“If he sees the virtuous of the land avoiding the Palace Halls and Court receptions as they would a pestilence—if he sees even common respect withheld from one whom, but for his despicable policy, we should reverence and love—if he discovers that cold loyalty towards the wearer of the Crown in these days puts the Crown itself in jeopardy—he will then, perhaps, see the full extent of the scorn and loathing with which he is regarded by everyone not lost to the proprieties, decencies, and modesty of social life.”
The Age, probably the most virulent of all Melbourne’s paper enemies, published an open letter to him, saying that he was exposing the highest personage in the land to be the jest of the vicious and a source of pity to the well-disposed. “Do you think it likely that any other young lady who had a father or a brother to protect her would allow a person of notorious gallantry to be constantly whispering soft nonsense in her ear? Why, then, should the highest lady in the realm, who, in fact, belongs to the country at large, be subjected to what would not be allowed in any private family?... If you affect not to know it I tell you plainly that ever since the Coronation, the enthusiasm of the people for their young Queen has been sensibly decreasing, owing solely to the bad advice of her Ministers.... However unpalatable it may be, I again tell you that your constant attendance on the Queen is unconstitutional, indecent, and disgraceful; whatever motive you have, it is impossible to justify it. I defy you to name an instance of any Prime Minister acting as you have done; and considering the age and sex of the Sovereign, I denounce it as unmanly and unprincipled. Lolling on your couch at the Palace, you may pretend to despise these unvarnished truths; but that you are conscious of your unwarrantable conduct was plainly evinced by the passion you flew into when Lord Brougham so admirably twitted you with it.”
That Melbourne allowed Robert Owen, the reformer, to be presented to the Queen was, some months after the event, used in passionate eagerness against him. The Duke of Kent had known Owen, and at the time of his death had been arranging to visit his co-operative settlement at New Lanark, near Glasgow; for the Duke agreed with Owen’s principles, so much so that he took the chair at a meeting which was called to appoint a committee to investigate and report on Owen’s plans to provide for the poor and to ameliorate the conditions of the working class. Owen’s ideas had enlarged during the ten years which had intervened, and he was in 1839 keen upon education, the disuse of arms, the alteration of ecclesiastical law, &c. Wishing to present a petition to Her Majesty, he approached Melbourne, who told him that the right method of procedure was to attend a levée. This the reformer did, in regulation white silk stockings, buckle shoes, bag-wig, and sword. He presented his petition, no one noticed his presence or gave a thought to it until, some time later, some speaker holding Socialistic views won notoriety. This caused the Bishop of Exeter to present to the House of Lords in January, 1840, a petition of his own, demanding that legal proceedings should be taken against any person who spread Socialistic views, and attacking Melbourne for having allowed such a man as Owen to approach the Queen. There was a certain bitterness about this, which was later intensified by Victoria’s attitude upon education.
The Government had, by a majority of two only, voted a sum of money for the support of National Education, and the Lords, under the plea of defending the National Religion, prayed the Queen that she should give directions that no steps should be taken with respect to the establishment of any plan of general education without giving them an opportunity of considering such a measure.
From time immemorial, education, that is to say knowledge, has been regarded as the sworn enemy of religion; the Catholics were afraid of the influence of the Bible; the Protestants were, and are, equally afraid of the influence of thought; both believe that religion can be killed by knowledge. One of the greatest of olden philosophers affirmed practically that the ignorant person could not be good, that goodness, which should be synonymous with religion, could not exist without knowledge. This really seems to be the more sensible view; the ignorant child eats poisoned berries, the child who knows avoids them; the ignorant man debases his body and his mind without realising what he is doing; the man who knows enough to forecast events has at least that safeguard against destruction. It is not too much to say that those who believe that ignorance is the best preserver of religion do no honour to real religion, which is an attitude of mind and not an outward conformity to this or that view or creed.
However, this is a digression. The act of the Lords was an encroachment upon the function of the Commons to deal with money Bills, and thus was, as the historian says, “an attempt to overstep the limits which the Constitution laid down.” The Queen, in her answer, expressed regret that the Lords should have taken such a step, adding that it was with a deep sense of duty that she thought it right to appoint a Committee of her Privy Council to superintend the distribution of the grant voted by the House of Commons.
Two sermons preached about this time before Her Majesty, which made something of a stir, were a sign of the independent way in which she was regarded by dignitaries of the Church. In one, her chaplain, Mr. Percival, dealt with recent history, for he made his discourse take the form of an attack upon Peel, or someone believed to be Peel, who, he said, had sacrificed his conscience to political objects in consenting to Catholic Emancipation. The other was more personal to Queen Victoria, for Hook—nephew of Theodore Hook, and afterwards Dean of Chester—announced that the Church would endure, “let what might happen to the Throne.” On Victoria’s return to Buckingham Palace Lord Normanby politely inquired whether Her Majesty had not found it very hot in church.
“Yes,” she replied, “and the sermon was very hot too.”
The disaffection among the Tories was the result entirely of their exclusion from office, and it spread all over the country. At a dinner at Shrewsbury the company refused to drink the health of the new Lord Lieutenant (the Duke of Sutherland) because Lady Sutherland was at the head of the Queen’s ladies. Greville said that the leaders of the party were too wise and too decorous to approve of such conduct, and that it was caused by the animus of the tail and the body. James Bradshaw, the Tory M.P. for Canterbury, made a speech at that town remarkable for being a personal attack of the most violent and indecent kind on the Queen, “a tissue of folly and impertinence,” which was received with shouts of applause at a Conservative dinner, and reported with many compliments and some gentle reprehension by the Tory Press. Others followed, and indeed the party which thought itself injured did its very best to prejudice Her Majesty against itself. Upon this, Edward Horsman, the Whig Member for Cockermouth, made a speech in his constituency, in which, alluding to Bradshaw’s Victorippicks, he said that Bradshaw had the tongue of a traitor and the heart of a coward. Six weeks later Bradshaw, who had probably been made in various ways to feel his position keenly, sent a challenge to Horsman. George Anson, Melbourne’s private secretary, and brother of Lord Lichfield, acted as Horsman’s second, and Colonel Gurwood, the editor of Wellington’s Despatches and his confidential friend, seconded Bradshaw. There was much indignation over this, not only among the Whigs, but among the respectable Tories, for Gurwood had just been appointed to the Governorship of the Tower, being thus given both a pension and a place. His excuse for going out with Bradshaw was that he had never read the offending speech, upon which Greville remarks: “As Gurwood is a man of honour and veracity, this must be true; but it is passing strange that he alone should not have read what everybody else has been talking about for the last two months, and that he should go out with a man as his second on account of words spoken, and not inquire what they were.” When George Anson offered to show him the speech he declined to read it.
The two men met, shots were exchanged, and no harm done, and then Gurwood asked if Horsman would retract. “Not until Bradshaw does, or apologises,” was Anson’s answer.