CHAPTER LXIII.
VICTORIA. 1851
General Condition of Great Britain: Agitation against “the Papal Aggression,” and strong national feeling against the Pope and the Church of Rome; Efforts of the “Protectionists,” and hostility of the people to that party..... Parliamentary Conflicts: Resignation of the Russell Ministry, and its Resumption of Power..... Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations..... The Census..... General Condition of Ireland..... The Court..... Colonial Affairs: War in South Africa; Discovery of Gold in California; Hostility of the Arabs near Aden..... Foreign Affairs: European Relations..... Outrage upon an English gentleman by an Austrian officer in Florence..... Deaths of Eminent Persons in 1851.
A.D. 1851
The year 1851 opened more auspiciously upon England than several preceding years. There was neither pestilence nor famine in Great Britain or Ireland. No commercial panic smote the prosperity of the country. Crime was not more than usually prevalent, and was rather on the decrease. The royal family were in health, and their happiness was a subject of universal care, as their persons were the objects of devoted loyalty. No sovereign in the world held so high a place in the affections of her people, or presided over dominions on the whole so united and prosperous.
The great home subject of interest was “the papal aggression,” referred to in a former chapter. Nearly all classes of Englishmen were indignant at the terms in which the pope decreed the new arrangements for the episcopal government of his church in England. There were many, especially among the dissenters, who considered that the true policy to pursue on the part of the English people was to view the whole affair with contempt, but even these were angry at the haughty contumely with which the pope’s bulls and rescripts treated the queen, government, and people of England not of the Roman Catholic communion. Mr. Roebuck was especially the champion of the pope and the new hierarchy, asserting the right of Romish hierarchs to assume territorial titles here, as they did in the United States. Lord John Russell was the champion of the anti-aggression movement, and his pen and tongue were animated by a peculiar fervour in the controversy. The dissenters and many churchmen doubted his lordship’s sincerity, believing that his zeal was simulated, and that he cared more for the service rendered to his government by raising a politico-religious cry at a critical period of his parliamentary ascendancy, than he did for protecting the rights of the crown, or the honour of Protestantism, against such invasions of either as the papal procedure had initiated. Whatever might have been the case in this respect, the agitation led by his lordship against the papal aggression was the chief means of carrying him safely through the session, in which the parliamentary tactics of his party and of his government were without consistency or cleverness, and the financial management of his chancellor of the exchequer as clumsy in detail, and what might be called manipulation, as destitute of invention, originality, and foresight.
When parliament was opened on the 4th of February, by her majesty in person, the public anti-popery demonstrations were very decided, and an outburst of loyalty came from all classes, such as only could arise from a thoroughly excited state of the public mind. It was known that Lord John Russell was to bring in a bill making it penal for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to assume territorial ecclesiastical titles, and this gave to the people an extraordinary interest in the progress of her majesty in state to the House of Lords. From her palace at Pimlico to her palace in Whitehall vast crowds collected, who rent the air with tumultuous and excited cheers and exclamations of loyalty. On no occasion of a royal progress were the assembled multitudes greater, and the peculiar excitement of their voices and deportment was such as no great festal occasion evokes. The royal speech referred to the cause of this excitement, and when her majesty assured the assembled senators that she was determined to preserve “the rights of her crown, and the independence of the nation,” her elocution was at once so precise, emphatic, and animated, as to cause an unusual sensation among her hearers; and when the passage was read by the general public, accompanied by the fervent panegyrics of the press, the public zeal against the papal brief was, if possible, intensified.
The general conduct of the Roman Catholic body, hierarchy, and press, was provocative of popular anger, and calculated to create an illiberal feeling towards Roman Catholics. Various pretensions were asserted in a highhanded manner by the Roman Catholic bishops in their epistolary communications; and their literary organs spared the Protestants of England no bitterness of invective, to which the most exasperating polemics could give expression.
The public irritation on this controversy was kept up during the whole year, for the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy were not moderated, and in Ireland the chief bishops of the Roman Catholic church openly derided and defied the power of the government and people of England to put any law against their assumptions into practical effect. It is probable that these magnates had good information that Lord John and his government merely intended to carry a bill which might be held in terrorem—a mode of legislating against the church of Rome, which an experienced politician must have known was futile.
