CORONATION OF THE EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA AS KING OF HUNGARY. (See p. [468].)
By the beginning of December it was abundantly evident that Mr. Gladstone would be supported in the new House of Commons by a considerably larger following than before. Mr. Disraeli thereupon took a bold and judicious resolution. He would not go through the forms of meeting Parliament as if he were the master of the situation—of advising a Royal Speech that must either omit all mention of the Irish Church, or mention it in a tone at variance with the sentiments of the great majority of the House,—of renewing or seeing renewed a debate that he knew could only end one way. He resolved, therefore, to resign office before Parliament met, and this resolution he communicated to his friends and supporters by a circular dated the 2nd of December. Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues accordingly resigned, and the Queen, of course, sent for Mr. Gladstone, as the recognised leader of the party, and the ablest exponent of the policy of which the majority of the constituencies had just recorded their emphatic approval. The outgoing Premier declined a peerage for himself, but accepted one for his wife, who became Viscountess Beaconsfield. Mr. Gladstone became First Lord of the Treasury, and the principal offices were thus filled up:—Lord Chancellor, Lord Hatherley (late Sir W. Page Wood); President of the Council, Lord de Grey and Ripon; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lowe; Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce; Foreign Secretary, Earl of Clarendon; Colonial Secretary, Earl Granville; Secretary for War, Mr. Cardwell; Secretary for Ireland, Mr. Chichester Fortescue; Secretary for India, Duke of Argyll; First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Childers; President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Bright; Chairman of the Poor Law Board, Mr. Goschen; Vice-President of the Council, Mr. W. E. Forster. The new Ministers, having necessarily vacated their seats on taking office, were not present at the meeting of Parliament on the 10th of December, and the only proceedings then taken were of a formal character, including the re-election of Mr. Evelyn Denison as Speaker, and the swearing-in of the new members who were more than 200 in number. Parliament was then adjourned to the 29th of December, at which date, the re-election of the new Ministers having been in no instance opposed, the House reassembled, with Ministers all in their places, but only to be again immediately adjourned to the 16th of February, 1869.
Some events, non-political in their character, which belonged to the year 1868, may here be brought together. In the course of the spring the intelligence of an attempt to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh while in Australia created much excitement in London. Prince Alfred, the second son of the Queen, having taken to a naval life, rose rapidly in the service, and at the time of the attempt was in command of the Galatea, a frigate attached to the Australian station. In the course of a long visit to the colony of New South Wales the Prince had consented to be present at a large picnic at Clontarf (a place on Middle Harbour, Port Jackson), organised partly to do honour to his Royal Highness, partly to benefit the funds of a Sailors' Home. Here, under the bright Australian sky, while all was mirth and enjoyment around, the Prince being engaged in conversation with Sir William Manning, the Attorney-General, while the Governor (Lord Belmore) and the Lord Chief Justice were at a short distance, a person was observed to take deliberate aim at the Prince with a revolver and fire. The Duke fell forward on his hands and knees, exclaiming, "Good God! my back is broken." Sir William Manning rushed at the fellow to seize him, but, seeing him on the point of firing another shot, stooped to evade the bullet, and in the act of stooping lost his balance and fell. But there were so many persons on the ground that the criminal had little or no chance of escape. A stalwart coachbuilder of the name of Vial ran up and seized him from behind, pinioning his arms to his side. The man struggled hard, attempting to liberate his right arm sufficiently to discharge the pistol at Vial over his shoulder; but, finding this impossible, he fired in the direction of the spot where the Duke was lying, with the supposed intention of wounding him again. The bullet, which had struck the back and traversed the ribs, was extracted without difficulty, and the progress of his Royal Highness to recovery was rapid and without check. While the Duke was being borne away, a painful scene occurred. Before the police could take him in charge, the misguided wretch was surrounded by a mob of infuriated loyalists, incapable of restraining either their feelings or their fists. By these the criminal was so mauled, so brutally beaten and bruised, that, when the police at last arrived, he was covered with blood from head to foot and scarcely retained the semblance of humanity. "Lynch him!" "Hang him!" "String him up!"—such were the cries that issued from a hundred throats. When he was brought down to the man-of-war from which he was to be removed to gaol, the sailors were about to hang him at the yard-arm incontinently; but Lord Newry interposed and saved him. After much preliminary investigation, in order to ascertain whether or not the man had accomplices, he was put on his trial on the 26th of March. He gave his name as Henry James O'Farrel, admitted that he had intended to kill the Prince, as a prominent representative of English tyranny over his native land, and at first used language which pointed, like that of Mucius Scævola on a similar occasion, to a secret conspiracy in which he was but one of the adepts and accomplices. When, however, he was condemned to death, he wrote and signed on the day before his execution (April 21st) a full and clear statement, declaring that he had had no accomplices, and that the design of assassinating the Duke had been conceived in his own brain, and communicated to no other person. He admitted that he was a Fenian, but denied that he was connected with, or even cognisant of the existence of, any Fenian organisation in New South Wales. Before he suffered, he was brought to a becoming sense of the guilt of the criminal act he had so nearly consummated. The Duke of Edinburgh, after his recovery, interceded with the Colonial Government, but without effect, for the pardon of the culprit.
