficiency which contributed so much to 
 his success where he was master of a subject, sent him per- 
 petually 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 venture- 
 some to call him a great critic even in art, for he seldom 
 expresses any opinion one day without flatly contradict- 
 ing it the next. He is a great writer, as Rousseau was — 
 fresh, eloquent, audacious, writing out of the fulness of 
 the present mood, and heedless how far the impulse of to- 
 day may contravene 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 contradictions shall have been utterly 
 
mi! LiTEnATms op mp nmon, 647 
 
 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 liter- 
 ature 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 recog- 
 nized the fact that a new and wonderful 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 happened 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 impossible, a 
 literary man who was no longer young, who had been 
 working with but moderate success for many years in light 
 literature, suddenly took to writing novels, and almost in 
 a moment stepped up to a level with the author of " Pick- 
 wick." 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 compar- 
 ison 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 dis- 
 tinctly and considerably below that of Fielding; but 
 Dickens cannot be said to stand thus beneath Thackeray. 
 If the comparison were to hold at all, Thackeray must be 
 compared to Fielding, for Fielding is not in the least like 
 Dickens ; but then it must be allowed that Smollett wants 
 many of the higher qualities of the author of " David Cop- 
 perfield." It is natural that men should compare Dickens 
 and Thackeray ; but the two will be found to be curiously 
 unlike when once a certain superficial resemblance ceases 
 to impress the mind. Their ways of treating a subject 
 
548 A mSTOBT OF OVU OWlf TIMES. 
 
 were not only dissimilar but were absolutely in contrast* 
 They started, to begin with, under the influence of a totally 
 different philosophy of life, if that is to be called a philos- 
 ophy which was probably only the result of peculiarity 
 of temperament in each case. Dickens set out on the lit- 
 erary 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 possi- 
 ble 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 mannerism. But the writings 
 of Dickens were far more deeply influenced by his pecul- 
 iarities of feeling or philosophy than those of Thackeray. 
 A large share of the admiration which is popularly given 
 to Dickens is, undoubtedly, a tribute to what people con- 
 sider his cheerful view of life. In that, too, he is especially 
 English. In this country the artistic theory of France 
 and other Continental nations, borrowed from the aesthetic 
 principles of Greece, which accords the palm to the artistic 
 treatment rather than to the subject, or the purpose, or 
 the way of looking at things, has found hardly any broad 
 and general acceptation. 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 any- 
 thing that he saw with a fidelity which Balzac could not 
 have surpassed ; and, like Balzac, he had a way of inspir- 
 ing inanimate objects with a mystery and motive of their 
 own, which gave them often a weird and fascinating indi- 
 viduality. But it must be owned that if Dickens'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 de- 
 scriptions of life and character, without affecting, in any 
 sensible degree, his influence on the reader or his position 
 in literature. Thackeray had a marvellously keen appre- 
 ciation 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 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN, 549 
 
 analyze and illustrate the weaknesses and foibles of certain 
 types of character with greater subtlety of judgment and 
 force of exposition than Thackeray. Dickens had little 
 or no knowledge of human character, and evidently cared 
 very little about the study. His stories are fairy tales 
 made credible by the masterly realism with which he 
 describes all the surroundings and accessories, the cos- 
 tumes 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 descrip- 
 tions of externals. He left his readers to construct for 
 themselves the greater part of the surroundings of his 
 personages from his descriptions 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 difficulty in constructing the surround- 
 ings 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 externals 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 ; Thack- 
 eray 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 of conventional life merely. This is not to be said 
 in disparagement of either artist. It is rather a tribute 
 to an artist's knowledge of his own capacity and sphere 
 of Avork that he only attempts to draw what he thoroughly 
 
550 A HISTOBY OF OUB OWN TIMES. 
 
 understands. But it is proper to remark of Dickens and 
 of Thackeray, as of Balzac, that the Ufe 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, aspiration, 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 Thack- 
 eray had in common — a love for the purely ideal and 
 romantic 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 
 vindicated 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 Thackeray 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 little 
 play in the novels of either writer. Both were, in this 
 respect, for all their originality and genius in other ways, 
 highly and even exclusively 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 cer- 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN, 551 
 
 tain reserves to suit conventional etiquette. It is some- 
 what 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 
 altogether for her material and her success. The novels 
 of a young woman, Charlotte Bronte, compelled all Eng- 
 lish society- into a recognition not alone of their own 
 sterling power and genius, but also of the fact that pro- 
 found 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 variety. 
 They make hardly any pretence to accurate drawing 
 of ordinary men and women in ordinary life, or, at all 
 events, under ordinary 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 in- 
 spiration would not always come at call. She had little 
 genuine relish for beauty, except the beauty of a weird 
 melancholy and of decay. But when she touched the 
 chord of elementary 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 because it seemed 
 to society the right sort of thing to say. She told a friend 
 that she felt sure that " Jane Eyre " Avould have an effect 
 on readers in gefneral 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 extraordi- 
 nary 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. Char- 
 lotte Bronte was far from being an artist of fulfilled 
 power. She is rather to be regarded as one who gave 
 evidence of extraordinary gifts, which might with time 
 