The bill brought into parliament by Lord John, to vindicate the rights of his royal mistress and the independence of England, was called “the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” and may be described in a single sentence as providing penalties, in the shape of a moderate fine of £100, against every Romish ecclesiastic assuming a territorial title belonging to the Protestant hierarchy. The Roman Catholic members of the commons opposed it with a vituperative eloquence, neither creditable to their religion, country, nor the especial cause of their advocacy. The whig ministry, and their supporters on both sides of the house, justified the bill on narrow and inconsistent grounds. The Protestant abettors of “the aggression” treated the hubbub raised as unworthy the greatness of England—the pope being a poor prince of very little power. Disraeli, with even more than his usual ability, supported the measure of the government, urging that the pope had, it was true, no formidable military force, but he had an army of a million of priests, and still greater numbers of persons belonging to various religious orders, the members of which were wholly devoted—mind, body, and estate—to his behests. This reasoning produced considerable effect on the house, and destroyed the effect of Mr. Roebuck’s arguments for allowing the Roman Catholic religion to develop itself in its own way. The bill met with so much opposition in its later stages from Sir James Graham and the Peelite party, that its progress was somewhat obstructed; but the vehement demands out of doors for its enactment, lowered the tone of the parliamentary opposition to it, and it was carried ultimately by a very large majority. It was introduced, by Lord John Russell, as early as the 7th of February. In consequence of the opposition it encountered, the cabinet divested it of several of the more stringent clauses, and on the 7th of March Sir George Grey reintroduced the bill, after a temporary absence from office of the government. It was not until the close of July that the bill received the royal assent.
Several cases were brought into courts of justice throughout the year, which kept up the irritation thus excited. Among these was the case of Miss Talbot, a Roman Catholic lady under the guardianship of the Earl of Shrewsbury, a Roman Catholic peer. The lady had a fortune of £80,000. She was advised by her guardians to enter a nunnery, and was placed there to pass through the preliminary stages before finally taking the veil. In that case, the whole of the vast property she possessed would be made over to the Roman Catholic church. The Berkeley family brought the matter into court, and such an exposure was made of the bigotry of Lord Shrewsbury, and the schemes set on foot to deprive the young lady of her property in favour of the church, as exasperated the already intensely excited popular mind. The young lady married Lord Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, and so settled the contest, at the same time disproving the allegations and oaths of the ecclesiastical party, who sought to victimize her, that she was about to take the veil in the result of her own importunity for permission so to do.
The public indignation against the Church of Rome was much stimulated by a remarkable law case, Métairie versus Wiseman and others. The co-defendants with the cardinal were several Roman Catholic priests, and some laymen known as much devoted to sacerdotal influence. The plaintiff was one Julie Métairie, next of kin to a deceased Roman Catholic gentleman, a native of France, whom it was alleged, when in a state of mental incapacity, was induced by a priest named Holdstock to make a testament of his property in favour of the Church of Rome, and of certain charities favoured by that church. It was given in evidence that the man had been a sceptic nearly all his life, hated priests, and was especially prejudiced against the peculiar disposition of his property, which the priests alleged that he had actually made upon his death-bed. A Roman Catholic physician, one Gasquet, had called in the priest. It appeared on the trial that no will, or other document, disposing of his property, could be produced by Cardinal Wiseman, or the priests his co-defendants, in the handwriting of the deceased, or of his attorney. A document, however, was drawn up by a Roman Catholic barrister, at the confessor’s request; and, according to the affidavits, the dying man was held up in the bed by the priest, while the latter took hold of the hand of the expiring man, and with it signed a deed, conveying £7,000 to certain trustees for Roman Catholic uses. Cooke, the barrister, by whom the deed was drawn up, prepared a power of attorney, by which the property was placed in his hands upon the decease of M. Carrée (the name of the man thus entrapped). This paper also the dying man was made to sign, but he intimated his desire to retain the papers which he signed, but was not allowed. One of the allegations made at the trial which most prejudiced the public was, that the priest who effected the trick did not again visit the dying man, who was permitted to die unabsolved, unanointed, without any of the “consolations” which Roman Catholics prize so much.
