Eighteen hundred and fifty-two was a year fruitful in alarms and excitement. The excitement arose from the discovery of gold in Australia towards the end of the year 1851, and from the rich supplies of the precious metal which came pouring in from the new El Dorado. The alarms arose from the unsettled state of affairs abroad, the tortuous policy of Louis Napoleon, and Cassandra-like warnings from military writers that the national defences were utterly untrustworthy. A troublesome Caffre War at the Cape had also been draining away the best blood of the army during eighteen months, and absorbing troops who could be ill spared at home.
Parliament met on the 3rd of February, and members, of course, could talk of nothing save the rupture between Lord Palmerston and the Ministry. The Queen’s Speech suggested, as topics of legislation, certain Reports of Commissions on the practice and proceedings in the Supreme Court of Law and
HARNESSING THE BLACK HORSES AT THE ROYAL MEWS, BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
(After the Painting by Charles Lutyens, in the Possession of the Earl of Bradford.)
Equity, the reorganisation of the Government of New Zealand, and Parliamentary Reform. Why, asked the Tories, was there no allusion to agricultural distress? Was it not absurd to congratulate the country on the fact that remission of import duties had not diminished revenue, when revenue was only maintained by the unpopular and iniquitous Income Tax? Why was no notice taken of the open and ostentatious defiance by the Roman Catholics of the Act against Papal Aggression? For the tranquillity of Ireland the Government surely ought not to take credit, inasmuch as it was due to the exodus of the Irish people to America. As for Parliamentary Reform, Lord Derby declared contemptuously that there were not 500 reasonable men in the country who wanted a new Reform Bill. These criticisms, however, fell flat. The one question of the hour was, Why had the Foreign Secretary resigned? and explanations were given by Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston. “In all my experience,” says Mr. Greville, writing of this incident, “I never recollect such a triumph as Lord John Russell achieved, and such complete discomfiture as Palmerston’s.... Palmerston was weak and inefficient, and it is pretty certain he was taken by surprise, and was unprepared for all that John Russell brought forward. Not a man of weight or influence said a word for him, nobody but Milnes [afterwards Lord Houghton] and [Lord] Dudley Stuart. The Queen’s letter was decisive, for it was evident his conduct must have been intolerable to elicit such charges and rebukes; and it cannot fail to strike everybody that no man of common spirit, and who felt a consciousness of innocence, would have brooked anything so insulting.”[49]
But Palmerston, though a fallen Minister, was not the man to sit meekly under such a mortification. As he said himself, he would soon give Lord John Russell “tit for tat.” His chance for retaliation came when the arbitrary acts of the Prince-President of the French Republic roused the fighting instincts of the English people. A wave of panic ran over the country, and it was asserted that as Charles Louis Bonaparte had founded his power by the sword, so by free use of the sword must he keep it. M. Berryer had expressed in the Chamber the taunt which was freely whispered through France, that the Prince-President’s aim was to establish an “Empire without genius and without military glory.” Surely, then, Englishmen argued, France under this unscrupulous usurper must be forced into war, in order to divert her attention from the bondage in which she is held by her Autocrat and his army. But if France must needs make war so that the French people may get military glory in compensation for civil liberty, a war on England, whose Press teemed with insulting criticisms on the brutality of the coup d’état, was of all wars the one most likely to be popular with the French soldiery. From such reasoning it was but a corollary that England was, as usual, utterly unprepared for attack, and a panic-cry was accordingly revived in favour of strengthening her defensive forces. Yielding to this cry, Lord John Russell introduced his celebrated Militia Bill, which organised a local as distinguished from a general militia—that is to say, a force whose regiments could be called on for service, not in any part of the United Kingdom, but only in their own counties. This was the weak point of the scheme, and the Duke of Wellington did not conceal his bad opinion of it. Fortified by the Duke’s moral support, Lord Palmerston assailed the Militia Bill of the Government with relentless ferocity. On the 20th of February he carried against the Government, by a majority of nine, an amendment in favour of organising a general instead of a local militia, and Lord John Russell resigned on the 23rd of February. Thus fell the last Whig Cabinet that has ruled England—all succeeding Liberal Ministries being either coalitions of Whigs, Peelites, and Radicals, or of Whigs and Radicals alone.
For reasons which have been already given, the times were not propitious for a coalition of this sort. The Queen had therefore no option but to send for Lord Derby, and ask him to form a Protectionist Ministry. She was, of course, deeply sensible of the fact that by recent declarations in favour of Protection, no Ministry of which he was the head could command the confidence of the nation. Indeed, Lord Derby himself was aware of this. But as his followers had joined Lord Palmerston in ejecting the Whigs, he felt that he could not in honour shrink from the embarrassing task of forming a Cabinet to govern the country, with a certain majority against him in the House of Commons, and a dubious majority at his back in the House of Lords. A futile attempt was made to induce Lord Palmerston to join the Tory Cabinet—the Queen agreeing to accept him as a Minister, provided he did not go to the Foreign Office, and was not entrusted with the leadership of the House of Commons. Palmerston refused all Lord Derby’s overtures, because he did not care to cast in his lot with a Party which was committed to Protection. One Tory leader, however, shared none of Lord Derby’s fears for the future. Writing in his Diary on the 20th of February, Lord Malmesbury says:—“Went to Disraeli’s after breakfast, and found him in a state of delight at the idea of coming into office. He said he ‘felt just like a young girl going to her first ball,’ constantly repeating, ‘now we have got a status.’”
The chief appointments in the new Cabinet were as follows:—The Earl of Derby, Prime Minister; Lord St. Leonards, Lord Chancellor; Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, as to which the joke current in Society at the time was “that Benjamin’s mess will be five times as great as the others;”[50] the Earl of Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Sir John Pakington, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Spencer Walpole, Home Secretary; Mr. Herries, President of the Board of Control;[51] Earl of Lonsdale, Lord Privy Seal. The only members of the Cabinet who had ever held office before were Lord Derby and Lord Lonsdale, and the country was anxious as to the competence of a Cabinet of novices to carry on the Government of the Queen. “The new Government,” writes Mr. Greville, “is treated with great contempt, and many of the appointments are pitiable.” Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in a letter to Sir Edmund Head, remarks that “the chief effect of the change has been that Graham and Cardwell have come to sit among the Whigs, while Gladstone and Sidney Herbert sit below the gangway.”[52] As for Lord Palmerston—though he got Lady Palmerston to invite Lord John Russell to one of her parties, and otherwise showed in public some desire to be reconciled to him—he told Lord Clarendon privately that “John Russell had given him his independence, and he meant to avail himself of that advantage.”[53] Moreover, to add to Lord Derby’s perplexities, there soon arose great complaints against Mr. Disraeli as Leader of the House of Commons. “They say,” writes Mr. Greville, “that he does not play his part as Leader with tact and propriety, and treats his opponents impudently and uncourteously.”