THE GREEN DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.
obviously sprang from the opinion which the Queen had held strongly ever since the year 1846, that the country would never get an efficient Government till a Coalition Ministry was formed. It was, however, quite impracticable. The Queen made no allowance for the ease with which a Cabinet loses prestige in the atmosphere of passion which pervades the House of Commons, where the fact that a Cabinet is even suspected of being divided destroys its moral authority. Neither the Duke of Wellington nor Lord Lansdowne, who was also consulted, could advise the Queen to put forward this project. The Duke, in fact, advised her to send for Lord John Russell once again. This was accordingly done. “The last act of the drama fell out last night,” writes Mr. Greville on the 4th of March, “as everybody foresaw it would and must.” Lord John returned to office with his Ministry unchanged, which, says Mr. Greville, “was better than trying some trifling patching-up, or some shuffling of the same pack, and it makes a future reconstruction more easy.” On the same night Lord Granville dined at the Palace. “The Queen and Prince Albert,” writes Mr. Greville, “both talked to him a great deal of what has been passing, and very openly. She is satisfied with herself, as well she may be, and hardly with anybody else;
SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS.
not dissatisfied personally with Stanley, of whom she spoke in terms indicative of liking him. She thinks Lord John Russell and his Cabinet might have done more than they did to obtain Graham and the Peelites, and might have made the Papal question more of an open question; but Granville says that it is evident she is heart and soul with the Peelites, so strong is the influence of Sir Robert, and they are very stout and determined about Free Trade. The Queen and Prince think this resuscitated concern very shaky, and that it will not last. Her favourite aversions are, first and foremost, Palmerston, and Disraeli next. It is very likely that this latter antipathy (which no doubt Stanley discovered) contributed to his reluctance to form a Government. Such is the feeling about him in their minds.” Mr. Disraeli, aware of their antipathy, had, indeed, offered to efface himself or to accept any office, no matter how humble, that would not bring him into personal communication with the Sovereign, in order to facilitate the return of his party to power. It may be here convenient to note that the Queen, though entertaining strong personal opinions about the capacity of her Ministers, has been ever prompt to change them when they gave her good reasons for doing so. Her antipathy to Peel in 1839 was notorious. Yet when Peel became Prime Minister he completely won her confidence. Her antipathy to Palmerston ceased after he left the Foreign Office and became Prime Minister, and the same may be said of her aversion to Mr. Disraeli, who, as Lord Beaconsfield, received from the Crown a tribute of homage and favour rarely accorded to any subject.
The reinstatement of the Whigs pleased nobody. However, a dissolution was dreaded, and all parties were therefore forced to tolerate them. But they were, as a Government, utterly discredited, and their final fall was imminent. On their return to office, the Government produced a new edition of their Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It consisted simply in a declaration that the assumption of such titles was illegal. What may be termed the stringent penal clauses were cut out, and in this form the measure was received with universal displeasure, mingled with contempt. The bigots complained that the measure was rendered futile. The Radicals complained that it was a concession to the bigots. As for the Irish members, they opposed what was left of it, simply to compel the Government to drain the chalice of mortification to the lees. So ingeniously was the Bill obstructed that it was not read a third time till a month after its introduction. The House of Lords passed it after debating the second reading for two nights. Its opponents predicted it would be a dead letter, and events verified their prophecies. As Sir George Cornewall Lewis said, “Neither the assumption of the territorial title nor the prohibition to assume it was of the least practical importance.”[34]
The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1851 may be briefly told. The obstruction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill left little time for legislation. Sir Charles Wood, as usual, bungled the Budget. He had a comfortable surplus of £2,521,000. His estimates were careful and judicious, and showed on the basis of existing taxation an anticipated surplus of £1,892,000. It was in disposing of this sum that Sir Charles plunged into a sea of difficulties. He said it would not enable him to abolish the Income Tax, the retention of which, during the early days of Free Trade, he recommended as necessary for the stability of the fiscal system. Hence he proposed to spend his estimated surplus in (1), reducing debt by about £1,000,000; (2), in commuting a tax “which bore on the health and morals of the lower classes,” namely, the Window Tax, into a house duty; (3), in reducing the duty on foreign and colonial coffee to a uniform rate of threepence in the pound; (4), in reducing the timber duty by fifty per cent.; (5), and by transferring to the State a certain proportion of the local charge for maintaining pauper lunatics. On the 17th of February, in Committee of Ways and Means, Sir Charles accordingly moved that the Income Tax and Stamp Duties in Ireland be renewed for a limited period. The manner in which the Budget was received clearly showed that it would be unpopular. The Tories attacked it because the Income Tax was to be retained, and the transfer of the charge for pauper lunatics they ridiculed as a mockery of relief to the distressed rural ratepayers. Mr. Hume complained that there was no attempt made to reduce military expenditure by asking the Colonies to bear the cost of their own defence. The representatives of the large towns protested violently against commuting the Window Tax into a house duty. The controversy was, however, cut short by Lord John Russell’s resignation after his defeat on Mr. Locke King’s resolution, to which reference has already been made.