Parliament had met on the 6th of February. In the Royal Speech the death of the Prince Consort was naturally the prominent topic. Among other results of the deep and universal sympathy with the Queen in her sorrow, was a general determination, rather tacit than expressed, on the part of statesmen of all parties, that the Session should be a quiet one. The first question warmly debated this Session related to the new code of regulations, commonly called "the Revised Code," which had been promulgated by the Committee of Council for Education in the preceding summer. Two great defects had gradually become apparent in the working of the system by which State aid was extended to primary schools. The nature of the first will be apparent when it is stated that, till now, every teacher in a school receiving an annual grant, and every pupil teacher, had been separately recognised and dealt with by the Education Department; and since the number of such schools had been enormously increased since the Committee of Council commenced its operations, the strain on the organisation of the Department had by this time become nearly intolerable. The other defect of the system of annual grants Mr. Lowe (then Vice-President of the Council) considered to be this, that, notwithstanding the check of Government inspection, it did not provide sufficient security for the economical application of the public money. A large proportion of the teachers—such was his argument—concentrate their attention on their highest classes and their cleverest boys; the annual examination thus becomes an occasion for the display of carefully selected pupils, and ceases to be a careful scrutiny. It was on the strength of considerations such as these that Mr. Lowe drew up his Revised Code, which was at once to relieve the strain on the administrative machinery of the Department, and to introduce the principle of "payment by results." All recognition of, and all grants to, teachers and pupil teachers were to cease, and the Department was henceforward to have dealings with none but the managers of schools. Secondly, the establishment grants for fixed sums, which had been hitherto made to teachers and pupil teachers certified to be efficient by the Government inspector, were to be replaced by capitation grants, regulated in the following manner:—On the day of the annual examination, all pupils who during the previous twelve months had attended school at least one hundred times, might be presented by the teacher to be examined by the inspector in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Six "standards," varying in difficulty with the age of the pupils, were settled in each of these subjects; and a certain small grant was to be obtainable in respect of any pupil who might pass satisfactorily in any one of the three. The plan of the Government was severely criticised by many Conservative members, and met with little favour out of doors among those who had been most active in the establishment, and continued most zealous in the support, of primary schools. Especially the clergy of the Church of England complained of the suddenness of the change, of the utter disregard shown to the claims and services of the pupil teachers, of the pecuniary difficulties in which they themselves as managers would in many cases be involved by it. Mr. Walpole moved, on the 11th of March, a series of resolutions, declaring it to be inexpedient to adopt the principle of payment by results exclusively and censuring many other portions of the Code. The House, however, went into Committee; but shortly before the Easter recess the Government took into its serious consideration the objections that had been raised to their plan, and resolved to introduce such modifications as would disarm the opposition of the more influential and reasonable objectors. The chief concession was the re-introduction of a small establishment grant, having nothing to do with "payment by results," to the extent of 4s. per annum for each child in daily attendance; something also was done for the pupil teachers. The Opposition was satisfied and Mr. Walpole withdrew his resolutions; and the scheme for regulating the apportionment of the public grant in aid of primary schools received the sanction of Parliament.
FUNERAL OF THE PRINCE CONSORT. (See p. [327].)
The progress of the Civil War in America excited a restless feeling in Britain, which naturally found its expression within the walls of Parliament. An incident happened in January which brought forcibly home to the minds of Britons the difficulties and embarrassments of that neutrality in the American struggle which we had proclaimed, and were resolved honestly to maintain. An armed steamer, named the Nashville, ran up the Southampton Water and anchored near the town. It soon transpired that she was a Confederate cruiser, and that, having just captured at sea a large American merchant ship, the Harvey Birch, she had, after removing her crew and such plunder as was not too bulky, set fire to and destroyed her. This proceeding was an inevitable consequence of the British proclamation forbidding either belligerent to bring prizes into any British port. In a few days the United States steam frigate Tuscarora, her captain and crew boiling over with wrath and the desire for battle, came up the Southampton Water and anchored within a short distance of the Nashville. To avert a collision, the Admiralty immediately sent a man-of-war to Southampton. Greatly to his chagrin, the captain of the Tuscarora found himself compelled to conform to the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which enjoined the authorities of any port in which two vessels belonging to belligerent States might be present at the same time, to allow to the one that should leave first a clear interval of twenty-four hours before the other might pursue. Thanks to this provision, the Nashville (which was no match for the Tuscarora) made her escape; but her career was of no long continuance, as she was soon afterwards chased into Gibraltar and there sold.
The tidings of sanguinary conflicts occurring along the whole frontier territory, from the west of Missouri to the shores of Virginia, shook the mind of Britain to its inmost depths and, according to the preconceived sympathies of different characters and classes, were variously judged and interpreted. Merchants, impatient at the cotton famine, found spokesmen in Parliament to inveigh against the fitfulness and inefficiency of the blockade of the Southern ports and to urge the Government to interfere. But since, to say nothing of the strong evidence produced on the other side proving that the blockade was as effective as was possible in the circumstances, the very fact that there was a cotton famine established the point to any reasonable mind without more ado, the advocates of British interference on this ground gained nothing by their motion. Mr. Lindsay, the chief representative of that portion of the mercantile community of Britain which desired the recognition of the Confederacy as an independent State, proposed a resolution, in July, suggesting the propriety of offering mediation with a view of terminating the hostilities between the contending parties. The matter was warmly discussed, but in the end the counsels of prudence and caution prevailed and the resolution was rejected. In order to meet the distress in Lancashire occasioned by the cotton famine, a measure was passed, called the "Union Relief Aid Bill," for enabling the Unions in that county to borrow money, when the pressure and burden of pauperism had reached a certain point, upon the security of the rates. Alarmed by the formidable destructive efficacy which the Confederate ironclad the Merrimac (or Virginia) had exhibited in her attack upon the wooden ships of the Federals, the Government proposed, and the House readily sanctioned, a vote of £1,200,000 for the strengthening and reconstruction of our forts and arsenals.
