VIEW IN THE CRIMEA: JALTA.
“it seems to me that a Party that has shrunk from the responsibility of conducting a war, would never be able to carry on an Opposition against a Minister for having concluded an unsatisfactory peace, however bad the terms.”[266] Lord Derby’s determination to refuse office when Lord Aberdeen fell from power, therefore doomed the Opposition to meek inactivity. “We are off the rail of politics,” said Mr. Disraeli in the letter just quoted, “and must continue so as long as the war lasts.” Hence one can have no difficulty in agreeing with Sir Theodore Martin when he asserts, that “it was only to be expected of a statesman like Mr. Disraeli, that he should refrain from embarrassing by a word the Ministers on whom devolved the difficult duty of protecting the national interests and honour, in negotiating terms of peace.”[267] There was no division on the Address. But Lord Derby attacked the Government for the abandonment of Kars, in deference, he insinuated, to the wishes
MISS NIGHTINGALE.
of the French Emperor, who feared that the war in Asia Minor would dangerously enhance British prestige in that region. On the 28th of April Mr. Whiteside also raised a debate on the subject in the House of Commons, but the Tory party was so unwilling to follow its leaders, that Lord Derby regretted the matter had ever been stirred. The discussion merely established the facts that Lord Stratford had cruelly neglected to press General Williams’ appeals for reinforcements on the Porte, that the Government had culpably neglected to give Williams the money (£100,000) which would have provisioned Kars. But as the fortress was to be restored to the Turks, and as General Williams was to be consoled with a baronetcy, the House of Commons thought the matter had better drop, and Mr. Whiteside’s motion was lost by a majority of 303 to 176. Much more serious was the defeat inflicted on the Government on another subject which deeply interested the Queen—that of Baron Parke’s life peerage.
Writing on the 9th of January, 1856, in his Diary, Lord Campbell says, “Bethell, the Solicitor-General, has made Baron Parke a peer. The judicial business of the House of Lords could not go on another session as it did last. Pemberton Leigh was first offered a peerage, and I wish much that he had accepted it, but he positively refused to be pitchforked. I don’t know that anything less exceptional could be done than applying next to Baron Surrebutter.”[268] At the Lord Chancellor’s levee on the first day of Hilary Term, Lord Campbell asked him if there was any truth in the story that Parke’s peerage was to be for life. On hearing that it was, Lord Campbell replied, “Then sorry am I to say that I must make a row about it.” At first he thought that the grant of a life peerage was not illegal—for Coke asserted its legality—but merely unconstitutional. When, however, Lord Campbell studied the precedents, he became convinced that “no life peerage had been granted to any man for more than 400 years, and that there was no authenticated instance of a peer ever having sat and voted in the House of Lords having in him a life peerage only—the life peerages relied upon being superinduced on pre-existing peerages, e.g., De Vere, Earl of Oxford (a title which had been in his family since the Conquest), was created by Richard II. Marquis of Dublin for life.” Lord Campbell goes on to say, “My eyes were opened. The power of the Crown to give a right to vote in the House must depend on the exercise of the power; and no one had voted in right of a peerage for life more than of a peerage granted during the pleasure of the King—for the granting of which there was at least one precedent.”[269]
When Sir Theodore Martin says that “the right of the Crown to create a life peerage with a right to sit in Parliament” was “scarcely disputed in the discussions which arose,” his anxiety to exaggerate the Queen’s prerogative has led him into a grave error. As Lord Campbell says, “It was not necessary to resort to the doctrine of desuetude,” for “the non-exercise of a prerogative, ever since the Constitution was settled, afforded a strong inference that it had never lawfully existed.” The fact is that the arguments in favour of recognising the right of the Crown to create a peer for life, with the right of voting in the House of Lords, would have been equally good for creating a peer with a similar right, during the Sovereign’s pleasure. A peer who could at any moment be deprived of his rank and senatorial privileges would, of course, either be a creature of the Court or the minion of the Minister. Lord Lyndhurst, therefore, had little difficulty in carrying a motion referring Baron Parke’s Letters Patent to a Committee of Privileges, which reported against the right asserted by the Crown. The Government yielded, and Sir James Parke was finally created an hereditary peer in the ordinary way, under the title of Lord Wensleydale.
The rebuff was annoying to the Queen; all the more that it led to a fresh series of attacks on Prince Albert. He was accused of having attempted to extend the Queen’s prerogative with the ulterior object of packing the House of Lords with certain scientific men who were supposed to be Court favourites.[270] In his “Memoirs,” according to Mr. Greville, General Grey “told his brother, the Earl, that his Royal Highness knew nothing of the matter till after it had been settled.” The truth is that nobody was cognisant of the affair except the Lord Chancellor, Lord Granville, and Lord Palmerston. Mr. Greville says, “George Lewis told me that the life peerage had never been brought before the Cabinet, and he knew nothing of it till he saw it in the Gazette,”[271] which illustrates the thoughtless manner in which Lord Palmerston allowed himself to be committed to a step, that roused public jealousy against the Crown and the Court. Lord Malmesbury also states, that when Lord Derby was dining one day with the Queen, she told him that if she had had any idea that the question would have created such a disturbance, she would never have dreamt of granting Parke his life peerage.[272]
Fortunately the negotiations for peace were now proceeding apace at Paris. The Queen had written a letter to the French Emperor, which Lord Clarendon had delivered to him, earnestly insisting on the necessity of unity of action between France and England at the Congress of the Powers. The Emperor told Lord Clarendon it was “a charming letter;” but in spite of his flattering account of it, the influence of France from first to last was turned against England in the discussions between the plenipotentiaries. Possibly this was due to the constitutional indolence and weakness of the Emperor, who permitted Walewski to manage matters his own way, and as for Walewski, he betrayed Lord Clarendon at every opportunity. Napoleon III. was really in the hands of his entourage, and they were to a great extent in the hands of Russia.[273] Lord Cowley, indeed, informed Mr. Greville that Walewski privately made known to Orloff, the Russian plenipotentiary, not only the points he must yield, but those as to which he might safely defy Lord Clarendon with the open or secret support of France.