The scandalous scenes caused in 1867 by the discourses of the "No Popery" lecturer Murphy were renewed in the May of 1868 with yet more calamitous results. A traveller, passing through the streets of Birmingham, on the night of June 19th, 1867, saw Park Street in ruins; the traffic stopped in the great thoroughfare of High Street and Bull Street; Carr's Lane, Moor Street, etc., strongly occupied by soldiers, and Irishwomen weeping over the destruction of their little property and their wrecked homes. On the 9th of May, 1868, the furious spirit of bigotry which Murphy's lectures had awakened in the breasts of his English auditors, at Dukinfield, Stalybridge, and Ashton-under-Lyne, important manufacturing towns in South Lancashire, found vent in a combined movement against the quarter inhabited by the Catholic Irish in the last-named town. Much fighting ensued, but the party of the assailants was in superior force, and, after having done considerable damage to a small chapel with its school in the Irish quarter, they attacked the principal chapel (St. Mary's). The chapel bell was rung, and the Irish flocked to the aid of their priest; but they were overpowered by numbers, and the fittings and window-frames of the chapel were destroyed. Shots were fired, but no lives were lost. On the 11th there was a renewal of rioting; the English attacked Reyner's Row, the inhabitants of which were mostly Irish, and commenced systematically to sack and gut the houses, and destroy the furniture. Troops were at last sent for by the Mayor; the rioters cheered the soldiers, and adjourned to another street merely to renew the work of devastation. It was the riots of 1780 repeated on a smaller scale. In one of the rushes made by the mob a respectable woman was knocked down and trampled to death. A number of special constables were sworn in; the most mischievous of the rioters were arrested or disarmed, and the disturbance was gradually got under. An attempt was made to renew the same outrages at Stalybridge; but here the authorities were well prepared, and the mob was at once charged and dispersed by a combined force of constables and specials.
In December, a decision, which had been awaited with deep interest by both the great parties in the Church, was delivered by Lord Cairns in the name of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The judgment was in the case of Martin v. Mackonochie. The latter, one of the leading Ritualist clergy in London, and the incumbent of St. Alban's, Holborn, was charged with lighting candles on the communion-table at the time of the celebration of the communion, and with superstitiously prostrating himself before the elements after pronouncing the prayer of consecration. On both charges submitted the judgment was against Mr. Mackonochie. Lighted candles, according to the Judicial Committee, were not "ornaments" within the meaning of the Rubric; and with regard to the prostrations, it was evident that they introduced and implied an adoration to a supposed Divine presence, objectively understood, which the Reformers had carefully eliminated from the worship of the Anglican Church. Mr. Mackonochie was condemned in the costs of the appeal, as well as in the costs of the hearing in the court below.
There died in this year (May 7), at an extreme old age, one whose name recalled the Liberal reaction that set in in Great Britain at the beginning of the century, who had worked with Mackintosh and Charles James Fox, and stood up to defend the unhappy Queen of George IV. This was Lord Brougham, whose splendid talents were neutralised by a restless ambition, which had condemned him, since his ostracism by Lord Melbourne, to a long career of political sterility. Longley, once head-master of Harrow, who since the death of Sumner had been Archbishop of Canterbury, died this year (October 27), and was succeeded by Dr. Tait, the Bishop of London. A life brilliantly commenced, but clouded latterly by many disappointments, was also closed this year (June 11)—that of Sir James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak. The adventurous story of his early life—how, finding himself possessed of wealth, and with no special work to do, he fitted out a yacht, and sailed to the Eastern Archipelago; how he settled down at Sarawak in Borneo, and, as a beneficent friend and lawgiver, taught the Dyaks the benefits of law, and the arts and enjoyments of a higher life; how he warred upon the pirates of the coast and the freebooters of the interior—all this is told, simply and well, in Captain Keppel's "Voyage of the Dido." Milman, the historian of the Jews and of Latin Christianity, also passed away; and Bishop Hampden, whose name was associated with university controversies, and Bishop Jeune, whose name recalls university reform.