Sir Baldwin Leighton's Act, the object of which was to enlist the services of the county police as assistant gamekeepers to the country gentlemen, had been originally introduced in the Upper House by Lord Berners, but failed to pass. The Bill was then adopted by Sir Baldwin Leighton in the Lower House, and by careful tactics, and arranging that a sufficient number of its friends should always be within call so as to ensure a superiority of force at the decisive moment, the country gentlemen carried it through all its stages and passed it. The Lords then had no scruple about accepting a Bill that naturally could not but command their sympathies and the Bill became law. This result was the more singular, inasmuch as the Government opposed the Bill at every stage. But, owing to the apathy of the borough members (an apathy proved by the smallness of the numbers on the division lists), the opposition failed. The Bill empowered a constable to search a person suspected of being in the possession of game, and imposed a penalty not exceeding five pounds.
Although in the debates of the Session there had been, according to that joint understanding with which it was begun, little exhibition of party heat or rancour, yet the spectacle of a large section of the Tory party almost openly avowing their sympathy with Lord Palmerston and his policy, and the evident congeniality between him and them, were not suffered to pass without observation. Towards the close of the Session, Mr. Cobden, in a carefully prepared and powerful speech, arraigned the policy of the Prime Minister as that of a man who was fighting, or pretending to fight, under a banner not his own, and whose acts were nicely calculated to gain the approval of his ostensible adversaries and carry discouragement into the ranks of his nominal adherents. He asked, What had been the professed principles of the Liberal party? They were economy, non-intervention, and reform. But the present was the most extravagant Government that had administered the affairs of the country in time of peace during the present generation. This assertion he supported by an elaborate comparison, and proceeded to ascribe the whole of this increased expenditure to Lord Palmerston, who himself represented a policy that had cost the country no less a sum than £100,000,000. After adverting to the wars with China, where Colonel Gordon, who was afterwards to die at Khartoum, was saving the empire from the anarchy of the Taeping rebellion, as instances of the departure of the Ministry from the policy of non-intervention, he turned to the state of great Liberal questions and of parties in the House, which, he said, was not an honest state. Lord Palmerston was not governing the country by his own party, but with the aid of his political opponents, who were then in power without the responsibility of office. He analysed Lord Palmerston's Liberalism by his acts. The Ballot, and other questions in which members on that side of the House took an interest, were going back under the noble lord's leadership. Rather than continue as they were, he would prefer being in opposition. Comparing Lord Palmerston with Mr. Disraeli, he thought the latter would be quite as desirable upon the Treasury bench. The veteran Premier defended himself against this vehement attack with the skill and adroitness which his thorough knowledge of Parliament, his tact, bonhomie, and cheerful elasticity of temper, rendered habitual and natural to him. He urged that if his zeal in the cause of Reform appeared to have grown somewhat cold, he was therein only reflecting faithfully the general feeling of the House, while the House no less faithfully reflected the general feeling in the country. As to economy, he could, of course, urge the continual rise in the costliness of national armaments, owing to the invention of new engines of destruction, and maintain that to spend money on fortifying the points where it was vulnerable to attack, was, in fact, a nation's best and truest economy. On the delicate question of the state of parties and Conservative support he said little, and that little was eminently judicious and discreet.
Parliament was prorogued on the 7th of August, and home affairs went on as quietly as usual for the remainder of the year. Pauperism increased, owing to the collapse of industry in Lancashire; nevertheless, the population was greater by a quarter of a million at the end of the year than it had been at the beginning of it. But a number of persons equivalent to about one half of this increase emigrated in the course of the year. In the autumn the honest and law-abiding citizens of London were alarmed by the outbreak and rapid increase of a new species of crime, the "garotte robbery." The villains who introduced it did not observe an absolutely uniform practice, but the usual modus operandi was this:—The victim who had been marked out for attack was seized from behind round the throat by one of the confederates; at the same instant another coming up in front dealt him a violent blow in the stomach; he was then thrown violently down on his back, thus being rendered insensible, and in this position his pockets were rifled, murderous blows and kicks being freely administered in case of any symptom of returning consciousness. After many cases of garotte robbery had occurred, in some of which the victims had died of the injuries received, while in all the constitution and health were permanently shaken, the garotting of a member of Parliament, Mr. Pilkington, drew the special attention of the Home Secretary to the condition of the streets. The police became suddenly active and arrested a number of known criminals on suspicion; these were tried en masse by Baron Bramwell, and all who were identified as having been implicated in garotte robberies were sentenced to heavy terms of penal servitude. The class of ferocious human wolves to which the condemned persons belonged was partly dispersed, partly cowed, by this judicious severity.