Politically, though the year had been eventful, it was not without its compensations. The dying embers of the Indian Mutiny had been extinguished. The war with China had ended with the capture of Pekin, the destruction of the Summer Palace, and the ratification of the Convention of Tchung-Kow and the Treaty of Tien-tsin[87] (24th of October). “At home with ourselves and with our colonies,” Prince Albert says in a letter to Stockmar (28th December), “we have every reason to be satisfied.” One event, indeed, brought grief to the Queen and her family. This was the death of the venerable Earl of Aberdeen, on the 14th of December. Lord Aberdeen was not only the trusted Minister, but the valued personal friend of the Queen and her husband. His experience of public affairs extended from the close of the war with Napoleon to the beginning of the war with Russia, and no English Minister in modern times enjoyed in a higher degree the respect and confidence of foreign Governments and Sovereigns. His stainless integrity and scrupulous honesty won the confidence of the Prince Consort. The high moral courage which led him to speak the truth in public, however unpalatable and unpopular it might be, so endeared him to the Queen that she expressed her admiration for it on the only occasion when she rebuked him for an impolitic indulgence in this virtue. Though a Peelite, he differed from his leader in having greater foresight, and a firmer grip of principle. Aberdeen did not, like Peel, work aimlessly from sheer expediency. He had a theory, a guiding idea, which, rightly or wrongly, always pushed him far in advance of his Party. This theory was that the less people were meddled with by governments, the happier and more prosperous would they become. He carried his principle of non-intervention from foreign to home policy, and acted on the conviction that more good was to be done by repealing old laws, than by enacting new ones. For the salvation of the people, he trusted to independence rather than patronage—to liberty rather than protection. He was blamed for buttressing the petty despotisms of the Continent, but he was blamed unjustly. He shrank from shedding English blood, and wasting English treasure in helping revolutionary movements, and he did so for two reasons. Nations worthy of freedom, he thought, must free themselves; the patronage of revolutionary movements must sooner or later involve England in war with all the Great Powers of Europe. His failure to avert the Crimean War need not here be dwelt on. It was the great blot on his career. Yet it is but due to his memory to say, as even Mr. Disraeli admitted, that if Lord Aberdeen had been head of a Cabinet the members of which all shared his views, and were all loyal in supporting his policy, the Crimean War would probably never have broken out. If Aberdeen had been master in his Cabinet, if he had been served at Constantinople by a loyal Ambassador, and at St. Petersburg by an Envoy who could have opposed with his own tact, patience, and cool common sense the monomaniacal ideas and arguments of the Czar, the conflict between Russia and England could have been averted.[88]
THE QUEEN’S PRIVATE SITTING-ROOM, OSBORNE.
(From a Photograph by Hughes and Mullins, Ryde.)
CHAPTER IV.
THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.
England in 1861—The Jumble of Parties—Secret Alliance Between Palmerston and the Tories—Opening of Parliament—The Prince Consort and the “Two Old Italian Masters”—Lady William Russell’s Salon—The Proposed Sale of Venice—The Fall of Gaeta—Prussia and Italy—Death of Cavour—A casus belli Against France—Napoleon in the East—Denmark and the Duchies—The Queen’s Private Sorrows—Last Illness and Death of the Duchess of Kent—Renewed Attacks in the Press on Prince Albert—Palmerston Accused of Tampering with Despatches—Anecdote of Lord Derby and Lord Granville—The Budget—Repeal of the Paper Duty—Palmerston’s “Grudge” Against Prince Albert—The Marriage of the Princess Alice announced—The Queen and Her Social Duties—Two Drawing-Rooms and Two Investitures—A Season of Mourning—Death of Lord Herbert of Lea—Lord John Russell’s Peerage—Reform and the Working Classes—Ministerial Changes—The Queen’s Tour in Ireland—The Queen and German Unity—Coronation of the King of Prussia—Death of the King of Portugal—Fatigue of the Prince Consort—Signs of His Last Illness—The Queen at Her Husband’s Sick Bed—A Mournful Vigil—The Prince Consort’s Last Words—Scene at the Death-Bed—The Sorrow of the Country—The Queen’s Despair—Her Removal from Windsor—Prince Albert’s Character and Career—His Funeral—The Scene at the Grave—The Queen and the Princess Alice.
From her own tranquil island the Queen, at the beginning of 1861, looked abroad upon a world that was strangely disturbed. It was a world in which men cried peace when there was no peace. In Europe, French agents were intriguing with the revolutionary parties in Poland, Hungary, and the Danubian Principalities. Italian conspirators were busy as usual in Venetia. The misgovernment of Turkey was again goading her Christian subjects to despair, and rousing the wrath of Panslavic fanaticism in Russia. Across the Atlantic the New Year brought with it the severance of South Carolina from the United States, and the pulse of the British aristocracy and their social parasites rose high as their golden youth congratulated each other on the “bursting of the bubble Republic.”[89] It is true that the harvest had been bad, and that the winter had been the coldest that had been experienced for half a century. But Free Trade made food cheap and wages high, so that there was no popular discontent to trouble the Government. The prospect of a cotton famine in Lancashire, as the result of a civil war in America, was not thought to be within the range of practical contingencies. As for political parties, they were, as Mr. Ashley says, “in a singular jumble at the period which we have now reached.”[90] The Tories were alarmed by Mr. Gladstone’s Budgets. These were supposed to be dangerously democratic, not only because his attack on the Paper Duty seemed designed to strengthen the power and position of a cheap press, but because in his financial speeches he seemed to justify the repeal of taxes solely by his desire to benefit the poor, and his imposition of new burdens by his desire to punish the rich for being wealthy. Absurd as this suspicion was, it is necessary to take it seriously, because it had much to do with creating the unexpected dictatorship of Lord Palmerston.
It was well known that Palmerston’s hostility to reform had well-nigh driven the Radicals into factious opposition. They had no more to expect from him, and at any moment they were ready to act against him. They even offered to combine with the Tories, turn out the Government, and keep Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli in power for two years, during which period they thought the Reform problem would ripen for solution. This offer was not accepted. In fact, through Lord Malmesbury and Lady Palmerston, a secret alliance was organised, in terms of which the Tories agreed to maintain Lord Palmerston in office “if only he would resist ‘Democratic’ Budgets, and keep his hands from any violent action against Austria.”[91] This compact was ratified by the people, who, despite the triumph of the Anglo-French alliance in China, were growing every day more distrustful of Napoleon’s warlike preparations, which it was part of Palmerston’s policy to counteract. Mr. Ashley asserts that Lord Palmerston was “too loyal to enter into any such secret understanding.” As a matter of fact, the alliance was, on behalf of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, first tendered by Lord Malmesbury at Lady Palmerston’s party, on the 12th of May, 1860, when, says Lord Malmesbury, “Lady Palmerston expressed herself as being very grateful for the offer.” [92]