General Condition of Great Britain: Agitation against “the Papal Aggression,” and strong national feeling against the Pope and the Church of Rome; Efforts of the “Protectionists,” and hostility of the people to that party..... Parliamentary Conflicts: Resignation of the Russell Ministry, and its Resumption of Power..... Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations..... The Census..... General Condition of Ireland..... The Court..... Colonial Affairs: War in South Africa; Discovery of Gold in California; Hostility of the Arabs near Aden..... Foreign Affairs: European Relations..... Outrage upon an English gentleman by an Austrian officer in Florence..... Deaths of Eminent Persons in 1851.
A.D. 1851
The year 1851 opened more auspiciously upon England than several preceding years. There was neither pestilence nor famine in Great Britain or Ireland. No commercial panic smote the prosperity of the country. Crime was not more than usually prevalent, and was rather on the decrease. The royal family were in health, and their happiness was a subject of universal care, as their persons were the objects of devoted loyalty. No sovereign in the world held so high a place in the affections of her people, or presided over dominions on the whole so united and prosperous.
The great home subject of interest was “the papal aggression,” referred to in a former chapter. Nearly all classes of Englishmen were indignant at the terms in which the pope decreed the new arrangements for the episcopal government of his church in England. There were many, especially among the dissenters, who considered that the true policy to pursue on the part of the English people was to view the whole affair with contempt, but even these were angry at the haughty contumely with which the pope’s bulls and rescripts treated the queen, government, and people of England not of the Roman Catholic communion. Mr. Roebuck was especially the champion of the pope and the new hierarchy, asserting the right of Romish hierarchs to assume territorial titles here, as they did in the United States. Lord John Russell was the champion of the anti-aggression movement, and his pen and tongue were animated by a peculiar fervour in the controversy. The dissenters and many churchmen doubted his lordship’s sincerity, believing that his zeal was simulated, and that he cared more for the service rendered to his government by raising a politico-religious cry at a critical period of his parliamentary ascendancy, than he did for protecting the rights of the crown, or the honour of Protestantism, against such invasions of either as the papal procedure had initiated. Whatever might have been the case in this respect, the agitation led by his lordship against the papal aggression was the chief means of carrying him safely through the session, in which the parliamentary tactics of his party and of his government were without consistency or cleverness, and the financial management of his chancellor of the exchequer as clumsy in detail, and what might be called manipulation, as destitute of invention, originality, and foresight.
When parliament was opened on the 4th of February, by her majesty in person, the public anti-popery demonstrations were very decided, and an outburst of loyalty came from all classes, such as only could arise from a thoroughly excited state of the public mind. It was known that Lord John Russell was to bring in a bill making it penal for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to assume territorial ecclesiastical titles, and this gave to the people an extraordinary interest in the progress of her majesty in state to the House of Lords. From her palace at Pimlico to her palace in Whitehall vast crowds collected, who rent the air with tumultuous and excited cheers and exclamations of loyalty. On no occasion of a royal progress were the assembled multitudes greater, and the peculiar excitement of their voices and deportment was such as no great festal occasion evokes. The royal speech referred to the cause of this excitement, and when her majesty assured the assembled senators that she was determined to preserve “the rights of her crown, and the independence of the nation,” her elocution was at once so precise, emphatic, and animated, as to cause an unusual sensation among her hearers; and when the passage was read by the general public, accompanied by the fervent panegyrics of the press, the public zeal against the papal brief was, if possible, intensified.
The general conduct of the Roman Catholic body, hierarchy, and press, was provocative of popular anger, and calculated to create an illiberal feeling towards Roman Catholics. Various pretensions were asserted in a highhanded manner by the Roman Catholic bishops in their epistolary communications; and their literary organs spared the Protestants of England no bitterness of invective, to which the most exasperating polemics could give expression.
The public irritation on this controversy was kept up during the whole year, for the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy were not moderated, and in Ireland the chief bishops of the Roman Catholic church openly derided and defied the power of the government and people of England to put any law against their assumptions into practical effect. It is probable that these magnates had good information that Lord John and his government merely intended to carry a bill which might be held in terrorem—a mode of legislating against the church of Rome, which an experienced politician must have known was futile.
