WITH NUMEROUS AUTHENTIC PORTRAITS. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES: FIFTY YEARS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS. BY THOMAS ARCHER, F.R.H.S, author of 'pictures and royal portraits," etc. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, whose name stands at the head of our title, has filled so large a space in the history of his time that his biography, which is to be narrated in this work, will virtually ern.brace the whole social and political history of the last fifty years: for no one who is acquainted with the political movements and stirring events of the last half century can fail to see how large a space in the history of the period has been filled by this one man, and how his irK:essant energy has influenced the entire political condition of the country. A history of the last half century — a period teeming with vast interests and amazing developments of social and political progress — must also comprise such sketches of the men who have been foremost in the direction of national affairs as will fully and vividly interpret those personal associations which are inseparable from great advances in whatever direction they may be made: prominence will therefore be given in these pages to the lives, the aims, and Ae characteristics of those leaders of thought and action, who have left their impress on the living world of our time. Even those names which bear immediately on the main current of events will form a grand muster-roll of statesmen, legislators, judges, soldiers, orators, philosophers, philanthropists, and men of literature and science, upon which will appear Gladstone, Disraeli, Earl Grey, Welling- ton, Lansdowne, Brougham, Melbourne, Peel, O'Connell, Russell, Aberdeen, Derby, Ashley, Cobden, Bright, Palmcrston, Fowell Buxton, Sidney Herbert, Denman, Lyndhurst, The Napiers, Raglan, Clyde, Havelock, Lawrence, Macaulay, John Stuart Mill, Wheatstone, Faraday, Newman, Chalmers, Maurice, Rowland Hill, and a host of others, of some of whom the pictures will need to be revived that they may show in unfaded colours to contemporary observation, and thus clearly illustrate the marvellous tale we have to tell. For we propose to recount the wonderful story of the half century, — to present a graphic view of a period which, perhaps beyond any other, has been marked by mighty events, intense inquiry, and striking incidents. The half century which comprehends the passing of the Reform Bill, the Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, the amelioration of the Criminal Code, the Chartist Agitation, the great tide of Emigration, the Discovery of the Gold-fields, the adoption of the Factory Acts, the Crimean War, the removal of Religious Disabilities, the Indian Mutiny, the Relief of Famine, the Great International Exhibition, the Extension of the Franchise, Vote by Ballot, the development of Steam- ship navigation, and of the Railway, Postal, and Telegraph systems, cannot fail to yield scenes and episodes full of fascinating interest, a wide gallery of attractive pictures — a history full of absorbing topics and recollections. We will only add one word. Those pages will display no party bias. The Book will be a record, and will take no side: political propagandism is no part of its function. But it will endeavour to be true, earnest, and sympathetic in tone — a book appealing to the best sentiments of citizens in all ranks and of all classes. The Work will be printed on super-royal 8vo, and completed in four volumes, price 9^-. 6d. each. The volumes will be bound in cloth, in a substantial and elegant style, with burnished red edges, fitting them either for continuous present use or a place in the library shelf; and each will be illustrated with eight authentic portraits of the leading men of the time. LONDON: BLACKIE & SON, Publishers; GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, AND DUBLIN. GLAD STONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. •"^Jft^f^ WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. FROM A PHOTU&KAPH BY ELLIOTT * F.RY BLSCKTE, & SON. LONDON:. &LaSGOW. S. EEDTOHROH . WILLIAM EWAET GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES FIFTY YEAKS SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PKOGEESS. BY THOMAS ARCHER, F.R.H.S., AUTHOR OF "PICTURES AND ROYAL PORTRAITS," "DECISIVE EVENTS OF HISTORY, " THE TERRIBLE SIGHTS OF LONDON," ETC. VOL L 1830 TO 1845. WITH BRIEF RETROSPECT FROM 1820 TO 1830. BLACKIE & SON: LONDON, EDINBUEGH, GLASGOW, AND DUBLIN. 1881. GLASGOW: \V. G. BLACKIE AND CO., PRINTERS, VILLAFIELD. DA V.I LIBRARY UNIVERPTTY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBAKA CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Portrait — William Ewaet Gladstone — From a photograph by Elliott & Fry .frontispiece. „ The Duke of Wellington — From the daguerreotype by Claudet, to face 66 „ Eael Grey — From the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., „ 80 „ Lord Melbourne — From the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.E.A., „ 98 „ Daniel O'Connell — From the miniature by T. Carrick, „ 136 „ Sir Robert Peel — From the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A.,.... „ 144 „ Queen Victoria — From the portrait by Winterhalter, „ 210 „ Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield — From a photograph, „ 320 CHAPTER I. Condition of the Country, 1821-1830. TAGE Parliamentary Reform advocated by Chatham and Pitt, ....... 1 Reform Petitions — The " Friends of the People," . . ... . . .1 " Protection " of British Agriculture, . . 2 Popular Excitement — Project of the "Blank- eteers," ....... 2 Sir Francis Burdett's Motion for Reform, . 2 Orator Hunt — The Peterloo Massacre, . . 3 The infamous "Six Acts" passed, ... 6 Accession of George IV. — His Character — Queen Caroline, ..... 6 George Canning — His early Career, . . 7 The Gladstone Family — Mr. John Gladstone of Liverpool, ...... 8 William Ewart Gladstone at Eton, . . H* State of the School — Fagging and Flogging, . 11 Gladstone's School Companions — His Tributes to Selwyn and Canning — The Eton Maga- zines, . . . . . . .13 Lord John Russell — His early Life — His Mo- tion on Reform, . . . . .17 Amelioration of the Penal Code — Sir Samuel RomiUy and Sir James Mackintosh, . 17 Readjustment of the National Currency, . 17 State of Ireland — Coercion Acts passed by Lord Castlereagh — Lord Wellesley ap- pointed Lord-lieutenant, . . . .18 Mr. Peel made Home Secretary — His early History, 18 Mr. Canning opposes Reform but supports Catholic Emancipation — Becomes Foreign Secretary, . . . . . .19 Suicide of Lord Castlereagh, . . . .19 Congress of Great Powers at Verona — The "Holy Alliance" — Canning's Speeches on Non-intervention, ..... 20 Our Eastern Wars, 22 Proposed Abolition of Negro Slavery — With- drawal of Commercial Bounties — Mr. Hus- kisson proposes Reduction of certain Duties, 22 The Corn-law Agitation — Ebenezer Elliott — Specimens of his "Rhymes," . . .23 Mr. Robert Owen— The New Lanark Mills— His Community of "New Harmony," . 24 Demands of the Roman Catholics — The "Catholic Association" in Ireland, . . 25 Daniel O'Connell, ...... 26 Mr. Canning becomes Premier — His Death in 1827 27 Benjamin Disraeli — His iirst Appearance, . 29 The Duke of Wellington Prime Minister, . 30 Daniel O'Connell on British Connection with Ireland, ....... 31 Catholic Emancipation Bill introduced and finally carried, . . . . .33 Wellington's Appeal to the Lords in favour of Emancipation, . . . . .35 First Roman Catholic Members returned to Parliament, ...... 36 Distress among the Labouring Classes, . .37 Death of George IV. and Accession of William IV. — Queen Caroline, . . . .38 Press Prosecutions — Mr. Brougham's Defence of Ambrose Williams — The Duke of Wel- lington and Sir James Scarlett, . . 40 John Wilson Croker — Disraeli's "Study" of him, 41 Mr. Gladstone enters Christchurch, Oxford — His College Life — Becomes prominent in the "Union" Debating Society — High Church Toryism at Oxford, . . .42 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE Revival in the Church of England, . . 45 Bishop Blomfield and John Keble, . .47 Foundation of the London University and of the Society for the Diffusion of Use- ful Knowledge by Thomas Campbell, Brougham, and others, . . . .49 Foundation of Mechanics' Institutes — Dr. Birkbeck, ...... 50 William Godwin, author of Political Justice, 51 Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, . . .52 Jeremy Bentham — James Mill, . . .52 Establishment of Metropolitan Police Force, 53 General Use of Gas — Discovery of the Lime- light — Beginning of the Railway System, 54 Dr. Thomas Young and Sir Humphry Davy, 54 Progress of Social Improvement, . . .55 CHAPTER II. The Beginning of a jSTew Era. Character of the "Sailor King" and of Quee Adelaide, ....... 57 Affairs in France in 1830 — Prince Polignac — Insurrection in Paris— Charles X. exiled — Louis Philippe becomes King of the French, 58 Coronation of William IV. — The New Par- liament — Return of Mr. Brougham for Yorkshire — His Character and Career, . 60 The Duke of Welling-tonon Reform — Unpopu- larity of his Administration^ — Its Fall, . 65 Sketch of the "Iron Duke" and of Sir Robert Peel, 66 Earl Grey's Ministry — Brougham made Lord- chanceUor — A Reform Measm-e prepared by the Cabinet, 69 Distress prevalent in the Country — "Captain Swing," ....... 70 Lord John Russell introduces the Reform Bill — Its Provisions — Scotland and Ireland included — Opposition to the Bill and Dis- solution of Parliament, . . . .71 Sketch of Lord John Russell, . . .79 Earl Grey — Lord Althorp — Harriet Mar- tineau — Joseph Hume, . . . .80 The New Parliament — Lord John Russell again introduces the Reform Bill — It is thrown out by the House of Lords — Riots in London, Nottingham, and Bristol, . 83 The Reform Bill re-introduced into the House of Lords and finally passed, . . .89 Affairs on the Continent — France and Louis Philippe — Belgium ^ — Greece — Germany — Poland overcome by Russia — Revolution- ary Outbreaks in Switzerland and Italy — Egypt and Turkey — Portugal and Spain, . 90 Characteristics of the Men of Reform Period, 94 Rev. Sydney Smith, 95 PAGE Lord Cochrane (Earl of Dundonald), . 96 Sir Francis Burdett — Caricatures of the Time, 97 White Conduit House, ..... 98 Sketch of Lord Melbourne, . . . .99 Prosecution of William Cobbett — Outline of his History — His Writings, . . .99 Thomas Babington Macaulay, . . . 104 Sir Walter Scott, 106 Noticeable Radicals in Parliament of 1832: Sir William Molesworth, George Grote, and John Arthur Roebuck, . . .107 The Westminster Review — Its Contributors — Its Services to extreme Liberalism, . .108 The Cholera Visitation of 1832, . . .109 Beginning of the Tractarian Movement — Di*. J. H. Newman, 110 First Church Disestablishment Meeting held, 111 Progress of Cheap Literature — The Penny Magazine, Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, 112 Sketch of Lord Lyndhurst, .... 112 Mr. Gladstone contests Newark and is returned to the first Reformed Parliament — His Address to the Electors, . . . .114 CHAPTER IIL The Men and Measures op Reform, Hard Work in the New Parliament — Sir Ed- ward Baines' Diary — The Duke of Wel- lington's Tactics, . . . . .118 Disturbances and Crime in Ireland— A Coer- cion Bill passed, . . . . .120 Irish Church Debates— Mr. Ward's Motion, . 122 Dismissal of the Whig Ministry, . . .124 Brougham's Quarrel with Lord Durham, . 125 WiUiam IV. and Lord Melbourne, . . 126 First Conservative Government formed — The Tam worth Manifesto — Sir Robert Peel's Difficulties in the House, .... 129 The Marquis of Londonderry, . . . 133 Report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners — Irish Tithe Commutation Bill introduced — Lord John Russell's Llotions — O'ConneU's Opposition to the Ministry — Haydon's Portrait of the Agitator— Speech of Sir James Graham — Mr. Gladstone's share in the Debate — Defeat and Resignation of the Ministry, . . . . . .134 The Melbourne Administration — Lord Glenelg, 145 Negro Emancipation — Evidence taken before Parliamentary Committee — Mr. Glad - stone's Maiden Speech in the House — He defends the Management of his Father's Estates in Demerara — The Apprenticeship Clauses — Miss Martineau's Story Deme- rara — The Abolition Act passed, . .146 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE Thomas Carlyle on the "Nigger Question," . 154 Sketch of William Wilberforce, . . .155 Debates on the Slave Trade — Mr. Gladstone defends the Planters — Negro Apprentice- ship abolished, . . . . . .156 The Houses of Parliament burned, . .159 New Poor-law Bill — Mr. Chadwick's Scheme, 1 60 Revival of Trades-unions — The "Dorchester i Labourers," . . . . . .161 Popular Dislike of the New Poor-law, . .163 Report on Municipal Corporations — ■ Lord John Russell introduces Bill for their Re- form — Amendments proposed in the Com- mons — Opposition and Alterations in the Lords — The Bill finally passed — Mr. Roe- buck's Denunciation of the Lords, . .164 The Corporation of London, . . . .176 The Anatomy Act of 1832, . . . .176 Further Amelioration of Criminal Code, . 177 Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, 177 Proposed Legislation on Church Lands, . 180 Death of William IV., 181 The Princess Victoria — Her Upbringing, . 181 The Duke of Cumberland — -Alleged "Orange" Plot 182 Death of Hannah More — Her Character, . 183 Lord Herbert of Lea, . . . . .184 Appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835, . 185 Writers of the Period : George Crabbe — Coleridge — Dr. Southwood Smith — Mrs. Hemans — L. E. Landon, &c., . . . 186 Newspaper Stamp and Paper Duties reduced, 188 Lord Palmerston — His early Career, . . 1 89 Continental Affairs — The Spanish Legion — Belgium becomes an Independent King- dom — Poland and France — Disturbances in Paris — French Revolutionary Societies — Revolt in Lyons — Attempted Assassina- tion of Louis Philippe by Fieschi, . .190 Charles Louis Napoleon — His early History — His Proceedings at Strasburg — Is exiled, 195 Prejudice against Reform, . . . .198 Changes in Political Opinions : Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, . . . .200 Mr. Gladstone's Essay on Church and State, 202 CHAPTER IV. The Eably Part of our Queen's Reign. The Princess Victoria — Is informed of her Accession to the Throne — Her Admirable Conduct — She is proclaimed Queen — Inci- dents of her Domestic Life, . . . 208 Feebleness of the Melbourne Ministry — De- mands of the Scottish Church — Supposed Whig Influence over the Queen, . .212 Louise Lehzen and Baron Stockmar, . . 215 A New General Election — Addresses of Sh- Robert Peel and Lord John Russell, The New Parliament opened by the Queen — Debate on the Address — Lord Brougham's Opposition to Lord Melbourne, Revolt in Canada — American Sympathizers — Proceedings of Major Head — Measures of the Home Government Sketch of Lord Durham — He is appointed Governor-general of Canada — The Quebec Ordinances — Brougham's Indemnity Bill — His Denunciations of Lord Durham — John Stuart Mill on Lord Durham's Policy and Subsequent Treatment, . Coronation of Her Majesty, . . . The Melbourne Ministry resign — The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel sum- moned — Sir Robert and the Ladies of the Bed-chamber — Case of Lady Flora Hast- ings — Lord Melbourne resumes Office, Social Improvements of the Period — Railwaj's, Question of Cheaper Postage — The Old Postal System and Mail Coaches — Early Life of Rowland HiU— His Pamphlet proposing Penny Postage — The New Plan adopted — Its Modern Development — The Money- order and Telegraph Sj'stems, . Sketch of Lord Eldon, ..... The Queen's First Visit to the City, Burning of the Royal Exchange, . Farmer Thom, "Sir William Coiu-tenay, Knight of Malta " — He incites the Peasantry to Riot, ..... Sketch of Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, Robert Owen presented to the Queen, . Mr. Disraeli on the "Conservative Cause," . Carlyle's Work on Chartism, The Rev. J. R. Stephens, .... Father Mathew — "Temperance Crusade," The Chartist Agitation — The Six Points of the People's Charter — Feargus O'Connor — The " National Convention " and the "National Petition" — Mr. Attwood's Mo- tion in the House — Trial of Frost, Wil- liams, and Jones, ..... Disraeli founds the "Young England" Party — His charming Description of a Strike, . Early Factory Legislation, .... Grants for National Education — Those to Roman Catholic Schools opposed — Mr. Shell's Speech, Amendment of the Criminal Law, Mr. Stockdale and the Parliamentary Printers, Evils of the Transportation System, Ocean Steam Navigation — Invention of Na- smyth's Steam-hammer — The Daguerreo- type — The Railway System, . 218 220 221 225 230 231 233 234 242 246 246 247 248 250 250 251 253 255 258 263 265 267 268 269 270 271 Vlll CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE Attempts on the Queen's Life, . . . 272 Lady Hester Stanhope, 273 Lord Brougham on our Marriage Laws, . 273 Origin of the Anti-Com-law League — Its first Meetings — Interference of the Char- tists — Stoppage of Work in MiUs — Another "National Petition," . . . 274 Church and Dissent — Lady Hewley's Charity — Mr. Gladstone's Speech on Chapel Bill, 282 The Tractarian Movement, .... 284 Death of Thomas Campbell, .... 286 Rise of the East India Company — Troubles in Afghanistan — Mr. Macaulay's Speech, 286 British Relations with China — ^The "Opium War," 289 Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt — Sir John Bowring's Reception by him, . . . 290 Prince Albert first visits England — King Leopold and Baron Stockmar's Views about his Marriage with Queen Victoria — Their Cautious Procedure — Albert's Edu- cation and early Training — A Royal "Love- making," ....... 292 Arrangements for the Queen's Marriage — O'Connell's exuberant Loyalty — Disciis- sions on Albert's Religion — His Annuity — Question of his Precedence — The Royal Marriage, . . . . . . . 29S Character of the Prince Consort, . . . 30 1 Conservative Attacks on the Melbourne Min- istry — Disturbed Condition of Society — Murder of Lord Norbury and of Lord William Russell— Mr. Charles Phillips' Defence of Courvoisier, .... 30;" The Budget of 1841— The Corn and Sugar Duties — William Greg's Pamphlet— Sir Robert Peel's Speech — The Ministry de- feated — Parliament is dissolved, . . 308 PA OK Policy of the "Philosophical Radicals," . 311 The New Parliament of 1841 — The Melbourne Ministry turned out — Sir Robert Peel's Declaration, . . . . . .312 Melbourne's Parting with the Queen — His Private Character — Lady Melbom-ne and Lord Byron — Melbourne's later Days, . 314 The Peel Ministry formed — Mr. Gladstone Vice-president of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint — His share in the Debates — Is nominated for Manchester — His Marriage, ... . . 318 Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield — Fa- mily History — His Father Isaac Disraeli — Benjamin's School -days and early Training — His Appearance in Society — Travels in the East — Vivian Grey and the Revolutionary Epick — His Political Ambi- tion — Unsuccessfully contests High Wy- combe and Taunton — His Quarrel with O'Connell — Melbourne's Advice to Disraeli — He is returned for Maidstone — His first Speech in the House — Becomes Member for Shrewesbury — -His growing Reputation, 320 Fire in the Tower, London, .... 330 Birth of Prince of Wales 330 Opening of Parliament in 1842 — The Queen's Speech — Poverty and Distress prevalent — The Income-tax imposed — Condition of the Labouring Classes — Sir James Graham's Factory Bill, . . . .330 Sketch of Lord George Bentinck, . . . 332 The Duke of Newcastle and Lord Carlisle, . 333 General Progress of the Country — Railways — The Railway Mania of 1845 — Influence of the Prince Consort on Art-culture, . . 334 Joseph Mazzini and the Brothers Bandiera — Opening of Letters in Post-ofl&ce, . . 335 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. CHAPTER I. CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY, 1821-1830. A retrospective glance — Condition of the Country in 1821 — Demands for Parliamentary Reform — Treasury nominations —Government majorities— Effects of the French Revolution — Consequences of the War — The Corn-laws — Distress of the People — The Manchester " Blanketeers " — Sir Francis Burdett — Popular excitement — Women's clubs — Meetings of Reforaiers — Orator Hunt — The Peterloo Massacre — Imprisonment of Hunt — The "Six Acts" — Paisley, Huddersfield, and Glasgow — Armed assemblies — Death of George III. — Embarrassments of George IV.— Trial and divorce of Queen Caroline — George Canning — His political views — Member for Liverpool —Resignation of Office — Mr. John Gladstone — Canning's visit — The ancestral Gladstones — William Ewart Gladstone at Eton — The school life of that day — Literary proclivities — Public speaking — Oxford course of study — College contemporaries — In- fluence of Canning on Mr. Gladstone — Early views — Catholic Emancipation — Wellington — Peel — O'Connell — Preparations for Reform. It would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the progress of the last half century, without giving some atten- tion to the political events which characterized the previous ten years, and the condition of the country before the passing of the Eeform Bill. In the latter part of the year 1821 many significant changes were being made in the political and social life of this country, — changes which to sagacious observers be- tokened the approach of that new era on which ten years afterwards the nation entered with a swift unmeasured stride. Fifty years earlier the great Earl of Chatham had advocated a scheme of parliamentary re- form which he did not live to bring before the government, and the attempt had been re- newed by his illustrious son William Pitt in 1782, and again in 1785, but without success. The French revolution alike animated the advocates and stimulated the opponents of popular representation. It had the effect of changing Pitt himself not only into an enemy to the opinions which he had formerly advocated, but into a persecutor of those who, VOL, I. by expressing those opinions in language scarcely more violent than that which he had himself used, brought themselves within the prosecution of the law. On the other hand, petitions signed by thousands of persons were presented to parliament from the large towns, from Sheffield, from Birmingham, and from Edinburgh — the latter containing so many names that it extended over the whole length of the floor of the house. Among these peti- tions the most important was one from " the friends of the people," presented by Mr. Grey, which was so ably and temperately drawn, that it may be said to have been the true pre- cursor of most of the representations in the cause of parliamentary reform which have since been recognized. In one portion of it the petitioners offered to prove that upwards of 97 members were actually nominated, and 70 more indirectly appointed by peers and the treasury, and that 91 commoners procured the election of 139, so that 306 members, or an absolute majority of the House of Com- mons, were returned by 160 persons. "I assert," said Mr. Grey, " that this is the con- dition of England; if you say it is not, do jus- GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. tice on yourselves by calling on us for the proof, and expose your calunmiatoi's to re- proach; but if it be the condition of England, shall it not be redressed 1 " It was not re- dressed. The horrors of the French revolu- tion had so affected the minds of the legisla- ture, that though a long debate followed, and the petition was supported by Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, and Francis; the house, by an over- whelming majority, led by Pitt, refused the challenge to examine the truth of Mr. Grey's assertions and deferred reform for thirty-nine years. For the war with France followed, and the distress and want which accompanied that long struggle was but little diminished when at last peace was proclaimed. The country seemed for the moment exhausted, the landed interests alone having profited — because of the high prices of agricultural produce and the consequent increase of rentals. The " protec- tion" of British agriculture— which we can now see was the compensation of these interests against the fall of the former war prices — was effected by an import duty placed upon foreign corn, and as we have long ago discovered was the protection of a comparatively diminishing, — at the expense of an increasing — portion of the community. The measure which marked the close of the war revived the cry for reformed representation in parliament. The corn-laws could never be I'epealed while those who were supposed to profit by them could secure a large government majority. In 1817 the colliers of Bilston conceived the idea of walking up to London in a body, and appealing to the Prince Regent to aid them in their distress. The Manchester operatives were fired with the simplicity of this notion, and a large number of them determined to make the journey to the metropolis on foot to beg the government to consider their needs, and to give them the political reform which alone was wanting to restore them to a better condition. The plan was that of honest, simple men, and so little did they regard their own probable vicissi- tudes on the journey that it was a part of their plan for each man to carry with him a share of such food as might be required, and a blanket, that he might sleep in any shelter that could be found. This project of the " blanketeere," as they were afterwards called, aroused alarm among the authorities, who were still liable to a panic at any movement which, however inconsistently, reminded them of the French revolution. The Habeas Corpus Act was already suspended, and the leaders of the Manchester workmen were arrested. The larger number of their followers abandoned the at- tempt, and the few who endeavoui'ed to carry out their intention were stopped by troops stationed along the roads, and after being searched were either driven back or impri- soned. No weapons were found upon them; but it appears to have been necessary to say something to excuse these pi'oceedings, and so it is recorded that among the number of men who had agreed to tramp to London to lay their grievances before parliament " two unusually long knives" had been discovered. But an event soon after happened, which still more forcibly affected the imagination of the people, and which also tended to add the dangerous element of popular resentment to the demands for political representation. In 1819 the question of Reform had been once more brought before parliament by Sir Francis Burdett, member for Westminstei-, the for- midable opponent of Sidmouth and Percival, the man who had been committed to the Tower for a breach of privilege and afterwards re- leased — the friend of Home Tooke — the out- spoken generous old English gentleman who was then in the van of the reform movement. He brought forwai'd no specific measure, but asserting the principle of the old maxim of common law, that "the people of England have a property in their own goods which are not to be taken from them without their con- sent," applied it to the argument that every person paying taxes was entitled to a voice in the election of a representative in the House of Commons. He moved " that the house should take the subject of the representation into its consideration early in the next session." The motion was rejected by a very consider- able majority, and its proposer very shortly afterwards found himself sentenced to a fine of .£1000 and three months' imprisonment in the King's Bench for addressing to his con- stituents a letter on the subject of what waa POPULAR EXCITEMENT— ORATOR HUNT. popularly known as the " Peterloo Mas- sacre." For the growing excitement of the people, sustained by leaders who urged them to de- mand Parliamentary Reform and the repeal of the taxes on corn, had now assumed pro- portions which were more alarming. Numer- ous societies were formed in various industrial centres, and especially in the manufacturing districts, and doubtless much inflammatory and even seditious language was used at some of the meetings. Women as well as men were formed into associations. The wives and daughters of workmen promoted "sister socie- ties" for co-operating with the men for secur- ing political reform, and instilling into the minds of the rising generation a "deep-rooted hatred of our tyrannical rulers." Assemblies of small, and sometimes of large bodies of people were regularly held by night as well as by day — not very surprising, perhaps, when we consider that the working day then con- sisted of most of the daylight hours. An en- deavour was made to organize communications between the societies of various districts to enable them to unite in their common efi'ort. It was averred that companies of workmen met, unarmed it is true — but still to practise marching and drill — and this was held to be evidence of preparing for an insurrection, dur- ing which they might possess themselves of weapons. In all these charges, however, it is to be noted that the authorities who professed to preserve order, were themselves the first to proceed to actual violence. Amidst wide- spread and increasing discontent nothing was conceded — no honest inquiry was made into the causes of disaffection — no attempt was made to adopt such measures as would alleviate the distress which lay at the bottom of dis- loyalty. With what seems almost like unrea- soning fear, repressive measures — and what was worse, weakly vindictive measures — were adojDted. The government became the aggi'esaor, and if some of the leaders of the people, and even a large number of the people themselves, had not been wiser, calmer, and even morally stronger than their rulers— that which was but a detached series of riots might have become a general insurrection. One of those leaders was Henry Hunt — known then and ever since as "Orator Hunt" — an opulent Wiltshire farmer, and lord of the manor of Glastonbury, who had begun life as an ardent and loyal patriot. When it was thought that the country was in danger of invasion he offered his whole stock (worth £20,000), if needed, for the use of the govern- ment, and also engaged to enter, with three of his servants, all mounted and equipped, at his own cost, as volunteers, into any regiment of horse that might be chosen to make the first charge on the enemy. He afterwards joined the Marlborough troop of cavalry, but had a dispute with Lord Bruce, whom he challenged, and was in consequence indicted in the Court of King's Bench, fined £100, and imprisoned for six weeks. This may have had some effect in determining him to become a "radical re- former," but, at any rate, he soon took the position of a trusted and unflinching champion of the popular cause, and as he was lord of the manor, and won the good oj^inion of his neighbours by his equitable judgments at the "court leet," as well as by his gift of speech, he was at the head of the reform movement in that district. The alarm of the government at the reports which were received of the organization of the reformers resulted in the issue of a circular letter by the secretary of the home department, instructing the lord- lieutenants of the "disturbed counties" to take immediate and effectual measures for pi-eserv- ing the peace, to excite the magistrates to activity, and to give directions to the yeomanry to hold themselves in readiness in case of their services being required. These orders, while they increased the exasperation of the popu- lace, seem to have been regarded without much dismay, for in less than a week afterwards a great meeting was held at Birmingham, at - which about 15,000 persons were present. The object of the meeting was not riotous, though it was obviously illegal. The people assembled without turbulence, and dispersed without serious disorder, but the resolutions were in the nature of a defiant protest. It was agreed that the meeting should elect "two legislatorial attorneys and representatives of Birmingham," and the two y Oxford students within the pale of the church, students who either renewed or observed certain devotional and disciplinary practices which would even now be classed with ritualism. In fact, "Methodists" was the name given to this party, who rigidly divided their time so that devotions, fasting, work among the poor, preaching, and other duties should have each their allotted and due observance. The Wes- leys, Whitfield, and their companions, were ritualists of that day, and it may be observed that early Wesleyanism was never really separated by its own will from the ritual of the Anglican Church. But this is only by way of illustration. Methodism had for years been in effect placed outside the Church of England, and had been long regarded with only a half-suspicious or even contemptuous toleration by the clergy — instead of having to endure their active antagonism — when a new revival once more arose within the church itself. It may be regarded as fortunate that we have from the pen of Mr. Gladstone in 1868 one of the most admirable comments that could be written on this movement : — " Even for those old enough to have an adequate recollection of the facts, it requires no incon- siderable mental eff'ort to travel backwards over the distractions, controversies, perils, and calamities of the last thirty years to the period immediately before these years; and to realize not only the state of facts, but especially the promises and jarospects which it presented. Any description of it which may now be attempted will appear to bear more or less the colour of romance; but, without taking it into view, no one can either measure the ground over which we have travelled, or perceive how strong was the then temptation to form an over sanguine 46 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. estimate of the jirobable progress of the church iu her warfare with sin and ignor- ance, and even in persuading seceders of all kinds to enter her fold. That time was a time such as comes after sickness, to a man in the flower of life, with an uiiimijaired and buoyant constitution : the time in which, though health is as yet incomplete, the sense and the joy of health are keener as the fresh and living current first flows in, than are conveyed by its even and undisturbed posses- sion. " The Church of England had been passing through a long period of deep and chronic religious lethargy. For many years, perhaps for some generations, Christendom might have been challenged to show, either then or from any former age, a clergy (with excep- tions) so secular and lax, or congregations so cold, iiTeverent, and indevout. The process of awakening had indeed begun many years before ; but a very long time is required to stir up effectually a torpid body, whose di- mensions overspread a great country. Active piety and zeal among the clergy, and yet more among the laity, had been in a gi'eat degree confined within the narrow limits of a party, which, however meritorious its work, presented in the main phenomena of transi- tion, and laid but little hold on the higher intellect and cultivation of the country. " Oiir churches and our worship bore in general too conclusive testimony to a frozen indifference. No effort had been made either to overtake the religious destitution of the multitudes at home, or to follow the numerous children of the church migrating into dis- tant lands, with any due provision for their spiritual wants. The richer benefices were very commonly regarded as a suitable pro- vision for such'members of the higher families as were least fit to push their way in any profession requiring thought or labour. The abuses of plurality and non-residence were at a height which, if not proved by statistical returns, it would now be scarcely possible to believe. At Eton, the greatest public school of the country (and I presume it may be taken as a sample of the rest), the actual teaching of Christianity was all but dead, though happily none of its forms had been surrendered. It is a retrospect full of gloom; and with all our Romanizing and all our Eationalizing, what man of sense would wish to go back upon these dreary times : " ' Domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna? " But between 1831 and 1840 the transfor- mation which had previously begun made a progress altogether marvellous. Much was due, without doubt, to the earnest labour of indi\'iduals. Such men as Bishop Blomfield on the bench and Dr. Hook in the parish (and I name them only as illustrious examples), who had long been toiling with a patient but dauntless energy, began, as it were, to get the upper band. But causes of deep and general operation were widely at work. As the French revolution had done much to renovate Chris- tian belief on the Continent, so the Church of England was less violently but pretty sharply roused by the political events which arrived in a quick and I'attling succession — in 1828 the repeal of the Test Act; in 1829 the eman- cipation of the Roman Catholics; in 1831-32 the agony and triumph of reform; in 1833 the Church Temporalities Act for Ireland. There was now a general uprising of religious energy in the church throughout the land. It saved the chvirch. Her condition before 1830 could not possibly have borne the scru- tinizing eye which for thirty years past has been turned upon our institutions. Her rank corruptions must have called down the aveng- ing arm. But it was arrested just in time."^ This is surprising and trenchant language, but we must remember that it is the Glad- stone of 1868 and not of 1828, or even of 1838, who uses it, and in order to add a little to its explanation, to the Gladstone of 1828-30 we may return. It was in fact while Mr. Disraeli was meditating, or writing, or publishing some of I lis fii-st works, and Mr. Gladstone was at Christchurch, that two important events occurred which had an un- foreseen bearing upon the "Young Euglaud- ism " of which the former was the leader, if not the practical inventor, as well as upon other public affairs. One of these was the 1.4 Chaptrr of Autobiography. 1863. BISHOP BLOMFIELD. 47 puLlication, in 1828, lay the Rev. John Keble, of The Christian Year. The other was a very different matter. When Lord Liverpool, then lying ill of paralysis and not far from death, heard of the death of Archbishop Sutton, he asked, "Who goes to Lambeth I" The answer was, " The Bishop of London " (Howley). " Then," resumed Lord Liverpool, " who goes to London 1" The answer was, "The Bishop of Chester." Lord Liverpool smiled approval, saying, "Good. That is right." Now the Bishop of Chester, who was thus removed to London (the Duke of Wellington being pi'emier at the time), was no other than Charles James Blomfield, one of the most energetic men that ever lived, and a great power in his day — to which may be added, and a great power in our own day, for he was the protagonist "churchman" of his times, and did his best to make the famous remark of Sir Roger de Coverley (when he noted how few churches there were iw London), " Church work is slow," inapplicable in the reign of King William IV., whatever it might have been in the reign of Queen Anne. Besides this, Blomfield was one of the fii'st, if not the first, to call public attention to the lack of institutions for the better education of the middle and upper classes in the metropolis. He started a powerful movement in this matter in June, 1828, the Duke of Wellington taking the chair at the first public meeting. The result was the foundation in that year of King's College (which was opened in 1831). Blomfield was a man o-f whose industry others were rather apt to be frightened, and he always took so much upon himself that when he was absent business was likely to languish. Vernon Harcourt, then Archbishop of York, sitting with Blomfield on an eccle- siastical commission, would look about and ask, " Where's Blomfield % I wish he'd come. Till he comes we all sit and mend our pens and talk about the weather." Of the bishop's energy, indeed, many a clergyman and many a layman felt the weight; and as he was somewhat irascible he made enemies. Sydney Smith writes of him : — " The Bishop of London is passionately fond of labour, has certainly no aversion to power, is of quick temper, great ability, thoroughly conversant in ecclesiastical law, and always in London ; he will become the commission, and when the Church of England is mentioned it will only mean Charles James of London, who will enjoy a greater power than lias ever been possessed by any churchman since the days of Laud, and will become the Church of England here upon earth." All this would have been fulfilled to the very letter if Blomfield had not been so fond of " routing people up," as somewhat to disperse his own energies. Abundant proofs of Blomfield's shrewdness as well as energy could be quoted from his speeches in the House of Lords and from other sources. It cannot be said that he was a mere churchman, for while he was at Chester he had a keen eye upon sanitary matters, and the condition of hospitals and prisons. Of his moral courage he gave many striking proofs. When William IV. invited him to dinner on Sunday, the bishop declined, replying that he never dined from home on that day. Sir George Sinclair once asked him whether there was any message he could deliver to the king for him. The bold bishop, taking advantage of the heat of the weather, said, " Pray pre- sent my duty to his majesty, and say that I find my ejDiscopal wig very inconvenient, and I hope, if I should be forced to lay it aside, his majesty will hold me guiltless of any breach of court order." The good-natured king at once sent a message to Blomfield, saying, " Do not wear a wig on my account. I dislike the wig, and should be pleased to see the whole bench of bishops wear their own hair." Blomfield immediately gave up the wig, and other bishoj^s followed suit until the whole episcopal bench went wigless. But these are trifles. The important point is that Bishop Blomfield, though not what we should now call Ritualistic, or even High Church in the sense in which Bishop Philpotts of Exeter and the late Bishop Wilberforce of Winchester were High Church, began to in- sist strictly upon obedience to the Rubric, ad- vocated daily "matins," and promoted church- building to an extent before unheard of. He " promoted " and consecrated altogether about 20(1 churches, of which more than half were 48 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. in his own diocese. His own personal contri- butions in money to this work were counted by tens of thousands of pounds. The day, however, has gone by in which any one man could take up such a position, as a prelate, as to explain Sydney Smith's joke, "Blomfield never sends out his invitations to dinner in the usual form, he always begins, 'Bishop Blomfield and the Church of England pre- sent their compliments,'" &c. Bishop Blomfield, though clear-headed in matters of practice, and a very intelligent man, had not the faculties by which he could be enabled to see the probable result of his labours in the interest of the church in -which he was a prelate. But the fact is, it was as if he had been from 1828 onwards preparing vessels for Keble and others to fill. The gi'eat aesthetic revival, including as it did the revival of Gothic architecture, was preparing, and soon followed. And the revival of Gothic architecture included the revival of what may be called the sentiment of Gothic architecture for religious purposes. But this, though largely stimulated by Keble's Christian Year, and by other causes, was no j^art of what Blom- field would have called " church work ; " nor, indeed, did it belong to the general High Church feeling until later. We are, of course, regarding these topics simply as historians, and recording, not criticising. It is undeni- able that since the date we have referred to, and consequently ujion the activity of Blom- field and the influence of Keble, there has been an ail-but incredible increase in the activity of the Church of England, or, as Keble would phrase it, the Anglican Church. To some of this increased activity Keble would object, to some of it Blomfield. But the fact of its existence is obvious. Church buildings have increased ; the clergyman has become a much more prominent personage in towns and cities ; and in all this there has been felt, by all classes of men alike, the presence of a new sentiment. We must go beyond Keble to find the nearer origin of the change. Wordsworth and Coleridge were admittedly at the bottom of it. " I would die for the Church of Eng- land!" said Wordsworth — pausing impi'es- sively to utter the words. " Esto perpetual" wrote Coleridge in his later years, though he had begun his career as " a Jacobin " and a disciple of Priestley. Southey, again, who had been a Jacobin too, was in middle and late life a Conservative, not to say a Tory, Church- man. Now it must be remembered that the changes of opinion and sentiment in these distinguished and influential men were in the nature of strong reactions, and possessed that peculiar character of intensity which is common in such cases. But besides that, they had all three the advantage of having travelled over the ground on the other side of the Hne, — a tremendous advantage for all the purposes of propagandism. And the re- sult corresponded. There was a new thing in the earth. It is indisputable that Cole- ridge, Wordsworth, and Southey would have looked with horror upon "Tract No. 90;" it is equally certain that Keble is a half-blood child of Wordsworth; and that without the influence of all the four, the world would never have seen the powerful movement which may be said to have begun while Mr. Gladstone was still at Christchurch, Oxford. As this is not an ecclesiastical but a social and political record, we omit all purely eccle- siastical references, and say nothing of the efi'ect which such things as the lectures of Bishop Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford in 1823, had upon the minds of the students, and upon the clerical mind gene- rally. This, with a thousand kindred matters, is outside of our plan. But a total change in the spirit in which a million or two of cultivated Englishmen looked at religion and the relation of religion to the state and its jDrocedure, is a very diff"erent topic, and one which is in vital connection with Mr. Gladstone's career, not less than with that of Mr. Disraeli. It is, of course, a topic upon which we cannot dwell, but it cannot be omitted. The Church of England is at this moment a greater power than it has ever been since it had all the power; and how has this happened ? By an appeal to the historic and aesthetic sen- timents. This is the main cause, so far as the subject falls within our province, which, we ADVANCE OF SECULAR EDUCATION. 49 repeat, is not that of the theologian or theo- logical critic. To him must be relegated the discussion of the higher and moi'e intimate causes of certain great changes. But the almost sudden springing into life of the his- torico-pesthetic feeling to which we have referred was a remarkable and fertile event of general public interest, and to it we owe some almost startling changes in the colours and forms of political activity. It was, as we have hinted, while Mr. Glad- stone was at Christchurch that the fermen- tation of the great Oxford movement began. We all happen to have singularly full infor- mation about it from the writings of John Henry Newman (now known to Roman Catholics as Cardinal Newman), who was then at Oriel. What it grew to afterwards, and how it got mixed up in Gorham contro- versies. Bishop Hampden controversies, and Durham Letter scares, we shall see by-and- by. Its relation to Mr. Gladstone's career we shall discover from his own writings, if from nowhere else. But the almost amusing part of the story is, that John Hemy Newman has left it on record that Keble was his master in those days (as he was certainly Gladstone's); that Oxford was in terror "lest the Church of England should be Liberalized ; " and that one great bugbear of the Keble party, — who were already a little army of friends — was Bishop Blomfield. The latter now passes from our pages as a new force ; but the posi- tion he voluntarily took up immediately on entering his new see, and the position he in- voluntarily held between the Tory Oxford pai'ty on the one hand, represented by men like Sir Henry Inglis in parliament, and Keble, Pusey, and Newman out of it ; and the semi- rationalizing and Liberal party represented by men like Brougham in parliament, and Whately out of it, made him a centre towards which many lines of political and social interest converged. The efforts of the poet Campbell, Brougham, and others to found an unsectarian university, with no religious tests, belong to the decade of which we have taken a rapid survey. For the present the institution which they suc- VOL. I, ceeded in founding was a mere private cor- poration without a charter, but it was a great beginning. To the same or a similar order of events belongs the founding of the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" by Brougham and his associates, with a com- mittee in which some of the ablest men in England and many philanthropists, the ever- generous Allen and William Ellis being among them, enrolled their names. The efforts of tliis society in "the diffusion of useful know- ledge" were by no means confined to me- chanics; but it was the artisan class to which it chiefly tui-ned its attention. With respect to this class, Ebenezer Elliott had recently struck a key-note which was eagerly caught up:— You seek the home of taste, and find The proud mechanic there, Rich as a king, and less a slave, Throned in his elbow-chair ! Or on his sofa reading Locke Beside his open door ! Why start ? — why envy worth like his The carpet on his floor ? Go, Mary, to the summer-house, And sweep the wooden floor, And hght the little fire, and wash The pretty varnished door ; For there the London gentleman Who lately lectured here, Will smoke a pipe with Jonathan, And taste our home-brewed beer. And bring the new white curtain out, And string the pink tape on — Mechanics should be neat and clean: And I'll take heed for John. And brush the little table, child, And fetch the ancient books — John loves to read; and when he reads, How like a king he looks ! There was a magistrate of Glasgow who boldly laid it down that "science and learning, if universally diffused, would speedily over- turn the best constituted government on earth." This edifying remark he made at the time when mechanics' institutes were first proposed. On the other hand, Glasgow had the Audereonian Institution, and there Dr. Birkbeck used to lecture to very large classes of mechanics. In Edinburgh Mr. Leonard Home and others had succeeded in establish- ing the School of Ai'ts. And when in Eng- 50 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. land, about the year 1823, Dr. Birkbeck and others set themselves to the task of establish- ing mechanics' institutes, great was the en- couragement, felicitous the omen, drawn from the success of these experiments north of the Tweed. It was in the late autumn of 1823 that a public meeting to consider the whole question was held at the then famous "Crown and An- chor" Hotel in London, the large room of which was the scene of many important political de- monstrations and conferences. Dr. Birkbeck was in the chair. Cobbett was present : two thousand working men were in the room, and one of them, a working blacksmith, spoke. Mr. Brougham sent a cajaital letter, with a cheque for .£20; and Bentham wrote expressing warm sympathy with the objects of the meeting. Brougham urged that "the plan would prosper in exact projjortion to the interest which the mechanics took in the details, and ought to be left in their own hands as soon and as much as possible. Cobbett said, characteristically enough, "If you allow any other management than your own, you working men, to interfere, men will soon be found who will put you on one side and use you only as tools." It is un- necessary to pursue this episode of our social history. All of us know what has happened, good and bad, in the mattere of mechanics' insti- tutes. They were a great sign of the times, and their place is now largely supplied by other agencies; but in one form or another the forces set afloat by Birkbeck have continued to swell and overflow. To the same date as the first establishment of these associations belongs the institution of the musical festivals at Birming- ham, York, Norwich, and "Worcester, and the general re-awakening of musical taste in the people. Upon the thresliold of the new era we have thus glanced backward upon the period preceding it, in order to supply the necessary back-ground of fact and suggestion. If these are the good old times, who would return to them? In a given fifteen years just approach- ing 1830 crime increased about four times as fast as it had formerly done in proportion to the population. Cotton-mills were burned, and the houses of employers blown up. Rick- burning was not far off". In the year 1827 there were 73 executions, of which only 11 were for murder. Sentence of death had been recorded against 1529 prisoners. For- gery was then a capital off"ence (as were many smaller crimes), but a great effect was pro- duced upon the public mind by the execution, in the year 1829, of a Quaker named Hunton for forgery. Every effort — and the efforts made were immense — to prevent the execu- tion of this man having proved unavailing, the excitement occasioned in the popular mind did not die out wholly till Sir Robert Peel introduced and passed his measures for the reform of the criminal law. We fear it must be added that the crime of poisoning began to be jjopular, or at least more common than it had ever been before among the people generally, in the last decade or two of the times we are leaving behind us. The number of prosecutions under the game laws had long been appalling. But what may be called the condition-of- the-people question had already begun to make itself the dominant of the national story. This had resulted from, of course, many causes. In spite of the ineflflciency of George IV., and of much misgovernment, the nation had prospered during his reign. It was recovering from the collapse which had followed that long, long story of war of which Byron wrote : — " I greatly venerate our recent glories, And wish they were not owing to the Tories." And in the breathing-time wdiich followed, the attention of thinkers was inevitably arrested by the fact that so much poverty, suffering, and social wrong could possibly co-exist side by side with so much prosperity. In public it seemed as if a new sijirit had taken possession of members of pai-liament and others. Not a negro could be unjustly killed — much more a missionary ^ — without 1 The case of the missionary Smith belongs to the re- cord of these years. It was taken up by Brougham and constituted a grand ralljing-point for humanitarians of all schools. It proved, indeed, one of the most important events of the time. Earl Russell has referred to Brougham's indignant eloquence in the case of Smith as one of the finest and most effective things he could remember. LEADERS OF PROGRESS— GODWIN, BENTHAM. 51 its being blazed abroad, and made the theme of a hot debate in the British parliament. But these things are mere symptoms. And, besides, nearly all the leading thinkers and politicians began now to occupy themselves with the study of the causes of poverty and crime. The educational curi'ent had set in — Brougham, in well-remembered words, had told "the Duke" that he did not care how much the soldier was abroad, for a greater than the soldier, namely the schoolmaster, was abroad too. And the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had begun its work. Three or four distinguished names demand a few words at this point of transition : — Godwin, Malthus, and Jeremy Bentham. The most remarkable of these men, at least so far as their effect upon their time was con- cerned, was Bentham. But William Godwin, the author of the Political Justice, was curi- ously and deservedly influential, and should be noticed as being the chief, if not the last, able and cultivated representative of the principles or tendencies of the French re- volution; or, at least, of theories of society founded on what were called the Rights of Man. It is necessary to make these distinc- tions, for Godwin, though his principles were (at the time he wi'ote the treatise in question) of the most extreme kind, was in practice an advocate of moderation and caution in reform. Not many writers have had schools of dis- ciples so large as his; he was singularly suc- cessful with the young, but commanded the respectful interest of men like Coleridge, Sir James Mackintosh, Dr. Parr, and all the leading Whigs. Sheridan tried to engage him in working politics, but found him too honest and intractable. He was the friend, even to the danger of his life or liberty, of men like Thelwall and Home Tooke, and his Political Justice only escaped prosecution through the sagacity of Pitt, who, when it was proposed to instruct the attorney-gene- ral, remarked that a book which sold for three guineas woiild never do much towards stirring up sedition. That was true, but God- win's writings did much towards stimulating inquiry into the true ends and policy of gov- ernment, and other questions bearing directly on social progress. He is to this day perhajjs best known by the general public as the author of the novel of Caleb Williams (on which Colman founded the play of the Iron Chest) and that of St. Leon; but he was one of the first and the ablest opponents of Malthus. In this respect alone he would be entitled to notice, for his attack upon the Essay on Popu- lation was powerful and effective, though as an argument it was on the whole a failure. Without tracing the whole career of Godwin, which would be out of place in a history of this kind, we may mention one fact which amusingly connects him with the point of junction of the ante-reform and post-reform converts. Very late in life — such is the irony of fortune — the author of Political Justice accepted, in his poverty, the office of keeper of the exchequer tallies — an absolute sine- cure. When the new brooms of the new era, just as he was nearing his last days, began to sweep close, the aged philosopher trembled for his place and salary ; but men as diverse as Melbom^ne and Wellington united in ar- ranging that the office should last his time, and it did. We believe it is on record that Godwin once showed Harriet Martineau the " tallies." Incredible as it may appear, some portions of the national accounts were, quite late in the first half of this century, kept in dog Latin, the figures used being the Roman numerals; duty on hair -powder figured as debitum super pulverem crinalem ! William Godwin had many pupils, and to the last retained a singular power of attract- ing the young. The name of one of his latest disciples will perhaps surprise some readers — it is Bulwer, afterwards Lord Lytton. Inci- dentally it may be remarked that it may be taken as all but established, so strong is the presumption, that Godwin, who had planned a novel on the subject himself, suggested the story of Eugene Aram as a topic to Bulwer. But the interesting point is, that we find Bul- wer at twenty-six years of age, when he had only just entered parliament as member for St. Ives (1831), sitting at Godwin's feet. The old lion of Radicalism was amusingly shy of his young friend at first. He writes, quoting 52 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Lord Chatham, "Confideuce is ajdantof slow- growth iu aged bosoms," and that he had at first knowu Bulwer only as the author of Pelham, and a man "devoted to the habits of high life." After reading Bulwer's "Address to the People of Southwark," however, he writes, "I now avow myself your convert. You have passed the Rubicon ; you must go forward, or you must go back for ever dis- graced. I knew your abilities, and I there- fore augur a career of rectitude and honour." There is a flavour of suspicion latent in even this apparently cordial language, and we are all aware that events justified Godwin's faintly- felt doubts of Bulwer-Lytton's Radicalism. He embraced the Reform side to begin with, and in 1835 received a baronetcy from the Whigs as the reward of his political service (partly as a pamphleteer) to the party. The sequel is known to us all. Bulwer- Lytton proved to be, as Godwin suspects, "devoted to the habits of high life," and ended his days as a Conservative. The simple truth is that Bulwer-Lytton was much more a man of letters than a politician, and always a man of the world, and that he, like the young Disraeli, was caught up in the waves of the Reform enthusiasm, but was never, from conviction, a Liberal. There are certain books which it has lately been the fashion to describe (after a German idiom) as epoch-making books. Such a book was the chief work of Malthus, — in which he maintained that population teyids to increase in a ratio appallingly greater than the means of subsistence. His formula has been amended, and his book produced, of course, much dis- cussion.^ But its general principle — which is independent of any particular ratio — has been established and admitted : not to say, is ob- vious. The publication of this book did not at first lead to much ; but by degrees, as the subject came to be taken up by others, — and especially when attempts were made, however remotely, to apply its dicta to governmental 1 It produced, also, Brougham's unguarded saying cou- cerning the imaginary "surplus" man,— "At Nature's already overcrowded table there is no cover laid for him, and she sternly bids him begone"— a little speech which did more harm at the time of the new poor-law discus- sions than any other incident of the debates. and social questions, — it proved to be one of the most important books ever issued. It might be maintained that it was the spring which set in motion all the wheels of Parlia- mentary and other activity which led to the repeal of the corn-laws, the repeal of the old poor-law, and the efforts which have been made to promote emigration: to say nothing of improvements in agriculture and stock- breeding and stock-keeping. A much larger and not less significant figure is tliat of Jeremy Bentham, without whose amazing influence (or something correspond- ing to it) the whole fabric of society to-day would have been different. There is scarcely a corner of the volume of what is called "modern progress" in which his signature cannot be traced. His first principle of morals (and therefore of politics), namely, " the gi'eatest happiness of the greatest number" (a phrase which he took from Piiestley), was by him elaborated and drawn out into endless appli- cations to social and political tojsics. He was the real originator of the " five points of the Charter" (to use an expression of a subsequent date); which are to be found in his political program. He oi'iginated great improve- ments in prison discipline, though some of his crotchets were objectionable enough. Him- self an eccentric recluse, with a hobby, or rather a whole stud of hobbies, he found men ready to take up his words and theories, and great was the multitude of the preachers. The French economist, M. Dumont, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir James Mackintosh, and James Mill were of the number. Men of this order dispensed with his strange dialect, and made him " understanded of the people." Brougham made no secret of his discipleship. When he was going to make a speech of a certain order in the House of Commons or elsewhere, he would call on "the sage of Queen Square" and say, "Well, Papa Bentham, I am come for some pap." And in Queen Square (Westminster) "the sage" philosophized to his admiring school of disciples with such effect, that there is perhaps not a reader of this history whose life has not been inflxienced in some degree by changes initiated by Ben- tham. THE "NEW POLICE." 53 Concerning so remarkable a man a few biographical sentences may well be pardoned. He played the violin when young, but de- spised poetry. When fifty-four years of age he gravely offered marriage to the charm- ing Miss Caroline Holland (Lord Holland's sister). The young lady refused the elderly sage "with all respect." Having thus sown his wild oats, Bentham gave himself up to the philosophic life, and dwelt in peace with all men — or most men — except when he quai'- relled with James Mill for " lifting" books out of his library, or was baffled by Hazlitt. Hazlitt was allowed by him to live in the well-known house (looking on to St. James's Park) which had once been Milton's, but would neither pay Bentham any rent nor go out after repeated notice to quit, which greatly puzzled " the utilitarian prophet." He was a man of great self-confidence. He invented constitutions for the United States and Eussia, and was much hurt when he found they were not instantly adopted by the respective powers. Late on in life he had his dining-room ar- ranged so that it consisted of a kind of well surrounded by a gallery. In the well was the dining- table, round which the guests assem- bled, with himself at the head of the table. But when he had swallowed the marmalade with which he always concluded his dinner, the old gentleman used regularly to get up from his chair, and mount the flight of steps into his gallery. In that elevated position he took his " constitutional," toddling round and round with one hand under his coat tails, and with the other emphasizing the conversational lecture with which he indulged his guests. Of course they had to look up at him while they were finishing their own dessert. Al- though he had been rejected by Miss Hol- land, and never entered the married state, he claimed to have descendants. He considered himself the grandfather of the later political economy; for he used to say, "I begot Eicardo; and Eicardo begot Mill." The Mill referred to is of course James Mill, who also must have a word. He was a very active propagandist of what we now call Eadical, or extreme Liberal principles, and was himself the philosophic head of a school, in which Molesworth, Eoe- buck, and Grote (wliom we shall meet here- after as active politicians) were pupils. He was not philanthropic, still less was he religious. He is said to have told his son John when the latter was about fourteen, that it was high time he should know there was no God, but he was not to mention it in company. But his amazing skill in detecting a political or social fallacy, and his love of liberty, made him a valuable ally of the philanthropic party, and in association with Allen the pious Quaker this hard-headed egoistic did some of the most effective work ever achieved on the humani- taiian side. Other names might be mentioned in this connection, but Godwin, Malthus, Bentham, and James Mill are typical and historical. It is not easy, in the present day, to realize in one's mind the jealousy of govern- ment which prevailed among "the masses" about the time of the accession of King Wil- liam IV. If ever a minister did a useful thing, Sir Eobert Peel did when he intro- duced that great institution the Metropoli- tan Police in 1829. Yet this was at the time extensively denounced as a Tory "move," ex- pressly designed to keei? "the people" down. The police in London are to this day called by the populace by nicknames which are fifty years old, and which in a rough way com- memorate the origin of the force: "Peelers" has ceased to be fashionable among roughs, but "Bobbies" is still common. The fact is that at first the policemen were hated and looked on with suspicion even by intelligent working men and tradesmen. Change was in the air; there were ideas of the possible ne- cessity of open insurrection; and the fancy floated vaguely in men's minds that these constables of a new fashion were an institution born of an instinct of fear on the part of the government. With the new police came many small changes in the aspects of metropolitan life by night and day. One was the disappearance of the night watchmen, with their rattles, lanterns, sleeping -boxes, and staves. We could perhaps have better spared a better thing than that nightly crying of the hour which was sup])0sed to be part of a watch- 54 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. man's function. Nobody under fifty has, we presume, heard, on waking in the night, such a cry as "Past thi-ee o'clock, and a cloudy morning." But this ci-ying of the hour was not unpoetic. It is difficult to explain such things, but we cannot help feeling, as we enter upon the new era, that other things besides the watchman are passing away. The rage for " Tom and Jerry " sport is going too. Theodore Hook will no longer be allowed to indulge in his stupen- dous hoaxes. Dr. Syntax will soon be con- sidered very stupid. Loud, vile, public scan- dal will speedily cease to find so large and so open a stage and so receptive an audience. Whatever might happen to an Edmund Kean or a Byron now for neglecting or maltreating a wife, the scandal would not be anything like what it was in the years from which we are just passing, and the consequences to all the persons concerned would be different in- deed. A newsj^aper like the John Bull of those times would not be possible. We do not now see what force or fun there was in Hook's calling the London ITniversity (origi- nated by Campbell the poet. Lord Brougham, and others), " Stinkomalee." It is undeniable that a great deal of false sentiment is passing away after a few years of peace. There was something false and stilted in the national life when the people could relish a comedy like Colman's " John Bull," or even Jerrold's " Black-eyed Susan." The change in the character of the popular songs, and the kind of speeches made at public dinners and on other occasions, is very significant. In spite of Sir Robert Peel's eulogy on the departed monarch, it really seems as if a thousand insincerities and follies went out of fashion when people put off their mourning for George IV. To the departure of the old watchman, or " Charley," may be made a suggestive addition. Let him pass into limbo with the old tinder- box, the flint and steel, and brimstone-tipped strips of deal, to light him on his way. Time was when the burning of old rags for tinder, and the tipping of the matches, was a regular household task in some families. The record of the many experiments made to produce a convenient and chenp uietliod of getting a light in the night time is a long story. Some very elegant and rather complicated designs went out, along with flint and steel, upon the advance of the lucifer-match, which was, how- ever, very imperfectly managed for a long time. Along with this may be named the general use of ga-s, and the invention of the lime-light by Lieutenant Drummond. The inception of the railway system (as one might even at this date call it) is a trite topic. But it was on the whole evident that the progress of " applied science " in every direction had received a new impulse, with a persistently watchful eye to social needs. This may be permitted to remind us of the deaths in 1829 of two illustrious men, who both did much to serve their own generation and the generations after them, — we mean the great Dr. Thomas Young and Sir Hum- phry Davy. It has often been made a topic of satire that while Sir William Congreve re- ceived a pension of £1200 a year for his war rocket, his great contemjjorary received only a tardily awarded baronetcy for his safety- lamj). Davy's treatment of the subject of agricultural chemicals constituted an epoch, no less than his discovery that the alkalies and earths are comjaound substances foi-med by the union of oxygen with metallic bases. When by the application of electricity he had suc- ceeded in decomposing potash, and first saw, as they were evolved under his own hands, the globules of the new metal potassium, his ex- citement was so great that he was unable to continue the experiment. The case was not unique. It is well known that when Sir Isaac Newton was approaching the end of the cal- culations which were to prove (if he was right) that the moon moved round the earth by the force of gi'avity, he was unable to continue at his work, and had to call in a friend to finish his sublime "summing." Davy dis- covered several other metals, but into the rest of his labours it would not be convenient here to follow him. Dr. Thomas Young, who also died, as we have said, in 1829, was a physician, and as good as he was acute, accomplished, and ver- satile. He used to attribute his discoveries to the influence on his mind of the doctrines GREAT SOCIAL IMPROVEMENTS. 55 of " Divine suggestion" peculiar to the Quakers, among whom he was educated. His great discoveries are well known. One was that of the law of "interference of light;" the other, the method of interpreting hieroglyphics. Both these were extraordinary achievements, and fei'tile in results. During the last few years of his life Dr. Thomas Young was a member of a council appointed by the ad- miralty to assist them with scientific ad- vice. The increasing determination of science to objects useful to man was part of the great general movement which is now usually dis- tinguished as the "beneficential"or "humani- tarian" movement. It dates, as to some of its main lines of direction, from the time of the French revolution, and the action of certain moral and intellectual ideas which have reached our own time by a chain of influential men, such as Godwin, Bentham, James Mill, and Robei't Owen. With these, however, we must remember the great religious reformers, men like Wesley and others, who, if we may so say, "raised the value" of human nature in that impalpable scale by which we are all more or less guided. Nor must we forget the poets and jjhilanthropists. From the time when Cowper, and Burns, and Crabbe struck the key-note of the new movement, to Words- worth, who was its greatest prophet, we may pass on to Wilbeiforee, Clarkson, Allen the Quaker, and Romilly, their coadjutors. When Romilly (who destroyed himself in an insane I^assion of grief for the death of his wife) was making some of his great efforts for the re- formation of our criminal law, he tells us what happened one night when he was at his post. "While," says he, "I was standing at the bar of the House of Commons a young man, the brother of a peer, came up to me, and breathing in my face the nauseous fumes of his undigested debauch, stammered out, ' I'm against your bill; I'm for hanging all,' I was confounded; and endeavouring to find out some excuse for him, I observed that I supposed he meant that certainty of punishment affording the only prospect of suppressing crime, the laws, whatever they were, ought to be executed. 'No, no,' he said, 'it is not that. There is no good done by mercy; they only get worse. I would hang them all up at once.'" That such a thing as this was possible and credible then, but simply takes our breath away when told now, may help to indicate the length of the path which we have since tra- versed. The light was breaking upon that path long before 1830. With men like Wil- berforce, Fowell Buxton, and Brougham in parliament it was easy to kindle, or rather impossible to extinguish the flame raised by a story like that of Smith, the Demerara martyr, on account of whose murder, for murder it was well known to be, though judicial in form. Brougham moved the House of Commons in one of his most magnificent speeches to pre- sent an address to the king. The motion was defeated by 193 to 146; but from that date, the session of 1823, the true, downright, fiercely resolved agitation in England for the abolition of slavery began. But the spirit of humanity which M-as abroad did not stop at slaves, or at missionaries and their wives and children, it went on growing and growing, and has grown ever since till it beats with so large a light upon the events of the day that not a vagrant can be wronged without exciting the feeling that the honour of us all lies deep in jmwn till he is righted, and hardly a cry for help from pain or wretchedness falls back to the sviff'erer unheard. A wave of the same movement is to be traced in the change which has arisen in the relations of the aristocracy, the middle class, and " the working man." This is not a topic to dwell upon, partly because it is here and there a little threadbare, partly because there are what lawyers call "very arguable points" in it. But one illustration may be ventured uj^on. George Canning was the son of a gentleman of "good family," and was re- pudiated by them for marrying beneath his station. After the father's death Canning's mother went on the stage, and married an actor. Subsequently she married a linen- draper. Now Canning was all his life taunted with being the son of an actress, and with the "shop" of the linen-draper father-in-law. In our own day we have seen a gentleman of great energy and sagacity whom it is no dis- 56 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. paragement to call a news-agent, a prominent member of a Tory ("Conservative") cabinet, and yet it will not have to be placed on record that he has ever been insulted on account of his connection with trade. Canning was once jiremier, but never escaped the sarcasms, such as they were, of his envious foes of all shades of politics. As to the change in social rela- tions it is significant that Sir Robert Peel, be- fore the time of the Eeform Bill, prophesied, and in no unkindly spirit, the ultimate acces- sion of the working-classes to political power. CHAPTER 11. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA. William lY. — Popular Ridicule — Queen Adelaide's amiable Character — State of Public Opinion— Affairs in France — Abdication of Charles X.— Its Effect on the " Reform" question in England — The Coronation — Early popularity of "the Sailor King" — Hatred to the Wellington Government — The Elections — Henry Brougham— Resignation of the Ministry — Earl Grey called in — Peel — Wellington — Brougham Lord-chancellor — The first Reform Bill — Lord John Russell — OiDposition to the BUI — Obstruction — The King induced to dissolve Parliament — Lord Althorp — Excitement in the Countiy — Distress — Political Meetings — Alarming state of the Country — Re-introduction of the Reform Bill — The Nottingham and Bristol Riots — Joseph Hume — Cobbett — Proposal to create new Peers — The Anti-reforming Lords give way — Lord jMelbourne — Grote — The Whigs — Sydney Smith — Affairs of Europe — The Refoi-m Bill IJEBsed— First Reformed Parliament — Mr. Gladstone member for Newark. With the second half of the year 1830 we open, in more senses than one, a new chap- ter in our history. George IV. has passed away, and his brother William, formerly Duke of Clarence, assumes his place upon the throne. We shall find he is known as the sailor king, the patriot king, and the reforming monai'ch, and also by less dignified appellatives. It is certain that he was really patriotic, and thoroughly English. That he had Liberal tendencies was generally xmderstood, though they did not prove to be of the kind that wear well, or that can withstand ladies' clamour and the criticisms of alarmists. As a sailor, he had not been very subordinate, and he had been all but dismissed from his post of Lord High Admiral by the Duke of Wellington ; but a man may be very self-willed on his own behalf without having that respect for the free-will of others which is the basis of liber- alism. King William lY. was sixty-six years of age, and there were no children of his mar- riage. The Princess Victoria, who was heiress- presumiDtive to the crown, was only eleven years old, a pleasantly behaved girl, whom Londoners used to go to catch a glimpse of in Kensington Gardens. It was noticed that the king in his first message to Parliament had said not a word about the appointment of a regency in case of his death, and the houses of Lords and Commons both made reticent allusions to this topic; but they were assured that the sailor king was in good condition, and that they need not trouble themselves. At the time of the death of George IV. the Duke of Wellington was prime minister. Sir Robert Peel home secretary, Mr. Goulburn chancellor of the exchequer, and Lord Aberdeen at the foreign office. This was, of course, a Tory ministiy, but it was retained in office, and parliament was dissolved as usual upon the accession of a new sovereign. The king's re- lations with his ministers happened once or twice during his honest reign to be rather peculiar, and of some of his ways and views of things it is difficult to speak with the dignity supposed to be proper to history. By public wi-iters little concerned with historic propriety he has been called "a queer old bufi"er;" and this is what he was. It was not incorrect to call him " our sailor king," for he had been a sailor, but "our reforming monarch" was a more doubtful appellation. It is undeniable that the Reform Bill was passed during his short reign of ten years, and that it could not have been passed without his formal assent ; but according to many authorities this "queer old buff"er" hated reform in his heart as much as his father, George III., and his predecessor on the throne, George IV., had hated Catholic emancipation. Popular literature, such as there was in those 58 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. days, was uot so reticent as it is now; and literature of the kind to which the French ad- jective jDO/92i/acie?' isapplicable had no reticence whatever. To the pojoulace William IV. was, at first, "Silly Billy." This was his current name, and he was pretty much disliked for his wife's sake. It is now known and admitted, indeed it was never denied by moderately cautious judges who had pure eyes undimmed by political prejudices, that Queen Adelaide was a very good woman. Of course, like other queens and exalted personages, tradesmen made use of her name to start fashions, and the Adelaide boot will be well in the recollection of middle-aged people. But the royal lady never was liked. She was a German; too old to be a leader of fashion; and had no jmrticular accomplishment or attraction that the multi- tude could lay hold of. When it became plain that there would be no direct heir to the throne the popular fancy clung warmly to the young Princess Victoria, and the belief tliat the queen was opjjosed to all concessions in the direction of reform in parliament placed her almost beyond the pale of toleration by the vulgar. Hence such things as caricatures in which this quiet, pious, kind-hearted lady was represented as compelling the king, the minis- ters, and courtiers to eat German sausages dipped in sauer kraut, and such like. It was the fashion of those times to put the words of the speaker in a sort of oval or ring issuing from the mouth; but some of the speeches put into the mouth of Queen Adelaide in those rude pictures are too coarse to be quoted. There was one very successful caricature in which "Silly Billy" was represented with a most inelegant lack of artistic sense as the victim of her majesty's "Sharman" (German) fervour. The queen had, in the picture, taken the monarch in hand after the fashion de- scribed in Shenstone's Schoolmistress, wielding an enormous birch rod, and admonishing him never to give another dinner-party (he was a great dinner giver), or to s^jend another guinea on English charities, for she wanted all the money for her " Sharman " relatives, and would have nothing eaten at court but "Sharman sausages and sauer kraut." William IV., however, was by no means the least worthy of the sons of George III. We may even go so far as to say that there was in him some sort of reminiscence of his father's natural piety and pig-headed good sense — it is difficult to describe George III.'s good sense by any word but pig-headed. In the Greville Me- moirs we are told that at the meeting with ministers after George IV. 's death the new king behaved pretty well up to the time at which he was called upon to sign the consti- tutional declaration, when he broke out : "This is a d- bad pen you have given me — " this being in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. There was about him a bluff" sort of honhomie wYiich. took the English taste, and he was, undoubtedly, in a crude way, re- ligious, though he had an odd way of explain- ing himself. Perhaps it would not be going too far to apply to liim the language of an historian concerning a certain emperor, now no more, namely, that he had "a most dense, most muzzy, most uneducated head." But there is no record of vice or unkindness against him either when he was Duke of Clarence or afterwards. His ante-nuptial inti- macy with Mrs. Jordan, the actress, was a very different thing from the liaison of his brother George IV. with Mrs. (Perdita) Eobi- son or Mrs. Fitzherbert. There is a story, not disbelieved, that upon his marriage Queen Adelaide, finding he had given orders for the removal of certain portraits of Mrs. Jor- dan and her children (the Fitzclarences), in- sisted that they should be restored to their former positions in the king's apartments. On the whole there is nothing disrespectful in saying that the njan who was king of Great Britain and Ireland during the era of the Ee- form Bill would have made a respectable pri- vate citizen, but was hardly fit for a mon- arch in stormy times, supposing he had "to reign as well as to govern." And the times threatened to be stormy. The reform ex- citement was suddenly roused to extreme activity in England by events in France. It was early in August, 1830, that Charles X. of France, one of the most misguided of the Bourbon dynasty, landed, an exile and a refugee, at Spithead. All the mischief was of his own INSUERECTION IN PARIS. 59 doing, by the hand of tlie minister Prince Polignac. Polignac had prosecuted M.Bei'tiu, the editor of Le Journal des Dehats; the judges had acquitted the prisoner; the king and court had insulted the judges ; and the people, on the other hand, had given unmistakable signs of disgust and discontent. It was the old story of Bourbon folly and high-handedness over again ; and it was clearly written in the signs of the times that France would not be brow- beaten. In 1829 the harvest proved bad, com- merce of all kinds was low, and a very cold winter was added to the troubles of the coun- try. The question whether the return of the Bourbons, even with the new charter, had not been a misfortune for France was pretty openly discussed in the newspapers and otherwise. Every press prosecution only made matters worse. An expedition to Algiers was un- doubtedly successful in putting down much disorder and robbery both by sea and land ; bvit it had the effect of saddling the nation with a lai'ge debt, and it did not suffice to dazzle home questions oixt of the eyes of the people. When the new elections came on in May a royal j^i'oclamation was issued, attempting to influence the popular votes ; but this attempt was a failure. As the king and Polignac found themselves defeated they issued in the Moniteur (the government organ) ordinances forbidding the publication of newspapers or pamphlets without official permission, annul- ling the elections on the ground that the people had been misled, and altering, in ob- viously sinister directions, the number and qualifications of the deputies and the manner of electing them. These astounding "official communications" were made at midnight of Sunday the 26th of July. The next day there was a panic on the Bourse; the markets were practically closed ; and ominously mut- tering little groups of citizens were scattered all over Paris. Nearly fifty editors of news- papers, having taken counsel's opinion upon the legality of the ordinances, declared openly their intention to resist them, and called upon the deputies of tlie people to meet in due course on the 3d of August. On the morning of the 27th of July Polignac sent out police to stop the publication of the newspapers, but found the doors of the offices shut, while cojjies of the journals were being thrown out of the windows into the hands of tumultuous recipients. The inmates refused to open the doors to the police, who then broke tliem open and destroyed the types and presses ! An editor, however, having brouglit an action against a jirinter for nonfulfilment of contract, the Tribunal of Commerce decitled that he was bound to fulfil it, and that the " ordinances" were illegal. This state of things could not last. On the afternoon of the same day, the 2Tth of July, for events move fast with our excit- able neighbours, about thirty of the deputies met. They were waited upon by a party of citizens, who informed them that the govern- ment were quietly posting soldiers all round and all over Paris, and that open insurrection was all but inevitable. As it hapisened Marshal Marmonthad in the city only 4000 troops whom he could trust, and these even he could not ar- range to feed ! The end was now ajiproaching withrapid steps. On the 28th Paris was blocked here and there with barricades, — the "omni- bus," then a new thing, proving a great con- venience to the insurgents. The mob captured the Hotel de Ville ; rang the alarm-bells, and sent the tricolor flying from the steeples. In vain did the mai'shal send to assure the mon- arch that he must give way or lose his crown. The infatuated Bourbon went on with his game at cards, and the court ladies smiled as they listened to tlie sound of the guns. " Put down the masses, marshal," was the royal answer. Poor bewildered Marmont, anxious to save bloodshed, withdrew to the Tuileries with as many of the soldiers as had not gone over to the other side. Two of the peers now waited on Polignac, and urged the immediate and public with- drawal of the ordinances. The minister re- fused. The peers bade Mai'mont arrest him, which would have been done had he not escaped to St. Cloud, followed by the peers. Now, indeed, the king and court began to feel un- easy, and after some further parleying Charles revoked the ordinances and appointed new ministers. 60 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. It was too late. Marniont could do nothing with his rag of an army. The people were everywhere triumphant. The Bourbon king was left to himself like a piece of lumber, with nobody bvit the ministers and a few soldiers. Late on the 1st of August, 1830, this select party acquired the knowledge that a provi- sional government, strong enough to blow them all out of the water, had nominated the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe, Lieutenant- general of France. Charles then abdicated in favour of the young Due de Berri; but his abdication was not received in a complimen- tary or encouraging spirit. He was requested to hand over the regalia, and advised to quit his kingdom by way of Cherbourg. This he did. Every attempt on the part of the deposed monarch and his escoi-t to awaken jjopular sympathy or loyalty on the way was a failure ; and it was not until he had reached Spithead in an English vessel that he considered himself safe, though he was everywhere received rather with contempt than anger. Such was the end of a struggle in which about 800 citizens of Paris were killed and 4500 wounded, to say nothing of the slain among the soldiery. Crosses or pensions were awarded to the wounded; the citizen dead received honourable public burial; the unslain soldiers were ab- solved; the ministers were arrested, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment for life, witli foi'- feiture of property. Lafayette recommended Louis Philippe as "the best of republics" for France, and he took the oath of fidelit}' to the charter under the style of King of tite French ; the meaning of this change being that he was to be held as an elected, not hereditary, sovereign. We have told this story very rapidly. But in our own beloved country it was sjjark to tinder, nay, spai-k to gunpowder, while its effects were felt in Italy, Switzerland, Saxony, Brunswick, and especially in Belgium, where it caused a revolution which secured national independence. The coronation of WillLnm IV. took place on the 8th of November without any ostenta- tious display, the chief part of the procession being the state cai'riages. The king appeared in his naval uniform and was at once greeted with loyal shouts as "our sailor king." His popidarity as a monarch favourable to reform probably had the effect of repeatedly prevent- ing a series of insurrections not only in the coun- try but in London. There was no immediate change in the government, but it would be difficult to imagine an administration less ac- ceptable to the nation than that of the Duke of Wellington, which was detested by the peo- ple, and had to sustain not only the jx^werful opposition of both Radicals and Whigs, who were pledged to sujjport the urgent demand for reform, but also the attacks of ultra Tories who seemed determined to avenge themselves on a government which had granted Catholic emancipation. All over the country the ministerialists were defeated, and what was more to the purpose, a great many of the successful candidates were ardent re- presentatives of popular rights. The riot and confusion at elections before the passing of the Reform Bill can scarcely be imagined by the present generation, and in these contests by which the country asserted its dissatisfaction with the government, the tumults were so serious that they were evidently expi-essions of a temper Avhich might have broken out in still more dangerous demonstrations. The re- sult of the general election was that the ministry lost about fifty votes in the House of Commons, and that their defeat wa.s all the more damaging because of the completeness with which the reformers had achieved a vic- tory even in places where the jiower and influ- ence of the government was set against them. The most striking of these incidents was the return of Henry Brougham for Yorkshire side by side with Lord Morj)eth. When he entered the House of Commons in 1810 his first speech was a failure, and he wrote de- spondingly to a friend to say that he must "give it up !" His return for Yorkshire now was not only a triumph which spoke volumes, but it was the true climax of a career. Brougham himself being witness. He ex- pressly said that when he stood for Y^'orkshire he made his choice between power and the peojDle, though we afterwards find him lord- chancellor, and not long afterwards hand-and- glove with Lyndhurst and Wellington. Dui'- BROUGHAM'S POPULARITY. 61 iug the earlier portion of his career Brougham hati uever shown himself more than a luke- warm friend of reform in the representation of the people, and he was severely criticised for it by men as different as Bentham and Cob- bett. All this, however, was now to change, and "lawyer Brougham," as the latter used to call him, was to figui'e as the most pro- minent man in the reform party, and the idol of nearly all the Radicals. He uever quite inspired the same confidence as Earl Grey or the beloved " Lord John," and there were always some who shook their heads when his name was mentioned as that of a man in whom the Liberals might have hope and rejoicing for ever ; but this was attributed to jealousy. His exertions on behalf of the late Queen Caroline had won him the heart of the masses,- and a great speech on the slavery question delivered in the last parliament had raised him to the pinnacle of such fame as he loved. This speech, as he used to say, was the imme- diate cause of his being returned for York- shire. Apart from the extraordinary industry of Brougham — the bare catalogue of his works, very many of them on education, filling about twenty-four octavo pages — and apart from his tremendous powers of attack; his political versatility, and various circumstances which will reveal themselves in the course of this story, made him, and still make him, a topic of singular fascination. He was the subject of more criticism, surprise, invective, admiration, and caricature than any man of his time; and he was so often accused of breach of faith, " Satanic hate," and other things not pleasant, that it may be well if we try to make him a little intelligible before going any further; especially as we now find him at what was, by his own avowal, the summit of his am- bition, the jioint beyond which he wished he had never gone. " Lawyer Brougham," who had been the warm and persistent friend of education, the denouncer of tyranny abroad as well as at home, the advocate and more than the ad- vocate of law reform, and in the very foremost rank of the enemies of negro slavery, attained, as we have said, political majority at about the year 1830. It may be affirmed that he even died then — in a sense; for he soon after- wards assumed characteristics so novel, and played so many and such confusing parts, that we scarcely recognize the old idol in the image before us. Indeed Lord Brougham, chancellor and ex-chancellor, was heard to say more than once, of course in private, that he wished he could put off his coronet and be j^lain Henry Brougham again. If he really had the wish, as well as expressed it, there was probably a little self-deception in his mind ; the changes in him were largely the natural result of in- creasing yeai'S, and the want of certain forms of popular stimulation to which he had become accustomed. If he had still been a commoner he would have found that these were nearly exhausted. The world had gone very fast, and a time of reaction was come. This most remarkable man will reappear from time to time in our histoiy; but the career of Brougham as Brougham ends with the fall of the Whigs in 1834, one might even say with the year 1830. Never was a man so idolized by the people as he was during the decade which preceded his elevation to the chancellorship. He had, indeed, done good service. In the first year of his parliamentary life (1810) he introduced and carried a bill making it felony to trade in slaves. He had previously acquired fame by tlie incomparable force and acutenesswith which he had attacked the Perceval orders in council (restricting Bri- tish commerce for reasons the most absurd); and then came his defence of Queen Caroline, which he undertook, like Denman, at the cost of sacrificing the royal favour and certain kinds of professional advancement. The rest of his labours have been already hinted at. But still, considering his immense physical enei-gy and working capacity, we find our- selves wondering what he did with himself to leave so little mark upon his time. And yet he did much; men have been immortalized for smaller services than Brougham's. When we have remembered the worst that can be said against Brougham we discover that we cannot help liking him. This is not merely that we all like power, or that his name and image have long been familiar to 62 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. us; it is rather that we are impressed with the fundamental goodness of the man, in spite of all that has been said against him. Benthara, who, in spite of his hatred of poetry, some- times wrote rhyme, produced these four lines upon Brougham : — "0 Brougham ! a strange mystery you are Nil fuit unquam sibi tarn dispar : So foolish and so wise, so great, so small ; Everything now — to-morrow nought at all." (The first line will not scan unless we make two syllables of the name; but it was all but universally pronounced Broom. Now and then, Bruffam, as in the comic story told by the elder Matthews about the Yorkshiremau in the stage-coach who wouldn't be quiet, no, not for the "gret Baron Hellock and Mister Bruffam.") There is an anecdote of the man too which may pair off with these two couplets. He sat out of doors, at his seat at Cannes, as one figure in a scene for the daguerreotype. The artist, who had noticed his ways, earnestly imploi-ed his lordship to keep still, if only for a moment. Brougham solemnly promised that he would, but failed to keep his engagement. The rest of the picture was perfect, but where the figure of Brougham should have been there was a blur. That is it; if it were not for the extraordinary individuality of his face and figui'e, especially his nose, one would scarcely have any permanent image of him. Some little points in his conduct suggest a streak of insanity — for example, he would make serious appointments and forget them. Perhaps a certain well-known anecdote of his early child- hood is not true, but it is likely to live. It is said that, when very young indeed, he had been called cracked. One day he fell a good long way down stairs, and his mother, in terror, called to the servant, "Oh, his poor skull will be crackit !" But the cliild was not hurt, and picking himself uj), said, "No, mother, — it was crackit before." Considering that Brougham was dreaded as an intimate coadjutor in political life, and was never admitted into a cabinet after the first time, it is pleasant to notice that he was a very "domestic" person, fond of children, and an excellent master. Wordsworth, who was a severe judge, spoke of him "as a family man" in the highest terms. It is on record that never for one day during the years of his greatest preoccupations and anxieties did he miss writing to his mother. His attentions to children — including those young enough to give a great deal of trouble — were remarkable. It is of couree impossible to answer for every- body, but some of those who ought to know the truth regard him as "the very best of masters." Wordsworth's description of him is, "very generous and affectionate in his dis- position," — and in using such terms he gave practical instances. It was not unknown that a daughter of whom he was exceedingly fond was painfully afflicted, and that her early death was a great shock to him. Yet this is the man whose "hatred" in public life was called " Satanic," and who is said to have hastened, if not caused, the death of Lord Dur- ham by his rancorous prosecution of him. It has already been noted that Brougham was profusely caricatured. He had personal peculiarities which partly accounted for this. One of these was his nose. It was the very opposite of another celebrated nose, namely, the duke's; being a very powerful kind of "snub" of the class known to physi- ognomists as the cogitative. It is plain fact, and not fancy or humorous exaggeration, that Brougham used to jjoint his seiitences, or some of the most powerful of them, wath his nose. When he came to any spot in the struc- ture of a speech which afforded an opportunity for a damaging pause, up went the astounding nose, with a sort of inaudible sniff of satis- faction at the pain the orator was inflicting, his eye gleaming with too conscious fire. Then take his remarkable tall black stock, worn negligently, as all his clothes were, and sometimes actually showing at the side ur near the front the buckle which ought to have been behind; his plaid trousers; his gaunt, agile figure, his fierce look as if he .slept with his eyes open and wanted no help from any one; then take into account that his face was after all a kindly one, and was full of that peculiar pleasantness which never goes without intel- lectual power; and lastly, add the powerful projecting forehead and pugnacious mouth. PEESONALITIES IN BROUGHAM'S SPEECHES. 63 and you certainly have a figure that any one might like to look at more than once. His powers of work were greater than even his look and gait gave promise of. It is believed, that while he was lord chancellor (in which capacity he performed prodigies in the way of clearing the cause list) he once worked a whole week without sleep, certainly without going to bed, and then drove home and slept from Saturday far into the Monday. He was at one time publicly and continuously taunted with habits of intoxication, bat this was party spite. No man who was often affected by drink could have done a thousandth part of his work. It may well be credited, however, that with his very great strength he was not the man to count glasses of wine; he did everything with a will, with rapid reckless energy. Mr Gladstone has publicly informed us that he has always found the time of wait- ing, prejmring, and fidgetting before or about a speech more trying than tlie labour of the speech itself, and this is the general experience of orators of all classes excei:)t the insolent and stupid. Mr. Gladstone, however, says he never takes, as a fortifier, anything more than a glass of slierry with an egg beaten up in it. Brougham's "palmy" days were the days of port wine. The grave and moderate Peel would take his pint, and it is fully presumable that on any exciting occasion a man like Brougham, to whom wine was as much a sedative as a stim- ulant, would not stop at a pint. When he made his greatest reform-bill speech in the House of Lords, ending with the words, "Yea, on my bended knees I imjjlore you not to reject this bill," malicious observers have declared that the feint which his lordship made of kneeling on the woolsack became, without his conniv- ance, a real act of kneeling, and that he con- tinued in the attitude of supplication till he was gently assisted to rise. Brougham's boyish freedom to communi- cate, and his still more boyish neglect of his dress and appearance, may be allowed to com- plete this picture. In 1834 we shall find that Earl Grey was honoured by a banquet on the Calton Hill, at which 2500 persons were pre- sent. Lord Brougham made a speech full of fire and force (he had been somewhat under a cloud owing to his Malthusian outpourings and his conduct in the matter of the Dorchester labourers), in which he eloquently boasted of having had nothing to do with any kind of jobbery. "Fellow-citizens of Edinburgh!" said the noble lord, " these hands are clean !" — but " the wags " were much amused to note that they were not. " The wags " are not high authoiity, but it is certain that Brougham was not, to quote Carlyle, "of the mau-miUiner species." Nature had built him in such wise that it was impossible his clothes should fit him, and for the rest, a man who worked as savagely as he did would probably drop oft' into a short sleep, whenever he had a minute or two to spare, rather than make a toilet. Brougham was, of course, an intensely vain man ; not sentimentally or j^rurieutly vain, but graspingly so. It is well known that racehorses have been known to bite at their rivals in order to keep them from the winning- post. There was something in Brougham of the blind-animal instinct of jealousy to which such stories ])oint. When he attacked a rival he did it without self - consciousness, or at least deceiving himself with the idea that he did it in the public service. But he had no vanity of the thin, complying sort. He went boldly against the stream — madly, some would say — whenever he felt inclined. And he cer- tainly never spared anybody. One time when he was speaking in the House of Lords he noticed that the Duke of Cumberland — who was the object of more popular hatred than any man but Castlereagh had been — was whis- pering to the Duke of Wellington. It appears to have suddenly occurred to Brougham that he might annoy the " galloping dreary duke " without going much out of his way. So, hav- ing occasion to use the word " illustrious," or perhaps using it on purpose, Brougham, cast- ing his eye, and inevitably his irritating nose, towards the two dukes, observed with pei'fect coolness that "the word 'illustrious' was a vague one — that the Duke of Cumberland was illustrious by usage or courtesy only, whereas the Duke of Wellington was illus- trious by his character and achievements." Til is was quite gratuitous. Nobody knew better than Brougham that the "galloping 64 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. dreary duke" lived under tlie suspicion of having murdered his valet, that he was the best-hated man in England, and that no one would defend him. The Duke of Cumberland turned in a rage upon the chancellor, and asked why he had been dragged into the debate in this rude manner ; but Brougham, without showing a ruffled feather, replied that the contrast between his royal highness and the Duke of Wellington had just occurred to him as an illustration, and he used it as it came. The man who was capable of this kind of unsparing spitefulness was sure to have enemies enough. But there is at hand another striking in- stance of Brougham's recklessness of invec- tive. When the Duke of Wellington uttered his sudden and very imwise declaration that he was opposed to any kind of reform in par- liament, Brougham made one of his most savage speeches in the Hovxse of Commons. After a torrent of eloquence on the general question he turned suddenly round, and, look- ing Sir Robert Peel and Sir George Murray full in the face, he exclaimed, "//m we scorn not, it is you we scorn— you, his mean, base, fawn- ing parasites ! " Sir Robert rose to his feet and in a voice hot with passion denied that he was the parasite of any man. It seemed likely that a challenge would have ensued, but Brougham immediately " explained," and the debate was resumed. That Brougham was capable of intense jealousy is certain, and his want of discretion was extreme. Not once or twice only, but many times in his life, did "Blundering Brougham," as Byron called him, "turn beef to bannocks, cauliflowers to kale." That Sydney Smith would gladly have kept him off the staff of the Edinburgh Review is well known, but as he advanced in political importance he acquired a strong hold of Jeffrej'^, and Mr. Macvey Napier, Jeffrey's successor, seems to have stood almost in dread of him. Macaulay was by far the most valuable contributor, and they all knew it; but Brougham lost no opportunity of running him down in his pri- vate letters to Mr. Napier. The correspond- ence suggests, for one thing, how rapidly the dial has moved since those days. Neither a man like Brougham, who was great, nor a man like Croker, who was miserably little, would now be able to give himself airs, " assume the god, affect to nod, and seem to shake the spheres" in political literature. Croker's power consisted mainly in his sjiite and his impudence. Brougham was not capable of anything like that, but he could make himself sufficiently disagreeable. The manner in which he was left out in the cold after his first chancellorship shows what was thought of him as a colleague ; but then he was, to use an Americanism, simply left to " slide," and not the most savage pen of the time has tried to make him odious and con- temjDtible. There is no portrait of Brougham to compare with that of Croker as "Rigby" by the author of Lothair. The upshot of all this seems to be that the enmity of Brougham was never so gi-eat as it appeared. It was largely artistic. He had little secretiveness, and, once embarked on a current of invective, he took so much pride in trimming his sails for the occasion that he became, from time to time, unconscious of the rest. For instance, as a lawyer he was right in denouncing poor Lord Durham's Canadian compromise, and once committed to the work of denunciation he followed it up to the climax in the spirit of an artist. Good judges, after passing some time in his com- pany, declared that he had in him the making of a first-rate actor. As a judge Brougham was hardly what is called a success. The remark that if Brougham knew a little of law he would know a little of everything, has been attributed to many per- sons, the only lawyer from whom it was excus- able being Lord St. Leonards, who was per- haps the greatest of his time. But it is notice- able that Brougham was never a great or suc- cessful advocate, as O'Connell, Scarlett, or Wilde was. His boyish inconsequence made him unsafe, and he had no genuine cunning or savoir faire. All he accomjilished in any sphere of action he did by sheer driving power. One of the finest speeches he ever delivered was that in defence of Ambrose Williams; but it was a most unwise and inconseqiient concio ad fopulvm, not an advocate's appeal THE DUKE'S OPPOSITION TO EEFORM. to a jury; and Williams, as we all know, was found guilty — Brougham's irritating speech having unquestionably done him harm. The most serious charge against Brougham is perhaps that of untruthfulness. But there is no charge of perfidy against him. He was a man of vei'y rapid and very intense mood, who had a scarcely conscious delight in his own strength, and when some end was to be gained, butted at it with red-hot energy, like a Hercules in a passion, thinking and asking nothing of other matters. A man like this will undoubtedly find himself in many a false position if he leads a life as savagely active as Henry Brougham's. And especially will this be the case if he is a little " crackit," and apt to forget. This was Brougham; he frequently forgot promises and other matters — forgot them in j^erfect good faith, when he had nothing to gain by the forgetting. The acquirements of Brougham were not such as would excite astonishment in our own day. A hundred experts would be at hand to demolish him in every department of know- ledge to which he made any considerable pre- tension. One day when he had been the life and soul of a company at which Rogers was present, the banker and poet remarked to the other guests after his dejjarture, " This morn- ing Solon, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Ai'chi- medes, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Chesterfield, and a great many more went away in one post-chaise." It is not easy to tell when Rogers was serious and when he was joking; but unless this was pleasantry it was folly. Brougham contributed papers to the Royal Society on points in the higher mathematics when he was about sixteen years old, and there was no scientific subject with which he was not pre- pared to engage. But he never approached even to the edge of a discovery — never even made an important suggestion. In point of fact, this remarkable man was wholly destitute of speculative power, and almost incapable as a critic in the higher literature. All this is now admitted. Nobody dreams of reading his notes on Paley, or of accepting his dicta upon poetry or eloquence, upon great literary work, English, French, Latin, or Greek. But his power of massing facts Vol. I. together was of course stupendous, and he used it with honour to himself and benefit to his country in some very conspicuous particulars. On the 2d of November, 1830, the session commenced, the king going down to the house with far more tlian his usual display of cere- mony, and delivering his speech in person. In both houses the address in reply passed without a division — but there were signs of serious opposition to the government. In the Commons Brougham had already brought forward the subject of reform even before the address had been moved — though he only did so by contradicting the report that he wished to introduce radical and sweejjing innovations, and declaring that he for one would take his stand on the ancient ways of the constitution. It was in the House of Lords that the first note of war was sounded, and it came from the Duke of Wellington. Earl Grey also referring to some remarks on the subject of I'eform, the duke said, "The noble earl has alluded to something in the shaj^e of a parlia- mentary reform, but he has been candid enough to acknowledge that he is not prepared with any measure of reform ; and I have as little scruple to say that his majesty's govern- ment is as totally unprepared as the noble lord." This was all very well, but the duke went on to declare that he had never heard or read of any measure by which, to his mind, the state of the representation could be im- proved or could be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large. He did not hesitate to add that if he had at that moment imposed upon him the duty of forming a legislature for any country, and especially for a country like England, in possession of great property of various descriptions — he would not assert that he would form such a legislature as then existed, — for the nature of man was incapable of reaching it at once — but his endeavour would be to form some description of legisla- ture which would produce the same results. This was no more than characteristic — but when he concluded by saying, "I am not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but I will at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, as long as I hold any sta- 5 66 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. tion in the govevumeut of the country, I shall always feel it my duty to resist such a measure when proposed by others:"— the war note went far and loud, and the fate of the minis- try was sealed. A comparatively small incident intensified the public dislike ; another gave strength to the opponents of the government. The king and queen had accepted an invitation to dine at the Guildhall on the 9th of November, and costly preparations had been made to receive them with due magnificence; but a few days before the banquet information was given to the home secretary from Mr. Key, the lord- mayor elect, that there was likely to be a pub- lic disturbance, and though it was particularly intended to make a demonstration against the Duke of "Wellington the king might be in danger in case of a serious tumult. His majesty was advised to forego his visit. Lon- doners were bitterly disappointed; people in the country were alarmed at what they feared was a sign of a coming revolution. The funds fell from 80 to 77. The night of the banquet arrived, and nothing of consequence occurred. The result was that the ministry had not only increased the anger of the people, but were contemptuously accused of having, through fear of the tokens of their unpopularity, prevented the king from receiving the en- thusiastic welcome which awaited him from a loyal and admiring people. Seldom has any government been more odious than was the Wellington administration at that time. It is only necessary to look at some of the cai'icatures and lampoons with which the country was flooded to see how acrimonious were the satirical attacks on the duke and Sir Robert Peel, who, rather more than a year before, had, by the death of his father, suc- ceeded to a title and to a large fortune. Outside parliament the ministry was every- where met by a disfavour which was too often expressed in execrations. Within the house the Whigs had already formed a strong op- position — not without feeling that the king woidd rather suppoi-t them than lose his popu- larity; while the extreme Tories, who little expected how soon their party would be utterly defeated, joined in attacking a govern- ment which they never could forgive for emancipating the Roman Catholics. The fall of the administration was accelerated by the fact that on the 15th of November Mr. Brougham proceeded to redeem a pledge given to his constituents to introduce a measure of reform giving votes to all copyholders, lease- holders, and householders, and members to Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, and other large towns; to take away one member from each nomination borough ; to reduce the time of elections to one day; to limit the number of members in the House of Commons to 500, and to make some changes in the fran- chise of town and country voters. His plan had been approved at a large meeting of members, and though he was not really ready to go on with the measure he intended to in- troduce it. But the day before, Sir Henry Parnell brought forward a motion for appoint- ing a select committee to consider the esti- mates on the civil list, and as this was carried against the government, though only by a majority of 20, the ministry made haste to resign the next morning. Their resignation was accepted, and the king at once sent for Earl Grey, whose hon- our, integrity, and consistent advocacy of a moderate reform, no less than his gi'eat ability and experience, entitled him to be regarded as the chief of the Whig party. It may be convenient here to say a few words on the great military chieftain who as a minister was so obnoxious to the people, and who yet lived to become eminently popular when he had long retired from active inter- ference in the work of government, and had, as it were, become historical. A great deal has been said by vai'ious critics about the duke's qualities and career as a politician, and there is no manner of doubt that he was a failure. It is admitted on all hands. Bonaparte, when at St. Helena, used to speculate a good deal as to what the suc- cessfid soldier would do. " Wellington will never rest content with a peaceful life and a subordinate position after all he has done," said the ambitious little Corsican ; " he will change the dynasty." This was an amusing FIELD MARSHAL THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. K G FROM THE DA&ITERROTYPE BY CLAUDEI. BLACKLE.S, SON, lOUDOM. GLASGOW S SDISBURGK, THE "IRON WILL." 67 instance of self-disclosure. But though Wel- lington had no desire to "change the dynasty," and was well content, as he had reason to be, with his titles, his honours, his pensions, his estates, and the admiration of his country- men, he had perhaps greater ideas of his own capacity as a civil ruler than other people could well entertain. The king's government must be canned on — he was always ready to serve his sovereign — these were phrases of his which have been remembered, and they were good in their way ; but after all he was an old soldier, with but little reading, no breadth of view, and a curious want of sympathetic intel- ligence. In fact he had all the high qualities of a military commander except the highest ; and these last are just what a soldier must have if he is to win victories in peace as well as in war. He was very obstinate and preju- diced. A very small simple incident will show this better than a hundred of larger size that might be disi^uted about. Being on a visit once, and of course an honoured guest, he was guilty of the rudeness of absenting himself from family prayers during the whole time of his stay, for no reason except that some of the jjetitions read had not been from the prayer- book. " I see you use fancy prayers," said the displeased martinet. There must have been a good solid lump of hard-headed stupidity in a man who could speak and act like that, small as the matter was in itself. It reminds one unpleasantly of that speech of his when the nation Avas in a ferment concei-ning the Reform Bill — "The people of England are usually quiet enough if they are let alone; and if they are not quiet, there is a way to make them." When his grace was appointed prime minister Henry Brougham made a re- markable speech, in whicli he condemned the appointment as unconstitutional. This was going too far, perhaps ; biit the majority of the nation was with him when, after oflfering his homage to the duke's character and abili- ties, he went on to remark that he did not feel gratified when he saw the regular and confidential adviser of the sovereign at the head of the civil and militaiy establishments, dispensing all the patronage of the crown, the army, and the church. We have already re- ferred to the passage in which he said, " The schoolmaster is abroad ; " and it was in this speech that it occurred, when he said, " Let it not be supposed that I am inclined to exagger- ate. I have no fear of slavery being intro- duced into this country by the power of the sword. . . . The noble duke might take the army, he might take the navy, he might take the mitre, he might take the seal — I would make the noble duke a present of them all. Let him come with his whole force, sword in hand, against the constitution, and the energies of the people will not only beat him, but laugh at his efforts. There have been periods when the country has heard with dis- may that the soldier was abroad. This is not the case now. Let the soldiei' be ever so much abroad in the present age, he can do nothing. There is another person abroad — a less impos- ing person, and in the eyes of some an insig- nificant person — whose labours have tended to produce this state of things. The school- master is abroad; and I trust more to the schoolmaster, armed with his primer, for up- holding the liberties of the country, than I fear the soldier with his bayonet." It is probable that the duke had some vague sense that he was in opposition to the people, that he did not understand them — never would understand them — and would certainly be beaten by them. He indemnified himself for this unpleasant feeling by play- ing the martinet whei'ever he could. The Huskisson squabble was a case in point. In vain did Huskisson plead that his letter was private and merely consultative. In vain did other members of the cabinet urge upon the duke that it was all a mistake. " It is no mistake, by G — ! and it shall be no mistake," said the old soldier. The king (George IV.) sup23orted the duke, and the end of it was that Mr. Huskisson was excluded, and all the Canningites went out of the cabinet with him. George IV. himself, however, had to take his turn in giving way to the iron will of the iron duke, who was as unbending when he had to sound the retreat as at other times. That monarch, when the Catholic Voting Bill was in question, threatened to resign the crown, go abroad, and leave the government to his 68 GLADSTONE AXD HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. detested brother Cumberland — a stroke of spite -which he knew would lead to a revolu- tion. But the duke was too much for him, and insisted on the bill. His majesty after- wards told the weeping Eldon that he had been as much forced into assent by the duke " as if a pistol had been held to his head, or as if the duke had threatened to throw him out of a five-story window" — a physical feat to which the conqueror of Napoleon, though figuratively, in the French song, "high as Eouen steeple," would not have been equal without much assistance. King William IV. knew his own mind much better than his late brother ever did, and he had strong ideas of the royal prerogative. But he too, as will be seen, placed much reliance on the duke, who would, in case of need, have jjut a pistol to his head also, in order that "the king's government" might be carried on. That was the man. But he had, at this time, to encounter armies very different from any he had ever beaten at Assaye or elsewhere, and in spite of sincere good inten- tions on his part, and much of his usual obsti- nacy, "the king's government" had to be "carried on" without him, and in spite of him at last. The only government which had been successfully exercised by the Duke of Welling- ton was of an autocratic kind, when countries were in a state of siege, and to that he was fuUy equal. But in this country there was a constitution and a free people, and to govern under such conditions a man must have elements of sympathy and intelligence, which the Duke of Wellington lacked. Benjamin Disraeli, whose Conservative sympathies did not prevent very plain speaking, has boldly pointed out the defects of the duke as a minister. "Bishop Burnet in speculating on the extraordinary influence of Lord Shaftes- bury, and accounting how a statesman so con- sistent in his conduct and so false to his confederates should have so powerfully con- trolled his country, observes, 'His strength lay in his knowledge of England.' Now that is exactly the kind of knowledge wdiich the Duke of Wellington never possessed." And this ingenious writer and successful man of action then goes on to refer to the mistakes made by Wellington, and insists that it is to his mismanagement, when he possessed the con- fidence of King William IV., and as much power as he could well expect, that we owe "the uprising of the demon Agitation." This is far too strongly put, but short as was the period of the duke's sway in the reign we are now considering, it was potent for good or evil. The "iron will" — a commonplace which is almost worn out, but is convenient,— the iron wiU of the Duke of Wellington, and his pei-sonal fidelity, were more than once of great use to Sir Robert Peel, and through him to the country. Both these men, the latter, of courae, a truly great statesman, had one merit in common — they were ready, if we may use another commonj^lace, to "accept" any " accomplished fact," with all its conse- quences, and woik those consequences for the public good, as far as they could see their way to doing so. Peel, whom Benjamin Disraeli has called the greatest member of Parliament that ever lived, was much more than a member of Parliament. He has so large a part to play in the history of the years before us that it is desirable he should be more than the shadow of a name to the reader — and indeed we have already introduced htm. The best of aU guides to what a man really is at bottom is a good portrait of him — unless you can see him face to face. The figure, head, and features of Peel are fortunately quite familiar. His father, as is well known, was a great calico-printer (sometimes as many as 15,000 hands were employed in his fac- tories at one time). He was made a baronet, a circumstance which Cobbett attributed to his subscribing £10,000 to the "Patriotic Fund " of his day — which we now record merely to save any speculation on the reader's part as to the source of the title of the son, who had, be it noted, an almost haughty way of putting "honours" aside. The elder Peel had a craze in favour of Pitt and paper money ; but he was not blind, and after his son had taken a double-fii-st at Oxford he took care that he should get into Parliament while little more than a youth. At fii-st Peel took his fathei''s side, not only as an extreme EARL GREY'S MINISTRY. no Tory, hitt alf=io as a friend of inconvertible one-pound notes; but at last he broke loose from the traditions of his early training, and, characteristically, the first point on which he did so was a financial one. But he very early pleased Spencer Perceval, who gave him a place in the cabinet almost immedi- ately. The part he took in relation to the Test and Corporation Acts and the Catholic Emancipation Act lies far b.hind this joortion of the narrative, as his final course of action in regard to the corn-laws lies far before lis. But all his j^olitical conduct illustrates the central point in his character. He had exti-eme tenacity of conviction, scrupulous conscientiousness, great openness to any ap- peal from the side of humanity, and an almost irritable sense of honour. The difficulty of " making him out," or following his reasons, was keenly felt from time to time by even his friends, and at the time of the Reform Bill agitation it was thought humorous to call him Sir Robert Eel — of course, in allusion to the difficulty of getting "a hold" on him. But a man of great tenacity of opinion, and, at the same time, of conscientious willingness to be convinced, is peculiai-ly liable to mis- constructions. Peel suffered severely from them on the Catholic question among others. We now find him steadily opposing reform in Parliament, and pretty well hated by the peo- ple in consequence ; but we must remember, in explanation of some portions of his con- duct, that he was a somewhat combative man, and that to attack him for his opinions was like endeavouring to extract a nail by hitting it hard on the head. However, the people of England were never long without "a sneaking regard" for Sir Robert, — so great was the confidence inspired by the steadfast^ ness and solidity of his character. The popularity and the known moderation of Earl Grey secured for him the support of the nation, but one difiiculty beset him directly he began to form a ministry. What was to be done with Brougham? The premier had only accepted office on condition that parliamentary reform should be made a cabinet measure, and here was this restless, tempestuous, indiscreet. able orator, not only the recognized leader of the Wliigs in the House of Commons, but with a Reform Bill of his own half ready and wholly promised. Added to this, he had gloried in accepting the representation of Yorkshire on public grounds alone, and not for the sake of office. He had enormous en- gagements, a largely increasing professional income, which he must sacrifice if he took any ordinary cabinet appointment. The office of attorney-general was offered him and distinctly refused ; it was then suggested that he should be made inaster of the rolls and still retain his seat for Yoi^kshire, but to this the king could not agree, as for such a man to be in the ministry, to represent such a constituency, and to be the proposer of the Reform Bill, would make him too sti'ong for the government. Earl Grey then asked his majesty what else could be done; and the king, with perhaps un- usual sagacity said, " Let him be lord-chan- cellor." It was a .splendid off"er of course, and any man might have been excused for being elated at it; but Brougham was in no hurry to accept it. He had the uncertainties of office to consider, and shoiild the ministry go out he would have to retire on ^4000 a year, after having relinquished not only a lucrative prac- tice but his independent position as leader of the party. Loi-d Althorp at last persuaded him to accept the appointment. "Remember," he said, "that our party has been out of office for twenty-five years, and that your refusal to join us will in all probability prevent the forma- tion of a ministry, and keep us in opposition for another quarter of a century." Brougham yielded, and the ministry was at once formed with his name as lord-chancellor and the ac- companying title of Lord Brougham and Vaux. Lord Althorp was chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Melbourne in the home office, the Mar- quis of Lanadowne president of the council. Viscount Palmerston foreign secretary. Sir J. Graham first lord of the admiralty. Lord John Russell took office (not in the cabinet) as pay- master of the forces, and the Hon. E. G. Stanley, afterwards to become famous as the Earl of Derby— "the Rupert of debate"— was aj)- pointed chief secretary for Ireland, but was tlie only member of the government who failed to 70 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. be re-elected, having been defeated at Preston by his opponent, the famous, or by that time notorious, radical, "Orator" Hunt, who was elected because Mr. Stanley refused to pledge himself to support the ballot. To a committee composed of Lord Durham, Lord Duncannon, Sir James Graham, and Lord John Russell was assigned the task of framing the government measure of reform, and it was the scheme of Loid John Russell which was the foundation of the bill. He proposed that fifty of the smallest boroughs should be disfranchised, that fifty more should return only one instead of two members, and that the seats thus gained should be given to counties and large towns; that the qualification for a vote should be the payment of a certain amount of rental, which was afterwai'ds fixed at £10. Instead of fifty towns being selected for disfranchisement, however, it was deter- mined, against Lord Russell's advice, that all towns which by the census of 1821 had fewer than 2000 inhabitants should be disfran- chised entirely, and all towns having between 2000 and 4000 should be disfranchised par- tially. The amount of disfranchisement would, it was found, be about the same, and Lord John yielded ; but he deemed the man- ner of effecting the change objectionable, and subsequent events proved that he was not far wrong. The pi'oposed bill was warmly accepted by the cabinet and no time was lost in bringing it forward, for the country was already in a very disturbed condition, not only because of the political crisis and the excitement occa- sioned by long-delayed relief, but in con- sequence of the terrible distress which pre- vailed in many of the counties and among the industrial population of large manufacturing towns. The agi'icultural labourers in some districts were starving, and their wages could not support them. In the county of Doi-set then, as much later, the part of the country where farm labourers were brought lowest, the amount of jDarochial relief — the alternative of actual starvation — was for a labouring man 2s. Id. a week; for a woman, boy, or girl above 14 years old, 2s. ; for a boy or girl of 12 to 14, Is. Id. ; for a boy or girl from 9 to 11, Is. Ad. ; and for children under 9 years old, l5. 'id. The abatement of rent and of tithes could do little to mitigate poverty which sought such relief as this, and the labourers in various quarters demonstrated their wrongs by break- ing the agricultui-al machinery, which they fancied had been the cause of their sufferings; and to make the situation more terrible, ricks were fired, and the food that was so scarce, blazed high, while those who went always hungry stood grimly by and not only refused to quench the flames but prevented others from extinguishing them. Neither the soldier nor the schoolmaster was abroad, but a mys- terious agitator and desperado, who sent threateningletters and called himself "Captain Swing," was supposed to be the chief incen- diary, though no individual was discovered, or probably existed, who led any organized plan of de2Dredation. Labourers in the rural dis- tricts were wrought to a pitch of dogged misery for which some violent acts were the only outcome, and they had never been taught to reason. In some of the large towns there was a smouldering fury which the introduction of a liberal measure alone prevented from breaking forth into fiery insurrection, and which, when that measure was afterwards thwarted and delayed, found sudden vent in riot and monstrous outrage. In Ireland mat- ters were, if possible, still worse. The potato crop had failed, the western counties were in a state of actual famine, assassination was rife, and lawless meetings were held continually. Such was the state of the country, affected doubtless by the recent revolution in France, when it was announced that on the 1st of March Lord John Russell would introduce the bill that was to give political liberty to the nation. As the hour drew near, every avenue to St. Stephen's was crowded, every landing, lobby, and passage was filled, every seat in the benches of the house itself was either taken or labelled by members who in- tended to be present during the debate. There was such a struggle to obtain admission to the public gallery that the speaker threat- ened to clear the building of strangers if the disorder continued. As the clock struck six, a little active figure — a calm, pale, determined THE FIRST REFORM BILL. 71 face — appeared at the door. Tliere was a momentary hush, and then followed a tremen- dous cheer. The fact that the financial mea- sures promised by the government had failed or were too weak to be of any real importance was forgotten, the unreduced pension list, the increased military and naval forces, the queen's conditional annuity of ^100,000 in case she should survive her husband were for the pre- sent condoned, now that reform was to be begun in earnest. Amidst a jjrofound silence — without which the low tones in which he commenced could scarcely have been heard — Lord John commenced. The very foundation of the bill, according to Lord John, was that the ancient constitution of our country declared that no man should be taxed for the support of the state who had not consented, by himself or his representative, to the imposition of these taxes. The well-known statute de tallagio non comedendo repeated the same language ; and although some historical doubts had been thrown upon it, its legal meaning had never been disputed. It included "all the freemen of the land," and provided that each county should send to the Commons of the realm two knights, each city two bur- gesses, and each borough two members. Thus about a hundred places sent rei^resentatives, and some thirty or forty others occasionally enjoyed the privilege ; but it was discontinued or revived as they rose or fell in the scale of wealth and importance. "Thus," said the noble lord, "no doubt, at that early period, the House of Commons did represent the peo- ple of England ; there is no doubt likewise that the House of Commons, as it now sub- sists, does not represent the people of England. Therefore if we look at the question of right, the reformers have right in their favour. If we consider what is reasonable, we shall arrive at a similar result. A stranger who was told that this countiy is unparalleled in wealth and industry, and more civilized and more en- lightened than any country was before it — that it is a country that prides itself on its freedom, and that once in every seven years it elects representatives from its population to act as the guardians and preservers of that freedom— would be anxious and curious to see how that representation is formed, and Ikjw the people choose their representatives, to whose faith and guardianship they intrust their free and liberal institutions. Such a per- son would be very astonished if he were taken to a ruined mound, and told that that mound sent two representatives to parliament; if he were taken to a stone wall and told that three niches in it sent two representatives to parlia- ment ; if he were taken to a park where no houses were to be seen, and told that that park sent two representatives to parliament ; — but if he were told all this, and were as- tonished at hearing it, he would be still more astonished if he were to see large and opulent towns, full of enterprise and industry and in- telligence, containing vast magazines of every species of manufactures, and were then told that these towns sent no representatives to parliament. Such a j^erson would be still more astonished if he were taken to Liverpool, where there is a large constituency, and told, 'Here you will have a fine specimen of a po])ular election.' He would see bribery em- ployed to the greatest extent and in the most unblushing manner ; he would see every voter receiving a number of guineas in a box, as the price of his corruption ; and after such a spec- tacle he would no doubt be much astonished that a nation whose representatives aie thus chosen could perform the functions of legis- lation at all, or enjoy respect in any degree. I say, then, that if the question before the house is a question of reason, the present state of representation is against reason. The confidence of the country in the construction and constitution of the House of Commons is gone. It would be easier to transfer the flour- ishing manufactures of Leeds and Manchester to Gatton and Old Sarum than to re-establish confidence and sympathy between this house and those whom it calls its constituents. If therefore the question is one of right, right is in favour of reform ; if it be a question of reason, reason is in favour of reform ; if it be a ques- tion of policy and expediency, policy and ex- jiediency are in favour of I'eform." Then came the explanation of the measure which was to be proposed. No half -measures would be suflicient, no trifling or paltering 72 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. with reform could give stability to the crown, strength to parliament, or satisfaction to the country. The chief grievances of which the people complained were the nomination of members by individuals, the election by close corporations, and the expense of elections. With regard to the first it might be exercised in two ways, either over a place containing scarcely any inhabitants and with a very ex- tensive right of election, or over a place of wide extent and numerous population, but where the franchise w\is confined to a very few persons. Gatton was an example of the fiist, and Bath of the second. At Gatton, where the right of voting was by scot and lot, all householders had a vote; but there were only five pei'sons to exercise the right. At Bath the inhabitants were numerous, but very few of them had any concern in the election. In the former it was proposed to deprive the borough of the franchise altogether. In doing so ministers took for their guide the population returns of 1821, and proposed that every borough which in that year had less than 2000 inhabitants should altogether lose the right of sending members to parliament; the effect of which would be to disenfran- chise sixty boroughs. But they did not stop here. There were forty-seven boroughs of only 4000 inhabitants, and these were to be deprived of the right of sending more than one member to parliament. Weymouth, which sent four members to parliament, would in future send only two. The total reduction thus effected in the number of the members of the house would be 168. This was the whole ex- tent to which they were prepared to go in the way of disfranchisement. "We do not, however," said Lord John Russell, "mean to allow that the remaining boroughs should be in the hands of a small num- ber of persons, to the exclusion of the great body of the inhabitants who have property and interest in the place. It is a point of great difficulty to decide to whom the fran- chise should be extended. Though it is a point much disputed, I believe it will be found that in ancient times every inhabitant householder i-esident in a boi-ough was competent to vote for members of parliament. As, however, this arrangement excludes villeins and stran- gers, the franchise always belonged to a par- ticular body in every town. That the voters were persons of property is obvious from the fact that they were called upon to pay sub- sidies and taxes. Two diiferent courses seem to prevail in different places. In some, evei-y person having a house and being free was ad- mitted to a general participation in the privi- leges formerly possessed by burgesses; in others, the burgesses became a select body, and were converted into a corporation more or less exclusive. These difterences, the house will be aware, lead to the most difficult, and at the same time most useless, questions that men can be called upon to decide. I contend that it is projier to get rid of these complicated rights, of these vexatious questions, and to give the real jiroperty and real respectability of the difi:'erent cities and towns the right of voting for members of parliament. Finding that a qualification of a house rated at £20 a year would confine the elective franchise instead of enlarging it, we propose that the right of voting should be given to householders paying rates for houses of the yearly value of £W and upwards upon certain conditions hereafter to be stated. At the same time, it is not intended to depi'ive the present electors of their privilege of voting, provided they are resident. With regard to non-resideuce, we are of opinion that it produces much expense, is the cause of a great deal of bribery, and occasions such manifest and manifold evils, that electors who do not live in a place ought not to be permitted to retain their votes. With regard to resident voters, we propose that they should retain their right during life, but that no vote should be allowed hereafter except to £10 householdei-s." In order to extend the franchise in coun- ties the bill would give all coj^yholders to the value of i,'10 a year, qualified to serve on juries, under Sir R. Peel's bill, a right to vote for the return of knights of the shire ; and leaseholders for not less than twenty -one years, whose annual rent was not less than £50, and whose leases had not been renewed within two years, were to enjoy the same l)rivilege. HEFORM IN POLLING AT ELECTIONS. When speaking of the numbers disfi-an- chised, Loi'd Russell had said that 168 vacan- cies would be created ; but it was believed that it would not be wise or expedient to fill up the Avhole number of these vacancies. After mature deliberation ministers had ar- rived at the conclusion that the number of members in the house was inconveniently large. " When this house is reformed, as I trust it will be," said Lord John, " there will not be such a number of members who spend their moneys in foreign countries and never attend the house at all. We propose, therefore, to fill up a certain number of vacancies, but not the whole of them. We intend that seven large towns should send two members each, and that twenty other towns should send one member each." The seven towns which were to send two members each were as follows : — Manchester and Salford; Birmingham and Aston; Leeds; Greenwich, Deptford, and Wool- wich; Wolverhampton, Bilston, and Sedgley; Sheffield ; Sunderland and the Wearmouths. The following were the towns which it was proposed should send one member each to parliament: — Brighton, Blackburn, Wolver- hampton, South Shields and Westoe, War- rington, Huddersfield, Halifax, Gateshead, Bolton, Stockport, Dudley, Kendal, Tyne- mouth and North Shields, Cheltenham, Brad- ford, Frorae, Whitehaven, Workington and Harrington, Wakefield, Kidderminster. It was well known that a great portion of the metropolis and its neighbourhood, amount- ing in population to 800,000 or 900,000, was scarcely represented at all; and eight mem- bers were to be given to those who were thus unrepresented, by dividing them into districts, viz. : Tower Hamlets, population 283,000 ; Holborn, 218,000; Finsbury, 162,000; Lam- beth, 128,000. It was next proposed to add to the members of the lai'ger counties- — a species of reform always recommended, and which Lord Chatham was almost the first to advocate. The bill was to give two members to each of the three ridings into which Yoi-kshire was divided — the east, west, and north— and two additional members to each of the fol- lowing twenty-six counties, of which the in- habitants exceeded 150,000 : — Chester, Derby, Durham, Gloucester, Lancaster, Norfolk, Som- erset, Sufiblk, Wilts, Cumberland, Warwick, Northamjjton, Cornwall, Devon, Essex, Kent, Lincoln, Salop, Stafford, Sussex, Nottingham, Surrey, Northumberland, Leicester, South- ampton, Worcester. Loi'd Russell having made these statements, said: — "I now beg leave to direct the atten- tion of the house to that part of the plan which relates to the expense of the long-pro- tracted polls, and which, while it removes that evil, also greatly facilitates the collection of the sense of the elective body. We propose that all electors in counties, cities, towns, or boroughs shall be registered, and for this pur- pose machinery will be put in motion similar to that of the Jury Act — that is to say, at a certain period of the year (I now speak of boroughs) the parish officers and church- wardens are to make a list of persons who occupy houses of the yearly value of £10. This list of names will be placed on the church-doors, we will suppose in September; and in October the returning officer will hold a sort of trial of votes, where claims made and objections stated will be considered and de- cided. On the 1st of December the list will be published ; every person who chooses may obtain a copy of it , and it will be the rule to govern electors and elections for the ensuing year. The means of ascertaining who are the electors being thus easy, there is no reason why the poll should be kept open for eight days, or, as in some places, for a longer period ; and it is proposed that, nearly according to the present law, booths shall be erected in the different parishes, so that the whole poll may be taken in two days. For my own part, I may say that I expect the time will come when the machinery will be found so simple that every vote may be given in a single day ; but in introducing a new measure, it is neces- sary to allow for possible defects. Attempts might be made to obstruct the polling ; and I therefore recommend two days, in order that no voter may be deprived of the opportunity of offering his suffrage." In coimties the matter was thought to be more difficult, and it was proposed that the churchwardens should make out a list of ail 74 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAPJES. pereons claiming the right to vote in the several parishes, and that these lists should be affixed to the church doors. A person to be appointed (say a barrister of a certain stand- ing) by the judge of assize was to go an annual circuit within a certain time after the lists were published, to hear all claims to votes and objections to voters. Having decided who were entitled to exercise the privilege, he would sign his name at the bottom of the list and transmit it to the clerk of the peace, and it would then be enrolled as the list of the freeholders of the county for the ensuing year. Lord Eussell next noticed the enormous expense to which candidates were put in bringing voters to the poll. In Yorkshire, without a contest, it cost nearly £150,000; and in Devonshire the electors were obliged to travel forty miles, over hard cross-roads, which occupied one day, the next being con- sumed in polling, and the third in returning home. The whole was a source of vast ex- pense and most inconvenient delay. It was proposed, therefore, that the poll should be taken in sepai'ate districts- — those districts to be ai'ranged according to circumstances by the magistrates in quarter-sessions, and not changed for two years. The shei'iffs were to hold the election on a certain day ; if a poll was demanded they would adjourn the elec- tion to the next day but one, and the poll was to be kept open for two days. On the third day the poll was to be closed, and on the sixth day an account of the number of votes to be published. It was so arranged that no voter should have to travel more than fifteen miles to give his vote. The number of polling places in each county were not to exceed fifteen, as the multiplication of places for receiving votes would give rise to great inconvenience. Each county was to be divided into two districts, returning each two members to parliament. There would be some difficulty in adjust- ing the districts; but it was proposed that his majesty should nominate a committee of the privy-council to determine their extent and direction. In some of the boroughs to which the fight of representation was to be continued the number of electors was exceed- ingly small ; a clause was therefore to be in- serted giving power to the commi.ssionei-s nominated vinder the bill to enable the in- habitants of the adjoining parishes and chapel- ries to take part in the elections when the number of electore in such a borough were below 300. That these were extensive powers the ministers did not attempt to deny; but Loi'd John Eussell declared that if any gentle- man in the house would suggest a better, safer, and more constitutional mode of effect- ing the object, his majesty's ministers would have no hesitation in adopting that mode and waiving their own. In conclusion Lord John said — " I have only one thing more to say with regard to the representation of England. In all these new towns to which we propose to give the right of sending members to parlia- ment, all persons who are entitled by their property to vote shall be excluded from the right to vote for the representatives of the county ; but it is not intended to interfere with the franchise of those freeholders who are at present entitled to vote. "With respect to the right of the forty-shilling freeholders, I do not think that there should be any alteration." In compliance with the loudly-expressed wish of the house, Lord J. Eussell then read, amidst frequent laughter and cheering, the list of boroughs which the bill proposed to disfran- chise, as having fewer than 2000 inhabitants according to the population returns of 1821 ; as well as that of the boroughs to be semi- disfranchised, as having a population under 4000 according to the same census. He then continued by saying : — " Scotland needs reform even more than England, as in that country no such thing tis popular representation is known. There we intend to give the suffrage to every copj'holder to the annual value of £10, and to holders of leases for ten years, not renewed witliin two years previous to the election, and paying £50 a year rent. The counties are to be settled as follows: — Peebles and Selkirk to be joined and elect one member together ; Dumbarton and Bute, Elgin and Nairn, Eoss and Crom- arty, Orkney and Shetland, Clackmannan and LORD RUSSELL'S APPEAL TO THE HOUSE. 75 Kinross, with certain additions, to do the same. The remaining twenty-two counties are each singly to return one member. The burglis are to be as follows: — Edinburgh to have two mem- bers; Glasgow to have two; Aberdeen, Paisley, Dundee, Greenock, and Leith (with the addi- tion of Portobello, Musselburgh, and Fisher- row), each singly to return one member. Thirteen districts of burghs to return one member. By the proposed alterations there will be an addition of five new members to the representation of Scotland, making the total number of fifty instead of forty-five as at present. "In Ireland we propose to give the right of voting to all holders of houses or land to the value of £10 a year. There are some places in that country which have not their due share in the representation. Of these the ]:>rincipal are Belfast, Limerick, and "Water- ford, to which we propose to give representa- tives so as to add three to the whole number of members for Ireland. The arrangement which I now propose will be eminently favourable both to Ireland and Scotland, but to Ireland particularly so; for as the nuijiber of the present members in the house repre- senting places in England is to be reduced, and their places are not to be supplied, the Irish members will become of great relative importance." The result of all the measures compre- hended in the bill as aflfecting the number of members in the house would be a decrease of 62. The number of representatives of con- stituencies Avould be diminished from 658 to 596, as the 168 seats which were to be abol- ished by disfranchisement of boroughs would not be compensated by the additions effected by the re - distribution or the accession of representation in other places. Sir Charles Wetherell afterwards compared this to "the system of reform introduced by the regicides when they established a commonwealth in England." The number of persons who would be entitled to the suffrage under the bill, not previously possessing that right, was supposed to be, in the counties, 110,000; in the towns, 50,000; in London, 95,000; in Scotland, 50,000; in Ireland about 40,000 ; and it was believed that the measure would add to the constitu- ency of the Commons House of Parliament about half-a-million of persons, all connected with the property of the country, having a valuable stake in it, and deeply interested in its institutions. " They are persons," said the noble lord, " on whom we may depend in any future struggle in which the nation may be engaged, and who will maintain and support l^arliament and the throne in carrying that struggle to a successful termination. I think this measure will further benefit the people by inciting them to industry and good con- duct. For when a man finds that by indus- try and attention to his busine.ss he will entitle himself to a place in tlie list of voters, he will have an additional motive to improve his circumstances and preserve his character. I think, therefore, that in tlius adding to the constituency we are providing for the moral as well as for the political improvement of the country. "Language has been held as if I had said that the institutions of the country could, by their own indirect strength, defend every attempt at sedition if no reform were adojjted. In m}^ opinion the question has little to do with sedition or rebellion. The question is whether, without some large measure of re- form, the government, or any government, can carry on the affairs of the country with the confidence and support of the nation. If this cannot be done, then it may become a question whether reform can be resisted ; but there can be no question that in such a case the British constitution must perish. The House of Commons, in its unreformed state, has nothing to look to but public confidence and the sympathy of the nation for its support. It appears to me that if reform is refused all such sympathy and confidence will soon be withheld. I ask whether, when the ministers of the crown consider that reform is necessary, when the sovereign has pei'mitted them to lay before the house their proposition, and when they come with that proposition to declare in the most unequivocal manner that they consider reform to be indispensable, and when the people out of doors, by multitudes of petitions and millions of voices, are calling 76 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. for tlie same thing, is it for the House of Commons to say, 'We are the judges of our own purity. We equally despise the minis- ters of the crown and the voice of the people. We will keep our power against all remon- strances and all petitions ; and we will take our chance of the dreadful consequences?' " I appeal to the gentry and aristocracy of England. In my opinion they were never found wanting in any great crisis of the coun- try. When war was carrying on against the national enemy, they were always the fore- niost to assert the national honour ; and Avhen great sacrifices were to be made and great burdens to be supported they were as ready to bear their proportion as the rest of their fellow-.subjects. I ask them now — now that a great sacrifice is to be made for the public safety and the general good — will they not show their generosity, will they not evince their public spirit, and identify them- selves in future with the people ? I ask them to come forward under these circumstances and give stability, j^olitical strength, and peace to the country. Whatever may be the result of the proposition I have made to the house I must say that his majesty's ministers will feel that they have thoroughly done their duty in bx'inging the measure forward ; neither seek- ing for the support of particular classes nor the applause of the multitude. When they have felt it their duty to resist popular feel- ings they have not hesitated to encounter and withstand them by a firm and vigorous enforcement of the law, by which many dis- turbances have been prevented or suppressed, I trust permanently. By their vigorous enforcement of laws passed before they entered office, agitation has been made to subside, and peace has been re-established. In no case could it be said that ministers have wavered in their duty by bending to popular clamour, or by seeking to ingratiate themselves in popular and transient favour, I have a right to say that, in submitting the present proposition to the house they have evinced an interest in the future welfare of the coun- try. They think that what they propose is the only thing calculated to give permanence to the constitution which has so lonnf been the admii'ation of foreign nations on accotint of its free and popular spirit, but which can- not exist much longer except by an infusion of new popular spirit. By these means the house will show the world that it is deter- mined no longer to be an assembly of the representatives of small classes and particular interests, but that it is resolved to form a body of men who represent the people, who spring from the people, who have sympathies with the people, and who can fairly call upon the people to support their burdens in the future struggles and difficulties of the country on the ground that they who ask them for that support are joining hand and heart with them, and, like themselves, are seeking only the glory and welfare of England." Lord J. Russell then sat down amidst loud and prolonged cheering from all sides. We have given the greater part of the remarkable address by which the Reform Bill was first introduced because it was one of the most important ever delivered in parliament, and may be interesting to a large number of readers, showing what were the particulars of the measure which was the foundation of that change in parliamentary representation, which was to introduce an entirely new era in poli- tical relations. For similar reasons we append the list which was read by Lord John, and we have ventured to include the number of the constituents and the prevailing influence in certain boroughs from the table in Mr. William Nassau Molesworth's excellent ac- count of the proceedings, as it is not alto- gether easy for the reader of to-day to realize the corruption which then existed. No. of Con. Place. Prevailing Influence. stituency. Aldborougli, . Duke of Newcastle, . . .60 Aldebtugh, . Marquis of Hertford, ... 