[117] It is only fair to say that Lord Palmerston was the first to make these representations. For his views on the Prince’s illness and the Queen’s doctors, see his letter to Lord Shaftesbury, of 11th December.—Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder. Vol. III., p. 130.
[118] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 178-185.
[119] Edmund Burke, by Augustine Birrell. Contemporary Review, July, 1866, p. 41.
[120] The Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, by Edward Barrington Fonblanque, p. 247.
[121] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters. London: John Murray, 1884, p. 360.
[122] See Memorandum by the Grand Duchess of Baden quoted in Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 18-19.
[123] The allusion here to the “revival” of Wilberforce’s old affection may seem curious. The Bishop of Oxford enjoyed more influence and favour at Court than ever fell to the lot of any ecclesiastic in our time. He was one of the extremely small group of prominent public men—Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Clarendon, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis—who enjoyed the Prince’s close personal friendship. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Prince Consort dropped him, and in one of his letters to Miss Noel the Bishop gives utterance to his sorrow over his fall at Court. Knowing Lord Aberdeen’s intimacy with the Prince, he begged his son, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, to induce his father to intercede for him. The incident curiously illustrates the Prince Consort’s character. When Lord Aberdeen opened the subject with his customary tact and delicacy, the Prince detected his object at once, and stopped him by observing, “He (the Bishop) does everything for some object. He has a motive for all his conduct.” Lord Aberdeen replied, “Yes, sir, but when a bad motive?” which, however, did not lead the Prince to continue the discussion. Again Lord Aberdeen seized an opportunity of serving the Bishop, and this time the Prince Consort frankly said he had occasion to doubt the Bishop’s sincerity—a suspicion that invariably forfeited the Prince’s confidence. Being pressed by Aberdeen still further, the Prince said that in early life he detected Wilberforce intriguing for the preceptorship of the Prince of Wales. Nor was that all. In a discussion with the Prince on a certain miracle about which he had preached, the Bishop had unduly modified his views to suit those of the Prince. It is only fair to Wilberforce to say that, in a letter to the Hon. Arthur Gordon, he denies the assertion about the preceptorship, but admits there was some colour in the other part of the Prince’s case. “The swine sermon,” writes Wilberforce, “was preached in days when he (the Prince Consort) was most friendly, long before I was Dean or Bishop; the conversation followed, and a long one it was. He did not say how entirely he disbelieved in spirits of evil, but raised all possible objections, which I combated; and the only thing like ‘convenient’ averment I said was that it was far best to believe in a devil who suggested evil to us; for that otherwise we were driven to make every man his own devil; and I thought that this view rather touched him.” It did touch him, but not in the way intended. See Life of Wilberforce, by his son, Reginald G. Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 226. For reference to the Prince’s funeral, see Vol. III., pp. 41-45.
[124] It gave Federal Commissioners power, without judge or jury, to return fugitive slaves to justice; prohibited State Courts from testing, on writ of habeas corpus, the rights of the person who claimed the slave in a Free State.
[125] The minority of the Judges seem to have taken a less pedantic view, and one more in accordance with the policy of the Republic, which had always been one of compromise with regard to slavery. They held that it was not by Federal but State law that a negro was made property. They contended that neither the laws of nature nor of nations, nor the Constitution of the United States, recognised him as property, so that the rights of owners over this species of property must logically be limited to the Territory where, by municipal law, it was recognised as property.—See The Constitutional History of the United States, by Simon Stern, of the New York Bar (Cassell and Co.), p. 190.
[126] According to it, slavery was prohibited north of parallel 36° 30´, but south of this it was to be recognised and never interfered with by Congress, and the Federal Government would pay for all slaves rescued from officers after arrest.