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Parliament was opened by commission in the first week of February. The first clause of the Royal Speech informed both Houses of what every one was aware of, that, since they last met, her Majesty had "declared her consent to a marriage between his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and her Royal Highness the Princess Alexandra, daughter of Prince Christian of Denmark." The marriage was celebrated in the following month, and the rejoicings which accompanied it were so genuine and so universal that it seems worth while to dwell at some length on the circumstances of the auspicious event. The preliminaries were settled during a visit paid by the Queen to the Continent in the autumn of 1862, and the Princess became a guest at Osborne in November. Her father, Prince Christian of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was then Heir-Presumptive to the Crown of Denmark, to which he succeeded in 1865. The yacht Albert and Victoria received the bride and her suite on board at Antwerp, and an escorting squadron, among which was the then formidable ironclad the Warrior, attended and welcomed her to the shores of her new country. The Princess, after a fine passage, landed at Gravesend on the 7th of March, and travelled to Windsor. Demonstrations of loyal and affectionate interest were not wanting along any part of the line of route. The marriage took place on the 10th of March, and the ceremonial employed on the occasion was brilliant and effective to a degree which public pageants in England seldom reach. Four processions or cortèges left the castle in succession. The first, that of the Royal guests, among whom were the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, and a crowd of petty German princes not yet Bismarckised, set out an hour before the time fixed for the wedding. The second cortège, in eleven carriages, conveyed the Royal Family and the Queen's household. The third cortège was the procession of the bridegroom, and the fourth the procession of the bride. The marriage was performed in St. George's Chapel. The Archbishop of Canterbury, of course, officiated, and the Eton boys cheered lustily as the happy pair drove away, en route for Osborne. On the same night London and all the principal towns in England were illuminated. An immense and thoroughly good-humoured crowd filled all the streets, and admired the coloured transparencies, the Prince of Wales's feathers, the true love-knots, the A A's, and fifty other devices, which the inventive affection of the people had rapidly improvised. At Birmingham the outline and the chief structural lines of the tower and cupola of St. Philip's Church stood out in flame against a dark and starless sky. The city of Edinburgh, whose situation lends itself to effective displays of this sort, was strikingly illuminated. The noble castle was lined with small paraffin lamps, which clearly defined its contour, and fireworks blazed till a late hour from the Salisbury Craigs and Arthur's Seat. In London the illuminations were characterised by the utmost splendour, but untoward events cast a shadow over the popular rejoicing. Though nothing could be more orderly and well-disposed than the behaviour of the crowd, yet the pressure of the enormous multitudes that filled the City thoroughfares up to a late hour of the night was fatal to six women, crushed or trodden to death between the Mansion House and the foot of Ludgate Hill, and was the cause of more or less severe injuries to not less than a hundred persons. The Prince of Wales addressed a feeling letter to the Lord Mayor on the subject of these sad accidents, expressing his deep regret that what was meant for rejoicing should have become an occasion of mourning. The House of Commons, on the motion of Lord Palmerston, cheerfully granted to the Prince and Princess of Wales, in addition to and augmentation of, the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, amounting to about £60,000 per annum, a revenue of £50,000 a year from the Consolidated Fund, of which sum £10,000 was separately settled on the Princess. It was further proposed by the Premier, and assented to, that a jointure of £30,000 a year should be secured to the Princess in the event of her surviving her husband. Among the subsequent ceremonies at which the Royal pair assisted was the inauguration of the Albert Memorial at South Kensington.

The financial statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, was made on the 16th of April, and was universally considered to be a masterly and very satisfactory exposé of the monetary and commercial condition of the country. The estimates of revenue and expenditure for the coming financial year showed a large probable surplus; and this surplus Mr. Gladstone applied to the reduction of the tea duty and of the income tax. Certain minor features of the financial programme were not allowed to pass unchallenged. One such consisted in levying a licence duty on clubs, on the ground that, as wine and spirituous liquors were sold in them to the members, they ought not to be exempted from the burden which every hotel-keeper and licensed victualler was liable to. But as there were not wanting many to point out the obvious and essential differences between a club and a public-house, this portion of the financial scheme was abandoned. The other feature referred to was Mr. Gladstone's proposal for the taxation of charities. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had conceived the notion that the exemption from income tax enjoyed by charitable institutions was equivalent to a burden of corresponding amount imposed on the general body of taxpayers. The sum lost to the revenue through the exemption from income tax of the property of charities was estimated by Mr. Gladstone to amount to at least £250,000. The great charitable institutions of the metropolis and elsewhere at once took the alarm, and a deputation, formidable in numbers, rank, and respectability, was soon organised to wait on the adventurous financier. In the end it became so evident to Government that the feeling of the House was opposed to the taxation of charities that the measure was withdrawn.