80 Appleby, . . EarlofThanet and Earl Lonsdale, 100 Bedwin, . . Marquis of Aylesbury, . SO Beeralston, Earl of Beverley 100 Bishop's Castle, Earl Powis 60 Bletchingley, . Mr. W. Russell 80 Boroughbridge, Duke of Newcastle, . . .50 Bossiney, . . Lord Wharnecliffe and Mr. Turnio, 35 Brackley, . . R. H. and J. Bradshaw, 33 Braniber, . . LordCalthorpeA- Duke of Rutland, 20 Buckingham, . Duke of Buckingham, ... 13 Callington, . Mr. A. Baring, .... 00 Canielford, Jlarquis of Cleveland, . . 25 Castle Rising, Marquis of Cholmondeley and Hon. F. G. Howard, . . 60 THE DEBATE ON THE BILL. •77 No. of Con- Plaee. Prevailing Influence. stituency. Corfe Castle, . Mr. H. Bankes 50 Dunwich, . . Lord Huntingfleld and Mr. Barne, 18 East Looe, . . Mr. Hope 50 Eye, .... Sir E. Kerrison 100 Fowey, . . . Mr. Austin and Mr. Livey, . 70 Gatton, . . Lord Monson 5 Hasleraere, . Earl of Lonsdale, ... 60 Hedon, . . . Money 830 Heytesbury, . Lord Heytesbury, ... 50 Higham Ferrers, Lord Fitzwilliaiii, . . 145 Ilindoii, . . Lord Grosvenorct Lord Calthorpe, 240 Ilchester . . Disputed between Lord Cleve- land and Lord Huntingtower, 70 Lostwithiel, . Earl of Mount Edgciunbe, . . 94 Ludgersliall, . Sir 6. Graham and IMr. Everett, 70 Malmesbury, . Mr. Pitt 13 Maw's, St., . Duke of Buckingham, ... 20 Michael, St., . Lord Falmouth <& Mr. J. H.Hawkins, 32 Midhurst, . . Mr. John Smith 18 Milborne Port, Slarquis of Anglesea, ... 90 Minehead, . . Mr. Luttrell, . . .10 Newport (Cornwall), Duke of Jforthumberlanil, . C2 Newton (Lancashire), Mr. Legh, .... CO Newton (Isle ^ Lord Yarborough and Sir F. of Wight), . ) Barrington, .... 40 Okehampton, . Money 250 Old Sarum, . — Oi-ford, . . . Marquis of Hertford, ... 20 Petersfield, . Colonel Joliffe, . . . .140 Plympton, Mr. Trehy & Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, 210 Queenborough, Money versus Ordnance, . . 270 Romney, New, Sir E. Dering, .... 150 Ryegate, . . Earl of Hai-dwicke & Lord Somers, 200 Saltash, . . Mr. BuUer, 36 Seaford, . . Lord Seaford & Mr. J. Fitzgerald, — Steyning, . . Duke of Norfolk 110 Stockbridge, . Lord Grosvenor 106 Tregony, . ,. Mr. J. A. Gordon, . . . ISO Wareham, . . Riglit Hon. J. Calcraft, . . 20 Wendover, Lord Carrington, .... 140 Weobly, . . Marquis of Bath, .... 90 West Looe, . I\Ir. Buller, 55 Whitchurch, . Lord Sidney and Sir S. Scott, 70 Winchelsea, . Marquis of Cleveland, ... 40 Woodstock, . Duke of Marlborough, . 400 Wootton Bassett, Earl of Clarendon and Mr. Pitt, 100 Yarmouth, . The Holmes Family, ... 50 The following was the list of boroughs which would return one member of parlia- ment each : — No. of Con- Place. Prevailing Influence. stituency. Amersham, . Mr. W. Drake 125 Arundel, . . Money, 450 Ashburton, . Lord Clinton and Sir L. V. Palk, 170 Bewdley, . . Lord Littleton, .... 13 Bodmin, . . Marquis of Hertford & Mr. D. 6. Gilbert, 36 Bridport, . . Money 340 Chippenham,. Mr. Neald 135 Clitheroe, . . Earls Howe and Browulow, . 45 Cockermouth, Earl of Lonsdale, . . ISO Dorchester, . Earl of Shaftesbury and Jlr. R. Williams 200 Downton, . . Earl of Radnor, .... 60 Droitwich, . Lord Foley, 12 Evesham, . . Bribery 600 Grimsby, . . Money 300 No. of Con- Place. Prevailing Influence. stituency. East Griustead, Earl de la Warr 30 Guildford, . Lord Grantley 250 Helston, . . Duke of Leeds 36 Honiton, . . Money, 350 Huntingdon, . Earl of Sandwich, . . . 240 Hythe, . . . Corporation and Patronage, . 150 Launceston, . Duke of Northumberland, . . 15 Leominster, . Money 700 Liskeard, . . Earl St. Germains, . . . 105 Lyme Regis, . Earl of Westmoreland, . . 30 Lymingtou, . Sir H. B. Neale 70 Maldon, . 2000 Marlborough, Marquis of Aylesbury, . . 21 Marlow, . . Mr. O. Williams, . . . .285 Morpeth, . . Earl of Carlyle and :Mr. W. Ord, 200 Northallerton, Earl of Harewood, . . . 200 Penryn, . . . IMoney 400 Richmond, . Lord Dundas, .... 270 Rye, .... Dr. Lamb, 25 St. Germains, Earl St. Germains, ... 70 St. Ives, . . Mr. Wellesley, .... 200 Sanwich, . . Money 955 Shaftesbury, . Lord Grosvenor, .... 300 Sudbury, . . ]Money, 800 Tamwortli, . Lord Townshend and Sir R. Peel, 300 Thetford, . . Duke of Grafton & Mr. A. Baring, 31 Thirsk, ... Sir F. Frankland, ... 60 Totnes, . , . Corporation 58 Truro, . . . Earl of Falmouth, ... 26 Wallingford, . Money 180 Westbury, . Sir E. A. Lopez, .... 70 Wilton, . . . Earl of Pembroke, ... 20 Wycombe, . . Corporation and Sir J. D. King, 65 " In most of these boroughs," says Mr. Moles- worth, " the seats were sold by proprietors. Sometimes they themselves, or some of their relatives or dependants, were nominated to represent them. Bribery was also practised with little or no reserve or concealment where it was necessary; but in many instances the constituency was so dependent on the pro- prietor that no expenditure of this kind was requisite." Sir J. Sebright rose and briefly seconded the motion for bringing in the bill. It would be tedious and not altogether profitable to record the course of the long debate which followed, though the account would be illustrative of the temper of the house and the great variety of opinion, both in the Lords and the Com- mons, which served to impede the progress of the measure for fifteen months, during which not only the ministry but parliament itself underwent repeated vicissitudes, while the country was constantly alarmed by repeated riots and deeds of violence. Among the most determined opponents of the measui'e were 78 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. Sir C. Wetherell, the Tory grotesque of the house, who endeavoured to support the policy of the opposition by speaking against time; ■while, on the other side, Lord Palmei-ston, who still professed to represent the policy of his former chief, Mr. Canning, declared that that great statesman, had he lived to that time, would at once have apprehended the necessity on which the opinions of the govern- ment were founded, and that if limited plans of parliamentary reform had been adopted at an earlier date the extensive measure the^ before the house would not have been de- manded. Sii' Robert Peel defended the preservation of the close boroughs because they facilitated the entrance to parliament of men of ability ; and if by any accident, such as cajjrice or want of money, any such man were deprived of larger seats the close boroughs received them and secured their invaluable labours to the party. To this Mr. Stanley, among other telling remarks, replied that whatever might be the talents of the membera thus admitted they would not be regarded by the people as their representatives. On the 8th of March Mr. O'Couuell, who was then advocating the repeal of the union between England and Ireland, delivered a speech, which, by its extraordinary oratorical ability, almost bewitched the house, and moved even that assembly with passing gusts of emotion. He gave his hearty sup- port to the measure, but believed that it with- held from Ireland the redress of those wrongs of representation which had been inflicted upon it by the union. He also earnestly ad- vocated universal suffrage and vote by ballot. Mr. Hume, the member for Middlesex, and the leader of the moderate Radicals, frankly declared that, radical reformer as he was, the proposed plan much exceeded liis expectations. Seventy-one members spoke on the ques- tion, and it was after midnight on the 9th of March when Lord John Russell rose to reply. The motion to bring in the bill was agi-eed to without a di\nsion, and on the 14th it was read for the fii-st time unopposed. But it had yet to be fought for, and the country itself was divided. The majority of the clergy were opposed to it, remembering the hostility to the church which had characterized the revolution in France, and dreading a proposal for disendowment. The greater part of the moneyed as well as the landed interests also used their eflbrts to overthrow it, and steady- going representatives of commerce shook their heads and helped to support the antagonists of the measure. On the other hand, the rising class of manufacturers, the large body of shopkeepei-s and tradei-s, and the gi^eat mass of mechanics and labourers supported it vehemently, for though the main part of them were not included in the proposed franchise, they were intimately associated with the class to be benefited, and would therefore share in some of the advantages of an enlarged repre- sentation. The second reading of the biU was moved on the 21st of March, and carried by one vote only — the vote, too, of Sir- John Cal- craft, who was a member of the opposition. The result was received with uproarious cheers from both sides — for the opposition felt that when the bill went into committee it would be at theii- mercy. The house adjourned for the Easter recess, and reassembled on the 12th of April, when modifications of some details v/ere made, after which General Gascoyne moved that an instruction should be given to the committee on the bill — "Tliat it is the opinion of this house that the total number of knights, citizens, and burgesses returned to parliament for that part of the United King- dom called England and Wales ought not to be diminished." Lord Althorp said this motion was the fii-st of a series by which it was intended to interfere with the progress of the committee. In fact, it would have the effect of giving still more seats for enfran- chisement than they wanted — but it was a measui'e of obstruction, and after an acri- monious discussion it was passed by a major- ity of eight. The countercheck was the dissolution of parliament, but it was known that the king was averse to this alternative, and the op- position fancied they had effectually "mated" if not checkmated the government. In the House of Lords it was proposed by Lord Wharncliffe to move an address to his majesty not to dissolve pai-liament. No time Mas to RUSSELL— GREY— ALTHORP. 79 be lost. The king must be seen at once, and Eaii Grey shrank from the task. Perhaps no man but Brougham would have had the bold- ness to execute it, and he for once showed not oidy courage but extraordinary tact. Every- thing had been provided — even to the speech ; and the king was at first angry, especially as the lord-chancellor was obliged to confess that he had ordered the lifeguards to be in readi- ness to escort his majesty. This enraged the monarch, who declared it to be high treason — and indeed it was a serious infringement of the royal prerogative. But Brougham was so submissive in his representations that only a serious crisis, which might endanger the country and the throne itself, had induced ministers to take this step or to proiFer the advice they offered, that his majesty was ap- peased, and, it is said, transferred his anger to the lords, who were preparing to jDetition him against exercising his royal authoiity. It was declared that he hurried on his robes to go down to the house, calling out, " Bring me a hackney-coach!" — as though he would not wait for the state carriage. At all events, he reached the lords in semi - state — the life- guards riding wide as an escort, the people huzzaing and making a demonstration, which convinced him of his popularity and atoned for the pressure to which he had been sub- jected by Earl Grey and the lord-chancellor, from whom he had parted in a jocular humour, threatening them with impeachment. When he reached the House of Lords it was in a tumult, which was barely hushed as he said, in a firm voice, that he had come to prorogue jjarliament prior to a dissolution, that he might ascertain the sense of his people on the expediency of making such change in the representation as circumstances might appear to require. In the House of Commons the discussion was as loud and as bitter, and when the king arrived the calm Sir Robert Peel was speak- ing in a violent passion. All was excitement, and the nerves of the assembly seemed to be wrought to the highest pitch. Parliament was dissolved the next day. We may now return for a moment to some of the principal actors in the exciting scenes to which we have referi'ed. Lord John Russell has already been intro- duced to the readers of this history. Perhaps he was on the whole, among all the pai'liameu- tary heroes of the Reform Bill, the most liked by the people generally. There were many reasons for this. He bore an honoured his- toric name, and in the general imagination some vague reminiscence of his illustrious but unfortunate ancestor clung to him. Then he was a religious man, and a domestic man — all which went well with hazy half -tints of recol- lection about the heroic Lady Russell of two centuries before. Besides all this, Lord John had been a consistent Liberal, and the Dissenters, to a man, remembered with gratitude that he had carried the repeal of the hated Test and Corporations Acts in the teeth of the Duke of Wellington and his government. And it was no secret that his lordship was prepared to go farther on the road toward complete religious freedom. No man was more liked as a chairman at popular religiou.s meetings, such as those of the British and Foreign School Society, the Bible Society, and so forth. In addition, it must be borne in mind that he was a plain-looking Englishman, with no brilliant qualities. Short, almost dwarfish in person, he had a large head and "plucky" appearance. When he spoke he did not dazzle like Brougham, or even inspire the immediate feeling of respect that Earl Grey did. When he sat in the House of Commons with his hat — which was always very large — slouched dow^n quite over his forehead, you could see little of his face but the firm lips, which had very frequently an expression of dry humour in them, though, indeed, Lord John was no joker. Nor was he what could be called a good speaker. There was nothing brilliant about him. He had written verse {Don Carlos, a tragedy), history, and bio- graphy, and had, by the general, nearly unanimous voice, failed in all. His gesture has been described as "cat-like," a sort of pawing over the table, or whatever was before him, and he often hesitated for the right word. This was, in some respects, in his favour. The cleverness of Bi'ougham made him dis- 80 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. trusted and feared. So of Roebuck, perhaps, and a few others. They never hesitated, or took you into their confidence by a tacit admis- sion of iuabihty to go on fast. Russell did, and as he was a good man, a family man, a man who sympathized with "religious" diffi- culties, a very intelligent man, with a party following, and always true to his colours, the people liked him. They usually spoke of him as "Lord John," and sometimes even as "little Johnny." On the whole, we repeat, he was the most heartily and simi^ly liked by the people, though the central figure of the show was Brougham, whose speeches on the side of "the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill" drove people wild with admiration. While Lord John Russell was thought of with a sort of familiax liking, mingled with respect, and strong confidence that he would do more for the people some day, the "veteran reformer," Earl Grey, now sixty-six years old, inspired feelings of serious homage such as it is not often given to political heroes to receive. Though an aristocrat and an earl — having sat in the upper house, indeed, since the death of his father in 1807 — Grey had been athoroughly consistent Liberal. He could make himself sufficiently formidable as a debater or par- liamentary critic, and though he was a man of much ability as a politician, it may per- haps be said that the most effective part of the general impression he made was the moral. A more dignified, yet kindly presence than his it is difficult to conceive. His name ex- cited the greatest enthusiasm at the time of the struggle, and not less when the victory was won. The mass of the people were proud of having an earl to fight their battles, and when Grey retired into private life, after his ministry broke up in 1834 upon the question of coercion in Ireland, he carried with him the deeply-seated respect of the nation. In the cabinet of Earl Grey, in 1830, Lord Althorp was not a very able chancellor of the exchequer; but he did good service in the ques- tion of reform. His political life was short and peculiar, and he was an intensely English Englishman — English in a sense very different from that in which it was customary to apply the word to Lord Palmerston. He may yet be seen as a boy of five years old on Reynolds's canvas — looking just a prophecy of what he afterwards proved to be both at Harrow and the university. He was not the boy for these times, in which, as Lord Kimberley put it, everybody either wants to examine or to be examined ; but, with great sweetness and straightforwardness of character, had a some- what bluff" and awkward look, and was much more fond of football, rackets, boxing, and hunting than of books. Without any natural love of study he was ready to go through any mental labour in his power, as a matter of honour, duty, or love. At Cambridge, in compliance with the prayers of his mother, the Countess Spencer, he made himself the first man of his year. Although he was a good mathematician and a very strict accountant, he was personally extravagant in one direction — sport; and what Avith hounds, stock-breeding, and the turf, was too frequently in debt. . His sim- plicity of nature may be judged of by the boyish and totally iirelevant remark he made after going to Deville, the phrenologist. "Deville knows nothing about it," said he, "for he has not found out my ruling passion, which is to see sporting dogs hunt." He was a daring rider, and one of his shoulders continued in a chronic state of dislocation. After he had given up hunting, he said he never dared to steal a glance at the hounds when out, for he knew if he did he should begin all over again. As soon as ever the earldom devolved upon him, he quitted poli- tical life, and spent the whole remainder of his existence on his estates. A friend who went to him with a view of winning him back, found him, like the honest Arcadian he was, sitting at an open window, watching the sheep and lambs in his fields. And he never again left the country life in which he de- lighted. Lord Althorp — for by that name we must know him — entered Parliament early in the century, and was by some peoy:)le called a pupil of Mr. Whitbread and Sir Francis Bur- dett. He was by instinct and culture a CHARLES_ SECOND EARL GREY. Premier 1830_1834r. FROM THE PORTRAIT BY SIR THO? LAWRENCE. P R.A. BLACKIE it SON LONDON, GLASGOW iXDINBURGH HARRIET MARTINEAU -JOSEPH HUME. 81 Liberal, and in financial matters a disciple of Mr. Huskisson. He was only two years sliort of fifty, when, in 1830, he became the elected leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons, greatly to the surprise of Sir Robert Peel and the Tories. It is another example of Altliorp's simplicity of character that he himself wished to see Brougham chosen for that post! And perhaps it is another that he consulted Harriet Martineau about one or more of his budgets. No names are so closely connected with the passing of the Reform Bill as those of Earl Grey and Lord John Russell ; but much was due to Lord Althorp's fine temper, his steady industry, and the influence which his con- spicuous and beautiful love of truth, along with his essentially "aristocratic" character as a country gentleman, commanded in the house. On one occasion, rising to reply to an effective speech of Croker's, he said he had mislaid some calculations of his own, which would entirely demolish Croker's, but perhaps the house would take his word for that, and throw out the amendment in suppoi't of which Croker spoke! The house did. In 1834 Althorp's father died, he himself be- came Earl Spencer, and, of course, ceased to be chancellor of the exchequer, and that was the signal for the break-up of the Reform Whig ministry. There are those who main- tain that Althorp was the essential "fly- wheel," or steadying power, in the whole Whig machine, and that after his absence it never went well. It is almost impossible to write of Loi'd Althorp without being reminded of Harriet Martineau. When she published her very in- genious and extraordinarily successful tales iu illustration of Political Economy it was sup- posed by a large public that in that "science" the new gospel was found. The excitement occasioned by her stories was something scarcely intelligible to more recent readers. Sydney Smith admired her, waited upon her, and flattered her in so loud a voice (knowing she was deaf) that she dropj^ed her ear-trum- pet, and started to the other end of the sofa, out of the way of — Vol. I. "The very powerful parson, Peter Pith, The loudest wit I e'er was deafened with," as Byron called him. Brougham would have patronized her, and he made large promises of employing her pen, but the promises came to nothing, and she quarrelled with him, and with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know- ledge, for holding back the directly political "knowledge " which she held it to be their duty to place at the service of the people. Still, her services to the Whigs, and to Liberal prin- cijjles generally, were great, and the party would have "taken her up" to almost any extent, if she had let them. Great was the flutter among the Tadpoles and Tapers when it was known that the born aristocrat. Lord Althorp, had sent Mr. Drummond, who used (she says) "some pomp and preface," to consult "the deaf girl from Norwich" about certain points in his budget. The excitement had some very ludicrous points. Moore, the poet, was ruthlessly snubbed by her, but that did not prevent his going about in society telling people that "the other evening he was singing to Miss Martineau." In her case the Whigs were not ungrateful, for they offered her a pension when she was laid by with illness. This she declined. Later in life Mr. Glad- stone made her a similar offer, which she also declined, on the ground that having a modest competency she had no excuse for coming upon the public purse. The short correspond- ence which took place upon the subject was in the highest degree honourable to both jsarties. In referring to this we have anticipated in point of date, but Harriet Martineau may be said to disappear from the stage of general history at about the Reform era, and is not likely again to appear in these pages. In the parliament of 1831 Joseph Hume, wliD, though not a new member (indeed he had almost then earned his title of veteran " reformer " ), was a new power, may be said to have begun a new career. It is no disrespect either to Weymouth or Montrose, for both of which he had sat, to say that Joseph Hume, member for Middlesex and leader of the Radicals, had effected a triumph and taken a place which were entirely new. 6 82 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. This was one of the cases in which tlie result of the elections surprised the Tories and jjut new strength into the reformers outside the house. Joseph Hume did not receive during his lifetime anything near the honour to which he was entitled. He was a very canny, quiet, unassuming, determined Scot, who kept a watchful eye on the public expenditure. He formed one of the most characteristic figures in the caricatm-es of HJ., which by their significance sometimes did the work of many leading articles and speeches. There he stood scanning through his eye-glass the estimates, gravely quoting with suppressed severity "the sum tottle of the whole." But the ai-tist, by instinct or intention, or both, contrived to express in the head and face the imperturb- able conscientiousness of the man. Joseph Hume did much more than give his mind to " the sum tottle of the whole." He began life as a surgeon, and served in the Mahratta war at the very time when "Wel- lington was fighting at Assaye. He did his native country great and unobtrusive service while in India, and at the same time made a fortune. This enabled him to increase his culture by travel on the Continent. It was a great mistake to suppose that Mr. Hume was a narrow-minded and ignorant man. Both in parliament and out, he devoted much labour to the cause of education, including the pro- motion of scholastic institutions for adults ; and it was to his untiring efforts that the public owed the complete opening of Hamp- ton Court, the British Museum, and other places of intelligent relaxation or refresh- ment. At an eai'ly date in his career the Greeks had found out his value, and he was patted on the back by the Edinburgh Review. Unfortu- nately men as influential as Huskisson thought it becoming to oj^pose his efforts to reduce the public expenditure, and Castle- reagh with his usual stupidity compared him to harlequin and clown. The time came, however, when Mr. Hume was treated with more consideration. During that portion of the struggle for reform in the parliamentary representation with which we are concerned his labours were unexampled. He sjjared neither time, money, nor strength, and risked something of his good name, for the Tories accused him of packing off Liberal candidates for the constituencies, properl}' labelled, in ways which were " unconstitu- tional." The sum of the matter was that in those trying days the influence of Mr. Hume was everywhere felt, and the more moderate Liberals began decisively to feel that he really was a person of some importance. Office he refused, and he jjoured out his time and money like water in behalf of the people. It would not be easy, if it were even possible, to find a more disinterested public man. His quietness (to which reference has already been made) was so gi-eat as to make him a natural subject for a joke of a certain kind. Sir Robert Peel at one time challenged Dr. Lush- ington, and immediately afterwards Mr. Hume, for some totally inoffensive words. General Sir De Lacy Evans, the member for Westminster, was anything but a humorist, but he made Sii- Robert's challenge to Hume the text of a short rebuke which is worth quoting : — ''The right honourable gentleman," said Evans, "is a regular fire-eater. First he sends a hostile message to an ecclesiastical judge, and then he challenges that entirely peaceful and prudent gentleman Mr. Hume ; and I sincerely advise the pacific member for Durham (tliis was Mr. Pease the Quaker) to be careful of his words, or as sure as fate he will be the next pei-son called out by the war- like minister." IMi-. Hume did so much for the people that it is desirable to make him as near a living figure as possible, and perhaps this sketch may help his name, when it recurs in these pages, to some of the homage to which it is entitled, but which it has too frequently missed. The dissolution of paiiiament was greeted with popular rejoicing, and in London the pub- lic excitement reached to a pitch that may well have alarmed the anti-reformei-s in pai'liament, and especially the opposing members of the House of Lords. The city was illuminated, and the lord -mayor being unable to prevent this sign of political triumph, acted with com- THE ELECTION OBSTRUCTIONISTS. 83 mendable common sense and promoted it by giving it his authority. But the rows of can- dles or coloured lamps in the windows were no conclusive evidence of the political opinions of the householders, since it was pretty well known that unlighted casements would be de- molished. In the city, however, all went tolerably well ; but at the west end, where known anti-refonuers abstained on principle from illuminating, the windows were ruth- lessly smashed by the surging crowd which tilled the streets. Mr. Baring's dwelling was subjected to a storm of missiles, and at Aps- ley House the Duke of Wellington had to en- dure not only the destruction of nearly every pane of glass which looked upon the streets, but the howls and execrations of a formidable mob. Happily there was no serious, or at any rate no general, riot, for the election, it was hoped, would secure the passing of the bill. During that election, for which both parties had to prepai'e, the condition of the country was far more alarming. In the fourteen days during which the poll was kept open enormous sums of money were spent in bribery and treating, and the candidates were returned amidst scenes of the utmost riot, drunkenness, and disorder. Crowds filled the streets, processions marched hither and thither with bands and banners, and the whole populations of the towns seemed to be wrought to a fever, which was increased by the unusual sultriness of the weather. There were, however, some notable instances of a determination on the part of reformers to abolish the corrupt prac- tices which prevailed. One instance was that of a body of East Kentish men who had arranged to march to Maidstone to the poll and to sleep in a barn on the road rather than put their candidate to any expense. There could be no doubt about the temper of the country, for the number of reformers returned gave the ministry a large majority. On the 14th of June parliament was opened by com- mission. Mr. Manners Sutton, though himself an anti-reformer, was unanimously elected speaker. On the 21st his majesty formally inaugurated the session, and as he returned to St. James's was greeted wdth enthusiastic applause as "the patriot king." No time was then lost. On the 24th Lord John Russell again appeared in the house with a bearing confident and determined, "for the purpose of proposing in the name of the government a measure of reform which in their ojainion is calculated to maintain unimpaired the pre- rogative of the crown, the authority of both houses of parliament, and the rights and liber- ties of the people." In referring to the nature of the opposition which had formerly been shown to the bill he said: "Neither the taunts nor the jeers which marked the first reception of the measure; nor the misrepi'esen- tations and the libels by which it had been sought to disfigure it; nor the firm, and able, and manly opposition which men of talent and honour had thought it their duty to give it; nor those more dangerous weapons — those un- warrantable and slanderous imputations that the sovereign had an opinion on it different from his constitutional advisers — none of these obstacles have prevented the sovereign, the ministers, and the peo])le from steadily pursu- ing an object which they considered ought to be dear at once to all those who loved the an- cient ways of the constitution, and to all those who are sincerely attached to the liberties of the people." After some modifications of details had been announced, the bill was read a first time without opposition. As the day for the second reading (the 4th of July) drew near, the excitement was tremendous. The house and all its approaches were filled with expec- tant members and an expectant crowd. The discussion lasted three nights, till five o'clock on the moiTiing of the 7th. The second read- ing was carried by a majority of 136. But when the bill went into committee the opposition used every possible artifice of ob- struction. Sir Robert Peel was the leader, but his antagonism was less factious than that of his followers, and though he more than exhausted all the arguments that could be brought for the purpose of delay, his repre- sentations were not mere talking against time. Between the 12th and the 27th of July, Sugden bad spoken 18 times, Praed 22 times, Pelham 28 times, and Wetherell, the able but blatant obstructionist, 58 times. It was an organized system, and the work of wearisome opposition 84 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAKIES. for the purpose of tiring out the ministry lasted till the 13th of September, the sit- tings on the Reform Bill alone occupying eight hours each evening. The debates on the rejwrt and some slight alterations were made to occupy another week, but on the evening of the 19th the third reading was to come on, and a call was made for every member to be in his seat. A large number of the anti-reformers, expecting a long discussion, lagged behind. Sir J. Scarlett attempted to speak against time to allow the rest an opportunity of reaching their places, but he sat down amidst great shouts of divide, and the division was at once taken. There were but 171 members present, and the bill was read a third time by a majority of 55 — the anti-refoi'merswho rushed in when it was too late being received with peals of derisive laughter. On the morning of the 22d the bill passed (this time with a full house) by 345 against 239. The question then was. What will the lords do? and it was soon answered. Solemnly Lord Althorp and Lord Eussell, fol- lowed by a hundred reformers, carried the bill to the bar of the upper house ; solemnly it was received, but the anti-reforming peers had al- ready made up their minds. Lord Eldon had said with well-marked meaning that he would do his duty, and his age and long term of office gave his assertion weight and influence. On the 3d of October Earl Grey, calm, and with a noble dignity, stood up to speak, but for a moment was overcome by agitation, for the fate of the country seemed to be in the balance. He appealed to the bishops specially and earnestly, but, as they conceived, with a scarcely-con- cealed menace, when he said, "I especially beg the spiritual portion of your lordships to pause and reflect. The prelates of the empire have not a more firm friend than I. But if this bill should be thrown out by a narrow majority, and the scale should be turned by their votes, what would be their situation? Let them set their houses in order." The last words, if they were an intentional quotation from Scripture, were either menacing or un- fortunate, for the conclusion of the passage is, " for thou must die and not live." Probably, and especially judging from his manner after- ■yvards, he used the words as a proverbial say- ing without thinking of the context; but the bishops knew so well what followed, that the phrase was afterwards made the subject of acri- monious and angry reference. Lord Wharn- clifi'e, a moderate opponent, replied, and at once moved the rejection of the bill. Lord Melbourne gave it a rather languid support, for, as he acknowledged, he had opposed reform as much as any man. The Duke of Welling- ton was of course immovable. The next day Brougham delivered a speech, a masterpiece of earnest eloquence, which drew ex]iressions of admiration from Lyndhurst, who, however, spoke strongly against " the revolutionary vio- lence of the measure." On the 8th of October Earl Grey rose to reply, and his address was applauded even by his foes for its evident honesty and sincerity of purpose, but at past six o'clock the next morning the lords threw out the bill. The news went through the country like flame; and but for the wise reticence of the ministry, and the belief of the people that the government would never yield, there would have been a revolution, and the throne itself would have paid for the opposition of the anti-reforming peers. Hapiiily not one leader of the reform party raised an insurrectionary cry. The shojjs were closed in London and other large towns, the church - bells were muflled. In one district at least it was de- cided to keep a fast day. A large number of the reformers in the house held a meeting to express their resolution to stand by the minis- try. The common council of the city did the same. All over the country great assemblies were called and violent sjoeeches were made. The French had just set about abolishing the hereditary peerage, and it was boldly hinted that their example might well be followed in England. There was a sudden and alarming run upon the bank for gold. Even while the debate was going on in the House of Lords thei-e had been enormous meetings of the political unions in the midland counties. The number that attended at one of these meetings was estimated at not less than 100,000, and several radical members of parliament were amongst the speakers. A resolution was passed to jjay no more taxes till the bill became law. RIOTS AT NOTTINGHAM. 85 Votes of homage and thanks to Lord John Russell and Lord Althorp were passed, and a resolution to address the king praying him to create new peers, if necessary, in order to pass the bill. It was no sooner known that the lords, with twenty-one bishops in the majority, had thrownout the bill than public meetings seemed to spring up out of the ground unsummoned nearly all over England. Not only did the common council of the city of London hold an assembly at Guildhall in favour of the measure, but there was another meeting of the leading merchants and bankers at the Mansion House. The address which the corporation voted to the king was carried up by an assemblage of 50,000 people. The "viler sort" in the mob assaulted Apsley House, unhorsed the Duke of Cumberland, and committed other acts of violence. These and similar matters led to such angry discussions in both houses that on the 20th of October the king again came down and pi'orogued parliament. In the royal speech the following passage occurred: — "The anxiety which has been so generally manifested by my people for the accomplishment of a constitutional reform in the Commons House of Parliament will, I trust, be regulated by a due sense of the necessity of order and moderation in their proceedings. To the consideration of this irajjortant question the attention of parlia- ment must necessarily again be called at the opening of the ensuing session : and you may be assured of my unaltered desire to promote its settlement by such improvements in the representation as may be found necessary for the securing to my people the full enjoyment of their rights, which, in combination with those of the other orders of the state, are essential to the support of our free constitu- tion." The violence of the political assemblies having somewhat abated, the anti-reformers professed to believe that a reaction was setting in — but, in truth, a more formidable organi- zation was being completed, and political unions were formed all over the kingdom. At the end of October Sir Francis Burdett presided over a great assembly of the inhabi- tant-householders of London who met for the purpose of combining in a national political association. Not only the king but the ministry felt considerable uneasiness at the proceedings of these societies, and on the 2d of November a Ijroclamation was issued declaring them to be illegal. There was sufficient reason for dis- quietude, for in various parts of the country alarming disturbances had continued, and two terrible events served to show that the whole framework of society was menaced by the ojiportunity afforded to ruffianly mobs, who, in the name of political agitation, were ready to defy the law and to introduce a reign of terror. The first of these was a riot at Not- tingham, where the ancient castle, — sacred to the memoi'y of Colonel and Lucy Hutchison, who had, as we all remember, held it for "the Houses and the Lord" in the time of Crom- well, — was fired by a mob. Ministers of re- ligion and other influential i^ersons did their best to control the ruffianly portion of the excited populace, and while daylight lasted they were largely successful, but when the autumnal darkness had descended in the city the castle was furiously attacked. A living writer and painter has described the scene in a few telling sentences: — "Towards night," writes Mr. Josiah Gilbert, whose parents lived on the spot, "the evil element in the mob predominated, and as darkness fell the rush of thousands filled the streets leading to the castle, which, as the property of the Duke of Newcastle, a Tory of Tories, was a tempting object for popular vengeance. The ancient lodge gates were bi'oken in, the lofty terrace was speedily thronged, and to the watchers on the roof of the Castlegate House, well placed for commanding the scene, the dark mass of the great building was speedily lit up with lurid flashes. Lights gleamed from window after window, and, presently, tongues of fire leaped out amidst shouts and yells piercing the air as the flames did the dark- ness. Then followed crash after crash, molten lead began to pour from the roof, and the odour of burning cedar-wood penetrated every- where, lasting, indeed, many days. It was a grievous si'dit." 86 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Tlie Duke of Newcastle had the satisfaction of receiving £21,000 from the country for the destruction of "his own." But far more terrible were the outrages committed in the still notorious riots at Bristol, when, on the 29th of October, the uncom- pi'omising and eccentric Sir Charles Wetherell went thither to open the assizes as recorder of that city, where the mob was perhaps the fiercest and most turbulent in England. The majority of the vast ci'ow^d w-ho thronged the streets knew little, and probably cared little, about the Reform Bill. They consisted of the lowest and most dangerous part of the popu- lation, and their objects were robbery, the destruction of property, and the subversion of all order. From every sordid street and alley, from ev'ery pothouse and infamous den, the worst characters came trooping forth in hot haste, ready for any mischief. Two troops of the 14th Dragoons were marched into the cattle-market, one troop of the 3d Dragoons into the court-yard of the jail, while a body of special constables assembled in the area of the Exchange. At Totterdown Sir Charles, as he entered the sheriff's carriage, was greeted with yells, groans, and hisses. He was sur- rounded by constables, but the carriage was pelted with dii't and stones all the way to the city. While he sat at the Guildhall the pro- ceedings were interrupted by clamour, and he had afterwards to make his way in the mayor's carriage to the Mansion-house through streets filled by a sullen and threatening concourse of rioters. He had no sooner entered the building than missiles were flung at the windows, and on one man being arrested there was a cry, " To the Back !" " To the Back !" the Back being a quay where piles of faggots were stacked. Six hundred men returned armed with blud- geons, with which they attacked and severely beat the constables. Towards evening the mayor, appearing at one of the windows and threatening to read the riot act and send for the troops, was assailed wnth large stones; and when he afterwards returned with other magis- trates and read the act he was pelted still more furiously; the constables were driven in, and the building itself was furiously attacked amidst yells and shouts of " Give us the re- corder, and we'll murder him !" The house was broken into, its principal rooms sacked, the furniture broken, and the floors covered with the stones flung at the constables, who, however, kept the mob at bay by fighting from behind mattresses and piles of chairs and tables. The street was barricaded with stones, and the iron railings torn from the front of the building. Sir Charles Wetherell contrived to escape by the roof, whence he reached the stable-yard and exchanging clothes with a friend passed through the crowd un- detected, and the same night obtained a post- chaise which carried him to Newport. By this time, however, the whole city seemed to be at the mercy of the infuriate mob. Colonel Brereton, in command of the 14th, led his troops through Queen's Square, after receiving the orders of the mayor to clear the streets; but he was himself a "reformer," and with criminal feebleness refrained from using vigor- ous measures, contenting himself with direct- ing his men to " ride through" the rioters and walk them away. This monstrous farce was ineffectual except to impress the rioters wath an opinion that the soldiers were inclined to be on their side. Captain Gage of the 14th was less inclined to deal gently with them, and charged with a line of swordsmen along the principal streets. The mob was scattered, and for a time this seemed to have a good effect. The next day was Sunday. Some of the rioters had been arrested and placed in the jail. Colonel Brei'eton removed the pickets fi-om the Mansion-house, and it was reported that he had shaken hands with some of the ringleaders, and was favourable to their cause. The riot became an insurrection. The Mansion-house was re-entered; the valuable glass, china, mii-- rors, and furniture were destroyed ; the wine- cellars plundered, and the wine was handed about till numbers of men were in a drunken frenzy. The mayor, a little nervous man, put on a woman's dress, scrambled over the roofs of the houses, and w^ent to summon the citizens, who formed themselves into a body of con- stables. From churches and chapels ordei'ly householders were summoned to aid in pre- venting the destruction of the city; but Colonel Brereton still refused to fire on the now frantic THE BRISTOL RIOTS. 87 crowd, and restrained his soldiers from offering any effectual check to the outrages which they committed. At a little after mid-day they had seized on the contents of a smith's shop — had stormed the Bridewell, released the prisoners, and set the prison itself on fire. They then ■went on to the jail, forced the doors with sledges and tools taken from a large ware- house, and released a hundred and seventy prisoners. By this time several well-dressed ringleaders had taken the direction of some sections of the insurgents ; the tread-mill was burned with trusses of straw, and the benches of the prison chapel were .saturated with some inflammable liquid and set on fii'e ; the flames seized the wdiole building, and were so fierce that even the stonework was calcined. The toll-house by Cumberland Basin was burned down. Another prison at Lawford's Gate was fired. The vice-president of the political union, who had endeavoured to disperse the rioters, recommended that the bridges should be swung so that a large portion of the mob might be left on an island where they would be helpless; but all was dismay and demoral- ization. The citizens were too few to stem the fury of the populace, and still Brereton refused to recall his troop which he had ordered to withdraw. A spirit store was plundered, and then in a fresh access of fury a crowd surged to the bishop's palace, and broke their way in almost immediately. The fire from the kitchen grate was heaped on the furniture and thrust into the feather-beds, which were ripped open ; the rooms were plundered ; the servants, who attempted some resistance, were driven out, and the building was quickly in flames, but the old Saxon chapter-house ad- joining would not burn, though valuable books and records were destroyed. The mob was now not only furious but mad drunk. The mansion-house was fired from below, and rioters carousing in the upper rooms had all escape cut off by the burning staircases, and perished before they could find a way out. The whole city seemed to be threatened with destruction. A short notice only was given for people known to be Tories to remove their families, and then armed gangs entered, and after seizing on such valuables as could be carried away made huge bonfires of furni- ture and woodwork, and accelerated the pro- gress of the flames with trains of turpen- tine poured upon floors and staircases, or by smearing the walls with some ignitible paste brought for the purpose. A whole side of Queen's Square was ablaze. The custom-house, the excise-office, and the adjacent back streets were burning. By midnight of that dreadful Sunday the thunder of falling houses, the lurid glare of the flames, the red pall of smoke overhanging the city, the roars and curses of tlie crowd, the yells of the plunderers who clambered from parapet to roof, or only stayed on their mad course to hold a wild carouse, and so fell in the red ruin which they had made amidst the crash of beams and ceilings, formed a scene that lived in the memory of the spectators for many a long year. The members of families thrust from their homes and beggared by the wanton destruction of their property, looked in vain for aid. In the centre of the square tables dragged from the dining-rooms of the houses were loaded with rare wines, spirits, and rich food, and the vilest part of the pojiulation sat there on costly chairs and couches drinking, scream- ing, and shouting imprecations and obscene jests. Costly articles of plate and valuable pieces of furniture were sold to any bidder for a few shillings, or were wantonly de- stroyed. Colonel Brereton had gone to bed at the house of a friend, but at last reluctantly let the dragoons return. Directly a really deter- mined charge was made the mobs in the streets gave way, though they still fancied the soldiers were with them, and shouted as they had shouted throughout this hideous carnival for "the king and reform." But with early morning arrived the 14th from Keynsham, commanded by Major Beckwith, a very different kind of officer. The soldiers keep no scabbards on their swords now, and as they swooped down upon a band of plunderers outside the ruin of the bishop's house their sabres slash deep. Another minute or tw^o and they are in the square cutting down a dozen ruf- fians who surround the statue of William III. The mob is pursued along the "Back," and the 88 GLADSTONE AND HIS C(3NTEMP0RAKIES. troojis wheel swiftly through the squax-e and along the "Grove." A man at the end of a court makes a snatch at a dragoon's bridle and his head is.severed from his body; another, urging the mob to stand firm and pelt the troops, shares the same awful fate. The citi- zens rally. Five thousand men with staves and with strips of white linen on their arms to distinguish them, come to support the sol- diers. The crews of vessels are mustered, the pensioners are enrolled; the mob, which has broken into separate crowds, is separately dis- persed, fresh troojis and companies of yeo- manry pour in, the men encamp in the streets. By Monday the riot is at an end, and parties are formed to search for the plundered jjro- perty, and for the killed and maimed lying amidst the ruins. No fewer than five hundred wretched rioters perished, and hundreds were seriously wounded or otherwise injured. Of a hundred and two jjrisoners tried on the 2nd of January, 1832, eighty-two were convicted, five hung, a large number transported, and others imjirisoned with hard labour. Colonel Brereton, during his trial by court-martial, went home and shot himself through the heart. The city of Bristol never, it is said, really re- covered the blow, and the loss of a great por- tion of its West Indian trade by the sub- sequent abolition of slavery considerably reduced its commercial position. But people would inquire whether these calamities might not have been avei-ted but for the obstinate antagonism of the Tory lords to the jDopular demand for a reformed parlia- ment, and the cry was no longer, " "What will the House of Lords do? "—but, " What shall be done with the House of Lords?" They still held out, and in the great commercial and industrial centres the assemblies of reformers again met in large numbers. On the 7th of May, 1832, the day on which jiarliament reassembled after the Easter recess, the very day on which the lords again threw out the bill, the gi-eat Midland meeting was held at Birmingham. There were present 150,000 men, with two hundred bands of music and seven hundred flags. The position selected for this meeting was on or below the slope of a hill. When a trumpet had lilown for silence this enormous multitude united in singing the so-called national hymn: — "Lol we answer! see, we come, Quick at freedom's holy call. We come! we come! we cornel we come! To do the glorious work of aU : And hark ! we raise from sea to sea The sacred watchword Liberty! "God is our guide! from field, from wave. From plough, from anvil, and from loom We come, our country's rights to save. And speak a tyrant faction's doom. And hark! we raise from sea to sea The sacred watchword Liberty ! "God is our guide! no swords we draw. We kindle not war's battle fires ; By union, justice, reason, law, We claim the birthright of our sires. We raise the watchword Liberty ! We will, we will, we will be free ! " It was part of the proceedings that these men lecited the following vow, the fugleman, so to speak, being a Mr. Salt: — "With unbro- ken faith, through every peril and privation, we here devote ourselves and our children to our countrj^'s cause." With uncovered heads these men pronounced the vow. Many a man, truly patriotic too, might hesitate at "devoting" his "children" as well as himself (and of course liis wife) to the object of attaining, say the ten millionth part of a voice in the legislature, and even that uttered at second-hand; but these men were rudely in earnest. In some places the}' recommended a refusal to pay taxes till the Reform Bill was passed. In London the political union under the pre- sidency of Joseph Hume pretty strongly hinted that the ultimate consequences of a continued disregard of the popular demand might be "the utter extinction of the jirivi- leged classes." There was but one course for the ministry beside resignation, and they were jaledged to the country not to resign while there was any other course open to them. It was detei'mined to ask the king to exercise his yoyal ^prerogative and to create as many new peers as would suffice to give a majority in favour of the bUl in the u{>per house. It was an extreme measure, for the number of new peers would be considerable; and his majesty hesitated, was afraid, and after deliberating, declined. The ministry resigned the next day, NATIONAL EXCITEMENT— THE REFORM BILL PASSED. 89 ami tliere was another political hurricane. If a Tory government could be formed it would be in opposition to the majority of the House of Commons, and where were the sup- plies to come from? The political associations enrolled hundreds of new members ; Lord Lyndhurst was commissioned by his majesty to endeavour to form a ministry, but no one, not even the Duke of "Wellington, could ven- ture to accejit the responsibility, and Sir Robert Peel declined to occupy a position which would have been less consistent and more dangerous than that which he consented to fill at the time of the passing of Catholic emancipation. It was evident that the king nuist consent to create a number of new peers, or that the House of Lords must give way. After some decent show of resistance, dur- ing which Loi'd Wharncliffe and a few peers who followed him became known as "waverers" or " trimmers," and were of great importance, the bill was again introduced and brought forward for second reading, some of the lords announcing that they would vote for it on the understanding that certain alterations would be made in committee; others, like the Bishop of London, agreeing to go with the re- formers for "the bill, the whole bill, and no- thing but the bill;" and a third party, like the Duke of Wellington, though they were bound to carry the measure, denouncing it as revolutionary. Thus the second reading was carried by only a majority of 9, many of the lords voting by proxy. Lord Lyndhurst and Lord EUenliorough endeavoured to move amend- ments which the ministry regarded as fatal to the true character of the scheme for reform ; and again there were attempts at delay which would have renewed the excitement of the country and drove ministers again to resort to the proposal of increasing the number of the lords. Again the king refused, for he now re- garded the amendments of the lords as mere matters of detail, and considered that he had already sacrificed enough for a measure of re- form to which he began to entertain a positive dislike because of the trouble it had caused him, the difficulties which seemed to be main- tained by the obduracj' of ministers, and above all the predictions of revolution which he had heard from statesmen with a great i-eputa- tion for political wisdom. The "reforming monarch" having thus de- clined to create new peers (a measure to which the Whigs were nearly as little inclined as he was) — and having, though with sullen tears, dismissed his ministers after thanking them for former services — the popular pulse had to beat a little quicker, and it did. Not long before this crisis the Duke of Wellington had made his never-forgotten little speech : "The people of England are quiet enough, and if not there is a way to make them;" and for nine or ten days of what we may call inter- regnum the popular excitement was intense. There was but little business done. Crowds met here and there, unbidden, to discuss the political situation. Wherever the King's Head was hung out on a signboard it was covered with crape, while the poor Queen's was covered with black paint or lamp-black. The National Union petitioned the House of Commons to refuse supplies and to put the exchequer in commission ! O'Connell, Hume, and Sir de Lacy Evans were addressing assem- blies of 20,000 people each, in London. The cry was raised, "To stop the duke, run for gold !" and in a few days a million of money, or more, was withdrawn from the Bank of England. Petitions were sent up insisting on the stoppage of supplies, and the members who presented them were chai'ged to say openly in the house that no more taxes would be paid until the bill was passed. This dis- turbance of the public mind was general throughout the three kingdoms. Street- fighting was discussed in the newspajjers with scarcely an aff'ectation of disguise. The unionists were preparing to march to London in bodies of 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 strong. Encampments were to take place on Hamp- stead Heath and Penenden Heath. As for the duke and the government, oflScers had been ordered to join their regiments ; and on Sun- day, the 13th of May, the Scots Greys, at Birmingham, were under orders to get their guns and sabres in order, ball-cartridges having been served out to the troops in various places. But it was the general belief, and almost entirely the belief in the most respon- 90 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. sible quarters, that neither the police, nor the militia, nor the troops could be depended upon, and, least of all, say some of the author- ities, the Scots Greys, who were to have inter- cepted the march of the unionists of the North to London. After nine days of this state of agitated and dangerous suspense the duke gave in, the king recalled his ministers, and the popular anger may be said to have spent its last heats in another monster meeting at Birmingham, where the 150,000 men who had, a fortnight before, sung the "national hymn" on the slope of Newhall Hill, now united in a prayer t)f thanksgiving. On the evening of the 9th of May Earl Grey announced the situation, and proposed that the order for going into committee next day should be discharged. Again all England was in a fei'ment, and everywhere there was a 211'oposal among reformers that nobody should pay taxes. Speeches by the hundred, monster meetings by the score, a run on the banks— which was in itself a calamity — the conditions of the previous month were re- peated under aggravated circumstances, and with the same result. If Wellington, who was willing to face anything short of actual revolution in vindication of his loyalty and consistency, could not venture to take the reins ; if Peel, whose caution was no more conspicuous than his candour and his honesty, refused to make an effort to stem a tide which was leading to rebellion — who could hope to succeed ? The country was already turning against the king himself. Insulting jeers and gross references pursued him, the majority of the newspapers spoke in terms which would now be considered outrageous. William IV. was no longer the popular monarch, "the i)a- triot" king, or the sailor king. Dirt was flung at his carriage as he came into London, amidst groans and hisses, and the gu.ards had to gather closely around him to protect him from personal violence. Lord Grey was again sent for, and, as usual, was accompanied by Lord Brougham. The king was ready to accede to the request to create as many new peers as might be abso- lutely required, but he naturally did it with an ill grace ; and Brougham, who respectfully asked that the permission should be in writ- ing, received a small piece of paper containing the concession and a stipulation that the eldest sons of peers should be first called to the upper house. But there was no need to put the prerogative into force. After a violent and acrimonious debate the lords gave way. Some amendments to the bill were agreed to in the House of Commons, and the great measure was adopted by which 56 nomination boroughs, returning 1 1 2 members, were swept away and 30 were half-disfranchised, thus making a total disfranchisement of 142 seats in the House of Commons, M'hile it gave the counties 65 additional representatives and conferred the right of representation on Man- chester, Leeds, Birmingham, and 39 other large and important towns. The nation, as it were, drew a long breath, or, rather, a gasp of expectation, for the king refused to give his assent to the bill in person, and public feeling on both sides was at ten- sion. But on the 7th of June the Reform Bill received the royal assent by commission, and the new era had begun. Turning for a short time to affairs on the Continent which had more or less connection with English politics, or more or less influence on English opinion, we have to begin as usual with France. Lafayette's "best of republics" did not get on as well as had been ex])ected. When "those glorious days of July" were over the citizen-king (afterwards for good reasons known as " broker-king") might beseenkissing and hugging the whole of the Lafayettes, root and branch, from the old general downwards, for they were all at court. Then it was that Louis Philippe was everywhere proclaimed as the true son of his father, Philippe Egalite, so far as " republican" tendencies went ! The king was to be seen in Paris any day walking about the streets just like anybody else, with- out any attendant — unless the everlasting umbrella with which he is usually drawn in caricatures was one. Mr. Bright has been persistently drawn even by Punch himself with an eye-glass, — but he never wore one. Louis Philippe's umbrella was, however, a FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 91 reality. He was, with or without his umbrella, one of the most wily of men. Few things can beat his persuading Lafayette to give up his post as commander-in-chief of the national guard, on the ground that his moral influence was greater than any he could acquire or exer- cise by holding a military position. The king was one of the ablest of corrupting manipulators of men. But he had scarcely taken his seat on the throne when the trial of Polignac for high treason (with three others of the ministry of the late king) was the occa- sion of much trouble. As early as 1831 Louis Philippe found himself freely criticised as a bourgeois monarch, which he undoubtedly was, and hatred sprang up between the middle classes and the proletaires or working-men. Within the first three years of his reign there had been three or four republican or quasi- communistic outbreaks; while there was a Bourbon insurrection, with Lyons for a centre, which occupied the attention of Soult and a considerable army before it was suppressed. Four hundred press prosecutions took place in' the course of the same three years ; and under the advice of Thiers Paris was "pro- tected " by fortifications at a cost of £5,500,000. Lafayette lived long enough to mourn his error in standing sponsor for the citizen-king, and had not during the latter year or so con- cealed his regret. Naturally, upon his death, in 1834, the funeral ^loge was forbidden. We now pass to Belgium. The arbitrary union of Holland with this country which had been effected in the great "partition" of 1815 had proved a failure. The French and Dutch and German populations would not coalesce, and the constitution was unfortunate. It was in 1830 that the performance of the opera of Massaniello at Brussels proved the signal for an outbreak. In spite of a few concessions made by the king, the insurgent Radicals got the capital into their own hands, and after five days' fighting a large army which was despatched to recover possession of the city in the month of September of that year, was defeated and driven out. The in- dependence of Belgium was proclaimed on the 5th of October, and ultimately, the national assembly having declaimed for a constitutional monarch in preference to a republic, the crown was offered to Prince Leopold (widower of our Princess Charlotte), and accepted by him. There was some difficulty with Antwerp, which went through a bombardment, but in the end was handed over to the Belgians. Russia and Prussia were at last induced to acquiesce in the, erection of the new and in- dependent kingdom of Belgium ; and some of the results, nearly all fortunate for the peace of Europe and the course of constitutional freedom, are familiar to most of us. The mention of the name of Leopold may serve as an opportunity of introducing Greece. He had already been invited to accept the crown of that kingdom, but had refused it, with good reason, on account of the unsettled state of the country. After some tumult Otho, a younger son of the Bavarian monarch, was made king of Greece, and ascended the throne early in 1833 under the protection of his father's trooj^s. Protection was felt to be necessary, for the murder of Count Caj^o d'Istria at noonday on the threshold of a church was still fresh in the memory of Europe. Coming back to the west, we find Germany also in a very disturbed state. In Brunswick Duke Charles thought it expedient to inform his subjects that they would find he could govern better than Charles X. had done. His subjects responded to this polite infor- mation by storming and burning his palace, and compelling him to flee. He was succeeded by his brother William : of his own subsequent notoriety in England it is not necessary to say anything. The King of Saxony was compelled to abdicate in favour of his brother Frederick. There were disturbances in Hesse-Cassel, the elector being driven out, and the people at last obtained a better constitution. In Hanover the people rose against the minister; and the Duke of Cambridge, sent out by King William IV. to pacify them, removed the minister and made some important concessions to the pop- ular demands. At Anspach and Frankfort the efforts of the insurgents were not suc- cessful. All this was interesting to England, and was watched with keen attention as part of a 92 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. general wave of political insurgence. But we have now to pass to the case of Poland, "un- happy Poland," "the Rizpah of the nations." Middle-aged men and women with good memories can still vaguely recall the tremen- dous thrill which shot through the Liberal mind of this country when Poland, towards the end of 1830, rose against the tyranny of her fiendish governor, the Grand-duke Con- stantine, known to not a few in those days as the Grand Devil Constantine, just as his suc- cessor Nicholas came to be heard of as Old Nick. In November of this eventful year some students at the military school at War- saw drank to the immortal memory of Kos- ciusko, ("onstintine, after two commissions had decided tliat there was nothing illegal in this, took ujwn himself to have the lads flogged and imprisoned. The result was not satisfactory to Constantine. Two hundred of the students, with two lieutenants to lead them, rose up in arms, and, aided by the students of the university, stirred up all Warsaw, slew several of the Russian officers, and in the end obtained entire possession of the city. It had been sharp and sanguinary work, but the citizens were beside them- selves with joy, and the Grand-duke Con- stantine was barely able to escaj^e with his life. The most prominent of the insurgents were formed into a provisional government, with Marshal Chlopscki to lead the troops, at the apparently unanimous wish of the Polish people. Although Chlopscki was very popu- lar, and had had experience in warfare under Napoleon, he did not come out so brilliantly in his new position as most of his friends expected. One of his first acts after being appointed was to try to make terms with the Grand-duke Constantine, who had come to punish the Poles and was halting with his army within easy distance of Warsaw. The Polish general actually allowed Constantine and his troops to depart in peace. Before this event all the Poles who had been under the grand-duke's command had come over to the popular side. Chlopscki next endeavoured to close the strug- gle by sending ambassadors to St. Petersburg to confer with the emperor. Under this state of things many of the patriots were becoming impatient, when on the 15th of January, 1831, arrived at Warsaw the emperor's answer, which was simply that the Poles mu^ surren- der at discretion : " I am king of Poland, and I will drive her. The first cannon-shot fired by the Poles shall annihilate Poland." This answer, written with the emperor's own hand, was read in the Polish diet, and was received with the cry, "There is no longer a Nicholas! There is no longer an emperor!" A new government was now formed with Prince Adam Czartoryski as president, and Nicholas and his descendants were declared, by the general voice, to be for ever excluded from the throne of Poland. Matters had now come to such a pass that the next step was open war in the field. The Russian general Diebitch, at the head of an anny of 120,000 men with 400 guns, was on Polish soil by the following February. The Poles could only oppose this host with less than half the number of men and cannon; but, far from being daunted, they entered the field against the Russians, and in spite of the in- competency of their own generals, gained many a victory, though with no permanent result in their favour. After several generals had tried their hand (the Poles always lacked good leaders) the command fell to Skrzynecki. He gave battle to the Russians twice during the months of March and April, but nothing decisive occurred until on the 26th of May of the same year (1831) the Russians forced him to fight at the town of Ostrolenka, a few miles from Warsaw, under circumstances which were not at all in the Polish general's favour. At about eleven in the forenoon news arrived at his headquarters that part of his troops had been engaging the enemy for nearly three hours, and that they were now falling back. After many daring, not to say frantic, efforts to rally the Poles, his coat riddled with shot, he succeeded in gathering his troops together, and after a fierce and san- guinary fight remained at nightfall master of the field, but vi'ith the loss of two generals, 7000 of the rank and file, and 270 minor officers. The Russians withdrew during the night, having lost in the battle 10,000 men. The POLAND. 93 Poles fell back upon AVarsaw, Skrzynecki re- peating the words uttered by Kosciusko, ''^ Finis Folonice" (An end of Poland). This, with the subsequent death of the Russian commander Diebitch and the Grand- duke Constantine, caused a lull. The lull was taken advantage of by some of the powers of Europe, particularly France, to seek to gain terms for Poland. These efforts, however, came to nothing, and on the appointment of General Paskievitch to the command of the Russian troops the struggle began again. Paskievitch made up his mind to attack War- saw at its weakest point, namely, on the left bank of the Vistula. Skrzynecki, contrary to the advice of those who were most capable of judging, determined to remain in Wai'saw, and actually allowed the enemy to cross the river without interference from him. The people of Warsaw rose as one man at this juncture. Skrzynecki was declared incapable, Krukowiecski was elected president, and General Malachowski appointed to the com- mand. The Polish council was torn with di- visions, although the Russian general was only a mile from their capital, with 120,000 men under command. The Poles had 35,000 men and 386 cannon. With half of this number of men they agreed to fight, sending the re- maining half to bring food into the city. This was on the 6th of September, 1831. The attack was commenced, and towards evening the Russians began to gain ground. The return of the other half of the Polish army might have efi'ected something in favour of the insurgents, but it did not return ; and, with the city on fire in more than one place, the council met to consider the situation. The result was the surrender of the city. A portion of the insurgents endeavoured to treat this surrender as invalid, but this did not prevent its becoming a settled thing within tlie next two days. Men, women, and child- ren were now at the mercy of the Russians, nor were they treated with a light hand by the Czar Nicholas. Hundreds of Poles were sent to Siberia, and hundreds more were com- pelled to serve in the Russian armies in the Caucasus, while children unable to lisp the name of Poland were carted off into Russia. Noble Polish ladies were "married" by force to common soldiers in the Russian army. Thousands wandered into the neighbouring states, and the diseases they carried with them, particularly cholera, became a source of trouble and confusion to Eui'ope. After all this came the Russian emperor's celebrated proclamation, "Order reigns in Warsaw." But the expatriated Poles have seldom contri- buted to the "order" of any city where they have dwelt in exile. Wherever the tires of revolution have been kindled a Pole has been found ready to fling a torch on the pile. In London and Paris subscriptions were opened for these unhappy men, but neither England nor France could by such easy means wipe out the guilt of having allowed that infamous "partition of Poland'' which had led to these troubles. It was the fate of Poland that excited the most sympathy in England, and that for many reasons. The Polish question had been domes- ticated, so to speak, by the poet Campbell. The sufferings of the Poles had been greater than those of any other oppressed country, and there was a strong belief, not confined to any one political party in England, that an inde- pendent Poland would have conduced largely to what was in those days talked of as " the balance of power." That phrase is now disused, but the opinion referred to still remains, and is, perhaps, stronger than ever. The history of Poland since the time of Frederick, called the Great, is admittedly one of the darkest pages in the volume of national records. In Switzerland, however, there were also outbreaks, at various points, of the revolution- ary fires that had long smouldered on below, and Zurich took the lead in making wise and timely concessions. The case of Italy was more serious, but the story does not at this point reach a height from which it can easily be wrought down into familiar-looking detail for a work like this. Later on, the current will flow still stronger and clearer. It is about this time that we catch our first glimpse of Mazzini, imprisoned in the fortress of Savona, with a greenfinch for a companion — the gov- ei'nor of Genoa explaining, in answer to the father's intervention in behalf of a son accused 94 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. of no crime, that " the government were not fond of young men of talent, the subjects of whose meditations were not made public ; and it was well known that Mazzini took 'long walks by night and held his tongue." This is not farce; it is historic. Charles Albert (King of Piedmont and Sardinia, 1831) and the Duke of Modena had betrayed the cause to which they had pledged themselves, and with the connivance of Louis Philippe (who in conniving broke pledges) Austria invaded Parma, Motlena, and Eeggio, and afterwards occupied Ferrara and Ancona. The pope, who had been " deposed," was restored to his posi- tion, and everywhere the signs and instru- ments of insurgence were trampled out with the usual ferocity of the Austria of those days. Charles Albert, who ascended the throne of Piedmont and Sardinia in 1831, has been held to have done sometliing, by moderately liberal measures, to prepare the country for a better day ; but the idea of an absolutely free and united Italy was now unfolded, and was never again shut up until it was realized. In the East Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, had conceived the design of creating a new Arabian monarchy out of a portion of the Turk- ish Empire. This pasha had an adojjted son, Ibrahim Pasha, who in pursuance of this idea overran Syria, and in 1832 appeared to be actually on the high road to Constantinojjle. Turkey applied to Russia for assistance, and after some complications the march of Ibrahim Pasha was stayed (though not until after he had made a further advance). But the state of things in the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles with regard to other nations than Russia and Turkey remained most unsatisfactory for the present. Palmerston, who ^^'as then foreign minister, kept a keen eye on all this, but he also inter- fered in the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. In Portugal it was in May, 1828, that Dom Miguel had usurped the throne, deposing the young queen, daughter of Dom Pedro, who was Emperor of Brazil. The story is long and tedious, and most of its incidents have ceased to interest English readers, though some of them were shocking and others romantic. The end of it was that with the assistance of Eng- land Dom Miguel was driven out and some- thing like constitutional freedom secured to Portugal. Dom Pedro was made regent, and his daughter declared of age. It was by the English fleet under Admiral Sartorius that the fleet of Miguel was destroyed. In Spain King Ferdinand, in illness and in a fright, restored the Salic law excluding women from the throne, which had the eff'ect of mak- ing his brother Don Carlos (an extreme abso- lutist) heir to the throne. When Ferdinand had recovered his health he changed his mind and the Salic law was revoked, which shut out Don Carlos and made Ferdinand's daughter Isabella queen upon his death. The adherents of Don Carlos rallied round him, Christina (widow of Ferdinand), who was regent, threw herself into the arms of the popular party, and Don Carlos was driven out of Spain. But we shall have to hear more of him, and of the " Spanish legion " under our own Sir General de Lacy Evans, Liberal member for West- minster. It was in 1834 that Lord Palmer- ston managed to create a Quadruple Alliance between England, France, Spain, and Portugal for maintaining liberal or constitutional gov- ernment in both countries. "This alliance" he said he considered "a great stroke of policy," partly because "it established a Quad- ruple Alliance in the West which might serve as a counterpoise against the Holy Alliance of the East." It is desirable, now that we have reached the period of that great crisis from which sprang most of the political and much of the social progress which have distinguished our own time, that we should dwell for a moment on some of the characteristics of the men who have been already referred to as prime movers in the great events of which we have given some account. The time is nearly past in which the word Whig could have any working signiflcance. Whatever the origin of the word as a term of political differentiation (that is much disputed, though of little consequence), it once took the place which is now filled by the word Liberal, or (going lower down) Radical. In process of time the latter may have to give way; but SYDNEY SMITH. 95 both Ijiberal and Radical have meanings inde- pendent of association, and it is difficult to see how "reform" can be made more than "radical," or how those who pi'ofess to love freedom can express it better than by an adjective whose root is the word liber — free. In 1830 the meaning had not gone out of the word Whig, though "Eadical " had come into use, and "Whiggism" was a thing pretty nmch abused, so far at least as regarded the Elliotts and the Greys, the " members of the family " or inner circle of Whiggism. The fortunes of the fighting men, the protagon- ists of Whig principles, who were outside the aristocratic ring, ami stood between them and the public, varied of course. It was said that the Whigs were as a rule ungrateful to their friends. But there were some whom they could not afford to treat with levity, and among them was the Rev. Sydney Smith, whom they eventually made canon of St. Paul's. He wanted a bishojjric — so at least runs the story — but the canoury was the highest dignity he ever reached in the church. He was presented by the Whigs with the rather valuable rectory of Combe Florey in Somersetshire ; but a canonry in Bristol Ca- thedral was the gift, not of a Whig, but of Lord Lyndhurst. The point, however, is that Sydney Smith was a Whig of the first water, and one of the most indefatigable and useful fighting men of the party. He was the origi- nator of the great Whig organ, the Edinburgh Review, and his i)en and tongue wei-e nearly always busy on behalf of his party, though he never " fashed " himself. In this i-espect he stands alone. Perhaps no man ever did so large a quantity of political "boxing" with so much good humour. This was partly the result of his natural gaiety, but goodness of heart had something to do with it. He was a benevolent man, and willing to take trouble in doing kind things. In wit and humour applied to j^ractice, and generally in power of making the logic of conduct, public and pi'i- vate, amusing, he had neither superior nor rival. To produce illustrations of this would be to quote all Sydney Smith's writings on practical questions of the day, for there is hardly a sentence in those writings which does not contain a pleasantry which either suggests or covers or discloses an argument. The gravity with which he puts forward an absurdity sometimes takes the reader almost at a disadvantage, and he lias, so to speak, to run back in a hurry and pick up the laugh he had missed in its proper place. In the Flymley Letters, describing the anomalies of English law as it then applied to Roman Catholics, he writes, without the smallest sign of humour — addressing, be it remembered, an obscure country parson — " No Catholic can present to a living, unless he choose to turn Jew in order to obtain that privilege." It hardly strikes the reader at first that this is the stroke of irony which it really is. In those days a Jew — a total denier of the Chris- tian religion — could present to a Protestant living; a Catholic could not. Sydney Smith wraps up the anomaly in the entirely ridicu- lous notion of a Roman Catholic turning Jew in order to acquire the ability to i^reseut a Protestant to a living in the Reformed Chris- tianChurch of England. The "country squire" did not see the humour of Sydney Smith's caricature of his view of Nonconformity and Nonconformists, but the rest of the world did : — " When a countiy squire heai'S of an ape, his first feeling is to give it nuts and apples; when he hears of a Dissenter, his immediate impulse is to commit it to the county jail, to shave its head, to alter its customary food, and to have it privately whipped." This is a hackneyed instance ; but less known is his exquisitely ridiculous pic- ture of " a first-rate ship of the line manned by Oxford clergymen." With the utmost solemnity he lays it down that " nothing can be more uncandid and unphilosophical than to say that a man has a tail because you cannot agree with him upon I'eligious sub- jects ; " and here, at the word " philosophical," a foot-note says, " Vide Lord Bacon, Dugald Stewart, Locke, and Descartes." In anotlier place, where he is ridiculing the unfairness of some of the informers in those days, who, in the matter of cruelty to animals, interfered wath the poor but not with the rich, he writes : — " Nothing can be more mischievous than to say that the pain inflicted by the dog of a 96 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. man of quality is not (when the strength of the two animals is the same) equal to that produced by the cur of a butcher. Haller, in his pathology, expressly says that the animal bitten knows no difference in the quality of the biting animal's master: and it is now the uni- versal opinion among all enlightened men that the misery of the brawner " [while under the torture to which a " brawn " pig is submitted] " would be very little diminished if he could be made sensible that lie was to be eaten np only by persons of the first fashion. The contrary supposition seems to us to be abso- lute nonsense ; it is the desertion of the true Baconian philosophy, and the substitution of mere unsupi^orted conjecture in its place." It may well be supposed that a master of irony like Sydney Smith, — a man whom it was impossible to take off his guard or to put out of temper, — w^as a powerful ally of the jaarty to which he adhered. Nothing was too great or too small for his notice. He was the warm and unshaken friend of the poor climbing boys, and the unappeasable enemy of the game laws and the penal and disabling laws which then existed against Eoman Catholics. It is largely owing to his exertions that prisoners ai'e now defended by counsel, and that the curriculum of study in our universities and schools is so greatly extended. There are yet living Tories of the old school who call the Eeform Bill the Eevolution Bill, and hold that the popular demand ought to have been resisted. Sydney Smith, howevei", in one of his speeches at Taunton, illustrated the situa- tion, as he saw it from the midst of the turmoil, by the now well-known story of Mrs. Partington, to whom he compared the House of Lords when they threw out the Bill. Dame Partington, as all the world now knows, lived at Sidmouth, and in the dreadful storm of the year 1824 was seen in pattens at her door endeavouring to mop back the Atlantic. It must be remembered that when Sydney Smith was thus actively and jjublicly engaged, quite apart from his writings, in supposing what he believed to be an important political improve- ment, he was a canon of St. Paul's and of Bristol also. "We may part with this remark- able man by placing it on record here that in private life he was as humane and good natured as might be expected, and patient and helpful to the poor and ignorant. He never hesitated to use the pulpit — whether that of St. Paul's or any other place — in order to denounce war or to jjlead the cause of the helpless. It is authoritatively stated that he read sermons of Dr. Channing's in St. Paul's — making no secret of it. By the time of the Eeform Bill he was growing old, and was no longer the great " diner-out " of his day ; a talker for whom footmen were set to shout from landing to landing when he went out to a party, "Mr. Smith is coming up stairs!" Sydney Smith was wanting in the capacity of spiritual enthusiasm, but he was a sincerely religious man, and few men have done so much good with so little ostentation, Thei'e are good and kind things to be re- corded of William IV., and amongst these is his conduct in the matter of the celebrated Lord Cochrane. In 1831 Cochrane's father died, and he became Earl Dundonald. His career is well known. He was probably the most daring seaman that Great Britain ever produced; and, though his services to the nation were not so fortunate and so peimanent in their results as those of Nelson and Colling- wood, his exploits were more astonishmg and perhaps more brilliant. His is indeed a most extraordinary story. Unhappily for himself, Cochrane carried his daring into political and social matters, and sometimes made himself very disagreeable to those in j^ower. While he was one of the Liberal members for West- minster, in 1814, a false report of the death of Napoleon, with the addition that the allied armies were . in f uU march for Paris, was cir- culated in England in order to influence prices on the Stock Exchange, and some strong circumstantial evidence was brought forward implicating Cochrane in the fraud. U])Ou this he was put upon his trial — the fiery and Tory Lord Ellenborough charged the jury. He was convicted, and the sentence of the lord chief-justice was that he should stand in the pillory for an hour in front of the Eoyal Exchange, pay a fine of .£1000, and suffer twelve months' imprisonment in the CARICATURES. SIR F. BURDETT. 97 Marshalsea. The House of Commons expelled liim, though the electors of Westminster per- sisted in returning him. He was also excluded from the Navy List, and the order of the Bath was taken from him. The public voice, liowever, went near to pronouncing a general verdict of acquittal in Cochrane's favour, and Lord Ellenborough was so much sent to Coven- try both in parliament and in society, that his health gave way under the disgrace. Brougham and Campbell both condemned him ; but the sentence on Cochrane was carried out except as to the pillory. This part of the business excited such an indignant clamour that the crown remitted it, and a bill was carried through parliament to abolish the punishment of the pillory for ever, on account of the way in which it had recently been abused. The Bank of England still keeps, or did recently hold, the bank-note with which Cochrane paid his fine, and which is endorsed by him in this way, " My health having suffered by long and close confinement, and my oppressors being resolved to deprive me of property or life, I submit to robbery to protect myself from murder, in the hope that I shall live to bring the delinquents to justice." As the years rolled on Cochrane, unable to fight for his native country, fought for Greece, Brazil, Chili, and Peru with his usual bravery and skill, but with no satisfactory results to himself, pecuniary or other. In 1831 King William, who had never believed in Cochi-ane's guilt, made some efforts to i-einstate him (he being then Earl of Dundonald) in aU his honours. In 1832 he received " a full pardon," and in time his name again took its place in the Navy List, and he was made an admiral, all his honours being restored to him. But such things go tardily (in England at all events), and for the present his story must close with the interference of the "Sailor King " in his behalf. In the representation of Westminster Lord Cochrane had a Radical colleague who also got into disgrace, only it was with the people and not with the "powers," and as he was a popular idol at the time of the Reform Bill agitation he may be mentioned in this place. More than one reference is made in this chapter VOL. I to the celebrated caricatures of IB., who, there is no doubt, was the father of a son still more celebrated, Mr. Richard Doyle. These cari- catures, which were especially popular at about the Reform Bill era, were rather costly, and of unusually large size ; they were on oblong sheets, perhaps about eighteen inches long and a foot broad. The topic was always treated with refinement, but the point was sm-e to be l^retty obvious; so that the windows of the great print-shops, such as Ackerman's in the Strand, were often, one might say always, blocked by a crowd whenever a new pic- ture came out. These caricatures may be re- ferred to by us more than once, for they were a I'eal jiower in their way, and are frequently mentioned in the political corres- pondence of the day. But a very good il- lustration of the obviousness joined with absence of vulgarity, in the humour of IB. is to be found in the case of Sir Francis Burdett. This gentleman (who married Miss Sophia Coutts, daughter of the great banker, Thomas Coutts) was always represented, some time after the formation of the Melbourne ministry in 1835, with his head turned in the contrary direction to that in which he was walking. He began his political career at about the opening of the century as a decided Liberal, accepting the whole programme of his party. He was returned with Lord Cochrane, after- wards Dundonald, for Westminster in 1807. He wrote in Cobbett's Political Register, and was eventually arrested and conveyed, under a speaker's warrant, to the Tower, for breach of privilege. On this occasion he kept his house barricaded for two days, and lives were lost in a conflict between the military and the mob who were his supporters. In 1819 he was again imprisoned (and fined £1000) for a letter to his constituents about the Peterloo massacre. Not long after the first defeats of the Whigs in the Reform Parliament Sir Francis "ratted," to the all but universal hor- ror of the people. Long after that, when he taunted the Liberals with the "cant of patriot- ism," Lord John Russell made one of his not too frequent good points by observing that there was also such a thing as the "re-cant of patriotism." 98 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. Sir Francis Burdett is worth a word of sjiecial notice, because he was one of the greatest of popular favourites during the ear- lier part of liis life. In the well-known pic- ture of the scene which occurred when the royal assent was given to the Eeform Bill, his tall thin figure will T e seen prominent enough in the foreground — large aquiline nose, bald gray head, top-boots and buckskin breeches of the country squire. On one thing we may, perhaps, congratulate ourselves. The political habit, so to speak, of these days does not so easily lend itself to scenic unreality as that of Bur- dett's time. It was thought rather fine to get it noised abroad that when the military at last found his house, they found him calmly expounding Magna Charta to his son. We, of a later generation, are quite unreal enough, but we have got beyond that. There is a name of a place which occurs more than once in the political record of these troubled times — it is White Conduit House. " What," asks the general reader of the new generation, or any general reader not a Lon- doner, " what was White Conduit House ? " The answer is not far to seek. There was a time, reaching down to the latter part of the reign of George III. (to go no further), when all the world, well and ill, appeared mad to "take the waters." This was, in the majority of cases, a mere excuse for dissipation. Springs were easily found in a great many places. Bagnigge Wells Gardens and the White Con- duit House — almost within a stone's-throw of each other — are local names which remind us that "the waters" were taken at Islington and Pentonville, in the north of London, as well as in other places. In old numbers of the Gentleman^s Magazine White Conduit House is the subject of occasional jokes, just as Cremorne Gardens or some such place might be in our own time; but the sugges- tion thei'e, is that those who went to White Conduit House or Bagnigge Wells Gardens to take the waters were chiefly tradesmen and apprentices with their wives and other lady friends. The neighbourhood was, until long after the Eeform Bill became law, sur- rounded with fields, and open to Hampstead through paths of yellow broom and pink wild roses. Just within easy distance lay the large inn called Copenhagen House, which will have to be mentioned again. The builder has swept away all traces of "waters" or con- duits, including a little white flint grotto under which the "water" might be seen bub- bling ^^p. But there is, or was until lately, a row of houses called the Parade — which speaks for itself. As time passed and "the waters" ceased to be fashionable, the gardens and large " assembly-room" of the White Conduit House (it was painted white) were put to other uses. The room was still used for balls, &c., but it became the scene of large political and other meetings, like the great room at the Cro'WTi and Anchor or Freemasons' Tavern. Mr. Green went up in his balloon from the gar- dens, and Mr. Eichard Blackmore, the gym- nast, ascended his tight-roi^e amid a blaze of fireworks — " Roi3e-dancers a score I've seen before, Madame Sacqui, Antonio, and Master Blackmore " — but the words White Conduit House had, on the whole, rather a political flavour than a festive in the ears of Londoners. This is a convenient place for introducing a few words upon Lord Melbourne who, by his ingenious suavity, succeeded in getting the extreme Eadicals to give up their inten- tion of holding the monster meeting which they had convened for the 7th November, 1831, at White Conduit House. Lord Mel- bourne, we find, was premier in 1834, with Su" Eobert Peel as chancellor of the exchequer and Lord Lyndhurst as chancellor. It is not safe to give his lordship any distinct jiolitical label, but the general tendency of his mind was liberal, and he was undoubtedly good- natured. He was a good-looking man, and well known, from ffi caricatures and other sources, as a dandy. His reputation in the matter of coat-collars reached America, and it is referred to with much humour by Long- fellow in a well-known passage in his prose idyl of "Kavanagh." He was a man of fine classical culture, and great ability of the easy- iroine sort. Hereafter we shall find him hifih WILLIAM LAMB. SECOND VISCOUNT MELBOURNE Preinier 1834- and iSddAB'hl. FROM THE PORTRAIT BY SIR THO^ LiWB.ENCE P R A SU^CA-.-K kSOSfl LCHrjON HIJ^S'-.OW* EDINBURGH COBBETT AND HIS "POLITICAL EEGISTER." 99 in the favour of Queen Victoria; but for the present we take him simply as a kind of political Sir Charles Coldstream — though, by- the-by, it was Lord Glenelg who figured in that chaiacter under the pencil of EB. There are stories, not contradicted, and very natural, of his genteel-comedy airs at cabinet councils. It is said that cue day, just as the council was breaking up, Melbourne set his back in a lounging way against the door and said, " Stop ! — it doesn't matter which way we have it, only let's be sure we are all agi-eed." His question, " Can't we let it alone?" when a very knotty point was obtruded, is historical. He had, too, an almost fantastical affectation of indifference in his manners. When receiving a deputation on some serious question^Dcr- haps a matter of life and death — he would " lounge," blow at the feather-end of his quill- pen, or dandle with a sofa-cushion. Of course this was a fine topic for humorists and carica- turists, and they made much of it. But in all the fun there was supj^ressed, or rather half-sup- pressed liking. The Duke of Wellington used to say he thought a soldier none the worse for being a dandy — the dandies fought well as a rule. Melbourne had had his private troubles, his maiTiage having been curiously unhappy; and he was apt to blow cold on burning ques- tions ; but Sydney Smith was not the man to pervert facts, and he came to the rescue, say- ing, "If the truth must be told, our viscount is something of an impostor. Everything about him seems to betoken careless denotation ; any one would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-fai'thing with human happiness ; that he was always on the heels of pastime ; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and decide by the method teetotum whether my lords the bishops should or should not retain their seats in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surjorisiug and making us believe that he can 'play with l-ing- doms as other men with ninepins. Instead of this he is nothing more than a sensible, honest man, who means to do his duty to the sove- reign and to the country. Instead of being the ignorant man he pretends to be before he meets the deputation of tallow-chandlers in the morning, he sits up half the night talking with Thomas Young (his private secretary) about melting and skimming; and then, though he has acquired knowledge enough to work off a whole vat of prime Leicester taUow, he pre- tends next morning not to know the difference between a dip and a mould." There are some curious records here and there of the manner in which this languid gentleman could blaze up on occasion. He made a favourable im- pression on Haydon the painter, who was (though who would have expected it?) a re- markably good judge of character. He does not appear to have made an equally favour- able impression on King William — and Queen Adelaide. It was not a little remarkable that early in the morning after the second reading of the first Reform Bill, the attorney-general had to hasten from the House of Commons to the Guildhall, there to conduct the prosecution of WUliam Cobbett for publishing in his Register words which it was alleged were intended to excite the agi'icultural labourers to riot, to rick-burning, and to sedition. The result of the trial of William Hone before Lord EUenborough — an event which does not come within our limits as to date — did very much to discredit press prosecutions in this country. But what may be said to have practically put an end to them was the failure of this prosecution of William Cobbett in 1831. Strange to say he was indicted for seditious libel under a Whig ministry. Den- man, the Whig attorney-general, was the public prosecutor, and Brougham, chancellor, and other cabinet ministers, were seated on the bench with the judge. Lord Tenterden. The outlines of Cobbett's story are well known. He was the son of a poor farmer at Farnham, and was entirely a seK-made man. He was in his early years a farmer's boy, a gardener's assistant, a lawyer's clerk, and eventually a soldier. It may properly be men- tioned in passing that he was largely influen- tial in promoting reform in the army, and especially in leading up to the nearly total abolition of flogging. In connection with some of his exertions in this good cause he suffered fine and imprisonment; but that story 100 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. does not come within our limits. Cobbett spent much of his early life in America, and his extreme vivacity in attacking abuses got him into trouble there, as it afterwards did in England. This is not the place for a biography of him — which, indeed, would be a most com- plicated and inscrutable aflfair if packed in smaU compass. But his almost ludicrous egotism has stamped his general character and history upon the memory of nearly all read- ing men and women. He was a man of strong domestic feelings, and he has himself told us aU about his courtship and married life as freely as if we were his blood-relations. His English and French grammars, his perform- ances in the character of "Peter Porcupine," his Political Register, his Tvjopenny Trash, and a score or two of such matters are com- monplaces. In accordance with a familiar law in these matters, it happens that the best and most comprehensive impression of him to be gathered in small compass is that for which any one may, if he pleases, be indebted to the "Rejected Addresses." A really first- rate parody tells all in a moment. Cobbett there appears in the character and attire of a Hampshire farmer, and beginning with a quo- tation from Ovid, proceeds, " Most Thinking People !" and denounces "the gewgaw fetters of rhyme" as invented by the monks to en- slave the people. He then proceeds to praise the newly-erected Drury Lane theatre and " Mr. Whitbread," to denounce the " beastly Corsican fiend," to ridicule Mr. Wilberforce for his " cheap soup," made of horses' hoofs and brick - dust, and to recommend "good honest English broth instead ! From broth he starts off to inquire how the people can be at once "dregs" and "scum," and to denounce the rotten boroughs ; having proposed that no per- son shall be admitted to Drury Lane theatre who will not buy at the door a copy of his An- nual Register, and condemned as hateful and immoral the usual custom of paying for admis- sion. He will have none of this, and explains that he on principle entered by the stage-door for nothing. After much utterly inconsequent abuse of most things and most people, and much praise of "Mr. Whitbread" (praise well deserved, surely), this " honest farmer" ends by reminding the "most thinking people" that everything he had ever prophesied had come to pass, and that for eveiy blessing they were indebted to him and " Mr. Wliitbread." It is impossible upon any jirinciple of logic to classify Cobbett as Whig, Tory, or Radical. He had a hawk's eye for an abuse or a job ; he always went on Napoleon's principle, "the tools to him that can use them;" he had quick, kindly, and j^et not maudlin sympathy with all suff"ering; he fought all his life for "the people," and was always in hot water with Tories and often with Whigs, and yet he had undoubtedly strong Tory fibres in his nature. It was his pugnacity that led him astray from time to time, and with all his acuteness he had no intellectual consistency, or grasp of principles. A lately deceased diplomatist and public writer has very neatly hit that side of Cobbett which came uppermost, after he be- came popular, and has given an intelligible clue to the extent and nature of that popularity, " Whatever a man's talents, whatever a man's opinions, he sought the Register on the day of its appearance with eagerness, and read it with amusement, partly, perhaps, if Rochefoucauld is right, because whatever his party, he was sure to see his friends abused. But partly, also, because he was certain to find, amidst a gi-eat many fictions and abundance of im- pudence, some felicitous nickname, some ex- cellent piece of practical-looking argument, some capital expressions, and very often some marvellously fine wi-iting, all the finer for being carelessly fine, and exhibiting the figure or sentiment it set forth in the simplest as well as the most striking dress. Cobbett himself, indeed, said that his popularity was owing to his giving truth in clear language." This very nearly strikes the bull's-eye, but not quite. The fascination for all " parties " lay in Cobbett's oivn pei-sonaJity, which was transparently shown in all he wrote. He had a sort of itch for bespattering with mud every- thing that was pojjular. Mary Tudor was with him " Merciful Queen Mary," Elizabeth, "Bloody Queen Bess;" our navy, "The swag- gering navy;" Napoleon, "A French coxcomb;" Brougham, "A talking lawyer;" Canning, "A brazen defender of corruptions;" and so on. COBBETT'S TEIAL AND DEFENCE. 101 His gift ill flowers of sjjeech of a certain order was incredible. " D rascally rotten boroughs ; " " Hob-snob snigger - suee - ers of Germans;" "Hell-hounds barking away tUl they are suffocated in their own foam." His unreasoning combativeness was extraordinary. He did not scruple to turn history and ordi- nary fact upside down, and yet there was usually some truth in his most abusive aber- rations. His talent for fastening his claws into any thing, or any one, by a word or by an expression, and holding them up to scorn or up to horror, was unrivalled. " Prosperity Eobinson," "^olus Canning," "The bloody Times," "The ■pink-nosed Liverpool" "The un- baptized, buttonless blackguards" (in which way he designated the Quakers !) — were ex- pressions with which he attached ridicule where he could not fix reproach ; and it is said that nothing was more teasing to Loi'd Erskine than being constantly addressed by Cobbett by his second title of " Baron Clack- mannan." The curious part of the story is that in private Cobbett was a most kindly, quiet fellow — a jolly, hosi^itable, srailiaig, good- natured farmer, who woidd have made Castle- reagh himself a welcome and a delighted guest. His eldest son — whose testimony agrees with that of many other witnesses and with a thousand and one indications to be found in the letters of Cobbett himself — who was no hypocrite — has left it on record that he cannot recall one unkind word from his father's lips at home. The truth is that he had, like Brougham, a great deal of the actor in him. John Kemble said that to have Brougham on the boards for a season •would make his fortune. Cobbett's talent as a mime did not lie in the same direction as Brougham's, and when he entered the House of Commons in the first reformed parliament his appearance and his quiet ways excited much surprise ; but many of his rages were little moi'e than artistic, though he was wholly sincere. Such a man might well puzzle a better judge of human nature than Brougham or Denman ; but for all that his prosecution by the Whigs is one of the ugliest things on record against them. From 1829 to 1831 Cobbett was going about the country lecturing on political subjects, the prevailing distress, and the causes of it. The times were bad, and in the rural districts rick-burning and other outrages were com- mon. In the midst of all this came Cobbett's lectures, and his new periodical, Tioopenny Trash, or Politics for the Poor — the first title being Canning's nickname for the Political Register. Cobbett never preached up revolu- tion, and he also dealt sensibly and respect- fully with the lights of property. " Poverty, even in its extreme state," he wrote, "gives no man a right to view his rich neighbour with an evil eye, much less to do him mis- chief on account of his riches." But Mr. Trevor, member of parliament for New Eom- ney, called the attention of the house to certain of Cobbett's articles, which he pro- posed to treat as seditious libels both on the government and the church. Cobbett's attacks ujjon tithes made him jmrticularly obnoxious to clerical Tories and even clerical Whigs. Mr. Trevoi^s motion, however, was withdrawn, and the matter was left to ministers entirely. Just at this unlucky crisis a poor man named Goodman was condemned to death for arson, and it is said that a clergyman whom Cobbett had offended drew from this ignorant man the confession which follows. At all events, here is the confession : — "I Thomas Goodman once heard of one Mr. Cobbit going About gaviug out lactures at length he came to Battel and gave one their and their was a gret number of peopel came to hear him and I went he had veiTey long conversation concerning the state of the coun- try and tilling them that they was verry much impose ujDon and he said he would show them the way to gain their rights and liberals (liber- ties) and he said it would be verry Proper for every man to keep gun in his house espesely young men that they might prepare themselves in readiness to go with him when he called on them and he would show them which way to go on and he said that peopel might expect firs their as weU as other places. This is the truth and nothing But the truth of A deyiug man." With the help of this confession and some other mattera the govei'nment at last felt as LIBRARY UNTVERPTTY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA 102 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. if they could venture ou a i^rosecutioii. And on the 7th of July, 1831, Cobbett stood on liis trial in the Court of King's Bench, Brougham and other ministers being present in front of him, as we have stated, and his fiiend Lord Eadnor being at his side to encourage him, and if necessary give evidence in his favour. Cobbett conducted his own case. The very number of the Twopeiviy Trash on which the indictment was founded contained the following words : " I am for a government of King, Lords, and Commons, but, let what else wiU come, I am for the freedom, the hap- piness and greatness of England, and above all things, for the good feeding and clothing of those who raise all the food and make all the clothing." And in a speech several hours long, Cobbett pointed out, among other things, that Goodman had disappeared, and that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which Brougham and Denman were both members, the former being president, had re- cently asked his leave to rejDriut his letter to the Luddites condemning theii- practices, machine- breaking and violence of other kind. Cobbett, then seventy years old, attacked the Whigs venomously throughout the whole of his speech. This was bad policy; bv;t after being locked up all night the jury were discharged, being unable to agree to a verdict. Pei'haps a sketch of Mr. Cobbett's appear- ance and his manner as a public speaker at this time — a sketch from a contemporary jjen — may be welcome in this place. " Mr. Cobbett," says this publicist, "is still of stately stature, and must in youth have been tall. He must then, in physiognomy, jjerson, and bearing, have been a fine specimen of the true Saxon breed, — " 'The eyes of azure, and the locks of brown, And the blunt speech, that bursts without a pause. And free-bom thought, which league the soldier with the laws.' " His thin, white hairs and high forehead, the humour lurking in the eye and playing about the lips, betokened something more than the squire in his gala suit; still, the al- together was of this respectable and respon- sible kind. His voice is low-toned, clear, and flexible, and so skilfully modulated that not an aspiration was lost of his nervous, fluent, unhesitating, and perfectly correct discourse. There was no emban-assment, no flutter, no picking of words, nor was the speaker once at fault, or in the smallest degree disturbed by those petty accidents and annoyances which must have moved almost any other man. . . . He is indeed a first-rate comic actor, possessed of that flexible, penetrative power of imitation which extends to mind and character as well as to their outward signs. His genius is, be- sides, essentially dramatic. We have often read his lively characteristic dialogues with pleasure and amusement ; but to see him act them, and personate Loi-d Althorp, pommelled and posed by the future member for Oldham, was a degree beyond this. He was in nothing vehement or obstreperous, though everybody had anticipated something of this kind, and his subdued tone and excellent discretion gave double point to his best hits. . . . The humour of his solemn irony, his blistering sarcasm, but especially his sly hits and unexpected or ran- dom strokes and pokes on the sore or weak sides of the Whigs, told with full effect. To oratory, in the highest sense of the term, Mr. Cobbett never once rises, but he is ever a wily, clear, and most effective speaker." Of course an attorney-general must do his duty, and Denman was not the man to sym- pathize with Cobbett's virulence. But it is rather melancholy to see him prosecuting this veteran, who evidently loved his country, and would not really hurt a hair of any man's head. Denman had himself known what it was to be on the dangerous side of the hedge, and, though not violent himself, had been asso- ciated with violent peojjle. He was a kind- hearted man, and had introduced touches of manly, homely feeling into his defence of Queen Carohne, which had sent a thriQ through the heart of the nation. Memorable as a stroke of simple, affecting eloquence was his remark — emphasized by his warm sincerity of manner — that though the queen's name had been by order omitted from the liturgy the people would remember her in the prayer for such as were ''desolate and oppressed." When, in the course of the trial, Denman went to Cheltenham for a little peace, the COBBETT IN PAELIAMENT— HIS DEATH. 103 iiiliabitants ran to the clergyman to ask him to have the church-bells rung in honour of her majesty's solicitor-general ! The clergyman declined, upon which the people tore the horses out of Denman's carriage, drew it to his house, and compelled him to make a speech to them from a window or balcony. They then made a rush for the house of the poor clergyman, smashed his windows, broke open the church, and rang the bells until late at night. It is not to be dreamed of that Denman approved of all this, for he was a wise, good, moderate man; but when King William had made him attorney-general it left an awkward impression on most people's minds to find a man who had gone through so many turbulent scenes himself, and fought so unflinchingly and honourably on the turbulent side, con- ducting a press prosecution against a man like Cobbett. The story of Cobbett's public life does not end with his trial in 1831 for a seditious libel. In the autumn of that year it had be- come plain that the reform wave would speedily carry all before it, and the return of Cobbett to parliament became a moral cer- tainty. He published — the Register going on all this time— an address to the electors of Manchester, in which he jDresented the world in general and the Whigs in jDarticular with his political programme. This included all the old items and a few new ones. Tithes were, of course, to be abolished, sinecures were to be swept away, and all pensions withdrawn for which a clear case of justification could not be made out. Besides this, the national debt was to be wiped out by the sale of ecclesiastical property, certain portions of the corporation properties, and the crown lands altogether ! The currency was to be set in order, the standing army reduced, and taxa- tion cut down and reai-ranged as to its inci- dence till it should be no longer an unjust bmxleu ujDon the industry of the country. (Cobbett's old friend, Lord Radnor, supported him on this occasion by an oj^en letter, which was extensively circulated, and from which a brief excerpt may well be given. "With re- spect," said Lord Radnor, "to the measures which ought to be adopted, I have no hesi- tation in saying that my decided opinion is, that, for the safety of the state, the internal peace of the country, the well-being of the people, the preservation of property, and the maintenance of anything like liberty, measures must be adopted to the full extent of any that have ever, as far as I recollect, been proposed by Mr. Cobbett. I am persuaded that he has all these objects sincerely at heart. I wholly acquit him of any personal ambition, except probably that anxious desire for fame, and that wish to live in the grateful recollection of his countrymen, which are the signs of an exalted and of a noble spirit. Sordid views of interest he certainly has none — no petty ambition. The good of the ]jeople is what he seeks; his fame — the mere fact of his being thought of to represent Manchester — is the as- surance that he has the means of promoting it." Under the new Reform Bill Oldham was to have two members. Cobbett had been re- ceived with great enthusiasm in Scotland, and Manchester had put him in nomination, but Oldham was the place for which he was to sit, along with Mr. Fielden, the manufacturer. When Brougham saw the returns for the first reformed parliament he said, "We shall be too strong!" This was true in one respect, but not in the main, so far as the country was concerned. Nor did the Radical members effect much. Mr. Cobbett, who surprised everybody by the quietness of his manner, was not always wise, and he made one serious blunder. Speaking on the currency question, and treating Sir Robert Peel as the "head and front" of all the "offending" in this matter, he had the gross bad manners (to say no more) to move that Peel's want of success in settling the currency question proved sxicli ignorance that he ought to be dismissed from the jDrivy council. Of course he was laughed down, and of course he did his own cause harm. It is pleasant to turn from these hectoring follies, to Cobbett pleading the cause of the factory children — "three hundred thousand of the most helpless creatures in the world holding up their hands for mercy." It was not until the 19th of June, 1835, that Cobbett died, but the event may as well be mentioned at once, as the preceding para- 104 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAKIES. graphs close liis parliamentary career. He boasted that " he had been the great enlight- ener of the people of England," and the boast had much truth in it, if confined to a certain class of topics, and if Cobbett's principles are admitted to be "light" such as the people wanted. It cannot be said that Cobbett wrote with "sweetness" as weU as light; but when you have allowed for his abusiveness you find remaining a good deal of practical moderation. He was no revolutionist. He was a great farmer, a considerable experimentalist in farm- ing matters, and passionately fond of flowers and birds. "I began life," said he, "by driv- ing the rooks and magpies from my father's pea-fields and my mother's chicken-yard, and I shall end it by endeavouring to drive the tithe and tax devourers from the fruits of the labour of my industrious countrymen." Un- fortunately this energetic man made the mis- take of thinking that he had a parliamentary vocation; and the pressure of London life, late hoiirs, and the necessary irritations of the new career helped to cut his life short at a date when he could ride "across country" with the boldest. He was fond of hunting, fishing, single-stick, boxing, and old English sports. There was a strong conservative fibre in his nature. His greatest pride and joy, apart from politics, was in his fruits, flowers, dogs, horses, home-made bread, and pleasant farm- house home. Miss Mitford declares that she never saw a finer garden than his, and that his Indian corn and water-melons were nearly up to the New York standard. He had re- tained something of the soldier about him to the last, and the lady opines that his "eternal red waistcoat" helped the "military" impres- sion which he made on some of his visitors. Cobbett began his career in the House of Commons by the conciliatory speech, "Since I have been sitting here I have heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation." He was totally destitute of mental or moral height, and had not a thi'ead of poetry in the whole web of his nature. If he had been born a gentleman, if he had had a gentleman's gen- eral culture, if he had had poetry and height in him, he would have much resembled in many particulars a widely difl"erent man- Walter Savage Landor (the Boythorn of Dickens, in Bleak House) — a point which is too obvious to need expansion, even if this were the place for it. The suggestion alone may help to explain much. In 1830 Thomas Babingtou Macaulay entered parliament for the pocket-borough of Calne. From the very first his presence stamped the debates with a new character, and though a scholar and a man of the " academic " order — admittedly no statesman — he took high place in his very first speech, and his figure will frequently appear in these pages. He was, as is well known, the son of Zachary Macaulay, the " Claphamite " and anti-slavery advocate, or rather worker, and his first public speech of any moment was made, with triumphant success, at an anti-slavery meeting in 1824. His univ^ersity career had been brilliant, and he was already celebrated as an Edinhurgh Reviewer when he entered parliament. He had studied for the bar, but never practised — though, as we shall see, his studies were not useless to him. Although he proved a good debater and extempore speaker, he was in the habit of getting his siaeeches by heart, like Ward, of whom Rogers wrote — " They say Ward has no heart, but I deny it; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it." His air and manner when he entered the house prepared for one of his magnificent oi'ations was so j^eculiarly abstracted that any one could see what was coming. He always spoke before dinner, and invariably kept the refreshment - rooms empty till he had done. When he came stumbling into his seat people would say, " Macaulay will give us a speech to-night;" and the words would pass from man to man far outside the house, till mem- bers came hurrying in groups from the club- houses in Pall Mall and elsewhere. To see him in the Strand or the Temple, absorbed and awkward, was sometimes a sufficient pro- phecy of what was coming. " Do you see that stout man talking to himself? That's Macaulay — he will speak in the house to- night." As we have mentioned his awkward- ness, and as small traits are interesting with MACAULAY— HIS OPINIONS. 105 regard to so remarkable a man, we may men- tion that Lis want of manual dexterity was so great that he could never shave himself with- out severely cutting his chin. Also, though he was a poet of a certain order, his general taste was not good, and he had an extraordi- narily extensive assortment of gorgeous waist- coats. Of course waistcoats did not influence his politics, though those were the days when Whigs were apt to dress alike; but much smaller circumstances than these are cherished in the memoiy when men so distinguished are in question. Among all the advocates of reform in par- liament none had a clearer head or a more [ )ractical view of the question than Macaulay. He entertained no sanguine hopes of what might follow an improved system of represen- tation; he felt strongly that human nature was the same in all ages; he had maintained that even under the Tudors, especially under Elizabeth, the English had been a free people, of whom the monarch stood in wholesome fear; and that previously to the Revolution the question of parliamentary reform was of very little importance. "The English," says Mr. Macaulay, "were in the sixteenth century a free people, beyond all doubt. They had not, indeed, the outward show of freedom, but they had the reality." It was not, he ad- mits, a constitutional freedom. " They ha d not as good a constitution as we have, but they had that without which the best constitution is as useless as the king's proclamation against vice and immoralit}'', that which, without any con- stitution, keeps rulers in awe — force, and the spirit to use it. . . . Parliaments, it is true, were rarely held, and were not very respectfully treated. The Great Charter was often violated. But the people had a security against gross and systematic misgovernment far stronger than all the parchment that was ever marked with the sign manual, and than all the wax that was ever pressed by the great seal. "A modern Englishman can hardl}- under- stand how the people can have had any real security for good government under kings who levied benevolences, and chid the House of Commons as they would have chid a pack of dogs. People do not sufficiently consider that, though the legal checks were feeble, the natural checks were strong. . . , There was one great and effectual limitation on the royal authority — the knowledge that, if the patience of the nation were severely tried, the nation would put forth its strength, and that its sti-ength would be found irresistible. If a large body of Englishmen became thoroughly discontented, instead of presenting requisi- tions, holding large meetings, passing resolu- tions, signing petitions, forming associations and unions, they rose up, they took their halberds and their bows; and if the sovereign was not sufiiciently popular to find among his subjects other halberds and other bows, no- thing remained for him but a repetition of the horrible scenes of Berkely and Pomfret. This, of course, is not constitutional freedom: it is primitive, it may even be called barbar- ous in all but form and colour ; and of course it is not consistent with a state of things in which free- trade and universal education form part of the general scheme. In fact it may be summed up in the formula, ' Treat us properly or we will cut your throat.' To which it may be added that the sovereign was in older days an actually fighting person — really, not nomi- nally, the captain of the nation; and the voice of the nation said, 'Conquer for us wherever we come into collision with the foreigner, or we will depose you.' But now, if the sovereign were to go out and fight in person to-morrow, it would be impossible to restore the state of national feeling which prevailed even at the time when George II. went to the battle of Dettingen." During the lustrum which preceded the passing of the Reform Bill the friends of a reform in the I'epresentation of the people had lost no opportunity of setting the question forward. Macaulay, then only twenty-eight years old, was not yet in parliament, but he had allied himself with the Whig party, had formed decided opinions on most political questions, and in the great Whig organ, the Edinburgh Review, made use of a notice of Hal- lam's Constitutional History of England as a stalking-horse behind which to fight the great cause of his party. He draws an amusing pic- ture of the difference between tlie relations of 106 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. the people and the pailiameut before the Eevo- lutiou and their relations since that event, and he lays on his colours with much moderation. Perhaps no man did more to influence "reason- able" anti-reformers than Macaulay. The re- ticence of certain passages in his argument is almost diplomatic in its character. "A large part of the nation," says he, "is certainly desirous of reform in the representative system. How large that part may be, and how strong its desires on the subject may be, it is difficult to say. It is only at intervals that the clamour on the subject is loud and veh.-ment. But it seems to us during the remissions, the feeling gathers strength, and that every successive burst is more violent than that which preceded it. The public attention may be for a time diverted to the Catholic claims or the mer- cantile code, but it is probable that at no very distant period, perhaps in the lifetime of the present generation, all other questions will merge in that which is, in a certain degree, connected with them all." It will be observed that we have, up to that date, 1828, got no farther than the pro- bability of a reform in parliament. In 1830 he entered parliament as member for the Whig Marquis of Lansdowne's "pocket bor- ough" of Calne, and made a very modest but successful speech in favour of the removal of the disabilities of the Jews. On the 2nd of March, 1831, we find him making a powerful speech in favour of Lord John Russell's motion for leave to bring in a bill to amend the representation of the people. One or two of the passages of that speech will brighten the page, and recall topics forgotten now, but of great weight then. "If, sir," said Macaulay, "I wished to make such a foreigner cleai'ly understand what I consider as the great de- fects of our system, I would conduct him through that great city which lies to the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford Street, a city superior in size and in pojDulation to the capitals of many mighty kingdoms, and probably superior in opulence, intelligence, and general respectability to any city in the world — I would conduct him through that in- terminable succession of streets and squares, all consisting of well-built and well-furnished houses. I would make him observe the bril- liancy of the shops, and the crowd of well-ap- pointed equipages. I would lead him round that magnificent circle of palaces which sur- rounds the Regent's Park. I would tell him that the rental of this district was far greater than that of the whole kingdom of Scotland at the time of the Union. And then I would tell him that this was an unrepresented dis- ti-ict ! It is needless to give any more instances. It is needless to speak of Manchester, Bir- mingham, Leeds, Sheffield, with no represen- tation, or of Edinburgh and Glasgow with a mock representation." To Macaulay's powerful and persuasive ad- vocacy of reform in parliament it will be necessary again to refer. On the 21st of September, 1832, died Sir Walter Scott. He was a man who used openly to say he did not heed or understand politics, and yet his story has some curiously interest- ing links with the politics of his time. That he was a red-hot Tory to the last is well known, but his Toryism was a sort of senti- ment, and had no intellectual root worth speaking of. He used very greatly to admire Canning, — which an able man could hardly help doing, — but as Canning advaucd farther and farther ui^on Liberal lines of thought and action, Scott fell off from him. The great novelist's attachment to George IV. was very little to his ci-edit, except so far as it sjjrang from gratitude. Scott was the first baronet whom George IV. made, and when the latter visited Edinburgh in 1822 it was Scott who "did the honours" of the reception. He went on board the royal yacht upon the very day when his dearest friend (William Erskiue) died, and when the king drank his health in Highland whisky, humbly entreated to be allowed to retain the glass which his majesty had used. To this humble petition the king most graciously acceded Unfortunately when Scott got back home, he found Crabbe there, and smashed the royal gift by sitting down upon it. Crabbe was himself something of a trickster, but would scarcely have admired the whisky transaction, and perhaps the very sight of him inspired Scott with a little shame. MOLESWORTH—GROTE— ROEBUCK. 107 It was in the midst of the reform agitation during the year 1831 that Scott was stricken with paralysis. In a speech at Jedburgh, made in March of that year, he so enraged the mob by his opposition that at last they hissed and hooted him. In the midst of it all he turned passionately round upon them, shouting, "I care no more for your gabble than for the quacking of the geese on the green." Some notion of the weakness of which a great man may be capable is to be gathered from a sentence or two of Scott's almost foolish speech. "We in this district," said he, " are proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge was the work of a Scotch- man, It still hangs where he erected it a pi'etty long time ago. The French heard of our invention, and determined to introduce it, but with great improvements and embel- lishments. A friend of my own saw the thing tried. It was on the Seine at Marly. The French chain-bridge looked lighter and airier than the prototype. Every Englishman present was disposed to confess that we had been beaten at our own trade. But by-and- by the gates were opened, and the multitude were to pass* over. It began to swing rather formidably beneath the pressure of the good company, and by the time the architect, who led the procession in great pomp and glory, reached the middle, the whole gave way, and he — worthy, patriotic artist — was the fii'st that got a ducking. They had forgot the middle bolt, — or rather, this ingenious person had conceived that to be a clumsy-looking feature which might safely be dispensed with, while he put some invisible gimcrack of his own to supply its place." Arguments like this might very well enrage an audience much slower to see through a fallacy than a Scotch one — unless they laughed at it. Unfortunately, these were angry times, and it is grievous to have to add that when in May of 1831, Scott, sorely ill with stroke after stroke of his malady, attended the Rox- burghshire election held at Jedburgh, he was chased and hooted in the streets, and insulted with brutal cries of "Burk Sir Walter !" All this sank deep into his heart, and in his last delirium he kept murmuring, "Burk Sir Walter!" It has been maintained that Sir Walter Scott's novels have had considerable political influence as popular conducting-rods of Tory sentiment, but that question is hardly worth discussing. The political excitement of the time had, among many ordinary and natural effects which lie on the surface of the narrative, that of " drawing out " men of ability who had a turn for afi"aii's, and enlisting their powers in what they held to be the service of the na- tion. Three remarkable men, of one school of thought, and with much less personal ambition than zeal for principles, were "drawn out" of the crowd in 1831, and soon attracted notice in the parliament of 1832. It was not likely that the school of Bentham and James Mill should be found to have trained no pujDils for political action. The greatest of them all, Mr. John Stuart Mill, was to remain in his study and at the India House for the present; but three of his fellow- pupils in the Utilitarian academy at Queen Square, all young, and two very young indeed, now came to the front. These three were Sir William Molesworth, Mr. George Grote, and Mr, John Arthur Roebuck, who in the parlia- ment of 1832 represented East Cornwall, the City of London, and Bath, respectively. These gentlemen were the leaders of Philosophical Radicalism (as it was and still is called) in parliament — Sir William Molesworth being the recognized chief, though his general powers and accomplishments were certainly not greater than those of Mr. Grote. The return of young Mr. Grote as one of the members for the city was a triumph. He was the son of a banker, and was already occupied with his studies for the great History of Greece, by which he is chiefly known in literature. He found time, however, for much political pamphleteering and speech-making, and in particular for the persistent advocacy of the ballot — the political topic with which his name is particularly associated. It is not irrelevant to notice that he had a remarkably fine presence, and though very quiet, always exercised much personal influence; being re- turned for the city, election after election, by 108 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. varying luajoi'ities, till he voluntarily i-etired from public life iu 1841. Mr. Roebuck was the great debater of the school to which he belonged, and one of the most eifective of what might be called the Light Brigade of Parliamentary Reformers. Of course he had not the fiery energy of Brougham, before whom all the rest sank into insignificance; nor did he even carry the moral weight of men like Russell and Altliorp; but he was a dangerous and unsparing foe to cross swords with. How he changed sides in his later years is familiar to us all; but up to the time of the Crimean war, when he carried his motion for an inquiry into the management of the army before Sebastopol and turned out the Aberdeen ministry, he was a general favourite among Liberals and a real power in political affairs. Sir William Molesworth, the youngest man of the three, was more of a statesman than either, and had real administrative power as well as speculative ability. "We shall see, as we proceed, how deep was the mark which he made on our colonial policy. But there is one topic which belongs rather to a general esti- mate of him and his labours than to any par- ticular point on which the annalist could fix. He was a great admirer and student of the philosopher Hobbes, and expended a fortune in reviving and circulating that ^Titer's works. With the majority of reading people at that time Hobbes had the reputation not only of atheism but of absolutism. Of course what Molesworth admired in Hobbes was what Bentham and James Mill admired in him — his mastery of inductive methods in philosophy, and his singularly nervous style of thought and wi'iting. But people were easily scared in those days, and political tactics were unscru- pulous; nobody reflected that Radicalism, the ballot, and all the rest of the progi-amme of the school, could not dwell in the same brain- pan with absolutism; and Sir William Moles- worth never, to his dying day, was able to emerge from the cloud of dislike under which he was placed for editing "the Philosopher of Malmesbury." In our own days such a fact would not alarm the merest infant in the ziursery of thought. Hobbes has now been admitted after much debate to his fair and proper jjlace in the philosophical and political literature of his age; but when Molesworth stood for South wark men were stationed along "the borough" to hand the enlightened elec- tors culled extracts from the Leviathan, with the terrible injunction added: — "Electors of Southwark ! miless you wish these principles to prevail, do not vote for Molesworth ! " Of course it was of little use to attempt to explain to a mob, whose religious and political fervour was exploding all round in rotten eggs and dead cats, that the system of Molesworth's master, Bentham, included not only what is usually known as universal suffrage, but votes for even criminals and lunatics. These three able politicians of the Radical Left were associated, along with some others, in writing, or managing, or helping to manage, the Westminster Review, which had always fought powerfully on the side of reform in Church and State. Roebuck was one of its most esteemed contributors, but Bentham used to teU him that his temper would do him more harm than his talents would do him good. Associated with him, James Mill, Bowring, and others, were some exceedingly able men of whom the outer world knows but little. Colonel Perronet Thompson, author of The Corn-law Catechism, which did so much to prepai'e the way for a more general interest in a gi'eat question, is, or was, very well known, and so is Albany Fonblanque. But few have heard much of William Ellis, an exceedingly effective wa-iter, and one of the gi'eatest of educational philanthropists. Still less known are the two Austins, John and Chai'les, who were said to be absolutely the ablest men of the whole set. John, by his gi-eat work on jurisprudence made an impei- ishable mark on the history of social progress, not only in England but abroad. Of Mi-. W, J. Fox, afterwards M.P. for Oldliam, we shall hear again in the course of this naiTative iu connection with the education question and the corn-laws. But the fii-st and most striking services rendered through the medium of the Westminster Review to what would even now be called extieme Liberalism range over the POPULAR SENSATION— CARICATURES— LAMPOONS. 109 years in which the reform question was seeth- ing in the public mind. The Westmmster Review had had more than one name, but its spirit was always the same. It had been started expressly to represent Radicalism (as the Edinburgh to represent Whiggism, and the Quarterly to advocate Toryism); but when Mr. Blackwood saw the gathering of the forces into this side-camp, and noted the immense amount of talent which they stood for, he is said to have thrown up his cap, and said that this division of the Liberal troops was a happy omen ! Eventually Sir William Molesworth and Mr. J. S. Mill became pro- prietors of this Revieio, but with that we are not concerned. Only we must bear in mind that the activities of the hustings and the House of Commons do not by any means represent all the social and political forces which were at work to precipitate political, social, and especially educational reform in the decade with which we opened the present volume, or in the years immediately succeed- ing. Perhaps not one of all this band of thinkers and workers did more for his genera- tion than the modest William Ellis. Many know his name as that of the founder of the Birkbeck schools, but of his other labours in the cause of education little is heard or sus- pected by the general public. Of the two Austins it was said by wags who were yet more and better than wags that they had be- tween them the two most powerful intellects in the world. Perhaps some who do not care much for social and political progress may be inclined to think there was something in this on hearing that the income of Charles Austin, made chiefly by practice at the parliamentary bar, was estimated at £30,000 a year. The Reform Bill being now safe, the gen- eral narrative may paiise to gather together a few collateral incidents. Just as William IV. was vindicating the royal prerogative by ordering "a hackney-coach" to take him to the House of Lords, the cholera was at our doors. The panic created by the proclamation upon the subject and the reports of the first cases was terrible. True, England found her- self well and hearty enough to illuminate for mere joy at this sudden dissolution, and the "cartload of inferences" obviously to be drawn from it, but the pestilence was dreadful for all that. These were not times of cheap news- papers, in which (we mean no satire) wild rumours coiUd be checked off one against another, or at least scrutinized with delibera- tion. "The common people" were largely dependent for their news upon chance read- ings at cofl"ee-houses and other public-houses, and "street patterers" made sudden little for- tunes by crying bad news — often quite false, of course — on both sides of the way, with slips of print professing to tell the whole story authentically. The cholera was fine capital for these men ; but, in truth, the plam facts were dreadful enough. A ghastly thing it was to see the stricken poor borne along to the hospitals in covered "stretchers," all the passers-by hurrying out of the way, for the disease was supposed to be infectious. There was scarcely a nook in London in which some death by cholera did not take place, and the symptoms were so terrible, the collapse in the fatal cases so rapid, the bewilderment of the doctors so complete, and the rise in the death- rate so great, that the commonplace, "a gloom was cast over the whole of society" was strictly applicable and fully true. It was curious to see a group of men assembled at the corner of a street to hear the news read out, — the last thing about Brougham, or Lord Durham, or the latest joke about the queen, poor dame, — suddenly break up at the approach of one of those dreaded stretchers. The first instruction (emphasized by severe penalties) to children and nursemaids, was not to go near them. Booksellers' shop windows exhibited pictures, rudely coloured, of the victim to cholera in the stage of collapse, and of course the blue skin, the bloodshot sunken eye, the baked lip, and the weeping relatives were made the most of. Everybody wore camphor, and hardly any one went to bed without some prophy- lactic, or attempt at a prophylactic, in the house. Last, not least, there was a decidedly perceptible increase in the attendance at churches and chapels, the result of increased seriousness, more or less deep, born of the alarm caused by the pestilence. It was in the course of these agitating 110 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. reform days that the mob assaulted the Duke of "Welliugton and broke the windows of Apsley House. The duke went in danger of his life, and the bishops who had voted against the bill were hissed and gi'oaned at in the streets. From this time the question of dis- pensing with their presence in the House of Lords never slumbered : it was discussed with heat and hate in every club-room, at every free-and-easy. The duke, Lord Lyndhuret (who had done the Tories the ingenious ser- vice of uniting the "waverers"), and the bishojjs were commonly exhibited in carica- tures and in transparencies, dangling from gibbets. On the other hand, when the bill liad passed some enthusiasts commented upon the Apocalypse by showing transparencies of "Satan cast into the bottomless pit for a thou- sand years," — the key (in the angel's hand) which was to lock up his writhing snakeshijD being inscribed Reform ! Since those excited times we have grown more moderate in our expectations of results from political move- ments. Another reform bill has been passed within the last twelve years, but if it locked up evil the lock must have been very easy to pick. The neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner was, at the highest of the excitement, the resort of angry crowds. But thousands of peoj^le went on purpose to see the ii'on win- dows which the duke had put up in Apsley House to make it shot-proof — windows cele- brated in many a street-song of the day, as thus: — "He is much disrespected wherever he goes, With his cast-iron windows and Waterloo nose ; He has often trod hard on poor Johnny Bull's toes, Dumble dum deary, &c." "Dumble dum deary" was then a popular song or tune. For a long while there was also sung about the streets, and indeed else- where, a parody on "Off, off! said the stranger. Off, off and away ! a parody intended to bid the bishops be off" from the House of Lords. It was an unfortunate thing that there Avas so little opportunity in the pai'liameutary debates on the reform bill for ridicule of a certain kind. Jokes there were, of course, and then duU men also made speeches. But a Castlereagh would have been invaluable in those bitter days. Earl RusseU has told us in his Recollections that he once heard him speak for nearly an hour, without his hearers being able to understand a sentence he uttered, and that he then— grave and self-satisfied as usual — closed "that branch of the subject" by saying, "Such, Mr. Speaker, is the law of nations." When the house was sitting any member who happened to come in to a dinner party from the house was sure to be asked what was "the last" from Castlereagh. In the reform struggle there was no such general butt, — he would have been invaluable, for laughter is a great check upon wrath. The interval from 1830 to 1834 was one of great ecclesiastical and religious activity. The least histoncally important of the events of these years was the foundation by Edward Irving of the institution to which he and his adherents gave the name of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. In 1831 the Congregational L^nion of England and Wales was founded. During all this time dissent in England was full of life, as was shown by the formation or by the energetic action of various societies for missionary or educational purposes. It is now that Exeter Hall begins to be recognized as "a great fact" — if we may use an expression which is a little faded. In 1834 the Wesleyan oMethodist Association was founded. In 1833 the Whigs abolished ten bishoprics of the Established Church ; and while this was in the air the movement known as the Trac- tarian movement began, or rather took practi- cal working shape at Oxford. As nobody of any shade of political or religious opinion wiU disjjute Dr. J. H. Newman's account of his share in the matter, we shall gladly adopt, with gi'eat abbreviations, his own words. "When [in 1833] I got back from abroad I found that already a movement had com- menced in opposition to the specific danger which at that time was threatening the re- ligion of the nation and its church. Several zealous and able men had united their coimsels and were in corresiiondence with each other. THE ESTABLISHED CHUECH AND DISSENTERS. Ill The principal of them were Mr. Keble, Hurrell Froude, who had reached home lou^ before me, Mr. William Palmer of Dublin and Worcester College (not Mr. William Palmer of Magdalen, who is now a Catholic), Mr. Arthur Perceval, and Mr. Hugh Rose. " Out of my own head I began the Tracts for the Times. ... I had the consciousness that I was emjjloyed in that work which I had been dreaming about, and which I felt to be so momentous and ins23iring. . . . No time was to be lost, for the Whigs had come to do their worst, and the rescue might come too late. Bishoprics were already in course of sujj- pression, church property was in course of confiscation, sees would soon be receiving un- suitable occupants. ... I felt as on board a vessel, which first gets under weigh, and then the deck is cleared out, and luggage and live stock stowed away into their proper re- ceptacles. . . . Nor was it only that I had confidence in our cause, both in itself and in its polemical force, but also, on the other hand, I despised every rival system of doctrine, and its arguments too. As to the High Church and the Low Church, I thought that the one had no more a logical basis than the other ; while I had a thorough contempt for the con- troversial position of the latter, I had a real respect for the character of many of the advocates of each party, but that did not give cogency to their arguments. . . . My first principle was the principle of dogma; my battle was with Liberalism; by Liberalism I meant the anti-dogmatic principle and its de- velopment. This was the first point on which I was certain." The significance of aU this will be made fully apparent to the reader by the following refer- ence to Dr. Hampden. "During the first year of the Tracts the at- tack (of the Liberals) upon the university began. In November, 1834, was sent to me, by Dr. Hampden, the second edition of his pamj^hlet, entitled, Observations on Religious Dissent, with particular reference to the use of theological tests in the university. ... It was under these circumstances that Dr. Pusey joined us. I had known him well since 1827-8, and had felt for him an enthusiastic admira- tion. His great learning, his immense dili- gence, his scholar-like mind, his simple de- votion to the cause of religion, overcame me, and great of course was my joy, when, in the last days of 1833, he showed a disposition to make common cause with us. . . , He at once gave to us a position and a name. Without him we should have had little chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making any serious resistance to the Liberal aggression." Now the story of Dr. Hampden connects itself with Lord John Russell's often-quoted prcemunire letter, and with much of Mr. Glad- stone's activity ; matters which are yet ahead of us, but which would be unintelligible in their place without this introduction. If Lord John Russell or anybody else sup- posed that the Dissenters would "rest and be thankful" after the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts it was a great mistake, but the simplicity of Earl Grey in these matters was both startling and entertaining. En- couraged by the general success of the cause of freedom, the Dissenters woke uji very wide, and in the year 1834 the first public meeting ever held in England to consider (not only Dissenting grievances but) the total abolition of the church Establishment, or as it is now phrased, the "total liberation of religion from state control," was held at Nottingham. A deputation to Earl Grey was decided upon, and the late Mr. William Howitt, then a Quaker, took a prominent part in the pro- ceedings of the body of gentlemen that waited on the premier. It soon appeared that even so staunch a friend of liberty as Earl Grey had never conceived the idea which Cavour described when he used the phrase, "A free church in a free state." "This petition, I presume," said Earl Grey, is to the same pui'jDort as the other petitions from Dissenters that have been jsresented?" "Of that," said Mr. Howitt, "your lordship will be a better judge than I am when you have read it. I can only say that the Notting- ham Dissenters did not look about to see what other Dissenters were doing, but thought and acted for themselves." After some further discussion, Earl Grey, quite bewildered, ex- claimed, "What is it you really do wish? Do 112 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. you waut entirely to do away with all estab- lishments of religion?" "Precisely," was the prompt reply. Earl Grey said he was very sorry for it ; the suggestion of such sweeping changes would alarm parliament and startle the countrj^, and he considered it the sacred duty of every government to maintain an es- tablishment of religion. "People are not so easily frightened at changes nowadays," re- plied Mr. Howitt; and he proceeded to argue that "to establish one sect in preference to another was to establish a party and not a religion." A fe^v months afterwards four hundred Dissenting deputies met in London to consider the propriety of agitating for disestablishment, but the subject was so new that old-fashioned people outside of Dissenting circles did not un- derstand it. It is little short of comic to find Mrs. Gilbert (formerly Ann Taylor) urging her husband, Mr. Gilbert, a Nonconformist minister, to be very explicit in what he said to Lord Althorp: "Be sure," says the lady, "to make him really understand what you want." On the 31st of March, 1832, appeai-ed the first number of the ever-to-be-remembered Penny Magazine. Those were days in which there was no fear of throwing really good literature straight at the heads of the people, and in some respects the Penny Magazine was superior to any of its rivals or successors. There was occasionally an attempt at writing down, and there were excellent papers of the " knowledge-made-easy " class. But there is not a cheap laeriodical now in existence that would not consider a full third of that writing over the heads of the modern buyer of minor magazines. Any one who will refresh his memory by turning to such articles as those on music, or Hogarth's pictui-es, or RaffaeUe's cartoons, or to the biographical sketches, will at once recognize the truth of this remark. To this may be added the fact that the Penny Magaziyie contained, from time to time, fear- less long quotations fi-om poets and humorists of the first class — especially Wordsworth, Lamb, and Coleridge. Almost at the same hour appeared the first number of Chambers' Edinburgh Journal. Soon these wei'e followed by the Saturday Journal, which was issued by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and a crowd of publications, mostly inferior. It would be easy to record their names and peculiarities, but the task is not worth while. A word, however, is due to The Mirror of Mr. John Timbs. As Dr. Kitto ("the deaf traveller ") was allowed by Charles Knight to say in the columns of the Penny Magazine itself, that The Mirror was "the parent of this class of periodicals, and had gone on improving from year to year," we may pre- sume to place it first on the list in point of date. The decline in the quality of so much of our cheap jDcriodical literature is chiefly to be attributed to the cupidity of publishers, who find their account in aiming straight at the lowest and most numerous classes of readers. This enables them to get just that enormous circulation which yields all but incredible returns, and of course the prices paid for the literary labour required in such work are small. Not long before the date at which our first chapter o^^ens, William Godwin was freely off"ered £1000 for his Political Justice (being then an unknown writer), and he re- ceived a large sum in advance before he had written a line. For his small book on Chaucer, written later, he received £300 for the first in- stalment and £300 for the second,— being also paid money in advance. This £600 he calls "extremely penurious." There is something very jDathetic in Charles Knight's farewell address to the readers of the Penny Magazine, for it contains a scarcely suppressed forecast of the times to come in matters of literature. Of one other prominent figure of that time a word needs to be said here. The first act of practical defiance shown by the Ameiicans to the government of Geoi-ge III. was the throw- ing of a cargo of tea into the sea at Boston, in order to prevent the paying of duty on it. This was done secretly by some of the citizens at night, and of course it was done in oj^po- sition to the will of the governor of the city, who was acting in the British cr royalist in- terest, and equally of course it was in oppo- SIR JOHN COPLEY (LORD LYNDHURST), 113 sltion to the wishes of the merchant to whom the cargo of tea had been consigned. This consignee was one Richard Clarke, the ma- ternal grandfather of the distinguished lawyer who occupied the woolsack at the time Wil- liam IV. ascended the throne, and of whom we shall hear again. Mr. Clarke was a stern royalist, and actually returned to England on the declaration of American indejDendence. His daughter married Mr. Copley, the painter, and when she and her husband also came to England, John Singleton Copley was a little boy. At an early age he distinguished him- self as a lawyer, and when he visited Boston to transact some law business for his father the Boston men found out his talents, praised his tact and manners, and predicted his be- coming "a great man." Although he began his parliamentary career as a Radical, and first made himself felt by attacking Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Sid- mouth, Mr. Copley was not long in dropping into his proper place on the Tory side. In the short-lived ministry of Canning he appeared as a Canningite, was made lord-chancellor, and was one of the three peers whose very presence in the cabinet was cited as a proof that Canning could not possibly propose Ca- tholic emancipation. He had some claims to notice and even to honour as a law reformer, and initiated beneficial changes (as yet admit- tedly insufficient, but real) in the legal treat- ment of lunatics. He retained his seat on the woolsack until he had to resign it to Biougham in 1830, upon the formation of the ministry of Earl Grey. He held the office of attorney- general for two years, and it should be re- membered to his honour that during his term of office he instituted not a single press pro- secution. There was undoubtedly a great deal that was politically liberal in .the mind of Lyndhurst. He was a Tory of the school which begins its creed by thinking that the only safe constitution of society is that in which the masses are strictly governed by a few, who are by the theory superior to the rest, and which goes on to hold that even if the theory does not happen to be realized in the facts, the best course is to assume the con- trary for the sake of the general order. Tories Vol. I. of this school, if they have the mental, and, we may add, the moral characteristics of Lord Lyndhurst, are iLSually ready to allow a good deal of freedom to " the people," who by the theory, are not to be trusted with any. In general ability, power of work, and moral courage of a certain order Lord Lynd- hurst has rarely been excelled. We shall shortly find that it is of importance to our story to remember that he was a tactician and debater of the first class. As the conductor of the king's case against Caroline of Bruns- wick, when he was Sir John Copley and attor- ney-general, he had exhibited an acuteness and a steady "grip" of intellect which have never, perhaps, been surpassed. It was while he was chief baron in 1831 that Lord Lyndhurst gave the most remai'k- able example of his great ability as a judge, when he had to try an involved and difficult case of such enormous dimensions that it occupied twenty-one days in the Court of Exchequer. He did not deliver his judgment for nearly a year, and when the question was taken before the House of Lords it lasted forty-six days, and the mass of papers printed and written was so enormous in bulk that Lord Brougham remarked that he had been furnished with coiDies of the arguments used in the House of Lords alone, amounting to about 10,000 brief -sheets. "Through this tangled mass of disputed facts and of repre- sentations the purport of which was in issue, of minute and intricate details of transactions and accounts," says a writer of that day, "Lord Lyndhurst on each occasion proceeded with apparent ease, diffusing light and bring- ing into order the chaos he encountered." The lords decided against him by the vote of Lord Devon, but general admiration was elicited by the serene composure with which he submitted to the reversal of his decree, although he steadily adhered to his original opinion. Stories are told of the mutual admiration which subsisted between Lyndhurst (when Sir John Copley) and Canning. One of them is amusing, though it has in it some of the spice of opposition. When Copley in 1827 was delivering his famous speech against Catholic 3 114 GLxVDSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. emancipation, Canning justly expressed his surprise at the attack coming from such a quarter. Meanwhile somebody looking over Copley's shoulder had seen that he held in his hand a pamphlet against emancipation by Dr. Philpotts, afterwards Bishop of Exeter. Can- ning immediately received a hint of tliis, and added to his remarks, that the observations of the learned gentleman were not original. "I Iiave met them in print," said he. '"Dear Tom, this brown jug which now foams with mild ale Was once Tohj Philpotts.'" The story may or may not be absolutely authentic, but there is certainly a flavour of Canning about it. At all events Canning a few weeks afterwards, on the death of Lord Liverpool, the breaking up of the cabinet, and the resignation of Lord Eldon, off'ered Copley the chancellorship, with the intimation "non obstante Philpotto." They were days of broader wit and also of rougher manners than our own, and the famous judge then and later was rather sensitive to references to his former Whig or rather Radical opinions. When he asked Musgrave (afterwards Arch- bishop of York) to vote for him as member for Cambi'idge, the reply was, "/am a Whig still, sir," and pointing to a favourite dog which was lying under the candidate's chair, " Take care of that dog; he's a terrible fellow for vermin ! " More pleasant is it to turn to the generous traits by which Lyndhurst himself was eminently distinguished. That violent Radi- cal, Gale Jones, who was for years launching abuse and invective against him, wrote to him asking for charitable help, when he was old, and sick, and poor. Lord Lyndhurst handed the letter to his secretary, telling him to make out a cheque for five pounds for that poor man. "My lord, are you aware who this man is?" inquired the secretary. "No," replied Lyndhurst, "I do not recollect having before seen the name." "Why this is the notorious Gale Jones, who has been for so many years so grossly and virulently abusing your lordship." The letter was glanced at again, and then handed back with the reply, "Oh, never mind what he has been in the habit of saying about me ; the poor man seems to be in a very dis- tressed condition : get the cheque ready and send him the money." There was much cour- tesy and good-humour in the great exchequer judge; and among other instances it is recorded of him that when a newsvendor named Cleave was on his trial on a government information, and conducted his own defence, commencing with the observation that he was afraid before he sat down he should give some awkward examples of the truth of the adage that " he who acts as his own counsel has a fool for his client," — his lordshij) pleasantly replied, "Ah, Mr. Cleave, don't you mind that adage, it was framed by the lawyers!" and throughout the trial treated the defendant with much indul- The social and political conditions which have been indicated in the foregoing brief re- view of the influence maintained by some of the leaders of thought and action during the periods immediately following and succeeding the passing of the Reform Bill, were, as we have seen, undergoing great and rapid changes. The representation of the country in parlia- ment was not gi-eatly altered with regard to the retui-n of new men in place of those who had previously taken the direction of political parties, but there were several striking addi- tions to the legislative assembly returned by the elections under the new bill. Among these new members William Ewart Gladstone was soon destined to hold a place of distinction, for though he was one of the youngest members of the house, he made a considerable impression directly he began to address the electors of Newark. During the passing of the Reform Bill Mr. Gladstone was travelling in Italy, and it was in consequence of an intimation from the Duke of Newcastle, with whose son he was on terms of close in- timacy, that he was called upon to place him- self in nomination for the borough — a borough, by the by, which had always been represen- tative of the system of "nomination" bj^ which many eminent members had gained their seats. Sir Francis Burdett entered parliament by purchase of a seat from the trustees of the GLADSTONE CANDIDATE FOR NEWAEK. 