552 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 earlier than 
 the age at which some of our greatest novelists brought : 
 forth their first completed novels. But she left a very deep 
 impression 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 super- 
 natural 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 ambi- 
 tions and common-day occupations 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 systematically toned 
 down and put in thrall to good taste and propriety, this 
 young writer should have suddenly con\e out with her 
 books all thrilling with emotion, and all protesting in 
 the strongest practical manner against the theory that 
 the loves and hates of men and women had been tamed 
 by the process of civilization. Perhaps the very novelty 
 of the apparition was, in great measure, a part of its suc- 
 cess. Charlotte Bronte did not, indeed, influence the gen- 
 eral 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 moment. As Miss 
 Martineau said of her, she stole like a shadow into litera- 
 ture, and then became a shadow again. But she struck 
 
THE LITEBATURE OF THE REIGN. 553 
 
 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 in 
 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. Some- 
 thing not unlike 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 wonderful 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 all living English novelists. 
 Perhaps this is rather to the reproach of the English 
 fiction of the day than to the renown of Lord Lytton. 
 But even after Dickens and Thackeray and Charlotte 
 Bronte, and later and not less powerful and original 
 writers had appeared 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 readily to change his style to suit the 
 tastes of each day. He began by writing of fops and i^oues 
 of a time now almost forgotten ; then he made heroes of 
 highwaymen and murderers ; afterward he tried the 
 philosophic and mildly« didactic style ; then he turned to 
 mysticism 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 l3eing a statesman and an orator. 
 Not Demosthenes himself had such difficulties of articula- 
 tion to contend against in the beginning ; and Demosthenes 
 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 hap- 
 pened to possess. His success in the House of Commons 
 was exactly like his success in romance and the drama. 
 He threw himself into competition with men of far higher 
 priginal gifts^ and he made so good a show of contesting 
 
554 A HISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 
 
 with them that in the minds of many the victory was not 
 clearly with his antagonists. There was always for exam- 
 ple, 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 Shak- 
 speare ; and although nobody cared to read them yet peo- 
 ple were always found to go and look at them. When 
 Lytton 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 charlata- 
 nerie ; 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 patience, 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 borrowings 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. Li all that 
 belongs to political life Mr. Disraeli's novels are far supe- 
 rior to those of Lord Lytton. We have nothing in our 
 literature to compare with some of the best of Mr. Dis- 
 raeli's novels for light political satire, and for easy, accu- 
 rate characterization of political cliques and personages. 
 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 thq 
 political sketches and satirizing became sham also. 
 
THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN. 555 
 
 "Alton Locke" was published nearly thirty years ago. 
 Then Charles Kingsley became to most boys in Great 
 Britain who read books at all a sort of living embodiment 
 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 commanded 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 author. He described glowing scenery admirably, and 
 he rang the changes vigorously on his two or three ideas 
 — the muscular Englishman, the glory of the Elizabethan 
 discoveries, 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. Per- 
 haps 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 philosopher, a great scholar, 
 a great poet, a great historian, a great novelist, and an 
 indefatigable country parson. Charles Kingsley never 
 seems to have made up his mind for which of these call- 
 ings to go in especially ; and being, with all his versatil- 
 ity, not at all many-sided, but strictly one-sided and al- 
 most one-ideaed, the result was, that while touching suc- 
 cess at many points he absolutely mastered it at none. 
 Since his novel "Westward Ho!" he 'never added any- 
 thing substantial to his reputation. All this acknowl- 
 edged, however, 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 ro- 
 mances 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 animal spirits and a broad, 
 bright humor. He was quite genuine in his way. He 
 afterward changed his style completely, and with much 
 
556 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 success ; and will be found in the later part of the period 
 holding just the same relative 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 roistering 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 
 during the period we have passed over, some in their day 
 more popular than either Thackeray or Charlotte Bronte. 
 Many of us can remember, without being too much 
 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 Walter Scott could have 
 given to the youth of a preceding generation. But Wal- 
 ter Scott is with us still, young and old, and poor James 
 is gone. His once famous solitary horseman has ridden 
 away into actual solitude, 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 undertaking was, on 
 the whole, decidedly healthy. Thackeray was by far the 
 greatest of the regular 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. Punch was a 
 thoroughly English production. It had little or noth- 
 ing in common with the comic periodicals of Paris. It 
 ignored absolutely and of set purpose the whole class of j 
 subjects which make up three-fourths of the stock in trade j 
 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 unsavory 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 inequalities of class, 
 and the struggles of ambitious and vain persons to get 
 
mt: LITER ATXJltE OF TffE BElGK. 557 
 
 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 papers relied when they 
 had to deal with the domestic life of the nation. Punch 
 started by being somewhat fiercely radical, but gradually 
 toned away into a sort of intelligent and respectable Con- 
 servatism. 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 remarkable sobriety of style was apparent 
 in all their humors. Of later years caricature has had 
 absolutely no place in the illustrations 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 espe- 
 cially, 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 maintain- 
 ing a good, open, convenient, neutral ground, where 
 young men and maidens, girls and boys, elderly politi- 
 cians and staid matrons, law, trade, science, all sects and 
 creeds, may safely 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. 
 
 EKD Of vol. I.