She then pointed out the desirability of a conference between Mr. Gladstone and the Archbishop on the subject of the forthcoming Disestablishment Bill; she had already paved the way for this in conversation with the Prime Minister, and was confident that while he would strictly maintain the principle of disestablishment, there were many matters connected with the question which might be open to discussion and negotiation. The interview between Mr. Gladstone and the Archbishop took place almost immediately. It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the sagacity which prompted the Queen to bring about this meeting before the introduction and publication of the Bill, rather than after. It is much easier to prevent an irreconcilable hostility by friendly negotiation, than to charm it away after it has once sprung into existence. Before seeing Mr. Gladstone, the Archbishop drew up a short memorandum of four points which he considered absolutely essential; after the interview he added a note to his MS. to the effect that he had not read it to Mr. Gladstone, “As the interview took the form of an exposition of his policy by Mr. G.” In fact he rehearsed to the Archbishop, on February 19th, 1869, the famous speech which he made in the House of Commons on March 1st. The Archbishop, however, heard with great satisfaction that the four essential conditions which he had noted down prior to the interview, were practically observed by Mr. Gladstone in his proposed measure. He immediately communicated this to the Queen, and expressed his satisfaction upon it, and his desire to aid by any means in his power a course of moderation and conciliation. The Bill passed through the House of Commons practically unaltered; all amendments were rejected by immense majorities; there was, in a word, every indication that the Bill was a practical expression of the national will. Then came its fate in the Lords to be considered; and again the Archbishop, by the Queen’s commands, put himself in communication with the Prime Minister on the subject, with the view of averting a collision between the two Houses. The Archbishop gave his strenuous support to the Lords adopting the policy of passing the second reading, and amending the Bill in committee. The ordinary Conservative majority in the Lords in 1869 was about sixty; and the practical question was how many of the opposition could be induced either to abstain from voting or to support the second reading. Much, the Archbishop wrote to the Queen, would depend on Lord Granville’s time in introducing the Bill in the Lords. He ventured to suggest that Her Majesty should represent this to him. He also wrote to Mr. Disraeli, and begged him to influence his friends in the House of Lords to allow the Bill to pass a second reading, in order to amend it in committee. The Archbishop spoke in this sense in the debate in the Lords, but abstained from voting; Lord Salisbury, among other well-known Conservative leaders, voted with the Government in favor of the second reading, which was carried by a majority of thirty-three. The first danger to the Bill was thus safely passed; but the acute stage of the fight between the Lords and Commons occurred over the Lords’ amendments, which were both numerous and important. The Archbishop was again in almost hourly communication with the Queen, constantly urged by her that a spirit of moderation must be shown on both sides, in order to secure a successful issue. In one of his letters to the Queen, while the war on the amendments was being waged (July 8th, 1869), the Archbishop suggested that, rather than yield on one point connected with the endowments, it would be better to defeat the Bill and risk another year of agitation. The Queen immediately replied, deprecating this course, and expressing her fear that another year of political warfare would result in worse, rather than better, terms being forced upon the Church. She herself had all along favored the plan of concurrent endowment, but the majority in the House of Commons was strongly against it, and all the amendments in this direction introduced by the Lords were disallowed. Mr. Gladstone spoke with great vehemence in the House of Commons against the whole of the Lords’ amendments. His unyielding language delighted his followers, and there was a corresponding feeling of exasperation among his opponents, especially in the Lords. But when the first heat caused by his speech had subsided, and the actual points of irreconcilable difference between the two Houses were calmly considered, it was felt that though Mr. Gladstone had spoken daggers, he had used none; the Government were, as a matter of fact, prepared to give way on the clause relating to the disposal of the surplus, to accord terms more favorable to the commuting clergy of the Disestablished Church, and to concur in the postponement of the date of disestablishment. On the other hand, they nailed their colors to the mast against concurrent endowment. This indicates the basis of the compromise ultimately arrived at, and without doubt it was largely due to the efforts made by the Queen to bring it about. The Archbishop wrote in his diary, July 25th, 1869:—
“A messenger from Windsor waiting for me with a further letter from the Queen about the Irish Church. It is a great blessing that the Queen takes such a vivid interest in the welfare of her people, and is (e. g.) so earnest to ward off a collision between the two Houses of Parliament.”
He then gives a narrative of his personal activity in bringing about the compromise, and his negotiations with Lords Salisbury, Cairns, Grey, and Carnarvon on the one side, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville on the other, and adds, “We have made the best terms we could, and, thanks to the Queen, a collision between the two Houses has been averted.”