The plaintiff, on behalf of himself and other relatives of the deceased, filed a bill in chancery, demanding judgment upon the invalidity of the deeds by which M. Carrée’s property was wrested from his relatives, and placed in the hands of the priests. After nine days’ argument the defendants paid the money into court. The matter was not again argued, as the defendants consented to pay £4,000 out of the £7,000 over to the relatives not to proceed. This was accepted to avert any uncertainty in the issue dependant upon doubtful points of law, and to avoid exhausting the property by litigation. The public expected that the priests, in order to the vindication of their own proceedings in the case, would have promoted the investigation, and have, in case of a decision in their favour, acted generously towards the relatives of the alleged legatee.
Various cases in which priestly pretension and intolerance were rumoured, kept alive the feeling created by the trials referred to; so that during the whole year manifestations of popular resentment towards the Roman Catholic Church, and especially its ecclesiastics, were put forth in almost every part of Great Britain. When the 5th of November arrived, the day upon which the detection of Guy Faux’s attempt to blow up the parliament usually receives a popular celebration, there was an outburst of patriotic hostility to the Church of Rome, which the magistrates in London and the great cities of the provinces in vain endeavoured to prevent or moderate. Cardinal Wiseman and the Pope were carried about the streets in effigy, and the figures by which they were ludicrously caricatured, were burnt amidst the acclamations of vast crowds, not always confined to the lower orders.
Various events in Ireland, of violence offered to clergymen and scripture readers, and assassinations of gentlemen whose protestant zeal was prominent, aided the circumstances which in England kept the public exasperation against popery at so high a pitch.
Incidents of persecution abroad, not materially differing from common occurrences, and such as happen without particular notice by the English people at other periods, were related and commented upon by the English press in terms of the bitterest reproach to the Roman Catholic religion, and its abettors. On the whole, no subject occupied the minds of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom so constantly throughout the year 1851, as that of the aggressive acts and spirit of the papal court and its ultramontane supporters.
The public mind was also much agitated by the question of “Protection of Industry.” A powerful party, consisting chiefly of the landlords, clergy, shipping interest, farmers, and certain sections of persons who had profited by “protection duties,” were determined, if possible, to revoke the decision of the legislature in favour of a free trade in corn, and to reverse the policy of Sir Robert Peel, of relaxing and finally removing all differential duties and taxes, imposed otherwise than for revenue, upon foreign commodities. The leaders of this reactionary party were very eloquent men—the Earl of Derby, and Benjamin Disraeli. Both these gifted persons have since been repeatedly in power, and, while evidently as hostile to a free-trade policy in office as well as when out of office, yet they affected in their parliamentary orations to be on the side of the popular theory of free trade, and often made speeches so glaringly inconsistent with those previously made by them as to damage the reputation of public men in the national esteem. Presuming upon the ignorance, or forgetfulness, of the population at large, the peer and the commoner have frequently spoken as though they had been the invariable champions of freedom of commerce, and of civil and religious liberty. In 1851 they were the persistent and acrimonious opponents of freedom, religious, political, and commercial, and by their eloquence stimulated those who sympathised with them, and incensed those who believed that a great economical victory had been accomplished by the free-trade legislation of Sir Robert Peel, which was irreversible. Those who considered that the “Derby-Disraeli party” only used their anti-free-trade agitations to accomplish a mere party purpose, to regain office, and check the general progress of free institutions and reform, were exasperated at the political charlatanism which they considered to be thus displayed, so that the public lost temper with the party, and was disposed even to violent manifestations of its hostility. A remarkable instance of this occurred at Tarnworth, previously the seat of the lately deceased parliamentary champion of the repeal of the corn-laws, Sir Robert Peel. The landowners of North Warwickshire, and their party adherents, convened a public meeting to discuss their alleged grievances, and selected Tamworth as the place of meeting. The populace and the free-traders declared that the place chosen was not one which would naturally be appointed for such a gathering, and believed that Tamworth was named for the meeting in order to insult the memory of Sir Robert Peel, and by a display of strength affront the liberal party, in matters of commerce, on the spot where the ashes of their chief reposed. The Protectionists would not yield to any suggestions concerning the bad taste displayed as to the moral battle-ground they had chosen. They were warned that it would become a material battle-field as well, but the warnings were rejected. The ringleaders in the great agricultural demonstration, Lord Lewisham, and Messrs. Newdegate and Spoon er, members of parliament, marshalled their hosts, and it was intended to make such a demonstration of strength on behalf of the agricultural interest as would awe the government, and impress the country with an idea of the growing power of the party. The populace, however, attacked the meeting—a severe conflict ensued; the Protectionists were driven from the town. The vehicles of the agricultural party were broken or thrown over Tamworth Bridge; many persons were dangerously wounded, especially among the Protectionists; and the issue was a fresh demonstration of the unpopularity of protectionist doctrines, and of their chief advocates. The moral effect of the incident throughout the country was adverse to the party who promoted the assemblage. The riot occurred on the 28th of May, and the strong popular hostility evinced, had its influence in parliament in emboldening the hostile eloquence of the free-traders, and damped the ardour of the protectionist gatherings in the coming autumn.