115 Duke of Newcastle, who was then a minor. It is perhaps scarcely to be wondered at there- fore that the duke should have grown up to regard the borough of Newark as a kind of political property, and that he should have asked in relation to it, "Have I not a right to do what I like with my own?" — a saying which for some time became satirically pro- verbial in the mouths of Reformers. The ducal influence was at aU events strong enough to give the young candidate fair ex- pectations of being able to hold ground in a caiavass even against such an opponent as Mr. Serjeant Wilde, who was the nominee of the extreme Liberals. Quite apart from the cre- dentials with which he presented himself to the electors, howevei', Mr. Gladstone became popular as soon as he apjDeared in the town. Of the other two candidates, Mr. W. T. Hand- ley and Mr. Serjeant Wilde, the latter had three times before contested the borough — in 1829 and 1830, when he had been unsuccessful; and again in 1831, when he had been returned in opposition to the Duke of Newcastle's no- minee by the advanced " Blue " electors of the borough, who, on the occasion of his previous defeat, had presented him with a piece of plate to commemorate his efforts "to emancipate the borough from political thraldom and restore to its inhabitants the free exercise of their long-lost rights." Probably the dislike aroused by the duke's declaration with regard to his ownership of the borough may have done much to obtain the election of Serjeant Wilde in 1831, but ducal influence was still so great that, on the nomination of a candidate who had such qualifications as those possessed by Mr. Gladstone, the tide was very likely to turn, and turn it did, against the veteran who had once represented the borough, and in favour of the youthful aspirant who was only in his twenty-third year, and is described as robust in appearance, with a full face, plump features, large dark eyes and eyebrows, an attractive bearing, and a bright thoughtful look. He was of course pretty extensively supported by the friends of the duke : the members of the "Red Club" all gave him their votes, amount- ing to above 600, and he had numerous other promises of support, but he had to go through a rather searching ordeal from several electors, one of whom demanded whether he was not the Duke of Newcastle's nominee. To this Mr. Gladstone inquired what was his interrogator's definition of the word "nominee," and on being informed that it meant "a person sent by the Duke of New- castle to be pushed down the electors' throats whether they would or not," — of course de- clared that according to that definition he was not a nominee, that he came to Newark by the invitation of the Red Club, that the club sent to the Duke of Newcastle to know if he could recommend a candidate to them, and in consequence he was appealed to and accepted the invitation of the club. Another elector asked what the candidate thought of the passage in the 16th verse of the 22nd chapter of Exodus, which says, "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death;" and whether his (Mr. Gladstone's) father was not a dealer in human flesh? Of coui-se the latter part of the question needed and received no answer, as it was obviously intended only as an insult; but some other inquiries by the same interlocutor were answered, and there followed another long address from a third elector, and a sub- sequent discussion on the question of negro slavery — Mr. Gladstone declaring that he de- sired the emancipation of slaves upon such terms as would j^reserve them and the colonies from destruction, and that the slaves ought first to be fully jorepared for emancipation; opinions which were afterwards held (and not without some seeming justification from recent experience) by some of the advocates of "abolition" during the struggle in America. The subject of negro emancipation had formed no inconsiderable part of the address issued by the young candidate to the electors at Newark, and as that address illustrates the opinions which he held at that time it may be interesting to quote it at some length. It begins by saying, "I have not requested your favour on the ground of adherence to the ojiinions of any man or pai-ty, further than such adherence can be fairly understood from the conviction I have not hesitated to 116 GLADSTONE AND HIS C0NTEMP(3HArJES. avow, that we must watch and resist that uninquiring and indiscrimiuating desire for change amongst us, which threatens to pro- duce, along with partial good, a melancholy preponderance of mischief; which, I am per- suaded, would aggravate beyond computation the deep-seated evils of our social state, and the heavy burdens of our industrial classes ; which, by disturbing our peace, destroys con- fidence and strikes at the root of prosperity. Thus it has done already, and thus, we must therefore believe, it will do. "For the mitigation of those evils we must, I think, look not only to particular measures, but to the restoration of sounder general principles. I mean especially that principle on which alone the incorporation of religion with the state in our constitution can be defended ; that the duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly religious; and that legislatures, like individuals, are bound to carry throughout their acts the sj^irit of the high truths they have acknowledged. Prin- ciples are now arrayed against our institu- tions; and not by truckling nor by tem- porizing — not by oppression nor corruption ^but by principles they must be met. "Among their first results should be a sedulous and special attention to the interests of the poor, founded upon the rule that those who are the least able to take care of them- selves should be most regarded by others. Particularly it is a duty to endeavour, by every means, that labour may receive adequate remuneration; which, unhappily, among several classes of our fellow-countrymen is not now the case. "Whatever measures, therefore — whether by correction of the poor-laws, allot- ment of cottage grounds, or otherwise — tend to promote this object, I deem entitled to the warmest support, with all such as are calcu- lated to secure sound moral conduct in any class of society. "I proceed to the momentous question of Slavery, which I have found entertained among you in that candid and temperate spirit which alone befits its nature, or promises to remove its difficulties. If I have not recog- nized the right of an irresponsible society to interpose between me and the electors, it has not been from any disrespect to its members, nor from unwillingness to answer theirs or any other questions on which the electors may desire to know my views. To the esteemed secretary of the society I submitted my rea- sons for silence ; and I made a point of stating these views to him, in his character of a voter. "As regards the abstract lawfulness of Slavery, I acknowledge it simply as import- ing the right of one man to the labour of another; and I rest it upon the fact that Scripture, the paramount authority upon such a point, gives directions to persons standing in the relation of master to slave, for their conduct in that relation ; whereas, were the matter absolutely and necessarily sinfid, it would not regulate the manner. Assuming sin as the cause of degradation, it strives, and strives most effectually, to cure the latter by extirpating the former. "We are agreed, that both the physical and the moral bondage of the slave are to be abolished. The question is as to the oi-der, and the order only; now Scripture attacks the moral evil before the temporal one, and the temporal through the moral one, and I am content with the order which Scripture has established. " To this end, I desire to see immediately set on foot, by impartial and sovereign autho- rity, an universal and efficient system of Christian instruction, not intended to resist designs of individual piety and wisdom for the religious improvement of the negroes, but to do thoroughly what they can only do par- tially. " As regards immediate emancipation, whether with or without compensation, there are several minor reasons against it ; but that which weighs with me is, that it would, I much fear, exchange the evils now affecting the negro for others which are weightier — for a relapse into deeper debasement, if not for bloodshed and internal war. Let fitness be made a condition for emancipation ; and let us strive to bring him to that fitness by the shortest possible course. Let him enjoy the means of earning his freedom through honest and industrious habits ; thus the same instru- ments which attain his liberty shall likewise GLADSTONE'S TORYISM. 117 render him competent to use it; and thus, I earnestly trust, without risk of blood, without violation of projierty, with unimjiaired benefit to the negro, and with the utmost speed which prudence will admit, we shall arrive at that exceedingly desirable consummation, the utter extinction of slavery." It will be seen by this address that Mr. Gladstone touched with emphasis, and with skilled emphasis too, upon those topics which were presently to stir the national heart and to demand the earnest consideration of the legislature. He had no opportunity at the nomination either to repeat or to enforce these views ; for Serjeant Wilde being the first speaker, led off with an oration of such inordi- nate length that there was neither time nor patience left for those who had to follow. So few hands were held up for Mr. Gladstone that a poll was demanded on his behalf, and he was ultimately returned by a good majority, the numbers being — Gladstone, 882 ; Handley, 793 ; and Wilde, 719 — a success which it was declared by some of his opponents had been achieved by the ducal influence and the coer- cion of voters, and was therefore another argument in favour of " the ballot." Of course such statements made in a time of electioneering excitement must be regarded as the national expression of party antagon- ism, and — though the new member had on another occasion delivered a speech full of "sound constitutional sentiments," in course of which he stated that he could not support the abolition of the newspaper stamp duty, on the ground that these taxes not only increased the revenue, but tended to check too great a circulation of bad matter — it was not long before Newark had occasion to be proud of its representative. None could then foresee that he would shake off the eai'ly surroundings which bound him to the Tory party, for he had shown few signs of becoming a great Liberal statesman, whose views would be in some re- spects more "advanced" than those of several prominent Eadicals of his own early days. CHAPTER III. THE MEN AND MEASURES OF EEFOEM. Hard Work of the Reformed Parliament — Wellington's Tactics — Irish Disaffection — Opposition to the Tithe — The Irish Church — O'ConneU and Repeal — Dismissal of the Whig Ministry— Melbourne and Brougham — WilUam IV. and the Irish Prelates — Russell and the Peel Ministry — Gladstone on the Irish Church — Abolition of Slavery — Gladstone on Negro Emancipation — Apprenticeship — Atrocities of the West India Planters — The Jamaica Assembly — Complete Emancipation — Buxton — W'Uberforce — Free Negro Labour — Burning of the Houses of Parliament — The new Poor-law — Orange Lodges — Chartism — Trades-unions — The Factories' Act — Church and Dissent — The Anatomy Act — Hannah More — Coleridge — Death of William IV. — Palmerston — General condition of Parties and of the Country — Gladstone in 1838 — Corporation Reform — France and Spain — Louis Philippe — Charles Louis Napoleon in London — At Strasburg — Social Influences in England. In the storm of agitation which had carried the Eef orm Bill through parliament, or rather driven it through, all the winds of political controversy were naturally set free. The new men found plenty of inevitable work cut out for them, and they had pledges to redeem. On every hand there were " burning " ques- tions demanding the answer of the hour ; but in addition to all this there were other ques- tions — real, indeed, and sure to find an answer some day, but not needing just then to be hotly pressed — and these were eagerly thrust np to the front by partisans who would not wait. It is perhaps only by a crowding and jostling process of this kind that vigorous movement in politics can be kept up under a constitution like ours; but it has its inconveniences even for the party of movement. It is with the name of Lord John Eussell, and with a much later date than the one immediately before us, that the word " finality " as applied to reform connects itself most vividly in people's memo- ries, but the thing itself was really of earlier date. The " rush " of the demands for change made upon the first reformed parliament frightened some of the Whigs, and a few of the more timid took refuge from this new pressure in the doctrine that the Eeform Bill was a final measure. This, however, is a very grave matter. A subject which looks much less so, but which really had consequences, was the new pressure of sheer hard work which members found was inevitable. There was no dawdling now. Macaulay writes to Lord Mahon in 1832 : — "We are now strictly on duty. No furloughs even for a dinner engagement, or a sight of Taglioni's legs, can be obtained. It is very hard to keep forty members in the house. Telthorpe and Leader are on the spot to count us out, and from six to ten we never venture farther than the smoking-room without appre- hension." Power of work, indeed, involving immense physical energy, was what the times now began to demand in any man who took a leading part, whether in trade, jiolitics, or otherwise. The days were gone by when a man of the stamp of Canning could hold the reins of an empire. It was far from just of Sydney Smith to taunt that great man, year after year, with being a mere joker ; but after all, the times were changed. Speeches still counted for much in the House of Commons and out of it; but business is the modern watchword, and it requires a strong back, a clear head, and immense staying power. In the old days Pitt or Sheridan might get up half -tipsy to make an oration; but where would be the command of detail which now began to be required in parliament, with ten thousand critical eyes out of doors on the THE HARD WORK OF PARLIAMENT. look-out for an ei-ror ? It was well said thirty years ago by the keenest of parliamentary observers, that after the passing of the Reform BiU politicians fell suddenly upon "days in which a glass of sherry taken at the wrong moment might change the whole aspect of affairs — might lose a bill, or in some other way precipitate a failure." That is tiue. The men who succeed in piiblic life are, as a rule, men of great physical force and greater self- command. Even more amusing than Mac- aulay's letter to Lord Mahon is an entry in the diary of Mr. (now Sir) Edward Baines of Leeds, who seems to have been much startled by the work he found cvit out for him in the reformed parliament :— '■^Monday. — Rose at six, much refreshed by two successive good nights' rest. Read parlia- mentary papers and reports till eight. From the hour of post till half-past eleven corre- sponded with constituents. At twelve at- tended the house to present petitions; but standing low on the ballot had not been called when the house adjourned at three. At- tended committee till four. House resumed at five; debate continued till nearly midnight; real business then began ; continued till three in the morning, when the house adjourned. Walked home by morning twilight. Tuesday. — Rose at seven. Read over papers to be printed that day. Resumed correspondence after the arrival of the post with ten letters. Attended the house at half-past eleven. In luck; name drawn out of the jar early; got in petitions afterwards. Attended committee till three. House resumed at five; sat till two o'clock next morning. Wednesday. — Rose at seven. Attended to correspondence till twelve. Walked till two. Applied at the Board of Trade for information res^Decting the repeal of duties, and at the War Office for a soldier's discharge. Attended the house at five; sat till half -past eleven. Thursday. — Rose at half- past six. Resumed perusal of poor-law reports. Quite overwhelming ! A Bill should he intro- duced to enable members to think and read by steam-poiver. Attended the morning sitting; from thence to two committees. The house sat again at five ; sat till half -past one o'clock in the morning. Friday. — Resumed perusal 119 of documents at eight. Attended committee from twelve till four. The house sat at five; continued the sitting till three next morning. A great deal of business done after midnight." In one passage of this diary Mr. Baines mentions ten letters by the morning's post, as if it were a considerable number. But four hundred letters a day is not an unusual num- ber for a cabinet minister of the third rank. The Duke of Wellington, though the steady opponent of reform in parliament up to the hour at which he saw it became inevitable, made himself useful in helping — in his own way — to pass it, when the time came. He "managed" his fellow-peers, or some of them, and thus served his king and his country in his characteristic way. With all his genius for military command, he was essentially a great servant, not an originator. He worked not only all the better for having a task set him,— there is no proof that he could have even made a mark on the world by working except under orders in some sense. There is indeed every presumption against the suppo- sition that he could. To say that he was aware of his own limitations would probably be wide of the mark ; for, first of all, he had no imagination, and, secondly, he never showed any of that fretful ambition which so often marks the man who is aware that he cannot do all he would like to do, or all he is expected to do. Though not a conceited man, he always exhibited an amount of quiet self- satisfaction, or satisfaction with his work, which was remarkable. His cue all through life, whether as soldier or politician, was either to win his own game or that of his mas- ters, or else to retreat in good order. On the question of Catholic emanci2:)atiou he had re- treated in order. On the question of the Re- form Bill he resisted up to the last moment, even to the very verge of revolution, — he re- sisted sword in hand, with guns loaded to the muzzle, — and then, when he saw resistance was useless, retreated in good order. Later in life this remarkable man avowed, in a letter to Lord Derby, the princijile on which he had always acted. " For many years," he said, " I have endeavoured to manage the House of Lords u^Jon the principle on which I conceive 120 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. that the institution exists iu the constitution of the country — that of conservatism. I have in- variably objected to all violent and extreme measures. I have invariably supported the government in parliament upon important oc- casions, and have always exercised my personal influence to prevent the mischief of anything like a difference or division between the two houses." The candour of this would be amus- ing if the question itself were not so serious. In continuing to address the peer upon whom he flung his mantle his grace was even more communicative. "My opinion," he said, "is that the great object of all is that you should assume the station and exercise the influence which I have so long exercised in the House of Lords. The question is, How is that object to be attained? By guiding their opinion and decision, or by following it? You wiU see that I have endeavoured to guide their opinion, and have succeeded on some most remarkable occasions. But it has been by a good deal of management." Here we have the philosophy of beating an orderly retreat iu politics put in veiy small compass, and we shall soon see once more how ready the retired soldier was to help to carry on the king's government at any cost of indi- vidual responsibility. The most fiercely "burning" question at the moment when parliament met on the 29th of January, 1833, was still the disturbances in Ireland. The royal speech, commencing with a recommendation carefully to consider the renewal of the charters of the Bank of Eng- land and the East India Company, touched on the necessity for correcting some abuses in the Church — a more equitable distribution of her revenues, and a just commutation of the tithes levied in Ireland; but the main part of the king's attention was directed to a proposed conference for the purpose of repressing Irish disturbances, and to a request that both Houses of Parliament would confer on the government additional powers for pun- ishing the disturbers of the public peace, and for preserving that legislative union between the two countries, which he was determined to maintain by all the measi;res in his power, as " indissolubly connected with the peace, security, and welfare of his people." It may surprise some modern readers of reports of parliamentary proceedings to hear that in the debate on the address O'Connell denounced the endorsement of the royal mes- sage as a "bloody, brutal, and unconstitu- tional " document — "a declaration of civil war." ..." The Irish people were and ever had been innocent and blameless. True it was that deeds of violence and crime had ' increased in that beautiful country ; but why had they increased ? The mover of the address had ascribed the increase to agitation; but he and the other friends of ministers seemed to have forgotten that it was only last year they themselves had been reproached as agi- tators, exciting the people to supjaort changes and innovations which the people did not originally desire or care for !" The latter was an acute and ingenious touch, and was fol- lowed by the bold declaration that when he and his friends "had most agitated Ireland for emancipation, tranquillity had most prevailed. The Whigs had been liding rough-shod over Ireland ; increase of crime had followed, and always would follow, increase of foi'ce and violence. . . . An unreformed jiarliament had passed two acts relative to Ireland which even an Algerian government would not have sanctioned. A reformed parliament, it ap- peared, was now about to pass another to put an end to agitation ; but he would tell them that it would be many and many a day before they could frame an act capable of effecting their object." Of course these subtle and clever twists and turns, illustrative of, but suj^erior to, a great deal of oratory on Irish affairs which has been heard since, could not mislead those who listened to them from the facts of the case. When O'Connell and his adherents chose to withhold the checks they exercised on the agitators, outi'age invarial)ly follow-ed, and could be used either for the pui'pose of menacmg or of taunting the government. It is probable, too, that O'Connell himself could not control all the secret societies which had been formed either for treasonable or for nefarious purposes, or both. There were THE IRISH COERCION BILL. 121 Whitefeet, so named, it is believed, because the membei-s drew white stockings over their shoes ; and these gave rise to the Blackf eet ; there were Whiteboys, and it is quite probable that there were Blackboys — who disguised themselves or concealed their faces. Under various names gangs of ruffians set the law at defiance. There was no j^rotection for life and property. Those who refused to submit to the dictates of these lawless bands or their emis- saries were murdered in open day and before witnesses, who would not or dared not ajjpear against the criminals. Jurymen were intimi- dated ; witnesses were either molested — some- times were slain — or were obliged to leave the country; and even magistrates were in con- stant peril of paying with theii* lives for honestly performing their duty. During the year 1832 there had been above 9000 crimes committed in relation to these political dis- turbances. Of these 242 were homicides ; 328 were shooting at peo2:)le with intent to kill ; 568 were setting fire to houses or property; 723 attacks on houses ; 290 maiming cattle ; 796 injuries to property; 401 burglaries; 1179 robberies; 161 serious assaults; 353 illegal reviews; 427 illegal meetings; 2094 illegal notices; 163 administering illegal oaths; 117 robberies of arms; 20 turning up of land; 8 resistances to legal processes ; 2 taking forcible possession ; and 20 resistances to tithes. The total number of crimes committed in the months of July, August, and September was 1297, but they had increased to 1646 com- mitted in the last three months of the year. There could be little doubt that some stringent measures were necessary for the deliverance of the peaceable members of the community from a reign of terror. Even some of the fol- lowers of O'Connell admitted that a coercion bill would alone be efficacious for the protec- tion of life and property ; and Mr. Davenport Hill, the member for Hull, had disclosed that the admission had been made by one of the princii^al opponents of the bill itself. He was challenged by half the followers of the great agitator after he had repeated this declara- tion, but Lord Althorp came to the rescue and manfully stood by him. Just as the previous coercion bill had been immediately followed by one of reUef— by the extension of the franchise, the measure now pro])osed in the House of Lords by Earl Grey was to be accompanied by some remedial adjustments; but the repression came first. Any disturbed districts which were proclaimed by the lord-lieutenant were to be under courts- martial— which were, however, prohibited from trying ofiences to which the penalty of death was attached without special authorization from the lord - lieutenant, while in no case could they inflict the capital punishment, their powers being limited to a sentence of trans- portation. A king's counsel or serjeant-at-law was to attend each of these courts as judge- advocate, and all persons apprehended were to be brought to trial within the space of three calendar months, or were to be dis- charged. But on the other hand, all persons absent from their houses between sunset and sunrise were punishable ; warrants were issued for searching houses for arms and ammuni- tion, and the refusal to give them up was a criminal offence. The distribution of sedi- tious papers was also punishable. The habeas corpus act was practically suspended in the proclaimed districts, and this will of course account for the limits placed on the period within which prisoners were to be brought to trial or set at liberty. Of course O'Connell and " his tail " — as his followers were called — used every means for obstructing the progress of the bill; and it was delayed until the 25th of March, when with a few alterations it passed the House of Commons by a very large majority (345 to 80), and went up to the lords, where strong objections were taken to one of the most sig- nificant of the concessions— namely, that re- sistance to the payment of tithes should not be made a reason for proclaiming a disturbed district. The clause was retained, however, the bill passed, and had no sooner been put in force (in the county of Kilkenny) than the number of crimes considerably diminished, although it had not become necessary to hold a court-martial — an alternative which had been avoided by the passing of another bill, empowering the Court of Queen's Bench to try causes in an adjoining county or in Dublin 122 GLADSTONE AND HIS COXTEMPOEAEIES. whenever there was reason to suspect that prosecutors, jurors, or witnesses would be sub- ject to intimidation in the county where the offence had been committed. But the question of the Protestant Church in Ireland and the payment of tithes and cess followed immediately on the passing of the coercion bill. These taxes had long been resisted by the Irish Eoman Catholics, who complained bitterly of being compelled even by force to support a Chui'ch the presence of which in the country they regarded as a token of their subjection. Nothing would satisfy them but the rejDeal of all tithes and cess for maintaining an establishment which absorbed its own revenues, and in which they had no interest; but the ministry had no intention of disestablishing the Protestant Church in Ire- land. They wei'e willing, and even anxious, to reform it, and even to some extent to dis- endow it, if by such means they could decrease the burden which it imjDosed on the Irish people — and so could enable it to assume a less hostile attitude. But the means by which it was projjosed to effect these objects failed to satisfy the Eepealers, and aroused violent opposition, not only from the Tory party, but from many of the supporters of the ministry, who regarded the measure as one of confisca- tion and the destruction of the Protestant Church in Ireland. On the revenues of the Church, amounting to about ^800,000 a year, a tax was to be imposed, varying from five to fifteen per cent, according to the value of the several bishoprics, and on livings with above £200 per annum. These taxes were to be in place of the payment of " first-fruits," to which the holders of the benefices had previously been subject, and were to be applied by eccle- siastical commissioners to the abolition of church "cess," to the augmentation of poor livings, the building of glebe-houses and churches, and other improvements. The num- ber of bishops was to be reduced from twenty- two to twelve, the number of archbishops from four to two ; the large revenues of the primate and the Bishop of Derry were to be decreased to the respective amounts of £10,000 and £8000 a year. It was even intended to institute an improved method of dealing with the lands held by the bishops, so that, without diminishing the income they then enjoyed, a considerable sum might be saved and devoted to secular purjooses. Of course this proposi- tion received the approval of the Dissenters and the Eadicals, as well as the Eepealers, since it seemed to foreshadow a similar appli- cation of ecclesiastical property in England ; but it was regarded with intense dislike even by members of the cabinet, and Lord Althorp was unable to maintain his position against the vehement antagonism of Mr. Stan- ley, the opposition of Sir James Graham and the Earl of Eipon, and the objections of the premier himself. It was certain, too, that such a clause would never be accepted by the House of Lords without a revival of the struggle which had so long deferred the pass- ing of the reform bill. The "desi^oiling" clause was therefore abandoned, much to the disgust of the party who had regarded it as the most important part of the measure. Even then the hostility with which the bill was met in the upiDer house, where Lord Eldon declared that he would ojipose it to the end of his life and the utmost of his power, seemed likely to delay it to another session, but the cabinet began to talk of resigning, and, remem- bering the crisis of 1832, the lords made some alterations, which were agreed to on the 2d of August, and the bill passed, O'Counell con- temptuously observing that their lordships had not made it much worse than they found it, and declai'ing that it could only be regarded as a trifling instalment of the enormous debt due to Ireland. It appeared, indeed, as though the concession was quite beside the true ques- tion of the hour, which was the collection of the tithes. For a long time past the resist- ance to this tax had been so violent that the clergy who attempted to enforce it were in constant dread of assassination ; and the tithe- proctor was even far more detested than the exciseman, and was almost placed outside the pale of humanity. An attempt to extort the payment of the ecclesiastical impost frequently terminated in a fatal affray, and as the sum recovered was often no more, and was some- times even less, than the cost of collection, the clergy who depended on it were in constant "JOHNNY HAS UPSET THE COACH." 123 disti'ess, and were frequently in a state of starvation. No expedient sufficed to jjut an end to these disastrous conditions. A million sterling had been advanced to the clergy as a loan. An attempt had been made to convert the tithe to a land-tax, and to leave the collec- tion to government officers, but the opposition was unabated, for no disguise sufficed to change the nature of the demand, or to deprive it of the intolerable character of a tax for the su])- port of a Church which it was declai'ed should have no place in the country — at all events unless it could be sustained at the cost of those who belonged to its communion. The course of these repeated debates on the Irish Church and the condition of Ireland, bear so remarkable a likeness to those with which we are at this moment familiar, and the proposals are so suggestive of the legis- lation which has only recently been accom- plished, that we may be pardoned for dwell- ing at some length on this early proceeding of the reformed parliament, even though, as we all know, and as Lord John Russell has told us, the Established Church in Ireland was discussed in 1835, inquired into in 1836, but not disestablished and disendowed till 1869. But the discussion in 1835 was pre- ceded by a statement made in the session of 1834 by Mr. Ward, the member for St. Albans, which had the effect of giving con- sistency to the demands made by the Whigs that the revenues of the Established Church in Ireland should be readjusted, and a portion of them appropriated to secular uses. Only about a fourteenth part of the Irish popula- tion belonged to the Protestant communion. The collection of the tithe had been the cause of prolonged and fierce opposition, and the country was in such a condition that an army equal to that required for India was main- tained there — the military force varying from 19,000 to 23,000 men. In 1833 this army had cost the country above a million of money, and the police force above half a million. Nearly 18,000 tithe cases had been tried, and it had cost £26,000 to collect £12,000 from persons the majority of whom were Roman Catholics, and who therefore resisted an im- post for the exclusive benefit of Protestant institutions. The revenues of the Irish Pro- testant Church were stated to be a million; but the money was so ill distributed that while the rector of a parish containing only ten or twelve Protestants, including the mem- bers of his own family, might receive £800 or £1000 a year — and a large number of the clergy were non-resident — the hard-working curates had to subsist on sums the average of which was £70, while some of them were as low as £18 a year. Lord John Russell had already grown so warm on the subject that on a previous even- ing, when Lord Stanley had stated that he adhered to his former opinions, Lord John rose, and, under the impression that his col- league had intended to refer to his support of the permanence of the Irish Church, at once gave an explanation of his own views. His speech was received with immense cheering; but Stanley scribbled a note to Sir James Graham containing the memorable words, " Johnny has ujjset the coach ! " • Mr. Ward's motion was moderate enough — "That the Protestant Episcopal Establish- ment in Ireland exceeds the spuitual wants of the Protestant population; and that it being the right of the state to regulate the distribution of church property in such man- ner as parliament may determine, it is the opinion of this house that the temporal posses- sions of the Church of Ireland, as now estab- lished by law, ought to be reduced." Grote seconded the joroposal, saying that when the advocates for the repeal of the union put for- ward the evils arising from the Irish Church Establishment, no man replied to them. The discussion would probably have been a lively one, for the ministry itself was di- vided on the question ; but after Grote had spoken Lord Althorp rose to say that cii'cum- stances which had come to his knowledge since he entered the house, induced him to move the adjoxirnment of the debate. The circumstances were the resignation of four members of the cabinet — the Earl of Ripon, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, and the Duke of Richmond, Their places were filled, but the new, or rather the patched ministry, was little nearer to agree- ment than before. The motion was got rid of 124 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMi'ORAPJES. by the apjjointmeut of a commission of in- quiry, and parliament gave its attention to a new bill first for changing the tithe into a rent charge, and for commuting the amount of tithe received by the clergy in consequence of its being collected for them. It was during the discussion on the modifications of this measure that the fiery Stanley — afterwards, when Lord Derby, known as "the Rixpert of debate" — turned furiously on his former colleagues, whom he compared to thimble- riggers at a country fair. He denounced one part of the plan as " petty larceny, for it had not the redeeming quality of bold and open robbery ; " and his address was so violent that he afterwards apologized to Earl Grey for the disrespectful language he had used. But the noble earl was soon to be subjected to an attack so scandalous that the mere heated words of debate might well have been forgotten. It was proposed to renew the coercion act, which had already been so effec- tual in diminishing crime and outrage in Ire- land; but while Earl Grey and some other members of the cabinet desired to maintain the clauses forbidding public meetings, others, including Lord Althorp, were in favour of re- linquishing them. O'Connell had already organized a deter- mined opposition to the clauses which so materially affected his influence as an agitator, and reduced the tribute or the " rent " which he received from his followers. So skilful were his plans that he was able to obtain the return of a "Repealer" to represent Wexford, where there was a vacancy, even against the influence of the "Whigs. But he also prepared an Eiddress to the reformers of England and Ireland, denouncing the government, and especially Earl Grey, in terms which are amazing. "Is it just," he asked, "that Ire- land should be insulted and trampled on merely because the insanity of the wretched old man who is at the head of the ministry develops itself in childish liatred and maniac contempt of the people of Ireland?" No minister, he declared, " ever had one-twen- tieth, perhaps not one-fiftieth part of the number of relations receiving public pay, nor so few deserving such payment." The ministry had not "one single friend nor even one nomi- nal friend in Ireland." The head of the ad- ministration was "an insane dotard." We have heard or read some violent language in Irish addresses since that time ; but even Irish professed agitators, if they have a seat in parliament, would now hesitate to use lan- guage such as this even under exti'eme provo- cation. The worst of it was that at this juncture Lord WeUesley, the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, who had first supported the obnoxious clauses, wrote a half-intimation that he was inclined to abandon them with a view to passing the bill moi'e readily through the house. Lord Althorp, in a manner quite inconsistent with his usual guarded conduct as leader of the house, allowed Mr. Littleton, the chief secre- tary for Ireland, to hint to O'Connell that the coercion act would not be renewed in its for- mer rigour. It may be imagined what was his dismay when he discovered that the clauses were to be retained, and what an explosion took place when he had to undeceive the agi- tator — who at once charged him with inten- tional treachery, brought the matter before the house, and called on him to resign. "The pig's killed," said Lord Althorp to Lord John Russell after O'ConneU's denunciation ; and he at once sent in his resignation, which Lord Grey laid before the king accomiDanied with his own. "At a meeting of tlie cabinet in the even- ing," says Lord Russell in his Recollections, " Lord Grey placed before us the letters con- taining his own resignation and that of Lord Althorp, which he had sent early in the morn- ing to the king. He likewise laid before us the king's gracious acceptance of his resigna- tion, and he gave to Lord Melbourne a sealed letter from his majesty. Lord Melbourne, upon opening this letter, found in it an invi- tation to him to undertake to form a govern- ment. Seeing that nothing was to be done that night, I left the cabinet and went to the opera." The king was in a hurry to accept the resig- nation of the Whig minister and the chancellor of the exchequer, and the reason soon became apparent. He thought he could induce ]Mel- LORD BROUGHAM'S QUARREL WITH LORD DURHAM. 125 bourne to try to form a coalition government, with the Duke of "Wellington and Sir Robert Peel in the administration; but Melbourne was far too sagacious to make such an attemjjt. The other membei's of the ministry were not eager to resign, and the only difficulty was to induce Lord Althorp to take office again. In any other man such a step might have ap- peared as though his previous resignation had been for the purpose of changing chiefs ; but as Lord Stanley said, Lord Althorp might have intrigued to get out of office, but it was quite incredible that he would have intrigued to remain in it. This was tnie, for Althorp hated political life. He used to say, " Nature intended me to be a grazier, but men will insist on making me a statesman." He told Lord John Russell that every morning when he woke, while he was in office, he wished himself dead. By the end of the year (1834) he was able to obtain liberty. But it is necessary to turn aside for a moment to catch the true light of the situa- tion. To the year 1834 belongs a "personal" episode in the history of Brougham and Lord Durham which had more than personal con- sequences. At the grand banquet to Earl Grey given on the Calton Hill — an event to which reference has been already made, — Lord Brougham distingaiished himself in his most perverse manner. His lordship had, as we shall see by-and-by, already made himself an object of popular dislike by the part he had taken in the New Poor-law discussions, and still more by defending the unwise and unjust treatment of the Dorchester labourers ; but the sentence on those poor men had al- ready been reversed, and if he could have held his tongue only a very little, repressed his gladiatorial habits, and let Lord Durham alone, he might have recovered some of his popularity and the Whigs might have kept office. But none of these things were to hap- pen. Lord Durham, son-in-law to Earl Grey, was at this banquet. He was well known as an advanced reformer ; while Brougham had been showing from time to time that he had aristocratic tastes which he could not govern, and had in fact allied himself with those Whisjs who professed to treat the Reform Bill as a final measure. In the speech he delivered at the banquet he made, as was his wont to the last, gratuitous and mischievous remarks. Having boasted — for his language was not very bashful — of the part he had taken in public aiFairs, and j^roclaimed that he had not deserted the cause of the people, he took an opportunity of aiming a side-blow at rash politicians who wanted to force on the hands of the dial. Then came a scene. The Earl of Durham, in his speech, said with great energy and with a clear allusion to Lord Brougliam's words, that for his part he re- gretted every hour which passed over without some attempt to remedy admitted abuses. This sally was received, as the speaker in- tended it should be, with loud cheers; and many an eye was turned, more or less fur- tively, more or less keenly, on Lord Brougham, who sat looking very hot, angi-y, and uncom- fortable. It was well known that there was a half-suppressed quarrel between the two, and the political and other friends treated the case as if it were that of two game-cocks pitted against each other, and did their best to " work up " both the combatants. In a sjieech made at Salisbury, Lord Brougham soon after- wards had the bad taste to deliver himself of a pretty plain challenge to Lord Durham to meet him in the House of Lords and fight out the quarrel on the question. This was not allowed to droj), and at a banquet given at Glasgow in honour of Lord Durham, that noble lord ojoenly took up the glove which had been thrown down to him. Indeed the words seem almost unnecessarily plain: — "He has been pleased to challenge me to meet him in the House of Lords. I know well the meaning of the taunt. He is aware of his great superiority over me in one respect; he is a practised orator and powerful debater. I am not. I speak but seldom in parliament, and always with reluctance in an assembly where I meet with no sympathy from an unwilling majority. He knows full well the advantage he has over me; and he knows, too, that in any attack which he may make on me in the House of Lords he will be warmly and cordially supported by them. 126 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. With all these advantages I fear him not, and I will meet him there if it be unfortu- nately necessary to repeat what he has been pleased to call my criticisms." But if this language sounds nowadays rather strong, it must be remembered that Brougham had actually charged Durham (in an article in the Edinburgh Revieiu) with betraying cabinet secrets — a subject on which Brougham was very sore. So then the battle was to come off on the meeting of parliament. But it never did. And what occurred to pre- vent the fight was not of a nature to displease the Earl of Durham. The duel in the House of Lords never came off, because the king dismissed his ministers. In the spring of 1834 there had been signs of a downfall for the "Whigs. The government were receiving defeat after defeat. Earl Grey was getting weary. Althorp never rose in the morning without dreading the day that was before him. What with the Irish Church question, and what with resignations in con- sequence of differences in the cabinet on that question and other questions, it was impos- sible that things could go on as they were. Lord Eldon professed himself scandalized by the manner in which the Whigs stuck to place without power, and wrote that it was some- thing quite new in English politics. The old Tories looked calmly on, certain that a change could not be far off; the Duke of Well- ington and Peel not concealing, or hardly con- cealing, their pleasure at the way in which things were drifting. At last came the resignation of Lord Al- thorp, and then Earl Grey resigned. After this, however, the cabinet was j^ut together again in a fashion which did not promise much, Lord Althoi'p returning to place as chancellor of the exchequer, while the facile and not too anxious Melbourne became premier. Meanwhile the Tories could very well see what was in the air, and the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were quietly laying their heads together. In August the king prorogued ])arliament, and there was a general sense of deaduess in political matters. There had been something uneasy in the at- mosphere, and there still was; but there was so little expectation of a crash that Sir Robert Peel had taken himself off for a tour upon the Continent, and other greater and smaller centres of political force had dispersed them- selves in various ways, not supposing they would be wanted. King William IV., influenced partly by his wife and partly by himself (so to speak), was getting old and uneasy, and wanted quiet days. He sent for Lord Melbourne, and pro- posed to him the formation of a hybrid govern- ment which should be strong enough to carry on the aflairs of the country without further concession either to the Radicals in the house or the people outside of it. The Duke of Wel- lington, Sir Robert Peel, and Mr. Stanley (a distinguished debater, who was never at heart a Liberal) were the chief persons upon whom his majesty had cast his eye, and to whom he determined, if jDossible, to tlirow the handkerchief. Lord Melbourne, informed of the king's wishes, addressed to him a wise and temperate expostulation. But death, the great power which compels so many changes, was soon to do something which should supersede discussion, or at all events which should be made the pretext for cutting dis- cussion short. On the 10th of November in this year Earl Spencer died, and Lord Althorp succeeded to his place in the upper house. Almost immediately afterwards Lord Melbourne went to the pavilion at Brighton — how strangely the words read now ! — to see the king about the appointment of a new chancellor of the exchequer. But Melbourne was as uneasy as any one, and had no love of power. He would have been glad enough to retire if the king had wanted to make the new Earl Spencer premier in his place; and he frankly asked his sovereign, the " reform- ing monarch," if he would like to make any change beyond that of appointing a new chan- cellor of the exchequer, although he (Lord Melbourne) was as willing to attempt to "carry on the king's government" as the duke himself could be. But the reforming monarch, though not a clever man, had his notions, and was bent on getting rid of the Whigs, and doing something to stop the course of political change. He felt LORD MELBOURNE'S CHARACTERISTICS. 127 his way with an ingenuity that did him credit. He inquired of Melbourne, among other things, who was to be intrusted with the leadership of the House of Commons, now Althorp was withdrawn. Melbourne sug- gested Lord John Russell, assuring the king that the Liberals would gladly accept him as lieutenant. At this, however, the monarch shook his head, maintaining that poor Lord John had neither the abilities nor the in- fluence which would qualify him for the post. He even indulged himself in the criti- cism that he would make a poor figure as a speaker in opposition to Peel and Stanley. By this time Lord Melbourne's task was becoming a very uneasy one. Lord Brougham had already made no secret of his feeling that the debating jDower of the cabinet in the House of Commons was weak, or at all events that the government suffered much in con- sequence of not using the power they had. Brougham's language is so characteristic of the man that it is well worth quoting in part at least. " It is quite in vain," said his lord- ship, "to conceal from ourselves that the government is seriously damaged, both in the eyes of the country, and even of the House of Commons itself. This is in part unavoidable, because it had been extravagantly popular — because absurd expectations, impossible to be realized, had been formed — and because all governments, after being a little while in office, have to contend with the selfishness of disappointed individuals and the fickleness of an unreasonable public ; and all this we should long ago have felt (indeed were beginning to feel three months after we came in), but for the excitement of the Reform question. But a great part, I firmly believe the greater pait, of our unpopularity is owing to ourselves ; and to come at once to the point, the cabinet ministers in the House of Commons either despise then' adversai'ies or fear them; I should rather say they despise some and fear others — and the error is equally great, and will soon be equally fatal in both cases. Grant and Graham sit as if they had not the gift of one tongue apiece (I sjieak on Whit- suntide). Palmerston I pass : it would be most unjust to expect anything from him, worked and worn to death as he has been; but Grant and Graham are wholly without excuse. Robert Grant is as loquacious as his brother to the full, but he is not in the cabinet. I speak now of cabinet ministers. How can men in the back rows get up and take part in debate when tbe government itself abandons its case? Althorp is admirable and invalu- able, but he is also quite indiff"ereut, and cares not how much either himself or any one else is attacked. What with his indifi"erence, Grant's indolence, and Graham's alarms, we are left entirely to Stanley and Spring Rice. The former is a host in himself ; the latter is, next to him, by far our best man for debat- ing. Lord John, too, is invaluable, and shows a sjjirit and debates with an efl'ect which are admirable. And in former times that force would have been quite enough, when there was but one debate in a week, and two or three speeches only were attended to. But now things are mightily changed. The debate ranges from Monday to Saturday, and twenty speeches are made in a night, most of which are much attended to in the country, and some of them in the house." Now it is well known that the king disliked Brougham. The Times went out of its way to say that he would as soon see a mad dog in the palace as the excitable lord chancellor. But it is quite possible the not overbright monarch had got hold of this topic in some way through Brougham, and thought it a good card to play with Lord Melbourne. Melbourne, as has been hinted, was an ex- ceedingly pleasant man, of course a gentle- man, and also a very good tactician. He was accustomed to take cheerful views of things. There is a well-known and admirable story illustrative of his willingness to make the best of everything; but many anecdotes of this nobleman cannot be thoroughly enjoyed (and this is one of them) without bearing in mind that he was given to a practice which is now much less common than it used to be. " Now then, Melbourne," said Sydney Smith one day, when his lordship had just entered the room where a party was assem- bled, " Now then, Melbourne, we wiU suppose everything and everybody to be d d, and 128 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. then you can tell us the news." The little story referred to above is not this. One even- ing Lord Melbourne and some others, includ- ing a man less willing to be pleased, drove to the Victoria Theatre, then called the Royal Coburg, in order to have a good look at " the people " and their amusements. He was after- wards told that the other gentleman had de- clared that he had found the evening dull. In reply to this Melbourne recalled the shops in the New Cut, and said, " D — — him ! couldn't he be pleased with the gas shining on the lobsters' backs in the fishmongers' shops?" Of his wonderful gift of saying impleasant things in a manner which the listener could not resent, an instance occurred in the answer he once gave to a political bore who had been jsressing hard to be placed on a certain com- mission. " Why," said he to the bore, " I did mention your name to the king, and to the others, but you see the fellows wouldn't sit with you, d them." This is a digression; but the point is that Melbourne could use no such weapons with William IV., and it is amusing to think how helpless he must have felt while the king was muddling and blun- dering on with the talk, showing plainly that he was anxious to hark back in political mat- ters, and giving inconclusive reasons for de- clining to consider the reconstitution of the Whig cabinet upon the basis proposed by Melbourne. The latter ajipears to have argued his case with more simplicity of heart than is usual with political tacticians, and to have been almost " sold " by the king, if so vulgar an idiom may be allowed to intrude into the page. He explained in the most deferential manner that, in order to possess power in the House of Commons it was not essential to be a good speaker, and quoted the influence exer- cised by Althorp before his removal to the Tipper house— Althorp being by no means an orator, or even a good debater. After more fencing the king made some admissions, and began really to show what was in his mind. He had taken alarm on the Irish Church question. He viewed with particular dislike the "advanced" views of Lord John Eussell in that matter, and could not consent to the formation of a cabinet with which he would be sure to have dissensions on so grave a ques- tion. The sailor king then let out that he knew or believed there were differences of opinion among the then ministers, and fliat he had a comforting belief that Lord Lans- downe and Mr. Spring Eice would secede "rather than acquiesce in the ajipropi-iation of any portion of church property in Ireland for general purposes of education," — Lord Lansdowne had indeed told him as much. We may well conceive that the air was now getting rather hot for Lord Melbourne, but he appears to have been more bewildered than anything else, and yet to have kept his head, for he carefully avoided anything like an admission that there was any lack of unanimity in the cabinet over which he pi-esided. This, how- ever, did not satisfy the "reforming monarch," who had, in truth, only partly shown his hand, though he had fully made up his mind. He endeavoured to persuade the premier that the government could not possibly hold to- gether, when what he really meant was that he was determined it should be broken up. But he had not the moral courage to commu- nicate his intention face to face, and broke up a tiresome and jxizzling discussion by saying, " Now let us go to dinner." But on the fol- lowing day the king, choosfaig to write rather than speak (like a clumsy and bashful lover), handed the astonished minister a letter in which he informed him that, as the govern- ment were in an actual minority in the upper house, and would soon be in a similar condi- tion in the lower (the removal of Althorp being alleged as the reason for this), he, the king, had made up his mind that the govern- ment of the country ought at once to be placed in other hands. The "reforming monarch" tried to soften down this blow by offering Melbourne an earldom and the order of the Garter ; but this the mortified, though uncon- querably urbane, viscount refused. The king had the questionable taste to harp again upon the details of the discussion, upon which Lord Melbourne, fond of making things pleasant, suggested that all his majesty had said about Lord John Eussell and Lord Brougham should be kept in the back -ground, and that it should not be made public that the king wa.s THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON '!S PLUilALlTY OF OFFICE. 129 opposed to church reform iu Ireland or else- where. Lord Melbourne tlien learned that his majesty was about to send for the Duke of Wellington, and there was so little delicacy shown about it that the jjolite Melbourne was actually asked to take charge of the first letter by which the royal intentions were to be made public. On the 15th November, 1834, the Times contained this announcement : — " The king has taken the opportunity of Lord Spencer's death to turn out the ministry, and there is every reason to believe that the Duke of Wellington has been sent for. The queen has done it all." It was believed that this communique was from Lord Brougham himself. His lordship was allowed to remain on the woolsack for a little while in order to finish some causes in Chancery which were undecided, but his turn soon came. He was summoned in the usual form to deliver up the great seal to his sove- reign, and did so. He had to bear the brunt of the blame of the Whig defeat, and great was his disgust. The Earl of Durham was despatched to St. Petersburg as ambassador for this country in ordei- to stave off for a time that threatened duel in the House of Lords which would undoubtedly have led to the letting out of more strife than any that existed between him and the ex-chancellor, and the disclosure, perhaps, of a few secrets. Thus were the Whigs kicked out. In the words of Palmerston, " the government had not resigned but were dismissed, and this not in consequence of having proposed any measure of which the king disapproved and which they would not give up, but because it was thought they were not strong enough in the Commons to carry on the business of th© country; and their places were to be filled up by men who were notoriously weak and unpopular in the lower house." What was the king to do? There was the duke — the iron duke, the ever-willing and " practical" servant of the sovereign. He was sent for, and was as ready as ever to do his possible. Of Sir Robert Peel, who was abroad, so little was known at the moment that his servants could not even tell where a Vol. I. letter would be sure to reach him; and yet he was eventually the man of the hour. The duke, with all his self-confidence and all his energy, could not be hiii; ielf the cabinet, and yet he could not, as a matter of good taste, go about forming a new one in Sir Eobert's ab- sence. So a messenger (Mr. Hudson, after- wards known in another capacity) was packed ofi" to the Continent on a Sunday night to hunt up Peel, and the duke, to use an actor's phrase- ology, " doubled parts" until the great Conser- vative should return. " I submitted," writes Wellington, " to his majesty that I was ready to do anything for his service; that it was unreasonable to expect that Sir Robert Peel would undertake to conduct the measures of an administration of which the arrangements should have been formed by another person, and that such a course would be equally in- jurious to Sir Robert and to his majesty's ser- vice; that under these circumstances I re- marked to his majesty that he should appoint me first lord of the treasury and secretary of state for the home department, which offices I would hold till Sir Robert Peel should return home, when he might submit to his majesty such arrangements as he might think proper; that Lord Lyndhurst might hold the great seal temporarily, by commission or otherwise, as might be expedient; and that no other arrangements should be made not ab- solutely necessary for the conduct of the public service." There was so much muddle in the whole story, such recklessness on one side, and so much haste on the king's, that Mr. Hudson had some difficulty in fiudingthe money for his jour- ney ! But after nine days' pursuit he found the great commoner in Rome, only he was just then at a ball ! Not to dwell upon these details, we may add, that it was not until December that Sii- Robert was in London, and engaged in the task of forming a new adminis- tration. But iu the meanwhile Lord Lynd- hurst had been gazetted as lord - chancellor. He was a much better lawyer than Brougham, and especially a much better Chancery lawyer; but the latter endeavoured to get back to his old place upon the woolsack by offering to per- form the duties of the office without a salary. 130 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. On the lOth of December the first Conserva- tive government was constituted. Sir Kobert Peel was premier and chancellor of the ex- chequer. The Duke of Wellington was foreign secretary; Mr. Goulburn home secretary; and the Earl of Aberdeen colonial secretary. Mr. Gladstone, the young member for Newark, was made one of the commissioners of the treasury. On the 18th of December Sii- Robert Peel issued that celebrated address to the electors of Tamworth which has since been known as the Tamworth Manifesto. Long before the repeal of the corn-laws Mr. Disraeli had maintained that the Tory party — we emphasise the word — had just claims to be the popular political confederation of the country. It wUl be necessary, in order to the clear understanding of the difficulties, or some of the difficulties, encountered by Sir Robert Peel, to glance at that view of the poli- tical situation which was taken by the Tories at the time. This view it was which may be said to have governed the movements of the party which we now call Consei'vative (a word which Mr. Disraeli carefully put aside) during many years. Mr. Disraeli maintained that the Tamworth manifesto of 1834 was "an attempt to con- struct a party without principles;" that "its basis was, necessarily, political latitudiuari- anism, and its inevitable consequence political infidelity." He maintained that "Conser;-atism — as distinguished from Toryism — was an attempt to carry on aSairs by substituting the fulfilment of the duties of office for the per- formance of the functions of government, and to maintain this negative system by the mere influence of property, reputable private con- duct, and what are called good connections." This distinguished political critic — who was himself to have so large a share in the political history of the next forty-five years — went on to declare that at no period duiing the move- ment of 1834^5 did Su- Eobert Peel ever be- lieve in the success of his administration, and he sketches the gossip of society about that time, and in the period before the "Tam- worth Manifesto" was written. Before the dismissal of the Whigs the king Had received a deputation of the Irish pre- lates with their primate at their head, who brought him an address from the Irish clergy deprecating changes in the doctrine and dis- cipline of the Church, which persons widely difi'ering from themselves were understood to have in contemplation, and his majesty, in- stead of replying by a written answer and after consultation with his ministei-s, had made them a speech, with the tears running down his cheeks — declaring that he remembered they had a right to require of him to be resolute in defence of the Church ; — a speech which seems to have been almost hysterical, but which was evidently sincere, and of courae was received with delight, not only by the Irish, but by some of the English clergy, who perhaps saw in it a determination to repress the demands of Dissenters. There was nothing for it but that he should dismiss the ministry as soon as he thought he could do so without repeating the mistake of the Reform Bill days, and being compelled to ask them to take office again. The result proved that he had once more miscalculated the feeling of the country. It may be said indeed that the new minis- try came into office almost despondently. The whole tone of Sir Robert Peel's letter to the electors of Tamworth is that of a deprecatory appeal addressed to the nation, and assert- ing the belief that the people "will so far maintain the prerogatives of the king as to give the ministers of his choice, not an impli- cit confidence, but a fair trial." That the country might formally pronounce on this manifesto, parliament was dissolved within a few weeks of the time ajipointed for its re- assembling. It was beUeved that many of the extreme reformers were ready to support Sir Robert Peel, who was likely to pass some important liberal measures that a feeble Whig ministry would lose; but the returns of the polling-booths showed, that while the Con- servatives gained in the counties the Liberals were more successful in the small boroughs, — a sign, as some politicians declai-ed, that the influence of landlords on one side was counter- balanced by money-spending on the other. History is of no political creed ; the conduct of every political leader, imless it violates PEEL'S DIFFICULTIES. 131 obvious principles of public morality, must be judged from his own point of view. This being assumed, it is easy and natural, as well as true, to remark that since the passing of the Eeform Bill the i^olicy of Sir Robert Peel and the behaviour of his sworn friend the Duke of Wellington had been, from their own point of view, very well adapted to ends and purposes. Sir Eobert, who always had much of the confidence of politicians of all shades of ojjinion, had gone about to remodel the old Tory party. By degrees the name of Con- servative had slipped in; and the new party had over and over again stated that they were not less desirous than the Whigs to attack proved abuses, and lead the countiy onward from strength to strength, only it must be in a "Conservative" manner. The great duke was too sagacious a man not to "cave in" along with Sir Eobert. All the old soldiers of the Tory camp had endeavoured to keep him among them, but he slipped through their fingers and stayed by the side of Peel. His opinion of Peel may be gathered from the fact that he filled altogether five offices in his own jjerson during the interregnum while the trusted chief of the party was abroad. When Sir Eobert came home (England, Scotland, and Ireland having got on pretty well without him for about a month) he endeavoured to induce Sir James Graham and Mr. Stanley to join him in the cabinet. They were deserters from the ranks of the Whig ministry, and he felt that their jsresence would give his government an ai^jjearance of liber- ality whiuh it might otherwise miss. These gentlemen declined to join him, so that he was compelled to fill ujj his list with the names of men of a very different stamp. It did not promise very favourably. The House of Commons that Peel had to meet was exacting and hostile. Naturally enough, a Conservative government being in power, the Whigs being disgusted with their recent ignominious dismissal, and the Eadicals enraged with the sudden turn of the scale by the " reforming monarch," there was a strong and watchfid opposition. Sir Eobert Peel then thought it necessaiy to dissolve parlia- ment, and to issue his manifesto, which was addressed to the electors of Tamwortli, for which he sat, but was in reality a declaration of policy for the eyes of the whole of the peojile of Great Britain. In this document Sir Eobert Peel had of course something to say about tlie Eeform Bill, which was not yet a shelved topic, the waves of popular feeling surging and heaving a little after the storm. In fact, the "Letter to the Electors of Tam- wortli" distinctly contained the lines of the Conservative policy. In proof of his desire to remedy "proved abuses" Sir Eobert referred to his own conduct in dealing with the cur- rency, the criminal law, and the grievances of the Eomau Catholics. The Eeform Act was, from his point of view, a final measure — "a final and irrevocable settlement — a settlement which no friend to the peace and welfare of the country would attemjjt to dis- turb." He went over the political questions which had occupied the attention of the reformed parliament, and endeavoured to im- press the electors of Tamworth, that is to say, everybody who was to read the manifesto, with the idea that he was on many jjoints abreast with the party of reform. But Sir Eobert Peel was far too sagacious a man not to feel that his position was imcer- tain, and not very hopeful. Since it is true that "hope springs eternal in the human breast," it would be too bold to say that an experienced and able politician in the i^rime of his energies had no hopes of being able to carry on the government with success even in the face of the opposition he knew he had to encounter; but certainly the closing pas- sages of this letter were not very cheerful. " I enter upon the arduous duties assigned to me with the deepest sense of the responsibility they involve, with great distrust of my own qualifications for their adequate discharge, but, at the same time, with a resolution to persevere which nothing could inspire but the strong impulse of public duty, the conscious- ness of upright motives, and the firm belief that the people of this country will so far maintain the prerogatives of the king as to give to the ministers of his choice, not an implicit confidence, but a fair trial." 132 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. This did not exactly mean that he was conscious he held office only on sufferance, but he must have known his was a very doubtful game to play. He declared in the letter that he would supjjort the inquiry into the state of the corporation, an inquiry with which the Whigs were identified. He was also desirous, he said, to satisfy Dissenters upon the subject of church-rates, and to relieve them from the injuries their conscientious scruples suflFered in the matter of the marriage laws. These, no doubt, were great things to say, and it was plain that what is called "Liberalism" had made its mark. But un- fortunately the new premier had to go on to say, in his well-known character of " Candid Peel" (an old joke of those days and of days much earlier), that upon the Irish Chui'ch ques- tion his mind was unchanged. He added that he would not admit Dissenters to the universities, or grant them university degi'ees, or consent to the appropriation of any portion of the church revenues to secular purposes; while, at the same time, he said his mind was not made up on the question whether any changes were desirable in the mere organi- zation of the Church Establishment. This was, indeed, a hybrid programme, not without some of that peculiar subtlet}^, called by enemies inconsistency. Sir Robert must have felt this, and he dissolved parliament within a few weeks of the time appointed for its next meeting. In the new elections all difi'erences were practically submerged, except the great broad ones between the two main parties in the state. Thei'e were indeed not a few reformers who had formed the idea which was destined afterwards to become general, that Sir Robert Peel had the knack of carrying his measures, and that his peculiar position as a moderate and cautious man might give him the control of working power in parliament from various sides, a working power which more "advanced" Ijoliticians could not always command, in the face of the opposition of the Conservatives. But the electors who took this view could not, on their consciences, push it so far as to vote for Sir Robert, with that cabinet at his back, or even if a few of them did so, their voices did not count in the general ru.sh. Consistent reformers, in high resentment at having been "snubbed" by the " patriot king," walked uj) to the polling-booths in a fury of zeal, and the result was held to prove that the Liberals would have a majority of a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five over the minis- terialLsts. With this majority at their command the Whigs and Radicals now joined together in achieving a small but easy victory. On the 19th of February the House of Commons pro- ceeded to choose a speaker, and Mr. Aber- crombie was elected b}' a majority of ten over Sir C. Manners Sutton, who was sent to the UjDper House as Lord Canterbury. The king's speech was pretty much what might have been expected. It was pathetic over the suff"erings of the agricultural interest as compared Avith other interests, and recom- mended a reduction of the burdens on land. The church and municipal corporations' com- missions were aj^pointed. Ecclesiastical ques- tions in England, Scotland, and Ireland were recommended to the attention of parliament. Then, of course, followed the debates on the address in reply to the speech. In the House of Lords this was carried without a division, but it was not to be supposed that the Whigs would let it pass unchallenged. Each in his own way. Lord Melbourne and Lord Brougham put the same natural ques- tion, namely, why the late ministry had been dismissed, if the royal speech put the condition of the country in a right liglit. There was another question which was also put forward. Why had the ubiquitous Duke of Wellington seated himself in so many bureaux at once — "How gat he there?" as Mi's. Siddons asked when, misunderstanding the word bureau, she had been told a certain French minister had been found in one. In fact, to pass from jest to earnest, why had the duke, who might at any moment, in spite of his rival. Lord Brougham's schoolmaster, have made himself military dictator of England — why had the duke constituted himself a provisional govern- ment. The Duke of Wellington quoted pre- cedent, and maintained that nothing had been done in this regard but what was fairly within THE MARQUIS OF LONDONDERKY. 133 the limits of the royal prerogative ; while those who were on his side exploded in "sacred rage" at the misbehaviour of Lord Brougham in sending word to the Times, ujDon the king's dismissing his ministers, that " the queen had done it all." All this did not come to much, nor could it. Neither did Lord Morpeth and his party take much in the House of Commons by moving an amendment deprecating the last previous dissolution of parliament. It is true this amendment was carried by a majority of seven, 326 to 319, and that Sir Ro- bert was called upon at once to resign. But Sir Robert, to use an expressive quasi-vulgarism which has come into extensive use since his time (it is a good old English idiom), "did not see it." Upon this Lord John Russell asked whether it was true that Sir Robert was cherishing a secret intention to dissolve par- liament again. Nay more, Loi'd John actually wanted to know, on behalf of the opposition, whether, in case the Mutiny Bill had notpassed^ it was then designed to continue the army on an unconstitutional footing ! All this does not look very wise, but we have had our own disputes and suspicions both before and aftei* the death of the late Prince Consort, and ours, too, have not been of the most generous, hope- ful, or helpful order. The conflict was not, however, to be a long one, and the premier must have had an uneasy time of it. The Marquis of Chandos — memor- able for a certain wet-blanket clause in the Reform Bill— moved for the repeal of the malt duty. This was opposed by the front men on both sides of the house, and his motion was negatived by a majority of 158. The next important discussion that ensued was of the class called "damaging." The Marquis of Londonderry was one of those professed adherents of the Tory party on whom the public had an eye. This military nobleman was brother to the unfortunate Castlereagh, and had most of that nobleman's unpopular qualities, with one or two of them that were popular. For instance he had the same splendid calm courage — a quality in which Castlereagh was probably never excelled bj' any statesman — and there was the same kindness of manner. This kind- ness was largely a result of imperturbable self-esteem. After Lord Castlereagh had cut his throat his valet was asked at the inquest whether he had noticed anything particular in his master's manner lately. "Yes," said the man, "he once siwke cross to me." This slowness to get angry was really a part of tlie man's self-esteeming placidity; though when the latter, helped only by a slow brain, re- ceived too rude a shock, he lost his reason. This might have happened with the brother, Charles Stewart Vane, who is now before us, only he had not the trials of the statesman to contend with. Charles Stewart Vane had proved himself a fine soldier in the Peninsular campaign, and had been a valuable public servant in the Franco-German wars. As he was, like his brother, a splendid horseman, and as the masses of the people do not think much the less of a man for confused thinking and very un- grammatical talk (in which Charles Stewart Vane succeeded to his brother's mantle) he would have been pretty well liked if he had not lived in times of popular excitement, and been veiy frankly stupid. But in politics he expressed himself as much astonished as the old Duke of Newcastle when he found he could not always do as he would with his own, and he wrote a book of travels in which he described the Czar Nicholas as the gentlest and sweetest of men, especially in his behaviour towards the Poles. His own love of the black sheep of Spanish and Portuguese politics, such as Dom Miguel and Don Carlos, was no secret. Tlirough his own importunate folly it had became publicly known that he had pressed hard for a pension for services never performed except in his imagination, and that even Lord Liverpool had endorsed one of his letters, "This is too bad." When it was now resolved to appoint this self-complacent hero ambassador at St. Petersburg, of all places in the world, the appointment was hotly at- tacked by the opposition in the House of Commons; and though the condemnatory motion was withdrawn it had the effect of in- ducing the marquis to withdraw his claim. Unluckily for his gi'owing popularity Sir Robert Peel took the side of the marquis. He 134 GLADSTONE ANJJ HiS CU^JTExMPOEAKIES. maintained, and truly, that Canning had ex- pressed his regi-et at this brave soklier's re- tirement from the Austrian embassy; but Sir Eobert forgot "the heavy change" which had passed over the whole spirit of public affairs since then, and the multitude scored up his defence of this new appointment against him. It was, however, on a very different ques- tion that the actual defeat of the Peel- Wel- lington ministry occurred. Lord John Rus- sell, of whose capacity as a debater and party leader the king had spoken so slightingly to Lord Melbourne, was the man who dealt the blow which proved fatal, and it may be more than tolerable to introduce the point in his own account, in the "Recollections" which he gave to the world late in life. "As leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons," says his lordship, " I had no smooth path be- fore me. To turn the majority into a minority by a direct vote of want of coniidence would have been easy. But my object was to keep the majority together, and in the whole twenty years during which I led the Liberal joarty in the House of Commons I never had so difficult a task. The plain and obvious plan of voting the supplies for three months being given \\p, the question naturally occurred. In what man- ner could Sir Eobert Peel obtain that fair trial which his own partisans and many in- dependent Whigs called. for on his behalf] There appeared no question so well fitted for an experimentum crucis as the question of the Irish Church. The proposal for a commission made by Lord Grey's government had been considered by four of the leading members of the cabinet as a test of principle, and the Liberal members of the first reformed House of Commons had accepted the question of the integrity and perpetual endowment of the Irish Church as marking the frontier line between Liberal and Tory principles. I therefore pi'o- posed to bring forward a resolution which, on the one hand, would be supjaorted by Lord Howick, and was, on the other, the basis of an alliance with O'Connell and the Irish mem- bers. Compact there was none, but an alliance on honourable terms of mutual co-operation undoubtedly existed. The Whigs remained. as before, the firm defenders of the union; O'Connell remained, as before, the ardent ad- vocate of repeal ; but upon intermediate mea- sures on which the two parties could agree consistently with their principles there was no want of cordiality. Nor did I ever see cause to complain of O'ConneU's conduct. He con- fined his opposition fairly to Irish measures. He never countenanced the Canadian Catholics in their disaffection, nor promoted a recurrence to physical force, nor used trades'-unions as a means of discord and separation among classes." This is Lord John's account, written, or at all events published, in his old age, and it is far from discreditable to him either as a tactician and public servant or as the rival of Peel. What precisely happened we shall shortly see. It was not till the middle of March that the lord-chancellor (Lyndhurst) brought up the report of the ecclesiastical commissioners. This commission had consisted of the Arch- bishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Gloucester, the Right Honourable Sir Eobert Peel, H. Goulbourn, C. W. W. Wynne, H. Hobhouse, and Sir Herbert Jenner. In the London Gazette an- nouncing their appointment they had been described as "commissioners for considering the state of the several dioceses in England and Wales with reference to the amount of their revenues, to the more equal distribu- tion of episcopal duties, and to the j^revention of the necessity of attaching by commendam to bishoprics benefices with the cure of souls ; for considering the state of the several cathe- di'al and collegiate churches within the same, with a view to the suggestion of measures for rendering them most conducive to the efficacy of the Established Church ; also for devis- ing the best mode of providing for the cure of souls, with special reference to the residence of the clergy on their respective benefices." The attorney-general, Sir Frederick Pollock, gave notice of two bills for amending church discipline, and Sir Henry Hardinge of an Irish tithe measure. Sir Eobert Peel gave notice of two bills, one for the commutation of tithes in England ; the other for the civil re- gistration of births, deaths, and marriages O'CONNELL'S POfiTRAIT. 135 among Dissenters — a name to be read in the widest possible sense for this occasion. On the qviestion of the charter for the Loudon University he was defeated. Admission to Cambridge and Oxford being refused to Nonconformists, the now strongly banded and determined friends of education moved for the presentation of an address to the king praying him to empower the London Univer- sity to grant degrees, leaving out, however, medicine and divinity. Sir Robert met the motion with an obsti'uctive amendment, and -was defeated by 246 to 136, a majority of 90 on the side of liberal education. It was not, however, on these questions that the de- cisive wager of battle was given, but, as we have seen in the words of Lord John, upon the Irish Tithe Bill. As to the main principle of the bill, the Liberal majority did not quarrel with it, and Mr. O'Connell went so far as to say that it was better in some re- spects than the measure of the late Whig ministry, inasmuch as that proposed to give the landlords one two-fifths of the tithes, se- curing to the clergy seventy-seven and a half l")er cent of their legal income, and charging seventeen and a half per cent of the whole on the consolidated fund, while this measure would give the landlords only one-fourth of the amount, secure the clergy only seventy-five per cent, and devolve no charge on the im- perial exchequer. On the 30th of March the Liberal leader brought forward his motion — the result of which was intended to be decisive — that this house resolve itself into a commit- tee to consider the temporalities of the Church of Ireland. After a debate of four nights' duration this motion was carried by a majority of 33. On the night of the same day the house went into committee, and Lord John Russell now moved, " That it is the opinion of this committee that any surplus which may remain after fully providing for the spiritual instruction of the members of the Established Church in Ireland ought to be applied to the general education of all classes of Chris- tians." Not until the 6th of April was the debate ended, when the resolution of Lord John Russell was declared carried by a majority of 25 votes, 262 against 237. This victory Lord John Russell followed up by a third resolution, to the effect that " no measure on the subject of tithes in Ireland can lead to a satisfactory and final adjustment which does not embody the principle contained in the foregoing reso- lution." This was carried, after a long debate, by a majority of 285 to 258 — 27 votes. In all three of these cases the Liberal majority came from the Irish members. For O'Connell was there to organize an opposition which had for its avowed ob- ject the repeal of the union. He candidly declared that all mixed measures were only regarded by him as instalments, and it was a serious difficulty that his following was strong enough to embarrass any government to w^hich it opposed its policy of obstruc- tion and delay or a temporary coalition with the other side. If the Liberal cause itself did not suffer from the necessities of such a tem- porary coalition, the statesmen who formed the Whig opposition or the succeeding Whig- administration were undoubtedly injured in the national estimation by the terms which they appeared to be obliged to keej) with the great agitator. Yet O'Connell himself was consistent. Lord John Russell distinctly states that he could not complain of him, be- cause he only acted in accordance with the intentions which he had declared to be his sole aim in parliament. But politically he was as compromising as a friend as he was unsparing and unscrupulous as an enemy. One can almost imagine how O'Connell must have looked when he was badgering an oppon- ent — for Ilaydon the painter has left a portrait of him — not a painting only, but a word por- trait — in his diary. " At twelve I went to O'Connell's, and cer- tainly his appearance was very difFeient from what it is in the House of Commons. It was on the whole hilarious and good-natured. But there was a cunning look. He has an eye like a weasel. Light seemed hanging at the bottom, and he looked out with a searching ken, like Brougham something, but not wdth his dejath of insight. I was first shown into his private room. A shirt hanging by the fire, a hand-glass tied to the window-bolt. 136 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. papers, hats, brushes, wet towels, and dirty shoes, gave intimation of ' Dear Ireland.' After a few moments O'Counell rolled in, in a morning-gown, a loose black handkercliief tied round his neck, a wig, and a foraging-cap bordered witb gold-lace. As a specimen of character, he began, ' Mr. Haydon, you and I must understand each other about this pic- ture. They say I must pay for this likeness?' 'Not at all, sir!' This," says Haydon "is the only thing of the sort that has happened to me." On another visit Haydon told him it was somewhat ungrateful after getting emancipa- tion to turn round and demand repeal. " Not in me," he replied, " I always said repeal would be the consequence of emancipation, and I always avowed such to be my object." One can almost fancy the arch smile and the " light " in the eye of that quaint, good-hum- oured face when he said to the painter, "I got a scolding from Peel last night. I told him I sjoared him this once — but the next time ." Probably O'ConneU had a greater respect for Peel than for any other of his opponents, or for most of his friends for that matter; for Peel was too honourable and truthful to escape the admiration of so keen, subtle, and unscrupulous a foe. To have had the life-long loyalty of a man like the Duke of Wellington, himself a judge of character, is proof enough of what Peel's high disposition must have been; though it was not till after the death of Sir Robert that his friend, seeking to express an estimate of his worth, said, " He was the truest man I have ever known. I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the counsels of our sovereign together, and I had long the honour to enjoy his private friend- ship. In all the course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invari- able desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth ; and I never saw, in the whole course of my life, the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact." This was the man, and it may readily be believed that he was an exceedingly diflricult man to displace from the premiership, since his high personal reputation, both in the house and in the country, joined to his re- markable power of debate and his great financial ability, made him a minister under whom any cabinet might serve with di-stinc- tion. But he could not maintain a ministry which had been forced on the country. He introduced an Irish Tithe Commutation Bill, which the leaders of the opposition declared he had borrowed from them ; and they deter- mined to join issue with the government on the vexed question of the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish Chm^ch to non- ecclesiastical purjDoses. A commission had been appointed, but the question could be revived as a party motion, to test the strength of a ministry which had already clung to office notwithstanding numer- ous defeats. Lord John contended that the avithority of a church establishment is founded on its utility, and that whenever, upon this prin- ciple, we deliberate concerning the form, pro- priety, or comparative excellence of different establishments, the single view under which we ought to consider them is that of a scheme of instruction; the single end we ought to propose by them is the preservation and com- munication of religious knowledge. Every other idea and every other end which have been mixed up with this, as the making the church the instrument and ally of the state, converting it into the means of strengthening or diffusing influence, or regarding it as a support of regal, in opposition to popular forms of government, have served only to de- base the institution, and to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses. "This" (said Lord John) "being what an established church ought to be, the question is, whether these great objects have been advanced by the Avay in which the church revenues have been appropriated in Ireland, and whether it has furthered the religious DANIEL OCONNELL FROM A MINIATURE BY T CARRICK BIACKIE S SON..LOKDON. GLASGOW. » EDIUBtJlliiH . OPPOSITION TO THE TITHE IN IRELAND. 137 iustruction which that church ought to be the means of bestowing. In the earlier part of the last century the revenues of the Irish Church did not exceed £160,000 \^er annum; they now amount to no less than .£791,726, in round numbers £800,000. While this enor- mous increase has taken place has there been a corresponding increase in the number of conversions to the Protestant faith, or has the activity, zeal, and success of the clergy been such as to warrant the continuance of this revenue 1 " In too many instances the conduct of the clergy had been the revei'se of what it ought to have been. Not very long before, it was con- sidered an advantage to a clergyman to have few Protestants in his parish, because he thus had a fair excuse for neglecting his duty. Even up to a late period many of the established clergy considered themselves rather as mem- bers of a gi'eat political body than as set apart for the purpose of communicating religious instruction. "What had been the consequence 1 In the county of Kilkenny in 1731 there were 1055 Protestants, in 1834 there were only 945 ; in Armagh at the same period the Pro- testants were to the Catholics as three to one, in 1834 they were only as one to three. In the county of Kerry the proportion of Catholics to Protestants was much greater. Lord John had come to the conclusion that the whole Protestant population of Ireland did not ex- ceed 750,000, and of those 400,000 were within the ecclesiastical province of Armagh. In nine dioceses the proportions were: — Mem- bers of the Established Church 166,492, Roman Catholics 1,732,452, Presbyterians 162,184, other Protestant Dissenters 6430, out of a total of 2,067,558. It was clear from statistics, that while in some l»arts of Ireland the members of the Estab- lished Church were sufficiently numerous to require a considerable number of beneficed clergymen, in other parts they formed so small a proportion that it could not be either neces- sary or right to maintain as large an estab- lishment as in other parts of the country. Nothing could set this in a clearer light than the following example, taken from the diocese of Ferns ; — Parishes. Value. Estab- lished Church. Roman Catliolic. Taghmon, Ballyconnick,... Ballynitty, Dunleer, Drumcar, Monachebone, . . Moyleary Cappog, Kuthdrumnim,.. Carrickbogget, . . Port, Ullard, £446-Glebe, £50 95 82 153-Glebe, 6 53 107 173-Glebe, 30 120 82— Glebe, 20 57 142— Glebe, 5 280— Glebe, 45 440 62 69 133 10 21 159 120 9 13 1 7 50 03 4 7 2920 501 300 1460 1528 737 1148 530 662 332 800 Glaig 4999 107 313 Ossory, Baboon Numerous instances of the same kind could have been adduced, showing that of the £800,000 which formed the revenue of the Irish Church, a large portion was given to a very small portion of the people, while all the rest derived from it no benefit what- ever. " It is true," said Lord John, " that within the last twenty years greater attention has been paid to the spiritual wants of the members of the cliurch in this respect. I believe the Church of Ireland now stands high. But it is not enough to build churches and glebe-houses in order to convert men from one persuasion to another. The occurrences of late years have very much diminished the probability of such conversions. In defiance of all history and experience it was thought fit some years ago to call public meetings, in order to make Protestants out of Catholics by controversy and dispute. The Catliolic clergy, being thus provoked, advised actual resistance to payment to the clergy of the opposing church. I am far from deeming that resist- ance justifiable, and far less the encourage- ment that was given to it; but it did take place, and its very existence presented an additional obstacle to the gaining over of any great class of the Irish to the Church of Eng- land. That resistance has prevailed for several years ; it has become so inveterate that all the exertions of the clergy and of the government to enforce the collection of tithe has become unavailing. Thus the Establishment has not merely failed to difi'use spiritual and religious doctrine among the gi'eat mass of the populace, it has produced a system which continually brings the clergy into collision with the people — which has led to scenes of civil strife and 138 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOE ARIES. bloodshed, has brought about a state of things utterly irreconcilable with the true ends of all chui'ch establishment, and has now made it plain that those great and paramount objects will never be aided by limiting the sj^iritual instruction of the people of Ireland as it hitherto has been, and by apjalying the re- venues of the Irish Church to maintaining the doctrines of the Establishment, and to no other purpose whatever." " This being the case, there must be reform, and that reform should consist in adapting the Establishment to the wants of those who belong to it, and making no unnecessary additions. If the house adopts this principle it cannot do othei'wise than greatly reduce the ecclesiastical establishment of Ireland. Whatever may remain after that reduction ought to be applied to some object by which the moral and religious instruction of the people of Ireland might be advanced. The use to which I propose to apply the surplus is general education, according to the system adopted by the National Board in Ireland, and according to which individuals of all persuasions can receive religious and moral instruction, and be brought up in harmony to- gether. No measure would tend so much to pi-oduce peace in Ii-eland. ... It has been the wish of parliament to improve that country by education. This was the object of the statute that introduced diocesan schools. Afterwards it was considered desirable to have a system of education which would not interfere with any man's religious faith. Since the establishment of the National Board of Education in Dublin, which was introduced by Lord Stanley, a better kind of education has been enjoyed, and moral and religious instruction has been conveyed generally to the people without interfering with the opinion or allocking the feelings of any sects. If, then, I can show that public advantage requires that some portion of the revenues of the Establishment should be applied to religious education and charity, how can my oioponents maintain that they hold church property more sacred than I do ? To say that it should be ])artly distributed and partly kept secret, j)artly interfered with for public objects and partly considered as private property, does seem to me to couple in one proposition the utmost absurdity with the utmost inefficiency. It is said that the land which pays the tithe belongs to the Protestants in the proportion of fifteen to one. I could understand that argument if an established church existed only for the rich ; but as it is intended for all classes of society, and especially for the benefit, instruction, and consolation of the poor, it is not enough to tell me that those who originally contributed to the revenue were Protestants, for I am bound to look on its effects on the whole of Ireland. Besides, whoever they may be on whom the charge of maintaining that church ultimately falls, it is notorious that it is now levied on Catholics, who derive no benefit from the Establishment. " I am charged with inconsistency in refer- ence to this question, because last year I objected to pass such a motion as this without inquiiy. But it must be remembered that Sir E. Peel, without waiting for the report of the commissioners, has declared that he would in no case consent to the ajiplication of church property to any but ecclesiastical purposes. He has declaimed that the commission may go on, but that he shall care for its reports only as far as they may enable him to make a better distribution of church property among its members. If that is the case it is quite necessary that the house should come to some distinct resolution on the subject, and that it should not be going on night after night and week after week without knowing whether the ministers of the crown do or do not enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons on this great and important question." The debate was continued on the evenings of the 31st of March and the 1st and 2d of April, and one of the most important speeches was that of Sir James Graham, who said : — " Why is it that some members are so anxious to get at the smaU sum which may arise out of the proposed appropriation of the revenues of the Irish Church, and which will not, I believe, amount to more than £100,000 per annum ? I believe it is the wish of many of those who support the present resolution to take these revenues, not because the state is Sm JAMES GRAHAM ON THE IRISH CHURCH. 139 poor, but because the cliurcli is rich ; not that the state may gain, but that the church may lose them. I believe in my conscience that if the appropriation is once allowed, in a very short time the Protestant religion will cease to be the established religion in Ireland, and ultimately England too. It was to avoid this very danger that the Irish legislature had stipulated, in the treaty of the Union, for the safety of the Irish Church. They made it an essential and fundamental article of the Union that the united Church of England and Ire- land should for ever be maintained. Such being the case, shall the Commons of England now, even before many of the parties to that compact have passed away, ungenerously with- draw from it that main and moving consi- deration which induced an independent legis- lature to enter into it 1 " Is this a course likely to add to the peace of Ireland? No. If peace is the object of this measure, its success is indeed hopeless. Peace has indeed been the promise which Ireland has made for important changes and concessions, but that promise has always been broken. Expectations and assui'ances of tran- quillity were held out to induce Britain to give way; while the real design, and the design now openly declared, was to proceed step by step till the Protestant church is annihilated. Mr. Shell, in his examination before the select committee of the House of Commons in 1824-25, said, ' I am convinced that it will not be in the jaower of any — no matter how great his influence might be, no matter how perverse his ambition might be — to draw large convocations of men together in Ireland ; nothing but the sense of individual injury produces these great and systematic gatherings, through the medium of which so much passion and so much inflammatory matter is conveyed through the country. ... I am perfectly convinced that neither upon tithes, nor the union, nor any other question could the people of Ireland be powerfully and permanently united.' Dr. Doyle declared, before the same committee, '^I conceive that the removal of the disqualifications vmder which Roman Catholics labour •would lessen considerably those feeliugs of opposition which they may at present entertain with i-egard to the Establishment; chiefly for this reason, — that whilst we labour under the disabilities which now weigh on us, we find that the clergy of the Establishment, being veiy numerous and very opulent, employ their influence and opulence in various ways to 023pose the pro- gress of our claims; and I do think that, if these claims were once adjusted, and the con- cessions that we desire granted, the country would settle down into a habit of quiet, and that we should no longer feel the jealousy against the clergy that we now feel, because that jealousy which we do feel arises chiefly from the unrelaxed efl'orts which they have almost universally made to oppose our claims; we should view them then, if these claims were granted, as brethren labouring in the same vineyard as ourselves.' Every ane of these hopes has been falsified, every one of these jiromises has been forgotten, and in their place has come triumphant exultation over the approaching downfall of the Protes- tant Church. What better witness can there be to the designs of the Catholics than Mr. O'Connell, of whom Lord J. Russell is now the accredited agent? No further back than October, 1834, Mr. O'Connell spoke out in a published letter addressed to Mr. Crawford, and discussing the proceedings regarding tithes in the last session of parliament. He there said, ' It is quite true that I demanded for the present but a partial reduction — it was three-fifths — of the tithes. Why did I ask for no more? Why did I not demand the abolition of the entire? Because I had no chance in the first instance of getting the entire abolished. And you perceive that I was refused the extent that I asked, being three-fifths, and only got from the House of Commons two-fifths. I had therefore not the least prospect or probability of destroying the entire ; and because I am one of those who are and have been always ready to accept any instalment, however small, of the debt of justice due to the people — the real national debt — I have been and am ready to accept any instalment of that debt, determined to go on and look for the remainder as soon as the first instalment shall be completely realized. 140 GLADSTONE AND HIS CUNTEMPORAiilES. It is totally untrue that I acquiesced in the perpetual continuance of the remaining three- fifths of the tithes.' Nor did he leave them in the dark as to the appropriation of church property ; for in another letter, in September, 1834, he says: — 'My plan is to apply that fund to the various counties of Ireland, to relieve the occupiers of land from the grand- jury cess. . . . My plan is to defray all the expenses of dispensaries, infirmaries, hospitals, and asylums, and to multiply the number of those institutions vintil they become qiiite sufficient for the wants of the sick' — that is to say, that church property is to be granted to the landlords of Ireland to enable them to do that which, without confiscation, they are )30und to do by the law of humanity, if not by the law of the land — namely, to provide for the relief of their poorer brethren. " I press on all those who lay claim to the name of sincere and genuine Whigs, to oppose this mischievous and disastrous resolution. Whig i^rinciples consist not in death's-heads- and - crossbones denunciations of those who venture to exercise their religious principles according to their consciences, nor in prayers for mercy limited to them in heaven, but not to extend to them on this side of the grave. Whig principles consist not more in love of civil liberty than in jealousy of the Catholic religion as an engine of political power, when it arrogates to itself a right to ascendency and claims to put other religions under its feet; above all, I consider genuine Whig principles to consist in a warm attach- ment to the Protestant religion as by law established. I have on this question a strong religious feeling. It is a vital question, on which no further compromise can be made. I have carried compromise on it as far as principle will allow; but further I cannot go. The property which was set apart by our ancestors to maintain and propagate the Pro- testant religion is sacred, and ought to be applied to sacred uses. They who minister at the altar ought to live of the altar. That principle is high as heaven, and you cannot reach it; sti'ong as the Almighty, and you cannot overturn it ; fixed as the Eternal, and you cannot unfix it. It is binding on you as a legislature of Christian men acting on Chris- tian principles, and no consideration on earth will induce me to compromise or destroy it." Interesting, or at all events illustrative, as these leading speeches may be, they have by this time ceased to have such real significance as that delivered by the young statesman who had been promoted by Sir Eobert Peel to the office of under-secretary to the colonies. Mr. Gladstone's fervid opposition to the motion of Lord John Eussell is significant indeed when read by the light of comparatively recent events. Nor is the j^art which he has taken in the disendowment of the Established Church in Ireland less significant when the details of the scheme are compared with the demands of O'Connell and the more advanced reformers in 1835. We shall have occasion hereafter to refer to Mr. Gladstone's own explanations of the complete change of view which he found it necessary to avow under the altered con- ditions of later years, and we shall then see that he had not spoken without deep feeling nor without serious consideration when he stood up to defend, as he believed, " the exist- ence of church establishments." And it must be remembei'ed that the young member for Newark had already made a high reputation not only as an orator and a debater, but as a thoughtful and able writer on political sub- jects of wide and immediate interest. Southey had two years before wrote of the great ex- pectations which were entertained of " young Gladstone, the member for Newark, said to be the ablest person that Oxford has sent forth for many years, since Peel or Canning," and had expressed a hope "that the young man might not disappoint his friends." That those expectations were not for a long time disappointed in the sense intended by Southey is pretty certain, for the "young man" quickly rose to an eminent position, and was able to strengthen the hands of his gov- ernment in several debates in which he took a part. To liis earlier efforts on the question of the condition of the slaves in the West Indies we shall have immediately to refer; but in the sessions between that time and the discussion on the Irish tithe he had repeatedly spoken GLADSTONE ON IRISH CHURCH PROPERTY. 141 ill the house and had been sedulous in his at- tendance. On the question of the inquiry into alleged bribery and corruption in the Liver- pool elections, while admitting the probability of some corrupt dealings, he had appealed to the house not "to immolate on insufficient pretexts the rights of the freemen" nor "to offer so poor a morsel to appease the hunger of reform ; " and on the inquiry issuing in a bill disfranchising a section of the electors he liad again addressed the house. He had also opposed Mr. Hume's Universities' Admission Bill, which abolished the demand upon stu- dents entering the University of Oxford to subscribe to the thirty-nine articles; and he had taken part in the debate on the Irish Church Temporalities Bill of 1833. Through- out this period he was entirely consistent in his support of the party to which he preferred allegiance, and there must have been an ele- ment of well-recognized force in " this young man of unblemished character and of distin- guished parliamentary talents," or Lord Macau- lay would scarcely have spoken of him with so much emphasis, and perhaps bitterness, as "the rising hope of those stern and un- bending Tories who follow reluctantly and mutinously a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but whose cautious temper and moderate opinion they abhor." The great Whig essayist wrote this in 1839, a propos of Mr. Gladstone's l)amphlet, The State in its Relations with the Church, in which the author sought to estab- lish that government ought expressly to pro- vide for the teaching of the true religion, and which he dedicated to that "fountain of blessings, spiritual, social, and intellectual," the University of Oxford ; but it was no fair representation of Mr. Gladstone's relation to his leader, as subsequent events seem to have shown pretty clearly. The occasion on which Macaulay made use of this kind of criticism we shall, as we have said, allude to in its place ; for the present the whole I'eference will be better understood by returning to the debate from which we have wandered, and noting the chief points of what the member for Newark had to say on the subject of Lord Russell's proposal : — " The noble lord and those who have spoken on the same side of the question have proceeded on totally unproved assump- tions — they have gone on the gratuitous and unsustained supposition that there exists a surplus revenue over and above what is necessary for the due maintenance of the church in Ireland. I think church property as sacred as private property; but I should say, that the former was sacred in persons and the latter to purposes. At the time of the Reformation the legislature, composed of the representatives of the country, having changed the established religion, changed to the same extent the appropriation of church property. If Protestants should ever again be in a minority in this house, I, for one, avow my conviction that a return to the ancient appropriation would be the fair and legitimate consequence ; but until that is the case I shall raise my humble voice as a Pro- testant against the principle involved in the motion before the house. The great griev- ance complained of in Ireland is, that the Protestant Establishment there is paid for by the Roman Catholic inhabitants. Now is such in reality the case? Are tithes paid for that purpose? or are not tithes rather a part of the surplus profit of the land which goes not to the cultivator of the land but to its owner? Tithe is paid by the landlord, and the grievance complained of exists rather in theory than in reality. But if there are evils arising out of this question of tithes, is not the present government prepared to re- dress them ? Has not the government a Tithe Bill before the house, the object of which is to place the payment of tithes where it ought to be, on the landlords? The jDrin- cipal argument of Lord J. Russell is, that the Irish Church property is not duly applied, and does not answer the purposes for which it was originally intended. Well, admitting that, and granting also that there are general abuses and neglects in the administration of the Church of Ireland, I may fairly ask, has not the same general vice prevailed also, and to a like extent, in its political govern- ment? The present motion opens a boundless road ; it will lead to measure after measure, 142 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. to expedient after expedient, till we come to the recognition of the Roman Catliolic religion as the national one. In jirinciple you propose to give up the Pi'otestant Establishment ; if so, why not abandon the political government oi Ireland, and concede the repeal of the legis- lative union? I come next to the question of a surplus church revenue in Ireland. When the supposition of the existence of a surj^lus causes a convulsion in this house and throughout the country, the noble lord ought to have waited till he could prove by official documents the existence of such a surplus. The number of benefices in Ireland is 1450 ; and according to the returns, the average in- come of each is £-275. Is that too muchi The noble lord who brought forward this motion calculated the number of persons be- longing to the Established Cliurch in Ireland at 750,000, I believe that they amount to upwards of a million, or at least to a million. If I am wrong in my calculation the fault rests with the noble lord, who has brought the subject under discussion before we have re- ceived fuU information on it. Allowing tliat there are a million of Protestants in Ireland, each of its 1450 rectors would have a flock of 700 souls in a country where the population is scattered over a wide extent. Is that num- ber too small to occupy the attention of a clergyman ? If the people of Ireland w^ere all Protestants, the present Establishment in that country would be totally and ludicrously dis- proi3ortionate to their wants. J, submit that there is no surplus, as far as tlie House of Commons can be aware, of the available revenues of the Church of Ireland. Mr. Senior, a gentleman intimately connected with some of those who are are most favour- able to the Irish Church commission, has declared in a pamphlet on this very important subject, that there is reason to believe that the report of the oommissionei's wUl show that there is a considerable Protestant popu- lation in most parts of Ireland, and tliat if the church is to be sujipressed only in those districts where it is now needless, the propor- tion of parishes in which it is got rid off will not be lai^e. The proposition, therefore, to which the house is invited to assent is alike impracticable and unjustifiable ; impractic- able, because the moral means of maintaining the state of things it proposes to create will be lost; unjustifiable, because there is no principle on which the Protestant Church can be permanently upheld, but that it is the church that teaches the ti-uth. The sj'stem we are now called on to agree to, involves the existence of church establishments. I hope I shaU never live to see the day when such a system shall be adopted in this country ; for the consequences of it to public men will be lamentable beyond all description. If those individuals who are called on to fill the high functions of administering public affairs should be compelled to exclude from their considera- tion the elements of true religion, and to view various strange and conflicting doctrines in the same light, instead of administering those noble functions, they will become helots and slaves." Lord Stanley followed with a speech which justified the former remarks of Lord John Russell, when it was said of him, "Johnny has upset the coach." He said: — "When the House is called on to adopt the jDresent position as the only means of pacifying Ireland, it behoves them to remember what has been the result of the concessions al- ready made, and to consider how far this additional concession is likely to produce unanimity and cordiality. Mr. Littleton has candidly admitted that he cares little for the resolution; that he looks to the great and vital disease, which, according to him, can only be removed by cutting out the afi"ected part. Is the house prepared to admit the principle involved in that argument, and to expose themselves to all the successive assaults which they will have to sustain from the well- marshalled phalanx which I see arrayed on the ojDi^osite benches? I congratulate the member for Dublin (O'Connell) on the posi- tion he now occupies as compared with that which he filled last year. Oh, how proud is the triumph enjoyed by one of the parties at the opposite side of the house, and how bitter the submission of the other ! In my opinion it mattere little whether the amount of the revenue of the Irish Church is £400,000 or SIR EOBEllT PEEL'S PROTEST. 143 ^800,000; though I firmly believe that on iuquiry it will be found not to exceed ^400,000. The whole sum available fox- the parochial clergy would not, I am assured, if fairly divided amongst them, exceed an average of J200 per annum to each. And yet, with no prospect of a higher revenue to the members of the clerical body in Ireland, the House of Commons is gravely called on to appropriate the amount that may be left." Sir Robert Peel spoke with a kind of sad dignity. He probably saw that the result of the motion would be the necessary re- .signation of the ministry. " If the house," said he, " is clearly of opinion that the pub- lic interest requires the abandonment of a national compact, the violation of a long prescription, and the abrogation of the laws affecting property, I am not disposed to deny the abstract absolute right of the legislature to do all these things; but I maintain that before doing so, it must be convinced by arguments approaching to de- monstration of the absolute necessity of the case. Three measures have expressly con- firmed the projjerty of the church. The Act of Union differed from any ordinary law in this : that it was a national compact, and contained the conditions on which alone the Protestant parliament of Ireland resigned itself and its church to us, inserting as part of the compact, of equal force with the com- pact itself, that ' the continuance and jireser- vatiou of the Established Church in Ireland shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the union.' The Emancipation Act of 1829 likewise partook of the nature of a compact. If it is irrevoc- able as regards the privileges it conferred on the Catholics, it is equally so, unless some urgent necessity should arise to compel a change, with respect to the assurances that it gave to Protestants. They were led to believe that no privilege which it conferred on the Catholics would be exercised to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or govern- ment ; that the removal of tlie civil disabilities would give new securities to the Church of Ireland ; but they little thought that within five years from the passing of that act the power which it conferred would be exercised to subvert the church establishment as far as regarded the jjroperty of the church. Two years ago we passed the Temporalities Act, by which ten bishoprics were abolished ; and measures were adopted, in my opinion wisely, to cut off a certain number of superfluous livings, and to apply their revenues to the improvement of small livings. Some of those who devised that act contended that according to one of its clauses part of the fund obtained might be applied to secular purposes ; but the subsequent abandonment of that clause, and the whole tenor of the act, showed that the principle of reserving ecclesiastical property for strictly ecclesiastical purposes was rigidly adhered to. Two years only have elapsed since the date of that act ; and now, notwith- standing the Act of Union — notwithstanding the removal of civil disabilities of the Catholics — notwithstanding the reform of the Irish Church and the extinction of ten bishoprics — we are told that this resolution must be adopted as the indication of a new system, and as the commencement of a new era. " The mover of this resolution says that the whole annual revenue of the Irish Church is £791,000. I assert as positively that it has not £450,000. Now I ask the House of Commons whether it is just or wise to come to a decision with regard to the disposal of a surplus when so great a difference of opinion prevails as to the sum itself. You have a right to insist on the noble lord's producing a practical plan; that is the only way to pi-event the exciting of extravagant hopes and sub- sequent disappointment. The noble lord's proposition will not give satisfaction to any party — not to the people of this country, not to the Protestants of Ireland, not to the Roman Catholics. " It has been argued that the Irish Church has failed to effect the ends for which it is established— that there are not more than 1,000,000 Protestants to 7,000,000 Catholics, and that Protestantism is not on the increase. I maintain that hitherto causes have been in operation to impede the growth of Protestant- ism: civil disabilities which enlisted men's pride on the side of Catholicism, abuses in 144 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. the church, superfluous wealth which created a prejudice against the Irish Church. Those causes, which formerly prevented the spread of Protestantism, have been removed ; what right, then, have we to legislate on the as- sumption of a proposed surplus? "The best proof that the resolution points at no determinable or pi-actical course is its own vagueness, and the consequent diversity of principles among those whom it has been framed to enfold; some professing at least that they must still maintain the church; others that the church is an atrocity ; others that it is a nuisance, because all establish- ments are bad; others that the Catholic clergy should be maintained by the state as well as the Protestant. Yet you call this a final settlement of the question. This resolution may have the advantage of enabling you to act together to-night, but you act on different principles and with diffei'ent views. You are all aware that this is no final settlement; that it is only an instalment of that whole amount which is held in contemplation ; that it is only an indication of the course you intend to pursue. Because you yourselves have taken a position that is untenable, you wish me to take it in common with you ; but I will not consent to appropriate this property, which is ecclesiastical and connected with the Protestant Establishment, to other purposes than those of the Establishment. I will not assent to your resolution for the sake of Ire- land, because I know that it will excite in that unhappy and susceptible country false hopes— hopes which you cannot realize, and yet hopes that you will shrink from dis- appointing. I tell you beforehand I will not act on your resolution. I shall oppose the motion for going into committee; in committee I shall oppose the resolution ; and lastly, I shall oppose with all my strength the com- munication of that resolution to his majesty. I will do so because it wears all the appear- ance of a purpose to pass by the House of Lords. Why have not the movers of this resolution brought in a biU? Are they un- certain of their plan? Are they ashamed of presenting in the ordinary course the result of their calm, solemn, and mature delibera- tion ? Do you consider it right to a.sk for a resolution of this nature under the unfair and dishonest pi-etence of making a communica- tion to the crown, which might have been done in a modest manner without any parade or the excitement of the least commotion ? If you think it right that a bill should be brought in on the subject I will afford every facility. You may succeed in forcing your resolution upon us. It may enable you to embaiTass the future progress of the administration. But I tell you, notwithstanding your vaunted majorities here, you do not control public opinion. We may be weak here ; but this I tell you, that there is a public opinion alto- gether independent of majorities, and which is not controlled by votes, but which must always hereafter be an essential element in every executive government. I was never more confident of anything than that the people will not sanction a motion to embarrass the government. They would sanction you in attempting a vote of want of confidence ; that would be a usual course of proceeding. Why have you not the manliness to propose it? Why do you not say at once that you want to turn out the government by the in- troduction of this measure? Why, then, do you not displace us, and then carry on the measure triumphantly ? I feel that I cannot undertake to force your resolution. I shall adhere to the principles of my own measure. I feel that such is the necessity for the settle- ment of the tithe question that it will admit of no further delay. I shall press it forward ; and if your determination to throw unusual impediments in the way of the government be plainly indicated, if you determine to obstruct it in principle and detail, I shall then see that it is not possible for me, con- sistently with my sense of duty, to remain in the situation that I have at present the honour to hold." The debate concluded with a brief reply from Lord John Russell, and on a division the votes were : — For the resolution, 322 Against, 289 Majority in favour of the resolution, . 33 SIR ROBERT PEEL, BART. Premier 13 J*. 1835 and. 1841- lo4-6 FROM THE P0RTPAI7 BY SIR TaC^ LSWREKCE. PP-A. BLACXre JvSOB. i-OKDON-GLASOOW .v. BPINBVKGH LORD GLENELG. 145 This division took place at three o'clock on the morning of the 3d of April, and Sir R. Peel then proposed that the resolution should be considered in committee on the Monday following ; but the victorious opposition re- fused even this concession, and the debate was renewed the same evening, with a num- ber of resolutions and discussions which ultimately compelled Sir Robert at once to resign office, his colleagues of course doing the same. The jDosition was critical and difficult, and his speech on this occasion was a remarkable one. He said that he with- drew with reluctance because he felt that, with the confidence of the sovereign and a considerable and morallj^ and intellectually powerful section of the people, he had it in his power to settle certain serious questions which were now once more left to float with the stream. After giving his reasons for holding on when first challenged to resign, and his reasons for withdrawing now, he con- cluded in these words, "The whole of my political life has been spent in the House of Commons — the remainder of it will be spent in the House of Commons, and whatever may be the conflicts of parties, I for one shall always wish, whether in a majority or in a minority, to stand well with the House of Commons. Under no circumstances what- ever, under the pressure of no difficulties, under the influence of no temptation, will I ever advise the crown to resign that great source of moral strength which consists in a strict adherence to the practice, to the prin- ciples, to the spirit, to the letter, of the con- stitution. I am confident that in that adher- ence will be found the surest safeguard against any impending or eventual danger, and it is because I entertain that conviction that I, in conformity with the opinions of my colleagues, consider that a government ought not to per- sist in carrying on public aff'airs after the sense of the house has been fully and deliberately expressed, in opposition to the opinion of a majority of the House of Commons. It is because I have that conviction deeply rooted in my mind, and regretting, as I most deeply do regret, the necessity which has compelled me to abandon his majesty's service at the VOL. I. present moment, that, upon the balance of public considerations I feel that the course which I have now taken is more likely to sus- tain the character of public men, and to pro- mote the permanent interests of the country, than if I had longer persevered in what I believe would have proved a fruitless attempt to conduct, as a minister, the king's service in defiance of that opposition which has hitherto obstructed the satisfactory progress of public business." The king was now once more in a difficulty. He endeavoured to induce Earl Grey to return to public life ; but the veteran reformer knew a better thing, and advised his majesty to recall Melbourne. This he was in fact com- pelled to do. Only one condition he imposed, that Lord Brougham should not again take the great seal. It was an unpleasant thing to anger Brougham, and he was likely to prove a dangerous enemy ; but his former colleagues, preferred any risk to that of having him among them. And now occurred a striking instance of the force of brains. Lord Lyndhurst of course would not do, being a high Tory. But who was there that could be named in the same day with Brougham — Lyndhurst being supposed out of the way] Not a lawyer in the kingdom ; so the great seal was put in commission, the holders of the commission being Sir Charles Pepys, Sir Lancelot Shad- well, and Mr. Justice Bosanquet. Of course, however, all these three good lawyers together did not make up for Brougham or Lyndhurst — so transcendent a thing is power of brain when it reaches exaltation point. We might, in passing, push this a step farther, by reflect- ing how mean a figure Brougham, Lyndhurst, and Campbell together would make as a wool- sack commission vice Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. In the new ministry the places were, in other respects, filled up pretty much as before Lord Durham was sent to Russia as ambas- sador. Earl Mulgrave, now Marquis of Nor- mandy, was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with Lord Morpeth for secretary. Mr. Charles Grant, the colonial secretary, was sent to the upper house as Lord Glenelg. In passing we mention two very incongruous things 10 may 146 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. about tliis nobleman'. His impnssivity and indolence was a frequent subject for the pencil of IB, who would represent him lying asleep on a sofa, one tickling his nose, another pinch- ing his legs, anothel- shouting in his ear, and so forth ; but no one being able to wake him. The other fact is that he is the author of the beautiful hymn — " When gathering clouds around I view," which is known all over the world, and ap- pears in nearly every selection of sacred pieces. The Irish Church Bill was not destined to succeed though the Whigs had returned to power, for it was so persistently opposed by the House of Lords that it had to be aban- doned by the Melbourne ministry. But if the aifairs of Ireland were still to be left unameliorated, and the factions opposition of Rejiealers on the one hand and supjjortei's of ecclesiastical domination on the othei", were potent to delay any measure adequate to re- dress wrongs or to suppress outrages in that unfortunate country, there was another great question which had already been dealt with more successfully. For years the advocates of negro emancipation had been waiting for the legislature to take another step in the abolition of slavery. For though the British slave trade had been abolished mainly through the strenu- ous advocacy of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Zach- ary Macaulay, Stephens, and Romilly, slavery still existed in the British colonies, and in many places remained under conditions of such horrible inhumanity that the hearts of good men were fired with a determination never to let the matter rest till this foul blot had been erased from the national escutcheon. In 1831 the number of human beings held in slavery by powers calling themselves Chris- tian nations was estimated to be 5,225,000 — namely, 2,000,000 in Brazil, 1,650,000 in the United States, 500,000 in Cuba and Porto- Rico, 200,000 in the French colonies, 75,000 in other foreign colonies, and 800,000 in British colonies, principally represented hj the West Indies, where the negroes were engaged on the sugar and coffee plantations. Sir Thomas Powell Buxton, a partner of the great brewing firm and member for Wey- mouth, had succeeded Wilberforce as the advocate of emancipation, and in 1823 had moved in the House of Commons that slavery was repugnant to the principles of the British constitution and to Christianity. He was a Dissenter, and a man of known piety and strong determination, while his tall figure and handsome presence gave him a distinction which was recognized at every meeting which he attended. The time had come when his constant earnestness on behalf of negro eman- cipation was to be crowned with success ; but the people themselves had already demanded that the government should deal with the question, and among the banners of the Liberal candidates at the elections the most conspicuous if not the most numerous were those on which appeared the figure of a man- acled negro, beneath which was inscribed, "Am I not a man and a brother?" Doubtless the treatment of the West Indian negroes differed very considei'ably on various plantations, and there were planters and slave- owners who had a humane regard for their human "chattels," and neither ill-used them nor subjected them to barbarous punish- ments ; but on the other hand it could not be denied that the old system of slavery survived in frequent cruelties and in unremitting toil. At anyrate the conditions of slavery gave the suflerers no redress. The negro had no rights, nor was he permitted to have property. He was forbidden to accumulate more than i;25, and he could exercise none of the jirivileges which are claimed by humanity except by the consent of his owner. The possibilities of extreme severity were often made certainties, and in the case of the hands on sugar planta- tions much of the evidence taken before the committee of the House of Commons was of a kind which justly aroused both the pity and the indignation of the advocates of freedom. The following may not have represented any- thing like the majority of cases, but they were obviously not improbable nor highly exagger- ated statements of the conditions of the un- fortunate men and women on some of the estates in Jamaica. The first is from the examination of Mr. William Taylor, who was SUFFERINGS OF THE JAMAICA NEGROES. 147 for thirteen years a resident in Jamaica in a commercial capacity, and as a manager of estates: — " Q. Do you think that an essential imjjrove- ment is consistent -with a state of slavery ? "A. I think no essential amelioration can consist with slavery. "Q. Will you describe what you mean by amelioration] "A. For instance, the absence of the whip. I do not see that they can uphold slavery without physical coercion — without corporeal punishment; some motive must be brought to bear on men's minds; where there is no motive you must apply the whip; if you with- draw that an instant, relaxation takes place of the whole system, and I do not think that, under any ameliorated slavery, they can be kept together. I think a certain degree of it may be called cruel punishment. Corporeal punishment is necessary to keeping them to- gether, and to keep them in active operation. I do not think that the work of the estate can be carried on without floc^ainsc, and iloirfrius considerably sometimes." The following is from the examination of Mr. James Beckford "Wildman, a planter and proprietor of 640 slaves : — • " Q. Did you work the boiling-house in one or two spells on your estate? "A. The system on one of my estates when I went was a very dreadful one, as I con- sidered, and of which my attorney, although he had been in the island all his life, was ignorant; for when I told him the negroes worked what is called the long sjiell — that is, in fact, four-and-tweuty hours — he denied it, and said it was not so ; and it was not until I called up the j^eople, and asked them the question, that he acknowledged it. "Q. Explain to the committee what the long spell is. "A. In the long spell the negro goes on at twelve o'clock in the day ; he then continues the whole four-and-twenty hours in work ; he is then relieved, at shell-blow, for two hours, and he works again from that time till dark, so that it is thirty hours' labour with the intermission of two hours; then at daylight he turns out again. The way in which they meet that is — they say, 'Oh, but where twelve peojjle are wanted, we put on twenty-four, so that twelve are always at rest;' and that is the fact in one way, because those women who are attending the mill are squirted all over with the cane-juice, and are wet through. "Q. You are speaking of what yourself knew? "A. Yes, and what I saw day after day, and night after night. " Q. If any witness should have stated that those who fed the mill are not wetted with the juice of the sugar-cane that spurts out, that is not correct? "A, No, it is not; I defy any one to feed the mill without being squirted all over with juice. I have done it myself ; I have grown canes as thick as my arm ; that cane is put in between two large rollers of sixteen to eighteen inches diameter; the roller is so close you scarcely can see through it; the cane is, with a little impetus, thrust between the roller, and that catches hold of it and draws it in; and when the cane is rank and in good order it is so full of juice there is almost a little fountain playing on the people ; they are perfectly wet through, they have nothing on but their little Osnaburgh frock, and their lower clothes; then if they lie down in that state on the mill bed, which at low ground is raised very high, of course they are before a small fire, exposed to so piercing a draught of cold, that although I myself was clothed warmly as Europeans are, and had a Scotch plaid, which I bound round my face, I could not stand it. "(?. The crop time is generally in the coldest part of the year in that country ? ''A. The mill is generally put about in Feb- ruary, and from February it varies, according to the climate, for three, four, or six months; on some estates it is crop time neaily the year round. " Q. Those who feed the mill through Feb- ruary and March are subject to sufier ex- tremely from cold ? "A. I consider that as one great reason of the destruction of life. The negro comes out of the field, after working all day under a tropical sun, and comes in to take the night spell, gets wet through in feeding the mill, 148 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. and lies down on the mill floor to sleep two or three hours under the cutting wind : I con- sider that to be one great reason for the de- struction of life on sugar estates. "^. Did the long spell exist on your estate? "A. On one out of the three. " Q. "What may be gained in produce, is in your opinion lost in the life of the slave ? "A. Over and over again. "Q. "What are the punishments in use in the island of Jamaica now 1 "A. They are very cruel ones. " Q. "Will you state what they are 1 "^. The general system of flogging is to give them a certain number of stripes with a long whip, which inflicts a dreadful laceration, or a dreadful contusion; and then they follow up that by a very severe flogging wath ebony switches, the ebony being a very strong wiry plant, with small leaves like a myrtle leaf, and under every leaf a sharp tough thorn: and then after that they rub them with brine." Of course it may be now, as it was then, ar- gued that such punishments were only inflicted for very serious offences, and it is not necessary to regard the rubbing with brine as an inten- tional addition to the sufl"erings of the unfor- tunate wretches who had to endure it, but as a barbai'ous means of preventing dreadful and probably fatal results from wounds or abrasions in such a climate ; but the whole ad- mission is sickening, and the excuse even for quoting it may be that it will serve to show not only the evils of the slavery which was safFered to exist even after the abolition of the trade in negroes, but also the vast space over which the progress of the last half-century has carried us, when we consider that human beings could be so tortured for comparatively small faults, and that the punishments were inflicted without a trial before any legal tribunal and without the right of appeal to any constituted authoi'ity. The Quakers, who were among the most pronounced advocates of freedom for the negro, had long recognized the incompatibility of slavery with Christianity and had emancipated their slaves as early as 1787, after which it was declared that thei'e was not a single slave in the possession of any member of the Society of Friends, who were, however, subject to per- secution for their endeavours to instruct their black labourers. "It is curious," says the Morning Chronicle of that time, " that the Quakers, so far from seeking compensation for the loss of their slaves, actually gave compen- sation to the slaves for the injury which had been done them by holding them in slavery. They calculated what would have been due to the slaves as wages, over and above food and clothing, from the commencement of their slavery, and paid the debt, thus clearing their conscience, as far as they could, of this deep offence." The Quakers were therefore naturally advo- cates of the immediate and entire " abolition," demanded by Buxton and other earnest advo- cates who represented perhaps the wider pop- ular feeling. But the government was not prepared to recommend such a sudden emanci- pation. The opinions of Mr. Gladstone were to a great extent shared by his older contempor- aries, and many of those members of the "Whig government who were disposed to grant com- plete freedom to the slave, hesitated to restore him to absolute liberty until he had been in a measure prepared for it by an interval which he would pass in a transitional "apprenticeship." They feared, and not unreasonably, that the sudden emancipation of a large number of un- educated slaves would lead to excesses which it might be exceedingly difficult, if not impos- sible to control, without worse consequences than could ensue from the exercise of certain restraints which would not press hardly, but would interpose for a time between actual slavery and free labour. Among the noblest achievements of the first reform ministry must surely be reckoned the abolition of West Indian slavery ; for, so far as form goes, the abolition was complete. From time to time, under the pressure of opinion in and out of parliament, orders in council had been passed having for their object the mitiga- tion of the evils of slavery as a system and the personal sufterings of the slaves. These, how- ever well intended, had all the usual conse- quences of half -measures. The slave's master was irritated, and took such vengeance as he could; the slave himself, awakened to the idea ANTI-SLAVERY MEETINGS. 149 that he had rights which were withheld from him in the gross, objected to receiving them bit by bit in this way. Not that they under- stood the ditl'erence between an amelioration of their lot by order in council in England and an amelioration by act of parliament in England ; but that they laid the blame upon the West Indian authorities when they did not get all they wanted. In fact, the discon- tent was general. The jalanters muttered, and more than muttered, some ugly things about withholding the payment of taxes to the im- perial government; the negroes of Jamaica rose in insurrection. This was in the latter part of the year 1831. At home, of course, the West Indian interest had ^^owerful repre- sentatives, and these demanded compensation from the government for the losses they had sustained. On the other hand, the friends of emancipation took this opportunity of calling in louder tones than ever for the total aboli- tion of slavery. The religious public in Great Britain were very much excited upon this question; other Nonconforming bodies besides the Quakers being especially active in their labours. Lord Brougham presented a petition signed by about 140,000 of the inhabitants of London; the signatures being as a rule not only hona fide, but of a very different charac- ter in other respects from those too often at- tached to petitions for merely political olijects. The petitioners in this case asked nothing for themselves ; they were moved by compassion, indignation, and the sense of what was due to the divine law. Mr. Thomas Fowell Buxton, taking his share of the work in the Lower House, moved for the appointment of a select committee to consider the best and most ex- peditious means of fulfilling the prayer of the petition, which was of course the abolition of West Indian slavery. This was opposed by Lord Althorp, and the motion was lost by a large majority ; but victory was now certain, and was not long delayed. Of course Lord Brougham could not (and indeed he did not) neglect his share of the labour, for he had been largely indebted to abolitionist votes for his return for Yorkshire. The movement which, after a long struggle, resulted in the abolition of slaverv in the Bri- tish colonies, was in its later stages entirely religious. Other than religious men had joined in it, for example, Pitt and Fox, and many religious men had opposed its progress; but at last the influence of the Quakers and "the Clapham sect," as the whole Macaulay group were called, stamped it with an essentially religious character, which it never lost till the goal was reached. Sir George Stephen, son of George Stephen and brother of the abler and more celebrated Sir James (of the colonial office), maintained that till the enemies of slavery had succeeded in stamping upon the movement the idea that it was above all things an effoi't to get the will of God done, it never assumed the form and dimensions which assured its speedy triumph. Those were the days in which the great missionary and edu- cational societies began to "loom large" in the public eye. Exeter Hall and Freemasons' Hall were the great resorts of such associa- tions, and "the May meetings" were most imposing. The number of hours to which a missionary or anti-slavery meeting would ex- tend its sittings would, in our own busier and more impatient day be voted appalling; but it was a regular thing then for resi^ectable people, bound for such assemblies, to take refreshments with them; partly because a meeting convened for eleven o'clock might go on till three, pai'tly because it was often im- possible to get out for a time, the place was so crowded. How much needle-work and fancy work was done by enthusiastic ladies in those five or six hours' meetings will never be known ; but to look down from the gallery upon the busy fingers at work below was dazzling to the eye. Of the enthusiasm that sometimes woke up suddenly at such places it would be difficult to give an idea ; but per- haps a few sentences from an account given by Sir George Stephen of a meeting at which Wilberforce and Buxton in vain endeavoured to impose "moderate views" upon the excited assembly may be not unwelcome. No man knew more the inner and outer life of the movement than Sir George Stephen, and as a con tern poi'ary record his account has much value, besides being graphic and straight- forward. An important impulse had been 150 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. giveu to the anti-slavery agitation by a great meeting held in Freemasons' Hall. It was a magnificent spectacle," writes Sir George Stephen. "Well do I remember saying to those around me, what I then sincerely felt, 'To-day the slave is free !' And all appeared to share the same feeling ; but, alas, the very demon of procrastination seemed to have pos- sessed our leaders ! A string of resolutions was proposed by Buxton, admirably worded, admirably indignant, but admirably prudent. Tliey wound np with an unalterable deter- mination to leave no proper and practicable means unattempted for effecting at the earliest period the entire abolition of slavery through- out the British dominions. They were carried, and others to the like effect; but it was too much for the patience of young anti-slavery England. Mr. Pownall, a member of the Anti-slavery Committee, was in the side gal- lery. Careless of the prudish decorum that had hitherto marked all our meetings, and in defiance of frowns and remonstrances and cries of order, Mr. Pownall would be heard, and was heard. He moved an amendment in a few pithy words, deprecating indecision and delay. 