was required by the country in general, and the labouring classes in particular. This was the document which soon afterwards received the name of “the People’s Charter”—on the suggestion, it is said, of Daniel O’Connell. The direction of the movement fell into the hands of the more violent members. Physical force was threatened; torchlight meetings were held; processions were formed, in which guns, pikes, and other weapons were openly displayed; and on the 12th of December the Government issued a proclamation against all such gatherings. Chartism, however, was not destroyed by this measure. Some degree of truth pervaded its extravagance, and its influence has been felt in later days.
It is about this period, or a little earlier, that we become aware of two great names in modern statesmanship, one of which is still potent in the political world, while the other has but recently passed into the sphere of completed history. Mr. Gladstone—then a young man of twenty-three—was returned for Newark, in December, 1832, to the first reformed Parliament. He was then a Conservative, with the same High Church leanings which, in the midst of considerable changes on other subjects, he has manifested ever since. His ability, his mental culture, and his habits of business, attracted the attention of Sir Robert Peel, who, in his short-lived Administration of 1834-5, made him a Junior Lord of the Treasury, and afterwards Under-Secretary for Colonial Affairs; but it was not until the beginning of Victoria’s reign that he became conspicuous. Probably no one—not even himself—could at that time have anticipated the greatness he was subsequently to achieve; but he was slowly maturing his powers, and acquiring that extraordinary knowledge of public affairs for which he has since been famous.
His rival, Mr. Disraeli, afterwards Lord Beaconsfield, did not enter Parliament until the latter half of 1837—the first Parliament of the reign of Queen Victoria. He was the son of Isaac D’Israeli, an author of distinction, the descendant of a family of Jews, formerly connected with Spain and Italy. Isaac having quarrelled with the Wardens of the Synagogue, his son Benjamin was brought up as a Christian from an early period of his life. By 1837-8, he had made a name for himself by a variety of novels, embodying those political and social ideas which afterwards influenced his conduct as a public man—a sort of Toryism, with an infusion of democratic sympathy. It was as a species of Radical, though with Tory support, that he first endeavoured to obtain a seat in the House of Commons; but a few years later he found no difficulty in displaying the Conservative colours without reserve. The inconsistency, though of course not susceptible of being entirely explained away, was hardly so extreme as might at first appear. Mr. Disraeli hated the Whigs, and objected to several features of the Reform Bill, as giving too much power to the middle classes, and too little to the working classes, and as tending in this way to the increased predominance of the great Whig families. He appeared, therefore, to be attacking the same enemy, whether from a Radical or a Tory platform. In a letter written on the 17th of January, 1874, this was the explanation given by Mr. Disraeli himself. “It seemed to me,” he said, “that the borough constituency of Lord Grey was essentially, and purposely, a Dissenting and low Whig constituency, consisting of the principal employers of labour, and that the ballot was the only instrument to extricate us from these difficulties.” Probably, Mr. Disraeli was consistent from his own point of view, and in his devotion to certain leading ideas; but it is equally obvious that he was resolved to get into Parliament, and that he addressed his appeal at different times to different supporters.
The future Lord Beaconsfield was thirty-three years of age when he entered the House of Commons as the Conservative Member for Maidstone. He was five years older than Mr. Gladstone, and began his Parliamentary career five years later; but, from the close of 1837 to the summer of 1876, when Mr. Disraeli was advanced to the Peerage, both were members of the Lower House, except during the short interval between Mr. Gladstone’s retirement from Newark in 1846 and his election for Oxford University in 1847. The appearance of the representative for Maidstone did not create a favourable impression. He was a dandy, of the type existing in those days, with the addition of a certain Hebrew extravagance and gorgeousness. His long black hair, his sallow countenance, his bottle-green coat and white waistcoat, his profusion of rings and gold chains, his strange gestures and general exaggeration of manner, excited a sense of the ludicrous which was not fortunate for the new-comer. His first attempt at oratory had a disastrous termination. A few years earlier, O’Connell had patronised young Disraeli; but they afterwards quarrelled on political grounds, and, in reply to a savage attack on himself by the Irish agitator, Mr. Disraeli had declared that, as soon as he obtained a seat in the House of Commons, he would inflict on that demagogue such a “castigation” as would make him repent the insults to which he had given utterance. On the 7th of December, 1837, during an Irish debate, he rose to acquit himself of this engagement. The speech had been elaborately prepared, but was too high-flown for the taste of the House. Certain it is that there were frequent interruptions and bursts of laughter; but a good deal of the disturbance appears to have originated with the Irish followers of Mr. O’Connell. The new member struggled bravely for a long time against this ungenerous opposition, but at length gave way, in these memorable words addressed to the Speaker:—“I am not at all surprised, Sir, at the reception I have met with. I have begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last. Ay, Sir, and, though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.”