Throughout the parliamentary session the agricultural interest made its complaints incessantly heard. The leaders declared that the landed gentry and farmers were rapidly proceeding to ruin in consequence of free-trade, and their vaticinations of frightful calamities to the nation were singular displays of extraordinary hypocrisy, or delusions. Amongst the most doleful prophets and lugubrious friends of agriculture was Benjamin Disraeli. He was also the most acrimonious of advocates, while defending claims ignored by the nation as unjust, denounced by political economists as injurious; and, obviously in the exclusive and selfish interests of a class, he denounced the advocates of free commerce as without honour, honesty, or patriotism, sparing his opponents neither as individuals nor as members of a party. The moral effect of this unprincipled vituperation upon the country was injurious to the party it was intended to serve, and lessened the confidence which the people had been accustomed to repose in the integrity of public men. Early in the session Mr. Disraeli introduced a resolution on agricultural distress. An opening, almost an invitation, for him to do so was given by Lord John Russell, who, with his usual mal-adroit attempts to conciliate his opponents, inserted in the queen’s speech an expression of regret for the distress borne by the agricultural interest. Disraeli accordingly proposed, “That the severe distress which continues to exist among the owners and occupiers of land, lamented in her majesty’s speech, renders it the duty of the government to introduce, without delay, measures for their effectual relief.” In his speech he advocated the remission of taxes from the landed interest, as the alternative to protection, attributing the distress complained of to the repeal of the corn laws. The chancellor of the exchequer, in a matter of fact speech, refuted Mr. Disraeli’s allegations that land was taxed disproportionately to other property, or that the repeal of the corn laws had failed of its object. Sir James Graham, in a clever ad captandum speech, called upon the house and the country to beware that the real object of Mr. Disraeli and his party was to re-impose the corn laws. Mr. Labouchere argued upon the same view of the policy of Mr. Disraeli’s party, which Sir James Graham had exposed. Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Cobden in very eloquent terms adopted the same strain. The latter gentleman said that there could be no doubt of the meaning of Mr. Disraeli’s motion, for whether a duty on corn, or compensation for the loss of it, were the object immediately aimed at, the result would be the same—the advantage of a class at the expense of the country. He threatened the renewal of a national agitation against the exclusive selfish policy of the landlord class. Lord John Russell declared that he considered Mr. Disraeli’s motion as fraught with more dangerous consequences than any motion which in the course of his public life he ever recollected. Mr. Disraeli’s resolution was negatived by a majority of only fourteen.