'That from and after the first of January, 1830, every slave born within the king's dominions shall be free.' It was a spark to the mine. The shouts, the tumult of applause, were such as I never heard before, and never shall hear again. Cheers innumer- able thundered from every bench, hats and handkerchiefs were waved in every hand. Buxton deprecated. Brougham interposed, AVilberforce waved his hand for silence, but all was pantomime and dumb-show. I did my best in a little knot of some half-dozen yoimg men to resist all attempt at suppres- sion. We would allow no silence and no ap- peals. At the first subsidence of the tempest we began again, reserving our lungs till others were tii'ed. We soon became the fuglemen of the mighty host ; nor did we rest or allow others to rest till Wilberforce rose to put the amendment, which was carried with a burst of exulting triumph that would have made the Falls of Niagara inaudible at equal dis- tance." To this interesting account of a kind of scene which in those "high and palmy days" of religious and philanthropic meetings was not at all singular, it need hardly be added that the "resolution" did not carry all before it, for it was not till four years after- wards that the slave was formally declaied free. It was during the debate on the ministerial proposition for emanciimtion of the slaves in the West India Islands, which was brought forward on the 14th of May, 1833, that Lord Howick, ex-under-secretary for the colonies, for the ixirjjose of showing that a great de- struction of human life had taken place in the West Indies, owing to the manner in which the slaves are worked, referred in illustration to an estate in Demerara of which the elder Mr. Gladstone was the owner. This reference, which was little short of an accusation, gave the rising young statesman an opportunity for an eloquent refutation, and furnished him with real motive power for what was in effect his maiden speech in parliament. This occurred on the 17th of May, on the occasion of the presentation of a petition from Portar- lington for the abolition of slavery. He chal- lenged the noble lord's statement respecting the decrease of seventy-one slaves upon the estate of Vreeden Hoop, which had been attributed to the increased cultivation of sugar. The real cause of the decrease lay in the very large proportion of Africans upon the estate. When it came into his father's posses- sion it was so weak, owing to the great num- ber of Africans iipon it, that he was obliged to add two hundred people to the gang. It was notorious that Africans were imported into Demerara and Trinidad up to a later period than into any other colony; and he should, when the pi^o^^er time arrived, be able to prove that the decrease on Vreeden Hoop was among the old Africans, and that there was an increase going on in the Creole population, which would be a sufficient answer to the statement of the noble lord. The quantit}^ of sugar produced was small in proportion to that produced on many other estates. The cultivation of cotton in Demerara had been abandoned, and that of coffee much diminished, and the people employed in these sources of production had been transferred to the culti- ME. GLADSTONE ON EMANCIPATION. 151 vation of sugar. Demerara, too, was peculiarly circumstanced, and the labour of the same number of negroes distributed over the year would pi'oduce in that colony a greater quantity of sugar with less injury to the people than negroes could produce in other colonies work- ing only at the stated periods of crop. He was ready to admit that this cultivation was of a more severe character than others; and he would ask, "Were there not certain emjjloyments in this and other countries more destructive to life than others? He would only instance those of painting and working in lead -mines, both of which were well known to have that tendency. The noble lord attempted to impugn the character of the gentleman acting as manager of his father's estates; and in making this selection he had certainly been most unfor- tunate, for there was not an individual in the colony more proverbial for humanity and the kind treatment of his slaves than this manager. Mr. Gladstone said he held in his hand two letters from the agent, in which that gentleman spoke in the kindest terms of the people under his charge; described their state of happiness, content, and healthiness, their good conduct, and the infrequency of severe punishment; and recommended certain addi- tional comforts which he said the slaves well deserved. On the 3rd of June, the debate on the abolition of slavery was resumed, and Mr. Gladstone again addressed the house, enter- ing much more fully into the charges which Lord Howick had brought against the manage- ment of his father's estates in Demerara, and showed their groundlessness. Although he confessed with shame and pain that cases of wanton cruelty had occurred in the colonies, he added that they would always exist, par- ticularly under the system of slavery, and this was unquestionably a substantial reason why the British legislature and public should set themselves in good earnest to provide for its extinction; but he maintained that these in- stances of cruelty could easily be explained by the West Indians who represented them as rare and isolated cases, and who maintained that the ordinary relation of master and slave was one of kindness and not of hostility. He deprecated cruelty, and he deprecated slavery, both of which were abhorrent to the nature of Englishmen; but, conceding these things, he asked, "Were not Englishmen to retain a right to their own honestly and legally ac- quired property V The cruelty, he said, did not exist, and he saw no reason for the attack which had recently been made upon the West India interest. He hoped the house would make a point to adopt the principle of com- pensation, and to stimulate the slave to genu- ine and spontaneous industry'. If this were not done, and moral instruction A^^ere not imparted to the slaves, liberty would prove a curse instead of a blessing to them. Eeferring to the property question, and the [)roposed plans for emancipation, Mr. Gladstone said that the house might consume its time and exert its wisdom in devising these plans, but without the concurrence of the colonial legis- latures success would be hopeless. He thought there was excessive wickedness in any violent interference under the present circumstances. They wei-e still in the midst of unconcluded inquiries, and to pursue the measure then under discussion at that moment, was to commit an act of great and imnecessary hos- tility towards the island of Jamaica. It was the duty of the house to place as broad a dis- tinction as possible between the idle and the industrious slaves, and nothing could be too strong to secure the freedom of the latter ; but with respect to the idle slaves, no period of emancipation could hasten their improvement. If the labours of the house should be con- ducted to a satisfactory issue, it would redound to the honour of the nation and to the reputa- tion of his majesty's ministers, whilst it would be delightful to the West India planters them- selves — for they must feel that to hold in bondage their fellow-men must always involve the greatest responsibility. But let not any man think of carrying this measure by force. England rested her power not upon physical force, but iipon her principles, her intellect, and virtue; and if this great measm-e were not placed on a fair basis, or were conducted by violence, he would lament it as a signal 152 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. for the ruin of the colonies and the downfall of the empire. The attitude of Mr. Gladstone, as borne out by the tenor of his speech, was not one of hos- tility to emancipation, though he was un- doubtedly unfavoxirable to an immediate and an indiscriminate enfranchisement. He de- manded, moreover, that the interests of the planters should be duly regarded. The apprenticeship clause was, however, a part of the government scheme of abolition which was explained to a committee of the whole house by Lord Stanley, who had ex- changed the office of Irish secretary for that of secretary for the colonies. Immediate and effectual measures were to be taken for the entire abolition of slavery throughout the colonies, under such provisions for regulating the condition of the negroes as might combine their welfare with the interests of the pro- prietoi's. It was considered expedient that all child- ren born after the passing of any act, or who should be under the age of six years at the time of passing any act of parliament for that purpose, should be declared free, subject, nevertheless, to such temporary restrictions as might be deemed necessary for their sup- port and maintenance. All persons then slaves were to be entitled to be registered as apprentice labourers, and to ac- quire thereby all the rights and privileges of freemen, subject to the restriction of labour- ing under conditions, and for a time to be fixed by parliament, for their present owners. To provide against the risk of loss which proprietors in his majesty's colonial posses- sions might sustain by the abolition of slavery, his majesty was to be enabled to advance, by way of loan to be raised from time to time, a sum not exceeding J15,000,000, to be repaid in such manner and at such a rate of interest as should be px'escribed by parliament. His majesty was to be enabled to defray any such expense as he might incur in estab- lishing an efficient stipendiary magistracy in the colonies, and in aiding the local legisla- tures in providing for the religious and moral education of the negro population to be eman- cipated. On the 3()th of May these resolutions were brought forward for consideration, and the first general proposition to abolish slavery passed without a division, the debate turning chiefly on the means of inducing the West India planters to accept the measure in good faith and with cordial co-operation, a desire which was not fully accomplished, even though an enormous sum was paid as comjjensation, since five years afterwards it was found that under cover of the apprenticeship clause the Jamaica ownei's continued many of their worst tyrannies, and that in numerous instances there had been no real manumission. This, however, is anticipating the story. The second resolution as to the freedom of children was also adopted, though Mr. Hume endeavoured to obtain the nomination of a committee to inquire into the probable efficiency of free labour. Such a commission, had it been gi-anted, would pi'obably have had a considerable effect on the third clause of the measure, which embodied the system of a^jprenticeship — and it was on this third proposition that the debate was fought most earnestly. Of course the foremost advocates of emancipation were op- posed to it, and Mr. Buxton declared that it was founded on a fallacy, for it was framed on a supposition that the emancijaated slaves could not be induced to work for wages. He cited numerous facts which he contended would show that as free labourers they would not only work readily for wages, but that their labour was far more profitable to their employei-s when they looked forward to a pecu- niary reward. These were the views of the original ad- vocates of emancipation, who if they had ever considered the question of an inter- mediate "apprenticeship," would have re- garded it with distrust, not only because of its falling short of complete abolition of slavery, but also because they regarded it as a fallacy in political economy. It may be known to only a few of our readei-s that in 1832 Harriet Martiueau, in one of her Ilhcstrations of Political Economy, presented the free negro labour question imder tlie guise of "a tale" entitled " Demerara." It consisted of twelve chapters, the titles of THE APPRENTICESHIP CLAUSES. 153 which were — 1. Sunrise briugs sorrow in Demerara. 2. Law endangers property in Demerara. 3. Prosperity imisoverishes in Demerara. 4. Childhood is wintry in Deme- rara. 5. No haste to the wedding in Deme- rara. 6. Man worth less than beast in Deme- rara. 7. Christianity difficult in Demerara. 8. The proud covet pauperism in Demerara. 9. Calamity welcome in Demerara. 10. Pro- tection is oppression in Demerara. 11. Beasts hunt men in Demerara. 12. No master knows his man in Demerara. The tale is in the form of a dialogue, and the principal personages are Mr. Bruce, a planter, and his son Alfred, lately arrived from England. The following extract exhibits the manner in which the subject was dealt with. "'Well, but, Alfred, give me the items. Tell me the value of a healthy slave at twenty- one?' '" I believe his labour will be found at least 25 per cent dearer than free labour. From birth to fifteen years of age, including food, clothing, life-insurance, and medicine, he will be an expense ; will not he 1 ' " ' Yes. The work he does will scarcely pay his insurance, medicine, and attendance, leav- ing out his food and clothing ; but, from fifteen to twenty-one, his laboiu- may just defray his exjjeuses.' " ' Very well ; then food and clothing for fifteen years remain to be paid ; the average cost of which, per annum, being at the least ,£6, he has cost £90 over and above his earn- ings at twenty-one yeai's. Then, if we con- sider that the best work of the best field-hand is worth barely two-thirds of the average field-labour of whites — if we consider the chances of his being sick or lame, or running away, or dying — and that, if none of these things happen, he must be maintained in old age, we must feel that property of this kind ought to bring in at least 10 per cent per annum interest on the capital laid out upon him. Whether the labour of a black, amount- ing to barely two-thiixls of that of a white labourer, defrays his own subsistence, his sliare of the exjaense of an overseer and a driver, and 10 per cent interest on £90, I leave you to say.' " ' Certainly not, son, even if we forget that we have taken the average of free labour, and the prime of slave labour. We have said nothing of the women, whose cost is full as much, while their earnings are less than the men's. But you overlook one grand con- sideration; that whites cannot work in the summer time in this climate and on this soil.' " ' It is only saying free black instead of white. The tenure of the labour is the ques- tion, not the colour of the labourers, as long as there is a plentiful supply of whichever is wanted. Only let us look at what is pass- ing before our eyes, and we shall see whether negroes working for wages, or even under tribute, are not as good labourers as whites.' " The " under tribute " certainly seems to point to the suggestion of some transitional period ; but Mr. Buxton and his followers be- lieved that the apprenticeship scheme would prove altogether unworkable, and both Mr. Halcomb and Lord Howick, who had resigned the secretaryship of the colonies because of his objection to this part of the ministerial plan, absolutely condemned it. He argued that it had not been shown in what manner the proposed system of apprenticeship would improve the character of the negroes so as to render them more fit to enjoy complete liberty at the end of twelve years, and he believed that they would be in a worse condition at the termination of the experiment than they were at its commencement. The government, however, would not abandon that clause, and they were supported by Macaulay, who, no less because of his own ability than from the fact of his being the son of the companion of Wilberforce and Clarkson in the first demands for negro emancipation, added greatly to the strength of the ministry. The period of ap- prenticeship, it was contended, was an interval of transmission by which the rights of pro- perty would be recognized — while freedom from corporal punishment would be ensured, respect for the domestic ties of the negro would be secured— and the labourer would receive a considerable share of the produce of his in- dustry. It was also argued that the advocates of immetliate emancipation could not show 154 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. that tlie same amount would be i:)roclucecl in the West Indies by a system of free labour as was obtained by compulsion. Mr. Buxton gave way on being assured that the duration of the period of apprenticeship should be left an open question, and he also agreed to forego another amendment that would have secured to the negro wages in exchange for his labour. O'Connell, who had seconded this proposition, insisted on carrying it to a division, but it was rejected by a large majority. The West Indian influence was strong in the house, and it was known that the negroes in Jamaica were frequently attempting to re- volt — endeavours, however, which had only had the effect of bringing i;pon them barbarous reprisals on the part of the slave-owners, who often treated them with the utmost violence. The party which supported the claims of the planters made a determined stand when the proposal of a loan of £15,000,000 came to be discussed ; and ministere, equally determined to pass the bill, and fearing that they might be defeated, eventually consented to pay — not as a loan, but as an actual gift in com- pensation — the enormous sum of £20,000,000. The bill then passed with no further altera- tion, except the important reduction of the term of apprenticeship from twelve to seven years, and the abolition of slavery in the British dominions was achieved — a glorious result of years of earnest ajDpeal, attained only by a vast expenditure, and at a time when the government was being urged to the retrench- ment which had been promised as a conse- quence of reform. The country, too, was in a dejiressed and even a suffering condition; but it was almost universally felt that the emanci- pation of the slave was no more than a fitting expression of the aspirations of a nation which had begun a new era in social progress and political freedom. In spite of the drawback that the emanci- pation after all was to be gradual, passing through the system of " appi'euticeship " (which after four years' trial was abandoned), the joy of the negroes was boundless, and yet well restrained by religious considerations. In the island of Jamaica " the 1st of August, 1834, came on a Friday, and a release was pro- claimed from all work until the next l^Ionday. The day was chiefly spent by the great mass of the negroes in the churches and chapels. The clergy and missionaries throughout the island were actively engaged, seizing the op- portunity to enlighten the people on all the duties and responsibilities of their new rela- tion, and urging them to the attainment of that higher liberty with which Christ maketh his children free. In every quarter, it is said, the day was kept like a Sabbath. Work had ceased. The hum of business was stiU: tranquillity pervaded the towns and country. The planters, or some of them, went to the chapels where their own jDCople were as- sembled, greeted them, shook hands with them, and exchanged the most hearty good wishes. At Grace Hill there were at least a thousand persons around the Moravian chapel who could not get in. For once the house of God suffered violence, and the violent took it by force. At Grace Bay the people, all dressed in white, formed a procession, and walked anil in arm into the chapel. It is on record that the dress of the negroes on that occasion was uncommonly simple and modest. There was not the least disposition to gaiety. Throughout the island there was not a single dance known of, either by day or night, nor so much as a fiddle played." The whole question of the position of "the lower races," as it is now the fashion to say, has within the last fifty years been dragged through so many jungles of controversy, that the impression of all this has a good deal faded. The point of view from which the question was fifty years ago regarded in Eng- land has ceased to be universally acceptable, and the writings of Mr. Carlyle have helj^ed to make "poor Quashee," as that gentleman calls him, ridiculous. His "Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question" is not so well remembered that a passage or two from it may not be useful and interesting as an index of the rapid changes that "public opinion" is liable to. There is now a large and strong "public opinion" among the "scientific" classes that the black man is the natural servant of the white, and that the triumph of the north over the south in America will be found to have WILBERFOECE AND HIS FRIENDS. 155 evil results of the most serious kiud. At all events it was not so many years after the triumph of religious philanthropy in the gi'eat anti-slavery question that Mr. Carlyle could write like this. "West Indian affairs, as we all know, and as some of us kuow to our cost, are in a rather troublous condition this good while. In regard to West Indian affairs, how- ever, Lord John Russell is able to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so many are dubious. That the Negroes are all very happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable in- deed. West Indian Whites, it is admitted, are far enough from happy; West Indian Colonies not unlike sinking wholly into ruin. But, thank Heaven, our interesting Black popula- tion, equalling almost in number of heads one of the Ridings of Yorkshire, and in worth (in quantity of intellect, faculty, docility, energy, and available human valour and value) per- haps one of the streets of Seven Dials, are all doing remarkably well, 'Sweet blighted lilies,' as the American epitaph on the Nigger child has it, — sweet blighted lilies, they are holding up their heads again ! "Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in this matter. The twenty mil- lions, a mere trifle despatched with a single dash of the pen, are paid; and far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered ex- tremely 'free' indeed. Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; the grinder and incisor teeth ready for ever new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates; while the sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins ; and at home we are but required to rasji from the breakfast loaves of our own English labourers some slight ' differential sugar duties,' and send a poor half-million or a few poor millions now and then, to keep tliat beautiful state of matters going on." Of course it is not possible to mention the subject of the abolition of slavery without being reminded of the death of William AYilberforce, who passed away in -July, 1833, aged 74. Wilberforce had every advantage of Avealth and education, and had no diflficulty in taking the place in life which was natural to him. While he was yet a schoolboy he wrote a letter to a York newspaper denounc- ing the slave-trade, so that he was one of that not too numerous band who, in the language of Wordsworth, have "wrought" all their lives " upon the plan that pleased their child- ish thought." He came, upon his majority, into a large fortune, and entered parliament as member for Hull at twenty-six years of age. It may be mentioned here as a cui-ious illus- tration of the uncertainty of the law even in points as to which it might well be supposed certain, that his son William lost his seat for Hull upon a technical point arising under his father's will. The question was whether the " estate " he " took " iinder the terms of the will was such as to entitle him to a seat. Ujaon this point the two greatest living pro- fessors of conveyancing law gave precisely contrary opinions. There was not a moment's doubt as to the intention of the will, but the decision was ultimately against the second Mr. W. Wilberforce, and he was unseated. William Wilberforce the elder — the Wilber- force — was a genial and accomplished man, of " the school " of Hannah More, if such an ex- pression may be used. In fact he very much resembled her in piety, general pleasantness, and willingness to mix with the world. His friendships wdth Pitt — under whom he declined to take office — the Rev. Richard Cecil, Za chary Macaulay, Clarkson,Romilly, and Fowell Bux- ton are familiar topics. His piety rendered him a subject of much ridicule. He was well laughed at in Byron's Don Juan in the same couplet with "Eomilly" — the rhyme being " homily." His " Society for the Suppression of Yice" pursued a policy which brought down Sydney Smith upon it in one of his most amusing and caustic papers. One night Sheri- dan was found drunk in the street — it is said in the gutter. When the watchman picked him up and asked his name, he answered, " William Wilberforce." The malicious humour of this speaks for itself. So much of London as heard of this w^as j^retty well scandalized at the news that William Wilberforce had been found tipsy in the street by a night watchman. 156 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. It was mainly to the public labours of William Wilbeifoi-ce that tlie abolition both of the slave-trade (1807) and slavery (1833) was due. Heaven alone can determine whether the most meritorious portion of the whole work was due to Clarkson, Zachary Macaulay, George Stephen the elder, or to labourers who are nameless, but as a public labourer in the cause Wilberforce must rank first. Being in very weak health, he retired from-^ parlia- ment in 1825. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton then carried on the agitation as its recognized public leader, and as the public grew more and more impatient every year it was plain to Wilberforce and those of his old coadjutors that the ti'iumjih of the cause they had at heai't could not be long delayed. When he was on his death-bed news was brought to him that the bill for tlie abolition of slavery in the British dominions had passed the second reading, and he expressed devout thankfulness that he had lived to see his countrymen willing to spend twenty millions for such a purjjose. He was buried in West- minster Abbey. It was with more purposes than one that we turned for a moment to Mr. Carlyle's imaginary report of a speech delivered at Exeter Hall denouncing what he conceived to be the excesses of the philanthropic spirit. " Here," says the report, " various persons in an agitated manner, with an air of indigna- tion, left the room, especially one very tall gentleman in white trousei's, whose boots creaked much. The president, in a resolved voice, with a look of official rigour, whatever his own private feelings might be, enjoined 'Silence, silence!' The meeting again sat motionle.ss." The very tall person, in white trousers, whose boots creaked, was intended for Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, as we have said, a man of much ability, but as unlike Wil- berforce as could well be conceived. He had, however, every necessary qualification for his task as Wilberforce's successor, except the latter's eloquence, fine voice, and winning ways. In its proper place we shall have to refer to the peculiarly party character which dis- tinguished the subsequent measures by which negro emancipation was actually completed ; but it will be convenient here to continue some account of the settlement of the question when, after changes of government, a Whig ministry, with Lord Melbourne at its head, was again in power, and when our present sovereign had succeeded to the throne. It was only in 1839 that her majesty was able to announce that throughout our West Indian j^ossessions the period of ajiprenticeship had been dimin- ished, and complete emancipation of the slaves had been accomplished by the acts of the colonial legislatures, and that the transition from apprenticeship to entire freedom had been effected without any disturbance of the public peace. This was exceedingly satisfac- tory so far, but there were two questions which had to be seriously considered in rela- tion to it. One was that the trafl&c in slaves was still carried on in Africa in spite of all our efforts to put a stop to it. It was declared, indeed, that the alacrity of the cruisers sent out by our government to seize slave-ships actu- ally increased the horrors of the abominable trade in human beings — the wretched negroes who had been bought or stolen on the coast were chained and even riveted together, and packed in the foetid holds of the vessels which were to convey them away. If a British cruiser was known to be gaining on the ship, a portion of the living cargo was thrown over- board to lighten the vessel and give her a better chance of escaping. Hon-ible stories reached England of the atrocities practised by the desperate dealers in human beings, who found themselves in danger from the guns of a fast-sailing "chaser;" and it was said that on one occasion five hundred negi'oes had been flung into the sea ! This was the foreign aspect of the slavery question ; but as we have already hinted, there were reports of mons- trous evasions, or, more sti'ictly sj^eaking, de- fiances of the law, in some of our own West Indian possessions, where many of the plantei-s made the apprenticeship clause a pretext for keeping the negroes in actual slavei-y, accom- panied by cruel punishments and tortures, while there were not a few cases where life was taken without either trial or inquiry. Lord Brougham brought the matter before ME. GLADSTONE'S ARGUMENTS FOR "APPRENTICESHIP." 157 the House of Lords with fervid emjjhasis. He proposed improvements iu the method for suppressing tlie African sLave - ti'ade, aud de- nounced the system of ajiprenticeship, of which he had been one of the supporters, if not one of the original jJi'OjJoseis, aud by insisting on which he had caused Lord Ho wick's resigna- tion from the ministry. These efforts were unavailing, however, as the labour of the slaves during the period of apprenticeship was regarded by the house as a part of the compensation made to the planters in addition to the twenty millions which had been paid to tkem. On the 29th of March, 1838, Sir George Strickland made a similarly unsuccessful at- tempt in the House of Commons ; and it was on that occasion that Mr. Gladstone spoke at great length and with consummate ability on the subject, defending the planters against reports which he regarded as being for the most part unsuj^ported calumnies. He began by saying that when the Abolition Act of 1833 was brought forward, those who were connected with West Indian property joined in the passing of that measure: "We pro- fessed a belief that the state of slavery was an evil and a demoralizing state, and desired to be relieved from it ; we accepted a price in composition for the loss which was expected to accrue; and if, after these professions and that acceptance, we have endeavoured to prolong its existence and its abuses under another appellation, no language can ade- quately characterize our baseness, and either everlasting ignominy must be upon us, or you are not justified in carrying this motion." But he utterly and confidently denied the charge as it affected the mass of the planters, and as it affected the mass of the apprentices. By the facts to be adduced he would stand or fall. "With what depth of desire," said he^ " have I longed for this day ! Sore, and wearied, and irritated, perhaps, with the grossly exaggerated misrepresentations, and with the utter calumnies that have been in circulation without the means of reply, how do I rejoice to meet them in free discussion before the face of the British Parliament ! and I earnestly wish that I may be enabled to avoid all language and sentiments similar to those I have reprobated in others." He then emphatically argued that the char- acter of the planters was at stake. They were attacked botli on moral and pecuniary grounds. The apprenticeship — as Lord Stanley dis- tinctly stated when he introduced the measure — was a part of the compensation. Negro labour had a marketable value, and it would be unjust to those who had the right in it to deprive them of it. Besides, the house had assented to this right as far as the year 1840, and was morally bound to fulfil its compact. The committee presided over by Mr. Buxton had reported against the necessity for this change. Mr. Gladstone then fully examined the relations subsisting between the planters and the negroes, and with regard to the cases of alleged cruelty, he contended that they had been constantly and enormously on the deci-ease since the period of abolition. He strongly deprecated all such appeals as were made to individual instances aud exaggerated re- presentations, and endeavoured, by numerous statistics, to prove tliat the abuses were far from being general. The use of the lash as a stimulus to labour had died a natural death in Bi-itish Guiana. During the preceding five months only eleven corporal punishments had been inflicted in a population of seven thou- sand persons, yielding an average of seven hundred lashes in a year, and these not for neglect of work, but for theft. Nearly at the close of his speech Mr. Gladstone used the following effective argument : " Have you, who are so exasperated with the West Indian apprenticeship that you will not wait two years for its natural expiration, — have you inquired what responsibility lies upon every one of you, at the moment when I speak, with reference to the cultivation of cotton in America? In that country there are near three millions of slaves. You hear not from that land of the abolition — not even of the mitigation — of slavery. It is a domestic in- stitution, and is to pass without limit, we are told, from age to age; and we, much more than they, are responsible for this enormous growth of what purports to be an eternal slavery. 158 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. . . . You consumed forty-five millions of pounds of cotton in 1837 which proceeded from free labour, and proceeding from slave labour three hundred and eighteen millions of pounds ! And this while the regions of India afford the means of obtaining at a cheaper rate, and by a slight oiiginal outlay to facilitate transport, all that you can require. If, sir, the complaints against the general body of the West Indians had been substantiated, I should have deemed it an unworthy arti- fice to attempt diverting the attention of the house from the question immediately at issue, by merely proving that other delinquencies existed in other quarters; but feeling, as I do, that those charges have been overthrown in debate, I think myself entitled and bound to show how capricious are honourable gentlemen in the distribution of their sympathies among those different objects which call for their ajj- plication." The defence was able and vigorous, but after careful inquiry there could be no doubt that the planters, or a sufficient num- ber of them to warrant interposition, had violated the spirit of the Act of Emancipa- tion, and though when the house went to a division, Sir George Strickland's motion was lost — the numbers being. Ayes 215, Noes 269, majority 54 — it was evident that the demand for interference must eventually be listened to. It was not surprising, therefore, when the queen in 1839 made the announcement that the legislatures of the "West Indian Islands had put an end to negro apprenticeship, and secured full emancipation, that the government should have turned its attention to the condition of Jamaica, where the gratifying result had only been attained by the direct influence of the home government upon the house of assembly wliich carried on the legislature of the island; an influence exercised because of the brutali- ties practised by the planters against the negroes on their estates. But the assembly, after effecting the desired change, became so rebellious that it became necessary to show its dependent character by a projDOsal to sus- pend the constitution of the island for five years, and then to amend the constitution in accordance with the altered circumstances arising from the complete abolition of slavery. The government, however, was ojjposed, not only by Sir Robert Peel and the Conservatives, but also by Radical members, who could not r-econcile the proposed act with their ideas of Liberal principles. The consequence was that the bill was only carried by a majority of five — the Liberal ministry resigned. Sir Robert Peel came into power, and had also to resign almost immediately under circumstances which made the question a party one; the Liberal gov- ernment was re-established, and introduced a new bill, which chiefly differed from the form.er one by containing a provisional clause that the Jamaica Assembly should be once more called together, that its members might have an opportunity of adopting the measures of the home government — while, if they were still contumacious, the governor would be em- powered to suspend their sittings, and to legis- late without consulting them. After strenuous opposition this bill passed by a small majority, and with some amendments in the Lords was finally adopted. Notwithstanding the cancelling of a debt of ^600,000 due from the Portuguese govei-n- ment, as an inducement to that country to aid us in our endeavours to suppress the slave-trade on the coast of Africa, Portugal had hitherto evaded the implied agreement. Lord Brougham therefore proposed an address to the crown, jjraying her majesty by all the means in her power to negotiate with the governments of foreign nations, as well in America as in Europe, for their concurrence in effectually putting down the traffic in slaves; and also that her majesty would graciously please to give such orders to her majesty's cruisers as might be most efficacious in stopping the said traffic, more especially that carried on under the Portuguese and Brazilian flag, or by Portuguese and Brazilian ships; assuring her majesty that the house would cheerfully concur with the other house of parliament in whatever means might be rendered necessary if her majesty should be graciously jjleased to comply with the prayer. This address was unanimously adopted by the house, and the queen, replying through the Duke of Argyll, promised that dii'ect orders BURNING OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 159 should be given to her cruisers iu accordance with the wishes of parhameut. A bill was subsei;[uently introduced for providing means for improving the regulations which had been made for suppressing the African slave-trade, and notwithstanding the determined opposition of the Duke of Wellington, who professed to see in it a breach of the law of nations and a violation of international treaties, passed both houses with certain modifications, and so for the time completed the legislation by which England stood forward as the uncompromis- ing enemy of slavery. Many of the debates to which we have alluded were conducted in a temporary as- sembly-room provided by fitting up some of the remaining committee-rooms of the old parliamentary building; for on the 14th of October, 1834, before the dismissal of the Melbourne ministry, the houses of the legis- lature had been almost totally destroyed by fire. The flames spread so rapidly, and burst out from so many parts of the building, that in a few minutes the entire structure and most of the offices belonging to it were in a sheet of flame, which lighted up the whole surrounding neighbourhood, and the glare from which could be seen all over London. Enormous crowds filled the approaches to the scene, and lined even the parapets of West- minster Bridge, to watch the progress of the conflagration, which shone in a red reflection all along the river. It seemed as though no effort could save Westminster Hall, and the Abbey was also in serious danger, especially as the tide was low when the fire first broke out, and there was consequently an insuffi- cient supply of water. The flames burned fiercely and with a crackling sound, succeeded by a series of alarming explosions like the firing of musketry. The Houses of Parlia- ment, most of the residences and chief offices, and the interior of the tower containing the library of the House of Commons, were de- stroyed, the latter falling with a tremendous crash a little after midnight. By that time the tide had risen, and the vigorous exertions and active zeal which had been devoted — but without any proper direction or organization — to an endeavour to save the buildings were now required only to play on the burn- ing ruins by means of the floating fire-engine, which soon had a remarkable effect. By three o'clock in the morning the fire had burned itself out — but the Hall and tlie Abbey were saved — and the speaker's residence and some of the offices also remained. Westminster Hall, in fact, stood amidst a heap of blackened ruins. It was at first suspected that the building had been fired by incendiaries, who had, it was asserted, been seen to run to and fro in the act of lighting it at various jwints; but the fact was soon established that the calamity was caused by the carelessness of a workman in conjunction with the inflammable nature of the old exchequer tallies to which allusion has previously been made in these pages. The use of these wooden tallies had been dis- continued, and the workman, whose name was Cross, had been ordered to burn them care- fully. There were so many of them, however, that after above ten hours had been passed in slowly consuming the greater part of them, he became impatient and flung on a larger batch. The flues of the stove, already greatly heated, and being close to, if not in actual con- tact with some of the old beams or timbers of the building, seemed to carry the fire along their course, until it burst out into flame in several places. Some accounts of the event called the destruc- tion of the ancient buildings a calamity, but it may be doubted whether it was so regarded by all the members of parliament at the time ; for the houses had been for many years inade- quate to accommodate the legislature, and even that strict economist Mr. Hume had for some time been urging the necessity for removing them and replacing them by a more spacious and convenient structure. The largest and most valuable portion of the public records was saved, and, during the arrangements for the new buildings, some remaining parts of the old structure were refitted and adapted to the meetings of parliament, though it should be mentioned that the king had offered to give up for the use of the legislature Buckingham Palace, which was just then nearly ready for his own occupation. 160 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAETES. " The New Poor-law," one of the most important achievements of the reformed par- liament, was yet the cause of hostilities be- tween the government and the labouring class of the people Avhich at one time threatened disturbances only equal to those which had preceded the passing of the Eeform Bill. But for some strong measure pauperism would have assumed such frightful dimensions that legislation would have been unable to gi'ap- ple with it. The application of the humane and equitable principle that every one born on the land had a right to subsistence from it, that the disabled or afflicted should be relieved and that work should be found for the maintenance of the impoverished labourer, had been grossly perverted. Upon the old statute of Elizabeth an act passed in the middle part of the reign of George III. had been engrafted, ordaining that relief should be given to the poor to such an amount and in such manner as to ensure their com- fort, and this led to the distribution of what is now known as "out-door relief" by over- seers and magistrates without any test of the real necessities of the applicants. Woi'khouses, and especially workhouses maintained by the iinion of districts or parishes, had no existence. The labourers in many places were demoral- ized. Farmers were obliged to take from the parish-officer gangs of men, who, because they were sure to be paid from the rates, did so little work that the fields remained untilled and the land was impoverished. In other cases farmers dischai'ged their labourers that they might become paupere and return to work on wages provided by the parish. Shop- keepers were mulcted in a heavy rate for the maintenance of those who in a natural condi- tion of affairs would have been their most numerous customers, but who were provided with necessaries by the overseers. These and a hundred other facts came out in "the com- mission of inquiry" — which had already be- came a characteristic of the Whig mode of procedure. This commission consisted of nine persons, including the Bishops of London and Chester, and Mr. Edwin Chadwick was the secretary. It was appointed in 1832, and by 1834 had made a thoroucrh investirration of the evils under which the country was suffer- ing because of the perveision of the provisions for "poor relief." "The laws of settlement intended to protect jiarishes from large im- migrations of paupers had enabled wealthy parishes to thrust the maintenance of their superabundant labour on small and poor parishes." Not only was there a pauper pop- ulation, but it was constantly increasing by the birth of children a large proportion of whom were illegitimate. The scheme proposed was princijially due to Mr. Chadwick, the secretary of the commission, whose motto was "Aggregation in order to segregation" — or large unions in order that every distinct class of paupers might come under a separate and appropriate manage- ment, with the general superintendence of one central body, with power to appoint paid responsible officers to administer the details under strict supervision. Had this scheme been carried out in its entirety the system would perhaps have been more perfect, and some hardships in the operation of the plan might have been diminished. The biU was passed, to be in operation for five years, so that at the end of that period parliament might have an opportunity for making any necessary alterations. The great supporter of the measure in the House of Lords was the Duke of Wellington, who said it was "the best bill ever devised," while of coui-se the in- fluence of Lord Brougham was powerful in its defence. The greatest opponent outside the house was the Times newspaper, and a re- markable occurrence emphasized the bitter hostility manifested by that then powerful organ. Brougham, while sitting in court, wrote a note to Lord Althorp proposing that they should set the Times at defiance, and passing some exceedingly unfavourable re- marks on one of the editors of that journal. The note was not sent, but was torn up and thrown into the waste-paper basket, from which, howev^er, somebody picked the pieces, pasted them together, and sent them to the Times, where the entire letter afterwards appeared in print. Inquiry was made, but the offender not being discovered, the lord- chancellor, in a manner that was perhaps TRADES-UNIONS. 161 more "thorough" than equitable, dismissed all the officers of the court. Happily the bill received the royal assent on the 14th of August at a time when there was ample employment in agricultural quar- ters, especially as the harvest was abundant. The good etiects of the measure were soon felt, although such a complete change neces- sarily produced some suflFering. For some time the labouring population, mechanics as well as agriculturists, showed a violent hos- tility, which was largely supported by the sentiment that denounced the separation of wives from their husbands — a provision which experience had rendered absolutely necessary. Those symptoms of discontent with the government which Brougham characterized as the inevitable reaction of the multitude after the achievement of political reform had already appeared. Though the first reformed parliament had done much, it had not, in the minds of the masses of the people, done anything to im- prove their position. There was no part of the work done which obviously and imme- diately amended or touched the daily course of their lives. Yet that kind of work is what " the masses " naturally looked for at the hands of the legislature. And now, what had happened ? It was " the masses " who had supj^lied, so to speak, the physical force which had passed the Reform Bill. It was their numbers and their anger which had given impulse to the movement of those of their fellow-citizens who had votes : in spite of all the duke and others had said or hinted about resisting to the last extremity and keeping the peojjle quiet, by grape-shot if necessary; the "masses" felt it was their presence in the game, their threatening restlessness, which had driven forward the hands of the dial. And what had the Whigs done for them 1 They had not extended the franchise in their favour. They had not passed a ballot bill. They had refused to deal with the question of the corn-laws. What had they done that immediately and to the quick touched the condition of the very poor ? They had passed the new poor-law. This, in the eye of the Vol. I. "masses," was both insult and injury; and it supplied not only vulgar and designing dema- gogues but sincere politicians with a point of leverage for continued agitation. There was no sharper test of political sincerity among able " peojile's men " in those days than the view they expressed of the poor-laws. Nearly all intelligent and conscientious jwliticians saw clearly that the new measures were good ones as far as they went ; and yet the majority of the working-classes abhorred them, and were disposed to treat as an enemy any politician who would not adopt the shibboleth then so common, "Down with the union bastilles!" It thus happened — and nothing could be more natural — that there sprung up a bitter sense of alienation between the poor and their best friends, to whom the shibboleth stood not only for the prejudice of the hour, but for a whole host of economic errors. " We must help ourselves; we must combine; we must fight everybody — our friends and our enemies all round" — said the poor; and trades-union- ism from this time took a new life and fiercer colours, while the movements which after- wards fell into rank under the name of Chart- ism sprang into full force and activity. We have had so many experiences of trades- unions of late years, that we can scarcely realize the panic which was caused by their revival at the date of which we are speaking. They are now at all events a recognized power in the country, whatever may be the mischiefs wrought by their perverted action. Accord- ing to the reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for the year 1879, on the .31st of December, 1879, there were in England 174 registered trade-unions, of which 130 made returns according to law, showing that these 130 unions had on that day funds amounting in all to £272,413, an aggregate annual income of £257,439, and a grand total of 222,853 members. The Scotch trade- unions had on the same date funds amounting to £16,408, an annual income of £20,065, and 12,596 mem- bers. The total figures for Ireland were: — Funds, £2229; annual income, £2930; mem- bers, 2440. There were many aggravating circum- stances following the alteration in the mode 11 lf)2 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAETES. of relief to the poor. Iii 1835 trade began to fall oif; in the manufacturing districts the .selfishness of the masters was the general topic among the working-classes, while every place in the kingdom, south of the Tweed at all events, rang with stories of hardships in- dicted under the new poor-law. Some of these were true, and some false ; but of course, after so many generations of abuse it was impos- sible to get the fresh system into working order without causing suffering here and there. The system of the Trades-unions had for some time been fluctuating, and now it was that besides the organizations of the sepai-ate ti-ades there sjarang up a scheme for a gener'al federation of the unions for purposes of nuitual support in cases of strike or other revolt. This caused the greatest alarm, es- ]iecially when it was found that the scheme was intended to include the agricultural labourers. Then, indeed, the landowners and farmers began to quake; to ask what was to come next if these things went on, and, more jiractically, what could be done to stop them. This latter question was answered, but in a most unfortunate manner. "The Dorchester Labourers" is a phrase which is still well remembered. Six "peasants" of that county were caught administering "union- ist" oaths to some of their poor comrades. Under an obsolete act against the extra- judicial administration of oaths these six men were indicted, found guilty, and actually sentenced to seven years' transportation. Now there was hei'e an evident "dodge" on the part of the prosecution. The poor clowns knew nothing of the law, for one thing; and, in spite of the well-known legal proverb that "ignorance of the law excuseth no man," ignorance always counts as a palliation. But, worse, far worse than that, the convicted men knew that though they were tried for one offence they were punished for another. It was not of secret oaths that the landowners and the government were afraid, but of the growth of trades -unionism. There was, therefore, Tuuch popular sympathy excited on behalf of these men, and the trades-unions, rising in sudden indignation, summoned a "mass meet- ing" of all the societies for the 21st of April, 1834. This was appointed to come off in Copenhagen Fields, and it did. Copenhagen House was a famous semi-rural inn which is mentioned in Hone's Every Bay Book and in other literature of the same date, and the space around was open fields. In this meeting there was of course the general idea of intimi- dation by means of a great show of numbers and physical force ; but it is believed, jDei-haps it may be recorded as quite certain, that among a certain knot of hot-headed partisans who were not much given to disguise, there was a distinct intention to lay violent hands ujion the ministers, or some of them, to "sack" London, or something of that sort, and, in particular, to seize Lord Melbourne — what was to happen to the duke and to Sir Eobert Peel, who were in office with him, is not clear. The meeting was held, and great was the alarm of timid old gentlemen and trades- people, — many of whom shut their shops. Five thousand householders wei'e sworn in as special constables, troops in large numbers were kept in readiness for any emergency, all the public offices being guarded by soldiers and defended by artillery ; but the immense procession, looking at a distance like a long black worm, though it startled peaceful Is- lington and put a stop to work for that day, did no harm to man, woman, child, or shop. A deputation, 30,000 strong — certainly that, and some accounts give higher figures — marched with a memorial up to Lord Mel- bourne's office, but, warned that he was in danger, the noble lord had resolved to keep out of the way. His secretary appeared at a window of the Home Office and told the leaders of the deputation that an address presented in that fashion could not be re- ceived, but that a memorial sent uj) without any appearance of intimidation would at once receive attention. The deputation then filed off i^eacefully to Kennington Common— then a wild, waste space, now an inclosed park — so as to give the south of London a taste of the "unionist" quality; there were a few speeches, and all was over. London slept in peace that night. The trades-iinionists had POPULAR HOSTILITY TO THE POOR-LAW. 163 at least "demonstrated" that the -working- man in mass looked very respectable in his "Sunday's best," and that there was a good many of him. Eventually a memorial was presented in proper form, and without any appearance of intimidation, and a "free pardon" was sent out to the Dorchester labourers. It was a long while before the affair was forgotten; but the "second thoughts" of the government were not discreditable to them, and if "the masses" had not got much of what they wanted out of the I'eform parliament, it was plain that their influence over their rulers was increased. The days of the Percivals, the Sidmouths, and the Castlereaghs were over and gone. What had the Whigs done? The Whigs were successful in passing the new poor-law, as we have stated, and this was one of their triumphs, for the opposition to the measure had been extreme. In the face of this opposition the biU was, as we have seen, carried by a majority of 107. It does not follow that a measure which is productive of immediate economy in a certain direction is perfect, or even just, and in some respects the new poor-law was undoubtedly at fault in its principles or its policy. It was a legiti- mate object to check the enormous increase in the number of illegitimate children, without responsible fathers, who were thrown upon the rates for support ; but the act undoubtedly and admittedly was cruelly harsh to women, and it has since been amended amid great applause. Still, a very shocking abuse was brought down to much lower dimensions, and within two years after the passing of the act it is said that the number of little waifs " thrown upon the pai'ish," oi-, as we now say, " the union," was decreased by thirteen per cent. The poor-rate, which in 1833, the year of the meeting of the first reformed parlia- ment, was moi'e than ,£8,600,000, was in about three years after the passing of the new law reduced by upwards of £3,000,000. All this was of course good, but the good was not unmixed. It was necessary to pass the law, but the time at which a long-delayed reform was at last carried out was in some respects unfortunate. It was certainly unlucky for the Whigs as a party. The new poor-law was not a party measure, but there were party doc- trines or principles which naturally arrayed themselves against it. It will be in the mem- ory of living men that the new commissioners were held up to popular hatred as three-tailed bashaws, while the Radicals found something to quarrel with in the "centralization" which lay at the bottom of the working policy of the ncM' law. It may safely be said, and is indeed admitted now, that the repeal of the corn - laws was a necessary corollary of tlie new poor-law; but this Earl Grey's ministry would not hear of, "the agricultural interest" being a political force whose enmity thej^ did not dare to provoke. Many of the circumstances attending the ultimate success of the measure were unfortu- nate. After the retirement of Earl Grey the management of the bill in the House of Lords fell into the hands of Lord Brougham, as we have already seen. His management was able in its way, and proved eflfective, but his motto was "thorough;" and though he was a kind- hearted man, he was a lawyer, and had a lawyer's habit of thinking more of letting the law have its course than of any inconvenience arising from its action. Nor was he the least bit of a sentimentalist. Luckily for the bill, and in the long run luckily for the country, he was a disciple of the school of philosophical Radicals, and well drilled in Malthus and Ben- tham. The latter was as hard as the nether millstone, and so was his great ally James Mill. Thus, when Brougham delivered his famous dictum that when a man proved himself one too many by not supporting himself, "Nature" must be taken to kick him out of the common dining-room — "at her already overcrowded table there is no cover laid for him, and she sternly bids him begone " — there was out of doors an all but universal howl of execration and defiance. Tlie separating of married couples in the union houses was another and a kindred tojiic, which was " worked " in popu- lar literature, in caricatures, at public meet- ings, and even in the pulpit, in ways which it is easy to imagine. It soon got noised abroad among " the people " that the really amiable and able man Malthus, who had years before 164 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. helped to set the new stoue rolling, and whose authority was so much quoted even now, was a well-to-do clergyman with a large family. What was made of this little iwiiit may be guessed, but those were plain-spoken days, and it had better not be described. It seemed, indeed, as if the popular dislike of the measure would never subside. The then popular opera of " Gustavus " was bur- lesqued into " Just-starve-us." The poor work- house overseer became the best-hated man in the world. The song of "The Mistletoe Bough" was parodied by the song of "The Workhouse Boy," which was immensely popular : — " The cloth was laid in the vorkus 'all, And the greatcoats hung on the vitevashed vail, The paupers all was hUthe and gay. Keeping their Christmas 'oliday, Veu the master he cries with a roguish leer, ' You'll all get fat on your Christmas cheer;' And each vun by his looks apj)eared to say, 'I'll have some more soup on this Christmas-day.'" The song then went on to tell how a poor boy who had once incurred the enmity of the master by asking for more soup had been pitched by him into a boiling-hot copper full of "vorkus soup," and held down there by the lid till he died; while the master pro- ceeded to Serve out the soup with the dead body lying at the bottom of the copper. Years afterwards the boy's bones were dis- covered in the copper, as Ginevra's were in the old oak chest in the story of Rogers, which had formed the model of "The Mistle- toe Bough." Such was one version at least of this popular song. There was also a parody on the well-known air from Gustavus, " Come to the ball, ladies all," which ran easily enough into " Come to the hall, paupers all," and so forth. Charles Dickens was of course too in- telligent a man not to know that the new poor-law was on the whole a wise measure, or at least he became so in time ; but his story of Oliver Tivist went a little too near to pandering to the state of the popular mind. Unfortunately, none except a very few thoughtful and far-seeing men saw, even while the work was doing, or after it was done, what evils the old system had entailed, anil how lontr tlie remoter mischief must con- tinue. As for the old system, "the public believed it an inexhaustible fund which be- longed to them. To obtain their share the brutal bullied the administrators; the profli- gate exhibited their illegitimate children, which must be fed ; the idle folded their arms and waited till they got it ; ignorant boys and girls married upon it ; poachers, thieves, and women of bad character extorted it by intimi- dation; country justices lavished it for popu- larity, and guardians for convenience. . . . Better men sank down among the worse ; the rate-paying cottager, after a vain struggle, went to the pay-table to seek relief; the modest giii might starve while her bolder neighbour received Is. 6c/. per week for every illegitimate child." In districts where the farmers administered the old poor-law they often paid part of their men's wages out of the rates, which amounted to taxing the other ratepayers for the culti- vation of tlieir fields. This led naturally to bad cultivation. Then, in order to avoid the obligation of having to pay poor's-rates, land- lords declined to build cottages, and even cleared away such as existed. Hence over- crowding, with all its unsanitary and immoral miseries. A great living thinker who has often dwelt on this and kindred topics has told us, on the high authority of a very able clergy- man who was for six years chairman of the Bath Union, that not only did the old system encourage the worthless to multiply at the expense of the honest and laborious citizen, but that it led to immorality of almost in- credible extent and kind. In the case of one workhouse there was, out of thirty married couples, not one man then living with his own wife, while some of the couples who were thus living in "the house," at the cost of decent and moral men, had actually exchanged wives twice or thrice since they entered that happy haven. And this state of things was common. So much for the outcry about separating "those whom God had joined" which followed upon the passing of the new poor-law. Probably the measure next in political im- portance which occupied the attention of the reformed parliament was the inevitable in- CORPORATION REFORM— MUNICIPALITIES. 165 quiry and subsequent legislation for the better regulation of municipal corporations in Eng- land and Wales. The subject had been agitated for some time ; and when the short- lived administration of Sir Robert Peel was succeeded, in April, 1835, by that of Lord Melbourne, this particular question received the earliest attention of the government. In accordance with the recommendation of a committee of the House of Commons in 1833, a commission had been appointed to inquire into the state of the several corporations ; and in the royal speech at the close of the session it had been observed that the result of the investigation would enable parliament to mature such measures as might seem best fitted to place the internal government of corporate cities and towns on a solid founda- tion with respect to their finances, judicature, and police. The report, when issued, gave a good deal of dissatisfaction to those who, from the first, were disinclined to any reform at all in these ancient bodies. It was contended by some that the views of the commissioners were partial and unfair ; that the statements of the witnesses were in many instances false, prejudiced, and unfounded; and that the general result was coloured by a foregone political intention. The report, moreover, was not unanimous. One of the commissioners sent in a list of objections, and another dis- sented altogether from the conclusions of his colleagues. Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that great abuses had grown up with time. The municipal corporation was an institution es- sentially popular in its origin. It seems to have issued out of the municipium of the Romans, who, in vai-ious parts of their empire, including this island, established town com- munities for local government, to which they confided rather considerable powers. The Anglo-Saxons either adopted these institutions, or developed something similar out of their own habits of manly freedom and self-rule. Every freeman or burgess— in other words, every resident sharing in the payment of local taxes and the performance of local duties — had a vote in the election of bodies which were responsible for the well-being of cities, boroughs, and even rural districts; and in this way a species of provincial parliaments grew up, which must have done much towards accustoming the English people to the respon- sibilities of government. William the Con- queror, with the despotic instincts of his race, curtailed the privileges of his new subjects, and concentrated some of the old municipal functions in his own hands, or those of his agents. The bailiff, appointed by the king, took the place of the borough-reve or port- reve, elected by the citizens. Gradually, how- ever, some of the privileges of the towns were purchased back from necessitous sovereigns, and the mediaeval municipality formed itself out of the struggles of the commercial and trading classes with a feudal aristocracy and a military kingship. A reaction towards despotism followed under the Tudors and Stuarts. The constitution of boroughs was in several instances arbitrarily remoulded by royal charters. The governing power, where- ever it could be safely effected, was vested in small select classes, originally nominated by the crown, and afterwards renewed by self- election. These close bodies had sometimes the privilege of returning members to the House of Commons ; so that parliament itself was falsified by the perversion of local free- dom. Thus a world of corruption arose in most of the great centres of English life, and the commissioners of 1833-4 found abundant evidence of a condition entirely out of har- mony with modern ideas, and with the reason- able demands of political society. In early times the powers of the muni- cipality were probably exercised, in ordinary cases, by the superior magistracy, but on more serious occasions by the whole body of bur- gesses, who were called upon to confirm or ! reject what the others had proposed. After- wards a representative body was elected out of the mass of freemen, for it is only primitive communities which can legislate by their own direct action. The popular character of these bodies became gradually less in the course of years, even before the meddling of the Tudor kings ; and this evil tendency was confirmed and increased by royal ambition and distrust. Numerous corporate towns were persuaded or 166 GLADSTONE AXD HIS CONTE]VIPORAEIES. intimidated into sulTendering their charters by Charles II. and James II., and what they got in exchange was a very poor substitute. The latter of those monarchs, when in im- mediate dread of the landing of the Prince of Orange, issued a proclamation restoring aU the municipal corporations to their ancient fran- chises ; but a certain liabit of corrujDtion had been established, and matters continued to get worse thi'oughout the long period of the Georges. The work of local self-government passed, in many important matters, from the hands of the municipalities into those of trustees or commissionei-s appointed by act of parliament, and the corporate bodies degener- ated into a number of sluggish cliques, which spent the public money in eating and drink- ing, and sometimes divided the surplus funds among individual members. One of the abuses which time had in a manner sanc- tioned, or to which, at any rate, men had become so accustomed that they ceased to notice them, was the granting leases of cor- porate estates at low rents to pex-sons whom it was desii-ed to favour. It was even alleged that in some instances chai'ity bequests, of which the corporations were trustees, were misappropriated by private pei-sons. In a large number of cases the whole system of borough administration, whether as regai'ds taxation, municipal order, poHce, or criminal jurisdiction, was a system of jobbery, oppres- sion, and inefficiency. The freemen or bur- gesses, who in ancient times had formed the corporation, had in some places dwindled down to a small and unjustly privileged class; in some, had disappeared altogether. Under- hand influence obtained the appointment of executive officers, and bad government fol- lowed in the wake of di'unkenness, profligacy, and dishonest greed. The possession of power in these narrow corporations was not unfrequently hereditaiy: that is to say, certain offices would be allowed by a vicious courtesy to pass from father to son for generations. Wben the local repre- sentation (as, by a kind of mockery, it was called) had fallen into the hands of one poli- tical party or religious connection, it was almost impossible to obtain the slightest re- cognition or fair dealing for any other. All patronage was given to the relatives and friends of the official clique. Trading mono- polies, which deterred others from entering into the same lines of business, and enhanced prices by forbidding competition, were granted to particular pei-sons. Even juries were chosen from a restricted class, and the admin- istration of justice partook of the vitiated life which had been permitted to grow up in these close dens of privilege. What rendered the evU stiU worse, was the fact that the officials forming many of the so-caUed corporations were elected for life. Their proceedings were generally secret, and in some cases secrecy was enforced by an oath. Human nature must be something very different from what we know it to be, if such conditions had not resulted in the grossest corruption and the most scan- dalous injustice. It appeared from the i-eport of the commis- sioners that the number of municipal corpor- ations in England and Wales was two hundred and forty-six. All but nine of these were subjected to examination, and in no fewer than a hundred and eighty-six boroughs the governing body was found to be self-elected. It is pleasant to find that some few of the municipal corporations of those days were managed in an honourable and dignified spirit; but these were rare exceptions. The report concluded with a general indictment, which was thus expressed : — " We report to your majesty that there prevails amongst the in- habitants of a gi-eat majority of the incorpor- ated towns a general, and in our opinion a just, dissatisfaction with their municipal insti- tutions ; a distrust of the self -elected municipal councils, whose powers are subject to no popu- lar control, and whose acts and proceedings, being secret, are unchecked by the influence of public opinion ; a distrust of the municipal magistracy, tainting with suspicion the local administration of justice, and often accom- panied with contempt of the pei-sons by whom the law is administered; a discontent under the burdens of local taxation, while revenues that ought to be aj^plied for the public advan- tage are diverted from their legitimate use, and are sometimes wastefully bestowed for the COEPORATION ACCOUNTS— CHARITABLE FUNDS. 167 benefit of individuals — sometimes squandered for purposes injurious to the character and morals of the people. We therefore feel it to be our duty to represent to your majesty that the existing municipal corporations of Eng- land and Wales neither possess nor deserve the confidence or respect of your majesty's subjects, and that a thorough reform must be effected before they can become what we humbly submit to your majesty they ought to be — useful and efficient instruments of local government." It was obvious that, with a Liberal minis- try in power, the question of municipal reform could not be neglected after the presentation of such a report. Accordingly, on the 5th of June, 1835, Lord John Eussell, then secretary of state for the home department, introduced a bill for amending the evils of the existing condition. By this measure it was proposed to deal with 183 corporations, including a population of at least 2,000,000. In speaking on the subject Lord John Russell stated that at Bedford the corporate body was only one- seventieth of the population, and one-fortieth of the property of the town. At Oxford there were 1400 electors, a great many of whom Avere not rated inhabitants of the city, and corrupt practices so largely prevailed that more than 500 voters seldom took part in the election. At Norwich there were 3225 resi- dent freemen, of whom 1123 were not rated at all; 315 out of the latter number were actual paupers : while, on the other hand, out of £25,541, which was the total value of the property rated at Norwich, £18,224 belonged to persons who were in no way connected with the corporation. At Lincoln three-fourths of the corporate body wer« not ratepayers, and nearly four-fifths of the population were excluded from the municipality. Out of 2000 ratepayers at Ipswich only 187 belonged to the corporation. At Liskeard 1685 persons were rated by a local act, of whom only 111 were freemen ; so that, as Lord John Russell pointed out, fourteen-fifteenths of these indi- viduals, paying taxes to the corporation, were excluded from the municipal body. Cam- bridge at that time had a population of 20,000 inhabitants : the number of £10 householders was 1434; but of these only 118 were free- men. Of the property of the town, valued at £25,490, only £2110 belonged to freemen associated with the corporation. Bribery and treating were common circumstances at the municipal elections of many towns. Tlie report on Aldborough stated that the bur- gesses were accustomed to ask a regular price for their votes. Men of good position would get £35 on these occasions, and a certain clergy- man connected with the corporation valued his office and influence at £100 a year. In the borough of Orford the corporation was mainly in the hands of the Marquis of Hert- ford, and the power thus conferred was used as a means of returning members to parlia- ment. To remedy these abuses it was proposed that there should be one uniform system of government, and one uniform franchise for the purpose of election. All irregular modes of acquiring the freedom of a corporation — such as birth, apprenticeship, and purchase — were abolished. The municipal franchise was vested in the inhabitants of boroughs who had been rated to the poor for three years. The governing body chosen by this constitu- ency was to consist of a mayor and common council. The order of aldermen was to be abolished. The pecuniary I'ights of existing freemen were preserved so long as they should live, but no new freemen were to be created. Exclusive rights of trading were to be discon- tinued; exceptional privileges — such as ex- emption from tolls— were abolished ; and the councils were endowed with more extensive powers of local government, police manage- ment, and the administration of justice, than they had before enjoyed. Provision was also made for the publicity of their proceedings, the proper apj^ication of their funds, and the publication and audit of their accounts. With respect to estates placed at the disposal of corporations for charitable purposes, it was enacted that the town councils should become the trustees of those funds, for the manage- ment of which a separate secretary and trea- surer should be appointed; a provision was made for auditing them in a different manner from the genei'al accounts of the borough. 168 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. The uumber of laersons chosen for the mauage- ment of charitable estates was not to be fewer than fifteen, who were to be selected from among the general body of burgesses. Sir Robert Peel, as the leader of the oppo- sition, gave a general support to the measure, while observing that every one of the details required a separate discussion. It must be recollected that Peel, although a Conservative statesman, belonged to a middle-class, manu- facturing family, and was therefore less in- clined than aristoci'atic members of his party to preserve certain ancient and privileged monopolies. He alluded in his speech to the House of Commons on the 5th of June, to the rapid manner in which places that at no remote period were inconsiderable had by manufac- turing industry started as it were into life, and arrived at gi'eat wealth and importance. He admitted that no provision was made in those places for the maintenance of order and the administration of justice, and he could not deny that the time had amved when it was of the utmost moment to the well-being of society to establish a good system of muni- cipal government in places which were then destitute of that advantage. Circumstances had changed, and he thought there was amjjle ground for considering whether provision ought not to be made for the local necessities of towns which at that time had no corpor- ations, and whether the system existing even in corj^orate towns was adequate to the le- quii'ements of the day. The evidence taken by the commissioners had shown that abuses really existed, and to these it was necessary that parliament should apply an effectual remedy. Parliament had a right to require that the funds of corporations should, exce])t when devoted to special purposes, be fairly applied on public grounds to objects connected with the general good. Following out the main purport of his speech. Sir Robert very earnestly advised all corporations to I'elinquish willingly the advantages which they might be supposed to gain by the ap]:)lication of corpor- ate funds to improper purposes. He appeared, however, to hint a certain degree of doubt as to the ministerial intentions when he expressed a ho)>e that the government would honestly execute that which they had declared to be their principle — namely, the restoration of popular power in such matters — and would not simply etiect a transfer of abuses from one l^arty to another. Such a transfer would be of no advantage to the public ; but Sir Robeit added that he would willingly co-0]jerate with the government in passing a measure which would prevent a recurrence of the like evils in future, and ensure a bond fide application of corporate funds. That object could not be attained without, in a material degree, j^lac- ing the election of oflftcers under popular con- trol. It was clearly important, however, that time should be given for the consideration of details; and the consideration of the franchise alone was a matter which demanded the utmost deliberation and caution. The bill was read a second time without opposition on the 15th of June. The necessity for some species or degree of reform was in- deed so obvious that there could be no con- tention on the main principle of the measure. Both sides of the house accepted what the facts of the case had rendered unavoidable, and all discussion as to points of detail was proi)erly reserved for the committee. This began on the 22d of June, and terminated on the 17th of July. The first disputed jDoiut had reference to the fixing of the boundaries of those boroughs whose limits had not been defined by the act passed for that purpose in connection with the Reform Bill. It was argued by the opposition, and even by some members on the government side of the house, that in this matter of the boundaries the crown was invested with a power which it ought not to possess, and that the executive was charged with duties which belonged to the legislature. An amendment proposed by Lord Dudley Stuart was, however, lost by a majority of 87. This was followed by a prolonged discussion on the clause which afi'ected the rights of existing freemen, and the modes of acquiring the freedom of the corporation in future. The object of the clause was to confine the suflPrage to occupancy and payment of rates within the borough, to the exclusion of those rights and titles of a dilfei-ent order which had for many generations been reco2:nized. Sir William CORRUPTIONS OF BOROUGH "FREEDOM." 109 Follett, sjjeakiiig on behalf of the vested iu- terests thus imj^erilled, observed that a certain number of persons were to be deprived of the rights, privileges, and property which they had previously had reason to exj^ect they would enjoy, and this would result in a de- privation of the parliamentary franchise. The framers of the bill appeared to Sir William Follett to have been ignoi'ant of the nature of many of the trusts vested in corporations on behalf of the freemen. In Coventry, he alleged, there were estates left on trust under which every freeman was entitled, on entering business, to a sum of £50, which he might hold for nine years, and every needy freeman was entitled to a sum of £4. There was also an endowed grammar-school, with an income of nearly £900 per annum; and to that school every freeman might send his son free of ex- pense. Other advantages of the like nature were enumerated by the able advocate, who showed particular tenderness towards the rights accruing to apprentices under the terms of certain bequests. These arguments, how- ever, did not touch the jirinciple of the mea- sure ; for it may have been true that occasional benefits resulted from these ancient charities, and yet the mode of their administration may have been open to grave objections. It was evident from the report of the conmiissioners that charitable funds were in many instances misappropriated, and the enjoyment of special privileges by particular electors, however highly prized by those on whom they were bestowed, or however excellent they may have been in themselves, could not be per- mitted to stand in the way of those larger and more general rights which properly be- longed to the whole body of ratepayers. One main object of the bill was to restore a condi- tion of democratic freedom which had existed in earlier times, but had been set aside or per- verted by the despotic inclinations of our Tudor and Stuart kings. It is remarkable how large a proportion of modern political reforms have been based on a return to the ancient constitution of England — on a reversal of that policy which was a comparatively modern innovation, but which in the course of time had come to be regarded as the very essence of constitutionalism. Sir William Follett argued that the object of the govern- ment was to destroy the freemen ; their real object was to extend the privileges of freemen to a larger number, and to disallow those special qualifications which were based on exclusiveness, and had resulted in corruption. As a lawyer Sir William Follett seems to have been more interested in the retention of estab- lished customs than in the enlargement of poixdar rights. Holding these views, he moved an amendment, the effect of which was to preserve what he called the rights of the freemen, without interfering with the municipal government of corporate boroughs. The amendment was strenuously opposed by the government. Many of the freemen whose privileges were championed by Sir William were actually men neither residing in the boroughs for which they had a vote, nor pos- sessing proi^ei'ty there, but who, nevertheless, in some indirect way had acquired a local standing. The attorney-general characterized these persons as being in many instances "i:)ooi-, wretched, degraded, and demoralized," and he contended that to leave power in their hands would be to perpetuate corruption. "These freemen," he said, "were not necessarily resi- dent in the borough. They need not possess any qualification as to property; they need not pay rates, and, for anything that existed to the contrary, might pass the greater part of the year in jail, and then come out and give their vote for a member of parliament." The contention of the government was just and reasonable; but the case of the opposition had a certain plausibility which affected the min:ls of many. Several members who usually voted with the ministry declared their intention of supporting the amendment of Sir William Follett. Mr. D. W. Harvey said the clause would destroy, in a short time, half the con- stituencies of the country. In Colchester it would reduce the electors from 1250 to 500, and in some boroughs it would bring them down to three or four hundred. Other mem- bers urged similar considerations, and in par- ticular Sir James Graham, as a member of the cabinet which had passed the Reform Bill of 1832, contended that the proposed clause was 170 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. a departure from what was understood to be one of the principles of that measure, namely, the perpetuation beyond their lives of the pi'ivileges of freemen. He thought, however, it would simjilify the question if the amend- ment were limited to the I'ights of freemen under the Reform Bill, and to this suggestion Sir "William Follett acceded. To Lord John Russell the modification of the amendment was no more acceptable than the amendment itself. Many of the rights and privileges enjoyed by the freemen in question were described by the home secretary as of a nature hurtful to the general inhabitants of the town. Many of them consisted in a monopoly of trades, others in an exemption from tolls to which the main body of citizens were liable. These freemen, in fact, belonged to no cor- poration, and existed only for the purpose of receiving charities and exercising the parlia- mentary franchise. After much debate, the committee divided, when the original clause was carried by a majority of 44. But the question was again raised by Mr. Praed, the member for Yarmouth, who proposed another amendment on the subject, which was sujd- ported by Sir Robert Peel, who argued that the proposed change involved a breach of faith towards the freemen whose prescriptive rights wei'e confirmed by the Reform Bill. The late prime minister observed that they were not then inquiring, on theoretical and speculative principles, as to what might constitute a good right of voting; they were dealing with a franchise which they found existing by long prescription, solemnly confirmed by the "final measure and conclusive settlement" of 1832. It is curious in these days to observe how general was the assumption at that time that the Reform Bill of Earl Grey's administration had settled the question of the franchise for ever. No doubt that was the view generally advanced while the bill was passing through parliament, but it is amazing that men of ex- perience and knowledge should have believed such a thing possible. A measure which, how- ever excellent some of its features, left a large part of the people disfranchised, and perpetu- ated many of the abuses of a political condi- tion tliat set the privileges of a class above the national good, could not in the nature of things be permanent while population was in- creasing, while knowledge was spreading, while the forces of society were rapidly shifting from contracted to more general centres. That an important alteration affecting the franchise should have been proposed three years after the passing of the Reform Bill was doubtless unexpected, and it is easy to understand that the municipal freemen whose privileges were abolished so soon after they had been con- firmed by a great legislative act, should have considered that they were being dealt with in a spirit of bad faith. It is perhaps impossible to reconcile the promises of 1832 with the in- novations of 1835, yet the latter had reason and justice on their side, and a House of Commons elected by a reformed constituency, and pledged to the extension of liberal ideas, could hardly disregard them. Mr. Praed's amendment was therefore throwTi out, thougli by a majority of not more than 28. A third amendment was equally unsuccessful; nor was Sir Robert Peel able to cany an amendment requiring a property qualification for common councilmen. Hei'e again the government was simply returning to the ancient practice of England. Lord John Russell, in resisting Sir Robert Peel's projjosal, said that in no instance did the old charters contain a syllable about pecuniar}'' qualifications for the magistrates of boroughs. "Fit and discreet" persons were to be elected, but the electors were to decide for themselves who those i:)ersons should be. In the city of London no property qualification was required for holding municipal offices, or for being a member of the common council, and it was difficult to see why any difference should be allowed to exist in provincial towns. Sir Robert Peel's amendment was lost by a ma- jority of 63. Another matter which encountered gi'eat opposition had reference to the periods of election. The bill provided that one-third of the councillors should go out of office every year : Lord Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby) proposed that this should take place only every second year. He considered that the shorter term would lead to perpetual vacillation and caprice, and that the principle of permanency OPPOSITIOX TO THE BILL. 171 in local administration would be thus entirely destroyed. The government, however, main- tained their proposition, and a majority of 44 disposed of the amendment. Mr. Grote, who, as we have already mentioned, was one of the most pronounced of the small band of philoso- phical Radicals in the House of Commons, next came forward with the suggestion that power should be given to the town councils to order that an election should be made by ballot whenever a majority of that body should deem it proper and expedient. The ballot was the constant care of Mr. Grote. It was he who for several years was the principal advo- cate in parliament for conducting all elections on the principle of secret voting, and on the present occasion he probably considered that an experiment of this system might be made on a scale smaller and less important than that which would be involved in the elections to the House of Commons. A previous ex- periment in the same direction had been tried by Sir John Cam Hobhouse in his Vestry Act, but that gentleman now stated that no one parish in Loudon had adopted the ballot which it had been the object of his measure to enable them to do whenever they jaleased. The amendment of Mr. Grote was ultimately withdrawn, and the extension of the balloting system was deferred for a considerable period. A further division took place on that clause of the bill which declared that the town-clerk should be removable at pleasure. It was ar- gued, not without some force, that this would have the effect of converting a legal and pro- fessional into a party and political office. The town-clerk under this system would be merely the servant of the party which for the time being happened to be dominant in the borough. If the opposite party came into power the town-clerk would be compelled to change his principles, or would be dis- missed. Legal ap]3ointments, said the oppo- nents of this provision, should not be placed at the mercy of political considerations. The duty of the town-clerk being to answer legal questions and to decide authoritatively all matters of form, the appointment should be kept clear from the passionate impulses of faction. Such, at least, was the view enter- tained by several members of the House of Commons, and it was even stated that in many boroughs the canvass for the town-clerk- ship had already begun, although the electois were not yet in existence nor the councillors yet chosen. The reply of the government de- pended upon the somewhat too easy assump- tion that the town-councils would not exercise the power which the bill gave them, and that, as the new councils would require the assis- tance of persons already well acquainted. Avith borough affairs, there was little chance of tlie existing town-clerks being removed. Up to that time, it was contended, the councils had been the mere puppets of the town-clerks ; but by the proposed change the councils would exercise a sufficient control over those who were in fact their servants. The original clause was therefore retained. In fact, the government prevailed on every point, so far as the House of Commons was concerned. The bill was reported on the 17th of Jul}', and on the 20th was read a third time and passed vsdthout any further opposition. The objectors relied upon the House of Lords for introducing considerable modifications, and in that hope they were not disappointed. The opposition in the Upper House was greatly strengthened by petitions which were sent up from Coventry, Doncaster, Lancaster, Worcester, Lincoln, and other corporations, praying to be heard against the bill by coun- sel ; and from Bristol and Liverpool, praying to be heard against it by their respective re- corders. The representatives of these towns complained that the repoi't of the royal com- mission had contained gross and grievous misrepresentations ; and when, on the 28th of July, the second reading of the measure was moved in the House of Lords, it was proposed that the petitioners should be heard by coun- sel. Lord Melbourne opposed the motion, and a long debate ensued. Ultimately the premier expressed his willingness to allow two counsel to be heard concerning the principle of the biU, if a fair and reasonable limit Avere placed to their speeches, and if it did not appear that the object was to delay the progress of the measure. The bill was then read a second time as a mat- ter of form, and on the 30th of July the heai-ing 172 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. of counsel began. This was continued on the two following days, and the two legal gentle- men appearing on behalf of the corijorations — one of whom was Sir Charles Wetherell — maintained that it was tyrannical, and con- trary to the spirit of English law, to inflict, without legal inquiry and conviction, such dis- abilities as were imposed by the measure of the government. They attacked the report of the commissioners as being based upon evi- dence which was characterized by ignorance and partiality, and they charged the bill with injustice on the ground that it did away with vested rights, many of which had existed for centuries. The liolders of those rights were, indeed, to receive compensation, but only such as the lords of the treasury, without any appeal, were prepared to give. The corpora- tions, said Sir Charles Wetherell, were en- titled to know of what delinquency they had been guilty — what they had done to forfeit their franchises and patrimonial rights. The preamble of the bill alleged that "abuse and neglect" had existed; but if this statement was not true, the penalties of the bill ought not to be inflicted. Forfeiture without delin- quency was t}Tanny, and the corporations denied that they had committed the faults of wliich the commissioners adjudged them to be guilty. Sir Charles, according to his usual temper, imported a good deal of passion into what should have been nothing more than a cold legal argument, and spoke of "the garru- lous trash and ribaldry, the gypsy jargon" of the report. He accused the commissioners of being the mere instruments of the govern- ment, and of having returned reports distin- guished by untruthful statements, and by the most glaring and indefensible bias towards the political party of their masters. This was certainly not the proper spirit in which to approach a question of fact and law. vSir Charles "Wetherell was guilty of the very sin with which he taxed the commissioners. His speech was an outbreak of party rage, provoked by the prospect of a new accession of popular jjower, such as would, in all proba- bility, turn to the disadvantage of the party with which he was associated. The corpoi a- tions had liad the opportunity of presenting their own case before the commissioners; they had had their advocates in the House of Com- mons, and they possessed many more in the House of Lords. It was therefore asking too much that they should be allowed to reopen the whole question of fact on the motion for the second reading of the bill in the Upper Chamber. When the arguments of counsel were concluded on the 1st of August, Lord Melbourn£ gave notice that he would oppose any motion for allowing evidence to be ad- duced in defence of the corporations. Obvi- ously the intention of the opjDOsition was to delay the progress of the measure, in the hope that in this way it might escape being passed that session. The government not unnatur- ally resisted such a design, and on the 3rd of August Lord Melbourne moved that the house should go into committee on the bill. The Earl of Cai-narvon then moved that evi- dence should be taken at the bar of the house in support of the allegations contained in the several petitions. After a prolonged and rather heated debate the house determined, by a majority of 124 to 54, to hear evidence. The government was thus left in a minority of 70 on this particular question, and in ac- cordance with the desire of the majority, evi- dence was taken on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th of August. Witnesses were examined in relation to about thirty boroughs. They were of course witnesses in favour of the corporations, and the general efi"ect of their statements was to discredit, as false and dishonest, much of the testimony given before the commissioners. It was alleged that there had also been num- erous suppressions of facts deposed to during the inquiry — facts which, as they tended to invalidate foregone conclusions, were passed over in silence. On the termination of the evidence of these witnesses the house went into committee with the bill. This was on the 12th of August, when the first alteration was proposed by Lord Lyndhui-st, who moved a clause presei'ving to all freemen, to every per- son who might have been a freeman but for tliis measure, and to their widows and chil- dren, or the husbands of their daughters or widows, the same rights in the property of the ALTERATIONS OF THE BILL BY THE LORDS. 173 borough as would have belonged to them by its law and custom if the act had not been passed. The object of this amendment was to perpetuate what the authors of the bill justly considered the undue privileges of cer- tain i)ersons. Lord Melbourne accordingly opposed the amendment as going too far. He said he should not be disinclined to consider a proposal for extending the period during which these rights should be preserved beyond the point at which it was fixed by the bill ; but he would not consent to preserve in per- petuity rights which he believed to be pre- judicial both to the freemen themselves and to the whole community. The opponents of the measure spoke of the proposed change as sheer spoliation. The freemen had been for many ages in jiossession of certain jJi'operty, of which it was now proposed to deprive them, and this was regarded as a most dangerous precedent. But it was contended by Lord Brougham, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and others, that the property belonged to the free- men in their chai'acter of corporators, and that, if that function might be the subject of legislative regulation, so might the privileges which attached to it. These rights, it was urged, had been vested in a particular class of jiersons, simply because those persons had been made the depositaries of political privi- leges : they were granted for the benefit of the public, to be enjoyed until the political privi- leges to which they were annexed should cease. These arguments were irrefragable, but they failed to convince the majority of the House of Lords, for, on a division, minis- ters were left in a minority of 93. Lord Lyudhurst then moved another amend- ment, which had previously been rejected in the House of Commons. This was designed to preserve to the freemen their parliamentary franchise, as secured by the Reform Bill. Lord Melbourne expressed great dislike to the proposed amendment, but, perceiving that there was no hope of success, he did not call for a division, and the amendment was adopted. On the 14tii of August Lord Lyndhurst pro- posed an amendment requiring a certain quali- fication in the town-councillors. He con- ceived that the best mode of fixing the quali- fication — a mode applicable to all places — would be to take the council from the highest ratepayers in each borough. A determined opposition was offered by the government to tlie proposed change. Qualifications, where they existed, had never been found to give any security ; where they did not exist, as in the parliamentary representation of Scotland, their absence had not led to the selection of improper or disreputable persons. Lord Mel- bourne averred that the amendment, if adopted, would prove fatal to the ultimate suc- cess of the bill, but it was nevertheless carried by 120 votes to 39. At a subsequent stage of the proceedings the further qualification was added of the possession of ^1000 in real or personal estate in towns divided into four or more wards, and of i;500 in towns divided into fewer than four wards, or forming only one ward. The next alteration in the bill was one by which it was provided that a fixed proportion of the town-council — namely, one-fourth of the whole body — should hold ofiice for life. The ostensible object of this amendment was to prevent fluctuation and caprice in the charac- ter and composition of the town-councils ; the real object was undoubtedly to create a species of oligarchy in all boroughs aff*ected by the act, and in this way to jilace a drag upon the democratical influences which it was the in- tention of the measure to call into existence. It was indeed admitted by some friends of the bill that the proposals of the government would be fatal to the principle of aristocracy, and this was a consideration which necessarily carried with it great weight in an assembly of territorial and hereditary legislators. The amendment was accordingly sanctioned by 126 to 39 votes, leaving ministers in a minority of 87. Other amendments were carried, con- firming their existing jurisdiction to those per- sons who were justices of the peace under borough charters; giving to the revising bar- risters the power of dividing boroughs into wards, and fixing the number of councillors which each ward should return; restoring to the county magistrates the function of grant- ing licenses, which had been abolished in the original draft of the bill; limiting to those 174 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. ruembei'S who might belong to the Cliurch of England the ecclesiastical patronage of the town-councils; and effecting some other altera- tions of less importance. These mattei-s were agreed to without any division ; but a struggle took place over an amendment previously re- jected by the House of Commons, which de- clared that the town-clerks should hold their offices during good behaviour. This was car- ried in the Lords by a majority of 104 to 36. It was originally proposed by ministers, and sanctioned by the Commons, that the king in council should determine the boundaries of the borough territory to be governed by the new councils, but the peers decided that this power should remain in the hands of parlia- ment. The bill thus modified was passed by the House of Lords on the 28th of August, and the amendments were brought before the Commons by Lord John Russell on the 31st of the same month. The home secretary re- ferred in terms of gi-ave rebuke to the dis- paraging tone adopted in the Upper Chamber with reference to the House of Commons, and strongly condemned the fierce invectives of Sir Charles Wetherell when pleading at the bar on behalf of the corpoi'ations. Neverthe- le.ss, the question for the House of Commons to decide was whether the bill, even as altered by the Lords, might not be moulded into an efficient instrument of good municipal govern- ment. It had at one time seemed not impro- bable that ministei's would give up the bill altogether, in consequence of the changes effected by the peers; but upon reconsidei'a- tion they had determined that this would be an objectionable coui-se, and they accordingly set themselves to discover some middle path, by which the views of the two houses might be reconciled, though of course not without a de- gree of self-sacrifice on the part of both. The home secretary exhibited much self-control and adroitness in the management of this difficult business, and eventually a series of compro- mises was adopted. A qualification for town- councillors was agi'eed to, but it was to consist not in the fact of the candidate being neces- sarily one of the highest ratepayers of the borough, as determined by the Lords, but in his possession of a certain amount of real or personal estate. The aldermen created by the House of Lords were to be elected for six years instead of for hfe, and the exclusive eligibility of existing aldermen was not in- sisted on. Much difficulty was encountered in dealing with the exercise of ecclesiastical patronage by the town-councillors. Lord Jolm RusseU de- sired to reject the amendment of the Lords, by which that patronage was to be confined to members of the Church of England ; and he proposed that the Commons should return to the original provision of the bill, leaving the patronage in the hands of all alike. Sir Robert Peel, who, as the Conservative leader, showed a good deal of conciliation, was never- theless strongly in favour of the Lords' amendment, which it was contended had been based on principles of equity and I'eason. The home secretary himself admitted that in the abstract Nonconformists were not the fittest pereons to jiresent to vacant benefices in the Establishment from which they dissented ; yet he supjx)rted the original proposition with a detei'mination which was declared to proceed more from party feeling than from a sense of justice. L'ltimately Mr. Spring Rice proposed to insert a clause directing the ecclesiastical jja- tronage belonging to boroughs to be sold, and theiiriceto be invested for the public good of the boroughs; which suggestion was accepted. The Commons did not attempt to restore the clause which gave to the town-councils the power of granting licenses. Some of the amendments, however, were thrown out, while others were accepted; and the disagreements between the two branches of the legislature were finally arranged in a series of conferences between a committee of the House of Commons and mauagei-s on the pai-t of the House of Lords. On points which they considered of compara- tively slight importance the peers gave way. They retained, however, their original amend- ments, providing that justices should be named directly by the crown and not selected from lists sent uj) by the town-councils ; and that the division into wards should begin with boroughs containing a population of 6000 instead of 9000. On the 7th of September, three days MR. EOEBUCK'S DENUNCIATION OF THE LORDS. 175 before the prorogation of parliament, Lord John Russell recommended that, for the sake of peace, and as the bill, though deprived of much of its original excellence, was still an effective measui-e, the house should agree to it as it then stood, reserving the right of in- troducing whatever improvement in the work- ing might afterwards appear to be necessary. The Commons thereupon agreed to the bill as it had been once more returned to them from the Lords, and it received the royal assent on the 9th of September, 1835. The disagreement between the two houses had at one time threatened to attain the pro- jjortions of a very serious collision. Excited meetings were held in various parts of the country, at which the action of the House of Lords was severely condemned, and the House of Commons was required to reject altogether the amendments which had been introduced by the body of hereditary legislators. This feeling found an echo within the Lower House itself. The Liberal party in those days, as in these, was divided into two sections: one which still clung to the old appellation of Wbigs, and which in many respects answei^ed to the jjresent "Mo- derate" Liberals; another known then, as now, by the name of Radicals. The latter section condemned the action of the House of Lords in no measured language. These views found an eloquent mouthpiece in Mr. Roebuck, the mem- ber for Bath ; the same Mr, Roebuck who in later days sat for Sheffield, and who towards the close of his long career exhibited something more than a tendency towards a pecidiarly qualified Conservatism. In speaking on the Lords' amendments to the Municijaal Reform Bill he asked why the real representatives of the people should bear the insults of so weak a body as the House of Loi'ds, when they had it in their power to crush that institution. The upper chambei', he said, had thrown out all the im- portant measures which the representatives of the people had passed : how much longer would they be required to go on with conces- sions? The House of Commons had reformed itself ; but, asked Mr. Roebuck, was there no other body that i-equii-ed excision by the knife 1 He confessed himself an advocate for extreme democracy, and believed that the sooner they brought matters to an understanding the better. The interest of the Lords was simply to maintain the supremacy of irresi)ousible power, and that was wholly incompatible with the interests of the people. " Why," demanded the member for Bath, " should such a body, with circumstances, interests, and feelings en- tirely opposed to popular desires, any longer have the power of controlling the decisions of that house? It was childish and imbecile to talk of conciliation and concession in such a case. He was one of those who felt it neces- sary to stir up the peojile upon this subject to something approaching a revolution." This was rather the language of passion than of statesmanship; but the belligerent spirit of Mr. Roebuck on the one side was met with an equally warlike tendency on the other. Some of the Conservatives maintained that the amendments of the Lords should be enforced in all their integrity; and in the passage of the bill through the House of Lords the more ex- treme members of the Tory party had adopted a tone towards the House of Commons and the people which was certainly deserving of the severest censure. Old Lord Eldon, then within three years of his death, exhibited bitter hostility towards the measure — not in- deed in the House of Lords itself, for his in- firmities prevented him from going there, but in private conversations with influential j^er- sons. The lord-chanceUor of earlier days had always been one of the stanchest suj^jjorters of unbending Toryism ever known in Eng- land, and he adhered to his political predi- lections to the last. Fortunately, however, these extreme views evaporated in a good deal of excited speech-making, and the more prac- tical members of the two parties decided, as we have seen, upon a compromise which may have satisfied neither, but which at any rate conferred upon the country a measure of no small value, amending some of the worst abuses in the former condition of English boroughs, and opening the door to any furthei- alterations which might be found necessary in the progress of time, and which have in fact been introduced by the Municipal Corpora- tions Act of 1859, and some others. A distinguished writer on constitutional 176 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. history has remarked that by these reforms local self-government has been eti'ectually re- stored. "Elected rulers," he observes, "have since generally secured the confidence of their constituents ; municipal office has become an object of honourable ambition to public- spirited townsmen ; and local administration, if not free from abuses, has been exercised under responsibility and popular control; and, furthei-, the enjoyment of municii^al franchises has encouraged and kept alive a sjiirit of poli- tical freedom in the inhabitants of towns. One ancient institution alone was omitted from this general measure of reform, — the corpora- tion of the city of London. It was a muni- cipal principality of great antiquity, of wide jurisdiction, of ample property and revenues, and of composite organization. Distinguished for its public spirit, its independent influence had often been the bulwark of popular rights. Its magistrates had braved the resentment of kings and parliaments ; its citizens had been foremost in the cause of civil and religious liberty. Its traditions were associated with the history and glories of England. Its civic potentates had entertained with princely splendour kings, couquerore, ambassadors, and statesmen. Its wealth and stateliness, its noble old Guildhall and antique jiageantry, were famous throughout Europe. It united, like an ancient monarchy, the memories of a past age with the pride and power of a living institution. Such a corporation as this could not be lightly touched." The legislators of 1835 and of subsequent years have in truth been afraid to attack the government of the city of Loudon. Refoi-ms have frequently been considered, but nothing has yet been effected, and yet the question is one which often appears to be rising in the near future. That it must some day be taken in hand, nobody doubts ; but few have the courage to approach a problem bristling with difficulties at every point, and involving, to him who shall handle it, an enormous amount of labour. If Mr. Gladstone were ten years younger than he is it might not improbably happen that this would be one of the measures associated with his name. His power of dealing with compli'\ated questions, depending on an im- mense array of facts and figures, has rarely been equalled, and it is an ability of this nature which will be especially required when the reform of the City corporation is brought forward in parliament. The Anatomy Act of 1832 was not a Whig measure or a Tory measure, but it was a very useful one ; and the act itself, with the story of w^hich it was the sequel, deserves a word of notice. Speaking in its favour, Mr. Macaulay ridiculed with great success the argument of its opponents — for, strange to say, it had opponents — that it was a measure conceived in favour of the rich rather than the jjoor. It was, he insisted (and the contention was obvi- ously true), the poor who suffered most from lack of good surgery. The rich were always sure to get the best that could be had, and one of the most serious drawbacks that surgi- cal science had had to put up with was the want of "subjects" for dissection. The word "burk" or "burke" yet remains for us, and though a slang word, it is found in dictionaries and is in creditable use both by writers and speakers. But what the word '•' burking " stood for at the time when Mac- aulay had to defend the Anatomy Bill in the House of Commons has almost faded from popular memory and passed into the catalogue of historical curiosities. L'ntil the Anatomy Bill had become law many timid people were afraid to go out alone after dark lest they should be " burked," and actual biirkings did take place long after Burke was hanged. The demand for " subjects " in the anatomy schools was so great, and the prices paid so high, that there was something like a premium upon murder. Murders did accordingly occur, two wretches named Bishop and Williams following in England in the steps of Burke and Hare in Scotland. Burke is said to have "burked" at least sixteen " subjects." The process was to smother the victim ; and this ruffian told the world that the idea had first struck him on reading or hearing read the murder of Ben- hadad of Syria (2 Kings xviii. 15) by the placing of a wet cloth over his mouth and nose. Sometimes a pitch - plaster seems to have been employed. At all events " burk- DISSENTEES' MARKIAGES. 177 ing" was a terror; and after the miirder of "the Italian boy by Bishop and Williams," in London, there was a general panic on the subject. That the passing of such a bill should meet with the slightest opposition does indeed seem incredible, when we only glance at the preamble, and know that those who opposed it were well aware that it recited no more than the plain truth. " Whereas," the act opens, " a knowledge of the causes and nature of sundry diseases which affect the Tjody, and of the best methods of treating and curing such diseases, and of healing and repairing divers wounds and injuries to which the human frame is liable, cannot be acquired without the aid of anatomical examination; and whereas the legal supjoly of human bodies for such anatomical examination is insufficient fully to provide the means of such knowledge ; and whereas, in order fully to supply human bodies for such purposes, divers great and grievous crimes have been committed, and, lately, murder, for the single object of selling for such purposes the bodies of the persons so murdered ; and whereas, therefore, it is highly expedient to give protection, under certain regulations, to the study and practice of anatomy, and to prevent, as far as may be, such gi'eat and grievous crimes and nuiixler as aforesaid, be it enacted," and so forth. The only clause which it is necessary to quote in explanation of the defective state of the law previously to the passing of the act is the seventh. By the seventh clause it is enacted that " it shall be lawful for any executor or other party having lawful possession of the body of any deceased person, and not being an undertaker or other party intrusted with the body, for the purpose only of interment, to permit the body of such deceased person to undergo anatomical examination, unless, to the knowledge of such executor or other party, such person shall have expressed his desire, either in writing, at any time during his life, or verbally, in the presence of two or more witnesses, during the illness whereof he died, that his body, after death, might not undergo such examination ; or unless the surviving husband or wife, or any known relative of the deceased person, shall require the body to be Vol. I. interred without such examination." No dead body is to be removed for anatomical exami- nation until forty-eight hours after death; and a medical certificate of the cause of death is to accompany it in every case. The demands of the medical profession for subjects are large; but it is believed that the number of abso- lutely friendless persons dying in hospitals and poorhouses, whose dead bodies are made available under this act, are sufficient for the purjDOses of science. Among the most successful and important measures which were passed without violent opposition should also be mentioned the series of bills introduced by Lord John Eussell in the early part of the session of 1837, for the further amelioration of the Criminal Code. By these humane enactments the number of crimes punishable by death was reduced to seven, and a longer interval was to elapse between the sentence and the execution of a criminal — the sheriff having been previously under an obli- gation to carry out the capital sentence within three days. It can scarcely be believed by the reader not acquainted with the fact, that up to this time no prisoner tried for felony was per- mitted to be defended by counsel, although in some of the colonies persons accused of similar crimes wei'e allowed legal aid. A bill was passed to remedy this glaring injustice ; and it the more readily found assent in the House of Lords because of the support which it obtained from Lord Lyndhurst, who candidly admitted that he had entirely changed his opinions, and, from having once been an opponent of a similar proposal, was now its earnest advocate. Among the gi-ievances of the Dissenters, those attending on the state of the Marriage Laws were perhaps as keenly felt as those relating to church-rates. The pocket of a man is a tender organ, but so is a woman's heart ; and it was the women who, when the hardship was felt at all, got the worst of the effects of the marriage law as it stood. It would be impossible to go fully into the history of that law, though it would be very interesting, and is almost necessary for the full understanding of the subject. The Vicar 12 178 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. of Wahejield gives us some light upon the matter, and that is a story which everybody knows. In fact the marriage law of England, previously to the passing of Lord Hardwicke'a Act in 1797, was not so unlike that of Scot- land as might be supposed. The Quakers, opposed to "steeple-houses" and " jjriests," and all forms of state religion, had made a bold stand in behalf of indepen- dence in the matter of the marriage contract. Nobody doubted their sincerity or their general honesty, whatever was thought of their rejection of " ceremonies," and their horror of "steeple-houses." Cromwell, it is well known, was in favour of a much wider scheme of religious " toleration " than any one except perhaps his secretary Milton, who ended his days as a Quietist, and the great churchman Jeremy Taylor, had yet conceived or made public in any such way as carried authority with it. But it was left for an English judge in the reign of Charles II. (Sir Matthew Hale, Lord Chief-justice of the Court of Queen's Bench under Cromwell), to lay down formally the principle that what the English law really looked to was the same as the Scotch law looked to — namely, the sincere intention of the parties. The story is given so quaintly by Bishojj Burnet that it is worth quoting: — "He was a true son of the Church of England, but moderate towards Dissenters, and just even to those from whom he differed most, which appeared signally in the care he took of preserving the Quakers from that mis- chief that was like to fall on them by declar- ing their marriages void, and so bastarding their childi'eu ; but he considered marriage and succession as a right of nature from which none should be barred, what mistake soever they might be under in the points of revealed religion. And therefore in a trial that was before him, when a Quaker was sued for some debts owing by his wife before he married her, and the Quaker's counsel pretended that it was no marriage that had passed between them, since it was not solemnized according to the rules of the Church of England, he declared that he was not willing on his own opinion to make children bastards, and gave directions to the jury to find it special. It was a reflection on the whole party that one of them, to avoid an inconvenience he had fallen in, thought to have preserved himself by a defence, that if it had been allowed by law must have made their whole issue bas- tards and incapable of succession ; and for all their pretended friendship to one another, if this judge had not been more their friend than one of those they so called, their pos- terity had been little beholding them. But he governed himself indeed by the law of the gospel, of doing to others what he would have others do to him ; and, therefore, because he would have thought it a hardship, not with- out cruelty, if amongst Papists all marriages were nulled which had not been made with all the ceremonies in the Roman ritual, so he, applying this to the case of the sectaries, he thought all marriages made according to the several persuasions of men ought to have their eifects in law." This act of good sense and plain justice on the part of Hale may be set off against his superstitious folly or worse in the matter of witches. Indeed, it was a very long while before any one could bring himself to take the same view of the marriage question as Hale did. One of the most conspicuous failures of the Whigs related to this topic, and melancholy was the mistake made by Lord John Russell. Lord Althorp had blun- dered on the church-rate question, — proposing simply to alter the mode of collection in favour of Nonconformists, while maintaining that the Church of England had a right to the tithes. Of this scheme the Dissenters abominated the jDrinciple, while the landowners and the clergy opposed the details, so it fell through. Lord John Russell made as gross a muddle of his marriage bill, under which he proposed that if the banns were published in the parish church, marriages in Dissenting places of worship should be made legal. Bat apart from their principles, the ordinary Noncon- formists had by this time got to remember habitually what the Quakers had gained by standing out for it, and they threw cold water, the very coldest, upon Lord John's bill. It is not generally known that one of the acutest and most pungent writers on the side of the EEGISTRATION OF BIETHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES. 179 Dissenting view of tliis question was the gentle humorist Charles Lamb, whose Quaker intimacies and " proclivities " had no doubt woke up his mind upon this important social question. Sir Robert Peel, during his brief term of office in 1835, had brought forward another bill, which, though it was too imperfect to be acceptable, was liked better than the measure that had been proposed by the Whigs in the previous year, and may be said to have sug- gested some of the provisions which were inclusively adopted in the year following. Marriages were to be celebrated in the usual way, if people chose to have the ceremony performed at church, but others who objected were to attend before a magistrate of the hun- dred in which they resided, at least seven days before their marriage, and make oath that they were of the age of twenty-one, or, if under that age, that they had obtained the consent of their parents and guai'dians, and knew of no lawful im2:)edimeut to their union. A copy of this affirmation was to be forwarded to the clergyman of the parish, who for a fee of five shillings was to enter it in the parish register, and the contracting parties were after- wards to be at liberty to celebrate their mar- riage by any religious ceremony which suited their opinions. This bill was, however, scarcely a less feeble expedient than those that had preceded it. The whole question of registra- tion was now before the jDublic, and as the only legal registers of deaths and marriages were those kept in the churches, while there was no registry of births at all, but only of baptisms, not only were a large class of the community left out of the record, but such registration as had been effected in the churches in bygone years had been found to be so scandalously imperfect and inaccurate that in many instances serious difficulties were encountered in endeavouring to prove a title by succession to important properties. The old leaves of the parchment registry books had sometimes been taken out by the parish clerks or even by the clergy, to be used for various domestic purposes, such as the lining of a pin- cushion, the foundation of a kettle-holder, the pi'eservation of artificial flies for fishing. or the mending of the back of a book,— and instances had been known of permitting per- sons to obtain possession of the registers, and even of mutilating them at the request of some influential or intimate friend who wanted a particular autograph. Strangely enough, at the period referred to the most coiTect of the registers were those kept by the French Pro- testant refugees who had settled in England, and still attended the places of worship pro- vided by their community. The English Dis- senting and Nonconformist bodies were, to say the least of it, entirely neglected except they made special arrangements of their own, or temporarily abated their principles by some act of conformity, to which they not unfre- quently submitted with ill-concealed resent- ment. That a great deal of inaccuracy, omis- sion, and carelessness still existed in the entries in the registry books was undoubted, and it was equally certain that the disabilities of Dissenters were but little relieved. It had therefore become necessary that some general and uniform system should be established by which registration should not only be complete, but should be effected by a public officer through his subordinates, and that cojaies of the registers should be preserved for refer- ence at a central office. Two bills, one of which provided a general system of registra- tion of births and deaths, and the other of marriages, effected a change by which those who chose to celebrate funerals, baptisms, or weddings in the churches could still do so — while Dissenters were relieved from the vex- ations under which they had so long com- plained. But the secular advantages of the measure were soon seen to be far greater than had been supposed, since to the registrar-gen- eral and his officers was confided the impor- tant duty of collecting and recording an enor- mous number of facts and data which have been of increasing value in estimating and accelerating the progress of society, and in promoting the adoption of the readiest and most effective means of maintaining the public health, and removing many of the causes of misery and distress. There was no serious opposition to these bills, for Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons, and the Duke of 180 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Wellington in the Lords, gave them such hearty support that both the government and the opposition may be credited with their adoption. Though the Registration Bills had removed the religious disabilities of Dissenters, so far as the recognition of their claim to celebrate baptismal, marriage, or funeral ceremonies, according to their own consciences, without thereby forfeiting the right to have the events placed on the public record— they were still compelled to pay the rates for the mainten- ance of the Church of England as by law established. Little difficulty had been ex- perienced in passing a bill for the commutation of tithes in England ; but the House of Lords, the majority of the clergy, and the opposition were as steadfastly opposed to the abolition of church-rates here, as they were to the re- mission of the tithe in Ireland. The ecclesiastical commission which had been appointed under the ministry of Sii* Robert Peel had set itself to reform glaring abuses, and the successors of those who first occupied a place at its deliberations were diligent to reduce the inequalities of the in- comes of the bishops and deans, to suppress many sinecures, and to pro^'ide for a reduction in the number of canons and minor canons. The amendment of many equally glaring in- equalities among the clergy below these ec- clesiastical ranks, was rendered almost hope- less because of the enormous amount of lay patronage, and the private riglit to seU and transfer livings — so the commissioners could only deal with benefices in public i^atrouage ; but as these were mostly in the more popu- lous and increasing districts, much was ex- pected even from the partial operation of the scheme. The whole of the recommendations of the committee were not suff"ered to pass the legislature, however. The Bishops' BiU was the only one which could be accomphshed in that session, because of the opposition of the Radical and Dissenting members on the min- isterial side of the house, who were urging the settlement of the question of church-rates before the passing of any further measures, which would serve to establish the Church in its possessions and its demands by the very act of modifying ecclesiastical incomes. The result was that the clergy had time to combine in petitioning against the proposed changes — that the wit, ingenuity, and brilliant argu- ment of Sidney Smith were exerted against the measure — and that out of the bUls which were intended together to introduce a system of church refonn, only those were adopted which to some extent equalized and reduced the incomes of future bishops, abolished the holding of ecclesiastical dignities or benefices in commendam, and restricted the renewal of ecclesiastical leases. The "Wliig government was already weak, and the leading Radicals now held meetings in which the feeble conduct of the ministry, in yielding to the re2Deated domination of the Lords, was warmly discussed. Unless they took a firmer stand in the next session they would receive from the more advanced re- formers but little support. If the Radical members with the whole body of Dissenters went into opposition the position of the ministry would be serious, and the govern- ment was willing enough to introduce a mea- sure for the abolition of church-rates if they could hope to carry it. The only scheme of which such a hope could be entertained was one which would leave the Church com- paratively uninjured. Mr. Spring Rice, the chancellor of the exchequer, was intrusted with a proposition to place the landed pro- perty of the Church under secular manage- ment, by which it was supposed an additional amount might be realized sufficient to meet the charges to defray which church-rates were levied, while a further balance would be left to pay the expenses of the ecclesiastical com- mission. The prelates took alarm. The Arch- bishop of Canterbury and the bishops sent forth a manifesto claiming for the Church whatever the pi-operty belonging to it might be made to yield. This interference on the part of those who were members of the House of Lords with a measure still under the con- sideration of the Commons was vehemently denounced by ministei-s; but the residt proved that the bill could not be safely adopted, for on a division the government had only a THE PRINCESS VICTORIA. 181 majority of five, and the measui-e was conse- (][ueiitly aLandoued — Lord John Russell suc- ceeding, however, in obtaining a majority of 86 in favour of a commission of inquiry into the management of church lauds. The weakness — some of their former ad- herents as well as their opponents called it the iJusillaiiimity — of the government was apparent notwithstanding the important and beneficial measures which had been passed. A number of bills had to be dropped because of the small majorities by which they were supported, and because of the determined opi^osition of the Lords. The majorities were still diminishing, and it was out of the ques- tion to seek to balance the House of Lords by the expedient of creating new jieers. Th« resignation of the ministry seemed to be inevitable. Sir Robert Peel had publicly in the House of Commons announced his readi- ness to take office, when on Tuesday, the 20th of June (1837), the bells of the London churches were heard tolling a muffled peal. King "Wil- liam IV. wasdead. He had reached his seventy second year, and had been for some time in feeble health, which was made worse by an attack of hay-fever — a complaint from which he had frequently suffered before his accession, but which, with some other ailments, signs of a weak constitution, had disappeared after he came to the throne. He had continued to transact business, but on the 15th of June his death had been expected, and every one was surprised to hear that a favourable change had taken place, and that his physicians had left him and returned to London. On Sunday the 18th his end was approaching; the Arch- bishop of Canterbury was sent for, and found the king in a calm and resigned frame of mind. On Tuesday morning the throne was vacant, and the country was exhibiting signs of genuine grief, — for William, though not a brilliant, nor a strong-minded, nor a cultured man, was honest and well-meaning. He was obstinate and opiniated, but he earnestly de- sired to do his duty and to act with justice and fairness. People had ceased to call him the patriot king and the reforming monarch, but he was still called the sailor king; and the title was believed in some way to express his blufi" good humour and honesty of purpose. He was familiar in his associations, fond of gossiping, and by no means majestic in his bearing ; but he had a good share of common sense, and was altogether a very good and iiseful monarch. At all events, the men who had the best opportunities for judging of his character spoke words not of eulogy but of honest respect for his memory when parlia- ment met after his death. Lord Melbourne, who perhaps had least reason for thinking higlily of him, not only commended his assi- duity and industry, but declared that he was "as fair and just and conscientious a man as ever existed — always willing to listen to any argument, even though opposed to his own previous feeling." Earl Grey said of him that "a man more sincerely devoted to the inter- ests of his country — that a man who had a better understanding of what was necessary to the furtherance of those interests — that a man who was more patient in considering all the circumstances connected with those interests — that a man who was more attentive to his duty on every occasion — never did exist." And the Duke of Wellington spoke earnestly of his "firmness, candour, justice, and true spirit of conciliation." There is something character- istic of each speaker in the terms used ; but it cannot be said that on the whole they were undeserved, or that the words themselves were Since the accession of William IV. a j^erson- age, then very young and for a long time after- wards strange to any of the foregrounds of history, had been increasingl}^ the subject of public consideration and half-reticent dis- cussion among those who lived in the midst of political life. We mean the young lady who is now the first lady in this country, and who was then known as the Princess Victoria. Princesses cannot claim the im- munitj^ which ladies of lower rank are sup- posed to be entitled to, and it stands pub- licly recorded that the Princess Victoria was born upon the 24th of May, 1819. Indeed we hear every year how old this exalted person- age is, so that it is a very simple matter of 182 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. arithmetic to fix the year of her birth. That birth was an eveut of great interest to the English peojjle, for it seemed to make the suc- cession to the crown secure; and the Duke of Kent was always much liked, to say nothing of a general feeling that he had been some- what "sat down upon" by George III. Prin- cess Charlotte had not long been dead, and it was the widower, Prince Leopold, who had the honour of opening his doors at Claremont to the Duke and Duchess of Kent after their marriage at Leiningen— the Princess Maria Louisa Vic- toria, the bride, being Leopold's own sister. Lord Eldon had given it as his opinion that it was not necessary that any of the royal chil- dren should be born in England; but the Duke and Duchess, who, after their visit to Clare- mont, had retired to Leiningen again, were anxious that the expected infant should be a native of this country. It befell, then, that the little Victoria was born at Kensington Palace; and though the year of her birth was a vei-y troubled one to the nation, the event was a pleasant drop in the cup of bitters. How the Duke of Kent met his death is well known, and was long a topic of familiar talk at British firesides. Having got his boots wet on a long walk, he was so occupied in playing with the baby on his return home that he neglected re- peated urgencies about changing them; caught cold, and died within eleven days. His will appointed the duchess sole guardian of the Princess Alexandrina Victorire {sic in will) "to all intents and for all purposes whatsoever." Every eye was now turned upon this exalted lady and her infant daughter, whom, indeed, she held in her arms while receiving the de- putation which was sent by vote of both houses of parliament to read addresses of condolence. It was now plain that unless something very extraordinary intervened, the next sovereign would be a woman, and the manner in which the widowed duchess performed her task as guardian was sure to be severely watched. The Princess Victoria was eleven years old when King William ascended the throne, and at the date when the king was dis- missing the Whig ministers she was of course in her early teens. Not much had been made known about the manner in which the princess was brought up, but enough was dis- co\-ered to please the people of England. The education of this young lady, upon whom so much depended now it was clear that there would never be a direct heir to the throne, was evidently as simple and homely as it could well be. She was seen dressed simply, prac- tising habits which were favourable for her health. She was out in all weathers, making herself happy with her young girl friends just like any other English damsel. This was not extraordinary, but it was pleasant. The bring- ing up of the Princess Charlotte, whose death caused so much excitement, had been most unfortunate, as was natural, from the state of affairs between her father and mother. She was known to be wiKul, lavish, and not without coarseness. Now it very early tran- spired that the Princess Victoria had been brought up in notions and habits of strict economy in money matters. After the nation's exj^erience of some of the royal dukes this was a comfort. Gossip soon got hold of a thousand stories of the young lady's good manners, truthfulness, and caution in spending money. Once while she was stajdng at Tun- bridge Wells, she had been buying presents for her young relatives and friends, and had spent her last coin in her purchases. Sud- denly she remembered one more friend for whom she would like to purchase something, and she fixed ujoon a certain box, price half-a- crown. The woman who kept the counter of the bazaar was about to let the box go, though unpaid for, with the rest of the pretty things; but the princess's governess interposed, saying, "As the princess has not got the money, she cannot buy the box." So the box was put aside. The princess would be penniless until quarter-day. Punctually on that day, at about seven o'clock a.m., the royal damsel came trotting up on her pretty donkey to pay for the box. There had always been a little uneasiness in the popular mind about the Duke of Cumber- land. It turned out afterwards that this un- easiness was not ill founded. The nation dis- liked him, knew he was a fierce and unscrupu- lous "Orangeman," and politically of a most headstrong type ; and thei'e was a general PLOT OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND. 183 feeling that the princess would not be safe for the succession, unless a regency were appointed until she should come of age. A bill had in fact been passed, by which it was provided that in case of the king's dying before the queen and without issue, the queen should be regent ; but that in any other contingency the Duchess of Kent should fill that office until the princess came of age. In 1835 came disclosures which startled even those who had ap^jreheuded the worst, — with the exception, of course, of the very few who were absolutely behind the scenes. Con- sidering the humdrum ways into which we have now fallen, it reads like romance, though it is true history, that at this time th^re was a deliberately concocted and powerfully sup- ported scheme on foot for setting aside the succession to the crown. Sevei'al of the Liberal members of the House of Commons, including Mr. Shiel, the great orator, and especially Mr. Hume, pressed Sir Robert Peel with questions relating to the reception of ad- dresses to the crown from certain treasonable associations known as Orange clubs. Nothing particular came of these questions, until Mr. Goulburn was "put up" to give the formal answer that some such addresses had been re- ceived, and there the matter for the moment dropped ; but the bare announcement was re- ceived with such an outbreak of cheering that it was apparent something unusual lay behind. Before the end of the session Mr. Hume moved for and obtained a committee to investigate this matter of the Orange lodges and their designs, and the evidence was certainly rather alarming. The name of Colonel Fairman, said to have been the confidential agent of the leadei-s in this treasonable movement, will pro- bably be remembered by many readers of these pages who have hardly remembered the story. In the evidence given before Mr. Hume's com- mittee what was generally held to be jiroved was the existence of a tremendous confedera- tion of Orange clubs, having for its object to set aside the Princess Victoria as next in suc- cession and place the Duke of Cumberland upon the throne. The chiefs of the Orange movement had conceived the hopeful idea that the Duke of Wellington intended to seize the crown — an idea for which, perhaps, they were indebted to the Corsican prisoner ; and they proposed to declare King William IV. insane, shelve the princess as a woman and a minor, and i^lace the Duke of Cumberland upon the throne. At all events there was evi- dence of the existence of a vast Orange con- federation, having that "galloping, dreary duke " for its grand -master and the Bishop of Salisbury for grand - chaplain, while many of the Tory peers were among the leaders. In England there were 145,0(J0 members, in Ireland 175,000, and there were branches in nearly every regiment of the army at home and abroad. Naturally enough the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Kenyon, who was im- plicated along with him, denied having any guilty knowledge of their proceedings, and in particular declared that they did not know of the existence of Orange clubs in the army. All the committee could do was to report that they could not reconcile this contradiction with the rest of the evidence, and Lord John Russell managed to induce the House of Com- mons to susjDend judgment in the matter. This was in order to give the Duke of Cum- berland time to withdraw from the Association, but as his royal highness did not seem inclined to do this, he was given up to his pursuers, and censured by vote. During the vacation of 1836 the Radicals determined to indict the Duke of Cumberland, the Bishop of Salisbury, and Lord Kenyon, under the act which had been employed to en- trap the Dorchester labourers. The indictments were drawn, and counsel were instructed, when the thing came to a stand on account of the death of an important witness; but when the House of Commons again met, Mr. Hume proposed an address to the crown upon the subject. This, with some modifications, was carried, and the hated duke then proceeded to break up the confederation. In 1833 died a woman whose general powers and acquirements would not entitle her to a place in history, but who may well be noticed in a sketch of progress, because an unusual number of the questions which we are apt to consider entirely modern connect themselves 184 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. with her name. Thei-e was much in the career of Haunah More which we may now- adays naturally smile at; but she was not an ordinary woiiian, and she was in some respects much in advance of her time. That, indeed, is a vague phrase when used of any one who lived so long; but the truth is that she was much in advance of the epoch at which she passed away — not in all respects, but in some A'ery important ones. Miss Hannah More — or, as she was called by brevet rank, Mrs. Hannah Moi'e — heard of Olive's victories in India when she was a child, and she lived to see the Eeform Bill, the Liverpool and Manchester Eailway, and the " Penny Maga- zine." She lived through all those yeai's of popular ferment in England which, following upon the French revolution, and reaching down from Orator Hunt and his set to the trades - unionism of the new era, kept the clergy and the more conservative jiortion of society in constant alarm. Nor was this the whole of her connection with such mat- ters. She had a real and effective gift of addressing " the jDoor " so as to gain their ear and turn them to moderation. She was ap- plied to by bishops and statesmen to write politico-moral tracts, in order, as the jihrase was, to "stem the torrent of sedition and unbelief ; " and she did it. These tracts had an enormous run. One of them, which is definitely religious in purport and is entitled Farley the Porte?; is still in circulation ; and another. The Shepherd of Salishiwy Plain, has a large sale. This tract is a narrative with the same kind of purpose as Paley's tract for the poor, Reasons for Contentment. The object is to induce " poor people " to be con- tented with a little, to touch their hats to their " betters," and keep quiet. Some of the smaller tracts, sold at a halfpenny each, are .still to be seen in the museums of the curious, and they supply curious illustrations of by- gone manners. The general tone is that of the verses to Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Apprentices, and not even the gallows is ex- cluded from the illustrations. The print, the paper, and the woodcuts would now exclude them from Seven Dials. But for all this, Hannah More must be reckoned amoncr the pioneers of jiopular education and cheap litera- ture. The story of her efforts to establish schools for the poor is too long to be told here, but the opposition she met with from people who ought to have known better was tragic. She lived to see the dawn of a better day, and her aged heart must have leaped at Brougham's words, "The schoolmaster is abroad." Hannah More, who had been the close friend of Johnson, Garrick, Mrs. Montagu (the friend of the climbing boys), and most of the wits of that day, including Burke, would have had many excuses for taking an old- fashioned view of certain new questions. Yet she was one of the very very few who wel- comed those Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge which nearly everybody else set down as silly aberrations. Tliough a deeply religious woman of what is called the evan- gelical school, she wrote plays (two of which were acted) ; and she was one of the earli- est and most strenuous advocates of better education for women. She especially con- tended that they should be thoroughly edu- cated for household work, and in this respect, among others, was far in advance of her time. She looked with some timidity ujjon the turn things were taking in the country shortly before her death, but on the whole she was a friend to whatever is trvily " Liberal," and well deserves a small corner to herself in a record of progi-ess such as this is. In the year 1834 the House of Commons listened to the first speech of a young Con- servative of high rank and very remarkable ancestry. This was Sidney Herbert, then only twenty-four years of age, but afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea. He had entered par- liament as Tory member for South Wilts in 1832, and now made his first speech by op- posing the admission of Dissenters to the universities. He was looked upon as a very bright and amiable young man, and one not vxnwilling to " take a position ; " and his aristo- cratic appearance and peculiar ancestry made him the subject of much curiosity. The fact is, Sidney Herbert was the second son of the Earl of Pembroke and Lady Pern- HALLEY'S COMET OF 1835. 185 broke his wife, who was the daughter of Count Worouzoff. Aucl who was Count "\Vor- onzofF I He had been sent to England as Rus- sian ambassador by no less a person than the celebrated Catherine of Russia, though he had not been Russian ambassador all his life, and had fur fifty years lived in England in a style which made his career undistinguishable from that of any English gentleman of his time. Still it must be noted that it was Sidney Herbert's uncle, his mothei"'s brother, who was appointed Governor of Bessarabia and New Russia, and who really did much to im- px'ove the country in its own resources as well as to open it up as a grain-market for other nations. But thei'e is more to come. AVho does not remember Schamyl and the struggle in the Caucasus'? It was this same uncle of the young Sidney Herbert who was commissioned by the Russian emperor to "put down" Schamyl. Schamyl was not so easily to be put down. But it is not easy to imagine a more curiously provoking state of things than that which we shall find occurring some years hence, when Sidney Herbert will be secre- tary-at-war in England, and the English are ravaging, or have it in their plans to ravage, his uncle's estates ! Meanwhile it is suflicieut to note that Sidney Herbert, who had been first to Harrow and then to Oxford, was, con- currently with Mr. Gladstone, one of the " rising young men " of the Conservative or Tory party, though he was at this time a somewhat hesitating speaker. Subsequently, however, we shall find him developing that peculiar fluency of utterance which, remark- ably enough, proved to be one of the badges of the Peelite party. In the latter jjart of the year 1835 appeared in the heavens one of the most remarkable of the cometary bodies. For many reasons it caused great excitement, and in many ways the circumstances surrounding its advent might be taken as data from which to mea- sure the progress of popular enlightenment. If Halley's comet were to appear now — which it is sure not to do — or rather if it were about to appear, the best information concerning the time would approach the public mind by ten thousand avenues. It was difi'erent in 1835, and there Avere scores of catch-penny tracts about the wonderful visitor, though there were already in existence some good periodi- cals, and the amount of knowledge that was in easy current circulation about the stranger was great. We have much to learn respecting comets even now : the vulgar have not ceased to be afi'aid of them; there are still vague fears that this poor planet may get caught and scorched up or suffocated in the tail of one of them ; and there are still superstitious terrors. But the general supposition among educated people is that the earth might pass through the tail of a comet without knowing it, though wine-growers have maintained that " comet " vintages are always good. Halley's comet, appearing in 1835, might very well cause some excitement, for it had a story. It was supposed to be the same as the comet which appeared in the year 52 B.C., and it was certain that it had appeared in 1456. This was soon after the Turks, having become masters of Constantinople, had excited a panic all over the West, and "good Chris- tians" wei'e bidden to add to their ave-marias the petition, " Save us from the Tui'k and the comet." This comet had also apj^eared in 1759, and the period of its arrival at the peri- helion point had been the subject of some exciting discussion. Long before its actual aj^pearance Laland, Clairaut, and Madame Lepante had announced (November, 1758) that Halley's comet would be found on this occasion to have sulfered a retardation, and that it would reach its perihelion 618 days later than it had done in 1682. The period foretold was the middle of April, 1759, but Clairaut had announced that under pressure of time he had omitted in his calculations certain small elements, which might make a difference of about a month. Now the comet passed its perihelion on the 12th of March in that year. In 1835 there were several calculations of the perihelion-period of Halley's comet, the best known being those of M. Damoiseau and M. de Pontecoulant. The 4th, the 7th, and the 13th of November were the dates respec- tively foretold, but the actual period proved to be the 16th of that month, — the largest 186 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. range of difference being twelve days, the smallest only four. During the years we have just now been surveying great influences, other than poli- tical, were at work in helping to shape the characteristics and fortunes of "the new age," as ceitain popular writers began now to call it. Some of those must be briefly glanced at. Our list shall end with the publication of the Pickwick Papers, which was both a striking sign of the times and a powerful factor of change. For the moment, however, it will be convenient to turn to the deaths of one or two illustrious writers who are now more or less spent forces, but whose character and works have had distinct results for all of ns. George Crabbe, clergyman, botanist, and poet, belongs so much to the past and present at once that it is difiicult to know what place exactly to assign to him; but he cannot be omitted. He belonged to the old school in one respect, was patronized (in the Meecenas sense) by Burke, and thought the jiraise of Dr. Johnson and Mr. Fox the brightest feathers in his cap. What Burke did for him must be sought in his biography, but it should never be forgotten. The chief point to notice is that Crabbe was evidently all his life quite unaware of the work he was doing by poems such as The Village and The Parish Register, The truth is, he was the pioneer of general interest in the lot of the poor. While politicians were spouting, and demagogues quarrelling (all of them doing some good in their way), the solemnly truthful poetry of Crabbe fell like a saturating, pervading rain all over the land, and prepared the hearts and minds of tens of thousands for "new views" in sanitaiy, educational, and other matters. At about the time of his death changes were in progress, if not partly achieved, which were to make some of his writing inapplicable, but his awfully sombre description of a country workhouse could never be forgotten by any who had once read it : — "There, where the putrid vapours flagging play, And the dull wheel hums doleful thi-ough the day;" nor could the story of Phoebe Dawson. Crabbe was a man of extreme gentleness and meekness, who never quite got out of the "dropping-down-dead" ways of his poverty- stricken life at Aldborough, and at first in London. When they were going to dinner at a loi'd's Moore would say, " For heaven's sake, Crabbe, hold up your head a bit." The death of Coleridge in 1834 was an event of more mark. His peculiar views of church-aud-state questions had, as is well known, a great effect upon the mind of Mr. Gladstone among others, and this history has already noted, however briefly, their con- nection with the Oxfoi'd or High Church movement, which ended in the secession of Dr. J. H. Newman, and with Young Eng- landism. This is by no means the whole of a subject which is far too large for discussion here, but it may be safely and profitably noted that Coleridge, next to Burke, had the great- est influence in turning the minds of politi- cians of the higher order to what may be called comprehensive and truly imperial ways of treating public qviestions. Besides this, he also was one of the foremost of those who made litei-ature and politics more human and com- passionate, and was a real pioneer of good things to the poor and oppressed. In politics he would rather have been classed as a Conservative than a Liberal, and he hated demagogues; but for all that his heart, like every great heart, was with the fainting, struggling many. The most amusing and appropriate light in which we can regard Coleridge for a moment before passing on is as one of the great talkers who were so striking a feature of the age that we are going away from. Things are not now settled by "tongue," or even much influenced by " tongue," as they were then : we mean, of course, not by the tongue of the salon, for there is tongue enough in other ways. Johnson and Burke were gone, but there were four omnipotent talkers in London, whom people came from the ends of the earth to learn wisdom from. These were Coleridge, Macaulay, Sydney Smith, and Hallara. In- experienced hosts, bent on making a sensation, would sometimes blunder by inviting Macau- lay, Hallam, and Smith to the same dinner- tiible — thoufrh of course thincjs were better ADVANCE IN GENEEAL CULTURE— SCURRILOUS PRINTS. 