THE FORTRESS OF GWALIOR.
Home and Foreign Affairs, however, brought more trouble and annoyance to the Queen than the operations of war in the East. In fact, at this period of her career, her Majesty found it more necessary than ever it had been to devote her best energies to the public service. In a conversation with Mr. Greville during the autumnal recess of 1857, Lord Clarendon said that “the manner in which the Queen in her own name, but with the assistance of the Prince, exercised her functions, was exceedingly good, and well became her position, and was eminently useful. She held each minister to the discharge of his duty and his responsibility to her, and constantly desired to be furnished with accurate and detailed information about all important matters, keeping a record of all the reports that were made to her, and constantly recurring to them; e.g., she would desire to know what the state of the navy was, and what ships were in readiness for active service, and generally the state of each, ordering returns to be submitted to her from all the arsenals and dockyards, and again weeks and months afterwards referring to these returns, and desiring to have everything relating to them explained and accounted for, and so throughout every department. In this practice Clarendon told me he had encouraged her strenuously. This is what none of her predecessors ever did, and it is in fact the act of Prince Albert, who is to all intents and purposes King, only acting entirely in her name. All his views and notions are those of a Constitutional Sovereign, and he fulfils the duties of one, and at the same time makes the Crown an entity, and discharges the functions which properly belong to the Sovereign. I told Clarendon that I had been told the Prince had upon many occasions rendered the most important services to the Government, and had repeatedly prevented them getting into scrapes of various sorts. He said it was perfectly true, and that he had written some of the ablest papers he had ever read.”[5]
The Queen, however, like the Prince Consort, was uneasy as to the stability of the Government. But she had erroneously formed an opinion, which was indeed shared by many others, that the danger to be apprehended was from the decay of Lord Palmerston’s health. “Clarendon,” writes Mr. Greville in November, 1857, “told me of a conversation he had recently with the Queen à propos of Palmerston’s health, concerning which her Majesty was very uneasy, and what could be done in the not impossible contingency of his breaking down. It is a curious change from what we saw a few years ago, that she has become almost affectionately anxious about the health of Palmerston, whose death might then have been an event to have been hailed with satisfaction. Clarendon said she might well be solicitous about it, for if anything happened to Palmerston, she would be placed in the greatest difficulty. She said that in such a case she should look to him, and expect him to replace Palmerston, on which Clarendon said he was glad she had broached the subject, as it gave him an opportunity of saying what he was very anxious to impress upon her mind, and that was, the absolute impossibility of his undertaking such an office, against which he enumerated various objections. He told her that Derby could not form a Government, and if she had the misfortune to lose Palmerston, nothing remained for her to do but to send for John Russell, and put him at the head of the Government. She expressed her great repugnance to this, and especially to make him Prime Minister. Clarendon then entreated her to conquer her repugnance, and to be persuaded that it would never do to offer him anything else, which he neither would nor could accept; that she necessarily was to have a man who could lead the House of Commons, and that there was no other but him; that Lord John had consented to take a subordinate office under Lord Aberdeen, who was his senior in age, and occupied a high position, but he would never consent to take office under him (Clarendon), and the proposal he would consider as an insult. For every reason, therefore, he urged her, if driven to apply to him at all, to do it handsomely, to place the whole thing in his hands, and to give him her full confidence and support. He appears to have convinced her that this is the proper course, and he gave me to understand that if Lord John acts with prudence and moderation all the present Government would accept him for their head.”[6]
The real danger, as will soon be seen, which menaced the Ministry was not Palmerston’s decaying health, but his waning popularity. The Party of Reform early in 1858 had become convinced that nothing was to be hoped for from him beyond empty and evasive promises. They were therefore, when Parliament reassembled on the 4th of February, simply waiting for a pretext to turn him out of office.[7] While the Radicals were mutinous, Mr. Disraeli, through the medium of Mr. C. Greville, was intriguing with the younger Whigs[8] to form a Coalition.[9] Palmerston had also incurred much unpopularity by appointing Lord Clanricarde to the office of Lord Privy Seal; in fact, it was known that this appointment would have been laid hold of as a pretext for moving a resolution which might destroy the Ministry. Of course, when Parliament met no division of opinion existed as to the propriety of passing addresses congratulating the Queen on her daughter’s marriage. But when, on the 8th of February, resolutions were moved thanking the civil and military officers in India for the ability with which they had dealt with the Mutiny, some of the Tories,[10] let us hope reluctantly, led by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, made themselves the mouth-pieces of the “White Terror” at Calcutta, and opposed a vote of thanks to Lord Canning. His policy had been objected to because it was not sufficiently bloodthirsty; therefore, argued his critics, it was rash to pass a vote of thanks to him. The vote was carried, but it was clear that the Indian policy of the Government would bring trouble on their heads. The Indian government must be transferred to the Crown, and as Mr. Vernon Smith, a man of limited capacity, was the Minister responsible for India, the prospect was not thought by experienced Anglo-Indians to be an alluring one. We ought to wait till we had stamped out the last traces of the Mutiny, it was contended by Lord Ellenborough, before we brought India directly under the Government of the Queen. Still, Ministers defeated a resolution to postpone their India Bill, and nothing seemed fairer than their prospects, though they were even then (18th of February), on the brink of destruction. The blow came when Palmerston, desirous of conciliating the French Emperor, introduced a Bill to alter the Law of Conspiracy.
LORD CANNING.
The history of this fateful measure is as follows:—Ten days before the marriage of the Princess Royal, a small group of conspirators in England carried out a plan for assassinating the Emperor of the French in the Rue