The bill brought into parliament by Lord John, to vindicate the rights of his royal mistress and the independence of England, was called “the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” and may be described in a single sentence as providing penalties, in the shape of a moderate fine of £100, against every Romish ecclesiastic assuming a territorial title belonging to the Protestant hierarchy. The Roman Catholic members of the commons opposed it with a vituperative eloquence, neither creditable to their religion, country, nor the especial cause of their advocacy. The whig ministry, and their supporters on both sides of the house, justified the bill on narrow and inconsistent grounds. The Protestant abettors of “the aggression” treated the hubbub raised as unworthy the greatness of England—the pope being a poor prince of very little power. Disraeli, with even more than his usual ability, supported the measure of the government, urging that the pope had, it was true, no formidable military force, but he had an army of a million of priests, and still greater numbers of persons belonging to various religious orders, the members of which were wholly devoted—mind, body, and estate—to his behests. This reasoning produced considerable effect on the house, and destroyed the effect of Mr. Roebuck’s arguments for allowing the Roman Catholic religion to develop itself in its own way. The bill met with so much opposition in its later stages from Sir James Graham and the Peelite party, that its progress was somewhat obstructed; but the vehement demands out of doors for its enactment, lowered the tone of the parliamentary opposition to it, and it was carried ultimately by a very large majority. It was introduced, by Lord John Russell, as early as the 7th of February. In consequence of the opposition it encountered, the cabinet divested it of several of the more stringent clauses, and on the 7th of March Sir George Grey reintroduced the bill, after a temporary absence from office of the government. It was not until the close of July that the bill received the royal assent.
Several cases were brought into courts of justice throughout the year, which kept up the irritation thus excited. Among these was the case of Miss Talbot, a Roman Catholic lady under the guardianship of the Earl of Shrewsbury, a Roman Catholic peer. The lady had a fortune of £80,000. She was advised by her guardians to enter a nunnery, and was placed there to pass through the preliminary stages before finally taking the veil. In that case, the whole of the vast property she possessed would be made over to the Roman Catholic church. The Berkeley family brought the matter into court, and such an exposure was made of the bigotry of Lord Shrewsbury, and the schemes set on foot to deprive the young lady of her property in favour of the church, as exasperated the already intensely excited popular mind. The young lady married Lord Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, and so settled the contest, at the same time disproving the allegations and oaths of the ecclesiastical party, who sought to victimize her, that she was about to take the veil in the result of her own importunity for permission so to do.
The public indignation against the Church of Rome was much stimulated by a remarkable law case, Métairie versus Wiseman and others. The co-defendants with the cardinal were several Roman Catholic priests, and some laymen known as much devoted to sacerdotal influence. The plaintiff was one Julie Métairie, next of kin to a deceased Roman Catholic gentleman, a native of France, whom it was alleged, when in a state of mental incapacity, was induced by a priest named Holdstock to make a testament of his property in favour of the Church of Rome, and of certain charities favoured by that church. It was given in evidence that the man had been a sceptic nearly all his life, hated priests, and was especially prejudiced against the peculiar disposition of his property, which the priests alleged that he had actually made upon his death-bed. A Roman Catholic physician, one Gasquet, had called in the priest. It appeared on the trial that no will, or other document, disposing of his property, could be produced by Cardinal Wiseman, or the priests his co-defendants, in the handwriting of the deceased, or of his attorney. A document, however, was drawn up by a Roman Catholic barrister, at the confessor’s request; and, according to the affidavits, the dying man was held up in the bed by the priest, while the latter took hold of the hand of the expiring man, and with it signed a deed, conveying £7,000 to certain trustees for Roman Catholic uses. Cooke, the barrister, by whom the deed was drawn up, prepared a power of attorney, by which the property was placed in his hands upon the decease of M. Carrée (the name of the man thus entrapped). This paper also the dying man was made to sign, but he intimated his desire to retain the papers which he signed, but was not allowed. One of the allegations made at the trial which most prejudiced the public was, that the priest who effected the trick did not again visit the dying man, who was permitted to die unabsolved, unanointed, without any of the “consolations” which Roman Catholics prize so much.