187 managed at Holland House, Bowood, and other great centres of social influence. The effect of having them all there in the same room was that neither talked at all beyond passing the time of day, or putting some such question as the brilliant Talleyrand did to the dumbfoundered Jeffrey, when he spoke no word all the evening beyond putting a ques- tion to "Monsieur Jeffrey" as to the proper way of " preparing your national cock-a-leekie." When Macaulay returned, sick and worn, from India, Sydney Smith said, "Macaulay is greatly improved of late — yes, very much. I have noticed in him flashes of silence." Hallam was a man who would hardly eat for talking —he was once described as "Hallam with his mouth full of cabbage and contradiction." But not all these, not even the astounding Macau- lay, with whom, when he once got the steam up, conversation was a wild impossibility, could compare with Coleridge. He declared that he never in his life had a headache — never was conscious of having a head — and one consequence of this was that his over- whelming, diluvial store of knowledge was always at his command. No man, perhaps, ever had a larger and more reverent "school" of listeners, and his opinions on the class of questions which have largely occupied the mind of men of Mr. Gladstone's order were, through the medium of his "golden tongue," impressed upon the minds of the inquiring listeners who gathered about him wherever he was. It may almost be said that he could not live without a listener — one at least. There was another writer, a schoolfellow and friend of Coleridge's, who died about the same time, and who also was one of the humanitarians, and he has told some droll stories, half-true, half- false, of his friend's "gift of the gab." Scarcely one of them can be called a carica- ture. For instance. Lamb says that starting one morning from London to Enfield he met Coleridge, who seized him by the button and began discussing as usual. After putting up with him to the last possible moment he cut off the button, and left it in the hand of Cole- ridge, who still went on talking. On his re- turn from Enfield in the evening he declares that he found Coleridge, button in hand, hold- ing forth as before. This is of course not quite exact, but it cannot be far from the truth. Many of the authenticated stories nearly ap- proach it, and during his later years at High- gate the school children, who used to call him "Old Coley," would run away from him in terror lest he should imijound them as lis- teners. The great merit of Coleridge, for the pur- poses of this history, is that his mode of treat- ing the higher politics, especially in relation to religion, formed a kind of bridge between the two centuries. His work was done many years before his death. From the time of the cholera visitation a great change may be noticed in the freedom, frequency, and thoroughness with which sani- tary questions were discussed. The disap- pointment caused by the immediate effects of the Reform Bill had at least this good effect, that it made "the people" for the time less in- clined to listen to demagogues, and more ready to think of improving their own condition by the means that science could jolace in their power. There was no law which made it in- cumbent on any one, peasant or artisan, to be dirty, or drunken, or to sleep in ill-aired rooms. True, for the present the window- tax still existed, but it was doomed, and the value of "hygiene," as some people call it, began to be better and better understood. Dr. Southwood Smith was one of the foremost in the new movement, and his writings are still valuable. Although Lord Brougham, disappointed in many things, and not finding the "diffusion of useful knowledge" as smooth a task as was anticipated, declared one day that he was per- suaded, after all, that the people of England did not want to be educated ; yet, for all that, his schoolmaster was " abroad," and could not be recalled. The slow progress of geuei-al culture, and the fact that the question of national education not only stood stiU but seemed as if it must stand still for ever, caused some wags to endow the celebrated saying (intended to "dish" the duke) with a new mean- ing, and it was thought comic to say that the schoolmaster was "abroad" and nobody could tell when he would be back again. Still, the 188 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAKIES. iucrease in books aud periodicals was very great. Too much of the magazine literature was of a kiud which would now be prosecuted instantly, yet decent booksellers felt, so it would seem, no shame in selling it. You might see cheap magazines with unquotable jokes spread open side by side with religious tracts, The Christian's Penny Magazine, and The jfonthy Visitor. Not the slightest attempt was made in those days to relate scandalous stories with discretion, and there were news- papers which made their chief profit by more or less direct "terrorizing" of the vilest kind. One of these filled so large a space in the public eye for years that its name should scarcely be omitted — the infamous Satirist, edited by Barnard Gregory. The fact that the religious classes in gen- eral, and especially the clergy of the Estab- lished Church (they being in dii'ect contact with the state), were usually to be found on the side of "social order" had one unfortunate result. It helped in leading the extreme low Eadicals to mix up irreligion and politics in a way which led to some prosecutions aud very much hindered their cause. In that unpleasant, sometimes utterly obscene kind of propagandism were mixed up many men who were good at heart and sound in head. These eventually found their way out, and made for themselves names of honour. "With the progress of " sanitation," slight as it was, and generally with the descent of great physicians into the arena of popular instruc- tion and " hygiene," another result begins to appear at about this time. England was, it is true, no longer the old three-bottle England of the days of Mr. Dickens' Barnahy Riidge, nor would a man like Gabriel Varden, the locksmith, breakfast on beef and ale in 1835, but strong drinks had it far too much their own way; though medical men were now begin- ning to speak out, and the consumption of tea, coffee, and cocoa increased enormously. Those were days when it was fortunate if you got a fairly good tea for common use at 5s. a lb.; coffee was 2s. a lb., the very lowest price being Is. A.d.; while moist sugar at Q>d. a lb. was very coarse. The Pickwick Papers of Dickens, which commenced in 1837, belong in their higher relations to the great humanitarian movement, and did a splendid work in helping to bind men together, and uniting the springs of hope and compassion in society at large, but they remain an imperishable illustration of the im- portance attached in those days to "the drink." There is scarcely a page from which the odour of rum punch is absent. The literature for ladies in this decade was for the most part very bad. That alone would supply an imjiortant index of culture. In our own days we have seen an Elizabeth Bari-ett Browning, a Mrs. Gaskell, a Mrs. Somer- ville, a George Eliot, but the high- water mark then was represented by names such as those of Mrs. Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. To these we have done justice when we have said there was in both, to use Mr. Caiiyle's expression concerning the first, " a thin vein of poetry." At this time the "Albums" were in their glory. They were sometimes called " Annuals," and they had a long reign. Very good writers contributed to some of them, e.g. John Wilson and Wordsworth, besides the ladies, aud they did something for literature and a little for art. The gradual improve- ment in the tastes of the middle-classes tended to make this somewhat namby-pamby kind of literature ridiculous, aud the progress of wood- engi'aving had its influence too. When it became possible to buy a hundred wood- etigraviugs with five hundred pages of good and varied literature, ornamentally bound, for ten shillings, the Book of Beauty or the Court Album, with about a hundred jjages of wide pi'int and twenty portraits of simpering ladies, made haste to hide their diminished heads. The prices paid to good and well-known con- tributors to these albums were sometimes large. An album was a common present to a lady at Christmas or on a birth-day. To this class of topics belongs assuredly one more which may be classed among the most im- portant achievements of the Whig government, and one which has had incalculable effects on the social, as well as the political, progress of our time. It was with reference to the financial performances of Mr. Spring Rice that Syilney Smith wrote, " Great would be the joy of the LOitD PALMEKSTUN. 189 three per cents if Spriug Eice would go iuto lioly orders." But in 1836 Mr. Spring Eice took a step in the right direction, by reducing the stamp-duty on newspapers. The excite- ment of the Eeform Bill period had produced a large crop of periodical writings of a more or less political character, which endeavoured to evade, and in a great many cases did evade, the stamp-duty. Papers were started on pur- pose to try the question of the liability to the stamp, and indeed this was done, with more or less intermission, until the stamp was wholly removed. Many of the enthusiasts of a free press submitted to fine, confiscation, and imprisonment rather than surrender their point, and now and then a legal victory was won upon the question whether such and such ] leiuodicals were newspapers within the mean- ing of the law. One of those who were ear- nest in parliament in favour of the repeal of the stamp-duty was Mr. Lytton Bulwer, (afterwards Lord Lytton and a Conservative), and eventually Mr. Spring Eice reduced the tax from fourpence to a penny. At the same time the duties on paper wei^e reduced to three-halfpence a pound. Lord Brougham was eloquent in maintaining that the reduc- tion of the stamp-duty would prove only a temporary measure, and that the tax would ultimately have to be given up, and of course he was right. A veiy strenuous eflfort had been made to reduce the duty on soap instead of that upon newspapers, but the constant difficulty of realising the latter impost, and the breach of the law to which it so frequently led, had made it a diminishing source of revenue, while as a " tax on knowledge " it was already odious to a large body of the more intelligent portion of the population. Therefore cheap newsjiapers gained the day over cheap soap by a majority of 33 ; but there were still some burdensome restrictions which imposed an additional stamp-duty of a halfpenny on newspapers exceeding 1530 square inches of the printed part of the sheet, and a penny if they exceeded 2295 square inches or had a supplement. Every newspaper was also obliged to use a distinctive stamped die, and proprietors, editors, and publishers were compelled to be registered. In running the eye, or the mind, over the story of our relations with foreign countries during nearly the whole of the reign of William lY., we may as well recall the fact tliat from 1830 onwards until 1841 Lord Pal- merston was at the head of the foreign office. It is from about 1830 that we must date the career in which he was chiefly interestino- to his countrymen. Henry John Temple, by courtesy Viscount Palmerston, was at the accession of the new monarch about forty -five years of age. He had begun political life early, and had served, under Percival among others, but his Toryism gradually gave way, and he became a good Canningist. Indeed it was in the school of Canning that he may be said to have learned the principles, or rather habits of mind, which he carried into his foreign policy afterwards. Of course, how- ever, it must be remembered that he was much Canning's inferior in ability, and that principles and methods are very different things in different minds. Humility and bashfulness are about the last ideas that we are accustomed to associate with the name of Palmerston, but it is said that he was a diffi- dent gay man, at aU events in regard to choice or acceptance of office. Under the Portland administration he was offered his choice of the post of chancellor of the ex- chequer or secretary at war, and consulted a friend as to the wisdom of his accepting either office, having doubts both of his administra- tive ability and his capacity, in point of tact and courage, to represent a great dejiartraent in the house — he really tliought or pro- fessed to think that it would be better for him to take a seat at the treasury board and learn a little more of his business. However, being patted on the back by his friends as a " very fine young man," he ventured on the post of secretary at war, and filled it success- fully from 1809 until 1828, when he went out with the other Canningists upon the occa- sion of the Duke of Wellington's quarrel with Mr. Huskisson. From this time Palmerston began to be known definitely as a politician of Liberal tendencies. He supported Catholic Emanci- pation, and his speech in favour of the Belief 190 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Bill was pronounced at the time a very fine cue. When in the year 1831 he came for- ward as a Reformer and supported Lord John Russell's Bill, he was vindictively turned out of his seat for Cambridge as Peel had previously been dismissed from Oxford for supporting Catholic Emancipation. In 1830, as we have seen, he took his seat at the For- eign Office, and began to make himself feared, or at all events attended to, all over Europe. When Earl Grey ofi'ered him the post, a high political authority, knowing the disturbed state of Europe, was pleased to remark that if an archangel from heaven were foreign minister in England, he could not keep the country out of war for three months. This prediction was signally disappointed, and Lord Palmerston became a very powerful foreign minister. What he was thought of as a debater will be gathered from the value Brougham put upon his services in that capa- city. In order to estimate our foreign relations at the time which we have been surveying, we must remember that to tbe latter years of the reign of William IV. belong certain con- tinental events which did not immediately, thoiigh tbey did more or less remotely, affect progress in this country. Louis Philippe — whom we shall meet hereafter as a refugee in England — had, in the language of M. Thiers, shown his " resolve to rule as well as to reign," and made himself a thousand enemies, of whom men like Barbes and Blanqui were per- haps not the worst. The somewhat lugubrious afiiiir of the Spanish legion falls within those years. We had formed a treaty with France, Portu- gal, and Spain, to support the cause of free- dom in the last-named country, which was practically a treaty in favour of the Queen of Spain against Don Carlos. The Foreign En- listment Act being suspended on jiurpose, an army was raised in England, and under Gen- eral Sir de Lacy Evans was sent off to Spain, while a naval squadron supported this move- ment. The "Legion" was not very successful, and was the subject of many caricatures ; but in the end Don Carlos was driven out, and Espartero set up as regent. The "Legion" would stand some chance of being forgotten now, if it were not that the Carlist struggle has been revived within the last few years, but without success. There were other troubles on the Continent, and the Emperors of Russia, Prussia, and Aus- tria did their possible to "stem the tide of democracy," and there was even some perse- cution—the Zillerthal Protestants being the victims. The German ZoUverein, or commer- cial union, was completed. The independence of Cracow, which had formed an article in the Treaty of Vienna, was violently put an end to by Russia, with the connivance of other powers; and in consequence of a treaty with Turkey, the Russians claiming Circassia, the conflict in that mountainous region began, of which so much has been written and so httle remembered. But as the changeful aspect of affairs in France, and the peculiar relations which that country had assumed towards England, are of the most imjDortance in respect to our social and political position at the period of which we sjieak, it may be worth while to consider at greater length what was the political attitude of the French people towards their elected king. In 1832 the small cloud presaging revolution had again appeared in Paris, where serious tvimults took place. One of the immediate causes of popular dissatisfaction was the atti- tude of the French government with regard to Belgium, where a revolution had already arisen because of the annexation of that coun- try to Holland by the CougTess of Vienna in 1815. This movement was doubtless caused by the success of the events which had placed Louis Philippe on the throne of France ; for it did not commence till August, 1830, when the passions of the people were aroused by the appearance in Brussels of the Prince of Orange, son of the Dutch king, who desired by bis presence to pacificate his discontented subjects. On his arrival the streets were barricaded, the citizens under arms, the Belgian tricolor everywhere conspicuous, and the air resound- ing with " Vive la liberte !" and cries for the deposition of Van INIaanen, the Dutch minis- POLAND AND FRANCE. 191 ter. Tlie prince at once retreated from the city, and in a few days about ten thousand Dutch troops marched upon Brussels, which they entered late in the evening of the 23d of September. The Belgian citizens were prepared for them. The tocsins were clanging from every steeple, and volleys of musketry were poured from the windows of the houses and from the shelter of barricades. The troops hesitated, and at last retired in a body and intrenched themselves in the j^ark, where they defended themselves for three days against the attacks of the Belgians, whose ranks were constantly increased by the arrival of volunteers from the neighbouring towns. The Dutch commenced a cannonade on the city with their artillery, and reduced it almost to ruins, in which numbers of women, children, and helpless persons were buried. At length, however, the military retreated before the insurgents, taking away their dead, and leav- ing behind them a fearful scene of carnage and destruction. It was useless to prolong the struggle. The annexation was a mistake of European diplomacy, and by diplomacy it was considered necessary to provide against further bloodshed. A conference of the five great powers was held in London. Lord Aberdeen represented England; Count Mas- tasewickz, Russia ; Count Bulow, Prussia ; and M. de Talleyrand, France. The news received by these plenipotentiaries during their sitting informed them that the Belgians were driving out the Dutch in every direction, and it was determined to restore the former country to a separate and independent kingdom. There were two candidates for the throne — the Duke of Leuchtenberg, and the Due de Nemours, son of Louis Philippe. The Due de Nemours was elected by a majority of one vote : but in the meantime it had been decided by the conference in London that no French prince should be permitted to accept the crown, a resolution which was endorsed by Louis Philippe, who refused it on behalf of his son. The Belgians therefoi'e conferred it on Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. It was evident that the fire of revolution smouldered, instead of having been extin- guished. France had learned a little from her reverses, but the revolutionary spirit was work- ing elsewliere. An insurrection broke out in Poland against the oppression of Russia, and was maintained against fearful difficulties ; the patriots, who had seized upon Warsaw, defeat- ing their opponents in several engagements, though the superior numbers and discipline ot the Russian troops made the chance a desperate one. It seemed as though the French were determined to rush to the assistance of the brave people who stood alone against one of the greatest powers of Europe. Thei-e was an opportunity also of avenging the disasters which had befallen the army of Moscow. The ministry opposed this inordinate desire of " aid to Poland," and pointed out the diffi- culty of embarking in a struggle with one, or perhaps two, sti'ong powers, while the atFairs of the nation were in such a disorganized con- dition. In return, they were accused of want of patriotism, of treachery to the cause of liberty, and of a desire to hand France over to another tyranny — the tyranny of the bour- geoisie. M. Perier was at that time at the head of the government. He had succeeded Lafitte in 1831, and his policy agreed with that of Louis Philippe himself. He had been insti'umental in obtaining a settlement of the Belgian ques- tion ; and, as a concession to the popular feel- ing, had succeeded in passing a bill for abol- ishing hereditary peerage ; still he was disliked and suspected by the Republicans on account of his foreign policy. Tliey spoke of the posi- tion of France under Napoleon, when the world had to listen to French dictatorship; and the refugees, who assembled at Paris from other countries, assisted to fan the flame against M. Perier's foreign policy, because his ministry would not sanction the formation of an army to march across Germany to the relief of Poland ; or to violate the neutrality of Switzerland or Piedmont, in order to assist the insurgents in the Papal States. In March, 1832, M. Perier defended his policy in an able and courageous speech ; in the following May he died of cholera. A few days afterwards General Lamarque, one of the leaders of the opposition, also died, and his funeral was the signal for a public dis- 192 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. tuib:ince, originating for the most part with a number of young men, many of them students in the Polytechnic School. The funeral of the general was attended by a great procession, consisting of people of all classes and some thousands of national guards. The rioters interrupted the funeral proces- sion, and with cries of "Liberty or death!" and "Vive la Republique!" accompanied by the hoisting of red flags, and poles surmounted by red caps, attempted to drag the hearse towards the Pantheon. This was prevented by the municipal guard, and at length the body of the general was permitted to be taken to the cemetery. Meantime another company of armed rioters had seized General Lafayette from among the mourners, and placing him in a hired carriage, endeavoured to drive him home, at the same time honouring him with complimentary shouts. On their way they were met by a number of dragoons, upon whom they fired. The soldiers at once re- turned their fire, upon which the mob dis- persed, shrieking oiTt that they were massacred, and calling, "To arms! to arms!" This was a signal for the tumult to become more gen- eral. It soon spread in all quarters of the city, and conflicts between the populace and the soldiers, assisted by the National Guard, took place in several localities. On the 5th and 6th of June the insurrection had reached its height. In the eastern faubourgs enor- mous barricades had been erected, which were so desperately defended by the riotei's that the troops at last brought cannon against them, and took them by storm. By the evening of the 6th the engagement was at an end, and the insurrection suppressed. Of the troops there w^ere 55 killed and 240 wounded; the National Guards had 18 killed and 104 wounded ; and the insurgents were supposed to have lost 100 killed, and to have had 300 wounded, while from 1200 to 1500 were taken prisoners. Prosecutions instituted against the press, as well as against some noted Republican agi- tators, members of revolutionary societies, continued to exasperate the people; but the occurrence of a foreign war was, as usual, sufiicient for a time to abate the animosity of parties, and the short campaign in Bel- gium eff"ected some diversion from domestic troubles. This campaign was undertaken by France at the request of the other powers of the con- vention, which had decreed the independence of Belgium. The King of Holland had fii-st protested againt this decision, and had after- wards refused to be bound by it, so that it became necessary to compel him to relinquish the Belgian ten-itory. On the 29th of November Marshal Gerard arrived before Antwerp with fifty thousand men. The Duke of Orleans was serving under him. He summoned the Dutch general, Chasse, to surrender the citadel, but without eff'ect, and it was not till the 14th of December that the besieging force could complete their batteries, and open fire upon the fortress. There were altogether 104 guns, half of which threw shells, and in a few days a breach was made in the outer wall, which was afterwards carried with the bayonet. The citadel, where the Dutch general lay ill, was not taken ; the batteries had reduced it almost to a ruin, and the shattered buildings threatened to fall upon the wounded in the hospital. A mine was sprung, and the general capitulated. After this the rest of the fortresses were taken, and the Dutch finally evacuated the Belgian terri- tory. Tlie combined fleets of France and England had sailed up the Scheldt to assist in the reduction of Antwerp; and the capitula- tion of that city, which took place on the 23d of Janviary, 1833, may be said to have ended the war, or at least to have established Leo- pold on the throne of Belgium.^ In the early days of 1833 the attention of the French foreign office was constantly claimed by the quaiTels between the Sultan of Turkey and Mehemet All, disputes which were at length satisfactorily concluded. Of still greater importance to the world was the arrangement of the treaty between France and England, which was signed on the 22d of March, for the purpose of suppressing the slave-trade, by means of a combined fleet on the coast of Africa. Attention was soon 1 De Bonnechose, History of France, Appendix. FRENCH REVOLUTIONAEY SOCIETIES. 193 recalled from foreign policy, however, by the recurrences of those popular tumults which so loug tlireateued, and at last overthrew the monarchy. These disorders had been assum- ing more alai'ming proportions in consequence of the hostility of the Paris journals and the political societies to the government. Insur- rection was openly advocated by these news- papers, some of which were under the direc- tion of members of the chamber. Thus, when press prosecutions were under discussion in the assembly the debates grew more and more violent, and the invective of the speaker often assumed a tone that was regarded as being personally insulting. A law was pro- posed to the chamber for the suppression of all associations which had not received government sanction. Of course the intention of such a measure was to extinguish the poli- tical combinations known as the Societe des Droits de V Homme and the Societe Amis du Peuple, two associations which exercised most influence as being both social and de- mocratic. Neither of these societies was a mere club for discussion of public questions, nor for peaceable demonstrations for the pur- pose of obtaining a repeal of obnoxious mea- sures. Both of them regarded insurrection as the legitimate result of their organization. Their members were expected to arm them- selves with muskets, and to be prepared with a supply of ball-cartridges, ready to use on the first emergency. The extent of these societies was consider- able, their organization was complete, and the various sections through all tJie departments of the country kept up a regular corresjjon- dence. Partly, perhaps, from a feeling that it was not strong enough to do more than con- ciliate, but certainly because of the disinclina- tion of Louis Philippe to resort to violent measures, these societies had attained a com- pleteness and an influence which enabled them to defy the government. Unfortunately, per- haps, the law, intended to extinguish such poli- tical associations, w-ent to the other extreme, and seemed to be aimed at the rights of consti- tutional freedom. The bill proscribed every as- sociation of more than twenty persons without the express permission of the government, and Vol. I. all offences against this law were to be tried at the " Correctional Tribunals," or police courts, instead of by a jury. The crisis began to be serious. The political associations already referred to, felt that they must either submit or assert themselves at all hazards; and their position was strengthened by the fact that ministers themselves had previously been members of associations which would now be declared illegal. M. de Broghe had received the Society des Amis de la Presse at his house, where they continued to meet; M. Guizot had belonged to the Societe Aide-toi le Ciel t'aidera. For all this, the measure was jiassed. That it was considered necessary for the im- mediate safety of the country may be inferred from the fact that Alphonse de Lamartine was one of its supporters, though he had but just begun to take a part in public aff"airs. Some dis2)utes with regard to finance led to the resignation of M. de Broglie from the ministry, and M. Eigny became minister of foreign aff"airs. M. Thiers, already virtually the leader of the cabinet, was made minister of the interior. The determination of the societies to assert their liberty of action continued, and the lead- ers of the more moderate associations, though they deprecated an appeal to arms, began to organize their branches more thoroughly, and to prepare for defence. It was once more in Lyons that the desperate conflict commenced. It was there that the Society of the Eights of Man had spread its doctrines most widely, and there the Eepublican journals had been among the first to suffer from government prosecu- tions, the editors having been fined or impri- soned, and treated only as the common con- victs, with whom they were put to associate. Added to this, the poverty and misery of the weavers, stiU suff"ering from low wages, made them ready for revolt, in the belief that no change that could happen to them could easily be for the worse. A strike for wages had already taken place; the town was filled with troops, measures of repression had been commenced, the National Guard was under arms. It was on the 10th of March that the Ee- publicans, having held council till daybreak, 13 194 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. bade each other farewell, rushed into the sti'eets, ' and shouted "To arms!" beginning at the same time to erect barricades. The town was soon a scene of dreadful carnage, amidst which the people, fighting desperately, were defeated on all sides with fearful loss of life and of pro- perty. In spite of this, when the intelligence reached Paris the members of the society there felt that they ought to maintain the rights of their order by the same means. The revolt in Lyons had been caused by adherence to the association, and its claims should be vin- dicated. Many of the leaders had already been arrested; there was a force of 40,000 men in Paris ready to supjjress any attempt at insur- rection, and they were supported by artillery; and yet, on the morning of the 13th of March, barricades w^ere erected, and the conflict began. The struggle lasted only for a few hours. The insurgents gave way at every point, and the troops seemed determined to punish them sevei'ely. Houses where the insurgents had fired from the windows were demolished and the inmates slain. The prisons were filled with those who were taken alive, papers were seized, and an almost indiscriminate slaughter was followed by an equally indiscriminate arrest. Many persons of importance were dis- covered to have been concerned in the move- ment, and among them the brave old General Lafayette, who had resigned the command of the National Guard, and added to his dislike of the government of Louis Philippe bitter disappointment at the neglect which he had suftered in retm-n for his long services to the country. On the 28th of July, 1835, the anniversary of the revolution, the king, whose personal courage was unquestioned, adhered to his determination to ride thi-ough the city at the head of his staff in a state procession. At ten o'clock in the morning he left the Tuileries accompanied by three of his sons (the Due d'Orleans, the Due de Joinville, and the Due de Nemom's), a number of generals, the ministry, and several noblemen and gen- tlemen of the court. The streets through which the procession was to pass were pro- tected by troops of the line and National Guai-ds. His majesty and those immediately following him had reached the end of the Jardin Turc, on the Boulevard du Temple, when a sudden volley of musketry seemed to be poured fi'om one of the houses, succeeded by the shrieks of the crowd. Several persons fell to the gi'ound, wounded or dying. General Mortier and General Lachasse de Yerigny, who were near the king, were each struck in the head and fell from their horses ; Cajitain Yillate of the artillery was killed on the spot ; and two colonels and four privates of the National Guards, as well as an old man and a young girl among the sjDectators, shared the same fate. None of the royal family were injui-ed, but the horses of the Due d'Oi'leans and the Due de Joinville had both been struck by musket-balls, and the king's horse reared so violently that his majesty was in consider- able danger. Almost before the smoke had cleared away a man, half-naked and bleeding, was seen on the roof of the house endeavour- ing to escape. The National Guards shouted to him to surrender or they would fire ; but amidst a hail of bullets he contrived to reach the court-yard, where he was at once seized by the gendarmes. The name of the miscreant who made this attempt, and that of the machine with which he expected to achieve his diabolical inten- tion, have both become historical, and are perhaps better remembered than many of those associated with deeds of heroism. For many years the " infernal machine " was re- membered with a shudder, and " Fieschi," its inventor, spoken of with execration. He had once been a soldier, but afterwards became a forger and a thief. On his discharge from prison, at the expiration of the punishment to which he was sentenced for his crimes, he was employed by the police as a common agent or spy. Afterwards he fell lower still, if that be possible, and, gi-owing desperate, determined to commit some crime that should bring him into notice, and might also place him in a position to profit by the blow that would be inflicted on the government. Assisted by two scoundrels who were his companions, Pepin and Morey, he consti'ucted an engine which, rude and ill-contrived as it was, was a fearful instrument of murder. It CHARLES LOUIS NAPOLEON. 195 consisted of a stout frame of timber standing on four legs, like a table without a top, upon wliicli twenty -five musket - barrels were so fixed that the barrels pointed downwards, and were directed in such a way as to seem to diverge like spokes from a common centre. The touch-holes being in a line, were lighted by a train of gunpowder, and the barrels were crammed with four times the usual charge of powder. This was probably the cause of four of them bursting and wounding the miserable assassin. Two other barrels missed fire. By the failure of these six barrels the king and his sons may have escaped. This horrible attempt produced a temporary reaction in the minds of the people. Public indignation was directed against the assassin; the king was enthusiastically cheered as he went on after the feai'ful occurrence. Insur- rection, and even deposition of the sovereign, dared not ally themselves to so base a crime as that of Fieschi, and there were few who did not rejoice at the safety of the royal family. These sentiments of sympathy on one side and abhorrence on the other were rendered still more intense on the day ap- pointed for the funeral of the victims who had fallen. The first of the funeral cars contained the remains of Mortier, a marshal of France, who had fought in the battles of the empire; in the last was the corpse of a poor girl, little more than a child, who was killed by one of the bullets as she looked at the glittering show that had attracted her to stand amidst the front rank of the crowd to see the king goby. Fieschi and his wretched companions were not executed till the following January, so tardy were the proceedings of their trial, dur- ing which inquiries were set on foot to im- plicate others; but the results of the attempted regicide were to be seen in the action of the ministry during the month of September, 1835. The laws of September were in. fact a series of repressive measures, including restraints on the press which had the efiect of changing the constitutional monarchy to little short of an absolute rule; and not only was the public discontent proportionally manifested, but the members of the legislature began to fret under the probability of restrictions for which they were not prepared. The result Avas that they became antagonistic to the ministry, which was soon dissolved, and M. Thiers gained fresh influence by being literally as well as nomi- nally the head of the government. The desire of Louis Philippe to strengthen his position as an elected monarch by a family alliance with one of the great European states led him to seek a marriage between the Due d'Orleans and the Princess Theresa, daughter of the Archduke Charles of Austria; but the Austrian count was alarmed, and in spite of the personal advantages of the suitor the ojiposition to an alliance of the house of Hapsburg with "the monarchy of the barri- cades" was too violent to be disregarded. Negotiations were broken off, and the Due d'Orleans returned to France, where the life of the king had again been attempted on the road to Neuilly by an assassin named Alibaud, who fired a shot into the carriage from a walking-stick gun. The successes of the French arms in Algeria for a time directed public attention from the repressive laws which had excited so much animosity. The war in Spain between the followers of Don Carlos and those of the queen seemed to oflfer an opportunity of forming a definite alli- ance with England. M. Thiers projDosed to co-operate with the force which had left Eng- land for SiDain, under Sir De Lacy Evans, by sending out 12,000 men, under the command of General Bugeaud, but the king was utterly opposed to the suggestion, and in fact the English "contingent" was but coldly regarded even by the British government, and was little more than a band of adventurers, who ultimately eflfected so little, that their general returned, disgusted and disappointed. In vain Thiers reminded the king that he was bound by the terms of the "triple alliance" to join England in settling the Spanish difii- culties. He refused to interfere, and Thiers retired from office, a new ministry being appointed, with M. Mole as president and minister of foreign affairs. It was during this ministry that an actor appeared on the scene, who was to take a 196 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. great place in the future history of Europe, and therefore to exercise cousiderable influ- ence on events by which English ])olicy was affected. Neither the attempt which brought this person forward, nor the man himself, seemed to be important at the time, and for long afterwards both were frequently spoken of with ridicule ; but for more than a quarter of a century the history of that man became the history of France. The death, in 1832, of the feeble youth who was known as the Duke of Reichstadt, but was also called Napoleon the Second by the Imperialists, had left a question to be settled among the family of the Bonapartes — namely, who was the legitimate representative of the first Napoleon and the political head of the family. The young man — " heir to the Empii-e," and entitled King of Rome in his infancy— had been placed under the protection of his gi-and- father (the father of Maria Louisa), and strange dreadful stories were abroad, that the old man had compassed his death by encouraging him in habits of dissipation. It may be hoped that such iTimoui's had no real foundation, nor is it easy to see what could have been the object of the old Austrian, since, when his grandson died, the disputed succession may be said to have given some stimulus to the Bonaparte faction. The senatus consultum of Napoleon I. limited the succession (in case of failure of direct heirs) to the emperor's brothers, Joseph and Louis and their heirs male. Lucien the second brother had been left out of the pro- vision, Joseph the elder brother was old and had no sons, and the maintenance of the family dignity therefore devolved on Louis. He had married Hoi'tense Beauharnais, the daughter of the Empress Josephine by her former hus- band, but the union was an unhappy one, and in 1810, four years after he had become King of Holland, they separated. His eldest son Charles, who had been a favourite with the empei'or, had died in 1807, and his two other sons were Napoleon Louis and Charles Louis Napoleon, the latter born in 1808, just after the death of the eldest brother. Their father retired to Rome in 1814, and afterwards to Florence, where, long before his death in 1846, he had retired from the public gaze and lived in comparative seclusion ; but after the fall of the empire Hortense took her two sons into exile with her, and lived in Geneva, in Savoy, in the Duchy of Baden, and in Bavaria, settling at last in the Chateau d'Arenenberg, on Lake Constance. The younger of the two boys had the reputation of a close student, under the tuition of the Abbe Bertrand and another master, and he attended the school at Augs- burg, from which he went to Thun to learn military science and engineering. Of his elder brother's studies less seems to have been said, but they appear to have clung together, and both asked permission to return to France after the accession of Louis Philippe, a re- quest the refusal of which left them to seek a career elsewhere. With rather precipi- tate energy, in March, 1831, they joined the revolution of the Carbonari in the Pontifical States, fighting as common soldiers for the " party of liberty," and sharing the defeat of the insurgents by the Paj^al troops. With no little difficulty they escaped to Forli, where the elder, who had taken a fever, died in the arms of the younger brother, and Charles Louis became the representativ^e head of the Bonaparte family and assumed the title of Prince Louis Napoleon. Making his escape from Forli in the dis- guise of a footman, and sufi'eriug from the disease which had proved fatal to his brother, the future successor to the Napoleonic title reached Cannes, where the ex-queen, his mother, had already arrived with the desire to remain within French territory, that she and her son might enter Paris and there re- main during the recovery of the latter from his illness; but this was forbidden, as might have been expected of so astute a government as that of Louis Philippe, and they set out for Loudon, whence, after a short stay, they re- turned to Switzerland. There they remained until 1836. Louis Napoleon (as he was now called), pursuing his military studies, A\ritiug treatises on artillery, — one of which, along with an essay on the Swiss Confederation, gained for him the honorary citizenship of the canton of Thurgau, — and generally biding his time? but always professing to regard himself as the THE STEASBURG FIASCO. 197 representative of the Napoleon dynasty, and intimating that he had no inconsiderable ex- pectations that his star would one day be in the ascendant, and that he would restore the family prestige in France. Among his beliefs, or his fancies, was that of the effect which the name and the presence of a Bonaparte, the heir to the empire, would have upon the French soldiery; and as he had secured a few followers, who, if they were themselves politi- cal adventurers, and therefore were willing to embark in a wild enterprise, appear to have been impressed with his claims and his expec- tations, he determined to make the experiment. He had already published among his treatises a kind of political scheme, dreamy, but not without a certain subtle adaptation to the changed conditions of things in relation to his own jiretensions. It was called Riveries Politiques, and united Eepublican views with the advocacy of an Imperial organ- ization. Substituting the word empire for monarchy its scheme was much the same as that which Lafayette and other jjoliticiaus had expected to be established by the election of Louis Philippe — "a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions." But the "monarchy of the barricades" had already approached to the confines of absolutism: Lafayette and others of his way of thinking had been driven to the opposition, and possibly the condition of France seemed to indicate that the attempt to re-establish a constitutional empire on the ruins of a limited monarchy might be success- ful. At all events, Louis Napoleon and his friends determined that the experiment should be made, and though its egregious failure and the ridicule that it excited might have pre- vented most men from making further preten- sions — and it was afterwards repeated with no more success and no less ridicule — the hero of that apparently amazing absurdity was soon to vindicate before the world his claims not only to rule France, but to carry on the government of the country for many years with extraordinary success. People cannot even now help wondering how a man who made the wild attempt of 1836 should afterwards have developed so remarkable an ability as he displayed on many occasions during his long control of the political movements of France ; but one is at the same time impressed by the fact that there was always something theatrical about Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, even when he sat moody and somewhat apart at the assemblies to which he was invited in London, whither he came soon after the failure of his first \)Y0- ject for reviving the Napoleonic idea in France. In October, 1836, he presented himself before the officers of the garrison at Strasbnrg, fol- lowed by some of his adherents, and dressed in the fashion of the first Napoleon. Strangely enough his calculations seemed at first likely to be realized, for the artillery officers, who probably already knew him by reputation, w^ere inclined to favour his pretensions though the infantry remained loyal. At five o'clock on the following morning he and his friends entered the artillery barracks unopposed. The officer in command ordered the reveille to be sounded and the men to be assembled on parade, where Louis Napoleon addressed them in a speech which was an imitation of those of his uncle, and was actually followed by cries of " Vive I'Empereur ! " The men pre- pared to follow him and he led them to the infantry quarters, but there they were received with levelled muskets, and while the colonel (Talandier) went forward and tore the epaulets from the shoulders of the officer of artillery the corps was surrounded and compelled to surrender, Louis Napoleon and his friends being arrested. Louis Philippe with some dignity refrained from a regular prosecution. It is perhaps un- necessary to inquire whether his clemency proceeded from a certain disdain for what was generally regarded as a preposterous en- terprise, or from a suspicion that a trial might have the effect of arousing fresh interest in the Bonapartists and the professed successor to the imperial claims. The course adopted was to exclude Louis Napoleon from France for ten years. A frigate was provided to con- vey him to America, and he accepted the pro- posal ; but he was only a short time in exile, for hearing that his mother was dangerously ill, he perhaps thought the intelligence was sufficient to excuse his breach of parole, and 198 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. in the autumn of 1838 he was in Areuen- berg, where she died on the 3d of October, 1837, only two months after his arrival. The Swiss diet refused the demand of the French ministry for his extradition, as he had been made a citizen of one of their cantons, and a serious complication was imminent, for if the tkreat to use force had been carried out a declai'ation of war would have ensued. To prevent a result which would have been so disastrous to his protectors, the retm-ned exUe came to England and took up his abode in London, where he was well known in society, frequently associated with the aristocrac}', and at the same time was in communication with the friends of the Napoleonic dynasty. He must, however, have had much difficulty from want of i^ecuniary resources, and he j^robably underwent frequent privations. One obstacle to his expectations (people called them dreams) of one day ruling over France was removed by the death of Charles X. at Goritz in Styria, an eveiit which excited very little attention, as the cause of the Legitimatists had already fallen to a very low ebb indeed — so low that there was no longer any necessity for detain- ing the former minister Polignac and his companions in j^rison. They were, therefore, liberated, some of them on condition of their quitting the kingdom, while othei's were per- mitted to choose a particular district of France to which they were to be confined. The re- newed successes of the army in Algeria again diverted the attention of the people from political disturbance. By the beginning of the year 1838 a hundred native ti'ibes had submitted. In AprU of the same year a road had been cleared twenty-two leagues in length from Constantine to the sea, and the coast of the bay at Stora became a French colony. In the autumn a new city called Phihppeville had been founded, and by the 1st of January, 1839, the war was temporarily at an eud. In our review of the successive events which had marked the progress of the nation for seventeen years, from 1820 to 1837, we have had frequent occasion to speak of the violent antagonism of the two extreme sections of politicians, — and it may be well to mention that while we have characterized some of these men by using terms, which were at the time and have since been accepted as de- scribing accurately their attitude in relation to the country, we have not in any instance taken them as truly representing either of the great parties of which they professed to be the adherents — and of which they were assuredly not the really intelligent supporters. At the time when our present sovereign came to the throne a remarkable, and to many persons a surprising, change had taken place in many of the " views " which had formerly distinguished the Radicals on the one hand and the Tories on the other, a change which, was perhaps first distinctly expressed by the adoption of the title of " Conservative" by the latter — a term which was afterwards to find an antithesis in the word " Liberal " as denot- ing the opposite party in the legislatui-e. This remark will in some measure illustrate the kind of progi'ess wliich had already been made during the five years after the passing of the Reform Bill. But it is necessary for the gen- eral reader to reflect that a change little less in proportion has been going on during the last forty years. The turbulent proceedings of those who then, while they called themselves Radicals, too frequently countenanced, if they did not actually promote, insuiTection for the sake of achieving political triumphs, would now neither be acknowledged nor tolerated even by extreme members of the Liberal party; nor would any intelligent ultra-Con- servative of the present day regard with com- placency that obstinate antagonism to the abolition of slavery, the reform of the jioor- laws, the relief from certain religious dis- abilities, and other measures, which was dis- I^layed by the threats and denunciations of some of the so-called Tories of the calibre which Macaulay designated as "stern and unbending." It is in fact almost impossible for ordinary people of the present time who have been witnesses of the further political reforms carried out if not inaugurated under a Con- servative government to realize the preju- dices which had to be overcome by the moderate and far-seeins; members of both PREJUDICE AGAINST REFORM, 109 parties in the state, before national jjrogress either in political or in social relations could be achieved. But the first step was the most difficult, for it was less a step than a mighty- stride, and there were men on both sides who regarded it as a leap in the dark. Not the extreme section only — those who by their virulence or their obduracy brought discredit or embaiTassment to the party to which they claimed to belong, but even the more moder- ate — the " Conservatives" of that day, showed a reluctance which can only be intelligible to a Tory of our own time by considering for how long a jDeriod the country had been com- mitted to a system the disturbance of which was to root up all kinds of strong interests and to bring to the surface nobody knew what shifting and untried elements. The chai-acter and proceedings of tlie first l^arliament returned after the Reform Bill was passed were watched with keen attention by all, by anxious apprehension in the case of a few. Anything more extravagant than the fears of timid Whigs and Tories of the old school can hardly be imagined. We have, it is true, seen something like it in our own day. The late Mr. Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) was a lawyer and a man of the world as well as a poet. In the latter capacity he might be excused for having some notion that a general turning upside down would follow Mr. Disraeli's reform bill in 1869. At all events, he was in a great fright for his property and his pictures. But at the time when the first Reform Bill was new men of business, who were anything but poets, were, out of mere terror of change, investing their money in American or Scandinavian securities ! Yet when Lord Sidmouth re- proached Earl Grey (in the lobby of the House of Lords) with having conspired to ruin and revolutionize England, Grey replied, "Mark my words, in a few years we shall be accused of having introduced the most aris- tocratic measure that has been known for generations." Lord Sidmouth had actually quoted and applied a well-known speech of the dying Queen Elizabeth to a traitress, — "God may forgive, I cannot." The utter futility of all the terror was soon shown by the sequel. Almost before the ashes of Grattan and Old Sarum were cold, England again saw a Conservative ministry in power. But it is worth while to turn back for a moment to one of the episodes of the debates in which it was in vain attemjited to arrest the progress of the measure. Sir Robert Harry Inglis, member for Oxford University, was a model Tory, a noble, cultivated, gener- ous specimen of the school. "I firmly be- lieve," said he, "that a representative system so entirely popular as that which the noble lord [Russell] wishes to introduce, has never yet been found to co-exist with a fi'ee press on the one hand and a monarchy on the other. No in- stance, sir, I am sure, can be pointed to where a popular rejiresentation aided by a free press on the one hand, can be found in juxtaposition with a monarchy. On the very day when the House of Commons murdered their king they voted the House of Lords useless. I think the one thing will follow the other as natur- ally as effect must follow cause. I say that in proportion as you increase the influence of the popular will in the House of Commons you risk the existence of the sovereign and the House of Peers. The thing may not happen to-day or to-morrow, but I am firmly convinced that if the proposed j^lan be agreed to, in the course of ten years the shock must be decisive. I have no doubt that the inten- tions of the noble lords were not to disturb the peers in their house; but whatever their intentions may be, I for one am quite sure that if this measure be carried, it will sweep the House of Lords clean in the course of ten years." Here we have a plain prophecy on the part of an able and amiable man that in ten years the sovereign would be murdered and the second chamber abolished, — by the pressure of the people. Yet we have seen that it was not the people, but a few Tory lords, with a royal duke at their head, who wanted to de- throne the king. For the rest, let us hear a few words from Macaulay's answer. "What facts does my honourable friend produce in support of his opinion ? One fact only— and that a fact which has absolutely nothing to do with the question. The efi!"ect 200 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES, of this reform, he tells us, would be to make the House of Commons all-powerful. It was all-powerful once before — iu the beginning of 1649. Then it cut off the head of the king and abolished the House of Peers. Therefore, if this reform should take place it will act in the same manner. Now, sir, it was not the House of Commons that cut off the head of Charles I., nor was the House of Commons then all-powerful. It had been gi'eatly re- duced in numbers by successive exptdsions. It was under the absolute dominion of the army. A majority of the house was willing to take the terms offered by the king. The soldiers turned out the majority, and the minority, not a sixth part of the whole house, passed those votes of which my honourable friend speaks— votes of which the middle class disapproved then, and of which they disapprove still." There is no need to dwell at any length upon the reasons by which the antagonists to the tii'st Reform Bill justified much of their opposition, but it will at least be intelligible to readers of to-day that it was an unfortunate thing for the Liberal or Eadical party during all those years that they found themselves of necessity in more or less close alliance with O'Connell, and his " many-jointed tail," as it was the fashion to call his followers. Of course the changes which took place in the "views" of many able men both in and out of parliament after the passing of the Reform Bill, and for many succeeding years of progress and of political activity, met with the usual amount of censure and of reproach from those who stood up for what they called con- sistency; and doubtless prominent statesmen on the Tory side delayed yielding to the in- evitable impulse which afterwards pressed them forward, until they were convinced that the condition of the country and the resistless march of public opinion made it not only consistent but absolutely necessary that they should acknowledge their responsibilities, and accept a leaderehip by which they might, as they thought, regulate, and to some extent con- trol, the pace to which the people were being urged T>y continued political excitement. There could have been no more sicmificaut recognition of the necessity for an alteration of standpoint on the part of the leader of the Tory party than was afforded by the banquet given to Sir Robert Peel by the Conservative members of the House of Commons in 1838. The invitation was signed Ijy no fewer than 313 members of the lower house, and 300 wei-e present at the assembly, which was designed to afford to the leader of the opposition an oppor- tunity of explaining and defending his policy, not only to those suppoiters who proposed to give him honour but to the whole nation. Even the remarkable tact and calm self-control of Peel could not suffice to protect him from the charges of inconsistency which were brought against him by those who refused to believe that any changes were required. They had for some time previously regarded him with suspicion if not with dislike, and now only supported him because there was no other alternative but for them to join the Whigs. They were too few of themselves to form a separate party, and had too little influence to ensui'e them the choice of a leader. At this large and important meeting therefore Sir Robert was able to declare that he had created a "Conservative" party; that in the first dis- solution in 1835, when he was at the head of the government of the country, the Conserva- tive members had suddenly increased from 150 to above 300; and that when a dissolution took place in 1837, with every circumstance calculated to be favourable to those in power, the result of the general election showed their numbers undiminished. This Conservative party was in fact composed of two sections: those who, like Peel himself, admitted and were not unwiUing to grant the demand for moderate reform, and were to a great extent iu sympathy with the less extreme party of the reformei-s; and those who, while they were prepared to make some concessions to public opinion, deprecated any decided and distinct advances in the direction of popular claims. These gentlemen supported Sir Robert because they believed that he was a safe and cautious statesman, who would judiciously j'ield only as much as would be warrantable, or would in their opinion be consistent with safety. At the same time many changes, or rather MR. GLADSTONE ON CHANGES OF POLITICAL OPINION. 201 advances of opinion, had already become obvious, and the curious result in some in- stances seems to have been, that the men who were apparently representatives of rather hard- and-fast lines of Tory opinion, but who had neither expressed these opinions in violent denunciations nor professed to be for ever unalterable in their predilections, were left to occupy a position which led to their being ranked with those "stern unbending" poli- ticians who were referred to by Macaulay, and with whom he associated Mr. Gladstone, then in the early days of his political career. But the young member for Newark (he was only twenty-nine at about the time of the Conservative banquet) has been perhaps the most striking example among modern states- men of that change of standpoint which is justified, and as he himself says, is alone to be justified, by the responsibility which is en- tailed upon a representative of the country to be in jsrompt and efi'ectual sympathy witlx the great movements of the public mind. Of course Mr. Gladstone has been continu- ally charged with inconsistency, and for some time he saw the effects of those accusations when he, who had been so earnest a supporter of the Irish Church Establishment in 1838, became instrumental in causing its demolition thirty years afterwards. " So far as my ob- servation has gone," he wrote in 1868, "the Liberal party of this country have stood fire unflinchingly under the heavy volleys which have been fired into its camp with ammuni- tion that has been drawn from depositories full only of matter personal to myself. And, with the confidence they entertain in the jus- tice and wisdom of the policy they recommend, it would have been weak and childish to act otherwise. Still I should be glad to give them the means of knowing that the case may not after all be so scandalous as they are told. In the year 1827, if I remember right, when Mr. Canning had just become prime minister, an efi"ort was made to support him in the town of Liverpool, where the light and music of his eloquence had not yet died away, by an address to the crown. The proposal was sup- ported by an able and cultivated Unitarian minister, Mr. Shepherd, who had been one of Mr. Canning's opponents at former periods in the Liverpool elections. Vindicating the con- sistency of his course, he said he was ready to support the devil himself if it had been necessary in doing good. This was a succinct and rough manner of disposing of the question in the last resort. I hope, however, that those who sustain the Liberal policy respecting the Established Church of Ireland will not be driven to so dire an extremity. ... In theory at least, and for others, I am myself a purist with respect to what touches the con- sistency of statesmen. Change of opinion, in those to whose judgment the public looks more or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a much smaller evil than their persistence in a course which they know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched with vigilance, always to be challenged and put on its trial. It can hardly escaj^e even cursory observation," continues Mr. Gladstone, "that the present century has seen a great increase in the in- stances of what is called political inconsistency. It is needless, and it would be invidious to refer to names. Among the living, however, who have occupied leading positions, and among the dead of the last twenty years, numerous instances will at once occur to the mind, of men who have been constrained to abandon in middle, and mature, or even in advanced life, convictions which they had cherished through long years of conflict and vicissitude; and of men, too, who have not been so fortunate as to close or continue their career in the same jjolitical connection as that in which thej^ commenced it. If we go a little farther back, to the day of ]\Ir. Pitt and Mr. Fox, or even to the day of Mr. Canning, Lord Londonderry, or Lord Liver- pool, we must be struck with the diflference. A great political and social revulsion like the French revolution of necessity deranged the ranks of party, yet not even then did any man of great name, or of a high order of mind, permanently change his side." Mr. Gkidstone contends that if we have witnessed in the last forty years, beginning with the epoch of Catholic emancipation, a great increase in the changes of party, or of 202 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. opinion, among prominent men, we are not at once to leap to the conclusion, that public character as a rule has been either less upright or even less vigorous. The explanation, he says, is to be found in the fact that the movement of the public mind has been of a uatiu'e entirely transcending former exi^erience; and that it has likewise been more promptly and more effectively represented than at any earlier period in the action of the government and the legislature. "The gradual transfer of political power from groups and limited classes to the community, and the constant seething of the public mind in fermentation upon a vast mass of moral and social, as well as merely political interests, offer conditions of action in which it is evident that the statesman, in order to preserve the same amount of consistency as his antecessors in other times, must be gifted with a far larger range of foresight ; but nature has endowed him with no such superiority. It may be true that Sir Robert Peel showed this relative deficiency in foresight with re- ference to Eoman Catholic emancipation, to reform, and to the corn-law. It does not fol- low with respect to many who have escaped the reproach that they could have stood the trial. For them the barometer was less un- steady, the future less exacting in its de- mands." This is Mr. Gladstone's explanations of those changes in the political situation of statesmen, many of which commenced at the period when the principles of the Conservative party began to be distinguished from the tenets of the older Toryism; but Mr. Gladstone him- self had to explain more than this. He had to account for an entire alteration of opinions and a subversion of the main declaration by which he held that the Ii'ish Church Estab- lishment should be supported. Nor does he shrink from the duty or the responsibility. It still remains true that the actual opinions and professions of men in office, and men in authority without office, are among the main landmarks on which the public has to rely, and he admits that, in vindicating an appa- rent liberty of change, we may seem to de- stroy the principal guarantees of integrity which are available for the nation at larcre, and with these all its confidence in the par- sons who are to manage its affairs. This, he asserts, would be " a consequence so fatal that it might drive us back upon the hopeless attempt to stereotype the minds of men, and fasten on their manhood the swaddling-clothes of their infancy." But this is not the alter- native. We cannot forbid the changes, but we may regulate them by subjecting them to the test of public scrutiny, and by directing that scrutiny to the enforcement of the laws of moral obligation. "There are abundant signs by which to distinguish between those changes which prove nothing worse than the fallibility of the individual mind, and man- oeuvres which destroy confidence and entail merited dishonour." In the latter portion of his defence, or rather his explanations, Mr. Gladstone says — " Changes which ai-e sudden and precipitate — changes accompanied with a light and contemptuous repudiation of the former self — changes which are systematically timed and tuned to the interest of personal advancement — changes which are hooded and slurred over or denied — for these changes, and such as these, I have not one word to say; and if they can be justly charged upon me, I can no longer desire that any portion, how- ever small, of the concerns or interests of my countrymen should be lodged in my hands." Coming to the immediate reason for these declarations Mr. Gladstone refers to the com- plete change which his views have undergone with respect to the Irish Church. " Let me now endeavour," he says, "to state the offence of which I am guilty. Ille ego qui quondam: I, the person who have now accepted a fore- most share of the responsibility of endeavour- ing to put an end to the existence of the Irish Church as an establishment, am also the per- son who of all men in official, perhaps in public life, did, until the year 1841, recommend upon the highest and most imperious grounds its resolute maintenance." We have already referred to the part Mr. Gladstone took in the debates on the Irish Tithe and the Church Estates in Ireland, and we may now, even though we go a little be- yond the date at which our next chapter will commence, refer to the particular circum- MACAULAY AND GLADSTONE. 203 stances to which he alhules in liis compara- tively recent explanations. During the au- tumn of 1838 he was suffering from a disorder of the eyes, and as the Peel administration was not in power he made a tour in the south of Europe, and no doubt noted many things which were emphasized when he afterwards took up the cause of Italian prisoners. Pre- vious to this journey, however, he had written his work on The State in its Relations with the Church, and it was printed while he was away. The distinctive principle of this book was intended to be, that tlie state had a con- science — or, more strictly speaking, a con- science which should take cognizance of reli- gious truth and error ; and the question which was involved was, whether the state of the United Kingdom was under an obligation to give an active and exclusive support to the "established religion" of the country. The essay attempted to survey the actual relations between the state and the church, to show from history the ground which had been defined for the national church at the Refor- mation, and to inquire and determine whether the existing state of things should be pre- served and defended against encroachment, from whatever quarter it might be appre- hended. This question it decided emphati- cally in the aflfirmative. Summarizing his chief reasons for the main- tenance of the church establishment, Mr. Glad- stone says : — " Because the government stands with us in a paternal relation to the people, and is bound in all things to consider not merely their existing tastes, but the capabili- ties and ways of their improvement ; because it has both an intrinsic competency and exter- nal means to amend and assist their choice ; because to be in accordance with God's mind and will it must have a religion, and because to be in accordance with its conscience that religion must be the truth, as held by it under the most solemn and accumulated responsibi- lities; because this is the only sanctifying and preserving principle of society, as well as of the individual, — that particular benefit with- out which all others are Woi'se than valueless ; we must disregard the din of political conten- tion, and the pressure of woi'ldly and momen- tary motives, and in behalf of our regard to man, as well as of our allegiance to God, main- tain among ourselves, where happily it still exists, the union between church and state." Macaulay came down upon this book iu perhaps less than his usual forcible style, inasmuch as he paid to the author a deserved compliment. "That a young politician," he says, "should, in the intervals afforded by his parliamen- tary avocations, have constructed and pro- pounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory on a great problem in poli- tics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from all consideration of the soundness or unsound- ness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. . . . Mr. Gladstone seems to be in many resjaects exceedingly well qualified for philosophical observation. His mind is of large grasp ; nor is he deficient in dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect fair play. There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light." But he adds — " Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices. His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking. His rhe- toric, though often good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which it should illus- trate. Plalf his acuteness and diligence, with a barren imagination and a scanty vocabulary, would have saved him from almost all his mistakes. He has one gift most dangerous to a speculator — a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import ; of a kind of language which affects us much in the same way in which the lofty diction of the chorus of ' Clouds' affected the simple-hearted Athenian." In this criticism there is something to re- mind one of the lines — "It was all very well to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me down staii's?" but apart from "the amenities," Macaulay's judgment on the work was sound, and was afterwards admitted to be sound by the author himself. , 204 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAETES. Macaulay maintained that Mr. Gladstone's "whole theory in this work rested ii]ion one great fundamental proposition, viz. that the ])ropagation of religious truth is one of the chief ends of government as government; and he proceeded to combat this theory. Admit- ting that government was designed to protect our persons and our property, the critic de- clined to receive the doctrine of paternal gov- ernment until some such government should be shown, as loved its subjects as a father loves his child, and was as superior in intelli- gence to its subjects as a father was to his child. Macaulay then demonstrated, by happy illustrations, the fallacy of the doctrine that every association of human beings which exercises any power whatever is bound, as such an association, to profess a religion. There could, he said, be unity of action in large bodies without unity of religious views. Persecutions would naturally follow, or be justifiable, in a society where Mr, Gladstone's views were paramount. No circumstance could be conceived in which it would be pro- per to establish, as the one exclusive religion of the state, the religion of the minority. The religious instruction which the ruler ought, in his public cajoacity, to patronize is the instruction from which he in his conscience believes that the people will learn the most good with the smallest mixture of evil. It is not necessarily his own religion that he will select. He may prefer the doctrines of the Church of England to those of the Church of Scotland, but he would not force the former upon the inhabitants of Scotland. Of course the Dissenters were strongly op- posed to the declarations contained in the book, and a commentator in the Quarterly Review regarded it from yet another stand- point, representing that as a necessary conse- quence of a profounder philosophy than that of Coleridge and thinkers of his school, Mr. Gladstone had taken far higher grounds in his argument than had been occupied by the defenders of the Church for many yeai-s. "He has seen through the weakness and fallacy of the line of argument pursued by "Warburtou and Paley. And he has most wisely aban- doned the argument from expediency, which offers little more than an easy weapon to fence with while no real danger is appreliended; and has insisted chiefly on the claims of duty and truth — the only consideration which can animate and support men in a real struggle against false principles." The writer of this review, however, contended emphatically that a popular government cannot long maintain a religion which is opposed to the feelings of the nation. If the people of this country combined to attack the Church, the king, lords, and commons would be compelled to abandon it. This, in effect, was the conclusion at which Mr. Gladstone himself afterwards arrived. It is pleasant to recal the fact that directly he received an early copy of the review Mr. Gladstone wrote to Macaulay, and that in his letter, and in the reply that was sent to it, there are none of those asperities which might have been expected. The following was the letter to Macaulay : — • "6 Carlton Gardens, April 10, 1839. " Dear Sir, — I have been favoured with a forthcoming number of the Edinburgh Review, and I pei'haps too much presume upon the bare acquaintance with you of which alone I can boast, in thus unceremoniously assuming you to be the author of the article entitled " Church and State," and in offering you my very warm and cordial thanks for the manner in which you have treated both the work and the author on whom you deigned to bestow your attention. In whatever you write, you can hardly hope for the privilege of most anonymous productions, a real con- cealment; but if it had been possible not to recognize you, I should have questioned your authorship in this particular case, because the candour and singlemindedness which it ex- hibits ai'e, in one who has long been connected in the most distinguished manner with politi- cal party, so rare as to be almost incredible. " I hope to derive material benefit, at some more tranquil season, from a consideration of your argument throughout. I am painfully sensible, whenever I have occasion to reo]»en the book, of its shortcomings, not only of the subject, but even of my own conceptions ; and I am led to suspect that, under the influence MR. GLADSTONE'S VIEWS IN 1838. 2U5 of most kindly feelings, you have omitted to criticise many things besides the argument, which might fairly have come within your animadversion. In the meantime I hope you will allow me to apprise you that on one material point especially I am not so far removed from you as you suppose. I am not conscious that I have said either that the 'Test Act' 1 should be repealed, or that it should not have been passed : and though on such subjects language has many bearings which escape the view of the writer at the moment when his pen is in his hand, yet I think that I can hardly have put forth either of these propositions, because I have never en- tertained the corresponding sentiments. Un- doubtedly I should speak of the pure absti'act idea of church and state as implying that they are coextensive : and I should regard the pre- sent composition of the state of the United Kingdom as a deviation from that pure idea, but only in the same sense as aU differences of religious opinion in the church are a deviation from its pure idea, while I not only allow that they are permitted, but believe that (within limits) they were intended to be per- mitted. There are some of these deflections from abstract theory which appear to me allowable ; and that of the admission of persons not holding the national creed into civil office is one which, iu my view, must be determined by times and circumstances. At the same time I do not recede from any protest which I have made against the principle, that reli- gious differences are irrelevant to the question of competency for civil office : but I could take my stand between the opposite extremes, the one that no such differences are to be taken into view, the other that all such differ- ences are to constitute disqualificatiou. " I need hardly say the question I raise is not whether you have misrepresented me, for, were I disposed to anything so weak, the whole internal evidence and clear intention of your article would confute me : indeed, I feel I ought to apologize for even supposing that you may have been mistaken in the ap- 1 Mr. Gladstone liere refers to the Act for repealing the Test. prehension of my meaning, and I freely admit on the other hand the possibility that, totally without my own knowledge, my language may have led to such an interpretation. In these lacerating times one clings to anything of pei-sonal kindness in the past, to husband it for the future, and if you will allow me I shall earnestly desire to carry with me such a recollection of your mode of dealing with the subject ; inasmuch as the attainment of truth, we shall agree, so materially depends upon the temper in which the search for it is insti- tuted and conducted. " I did not mean to have troubled you at so much length, and I have only to add that I am, with much respect, dear Sir, very truly yours, " W. E. Gladstone. "To T. B. Macaulay, Esq." The reply soon followed. " 3 Clarges Street, April 11, 1839. "My dear Sir, — I have very seldom been more gratified than by the very kind note which I have just received from you. Your book itself, and everything that I heard about you, though almost all my information came — to the honour, I must say, of our troubled times — from people very strongly opposed to you in politics, led me to regard you with resjsect and good-will, and I am ti'uly glad that I have succeeded iu marking those feel- ings. I was half afraid when I read myself over again in print, that the button, as is too common in controversial fencing, even be- tween friends, had once or twice come off" the foil. "I am very glad to find that we do not differ so widely as I had apprehended about the 'Test Act.' I can easily explain the way in which I was misled. Your general principle is that religious nonconformity ought to be a disqua- lification for civil office. In page 238 you say that the true and authentic mode of ascertain- ing conformity is the act of communion. I thought, therefore, that your theory pointed directly to a renewal of the ' Test Act.' And I do not recollect that you have ever used any expression importing that your theory ought in practice to be modified by any con- siderations of civil prudence. All the excep- 206 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. tious that you meutiou are, as far as I remem- ber, founded ou positive contract — not one on expediency, even in cases where the expe- diency is so strong and so obvious that most statesmen would call it necessity. If I had understood that you meant your rules to be followed out in practice only so far as might be consistent with the peace and good govern- ment of society, I should certainly have ex- pressed myself very differently in several parts of my article. "AcceiDt my wai'm thanks for your kind- ness, and believe me, with every good wish, my dear Sir, very truly yours, " T. B. jMacaulat. "W. E. Gladstone, Esq., M.P." In one imj^ortaut point, however*, Mr. Glad- stone admits the book was inconsistent with itself; it contained a full admission that a state might, by its nature and circumstances, be incapacitated from upholding and propa- gating a definite form of religion. " There may be a state of things in the United States of America, perhaps in some British colonies there does actually exist a state of things, in which religious communions are so equally divided, or so variously subdi- vided, that the government is itself similarly chequered in its religious complexion, and thus internally incapacitated by disunion from acting in matters of religion ; or, again, there may be a state in which the members of the government may be of one faith or persuasion, the mass of the subjects of another, and hence there may be an external incapacity to act in matters of religion." The book goes on to describe that incapacity, however produced, as a social defect or calam- ity. But the latter jjart of the work, instead of acknowledging such incapacity as a suf- ficient and indeed commanding plea for ab- stention, went beyond the bounds of modera- tion and treated it as if it must in all cases be a sin, as though any association of men in civil government or otherwise could be responsible for acting beyond the line of the capabilities determined for it by its constitution or com- position. "My meaning," says Mr. Gladstone, "I believe was to describe onlv cases in which there might be a deliberate renunciation of such duties as there was the power to fulfil. But the line is left too obscurely drawn be- tween this wilful and wanton rejection of opportunities for good, and the cases in which the state of religious convictions, together with the recognized principles of government, dis- able the civil power from including within its work the business of either directly or indi- rectly incidcating religion, and mark out for it a difi"erent line of action." But at all events the claim is that the theory of the work was simple enough. As Macaulay at once discovered "Mr. Gladstone's whole theory rests on this great fundamental pro- position, that the propagation of religious truth is one of the princij^al ends of govern- ment as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition his system vanishes at once." Mr. Gladstone accepts this conclusion as en- tirely just. He did not advocate the main- tenance of the Irish Church in order to avoid disturbing the settlement of property, or lest the government should be driven to repeal the union, or should ofi"«nd and exasj)erate the Protestants, or because of the statement that the Irish Church had an indefeasible title to its projjerty. He did not urge its support for the spiritual benefit of a small minority, and least of all did he say " maintain it, but estab- lish religious equality by setting up at the public charge other establishments along with it, or by distributing a sop here and a sop there to coax Eoman Catholics and Presby- terians into a sort of acquiescence in its being maintained." His contention was that the Church of Ireland must be maintained for the benefit of the w^hole people of Ireland, and must be maintained as the truth or it could not be maintained at all. Of course it was not, and could not be maintained; and though he held to what were his convictions at the time till he discovered that they were founded on a mis- apprehension of the actual function of the state in relation to religious opinion, though he consistently with his alleged principle op- posed the Maynooth grant on every ground but that of a covenanted obligation, he was at length unable to retain a hold upon the MR. GLADSTONE'S POLITICAL PROGRESS. 207 theories Ly which his opinions had been sup- ported. He tells us that scarcely had his book issued from the press when he became aware that there was no party, no section of a party, no individual person jsrobably in the House of Commons, who was prepared to act upon it. He found himself the last man in the sinking ship. He was bound to defend the Irish Church so long as it could be defended on the ground of its truth; but when that ground was definitely abandoned by the gov^ernment, and a j^olicy was adopted by parliament such as to destroy that plea, he felt that he was equally bound to adopt no other. Exclusive support to the Establishment, with a limited and local excep- tion for Scotland under the treaty of union, had been up to that time the actual rule of policy, the instances to the contrary being of equivocal construction and of infinitesimal amount. " The attempt to give this rule a vitality other than that of sufferan,ce," says Mr. Gladstone, " was an anachronism in time and place. When I bid it live it was just about to die. It was really a quickened and not a deadened conscience in the country which insisted on enlarging the circle of state support, even while it tended to restrain the range of political interference in religion. The condition of our poor, of our criminals, of our military and naval services, and the back- ward state of popular education, forced on us a group of questions before the moral pressure of which the old rules properly gave way. At and about the same period new attempts to obtain grants of pubhc money for the building of churches in England and Scotland, I am thankful to say, failed. The powerful govern- ment of 1843 also failed to carry a measure of factory education, because of the preference it was thought to give to the Established Church. I believe the very first opinion which I ever was called upon to give in cabinet, was an opinion in favour of the withdrawal of that measure." With this very remarkable instance of the changes which were being wrought in the opinions of some of the leaders of thought and of political action at the period at which this record has now arrived, we close this chapter. The whole subject may well be illustrated by the reference we have made to the special opinions held at that time by a statesman destined soon to hold a prominent place in the councils of the young queen, whose accession was the one great subject of congratulation and rejoicing throughout the nation. CHAPTER IV. THE EARLY PAET OF OUR QUEEN'S REIGN. Accession of the Princess Victoria — Admiration of the Young Queen's conduct and character — Proclamation — Coronation — Popular Rejoicing — Parliament — Her Majesty's Advisers — Stockmar — Canada — Re- signation of the Whigs — Return of Peel — ITie Ladies of the Bedchamber — Lady Flora Hastings — Restoration of Melbourne Ministry — Popular Expectations and Social and Political Conditions — Mr. Disraeli member for Maidstone — The New Postal System — Grants for Education — !Mr. Gladstone in the Opposition — The Royal Betrothal — Prince Albert — Marriage of the Queen — Sugar Duties — Com Duties — Sliding Scales — Alarming Condition of the Country — Want and Misery — General Election of 1841 — Mr. Gladstone in Office — Income Tax — Demand for Free Trade — The Corn-law League — Cobden — Bright — Meetings in Manchester and London — Chartism — Riots — Mr. DisraeU's Declarations — Feargus O'Connor — Monster Demonstrations and Petitions — Factories Bill- Louis Napoleon's Attempt at Boulogne — Contemporaiy Men and Events. The Princess A'ictoi'ia — our little May-flower, as the old Duchess Augusta of Coburg used to call her — had received both the physical aud moral ti-aiuiug which we are accustomed to persuade ourselves are peculiarly English. Fre- quent robust exercise in the open air — with- out much fear of ordinarily inclement weather — riding, walking, and even yachting excur- sions, to join in which her mother overcame her own repugnance to the sea — simple and becoming attire which allowed unrestrained movement and activity — were all elements in an education which was at the same time truly intellectual. In the accomplishments that belong to a young lady of high rank, no less than in some more solid acquirements, the princess excelled most of the daughters of the aristocracy of that time, aud in music and drawing she showed a very special aptitude, which continued to be developed even when affairs of state and her own maternal cares claimed a large part of her attention. The frank and unaffected character of the princess was manifested by the manner in which she received the intelligence that called her to the throne, and by her demeanour at the meeting of the council which took place immediately afterwai'ds. It was two o'clock on the moniing of the king's death that the Archbishop of Canter- bury and the Marquis of Conyngham (the lord-chamberlain) left "Windsor for Kensing- ton Palace to inform her royal highness of the event, which ha-d been so little anticipated in that quiet household, that when they arrived at about five o'clock they found nobody stir- ring, and had considerable difficulty in making their pi-esence known. According to the account afterwards received, they knocked, thumped, and rang for a long time before they could rouse the porter at the gate : they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform her royal highness that they requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay, and another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, and with an apj^arenth' complete inability to understand that anytliing could be of more importance than her own special charge, stated that the princess was in such a sweet sleep she could not venture to disturb her. The archbishop and the lord-chamberlain must have been lost in admiration at such an example of single regard to immediate and specific duty, but they had to explain that they had come to the cjueen on business of state, and that even her ADMIEABLE CONDUCT OF THE YOUNG QUEEN. 209 sleep must give way to that. The word '•(jueeu," perhaps, impressed the attendant with a sense that she might venture to wake her young mistress, who was so concerned at the probable news, and at her two visitors having been kept waiting on such an occasion, that without causing a further delay of more than a few minutes, she came into the room attired in a shawl over a loose white night- gown, "her night-cap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified." Lord Melbourne having been sent for, the privy council was summoned to attend at Kensington at eleven o'clock, and at that hour the youthful queen, with the Duchess of Kent, entered the council chamber. Probably the best and most authentic account of the scene, and of the effect produced on the as- sembly by the appeax'ance and conduct of the young princess thus suddenly placed in such an exalted situation, is that of a diarist who, even though his official position may be sup- posed to have influenced him in speaking of the occasion, his recently published journals show to have been an unsj^aring, if not a cynical and bitter, recorder of the scenes and events of which he was for so many years a witness. Greville, the clerk of the council, in his journal says : — " Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of joraise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this trying occasion; and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace notwithstanding the short notice which was given. The fii'st thing to be done was to teach her her lesson, which, for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. I gave him the council papers, and explained all that was to be done, and he went and explained all this to her. He asked her if she would enter the room accompanied by the great officers of state, but she said she would come in alone. When the lords wei-e Vol. I. assembled the lord-president informed them of the king's death, and suggested, as they were so numerous, that a few of them should repair to the presence of the queen and inform her of the event, and that their lordships were assembled inconsequence; and accordingly the two royal dukes (Cumberland and Sussex, the Duke of Cambridge being at Hanover), the two archbishops, the chancellor, and Melbourne went with him. The queen received them in the adjoining room alone. As soon as they had returned the proclamation was read and the usual order passed, when the doors were thrown open and the queen entered accom- panied by her two uncles, who advanced to meet her. She bowed to the lords, took her seat, and then read the speech in a clear, dis- tinct, and audible voice, and without any ap- pearance of fear or embarrassment. She was quite plainly dressed, and in mourning. After she had read her speech and taken and signed the oath for the security of the Church of Scot- land, the privy-councillors were sworn, the two dukes first by themselves, and as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil and natural rela- tions, and this was the only sign of emotion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging : she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered by 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 minis- ters, 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 particularly interesting and ijigrati- 14 210 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. ating. Peel aftei'wards said how amazed he was at her manner and behaviour, at her ap- parent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and, at the same time, her firmness. The declaration signed by all present was in effect the proclamation which was to be made on the following day, the 21st of June. Her majesty on her part said:— 'The severe and afflicting loss which the nation has sustained by the death of his majesty, my beloved uncle, has devolved upon me the duty of administer- ing the government of this empire. This awful responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and at so early a period of my Ufa, that I shoidd feel myself utterly oppressed by the burden were I not sustained by the hope that Divine Providence, which has called me to this work, will give me strength for the per- formance of it, and that I shall find in the purity of my intentions, and in my zeal for the public welfare, that support and those re- sources which usually belong to a more mature age and to longer experience. I place my firm reliance ujDon the wisdom of parliament and upon the loyalty and affection of my people. I esteem it also a iseculiar advantage that I succeed a sovereign whose constant regard for the rights and liberties of his subjects, and whose desire to promote the amelioration of the laws and institutions of the country have rendered his name the object of general attach- ment and veneration. Educated in England under the tender and enlightened care of a most affectionate mother, I have learned from my infancy to respect and love the constitution of my native country. It will be my unceas- ing study to maintain the reformed religion as by law established, securing at the same time to all the fuU enjoyment of religious lib- erty; and I shall steadily jjrotect the rights, and promote to the utmost of my power the happiness and welfare of all classes of my subjects.'" On the following day the young queen, plainly dressed in deep mourning, went to St. James' Palace, where she was to be pro- claimed, and was there met by members of the royal family, cabinet ministers, and offi- cers of the household. It must indeed have been a trying occasion, and one likely to flut- ter a young heart, so that there is little to wonder at in finding it recoi'ded tliat when Lord Melbourne and Lord Lansdowne led her to the window of the presence-chamber over- looking the courtyard, which was filled with heralds, pursuivants, robed officials, and "civic dignitaries," she looked fatigued and pale. But the proclamation was read by garter- king-at-arms, the band played the national anthem, the guns in the park boomed out a sulphurous chorus which was echoed by the guns at the Tower, and the city dignitaries marched off to rejseat the proclamation at various places within their "liberties." There was but one sentiment throughout the country with regard to the personal ad- miration and affection with which the young queen was welcomed, and her abandonment of the name Alexandrina for her second name Victoria in assuming the royal title met with general apjjroval, though it necessitated a change in the rolls documents of the House of Lords and in the printed form of the oath to be presented to the membere of the House of Commons. It is true that apprehensions, which were not altogether without reason, existed among the older members of the Tory party. The Melbourne ministry was not likely to be subjected to such vicissitudes as it had suffered from the disaffection of the late sovereign, and as the queen had, it was believed, been taught to look ujDon the AYliigs as her friends and had even been educated in Whig principles, the opposition could scarcely look forward to a return to power. Indeed the Duke of Welling- ton is reported to have regarded the accession of the young queen as a distinct disablement of himself and his colleagues, and he is repre- sented as saying, "I have no small talk, and Peel has no manners,"- — a remark which we can only infer, from the gallantry of the speaker and his admiration for Peel, was made in a half jesting or satii'ical manner. But W el- lington, like the rest of the world, looked with interested admiration on the girl sovereign, to whom he afterwards became a trusted friend; and at the coronation, which did not take place till the 28th of June, the "Iron Duke" was greeted with unbounded applause, for he had again become the most popular Q L) E E N VICTORIA FROM THE PCRTFA;T BY WINTERHALTER BY PERMISSION OF EENRY 3-RAVES 4 C° Eij\afrE ^EOK rOEMER SECLUDED LIFE OF THE QUEEN. 211 man in England. His known fidelity to the crown and to the country had no small share in enabling tlie people to forget much in which he had been obstinately mistaken, that they might remember those achievements in which his determination and unyielding courage no less than his great military genius had made him repeatedly successful as the vindicator of English prowess and honour. While we are on the subject of loyalty and good faith, it may be remarked that the suc- cession of a female to the throne severed the connection between the kingdoms of Eng- land and Hanover, which had been maintained ever since George I. reigned over both coun- tries. Probably nobody in Great Britain was soiTy for the separation, for Hanover was of little advantage to us, and yet entailed con- siderable expenses, which had been paid out of English taxation. If any sentimental re- gret yet lingered in tlie minds of any, it may have been dispersed by the reflection that by the death of William IV., it was the Duke of Cumberland who became king of Hanover, and that this country would be well rid of the man who had been accused, and not acquitted, of having conspired to set aside the succession of a queen, to the oath of allegiance to whom he was now the first to attach his signature. On the 22d of June a royal message was laid on the table of both houses of parliament, stating that in the judgment of her majesty it was inexpedient that any new measures should be recommended for adoption beyond such as might be requisite for carrying on the public service from the close of the session to the meeting of the new parliament on the 15th of November; and the address was nnanimously agreed to. Sir Eobert Peel, in a speech of great eloquence, expressed the general sentiments of all parties when he said: " I will venture to say that there is no man who was present when her majesty, at the age of eighteen years, first stepped from the privacy of domestic life to the discharge of the high functions which on Tuesday last she was called on to perform, without entertaining a confident expectation that she who could so demean herself was destined to a reign of happiness for her people and glory for herself. There is something which art cannot imitate and lessons cannot teach; and there was some- thing in that demeanour which could only have been suggested by a high and generous nature. There was an expression of deep re- gret at the domestic calamity with whicli she had been visited, and of a deep and awful sense of the duties she was called upon to fulfil — there was a becoming and dignified modesty in all her actions, which could, as I have already observed, only have been dictated by a high and generous nature, brought up, no doubt, under the guidance of one to whose affection, care, and solicitude she is, and ought to be, deeply grateful. I trust I have said enough to convince the house that all persons, without reference to party distinctions, and in the oblivion, on this day, of all party diff"er- ences, join in the expression of cordial con- dolence with her majesty on the loss which she and the country have sustained, and in the most heartfelt wish that we are now at the commencement of a long, a prosperous, and a happy reign." The privacy of the domestic life to which Sir Eobert referred was doubtless one reason of the charm which attracted so much regard to the young queen. Mr. GrevUle — to whose journal we have referred — went so far as to say that she had been kept in seclusion and in the constant society of her mother and of the Baroness Lehzen,who stood in the relation of governess under the title of lady companion; but probably these restrictions did not exclude some young companions chosen as occasional associates, and themselves under the influence of that quiet and unostentatious hovisehold. At any rate, the "seclusion" of a young girl from the manners and, one might say, the con- taminations to be found about a court in wliich there were all the traditions, and not a few of the evil distinctions, that had chai-acterized it in the reign of George the Fourth, was a dis- tinct advantage. To the men who had so long been familiar with these characteristics there was something peculiarly charming in the pre- sence of this young and innocent girl — some- thing perhaps almost bewildering in the notion that with her an entirely new relation would be established between the ministry and th« 212 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. crown. " If she had been my own daughter I could not have desired to see her perform her part better," said the Duke of Wellington bluntly — and probably forgetting in his pa- ternal admiration his rather bitter impression that neither he nor Peel would be among her counsellors. Even Greville himself, the un- sparing critic and recorder of the doings of his contemporaries, was under the same influence, for he says, " 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 con- trived 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 pretensions to beauty, the gracefulness of her manner and the good expression of her countenance gave her on the whole a very agreeable appearance, and with her youth inspire an excessive inter- est in all who approach her, and which I can't help feeling myself." Perhaps the chronicler, whose words were only published to the world long afterwards, felt even while he was writing that he had underrated the personal charm of Victoria, for he adds — in what seems (for him) a sudden burst of enthusiasm — " in short, she appears to act with every sort of good taste and good feeling, as well as good sense; and so far as it has gone, nothing can be more favourable than the impression she has made, and nothing can promise better than her man- ner and conduct do." These expressions of the sentiments with which the queen was regarded are dwelt on at some length here, because they mark the distinction which was afterwards emphatically observed between a continued affection for and loyalty to the sovereign, and bitter oppo- sition to those by whom she was believed to have been influenced during her political education. That the conflict of parties was likely to be a close one soon became evident; but the Whig ministry, great as its advantages were 1 It has since been stated that Greville himself was the cause of the confusion, as he had omitted to prepare a paper which he tliouglit was superfluous. supposed to be in regard to the confidence of the queen, had given numerous signs of weak- ness, if not of vacillation. Their intentions and professions were perhaps all that could be expected or desired at that time, but there was a lack of energy which had already begun to tell upon public opinion. The feehng that they had been gradually losing the con- fidence of the people, who expected a more decided advance in the road to the reform of fiscal as well as social legislation, increased their perplexity and encouraged the aggression of the opposition, under the powerful leader- ship of Sir Robert Peel, and the attacks of Lyndhurst and Brougham. On the day after the reception of the queen's message Lynd- hurst pronounced a censure upon ministers for their carelessness and incapacity. Only two acts of distinct and special legislation had, he said, been passed in a session of nearly five months' duration, and there were seventy-five public bills depending in the House of Lords; while the foreign policy of the ministers "elicited the pity of their friends and the scorn and derision of then* enemies." Lord Melbourne endeavoured to combat these chai-ges, but they could not be contradicted b}'- the recital of measures that had been passed. There was no refuting that which was not un- truly called " the bitter and vehement attack of the learned ex-chancellor." In the House of Commons Lord John Russell had little more definite to say; and one thing that he did say was twisted into an awkward nick- name for himself. Speaking of the Reform Act, he declared, "Her majesty's ministers, while they consider it a final measure, do not intend that it should remain a barren act upon the statute-book, but that it should be fol- lowed up in such a manner as will ennoble, invigorate, and enlarge the institutions of the country." Of course it was extremely injudi- cious to speak of "a final measure" in any direc- tion, or to act as though any particular degree of progress would be the limit of legislation (as Sir Robert Peel had to find out not very long afterwards) ; but it is very doubtful whether Lord John really meant anything more than that the Reform Bill had settled the mode of parliamentary representation for THE SCOTTISH CHURCH— DEMAND FOR EXTENSION. 213 a period beyond whicli there was then no necessity to look. At any rate his meaning was not such as led the "lower order" of Radicals to dub him " Finality Jack," but by that name he was called for a long time after- ward, and in 1849 he protested that he had "never used the word 'finality' with which liis name had somehow become associated." The ministry had no political " cry" with which to go to the country. They already showed signs not only of feebleness but of in- competency. Had they possessed the courage to risk place and power by announcing that their policy would be the repeal of the corn- laws, or the reduction of the impost on grain to a small fixed duty, they might have secured a triumphant return, instead of being depend- ent on a precarious majority which left them almost at the mercy of the opposition, and was only just sufficient to enable them to cling to office. Brougham was to become practically their most formidable opponent. Lyndhurst was their avowed foe. Peel — calm, cold, stately, some of his enemies said pompous — and with a certain exhibition of suppressed strength — was more than a match for any de- bater on the other side; and his earnestness contrasted with the usual ease of manner and the half-cynical flashes of humour and of sa- tire, which were erroneously supposed to prove Melboui'ne's studied unconcern for serious business. The only topic on which an appeal to the country could be founded was the opposi- tion of the ministry to the application of the General Assembly for a grant in aid of the extension of the Established Church in Scot- laud. The Scottish Church, it was alleged by its representatives in the General As- sembly, found the means of religious instruc- tion in many places so far below the needs of the population, that a grant of no very great amount was required in order to provide more churches and to increase tl e number of the clergy. The Scottish Church, although it had lost a number of its former members by seces- sions, still included above eleven hundred congregations in various parts of the country, and it was perhaps considered reasonable that it should be dealt with in a different fashion than that which had partly disendowed, in- stead of re-endowing, the Established Church in Ireland. At first it appeared that the a])- plication of the delegates would be favourably entertained ; but the expectations of the A.s- sembly were disappointed when a commission of inquiry was appointed, consisting mostly of men who not only were without any par- ticular knowledge of the needs and the con- stitution of the church in Scotland, but who were decidedly averse to making a marked distinction between that church and the church in Ireland. The General Assembly passed a nearly unanimous resolution in the shape of a remonstrance against the constitution of this commission, complaining that some members of it were actually opjiosed to the connection between church and state, while few of them were really interested in the church or had such experience as qualified them to take part in such an inquiry. This representation had no effect in obtaining a change in the commis- sion ; and at a second meeting of the Assembly, where eighty-five clergymen and seventy lay elders were present, another resolution was passed, regretting that their former represen- tations were unheeded, and objecting to the conclusion at which the commission had ar- rived — -that where religious instruction and pastoral superintendence were afforded by any sect or denomination whatever, there the ser- vices of the Established Church were not re- quired, and might be dispensed with. This, they contended, was at variance with the prin- ciples and policy of the Established Church, and was calculated to weaken and overthrow it. The General Assembly, therefore, publicly and solemnly protested against such a princi- ple, and declared that they considered it to be the sacred duty of the legislature to support and to protect the national church, and to secure accommodation and religious instruction to the peojjle of Scotland. They approved of members of the church furnishing to the com- mission accurate information on all statistical matters, and of church courts allowing inspec- tion of, or giving access to, their records of all entries relating to such matters; but held that it was not competent to the commission- ers to put to individual members any questions 214 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. relating to the doctrine, worship, government, or discipline of the church. This latter demand would appear to place ecclesiastical authority on such a footing with regard to the state from which it sought secu- lar support, that we cease to wonder at the opposition which it created, not only amongst Dissenters and Seceders, but on the part of a ministry which had but just emerged from the heat of discussion on the Irish Church question. The result was that the Dissenting bodies all over the country were aj-oused; that from Glasgow an anti-state-church peti- tion was signed by 14,000 persons; and that when the report of the commissioners denied the alleged necessity for providing more churches and increasing the number of the clergy by a gi'ant of public money, numbers of Dissenters both in England and Scotland were ready to support the government. This support, however, was not such as to afford a secure majority in a general election, and the effects of the events which had called it forth had considerably diminished. In the absence of any strong claim on the gi'ounds of prospective legislation the friends of the ad- ministration relied chiefly on the representa- tion that the queen was anxious to retain her present advisers, in whom she had complete confidence. Electors were exhorted to sup- port the friends of their young and popular sovereign, and not to return a government to which she would have an aversion at the very commencement of her reign. These representations were not only ill- advised, but were ill-timed. They were made not by the ministers, but by those par- tisans of the ministry who were eager to ob- tain a majority; and O'Connell and the Irish party were among the hottest advocates of the retui'n of the Whigs, on the ground of the an- tipathy which the queen must necessarily feel to the Tories, who were represented to be her inveterate enemies. The language used by the agitators on both sides was so violent, so exaggerated, that it now appears to be almost incredible that men should have given utter- ance to such fierce invective, such unscrupu- lous denunciation. The whole country was in a state of intense excitement, and many of those politicians who had a reputation for moderate views and guarded statements were carried away in the vortex of party conflict. There can be no doubt that the queen had found her first, and therefore her most trusted, adviser in Lord Melbourne. But whatever may have been his lack of true energy or true statemanship as prime minister, there were few men more capable of explaining to her the duties of her station, and explaining the political constitution of the country. At the same time he was one of the men least likely to make such a duty subservient to his own adv^antage, or even to the promotion of the party of which he was the chief. Apart from his elegant manners, extensive reading, and agi'eeable temper, he was one of the kindliest advisers living, and possessed a singularly generous nature. That he was always ready to conciliate may have been a weakness ; but he had that sort of sagacity which in times of only moderate trial will often succeed in "keeping things pleasant," and he had remark- able tact, which added greatly to his social qualities, and was consistent with an un- selfish disposition. For the young queen he entertained a sincere regard, and his admira- tion for her character made him earnestly en- deavour to make her life a happy one, and to instruct her in the duties of state without ex- acting too much from her youth and station. It was no wonder that Victoria should have felt a grateful affection to one who occupied so con- fidential a position, nor that she should have learned to look upon him less as the minister than as the trusted guardian, and herself no more the sovereign than the pupil. When Melbourne's real character was acknowledged after the dust of party strife had cleared away, and he lay dead, it was admitted that though he had neither the political abUity nor the intellectual force necessary for the head of a government, at a time when contending in- terests were gathering for a trial of strength, he was not the indolent lounger or the easy cynic which people had half believed him to be, because of his peculiar affectation of levity and indifference to troublesome questions. He was a man with a remarkable capacity for hard work, and with an anxious desire to deal THE QUEEN'S GOVERNESS. 215 justly and fairly with his opponents, which could not have left him at ease, even though he had an extraordinary faculty for looking at the bright side of life — a faculty which could perhaps alone have sustained his true amiabi- lity and gentleness of heart under the peculiar trials of his own domestic life. It is a settled matter now that so far from unfairly using his influence to promote his own interests or to increase his importance, or even to make his party the monopolists of political power, he advised the queen to "hold out the olive branch a little" to the Tories. He had not contrived the circumstances by which she was impressed that a Tory govern- ment would be less in accordance with her opinions and her desires than the ministry then in power, and he did not endeavour to perpetuate them. He had the reputation of an indifferent lounger, whose manner to earnest deputations and to serious violent politicians appeared to be trivial when com- pared with the sedate and even solemn de- meanour of Peel and the volcanic energy and encyclopaedic attainments of Brougham. Pro- bably it was because of a half humorous sa- tirical sense of the difference between these strenuous statesmen and himself that he ex- aggerated his assumption of careless in- dolence ; but the satire was missed, and the affectation was taken for the reality except by a few like Sydney Smith and Lord Lans- downe, who really knew him. If there was one thing about which his indifference was sincere it was his own exaltation. He had little of the pride of place or power, and simply laughed away the queen's proposal to bestow upon him the blue ribbon as a mark of her grateful obligations — saying, "A garter may attach to us somebody of consequence whom nothing else will reach; but what would be the use of my taking it? I cannot bribe my- self!" But there were reasons, one might almost say a peculiar complication of circumstances, which accounted for the suspicions that the queen was controlled by the Whigs --- suspicions which were soon developed into emphatic charges of political intrigue and violent de- nunciations of the minister for endeavour- ing to surround the throne with his own par- tisans, and to make himself an irremovable minister of state. Of course these invectives must be regarded as having far less meaning at that time of strong utterances and reckless declamation than they would have in our own day, and it must be remembered that the course pursued by the ministerialists in can- vassing votes for the "friends of the young and innocent queen" had much to do with the widely-spread opinion that the crown was en- tirely under Whig influence. Another cause of adverse feeling was the position supposed to be held in the royal household by Baron Stockmar. Louise Lehzen, the former governess of the queen, was the daughter of a Hanoverian clergyman, and had first come to England in 1818 as governess to the Princess Feodora of Leinengen, a daughter by the first marriage of the Duchess of Kent. In 1824 she entered upon the same duties for the Princess Victoria; but as she was a foreigner, the title of sub- governess was abandoned for that of "lady in attendance." In 1827 George IV. had raised her to the rank of a Hanoverian ba- roness, and as the Baroness Lehzen she con- tinued her instructions, while from 1831 until the accession of the princess to the throne she acted as sub-governess under the Duchess of Northumberland, who had been appointed governess. After the accession of her royal pupil she remained for some time as lady in attendance and companion to the queen. The baroness may be said to have been private secretary to her majesty as regarded personal matters and non-political correspondence; but it was necessary that there should be some one to attend not only to these personal affairs but to those that had reference to state topics — a private secretary in fact, who should hold a confidential relation between the ministry and the crown. There were, however, some difficulties in the way of appointing such a person. George III. had laboriously done his own secretarial work until he became blind, and he then appointed Colonel Herbert Taylor as his private secretary, and paid his salary out of the funds at the disposal of the crown. This arrangement was very seriously 216 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. objected to, and the appointment of a private secretary at all was regarded with disfavour. When the prince regent appointed Colonel MacMahou as his secretary, and wished to have his salary paid out of the public funds, the appointment was attacked in parliament as being unconstitutional. The opponents declared that secrets of state should not be allowed to a third party beside the king and the ministers, and argued that a private secre- tary would be as it were a court of revision above the cabinet. This was denied by the ministiy, who represented that a secretaiy was necessary to assist the regent in his private corresjjondence, and to get through the mass of mechanical labour which devolved upon the sovereign in the transaction of public business, that the private secretary had no political responsibility, that his office in no way interfered with the duties of any minister, and that the ministei's of the crown remained the legal and constitutional instruments by whom all public business had to be transacted. The regent therefore kept his secretary, but was obliged to pay him out of the privy purse in- stead of from public money. William IV. had reinstated his father's former secretary. Sir Herbert Taylor, and though no opposi- tion was manifested to this appointment, it may have been the impression that a person possessing so much knowledge relating both to private and state affairs, and holding so confidential a position in relation to the sove- reign, was able to exert very considerable poli- tical influence. AU this made it seem unde- sirable to appoint any one to the situation of private secretary to the young queen. It would seem to be obvious enough, how- ever, that some of these considerations were against the performance of the secretarial duties by the prime minister, or, indeed by any minister, and although by not naming any one to the post the possible intrigues which would have arisen in order to secure so influential an appointment were avoided, it was at the expense of leaving the ministry open to the charge of having endeavoured to take advantage of the existing inclination of the queen towards a Wbig government, and to make it ajjpear that the Tories were so inimical to her interests that her only hope of ha2:)piness, if not of personal security, would depend u])on the retention of the existing government. It has already been mentioned that Lord Melbourne emphatically denied these accusa- tions, so far as he was personally concerned, and it seems pretty certain that neither he nor Earl EusseU used what would have been considered undue influence. Indeed the queen, though she has in quite recent times acknowledged (in those admirable memoirs which have been published to the world) that she then " indulged strong feelings of political partisanship," was even in those early days no mere puppet of state to be exhibited for the advantage of a ministry, but had a judgment capable of forming definite and fairly accurate conclusions — as was afterwards shown by the confidence which she placed in Sir Eobert Peel, and the relation which she continued to sustain to both parties. But we have already referred to Melbourne's personal claims on the queen's regard, to his devotion to her happi- ness, and to the easy and kindly manner in which he instructed her in public afi'airs. It was impossible but that he should have strong influence, and it was almost as impossible that the opponents of the ministry should refrain from representing him as a crafty time-server, who endeavoured to make himself indispeii- sable and surrounded the sovereign with his friends and subordinates that he might be ruler of the state. The very fact that Mel- bourne was then in his fifty-eighth year, a moderate Liberal, careless of power, and with a confirmed habit of that kind of heedlessness which consists in a desire to avoid strife and to let troublesome questions alone, gave occa- sion to his political enemies. He was too careless to avoid yielding to his friends and supportei-s advantages which he would never have taken for himself ; and thus from good nature and the kind of easy scepticism that saw '• nothing worth making a fuss about," where more ear- nest politicians thought they detected the abandonment of a principle, he aroused sus- picions, which damaged and ultimately heljied to ruin his party, and to exclude him fioni power. BARON STOCKMAR. 217 Nor was the general suspicion of undue in- fluence diiuiuished by the presence in the royal liousehold of Baron Stockmar, who, though he was a man of known integrity and of singular sensitiveness to any imputation of interference in political matters, occupied both then and afterwards a very peculiar relation to the queen and to her social interests. Christian Friedrich Stockmar had formerly been the confidential secretary, the physician, the trusted friend and adviser of Leopold. It was he who alone could break to the prince the distressing news of the death of the Princess Charlotte in 1817; it was to him that the bereaved hus- band first sjDoke after kneeling by the bedside and kissing the cold hands of the wife whom he had loved. "He pressed me to him," wrote Stockmar, "and said, 'I am now quite deso- late; promise me always to stay with me.'" He did stay, and gave a lifelong service. " My liealth is tolerable," he wrote in the same letter which has just been quoted, "for though I am uncommonly shaken and shall be yet more so by the sorrow of the prince, still I feel strong enough, even stronger than I used to be. I only leave the prince when obliged by pressing business. I dine alone with him and sleep in his room. Directly he wakes in the night I get up, and sit talking by his bedside till he falls asleep again. I feel increasingly that un- looked-for trials are my portion in life, and that there will be many more of them before life is over. I seem to be here to care more for others than for myself, and I am well con- tent with this destiny." This was the man-^and an acute, patient, faithful, far-seeing man he was — an accom- plished physician who diagnosed the minds of those amongst whom he lived, and judged of their intentions and characters with remark- able sagacity ; especially in reference to the effects of their actions in public events and political afl'airs, in which he took no immediate part. It may seem to illustrate Stockmar's sense of what Avas becoming, or at all events of the conduct which should be carefully ob- served by one in his position — a foreigner in a confidential situation at the British court — that he had resolutely declined to attend the Princess Charlotte in his capacity as a phy- sician, and even though he had serious doubts of the treatment of the case by the English physicians previous to her accouchement, he could only be prevailed on to offer advice when they distinctly requested him to visit her about two hours before her death. This may seem almost a blamable reticence till we remember what would have been the state of i:)ublic feeling if the princess had died after the English physicians had been super- seded by a foreigner, and wlien we recall the fact that the chief medical attendant, Sir Richard Croft, never afterwards regained the balance of his mind, which had been unhinged by the calamity, and that he eventually shot himself with a i:)istol which he found in the room of a house where he was staying to attend a lady whose protracted confinement had revived the unbearable memory of the former fatal event. On the death of her father, Leopold, then king of the Belgians, and respected all over Europe for his integrity and sagacity, may be said to have become the natural guarcKan of the Princess Victoria. On her accession he believed he could do her no greater service than to send his own trusted adviser to give her friendly aid and counsel in his name, and especially to give watchful care to the then not remote probability of her i-eceiving the addresses of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Though Lord Melbourne himself fulfilled many of the duties of a private secretai-y in aflfaiis of state, and by reason of his personal regard for the queen held an almost paternal relation to her at that time, there was still a necessity for some person to act as a medium of com- munication in many matters between the queen and the prime minister or other mem- bers of the cabinet. For fifteen months Stock- mar filled this undefined but yet useful ofifice as a trusted adviser who could be consulted upon the higher personal interests of the sov- ereign and matters of importance connected with the court. It was his duty to observe attentively everything which could affect the well-being of the king's niece, but his clear insight made him carefully avoid every inter- ference with English affairs of state, so that he never excited the susi^icion o)' jealousy of 218 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. the ministry. The queen herself h;is told us that Melboui-ne had the greatest regard and affection for, and the most unbounded confi- dence in him. In a letter to her majesty he said: "Stockmar is not only an excellent man, but also one of the most sensible I have ever met with." Palmerston, who, it is said, disliked Stockmar, yet spoke of him as an ex- ample of complete disinterestedness; and Lord Aberdeen held him in very high estimation. "Baron Stockmar/' says Max Mliller, "was neither a statesman nor a diplomatist in the ordinary sense of the word; and though mov- ing all his life in that inner circle where de- cisions ai'e taken which influence the course of history; nay, though forming occasionally the very centre of that narrow circle, he never claimed credit for himself, but was content to remain through life the unknown friend and benefactor of the sovereigns whom he served. The real secret of his success was his entire truthfulness in his dealings with friends and opponents, and the I'are art which he possessed of telling the truth, even to kings, without giving off'ence." It is not beside the intention of the present history to dwell thus upon the characteristics of this man who occupied so delicate and yet so undefined a position towards the royal household, for when in the summer of 1838 he left England, it was to transfer first his keen observation and afterwards his confiden- tial advice and companionship to the young prince who afterwards became the consort of the queen. Though Stockmar possessed the confidence of the ministry and even of the leaders of the opposition, his presence at the court in a confidential capacity was made the subject of bitter comment by those who accused the Whigg of an endeavour to subordinate the queen. Mr. Abercromby, the speaker of the House of Commons, once declared to Lord Melbourne, that he felt it would be his duty to call attention in parliament to the uncon- stitutional position of that foreigner Stock- mar. The premier replied that Stockmar was a person who fulfilled duties in which circumstances had made it necessary that somebody should be employed, and that he was there with his (Melbourne's) knowledge and approval. On Stockmar hearing of it he said, " Tell Abercromby to bring forward his motion against me in pailiament ; I shall know how to defend myself." Nothing came of the threat or the retort, but there can be no doubt of the increased injury to the min- istry by the supposition that Stockmar repre- sented a foreign influence to which the government was amenable. '■ King Leopold and Stockmar are very good and intelligent people," said Melbourne, " but I dislike very much to hear it said by my friends that I am influenced by them. AVe know it is not true, but still I dislike to hear it said." These were the elements of that bitter con- test which was to result in a majority to the "Whigs — but only such a majority as repre- sented the diminishing influence of their government, and the increased distrust with which it was regarded by the country. Nor was their position strengthened by the avowal of any future policy which would secure the adhesion of those who desired to see further measures of reform. The addresses of the jiar- liamentary leaders were party speeches and little more. Sir Robert Peel wrote to the electors of Tam worth : " In cordial concurrence with that powerful Conservative party with which I am proud to boast of my connection, looking rather to the defence of great principles than to the mere temporary interests of party, I have given a zealous support to a weak and ineflicient government, whenever it has off'ered any opposition, however lukewarm and hesi- tatitig, to projects of further change in the system of representation or in the balance of the constituted authorities of the state." On the other hand, Lord John Russell told the electors of Stroud — " I have endeavoured to strengthen our institutions by reforming them; to obtain complete and full liberty for every religious opinion ; to give to Ireland the franchises of Great Britain; but in so doing I have been cautious not so to innovate as to admit any princijile by which our ancient institutions might themselves be endangered ; not so to define religious liberty as to weaken the Established Church; not so to pi'ovide for POLITICAL INVECTIVE. 219 the wants and wishes of the peojjle of Ireland as to break or disturb the unity of the empire. In this spirit I must always oppose any j^ro- position for the adoption of an elective House of Lords, or of the voluntary principle in religion." It would perhaps be difficult to imagine an address more calculated to increase the growing distrust of the Dissenters and the ardent reformers. Indeed at this time the Earl of Durham, who was regarded as an advanced reformer, was spoken of as the possible head of a new ministrj^ which, ac- cording to his avowed policy would have been very much like what is now spoken of as '' Liberal-Conservative." He had been con- sulted by the electors of his own county on the political situation, and several candidates for parliament had endorsed his views; but he was to be otherwise and far less fortunately employed, as we shall presently see. To show the manner in which family influ- ence was even then used to secure the return of a candidate, it may be mentioned that the ]\Iarquis and Marchioness of Londonderry sent the following agreeable manifesto to their Durham tenantry through their can- didate. " We assure all those who answer to the solemn appeal that we make to them — who step forward with heart and soul in the Conservative cause to rescue the country from Eadical domination — that the sense of the obligation to us personally will be for ever registered in our memories; and that the gratitude of ourselves and our family to those who live ai'ound us and on our property, will be in proportion to this imjDortant demand we make upon them to prove their fidelity and their attachment to our sentiments and confidence in our opinions. We send these our recommendations to our esteemed friend, the Honourable Henry Liddell, to make every use of he shall think fit ; and we have begged him especially to report to us those who answer zealously to our call, and those who are unmindful of our earnest wishes." There is something unpleasantly significant in these vague promises of contingent advantage to the docile, and in the implied menace to the disobedient elector. There could be no more emphatic argument than such an address, — to show how inoperative the Reform Bill could be made in certain constituencies unltss the legislature also protected voters in the exercise of their privileges. In constituencies like Tamworth, however, the election would have to be conducted on a diflferent ground. The boroughs and large towns might be scenes of bribery and corrup- tion on both sides, but only constitutional principles were acknowledged, and it was perceived by the sagacious opponents of the government that the battle would be very effectually fought by careful registration. Sir Eobert Peel, indeed, told his friends at Tam- worth that it might be disagreeable, and in- deed inconvenient, to them to attend to the registration of voters which annually took place through the country. " All this," said he, " may be revolting to you ; but you may depend upon it, that it is better you should take this trouble than that you should allow the constitution to become the victim of false friends, or that you should be trampled under the hoof of a ruthless democracy. The advice which has been given to some per- sons is 'Agitate, agitate, agitate !' The advice which I should give to you would be this : 'Register, register, register !'" Of course the " trampling under the hoof of a ruthless democracy" on the one side and other much stronger modes of expression on both sides, were only ordinary oratorical flourishes. Then as now strongly illustrative words were used by speakers in and out of parliament, but they must not be taken to mean all that they literally imply. " A butcher," says a witty writer of that day — " may say that his heart bleeds for his coun- try, and yet feel very comfoi'table all the time." It would indeed be impossible to take all the " flowers of rhetoric " of that period at anything like the equivalent at which they would now be placed. The language of in- vective and the constant use of expletives to be noted in the speeches of the time is amaz- ing to a modern reader with a refined taste, and so we shall be obliged to see when we presently refer to the taunts and recrimina- tions which enlivened parliament in the next session. The language then employed in poll- 220 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. tical controversy was often such as could scarcely have been tolerated except for the accepted retaliation of a barbarous reference to a duel for the purpose of bringing violence to a climax, and so vindicating the right to abuse an antagonist by the reflection that he might claim the privilege of giving the ag- gressor a chance to murder him, or to be mur- dered. But after all the strong language, and the strenuous contest during the elections, there was very little change in the relative position of parties up to the end of July. By the 19th of August, however, the number of Liberals replaced by Conservatives and Tories amounted to 66, and the rei^lacements on the other side j to only 53. Instead of the Liberal majority being 356 to 302 as in the last parliament, the present majority was only 336 to 322. That the queen had expressed a wish to retain their services had been the chief claim of Lord Melboui-ne's ministry to a return to power. Several of the principal constituencies had openly become Conservative. Mr. Hume was rejected by the electors of Middlesex, and accepted the representation of Kilkenny through the influence of O'Couuell. Mr. Eoebuck was unseated at Bath. Liverpool and Hull both gave up their Radical mem- bers. On the 13th of November the queen opened parliament in person, her progi'ess through the streets being greeted by the enthusiastic plaudits of a vast concourse of people. The address in reply to the royal speech was unani- mously accepted in the upper house and in the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel — concur- ring in the seconding of the address, but re- serving his opinion on every measure to which it made allusion — gave the queen's appeal the most unqualified acquiescence in tendering to her majesty an assurance of loyalty and of his desire to aflFord the co-operation which she asked when she said, "In meeting this parlia- ment, the first that has been elected under my authority, I am anxious to declare my confi- dence in your loyalty and wisdom. The early age at which I am called to the sovereignty of this kingdom renders it a more imperative duty, that under Divine Providence I should jjlace my reliance upon your cordial co-opera- tion and upon the love and affection of my people." The address was not to pass unchal- lenged however. Three amendments intended to raise the question of further political en- franchisement and to set forth the views of the Radicals were moved by Mr. Wakley and seconded by Sir William Moles worth, but the first of them being rejected by an enormous majority the two others were abandoned. On a portion of the queen's speech which said, "I place unreservedly at your disposal those hereditary revenues which were transfen-ed to the public by my immediate predecessor ; and I have commanded that such papers as may be necessary for the full examination of this subject shall be prepared and laid before you." Mr. Harvey brought foi'ward amend- ments for the purpose of placing the heredi- tary revenues of the crown more directly imder the control of parliament, and to pro- cure a revision of the pension list. These proposals were also defeated at the time, though afterwards the government brought in a mo- tion ajipointing a committee of inquiry into the subject. The amendment proposed by Mr. Wakley elicited from Lord John Russell a declaration of entire dissent from the views of the Radicals. He emphatically declared that so soon again to enter into the question of the construction of the representation would destroy the stability of our institutions. The settlement of the monetary affairs in relation to the crown and the income of £'30,000 to be granted to the Duchess of Kent occupied the remainder of the session, and parliament was to have adjourned till February (1838), but serious news from Canada made it necessary to order its reassembly on the 16th of January. It may be noticed here as illustrating the position of parties, that among bitter oppon- ents of Melbourne Brougham had become the bitterest. His antagonism was of a kind which passed beyond the confines of parlia- mentary difl"erences and became personal. His excitable temper, exasperated by a deep and incurable wound to his ambition and his vanit}-, led him to display an almost ferocious disposition to assail the premier and to taunt the ministry on every occasion. He had ex- KEVOLT IN LOWER CANADA. 221 pected to be restored to office on the recon- struction of the Whig- ministry in 1835, and it perhaps never seriously occurred to him (or if it did, the suspicion does not ajipear to have mitigated his resentment) that this very infirmity of temper, his indiscretion, and his ungovernable eccentricity had rendered it im- possible even for an easy-going statesman like Melbourne to endure him as a colleague. In 1838 Brougham made ready for a strenuous opposition, instead of maintaining an armed neutrality as he had done in 1837. Mean- while Lyndhurst and he had been reconciled, and remained ever after on friendly and even intimate terms. Towards many of his old allies he continued to profess unaltered senti- ments of regard ; but to Melbourne there was nothing due but condign punishment for what he called his treachery ; one aggravation of oiFence not to be forgiven lay, as he loved to tell, in the premier's having written to him about the Imprisonment for Debt Bill, and other measures, in his accustomed free-and- easy tone, without dropping the least hint of the judicial affront in contemplation. Had he been treated confidentially, and told that the whole blame lay with the king, he would have pitied the infirmity of friendship, but would not have felt himself outwitted. But on the demise of the crown and the accession of Melbourne to the hitherto untasted power which the full confidence of royalty confers, the last shade of doubtful extenuation van- ished, and the unhappy egotist was forced to see plainly that he had been laid aside by his party rather than by royalty. Thenceforth his thoughts were devoted to the vindication of his rejected claims and vengeance on his chief adversary. The public were never told directly at the time what were the reasons that he was not a second time made keeper of the seal; and other causes which appeared to be too obvious were never authentically denied. He was held up as a victim to the enmity and resentment of the court, and sometimes as the liated and envied rival whom the Whigs of inferior talent feared to admit once more within the pale of power. But on the fall of Sir Robert Peel's short administration the court was absolutely helpless, while the new cabinet stood in the utmost need of some one able to cope with Lord Lyndhurst; yet for several months there was no one whom they ventured to name as a fit occupant for the Avoolsack. Now they could no longer deceive themselves into hoping for any quarter from the eloquent and exasperated subject of official ostracism. Furious at the conspicuous slight put upon him. Brougham lost no more time in reminding them what manner of spirit he was of. Day after day he poured forth upon them the unfailing vials of his wrath. Ireland, Canada, and the West Indies fur- nished him in succession with themes of in- vective against what he stigmatized as their maladministration; while, for popularity in England, he was ready to outbid them easily on education, fi-ee-trade, and law reform. Had the objections to his readmission to the cabinet rested on the antipathy -of the king, they would have been removed by his demise in 1837; had they been entertained only by the premier, they must evidently have been over- borne by the more placable views of his col- leagues as time wore on, and the ministerial majority, small enough at first, grew less and less. The truth is, however, that what their chief had the courage and candour to declare at starting, they were, or soon came to be, con- vinced of with regard to this most eccentric though most eloquent of men.^ To one of his memorable onslaughts Melbourne thus com- menced his reply: — I appeal to the candour of every one who has listened to the marvellous display of in- genuity in argument and versatility of illus- tration with which we have been favoured by the noble and learned lord, whether the rea- sons must not have been perfectly insuperable which compelled us to forego the advantage of including him in the administration. The information which caused the earlier reassembling of parliament was that, from a state of discontent and of perpetual bickering between the colonial assembly and the legis- lative council appointed by the crown, the Canadians in Lower Canada had broken into open revolt, and that many of the people of 1 Memoirs of Lord Melbourne. W. M. Torrens, M.P. 222 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. Up])er Canada were also disaffected. Lower Canada was at that time, even more than it is now, distinguished from Upper Canada both by nationality and by social observances. Lower or Eastern Canada was still French, and the usages of the people were in some resjiects those of the old French regime before the revolution. This peculiarity is still so marked in many parts of the colony that a "visitor is immediately struck with what ap- pears to him to be an anachronism, when he j^asses from the pushing and modern activity of the upper province to the quiet, old-fashioned townships and villages of the descendants of the French colonists. The two provinces naturally had many more marked differences forty years ago, and of course gi'eater differences still when by the constitution of 1791 they were divided into separate governments, each with its governor, its executive council appointed by the crown, its legislative council, also appointed by the crown, and its representative assembly, the members of which were elected for four years. It was at first intended that these provinces should remain separate, one community being virtually French in feeling and education, and Roman Catholic in religion ; the other chiefly British, and of the Protestant faith. Of course it was found to be impossible to separate the two provinces in any artificial way; there were no natural geogi'aphical divi- sions, and the real division was the distinction of race, of customs, and of those laws which were under the control of the popular assem- bly. The result was that the attempt to bring each province under the same kind of govern- ment failed utterly. It exasperated the Lower Canadians that a British party in the legisla- tive council nominated by the crown should be able to dominate the country and to over- throw the resolutions of the representative assembly elected by the people, and by people who were French, and desired to retain French laws and observances. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Upper Canada demanded local self-government, and resented the authority of the crown, which could nullify the votes of the people as represented by their elected mem- bers. In Lower Canada the mixed population of French and English settlers were equally dissatisfied with the government, for theBritisli colonists fretted under the operation of many French laws which were allowed to remain, such as those regarding the tenure of land. On one side the civil law was hampered with French prescription, and on the other the criminal law was impeded because it was instituted solely on British procedure. The mutual jealousies of the people made the task of government difficult, but the arbitrary manner of governing caused constant complaint and disloyalty. There could be no jury chosen with any probability of its giving a pi'oper verdict, the composition of the legislative council was declared to be unbearable, and a demand was made for that council to be made elective. The church question was as promi- nent here as in Ireland, and the property set apart for ecclesiastical purposes was required for secular uses. In both provinces the ap- peal was made year after year against the combination of the legislative and the judicial functions, the irresponsibility of the executive and officials, the monopoly of the application of the revenues by a government nominated by the crown, and the retention of church endowments. The struggle to obtain these changes had been maintained by the popular assemblies for several years. In 1833 the assembly of Lower Canada had separated with- out voting supplies, three years afterwards the assembly of the Upper Province had done the same, and still the govei'ument here was obdui-ate, and the reply sent to the people who had acted loyally during the American war of independence was such as to pi'ovoke the thi'eat of an appeal to force for the pur- pose of securing independence. "When the representative assembly stopped the supplies chiefly because the legislative council persisted in retaining in theu- service officials whose conduct had been condemned by the popular body, the government simply claimed the right to appropriate the payment of these officers' salaries from any public money that happened to be on hand. In spite of public meetings and constant repi'esentations that the letrislative council should be chosen CANADIAN EEBELLION— AMERICAN " S YMPATHIZEES." 223 by the votes of tlie jieople and not be allowed thus to dispose of the funds of tlie colony at their pleasure, the government authorized the appropriation of the treasury for the mainten- ance of the executive system without the con- sent of the colonial assembly. This was equiv- alent to placing the French Canadians under arbitrary rule of British officials nominated by the English government. Thus discontent was working in both provinces. In Lower Canada commenced the movement which led to rebellion. The representative of Mon- treal in the Eepresentative Assembly was M. Louis Joseph Papiueau. He was a man of ability and influence, and became speaker of the house. He was the recognized leader of the opponents of the government policy, and presided at several meetings where inflamma- tory allusions were made to the successful re- sistance which had led to the independence of the United States. He was an officer of militia, and several of his brother officers had attended the meetings. It was understood that Papi- neau had organized a great convention for dis- cussing the grievances of the colony. The governor. Lord Gosford, began by dismissing some of the militia officers who had attended meetings and taken part in the demonstrations. He then issued warrants for the apprehension of several members of the assembly on the charge of high treason. Some of these fled from the country. Othersremained; the attempt to arrest them was resisted by their friends, and political opposition became open rebellion. The military forces were not prepared for so sudden an outbreak. The commander-in-chief of the troops sent Colonel Gore with a strong force to one of the two villages, at the entrance of which 1500 of the rebels had taken up their quarters in a stone house which they had strongly fortified. The troops attacked, but were repulsed with the loss of sixteen men in kUled and wounded, and the only field-piece which they had taken with them. They were forced to retire. Two days afterwards Lieu- tenant-colonel Wetherell attacked the other village, seven miles distant, burned it to the ground, and routed its defenders. This alarmed the more successful body of insurgents, who abandoned their position and joined their de- feated compatriots in their flight across the border and into the United States tei-ritory. Sir John Colborne was then able to march his whole force to the north of Ottawa, where the rebellion had commenced and was still main- tained. The insurgents occupied a fortified village on the bank of the river; but on his approach most of them fled, and only about 400 held the church and the adjoining build- ings, which they had so fortified as to keep them against the whole British force until both church and village were set on fire, when they were compelled to retreat, leaving behind them above half of their number in killed, wounded, and prisoners. The rebellious peojile of that district, who probably comprised nearly all the inhabitants except the British residents, upon whose property some injuries had of course been inflicted, then surrendered uncon- ditionally, and were allowed to go unpunished. Four of the leaders of these outbreaks had been killed, nine had escaped, including M. Papineau, who repaired to New York, and eight were taken prisoners, one of them being a brave man named Wolfred Nelson. In New York Papineau and his companions found "sympathizers," who raised numerous recruits among the Americans, and above seven hundred of them under a leader named Van Eensselear took possession of a small wooded island named Navy Island in the Niagai'a river, three miles above the falls, and in Canadian territory. They commenced firing upon the Canadian shore, which was only 600 yards distant, and kept up communications with the mainland by means of a small steamer, which was captured by a party of militia who attacked it in boats, set it on fire, and sent it, in flames, down the river to be extinguished in the falls. Navy Island was afterwards invested, and the gar- rison quickly and silently departed without further fighting. This was on the 14th of January, 1838, and for some time afterwards the " sympathizers " kept uj) a kind of border warfare, making raids and incursions across the frontier in what seems to have been a kind of reckless playing at warfare; for the American government had interdicted it, and the sympathizers were therefore unattached 224 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. supporters of the rebellion by a kind of bri- gandage by which they obtained no advan- tage, since they were repeatedly defeated. Still more remarkable had been the state of affairs in Upper Canada, to which the rebellion had spread, but where it never really attained any very decided footing. There were numerous malcontents there, and their dissatisfaction was to some extent justified, but the very manner in which their leaders called them together shows perhaps that there was no energetic desire for an appeal to arms. A manifesto was issued, couclied in a kind of exaggerated imitation of the old Puritan language. The governor of the province was the brave and rather eccentric Major Head (afterwards Sir Francis Head), so well known as a traveller. He had fought at Waterloo, and while acting as assistant poor-law com- missioner for the county of Kent had sud- denly been sent for to go out to govern Upper Canada. When the rebellion broke out he did little or nothing. What he did afterwards was either so risky and fanciful that it de- served the censure and the adverse comment which it received, or it was so sagacious that it was entitled to the reward which followed his resignation. There have always been sup- porters of both views; but as his plan was successful, his admirers invariably seemed to have the better argument. He resolved to show that the rebellion in Upper Canada was of so little real importance that he could treat it, if not with contempt, at least with comparative indifference. He sent every soldier out of the province to help the troops in Lower Canada; he permitted the rebels to make all kinds of preparations — he even allowed them to invest Toronto, where they appeared to the number of 3000 under the leadership of Mr. Mackenzie, the editor of a Republican newspaper, one Eg- mont, a former Bonapai'tist officer, and others. Then Major Head summoned the militia and the loyal inhabitants of the city, who foi'tified the town -hall, and attacked the insurgent force with such sudden spirit and success that it was utterly routed and dispersed and the rebellion was suppressed. It was a vevy bril- liant, but, as many people thought, a very imprudent way of dealing with an insurrec- tion in a province where many of the inhabit- ants of the neighbouring territoiy were in revolt, and American marauders were making lepeated attacks on the frontier. He claimed to have vindicated Canadian loyalty, and there is no doubt that he increased it by his courage and address; but the fact remained that Lower Canada was still in a condition of ferment, and it was contended that the result might have been less fortunate. Some further discussions arose between the major and the home authorities, whicli led to his sending in his resignation, and (much to the regret of the colonists) to his return to England, where his effectual services (the wisdom of which had been called in question) were rewarded with a baronetcy. The revolted colonists were not without sympathizers in this country, who, although they condemned the rebellion, also condemned the action, or leather the inaction, of the govern- ment, that had permitted the grievances of whicli the Canadians complained. Public meetings were held and resolutions wei-e j^assed blaming the government for refusing to listen to the representations of those who had appealed for redress of abuses. Mr. Hume was one of the w^armest advocates of the colonial cause. But whatever might afterwards be done to remedy those grievances and to relieve the people of Canada, it was necessary first to bring both provinces to orderly relations with the government. Lord John Russell, on the part of the ministry, introduced a bill to sus- pend the constitutioii of Lower Canada; to send out a governor-general and high com- missioner, with extraordinary powers to re- model the constitution of both provinces. The measure was not passed without considerable oj^position, the most remarkable being that of John Arthur Roebuck, who, though he was not at that time a member of the House of Commons — having lost his seat for Bath be- cause of his violent opposition to the govern- ment — was yet deemed a proper jjersou to come before the bar of each house as the agent and representative of the province of Lower Canada. Mr. Roebuck was born at LORD DURHAM. 