[166] This is calculated on the basis of the oats, wheat, and potato crop, with one-third the actual value of the total: the live stock added to represent the value of stock for the given current year.
[167] Customs and Income Tax showed an increase, but there was a decrease on Excise.
[168] This cost the revenue a loss of £216,000.
[169] Quoted by Sir T. Martin in his Life of the Prince Consort, Ch. CVIII.
[170] When the British ship Prince of Wales was wrecked in June, 1861, on the coast of Rio Grande, it was reported that the crew had been murdered. A demand was made by the English Foreign Office on Brazil for compensation. Mr. Christy, the British Minister, happened to be an imitator of Palmerston’s hectoring manner of negotiating with weak Powers. His demands were rejected by Brazil because the compensation claimed was monstrous, and because he sought to impose conditions which were not compatible with the dignity and honour of an independent State. Reprisals were then ordered to be made. In the first instance it seems the Brazilian Government had been guilty of negligence. But Mr. Christy’s high-handed action soon put England in the wrong.
[171] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXI.
[172] Sir Stafford was denounced as one of the Exhibition clique. He moved the reduction of the vote by £25,000—the amount estimates for altering the building—as a compromise.
[173] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 299-300.
[174] The strength of the City Police was 1,000 men.
[175] Sir Francis Hastings Doyle tells a curious story which he obtained from an American officer, whose authority he vouches for as good, which throws some light on Lee’s failure, which was one of the turning-points of the war. One of his subordinate generals—“a hot-tempered, impetuous man”—received a document from Lee containing the plan of invasion, and giving him orders to carry it out. Something in these irritated him. He tore up the letter in a rage, and flung the pieces on the ground. The moment his troops moved on, the pieces were all picked up by a Northern partisan, pasted together, and conveyed to the enemy.—Reminiscences and Opinions of Sir F. H. Doyle, p. 340.