PRINCE CHARLES LOUIS NAPOLEON.
were also issued. As for the Chamber, its members were arrested when they attempted to offer a protest. All prominent men who might have organised opposition among the masses were suddenly captured and thrown into prison. At the first show of popular resistance, the troops, who had been plied with strong drink for the occasion, fired on the people—in fact, the army seized France, and, having gagged and bound her, laid her at the feet of the Bonapartists. When Mr. Senior asked M. de Tocqueville if he did not think that the contest had been virtually forced on by the Assembly, we have said that the French statesman denied the charge. M. de Tocqueville contended that the proposition to put the army under the orders of the President of the Chamber was absurd, because it was impracticable, and need not have alarmed the Prince-President. The army had been so corrupted that it would not have obeyed the orders of the Chamber. As for the law of responsibility, that was not meant as a step in a conspiracy to crush the Prince-President. This law, M. de Tocqueville assured Mr. Senior, was sent up to the Chamber by the Council of State, who had been two years at work on it, and the Committee of the Chamber, fearing lest it might provoke a collision with the President, actually refused to declare it urgent. “Though I have said,” observed De Tocqueville, “that he (the Prince-President) has been conspiring since his election, I do not believe that he intended to strike so soon. His plan was to wait till next March, when the fears of May, 1852, would be most intense. Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly. One was the candidature of the Prince de Joinville. He thought him the only dangerous competitor. The other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists in the Conseils Généraux for the repeal of the law of May 31st. That law was his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that if he delayed, it might be repealed without him.”[48] The brutality displayed by the police who dispersed the Legislative Assembly, and by the soldiery who fired in the most wanton manner on the 3rd of December, without any justification whatever, on the houses, and on peaceful passers-by along the boulevards of Paris, was stigmatised by the public opinion of England as barbarous and outrageous. It set the educated classes in France without distinction of party against the Prince-President to such an extent, that it became a mark of social and intellectual distinction to refuse to recognise or serve under the new régime. In the provinces the Prince-President’s tactics of repression were equally successful, and some 10,000 persons were seized and transported to penal settlements, without being convicted by any form of legal trial. The papers of the distinguished statesmen and generals who were alleged to have been conspiring against the Prince-President were ransacked; but no trace of evidence was found against them, and they were accordingly never brought to trial at all. Having thus destroyed the Constitution by the sword, Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte appealed for a vote of indemnity to a nation which had no alternative but to choose between him and anarchy. The result of this appeal was a vote of 7,439,000 votes in his favour, and 640,737 against him—M. de Montalembert, to the grief and surprise of the educated classes, being among those who joined the majority.
What was the attitude of the Queen to these events? On the 5th of December, Lord Palmerston sent a despatch to Lord Normanby, the British Ambassador at Paris, stating that “it is her Majesty’s desire that nothing should be done by her Ambassador at Paris which could wear the appearance of an interference of any kind in the internal affairs of France.” Lord Normanby accordingly called on M. Turgot, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to communicate this instruction, and apologised for his delay in making the communication. M. Turgot sarcastically replied that the delay was not of importance, as he had two days before that heard from M. de Walewski, the French Envoy in London, that Lord Palmerston had approved of the deeds of the Prince-President. When the despatch from Lord Normanby recording this interview reached the Queen, she sent it to Lord John Russell, pointing out that Lord Palmerston’s approval of the coup d’état was not only a defiance of her own personal wishes, but also of a resolution of the Cabinet. Lord John Russell complained to Lord Palmerston about the matter, but instead of expressing regret, the latter sent to Lord Normanby a despatch strongly approving of the coup d’état, which, however, he concealed from the Prime Minister and the Queen. It was not till the 18th of December that Lord John Russell was able to inform the Queen that he had at last received from Lord Palmerston an explanation, which was so unsatisfactory that he had been compelled to write to that turbulent Minister “in the most decisive terms.” In plain English, Lord John called on Palmerston to resign. He sent in his resignation promptly enough, excusing himself by saying that his approval of the coup d’état was but the expression of a personal and not of an official opinion. The whole correspondence was submitted to the Queen, who accepted the resignation of the Foreign Secretary with alacrity. “It was quite clear to the Queen,” writes Prince Albert in a letter to the Prime Minister, “that we were entering on most dangerous times, in which Military Despotism and Red Republicanism will for some time be the only powers on the Continent, to both of which the Constitutional Monarchy of England will be equally hateful.” The calmative influence of England, her Majesty thought, should be used to assuage and not embitter the conflicts abroad which produce such a perilous state of things. But this influence, she held, had “been rendered null by Lord Palmerston’s personal manner of conducting the foreign affairs, and the universal hatred which he has succeeded in inspiring on the Continent.”
On the 22nd of December a Cabinet Meeting unanimously condemned Palmerston’s conduct, and the post vacated by him was accepted by Lord Granville, who was installed at the Foreign Office on the 27th of December. Lord Palmerston’s friends forthwith began to fill the Press with foolish reports, that he had been dismissed because foreign Courts had influenced the Queen against him. These insinuations were utterly unjust. For when Baron Brunnow asked Lord John Russell to contradict these rumours, the Queen wrote to Lord John as follows:—“Baron Brunnow’s letter is in fact very presuming, as it insinuates the possibility of changes of government in this country taking place at the instigation of Foreign Ministers, and the Queen is glad that Lord John gave him a dignified answer.” Palmerston’s dismissal, in truth, was due to his incurable recklessness, and his inveterate habit of not only compromising both the Queen and the Cabinet without consulting them, but of acting contrary to the course which had been definitely adopted by Queen and Cabinet alike, in grave and delicate affairs. Louis Napoleon was the only personage of distinction who regretted his fall. “So long as he was in office,” remarked the Prince-President cynically, “England would have no allies.”
DIANA FOUNTAIN, BUSHEY PARK.
CHAPTER XXVII.
A YEAR OF EXCITEMENT AND PANIC.
Cassandras in the Service Clubs—The Tories and the Queen’s Speech—Lord John Russell’s Triumph—The Militia Bill—Defeat of the Russell Ministry—Fall of the Whig Cabinet—Palmerston’s “Tit for Tat”—A Protectionist Government—Novices in Office—A Cabinet of Affairs—Mr. Disraeli’s Budget—Lord John Russell’s Fatal Blunder—The Second Burmese War—Dalhousie’s Designs on Burmah—How the Quarrel Grew—Lambert’s Indiscretion—The Attack on Rangoon—Fall of the Citadel—Annexation—Desultory Warfare—Dissolution of Parliament—The General Election—Equipoise of Parties—Factions and Free Trade—Palmerston’s Forecasts—Forcing the Hand of the Ministry—Death of the Duke of Wellington—The Queen’s Grief—The Nation in Mourning—The Lying-in-State—Shocking Scenes—The Funeral Pageant—The Ceremony in St. Paul’s—A Veteran in Tears—The Laureate’s Votive Wreath—Review of the Duke’s Character.