225 Madras, but was brought to Eugland while still an infant of five years old. Soon after- wards his mother, on a second maiTiage, settled in Canada, and there he passed most of his boyhood. In 1824 he had returned to England to study law ; had been called to the bar in 1832, when he became a candidate for Bath, and represented it as a Radical reformer until, on the death of William IV., he lost his seat at the general election. Mr. Roebuck was tliirty-seven when he addressed both houses as the advocate for Canada, but his appearance was so singularly youthful that his clear and for- cible representations seemed to gather greater effect from that circumstance. It was his habit to attack everybody with so much asperity that he often set his hearers against him; and he was not wanting in his usual quality on this oc- casion, but his arguments were acknowledged to have considerable weight when he opposed the bill on the ground that it would unjustly suspend the constitution of a province in con- sequence of disturbances provoked by the intolerable oppression of the home govern- ment. But it was useless to spend time in discussing the acts of the government in face of a continuance of disturbances which de- manded a prompt remedy, and of grievances which it was admitted required timely redress. The question was, who should be intrusted with the necessary powers, first to suppress the rebellion and to pacificate the province, and then to remodel the constitution with a view to abolish the causes of jealousy and disaffection 1 The name of Lord Durham was mentioned by Lord John Russell, and at once met with cordial approval. He was a well-known Liberal, a man of noble disposition and of high attainments — a man of strong, and, as it would seem, occasionally of arrogant temper, but of generous instincts immediately follow- ing his gusts of passion — on the whole, a fair, just, proud man, with the power to rule and the ability to organize broadly and with pro- visions for free working. John George Lambton, Earl of Durham, was the son of William Henry Lambton, the representative of one of the oldest families in England — wealthy from the produce of the Vol. I. coal-mines of which they were the owners — and of the heirs to which, it was said, there had been an unbroken succession for six centuries. It was only in comparatively recent times that the projierty had been so considerable; but the Lambtons had represented Durham in parlia- ment from 1727 till the death of Lord Dur- ham's father in 1797. John George was born at Lambton Castle in April, 1792, and while still a youth of not twenty years ran away with a lady to whom he was married at Gretna Green. She died three years after- wards, and in another twelvemonth, after having served for a short time in a regiment of hussars, he was returned to parliament for the county of Durham, and his pi'oposal for the hand of the eldest daughter of Earl Grey was accepted. He was then only twenty -four years of age, but his address and his remarkable talents already gave him unusual distinction, while his energetic advocacy of reform made him even then a striking figure in parliamen- tary debates. In 1828 he was raised to the peer- age as Baron Durham ; in 1830 he became lord privy-seal in the then newly formed ministry of Earl Grey, over whom it was rumoui'ed that he exercised very great control, not only be- cause of his abilities and his engaging disposi- tion, but in consequence of an impetuous and impassioned temper which bore all before it and would scarcely brook opposition or criticism. Be this as it may, he was after- wards known to be a man capable of carrying out an able organization, and this was suffi- cient reason for his being chosen to set matters right in the Canadian provinces, in spite of the- opposition of a few men who were either his political or his personal enemies. Brougham was both a personal and a jiolitical anta- gonist. We have already seen that there was a " very pretty quarrel " between them, and that the supposed attack made by Brougham upon too zealous reformers — at the dinner given to Lord Grey at Edinburgh in 1834 — and the outbreak of invective with which Durham replied to it, as a personal reference to himself, was not likely to be forgotten by the ex-chancellor. But the almost universal opinion was in favour of the appointment of Lord Durham, 15 226 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. and he went out to Canada with high hopes and great expectations, taking with him Mr. Edward Gibbon "Wakefield and Mr. Charles Buller, the latter the pupil of Mr. Thomas Carlyle, and a young man whose ability was already recognized. It was felt that Lord Dur- ham, the man who was looked upon by many consistent Radicals as the future premier, who would introduce vote by ballot, shorter terms of parliament, the extension of the franchise, and other measures which they regarded as necessary ordinances in reform, would begin by establishing order, and would then inquire into and remove those causes of discontent which were believed to have produced the rebellion. The question remained how the re-establishment of authority was to be effected. On his arrival at Quebec on the 29th of May the governor, who was neces- sarily intended to be almost a dictator, was received with gratifying demonsti'ations of friendly feeling. But it would seem that the government was as weak at the colonial office as it was in some other departments, and the instructions which he received from Lord Glenelg were vague if not contradictory. The powers with which he and all the world imagined he was sent out, were not confirmed by the bill which was intended to endorse the first representations made to him, and he acted in a way which appeared to evade one of its first intentions. It provided that he should be advised by a council, and that every ordi- nance he issued should be countersigned by at least five of its members. It was expected that he would form a council similar to that already in existence, which had been selected by his predecessor, Sir John Colborne, and represented the various sections of the inha- bitants in the colony. Instead of this, and perhaps with some reason because of the neces- sity for immediate action, that he might in- troduce the contemplated reforms, he replaced this body by one which, as it was composed of his two secretaries, two military secretaries, and the commissary-general, was regarded as an instrument for giving mere formal legality to his acts, instead of securing coun- sellors or advisers with the right of discussion and with some independent action. At the same time it is evident that such powers as could have been exercised by such a council as that referred to in the act of administra- tion would have been incompatible with the high authority with which he and everybody else supposed that he was commissioned. At any rate he was not slow to act on the respon- sibility with which he was supposed to have been invested, and to exceed it. The appoint- ment of such a council was an error in pru- dence, his subsequent proceedings were errors in judgment even if they were not an arbi- trary disregard of the rules to which all delegated authority must be subject. A large number of prisoners who had been arrested for offences during the rebellion were wait- ing their sentences. Loi'd Durham issued an ordinance by which, while a general amnesty was proclaimed, some of these prisoners were excepted. Papineau and the leaders of the rebellion, beside others who had been induced to plead guilty of high treason, or who had voluntarily confessed it, were ordered to be transported to Bermuda, there to remain under such restraints as might be thought fit — during her majesty's pleasure. If any of these persons should be found at large within the province, without permission, they would be deemed guilty of high treason, and were to suffer the penalty of death; but the ordinance also empowered the governor for the time being to grant, when he should think fit, permission for any of them to retiu'n to the province. This would appear on the face of it to be intended to be a deterrent punish- ment which, at a time of greater secvirity, might be revoked, and with the exception of some who were concerned in the murder of two persons, all the other rebels were in- cluded in the act of amnesty, and could return to their homes on giving proj^er security for their good behaviour. " We are authorized to state," said the Gazette in which the ordinances were published, " that his excellency the governor-general is actively engaged in the prejiaration of measures which will, as soon as it may be possible, be embodied in ordinances of the governor and special coun cil, relative to a jury law, a bankrupt law, muni- cipal institutions for the whole province, gen- BEOUGHAM'S DENUNCIATIONS. 227 eral education, the establislimeiit of registry offices, aud the equitable commutation of feudal tenures." There can now be little doubt that in spite of what were undoubtedly illegal methods of procedure in the preliminary stage. Lord Dur- ham had devised a bold and comprehensive plan for the deliverance and ultimate well- being of the colony — after events proved that his plan was well considered aud, in important respects, effectual — for it was in its principal clauses, adopted by his successors after he had returned to England in an access of indigna- tion, and had died without seeing the results of that system of colonial government which he may be said to have founded, aud which is still (with some modifications) in force. But he had acted illegally — had exceeded his powers. He had gone out as a dictator to reconstruct a system which had produced a rebellion; aud his reply to the charge of having gone beyond the law was, " What are the con- stitutional principles i-emaining in force where the whole constitution is suspended? What principle of the British constitution holds good in a country where the jaeople's money is taken from them without the people's consent; where representative government is annihilated ; where martial law has been the law of the land; and where trial by jury exists only to defeat the ends of justice, and to provoke the righteous scorn and indignation of the com- munity 1 " The high-handed policy which he thus de- fended — and not altogether unreasonably de- fended, on the ground that it was only pre- liminary to reconstruction of the policy of a colony that had fallen into a state of anarchy — was (also not unreasonably) assailed at home. One strong point against him was that he could not claim to act as governor of Bermuda, and had no right to transport prisoners to that island. Indeed Sir Stephen Chapman, who was the governor, was so convinced that there was no legal authority for his detaining the prisoners, that he at first hesitated even to allow them to be landed. When he at last permitted them to come on shore, he only exacted from them their parole d'honneur that while they remained they should not re- move from the limits to which the authorities might from time to time confine them, and he wrote at once to Lord Durham imploring him to remove them as soon as possible and not to send any more. The Quebec ordinances were seized on with remarkable avidity in the House of Lords, where Durham was denounced as though he had been a traitor, or rather a usurper, who arrogated to himself powers that would enable him to hang men without trial or any of the forms of justice. This was Lord Brougham's way of looking at it, and he claimed to be consistent, for he had, he said, opposed Canadian coercion from the beginning, and he still opposed illegal attempts to deal with that country. But it is doubtful whether Brougham would have exhibited so much fury of denun- ciation, or used such strong expressions of op- position, if he had not been actuated by an animosity to Lord Durham which was scarcely inferior to that which he manifested to Lord Melbourne and his government. Brougham aud Lyndhurst were leagued to- gether against the ministry, and the Quebec ordinances gave them an ojiportunity to raise astorm in the House of Lords, which Melbourne was not strong enough to meet, though he once endeavoured to gTapjile with his antago- nist, who screamed defiance, and challenged him to point out any indication in any one part of his political conduct that had for an instant been afi'ected in any manner by feel- ings of a private or personal nature. Brougham triumphed. After bringing the subject twice before the house he introduced an Indemnity Bill which would have reversed the policy of Lord Durham. To prevent this bill being finally carried, the ministry aban- doned the ordinances which they had previ- ously accepted, and announced the decision to the house. Their humiliation was complete. Lord Durham hearing indirectly of the deser- tion of the government before the official letter reached him acted with his usual impetuosity, and indignantly sent a letter announcing his determination at once to give up his position and return to England. This declaration was despatched while the official communication to him was on its way. It was thought by Loi'd Melbourne, and even by Lord Lansdowne 228 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. — a calmer and closer politician — that he might yet be induced to stay if, for instance, the people of Canada themselves solicited him to remain and complete the work by accepting the decision of the ministry; but he had al- ready issued a proclamation calling attention to the action of the government, and virtually appealing against it to popular appreciation. His enemies bitterly attacked him, and his friends could not easily defend what was re- presented to be an appeal against the advisers of the sovereign, to the judgment of the people of a rebellious colony. There was no keeping him in Canada after that, and indeed he had no thought of remain- ing. Among the insinuations were those carping at the expense which he incurred on behalf of the government for the stately manner in which he visited the colony; but it was not mentioned that though he may have lived with a certain magnificence, which was a part of his way of procedure, he received no emolument from his official position, but un- dertook it without government salary or any other payment. Lord Durham returned al- most precipitately to England, full of natural indignation, and with the weai'ing anxiety felt by a proud and noble nature that believes itself to have been betrayed. He was a man whose ambition had been ruined, and it may be feared that his heart was broken. There had been talk of impeachment or of public rebuke, but all that was done was to omit to fire the usual salute in honom' of a retm-ning governor when he landed at Ply- mouth; but the want of it was supplied by the acclamations of the people, who received him with unbounded favoui', and in so doing repre- sented public opinion, which has always a lean- ing towards men of an open, generous, and one might even say of a somewhat headstrong, nature. Lord Durham at once removed his wife fi'om the queen's household and retired into private life, or more sadly it might be said, retired to die. His report was acknow- ledged on aU hands to be a masterly exposition of the policy by which a colony may be success- fully governed and its prosperity promoted. After explaining the causes of discontent, it recommended that the government of the colony should be placed as much as possible in the hands of the colonists themselves, and that the interference of the imperial govern- ment should not go beyond matters afi"ecting the relations of the colony with the mother country, such as the constitution of govern- ment, the foreign relations of the colony, and its trade, and the disjjosal of public lands. Other recommendations which he had been prepared to carry into execution have already been referred to; but among them were a sys- tem to secure the independence of judges, to make all officers excejat the governor and his secretary responsible to the colonial legislature, and to repeal aU former legislation on the sub- ject of lands reserved for the clergy. The re- port ended with a proposal to unite the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, and recommended that any of the other North American colonies might, if apj^lication was made by their legislatures and with the con- sent of that of Canada, be received into the Canadian Union. It was a great and admii-- ably practical scheme, as was proved by its being, by not very slow degi'ees, adopted by parliament in the government of Canada. When Lord Normanby succeeded Lord Gleu- elg at the colonial office, and was succeeded by Lord John Eussell, one of the most ear- nest and industrious of colonial secretaries, a bill was introduced for reuniting L'pper and Lower Canada on the basis of Lord Durham's report, which has in efi'ect been the foundation of our present system of colonial government. The act was passed only a few days before the death of the noble author of the scheme on which it was settled, who expii'ed at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, on the 28th of July, 1840. He was but forty-eight years of age, but his health had been failing for some time, and it can scarcely be doubted that his end was hastened by the bitter disappointment and implied disgrace to which he was com- mitted by the government who had aban- doned his ordinances but had not hesitated to adopt the policy which in his belief those or- dinances would have been effectual in securing. The subject of Lord Durham's policy and his subsequent treatment can scarcely pass from under our view without a reference to PACIFICATION OF CANADA. 229 Mr. John Stuart Mill, and to the testimony which he afterwards bore to a man from whom he differed so remarkably in disposition and temper, and yet to whom he professed to stand (with regard to colonial policy) in the position of a friend and adviser. In his autobiography Mr. Mill says : — " Lord Durham was bitterly attacked on 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 appeai'ed to be returning a defeated and discredited 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 Review^ in which I took the very highest ground in his behalf, claiming for him not mere acquittal, but praise and honour. Instantly a number of other writers took up the tone. I believe there was a por- tion of truth in what Lord Durham soon after, with polite exaggeration, said to me, that to this article might be ascribed the almost tri- umphant 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 result; the touch which determines whether a stone set in mo- tion at the top of an eminence shall roll down on one side or on the other. All hopes con- nected 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 Baker, partly under the inspiration of Wakefield, began a new era; its recommenda- tions, extending to complete internal self-gov- ernment, were in full operation in Canada within two or three years, and have been since extended to nearly all the other colonies of European race which have any claim to the character of important communities." The immediate successor to Lord Durham was his intimate friend and disciple, Mr. Poulett Thompson (afterwards Lord Sydenham), the Free Trade member for Manchester, who 1 ill'. Mill refers to the Westminster Review. carried out Durham's policy with the cordial sujjport of Earl Russell. He succeeded in uniting the two provinces, but died in the following year. Immediately after the resignation of the Earl of Durham Lord Glenelg — amiable, quiet, and studious, but remarkably sleepy — was felt not to have sufficient grasp successfully to administer the colonial department; and Sir William Molesworth, who had devoted some attention to colonial affairs, and had come to conclusions entirely different from those of Lord Glenelg, actually proposed a vote of cen- sure against him. The ministry represented that such a vote would be a condemnation of themselves and would cause their resignation, upon which Loi'd Sandon moved an amend- ment, attributing the condition of Canada to the want of foresight and energy on the part of the government, and to the ambiguous and irresolute course of her majesty's ministers. This amendment was accepted by Sir W. Molesworth, but was rejected by a majority of twenty-nine. Lord Glenelg, however, retired from office soon afterwards. With reference to the easy-going somnolency of Lord Glenelg, we may recall Lord Brougham's remarks in the House of Lords when Lord John Eussell brought in his bill providing for the governor of Lower Canada previous to Lord Durham's dej^arture. " If," said Brougham, " you will have plantations in every clime, if you will have subjects by millions on opposite sides of the globe, if you will undertake to manage the affaii's of an empire extending over both hemisjjheres, over an empire on which the sun never sets, whether such a determination on your jiart be prudent or impolitic, whether its effects be beneficial or detrimental to our highest interests, I will not now stop to in- quire; but if you make up your minds to this, at all events it imjioses on you the absolute necessity that you shall be alive, and awake, and vigilant, that you shall not sleep and slumber, that you shall not, like the slug- gard, let yoiu- hands sleep before you as if you were administering the affairs of a parish, or even of a kingdom near at home, to which and from which the post goes and arrives every day in the week." This is a moderate 230 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. example of Brougham's milder style. The allusion to the slumbering habit of Loi-d Glen- elg caused some laughter among the lords. But let us return to the period beyond which we have just passed. The 28th of June had been appointed for the coronation of the queen, and the event was hailed with an almost extravagant enthusiasm, which for a short time diverted public attention from the pre- carious condition of the government and from topics of immediate political excitement. For the first time since the accession of Charles IT. a public royal procession, which may be called a pageant, was arranged to pass through some of the principal streets of the metropolis, and the whole of these streets were closely packed by an enormous multitude who lined the roadways, sat at open windows, tilled plat- forms and balconies, and even clustered on the house-tops. The young queen had said when she went to open her first parliament, and sat in an open carriage, " Let my people see me; " and she still delighted in looking face to face at the great assembly of those who came out in thousands to greet her. Beside the London population, 400,000 persons had come up from the provinces and from places abroad to witness the spectacle and take part in the rejoicings of the day. The usual banquet to the sovereign at Westminster Hall was omit- ted, that this mutual recognition of sovereign and subjects might be eff'ected. There were some who grumbled at this suppression of a grand ceremonial which was enjoyed only by the privileged few, for the sake of gratifying the unprivileged many, and the Marquis of Lon- donderry gave expression to the complaints of the malcontents, but nobody cared much for their grumbling. The queen, and those who re- presented both the queen and the country, were willing to sacrifice the pomp and state of a grand dinner, for the sake of the grander cele- bration that was to be found in a fervent and unbroken display of loyalty. The banquet would have been far more costly than this public procession; and the coronation, though it was less expense by ^173,000 than that of George the Magnificent,would still cost ^20,000 more than that of "William the Unpretentious. Good sense and good-will marked the whole of the proceedings, and as it has been already hinted, after the overwhelming greetings that were given to the Queen herself, the most hearty acclamations were for the Duke of Wellington, and for his former brave and able antagonist in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, old Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia. The white-haired old warrior had been sent as ambassador extraordinary to represent France at the coronation, and appeared in a splendidly decorated carriage. Wlienever his war-worn face appeared he was greeted with cheers that touched his heart, and this reception probably did more to unite France and England in amity and to erase the lingering recollections of former hostilities than any other occuiTence of the time. Long afterwards Soult gave ex- pression to his feelings on the subject when he supported Guizot in his supposed desire for an English alliance. " I fought the English down to Toulouse, when I fired the last cannon in defence of the national independence; since that time I have been in London, and France knows the reception that I had there. The English themselves cried, 'Vive Soult!' they cried, ' Soult for ever !' I had learned to es- timate the English on the field of battle, I have learned to estimate them in peace; and I re- peat that I am a warm supporter of the Eng- lish alliance." This was a characteristic re- sponse to the hearty welcome he had received, by which the great assembly of the people in London had expressed their desire to maintain cordial relations with France. The ceremony in Westminster Abbey was very solemn and imposing. It was twelve o'clock when the gi'and procession passed up the nave into the choir amidst the singing of an anthem and a chant of Vivat Victoria Regina. After private prayer the queen was publicly presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury to receive the homage of those present. The prescribed prayers, litany, and communion service were said by the archbishop, and a short sermon was preached by the Bishop of London. After the oath the ceremony of anointing and crowning the sovereign was performed, and the admin- istration of the sacrament having followed the presentation of the Bible, the benediction THE LADIES OF THE BED-CHAMBER 231 and the homage, her majesty was invested with the royal robes by the lord-chamberlain, and left the Abbey by the west door, wearing the crown and holding in her right hand the sceptre and iu her left hand the orb. It was nearly four o'clock when the procession left the building in the same order iu which it had entered, the queen wearing her crown and the noble personages their coronets. With the blare of trumpets, the beating of drums, and the firing of salutes from the guns in the parks and at the Tower, the young queen went out again amidst the people. In the evening there was a state dinner at Buckingham Palace, whei'e the royal party witnessed the display of fire-works in the Green Park, The Duke of "Wellington gave a magnificent ball at Apsley House, some among the crowd in front of which must have recalled with something like wonder the time when it had been barricaded against an angry mob who had caught up the savage verses of Ebenezer Elliot, the " Corn- law Rhymer." But the country had gone be- yond that, even though the corn-laws were not repealed. The old soldier was so naturally re- gai'ded as the loyal and faithful protector of the young queen, and he had himself given so many proofs that after all, his opposition to reform had arisen fi'om no antagonistic feeling to the people, or to what he thought were their just claims, that he almost naturally shared the triumphs of the day. The rejoicings at the coronation had only temporarily mitigated the asperities of party spirit, and though we shall presently refer to some measures of great importance in their relation to the social progress of the coun- try which were passed during the session, it became more and more evident that the government could not long stand against the increasing influence of the opposition, even though some changes were made iu the ministry by "shufiiing the cards" and making a diS'erent distribution of the offices in accord- ance with the qualifications of members of the government. Peel had already laid down the plan by which he desired the opposition to be con- ducted. He was in no hurry to overturn the government till the countrv was so sick of it that he could count on a Conservative triumph, and leave very little hope of the return of the Liberal ministry to power. The policy which he recommended and jjui'sued was to prevent the government from passing such bills as were strongly opposed to the Conservative professions, and to occasionally aid them in escaping from temporary embar- rassment arising from the demands of the Radicals, until the time came to challenge their policy and to go to the country in the confidence that a strong Conservative majority would be returned. This was the policy, but events delayed, and even for a time rather signally frustrated its adoption. In tracing the course of legislation on the subject of negro emancii^atiou, and its result in the complete freedom of the slaves even from the temporary burden of apprenticeship, we have already referred to the fact that Lord Melbourne's government were in a minority on the question of temj^orarily suspending the constitution of the Jamaica government be- cause of the excesses and the lawlessness of the planters. The Radicals opposed this measure because of its supposed violation of Liberal principles; and this disaffection, added to Conservative opposition, left the gov- ernment in a minority of five on the second reading of the bill. As it would have been impossible to carry it through its further stages — ^to say nothing of a similar piece of legislation which was required for Canada — the ministers decided to resign ; and Lord Melbourne advised her majesty to send for the Duke of "Wellington, who of course re- ferred her to Sir Robert Peel, to whom she applied, at the same time expressing her regi^et at being obliged to part with her late ministers. It may be doubted whether Peel thought the worse of the queen for these out- spoken expressions of favour to his opponents, but he appears to have been a little too ready to demand some kind of security against pri- vate influence at court. Perhaps with too little of his usual caution he took the course which, beyond all othei'S, would be likely to prevent, or at all events to delay, him from acquiring the confidence of a youthful sove- 23: GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. veign. On undertaking to form a ministry he forwarded to her majesty a list of those who would be invited to become his colleagues, but at the same time required that some of the ladies of the royal household should be dismissed because of their relationship to members of the late cabinet. It is perhaps necessary, for a proper understanding of the situation, to remember that, as Peel said afterwards, his chief difficulty was Ireland. " Ireland was my chief difficulty. My diffi- culties were not Canada, my difficulties were not Jamaica, but my difficulties were Ireland." This was doubtless true enough, for Ireland liad been the constant difficulty of the "Whigs also ; and it was only by a series of half com- promises — by a kind of hollow alliance with O'Connell, of whom Melbourne said he was only less dangerous as a fi'ieud than as an enemy — that the "Whigs had held a majority at all. Of course the offer to O'Connell of the office of master of the roUs, and his " graceful refusal" of the position, is a pretty well known incident. But Peel and the Conservative party could make no such terms, and Ireland would have been the chief difficulty. This, however, was scarcely sufficient reason for demanding, without careful explanation, the dismissal of the ladies of the bed-chamber — by which the queen probably understood that she was to be separated from all those ladies, members of her household, with whom she was on the most confidential terms. That the wife of Lord Normauby, who had been Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and the sister of Lord Morpeth, who had been Irish secretary under the "Whig government, were in close attendance and companionship, doubtless excited some ap- prehension in Peel's mind. ""Would it," he afterwards asked in the house, " would it be considered by the public that a minister had the confidence of the crown when the relatives of his immediate political opponents held the highest offices about the person of the sove- reign ? . . . "Who were my political oppo- nents? Why, of the two I have named, one, the Marquis of Normanby,was publicly stated to be a candidate for the very same office which it was proposed I should fill, namely, the office of prime minister. The other noble lord has been designated as the leader of this house ; and I know not why his talents might not justify his appointment in case of the retirement of his predecessor. . . . Is it fitting that one man shall be the minister responsible for the most arduous charge that can fall to the lot of man, and that the wife of the other — that other his most formidable political enemy- — shall with his express con- sent hold office in immediate attendance on the sovereign]" Probably if Sir Eobert's demand had been explicitly confined to these two ladies the queen would have been less unwilling to re- fuse; but as it was she declined, saying that having considered the pioiaosal made by Sir Robert Peel to remove the ladies of her bed- chamber, she could not consent to adopt a course Avhich she conceived to be contrary to usage, and which was repugnant to her feel- ings. The whole question was an exceedingly unfortunate one, not only for Peel and the Conservative party, but in some respects for the "Whigs, for while Melbourne was sus- pected of having influenced the queen's reply and of concerning himself with a palace in- trigue, the case of the unhappy Lady Flora Hastings was still fresh in the public me- mory, and the "Whigs were unjustly associated with that sad story. "We need not now re- capitulate all the details. It is enough to say that early in the year. Lord Melbourne had informed Sir James Clark, the court phy- sician, that a communication had been made by Lady Tavistock, one of the ladies of the Duchess of Kent's household, that the appear- ance of Lady Flora Hastings had given rise to a suspicion in the jjalace that she might have been pi'ivately married. Of couree this was an exceedingly painful imj^utation, and was rendered all the more painful because there undoubtedly was an appearance which would to some extent justify the suspicion, and this appearance was confirmed by the physician. The Duchess of Kent expressed her entii'e disbelief in the conclusion to which it had led, but still some further inquiry was deemed necessary; and after firmly and indig- nantly denying that there were any grounds for the suspicion, an examination was sub- LADY FLORA HASTINGS. 233 niitted to which proved that the appearances referred to i^roceeded from some disorder of the health, aud were not attributable to the causes suggested. The Marchioness of Hast- ings, naturally indignant at the jii-oceedings — which were defeiided by Lady Tavistock as being for the honour of her majesty and the character of the household, that the suspicions entertained should not be permitted to con- tinue and to spread — demanded further in- ijuiry into the origin of the suspicions against her daughter, aud the dismissal of Sir James Clark as a physician to her majesty — a de- mand that was not complied with, as it was i-egarded as unreasonable. In writing an ac- count of what was called " The Palace Con- spiracy," to her uncle at Brussels, the unfortu- nate Lady Flora mentions the tenderness of the Duchess of Kent, of whom she says that a mother could not have been kinder to her; while the queen endeavoured to show her regret by her civility to her, and "expressed it handsomely with tears in her eyes." " The affair has made me ill," said the j^oor lady; but she hoped soon to be better. Whether the anxiety and agitation of so dreadful an imputation increased the disease from which she was suffering is not known, but she died four months afterwards at the palace, of en- largement of the liver — her age being only thirty-three. It is recorded that the queen had an interview with her shortly before her death, which had not taken place at the time of the dispute between Sir Robert Peel and the late ministry on the subject of the ladies-in- attendance. "With reference to that subject Lord IMelbourne declared most earnestly that (le had had no personal interest to serve in advising her majesty, on her asking his opinion, that she was not called upon to dis- miss those ladies. By the consent of both houses of parliament the Whig ministry re- sumed power — not without a scarifying pro- test from Lord Brougham. Melbourne said — "I frankly declare that I resume office un- equivocally and solely for this reason, that I shall not abandon my sovereign in a situation of difficulty and distress, and especially when a demand is made upon her majesty with wliich, I think, she ought not to comply — a demand inconsistent with her personal honoui-, and wliich, if acquiesced in, would render her reign liable to all the changes and variations of political parties, and make her domestic life one constant scene of unhappiuess and discomfort." At any rate this dispute, which, unimportant as it may seem, returned the Melbourne administration for another two years, had some very decided effects on the country, and gave O'Connell, Grattan, and others of the Irish party, a text on which they amjjly denounced the Tories. Among the important events which marked or illustrated the social and political progress of the period preceding the passing of the Re- form Bill, there are some so far outside mere party contention that they may be regarded as national landmarks, showing the advance of both material and moral improvement. Of the max'vellous development of the railway system, and its effects in the promotion of a common sympathy and the maintenance of a common interest, we may have to speak pre- sently; but even before the country had been completely intersected with those iron roads which enabled people to interchange visits, and once more brought friends and families who had been long sej^arated into personal communion, the revision of the whole postal system had wrought a remarkable change in the social relations of people living far apart from their relatives, who, from having been obliged to content themselves with two or three letters a year, could keep up a constant correspondence without either impoverishing themselves, or humbly begging for franks from those privileged persons who were entitled to forward letters at the expense of the public service. In 1838 the London and Birmingham Rail- way was completed. In the same year the Liverpool and Preston line was opened, and the line between Liverpool and Birmingham had already been at work for a year. Amongst the wondere of the time was the discovery that a locomotive had made a journey at the rate of 37 miles an hour. A writer giving an account of the railways in 1837 says, "The jDrospect of travelling from the metropolis to Liverpool, a distance of 210 miles, in 10 hours. 234 GLADSTONE AND HIS COXTEMPORAEIES. calls forcibly to miud the tales of fairies and genii by which we were amused in our youth, and contrasts forcibly with the fact, attested on the personal experience of the writer of this notice, that about the commencement of the present century this same journey occupied a space of 60 hours." At that time experi- ments were about to be made with "ships of an enormous size, furnished with steam power, equal to the force of 400 horses and upwards, to make the voyage across the Atlantic." But up to this time, and indeed till the latter part of 1839, the charges made by the post-office for carrying letters were not only so various as to seem almost arbitrary, but were so high as to be nearly prohibitive in the case of the humbler classes of correspondents. "There were few families," says Miss Martineau, " in the wide middle class who did not feel the cost of postage a heavy item in their expendi- ture, and if the young people sent letters home only once a fortnight, the amount at the yeai-'s end was a rather serious matter. But it was the vast multitude of the lower orders who suffered, like the crusading families of old and the geographical discoverers of all time. When once their families parted off from home it was a separation almost like that of death. The hundreds of thousands of apprentices, of shopmen, of governesses, of domestic servants, were cut off from family relations as if seas or deserts lay between them and home. If the shilling for each letter could be saved by the economy of weeks or months at first, the rarity of the correspondence went to increase the rarity; new interests hastened the dying out of old ones, and the ancient domestic affections were but too apt to wither away, till the wish for intercourse was gone. The young girl could not ease her heart by pouring out her cares and difficulties to her mother before she slept, as she can now, when the penny and the sheet of paper are the only condition of the correspondence. The young lad felt that a letter home was a somewhat serious and formal matter, when it must cost his parents more than any indulgence they ever thought of for themselves; and the old fun and light-hearted- ness were dropped from such domestic inter- course as there was. The effect upon morals of this kind of restraint is pi'oved beyond a doubt by the evidence afforded in the army. It was a well-known fact that in regiments where the commanding officer was kind and courteous about franking letters for the privates, and encouraged them to write as often as they pleased, the soldiers were more sober and manly, moi-e virtuous and domestic in their affections, than where difficulty was made by the indolence or stiffness of the franking officer." The rates of postage differed not only accord- ing to the distance for which letters had to be carried, but with respect to the weight, size, and shape of the letter; while if more than one sheet of paper were used a higher charge was invariably made, a condition which fre- quently led to tampering with letters by post- office officials, for the purpose of seeing whether they were liable to the higher scale. The postage of a letter from London to Belfast was one-and-fourpence, from London to Brighton eightpence, and the average charge from London to all places throughout the kingdom exceeded sixpence. Then not only could any member of the government frank his own and other people's letters by writing his name on the outside, but all members of parliament were permitted to send a certain number of letters free by the same process. The absurd system of course led to the illegal transmission of letters by private carriers, or by coaches and wagons, who conveyed them at a lower rate than that charged by the post- office, while all kinds of evasions were prac- tised for the purpose of saving the heavy im- post. Coleridge, when a young man, was walk- ing through the Lake District when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying that she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Heai-ing that the letter was from her brother, Coleridge paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness 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 con- cerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself. THE OLD POSTAL SYSTEM. 235 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 the expense of postage. This was only one of many devices resorted to to avoid the exorbitant demands of the post-office. There was curious dotting in newspapers by which messages might be spelt out by means of a "key" in the possession of both correspond- ents. Men of business wrote letters so that several might go on one sheet, which was to be cut up and distributed. The idea of a penny post was not altogether new, since one had been established in London in 1683, and was after- wards absorbed by the government, which would never permit competition; and Dr. Johnson refers to the penny post in 1738. But whenever an attempt was made to cheapen the carriage of letters it was always opposed by the authorities, who represented that it would diminish the revenue. Mr. Charles Knight, in the work on London of which he was editor, gave some interesting particulars of the post-ofRce system as it was for- merly conducted: before 1784; from that year to 1839; and after the new bill had been passed. In the first period the mails were conveyed on horseback or in light carts, and the robbery of the mail was one of the most common of the higher class of offences. The service was very inefficiently performed, and the rate of travel- ling did not often exceed four miles an houi\ A time-bill for the year 1717 has been pre- served, addressed " to the several postmasters betwixt London and East Grinstead." It is headed " Haste, haste, post haste ! " from which it might be inferred that extraordinary expe- dition was not only enforced, but would be accomplished. The mails, conveyed either on horseback or in a cai't, departed "from the letter-office in London, July 7th, 1717, at half an hour past two in the morning," and reached East Grinstead, distant forty-six miles, at half an hour after three in the after- noon. There were stoppages of half-an-hour each at Epsom, Dorking, and Reigate, and of a quarter of an hour at Leatherhead, so that the rate of travelling, exclusive of stoppages, was a fraction above four miles an hour. But even nearly fifty years afterwards, and on the great roads, five miles an hour was considered as quite " going-a-head." " Letters are con- veyed in so shoi't a time, by night as well as by day, that every twenty-four hours the jjost goes one hundred and twenty miles, and in five or six days an answer to a letter may be had from a place three hundred miles from London." Letters were despatched from Lon- don to all parts of England and Scotland three times a week, and to "Wales twice a week; but " the post goes every day to those places where the court resides, as also to the several stations and rendezvous of his majesty's fleet, as the Downs and Spithead ; and to Tun bridge during the season for drinking the waters." The mails were not all despatched at the same hour, but were sent off at various inter- vals between one and three in the morning, and letters wei'e delivered in London at differ- ent times of the day as each post arrived. This careless and lazy state of things existed until 1784, when the attention of Mr. Palmer was drawn to the singular discrepancy which existed between the speed of the post and of the coaches. Letters which left Bath on Monday night were not delivered in London until two or three o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, and were sometimes even later ; but the coach which left Bath on Monday afternoon arrived in London sufficiently early for the delivery of parcels by ten o'clock the next morning ; and though the postage from Bath to London was at that time only three- pence, yet despatch was in many cases of such importance that the tradesmen of Bath will- ingly paid two shillings to send their letters to London in the form of a coach parcel, be- sides requesting their correspondents to give a gratuity to the porter for the early delivei-y of the packet, this promise of additional pay- ment forming part of the direction. The slow rate of travelling of the Bath post was not an exception. The post which left London on Monday night, or rather on Tues- day, from one to three in the morning, did not reach Norwich, "Worcester, or Birming- ham until Wednesday morning; and the Exeter post not until Thursday morning; while letters were five days in passing from London to Glasfrow. 236 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Mr. Palmer proposed that the mails should no longer be transported on horseback or in light carts, but that coaches should be em- ployed ; and as the robbery of the mail was so frequent an occurrence, a man with fire- arms was to travel with each coach. The coaches with the mails were all to start from London at the same hour, and their departure from the country was to be so regulated as to ensure, as far as possible, their simultaneous aiTival in town at an early hour in the morn- ing. The first mail-coach upon Mr. Palmer's plan left London for Bristol on the evening of the 24th of August, 1784. The improve- ments suggested by Mr. Palmer met with a good deal of opposition from some of the post- ofiice authorities, but the ministers resolved that the scheme should be carried out in all its most essential features. The results were that by 1797 the greater part of the mails were conveyed in one-half the previous time, in many cases in one-third ; and in some of the cross posts in one-fourth of the previous time. Daily posts were established to above five hundred places which before had only received them thrice a week. The great com- mercial towns were thought to be as much entitled to this advantage as the water- tlrinkers at Tunbridge Wells thirty years before. The revenue of the post-office in- ci'eased beyond anticipation ; but Mr. Palmer, who had stipulated for a per centage on the surplus net revenue beyond .£240,000, received instead an annuity of £3000. The era of mail-coaches embraces about lialf a century. Their origin, maturity, and perfection, and gradual displacement by the railways, all took place within that short period. In 1836 there were fifty -four four- horse mails in England, thirty in Ireland, and ten in Scotland. The number of pair- horse mails in England was forty-nine. Their average speed in England was nine miles an hour, including stoppages. Starting from London at eight o'clock in the evening, the mail reached Exeter, 170 miles, in sixteen hours thirty -four minutes; Holyhead, 261 miles, in twenty-seven hours; Glasgow, 396 miles, in forty-two hours; Edinburgh, 399 miles, in forty-two and a half hours. The number of miles ti-avelled by the mails in England and Scotland in 1838 was above seven millions, equal to a circuit round the globe every day in the year. The English mail-coach was strongly characteristic of the national energy and spirit, and also of the national taste. The daily departure of the mail-coaches from the post-office was always a favourite sight. In 1837 the number which left London every night was twenty-seven, travelling in the aggregate above 5500 miles before they reached their respective destina- tions. A short time before the hour of start- ing they arrived in the yard round the post- office from their respective inns, with the passengers already in their places. Through the iron railing, by the light of innumerable gas-lamps, the public could see the process of packing the mail-bags. It was really a fine sight to see twenty of these vehicles drawn up, each occupying the same station night after night, the horses fine and spirited animals, the harness excejitionally neat, and the coachman and guards wearing the king's livery. The travellers for such various and distant parts of the kingdom seemed as if they felt the difi"erence between travelling by the mail and by the stage-coach. As the clock struck eight the post-office porters dragged out huge bags, of which the guards of the different mails took charge. In a few minutes each coach, one by one, passed out of the yard, and the sound of the guard's horn became lost in the noise of the streets. About six of the mail-coaches on the south- western, western, and north-western roads did not take up their bags at the post-office, but started from the western end of Piccadilly — the bags for those mails being conveyed in light carts in the care of mail-guai'ds. The starting of these mails was a sight for the West End. About twenty minutes jDast eight the mail-carts drove up at great speetl, the guards' horns warning passengers of the necessity of getting out of the way. The bags were transferred to the mail-coaches, and each successively took its departure. The annual procession of the mail-coaches on the king's birth-day was also an exhilarating and pleasing sight which will never again be SIR ROWLAND HILL. 237 witnessed. "The gala turn-out of our mail- coaches on the king's birth-day," says Sir Francis Head, " I always think must strike foreigners more than anything else in oui* country with the sterling, solid integrity of the English character;" and a foreign visitor, Von Raumer, in his England in 1835, says : — " Such a splendid display of carriages-and-four as these mail-coaches could not be found or got together in all Berlin. It was a real pleasure to see them in all the pride and strength which, in an hour or two later, was to send them in every direction, with incred- ible rapidity, to every corner in England." The procession proceeded from the city to the West End and through Hyde Park; and usually passed before the residence of the l>ostmaster-general for the time being. But a remarkable change was still to be made in the system of the post-office, and it was to originate from a young man who, as an ardent social reformer, had made a consider- able impression on those with whom he had been associated in useful and practicable schemes for the public benefit. Rowland Hill was born at Kiddei-minster on December 3d, 1 795, in a house that had be- longed to his forefathers for some generations. But the war with France had caused the ruin of the business in which his father was en- gaged, and the family was reduced to great straits. From his earliest years, Rowland was brought up in the stern school of poverty, and, like Garrick, "was bred in a family whose study was to make 4(f. do as much as others made 4|o?. do." His father was a man of great intelligence, of varied, but not deep, knowledge, and of an eager, inquiring mind. He was as upright and as bold as he was simple-hearted. He was given to speculation, and never weary of forming theories. Many of his theories his son came in time to distrust, and yet he had been heard to say that in political matters his father was always right. As far back as his sons could remem- ber, he had lifted his voice against slavery and the slave-trade, and against the cruel se- verity of our criminal code. As a member of Dr. Priestley's congregation, he was of course in favour of full religious liberty. He was, in those early days, a thoroughgoing freetrader. All these subjects, and many others, he de- lighted iu discussing with his children, even from their earliest childhood. His eldest son, the late Mr. M. D. Hill, the recorder of Bir- mingham, in a short memoir that he has left, says, " Perhaps, after all, the greatest obliga- tion that we owe our father is this : that from infancy he would reason with us — argue with us, would perhaps be a better expression, as denoting that it was a match of mind against mind, in which all the rules of fair- play were duly obsex'ved, and we put forth our little strength without feai\ Arguments were taken at their just weight, the sword of authority was not thi-own into the scale." Rowland has been heard to say that as a child he read and read again Miss Edgeworth's stories for the young. They deeply impressed him. He resolved, when a mere boy, to fol- low in the path she traced, and before he died to do something that should be for the signal advantage of mankind. How he was to bene- fit his fellowmen he did not of course know; but that he should benefit them, and benefit them in some large way, was his fixed resolu- tion and conviction almost from childhood. As the family day by day gathered for its meals — meals of the most frugal kind, where nothing stronger than water was ever drunk — there was a constant discussion among the members on the best means of reforming the world. There was little timidity h\ those days among any of them, and little fear of pushing any princijile to its extreme consequences. In their later days they came to smile at the wildness of many of their theories ; but they had always the satisfaction of knowing that their aims, if often visionary, had always been high and noble, and that in their earnest de- sire to improve mankind, they had first set about improving themselves. Much as Row- land Hill owed to his father, he owed scarcely less to his mother. She, though the inferior of her husband iu quick intelligence and originality, was his superior in shrewd com- mon sense and in firmness of purpose. She, unlike her husband, was of an anxious and ambitious temperament, and toiled night and day to keep her little family from sinking 238 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. tlirough poverty out of the class into which they had been born. In her desire to seciu-e her cliildren an education, she persuaded her husband to give up trade, for which he was vei'y Httle fitted, and to establish a school. The charges for pujjils were very low, and prices were very high. When Rowland was a mere child, his mother used to talk over with him her difficulties, almost as if he were a man. From his childhood he had, as he said, seen the terrible inconvenience of being poor. He had known his mother dread the visit of the postman, as there was not money in the house to pay the postage. Each child was brought up to consider the good of the family rather than his own sjiecial good. All the brothers held closely together. No one took any decision of great importance without first calling a kind of family council and having the matter thoroughly discussed. Row- land was quite a youth when he and his brother Matthew began to discover the de- ficiencies in their father's school, and to set about to reform them. His first task, how- ever, was to free his father from the load of debt which, through his unbusinesslike habits, in spite of his simjole way of living, had come to press very heavily on him. At an age when boys are now leaving school, he had taken upon himself the entire management of the accounts, and before long had the satisfaction of paying ofi" all his father's creditors in full. Matthew chiefly concerned himself with im- proving the instruction, while Rowland dealt with the discipline and organization. "Organ- ization," he used often to say in after life, "is my forte." And this is how he organized : "Con- vinced that numerous and important advan- tages would be derived from engaging their pupils in the consideration and in the practice of rules for their own government, from plac- ing restrictions to the powers of the teachers, and from giving to the regulations of the school a permanent form, the proprietors, early in the year 1817, proposed to the school a certain division of powers, together with re- gulations for their exercise, which, having received the joint assent of the teachers and pupils, became the constitutional laws of the school ; and in the confident expectation that the powers placed in the hands of the pupils would never be emj^loyed but for the welfare of the school, the proprietors pledged them- selves not to alter these laws, without the consent of a majority of the proprietoi.-j and regular teachers meeting in conference on one hand, and of a majority of pupils on the other. With such joint consent, occasional alterations have been made in the constitutional laws, tending chiefly, if not entkely, to throw more and more power into the hands of the pupils." An almost perfect democracy was established. Each boy had even the right of being tried by a jury of his school-fellows whenever a charge was brought against him by one of the mas- ters. In the Essays of a Birmingham Manu- facturer an interesting account is given of the school. "By juries and committees," says Mr. W. L. Sargant, the author, "by marks, and by appeals to a sense of honour, discipline was maintained. But this was done, I think, at too great a sacrifice ; the thoughtlessness, the spring, the elation of childhood were taken from us ; we were jDrematui'e men." This sys- tem, whatever may have been its merits and its faults, was invented by Rowland Hill at an age when most young men have scarcely left college. It was greatly modified in after years, both by himself and his younger brothers; for, as the "Birmingham Manufac- turer," perhaps with some exaggeration, says, "the Hazelwood constitution, discipline, in- struction, were in a perpetual flux ; the right to-day was wrong to-moiTow." In a volume entitled Public Education, written chiefly by his brother Matthew, Rowland's new system was made known to the world. The book at once excited public attention. An article on it appeared in the Edinburgh Review, and. another in the London Magazine written by De Quiucey. Jeremy Bentham took the warmest interest in the school, and declared that after reading the book he had thrown aside all he had himself written on education. Wilberforce, Brougham, Grote, Joseph Hume, Miss Edgeworth, and many others, either visited Hazelwood or made inquiries about it. Rowland was as convinced as any young enthusiast could be of the soundness of his plans, and longed to extend them. He re- PENNY POSTAGE PROPOSED. 239 (jiiired, he said, at least five hundred boys befoi'e he could organize his school as it ought to be. He looked forward to seeing great col- leges on the same system sj^ring up in all parts of the country, to the advantage of his fellow- men. He was afterwards heard to confess, that having after long years looked into his code of laws he thought it far too complex. He added, with a smile, that he greatly doubted whether he should send his own son to a school conducted on such a complicated system. It can scarcely be doubted, however, that to his bold and novel experiment may be traced not a little of the vast improvement that in the last fifty years has been effected in education. He used to boast that at one time he had the largest school in "Warwickshire, for Rugby in those days had sunk very low, and some years before Arnold's name was heard he had shown that boys could be made almost to govern themselves, through a high sense of duty, and not through brutal fear. After living at Birmingham till he was more than thirty, he removed to the neigh- bourhood of London, where, with the aid of one of his brothers, he established a branch school at Bruce Castle, Tottenham. But by this time his health, which had always been delicate, began to give way, and at last broke down. It was only the extreme temperance and regularity of his life which had kept him alive. Moreover, his work as a schoolmaster had become distasteful to him, and he longed for a change. As soon as his health was re- established by a long period of rest, he began to cast about for a new employment. He had long been known to many leading men among the advanced Liberal party, not only by his work as a schoolmaster, but also as an eager advocate of political and social reform. He and his family had been in the front ranks among the men of Birmingham in the great Reform Bill agitation. ■ He had assisted in founding the Society for the Diffusion of Use- ful Knowledge. He had published a plan for the gradual extinction of pauperism and for the diminution of crime. Shortly after his re- tirement from the school, an association was formed for the colonization of South Australia on the plan of Mr. E. G. Wakefield. In this association Rowland Hill took an active part, and when the act was carried through parlia- ment, and the commission was appointed, he was named secretary. He held this post for four years, and discharged the duties Avith conspicuous success.^ In the early part of 1837 he had published a pamphlet which discussed the postal question closely and convincingly. He showed that the actual cost of conveyance for letters must be very small, and that it increased only in a very trifling proportion to the distance of the place to which they had to be carried. His argument, supported by indisputable facts, was that the substitution, in the United King- dom, of one uniform rate of postage would be of inestimable benefit to the community, and that it would increase rather than dimin- ish the revenue. The rate of postage which he desired to establish was a penny for the half -ounce, without reference to the destina- tion of the letter, within the postal limits of Great Britain and Ireland. ]VIi-. Hill ascer- tained that the cost of mere transit incurred by conve3'ing a letter 400 miles, from London to Edinbui-gh, was no more than one thirty- sixth part of a penny, and yet the income of the post-office was exceedingly small, and had been diminishing. The actual cost of trans- mission to any part of the kingdom reached by the mail was less than a farthing, so that the penny rate would pay 400 per cent, and means might be taken to secure payment beforehand by means of a stamp affixed to the letter itself, a notion for which iSlx. Hill was indebted to Mr. Chai'les Knight, the eminent writer, who had already done so much to promote educa- tion and social progress in the publications which bore his name. Of course the post-office officials were strongly opposed to such a scheme. They had always gone on the principle of main- taining an expensive monopoly, and in their efforts to increase the revenue of the depart- ment by charging far more than would re- munerate private enterprise, had diminished the correspondence of the entire community. 1 Times, August 2Sth, 1S79. 240 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. nobody could be found to regard as a ci-ime, and had in a very definite sense injured society by preventing those domestic and friendly communications which are among the chief safeguards of aflfection and morality. It hap- pened fortunately enough, that a commission was engaged in inquiiing into the manage- ment of the post-oflB.ce at the very time that Mr. Hill's i^amphlet aj^peared, and though the pi'ivate offer of his plan to the govenment had produced no immediate result, his public appeal at once made a stii- in commercial cii'cles and compelled some notice. The com- mission were engaged in investigating the opei-ation of the twopenny post when the pamphlet appeared. Mr. Wallace moved in the House of Commons for a select committee to report upon the plan devised by the author, but without any result, as the government de- clared that the matter was under consideration. Petitions, however, began to be presented from the corporation of London, from cham- bei's of commerce in the large seaport and manufacturing towns, and from literary and other societies. The ministry were at first for temporizing and trying some smaller schemes which it was supposed might not be dangerous to the revenue, and the promoter of this great public benefit was compelled to undergo much of the disappointment and heart-burning which are too frequently the lot of true benefactors to mankind. Happily he was a man who had the courage of his con- victions, and he has but recently passed away from us after forty years of undoubted success for a scheme which has been developed to a marvellous organization, and may be said fitly to represent the enoi-mous strides made not only in commerce, but in science and in educa- tion, during the present reign. A committee of the house was at length granted to investigate the proposed scheme, and they were convinced not only that it was practicable, but that public opinion demanded its adoption whether the revenue would sufier loss or not. That it would sufi'er a loss was an opinion expressed by nearly everybody con- cerned, and even the sagacious Sydney Smith stigmatized the plan as the " nonsensical penny postage scheme." On financial grounds Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Goulbourn were opposed to it. In the House of Lords the Duke of Wellington, who entertained strong objections to the scheme, yet entreated the house to pass the measure because it was one anxiously ex- pected by the country. The measure was passed with some modi- fications. For a few weeks fourpence was charged as the uniform rate, in order to pre- vent an overwhelming number of penny let- ters being sent before the officials had time to become accustomed to the change. Prepay- ment was to be by stamps, and the privilege of franking, or sending letters free through the post, was to be abolished except in the case of official letters on government business. On the 10th of January, 1840, the new scheme wa.s- to be tried, A penny was to be charged for every prepaid letter not exceeding half an ounce in weight, and twopence for every such letter if not paid in advance. Double the rates were charged for packets over half an ounce and under an ounce, and so on with double charges if left to be paid on delivery. At first an official envelope was issued con- taining a design by Mulready consisting of a number of emblematical figures of commerce, industry, &c., and gi'oups representing the sentiments with which letters from friends and relatives are received; but this was after all unsuited for business purposes, and became a little tiresome iu its continued and therefore stale presentation of emotions which might be entirely incongruous when regai-ded in re- ference to the contents of the envelope. The queen's-head stamp, first on the envelopes, and afterwards in their present form, therefore soon took its place. The results of the new plan were not at fii-st favourable to the revenue, because the govern- ment would not adopt it in its entirety. The actual net revenue was £465,000, a falling ofi" of nearly three-fourths from the former net revenue, but it was expected that there would for some time be a considerable diminution, and the enormous advantage to the country, both among the commercial classes and the poor, whose families were so often separated, was well worth the temporary cost. Had the plan been fairly tried it is probable that in" DEVELOPMENT OF OUR POSTAL SYSTEM. 241 five years the gross revenue of the post-office would have been restored, especially as rail- ways and means of rapid locomotion and eco- nomical conveyance were increasing with great rapidity; but official opposition and the neglect both of the existing and of the succeeding governments jirevented Mr. Hill from succeed- ing. At first he was engaged to work his own scheme, but he was compelled to abandon about half of it, and those portions of the organization which would have made it re- munerative were left out of the system. When the Peel government came into power he was dismissed, and the system again fell under the hostile management of the "authorities." For three years the reduction of the cost of postage and the prepayment by stamps were adopted, but little was done towards simplifying the arrangements with a view to economy, or in- creasing the facilities for conveying and de- livering letters. Yet at that time, when every industry and every interest was depressed and complaining, and every other branch of the revenue had declined, the proceeds of the post-office had increased and had reached to two-thirds of its old amount. It was evident at last, however, that to secure the full ad- vantage, the projector of the scheme should be in authority to work his own plan, and he was solicited to return to the superintendence of the post-office. "What that department has become, and the vast, active, and far-reaching organization which it represents, has long ago been recognized. The name of Sir Eowland Hill was one which, during the life of him who bore it, was everywhere mentioned with genuine respect, and had he been a man who aspired to a title higher than the simple knight- hood which was conferred upon him he might doubtless have obtained the distinction. His best title to our regard, however, is that he lived and died a faithful public servant, who, having seen how by one great reform the hap- piness and the prosperity of his fellows could be enhanced, gave himself heartily to the work of which he lived to see the achievement. The postal system introduced by Sir Rowland Hill lias been adopted by almost every civilized country in the world, and its amazing progress here is best evidenced by the account of the Vol. I. increase of the work of the post-office even in the decade from 1870 to 1880. In the former year there were 704,000,000 letters delivered in England and Wales, 79,000,000 in Scotland, and 64,000,000 in Ireland. In 1880 these numbers had increased to 950,000,000 for Eng- land and Wales, 102,000,000 for Scotland, and 76,000,000 for Ireland. In the year 1879-80 there were 97,000,000 post-cards delivered in England and Wales, 12,000,000 in Scotland, and 6,000,000 in Ireland. The number of newspaper and book -packets delivered during the same period was 281,000,000 in England and Wales, 37,000,000 in Scotland, and 27,000,000 in Ireland. Equally remarkable has been the progress of the admirable provision adopted early in the scheme as worked by Sir Rowland (then Mr.) Hill as a portion of the system, that of sending money-orders thx'ough the post. The value of the money - orders issued by the post-office in the official year 1879-80 was £25,032,261, being at the rate of 51'1 orders to every 100 of the pojiulation. The increase in the number of telegi-aphic messages since the lines were taken over by the state in 1870 is very remarkable. The first year the lines were under government control and made part of the ijostal system, there were 8,606,732 mes- sages sent in the United Kingdom; and in 1879 these figures had risen to 23,385,416, exclusive of press and service messages, the net revenue from this number of telegrams being £257,601. The initiation of the electric telegraph as a practical thing dates from the first year of the reign of Victoria. It is well known that Pro- fessor Morse of America claims to have invented this telegraph in 1832, while on his way from Havre to New York. There was an alphabet, dots and strokes, in Morse's invention, and it was successfully applied in experiments extending over a circuit of ten miles. Meanwhile Baron Schilling and Messi's. Gauss and Weber, on the Continent, were making immense strides in the more strictly scientific, as distinguished from the merely mechanical and ingenious portions of the new agency. It was, however, in 1837 that Stein- heil of Munich made the great discovery that 16 242 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. two wires were not necessary, because the earth itself Avould complete the circuit; and in the same year our own Professor Wheat- stone took out his first j^atent. It must be understood that no expression of opinion is here given as to who was really the originator of the electric telegraj^h, but the first experi- ment of a practical nature in London was made on the 25th of July, 1837, between Euston Square and Camden Town stations, on the North-Western Eailway, immediately after Messrs. Wheatstone and Cook had taken out their patents. Mr. Eobert Stephenson and Mr. Fox were present to witness the operation. Within six months after the accession of her present majesty, a striking figure was removed by death from the public eye. He began life by running away to Gretna with a beautiful girl, whom, while still without any profession, he married. This couple went through much hardship, but continued all their lives romantically fond of each other. The man was "mixed up" with a romance much wilder than his own, and will be remembered by that when all the rest of his story is little cared for. He was a handsome fellow, and a handsome drinker when he dined out; not at home, for he was very penurious ; he would drink, as he said of his brother, " any given quantity of wine." He had some wit, and great power of personal fascination. At eighty years of age we find him writing some rather "free" verses about some girls whom he had caught playing at see-saw. This " curious figure " is no other than John Scott — Lord Eldon. We have called him a figure, but he almost strikes one as a sort of figure-head, so long had he maintained one fixed attitude. A high authority. Dr. Surtees, writes that the old regi- men " was buried in his grave." Not that he was a Tory, though he was : but that he was an obstructive and obscurantist. He was the "everlasting No" — except when there was something to gain. Not even the candour of enemies — which is often more to be trusted than the zeal of friends — has pretended to hold him quite clear of greed and time-serving. He died worth more than half-a-million, one of the loneliest men in England. Dr. Surtees has recorded a Christmas day, long long before his death (he lived to eighty-seven years of age), upon which he did not receive one single gift or other remembrance (one turkey was despatched to him, but was stolen on the way) ! He had held the great seal time after time, year after year, and had wielded much power direct and indirect; yet scarcely one poor reform, even in his own department, is to be traced to his zeal; while it will never be forgotten, so long as he is remembered, that he opposed, with Sidmouth, the abolition of the slave-trade, and actually voted against Loi'd Howick's measure when it may be said that all the heart of England, of every politi- cal creed, was set upon that great change. Nobody has attempted to deny that in private Lord Eldon was wilful and unforgiving — to everybody but his wife. Unfortunately he had a knack of crying, which won him no favour with the rude British jiublic. " By G , she's guilty" — this not very judicial remark, accompanied by a tear or two, at Queen Caroline's trial, was long remembered against him, and he was christened " crocodile Eldon " by those who knew what his relations with that misguided, if not guilty, woman, had previously been. It will certainly not be forgotten until Shelley's Masque of Anarchy is out of print: — "Next came Fraud, and he had on, Like Lord E , an ermine gown ; His big tears, for he wept well, Turned to millstones as they fell ; And the little children, who Round his feet played to and fro. Thinking every tear a gem, Had their brains knocked out by them." The allusion — admittedly one of the most telling and significant in all literature — is to Eldon's judgment in the case of Westbrook v. Shelley, when the question was who was to have the custody of the poet's two little ones. But here we must do an act of justice. It was not to be expected that the bereaved father, who was pa 3sionately fond of children, should see clear, but the truth is that Lord Eldon's judgment is singularly moderate in tone; turns not upon the poet's theological opin- ions, but on his moral creed ; and is still ujv LOED ELDON. 243 held as good law. It was rather hard for Shelley to be com2:)elled to pay £ii)0 a year for the education of his own children by the nominee of an avowed and ojjen enemy ; but Lord Eldon seems to have been blameless in the matter. His decisions in the Court of Chancery have very seldom been impugned, either as to their law or their fairness. It used to be said that the length of time he took in making up his mind did suitois more harm than wrong decisions would have done ; and there are a thousand squibs current in literature about his see-sawing judgments. He was very tedious, and wrote and spoke vile English. On the trial of Home Tooke and Hardy he spoke eight hours (for the crown, of course) without seeming fatigued. Tooke, who was a scholar, said, when acquitted, that he would rather be hanged out of hand next time than listen to one of Sir John Scott's speeches. Eldon, in fact, was a man of one groove. He had no notion of j)olitical or social first princijjles, no knowledge of history, no love of literature, art, or science. His one idea was to be a successful lawyer, and great was his disajipointment when he found, late in life, that neither Wellington nor Peel would let him return to his old jDerch on the wool- sack. But he had become a sort of fossil, and the times would not permit the " everlasting no." There was once a churchwarden who would not hear of an able and leai-ned preacher. " We won't have learning and eloquence here, sir; I always opposed that d intellect, and always will." That i:)recise speech was never put into Eldon's mouth by the carica- turists of the day, but a score of siaeeches like it were. The title " crocodile Eldon " was well won. Dr. Surtees has positively told the world that Eldon declared in private that when he prosecuted Home Tooke, Hardy, Hol- croft, &c.,for (constructive) treason, he thought the two sides of the case so nicely balanced, that if he had been on the juiy he would not have known which way to divide. Yet at the end of his speech against the prisoners he burst into tears, and, among other appeals, pledged himself to the jury as lawyer and as citizen, and implored them not to disgrace him and his by rejecting his view of the case. When we remember who the men were whom he was doing his best to get hanged or trans- ported, and what Dr. Sux'tees has related, we must admit that Sir John Scott jiushed the privileges of advocacy as far as they could go. John Scott was born in 1751 at Newcastle- on-Tyne. Like his brother William (the great Lord Stowell, also an obscurantist) he was a twin — each having been born with a sister, Scott, the father, was a man of very humble origin, who had made money first as a coal- fitter or broker, and then as a publican and insurance broker. The Sandgate, where John was born, and from which he eloped with the beautiful Bessy Surtees, is classic ground, if a well-known song can make it so : — "As I came thro' Sandgate, thro' Sandgate, tliro' Sandgate, As I came thro' Sandgate, I heard a lassie sing, Weel may the keel row, the keel row, the keel row, Weel may the keel row, that my laddie's in." Here John Scott, afterwards one of the greatest lawyers that ever flourished, was living when, an Oxford student, he fell in love with the girl who was to be his fate. He had a narrow escape of being a coal-fitter or a grocer, but he was destined for a lord-chancellor, and a lord-chancellor he was, and not only so, he was a lord-chancellor with a romance in his life. George III. once asked him whether he thought there was another king in all English history who had had a chancellor and a pri- mate at the same time who had each run away with his wife. Eldon, with his usual ready wit, passed the question on to the archbishop. It was in the ancient Gothic Church of Sedgefield, Durham, that young John Scott first saw Miss Elizabeth Surtees, daughter of a Newcastle banker, and a"" girl of striking beauty. The coal-fitter's son soon got ac- quainted with her, and, with his handsome, figure and attractive manners, distanced the young " squires " who were his rivals. The relations of Bessy frowned and sent her to London. But the connection was not to be broken off, and the efforts to sejiarate the jmir led to an elopement, for an account of which we will be indebted to a descendant of the family, Dr. W. H. Surtees. 244 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEISIPOEARIES. The house in which Mr. Surtees lived was a very large old-fashioned building, in a row of houses called Sandhill, which fronted to- wards the town-hall, the exchange, and the river. The ground-floor was occupied by the shop and warehouse of a Mr. Snow Clayton, an extensive clothier, but between the shoji and the rest of the house there was no com- munication, each having a separate entrance. John Scott had an early friend of the name of Wilkinson ; and to him he confided a plan for an elopement. "Wilkinson, who was a young man of some small indejiendence, which he contemplated investing in trade, had ap- prenticed himself to Clayton the clothier, and as Clayton's shop was under Mr. Surtees' resi- dence, his apprentice must have possessed pe- culiar means of facilitating the escape. The night of Wednesday the 18th of No- vember, 1772, was selected for the elopement. At that time the garrison within the house at Sandhill was weakened by the absence of Mr. Surtees' eldest son William, who was on a visit of a few days' duration to Some friends. Wilkinson was faithful to Scott in aiding and abetting the enterprise, and assisted him by concealing a ladder in the premises of Mr. Clayton below. This ladder was placed against the most westerly window on the first floor; and down it Bessy Surtees, "with an unthrift love," descended into the arms of John Scott. That night they were "over the Border and away," and the next morning were married at Blackshields, in Scotland. In a few days the young couple returned to Newcastle, but found sad or averted faces. Mrs. Surtees had been so affected with the flight of her daughter that she had kejit her bed for several days, and the mind of the dis- appointed mother fluctuated between sorrow and anger. Mr. Scott, however, received his son and newly-acquired daughter kindly; and a few days later Mr, Surtees was induced, by the intercession of his eldest son William, to ex- teud to the delinquents an ostensible fox-give- uess, though his displeasure appears not to have been entirely obliterated for the next two years and a half. This does not seem a very hopeful beginning for a young man, barely twenty-one, with his way to make in the world, but so far as human eyes can judge nothing but good came of it. Many odd stories have been told of the early struggles of young Scott and his lovely wife. For instance, that while he was reading law with a wet towel round his head, Bessy might have been seen in Carey Street, Chancery Lane, with a pint of porter in one hand and a plate of sprats (bought in Clare Market) in the other — these delicacies (and there is much worse food) being for the hapjjy young couple's supper. This gossip we will set down as fic- tion, but it is said to have oi'iginated Thack- eray's delicious sketch of Raymond Gray and his wife and their "little dinner" to the nabob in the Snob Papers. Lord Eldon himself, however, has told a story which goes very well with such small anecdotes. " When I was called to the bar," says he, "Bessy and I thought all our troubles were over: business was to pour in, and we were to be almost rich im- mediately. So I made a bargain with her that during the following year all the money I should receive in the first eleven months should be mine, and whatever I should get in the twelfth month should be hers. What a stingy dog I must have been to make such a bargain ! I would not have done so after- wards. But, however, so it was; that was our agi-eement; and how do you think it turned out? In the twelfth month I received half-a- guinea; eighteen -pence went for fees, and Bessy got nine shillings ; in the other eleven months I got not one shilling." This story Mr. Surtees, who quotes it, says can only be true as applied to John Scott's first year of London business. By the year 1774 Scott was doing pretty well, was on good terms with the Duke of Sussex, and was a welcome guest at Carlton House. Not much later he writes to his brother Henry an amusing account of his experiences in his visits to a ISIi-. Bowes, who kept up the traditions of the time in the matter of strong waters. "I see your friend Bowes," he writes, " very often, but I dare not dine with him above once in three months, as there is no getting away before midnight ; and indeed one is sui'e to lie in a condition in which no man would LORD ELDON. 245 wisTi to be in the streets at any other season." Mr. Bowes delighted in making his guests intoxicated : the device which he adopted to reduce them to this state is thus related by one of his biographers : — " Bowes had a prac- tice which he applied whenever he could, if he wanted to make any part of his company drunk; and as far as I have seen he was generally successful. I have known very grave people over whom he has succeeded. He would appear to be very candid, and to tell his guests they should help themselves to the spirits which were upon the table, whilst he officiously poured the water to fill up the glasses out of the tea-kettle. All this ap- peared very fair, but he had instructed his servant to bring in the kettle with half-and- half of water and spirits, so that the more his guests "wei'e desirous of being sober, the drunker they became." Perhajjs we may take the opportunity of remarking that this is not an unfair specimen of Lord Eldon's English. It is worth con- trasting, as shown in his judgments in chan- cery, with one or two of his brother's (Lord Stowell), which are classical. There is an authentic story which throws a delightful colour ujion the fondness of the young couple for each other. They were tra- velling in the Lake district, when Bessy fell ill. The only accessible doctor being called in, he gently sent Mr. Scott out of the room, and pi'oceeded to suggest to the lady that she had some mental trouble ! "Are you quite happy with your husband?" was his sagacious way of putting it. Now young Mrs. Scott was not only adored by John, she was an irascible lady, and we are told that she im- mediately dismissed the sage. "Went into heroics," is the phrase of the biographer in hinting at the way in which she sent him about his business. The conduct of this medi- cal man reminds one of a hon mot of Lord Stowell's. Like his brother John, this great judge was "close," and one day asked Sir Henry HaLford, at dinner, a question which, in the ordinary course of things, would carry a fee. Sir Henry saw the trick, and simply replied, "A man's health is generally in his own keeping : you know the old saying, that at forty every man is either a fool or a physi- cian." "Why not both?" said the lawyer. In this connection it may be mentioned that Stowell's favourite dish was steak and oyster- pie, of which he would eat with acharnement, taking two bottles of port with it; while Lord Eldon was jmssionately fond of liver and bacon, and during the busiest years of his life drank every night a great goblet of ale on getting into bed ! John Scott, after taking silk and spending a few years in Parliament, was made first solicitor-general and then attorney-general by Pitt. In 1 799 he became lord chief -justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and in 1801 he was made lord-chancellor. It is not necessary to i-epeat all the stories which are told of his so- called " intrigues," but he occupied the wool- sack for nearly twenty-six years. In 1834 he had given up public speaking, but he still clung to the hope of being again lord-chancel- lor. This suggests both great energy and great tenacity, but also great dulness as a politician. Indeed, to a man like Eldon the word is misapplied. Whig, Tory, or Eadical, he had no grasp of principles, and could not read the signs of the times. He must, how- ever, have credit for consistency on the ques- tion of the Eoman Catholic Eelief Bill, and perliaps his own words, written with reference to a proposal to erect a monument in honour of his unbroken opposition to the scheme, should be quoted here. "All that I wish," says the aged peer, "of my country is that they would do me the justice to believe that I have meant, and shall continue to at least mean well, whilst I live, able with any exer- cise of judgment to form a meaning. "As to national monument, my dear friend, that honour must be paid only to those who are more deserving of it. As to any other monument, the kindness of that Being who has given me leisure and a respite from labour between the business of life and the close of it, that I might not go hence too weU known to others, too little known to myself" [this turn is not of Eldon's invention], "I trust will postpone for some time longer the occa- sion upon which it may be considered whether I should have a monument to my memory or 246 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. be quietly suffered, which perhaps is best for me, to be forgotten. " I own that I am not in any great hurry to take possession of that little spot of land which, when possessed, must be occupied by me till time shall be no more." Lady Eldon had died in 1831, and the old age of his lordship was very lonely. He is said to have spent much of his time, after his retii'ement and during vacations previ- ously, with inferior people, reading nothing but newspapers, and indulging in mean gos- sip. But he was very playful, and often showed much tender-heartedness. Dr. Surtees declares that no one who knew him could ever call him a liberal man, and yet that he often gave away large sums of money, not being able to bear the sight or even thought of distress. A man who had accumulated more than half a million of money could cer- tainly afford to give. Dr. Surtees records that his friendships were not formed among men of ability and culture, and gives examples of overbearing severity in his relations with his family. But his love for Bessy was strong to the last, and he always opposed second marriages. In this his wife seconded him. He died in January, 1838, and with his de- parture Englishmen of every shade of political opinion felt that "the old dispensation" of politics was closed. It was high time that it should be. The young queen was scarcely seated on her thi'one before it became manifest in various ways (some of which we will now endeavour to suggest) that the great evils of popular ignoi-ance and popular discontent re- quired fresh and far-seeing treatment. The visit of the queen to the city on the 9th of November, 1837— the first "Lord- mayor's Day" after her accession in June — was an event of great public interest, and by no means without its influence upon the sen- timents of the people, who thus had an oppor- tunity of seeing amongst them the young sovereign for whom they entertained a very loyal affection. The royal state procession from Buckingham Palace was imposing, since it consisted of above two hundred carriages extending for nearly a mile and a half, and the royal family, foreign ambassadors, cabinet ministers, and the larger part of the nobility of England took part in the celebration of what was in the nature of a royal progress. All London made holiday, and an enormous num- ber of persons crowded the streets in spite of rather inclement weather. It was a day of enthusiastic acclamation, and the banquet at Guildhall, where the lord-mayor (Sir John Cowan) of coui'se was the host, was a scene of great magnificence, amidst which the queen, seated on the throne, or rather chair of state, at the east end of the hall, maintained her self-possession and responded for the toast in which his lordship proposed her health with a simple dignity which was infinitely becoming. Her majesty in retm-n proposed the lord-mayor and prosperity to the city of London. Banquets were held at an earlier hour in those days than they are at present, for her majesty reached Guildhall at half-past three, and after rising and bowing to her relatives when the health of the royal family was pro- posed (there were but these three toasts on the occasion), left the Guildhall for Bucking- ham Palace at half-past eight, amidst the illuminations which already blazed or twinkled in the streets of the city. The burning of the Royal Exchange on the 10th of January, was a more striking occur- rence in the following year. This was the second Exchange built on the same site — the first, founded by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1566, and opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1570-1, was, of course, destroyed in the great fire of 1666, but the statue of Sir Thomas Gresham re- mained uninjured, and was placed in the second building — a quadrangular structure with a timber clock-tower looking towards Cornhill, a series of stalls or open shops on the upper corridor for the sale of mercery and fancy goods, and a number of statues of the sovereigns from Edward I. to George IV. The total destruc- tion of this building was partly owing to a severe frost which prevented the firemen from obtaining an immediate supply of water. The flames were first seen issuing from Lloyd's Coffee-room, and the fire at once spread with "SIE WILLIAM COUETENAY, KNIGHT OF MALTA." 247 such rapidity tliat iu two Lours the large range of offices belongiug to Lloyd's and to the Exchange Insurance Company were in flames. From half-j^ast ten at night, when the fire broke out, until noon the following day the conflagration continued. "When it reached the tower, the hells, which had been chiming at the i-egular intervals during the progress of destruction, fell one after another, carrying along with them the roof, the stone- work, and the arch of the main entrance. The lord-mayor and several of the aldermen were present during the fii-e, and the police were assisted by a party of soldiers from the Tower and by the guard which is stationed every night within the Bank of England. Strange things happen in the shape of triumphs for gross and ignorant superstition. It is said that Joanna Southcott has yet "fol- lowers" in this country; the delusions of "Brothers, the prophet," are not so very old; and to come down much later, the whole story of Mormonism, with fat Joe Smith, "the gol- den plates of the Book," the false miracles, and the polygamy, has been enacted under living eyes in an age of newspapers, lectures, science, and electric telegraphs. There is perhaps no reason to doubt that if the occasion were again to arise we should find obscure districts in England, not impossibly districts far from obscure, in which scenes like those which now fall to be mentioned might occur among either peasantry or townspeople. So obstinate is hu- man ignorance, so regularly do dulness and cre- dulity reproduce themselves, generation after generation. A few years before the accession of Queen Victoria there was a man named Thom, who was a farmer and maltster living in Corn- wall. He was not poor, and, taking a craze into his head, left Cornwall, set up for himself a new home in Kent, as he had a perfect right to do, and assumed the name and title of Sir William Courtenay, knight of Malta. This also he had a right to do, that is to say the law of England had nothing to say against such folly. Thom devised to wear oriental clothing, such as to his mind behoved a knight of Malta, and as he was a fine-looking man, lived rather handsomely, and made generally a stylish appearance, it was not long before he found himself very popular among the peasan- try of Boughton (famous iu Chaucer's Canter- bury Tales), Heme Hill (near by), and other neighboiuiug parts. But it was not only the clodhoppers who admired " Sir William Cour- tenay, knight of Malta," for jjeople who ought to have seen through him failed to do so, and in the election of 1833 he had actually polled between 300 and 400 votes for Canterbury in the Conservative interest. Before very long he got into the county jail under a convic- tion for perjury; but it soon became clear that he was insane, and Lord John Eussell, who was then home secretaiy, gave orders that he should be set free. Early in the year 1838, he again turned up, almost under the very towers of Cauterbm-y Cathedral, and this time in the character of a miraculously commissioned friend of the farmer and the peasant. The excitement caused by the new poor-law was yet quick and strong, and the farmers had the usual grievances of their class. To the latter he made vehement speeches, in which he pro- mised that, under his auspices, they should have land rent-free. To the poor peasantry he denounced the "Union Bastilles" (as they were called), and prophesied abundant wages or better than wages. Much better indeed were the things he promised, for he announced at last that he was to be the saviour of all who trusted him, followed him, and fought with him; that he would shortly set up his kingdom, and would reward his adherents in untold ways. As he was, by his own account, incapable of being injured, guns and swords would not mattei", and he proposed immediate action. This proposal w^as received with acclama- tion. On the morning of the 28th of May, 1838, an incoherent mob of men and women went forth from Boughton at the heels of this madman, whose train was about a hundred in number, and rushed wildly about the district preaching the new "kingdom" according to Thom, and dragging or enticing farm-labourers from their work. This straggling, excited army kept up their unbeneficent laboms tiU the 31st of that month. On that day a farmer 248 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. who did not believe in Thorn's kingdom, and who wanted his work done as usual, got a con- stable to go in search of one of his truant labourers who was in the madman's train. The valiant knight of Malta shot the constable with hLs pistol, stabbed him with his dagger, and then flung the body into a ditch. This was going too far, and the magistrates sent off in hot haste for the soldiers, who soon made their appearance under the command of Lieutenant Bennett. Thom and his followers had withdrawn in mass to Bossenden "Wood. As soon as ever Bennett moved forward with his men Thom again raised his pistol and shot him dead. Uiwn this the soldiers fired, and it was now Thom's turn to fall. Although it was thus made plain that he was not invul- nerable, his followers were not disabused of their faith in him, and made such a resistance that ten of them were killed and many wounded before they gave in. It seems that Thom had assured his friends that if he fell they might revive him with water, and a poor woman who had followed him for miles with a paiKul spent much pains in trying to put life into his corpse. Others of the poor ignorant creatures maintained that he would rise from the dead in three days and be taken up to heaven in a cloud ! In sj^ite of this steadfast faith, however, these rioters were brought to trial : six were sent to prison for twelve months, and three were transported. In the teeth of all this there were numbers of those who had followed poor Thom, or " Sir "William Courtenay, knight of Malta," who continued to believe in him, and year after year expect his resm-rection from the dead. So much for one striking illustration of popular ignorance among the peasantry of England in 1838. What they were capable of being worked up to expect, we see. In the towns, where there was more intelligence, the Chartist movement assumed by degrees a threatening shape. Townspeople also were capable of forming large expectations, and these found mouthpieces in parliament. The most popular of these political advocates, and the most unflinching, shall now be introduced. In what may be called the lower politics it is seldom difficult to make a position and a name, but reputations fade as rai:)idly as they are acquired. It cannot be said that the name of Thomas Slingsby Duncombe is for- gotten yet, nor perhaps that it deserves to be; but in the high sense Mr. Duncombe was not a politician, and he had not the good fortune or the " luck " (to use a meaner word) of men like "Wilkes and Burdett; he did not happen to come into open conflict with any sort of constituted authority, or have any prolonged quarrel with even " the public," or any con- siderable section of it. His was not the stuff of which martyrs are made, and there was a sort of general understanding (kept within polite bounds) that he was not to be taken completely au grand serieiox. Mr. Duncombe was a nejihew of the first Lord Feversham, and was member for Hertford when the first Reform Bill was carried, — carried not without his assistance, when he was not very far short of forty years of age. He deserves the credit of being all his life a consistent Radical, and an unflinching one. He somehow gave the impression of being a mere " free lance," and yet he was always as true to his colours as Mr. Hume, and he was much more ready to take up a popular cry without inquiry. He was always "the gentleman," indeed a little of a dandy, and this was in his favour so far as "the masses" were concerned. Nor did it hurt him that he was, without concealment, a man of a free life. Those were days in which clever dandies with plenty of money did pretty much as they pleased, without feeling under any 25articular obligation to keejj their amuse- ments to themselves, and Mr. Duncombe's name was as freely associated with that of the beautiful Madame "Vestris as Antony's with Cleopatra. Nor was this the mere scandal of the streets ; it was at the bottom of a thousand jokes in newspapers and other periodicals, and within the last twenty years the late Mr. Van- denhoff, the actor, did not scruple to allude to it in a volume of recollections of stage life. Of course, Mjr. Duncombe — "Tommy Dun- combe," as he was called — was no favourite with the more serious classes, and there were many religious Radicals who refused to vote for him, even under strong pressure, simjily ME. THOMAS S. DUNCOMBE. 249 because they had heard he was " free " in his life. This was especially the case when he stood for Finsbury, in 1834, and afterwards. Fiusbury was an intensely Radical borough, but Lsliugton, which forms part of it, was, and still is, a sort of centre of evangelicalism. Here then, though he was triumphantly re- turned, with his colleague Wakley, of the Lancet, from time to time he had to encounter a good deal of opposition. This, however, he surmounted, and continued for many years to be the " pet " Radical of a very large public. He could nearly always be depended upon, or at least he was usually expected to do the dashing work in the way of attack, to put the awkward question, and to expose the griev- ances of British and foreign patriotism. It is not necessary to inquire too solicitously into his fidelity, principles, or even into the question whether he undei'stood principles at all. But he represented very Avell a bygone phase of Radicalism, and we shall have more than one occasion to note certain results of his vivacity. Speaking generally, it may be said that his Liberalism was of the kind that is typified in the liveliest political passages of Byron, and that something of the spirit of the time of the regency clung to him to the last. He had much savoir faire, and knew by intuition when he was safe, i. e. when he was sure not to be called upon to go too far. Between natural dash, " good fellowship " ways, and a gift of saying smart things, which, if they fell short of wit or humour, produced a laugh, Mr. Duncombe made way, and made his mark. We are now regarding him as the mouth- piece of extreme Radicals, especially of those who cherished lai'ge expectations of change upon the accession of the queen. His connec- tion with Chartism will appeal' in due time. Passing for a moment from the merely po- litical Radical, we alight upon another type, the radical reformer, who invoked the assist- ance of the law for the purpose of clearing his way and making changes in the more obviously alterable framework of things as they were, but whose reliance was not mainly upon re- form bills and kindred measures, but upon social co-operation. One of the most competent authorities in the world upon such a question, because one of the best informed, has declared that in India the best-governed provinces have been those which were under the sway of women. To this it has been answered that that is only because women have a peculiar discernment in choosing their ministers and other ofiicers. Mr. Mill's reply has always been, for substance, "And do you call that nothing? What better quality can a ruler have?" In this country, however, whatever the rights of the sovereign may be, it can scarcely be said that he or she exercises an active or uncontrolled choice in the selection of the ministers who are to rule in her name. According to the old formula the sovereign reigns but does not govern. Ex- pressing no opinions whatever upon the work- ing of this constitutional fiction, we may cer- tainly notice that if the young queen who had now ascended the throne had governed as well as reigned, and had possessed the self- will of Elizabeth or Catherine II. (who was not very felicitous in choosing her ministers), too much was expected upon her accession. What happened was, indeed, a surprising instance of the power of sex upon the imagi- nation, and of the amount of romance that lies dormant in the human mind. The genuine rational enthusiasm did not exceed by an atom what was right and natural, and it was a delightful thing to see staid elderly men, statesmen, philosophers, bishops, judges, and merchants going into raptures of constitutional gallantry over the coronation of a girl of eighteen. Of course everybody heard enough of that empire on which the sun never sets; and if anybody had added, with Chai'les Dickens, "and in which the tax-gatherer never goes to bed," he would have had his hat knocked over his eyes. There was a vague feeling that all grievances were going to be removed, and a romantic delight in the use of the change of style. To pay queen's taxes was felt to be a privilege, and even to be sent to the Queen's Bench had a flavour of novelty in it. "God save the Queen" was sung ten times where "God save the King" had been sung once, and writers vied with each other in com- posing fresh variations on the old air, and 250 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. "additional verses" to the hymn. Clergymen preached special sermons, and sent them, very much perfumed, to the palace. Everything was dedicated to the queen, with or without permission. Of course her majesty's style of dressing her hair became instantly the fashion, and the coal-scuttle bonnet underwent consid- erable modification. These are small matters, and pleasant enough to remember. But there was, not unnaturally, a hazy feel- ing abroad that everybody who had anything new to propose stood some chance of a hear- ing from a cultivated good -hearted young lady. If aU the wild applications from social and other schemers (to say nothing of pro- posals of marriage) that reached the secreta- ries at Buckingham Palace, and went no fur- ther, could be published, the old cry, " a mad world, my master's," would receive some very powerful illustrations. What the Irish ex- pected it would be hard even to guess at. But all the world, or nearly all the world, was startled when it was found that Lord Mel- bourne, who was understood to be a favourite with the young queen, had presented Robert Owen to her. True, Sir Eobert Peel and Mr. Ricardo had encouraged him, and the govern- ment had once even assisted him in one of his experiments ; but that was long ago ; and now, when most peoi:)le would have said, if asked, that he was in a madhouse, he turned up at court to "present" co-operation before the sovereign, with the elegant Melbourne stand- ing by. Now there was a little humour in this, but there was more and better. In 1716, when Caroline of Anspach was Princess of Wales, some amusing things befeU. The Bishop of London went to the palace to expound to her the principles of his faith, and she dismissed him, remarking that she understood them very well already. And we read that Sir Isaac Newton, then aged seventy- four, accompanied by Dr. Samuel Clarke, one day waited on the princess to explain to her the Newtonian philosophy. But just conceive the Robert Owen of the day, if there had been such a person, admitted within the sacred precincts to expound socialism. The topic is not an idle one — far from it. The "condition of the people " was a question which had not then been dreamt of, and it was now, though not as new as the reign of the new queen, entering upon phases which had much nov- elty in them. Of these none was more new to political practice in this country than the phase of co-operation. To the New Lanark scheme and some kindred matters reference has already been made, and the name of Robert Owen has long stood registered among those of the benefactors of civilized society. But thei-e was something characteristic of the simple-hearted innovator in his going to court; and though it was a thing of no consequence in itself, and we may conceive Lord Melbourne laughing in his sleeve, it elated hundreds of the friends of " the principle of co-operation," and scandalized a good many thousands to whom the mere name of Robert Owen stood for atheism, republicanism, universal pillage, and the abolition of marriage. Nothing came of this presentation of the arch-apostle of socialism to the queen, and those who are surprised at it must remember that he had been admired and publicly praised by men as diverse as Prince Metternich and Southey, and that his " record " (as we have mentioned in a previous page) included friendships with emperors abroad and royal dukes at home. But another topic awaits us. A distinguished man, whom we shall shortly find leaping to the front of political activity — a man who has already been introduced in this sketch of recent progress, and whom it wiU in future be impossible to keep out of the page for long together — has drawn an amusing and characteristic picture of the im- mediate results among certain classes of the death of William IV. and the accession of Queen Victoria. Up to within a fortnight of his Majesty's death, eminent persons had de- cided that his illness was only hay -fever. But it proved to be an illness that was fatal, and the consequence was that " the Conserva- tive cause" — a phrase which had already be- come fashionable — was now to " sufi'er " in an unexpected manner by a general election which was to come off before the impending regis- tration had taken place. This catastrophe " darkened the brow of Tadpole, quailed the heart of Taper, crushed all the rising hopes "A GOOD CONSERVATIYE CRY." 251 of those numerous statesmen who believe the country must be saved if they receive twelve hundred a year." It is a peculiar class, Mr. Disraeli went on to say. "To receive ^1200 a year is government; to try to receive .£1200 a year is opposition; to wish to receive £1200 a year is ambition ;" in fact, "£1200 a year, paid quarterly, is their idea of political science and human nature." Thus it happened that " the twelve hundred a year-ers were in despair about the king's death." What could the Conservatives do against the Whigs when they had " the young queen" for a cry ? Some- thing must be done. A dissolution without a cry would in the eyes of Tadpole and Taper be a world without a sun. Church and corn- laws and malt-tax together would not do. Church was "sulky" about the Commission, and everybody knew that the malt-tax was not going to be repealed. Day and night did Tadpole and Tajoer rack their brains for a good Conservative cry to go to the country with. One morning Taper presents Tadpole with a slip of paper, on which is written — " Our young queen and our old institutions." So far Taper and Tadpole. But this great political humorist now takes us to another scene, in which we discern the germ of Young Englaudism. There is an election for Cam- bridge, and the Conservative candidate, who is an old Etonian, is victorious. Among the young Etonians who are at Cambridge there is naturally great throwing up of caps, and yet young Buckhurst, who has done much of the work, and is rejoicing at the triumph of "the Conservative cause," as he calls it, goes on to say, that if "any fellow" were to ask him what the Conservative cause was, he should not know what to say. Henry Sydney (who is intended for Lord John Manners) takes part in the ironical discussion which fol- lows, and the general conclusion reached is that the Conservative government of that day was nothing particularly worth having. It must be remembered that we are quoting Mr. Disraeli sketching the state of things which existed at the king's death, and that he distinctly, speaking in his own person, claimed that "the Tory party was the natural popular political confederation of the country." All this must be borne in mind if we would intel- ligently follow the subsequent career of Mr. Dis- raeli, Sir Eobert Peel, and Mr. Gladstone, and the manner in which "the condition-of-the- people question" has kept itself uppermost for nearly two generations. What, then, does Mr. Disraeli at this time enumerate as the "notes" of the Conservative party % In his own words, "a crown rohbed of its prerogatives" — this should be remembered — "a church controlled by a Commission, and an aristocracy that does not lead." This last clause also demands special notice, "Under whose genial influence," says Henry Sydney, "the order of the peasantry, a country's pride, has vanished from the face of the land, and is succeeded by a race of serfs, who are called labourers and who burn ricks." Another of those young heroes of debate pro- ceeds to say that the "Conservative cause" means, for one thing, that "the peojale are drudges. It yields everything to agitation ; it does not enunciate a single principle, and it has established political infidelity throughout the land." All this we are bound to record as matter of history, and especially on account of its connection with a noticeable movement, partly political, partly social, of which we may discern a hint in the part played by Henry Sydney (who, as has been exj^lained, stands for Lord John Manners) in the discussion among those undergi'aduates nearly fresh from Eton. But Mr. Disraeli was not the first man to discuss the "condition-of-the-people" question from the point of view that the English "aris- tocracy did not lead." Whether this was or is true or false, or what it should lead to if true, it is not the business of this outline of recent history to inquire ; but we ai'e for the jjresent engaged in gathering upcertain strands of influence or opinion with especial reference to the earliest years of a new reign, in which there was much vague and half-sentimental expectation of great and rapid change for the better, and much unloosing of tongues. A new voice was to be heard now; that, namely, of Mr. Carlyle, whose work entitled Chartism, published at this time, may be said to have flung bomb-shells into every camp of opinion, and to have spoken the watchword of a great 252 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. movement, universally admitted to have been beneficial, namely, the emigration movement. It is not as a literary matter that this account of recent progress has any immediate concern with Mr. Carlyle's book on Chartism, or any other of his writings, though as an influential man of letters he must find his jilace. But he was the organ outside of parliament (and in- deed outside of all political action proper) of certain reactionary tendencies in public feel- ing, and no one has expressed them with half his force and singleness of purpose. This is admitted. In what is now to be said the point to be noted is, that the reactionary ten- dencies were facts, and that they have been smouldering on ever since at a slow rate of combustion, except when now and then they have broken out into flame. Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Richmond, as is well known, attended, in no hostile spirit, meetings in favour of household suSrage and annual parliaments. These things do not, of themselves, belong either to a Tory, a Con- servative, a Whig, or a Radical programme — a point which will have to be remembered in estimating the political history of Mr. Disraeli from the time when he sat for Shrewsbury to the time when he introduced a reform bill which gave the right of voting to a much larger public than Earl Russell's bill had pro- posed to do. It is true that annual parlia- ments and imiversal suflfrage became part of that Chartist demand to which we are now coming ; but the point at bottom was nothing so mechanical-looking as any question of the duration of a parliament. The creed of the Tory or Conservative has always involved this, that it is the duty of the aristocracy, re- presented by the government, to guide and care for "the peoijle." In its extreme form it meant, in the words of a certain nobleman, "the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." This is dead and gone; by universal consent it was buried in the graves of the Sidmouths and Eldons. But it will be seen that it was the direct opposite of what may be called the Whig- Radical programme which had now been in vogue for so many years, and was soon to be partially obscured in a Conservative reaction. The Chartist wanted more power in order that "govern- ment" might take more care of "the people." The Whig- Radical principle was laisser-faire, or let alone; that is to say, every man for him- self ; freedom of control not only between rich and rich, and poor and poor, but between rich and poor and all i-ound. Labour shall liave whatever wages it can get in an open market, and capital whatever interest it can get in an open market. To prevent utter anarchy (said this scheme) there must be some sort of poor- law provision ; but it is (said the Whig-Radi- cal) only a compromise which we unwillingly come to, and we must pare dowTi that pro- vision to the very closest rind of help, stick- ing close to the labour test, and refusing, as a rule, out-door relief. Now it is well known that this was not what "the people" wanted, and that they turned angrily on their Whig-Radical friends when they found that this was the programme. The "philosophical Radicals" vexed them even more than the mild old-fashioned Whigs, for they were ever so much more thorough-going in the application of the principle that every man is the proper guardian of his own in- terests ; that for anybody else to attempt the care of them can lead to nothing but mischief; that government should do nothing for the citizen that the citizen can do for himself; that if he is poor, it is his own aff'air exclu- sively, and that if he has a larger family than he can heljD it is so much the worse for him, but no concern of any other human being. As to this last point, however, there was sometimes an exception made. A few of the " philosojDhical Radicals" held — though the thing was pretty well kept under hatches — that to have a large family was an off"ence against the common interest, and ought to be punished as a crime, like bankruptcy. Now we have already referred to the hatred called forth by the new poor-law in the mass of the people, but it is not easy at this distance of time to make it real to the imagination. The mass of agricultural labourers and artisans had not of themselves the requisite knowledge for following up things of this kind to first principles, but they had instructors botli in THE REV. J. E. STEPHENS. 253 the press and otherwise. Speeches were made at public meetings and pamphlets jjublished, as to which it was next to impossible to say whether the proposals were serious or not. Dean Swift's ironical scheme for killing the majority of the babies born in Ireland and using them as food/ was painfully suggested by these proceedings. Horrible as Swift's proposal seems, it was after all only a shock- ing jest ; but now, at the very time when the young queen came to the throne, there were publicly made in print and at meetings seri- ous proposals which, though they escaped the cannibalism, had no other superiority over Dean Swift's. All was to be done in due course of law. There was to be a public ex- termination of infants, or at all events a pub- lic registrar of exterminations; and there were to be public cemeteries, " adorned with trees and flowers,'' in which parents, particularly mothers, might take their walks abroad, and indulge a pleasing melancholy amid the me- morials of the exterminated. To readers of the new generation this will perhaps appear like a bad joke, to which not even the quota- tions given by Mr. Carlyle in his Chartism will lend an air of gravity ; but to readers of middle age it will be sufficient, if they have forgotten, to recall certain pamphlets publicly sold under such author-names as Marcus and Anti-Marcus. The effect of all this — and much more — upon the ordinary hard-headed unedu- cated poor man, who thought of little more than his victuals, and was always ready to use unquotable language about all government whatever, was bad enough in one way. But J It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the countrj', when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin -doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. ... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children ... is, in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance ; and therefore wiioever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these chil- dren sound, easy members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. ... I shall now, therefore, humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourish- ing, and wholesome food, whetlier stewed, roasted, baked. it had effects of a different kind u])on men like the Eev. J. R. Stephens, a Wesleyan minister of the day. Mr. Stephens (who is only recently dead) was a man of genius and very beautiful character. As a speaker he was one of the most eloquent men that ever lived, and overcharged with most contagious fire. His violence of speech got him into the hands of the government, and this was per- haps a good thing both for him and the nation. For he was a man of the John Brown type, only more capable of making himself gener- ally loved ; and when a man of that stanq> preached revolt, or something like it, in the name of God and Christ, it was time for the authorities to look about them. Under the influence of his eloquence strong men sobbed and shook, women fainted, and too often there would run through the assembly that awful sound, the hum or growl of execration. This is partly anticij^ating, but it is as well to show what "a dainty dish" was "set before the queen " on her accession or soon after it. It was not the fault of the baser (or sometimes the merely simpler and more earnest) class of agitators and enthusiasts, if the royal lady was not kept well posted up in the new ideas and schemes; for the current fancy in the heads of this sort of peoj^le was that every- thing should be sent " to the palace " in order that "the queen" might "know." How much was really sent nobody can tell, or how much was kept back by secretaries. It was, as has been hinted, Mr. Cai'lyle who boldly laid bare some of the most unwelcome and startling facts of the " condition of Eng- or boiled ; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasse or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part be males ; that the remain- ing hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom ; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone the fore or hind quarter will make a reason- able dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in win- ter. — From>4 Modest Proimsal for preventing the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from becoming a Burden on their Parents or Country, and for making them beneficial to the Public. 254 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. •land " question, and gave, for the first time, a responsible and tliouglitful utterance to the popular discontent. Great was the effect pro- duced, not in parliament or in political organi- zations outside of it, but in touching the springs of social and political thought and feeling everywhere. It was he who boldly and even savagely challenged the Radical economists to fight out their battle to the death upon the basis of what he called the Dismal Science (political economy); and what- ever opinions a man might hold nobody could resist the force of the humour or pathos of the passages in Chartism and Past and Pre- sent, in which he gathered up facts well known to newspaper readers and annalists, and strung them together on a fresh thread of connection. Not many illustrations of the same order have been so frequently reproduced as the case of the poor woman who, being unable to get help, went and had typhus fever, and "proved her sisterhood" and her claim by infecting seven people. Again, his ridicule of the attempts made to prove that the distress of the people arose from ovei'-production. " Ye miscellaneous, ignoble mamifacturing individ- uals, ye have produced too much ! We accuse you of making above two hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made, of fustian, of cassimere, or Scotch -jilaid, of jane, nankeen and woollen broadcloth, are they not manifold J Of hats for the human head, of shoes for the human foot, of stools to sit on, spoons to eat with — Nay, what say we, hats or shoes ? You produce gold-watches, jewelleries, silver-forks and epergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, stuffed sofas — Heavens, the Commercial Bazaar and multitudinous Howel-and-Jameses cannot con- tain you. You have produced, produced; — he that seeks your indictment, let him look around. Millions of shirts and empty pairs of breeches hang there in judgment against you. We accuse you of over-producing; you are criminally guilty of producing shirts, breeches, hats, shoes, and commodities in a frightful over-abundance. And now there is a glut, and your operatives cannot be fed !" What Mr. Joseph Hume, or Sir William Molesworth, or Sir Eobert Peel would liave said to this in the House of Commons is not to the point, for we are not offering opinions, but listening to an exposition from a given side. But it is certain that the most intelli- gent men in parliament were on the side of "national education." The question was stated over and over again as part of the new jDro- gramme of reform. " Captain Swing and Chartism having arisen, is there no official person who will stand up for the Alphabet, — who will say, 'Avaunt, ye gainsayers! Be- concile yourselves to the alphabet, or depart elsewhere.'" This w^as instantly caught up as a cry, and yet it took us more than thirty years to reconcile oui'selves to the aljjhabet. In every direction there were now to be seen in England signs of a reversion to the old-world view of what is called "paternal government;" everywhere the masses of the people were showing that they w\anted things done for them which the jDredominant politi- cal creed held they ought to do for themselves. It is not necessary here to do more than refer in passing to the long struggle that was now beginning, and that went on for many years, between those who were in favour of govern- ment interference with labour in factories and mines and those who were not. This is only one illustration of the ideas that really lay underneath what was called Chartism. In the pai-liamentary debates the illustrations were abundant. It must not for a moment be sup- posed that the Chartist movement was mere Radicalism. To make this mistake would be utterly to misapprehend the course of events which it will fall to our lot to trace out more or less from this turning-point. Two subjects now began to assume, as was natural, new colours and greater prominence, and upon these Mr. Carlyle was the firet de- cided and unflinching speaker. One tvas what we call the organization of industry, and the imperative call upon manufactm-ers and cajii- talists of other kinds to become " captains of industry;" the other was the expediency of emigration upon a large scale under the guid- ance of " captains of emigration." One of the most striking passages in Chartism upon this subject became the key-note of much philan- thropic effort, which, in connection with FATHEE MATHEW. 255 Mrs. Chisholm and others, will fall to be uoticed ia due time: — "In a world where Canadian Forests stand uufelled, boundless Plains and Prairies unbroken with the plough; on the west and on the east green desert spaces never yet made white with corn, and to the overcrowded little western nook of Europe, our Terrestrial Planet, nine-tenths of it yet vacant or tenanted by nomades is still crying, Come and till me, come and reap me ! And in an England with wealth, and means for moving such as no nation ever before had. With ships; with war-ships rotting idle, which, but bidden move and not rot, might bridge all oceans. With trained men educated to pen and practise, to administer and act; brief- less Barristers, chargeless Clergy, taskless Scholars languishing in all court-houses, hid- den in obscure garrets, besieging all ante-cham- bers, in passionate want of simply one thing, Work; — with as many Half -pay Officers of both Services, wearing themselves down in wretched tedium, as might lead an Emigrant host larger than Xerxes'. . . . Meanwhile, what portion of this inconsiderable Terraque- ous Globe have ye actually tilled and delved till it will grow no more ? How thick stands your population in the Pampas and Savannas of America ; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of Africa on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man in one year, as I have understood it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself and nine others. Alas! where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our still-growing still-expanding Europe; who, when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist and, like fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable living valour; equipped, not now with the battle- axe and war-chaiiot, but with the steam- engine and ploughshare? Wliere are they? Preserving their game!" It is a fact that this appeal had an effect, which no one now denies, in awaking the aristocracy of England to a sense of threatening perils for the nation. On the other hand, the working-classes were not spared, and they also have seriously modi- fied their policy during the last thirty yeai'S. "My difficulty," said Sir Robert Peel, as we have already seen, " was not Canada," was not this, that, or the other; "my difficulty was Ireland." For a moment it looked as if the national enthusiasm of the Irish people when a girl of eighteen ascended the throne of these kingdoms would make Ireland less of a diffi- cixlty; and the sudden aj^pearance upon the scene of Father Mathew, the great apostle of temperance, did much to aid the illusion. The life of the Eev. Theobald Mathew, to say nothing of his work in his native land, will bear a little dwelling on. The details of such a life do not concern us here except so far as they throw light on his character and performances. That he was a Roman Catholic priest is a fact which itself speaks volumes. Left early an orphan, he was sent by a relative to the Catholic College at Kil- kenny, but he became eventually a candidate for the priesthood, and studied at Maynooth. Afterwards he became a Capuchin, and ministered at Cork, where his kindness, simple eloquence, and amiable manners made him universally popular, and what is better, gener- ally beloved and "looked up to." Negative kindness, inoffensiveness, even generosity, is not so very uncommon; but "the enthusiasm of humanity," that remarkable product of Chris- tian ethics, is rare in all churches and out of them. Perhaps he was always somewhat reck- less in his acts of charity. He introduced the Brotherhood of St. Vincent de Paul, founded schools, and in a hundred ways showed the depth of his religious and moral convictions, the goodness of his heart, and his untiring in- dustry where the welfare of his fellow-crea- tures was concerned, and the object in view was at all within the scope of his mind. This reservation is necessary, for there was nothing large about his views, and notliing scientific in the habits of his mind; nor had he any quick sense of human rights; or perhaps any capacity of strict constructions in regard to some of the virtues that Englishmen dearly love. Business capacity he had none; but when evidence was laid before him that about four-fifths of the crime and three-fourths of the beggary in his native country were due directly or indirectly to "the drink," his heart 256 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. was stirred within him, and he began to move rapidly and vigorously in the direction which had been suggested to him by some American friends of "total abstinence," and by four citizens of Cork — a Protestant clergyman, a slater, a Quaker, and a tailor. By tliis time Mathew was a superior in the Capuchin order of friars, and his zeal and activity in the cause were unbounded, and his influence great. He went about in Cork, Limerick, and Kerry, ad- ministering the pledge, and very soon 150,000 Irishmen were registered, and one may say, considering the terms in which the pledge was administered by this pious priest, sworn tee- totallers. Before long he had extended his labours to Dublin and other parts of Ireland; and then he went to Glasgow, Manchester, and London, administering the pledge to hundreds of thousands. The good results w^ere un- deniable, though it could be no pleasure to him to find that his own brother, a distiller, was ruined by the falling off in his trade ! He is said to have "pledged" as many as 50,000 persons in one day. Those were not days in which photographs could be sold for a penny, and the daguerreotype was a new thing; but lithographic portraits of Father Mathew in the attitude of benediction, with the words of the pledge recorded underneath, were so com- mon that at last the surplus stock came to be extensively used as waste paper by shop- keepers. In England, however, where a Catholic priest carries no such prestige as he does in Ireland, his success was not unalloyed; he was a good deal " used " for political pur- poses, and more than a little laughed at. Some exceedingly interesting ejDisodes in the life of Father Mathew have been pubhshed, and an amusing biography of the " apostle of temperance" was written by the late Mr. Maguire, M.P. It wovdd appear that while the temperance cause was prospering it was impossible for the man who had organized it and carried it on to keep out of debt. His chief pleasure in life was to be giving, and at the very time when he was making the most prodigious exei-tions in the cause the black horseman. Care, was ever riding behind him, fiUing his mind with anxiety, and depriving him of rest at night, and all for the public good. "My heart is eaten up by care and solicitude of every kind," he once exclaimed at a festive meeting at Cork, and the hour of his deepest bitterness was not far off, for while publicly administering the pledge in Dublin he was arrested for the balance of an account due to a medal manufacturer, the Ijuiliff to whom the duty was intrusted kneeling down among the crowd, asking his blessing, and then quietly showing him the writ. The moment the fact became known steps were taken to relieve him of his difficulties, and to a certain extent this was done, but he was never thoroughly free of debt. His house in Cove Street, where the great temjoerance movement commenced, was the resort of thousands of converts, and the place smelt of whisky more than any tap-room iji Cork, for "the boys" would often come in from a drinking bout. His old servant John, who liked whisky, hated the pledge, and objected still more to the house being invaded by peo- ple for whom the pantry had often to be ran- sacked that they might be fed after a long journey, was one of the good priest's trials. So gi'eat was the tyranny of this retainer that it was only checked when his master, more exasperated than usual, exclaimed, ".John, if you go on in this way, I must certainly leave this house." This dreadful John scandalized his master when friends were partaking of his hospitality. On one occasion there was a frightful smack of whisky pervading the pure element that graced the board, which he ac- counted for by saying he had placed the spirits with which he "cleaned his tins" in the jug by mistake ; but from the manner in which John retired for the night to his bed, it was thought that the whisky was more often used for in- ward than for outward application. Of the homage paid to Father Mathew by the people a very quaint account is given in Mr. Maguire's book. The missionary of temperance had ar- rived in the dusk of the evening at the house of a parish priest in a remote jxirt of the county Galway, where he was to preach in aid of the funds of a school, convent, or chapel, and afterwards administer the pledge. The best room in the house was prepared for the honoured guest, who was conducted to it by SUCCESS OF THE "TEMPEEANCE CRUSADE." 257 his host. The room was on the ground-floor, and was lighted by a large bay-window, which was without blind or curtain of any kind. Father Mathew, turning his face to the wall and his back to the window, soon fell into a deep slumber. Awaking, as was usual with him, at an early hour in the morning, he opened his eyes and moved towards the win- dow, when he beheld a crowd of people — men, women, and children — in front of the blindless and curtainless bay-window, and at least a score of noses flattened against the glass^ the better to enable their respective proprietors to obtain a peep at his reverence. A more modest man did not exist, and he looked about for a bell-pull, or for a bell, but such a luxury in the house of a parish priest in a mountain parish of Galway was not to be thought of, and though there was something that looked like a bell-pull at one side of the fireplace right across the room, it might as well have been twenty miles away. The crowd outside was increasing, and various dialogues were heard between those who were anxiously awaiting his waking movements, but who were careful not to speak too loud in case of waking him. For three liours he had to endure this tiresome imj^risonment till his considerate host, who would not "disturb" his guest too early, entered the apartment, and then becoming aware of the presence of the admiring crowd, took measures for dispersing them. In Ireland the "temperance crusade" of Father Mathew had an important political bearing. O'Connell was not the man to miss a good opportunity, and he did his best to " work in" his own agitation for "repale" with the labours of the excellent Capuchin, who was said to have worked miracles, and even to have raised a dead man to life. He de- clined to lend his aid to the uprooting of the superstitious ideas which had got mixed up with the cause, alleging that he was afraid of rooting up the wheat along with the tares. In the ignorant masses of the Irish people there were at this time all manner of wild beliefs. It was supposed that a grand conflict was impending, and that O'Connell was to be king of Ireland. The temperance medals, sold at a shilling each, were cherished as sacred Vol. I. talismans; and great was the gratification with which O'Connell looked upon Father Mathew's two millions of abstaining enthusiasts, as likely instruments for political purposes. There was not necessarily anything sinister about this. Unpleasant questions have been asked as to where the money collected by Mathew went to, and nobody dreamed of his having done any- thing selfish or unfair ; but neither need we suspect others. AH large movements among masses of people are expensive, and it was nothing to the discredit of any political agita- tion to look upon two millions of sober Irish- men, ready organized, as much better than crowds of stragglers without organization and apt to be full of whisky. It is not necessary for our purpose to follow the personal history of Father Mathew to its end; he died with no stain upon his fame but that of improvidence and too lavish generosity. After his return from a temperance mission to America, and the loss of much of his influence, he drooped. Repeated attacks of paralysis brought him to his end. For many years he had been in receipt of a pension of £300 granted by the queen from the civil list ; but this was prac- tically forestalled during the progress of his labours, for he had appropriated the money to the payment of premiums on the assurances that he had made on his life, that he might not leave behind him the heavy debts he had incurred chiefly for the cause of temper- ance. It cannot be said, and has not been seriously maintained, that the work of Father Mathew was one of far-reaching success; but the actual sight of what could be done with Irishmen was an impressive lesson, sud was not thrown away upon English observers. It was one more striking instance of " organization" among the masses of the people, and the social and political students who were watching the movements of the Chartists and the immense growth among the working classes of Great Britain of the habit of associating in numbers, who were not so sober as the two millions of the Capuchin Friar — hardly knew whether to be pleased or alarmed. We have now passed in review, however briefly and imperfectly, some of the incidents 17 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. aud characteristics of the first year or so of the young queen's reign. With the departure of the Duke of Cumberland to Hanover, there to take his place as sovereign, the people at large got rid of a sad bugbear, and though men turned eighty are apt to die, it was a somewhat striking coincidence that the last thoroughgoing representative of political fos- silism should have been removed in the course of nature at about the same time. Poor Leti- tia Landon and others addressed her majesty iu verses which began with the beauty of the dawn or early morning, and went on to fore- tell a millennium for England — the reign of peace and joy to begin at once. But as we have seen there was a good deal of work to do yet, and swords were not at present to be beaten into ploughshares, nor white gloves presented to the judges all round. Bad har- vests and depression of trade, overproduction and falling wages, could not be prevented by queen, kaiser, or council. It now became plain, or at all events it was felt by the poor to be plain, that the middle classes, having used the lower as instruments for obtaining an extension of the franchise up to a certain point, were not disposed to push that question any farther. There is no doubt a great mistake when one "class" attributes concerted and conscious design to another class, where both are so very numerous as was the case here; but that did not help. The middle classes had had enough of it for a time, and, besides, ques- tions of national finance were uj^permost in their minds, as well they might be. Avowedly or not, the thoughts of thousands of Liberals turned hankeringly to Sir Eobert Peel, the great financier in whose school Mr. Gladstone was partly trained, and though nobody yet dreamed that he would be "the man" to repeal the corn-laws when "the houi'" arrived, there was a strong conviction among the foremost men of all political creeds that that repeal must come before long. We say among all politicians in the front rank, not by any means intending to convey that there was anything like general consent upon the subject, on the Tory or Conservative side. Even then, however, there was " a feeling " that it must come. There was a strong impression among the working-classes and their political guides that the only remedy required for their sufferings was more class power in parliament. Six members of parliament on the Radical side concurred, or thought they concurred, with them in this, and in association with six re- presentatives of " the people," themselves " working men," they drew np a formal state- ment of the celebi-ated Six Points, which were to be embodied, if the fates were favourable, in what was called the People's Charter. The points, as has been already pointed out, were not new, and, with increased light and experi- ence, we living at a later day, find something arid and mechanical in the very sound of these Six Points: — 1. The extension of the right of voting to every (male) native of the United Kingdom, and every naturalized foreigner re- sident in the kingdom for more than two years, who should be twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and unconvicted of crime. 2. Equal electoral districts. 3. Vote by ballot. 4. Annual parliaments. 5. No property quali- fication for members: and 6. Payment of members of parliament for their services. Arid and mechanical or not, such were the " terms" which veiy large masses of the people set themselves to demand of the government, and from this time forward we hear more aud more of Chartism, a word which was, however, used with considerable vagueness, and some- times thrown at the heads of comparatively moderate reformers, of course on the old prin- ciple, give a dog an ill name and hang him. Some very amusing scenes at public meetings, and discussions in the press, were the result of this vagueness. On the 6th of August, 1838, there was a very large meeting at HoUoway Head, Bir- mingham, a meeting held, like others of the same order, in the open air, and not without more reasons than one, for the numbers who attended have been estimated at from 150,000 to 200,000. There 'may be exaggeration even in the lower of these two figures, but there is no doubt that there was in the minds of the majority even of the more sober-minded Chartists a feeling, more or less latent, that it would not be a bad thing for political "pro- FEAEGUS O'CONNOR. 259 gress" if the people shoioed tlieir " physical force," whcatever they did with it. This -was a principle which we find openly avowed much later on by no less moderate a person than Mr. John Stuart Mill, who, at about the time of the Hyde Park riots, made the remark that the countries in which the people were allowed to show their power were precisely the countries in which they were never called upon to use it. We shall see, however, that "physi- cal force Chartism" was an actual thing at this time, and that a very small mistake on the part of the government might have had con- sequences beside which the Peterloo story would have sunk into shadow. Here emerges a name of which we shall hear more in the course of this narrative of the doings of the last fifty years, tliat of Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister. There is some doubt whether he was ever strictly speaking sane, and eventually, as will ap- pear, he lost his reason, though he retained his cunning. He was hardly a favourable specimen of a " people's man," though he was of great height and possessed enormous strength, but he was one of the speakers at this gathering. Mr. Altwood, one of the members for Birmingham, was in the chair, and his colleague, Mr. Scholefield, was among the speakers. These were both familiar names in those days. The meeting was con- ducted with great ordei-liness, and was even opened with prayer or invocation. French exiles wanted to know why the English did nothing at such a meeting as this ; they could not understand the absence of insurrection and bloodshed: but a petition in favour of the People's Charter was agreed upon, and passed with great enthusiasm. Shortly after this another large meeting was held at Manchester, also in the open air, and in this case Mr. Fielden, the member for Oldham, was in the chair. Mr. StejDhens, the Wesleyan minister of whom mention has already been made, was the chief orator, and he spoke to some purpose. He was a very ex- citable man, and his oratory was a striking illustration of the truth of a fine observation of Mr. Gladstone's, to the efi'ect that what the orator receives from his audience in vapour he pours back upon them in flood. As Mr. Ste- phens (who, by the by, belonged, we believe, not to the main Wesleyan body, but one of the oflT- shoots) got so far off his balance as to put, in a significant tone of voice, the question, " Why have you left your arms at home 1 Is it because you are afraid I " it is very possible that this good and eloquent, but over-excitable man, was going on to say, "No, but because you were too wise aud good to bring them out with you." But when uneducated men get together in tens of thousands, and grow excited under appeals to their lower impulses, they do not stand upon niceties, and the question of the orator, "Is it because you are afraid]" was answered with shouts of "No !" and growls of defiance. Perhaps it was a good thing for Mr. Stephens himself that his career as a poli- tical agitator was brought to an early close, for he was the kind of man who might very well have lost his reason if too frequently excited. In London and elsewhere the Chartists were not idle. There was at least one meeting held in Westminster, close to the houses of parliament, in the middle of the day, and in the northern and southern suburbs, there were open-air meetings at night. There is nothing particularly dreadful in a torch, or in a meet- ing by torchlight; but when, as the days shortened, the meetings came to be held by torchlight, it somehow seemed as if a new element of alarm had entered into them. The secretary of state for the home department. Lord John Pussell, issued orders to magis- trates in the counties, calling upon them to declare these meetings illegal, and to keeji the people well advised and well warned. This was in November, and in December a royal proclamation was issued, warning well-dis- posed and peaceable subjects not to attend such meetings. The Chartists said, naturally enough, that there were no halls large enough for such immense assemblages of people, and that, even if there were, they could not get the use of them. As for the torches, they could only meet after working- hours, and what else could they do for light? This was all reasonable enough, and has been said a great many times since; but, unluckily, 260 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. Stephens forgot himself so far as to utter words Avhich looked like a suggestion to the populace of Ashton-undei-Lyiie, that there was a magistrate in the district (who had dis- pleased the Chartist party) whom it would not be a bad thing to punish by bringing the torches into too close proximity to his house. This was madness and worse, and now that it had come to questions of "burning out" re- spectable citizens who did not agree with Mr. Stephens about the new poor-law, it was time to put on the drag. Stephens was arrested, and a great sensation his arrest made all over the country, for there was much about him and even his wildest addresses that everybody liked. He was, however, released on bail, and meanwhile went on just as he had done before his arrest, or perhaps rather worse. His sermons on the duty of the rich to the poor, and the wi-ath of Heaven de- noimced in the Bible against the oppressors of the defenceless, took the audiences on the weak side, and awoke storms of emotion. He had a fine head, with a face capable of ex- pressing great tendei'ness, and his portraits had nearly as large a sale as his sermons. It would be wrong to compare Stephens to Mr. Spurgeon, for the latter has much shrewd- ness and is altogether of the steady order of mind, while the former had much more poetry in him. He had neither the robustness nor the general power of Chalmers, and it is not easy to name any pulpit orator whom he much resembled. Richard Lalor Shell, if he had been a preacher, would have been some- what like him. When parliament assembled in 1839 the young queen was called upon to refer in her speech to the alarming and unlawful pi'ocedure of the less prudent Chartists ; and it was not a very pleasant topic for her or her ministers. It was bad enough that the winds of discord, not to say sedition, had been let loose so early in the reign which promised so well (and which has fulfilled its promise), but worse was to come. Mr. Duncombe moved by way of amendment in the debate on the royal address, that her majesty should be advised that the Reform Bill had caused the gi-eatest disap- pointment to her people, and that the Com- mons were of opinion that the suffrage should now be largely extended, as the only means of securing something like a balance of politi- cal power in the nation, and giving the poor a chance of obtaining some of their rights. Now the Reform Act had only been in opera- tion about six years, and yet so strongly was the dissatisfaction of "the masses" represented in the House of Commons, that out of 426 members present, 86 voted for Mr. Dun- combe's amendment. This is only a sixth of 512, but it was a number large enough to pro- duce a strong impression, and at once to en- rage and stimulate the Chartist party outside the walls of the house. Some of the missionary advocates of Chai-t- ism were men of high character and intelli- gence. It will not be understood as reflect- ing upon any of the othei's if Henry Vincent (not long ago deceased, and universally re- spected) and William Lovett are selected for special mention. They were men of a very diff"erent stamp, but both of them sincere, honourable, and able. Unfortunately the "party of order" had its "roughs" as well as the Chartist party, and untimely collisions with some of these " roughs " produced the worst possible eff"ect. In the spring of this year Mr. Vincent and some other men who formed a deputation from the London Chart- ists to the Radicals of Devizes were assaulted by a mob in that town, and in other parts there were not wanting signs that there was such a thing as physical-force aniz-Chartism, and that collisions were imminent. Of course the name of the queen was freely used on both sides. The authorities thought it was now time to go beyond proclamations and warnings, and Mr. Vincent found himself in jail, on a charge of having uttered seditious language at Newport. It is a curious reflection that much more " seditious language " than most of that for which men like Vincent and Lovett were imprisoned would now excite no particular attention. The imprisonment of Vincent was a source of deep regret in circles where "physical-force Chartism," as it was called, was held in the deepest abhorrence. In May a body called the National Convention, composed of work- THE "NATIONAL CONVENTION." 