PLAN OF WINDSOR CASTLE.
law being now to be administered by a regular judicial tribunal, instead of the injured parties being obliged to petition the Legislature for private Acts of Parliament to dissolve the marriage. We are assailed on the one hand by those who hold that, according to divine law, marriage cannot be dissolved even for adultery, and on the other by those who think that for this purpose no distinction should be made between the sexes,[319] and that in all cases the wife should be entitled to a divorce on proof of any breach of the marriage vow by the husband. But I think the true principle is, that the marriage ought only to be dissolved when it is impossible for the injured party to condone, and that Divine Providence has constituted an essential difference in this respect between the adultery of the husband and the adultery of the wife. I would rather run the risk of cases of great hardship occurring, when it would seem desirable that women should be released from the tyranny of profligate and brutal husbands, than give too great a facility to divorce, which has a tendency most demoralising.”[320]
Another measure of sound reform, with which Lord Campbell honourably associated his name, gave rise to a curious incident, towards the end of the Session, in the House of Commons. “Since I returned from circuit,” says Lord Campbell, in his Diary, “my chief business has been to watch the progress through the House of Commons of my Bill for checking the trade in obscene publications by allowing them to be seized in the depôts of the dealers. Brougham had hardly ventured to oppose the Bill as it passed through the Lords, but afterwards he wrote a violent article against it in the Law Magazine, and he put up Roebuck to assail it in the House of Commons. The Bill, being in Committee yesterday (July 12th), I showed myself in the Peers’ Gallery to watch its fate, and that I might be consulted, if necessary, during the debate. Roebuck contented himself with reading a letter which he had received from Brougham, pointing out the danger of country justices perverting the Bill for the punishment of poachers; and it went through the Committee with the amendments which I had suggested and assented to. The Speaker then sent me a message by the Chancellor of the Exchequer complaining that I had appeared in the House to overawe their deliberations, like Cardinal Wolsey and Charles I., and that it would become his duty to protest against such an unconstitutional proceeding.”[321]
Brief mention must also be made of the Fraudulent Trusts Bill, as one of the Ministerial achievements during the Session of 1857. Several glaring cases of embezzlement on the part of trustees had recently occurred, and yet it was found that the existing criminal law could not reach the guilty parties. Sir Alexander Cockburn, before his elevation to the Bench, had promised to deal with this scandal, and now his successor, Sir Richard Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, fulfilled that promise. The object of his Bill was simply to make trustees of settlements, directors of companies, and other persons invested with a fiduciary character, criminally responsible for frauds, or for the misappropriation of the funds entrusted to their care. The Bill passed both Houses. The only serious opposition it met with was from Lord St. Leonards, who dreaded lest its severity might deter honest and substantial men from serving as trustees.
These were among the chief results of the brief but useful Session of 1857, which was prorogued on the 28th of August. Up to midsummer the House of Commons dozed through halcyon days, only too well pleased to do the bidding of its master. Lord John Russell was meek, Mr. Gladstone was an absentee, the Tories were discouraged, and the Radicals were docile. To go to a division at this time on any question was to rush to ignominious defeat. But about the middle of July the House began to show signs of a quickened life. The debates on the Persian War roused the combatant spirit of the Opposition; Mr. Gladstone reappeared, as Ministers knew to their cost when the Divorce Bill was obstructed; and it was remarked that even Palmerston’s most subservient followers no longer hesitated to cheer Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Disraeli, when they made an exceptionally clever attack on the Ministry. In August the shadow of the Indian Mutiny darkened the prospects of the Government, and when Parliament was prorogued there was some ill-concealed grumbling among the captious critics of the Court, because the Queen went to Scotland at a time when the British Empire in India was in dire peril. But on the whole, Palmerston’s prestige was not materially impaired. His domestic programme, modest as it was, had been successfully carried out. Moreover, for the first time in his career, his relations with the Court had been put on a satisfactory footing. On this point Mr. Greville records an interesting conversation with Lord Clarendon, who told him that the Queen had treated Palmerston during the Session with unreserved confidence. Palmerston, on the other hand, found it expedient to treat the Queen with a deference and attention which had produced a favourable change in her sentiments towards him. Mr. Greville says, “Clarendon told me that Palmerston had lately been ailing in a way to cause some uneasiness.... Clarendon talked one day to the Queen about Palmerston’s health, concerning which she expressed her anxiety, when Clarendon said she might indeed be anxious, for it was of the greatest importance to her, and if anything happened to him he did not know where she could look for a successor to him, that she had often expressed her great desire to have a strong Government, and that she had now got one, Palmerston being a strong Minister. She admitted the truth of it. Clarendon said he was always very earnest with her to bestow her whole confidence on Palmerston, and not even to talk to others on any subjects which properly belonged to him, and he had more than once (when, according to her custom, she began to talk to him on certain things), said to her, ‘Madam, that concerns Lord Palmerston, and I think your Majesty had better reserve it for your communications with him.’ He referred to the wonderful change in his own relations to Palmerston, that seven or eight years ago Palmerston was full of hatred and suspicion of him, and now they were the best of friends, with mutual confidence and goodwill, and lately, when he was talking to Palmerston of the satisfactory state of his relations to the Queen, and of the utility it was to his government that it should be so, Palmerston said, ‘And it is likewise a very good thing that she has such boundless confidence in her Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when after all there is nothing she cares about so much.’”[322]
And yet it cannot be said that in foreign affairs Lord Palmerston had won any conspicuous triumph for British diplomacy. The dispute with Persia did not end gloriously for England. It is true that the controversy over Neufchâtel, in which the Queen, owing to her close relations with the Royal Family of Prussia, was deeply interested, terminated happily.[323] But on the other hand, the vexed question of the Danubian Principalities was still open, and it was almost certain that it would lead to the diplomatic humiliation of England.
The future government of the two Principalities was left by the Congress of Paris to be settled by the Treaty Powers. Russia desired their union under a Native prince. France and Sardinia desired their union under a foreign prince, fearing that a Native ruler would soon become a mere satrap of the Czar. Turkey and Austria desired to keep the Principalities separate, and this view was warmly supported by Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon. At the Congress of Paris, France had insidiously suggested to Austria that she should take the Principalities, the object being to justify new territorial arrangements on the Rhine in French interests. After that proposal was rejected, the French Emperor drew closer and closer to Russia; but when the General Election gave Palmerston a solid majority, Russia became effusively civil to England. When, however, England persisted in acting with Austria and the Porte, thereby resisting territorial changes, which could only be made