At this juncture in the agricultural agitation political affairs in parliament assumed peculiar and various complications. On the 20th of February Mr. Locke King, the member for East Surrey, asked for leave to bring in a bill to make the franchise in counties, in England and Wales, the same as in boroughs—the occupation of a tenement of the value of £10 a year. Lord John Russell refused the assent of his government, pledging himself to bring in a bill to improve the representation, a promise which through many succeeding years his lordship was in no hurry to fulfil. The motion of Mr. King was carried against the government by a majority in the proportion of nearly two to one. It was generally felt that this vote virtually sealed the fate of the government. The agricultural party were therefore emboldened to renew their previous tactics on the discussion of the budget, and to press for the especial exemption of their class from a large proportion of the general taxation. The budget had been previously introduced (on the 17th), in a committee of ways and means. The income had exceeded the expenditure by more than two and a half millions sterling. This fact left an opening for the reduction of taxation, which the agriculturists had already claimed in their own peculiar interest. They were prepared upon the 21st of February, upon the order for going into committee on ways and means, to make propositions, which, if carried, would appropriate to themselves the two millions and a half of surplus as effectually as if the money were taken and divided among them. Lord John Russell requested the postponement of the order of the day to the 24th, intimating that he was moved to desire this postponement for especial reasons. It was well known that his lordship felt himself incapable of carrying on the government against the attacks of the Protectionists, on one hand, and the parliamentary reformers on the other. On the 24th Lord John informed the house of this fact, and declared that he spoke “as the organ of a government which no longer existed.” Lord Stanley had been invited by her majesty to form a government, but did not succeed, and she again called upon Lord John to construct a new cabinet. His lordship informed the house that he had undertaken the task, and requested an adjournment. On the 28th the house resumed its sitting. It then appeared that Lord Aberdeen had been summoned by her majesty to form a ministry, but his lordship, Sir James Graham, and the Peel party generally, refused to co-operate with Lord John in the ecclesiastical titles bill, the Peelite section of both houses, especially its leader, Lord Aberdeen, being committed to the new ecclesiastical party called Puseyites, who sympathised with the efforts of the Roman Catholics to restore the grandeur of their hierarchy. Lord Aberdeen dared not face the popular feeling on that question. Finally, the Duke of Wellington’s advice having been sought by his royal mistress, he advised her, as the best solution of the difficulty, to confide to Lord John Russell the reconstruction of his ministry. The protectionist party determined to oppose the government on every measure which afforded a chance, by small defeat, of weakening its influence over the house and the country. When the ecclesiastical titles bill again came before the house, Sir F. Thesiger moved three amendments, the object of which was to make it more effective. This the party of Sir Frederic knew well neither Lord John, his ministry, nor the Whigs generally, really desired. By this means the true whig view of the question was forced out. Lord John resisted the amendments. The house was indignant. His lordship confided in the votes of the Roman Catholic members, but they, anxious to humiliate him, walked out of the house in a body. The amendments were carried amidst the derisive cheers of the Protectionists. Large majorities in every case defeated the half measures of Lord John. So little did he appear to comprehend the spirit of the house and the country, that instead of bowing to their decision, or resigning his office, he attempted on the third reading of the bill to reverse the votes carried by such overwhelming majorities: he failed still more signally than before. He stood in a false position to the house, the country, and the Roman Catholic party. He had brought in, with vast pretensions to a zealous Protestantism on his lips, a measure which was never intended by him, or his party, to answer the purpose proclaimed. His opponents took it out of his hands with skill and moderation, and made it much more practicable for its ostensible purpose, although still short of a sound and efficient bill to restrain the hierarchy of Rome from the assumptions it desired.
The Protectionists found another occasion to damage the government during the discussion of the budget. On the 5th of April the chancellor of the exchequer made his second financial statement for the year, which was much more favourably received than the former one. He, however, retracted some of the boons conceded in the first budget to the agricultural interest. This gave satisfaction to the majority, but exasperated the protectionist party, which attempted to defeat the government on the question of the income tax, by direct resolutions moved by Mr. Herries; a considerable majority defeated the movement. On the bill going into committee Mr. Hume, then in the zenith of his influence, moved an amendment to the effect that the tax should be maintained for one year only. The honourable member was an extreme Liberal in politics, but his support of the free-trade party was neither very warm nor very intelligent. His amendment was energetically opposed by the government, and by the free-trade leaders, especially Mr. Cobden and Mr. Sidney Herbert. The Protectionists rallied round Mr. Hume, and the little circle of radical members who, like Mr. Hume, were suspected of being heterodox to the free-trade doctrines. The temporary coalition was led by Mr. Disraeli, always in the van when a political or parliamentary trick was the hope of his party. The government was defeated, and acquiesced in the motion. This success greatly encouraged the Protectionists, who made a direct assault upon the government, on the 8th of May, when Mr. Cayley proposed the abolition of the malt tax, but was beaten by a large majority.