261 ing-men delegates, or delegates appointed by working-men, from every part of the country, met in London, and held continuous sittings, in which the Charter and the condition-of-the- people question were freely discussed. Of course the men and their doings were open to a good deal of criticism : there was plenty that was rough and crude, and outsiders had much to say about " demagogues." But this conven- tion brought forward what was called the "National Petition," in favour of the Five Points, and it was presented, after a fashion, on the 14th of June. It was a more comic than serious circumstance that this National ])etition, which was said to have been endorsed by 1,200,000 signatures, was so large that it had to be j^ropelled into the House of Com- mons like a roll of carpet. Six earnest and athletic Radical members performed the feat of thus introducing the document ; and there was not much laughter. On the contrary, it was treated with respect, some of which was no doubt a little forced. That tried and uncompromising Radical, Mr. Attwood, was heard at length on the prayer of the petition, the house having been polite enough to sus- pend a standing order for the purpose. In all this it must be borne in mind that down to a quite late period the very word Chartist was a name of terror. Mr. Attwood moved on the 12th of July that the whole house should resolve itself into committee to con- sider the Five Points; and out of 424 mem- bers 189 voted for the proposal, but of course the majority of 235 against it was not only decisive, as a much smaller majority would have been, but was taken out of doors to be contemptuous. Some of the minority of 189 who voted for Mr. Attwood's motion were moved by motives of conciliation, not unmingled with appi-ehen- sion. For since the presentation of the great rolly-polly petitioii there had been a disturb- ance at Birmingham (for which town Mr. Attwood sat). The government with doubt- ful wisdom desi^atched a body of sixty Lon- don policemen armed to Birmingham. This intrusion of an alien force was displeasing even to the authorities at Birmingham, and the Radicals were enraged by it. The " National Convention " sitting in London (at the National Hall, now or lately a music- hall) forwarded to their brethren, " sitting " in conclave at Birmingham, a vote of con- demnation applying to this step on the part of the government. Mr. Lovett and Mr. Collins, the secretaries of the convention, were now apprehended, which was wliat we should certainly now condemn as an arbitrary mea- sure. Although the town -council condemned the action of the government in sending Lon- don police, armed or otherwise, to Birming- ham, they would not, or at all events did not, allow the Chartists the use of the Town Hall for one of their meetings, and so these determined persons assembled in the Bull Ring, which was a place of somewhat inelegant repute, a sort of extensive hollow towards which many streets converged, and which had formerly been used for bull-baiting. This made the meeting and its objects neither worse nor better; but when the jDolice endeavoured to break up the meet- ing and disperse the crowd, they failed at first, and the military were called out. The refusal of the House of Commons to agree to Mr. Attwood's motion caused great excite- ment, and the day after it was known in Birmingham there was a good deal of rioting, with some house-burning. A still more ugly symptom was that in some of the northern towns, and in the midlands too, troops of men went about "begging," that is to say, demanding food and money of shopkeepers and others. The National Convention now recommended not only a run on the savings- banks for gold, and entire abstinence from the use of all excisable articles, but also the observance of a " sacred month," during which all labour should be suspended. To this was added a recommendation to procure ai'ms. The great idea, however, of the more moderate of the Chartist multitudes was to show them- selves as much as possible, and one of the plans devised and acted upon for this purpose was to visit the churches in great numbers. Nothing particular came of this, but perhaps that was not wholly the fault of the people. There was real trouble among the poor, and if all had been well or nearly well in the body politic, save their immediate suiFerings, their 262 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. presence in churches and cathedrals would have had results better than sentimental. However, towards the latter jDart of this year the Chartist leaders were brought to trial. Vincent was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and so were Lovett and Collins. Stephens was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment; some of the Birmingham rioters were sentenced to death, and a gi-eat number of minor offenders to imprisonment. Mr. Vincent and his two fellow-prisoners made a very favourable impression, particularly Mr. Vincent, — and he, and Lovett, and Collins were complimented by the crown counsel on the good taste as well as the skill with which they had conducted their own defence. After- wards Sergeant Talfourd, from his place in parliament, endeavoured to obtain some miti- gation of the rigours of the treatment to which Vincent was subjected, and he was successful in that endeavour. The treatment was very severe. After these measures on the part of the government there was much debate on the part of the Chai'tists, in convention and else- where, as to what was to be done, but in September the convention was dissolved. The debates had been hot, and it was only by the casting-vote of the chairman that the measure was carried. It was a misfortune that this gathering of Chartists received a name so unluckily suggestive of the French revolution. Shortly after it had ceased to sit Mr. Fear- gus O'Connor (of whom more will have to be said jiresently) was arrested; and Sir John Campbell, attorney-general for the time, as- sured the country in the uame of the Liberal ministry that Chartism had been put down. There is something very instructive about this. "Plain John" was a slu-ewd man, and there were shrewd men in the cabinet. Yet so blinding are class j^rejudices, or rather so much are even able and acute men shut u]^ within the circle of class impressions and official ideas, that these men had none of them seen how deeply rooted were the causes of popular discontent, or how much harm had been done (inevitable though it was) by re- moving good men like Vincent from a posi- tion in which their goodness did exercise some litlle control over the wilder of their adher- ents. Out of the circle of legal pedantry and official self-confidence a very different view was entertained. " "We are aware," wrote Mr. Carlyle, "that according to the newsjmpers. Chartism is extinct ; that a Reform Ministry has 'put down the chimera of Chartism' in the most felicitous efl'ectual manner. So say the newspapers, — and yet, alas! most readers of newspapers know withal, that it is indeed the 'chimera^ of Chartism, not the reality, which has been put down. The matter of Chartism is weighty, deep-rooted, far-extend- ing; did not begin yesterday; will by no means cease this day or to-morrow. Reform ministry, constabulary rural police, new levy of soldiers, grants of money to Birmingham ; all this is well, or is not well; all this will put down only the embodiment or ' chimera ' of Chartism. The essence continuing, new and ever new embodiments, chimeras madder or less mad, have to continue. The melancholy fact remains, that this thing known at present by the name of Chartism does exist; has existed, and, either 'jnit down' into secret treason, with rusty jDistols, vitriol-bottle, and match-box, or openly brandishing pike and torch (one knows not in which case more fatal-looking), is like to exist till quite other methods have been tried with it. " To say that it is mad, incendiarj', nefari- ous, is no answer. To say all this, in never so many dialects, is saying little. ' Glasgow Thuggery,' 'Glasgow Thugs,' it is a witty nickname ; the practice of ' Number 60' enter- ing his dark room, to contract for and settle the price of blood with operative assassins, in a Chi'istian city, once distinguished by its rigoi'ous Christianism, is doubtless a fact worthy of all horror; but what will horror do for it? What will execration, nay at bottom, what will condemnation and banish- ment to Botany Bay do for it? Glasgow Thuggery, Chartist torch-meetings, Birming- ham riots, Swing conflagTations, are so many symptoms on the surface ; you abolish the symptom to no purpose if the disease is left untouched." In all this the great social critic was right, and he was also risrht in lavincr the main FEOST, WILLIAMS, AND JONES. 263 stress for the momeut (as to remedial mea- sures) upon the repealing of the corn-laws. That, however, was not to be yet. The names of " Frost, Williams, and Jones " are yet fresh in living memory, and Mr. Frost appears to have been something like a mad- man. He had been, some years before these ti'oubles, appointed a magistrate of the bor- ough of Newport. He was now a Chartist. When Lord John Eussell, who, as has been said, was home secretary at the time, found that this gentleman had been elected a mem- ber of the National Convention, he called upon him to resign his commission. This Mr. Frost decidedly declined to do, and the home secre- tary did not forcibly displace him. The Con- vention, as Mr. Frost pointed out, was in itself a perfectly legal assembly; but he was not always so sane as when he took that ground. On the night of Sunday the 3d of November, 1838, Frost took the extraordinaiy course of marching four or five thousand armed men into Newport. • The other magistrates of the borough were not wholly unprepared, and took up an attitude of defence with a band of foot soldiers, in the chief inn of Newport. Frost led the attack, and the first volley of shot wounded the mayor, Mr. Thomas Phillips, and some others. The soldiers then fired, and the wretched " army " of Frost was frightened and scattered, while he himself was taken prisoner. His coadjutors, Williams and Jones, then disbanded the detachments of armed mob under their command, but they also were taken into custody. All three were tried for high treason, found guilty, and sen- tenced to death. But the marriage of the young queen was not far off", and there was a general feeling that it would be as well, if possible, to avoid extreme measures, and the madmen were only transported for life. Here, for the present, ends what Mr. Car- lyle distinguished as "the chimera of Char- tism." But of course these were not likely to pass away without leaving various impressions on the minds of those who watched the signs of the times. Mr. Disraeli was, of course, one of these, and did not keep to himself the discovery that the young queen had really come to the throne to rule over "two nations, the rich and the poor." Scarcely in Crabbe shall we find more powerful or more minute descriptions of the misery of the poor in the agricultural districts in those times of rick- buming, and perhaps no pen has so faithfully described the degradation and misery which were to be found in certain parts of the manu- facturing towns. Mr. Disraeli's views of the situation led to the formation of the Young England party. It was the doctrine of this party, as of its founder, that the governing opinion or influence in politics was always that of the elder people in the nation, and that this was destined to pass away before the more hopeful energy and keener eyesight of the young. What, then, was the task which " Young England " set itself 1 To restore the prerogative of the crown, and the influence and activity of the church and the aristocracy. The stai'ting-point was not that of the philo- sopher of " Chax'tism," but, leaving out " the church," the outcome appeared to be the same, or rather not very dissimilar. There was, however, a very great diflTerence. Why was not the England of 1838 or 1839 the same land as it had been in the days of his light-hearted youth ? This is the question which INIr. Disraeli puts into the mouth, or the meditations, of the high-born Egremont. Why these hard times for the poor ? Had " the millions of toil," on whose unconscious energies during centuries of change the nation had reposed, had a fair share of the results of the national progress? The rick-burning in the agricultural districts was bad enough, but more horrible still the condition of the manufactur- ing towns; for density of population tends to isolate men, while it sharpens their intelli- gence in certain particulars. "Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour; modern society acknowledges no neighbour." Twelve hours' labour at the rate of a penny an hour. "The capitalist has found a slave that has supplanted the labour and ingenuity of man. Once he was an artisan; at the best he now only watches machines ; and even that occu- pation slips from his grasp to the woman and the child. The capitahst flourishes, he amasses immense wealth ; we sink lower and lower, lower than the beasts of burden, for they 264 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. are fed better tliau we are, cared for more." The speaker, who is a woman, asks, " Why am I and six hundred thousand subjects of the queen, honest, loyal, and industrious, — why are we, after struggling for years, each year sinking lower in the scale, — why are we driven from our innocent and happy homes, our country cottages that we loved, into squalid cellars in close towns?" Much is made in working politics of what is called " tergiversation," and changing sides. But it is not at all an unnatural thing. Mr. Disraeli, who is, at the date of which we are writing, preparing to occupy a prominent and influential place in English politics, began his career under a Radical classification, and so did Bulwer, afterwards Lord Lytton. But it is not surprising when we find men like these soon afterwards classified differently. Bulwer- Lytton is not the personage whose prin- ciples it is now essential to emphasize, but he has openly justified himself on theoretical grounds for changing his name, maintaining that he had made no effective change in his political fii'st principles. Indeed it is difficult to foresee what classification might not be reconciled with the principle entertained and expressed by Mr. Disraeli at this time : — "The future principle of English politics will not be a levelling principle, not a principle adverse to privileges, but favourable to their extension. It will seek to ensure equality, not by level- ling the few, but by elevating the many." Of course, however, the word "privileges" must here be read with a reserve, for privilege imjjlies something exceptioiial. But, in any case, the Young England move- ment had begun while Chartism was yet in- surgent, and the party was gradually though slowly taking shape. It undoubtedly did good. The general English public smiled, whatever their politics were, when they were told that " King Charles I. was indeed a mar- tyr, for he was the holocaust of direct taxa- tion;" but the miseries of the manufacturing and agricultural districts were real and patent, and there was something beautiful in the idea of the church and the nobles resuming for- gotten functions or assuming new ones, and standing between the livinif and the dead. A dream of "merry England" passed over the land; a good deal up in thin air it is true, but there it was. The "fine old English gentle- man " that had a fine estate and helped the poor, and lived at a bountiful old rate with my Lady Bountiful, helped by the clergyman at her side, passed across the stage of this vision. There, too, was the magnificent lord of the soil, riding to hounds, broaching pipes of malvoisie, issuing pasties of the doe to all and sundry, and leading the ladies forth on hawking excursions. All the cottages on this landlord's estate were to be smothered in I'oses, all the "peasants" (labourers was a for- bidden word with Young England) were to be ruddy, reverent, industrious, seldom at the ale-house, and i-egular at church. True, there was to be no want of good cheer for the poor, no, they were to have ripe October and " firsts " cider, with, except in extreme cases, no rheu- matism. By every jjossible means the country was to be encouraged to march upon the towns, as the towns had marched upon the country; and the may-pole was to be the standard or flag of advance. Perhaps it may be said that this fashion of thinking and feeling came to a climax in the Eglinton tournament, which was called by the more vulgar periodicals the Eglinton tomfoolerymeut. It had at least one use, but the point has been so often re- ferred to that one is almost ashamed to men- tion it again^when old-fashioned armour was gathered together for this piece of acting it was found that the majority of the men were too big for the armour. This undoubtedly tended to cast some oblique ridicule upon the general idea that the "days of old" were better tlian the present.^ 1 The tournament at Eglinton Castle was a rare event for the satirists of the day, as an attempt to revive the mediaeval show of feats of arms by noble knights and doughty warriors. The King of the Tournament was oui- old friend, the Marquis of Londonderry; the Queen of Beauty was Lady Seymour. The knights with their suites had each their separate tents. There was jousting in the tilting-ground, broadsword play — in which, by the by. Prince Louis Napoleon took apart— and other sports, which were marred by the inclemency of the weatlier. The first day it was computed that 100,000 spectators were present. Some ridicule was thrown on the affair by the subsequent sale of the armour and "properties" of the tournament to several of the managers of minor London theatres, and by a correspondence (published in the newspapers) between Lady Seymour and Lady Shuckburgh, who seems to have CHARMING STORY OF A STRIKE. 265 It would hardly be fair, after what has been related of certain "Chartist" doings, to omit what Mr. Disraeli has given us in his own words as an eye-witness of the whole scene. He says that during a strike " the people had never plundered, except a few provision shops chiefly rifled by 1-ioys, and their acts of violence had been confined to those with whom they were engaged in what, on the whole, might be described as a fair contest. They solicited sustenance often in great numbers, but even then their language was mild and respectful, and they were easily satisfied and always grateful. A body of two thousand persons, for example, quitted one morning a manufac- turing town in Lancashire, when the strike had continued for some time and began to be severely felt, and made a visit to a neighbour- ing squire of high degree. They entered his park in order — men, women, and children — and then, seating themselves in the immediate vicinity of the mansion, they sent a deputation to announce that they were starving, and to entreat relief. In the instance in question the lord of the domain was absent in the ful- filment of those public duties which the dis- turbed state of the country devolved on him. His wife, who had a spirit equal to the occa- sion, notwithstanding the presence of her young children, who might well have aggra- vated feminine fears, received the dejjutation herself ; told them that of course she was un- prepared to feed so many, but that, if they promised to maintain order and conduct them- selves with decorum, she would take measures been exceedingly jealous of " the Queen of Beauty " Lady Seymour had written to know the character of a servant named Stedman who had applied for a situation, and particularly whether she was a " good plain cook." Lady Shuckburgh replied that, having a professed cook and housekeeper, she knew notliing about the under- servants. Lady Seymour explained that she understood Stedman had been accustomed to cook for the little Shuckburghs. The Shuckburgh housemaid was instructed to answer this note, wliich she did as follows :— " Stedman informs me that your ladyship does not keep either a cook or housekeeper, and that you only require a girl who can cook a mutton-chop : if so, Stedman or any other scullion will be found fully equal to cook for or manage the establishment of the Queen of Beautj'." There is something about this note so enormously sug- gestive of small spite, expressed in the meanest style of insoleut vulgarity, that it is almost worth preserving on that account. to satisfy their need. They gave their pledge, and remained tranquilly encamped while pre- parations were making to satisfy them. Carts were sent to a neighbouring town for provi- sions; the keepers killed what they could, and in a few hours the multitude were fed without the slightest disturbance, or the least breach of their self-organized discipline. When all was over the deputation waited again on the lady to express to her their gratitude, and, the gardens of this house being of celebrity in the neighboui'hood, they requested permission that the people might be allowed to walk through them, pledging themselves that no flower should be plucked and no fruit touched. The permission was granted : the multitude, in order, each file under a chief, and each commander of the files obedient to a superior officer, then made a progress through the beautiful gardens of their beautiful hostess. They even passed through the forcing-hovtses and vineries. Not a border was trampled on, not a grape plucked; and, when they quitted the domain, they gave three cheers for the fair castellan." It is a very charming story, and if we add to it some such j^icture as that of "young Lord Vieuxbois, among high ai't and j^ainted glass, spade farms, model smell-traps, rubrical- ities, and sanitary reforms," not omitting the maypoles, and carefully giving his lordship the white waistcoat of the school, with a flower in his button-hole, we have some idea of what the greater part of the Young Eng- land party were aiming at. The aim was, at least, a kindly and picturesque one ; it called attention in an emphatic way to the w-ar of the "two nations" over whichj Mr. Disraeli declared, the queen was reigning; it pointed the way to much real improvement ; and if it could have succeeded in checking that mon- strous growth of cities which, it is now ad- mitted on all hands, is one of the worst evils of the century, it would indeed have done wonders. The time of the poor agricultural labourer or "peasant" was not yet. His time was to come. But factory legislation had for many years been a sericjusly-fought question, and 266 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAKIES. was, parliament after parliament, more and more earnestly discussed. Ministry after min- istry fought shy of it, or tried to do so, and at the last nobody in power would even look at Mr. Eichard Oastler's Ten Hours Bill, because the manufacturers declared with one voice that if the hours of labour were restricted, or freedom of contract touched, the commerce of the country would be ruined. In the early history of the factoi-y system, before steam-power came into vise, mills used to be erected on streams at points which were usually, for natural reasons, at a consid- erable distance from towns. Eound these mills new populations sprang up in time, but, at first, there was a system of apprenticeship under which young hands were secured for fixed periods. A powerful passage about the gradual en- croachment of the mill and factory system upon once sweet and clean rural districts, and the unwholesome moral bondage under which thousands of human beings, most of them young, and largely consisting of girls, were growing up to a stunted, uneducated, degraded maturity, will be found in the eighth book of Wordsworth's Excursion. It is too well known to bear quotation, and it has been the key- note of "ameliorative" legislation in regard to factory labour. But one of the first, if not the very first legislator to ojien the question to any pmpose was an eccentric baronet, of whom the reader of these pages has already heard in connection with inconvertible one- pound notes and various currency heresies. This was no other than Sir Eobert Peel, father of the late baronet, who introduced a bill to limit the hours of labour of the "apprentices" at mills. This was in 1802. But as soon as ever steam-power came to be generally made use of, it was found as easy and as cheap to have factory mills in towns or close to them, the "apprentice" s^^stem dwindled, and the supply of labour to the mills became, from one point of view, only too cheap. There are things recorded as to the history of the em- ployment of young children in those mills which make the blood flow back upon the heart. Even before James "Watt's great dis- covery had been made, Hutton of Birmingham has told us what he used to sufi'er when sent to work at a mill, though he was so j'oung and so little that he had to stand on pattens to reach the machine. To the honour of the first Sir Eobert Peel, himself a manufacturer employing many thousands of hands, he again brought the subject before parliament, and explaining the change of conditions, asked for fresh legislation. In doing this, or rather in moving for a committee to inquire into the subject, this good man warned the house that unless the children employed in factories were protected from the exhausting demands made upon their strength, and the debasements to which the associations of the labour exposed their minds, the great inventions which were considered the glory of the country would yet prove one of her most dreadful curses and shames. This was in 1816, and it is pleasing to find father and son, the elder and the younger Peel, in 1818, united in taking the part of the children. And in 1819 Sir Eobert Peel, the elder, had the great happiness, not to say the glorious triumph, of passing an act for the protection of the unapprenticed children em- ployed in factories. The name of Sir John Hobhouse is connected with another act of a similar kind, passed in 1825. But all this legislation proved ineffective, the provisions of the acts being constantly evaded. It is not necessary, nor would it be in place here to give, even in a condensed form, the narra- tion of the struggles of argument and influence of one kind or other, inside of parliament and out of it ; but at last, in the hands of humani- tarians of all schools, including labourers at the oar as different from each other as Mr. Eichard Oastler and Lord Ashley (now the Earl of Shaftesbury), factory legislation, dating from 1833 onwards, began to assume such shapes that it bec;ime plain to all the parties concerned, manufacturers and parents, that the law would have to be obeyed. But the work could not and did not stop here. The point in which the friends of re- strictive legislation of this order think them- selves entitled to rejoice, is that it recognized a principle which, they maintain, is of wide application. This priucijile, reluctantly ac- NATIONAL EDUCATION. 267 quiesced in by " the philosophers," so far as children (and now and then women) are con- cerned, has been since applied in various directions, and the greater the power of tlie working classes, the more various and decided have been other applications of that principle. Closely allied to limitations of the hours of labour for young persons are the means of national education. A grant of £20,000, voted for educational purposes in 1833, had been continued annu- ally, and was devoted to the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society, the amounts in aid of these institutions being proportioned to the size and cost of the school- buildings and the number of scholars in at- tendance. It is obvious that under this arrangement the larger part of the money went to the church, and this naturally occa- sioned much dissatisfaction. It was therefore proposed in 1839 to increase the amount of the grant to £30,000, and to transfer its dis- position to a committee composed of the presi- dent of the privy-council and not more than five of its members. The committee was to establish a normal school for the training of teachei's, and to appoint inspectors to visit and report upon the schools receiving aid from the grant. One great improvement in the system was that instead of being obliged to proportion the aid to a school in any neigh- bourhood to the amount of local subscriptions for its support, the committee might establish schools in poor or populous neighbourhoods without making it an indispensable condition that they should be connected with either of the societies which were supposed to represent public education. Grants of assistance were also to be made to Roman Catholic schools, or at all events to schools where the Roman Catholic version of the Scriptures was read. In the light of recent events it is worth re- membering that this proposal met with the violent opposition of the Conservative party and of the church, who raised a general agita- tion against the application of public money to aid schools in which the Douay Bible was admitted, but above all, against the appoint- ment of inspectors wlio might, it was alleged. interfere with the management, and even with the religious instruction given to the pupils. The excitement against the grant, which was only "in aid" of subscriptions, was intense, and in the House of Commons there was such a close division of opinion that the conditions referred to were only carried by 275 votes against 273 ; while an address was sent to the queen from the House of Lords against the proposed application of the public money. In this instance, however, the govern- ment prevailed after making some modifica- tions, the chief of which were the abandon- ment of the proposed normal school, and the concurrence of the bishojis in the choice of an inspector; Lord Lansdowne finding an ad- mirable candidate for this office in Dr. Kaye, afterwards Sir J. K. Shuttleworth. The com- mittee of council was constituted, and the education of the country was placed under its superintendence. In relation to the debate in the House of Commons on this question an eminent nar- rator says: — "Of all the long speeches that were delivered on this occasion there is only one that we think it desirable to rescue from oblivion, and that not so much on account of the spirit of eloquent earnestness it breathed as because of the beautiful plea for a just toleration which it put forth." This refers to the speech of Mr. Shell, the Irish orator, whose name has already been mentioned iii these pages, and to whose marvellous elo- quence Mr. Gladstone very recently alluded. " Why," said he, addressing the Conserva- tive opposition, " are you for ever crying out in reference to Popery that your church is in danger, and giving A^ay to the most fantastic fears? What in the world makes you so much afraid ? Your church is incorporated with the state, supported by the interests of the higher orders, and by the faith of the humbler classes. It lifts its mitred head amidst courts and par- liaments ; it possesses vast revenues ; it rules over the two most famous universities of the world; it presides over the great patrician seminaries of the land ; it has I'etained all tlie pomp, pride, and glorious circumstance of the establishment, of which it is a perpetuation — archbishops, bishops, deans, cathedrals, golden 268 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAETES. stalls. It is distinguished by a prelacy emi- nent for learning, and a clergy distinguished for energy, activity, and an organized spirit of confederacy. Such is your establishment. And can you bring yourselves to believe that such a fabric, based on the national belief and towering amongst aristocratic sustaiument,can be prostrated on the rock of truth on which you believe it to be raised, not by foreign in- vasion, but by intestine commotion ; not by great moral concussion, but by a discharge of Douay Testaments and popish missals from the hands of a set of shoeless, shirtless popish paupers, gathered under the command of the privy-council from the lanes of Liverpool and the alleys of Manchester and Salford, or the receptacles of St. Giles? This ague of apj^re- hension for your church is idle, and would be ridiculous but for the fatal results it produces and the constant injustice it works. I have heard much in the course of this discussion of the dogmas of theology. I do not profess to be conversant with them; but I sometimes read my Bible, in every page of which lessons of mercy are so admirably inculcated ; and it strikes me that if there be a passage in which the character of our Saviour is described in a peculiarly amiable light, it is that in which he is represented as desiring his disciples not to forbid little children to come to him. . . . Do not imitate the example of those by whom the children were rebuked. Suifer them to approach him ; let them have ac- cess to the sources of pure morality, and of that truth which is common to all Christians. Do not close the avenues of that knowledge which leads to happiness when 'time shall be no more;' and, instead of engaging in acri- monious contention about ecclesiastical pre- rogatives and pretensions, act on the precept contained in the divine injunction, ' Suffer the little children to come unto me, and for- bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' " The commission which had been appointed in 1833 to form a digest of the criminal law of the country had been proceeding with its work, and one of the beneficent results of these labours was the bill passed in 1836 for allowing prisoners on trial in criminal cases to have the assistance of counsel — an enor- mous concession, as it may have seemed at the time, but one which we should now regard only as a provision of ordinary justice. It was followed, however, by a still more impor- tant advance in the direction of diminishing the number of offences for which the punishment of death was still inflicted. For years there had been a strong desire on the jiart of phi- lanthropists like Sir Samuel Eomilly to abolish capital punishment altogether, in the belief that severity of punishment had the effect of increasing rather than diminishing crime. There were many arguments against the ex- treme penalty, and the objections were not — and are not now — without weight. The right to take away human life at all as a de- liberate punishment for an oflFence was plainly denied by many of the advocates for aboli- tion. Othei-s argued against the dreadful cruelty of sending suddenly out of the world a culprit laden with crime ; and an argument not devoid of force was derived from the numerous instances in which innocent pereons had been condemned to death and executed. But the argument on inexpediency was still more broadly insisted on. It was alleged as the professed result of experience that the average of certain crimes had been less after the remission of the extreme penalty, while the number of convictions had proportionally increased. Both prosecutors and juries shrank from bringing a criminal to death for an offence against property, or for other offences short of murder. The execution of such a criminal was itself regarded as judicial mur- der, and so those concerned in the conviction refused to bring the offenders to justice. It was very strongly held by many advocates of remission that the punishment of death should be altogether abolished, and though the gov- ernment, the criminal law commissioners, and probably the officials of criminal prisons, were not prepared for such a change, there was a very general desire that it should be effected, and its advocates were prepared with facts and statistics which lent considerable weight to their arguments. Mr. Ewart was one of the most enerijetic and earnest advocates of EEMISSION OF THE DEATH PENALTY. 269 the entire abolition of the death penalty, and there was such a general desire to do away with it altogether, or only to retain it in cases of murder, that the proposal would in all like- lihood have been carried but for two reasons. One, and perhaps the principal one, was the hesitation and fear of going too far which was characteristic of the ministry, and was too often represented by Lord John Russell. The other was the extreme difficulty at that period of knowing what to do with any number of desperate felons who might escape the halter. Our system of penal servitude had not then developed into the careful and, as some people think, the mischievously concentrative organi- zation with which we are now familiar, and at the same time " ti'ausportation " was be- coming a mere memoiy of the past, since we had no right to force a criminal class of the community on any of our colonies, and it was impossible, even if it had been less horrible, to provide penal settlements in remote and uninhabited places, where there would have been no safety for the officials but in a system of repression more revolting to humanity than the punishment of death itself. Another course might then have been found had this argument been brought forward, so that the advocates of the abolition of the penalty of death might have undertaken the subject of secondary punishments for serious ofi'ences; but it is obvious on reflection that no govern- ment could avow that they must continue to hang men because they did not know what else to do with them. The result of these difficulties was a susjDicion on the part of the commissioners that Lord John would think they were making too sudden and complete a change even when they recommended the remission of capital punishment in twenty- one out of thirty-one cases of offences for which the extreme penalty already existed. Lord John — delighted at the prospect of being able to remit the punishment, however undecided he may have been on the subject of the temper of the house and the country — brought in a bill proposing to remit the death penalty in the twenty-one cases, and to restrict it considerably in some of the ten which remained ; but Mr. Ewart and those who supported him regarded this as mere trifling with a subject on which they felt deeply, and an amendment was moved to abolish the penalty of death for any crime except that of deliberate murder. Nor did the advocates of this remission stop there : they let it be plainly understood — or at all events Lord John Eussell declared that in his opinion they did not disguise — that it was their intention to endeavour to obtain complete aboUtion as soon as possible. The noble lord was ex- tremely surprised that things should have taken such a turn, there was an immediate flutter among the ministers and their sup- porters, and the whips were sent off in a hurry to fetch members to a division for which they were not at all prepared. After all these exertions there was a ministerial majority of one; the bill passed, and after some debate went through the Lords, where Brougham declared that nothing but the pressure of time prevented his endeavouring to restore the amendment by making the remission of the death penalty extend to all crimes except that of murder, and he did not know that he should even have excepted that, for he was convinced that capital punishment tended to the increase of crime and the impairing of justice. A curious story, which began in 1835-6, came to a climax (fortunately a rational one, though it was long delayed), in 1840. In the year 1835 a law was passed for the inspection of prisons, and under this act the jail of Newgate was visited among others. The report in this case made by the inspectors, and laid before a committee of the House of Commons, stated that among other books in iTse by the prisoners was one published by Mr. Stockdale of a very objectionable chai-- acter. On the 7th of November, 1836, Mr. Stockdale commenced an action against Messrs. Hansard, the parliamentary printers and publishers of the report, on the ground that this statement was a libel ; but the jury found it to be true, and agreed in a verdict for the defendants. In the following year, a second action was brought, to which, in accordance with the instructions of the house, Messrs. Hansard pleaded that the publication 270 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. was a privileged oue. The plea was demurred to, and the court gave judgment against it. Damages were afteiwards assessed, which the house directed Messrs. Hansard to pay. On the 26th of August, 1839, Mr. Stockdale commenced a third action founded upon a further and subsequent sale of the report. To this action Messrs. Hansard did not plead, but they served the plaintiff with a notice of resolutions passed by the house to the effect that the prosecution of any suit for the pur- pose of bringing its piivileges into discussion before any court of law, was in itself a high breach of the privileges of the house, render- ing all persona concerned in it amenable to punishment. Judgment was nevertheless signed against Messrs. Hansard, and a writ of inquiry and damages executed before the sheriffs, when the damages were assessed at £600. The sheriffs eventually entered into possession of Messrs. Hansard's establishment, and sold goods to a sufficient amount to satisfy the judgment. Before the sheriffs had paid the amount over to Mr. Stockdale, all parties were sum- moned to the bar of the house, and Mr. Stockdale committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. A resolution was then passed directing the sheriffs to refund the money to Messrs. Hansard; and on their non-compliance, they were likewise committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. Upon this, a writ of habeas corpus issued from the Court of Queen's Bench, commanding the sergeant-at-arms to bring up the bodies of the sheriffs. This was accordingly done, with a return to the effect that the sheriffs were in custody by order of the House of Commons, for a breach of the privileges of that house. The sheriffs were thereupon remanded back to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, but were afterwards discharged on account of ill- health. In the meantime two new actions were commenced on the part of Mr. Stockdale, and the house ordered his solicitor (Mr. Howard) into custody, and committed him fortliwitli to Newgate. After several de- bates upon the subject, a Ijill was brought in and passed, giving protection to persons em- ployed in the publication of parliamentaiy papers, and Stockdale and Howard were eventually discharged from custody. The odd part of this story is, that Lord John Eussell's remedial measure, simple and moderate as it was — indeed it might well have gone much further — was opposed. Mr. Macaulay defended the bill with his usual sagacity, and it became law. The uneasiness of the general public about the poor sheriffs when in confinement — the disgust that there should be all this turmoil for so mean a cause — and the uneasiness naturally felt at seeing the makers of the law and the administrators of it at open war, — are still well remembered. Beginning from a dreary historical precedent (the case of Sir John Eliot), Mr. Macaulay stated his case with great dexterity. The ancestor of the then member for Corn- wall was kept in prison till his spirits, health, and strength gave way, and his imprisonment was continued even to the hour of his death. But in the present day it was impossible for the House of Commons to pursue so harsh a course. Their own good nature would not allow them to do so. The feelings of the people would not permit them to do so. The very moment that the health or spirits of a prisoner began to suffer, that moment the house began to relent; and either upon the instant, or shortly afterwards, the prisoner was set at liberty. So that, when the house pos- sessed itself of a prisoner of a robust and hardy constitution, it might have the power of completely vindicating its privileges by detaining him in jmson till the question at issue was arranged ; but if it happened to have a prisoner of a bilious and apoplectic liabit, in that case its privileges must be abandoned or only feebly asserted, because the health of a prisoner suffered from con- finement. Even if the health of Mr. Stock- dale himself should appear to be seriously affected by his imprisonment, it was certain that he would not long be detained in custody. However, the bill became law, and so a very stupid ignominious business came to a close. The practice of transporting criminals to the colonies received a heavy blow in the year ADVANCES OF SCIENCE. 271 1838. The influence of Beutham and his school, including of course his Radical disciples, had been largely brought to bear upon the general question of our treatment of criminals, and in this year a Parliamentary Eeport ap- peared, "which was a prophecy of the discon- tinuance of transportation. It was in the seventeenth century that we began to send our criminals to"" the plantations," and great were the abuses which followed. When offenders were sold as slaves to the planters, and so got rid of, it is clear that the punish- ment could hardly be called in the minor sense "judicial." One planter might be a cruel and even murderous ruffian, another an easy-going master like the celebrated Due de Vendome, of whose laisser faire ti'eatmeut of his servants such odd stories are told. One of them expressed a desire to leave his service because he could not bear to see so good a master robbed by his other servants. "Is that all ? " said the great soldier ; " can't you rob like the rest and stay?" Besides this, however, men, especially young men, were frequently kidnapped and sold to the planters, when it was an object to get them out of the way. The story of Annesley (Mr. Charles Eeade's Wandering Heir) is a well-known illustra- tion. The systematic and regulated tx'ansportation of criminals to Australia, which was con- demned in the Parliamentary Eeport of 1838, was, of course, another mattei'. But it had its obvious evil results, and some of these— intei' Christianos non nominanda — had not been obvious, though they were proved to exist. In fact, the penal district was a hell upon earth. And, apart from that, the punishment of trausijortation fell very un- equally upon criminals of different classes. Whfen young Gerald was condemned (Eldon being attorney-general at the time) Mr. Dun- das remarked that he did not see why the gentleman's friends should raise such a storm about it — he did not see much in being trans- ported — upon which Godwin appealed to Burke, who had a little more imagination. But, over and above all this and much more, it was found that transportation had been adopted under a mistaken idea. "True patriots we, for be it understood, We left our country for our country's good," wrote Barrington of himself and comrades. But it was found that sending criminals abi'okd did not lessen crime at home. The blanks were filled up as rapidly as they were made. In fine, for various economic reasons, and for the welfare of the colonies themselves, the system of transportation stood condemned from this time. There were not a few triumphs of science in the very early j^art of the new reign. The establishment of- the electric telegi-ai)h has already been referred to. In 1838 the steamship Sinus and the steamship Great Western sailed, the first from Cork on the 4th of April, the second from Bristol on the 8th of April, and both reached New York on the 2.3d of the same month, within a few hours of each other. In the same year the first screw-steamer was made. In 1837 James Nasmyth first turned his mind to the produc- tion of a steam-hammer, and though it was long before his efforts or those of his coadjutor and partner, Mr. Eobert Wilson, came to any- thing of much value for manufacturing pur- poses, the splendour of the subsequent success is familiar to us all. A hammer weighing several tons and capable of smashing almost anything, is so delicately adjusted and worked that it can be made to crack an egg as tenderly as a silver spoon in a lady's hand. As for steam navigation, it was nothing new; but these successful voyages across the Atlan- tic were noticeable, because it had been pre- dicted by men of science — the prediction being supported by the nicest calculations in physics — that the journey could never be successfully made. At about the same time Daguerre, in France, following up a previous suggestion by Niepce, succeeded in producing sun -pictures by the process which bears his name. It was not new in conception, even so far as Niepce was concerned — nearly every invention has a long history — but it was a triumph fraught with important results. Tlie daguerreotype is out of fashion, but in some respects it is per- haps superior to any of its successors. The 272 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. social consequences of photography have been incalculable. The description given by Mr. Bantam the artist (in Mr. Longfellow's prose idyll of Kavanagh) of the use of a portrait in "vivifying the affections of those we esteem and love," will be in the mind of every reader; and a living historian, who has made the social phenomena of his time a special study, declares that among the poor the sixpenny photograjjli that has made so much fun for the comic writer has been one of the most valuable of humanizing influences. We must not forget, however, that its use in bringing near those who were in one sense far apart, would not have counted for much without the penny post. During the years which are now under re- view, the "railway system," as it is now called, was becoming a fact, and towards the end of the period the railway mania showed itself not far off. That, however, is not the point. What is now indicated is the gradual growth of activity in " gridironing " the country (to use an engineer's phrase), and the immense extension of the contract system. Englishmen were in demand to make foreign lines (for ex- ample the Paris and Rouen, commenced in 1840), and the work to be done was so vast and the versatility of energy demanded so peculiar, that the contractor, though not un- heard of previously in dock and canal works, became practically a new figure in English commerce. That he proved a very important personage in English and foreign commerce need not be stated. We are destined to hear of this gentleman again before the close of our fifty years. Meanwhile arose the system of excursion trains. One of the very earliest of these, an excursion train from Leicester to Nottingham, caused so much excitement that about 20,000 people turned out into the Nottingham mea- dows to welcome the strangers. The latter were in all about 1000, and they were received at the station by a company of Nottingham gentry, with flag-bearers and bands of music. Among the attentions which her majesty received in the early part of her reign, were some which were hardly to be expected. She wa.s a good deal shot at ! This is, at least, an incidental proof of the floating excitement there was about her for a long time. The wi'etched young man, Oxford, who began this sort of pleasantry was undoubtedly insane, and, being tried for high treason, was acquitted on that ground. Afterwards, an act was hurried through parliament making the pre- sentation even of unloaded firearms, &c., at the sovereign an offence puuisliable with flogging. The object of the offenders in this line being notoriety, this act proved effectually deterring. The assault by Lieutenant Pate, who was also a monomaniac, was the effect of long brooding over fancied injuries. But the whole subject is worth notice, not only be- cause this flogging act undoubtedly served as a suggestion of subsequent legislation of the same kind, but for another reason. It is a curious illustration of the Jteat, so to speak, that is evolved in the great publicity of modern life, that women in conspicuous posi- tions have been, within living memory, very much annoyed. It is now forgotten by the majority, but it will be recollected by some, that the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, then Miss Burdett-Coutts, was for years persecuted in a flagrant manner, — in one case by a man who persisted, year after year, in pretending that he was in love with her. How many times this madman was bound over to keep the peace does not matter. Pleasanter homage than that of Oxford or any of his imitators was, of course, offered to the queen, though some of it must have brought a heavy sense of responsibility with it. Of course, upon the first attempt on her life (June, 1840) the loyalty of the country broke out in a thousand enthusiastic ways ,• but, later on, during the years when the potato-famine was coming on, her majesty had to receive other than congratulatory addresses. The subject of the desired repeal of the corn-laws brought out the ladies on a large scale, and they sent up petitions to the throne, some of which were admirable. Events in the East assumed from about this date so much importance, that we jDro- pose to deal with them all in their mutual con- LADY HESTER STANHOPE. nection at the close of this portion of the nar- rative. But we hardly like to pass on with- out a word or two couceruiug a very romantic figure, Avhich had curiously interesting links with the i)ast, and was, in minor ways, mixed up with some of our relations with Syria, if not with Egypt. This was Lady Hester Stauhope, who died in Syria in 1839. There was scarcely a per. son of celebrity in her time with whom this "Queen of Syria" (as she proposed to become) had not some sort of intimacy or quarrel, and she was not very agreeable to our consuls. She was the granddaughter of the great William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and a woman of great beauty and ability, not by any means without political influence in the days when she kept house for her uncle, William Pitt the younger. Upon his death the crown awarded her a pension of ^1200 a year, which, but for her haughty refusal of the intervention of Fox, would have been much more. She was in love with Sir John Moore, the hero of Corunna, and with his last breath lie sent her a message. Whether this turned her fine brain or not, she led, afterwards, one of the most picturesquely adventurous of lives. After some time spent in retirement in Wales she went abroad, and, after a year or two of rambling about the Mediterranean coasts, went and settled herself for life among the wild tribes of Lebanon. Here her beauty, force of character, and magnificently perfect assumption of the oriental type of character, manners, dress, and religion (for she was some- thing between Jewess and Mohammedan), gave her an almost incredible ascendency over the wild tribes by whom she was sur- rounded, while in her tent the stranger might reckon on a royal reception. It must be understood that she dressed like a man, and was by no means a person to be trifled with. Her strange exjiensive habits and her great liberality kept her in debt, but none of her creditors were ever able to touch her pension, — so dexterously did she contrive to receive it through French or other sources. When Sir John Bowring went out to St. Jean d'Acre, he sent to her ladyship soliciting an audience. Bat she sent a haughty message Vol. 1 in reply saying that she would receive no envoy from Cupid — which was her name for Lord Palmerston ! She had recently had a visit from Laraartine, and had informed our consul-general in Egypt that she did not intend to pay her debts — including one which he had been instructed to demand of her. When one of our other consuls paid her the compliment of asking her to name his new- born child, she replied, " Call him Humbug or Fiddlesticks." She had 120 armed men about her, and jaroposed to enter Jerusalem on an ass and reign as queen. She rode " across " like a man. When pressed for pay- ment of what she owed, she said, "I have divided my ci-editors into three categories. Those who have asked for their money, which I consider an insult, shall never be paid; and the second and third, who have never asked, I shall divide into two classes, some of whom I shall pay and some not." It is melancholy to have to add that this essentially noble, but more than eccentric lady, died in poverty, but queenly to the last. She was buried in her own garden. If she had lived in our days she might have been put under restraint perhaps; otherwise she would probably have been a centre of action in the East. It is amusing to remember that Lady Hester Stanhojie declared that if Queen Victoria ordered her to pay her debts she would do so. An enactment of great importance in its immediate effects, and probably of far greater importance in its relation to after legislation on behalf of the majority of the nation — the women and children — was brought forward in the session of 1839. It was a bill to enable women separated from their husbands for no misconduct of their own, to obtain access to their young children by petitioning the equity judges, who would have the power of direct- in"- on what terms the application should be granted. Under the title of the Custody of Infants Bill this measure had passed the House of Commons in 1838, but had been rejected by the Lords,— Brougham opposing it not because its provisions were not obviously 18 274 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. needed for the protection of the wife from the cruelty and infidelity of a "worthless hus- band, but because the proposed remedy touched only one of the numerous cases in which married women were left without re- dress under the most trying hardships, and because the means by which it was sought to remedy the evil complained of was inappro- priate. By the law as it then stood a hus- band of the most profligate character could prevent his virtuous wife from seeing her childi-en; but Lord Brougham contended thatj harsh and cruel as that law was, and though instances had been pointed out in which it might entail evil on the children, there were many evils which the bill did not profess to remedy. Could anything be more harsh and cruel than that the wife's goods and chattels should be at the mercy of the husband, and that she might work and labour and toil for an unkind father to support his family and children, while the husband repaid her with hai'shness and brutality — he all the time rioting and revelling in extravagance and dissipation, and squandering in the company of guilty paramours the produce of her in- dustry ? He knew that there were anomalies and a thousand contradictions in the marriage law, but the existence of these anomalies and contradictions should operate as so many warnings against the introduction of new anomalies and changes in that marriage law. Instances were known in which, by collusion between the husband and a j^retended jjara- mour, the character of the wife had been de- stroyed. All this could take place and yet the wife have no defence. She was excluded from Westminster Hall, and behind her back, by the principles of our jurisprudence, her character was tried between the husband and the man called her paramour. But when the man was the guilty party the wife had no remedy; the husband might pursue his course, and even refuse to live with his wife unless she made a legal application at Doctors' Com- mons of a nature which every woman of deli- cacy would shrink from. Even in cases of gross infideUty a wife had the gi'eatest trouble to procure a separation. There had only been two cases before the House of Lords in which such relief had been gi-anted. Lord Brougham's opposition may have had the effect of throwing out the bill for the time, but his representations were potent to secure that, and far more than that measure of relief for women who were suffering op- pression and yet could find no remedy by an appeal to the law. The bill was rejected, but not without protest; and it was passed in the next session, but not without an opposi- tion in the Lords (especially on the part of Lord Wynfoi'd, who was the most active an- tagonist of the measure) wliicli was in efi"ect a declaration that a woman, whatever might be the circumstances under which she had separated from her husband, was not fit to have access to her child, lest she might not instil into that child any respect for the hus- band whom she might hate or despise. But Lord Denman, who, with Lyndhurst, was strongly in favour of the bill, had something to say on the other side. In a case which had been decided before himself and the rest of the judges of the Conrt of King's Bench in 1836, a father had been able to take his chil- dren from his young and blameless wife, and place them in the charge of a woman with whom he was then living. " The present law," said his lordship, "is cruel to the wife, de- basing to the husband, and dangerous and probably z'uinous to the health and morals of the children, who could not have any such guai'antee against corruption under the tutelage of a profligate father as the occasional care of a mother." In the case to which he had referred he did not believe there was one judge who had not felt ashamed of the state of the law. The biU passed without delay, and it was a fitting event that a measure for the relief of suffering wives and mothers should have been one of the first passed in the reign of a young queen who was herself about to contract mar- riage. It is desirable before we leave the earliest years of the queen's reign to refer to the sub- ject which was even then chiefly occupying the attention of many thoughtful and able men — men who, having once made sure that they w^ere acting on a right principle and for GROWTH OF MANCHESTER. 275 the public good, would uever retreat from the l)ositiou which they had taken up, but would hold it until they compelled the country and the government to listen to their representa- tions. These were the kind of men who, under the name of Free Traders — a name the full meaning of which was scai^cely understood, and was certainly not widely recognized, by many of those who adopted it — commenced an organized agitation for the repeal of the corn- laws. These laws continued to exist, although seasons of great and general distress had fre- quently aggravated the detestation with which the duties on corn had been regarded, by those who looked upon this impost as a device for maintaining the agricultural interest at the expense of the great manufacturing com- munity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the organization known as the Anti-Corn-law League should have had its real origin in Man- chester, nor that this great centre of the nianu- factui'ing interest should also have been the centre of the agitation for repealing the tax on food. In a few years it had grown from a place of comparative insignificance to an important town — practically the metropolis of a gi'eat part of the northern and midland counties. It was only seventy -four years since the first spinning-jenny had been con- structed by Thomas Highs, a reed-maker at Leigh; sixty-eight years since Richard Ark- wright had taken out a patent for spinning by means of rollers ; only a little more than half a century since the Rev. Edward Cart- wright, by inventing the power-loom, had set free and given gigantic impetus to the cotton manufacture. In 1789 the first steam-engine for spinning cotton had been set up in Man- chester, and from that year the town became the capital of a great and increasing industry. It grew not only in extent but in intelli- gence, and by the adoption of the municipal institutions by which other towns were gov- erned. Sordid in appearance, bleak and cheerless in its aspect, lying beneath a dim atmosphere of smoke it remained ; but it increased enormously, and many improve- ments were made in the streets and buildings even before the remarkable changes that have been completed in later years. We have already seen what were the kind of people who formed the majority of its population in the days of the Blanketeers and of Peterloo, and they had not changed very much a quar- ter of a century later. Directly Manchester rose from obscui'ity to become the representa- tive of a vast industrial enterprise it also became a centre of political agitation, and this agitation was frequently carried on with a strenuous determination and even a ferocity which had earned for the town a reputation for violence all through the times of the Reform Bill and much earlier, down to the day when the first notes of the anti-corn-law apjaeal first sounded in the theatre of the town in August, 1838, or when, two months afterwards, in October in the same year, when there appeared in the Manchester Times a list of thirty-eight gentlemen as provisional committee of the "Manchester Anti-Corn-law Association." In this list were included the names of John Bright of Rochdale and Richard Cobden of Mosley Street. Manchester had determined to carry out its character of a reforming town, not by electing Cobbett, who had first sought its suff'rages, but by retuining Mr. Charles Poulett Thompson, and Mr. Mark Phillips one of their own townsmen, Cobbett was withdrawn, because it was feared that to per- sist in his candidature would be to bring in Mr. Jones Lloyd' the banker, a Tory candi- date. Mr. Charles Poulett Thompson was then the j^resident of the Board of Trade, and the choice was felt to be a discreet and a happy one. The contest was hard enough, but the rugged Manchester voters were deter- mined and persistent. The decision was not to be for the session of 1832 only, but probably for a long series of years, and they determined that their new franchise should be marked by a triumph of reform. The temporary commercial prosperity of 1835 and the early part of 1836 had given rise to an enormous increase in speculation in Manchester as well as elsewhere, and a mania set in during which a number of bubble com- panies were started and in a short time col- lapsed, leaving a great deal of distress among some of that class of people who had formerly 276 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. represented the monied community. Then came pressure on the money market, bank failures, and a general financial panic, just at the time that depression was deepened and suffering increased by reason of the bad harvest of that year. It may be imagined that Manchester felt it keenly, for there were 63,623 persons employed in the mills in the town parish alone, and of these 35,283 were females. To- wards the close of the year an Anti-Corn-law Association had been formed in London, with a committee of twenty-two members, of whom some were members of parliament ; but there was no active organization, and it needed the pressure of a more energetic demand and a larger numerical representation to give efficacy to a movement in which these gentlemen afterwards did good service. If 1836 had been a year of loss and suflfering, 1837 was worse, and the harvest was inferior to the one preceding it. Manufacturers and traders were hard put to it to keep their mills and warehouses open. At the meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce in 1839 Mr. Cobden, speaking of the year 1837, said, " I have looked round this room, and have come to the conclusion that, when this meet- ing commenced, there were individuals in this room whose losses during the last two or three years would amount to ^600,000 at the very least. I have no doubt that the losses sus- tained by the members of this chamber would be at least a million and a half since 1835, and I mention this after taking some little time to consider, and looking at the names of the parties." In 1837 the harvest had been worse than that of the previous year. That of 1838 was one-fourth less than that of 1834, " the most deficient crop of any since 1816." No wonder that the long deep note of dissatisfaction sounded in the manufacturing districts, where factories were working short time, running only four days a week, and where thousands of operatives had been discharged from em- ployment; no wonder that numbers of the Manchester weavers who had been engaged in making the inferior kinds of cotton goods, and receiving even when fully at work only a very low rate of wages, went through the town demanding food. No wonder that hatred to the " bread-tax " grew more intense. It was in October, 1838, says Mr. Frederick Bastiat in his Cobden et la Ligue, that "seven men united themselves at Manchester, and with that manly determination which charac- terizes the Anglo-Saxon race, resolved to over- turn every monopoly by legal means, and to accomplish without disturbance, without effu- sion of blood, with the power only of oiDinion, a revolution as profound as — perhaps more jirofouud than that which our fathers worked to efi'ect in 1789." This refers to the first meeting of the Anti-Corn-law Association, and the seven men were Edward Baxter, W. A. Cunningham, Andrew Dalziel, James Howie, James Leslie, Archibald Prentice, and Philip Thomson. The subscription to the association was to be only five shillings, in order that all classes might join it. Mr. William Eawson afterwards became the treasurer, and the names of Bright and Cobden were on the committee. At a subsequent meeting, when the numbers had considerably augmented, Eichard Cobden and Eichard Ashworth of Bolton were among the speakers. In January, 1839, a meeting was held at the York Hotel, Manchester, to consider the pro- l^er mode of carrying out the objects of the association, and £1800 was subscribed in the room. In the following montli the subscrip- tions had amounted to £6136, 10s., and the association invited to a public dinner a num- ber of members of parliament who had in the previous session voted for Mr. Yilliei's' motion that evidence be heard at tlie bar on the operation of the corn-laws, a proposal which Loi-d John Eussell had advised the house to reject as unprecedented and inconvenient; while a similar motion made by Lord Brougham in the Lords was refused with contemjat. An Anti-Corn-lawConvention had been established in London, but the delegates after this rejec- tion adjourned to Manchester and at once appealed to the people by addresses, lectures, and publications, the earliest of the latter being The Anti- Bread-tax Circular. In the autumn of 1838 an old physician of Bolton, Dr. Birney, had announced his intention of deliveiinir a lecture in the theati'e of the town ANTI-CORN-LAW AGITATION. 277 on the subject of the corn-law and its effects. The theatre was crowed in every i)ai-t, with an audience of a rather rough stamp and of not very orderly manners. The lecturer was too nervous to proceed, and the meeting seemed likely to become riotous, when a gentleman who was present asked a young surgeon named Poulton to go on the stage and say something to the peojale present. Poulton was a ready and a fairly able speaker, and at once com- menced to say a few telling words on the sub- ject of the corn-laws, and the sufferings of which they were the cause. He carried the people with him, and the meeting was a de- cided success. Having been asked to repeat his sjieech shortly afterwards, he added to it many fresh facts and illustrations. Dr. Bow- ring, who was present when he delivered it, and who had at that time become one of the foremost leaders of the anti-corn-law move- ment, induced the association to engage Poul- ton to deliver a lecture in the Corn Exchange, and afterwards to retain him as a lectiirer to go through the great manufacturing towns. Thus began a system by which information on the objects of the association was diffused; and opposition to the corn-laws maintained by lectures, publications, and other means, to an extent never previously heard of even in re- lation to any other important political subject. The dinner to which we have just referred was held in the Corn Exchange, and was attended by eight hundred persons, and the Manchester Anti-Corn-law Association was immediately fully organized. Shortly afterwards the mem- bers met in the Corn Exchange to receive the delegates who had been in London, and they then found that they had a new difficulty to contend with. A number of Chartists got into the building and by their i-iotous conduct pi'evented the meeting from proceeding. At the next meeting admission was by ticket, so that only those who had the right to be present should take part in it, and Mr. Cob- den then pointed out that the corn-law ques- tion was the question of the poor and called for the co-operation of the honest hard-working men of the town. At the same time he de- nounced the conduct by which the previous meeting had been interrupted. Ees'olutions were afterwards proposed recommending tliat the movement should be no longer sectional but national, and were unanimously carried. The interference of the Chartists with meetings of the association, or, as it was after- wards called, the Anti-Corn-law League, con- tinued to be a serious obstacle, and advantage was sometimes taken by the upholders of the corn-laws to summon either real or pretended meetings for advocating the Charter, at the time and place where the anti-corn-law meetings were to be held, and so either pre- vented or interrupted the proceedings. Of course the Chartist leaders, who were not themselves always contented to seek the attainment of their objects by constitutional means, were desirous to effect some kind of coalition with the League, or to induce its in- fluential and consistent leaders to make com- mon cause with them, and this led to frequent misunderstandings, and to no little inconveni- ence, since the repeal of the corn-laws was a question standing apart from the political de- mands of the Charter. Some of the attendant circumstances of these attempts at amalgama- tion were at a later period made peculiarly painful because of the association of Chartism with the want and distress which the repeal of the corn-laws was also calculated to alleviate. The very fact that the expectations of the suffering people had been fixed upon the action of the League as much as upon the action of the Chartist leaders, may sometimes have made it apjiear that the two movements were in union. As an illustration of this we may refer to the events that arose at a later period (in 1842), when the government then in power had refused the appeal of the Anti- Corn-law Conference. The British Association for the Advance- ment of Science had just held its twelfth annual meeting in Manchester, where great preparations had been made for its reception. For several days afterwards the different sec- tions assembled for the discussion of numerous scientific subjects, many of them of great social importance. But there were deeper questions agitating the public mind than the deliberate considerations of such topics could affect. The agitation for the cheap loaf and 278 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. for free corn was at its height, or rather it had nearly reached the point at which it changed from an appeal to a peremptory de- mand. For a time indeed it appeared as though, in Manchester at all events, there was imminent danger of an amalgamation of the leaguers with those who only regarded the repeal of the corn-laws as one of the measures which would be secured by the adoption of the people's Chai'ter. The Anti-Corn-law Conference closed its sittings on Monday, the 1st of August; parlia- ment was prorogued eleven days afterwards. Up to this time peace was preserved through- out the manufacturing districts. "While there was hope that parliament would do something in the way of giving cheap food to the people, the representations of evil-minded men that nothing could be obtained without violent measures were listened to with mistrust; but when parliament was about to be pro- rogued, after declaring that it would enter into no consideration of the means to relieve the acknowledged distress, that peace-preserv- ing hope was destroyed, people were willing to give attention to those who recommended violent proceedings with the view of bringing matters to a crisis. It was represented that a great commercial convulsion, which would compel employers to join the ranks of the employed, would render the demand for the Charter irresistible; and that the means of ob- taining that, through reform of the represen- tative system, would also be the means of gaining a great advance of wages. The plan was that every worker should cease to work ; one absurd and foolish enough at any time, but especially so when employers had so little work to give. It was not asked whence the advisers came, or by whom employed. In their wretchedness and hunger men did not reason much. Besides, thousands being con- vinced that some violent proceeding was ne- cessary, tens of thousands would be compelled to join them. Thus, the outbreak, the almost universal "turn-out," came at once; came, however, in a manner which proved the change which had taken place in the habits of the ]>eople; came not, as in bygone days, with at- tacks upon millers, corn-dealers, and bread bakers, but with some reverence for law and regard to the rights of property. The design- ing wickedness of some, acting upon the despair of the multitude, originated a folly ; but the foolish would only go to a certain length with the wicked, and there was reason to believe that the few instances of pillage that occurred was mainly the work of thieves and vagabonds who had mingled in the crowd for that pur- pose. Another characteristic of the period was the patience and forbearance of those whose duty it was to preserve the public peace. Persuasion was preferred to the constable's staff and to the soldier's musket and sabre. A turn-out like that of August, 1842, occurring twenty years previously, would have occasioned a civil war. The movement, originating in Ashton-under- Lyne, Duckingfield, and Stalybridge, was al- most without violence and simultaneous. All the hands in the mills, 23,000 in number, turned out at once on the morning of Monday, August 8, and deputies from their body in- duced 9150 in Hyde and its neighbourhood to follow the example. Oldham was visited in the afternoon by numerous turn-outs from Ashton, who, despite some resistance, succeeded in causing the work-people to leave most of the mills. On Tuesday a body of several thousands proceeded fi'om Ashton to Man- chester, where, their arrival being anticiisated, they were received by the militarj^ and police; but on their declaration that they intended nothing illegal, they were allowed to pass, but were carefully watched in order to prevent violence. Their demand at various mills that the hands should turn out was instantly com- plied with; the masters generally giving their hands full liberty to do as they jjleased. At Messrs. Biiiey's mill, the doors of which were thrown open at their approach to allow the workers to go out, the mob insisted on going in; and, on being resisted, a number of win- dows were broken, and stones thrown, which inflicted some severe hurts, and it was neces- sary that the streets should be cleared by the military and police, which was soon effected. At two or three other places similar damage was done, but no attempt was made to destroy machinery. CHAETIST DISTURBANCES THREATENED. 279 On Wednesday the business of turning out hands in the mills was continued, but it was eflfected with little violence, and where any was attempted the ringleaders were seized and sent to prison. Numbers of idle persons croM'ded the streets, mingled with whom were bands of thieves; and, in some instances, con- tributions were levied upon the bread shops. The magistrates were constantly on the alert, and, with the militaiy and police, succeeded in preventing the accumulation of any great number in one place. The mayor (Mr, Wil- liam Nield) issued a notice cautioning persons against joining promiscuous crowds in the streets; and a number of special constables were sworn in to assist in the preservation of the peace of the town. Much alarm was of course experienced; but it was not very intense. There was a belief that the turn-out was not voluntary on the part of the majority of the workers; that that majority was proof against the recommendation of violence; and that the authorities, while firm and determined, were equally cautious and forbearing, and anxious that the innocent and the deluded should not share in the punishment due to the guilty and deluding. On Thursday the appearance of things became more alarming. The disturbers were at work at an early hour in the morning; thousands being assembled in Granby Eow Fields at half-past five o'clock, when they were addressed by several of the Chartist leaders. Soon after six the proceedings were brought to a close by the interference of the civil and military authorities. Sir Charles Shaw led on a very large body of police and special constables, and a strong body of the First Eoyal Dragoons and the 60th Eifles accompanied them. This force halted near the Cai'penters' Hall, close to the meeting; and immediately afterwards Major-general Sir William Warre, commander of the north- ern district, came up with a detachment of the Eoyal Artillery and two field-pieces. The mayor, Mr. D. Maude (police magistrate), and Mr. James Kershaw, a borough and county magistrate, who had accompanied this force, took a position in front on horseback, and the mayor read the Eiot Act. Previously, however, to his reading, the mayor, humanely desiring to avoid, as much as possible, any resort to force, rode up to the hustings, and stated that the authorities had come to the determination, after what had occurred, to allow no such meetings as that; that they were not averse to the liberties of the subject being enjoyed to the fullest extent compatible with the preservation of the peace ; but they thought meetings of that description were calculated to disturb the public mind. Enter- taining this opinion, they held such meetings to be illegal, and were determined to disperee them. This announcement was received with gi-eat displeasure by the meeting; but the Eiot Act was read, as a further warning, in the face of this expression of feeling ; and the magistrates withdrawing, and the two field- pieces having been pointed in a direction to command the centre of the field, Major-general Warre put himself at the head of the dragoons, and rode into the middle of the meeting. This had the efi'ect of instantly dispersing it with- out further trouble, and without injury to any one. Effective as this step had been in dispersing the alarming assemblage, it was far from restoring the town to a state of quietude. The idle, the mischievous, and the dishonest were out, looking for opportunity of plunder. About nine o'clock, in the whole of the south-eastern part of the borough, includ- ing Brook Street, Oxford Street, and Green- heys, the shops were closed, and bands of from twenty to fifty youths parading from street to street, knocking at doors, demanding food, and seldom going away empty-handed ; changing their place of operations when any of the police appeared. It is due to the authorities to state that they were not idle, a body of 200 pensioners, and ninety other per- sons, were sworn in to act as special constables, making, with those sworn in on the previous day, and a number of respectable workmen who had been sworn in at difi'erent mills, all anxious to preserve the property of their employers, a force of 1000 men. Strong bodies of these assistants were despatched, in company with parties of the regular police, to difi'erent parts of the town where it was thought there was the most pressing need for 230 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. theii" jjreseuce. Things remained in much the same state during the Friday and Satur- day, violences being rather the exception than the rule, for the masters had generally closed their mills, with the determination to keep them closed until their work - jaeople volun- tarily offered themselves, and the work-people, generally convinced that no good could be effected by the turn-out, waiting the period when they could resume their employment without the risk of obstruction from the fiercer portion of their number. At the close of the week 3000 special constables were enrolled, and the hope was entertained that, although in the surrounding towns the process of turning out had been successful, with more of violence than had occurred in Manchester, there would be no very serious disturbance of the public peace. In the commencement of the following week there were indications that the turu-out would not be of long continuance. Fears were entertained that Tuesday, the 16th, being the anniversary of the " Peterloo Massacre," would be the day chosen by the Chartists for a display of their power. A public procession was talked of, and the presence of Feargus O'Connor was expected ; but if it was intended, he had caution and prudence enough to avoid the i^ersoual risk. The numerously attended meeting was, however, held in the Carpenters' Hall, of delegates from almost every trade in Manchester and the neighbouring towns, when the following resolutions were proposed : — "(1.) That this meeting pledges itself to dis- continue all illegal proceedings; and, furthei', that they will endeavour to preserve the pub- lic peace. (2.) That we cannot exist with the present rate of wages, and that we are deter- mined not to go to work till we obtain the jjrices of 1839. (3.) That each master do pay the same for the same fabric of cloth through- out the whole of the manufacturing districts. (4.) That it is the opinion of this meeting that our political rights are imperatively ne- cessary for the preservation of our wages when we gain them; we therefore pledge ourselves to act with our other friends, and trades generally, in gaining the People's Charter, as the only means of securing the said rights." The result of the deliberation was that fifty- eight wore for the People's Charter, and would not return to work till it wa.s gained, nineteen would wait the result of another meeting, and seven thought the movement should be solely for an advance of wages. There can be no doubt that this meeting tended greatly to les- sen the influence of the leaders of the move- ment. Tens of tliousands saw instantly the folly and the impossibility of remaining out of work till the Charter was obtained, and earnestly desired to retire from the contest ; more especially as the congregated masters had issued a resolution — "that the mills and other public works of Manchester and Salf ord be not opened for work until the work-people therein emjJoyed signify their desire to resume work." The workers had been made to believe that the masters would be compelled, by the universal- ity of the movement, at once to yield; but this non-resisting policy, this willingness to stand still, and at a period when standing still was about as profitable as working, was a thing that was not anticipated. An address from Sir Benjamin Heywood to the working-men was not without its effect in opening their eyes to the folly of their conduct, for the time had come when the advice of respected men was not disregarded. In other places the movement was attended by less regard to life and property than was shown by the working-men of Manchester and its neighbourhood.^ Harriet Martineau says: — "The Chartists had got into the hands of Pro- tectionist guides or agents, had broke in upon free-trade meetings, and denounced free-trade in corn, and stirred up precisely those among the working-classes who were suffering least — the pitmen of the coal districts and the Welsh miners. There were riots of nailers and miners at Dudley and Stourbridge, and tumult over the whole district, requiring the active services of the military. The rioters resisted a reduc- tion of wages, and hustled some of the masters, as did other rioters in Wales, when a gentle- man of property had a narrow escape with his life. In the Potteries a force of six thousand malcontents, spread over an extent of seven 1 Reilly's History of Manchester. ANOTHER "NATIONAL PETITION." 281 miles, and occasionally committing violence on recusant masters and men, kept Staftbrdshire in alarm. Troops were encamped on the Pot- teries race-course, and magistrates tried to conciliate and mediate, but with little effect. . . . The rioters sent bodies of men to the Yorkshire towns, and sometimes letters — laconic and significant— detailing progress, and one ending, ' We get plenty to eat; the shops are open, they give us what we want.' Some disturbances ensued; but nothing formidable, as in Lancashire and the Potteries, where now the malcontents were gutting and burning dwelling-houses. In the midst of their vio- lence they gave a lame clergyman ten minutes law to walk away, but refused the entreaties of a lady that they would spare the house, leaving her to be thankful for her present safety. Three men were shot dead by the soldiery in Burslem,and several were wounded. . . . In a very short time the Chartist strangers, dropping in from a distance, showed a depth of design and a rapacity which dis- gusted the Lancashire oj^eratives." The dis- order subsided gradually through the last weeks of August and the beginning of Sep- tember. At the following Lent assizes fifty- nine prisoners, arrested in Manchester and Salford during the riots, were tried at Lancas- ter, when twenty-eight were acquitted, and the remainder sentenced to various terms of imprisoimient. Chartism, as a public working force, had al- ready in fact been for some little time in the background. The riots had frightened the classes who had anything to lose, and made them dread the very name of "Chartist," while even "physical force" revolutionists had been taught l)y the repressive action of the govern- ment in the case of men like Frost, Stephens, Vincent, Lovett, and Collins, that the time for taking the political citadel by stoi-m was not yet. Except as all propagandism partook of the improving spirit of the times, it is hardly true, perhaps, that the loiver radical propagandism had improved since men like Vincent and Lovett were sent to jail. But Vincent and Lovett had, from jail, addressed the working- classes, recommending moderation, obedience to the law, and careful organization, and much sympathy had been felt for Vincent and some others. Vincent, a good man as has been al- ready stated, was treated with great severity in prison; and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, who had held the brief for the prosecution, pleadetl his cause, not without effect, before the House of Commons. The general result was that a number of the definitely "respectable" classes, who had something to lose, and who wei'e sure to oppose revolution, now took up the Chartist cause in another, but sufficiently courageous, spirit. Men like Joseph Sturge — the anti- slavery and "temperance" Quaker — and Mr. Sharman Crawford, himself in parliament, took the lead in a conference at Birmingham in April, 1842, the object of which was to unite the middle class and working-class Radicals, and again press the six points upon the legis- lation. The result was the formation of a body called The National Complete Suffrage Union. Biit unfortunately the working-men of England, or at all events men like Feargus O'Connor, had fallen in love with the " red " name " National Convention," and another assembly under that style and title now met in London, O'Connor being its presiding spirit; and under the auspices of this body another national petition was got up. This was said to be twice as big as the one that had been rolled into the house on the former occasion, and when it reached that place on the 2d of May in this year, it was found that it would not go in at the doors, and it had to be broken up into five pieces. Radical members, defying their own sense of the ridiculous, rolled these bits of petition up to the speaker's table, and Mr. Buncombe (who must have laughed in his sleeve all the time), having gravely informed the house that the petitions bore 3,500,000 signatures, and that 100,000 of the petitioners subscribed a penny a week each to Chartist associations, moved that the petitioners should be heard at the bar of the house in explanation of the objects of the pe- tition. These, however, wei'e plainly set forth by Mr. Buncombe in a very moderate and in- genious speech, and they were in possession of all the members. L^niversal suffi-age was of course one of the points, and to be relieved from the burden of paying interest on the 282 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. national debt was another. Mr. Roebuck, then in the flower of his reputation as a Radi- cal, supported Mr. Dvincombe's motion, but described the petition itself as a worthless, inflammatory aflair, the work of a " cowardly demagogue for whom he had too much con- tem^^t even to name him" — this, of course, was Feargus O'Connor, who is not yet going to pass off" the stage. Mr. Macaulay, who, after his return from India, had been elected for Edinburgh on the strength of his conversion to the ballot, opposed Mr. Duncombe's motion. He did not object to short parliaments, or to the abolition of the property qualification, or to the ballot; but he did object to universal sufl'rage. He examined the petition clause by clause, and argued that it jDointed to the con- fiscation of all property, to deliberate national bankruptcy. Having suggested the probable, the morally certain, results which would follow the granting of universal sufi^rage, he said, "Let us grant that education would remedy these things; shall we not wait until it has done so before we agree to such a motion as this '? Shall we, before such a change is wanted, give them the power and the means of ruining not only the rich but themselves? I have no more unkind feeling towards these petitioners than I have towards the sick man who calls for a draught of cold water although he is satisfied that it would be death to him; nor than I have for the poor Indians whom I have seen collected round the granaries in India at a time of scarcity, praying that the doors might be thrown open and the grain distri- buted. But I would not in the one case give the draught of water, nor would I in the other give the key of the granary; because I know that by doing so I shall only make a scarcity a famine, and, by giving such relief, enormously increase the evil." To this he added a warning which has not yet become idle. "There has been a constant and systematic attempt for years to represent the government as being able to do, and as bound to attempt, that which no government ever attempted; and instead of the government being represented, as is the truth, as being sujjported by the people, it has been treated as if the government were to support the people. It has been treated as if the government possessed some mine of wealth, some extraordinary means of supplying the wants of the people; as if they could give them bread from the clouds, water from the rocks, or had jjower to increase the loaves and the fishes five thousand fold. Is it possible to be- lieve that the moment you give them absolute, supreme, irresistible power they wiU forget all this?" The house thought it was not pos- sible, and rejected Mr. Duncombe's motion by 238 to 49. In all this the Malthusian argu- ment was kept in the background, and with great discretion; but it was quietly pressed in various ways, and there Avere "leaders of the masses" who had sense enough to see that in the end this sort of policy would come to a general scramble and free fight, each man taking his brother man by the throat and saying, " What do yoit do here ? You are one too many." Mr. Duncombe was complimented by Mr. Macaulay on the ingenuity with which he had introduced the motion, but the house rejected it so decidedly. In the course of the summer followed large Chartist meetings in Lanca- shire and other counties, and disturbances which reached far north. There were a good many strikes, some Union Bastilles were at- tacked, and there were scenes such as are de- scribed with a masterly pen in Mr. Disraeli's Sybil. But once more the strong hand of the law was put forth, there were numerous im- prisonments and transijoi'tations, and Thomas Cooper, who as little deserved his fate as Henry Vincent, was sentenced to three years' im- prisonment. It was in prison that he composed The Purgatory of Suicides. These, however, are illustrative episodes a little in advance of the date at which our record has now airived. Serious questions between the Church and Dissent were not the most prominent during the years which we have been considering; but they were not by any means laid aside, nor were they sleeping. Several considerable changes had been going on on both sides, as was afterwards illustrated with regard to dis- sent in a peculiar way. The question of Lady Hewley's Charity, as it was named, is yet fresh, and led to some LADY HEWLEY'S CHAEITY, 283 amusing incidents. Mr. Gladstone took the " Liberal " side, though his language compares oddly enough with that of Macaulay, who, of course, did the same. A lawsuit had been going on for fourteen years concerning a be- quest by Lady Hewley in the reign of Charles II. to a Presbyterian church. As is pretty well known, many of the Presbyterian con- gregations of that day became by degrees Unitarian — many Unitarian chajjels being to this day recorded as " Presbyterian " both in Ireland and England. This case woke up the question of kindred endowments, in which the modern LTnitarians, as well as others, were concerned, and a Dissenters' Chapel Bill was introduced with the object of con- firming congregations in the possession of pi'operty which could plead twenty years of prescriptive use. A great hue and cry was raised upon the whole subject, because it was maintained by the opponents of the measure that it had been brought in solely in the interest of the Unitarian body; but the bill received such powerful support from able men in parliament that it passed by consider- able majorities ; the bishops " protesting " by their absence upon the last division in the House of Lords. Mr. Gladstone delivered a singularly char- acteristic speech in support of the bill — a speech from which an attentive reader might prophesy much of the future action of his mind. The distinctions he drew will be seen at a glance. " Lady Hewley," said IVIr. Glad- stone, "was a foundress; there can be no doubt of that. She devoted a large portion of her property in trust to be administered according to her will, and for certain purposes. But are the parties who instituted the chapels to which this biU refers, founders at all? I ask that question, whether they are in the eye of the law entitled to be considered foun- ders at all. I apprehend that they were pax'ties not devoting their property for the benefit of others, but parties devoting it to their own purposes during their lifetime, though undoubtedly after their death that property should descend to others. I believe that the difference between the cases is broad founder has to have his intentions ascertained, protected, and j^reserved, is a right of a nature entirely different from that which may be possessed by any persons who associate to- gether to form a body who are to be the first to enjoy the benefits resulting from that association, and which body is to be propa- gated by the successive entrance of new mem- bers in the natural course of mortality through the following generations. I must be per- mitted to say also, that in the case of Lady Hewley it cannot be said, as I think, that there was no indication of the intentions of the foundress. Lady Hewley made reference to the Apostles' Creed, to the Ten Command- ments, and to the Lord's Prayer, and not only to these, but to the catechism of Mr. Bowles, a catechism of anti-Unitarian doctrines, and one going extensively into detail upon those doctrines. This at least applies to the prin- ciples of one of the deeds which she executed, the deed of 1707 connected with the alms- houses. But, sir, it appears to me that this is not a question on which there is justly any room for difference of opinion. ... I cannot admit that it is subject to the smallest doubt whether these parties ought to be regarded or not, as qualified successors of the early Presbyterians in chapels. If you are satis- fied to look at nothing but the mere external view of the case, and to say there were cer- tain persons who founded these chapels enter- taining one creed, and the present possessors of those chapels possess another creed, I admit that sounds startling. But if you take the pains to follow the course of events from year to year it is impossible to say that at any given period the transition from one doc- trine to the other was made. It was a gra- dual and an imperceptible transition. There can be no pretence for saying that it was made otherwise than honestly. I at least do not hold myself entitled to say so. The parties who effected it made a different use of the prin- ciple of private judgment from those who preceded them; but they acted on a principle fundamentally the same, and though I may lament the result, I do not see how their title is vitiated because they used it to one effect and practical, and that the right Avhich a | and others to another. I do therefore hope, 284 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. not only tliat this bill will be passed by the house, but I hope also, and I cannot enter- tain much doubt, that the feeling which un- fortunately prevails against it out of doors will also be allayed. I think that it is our duty to set ourselves against this feeling, and to endeavour to bring about a mitigation of it, if we are convinced that it is unjust and ill-formed; and I do not believe that my honourable friend the member for Kent will be content to tell us, when the measure again comes before the house, that we are passing a bill for the encouragement of error. If my honourable friend were a judge, and there came before him two parties litigating for an estate, one of whom was an infidel and a j^rofligate, and everything that was bad, and the other a most vii-tuous and benevolent man, would he be deterred from giving the estate to the infidel and profligate if justice lay on his side, because he encour- aged errors ; or would he be deterred — I well know he would not — by such a reproach from the resolute discharge of his duty? But I apprehend that the duty of a judge in such a case as that resembles the duty which my honourable friend is here called on to perform; for he is now called upon to remedy a defect in the law, and to adapt the law to the general and larger principles of justice. I feel no compunction or conflict between my religious belief and the vote I am now about to give. I am not called upon to do that which I could not do, to balance the weight and value of a great moral law against that of some high and vital doctrine of Christianity. Our religious belief should guide us in this as in other acts. But I contend that the best use you can make of your religious belief is to apply it to the decorous performance, without scruple or hesitation, of a great and import- ant act, which, whatever be the consequences, I have in some measure j^roved to be founded on the permanent principles of truth and justice." Macaulay, in a set speech of gi-eat point and vigour, said he now contended against the intolerance of the opponents of the bill in the si^irit in which he should be prepai-ed at any other time to contend for their rights against the intolerance of others. This, by the way, was the speech in which the unfor- tunate reporters made one of the blunders which so much irritated the speaker. In speaking of the universal recognition of the principle of prescription in reference to pro- perty, he said it was known all over the world, — among the pundits of Benares as well as the priests of the West. The reporters made the illustrious " book in breeches " (who talked at the rate of 180 words a minute) speak of the pandects of Benares. Criticism, from a theological or ecclesiastical point of view, of the Tractarian movement, is of course a long way out of the path of this sketch. But it is impossilile to pass over the end (for so it may be called) of a movement as to which the author of Tract xc. himself has said with amusing truthfulness and sim- plicity that, "not to mention the excitement it caused in England, the movement and its party names were known to the j^olice of Italy and to the backwoodsmen of America." To which Di\ Newman adds (^Apologia, pp. 75-6), "And so it proceeded, getting .stronger and stronger every year, till it came into col- lision with the nation and the church of the nation, which it began by jMofessing espe- cially to serve." The subject, however, is one for which no large amount of space can be spared. Pusey- ism is still a well-remembered word, though the terror is gone out of it, another descriptive term having taken its place. But early in the reign of her j^resent majesty the former term was a " word of fear, unpleasing to the ear" of the majority of the religious classes. "Sound Churchmen," as they were called, of the old school, and all Dissenters (except Roman Catholics) looked with terror upon the advance of the new way of looking at Church of England doctrines, services, and history, because it was held to be — as it proved to be in a large number of cases — the path to Romanism. Dismissing the theolo- gical question, the historian has no difficulty in fixing the place of the movement as a movement. For a long time past there had been a great revival of the study of liistory, THE TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT. 285 and a great uewly-awakened interest in the middle ages, with their ^^eculiar learning, taste, and mode or theory of life. A new spirit got into the air of thought among Chui'chmen ; an admiration of unquestioning submission to authority, of the deep unques- tioning sei'iousness of former centuries, of the writings of long-forgotten scholars, historians, and divines; and of ceremonies, splendid or gloomy (as the case might be), taken as repre- senting certain religious ideas. This was, it may be repeated, a natural part of the histori- cal revival. What was called "Gothic" had, as we all know, been the butt of educated men ; but from about the time of the publica- tion of Pei'cy's Reliqnes or Warton's History of Poetry in England a new tide began to flow. Then came Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and Keble, and this new Eomanticism mingled very well indeed with that which was a little older. The " Tracts for the Times " were part of a movement of which Dr. Pusey was the liead, and Dr. J. H. Newman the great liter- ary protagonist. The object of the whole Oxford party was, by their own account, to find what they called a via media in church matters, and, falling back on the Prayer-book of the Established Church, they endeavoured to make out how much of what is generally called Eoman Catholic the Thirty-nine Articles admitted or condemned. This endeavour was carried forward in church practice, in hymns, in sermons, essays, and in the "Tracts for the Times." At last Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman were adjudged to have gone too far. Tract xc, written by the latter, avowedly with the object of inquiring how much of what was "Roman" or "Catholic," or both, could be got within the four corners of the Prayer- book, was condemned by the Bishop of Ox- ford, and the series stopped at that number ; while Dr. Pvisey was sentenced to two years of silence. This was in 1843. In 1845 Mr. Newman openly seceded to Rome, and after- wards what was called Tractarianism began to seek other channels. With this we have here no concern beyond referring generally to the great change in the aspect which the Anglican Church of 1880 presents as compared with that of 1840. There is something so naif in Dr. Newman's account of his surprise at the unfavourable eflect produced by his "Tract xc," that the reader may be glad to see a few sentences from his Apologia. " As to the sud- den storm of indignation with which the ti-act was received throughout the country on its appearance, I was quite unprepared for the outbreak, and was stai'tled at its violence. I do not think I had any fear. Nay, I will add, I am not now sure that it was not, in one point of view, a relief to me. " I saw, indeed, clearly that my place in the movement was lost. Public con ii deuce was at an end, my occupation was gone. It was simply an impossibility that I could say any- thing henceforth to good effect, when I had been posted up by the marshal on the buttery- hatch of every college of my university, after the manner of discommoned pastrycooks; and when, in every part of the country and every class of society, through every organ and opportunity of 02:)inion, in newspapers, in jjeriodicals, at meetings, in pulpits, at dinner- tables, in coffee-rooms, in railway-cai-riages, I was denounced as a traitor who had laid his train, and was detected in the very act of firing it against the time-honoured Establish- ment." Then came the final snapping of the old ties, and Newman leaves Trinity. " Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snap-dragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my university. ... I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires as tliey are seen from the railway." This was written about twenty years ago. Dr. Newman has since been honourably entertained at Oxford. It has already been remarked that, in the time which we are now considering, men were liable to be imprisoned or transported for saying or wn'iting things such as are now written and said with utter impunity. It is all but startling to note that no longer ago than 1841 Mr. Moxon, the publisher of the works of Landor, Tennyson, Wordsworth, &c., was tried for blasphemy and found guilty. 28fi GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. liis offence specifically being the publication of Shelley's poems, which are now sold openly by tens of thousands without the suppression of a word. As the death of Eldon may be taken to mark the close of an era in political and social progress, so the death of Thomas Campbell in 1844 may be noted as coincident with the passing away of a certain era in poetry and general literature. Generally, indeed, the public taste was undergoing a considerable change in the direction of robustness and freedom. While the larger diffusion of books and periodicals had the effect of lowering the standard of literature in some respects, that standard was greatly raised in others. But while ballads like Campbell's best (which it is not necessary to mention by name, since every reader knows them by heart) are imijerishably powerful, his larger poems, such as "The Pleasures of Hope" and "Gertrude of Wy- oming," had already passed into the shade, and with them the whole class of poetiy to which tliey belong. The days when verbal finish and rhetorical power would make a poet's success, if there were onl}'' the faintest tinge of imagination, were over and gone. There is much more than fashion in this ; the whole tide of life now began to roll fuller and stronger, and literature partook of the change. Camjibell was, however, much more than a poet. Besides being the sagacious and earnest initiator of the London University, he was a zealous friend of political freedom — a fact of which there are luminous and frequent traces in his miscellaneous writings. He was, un- fortunately, too fond of his tumbler. When his statue was set up in Westminster Abbey, Eogers, his fellow-poet, said to a friend, "Ha ! the first time I ever saw Tom stand straight." It has already been hinted that certain of the political pai'ty known as the philosophical Radicals, or more briefly and with a touch of ridicule, "the philosophers," exercised a marked influence on our colonial policy; it might be added, on our foreign policy in general. To tliis, India was no exception, though it had been, to an extraoi-dinary de- gree, neglected in parliament, and but for the labours of James Mill and John Stuart Mill would have been more neglected still. The value of their services to our Indian empire, and through them to the empire generally, is universally admitted. The name of Mr. M'CuUoch must be associated with theirs; but it is said that the elder MiU counted for so much in the management of Indian affairs, that after his retirement the Company would and did actually lefrain from taking certain important steps for which they would have been glad to rely upon his wonderful know- ledge and administrative sagacity. There are extant dissertations by both the father and the son which are held to be unequalled in the whole history and range of such docu- ments. When some of the readers of these chapters were young they may have seen the gloomy old India House in Leadenhall Street, in which Charles Lamb said his real works were shelved, and in which so many distinguished men have found a position, not idle, but which yet left them free for other pursuits. But much more significant than the dull Grecian frontage of that building were the small placards to be seen pasted here and there about the streets. At the top of any of those you saw a dashing horse-soldier, airing his sabre, and underneath was an announcement beginning, "A good oj^iiortunity ! Wanted, Smart Young Men for the service of the Honourable East India Company." Of course all this is now gone, and from the year 1833, in which the trading monopoly of the Company was abolished, all has been change. It seems at first sight scarcely credible that it is not quite a century since Cowper, in the fourth book of TJie Tasl; describing the arri- val of the post-boy with the newspapers, repre- sents the country gentleman as impatient to open the printed sheet in order to learn if India is " free." "Is India free? and does she wear her plumed And jewelled turban with a smile of peace, Or do we grind her still ? " But SO it was. Of course, however, the story of the connection of this country with India goes much farther back than Clive or Warren Hastings. Without doing more than EAST INDIAN AFFAIRS. 287 just glance at the commencemeut of this long story, we will go Lack to the year 16U0, when Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to some English merchants, to be called "The Governor and Company of Merchants of Lon- don trading to the East Indies." The Dutch had for a century had settlements in India, but the English and Dutch were now appear- ing upon the scene. There were indeed two rival companies, one stationed at Amsterdam, one in London. The English found the trade with the natives pay, and resolved to make settlements on the coast for the convenience of trade. In the second decade of the century we had, by permission of the native powers, establishments at Surat and three or four other places. The charter being renewed as occasion arose, factories or agencies were set up by degrees not only in Borneo, Java, &c., but on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. Between 1630 and 1670 the cities of Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay had arisen, and Charles II. had granted the Company (for a considera- tion) his royal permission to make war and I^eace at their pleasure. It is not necessary to describe the capital or constitution of the East India Company, or to go through any of its vicissitudes except those which fall within our chronological limits. In strictness the Company were for a long time nothing but merchants, but this was not likely to last, and it did not. By accident or design the agents of the Company got mixed up in native quarrels, and money being the sinews of war everywhere, the Company began to acquire something like actual territorial power in the peninsula. During the progress of their story there were many instances both of robbery and tyranny, traces of which abound in our literatui'e {e.g. in Pope — "Asleep and naked as an Indian lay, An honest factor stole a gem away, &c.). And enormous fortunes were made by British adventurers, of which also traces abound in our literature. The rich uncle coming home suddenly from India to enable a poor but loving pair to marry was, until lately, a very common figure in plays and novels. But to return for a moment to an earlier date, of course not to the early history of the peninsula, but simply so far as to mention that after the death of the celebrated " Great Mogul " Aurungzebe (the greatest erf the Mo- guls), in the year 1707, the old empire of India began rapidly to fall to pieces. Bombay, which had been the dowry of Catherine, the Infanta of Poi'tugal, when she married our Charles II., was in 1668 handed over to the East India Company. The Persian invasion of 1738, and other events, bring us up to the middle of the eighteenth century, or later, when feuds began to break out between the English and the French, who had also settlements in India. Of course war between England and France was the signal for war in India between the forces of the two nations there, though the interests of the native princes were often the pretext for hostilities. After the great vic- tories of Clive over the French, which it is not necessary to recall exce])t in this general way, the path lay open to almost unreserved British supremacy. When a native prince appealed to the Company for support they drove a bargain with him, which was sure to lead to quarrels, and some kind of corruption was not far off. Before the close of his career Clive, though he did some wrong things, did much to make it easier to govern India well in future, and the first British governor- general, Warren Hastings, now appears upon the scene. This brings us down to compara- tively recent dates and comparatively familiar names and events. Hyder Ali and the French, who had combined against the British, were defeated in 1781 by Sir Eyre Coote, and on the whole India did well under the governor- ship of Warren Hastings, the story of whose impeachment need not here be told. In 1784 Pitt established the Board of Con- trol. Soon afterwards we find Lord Corn- wall is in the place of Warren Hastings, and he was both the civil and military master in India. Before long, Wellesley, whom we know better as the Iron Duke, is defeating Tippoo Saib and the French, and winning the memorable victory against " the mj'riads of Assaye;" and after this we meet the names of Lord Cornwallis, Lord Minto, and the Mar- ouis of Hastings. The last-named nobleman 288 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. was Govern or-general of India from 1813 to 1823, and it was under his administration that the British power finally consolidated itself in India. We had been able to liold it only on condition of constant fighting and too fre- quent aggression, and the story of our relations with these dark races is from first to last stained with many errors and some crimes. The position of the Company had never been quite cleai', and the military power which it gradually acquired (th£ army at last reached to about 300,000 men) had been taken up under pressure, in quarrels, or for self-defence. The soldiers were at first mere volunteers, some of them released or runaway criminals, and at first no natives were enlisted. We find them eventually in the army in very large numbers, but they were never "enlisted" by force, and that subject will arise again when we approach the dreadful mutiny of 1857. It has been already stated that in 1833 the trading privileges of the Company were taken away, and this led to a curious state of things, one, in fact, which could not last. The Com- ])auy had to levy taxes to pay the dividends on East India stock, and it had no direct governing power. Under the unfortunate administration of the Earl of Auckland began the dreadful story of our trouble with Afghanistan. The independent and warlike character of the Afghan race is well known, while a glance at the map shows that this mountain region may be considered as a grand natural barrier between India and the more western parts of Asia. Through the highlands of Afghanistan to the regions of the Indus there are only two passes, of which the Khyber Pass is one, and it has strong positions of natural fortification at Jellalabad and Peshawui'. This pass is formed by the valley of the Cabul river. Cabul, Ghuznee, Candahar, and Herat are very important centres of communication. Between the north-westein boundary of Bri- tish India and Persia there lies the plain of the Punjaub or Punjab, then the alpine region of Afghanistan, and then a desert. With the desert we have no concern, but it has to be noted that the Punjab was in the hands of the Sikhs, a very warlike people, who were then under the rule of Runjeet Singh (whose name is familiar to us all), called the Lion of Lahore. In Afghanistan there had for some time been more or less anarchy. One Shah Sujah, who had been trying for the ascendency, was defeated by Dost Moham- med (another familiar name), who now ruled in Cabul. Shah Sujah fled into the Sikh terrrtoiy. Meanwhile the Sikhs had, in the recent confusion, helped themselves to im- portant positions in the north-west and the province of Peshawur. Of course Dost Mo- hammed of Cabul now made war upon Run- jeet Singh of the Sikhs, and the end of it, so far, is that we find Shah Sujah taking refuge with the British, while the Afghans are ap- plying to us for help against the over-active Lion of Lahore, Runjeet Singh. This is, in vulgar language, a pretty kettle of fish; but the worst is to come. Dost Mo- hammed, denied assistance by the British, apjalied to Persia, which was eager to help him, having an eye to Herat. At this point British jealousy (just or unjust) of Russia begins to play a part in the story. Pei-sia was on good terms with Russia, and the idea of Persian soldiers holding Herat was alarm- ing to the British mind, especially to that of Lord Auckland. Russia, too, was found ofi"er- ing to the Afghans the aid we had denied, and it was held by the governor-general that we must be in command of Cabul. Herat, which was then under an independent Afghan chieftain, was besieged by the Persians in vain, the defence being conducted by Lieu- tenant Pottinger. But Lord Auckland de- cided to make war on Dost Mohammed, with Shah Sujah for excuse, and ships were de- simtched to the Persian Gulf in order to divert the Persian forces from Herat. Naturally Runjeet Singh refused to allow the British troops to pass through Lahore, and they had to fight their way through the hostile territory of Scinde. In the end the British troops captured Ghuznee, drove out Dost Moham- med, and set up Shah Sujah in Cabul. This was no gi-eat achievement, and we had to maintain our position, nominally Shah Sujah's position, at the point of the sword by a large armv. at a cost of millions of monev. CHINA— "THE OPIUM WAE." 289 At home the victory at Ghuznee was re- garded with satisfaction, of course, because no Englishman reHshes the news of a defeat of the British arms; but of the wisdom of Lord Auckland's policy there were various opinions. Nevertheless the thanks of both houses of parliament were voted to the gover- nor-general, the commander-in-chief. Major- general Elphiustone, and the army in genenxl. The Duke of Wellington did not refuse his tribute to the bravery of the troops, and the energy with which the whole expedition had been carried out; but he did not fail to point out that we had entered upon a dangerous business, and that we were not unlikely to discover that our difficulties had only just begun. It is noticeable here that the duke himself, when commander-in-chief in India, had been recalled because his policy had been too aggressive ! Mr. Macaulay, not long re- turned from India, with aU the doubtful honours of his code thick upon him, was now war secretary, and cordially sujjported the vote of thanks to the army of the Indus. The more sanguine portion of his remarks was curiously stultified by the event. Among many peculiarities of our Indian empire, Mr. Macaulay said, — there was none more re- markable than that the people whom we go- verned there were a people whose estimate of our power sometimes far exceeded the truth, and sometimes fell short of it. They knew nothing of our resources; they were ignorant of our geogi'aphical position; they knew nothing of the political condition or the relative power of any of the European states. They saw us come and go, but it was upon an element with which they were not acquainted, and which they held in horror. It was no exaggeration to state that not merely the common people, but the upper class — nay, even the ministers of the native provinces — were, almost without exception, so profoundly ignorant of European affairs that they could not tell whether the King of the French or the Duke of Modena was the greatest poten- tate. Further, IMr. Macaulay said he could tell the house, that when he was in India there was a restless unquiet feeling existing in the minds of our subjects, neighbours, and Vol. I. subsidiary alUes — a disposition to look for- ward to some great change, to some approach- ing revolution — to think that the power of England was no longer what it had been proved to be in former times; in short, there had prevailed a feeling in the public mind in India, which, unchecked, might have led the way to great calamities. But this gi-eat event, this great triumph at Ghuznee, enacted so signally by the British troops, had put down, with a rapidity hardly ever known in history, this restless and uneasy feeling; and there never was a period at which the opinion of our valour and skill, and what was of equal importance, the confidence in our 'star,' was higher than it then was in India. Mr. Macaulay held that there was reason to think that all the expense incurred by these thousands of camels and thousands of troops was sound and profitable economy. He had, he said, seen something of the brave men who defended our Indian empire ; and it had been matter of great delight to him to see the warm attachment to their country and their countrymen which animated them in that distant land, and which added a tenfold force to the zeal and vigour with which they performed their arduous duties. There was a disposition in the service, continued Mr. Macaulay, to think that the Indian service was not so highly considered in England as other services less able, and performed with less jeopardy, in other countries. It was ex- traordinary to see the interest, with what gratification, the smallest scrap, the merest line in an English newspaper, conferring any praise on this service, was received by them, and their delight would be extreme when they came to read the vote of thanks which had been conferred on them unanimously by the House of Lords, and which he trusted would be passed as unanimously by the House of Commons, the more esjjecially accompanied as it was by the testimony to their merits borne by the greatest general that England ever produced. "We may now leave India for a time, but we have to pass round to China and to take Borneo on our way. About this time commenced the extraordinary and much- 19 290 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. discussed career of Sir James Brooke, some- time Rajah of Sarawak, of which a comjjlete account scarcely belongs to this chapter, though it was in 1838 that he went out to Borneo and engaged in the service of the sultan, who afterwards made him rajah. He was a man of a type which is now pretty well extinct — so much is admitted on all hands — a high- handed adventurer, whose manner of dealing with " salvages " belonged rather to the six- teenth than the nineteenth century. But though some portions of his career were the subject of much discussion both in and out of parliament, his services to Borneo are not denied; and for the moment his story may stop here. In our relations with China we have a sub- ject of much greater magnitude and intricacy. Much of our procedure in that country has been severely condemned on grounds of jus- tice and humanity too; but the chief interest attaching to our quarrels with " the yellow men " lies in the fact that they led to what is sometimes called "the opening up of the Chinese empire." Of the exclusiveness of the Chinese nothing new can well be said, and one of the most striking and pregnant incidents of the present reign was the breaking down of the barriers which shut out " barbarians " like ourselves from intercourse with (about) a third of the whole population of the globe. It has already been mentioned that the trading monopoly of the East India Company was in 1833 marked to cease. In 1834 it came to an end, and frequent quarrels arose between the Chinese mandarins and the officers ap- pointed by our government to protect our commerce. In 1838 the Chinese appear to have decided to stop the trade in opium, and the British government sent out word to the East that if our merchants chose to carry on the trade as smugglers, it would not be the business of the Queen to protect them with ships or soldiers. In the meantime, however. Commissioner Lin — whose name was once very familiar in Great Britain — had blockaded our factories at Canton, and Captain Elliott, who had been forced to surrender 20,000 chests of opium, had written to Calcutta for ships and troops. In the latter part of 1839 Captain Elliott fired into some Celestial war-junks, and a treaty was drawn uji; but this was not confirmed in Downing Street, and Sir Henry Pottinger was sent out to China with full powers for peace or war. There ensued a "war" with the yellow men, some of the details of which ai'e stUl remembered as having found their way even into street-ballads. The poor Celes- tials were not prepared for the military en- gines and methods of the barbarians, and their arrows or small bi-ass guns did not do much execution. Our cannons drove them fairly out of their senses, and even those who con- demned the opium war could not help laugh- ing at the stories of the bewilderment and terror of the "celestials" who had so long despised the "barbarians." Several places were captured by the British, including Nan- kin, and the island of Hong-Kong, which became ours. The treaty which Sir Henry Pottinger negotiated with the "Brother of the Sun and Moon," bound him to pay us 21 millions of dollars for the cost of the war, though he had already paid 6 millions of dollars for the value of the confiscated opium. The total sum was more than ^5,500,000 ster- ling, and great was the triumph of the idling Briton and street-sparrow when they saw the heavy wagons pass through our thoroughfares with the first instalments of the war-indemnity. A song which appeared in Pxmch, to a popular tune, has not yet passed out of memory: — " Our foes in China, Potts dz-ubbed in all quarters ; They'd ne'er so fine a Whopping from the Tartars ; And, SU-, they must, (How proud am I to say it) Down with the dust — and tax our tea to pay it." Syria and Egypt — the story which culmi- nated in the capture of St. Jean d'Acre by Commodore Napier — demand a few words of notice, partly for ordinary reasons, partly be- cause it was in this siege that steam war-ships were first employed, and partly because the whole aflfair formed a striking ejDisode in the history of our relations with Egypt and Turkey. Sir John Bowring had been sent out about this time by Lord Palmerston to inquire into the commercial relations of vaii- EGYPT— MEHEMET ALT. 291 ous countries, and his account of the celebrated Mehemet Ali (whom Lady Hester Stanhope called a bloody tyrant when he wanted to reduce the number of her men-at-arms, and who really was one), and what that very able man would probably have done in the British interest if he had been differently treated, is too interesting to be omitted. " I think," writes Sir John Bowring, " that a great politi- cal error was committed by the British govern- ment when they lent themselves to the views of the Ottoman Porte, and determined to coerce Mehemet Ali, the viceroy of Egypt, into subjection, instead of encouraging his desire for independence. His plan was to gather all the Arabic-speaking nations under Egyptian rule, and to establish the founda- tions of a great Arab empire; and had we been a party to this arrangement there is no doubt that we might have exercised at Cairo an influence far more potent than we could ever expect to do at Constantinople, which is the very focus of intrigue, where all the great powers are constantly struggling for ascend- ency, and where our policy is often thwarted by the action of Russia, France, or Austria. The geographical position of Egypt — standing midway between England and her Indian possessions — must have a political iraj^ortance of the highest order. When the French first invaded Algiers they made to the pasha the most seductive offers to recognize his inde- pendence of the Porte, if he would co-operate with them in their intended African expe- dition. He communicated this information to the Duke of Wellington, who recommended him to repudiate the offer, stating that if he did so the service rendered to English intei^ests would not be forgotten. Eeferring to this subject with some bitterness, he once told me that he would at any time have despatched ten thousand of his regular troops to assist in maintaining our authority in Bi-itish India; and though their services might not have been of much value, the offer was evidence of the friendly animus which inspired the viceroy." Mehemet Ali was of very low origin, and had not learned to read till he was forty-six years of age ! Though he was, as the Scinde brigands said of Napier, a " Devil's brother " and a true Turk, he was tolerant and a far-seeing politician. Sir John Bowring's narrative of his reception by this "bloody tyrant " is both amusing and instructive. "The Pasha," says Sir John, "received me in his palace at Shoubra, in the mouth of November, 1837. We were preceded by a janissary with his silver staff, on horseback, and were accompanied by a number of men who turned aside the camels, overturned the donkeys, beat the children, collared the men, and shoved away the women, it being as difficult to thread the streets of Cairo at sun- set as it is to force a passage through the Eoyal Exchange at mid-day. The pasha's secretary awaited us, and conducted us into the place of audience, in the centre of which were three huge silver candlesticks with lighted wax candles. In the corner stood Mehemet Ali, with his white beard, soft and fair hands, and fiery eye. He beckoned us to approach, and squatted himself in the corner of the divan, on a carpet of green and gold. Next to Colonel Campbell, the consul-general, I had the seat of honour, the interpreter standing before the pasha. Coffee was ordered in, and conversation began. He told us of the bad education he had received, said that he had never seen civilized nations, that he had been thrown among barbarians, of whom, when he came to Egypt, scarcely one could read, but that he was endeavouring to in- struct his people, and had ten thousand in dif- ferent schools. He added that though he had often been at war, it was against his wish and necessary for his jDrotection, and that he wished to live ten years more in peace, in order to show what Egypt was capable of becoming. He told us that when the insurrection broke out in Syria the Russian and French consuls told him that he should study history in order to learn how to govern. 'My son wrote to me,' he said, 'for orders. I thought the best thing was to go myself; so I went, and settled every- thing in a week. That was practical govern- ment — better than I would have learned from history.' The fact is that he went to Jaffa, seized and hanged the leadei-s of the revolt, and returned to Egypt in a month from the day he had left it. Colonel Campbell, who went 292 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. with him, told me that he never saw such an examjile of energy. Nobody could fail to be struck with his suavity of manners, his natural ease, his smile, and his penetrating eye. Who, in that fine old man, stroking his long beard, white as snow, and wiping his lii^s with a fair and fine pocket-handkerchief, could imagine that he saw the slaughterer of the thousand Mamelukes, his guests and dependants, the con- queror of the Wahabees of the holy cities, the man who had bearded the sultan and subjugated the half of Ai-abia, the hero of Syria and Can- dia? There he sat in the corner of the divan, his words bearing life and death. It was alto- gether a most interesting scene. This man, in his rude way, did wonders for Egypt, caused vast tracts of land to be redeemed from the desert, introduced the fine sea-island cotton, which has become so important an export from Alexandria, made canals, though at a fearful sacrifice of human life, introduced into the army the military organization of Europe, so that he overthrew again and again the forces of the sultan in Syria and Asia Minor, put his ships of war into good condition, and ap- pointed French officers to the supreme com- mands both in the army and the navy. He had applied to our government to obtain the services of British officers, but met with a re- fusal. The French government, however, will- ingly gi-anted his request, and in consequence French interests in Egypt have not unfre- quently circumvented British policy." We must now refer to an event, the in- fluence of which, on social progress in this country, it would be difficult to estimate too highly. In May, 1836, the Duke of Coburg, eldest brother of Leopold and of the Duchess of Kent, had been on a visit to England, accom- panied by his two young sous Ei-nest and Albert.^ That visit was not without an object, although no mention of its real intention had been made to the peisons most intimately con- cerned. Stockmar was one of the prime movers, and Stockmar had written " it must be made a sine qua non that the object of the 1 Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel, kuo>vn always as Prince Albert. visit be kept strictly secret from the princess as well as from the prince, so as to leave them comjjletely at their ease." Of course nearly eveiy Englishman and every Englishwoman now understands that the hope and expecta- tion of the two amiable old matchmakers — the King of the Belgians and his faithful friend and secretary — was that Albert, the younger of the two princes, and Victoi'ia, the English May-flower, should fall in love with each other in the most natural way possible, and that then diplomacy might come in with a set face and a gently warning finger to regu- late matters, and to see that they were quite serious before the betrothal should be even so much as whispered either in England or in Germany. By the blessing of Heaven this happy plot of the two amiable but astute old gentleman, — the uncle being indeed regarded as one of the most sagacious princes in Europe, — succeeded admirably, and resulted in one of the happiest royal marriages ever recorded in the history of the world; and though it cannot be doubted that even nursery gossip in Coburg pointed to the intention to make the younger son of the ducal house an aspirant for the hand of the Princess Victoria long before it was probable that she would be queen, it was determined to keep from the princess herself any influence which would be stronger than the regard with which her future suitor might unconsciously inspire. Leopold, on whom had devolved the guar- dianship of his twice widowed sister, the Duchess of Kent, and her infant daughter,^ was deeply desirous of this alliance; and 2 Soon after the death of the Princess Charlotte, who was presumptive heiress to the throne of England, the Duke of Kent, then in liis fifty-first year, married Victoire JIaria Louise, Princess Leiningen, the youngest sister of the Duke of Coburg and of the bereaved Leopold. She had married the Prince Emich Charles of Leiuingen in 1S03, when she was seventeen, and his death in 1S13 left her a widow with a son, Charles Emich, Prince Leiningen, and a daughter, Anna Feodora, afterwards by marriage. Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. On the 24th of May, 1819, the Princess Victoria was born, and although the marriage of the Duke of Clarence on the very same day with himself, and the probability of there being therefore an heir to tlie throne, left the succession doubtful, the Duke of Kent was in the habit of showing his infant daugliter to his intimate friends, with the words, "Look at her well, for she will be Queen of England." Prince Leiningen, the half-brother of her majesty, died in 1859. EOYAL MATCH-MAKING. 293 though, like Stockmar, he carefully refrained from promoting it until the character of the prince had been observed and trained, and the mutual regard of the two young people themselves had been ascertained, it is to him that its complete success may be said to have been due. Although her father, the Duke of Kent (who died within eight months after her birth), used to regai'd his little daughter as the future sovereign of England, the succession was for many years uncertain, as two children were born to the Duke of Clarence, and though both of them died in infancy Adelaide was still young when her husband came to the throne. These were among the reasons for the comparative seclu- sion and simplicity in which the Princess Victoria was brought up. Not until she was twelve years old was she allowed to know that she was next in succession to the throne. The information was conveyed to her by her governess, the Baroness Lehzen, placing the genealogical table into the history book from which Mr. Davys (instiaictor to her royal highness, and afterwards Bishop of Peter- borough) gave a lesson. In a letter from the baroness to her majesty so late as the 2d of December, 1867, the whole incident is very fully described. " When Mr. Davys was gone the Princess Victoria opened, as usual, the book again, and seeing the additional paper, said, ' I never saw that before.' ' It was not thought necessary you should, princess,' I answered. ' I see I am nearer the throne than I thought.' ' So it is, madam,' I said. After some moments the princess resumed, 'Now many a child would boast, but they don't know the difficulty. There is much splendour, but there is more responsibility.' The princess having lifted up the forefinger of her right hand while she spoke, gave me that little hand, saying, ' I will be good ! I understand now why you urged me so much to learn even Latin. My aunts Augusta and Mary never did : but you told me Latin is the foundation of English grammar and of all the elegant expressions, and I learned it as you wished it; but I undei-stand His son, Ernest, Prince Leiningen, entered the British navy, and commands the royal yacht. The Princess Hohenlohe died on the 23d of September, 1872. all better now,' and the princess gave me her hand, repeating, 'I will be good!' I then said, ' But your aunt Adelaide is still young, and may have children, and of course they would ascend the throne of their fathex', Wilham IV., and not you, princess.' The princess answered, 'And if it was so, I should never feel disappointed, for I know by the love Aunt Adelaide bears me, how fond she is of children.' When Queen Adelaide lost her second princess she wrote to the Duchess of Kent, ' My children are dead, but youre lives, and she is mine too.'"^ There is something of quaint "old fash- ionedness" about this description, as there is about the conversation wliich it x'ecords ; but it shows very distinctly the meaning of that retirement to which allusion has more than once been made in referring to the training of the young princess. As time went on, however, the succession to the throne became more certain, and the marriage of the niece for whom he felt a parental affection and a guardian's respon- sibility became of still graver moment to King Leopold; and though he shared the warm regard of all the Coburg family for the nephew who from babyhood had been a prime favour- ite because of his singularly engaging char- acter no less than for his personal beauty, he would take no step to promote an alliance until he was well assured that it would be for the mutual happiness of the young people themselves. The serious question was whether Albert possessed, or would be^ able to acquire, those characteristics which would qualify him for the difficult position of consort of a young constitutional sovereign in a country where there was always extreme jealousy of interposition, and where the suspicion of "foreign influence" would be ever vigilant and unrelenting. Added to this was the re- solution, probably born of the abiding tender memory of his own love and bereavement, that if this marriage were ever to take place it should be no ?3ie;-e?_y prudential alliance, but 1 Life of the Prince Consort. On the subject of the intimation of her probable succession, the queen says iu a note, " I cried much on learning it, and ever deplored this contingency." 294 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. one of affection and esteem also. He could have had no more faithful, no more practical, and, be it added, no more subtle ally than Stockmar: subtle even by his very indepen- dence and unity of purpose. Leopold was of opinion that no other prince was so qualified to make his niece happy, or to fulfil worthily the difficult duties of the consort of an English queen, Stockmar as friend and counsellor thought it his duty to take care that this opinion was well founded. Since 1834 he had resided with his family at Cobur'g, but without any relations with the ducal house, where it was believed that he was no favourite. He had only casual opportunities of observing the young princes, and occupied with his studies, and in rather poor health, he had sufficient, and to him agreeable occupation in the retired life he led apart from courts and political questions. But Leopold had been his model prince, and was still his beloved master and friend. An appeal from him became a com- mand, especially when it had reference to the happiness of the little English princess of whom he had seen so much while he was in London. He soon sought opportunities of meeting the young princes, and his scrutinizing eye was as quickly fixed upon the younger. " Albert is a fine young fellow," he wrote in 1836; "well grown for his age, with agreeable and valuable qualities ; and who, if things go well, may in a few years turn out a strong, handsome man of a kindly, simple, yet dignified demeanour. Ex- ternally, therefore, he possesses all that pleases the sex, and at 'all times and in aU countries must please. It may prove, too, a lucky cir- cumstance, that even now he has something of an English look." There is nothing very "gushing" in this reference, but Stockmar was always plainly, sometimes almost grimly, matter-of-fact. He committed himself to no opinion then, but only ventured to continue by saying, " He is said to be circumspect, dis- creet, and even now cautious. But all this is not enough. He ought to have not merely great ability, but a right ambition and great force of will as well. To pursue for a life- time a political career so arduous demands more than energy and inclination — it demands also that earnest frame of mind which is ready of its own accord to sacrifice mere pleasure to real usefulness. If he is not satisfied hereafter with the consciousness of having achieved one of the most influential positions in Europe, how often will he be tempted to repent what he has undertaken ? If he does not from the very outset accept it as a vocation of grave responsibility, on the efficient fulfilment of which his honour and happiness depend, there is small likelihood of his succeeding." There is something deeply significant in these words when they are read now in the light of what Prince Albert became, and of the estimate in which he lived to be held by the English people; something very pathetically significant in them, when we remember that they are here quoted from a biography of the prince com- piled under the direction of our queen herself,^ and published only six years ago — a biography in which she records, now that she is able to surround herself with her children's children, the tender and true and simple emotions of her own "love-making," — and to confess with pride how her youthful heart was stirred with an affection that abides with her still, and the memory of which has never left her during the years of her widowhood. So the Duke of Coburg came to England in May, 1836, and stayed for four weeks. It was no more than a friendly visit. The prince had often in still earlier years heard his grand- mother, the Dowager Duchess of Gotha, say how she should like him to form an alliance with his cousin; but even if he had reason to sujDpose that this was more than a family wish casually though earnestly expressed, he was an exceedingly unlikely person to bring it to any practical issue without some more dis- tinctly personal motive. That such motive arose on both sides during this visit there seems to be little reason to doubt, and indeed directly after the visitors had departed King Leopold began to make his niece aware of his hopes and wishes. That it was done with kindly art there need be no question; for it elicited an answer which must have been eminently satisfactory, since it concludes by saying, " I have only now to beg you, my ' Life of the Prince Consort. PRINCE ALBERT. 295 dearest uucle, to take care of the health of one now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection. I hope and trust that all will go on prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me." She did not appeal in vain. From that moment not only Leopold but Stockmar were devoted to the welfare of the prince. The course of his education, his health, and his pursuits were assiduously watched, and to a great extent judiciously directed, but in such a manner that he was left free, or at all events with the freedom of one who is grateful for kindly and symiDathetic aid and agreeable counsel. On leaving London the prince and his bro- ther went to Paris, where they made the acquaintance of the Orleans family; and thence to Brussels; for as Stockmar wisely con- sidered that as it would be desirable that the course of studies on which they were to enter should include a frank estimate of men, the restrictions of the society of Coburg, where they would occupy so conventional a position, would prevent their forming acquaintances even though they might be receiving instruc- tion from eminent professors. The political attitude of Prussia made it an exceedingly bad school at which to gain any true know- ledge of i^ublic affairs and the relative position of European states, while the society at Berlin was either hopelessly formal or notoriously profligate. Vienna was equally objectionable for a German prince, and the universities were too narrowly scholastic for a young man who might have soon to take a practical part in the social if not in the political conditions of an important state. In Brussels Leopold him- self was engaged in organizing and establishing a constitutional government; and whether the younger of the two nephews married the young Queen of England or not, he would there be able to pursue studies which would fit him to take a distinguished place in the world. Baron Weichmann, a retired officer of the English- German legion, was their tutor in history and modern languages. With M. Quetelet, the eminent statist, they read the higher mathe- matics, and their application to social and natural phenomena — studies which always had such an attraction for Prince Albert that for several years he kept up an intimate cor- respondence with his distinguished tutor. In the spring of 1837 they went to Bonn, where they remained for eighteen months under the direct tuition of the able professors who were then attached to the university; and here Prince Albert was distinguished not only for the eager prosecution of his studies and his especial delight in questions of public law, metaphysics, and philosophy, but for his ami- able temper, and for that social attraction of which his remarkable talent for grotesque but genial mimicry and his keen sense of humour were considei'able elements. As he was also an accomplished musician, an excellent hand with the foils even among the student experts, and had taken care to maintain the practice of those manly sports which enabled him to enjoy exercise in the country, it may be be- lieved that he justified the declaration of one of his close friends and companions. Prince William of Lowenstein, that " he spared no exertion either of mind or body; on the con- traiy, he rather sought difficulties in order to overcome them, the result being such an har- monious development of his powers and facul- ties as is very seldom arrived at." It was while the princes were at Bonn that the Princess Victoria came to the throne, and Stockmar, as we have already seen, came to England as her confidential secretary and adviser. In a modest and sensible letter Prince Albert congratulated his " dearest cousin " on the high but difficult task, for which he prayed that she might receive heavenly strength, and find a reward for her efibrts in the thankfulness and love of her subjects. Of course there were rumours of a contemplated marriage of the young queen with her cousin, but the prince himself had not been made aware of the real state of the case. He was not, so to speak, an officially-recognized lover. It is pleasant, however, to know that during the autumn vacation, when he and his brother were making a pedestrian tour — a delightful holiday of exploration in Switzerland and amidst the Italian lakes — he collected views, little memorials, a "Rose des Alpes" from the Righi, to be forwarded to her on his return. 296 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. After another short period of assiduous study at Bonn it was thought desirable that he should be formally made acquainted with the projected marriage. Thus we see alter- nately the diplomatic and official and the natural or human sides of this royal court- ship. The queen had been consulted by her uncle, who thought that some decided arrange- ments should be made for the following year. The frank reply was such as might have been expected in a royal maiden trained as Victoria had been, and had in it something character- istic of the candid common sense for which the sovereign was even then distinguished. Both she and the prince were too young, and she being under age, her subjects might think her marriage premature. He spoke English but imperfectly, and it was important that this defect should be remedied ; besides this he needed more experience, more self-reliance, and greater opportunities and habits of obser- vation than he could possibly have acquired. We seem to be able to trace in these simple but practical objections the same sense of duty which caused the sudden impulsive declaration, " I will be good," to be made to the governess — the same desire to be worthy of her high calling which bent the little head over the puzzling Latin grammar. The prince, who was on a visit to Brussels, was informed by King Leopold of the family proposals, and of these which were accepted as necessary conditions. It was not unnatural that he should have been disappointed, but he took a high and honourable view of the situation. He was ready to submit to the proposed de- lay, but he should expect some assurance to go upon. If, after waiting perhaps for three years, he found that the queen no longer desired the marriage, he would be placed in a ridicvdous position, and to a certain extent his future prospects would be ruined. It was certainly rather hard, especially as the queen had thought it her duty to cease corresponding with him after her accession. But Prince Albert had grown much more mature during the previous year, and the objections to his youthful appearance and even to the need for greater experience had already diminished. His uncle was more than ever satisfied with him. Stockmar, cool, calculating, and anxi- ously inquiring, had begun to form a higli estimate of his character and abilities. These opinions were soon likely to be confirmed. On leaving Bonn it was arranged that the prince should make a tour in Italy, there to study not only books and politics, but men and manners. The queen, who had already con- fided to Stockmar her true wishes, requested him to accompany the prince. There was little difficulty in this arrangement, and any surprise which he might have felt that the confidential physician, secretary, and friend of his uncle LeojDold should be his companion was easily accounted for by Stockmar's know- ledge of Italian society and his undoubted attainments. It was a happy pleasant holi- day, tempered by daily hours of study and simple active habits. The country round Flor- ence was the delightful resort of the prince and his friend and companion Sir Francis Seymour, then a young lieutenant in the 19th Regiment. The greatest pain of this journey was that it was made without the brother, from whom he had always been inseparable. Prince Ernest had entered ujDon active mili- tai-y life at Dresden, and the parting had been very grievous, for the brothers loved each other sincerely. But there was no leisure for unavailing sorrow. Early rising, study from six till noon, a simple mid-day meal, a visit to some gallery of art or an excursion to the lovely environs of the city, or two or three hours devoted to the grand organ in the Church of the Badia — such was the usual day's occupation. The prince was never fond of the ordinary fashionable amusements of society, as people in England found out after- wards; but of course he sometimes had to accejDt invitations — indeed, in a letter to Prince Lowenstein, he says he never excused himself. " I have thrown myself into the vortex of society. I have danced, dined, suj^ped, paid compliments, been introduced to people and had people introduced to me, chatted French and English, exhausted every conceivable phrase about the weather, played the amiable — in short, have made ' bonne mine a mauvais jeu.' You know my passion for this sort of thing, and must therefore THE YOUNG QUEEN'S WOOING. 297 admire my strength of character — in short, I have never excused myself, never returned home till five in the morning — in a word, I have fairly drained the carnival cup to the dregs." There is, of course, a touch of satire in this. The prince cared little for the .small-talk and the mere frivolities of ordinary assemblies; and though his qualities were eminently social, they were never of that gregarious kind which made him hap])y in a crowd. There must be piu'jjose in all that he said and did, and probably only those who knew him intimately and in his domestic relations really knew what an intensity there was in his affection, and how eai-nestly he regarded those who were near to him in his daily life. Ordinarily he was looked ujJon as cold and undemonstrative, if not actually inaccessible. There is no need now to ex- patiate on the social and domestic character of Prince Albert. All that need be said may be conveyed by one short extract from her majesty's journal on the 22d of January, 1841, not long after the birth of the princess royal, when the royal household had gone to "Windsor Castle to spend the Christmas holidays after the queen's recovery. "I told Albert that formerly I was too happy to go to London, and wretched to leave it, and how, since the blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country, and could be content and hapjjy never to go to town. This pleased him. The solid pleasures of a peaceful, quiet, yet merry life in the country, with my inestimable hus- band and friend, my all in all, ai'e far more durable tlian the amusements of London, though we don't despise or dislike these some- times." The Italian tour was over, and it had greatly helped to expand the prince's knowledge and experience. He was preparing to settle down at the Eosenau — the place of his birth — there quietly to study the English language and history, when his father called upon him to accompany him to Carlsbad. Stockmar, who perhaps had some doubt whether the remark- able range and variety of his studies, and especially his proficiency in some accomplish- ments, might not prevent him fi'om an earnest application to subjects an acquaintance with which would give him a due position there- after, wrote to him sound advice and kindly counsel, and even ventured to banter him, par- ticularly on his apparent aversion to spend much time in the society of ladies. Meanwhile the reasons for delaying the proposed marriage were diminishing. There were many argu- ments in favour of the young queen having a suitable protector who would have the right to be constantly near her. Other alliances had already been proposed, but in her own words " she never had an idea, if she married at all, of any one else." The mutual distrust of political parties was increasing rather than diminishing, and it was more and more diffi- cult for the sovereign to maintain a position of neutrality. Still delay had been insisted on, the language of diplomacy and of friendly but formal representation had been addressed to the prince on the subject, and on the 10th of October, 1839, he and his brother once more arrived at "Windsor Castle, evidently under the impression that the marriage was, if not altogether broken off, at all events suspended for three or four years. But three years had already elapsed since the first meeting, and handsome as both young men were, Albert's appearance was so striking not only in its manliness, but for the self-control and gentle intelligence of his expression, that doubts founded on his youth or want of experience were not likely to last. Probably the mere fact of such a meeting was enough. Two days after his arrival the queen writes to her uncle in her usual artless way : " Albert's beauty is most striking, and he is most amiable and un- affected, in short, very fascinating. The young men are very amiable, delightful companions, and I am very happy to have them here." It would be difficult to say whether Leopold, or Stockmar, or Melbourne was most pleased at the quickly following result — a result expressed in the young queen's letter to Stockmar, her counsellor and secretary, on the 15th of October. " I do feel so guilty, I know not how to begin my letter ; but I think the news it will con- tain will be sufficient to ensure your forgive- ness. Albert has completely won my heart, and all was settled between us this morning. . . . 