The great figures of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli have occupied such prominent positions during the reign of Queen Victoria, that it has seemed necessary to make special reference to their rise as politicians. At this period, both sat on the Conservative side of the House. But their Conservatism was of two very different orders; Mr. Gladstone’s being more of the steady, orthodox kind, while Mr. Disraeli’s shot forth into novelties and unexpected developments, touching on autocracy in one direction, and on democratic power in another. The term “Conservative,” it may be here remarked, arose about the commencement of the Queen’s reign, or at any rate not long before. Since 1832, also, it had been not unusual for certain enthusiasts of the opposite party to call themselves Liberals; but the older members of both bodies preferred the historic appellations of Whig and Tory. “Radical” was another term belonging to the same epoch; so that we find, at the beginning of the Victorian era, all the party watchwords which are still active in the political arena.
The leading events in the earlier months of 1839 were the occupation of Aden, on the 20th of January, by the troops of the East India Company; the opening of Parliament by the Queen in person on the 5th of February; and the arrest by the Chinese Government, on the 7th of April, of Captain Elliot, the superintendent of British trade in China, who was compelled to deliver up opium to the value of £3,000,000. Aden is a town and harbour at the south-western extremity of Arabia. It was at that time a miserable collection of mud huts, containing not more than six hundred inhabitants, but is now, under English rule, a flourishing and populous place of trade, a coaling-station of the Anglo-Indian mails, and a singularly convenient position for communication with Asia and Africa. A British merchant-vessel having been shipwrecked off the coast of Aden, the barbarian natives of which plundered and ill-used the crew, a war-ship was despatched from Bombay in 1838, to oblige the reigning Sultan (a half-savage potentate) to make restitution. It is evident, however, that the East Indian authorities were rather glad of the incident, since it gave them a much-desired pretext for impressing on the petty sovereign of the country—with that persuasiveness which the presence of a ship-of-war so greatly facilitates—the desirability (from our point of view) of ceding Aden and the adjacent lands to the English. The Sultan agreed to the proposal, but afterwards endeavoured to break his promise, when he was compelled by force to submit.
Affairs of this nature have always their questionable side; but the Chinese war was much worse. An English factory was established at Canton in 1680, and several were in existence in 1839. A factory, in the Anglo-Indian sense of the word, is not a place of manufacture, but a place of trade. One of the principal trades we pursued at Canton was the trade in opium, which, having been grown in India, was smuggled into China, in defiance of the express prohibition of the Imperial Government. The use of opium ruined the health, and corrupted the whole moral nature, of innumerable Chinamen; but the culture and exportation of the poisonous drug yielded a large revenue to the Indian Government, as well as a great profit to the traders; and the reasonable wishes of the Chinese authorities were therefore to be disregarded. Frequent dissensions arose in consequence; and at length, in 1839, matters came to a crisis with the arrest of Captain Elliot, and the seizure of the opium over which he had control. A naval war, ultimately supported by a military force, soon afterwards broke out between England and China, and lasted, with brief interruptions, until the 29th of August, 1842, when a treaty of peace was concluded at Nankin, the Imperial sanction of which was received on the 15th of September. Amicable relations were thus re-established for a few years; but at a later period hostilities again broke out, owing to repeated misunderstandings between the British authorities and the Chinese Government. By the Treaty of 1842 (the formal ratifications of which were exchanged between the Emperor and Queen Victoria on the 22nd of July, 1843), it was provided that Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghae, should, in addition to Canton, be thrown open to the British, who were permitted to maintain a consul at each of the five ports; and that the island of Hong-Kong should belong in perpetuity to England. We had succeeded by virtue of superior force; yet such triumphs yield nothing but a feeling of shame to any well-informed
THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, ST. JAMES’S PALACE.