On the 17th of June Mr. Bass moved that half the malt tax should be repealed in October, 1852. On a division the motion was rejected. Various other attempts were made on isolated subjects to support the landlord interest by the remission of taxes bearing on it. Lord Naas repeatedly defeated the government on the mode of assessing the spirit duties, but ultimately the ministry got rid of the resolutions of his lordship. In June Mr. Disraeli moved a series of resolutions on the position and prospects of the country and the policy of the government, in which he was supported by the entire strength of the tory party. The object of the resolutions was to oppose the application of the surplus revenue to the reduction of taxes, such as the window, coffee, and timber duties, until the result of a select committee on the income tax, proposed by Mr. Hume, should be known. The object of the resolutions was to preserve the surplus revenue for the reduction of taxes borne by a single class, that of the landlords, and for their exclusive benefit. It was the question of the right of peculiar advantage by the landed interest brought out in another form. Mr. Disraeli appeared to great disadvantage as a financier, political economist, and even as a party leader. His speech was factious in spirit, resting upon no sound principles of policy or economy, and altogether unworthy of the leader of a great party, and of one who aspired to a reputation for statesmanship. The chancellor of the exchequer made an unusually happy speech in reply. It was not usual for that honourable member to indulge in the witty and satirical vein which so cleverly and appropriately pervaded that particular oration. The disingenuousness and factiousness of Disraeli roused the spirit of Sir Charles, and inspired him with a sarcasm unlike his own serious and even dull tone of address. He accused Mr. Disraeli with delivering a two hours’ speech on fiscal and economical subjects, from which a single proposition could not be extracted, and concluding by trite reflections upon the necessity of maintaining public credit, couched in highflown language about the empire of the Cæsars, with its triple crown, the mines of Golconda, pillared palanquins, and other things having as little to do with the question. These poetic fancies were very pleasing, but the house would have better liked to hear arguments in support of a motion against repealing taxes. The following passage from the speech of the chancellor of the exchequer excited much mirth among the members, at the expense of the protectionist leader:—“Mr. Disraeli would not jeopardize public credit (by repealing taxes); but only six days after Mr. Hume’s motion (for continuing the income tax only one year) was carried, Mr. Cayley moved the house to remit £5,000,000 by the repeal of the malt tax. If it be wrong to jeopardize public credit, surely it was as much endangered on the 8th of May (when Mr. Cayley proposed the remission of the malt tax), as it was on the 30th of June (when the ministers proposed to repeal duties which affected the whole community), yet on the division list in favour of Mr. Cayley’s motion I find the name of Benjamin Disraeli! Can it be that there are two Benjamins in the field? One Benjamin voting for the reduction of five millions of taxes, and another Benjamin who is afraid to meddle with a surplus of £1,600,000.”
The effect of this cutting and just satire upon the dishonest pretences of Mr. Disraeli in refusing the repeal of taxes to the amount of the surplus revenue, on the ground of maintaining public credit, was exceedingly striking. The house was at first convulsed with laughter, after which serious murmurs rolled along the benches to the right of the speaker’s chair, and the Conservatives, in sullen and moody silence, showed their consciousness of the moral effect of this exposé, especially as the resolutions were lost by a very large majority. The speech of Sir Charles Wood was much quoted out of doors, and Mr. Disraeli became, for a considerable time, most unpopular throughout the country. It was much mooted among the opposition whether he should not be deposed from a leadership which his eloquence did not always serve, and which his reckless inconsistency so often damaged.
The Protectionists were unable to make any impression upon the house or the country favourable to a reversal of free trade, or the removal from the landed gentry of the taxes which they professed bore most heavily upon them.
In connection with the protectionist agitation, the navigation laws, and their repeal, held an angry prominence. The shipowners agitated the peculiar burdens on shipping almost as loudly as the landlords complained of the peculiar burdens on land. The cause of the shipowners was espoused by the landlords, and among them the Earl of Derby was the most prominent. The act of 1849, for the removal of maritime restrictions, was discussed in both houses, and the shipowners and landed interests demanded that the legislature should retrace its steps on that subject. The house, however, maintained the policy of 1849.