Towards the end of February there was great agitation among the well-wishers and ill-wishers of the Church of England, on account of a suit brought in the Chancellor's Court at Oxford by the Rev. Dr. Pusey against Professor Jowett, charging him with having maintained heresy in certain of his published writings, particularly in the publication so well known as "Essays and Reviews." The Assessor, Mr. Montague Bernard, after hearing the case fully argued, gave judgment. He first of all overruled the exception which the defendant had made to the jurisdiction of the Court; and then, after examining the statute under which he thought himself empowered to try the case, he decided that it was so vague in its terms as to leave him, in his opinion, a discretionary power whether to proceed to judgment or not; in the exercise of which power he declined to let the case go forward. Notice was given of appeal against this judgment, but the intention was afterwards abandoned.

Seldom has a year witnessed the disappearance from the scenes which their genius, valour, or virtue had adorned, of a greater number of illustrious men than the year 1863. Two of the heroes of the Indian Mutiny, Sir James Outram and Lord Clyde; four distinguished statesmen, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Elgin, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis; the veteran politician, Mr. Ellice, often called the Nestor of the Whig party; and two great authors, Archbishop Whately and Thackeray, were among those who within the twelvemonth paid the debt of nature.

The desperate effort made this year by the gallant and unfortunate Poles to shake off the despotic yoke of Russia, riveted the gaze and engaged the sympathy of nearly every nation in Europe. We say nearly, for Prussia, as represented by its Government, assisted, on grounds at the time little understood, the Muscovite gaoler to remanacle his victim. In January the Russian Government revived by an ukase the system of conscription. Lord Napier, the British ambassador at St. Petersburg, described it as "a design to make a clean sweep of the revolutionary youth of Poland; to shut up the most energetic and dangerous spirits in the restraints of the Russian army: it was simply a plan to kidnap the opposition, and carry it off to Siberia or the Caucasus." At midnight on the 14th of January police agents and soldiers commenced the work in Warsaw and the revolution began. The misfortunes of Poland led to one of those diplomatic and didactic interventions of which Britain about this time was so liberal and of which the issue was so invariably and so notoriously unfortunate. Earl Russell wrote (March 2nd, 1863) in a somewhat curt style of remonstrance to Lord Napier at St. Petersburg, setting forth the view of the British Government concerning the rights of the Poles under the Treaty of Vienna, maintaining the right of Great Britain, as a party to that treaty, to interfere, with a view to the sincere execution and fulfilment of its stipulations, declaring that since the time of the Emperor Alexander I. Russia had broken faith with Poland in withholding the free institutions which had been promised, and concluding with the demand that a general amnesty should be proclaimed, and the just political reforms required by the Poles conceded. Prince Gortschakoff, "acting in a spirit of conciliation," declined to send a written reply to Earl Russell's despatch, but expressed to Lord Napier, in conversation, his adverse views upon its principal clauses. Nevertheless an amnesty was granted, but rejected by the insurgents.

Earl Russell had by this time formulated, in concert with Austria and with the knowledge of France, the plan for the regeneration of Poland which he had been long meditating, and was now prepared to propose for the acceptance of the Russian Government. The plan, as unfolded in his despatch of the 17th of June, comprised the following six points or articles:—

1. A complete and general amnesty.

2. National representation in a form resembling that which had been granted by Alexander I.

3. A distinct national administration carried on by Poles and possessing the confidence of the country.

4. Full and entire liberty of conscience, involving the repeal of the restrictions imposed on Catholic worship.

5. The Polish language to be recognised in the kingdom as the official language and used as such in the courts of law and in the schools.

6. The establishment of a regular and legal system of recruiting.

All these reforms were just and desirable per se; but to propose them was tantamount to an interference in the internal politics of a foreign State. "The Principal Secretary of State of her Britannic Majesty," said Prince Gortschakoff, writing in July, "will dispense us from giving an answer to the proposed arrangement for a suspension of hostilities. It would not resist a serious examination of the conditions necessary for carrying it into effect." Turning the tables on the remonstrating Powers, he said that the speedy re-establishment of order depended largely "upon the resolution of the Great Powers not to lend themselves to calculations on which the instigators of the Polish insurrection found their expectation of an active intervention in favour of their exaggerated aspirations." The end of the diplomatic comedy was not far off. The Emperor Napoleon, observing that the views of the three Powers—Britain, France, and Austria—as expressed in their communications to their representatives at St. Petersburg, were not precisely in accord, proposed to the other two Courts to take, in the form of a convention or protocol, an engagement to pursue in concert a regulation of Polish affairs, by diplomatic methods, or otherwise if necessary. The meaning of these words plainly was, that if diplomatic methods failed, the three Powers would not shrink from the arbitrament of war, in order to compel Russia to do justice to Poland. "Our proposition," the statement quoted from drily continues, "was not accepted." The Russian Government consequently assumed a defiant tone, and Prussia came to her assistance by drawing a military cordon against the fugitives round the frontier. The propositions of the three Powers were quietly ignored; Russia proceeded in her task of restoring order by the methods familiar to despotic Governments and the fate of Poland was sealed.