The sequence of events in Abyssinia that terminated in the death of the Emperor Theodore and the storming of the rock fortress of Magdala, commenced with the conclusion of a treaty of amity and commerce, in 1848, between Queen Victoria and Ras Ali, the ruler of central Abyssinia. This treaty was the work of Lord Palmerston; and to understand his motives, it is necessary that the reader should have some general knowledge of the previous history of Abyssinia. The natives of this portion of the ancient Ethiopia—which, though within the tropics, enjoys a healthy and delightful climate, on account of its great elevation above the sea—were converted to Christianity by St. Frumentius, sent from Alexandria by the great Athanasius in the fourth century of our era. They never for any long time together broke their connection with Egypt; for centuries the Abuna, or patriarch, of the Abyssinian Church, had been appointed, whenever the dignity fell vacant, by the Coptic Patriarch in Egypt, and submissively accepted by the Abyssinian Christians. Unfortunately, the Copts in Egypt having ages ago adopted the heresy of the Monophysites, the connection between the two countries propagated the same heresy in Abyssinia, and thereby raised in some degree a barrier between the Abyssinians and the rest of Christendom. But the motive that originally induced the Neguses, or Emperors, of Abyssinia to seek the head of their Church from Egypt was wise and laudable; they saw Mohammedanism spreading all around them, cutting them off from all other Christian countries; and they hoped by this ecclesiastical arrangement to guard themselves in some measure against the fatal effects of that isolation.
Ages rolled by and the troubles of Abyssinia continually thickened. Once, before Mohammed arose, she had had the command of the Red Sea and had subdued the southern portion of Arabia, where her dominion for a time promised to be permanent. Gibbon speculates on the strangely different course which human affairs might have taken if the Christian rulers of Abyssinia had been able to subjugate the whole of Arabia and stifle Islam in its cradle. But the Crescent rose higher and higher in the heavens; the Turkish power gradually extended itself along the shores of the Red Sea, and about 1570 succeeded in permanently occupying Massowah and other points on the west coast, thus cutting off Abyssinia from the sea. A still worse infliction came on the unfortunate country about the same time, in the invasion of tribes of savage and heathen Gallas from the south. They came again and again; though often defeated and driven out, they still returned in greater numbers and with greater ferocity than before. These intruding Gallas had become Mussulman, while the Galla tribes to the south remained heathen.
The Portuguese, soon after they had discovered the passage round the Cape of Good Hope, conceived a high idea of the importance of Abyssinia as the key of North-Eastern Africa, and opened diplomatic and commercial intercourse with its rulers. For about a century and a half this heroic little nation, partly by its soldiers, partly by its Jesuit missionaries, maintained a close and constant communication with Abyssinia. About the year 1640 the Portuguese power, succumbing to some mysterious law of national decay, began everywhere to decline. Thenceforward, till official relations were opened between Britain and Abyssinia, near the beginning of the century, it does not appear that any European nation had any intercourse with the country except through the visits of individual travellers or adventurers. The ancient royal family, which bore the sovereign title of Negus (properly "Nagash"), was deposed about 1770, shortly before the visit of James Bruce, the celebrated traveller; and Abyssinia was split up into three or more independent States, the chief of which were Tigré, Amhara, and Shoa. Official communication was first opened between Britain and Abyssinia in 1810, when Mr. Salt, the British Envoy, paid a formal visit to Ras Walda Selassyé, the Prince of Tigré, at Antalo, and presented him with two three-pounder field guns and other presents. But Mr. Salt's visit was an isolated act, and led to nothing. Nor was the visit of Major Harris to the King of Shoa, in 1841, undertaken by orders of the Bombay Government to arrange a treaty of commerce with that potentate, productive of more lasting consequences; although it furnished the materials for one of the most popular and interesting books of travel that the last generation produced. The visit of Walter Plowden, a private Englishman, who first found his way to Abyssinia in 1843, led eventually to more important consequences than either of the official visits just mentioned. After a residence of nearly four years in the country, he returned to England, bearing some presents from Ras Ali, then chief of central Abyssinia, to the Queen. While in London he submitted several memoranda on Abyssinian affairs to Lord Palmerston. The intelligent clearness with which these were written, and the prospect which they held out of extending British trade and influence in those parts of Africa, appear to have made a strong impression on Lord Palmerston, and he appointed Mr. Plowden British Consul at Massowah, for the protection of British trade in Abyssinia. He also entrusted him (Jan., 1848) with presents for Ras Ali, and instructed him to conclude with that ruler a treaty of amity and commerce. Plowden was soon back in Abyssinia and zealously fulfilled his instructions. Ras Ali, an indolent man, had no objection to sign the treaty, but he said he did not expect that it would bring any British traders to Abyssinia. In truth, while the Turks (or rather the Egyptians, for Turkey ceded her possessions on this shore in 1866 to the Pasha of Egypt) were allowed to cut off Abyssinia from the sea, no European trade with the country could flourish.