Through the publication of the Archbishop’s life, a detailed account of the Queen’s activity in this matter has been given to the public; but in order fully to appreciate it, it should be borne in mind that the circumstances just narrated are only a specimen of what is constantly going on of the Queen’s unwearying watchfulness over national interests, so that necessary changes take place without unnecessary friction and violence. There is a passage in one of the Queen’s letters to her uncle, published in the “Life of the Prince Consort,” in which Her Majesty expresses (in 1852) her weariness of political strife, and says, “We women are not made for governing.” As this passage meets the eye we can hardly forbear the remembrance that St. Paul wrote of himself, no doubt sincerely, as the chief of sinners. No Sovereign has ever shown more diligence, tact, and courage in the fulfilment of Royal duties than the Queen, and there can be no doubt, not only of her vast knowledge, but also of her intense interest in her work, and of its high utility to the nation.
There has been no space in this little book to dwell upon the colonial expansion of England during the Queen’s reign, nor yet upon the great development of man’s powers over the forces of nature during the same period, making the England of to-day more different from the England of 1819 than the England of 1819 was from the England of Elizabeth. Neither has space allowed even a reference to the wonderful social progress that has accompanied this material development. Disraeli was perhaps the first among statesmen to grasp the fact of what England’s Colonial and Indian Empire meant, and the new place it gave this country in the world. It should not, however, be forgotten that the conception of England as a great Imperial Power is as much due to the philosopher as to the statesman. Sir John Seeley, in the field of historical research, has contributed to it as much as the practical politician. He has pointed out that “the main fact of all facts is the expansion not only of the English race, but of the English State all over the globe.” The English people, it has been said, have conquered and peopled half a world in a fit of absence of mind; and it required a Jewish statesman and a Cambridge professor to point out to them that there was anything noticeable in the achievement. Disraeli had not perceived it in 1852. In that year he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury, as Foreign Secretary, “These wretched colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks.” What a change between this remainder biscuit of an effete doctrine of the Manchester School, and the Imperial statesman of later years! When his life is written it will be interesting to see when and how he developed the Imperialism with which his name is now associated. His passing of the Bill in 1876 which made the Queen Empress of India has been already referred to. The Queen valued him as a statesman and as a friend more than any Prime Minister since the days of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen. Whether he derived his Imperialism from her, or she hers from him, will not be known till the history of both lives can be fully revealed. She honored him with her regard and friendship, entirely abandoning the distrust and suspicion with which at the outset of his political career she had regarded him. In Hughenden Church she placed after his death a memorial tablet with the following inscription, written by herself:—
To the dear and honored memory of
Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield,
This memorial is placed by
His grateful and affectionate Sovereign and Friend,
Victoria, R. I.
“Kings love them that speak right.”—Prov. xvi. 13.
She wrote at the time of Lord Beaconsfield’s death to Dean Stanley:—
“The loss of my dear, great friend ... has completely overwhelmed me. His devotion and kindness to me, his wise counsels, his great gentleness combined with firmness, his one thought for the honor and glory of the country, and his unswerving loyalty to the throne, make the death of my dear Lord Beaconsfield a national calamity. My grief is great and lasting.”
The Queen’s words, “his one thought for the honor and glory of the country,” are illustrative of what Her Majesty most values in her counsellors; they also indicate her conception of Royalty as a means of representing the nation, and the fusion of party differences. With the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, the House of Commons stands in danger, by its very representative character, of representing only the people who vote for it, and these are only a handful in the great world of the British Empire. The Queen has 378,000,000 subjects; of these only about six millions vote for the Members of the House of Commons. There is danger of the six millions acting with something less than justice to the unrepresented 372,000,000. The Queen constantly watches against this danger, and her well-trained eye quickly detects those among the statesmen of both parties who are able to grasp the larger conception of the duties of government, who are not prepared to destroy the Empire to buy a party majority, or who steadily decline to buy, for example, thirty seats in Lancashire, by the sacrifice of Indian fiscal interests. To such men she gives her support and encouragement, and she has consequently been, throughout her long reign, a steady influence with both parties on the side of prefering national to party ends.
That she has achieved much in this direction is undoubted, and it is also undoubted that she has achieved it mainly by the absolute sincerity of her own character, and by its spontaneous power of distinguishing between the false and the true, the noble and the ignoble. With all the temptations of her position, the possession of almost unlimited power from girlhood, she has chosen to live simply and to live laboriously; with everything before her that wealth could offer in the way of pleasure, she has never found her amusements in pursuits that bring to others sorrow and misery. She has ever been the true woman, and because a true woman therefore a great Queen.