298 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. I feel certain he will make me very happy. I wish I could say I felt as certain of making him happy ; but I shall do my best. Uncle Leopold must tell you all about the details, which I have not time to do. . . . Albert is very much attached to you." But the prince himself also writes to Stock- mar on the following day, full of his new wonder and happiness at finding himself the object of so much affection, and quoting the famous lines from Schiller's " Song of the Bell." "Heaven opens on the ravish'd eye; The heart is all entranced with bliss." And this was not the transient sentiment of the fii'st courtship. " True and fast," the prince proved to be worthy of the motto of his ancient house. The letters of the later married lives of this happy royal pair are just as really love-letters as any that note the first spring-tide of their regard. On the 2.3d November, 1839, there was a special meeting of the privy-council at Buckingham Palace, at which eighty-three members were present, to hear the queen intimate her intention of allying herself iu marriage w'ith Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. "Precisely at two," the queen records in her Journal, " I went in. The room was full ; but I hardly knew who was there. Lord Melbourne I saw looking kindly at me with tears in his eyes ; but he was not near me. I then read my short declaration. I felt my hands shook, but I did not make one mistake. I felt more happy and thankful when it was over. Lord Lansdowne then rose, and, in the name of the privy-council, asked that ' this most gracious and most wel- come communication might be printed.' I then left the room — the whole thing not last- ing above two or three minutes. The Duke of Cambridge came into the small library where I was standing, and wished me joy." The royal declaration was in these words: — " I have caused you to be summoned at the jiresent time in order that I may acquaint you with my resolution in a matter which deeply concerns the welfare of my people and the happiness of my future life. It is my inten- tion to ally myself in marriage with the Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Deeply impressed with the solemnity of the engage- ment which I am about to contract, I have not come to this decision without mature con- sideration, nor without feeling a strong assur- ance that, with the blessing of Almighty God, it will at once secure my domestic felicity and serve the interests of my country. I have thought fit to make this resolution known to you at the eaiiiest period, in order that jon may be fully apprised of a matter so highly important to me and my kingdom, and which I persuade myself w-ill be most acceptable to all my loving subjects." On the 16th of January, 1840, the queen opened parliament, and the fii-st words she uttered referred to that mai'riage which it was hoped might be conducive to the interests of the people as well as to her own domestic happiness. There was but one general feeling in the country on the latter subject; and had it not been for the continued exasperation of the Tories at the supposed influence of the Whig ministry — a suspicion for which there were, as we have seen, many grounds of excuse — the national welcome of the prince might afterwards have been unalloyed by those party disputes on the subject of bis religion, his income, and his relation to the crown, which would have been painful to a less informed mind, or to a less dignified, equable, and undemonstrative temper. The successes which had been achieved in India were almost the only matter for congratula- tion alluded to in the speech from the thi'one, except this marriage; but the loyalty and regard of the people were suflicient to give the topic of the approaching wedding para- mount importance even in the face of Chartist riots, and the general prevalence of disaffec- tion towards the government, Avhich arose from widely prevailing distress, and the de- mand for a reduction of taxes on articles of common consumption. The address of congratulation which was presented to the queen by parliament was warm and enthusiastic, and the emotion which gi'eeted the announcement of the approaching marriage was intense. Sir Robert Peel, in supporting the address as leader of the oppo- sition, spoke of her majesty's singular good O'CONNELL'S EXUBERANT LOYALTY. 299 fortune to be able to gratify her private feel- ings while she performed her public duty, and to obtain the best guarantee for happiness by contracting an alliance founded on affection. Melbourne was doubtless willing and ready to relinquish those confidential relations which would now devolve on him who had the right, and would soon acquire the ability, to advise and protect the sovereign. But the prince had not yet arrived in England. The mai'- riage contract had yet to be arranged; and there were other elements of discord beside those that proceeded from the jjolitical jea- lousies of the extreme Tories, the weak indif- ference of many of the Whigs, and the growing symptoms of disaffection to the gov- ernment, which already pointed to a strange coalition between the Radicals and the fol- lowers of Sir Robert Peel, who foresaw that the time must soon come when the ministry would have to give way. The government was still hampered by the too obvious aid which it received from O'ConneU, who lost no opportunity of assailing the Tories with vio- lent abuse. He had taken the opportunity of signalizing her majesty's refusal to dismiss the ladies of the bed-chamber by addressing a meeting at Dublin, convened for the purpose of congratulating her on her resistance. At that meeting Mr. Henry Grattan had darkly declared that if her majesty had once been fairly placed in the hands of the Tories he would not have given an orange-peel for her life. " If some of the low miscreants of the party had got round her majesty and had the mix- ing of her royal bowl at night, I fear she would have had a long sleep." Feargus O'Connor in his mad way averred that he had excellent authority for the statement that the proposed change of the ladies of the bed-chamber was part of a plan for placing " the bloody Cum- berland" on the throne. O'ConneU was full of insidious flattery. "When I entered the Reform Club," he said, " a friend seized me by both hands, exclaiming, ' She has done it ! England has triumphed, and Ireland is saved ! ' May the great God of heaven bless her who did it ! — that creature of only nineteen — lovely as she is young, and pure as she is exalted. She was something which might be dreamed of in chivalry or fairyland. There she was in the power of the weakness of her sex. It was not her head that she consulted ; it was from the overflowing feelings of her young heart that she was induced to take the course she so nobly pursued. 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 sickness, whose eyes beamed with delight as they watched 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." That this wild talk, this monstrous perversion, had an immediate effect in Ireland there can be no doubt. In England it helped to empha- size Brougham's attacks on the ministry, and seemed to give force to the accusation that Melbourne and his adherents used unconsti- tutional devices to maintain an influence over the crown. Before the announcement of the proposed marriage O'ConneU had taken an- other opportunity of addressing an enormous assembly of above 30,000 people at Bandon. " We must be, we are, loyal to our young and lovely queen. We must be, we are, attached to the throne, and to the lovely being by whom it is filled. She is going to be married!" This was greeted with tumultuous cheering, and with waving of handkerchiefs by hun- dreds of elegantly-dressed ladies who crowded the surrounding buildings. " I wish she may have as many children as my grandmother had — two-and-twenty! God bless the queen! I am a father and grandfather; and in the face of heaven I pray with as much honesty and fervency for Queen Victoria as I do for any one of my own progeny. The moment I heard of the daring and audacious menaces of the Tories towards the sovereign, I promul- gated through the press my feelings of detes- tation and my determination on the matter. Oh ! if I be not greatly mistaken, I'd get in one day 500,000 brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honour, and the person of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne is now filled. Let every man in the vast and multi- tudinous assembly stretched out before me 300 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAPJES. who is loyal to the queen and would defend hei- to the last, lift up his right hand. (Every hand was held aloft.) There are heai'ts in those hands. I tell you that if necessity re- quii-ed, there woidd be swords in them ! " This may seem to some readers to be rant and fustian, but at that time and amidst that assembly it had a tremendous effect; for we must try to imagine the towering form, the mobile features, the seai'ching eye, and the voice which, round and full, and yet with clarion tone, could be made to reach to the very confines even of that vast crowd, and by its wonderful cadences and changeful notes of mirth, of pathos, and of denunciation, move every man and woman who heard it to a tempest of auger, of laughter, or of en- thusiasm. Nor can it be forgotten that in all O'Con- nell's speeches there was an appearance of sincerity, arising from allusions to known occurrences or to deeply-rooted prejudices. There was enough of fact, even though it might be altogether misapjaliedjto give a ring of truth to many of his most untrustworthy utterances. We have already seen the position in which the Duke of Cumberland stood in relation to an avowed attempt to change the succession to the tlu-one ; and in January, 1840, the calm and judicious Stockmar, coming to England to negotiate the marriage treaty with Lord Palmerston, recoi-ds his opinion that the preju- dices entertained by some of the ultra pai'ty against the j^rince could be clearly traced to the influence of Ernest Augustus of Hanover. They gave out that he was a Eadical and an Infidel, and said that George of Cambridge or a Prince of Orange ought to have been the consort of the queen. "On the whole, how- ever, the mere determination of the queen to marry, and the satisfaction thereby given to what was a very universal desire (for the idea that the King of Hanover and his line might succeed to the throne was very distasteful to the people), has raised the queen's popularity, and will for a while lend some little strength to the very weak miuistiy." The calumnies which were spread or which grew out of prejudice and ignorance perhaps helped to refute each other, for another set of detractors were equally ready to assert that the prince was a Roman Catholic — a suspicion which, if it had any real existence, pi'obably originated in the remarkable carelessness of ministers, who had omitted from the declara- tion of marriage to the privy-council and to parliament the statement that he was a Pro- testant prince. King Leopold had noted the omission, and wi'ote to the queen on the sub- ject in his usual shrewd way, saying, " On religious matters one cannot be too prudent, because one can never see what passionate use people wiU make of such a thing." He was right. Melbourne, in his /a/sses/aw-e manner, regarded the words as superfuous. Other ministers agi-eed with him that people with any knowledge would be aware of the Pro- testantism of the prince's house, which had lost many of its possessions through its oppo- sition to Eome at the time of the Eeforma- tion and afterwards. Besides, as Brougham afterwards pointed out in the House of Lords, for the sovereign to maiTy a Eoman Catholic would be to forfeit the crown. There was no particular reason for including the words in the declaration, but there was certainly no good reason for leaving them out ; and on the debate on the address the Duke of WeUingtou moved an amendment for inseiliug the word Protestant, on the gi^ound that " it will give her majesty's subjects the satisfaction of know- ing that Prince Albert is a Protestant — thus showing the jjublic that this is still a Protest- ant state." The duke, in fact, attributed the omission to the desire of the ministry not to offend their Irish supporters — a charge which is significant enough when considered in refer- ence to the condition of parties. The discussion on the subject of the prince's religion of course got abroad, and all kinds of vague rumours were in circulation, so that the queen herself asked for a regular statement which would show how unfounded were all these reports. Accordingly the following letter was received from the jDrince. "In accordance with your wish we have set about the pre- paration of an historical sketch of the pro- genitoi^s of oui- house, so as to show at once their position towards the Eeformation and Protestantism. It is not yet complete ; but it SIBTHOEFS AMENDMENT TO THE PROPOSED GRANT. 301 shall be sent with my next letter, and demon- strate, that to the house of Saxony, Protestan- tism in a measure owes its existence, for this house and that of the Landgrave of Hesse stood quite alone against Europe, and upheld Luther and his cause triumj^hautly. This shows the folly of constantly assailing our house as papistical. So little is this the case, that there has not 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. That you may know and judge for youi'self, dear Victoria, what my creed and religious principles are, I send you a confession of faith, which I worked out for myself in 1835, and which I then i^ublicly avowed and swore to in our High Church. I enclose an English copy and the original as I then wrote it. Yoix will see my hand has somewhat changed since then." This was decisive enough, but that vague mischief had been rather widely spread, was evident from the fact that Stockmar received a letter from Lord Palraerstou asking, — -"Can you tell me whether Prince Albert belongs to any Protestant sect, the tenets of which could prevent him from partaking of the Lord's supper according to the rites of the Church of England?" The reply to this was that the prince did not belong to any sect, and that no material difference existed between the celebration of the Lord's supper according to the rites of the German Protestant Church and those of the Anglican Church. But there was also to be disagreeable opposi- tion over the discussion of the prince's annuity and of the rank which should be accorded him. Tiie ministry here also showed a remarkable want of tact, and even of common prudence, when we consider the feeling which was pro- bably raised by the groundless suspicions that had already been more than whispered both in and out of parliament. Some of the lower class of so-called satirical journals, and of caricatures, were not likely to lose the op- portunity of making capital out of the money question. Nothing could have been more un- conciliatory than the manner iii which the question of the prince consort's annuity was brought before the house. It was proposed that the grant should be ^50,000 a year ; but it would seem that no attempt was made to consult the opposition, or to come to such an understanding as would have secured proper unanimity, instead of making the prince's income the subject of a haggling debate, in which the objections of the opposition were treated as expressions of disloyalty, and were so interpreted that it appeared as though there was some desire to provoke the antagonism which, it was assumed, had been directed against the queen and the prince. Mr. Hume at once as an economist proposed to reduce the amount asked for from ^50,000 to £21,000, and a clumsy remark of Lord John Russell's, that the prince's household would cost £8000 a year, of course, gave the opportunity for asking what then would be done with the other £42,0001 The proposed reduction was negatived ; but the debate had been conducted in an aggravating temper — little likely to secure a ministry which had already lost many of its former supporters. On the mo- tion of Colonel Sibthorp, who was even then almost fantastic in his professed Toryism, the sum voted was £30,000. This was sup- ported by many prominent members of the opposition, including Peel, who in forcible language resented the imputations that they who voted for a reduction in the amount were unfi'iendly to the crown. " He who acquiesced in a vote which he felt could not be vindicated, was not a true friend to the crown. He was a much greater friend to the crown who saved it from the uiapopularity of an extravagant vote." He thought that £30,000 during the life of her majesty wovild be a just and liberal grant, and that £30,000 to Prince Albert in case of his surviving her majesty, and in case of there being no issue, would also be a liberal provision ; but he was prepared to vote for a suitable increase should there be a family, and if Prince Albert would give a guarantee of his permanent residence in and attachment to the country. After arguing the question by numerous references to precedents and to the special circumstances of the case. Sir Robert said, " I will not condescend to rebut the 302 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. charge of want of resjoect or loyalty. 1 have uo comjjunctions of conscience on that ground. I never made a concurrence of political senti- ment on the jxirt of the sovereign a condition of my toyalty. I never have been otherwise than loyal and respectful towards my sovereign. Not one breath of disloyalty, not one word of disrespect towards the crown, or any members of the royal family, however averse their political sentiments were to mine, has ever escaped my lips ; and when performing what I believe to be my duty to this house, and my duty towards the crown, I should think myself imworthy of the position which I hold, of my station as a member of the House of Commons, if I thought that I could not take a straightforward course, without needless j^ro- fessions of loyalty, or without a defence against accusations which I believe to be utterly un- founded." This was good and honest speech, and the proposed reduction of the grant was carried, at which nearly everybody on the other side, including Stockmar — who of course desired to do as well as possible by his pro- tege? — was much more annoyed than either the queen or Prince Albert himself. Indeed the prince, guided by an admirable temper and a sound clear insight, had already begun to see the danger of being led into any poli- tical partisanship; and the first real opposi- tion which he afterwards made to ministerial proposals, was that he should have for his private secretary Mr. George Anson, who had been confidential and private secretary to Lord Melbourne, but who was a man little likely to introduce any shadow of political intrigue, and who, because of his attainments, high breeding, and experience, was well quali- fied for a post in which he soon gained the real respect and esteem of the prince. In a letter to the queen Prince Albert had expressed a strong desire that his household should com- prise men of both parties, and if possible should consist of persons who had done the state good service. The prince had in fact de- termined to hold a position unbiassed by party considerations, and his subsequent regard and admiration for Peel, and the manner in which he assisted in correcting any impressions which existed with regard to the overweening influence of the Whig ministiy, showed at once that he had both studied and vmderstood the position which he was to occupy in relation to English politics. The young queen, however, was seriously vexed by the question of precedence, or the rank which was to be conceded to her consort. Here again the ministry blundered. It was not unreasonably desired by the queen that her husband should rank next to herself, and there did not at first appear to be any parti- cular difiiculty on the subject, as the intention was to introduce into the bill naturalizing the prince a clause which would give him prece- dence immediately after the queen. A strong opposition was at once manifested to this course. Cumberland, the King of Hanover, began it by so working upon the prejudices of the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge, that they withdrew what had been regarded as a consent, however reluctant. He also urged some of his partisans here to agitate against the measure. Many who were not well af- fected to him were yet opposed to the bill, and it was soon discovered that the title referred only to a bill of naturalization, and said nothing about the rank of the prince. This caused some delay, and the delay meant an opposition which was in itself justified by legal argument. By the advice and strong representation of Stockmar, as it appears from his memoirs, the government withdrew their bill, though the queen was greatly hurt and distressed by the repeated success of the opposition, which seemed to be directed against Prince Albert. For the bill an order of council was substituted, similar to that which had been used by the Prince Eegent in 1826 to settle the rank of Prince Leopold; a simple act of naturalization was passed, and the precedence of the prince was afterwards determined by the royal prerogative ; that is to say, the queen herself could give him pre- cedence next to herself at home; but this right could not, of course, be exercised abroad, where, unless by the courtesy of other sove- reigns, the same status might be refused. It was years afterwards, in 1857, that he re- ceived by letters-patent the title of Prince Consort, which, however, had been ali-eady PUBLIC WELCOME TO PRINCE ALBERT. 303 bestowed upon liim by the peojile, who had learned to estimate and admire his high char- acter and his unassuming nobility of conduct; but in 1856 the queen herself recorded what was her annoyance on the subject. Neither the Duke of Sussex nor the King of Hanover would give way, especially as it was repre- sented that, in the event of the queen's death, Prince Albert would still retain precedence over the heir apparent, if ever that heir should be a son of the Hanoverian sovereign. On the other hand, no mere title of nobility could give the jDriuce consort the precedence which would entitle him as the husband of the queen to stand next her on public occasions, since the precedence of titles was ali'eady settled by law in favour of actual members of the royal family. Perhaps the only way after all was to leave it within the power of the queen her- self. " When I first married," she says in the memorandum ali'eady referred to, "we had much difficulty on this subject, much bad feel- ing was shown, several members of the royal family showed bad grace in giving precedence to the prince, and the late King of Hanover positively resisted doing so. . . . When the queen was abroad the prince's position was always a subject of negotiation and vexation; the position accorded to him, the queen had always to acknowledge as a grace and favour bestowed on her by the sovereigns whom she visited. . . . On the Rhine in 1845 the King of Prussia would not give the place to the queen's husband, which common civility re- quired, because of the presence of an archduke, the thii'd son of an uncle of the reigning Emperor of Austria, who would not give the pas, and whom the king would not ofiend. The only legal position in Europe according to international law which the husband of the Queen of England enjoyed was that of a younger bi'other of the Duke of Saxe-Cobm-g, and this merely because the English law did not know of him. This is derogatory to the dignity of the crown of England." The queen doubtless felt it far more than the prince himself, and indeed, so far as the money matter was concerned, he told Stockmar that the reduction of the amount chiefly affected him because it gave him less means of helping men of letters and of science. He had already understood that the opposition was not due to the Tories alone, nor was it so represented by Melbourne, who, on meeting Stockmar on the staircase of the palace, took him aside to say, " The prince will doubtless be very much irritated against the Tories. But it is not the Tories alone whom the prince has to thank for the curtailment of his ap- panage. It is the Tories, the Radicals, and a good many of our own people." So far from the prince being much irritated, even imme- diately after he heard of it he wrote to the queen from Brussels to I'eassure her. " You can easily imagine the very unpleasant efi'ect produced upon me by the news of the truly most unseemly vote of the House of Commons about my annuity. We came upon it in a newspaper at Aix, where we dined. In the House of Lords the people have made them- selves needlessly disagreeable. All I have time to say is, that while I possess your love they cannot make me unhapj^y." There is no need to dwell at gieater length on the early characteristics of a prince who remained always true to these first expressions of affection, and who subordinated much of what others might have regarded as legiti- mate ambition to that which he recognized as his plain and simple duty. Near the end of the year 1839, only an hour before he was to take the sacrament at the church at Cologne, he was writing to his dear little bride, and said in reference to the solemn act in which he was about to participate : " God will not take it amiss if in that serious act, even at the altar, I think of you ; for I will pray to him for you, and for your soul's health, and he will not refuse us his blessing." There was no bitterness in his mind, but love and doubtless much peace in his heart, when he arrived in England for the marriage; and if he had any doubts, they must have been dissipated by the hearty enthusiastic reception accorded to him hj the English people. From the time that he landed at Dover till he reached the palace, the avenues of which were crowded, he was greeted with shouts and cheers of welcome, and the pleasure of the joui'ney doubtless shone in his calm but 304 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. singularly handsome face. It was on the 8th of February (1840) that the prince arrived in London, and on the 10th the royal marriage was celebrated amidst general rejoicings, and a holiday, which attracted large numbers of people from the country, and from an early hour in the morning kept the streets crowded in the direction of Buckingham Palace and the chapel-royal, St. James', where the ceremony was to take place. The Duchess of Kent and twelve bridesmaids were already in attend- ance on her majesty. The prince and his party left the palace at about a quarter to twelve — rather before the queen's departure. Again he was received with acclamations, and even in the colonnade leading to the chapel the reception made him radiant. There has perhaps never been a more delightful, simple and happy, and unostentatious royal wedding — there has probably never been so truly happy, loving, and purely domestic a married life than that which followed ; for it was a marriage not of political convenience, but of affection. " It is this," said Lord Melbourne afterwards to the queen, " which makes your majesty's marriage so popular." The approaching expectation of the birth of an heir to the throne made it necessary to con- sider the appointment of a regent in case of the death of the queen. In spite of the oppo- sition of the Duke of Sussex, who urged that the regency should be vested in a council of which the consort of the queen should be a member, the nomination of Prince Albert to be sole regent to his own child or children was accepted with general satisfaction. Statesmen and people acknowledged the propriety of appointing the father of the royal infant as guardian, and had already recognized that the prince was eminently deserving of com- plete confidence. It cannot be said that the young consort of the queen (he was then scarcely twenty-one years of age) had become what is termed popular — and in the ordinary superficial sense Prince Albert never was a i:)opular man; he had too great earnestness, and yet a wise reticence in relation to public matters, and his sentiments also were too deep to be in accord with the sort of " tak- ing" temper that makes the temporary suc- cess of popular favourites; nor, as we have seen, did he care to cultivate the shallower, and, as he considered them, the frivolous and useless habits of so-called society. He would not aff'ect an interest in small talk; he would not flirt, or pretend to find delight in the or- namental commonplaces that sometimes pass current for conversation. His humour was that of a witty observant boy; but he mostly kept that for the domestic circle. His char- acter was serious, his manner undemonstrative; but even at the time of which we are speak- ing sagacious and somewhat cynical observers gave him their confidence, and noted his remarkable ability no less than his evidently conscientious desire to act with a singleness of purj^ose which commanded respect and esteem. The people too, or that thinking section of the people who foresaw the great advantage to the counti-y of a pinnce consort who was ready to promote art education, manufactures, and social improvement, and of a royal household which, from its simple domestic character, would be in direct sympathy with English family hfe, soon learned to trust the man who was able steadily to subordinate his ambition, his recreations, and even many of his favourite studies to the duties that he had undertaken as the person nearest the throne, and therefore as representing the wishes of the queen in relation to the country. For some time Prince Albert doubtless found the study of the English constitution a difficult task, or rather he found it difficult to recognize the practical working of the political constitution when he took to actual experience the result of his study of the science of govern- ment. Probably he had never quite realized the peculiar elasticity and unmechanical, na- tural adjustments of the English system, and was unprepared for the discovery that hard and fast scientific rules were frequently dis- regarded. It may be doubted whether in this respect he was much helped by Stockniar, who, comjiletely as he was acquainted with Eng- land and the English, never abandoned, or more properly had never seen reason to change that scientitic method of regarding political situations which, if not essentially German, was a part of his German chai'acter. As a. ATTACKS ON THE WHIG MINISTRY. 305 ti'ue friend and aftectiouate disinterested ad- viser both to the prince and tlie royal house- liold Stockmar was invaluable. He was acute, thoughtful, absolutely sincere, and philosophi- cally a Liberal in politics; but, in consequence of his peculiar influence and the confidential position that he occupied, he seems to have been a little too liable to think of himself as a political motive power capable of regulating that part of the machinery of the British con- stitution which related to the royal family. On the whole Prince Albert probably got on better when, after he had listened to Stock- mar's excellent advice and suggestions, he applied to them the results of his own obser- vations untrammelled by the hard definitions of a supposed political system. There would have been vast social as well as political progress under the Whig adminis- tration if the government itself had been in earnest sympathy with the national desire to advance. But the policy was to " rest and be thankful : " to keep as quiet as possible till the clamorous demands outside broke into definite threatenings. It was as though the ministry endeavoured to separate itself as widely as possible from the energetic move- ments which showed that a new era of na- tional activity had opened, and that a supine attitude could not long content either the people who had received or the people who claimed political power. There was no en- thusiasm, no determination except to cling to office, and the events of the queen's accession and the royal marriage had made this for a time comparatively easy. Melbourne was mostly at court, and when he was in jjarliament, in spite of his sincere desire to serve the country, he had none of those ardent desires for reform which would have made him the representative of the nation. Russell seemed to be reluctant to give the Conservatives any atlvantage by committing himself to Radical measures. Altogether the chief differences between the government and its opponents were that when the ministry, yielding to popular demands, consented to introduce a reformatory measure it contrived to prune it down to dimensions which failed to satisfy Vol. I. the country, and reduced what should have been a generous measure of legislation to a mere concession. It was as though, for the sake of holding power, the government strove so to assimilate itself to what might be ex- pected of the opposition as to remove any motive for a change of ministry. The result was that several ineffective, and some really useful and effective proposals were defeated, and others were delayed until there arose a conviction in the minds even of Radical reformers that a Conservative. government, with something of real earnestness and an energetic desire to consider public grievances, might be compelled by outward pressure and the growing force of opinion to introduce wider measures of relief than could be hoped for from a feeble, timid, and uncertain ad- ministration. Events proved that this opinion was not ill founded; but it had a far different outcome to that which was originally expected. This was achieved by the conversion of Sir Robert Peel to the princiijles of free-trade, and by his carrying the repeal of the corn- laws at the noble exj^ense of his own final retirement from office, leaving protection to be represented by the "country party" of Lord George Bentinck under the sudden and startling leadershiij of Mr. Disraeli. The old Whiggism had to be superseded by what has since been known as moderate Liberalism, which for some time exhibited much of the uncertainty and vacillation of the party from which it sprung, and was in fact made more truly vigorous by two very dissimilar men, Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. Of the manner in which the new political reforma- tion was effected we shall presently have to speak. The Conservatives under the guidance of Sir Robert Peel had been for some time watching the decline of real power in the Melbourne administration, and in the session of 1840 they had begun to attack it by proposing direct resolutions of want of confidence. The first motion of this kind was made by Sir J. Yai'de BuUer and seconded by Mr. Alderman Thompson, and it was unsuccessful, inasmuch as it was rejected after a prolonged debate by a majority of twenty -one; but Sir James 20 306 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Graham's motion condemning the Chinese policy was defeated only by a majority of nine. In one important measure carried in 1840 the opposition joined the govei-nment, and this in itself may have deepened the sense of inability which followed the attemjjts of the ministry. Unable to carry out the policy of the appropriation clause in Ireland, and yet agreeing with the Conservatives that it was necessary that the question of tithes and of municipal reform should receive immediate attention, they accepted overtures of mutual concession, and the Irish municipal reform bill was carried against the ojiposition of men like Sir Robert Inglis and the Bishop of Exeter, who professed to see in this settlement danger to the cause of Protestantism both in England and Ireland. There is no occasion to refer to the abortive measures, some of which were to be reintroduced under different conditions, while others, Hke Serjeant Talfourd's copyright bill and Mr. Ewart's proposition for the abolition of capital punishment, were withdi'awn because of the lateness of the session. The financial statement of the year had been less unsatisfactoi'y than might have been ex- pected. At the time when there was a recon- struction of the cabinet Mr. Spring Rice had been made Baron Monteagle, and was suc- ceeded as chancellor of the exchequer by Mr. T. Baring, the deficiency was met by an increase of ten per cent on assessed taxes, five per cent on most articles of customs and excise, and additional duty on spirits. With the public excitement manifested in relation to the repeal of the corn-laws and the meetings of the Chartists in London as well as in various paits of the country, there were many symptoms of a feverish and disturbed condition of society, and some crimes, attended by horrible circumstances, were topics of general discussion. We have already referred to the attempts to shoot at the queen by Ox- ford and other assailants, against whom much public indignation was expressed, while her majesty's calm courage and presence of mind was the theme of general admiration. By O'Connell and the Irish agitators the crime of Oxford was without hesitation, but of course entirely without excuse, attributed to political motives. The Pilot, one of the or- gans of the party, published an article which said, " There has been — we anticipated there would be, as soon as her majesty was an- nounced enceinte — there has been a deliberate attempt to assassinate the queen and put Cumberland on the throne. Yes, Cumber- land and Grangeism plotted to murder the queen; the hand of God alone saved her to the people. Oh may that God long pi'otect her life and preserve her people from the domination of Cumberlandism and the foul assassin, Orange-Tory faction." Even this, however, was scarcely so bad as O'Connell's declaration in 1839. When Lord Norbury had been shot while walking in his own grounds with his steward and in open day, suspicions were entertained and accusations were made against the followers of the repeal faction; and O'Connell, in order to turn the current of imputation, broadly insinuated — if he did not actually allege — that the assassin of Lord Norbuiy was the unfortunate nobleman's own son; the only implied evidence for such a monstrous assumption being that a footjirint near the spot was not made by the clumsy brogue of an Irish peasant but by a fashion- able Dublin boot. The utmost conclusion that could be derived from such a discovery, if even it were true, was that the murderer was of higher social position than that of a peasant, or that he had become possessed of a pair of fashionably shaped boots, but the dark hint was emphatically and unscrapulously made. A crime which at the time moved the Lon- don public strongly, and gave intensity to a very widely spread feeling of horror and insecurity, v>ras the murder of Lord William Russell. On the 6th of May, 1840, his lord- ship was discovered early in the morning in bed, his face covered with a towel, and his throat cut in such a manner that death must have been almost instantaneous. His writing- desk had been broken open, his kej's and papers were lying on the carpet, and in the dining-room the drawers were open and can- dlesticks and pieces of plate were scattered on the floor. It seemed as though the crime had been committed by some burglar who had also attempted to rob the house, but it THE TRIAL OF COURVOISIEE. 307 afterwards transpired that the murderer was his lordship's Swiss valet, Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, who aftei'wards confessed while in prison. A housemaid in his lordship's establishment at 14 Norfolk Street, Park Lane, had entered the back drawing-room, where she found the writing-desk broken open, and then went into the dining-room, which was all in disorder. She ran upstairs and woke her fellow-servant, and then called the valet, asking him what he had been doing with the silver, which was all over the floor. He denied having done anything with it, and on going down stairs declared that the place had been robbed. He went into his master's room and opened the shutters, when they saw the body lying there, and ran into the street to give an alarm. A Dr. Else- good was one of the first who afterwards entered the house, and in his subsequent evidence he described the wound and the position of the body, asserting that the de- ceased could not have inflicted such an injury on himself and have placed the cloth over his head afterwards. It subsequently appeared that Lord William Eussell liad had occasion to complain of his valet's bad conduct, and in his confession Courvoisier said : "As I was coming u]} stairs from the kitchen I thought it was all up with me. My character was gone, and I thought murdering him was the only way to cover my faults. I went into the dining-room, and took a knife from the sideboard. On going up stairs I opened his door and heard him snoring in his sleep. There was a rushlight burning in his room at this time. I went near the bed by the side of the window and then I murdered him. He just moved his arms a little and never spoke a word. I took a towel which was on the back of a chair and wiped my hand and the knife. After that I took his key and opened the Russian leather box, and put it in the state in which it was found in the morning. The towel I put over his face, and undressed and went to bed." It was found that before committing the murder Courvoisier had taken some plate and other property, a portion of which he had left in charge of Charlotte Piolaine, an old fellow-servant at the Hotel Dieppe in Leicester Square, and it was after her evidence that the prisoner confessed his guilt to his counsel — Mr. Charles Phillips, a famous barrister and writer — who, after consulting the judges, carried on the original line of defence and argued for the prisoner's innocence. The judges thought this the proper course, as the prisoner himself had wished it to be done ; and Mr. Phillips dis- charged his office with marvellous ability, considering that he knew all the time that his client had committed the crime. "It was not a strong suspicion," said Mr. Phillips, "or a moral conviction, which would justify the jury in finding a man guilty of murder." If, notwithstanding that susjiicion, they felt bound to acquit the jmsoner, he was stUI answerable to the laws of his country for the robbery, if guilty; and even supposing him to be guilty of the murder — which, in- deed, was known to Almighty God alone, and of which, for the sake of his eternal soul, Mr. Phillips hoped he was innocent— it was better far that in the dreadful solitude of exile he should, though not in the sight of man, yet before the presence of God, atone by a lingering repentance for the deed, than that he should now be sent in the dawning of his manhood to an ignominious death, in a case where the truth was not clear. Mr. Phillips solemnly warned the jury not to pronounce sentence of death lightly, or on suspicion, however strong, on moral convic- tion, however cogent, on inference, doubt, or anything but a clear, irresistible, bright noonday certainty. He warned them as a fellow-Christian that if they spoke that word lightly it would haunt them in their sleep and hover round their beds; that its memory would never die within them, that it would take the shape of an accusing sjairit and con- front and condemn them before the judgment- seat of their God. The jury deliberated for an hour and twenty minutes, but returned a verdict of "Guilty;" and Chief- Justice Tin- dal, who was deepl}^ aff"ected, especially when alluding to the age and position of the mur- dered nobleman, sentenced the murderer to death. We have referred somewhat fully to this case because it afterwards occasioned 308 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. some very sharp comments on tlic limits of the relative duty of an advocate towards his client and towards the jury and the public, in cases where the advocate is himself aware of the guilt of the prisoner whose cause he is pleading. There were strong animadversions on Mr. Phillips because of the language in which he appealed to the jury, and it is believed that he was for some time under many social and professional disabilities in consequence. From these he was never quite released, and the reports of his manner of conducting the case were exaggerated into an accusation of his having solemnly appealed to Heaven in sup- port of the prisoner's innocence. More than nine years afterwards, at the time of the shock- ing murder by the Mannings we find him writing to the Times, to which he had been an able contributor and reviewer, denying the truth of scandals that had been revived against him regarding his defence of Cour- voisier, and saying that the criminal's defence was continued after the confession of guilt at Courvoisier's own request, and with the full approval of Mr. Baron Parke, who sat on the bench. He also denied having appealed to Heaven in support of Courvoisier's innocence, or having insinuated that other servants in the house were guilty of the murder. Though the year 1841 promised well, and the striking foreign policy of Lord Palmerston had given a new fillip to public satisfaction, there were few who believed in the proba- bility of the ministry holding their own. The great diflBcu.lty was how to dislodge them from power, for the tenacity of their clutch was so remarkable that nothing short of a public demonstration against them seemed likely to induce them to relax it. There were, however, expectations of a financial measure which should to some extent retrieve the reputation of the government and include a series of reforms which would themselves constitute a strong appeal for the support of the country. It was knovm that the financial statement would as usual show a deficiency; and unless tlie budget displayed more ability than those of previous yeai-s, there could be little doubt of a defeat for the administration. A majority had been obtained on the proposal to renew the powers of the jJoor-law commissioners for five years, but no other important measure had been passed, when the time came for the chancellor of the exchequer to make his state- ment, which included the announcement of a deficiency of more than two millions. The liudget itself, whatever may have been its shortcomings, was at all events based on pro- jjositions in favour of increased freedom of trade ; but these indications were compara- tively insignificant as compared with the an- nouncement by Lord John Russell that he should, on the 31st of May, move for a com- mittee of the whole house to consider the acts of parliament relating to the trade in corn. The question was, What did he mean by it, and how far would the ministry identify itself with the anti-corn-law agitation , which had already assumed proportions por- tentous enough to show that the coming poli- tical battle would ultimately have to be fought on the lines of free-trade in that food supply for which the people were clamouring? At present, however, the majority of the nation was not altogether prepared for the total abrogation of the taxes on corn and for the abandonment of those imposts which were regarded as necessary for the maintenance of " the agricultural interest." What, therefore, would Lord John Eussell do? was the ques- tion asked both inside and outside the house by everybody except those — and they were a pretty numerous body— who had little belief in any bold or thorough measure emanating from a party so vacillating as the Whigs had shown themselves to be. So far as the chan- cellor's budget was concerned, it proposed to modify the duty on timber, raising that on colonial timber from 10s. to 20s. and reducing that on Baltic from 55s. to 50s. a load — a plan which had previously been brought forward by Earl Spencer (Lord Althorp); but the chief point in the financial scheme was the reduction of the duties on foreign sugar from G3s. to 36s. a hundredweight, from which an augmentation of at least .£700,000 to the revenue was expected. From the changes in timber and sugar £1,300,000 was anticipated, still leaving a deficiency of £400,000 to be FREE SUGAK AND SLAVERY. 309 provided for; while in the event of Lord Russell's propositions ou the reduction of the duty on corn being accepted, further provision would have to be made by direct taxation. On the 7th of May the terms of these propo- sitions were announced to the house. It was intended to impose only a fixed import duty of 85. a quarter on wheat, 5s. on rye, 4s. 6d. on barley, and 3s. 4d. on oats. The plan was regarded with conflicting feel- ings ; but it was of sufficient importance, even in I'elation to an ultimate repeal of the corn- laws, to call forth an enormous amount of excitement. It was evident that the exist- ence of the government must dej^end on the issue, and both parties commenced an active agitation — the Conservatives to prevent the changes, which might be but the beginning of an abandonment of protective duties ; the free-traders to increase the demand for the entire abolition of the tax ou corn. "We have already recounted the means that up to that time had been taken by the Manchester leaguers and their associates to organize a great anti-corn-law movement, and this gave the cause a fresh impetus. The debate on the sugar duties came first ; but it was felt that this really embraced the whole of the questions put forward by the government, while at the same time there was a special opposition on the part of some who believed that encouragement would be given to the importation of sugar from Cuba and other places where slave labour was continued, at the expense of our "West Indian colonies where slavery had been abolished. They were joined by the agricultural party, many of whom, by the by, were "Whigs, but who looked upon a fixed duty on corn as only preparatory to the entire abolition of the tax. Sir Robert Peel was eloquent and determined in his op- jiosition, in the advocacy of a sliding scale, and in the earnest x'epresentation that a fixed duty could not be maintained. On the question of the sugar duties he had received a pamphlet from Mr. Ashworth, one of the deputation of the Manchester chamber of commerce, together with a note, saying, "Esteemed friend, — Here- with I send thee a pamphlet of "William Greg" (the brother of the member for Manchester), " which I commend to thy attentive perusal. I do not hear that either Sir T. Buxton or any of his adherents ever attempted an answer, merely remarking that such reasoning is cold philanthropy." This pamphlet discussed the question of the imjaortation of sugar from Cuba and Brazil, and Sir Robert Peel made telling quotations from it where it said, "Few things can be more certain than that the ceasing of the sugar cultivation in our colonies, and the consequent destruction of the capital now invested therein, would lead to the com- jjlete abandonment of them by the white population, who would carry to more hopeful lands their knowledge, their energy, and their capital. Not only would emancipation sin- gularly fail so far as the moral condition of the negro is concerned, but the eff"ects which it was exjDected to operate on slavery in other countries, and the anticipated good conse- quences that were expected to flow from oiu- example, would be wholly lost." And again : — " If ever the negro population of the "West Indies shall become squatters and cultivators of waste ground instead of labourers for hire, slavery and the slave-trade will then have received the last and greatest encouragement which it is possible for them to receive. . . . The only method of destroying the slave-ti-ade and putting an end to slavery, is by destroy- ing the demand for slave-grown produce, and thus doing away with the demand for slaves. . . The prosperity of the "West Indies can only be continued and ensured by an extensive and systematic system of immigration, and by the temporary continuation of the present protec- tive discriminating duties on sugar." It may well be believed that Sir Robert made emphatic use of these quotations. "This is not the first time that I have been indebted for an argu- ment to the Manchester chamber of com- merce," said he, and he went on to argue that though, if we could only look to the "West Indies for our supply, we could not continue the prohibition on foreign sugar, yet he looked to India and the Mauritius, and to Lidia we owed an endeavour to promote the consump- tion of her agricultural produce, apart from the rigid piinciples of free-trade, and in ac- cordance with the moral and social obligations 310 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. to millions submitted to our sway. After referring to the support which he had re- peatedly given to Mr. Huskisson in " the pro- gressive and well-considered relaxation of the restrictions upon commerce," Sir Robert said, "The noble lord seems to claim an exclusive inheritance of the princij)les of Mr. Huskisson. Nay, he makes the awful announcement that if he and his colleagues are driven out of office they will pack up the principles of free- trade and carry them off with them. . . . You ask me what I intend to do with reference to the corn-laws] Sir, I will not shrink from the exj^ression of my opinion. If I saw a reason for changing my coui'se I would do so, and frankly avow it. But I have not changed my opinion. Notwithstanding the combina- tion which has been formed against the corn- laws, notwithstanding the declaration that either the total repeal or the substitution of a fixed duty for the present scale is the in- evitable result of the agitation now going for- ward ; notwithstanding this declaration, I do not hesitate to avow my adherence to the opinion which I expressed last year, and again to declare that my preference is decidedly in favour of a graduated to a fixed duty. I said last year, and I repeat now, for I may refer to the speech I then made as the expression of my opinions now, that I viewed with anxiety the state of the manufactures of this country. I stated then, as I state now, that I consider the prosperous state of the manufacturing in- dustry of this country to be intimately con- nected with the welfare of our agriculture, and that the prosperity of our manufactures is a greater supi^ort to our agriculture than any system of corn-laws." "With intense sarcasm Sir Robert referred to Lord Melbourne's former declaration that it would be madness altogether to abolish protection to agriculture, and chal- lenged the government to say that any one of them rose to express his opposition to those sentiments. He referred also to the former budgets, where duties were increased to make up for the deficiencies with which he taunted them. " You have had the possession of power since the year 1835. You have had the complete uncontrolled administration of the finances of the country during that period. Whenever you happen to be successful you boast of success as a proof of your wisdom, but you never admit failure to be everr prima facie evidence of your incapacity. But the whole course of your financial administration has been a series of failures. ... I view with unafiected symjiathy the jDosition of the right honourable gentleman the chancellor of the exchequer. It has been remarked that a good man struggling with adversity is a sight worthy of the gods. And certainly the right honourable gentleman, both with resjDect to the goodness of the man, and the extent of his adversity, presents at the present moment that spectacle. Can thei-e be a more lament- able pictiu'e than a chancellor of the exchequer seated on an empty chest — by the pool of bottomless deficiency — fishing for a budget? I won't bite ; the right honourable gentleman shall return home with his pannier as empty as his chest. What absurdity there is in demand- ing a budget from me — in requiring that I, who am out of office, who have been out of office for ten years, shall agitate the public mind by declaring what taxes I would impose, or what taxes I would remit, if I were in power." He was right in saying that the vote of that night would be a vote of confidence or want of con- fidence in the government, and it went against them. On the motion that the speaker do now leave the chair there was a majority against them of 36 in a house of 598. There was an almost breathless pause in the crowded house, to hear what would be the course that mini- sters would pursue. Then the chancellor of the exchequer rose and calmly, as though nothing jjarticular had occurred, gave notice that on the following Monday he would move the usual sugar duties. Surprise had pretty well turned to indignation when Lord John Russell followed, and without any explanation whatever, moved the adjournment of the house. This indignation found exjii'ession through Lord Darlington, who, in reply to a question, was informed that the discussion on the proposed alterations in the corn -laws would be taken on the 4th of June — an oblique intimation that ministers still meant to cling to office. It was immediately inferred that after "PHILOSOPHEE" WARBUETON. 311 the corn debate they would dissolve the house and go to the country with a free-trade policy during the height of popular excitement; but it afterwards seemed that they had not the resolution to take so bold a course, nor would either Melbourne or Russell have so far outrun what were then their lingering belief in a fixed duty, which they perhaps did not see their way to extinguish altogether. The whole country was in commotion — the Poor-law Extension Bill was dropped, as Lord John Russell said he did not wish to give occasion for speeches in parliament which were intended for the hustings. The annual sugar-duties were agreed to, for Sir Robert Peel would not consent to defeat the ministry on that question. He had determined to bring forward another vote of want of confidence. On the 4th of June this vote was carried by 312 to 311 votes, the agricultural party or landed interest, and those advanced reformers who went further even than the league, and so refused the supposed compromise of a fixed duty in the hope of its quickly leading to total abolition, forming a strong phalanx beside the Conservatives. The resolution was "that her majesty's ministers do not suflficiently pos- sess the confidence of the House of Commons to enable them to carry through the house measures which they deem of essential im- portance to the public welfare ; and that their continuance in office under such circumstances is at variance with the spirit of the constitu- tion." On the 22d parliament was prorogued by the queen in person, and on the 23d was dis- solved by proclamation, and the country at once plunged into preparations for the forth- coming elections with an excitement in which the strenuous efi"orts of parties were continued with unabated vigour. Among the many opponents of the govern- ment who believed less than ever in their ability to grapple with the necessities of the time were those to whom allusion has already been made, and who had obtained the name of Philosophical Radicals. To them had been in a great measm^e due the constant flutter of uncertainty in which the ministry had been placed, and to them the Conservatives had looked, and sometimes not in vain, for a coali- tion which would weaken and embarrass a government not strong enough to carry mea- sures without their aid. We may, therefore, understand what was the position of the prime minister and of the chancellor of the exchequer at a juncture when they were still reluctant to throw in their lot with the Anti-corn-law party, and yet de- sired to mark their sympathy with the growing demand for freedom of commerce. Lord John Russell left in his Reminiscences a pretty clear allusion to his intentions and of the opposition with which he had to contend. " The policy of the Philosophical Radicals at this time," he says, " is well defined in a letter of Mr. Henry Warburton's : — " 'Expression is to be given to public opinion, and the "Whigs are to be made to feel the full force of it, in constituencies by keeping them constantly in a state of alarm of being ousted by Radical competitors; in parliament by oc- casional threats of being voted against by their Radical allies. In a certain state of dis- quietude it is our business always to keep them; the pi'essure is to be heightened or moderated according to circumstances, and the magnitude and proximity of the objects we hope to carry. But so long as there exists any material difference in the weight of liberal measures which the Whigs and Tories sever- ally are willing to offer to us, the highest bid- der, if in possession, is not to be ousted from the government.' "Mr. Warburtou, usually called 'Philoso- jiher' Warburton," continues Earl Russell, " acted loyally in support of the oj^inions here set forth. I often saw him, and he did not grudge his advice to the government. In 1839 he urged the adoption, by the government, of the plan of penny postage which had been made known to the public by Mr. Rowland Hill. I said I thought the plan very ingenious, and likely to confer great benefits upon the public, but that it would make a temporary deficit in the revenue, Avhich would probably require to be filled up by new taxation. Mr. Warburton said that a new tax was a great evil, and he hoped it would be avoided. No further conversation passed at that time. 312 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. " Uufortuuately the government adopted botli parts of Mr. Warburton's advice. The cabinet was unanimously in favour of the in- genious and popular plan of a penny postage; but they ought to have enacted at the same time such measures as would have secui'ed a revenue sufficient to defray the national ex- penditure. Failing to do this, there was for three years together a deficit, which exposed the government to the j^owerful reproaches and unanswerable objections of Sir Robert Peel. Public opinion echoed those reproaches and those objections, and produced such a de- gree of discontent as was in itself a sufficient gi'ouud for a change of administration. " There was, however, another ground of party hostility, which the government were willing to i^rovoke and eager to encounter. The chancellor of the exchequer had pointed out to the cabinet that a large revenue might be derived from the admission of foreign sugar, giving at the same time the advantage of a protecting duty to the British colonies. He likewise proposed the admission of foreign timber on terms more favourable than had been hitherto accorded. By one of the clumsy contrivances of the system of j^rotection the timber of Norway was sent to Canada and brought back to England with a view to evade the high duty on foreign timber. " But there was another article which, since the year 1815, had been a favourite object of protection — this was corn. By the ingenious machinery of a sliding scale, corn was only admitted at a low duty when British corn was at a high price, and was charged with an enormous duty when British corn was cheap, or at a moderate price in the market. "I pointed out to the cabinet that of all the gi'ievances inflicted upon the British con- sumer by the system of monopoly and pro- tection, that which arose from the corn duties was the most grievous and oppressive. Lord Grenville, in a memorable protest, had de- clared that monopoly was the pai'ent of dear- ness and of scarcity. The best writers on political economy, several of the highest statesmen and members of the House of Commons, had argued powerfully for the re- peal, or at least modification, of the corn duties. "I proposed, not a total repeal, but, in ac- cordance with some of the best authorities, a moderate fixed duty on the admission of foreign corn. "The whole project,howevei-,raised a clamor- ous uproar from "West Indian planters, colonial growers of timber, and, above all, from the landowners, farmere, and agricultural la- bourers of England. "The ministry were defeated by a majority of thirty-six on their proposal with regard to sugar duties. The government resolved to dissolve parliament. Sir Robert Peel, who was not aware of the intention of the cabinet, then brought forward a vote of want of con- fidence, which he carried, after a long debate, by a majority of one. " The general election, decided by the con- stituent bodies of freeholders in the counties and £10 householders in boroughs, gave to Sir Robert Peel a majority of ninety-one over the existing ministry. The "Whig ministers, how- ever, thought it due to themselves and fair to the country to place on record their inten- tion to pursue the path of free-trade with re- gard to corn, sugar, and timber, by making some immediate reductions, thus opening the way to further changes which would save the people at a future pei'iod from monopoly prices on behalf of the "West Indian planters, the Canadian producers of timber, and the landowners and farmers of England, who in- sisted upon prices of sugar, timber, and corn sufficient to protect their own interests. " It was thus that, as the patrons and favourers of protection in reference to sugar, timber, and corn, the Tory ministry accepted office in September, 1841." The results of the election for the parliament of 1841 were such as might have been antici- pated. It was too late for the "Whig ministry to go to the country with the cry of corn-law reform. They had missed their opportunity, and it is extremely doubtful whether they would have been beheved if they had pro- fessed to desire to repeal those duties which they had previously declared were in some shape essential to the country. Between Peel and the Conservatives, and Melbourne, Rus- sell and the "Whigs, the diflTereuce was after PEEL'S FREE-TRADE INCLINATIONS. 313 all ouly tlie mode iu which the impost should be retained, aud the sudden abandonment of the duty altogether was not tlien iu the pro- gramme of either side. Iu other matters, as we have seen, the inclination even of re- formers was to the side of the Conservative leader, who could form a strong and effectual government that might be made to yield a compromise which would, at all events, be the precursor of an entire repeal of the corn-laws. But the corn-laws were not the only evil to be contended against, and the perpetuity of a weak ministry — feeble iu policy and in finance — was more to be dreaded than a less yielding administration which would yet be powerful and stable enough to restore public confidence. Every effort was strained on both sides, but the Tory gain was greater than even the chiefs of the party had anticipated. It was calculated that there were 368 Tories and Conservatives to 292 Whigs and Liberals, and there were 181 new membere. The Liberals replaced by their opponents were set down at 78, and the Tories replaced by Liberals at 38. The Tory gains were in the counties, but two Conservatives were elected for Dublin against O'Connell, who had to take a seat for Cork county; aud in the city of London, Lord John Russell, who had consented to become a can- didate, was at the bottom of the poll. It is to be noticed, however, that Cobden was re- turned for Stockton, and from that moment there was a new poM'er in the house. The pi-opositions of the Whig luinistry had come too late ; but when the house assembled the queen's speech, which was delivered by commission, was in accordance with the de- clared intentions of their government, since it said: "It has appeared to her majesty, after fidl deliberation, that you may at this juncture direct your attention to the revision of duties affecting the pi'oductions of foreign coun- tries. It will be for you to consider whether some of these duties are not so trifling iu amount as to be unproductive to the revenue, while they are vexatious to commerce. You may further examine whether the principles of protection upon which other of these duties are founded be not canied to an extent injuri- ous alike to the income of the state and the interests of the people. Her majesty is desir- ous that you should consider the law.s whicli regulate the trade in corn. It will be for you to determine whether these laws do not aggra- vate the natural fluctuations of supply — whether they do not embarrass trade, derange the currency, and by their operation diminish the comfort and increase the privations of the great body of the community." This method of bringing the queen into a controversy which had not yet been fought out iu parliament was severely censured, and Lord Stanley appealed to Lord John Russell to set the matter right. The I'eply was a definite declai-ation that ministers alone were resjjonsible for all that the royal speech con- tained. It would still have been unseemly to make the apparent declaration of the royal opinion the subject of an amendment to the address for the purpose of displacing the ad- ministration, aud therefore that amendment took the form of a vote of want of confidence, which was moved by Lord Ripon in the House of Lords and carried by a majority of 72, and by Mr. Stuart Wortley iu the House of Commons, where it was carried by a ma- jority of 91 votes, though those who had hoped to obtain a wide measure of free-trade, because of the tardy professions of the govern- ment, voted in their favour. The queen at once announced her intention to take imme- diate measures for the formation of a new administration, and prepared to part with those ladies of her household who would be necessarily superseded, but with whom she had long been associated in affection and esteem. Some passages in the speech made by Sir Robert Peel during the debate are note- worthy, especially as they were afterwards interpreted by events. " I adhere," said he, "to my determination not pi-ematurely to develop my plans for remedying the financial embarrassments of the country — a determina- tion which has been sanctioned by the late elections. I protest, however, against the assertion that I am adverse to the removal of restrictions on commerce or hostile to the principles of free-trade because I oppose the measures of the government. I protest against 314 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. the principles of free-ti'ade being tried b}' any such test. I have formed an opinion which intervening consideration has not induced me to alter, that the principle of a gi-aduated scale is preferable to that of a fixed and irre- vocable duty; but I said then, and I say now — and in doing so I repeat the language I used in 1839 — that I will not bind myself to the details of the existing law, but will reserve to myself the unfettered discretion of considering and amending that law. I hold the same language now; but if you ask me whether I bind myself to the maintenance of the existing law in its details, or if you say that it is the condition on which the agri- cultural interests give me their support, I say that on that condition I will not accept it. . . . If I thought that the repeal of the corn-laws could be an effectual remedy for the distress of the manufacturing districts — the recital of which has caused me much pain — I should recommend it as essential to the wel- fare of the agricultui'ists themselves ; but I cannot come to that conclusion." In his reply Lord John Bussell defended the fixed duty on the ground that it was impossible that there could be any steadiness of trade while the averages were tampered with by corn-jobbei-s under a sliding scale. The eight shillings duty could not be main- tained in a time of scarcity; but with a fixed duty, and the consequent regular trade, there very seldom would be any actual scarcity. " I have no reason to suppose," he continued, " that Sir Robert Peel wiU refuse to put in practice those principles of free-trade of which he is the declared advocate. I am sure if he does, it will be from the want of inclination, not from the want of power; for, as for any imjDutation of his wanting any power to deal with the corn-laws as we proposed to deal with them, I think we may despise it. I know not what course he may pursue, but the full responsibility rests with him. He has no right to say that he is shackled and thwarted by party trammels, because it appears that the party to which he belongs could not resist liberal measures if he were to propose them." The division, which showed that the party of Sir Robert Peel was so strong as to justify these declarations, was immediately followed by the resignation of the ministry, and thus the Melbourne government came to an end, and with it the influence of Lord Melbourne himself whose political career may be said to have terminated. It is pleasant to remember that Lord Spencer had come out of his retirement to stand by his friends and move the address — that he had boldly and unhesitatingly indorsed the free-trade budget, and without flinching faced the charges brought against the falling ministry on the ground of the deficit. It was true, he said, that the debt had somewhat increased, but wealth had increased in greater proportion. To augment this still further was the aim of the government, who proposed not to increase but revise taxation by lowering restrictive duties and giving a freer course to the extension of commerce. The main peculi- arity in existing cii'cumstances was the pres- sure of taxation; and the most effectual way of meeting that pressure was to develop the national wealth, leaving the burden of the debt to fall more lightly on the extended resources of the country. Melbourne knew that the end had come. He had held his high ofiice longer than any statesman of his time, and had acted sincerely and often successfully in endeavoui'ing to cari'y many great measures and in taking oft" injurious and oppressive taxes. He quitted office without a hint being even munnured that he had appropriated to himself the smallest favour of the crown. He would not take the trouble to pronounce a defence of his career nor to utter complaints or regrets at its close. By the queen's desu-e he went to Windsor the same evening and resigned his trust, and there was no bitterness, no queru- lousness in his fine and noble temper. He praised the speeches of Lord John Eussell and Sir Robert Peel, and only spoke of the change of ministry with reference to the trouble which it might occasion to her majesty. "For four years," he said, " I have seen you every day, but it is so different now to what it would have been in 1839 — the prince under- stands everything so well." It was an aftect- MELBOUENE'S PUESUITS AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 315 ing parting when he took leave the next morning ; and he had no sooner reached home than he wrote to the queen again, saying how great confidence he had in the judgment, temper, and discretion of Prince Albert — who had already consulted him on the expediency of making arrangements for so disposing the royal household as to retain some of the near friends of the queen as ladies-in-waiting, and yet to concede to the coming government the retirement of those ladies who were near rela- tives of members of the Whig cabinet. Before the Peel ministry was installed Sir Robert had given his assent to the jjroposed arrange- ment. The Duchess of Sutherland, the Duchess of Bedford, and the Marchioness of Normanby had resigned, and the Countess of Charlmont and Lady Putman remained. Of course the caricaturists as well as the newspapers had been busy enough over the coming fall of the ministry, and it was be- lieved that they contributed to it not a little. One of the most telling squibs was by IB, because it made a witty use of an incident which had already created a great deal of popular surjjrise and amusement. At the end of 1840 a youth named William Jones (there- after to be known as "the boy Jones") had contrived to gain access to Buckingham Palace, where he had concealed himself for several days. Mrs. Lilley, the nurse to the princess royal, had discovered him under the sofa, and he was of course immediately removed by the attendants. His accounts of the manner in Vvfliich he gained admission to the palace as well as the object of his visit varied con- siderably, and at first there was some uneasi- ness at the thought that an intruder had been able to hide himself in or near the royal nursery ; but there was believed to be little cause for alarm, and the offender was sentenced to three months' imprisonment as a rogue and vagabond, but only to repeat his offence im- mediately after his discharge, as it appeared on his own confession, when in endeavouring to gain admission a third time he was seized by a constable. The only thing that could be done with this incorrigible interloper was to send him away from the scene of his fascina- tion, and the police magistrate induced his parents to allow him to be placed on board one of her majesty's ships. All London, how- ever, was laughing at the incident when there appeared an admirable and highly humorous sketch by IB, repi-esenting Melbourne in a careless attitude soliloquizing on the topic of the day: — "That boy Jones must be a very clever fellow ! To make his way into the palace once or twice was not so extraordinary; I have done as much as that myself: but how he managed to get in the third time. I wish I knew the secret." Probably no one enjoyed this "skit" more than Melbourne himself, for there was no rancour or angry jealousy and vanity in his character. He had always tried to heal dissensions, to reconcile estranged friends, to bring people amicably together; and when he asked, " Can't we leave it alone 1 " the question meant more than laissez faire — it meant. Why call up conflicting elements ? Let sleeping dogs lie ! Life is too short for quar- relling ; let us avoid the causes of contention if possible, and see where we can agree. Mel- boui'ne was much more and much better than his enemies, and even some of his friends, gave him credit for. A highly cultured mind, a graceful and fascinating manner, and in some matters a deep reader, he was far more in- dustrious than half the joeople who blamed him for his idleness. He was well versed in books of divinity, and had a profound acquaint- ance with the writings of the theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and of the Christian fathers, which were his favourite study, — a fact of which the majority of people perhaps knew as little as they did of his true depth of feeling, or of the shadows of a life which had had great and lasting griefs. Pro- bably the true nature of the man was most displayed in relation to the wife who had so severely tried his patience, but whose vagaries rould not entirely break down his affection uor dissipate the influence which the abiding love of his youth could suffice to re-establish. It would be far beyond our scope to dwell at any length upon the often painful story of Lord Melbourne's domestic life. He was married early, and while still only William Lamb, to a wilful, wayward, romantic girl — a creature of ill-regulated impulse deformed by :5i(; GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. the follies of society into something so like insanity that it at last took the aspect of mental aberration. There is no need to recount how among tlie guests which his mother Lady Melbourne in- vited to Melbourne House — where as of old she assembled the leaders of rank and fashion — Lord Byron became a frequent visitor, nor how Lady Caroline Lamb, wayward, clever, always sketching caricatures, writing morbid or senti- mental verses, many of them of undoubted ability, and already living a life of excitement and disordered fancy, was first by instinct repelled, and afterwards by fashion infatuated by the rising poet. " Mad, bad, and dangerous to know," she had written of him in her diary after their first introduction; and she soon became one of those who, without any grounds for imputations of a diff"erent kind, stood as representative figures of the worshippers of the romantic bard, who was then only in the dawn of his fame. At the house of the Mel- bournes he was introduced at once into a charmed circle of aristocracy and rank, and there he found it agreeable to his vanity as well as to his leisure to talk with a woman clever enough to understand him, eager to listen to his accounts of his travels and ad- ventures, and with so-called sympathy for his affected glooms. When she began to need sympathy for her glooms in return, and to write morbid verses which he was in turn expected to admire, it was a different affair altogether, and he became impatient, while she could scarcely rise to the height of his ima- ginings, and grew fretful. In the end the marriage to which he had asked Lady Mel- bourne to recommend him was secured by his union with Miss Milbanke, and he departed. Those who remember his verses beginning, "And sayest thou, Caral" will be able partly to estimate the kind of tone which he had adopted when he could write in such a way immediately after his marriage ; but it must be remembered that these lines were a part of the delusive morbid affectation of passion and sentiment which was then the Byronic fashion. It was common enough for the poets and for people in the same circles of society to write verses of that kind, and William Lamb him- self had written several spirited and admirable pieces, which showed much thought and feel- ing; but he was of a different mental con- stitution to the merely morbid versifiers, and he was honest, and even though in too early days he had been a giiest at Carlton House revels, because of the intimacy of the regent with his family, jjossessed a truth and delicacy of feeling which, combined with his satirical humour and his extensive reading, kept him from many absurdities of the time, and enabled him to regard his wife's hero- worship for the author of Childe Harold as a passing extravagance of an impetuous and impressionable woman, whom he had married with the avowed intention of bearing with her waywardness and strange unconventional manners. Byron's separation from his wife, his continued correspondence with Lady Caro- line Lamb and its abrupt termination, her fancied revenge in publishing a foolish book called Glenarvon, which was supposed to con- tain a kind of exaggerated jiicture of the poet, his departure from England, his latest verses addressed to her, commencing '"Farewell if ever fondest prayer," and all the unhealthy fancies of that friend- shil> between two egotists of whom Byron was much the least sincere, has little to do with this record, except in so far as it affected the statesman who so long held office during a critical period in the country. That his wife, whom he had never ceased to love, was really suffering from mental derangement, can scai'cely be denied, for it afterwards occa- sionally broke out in actions that were beyond mere eccentricity. She would sometimes per-- sist in sitting beside the coachman when she drove out, and once called to the footman to catch her as she leaped fi'om the front seat. She remonstrated with the butler for setting out the table monotonously and without a more lofty centre ornament, and when he went on arranging the plate without resjionding to her demands, thinking that she might get over her passing whim, oi'dered him to remove the centime piece, and stepped lightly on to the table in its place, where she posed in a grace- ful attitude, till her husband had to be fetched, MELBOURNE'S EXCLUSION FROM OFFICE. 517 and with the simple remonstrance, "Caroline, Caroline," took her in his arms and carried her into the garden, where she recovered her equa- nimity, and was quite able to receive her guests ill the evening. Their only child, a son who lived to be a young man, had the sad inheri- tance of an intellectual cloud whicli deepened until just before his death; but he survived his mother, whose conduct became so extra- vagant that at last a separation between her and her husband seemed to be inevitable. It would have taken place long before; but Lamb was never insensible to the influence which she had possessed over him in youth, and he loved her so well that he could and did forgive her for her wild follies. Though it was neces- sary eventually for her to remain at Brocket Hall while he was attending to his parliamen- tai-y duties in London, the separation was in her case ameliorated by his kind, thoughtful letters, and by visits, during which he treated her as sane and with infinite kindness. Before her death she lost her wilfulness and wild exaggeration; but she had never lost his love, which followed her to the last, and her death left him bereaved. In the important poli- tical relations which he afterwards sustained when he had become a peer of the realm, prime minister of England, and adviser of the queen, he never forgot that first love, nor the influence of her over whose grave follies and frivolities were forgotten, and only the love itself and those better qualities which had inspired it were remembered. The years after his bereavement were years of political strife and excitement, in which he sought relief from the private grief which had oppressed him by pursuing the ambitious course that had been marked out for him by his mother before her death. As we have already seen, his temper was one capable of seizing on small enjoyments, or rather of ex- tracting enjoyment from ordinary pursuits, and he had the many resources of a cultivated mind, though a sceptical temperament, united with an earnest desire to attain the truth, is said frequently to have given him much mental uneasiness. He had had a long term of power and influence, and the fall of his ministry came at a time when he found it diflicult to accept the comparative unimportance of his position and the diminished claims on his activity. He had no domestic life to which to retire, and thougli his friends were eai-nest in their regard for him, and Lady Holland, Lady Cowper, and Lady Morgan especially gave him frequent and congenial society, he yielded to a sense of neglect and solitude. There was no asperity, no quei'ulous com- l^laint, but a depression which was increased by approaching bodily infirmity and impend- ing symptoms of paralysis. Still he was often bright, witty, and cheerful. In 1843 the queen and Piince Albert meet- ing him at the Duke of Devonshire's at Chatsworth, invited him to spend a few days at "Windsor, after which he went to Broad- lands, and returned to town so much better as to be able to entertain his friends. As late as the spring of 1847 he dined with Campbell, and there met Lord John Russell, Lord Derby, and his old foes Brougham and Lynd- hurst; but Brougham had four years before expressed some regret that he had quarrelled with the Whigs, though he said he never should have done so but for Melbourne's un- friendly treatment of him, and Lyndhurst as well as Wellington had acknowledged that the policy jjrofessed by the Melbourne gov- ernment had been necessary for the preserva- tion of the peace of the country. It was a deep disappointment to him that he was not invited to the conferences of the Liberal party when, at the end of 1845, there was a ijrobability of their retui-n to power, because of the proposition of Sir Robert Peel temporarily to open the ports for the free ad- mission of food during the Irish famine, but to reimpose the duty as soon as the exigency had passed. On the retirement of Sir Robert Peel after the achievement of free-trade he again had some expectation that he might be consulted, though it was evident that he would not be invited to take office because of his broken health. He still believed that he was equal to fulfilling the duties of privy-seal, whicli he thought might reason- ably have been off"ered to him. It was hard for a man who had neither sought self-ag- grandizement, nor been puff"ed up with the 318 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEARIES. pride of place, to feel that he was passed by. He was still clear-headed, and his witticisms were often as pungent as ever, but hours of enjoyment were succeeded by periods of de- pression and of inability to perform much intellectual work. His j^ublic career was closed, and even in his changed condition he could find no occupation which would take its place. The new ministry was soon formed, and though Mr. Goulbourn was made chancellor of the exchequer it was believed that the financial genius of Peel himself would be exercised to relieve the country from the serious difficulties which had already pro- duced wide-spread distress and misery. The cautious, calm, and cultivated Lord Aberdeen succeeded the more impetuous and positive Palmerston in the foreign office. Sir James Graham, who had been returned for Dor- chester, and whose well-known i3amphlet Corn and Currency/ had fifteen years before upheld the policy now avowed by Peel, was made home-secretary, and brought not only great adraiiilstrative ability to the cabinet, ; but ,a close- and lasting loyalty to his chief. ;. The least fgi'tunate appointment was that of , Lord EUenBorough to the presidency of the ■ Board of Control, since it afterwards led to his being nominated Governor-general of India and to the complications which ensued in Afghanistan. Lyudhurst of course became lord-chancellor, Lord Ripon was at the Board of Trade, and Stanley was at the head of the colonial office, a position for which most people believed he. was eminently unfitted. The Duke of Wellington had a seat in the cabinet, but without office, and Earl de Grey was made Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Some young poli- ticians were presented to office, among whom Mr. Sidney Herbert became secretary to the admiralty ; but one of the important ajipoint- ments, which soon afterwards had very re- markable results, was that of Mr. Gladstone as vice-president of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint. This, of course, did not include a seat in the cabinet, but there can be no doubt of the confidential position occupied by the member for Newark, nor of the recog- nition of his consummate financial ability. In the scheme for the revision of the tariif, which was a chief part of the measure after- wards presented to parliament, it was he who had grasped the difficult details, and reduced the whole proposal to order, an achievement which, while it at once raised him to the rank of a practical statesman, may be said to have inaugurated a free-trade policy by the adjust- ment or remission of duties on articles of ne- cessary consumption. As a sjDeaker, with powers of oratory which lost nothing from the fact that he could be earnest and intense without the use of in- vective, and without departing from a cer- tain moderation in tone, Mr. Gladstone had achieved a reputation. He had been listened to with attention on many important occa- sions, some of which have already been re- ferred to, and he had made a decidedly favour- able impression even on his opponents. A ■writer on parliament in 1838 says : " His party expect great things from him, and the success of the parliamentary efforts he has already made justifies their expectations. He is well informed on most of the subjects which usually occupy the attention of the legislature; and he is happy in turning his information to good account. He is ready on all occasions which he deems fitting ones with a speech in favour of the policy advocated by the party with whom he acts. His extempore resources are ample. Few men in the house can im- provise better. It does not appear to cost him an effort to speak. . . . His style is polished, but has no appearance of the effect of previous preparation. He displays con- siderable acuteness in replying to an opponent; he is quick in his perception of anything vul- nerable in the speech to which he replies, and happy in laying the weak point bare to the house. He now and then indulges in sar- casm, which is in most cases very felicitous." He had then taken a prominent part in several important debates, notably in that on Canadian affairs, when he supported the government on the ground that the question was one of public order on one side, and the absolutism of the popular will on the other ; that the difficulty was not between the House GLADSTONE IN 1842. 319 of Assembly and the Legislative Council, but between the House of Assembly and the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain. He had also sjioken at considerable length on Mi\ Spring Rice's measure for an ecclesiastical commission to deal with the property of the bishops, deans, and chapters, and it need not be said that the scheme had his energetic ojd- position in committee. It was, perhaps, a high compliment to his increasing reputation that he had been solicited to stand for Man- chester in the Tory interest in 1837 against Mr. Mark Phillips and the Eight Hon. C. Poulett Thomson, and that, though he stren- uously refused, his name was taken to the poll, and the votes in his favour amounted to 2294 as against 3760 for Phillips and 4155 for Thomson. As soon as he heard that he had been nominated he issued an address to the electors of Newark, saying, "My attention has just been called to a paragraph in the Nottingham and Newark Mercury of this morn- ing (July 22, 1837), which announces on the authority of some person unknown that I have consented to be put in nomination for Man- chester, and have promised, if elected, to sit in parliament as its rej^resentative. I have to inform you that these statements are wholly without foundation. I was honoured on Wed- nesday with a deputation from Manchester empowered to request that I would become a candidate for the borough. I felt the honour, but I answered unequivocally and at once that I must absolutely decline the invitation, and I am much at a loss to conceive how ' a most respectable correspondent' could have cited language which I never used, from a letter which I never wrote. Lastly, I beg to state in terms as explicit as I can command, that I hold myself bound in honour to the electors of Newark, that I adhere in every particular to the tenor of my late address, and that I place my humble services during the ensuing parliament entirely and uncondition- ally at their disposal." Mr. Gladstone's mai'- vellous capacity for detail was in some mea- sure displayed by his criticism on Lord Gos- ford's correspondence, and on the order of events which had led to the condition of Canada in 1838, when he effectively criticised at some length the whole conduct of the colo- nial office. We have already seen what was the part he took in the debates on the ques- tion of West Indian negro ai^prenticeshij), and then followed the vacation, during which he wrote the pamphlet on church and state to which reference has been made in previous pages. On the ground of the opinions ex- pressed in that work he strongly opposed the government scheme of national education — replying to Lord Morpeth's declaration that it was the duty of the state to provide educa- tion for Dissenters so long as it fingered their gold, by saying that if the state was to be regarded as having no other function than that of representing the mere wiU of the people as to religious tenets, he admitted the truth of the principle, but not if it was to be held that the state was capable of duties, and that the state could have a conscience. It was not his habit to revile religion in any form, but he demanded what reason there was for con- fining the noble lord's reasoning to Christian- ity. Eeferring to the position held by the Jews upon this education question, he read to the house a passage from a recent petition,; which said — "Your petitioners feel the deepest; gratitude for the expression of her majesty's most gracious wish that the youth of this country should be religiously brought up and the rights of conscience respected, while they earnestly hope that the education of the people, Jewish and Christian, will be sedu- lously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures." How, asked Mr. Glad- stone, was the education of the Jewish people, who considered the New Testament an im- posture, to be sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures, which con- sisted of the Old and New Testament ? To oblige the Jewish children to read the latter would be directly contrary to the principles of the honourable gentleman opposite. He would have no child forced to do so, but he protested against paying from the money of the state a set of men whose business would be to inculcate erroneous doctrines." Here spoke the old Oxford training and the opinions which were scarcely modified until he had, as we have seen, come to a wider view of what 320 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPOEAEIES. were the true governmental functions and the real conscience of the state in relation not only to the church but to the nation. In the debate on the "opium war" Mr. Gladstone supported Sir James Gi'aham's motion, and in reply to Mr. MacauLay, who had spoken in vindication of the resentment of the govern- ment against the insult to the British flag — asked, " How comes it to pass that the sight of that flag always raises the spirit of English- men ? It is because it has always been asso- ciated with the cause of justice, with opposi- tion to oppression, with respect to national rights, with honourable commercial enterprise; but now, that flag is hoisted to protect an in- famous contraband trafiic, and if it were never to be hoisted except as it is now hoisted on the coast of China, we should recoil from its sight with horror, and should never again feel our hearts tkrill, as they now thrill, with emotion when it floats proudly and magnifi- cently on the breeze." In July, 1839, Mr. Gladstone had married Miss Catherine Glynne, eldest daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glynne, of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, an alliance of whicb it may be permissible to say that it has been one full of happy influences, and associated not only with the advantages of great social dis- tinction, but with the blessings of family union and active participation in benevolent efi'orts. In speaking of the more prominent mem- bers of the new parliament of 1841 it is neces- sary that we should refer more particularly than w^e have yet done to one who had already achieved a marked success in public life both as a writer and a speaker, and had attained his position in the House of Commons in spite of difficulties so disheartening, and an opposition so adverse, that any young man less resolute and less tenacious of purpose would probably have been deterred from fur- ther attempts. Benjamin Disraeli, however, came of a race famous for its determined persistency no less than for those mental characteristics which give to their possessors the elements of poli- tical influence. He had no lonjr time to wait for an op^Jortunity, which he so quickly seized that he reached, as it were, in one single bound the front of the parliamentary arena as the leader of a party which, though not at tlie time numerically jjowerful, was composed of men of social weight and traditional import- ance. The great space which he had occupied in the state and in the regards of the English people had scarcely been estimated when, after nearly forty years of arduous i)olitical life and of service in the councils of the nation, he became the Earl of Beaconsfield. It was not till he seemed to be passing away from it, that it was seen how strong an influ- ence that life had exercised not alone in the region of mere political controversy, but in the closer relations which in this country often identify the career of an eminent public man with the sentimental side of the national character. It is far from easy, at this moment,^ to write either with adequate expression or with that just balance of appreciation which should belong to an historical record — of a statesman whose reputation was so brilliant, whose talents were so conspicuous, or whose intel- lectual powers were so keen and varied. All England, from the sovereign to the artisan, from his most distinguished contemporary and opponent in the ranks of jiolitical life to the humble follower of the plough, is sincerely mourning a death against which not even extremest diff'erence of opinions can so weigh as to make it other than a calamity, or can so move the heart as to leave room in it for aught but sad sense of loss and generous re- membrance. The intense anxiety which was manifested during the many days that Lord Beaconsfield lay sick: the constant inquiries from the queen, the royal family, and all the nobility of England : the public necessity, or at any rate the public demand for almost hourly bulletins of his condition : the silent decorous crowds that daily and nightly filled the street I April 19, 1881. At four o'clock tliis moniiiig Lord Beaconsfield died at his residence, Curzon Street. May fair, London, after a protracted illness, in the 77th year of his ase. BENJAMIN D' ISRAEL EARL OF BEACONSFIELD FROM A PHOTOG-RAPH- BIiACKTE iS01l.l.Oin)OH,OLu5SOOW.a.i:DINBDRGR. THE DISEAELI FAMILY. 321 to read the latest repoi'ts of the physicians in attendance as they were posted opposite the house: the wistful inquiries that were made hour by hour as to the hojies that might be en- tertained of his recovery: all bore witness to the esteem and regard in which he was held. It is no more than just to say that this i^opularity was not dependent either upon his political attitude or upon the opinions which he was believed to represent. The Earl of Beacons- field had continued to be as conspicuously political as Mr. Disraeli; but, as is nearly always the case here, the public feeling was probably associated with political ability plus something else — it had gone beyond politics, and the homage was given not only to high ability, to statesmanlike capacity, but to that ever fresh, buoyant, and vigorous resolution which is summed up in the common word " pluck," a great quality which itself sufficed to make him popular, and led men of all shades of politics to wait expectantly for his speeches, and to admire the wit that irradiated them, and the pungent satire that often pointed arrows of genius from the plain shafts of common sense. The death of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, leaves a space in the ranks of the state not easily to be filled — a biography to be written for which few pens are adequate. In future chapters of this record of the con- ditions of social and political progress in which he took so conspicuous a part, the story of his career and its relation to the changes and developments of the time will be more than indicated, and will necessarily occupy a pro- minent place. We have already, by looking for a year or two beyond the date at which we have now arrived in the consecutive narrative of poli- tical progress, seen Mr. Disraeli as the advo- cate of "Young Englandism," and have, as we shall again have occasion to do, quoted several brilliant and piquant passages from his early writings to illustrate some social and political occurrences; but we shall pre- sently have to consider him as the repre- sentative in parliament of that Protectionist party of whom Lord George Bentinck was the nominal leader, and who, though they Vol. I. were not strong enough to rise to actual power, often exercised a very considerable in- fluence on the debates, and even on the decisions of the house, and carried that influ- ence with them when they afterwards came to the front of the Conservative ranks under the same leadership. There is no need to dwell at any length on the history of the Disraeli family, to which some allusion has been made in an earlier page. That they were of the Hebrew race is well known — the race of the Sephardim — " Children of Israel who had never quitted the shores of the midland ocean until Torque- mada had driven them from their pleasant residences and rich estates in Aragon and Andalusia and Portugal, to seek greater bless- ings even than a clear atmosphere and a glowing sun, amidst the marshes of Holland and the fogs of Britain." The Disraelis settled in Venice, and it is said to have been in the year 1748 that Benjamin Disraeli, the grandfather, settled in England, where he pursued a successful commercial career such as his fathei's had carried on in the City of Palaces. At a comjoaratively early age he had acquired a fortune, and his name has been mentioned as one of the founders of the Stock Exchange. He retired to a villa at Enfield, where he " formed an Italian garden, entertained his friends, played whist with Sir Horace Mann, who was his great acquaintance, and who had known his brother at Venice as a banker, ate maccaroni which was dressed by the Venetian consul, sang canzonettes, and, notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who disappointed his plans, and who to the last hour of his life was an enigma to him, lived till he was nearly ninety, and then died in 1817 in the full enjoyment of prolonged existence." The wife disliked her name and everything Jewish, but there was little about the household that was Jewish except the name, for Benjamin Disraeli the elder had nearly abandoned the distinctive religious observances of his people, though he paid his contribution to the synagogue. Still less Jewish, if that were possible, was Isaac Disraeli, the son who was an enigma to him, and who is now chiefly known for his still 21 322 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. famous book the Curiosities of Literature. His father, of course, destined him for com- mercial pursuits, aud after receiving some in- struction at a private school aud being after- wards placed under the care of a private tutor, he was sent off to Holland, there to be trained. But the friends to whom he was entrasted put him again with a private tutor, who, instead of prescribing a course of study, left him to roam at large in his library, and occasionally talked "philosophy" to him — which means that he gave him a smattering of Rousseau and other "philosophers" of the revolutionary period. The lad came back — hysterical, vain, full of affectations, and v.-ith an absolute aver- sion to trade. His mother received him with- out much display of regard — indeed, it is said that his appearance and manner excited her laughter if not her I'idicule, and as he had been preparing for a sentimental interview his feelings were for a time so lacerated that his father endeavoured to soothe him, and offered to send him to Bordeaux to other friends there. The reply was that he had written a poem on Commerce as the Corrupter of Mankind, aud desired to publish it, upon which, as his father was indignant, he appealed to Doctor Johnson, to whom he sent the manuscript; but the doctor was then in his last illness, and the poem was returned un- opened. The youth was in a certain sense unmanageable, and gave his attention only to reading and to such pursuits as he chose — so that it was deemed advisable again to send him abroad, and he went to Paris, where he stayed tiU the threatened revolution, and re- turned with a collection of books and a better knowledge of the world. He had already determined on a literary career, however, and his first book. On the Abuse of Satire, which was published anony- mously, obtained considerable reputation, and gained him some literary acquaintances. He wrote occasional verses and other slight con- tributions to the literature of the day; but in 1796 he published a small volume of literary anecdotes, which was the precursor of his well- known Curiosities of Literature, and from that time he may be said to have almost lived in his library ; for when he went to Loudon it was to meet literary people or to ramble among bookseUei's. In 1806 he issued a "literary romance," with the odd title of Flim Flams, or the Life and Errors of my Uncle and his Friends, ivith Illustrations and Obscurities by Tag Rag and Bobtail, a book which nobody now remembers, and which was not very well worth remembering. There are other works, however, with which his name is worthily associated, one of which he never seems to have acknowledged, though he is generally credited with its authorship. This appeared as late as 183.3, and is a good-sized pamphlet entitled The Geyiius of Judaism, written with considerable skill, and showing how a con- siderable part of the Mosaic code and most of the Jewish ordinances were necessarily transi- tory, and intended only for the time and coimtry of their institution. These represen- tations were at least indicative of the position held by Isaac Disraeli towards the Jewish fraternity, from which he had removed still further than his father had done. He was, it is believed, rather proud of the race to which he belonged, but he had no religious part in the community, and eventually, in 1817, withdrew altogether from any connec- tion with Judaism. His eldest son, Benjamin Disraeli, was in the same year baptized at the parish church of St. Andrew, Holborn. In 1802 Isaac Disraeli had maiTied a sister of George or Joshua Basevi the architect, also of Hebrew family, and their children were Sarah, Benjamin (the late Earl Beaconsfield), Ralph, and James, the latter born in 1813, at which time they lived in the King's Road, near the British Museum, removing thence to the corner of Hart Street, Bloomsbury Square. For some time after this, as his means were much increased after the death of his father, Isaac Disi'aeli sought to find a convenient residence near some of his friends in Berk- shire, and though no suitable residence could be obtained in the precise spot, the family in 1825 took possession of Bradenham House, in the parish of Bradenham, Buckinghamshire. The purchase of this house gave rise to the association between the late Lord Beaconsfield and the county of Buckinghamshire, which has ever since continued; and it was from EARLY DAYS OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 323 Bradenliam House that the works of " the younger Disraeli" were dated, and indeed many of the later woi'ks, until after his mar- riage with the Viscountess Beacousfield, when he became the possessor of the adjacent man- sion of Hughendeu Manor. It is in the vault of the chancel of Bradeuham Chui-ch that Isaac Disraeli and his wife wei'e buried, as the epitaph in the church tells us, and a few years ago a column was erected by Lady Beacons- field near Hughenden to the memory of her husband's father. In a previous chapter we have already referred to the eai'ly reputation achieved by the young Benjamin Disraeli, but there is very little known of his actual boy- hood. It is understood that he went to a private school at Walthamstow for some little time, and that he afterwards received private tuition, but the probabilities are that a good deal of his education was in his father's libl'ary. In esti- mating his peculiar character — the reticence which he maintained about himself and his immediate affaii-s, and much that made in him a marked contrast from many of his con- temporaries in the world of public work and political ambition — the fact of his never hav- ing been at one of the gi-eat public schools or at either of the universities, should be taken into account. He had not formed close asso- ciations with any particular section of society by means of school intimacies, and he had no special prestige to maintain in relation to those strong traditions which have so largely affected men educated at Eton or Rugby, Ox- ford or Cambridge. When he first emerges from boy -life, and after a short period passea.Yty, to no special " set " representing any phase of public life; by birth and obviously by name the im- mediate descendant of a Jewish family at a time when the Jews were stiU under political disabilities, and had scarcely surmounted the kind of contemptuous toleration by which alone they were recognized. To these is to be added the supposed disqualification for the serious business of politics which is always attached to a writer of works of imagination. But in the spring of 1832, just after his return to England, the opportunity presented itself for him to make his first attempt, and he seized it. The Reform Bill was about to pass, but a vacancy had occurred in the representation of Wycombe, near his father's house at Braden- ham, and he became an independent candidate, singularly enough, and perhaps awkwardly enough, as it afterwards turned out, furnishetl with letters from O'Connell and Hume, which led to his being afterwards accused of having begun political life as a Radical, though he had, as it appears, professed no other politi- cal opinions than an inveterate dislike for the Whigs (of whom his opponent, the Hon. Charles Grey, was a very complete youthful specimen), and a refusal definitely to join the ranks of the Tories, who were then, he said, in a state of ignorant stupefaction. We have in an earlier page of this volume referred to the contest, and we would again remind our readers of the necessity for remembering those peculiar views which seem from the very out- set to have determined the political conduct and policy of Disraeli — that combination of Toryism and Democracy which, as we have seen, led to the pleasant but unpractical 326 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. theories of the Young England party, and to much else that will be more fully illustrated hereafter. He was unsuccessful in his efforts; but un- dauntedly renewed them on the dissolution of parliament after the passing of the Reform Bill, when he again appeared as an indepen- dent candidate, though he says, " I have never availed myself of that much-abused ejoithet to escape an exjalicit avowal of my opinions." He wished to see the work completed which the Reform Bill had begun, and would supple- ment the enlarged franchise by the ballot; he would vote for triennial parliaments, "of which the Whigs originally deprived us." He was in favour of the abolition of taxes on knowledge and of the suppression of slavery. On the question of the corn-laws he was anxious to relieve the consumer, but could not consent to measures, the result of which must assuredly be the permanent injury of the agricultural class. For the same kind of reasons he would vote for the commutation of tithes, as he desired to protect the clergy without injuring the farmers. His address concluded by saying, "Englishmen, behold this unparalleled empire raised by the heroic energies of your fathers, rouse yourselves in this hour of doubt and danger, rid yourselves of all that political jargon and factious slang of Wliig and Tory, two names with one mean- ing used only to delude you, and unite in forming a gieat national party, which can alone save the country from impending de- struction." Again he was defeated, and though he continued occasionally to speak in public he had no opjjortunity till 1835 to renew the contest for High "Wycombe, when he avowed himself to be in favour of protec- tion and the representative of the agricultural interests. The Tory supporters gave him a complimentary dinner when he spoke as a chamjiion of the country party, but he did not renew his candidature of the borough, and three months afterwards went to contest Taunton against Mr. Labouchere, afterwards Loi'd Taunton. He had then, as it appeared, definitely allied himself to the Tory party, and it may be remarked that that party was not then in power, as Sir Robert Peel had just been defeated, and Lord Melbourne was prime minister. It was then that the quai-rel arose between Mr. Disraeli and O'Connell. The implied compact between the Whig government and the agitator and his f ollowei-s had just been tacitly acknowledged, and the young candidate for Taunton in commenting upon it used some strong language, among other remarks saying, "I look upon the Whigs as a weak but ambitious party, who can only obtain power by linking themselves with a traitor. I ought to ajDologize to the admirers of Mr. O'Connell, perhaps, for this hard lan- guage. I am myself his admirer so far as his talents and abilities are concerned, but I maintain him to be a traitor — and on what authority? On the authority of that very body (the Whigs) a distinguished member of whom is my honourable opponent." Some of the party newspapers published an account of this speech with sundr^' changes, additions, and animadversions, and commented on the former display by Mr. Disraeli of letters from O'Con- nell and Hume supporting Lis candidature for Wycombe. O'Connell was not slow to take the matter up pei-sonally, and in an abusive speech denounced the candidate for Taunton in terms of contempt. This might have passed, but the newspapers made this speech the subject of comment and of fresh accusations. The Globe, then a Whig organ, took up the quarrel and it became a squabble. O'Connell then in language Avhich would, one would hope, be impossible even to an Irish agitator of our day, and with a display of wit which is in- sufficient to redeem the revolting character of the invective, again attacked Disraeli. The result was a retort which, though perhaps less coarse, was in its way as personally vitupera- tive. This word-duel between two masters of the then not neglected art of violent and un- sparing imputation, ended with a challenge to fight, a termination to political disputes which, as we have had occasion to remark, was not at that time unknown. O'Connell, however, had long before "been out" in response to a "mes- sage" from a gentleman named D'Esterre, a councillor of Dublin, who called upon him to answer for saying in a speech to one of his crowded followings that the corporation of YOUNG DISEAELI AND MELBOURNE. 327 Dublin was "a beggarly corporation." O'Con- nell tried to avoid the encounter, but he would not appeal to the law for protection, and he professed to believe that his antagonist, who was reputed an unerring mai-ksman, had been set upon him by a political party. "They have reckoned without their host, I promise you," he said to one of his friends immediately before the duel. " I am one of the best shots in Ireland, at a mai'k, having as a public man considered it as a duty to prepare for my own protection against such unj^rovoked aggres- sion as the present. Now remember what I say to you. I may be struck myself, and then skill is out of the question ; but if I am not, my antagonist will have reason to regret his having forced me into this conflict." They fired almost both together at a given signal, and D'Esterre fell mortally wounded. O'Con- nell would never accept another challenge; but on one occasion his son, Morgan John O'Connell, had challenged Lord Alvanley for insulting words to his father, and to him therefore INfr. Disraeli addressed himself, but on the ground that to give satisfaction for an insult offered by O'Connell was a very dif- ferent thing to resenting an insult offered to him, Morgan John very reasonably declined to be his father's deputy. The matter ended with another letter to the agitator, concluding with " I expect to be a representative of the people before the Repeal of the Union. We shall meet at Philippi, and I'est assured that, confident in a good cause and in some ener- gies which have not been altogether unim- proved, I shall seize the first opportunity of inflicting upon you a castigation which will make you at the same time remember and repent the insults you have lavished upon — Benjamin Disraeli." It was not till two years afterwards, how- ever — in 1837 — that they did meet at the Philippi of the House of Commons; and those two years were not idle ones, for during that time were published The Wondrous Tale of Alroi/, A Vindication of the British Con- stitution, the Runm/mede Letters in the Times, Henrietta Temple, and Venetia. Literary work and the experience of former political defeats had brought perhaps more settled purpose, but it is worth noting that the ambition of attaining to high station had animated him from the first. It was at Storey's Gate at the house of Mr. Norton, the magistrate whose name is now only remem- bered because of his gifted wife, the grand- daughter of Sheridan — that Melbourne, attending a family birth-day dinner-party, was introduced to the author of Vivian Grey. The young Disraeli had only just then re- turned from his travels in the East, and had not quite got over the disappointment of having been rejected as a candidate for Wycombe, where he said he had been de- feated by the want of support of the Whigs. After dinner Mrs. Norton presented him to Melbourne, who was then home secretary, and who could, she said, retrieve the young aspirant's disappointment if he chose. The frank and attractive manner of the older man was not without its effect on Disraeli, who explained the causes of his failure at Wycombe, and dwelt on the treacherous con- duct of his opponents in language so striking and with manner so unusual that Melbourne was constrained to admire. In his usual sudden way, but with no hrusquerie, he asked, "Well, now, tell me — what do you want to bel" — "I want to be prime minister," was the calm reply, in a tone of perfect gravity. One can almost imagine Melbourne's long- drawn breath, half sigh, half signal of sur- prise. "No chance of that in our time," he replied. "It's all arranged and settled. No- body but Lord Grey could, perhaps, have can'ied the Reform Bill; but he is an old man, and when he gives up he will certainly be succeeded by one who has every requisite for the position, in the prime of life and fame, of old blood, high rank, great foi'tune, and gi-eater ability. Once in power, there is nothing to prevent him holding office as long as Sir Robert AValpole. Nobody can compete with Stanley. I heard him the other night in the Commons, when the party were all divided and breaking away from their ranks, recall them by the mere force of superior will and eloquence : he rose like a young eagle above them all, and kept hovering over their heads till they were reduced to abject sub- 328 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. mission. There is nothing like him. If you are going iuto politics, and mean to stick to it, I dare say you will do very well, for you have ability and enterprise; and if you are careful how you steer, no doubt you will get into some post at last. But you must put all these foolish notions out of your head: they won't do at all. Stanley will be the next prime minister, you will see." Of course the j^rophecy was wi'ong, for in a few months only Melbourne himself was prime minister, and in five-and-tliii'ty years his young interlocutor attained to the same dignity — but, as all the world knows, he began to make his mark even before the Mel- bourne ministry had fallen. It was not till afterwards though, when Disraeli had com- menced his bitter invective against Peel, that the old premier, then a valetudinarian at Brocket, laughed at and enjoyed the biting sarcasms of the member for Shrewsbm-y, especially that in which he accused the prime minister of having caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes. Eemembering the con- versation at Storey's Gate Melbourne rubbed his hands and exclaimed, "By Jove ! I believe he'U do it after aU." The Runnymede Letters, which so satirized Melbourne, and contained sharp and unrelent- ing attacks on the Whigs, had intervened. The witty ex-premier had no doubt appreci- ated them all. The first parliament of Queen Victoria saw the success of Disraeli in gaining admission to parliament as representative of Maidstone and as the colleague of its senior member, Mr. Wyndham Lewis, who died in 1838, and whose widow was afterwards united to Mr. Disraeli and in his honour created Viscountess Beaconsfield. So much has been said at various times on the subject of Mr. Disraeli's first speech when he rose to address the house, that it might be thought his appearance was marked by failure. Doubtless there was something forced and peculiar in it, and he was evidently somewhat agitated, and no wonder, for he took the first opportunity to redeem his pledge of opposing O'Connell. It was on the 7th of November, 1837, and there had already been some de- bating on the subject of petitions against certain Irish elections, the expenses for such petitions having been partially defrayed by a fund to which it was alleged some members of j^arliament had subscribed. O'ConueU had attacked the Tories, and Mr. Disraeli rose to reply. But the Irish faction was ready, and he had to speak amidst interruptions and at- tempts to silence and confuse him, which it would have required O'Connell himself to withstand. The speech therefore appeared to consist only of disjointed sentences, and LIr. Disraeli is reported to have begun by saying that the subscribers to the Spottiswoode fund were anxious to work out the Reform Act by putting an end to the system of borough- mongering which in a different shape jjre- vailed more extensively than ever. The mor- tified feelings of these individuals should be taken into consideration before the inquiry was instituted. (Here Mr. Disraeli expe- rienced much interruption, and repeatedly implored the house to grant him a hearing.) He had something to say in vfndication of her majesty's government, and wished the house would give him five minutes : " I stand here to-night, sir, not formally, but in some degree virtuall}^, the representative of a con- siderable number of members of parliament. (Here he was inteiTupted by burets of laugh- ter.) Now why smile? Why envy me? Why should not I have a tale to unfold to-night? (Roai's of laughter.) Do you forget that band of 158 members — those ingenious and inexperienced youths to whose unsophis- ticated minds the chancellor of the exchequer in those tones of winning pathos — (Exces- sive laughter, and loud cries of ' Question.') Now a considerable misconception exists in the minds of many members on this side of the house as to the conduct of her majesty's government with respect to these elections, and I wish to remove it. I will not twit the noble lord opposite with opinions which are not ascribable to him, or to his more imme- diate supporters, but which were expressed by the more popular section of his party some few months back. About that time, sir, when the bell of our cathedral announced the death of the monarch (laughter), we all FIRE AT THE TOWER OF LONDON. 329 read then, sir (Groans and cries of 'Oh!') — we all then read — (Laughter and great inter- ruption.) I know nothing which to me is more delightful than to show courtesy to a new member, particularly if he happens to ajapeal to me from the party opposed to my- self. (Ileal', hear.) At that time we read that it was the death-knell of Toryism ; that the doom of that party was sealed ; that their funeral obsequies were about to be consum- mated. We were told that with the dissolution of that much-vilified parliament which the right honourable baronet had called together, the hopes and jn'osjDects of the Toiies would be thrown for ever to the winds; and that aifairs were again to be brought to what they were at the period when the hurried Mr. Hudson rushed into the chambers of the Vatican. (Great interruption.) If hon. gen- tlemen thought this fair he would submit. He would not do so to others, that was all. (Laughter.) Nothing was so easy as to laugh. He wished before he sat down to show the house clearly their position. When they remembered that in spite of the honourable and learned member for Dublin (O'Counell) and his well- disciplined band of patriots, there was a little shyness exhibited by former supporters of her majesty's government, when they recollected the 'new loves' and the 'old loves' in which so much of passion and recrimination was mixed up between the noble Tityrus of the treasury bench and the learned Daphne of Liskeard (Charles BuUer) (loud laughter); notwithstand- ing the amantmm irce had resulted, as he always expected, in the amoris redintegratio (renewed laughter); notwithstanding that poli- tical duels had been fought, in which more than one shot was interchanged, but in which re- course was had to the secure arbitniment of blank cartridges (laughter) ; notwitlistauding emancipated Ireland and enslaved England, the noble lord might wave in one hand the keys of St. Peter, and in the other — (the shouts that followed drowned the conclusion of the sentence). Let them see the philosophical prejudice of men. He would certaiuly gladly hear a cheer, though it came fi'om the lips of a political opponent. He was not at all sur- prised at the reception which he had experi- enced. He had begun several times many tilings, and he had often succeeded at last. He would sit down now, but the time would come when they would hear him." This speech was suggestive enougli, but it was unusual, and we see it in a mere disjointed form. It may be observed here, too, that Mr. Disraeli had an originality which was then unmodulated. He had received none of the training of the discussion societies of the uni- versities. There was nothing cut and dried or jore-arranged in the form of his orations. They were, so to speak, unmodified ex- amples of genuine intensity of expression, just as his after efforts were for a little while examples of unconcentrated power and un- formulated opinion. But it was not long before he was, as he had j^rophesied, listened to with eager attention. By the time that the new jaarliament of 1841 had assembled, and he had exchanged Maidstone for Shrewsbury, he had made his mark in the house, and had no need either to dejwecate or to defy criticism. The new parliament met on the 16th of September, 1841. Sir Robert Peel announced that he should adopt the estimates of the late government, that he should provisionally re- new the poor law and should make other necessary arrangements, but that the financial measures which he intended to bring forward would be deferred until the following session. Against this Lord John Russell and the op- position strongly protested. A plan which they alleged would have had the effect of restoring the revenue and making good the deficiency had been rejected without discus- sion, and now the country, while suffering from widely spread distress, would have to wait five months before any definite plans of relief were proposed. The reply to this was that the state of the country was itself a rea- son for proceeding with caution, and that it would be encouraging a delusion if parliament were to profess to bo able to bring forward measures by which the prevailing want could be immediately relieved. The measures of the next session were to be studied, and their application to be considered during the vaca- tion. 330 PtLadstone and his contempoearies. A few days after the prorogation of parlia- ment an accident which was at the time of great public interest attracted half London to Tower Hill and its neighbourhood. On the night of the 31st of October the sentry of the Scots Fusilier Guards on the ramparts of the Tower of London saw a large cloud of smoke ascending from the central part of the building where the storehouse and small ar- moury wei-e situated. He discharged his musket as an alarm, and the garrison turned out, but no water could be obtained. The destruc- tion of the armoury soon appeared to be in- evitable, and an immense body of tire was then raging without any means being discovered for permanently arresting its progress. En- gines had arrived, and there were soldiers disciplined and ready both to work them aud to perform other service, but for two houi-s no water was procured, and it was then thought that the jewel-house, the chapel, and the White Tower would be destroyed. The regalia were removed to the house of the governor without the loss of a single jewel. At two o'clock in the morning, when the flames had reached their fiercest height, an alarm spread that they would extend to the gun- powder magazine, but by that time the tide was up, aud there was au adequate supply of water from the river and the moat. Into the latter 9000 tons of gunpowder was thrown, after it had been taken from the magazine, and the fire was soon afterwards so far extin- guished as to leave little cause for further alarm. An event of gi'eat national importance soon afterward diverted public attention from minor occurrences. On the 9th of November her majest}' gave birth to a son — the Prince of Wales. Public rejoicing and general ex- pressions of good-will attested the loyalty of the people, and preparations for the royal christening occupied the period remaining before the opening of parliament. The King of Prussia, who was to act as sponsor, arrived at Greenwich, where he was received by Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, and other distinguished persons. It may be worth re- cording that the famous Baron Von Humboldt was in the suite of his majesty. Tlie baptism of the infant prince, who was, as we all know, named Albert Edward, was a very splendid celebration, and was performed at the Chapel Royal, Windsor, on the 25th of January in the following year. On the 3rd of February the queen opened parliament, and the presence of the King of Prussia, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, and other distinguished visitors made the ceremony imposing, while the occasion wa.s one of the most important which had occurred in the history of the country for many years. The period from 1842 to the end of 1846 was for this country a turning-point, and a critical one. The measures which, dur- ing that time, occupied the attentioii of the legislature, the strenuous character of the debates, the disturbed .state of the country, the poverty and distress which were felt both among farm-labourers and the people of the manufacturing districts, the trouble and cost of the hostilities in which we were engaged in India and China, and the pressure of taxation at a time when the cry again.st maintaining the duties on food coming from abroad arose with threatening distinctness, combined to make that a memorable period in the story of our national progress. These were the topics referred to in the royal speech by some general allusions which are the neces- sary substance of most royal utterances at the opening of parliament; these were the sub- jects which at once demanded and received the serious and earnest attention of the house immediately afterwards. It was in view of the absolute necessity of redeeming the finan- cial position of the countiy that one of the first i^ropositious submitted to parliament by Sir Robert Peel was the imposition of an income-tax of not more than sevenpence in the pound on incomes over £150 a yeai", whether derived from landed or funded pro- perty, and it was calculated that this would produce .£3,771,000; while in Ireland, where there were no means of collecting such a tax, it was proposed to raise the duty on spirits by one shilling a gallon, to equalize the stamp duty with that of England, and to place a tax THE DISSENTERS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION. 331 on coal exported in British vessels from this country. The aggregate revenue from all these sources was estimated at i/4,380,000, and this would, it was declared, leave a surplus of revenue which might be applied to relaxing the tariff of duties on about 750 diiferent articles, leav- ing about 450 on which the duties remained untouched. Thus, the income-tax was im- posed professedly as a temporary expedient during a time of serious depression and for a limited period, and the measure as proposed by Sir Robert Peel was, after considerable opposition, passed by a large majority. It is not easy to convey an adequate impres- sion of the condition to which the people in some of the manufacturing towns were re- duced at this time; and there can be no won- der that Mr. Cobden, as we shall see hereafter, was able to tell in parliament "a plain un- varnished tale" which was viltimately more effective in obtaining the repeal of the corn duties than any mere flight of oratorical invec- tive or of rhetorical appeal would have been. In Stockport, the town for which he had just been returned, more than half the master spin- ners had failed before the end of 1 842. About 3000 dwelling-houses were shut up, and the occupiers of hundreds more were unable to pay rates. Five thousand persons walked the streets in compulsory idleness, and the Burn- ley guardians wrote to the secretary of state that the distress was far beyond their man- agement, so that a government commissioner and government funds had to be sent down. The first immediate measures of relief for some of the evils which were atflicting the mass of the lower portion of the labouring population were brought forward by Lord Ashley in his proposals to regulate the em- ploymeut and limit the hours of working of women and children in mines and collieries, and the facts that he brought forward, through a commission of inquiry, disclosed horrors amidst what might have been called the underground population, of which people in general had little conception. As Harriet Mai'tineau says with significant emphasis: — " Women were employed as beasts of burden ; children were stunted and diseased, beaten. overworked, oppressed in every way; both women and children made to crawl on all fours in the ])a,ssages of the pits, dragging carts by a chain passing fi-om the waist be- tween the legs; and all lived in an atmosi)here of filth and profligacy which could hardly leave a thought or feeling untainted by vice." The proposed bill was passed rapidly because it was necessary to hurry it through the house to avoid the strong opposition which was seen to be inevitable. The result was that a num- ber of people were thrown out of employment and that they had to live upon the rates. All this was foreseen ; but even this, it was felt, was better than to leave them in the state of misery and degradation to which they had been so long subjected. Immediately following this act Lord Ash- ley (lie is now Earl of Shaftesbury, and has been for the whole of a long life working in the same direction — the improvement of the condition of the labouring classes) moved to addi-ess the qiieen on the subject of religious education, and this elicited from Sir James Graham that a measure was about to be pro- posed by the government by which children in factories were not to work for more than six and a half hours a day, and should be com- pelled to attend schools provided for the pur- pose, the children of Churchmen, Roman Ca- tholics, and Dissenters receiving religious in- struction from their own pastors according to the creed of their parents, during certain hours each week. All i^auper children in towns and all children whose jjarents would consent to their attending the schools were to be included in the plan, which might have been regarded as a wide attempt at national education, for it was apparently intended to enlai'ge the sys- tem so as to take in the children of the agricul- tural disti'icts. The Dissenters, however, were up in arms. They saw, or thought that they saw, in the proposed scheme an endeavour to give to the Church the control of the education of the country. There were to be seven trustees to each school, four of whom were to be elec- tive while the other three were to be the clergyman of the district and two church- wardens. This would have given a pre- ponderance to the representatives of the 332 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. Church, aud it was better to have no education at all than to accept schools with the domina- tion of church trustees. The queen's reply was cordially favourable, Lord John Russell gave the main plan his hearty support, and Sir James Graham was ready to enlarge the niim- ber of trustees and to effect such changes as would, it was believed, remove any reasonable objections by making clear the entire inde- pendence of the children of ditFerent sects in regard to religious instruction and worship; but the oijjiosition was uurelaxed; the Dissent- ing bodies were determined not to make con- cessions on their part, and a flood of petitions were presented against the measure, one of them consigned to Lord John Russell from the city of London containing 55,000 signa- tures. The educational j^ortion of the bill had to be abandoned. It should be remembered, however, that the religious question as between Church and Dissent was always then in a con- dition of ferment, for there was not actual religious equality, and Dissent still involved a degree of disability in regard to public edu- cation and to public office, to say nothing of the question of rates for the support of the church as by law established. Again, it was known far and wide that Sir James Graham, perhaps with blamable inadvertence, perhaps with that calm and cutting manner which tlis- tinguished his polished utterances, but at any rate with great indiscretion, had said that the Dissenters need not be under so much alarm, for the government bill did not contemplate the immediate destruction or supei-session of their Sunday-schools and other educational agencies. The effect was such a storm of petition and public meeting as had never before been seen in England on any similar question. Seeing the bearing of the measure on Sunday-schools, others besides Dissenters joined in the outcry. On the evening upon which Sir James Graham was expected to make a final statement of his intentions there were thousands of meetings held in this coun- try for prayer and remonstrance. A friend of the writer of these lines who was present at one such meeting says: — It was a beautiful evening, and the crowd extended far outside the doors of the hall in which the meeting was held. "Within the doors the jieople, to a man and to a woman, were on their knees in silent prayer. Suddenly the sound of carriage wheels was heard outside. A messenger had driven hard from the House of Commons with the news that Sir James had withdrawn his bill. The cheers in the street conveyed the news to the people within, and without a sign or a moment's pause they rose in mass from their knees and sang the doxology. The Factory Bill had therefore to be deferred, and we shall find some account of it in a future page, but the other gi'eat measures for the re- lief of the country were urgently pressed for- ward. As these may be said to form a group which were more or less immediately associated with the gi'eatest measure of all — the repeal of the corn-laws — we propose to speak of them in that connection aud at some length in the next chapter. Meanwhile we will take a brief glance at some of the peojile and events illus- trating with some significance the situation of the country during the years to which we are now giving attention. From about 1834 onwards Lord George Beutinck — the name is still familiar — was a politician whose position became increasingly noticeable. He was the thii'd son of the fourth Duke of Portland, and had served in the army, but at last turned his attention to politics, and became private secretary to Canning, who was his uncle. While he was member for Lyme-Regis he voted in favour of the Reform Bill (as a whole), and he had always been a friend of Catholic emancipation. When Sir Robert Peel was prime minister in 1834 Lord Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), and Lord George Beutinck were the leadei-s of a kind of third j^arty, though a small one, in the House of Commons; but when Sir Robert resigned Lord George Bentiuck went over to him and the Conservative party, aud in 1841 might have taken office under Peel, but declined, being at that time, as was said in the popular literature, "a man of stable mind," — a title which, we believe, he received from the pen of Thomas Hood. He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest of "turf" heroes, made large sums of money on the race- LORD MORPETH AND THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE. 333 course, and did his utmost to make the " turf" a wholly clean and honourable affair. He was a man of a strikingly "English" nature, and though a vei-y had speaker, always com- manded considerable influence in parliament. Being liable, or fancying he was liable to be- come slightly confused in the head after a meal, he had a mistaken way of going without food all day from breakfast time till the hour at which he was to make a speech. He had immense staying power, and his trick of keep- ing select committees sitting till night-time, nearly killed the short-hand wiiters, till the subject was taken up by the authorities. With a little deduction for a great writei''s peculiarities of style, the sketch by Mr. Disraeli may be received as fair. "He was not a very frequent attendant of the house. He might be counted on for a party division, and when, towards the termination of the Melbourne ministry, the forces were very nearly balanced, and the struggle became very close, he might have been observed on more than one occasion entering the house at a late hour, clad in a white great-coat, which softened, but did not conceal, the scarlet hunting-coat. " Although he took no part in debate, and attended the house rather as a club than a senate, he possessed a great and peculiar in- fluence in it. He was viewed with interest, and often with extraordinary regard by every sporting man in the house. With almost all of these he was acquainted, some of them on either side were his intimate companions and confederates. "His eager and energetic disposition, his quick perception, clear judgment, and prompt decision ; the tenacity with which he clung to his opinions; his frankness and love of truth; his daring and speculative spirit; his lofty bearing, blended as it was with a simplicity of manner very remarkable; the ardour of his friendships, even the fiei'ceness of his hates and prejudices ; all combined to form one of those strong characters who, whatever may be their pursuits, must always direct and lead." This picture is from the pencil of a friend, and the dispassionate student of that strange and sometimes amusing figure, Lord George Beutinck, with his curious habits and anoma- lous career, may well feel a little puzzled by it. But "Nature," continues the artist, " had clothed this vehement spirit with a material form which was in perfect harmony with its noble and commanding character. He was tall and remarkable for his presence ; his countenance, almost a model of manly beauty ; the face oval, the comi)lexion clear and mantling ; the fore- head lofty ajid white ; the nose aquiline and delicately moulded; the upper lip short. But it was in the dark brown eye that flashed with piercing scrutiny that all the character of the man came forth, — a brilliant glance, not soft, but ardent, acute, imperious, incapable of de- ception, or of being deceived." This, according to his friend, and then lieutenant, was the man to lead the Protec- tionist party in parliament during the great corn-law struggle. The simple truth is that Lord George Bentinck was a good-looking aris- tocrat, of great tenacity of character, moderate intelligence, and little culture. This is a view which will now be accepted on all hands. " Heaven was made for those who have failed in this world," — this remark, which may or may not be verbatim, since it has been travelling about the world for half a century, was made by Lord Morpeth, better remem- bered as Lord Carlisle ; and it may serve as a text for introducing both his lordship and the somewhat unfortunate Duke of Newcastle, who, in many respects resembled his amiable contemporary. It can hardly be said, from a worldly point of view, that Lord Morpeth was a failure, though his success fell short of his ambitions, or rather of those who had ambitions in his behalf. But of the Duke of Newcastle it must be admitted that, like Sid- ney Herbert his colleague, he did fail, though without blame of his own. It is a favourable opportunity for introducing both these noble- men, whose beauty of character was of an order far from common. Henry Pelham Clinton was the son of that celebrated Duke of Newcastle who made him- self immortal by being so sure that he could do as he would with his own, though perhaps few of those who noted the words remem- bered their origin in a certain parable. The 334 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. young nobleman passed honourably from Eton to Cliiistchurch, Oxford, but without having any " trailing clouda of glory " around his name, and his character and intelligence soon found him a place in Sir Robert Peel's govern- ment in 1834. He was then not four-and- twenty years of age. This Peel ministry was, we need not say, very short, and it was not until the return of Sir Robert to power in 1841, that he again took office, when it was simply as first commissioner of inland revenue. To the general public he did not fulfil the expectations which they had formed of him; but Peel knew his man, and in 1846, Lord Lincoln (which was his title by courtesy) was made chief secretary for Ireland. One of the best speeches he ever made was in 1847, while in opposition, under Peel — it was on Irish emigration as a means of relief to the distress in that country, and also in other lights. He was sitting at last for the Falkirk Burghs, his own father having, from purely political reasons, made Nottingham too hot for him. His domestic life was also very unhappy, and ended in his procuring a divorce from his wife, after many years of misery. With the remainder of his career we are not at this moment concerned ; but it will be seen that his story thus far is not cheerful or too well adapted to educate a man into a strong minister, fitted for times of "storm and stress." Lord Morpeth, or Lord Carlisle, was known as a man of exceedingly beautiful nature, and he was a man of more talent, at all events of more literary talent, than Lord Lincoln. That he was in 1830 elected along with Brougham for the "West Riding is a fact which lies be- hind us at this point. In Lord Melbourne's administration, between 1835 and 1841, he held the office of chief secretary for Ireland, and made himself much lespected in that capacity. In 1841 there came a "reaction," and the Liberals were dismayed at the results of some of the elections, startlingly unfavour- able as they were to the Whigs. Two of the rejections were almost incredible — O'Connell was voted out at Dublin and Lord Morpeth in Yorkshire. The amiable and magnanimous peer delivered, after his defeat, an address which for a long time was held to be the best ever uttered before or after an election, and it may still be read with delight and profit. At the Woods and Forests, first, and then as chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Moi'peth formed part of Loid John Russell's administration in 1846; and not long afterwards he took his seat in the House of Lords as the Eaii of Carlisle. Here he was at first looked upon as a sort of incendiary who had no business in so high-polite a sphere. He ' had previously subscribed the sum of five pounds to the Anti-corn-law League. This was at first denied, as a public scandal, because it was not to be supposed that a peer and a Cai^lisle would do anything so "low;" when the fact was admitted, his lordship was ridiculed for the smalluess of his subscription — only five pounds! — which also was unworthy of a Carlisle. Lastly, it was confidently de- clared that the five pounds had been a pay- ment in the nature of an electioneering bi'ibe. His lordship simply remarked that if he had bought any votes in that way he had got them in vulgar phrase "very reasonable." The word " progress," which occurs in the title of this work, is one to which the majority of readers attach a very positive, though not very definite, meaning. In that respect the term resembles another — civilization, but it is the subject of much more dispute. During the years which immediately preceded the passing of the Reform Act and those on which we have now entered, the statist, or statisti- cian, became a very important person, and it was to him that people looked for the data from which to argue questions of progress. The increase or decrease of the population — the number of deaths from avoidable causes — the number of people who could sign their names or could not — the proportion of the criminal to the non-criminal population — the exports and imports— the prices of goods — the relations of pauperism, general industry, and capital, to each other, — these have been the kind of topics (and still are) as to which we look to the statistician for registered facts when we in- quire into what is called progress. It was of course not always so. The Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman, especially the Hebrew and LETTER-OPENING AT THE POST-OFFICE. 335 the Gi-eek, made their mark upon history, without troubliug themselves about some of these matters. We, however, cannot avoid them, and esjjecially in our age of great cities, we have to in(][uire into sanitary conditions and the relations of capital and labour. From the first there was a kind of feeling that publicists like Mr. G. R. Porter and Mr. Macculloch, and reforming statisticians like Mr. Chad wick (to mention only a few names) were, to use a vulgarism, " dry sticks." It became known that one of them had devised a plan for lighting cities with gas made from corpses, a thing which looks like a jest, but which has been deliberately proposed. Other facts of the same order, which it might seem trivial to mention, tended to produce a re- actionary feeling in the mind of certain classes, however vague it might be. This feeling, which entered largely into the Young England movement, hel2:)ed to push forward certain other movements, which looked rather to the amenities of life than to matters of which popular statists usually take account. The most remarkable features of commer- cial progress from the death of King William £V. onward to the years in which the first of her majesty's childi'eu were born, relate to railways. Mr. Brassey — a name which may be said, like that of the Stephensons, to belong to history— was getting into full swing. In the year 1840 the total amount of capital in- vested in railways was estimated at sixty-nine millions sterling. The Great Northern was making rapid progress. The Great Western and the London and Brighton lines were opened in 1841, and other pieces of "gridiron- ing" were helping to transform the face of the country. About 1845 came the railway mania, as it was called. Parliamentary barristers, engaged in appearing before committees on private bills, made fortunes in a year or two. At one time there were nearly fifteen hundred schemes afloat, and capital involved was not far short of seven hundred millions sterling. A new form of competition sjjrang up between the companies, who spent hundreds of thou- sands of pounds a session in fights over rival schemes. Immense numbers of projectors, agents, lawyers, and speculators in general. made fortunes out of all this, but a " cra.sh " cameat laMt,an(l dreadful and wide-spread ruin. All the while, however, the sjjirit of social "amenity," to which reference has been made, was spreading and working. Besides the changes that were apparent in general litera- ture and ])ublic buildings (especially in the revival of Gothic architecture) there was a strongly accelerated movement for musical and pictorial culture. To this the influence of the prince consort largely contributed. His ideas in these matters were not distinctively English, and his methods have been much criticised, but no one doubted that he really discerned a great want in the English life, and set himself intelligently to do something towards supplying it. From this time we have more and more of Art, and what it does for a people. Some of the theories of art- culture were vague, as they still are, and it took the " masses" a long while to understaml what 2:)ictures and sonatas were meant to do for them ; but the current had fairly set in, and it has been swelling and hastening ever since. There was always a party in the House of Commons who looked coldly upon the question of art-culture, and some amusing things were said and done; for instance, Mr. Wakley, the colleague of Mr. Duncombe in the representation of Finsbury, publicly under- took (in the house) to write poetry like Words- worth's by the yard ; but these eccentricities were straws in the stream. Mr. Thomas Duncombe comes before us in a favourable light in the year 1844. It was through his persistent eff'orts that the practice of opening letters in the post-office in London for political reasons was dragged into light. This is not the place to discuss the question of the right of a government to break the seal of privacy in correspondence ; but the fact that the opening of letters in this case led to the execution of the unhapjiy brothers Ban- diera gave great prominence to what had oc- curred, and caused immense excitement. Joseph Mazzini had long ago commenced his apostolate, and " Young Italy " was struggling, and sometimes conspiring in every direction. As all Italy has conspired to do 336 GLADSTONE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. homage to the memory of Mazziiii in company Avith her greatest men, we English can, with- out- reference to our own opinions of his methods, agree to speak of him with honour, and none the less that his reasons for coming to England in 1837, and his account of the friendships he formed hei'e, are flattering to us as a nation. " Friendships once formed in England," he wrote, " are firmly based, and sincerely proved in action rather than in words, even among those who difler upon tliis or that question or opinion. Many of my ideas appeared then — some still appear — un- realizable or even dangerous to many English minds; but the logical proof of the sincerity of my convictions afforded by my life sufficed to gain me the friendship of some of the best minds of the island. Nor shall I ever forget it while I live, nor ever utter without a throb of gratitude the name of the land wherein I now write, wdiich became to me almost as a second country, and in which I found the lasting consolation of affection, in a life embit- tered by delusions and destitute of all joy." The story of the brothel's Bandiera belongs to history, and made a profound impression all over Europe. Sir James Graham never recovered the good opinion which he lost in the episode with which his name, like Lord Aberdeen's, was so jJ^infully associated ; and perhaps no politician of the Gladstone era incurred so much odium as he did. Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were young Venetians of high birth, who had devoted themselves to the cause of Italian freedom, as Mazziui understood it. The days of conspiracies are gone by in the minds of wise and good lovers of liberty, but this was in 1844, and they were Italians. In 1843 they committed themselves to a conspiracy, but were disappointed in the result, and fled to Corfu, where their sufferings were for some time extreme. It is believed that false rumours of a rising in Naples were conveyed to them by the Neapolitan police, in order to tempt them to their doom. They fell into this horrible trap, and the end of a most tragic story is that the two brothers were shot, with seven of their comrades, in July, 1844, crying, "Viva ITtalia!" with their last breath. Mazzini himself, who risked his life as often as any one, and was not stz'ange even to the battle-field, was at this time in London. His letters had been opened in the post-office upon applications from the Austrian and Neapolitan governments; and Lord Aberdeen, who was then foreign minister, and Sir James Graham, secretaiy for the home department, weie the ministers responsible for the opening, which was carried on over a space of four months. Tlie letters of several members of parliament and other Englishmen whose sym- pathies were known were also opened. JSIr. Duncombe led that attack in the House of Commons, which ended in a complete exposure of the whole business, and reports from com- mittees of both houses. Lord Aberdeen was never cleared of the charge of deliberate public falsehood, while Sir James Graham committed himself to calumnies against Mazziui which he was compelled publicly to retract. Yet it is clear that in ordering certain lettera to be opened he had merely followed precedents with which were connected names as noble as that of Fox and Lord John Russell. — The rela- tions which we sustained to foreign countries will receive our attention in another chapter END OF VOL. I. LONDON: BLACKIE AXD SON; DUBLIN, GLASGOW. AND EDINBURGH. EXTRACT FROM BLACK IE & SON'S CA TALOGUE. Pictures and Royal Portraits, Illustrative of English and Scottish History, from the Introduction of Christianity to the Present Time. 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