Parliament met on the 1st of February, and Mr. Denison was elected Speaker. It was known that Lord Russell was anxious to strengthen his Ministry by giving Mr. Bright a seat in the Cabinet, but his colleagues objected to this step, and the omen was not auspicious for the Party of Reform. Writing on the 6th of February in his Diary, Lord Malmesbury says, “the Queen opened Parliament to-day. She came in a State coach with her eight cream-coloured horses, but entered by the Peers’ entrance. She was well received, but did not wear her robes, which were placed on the Throne, and did not read the Speech, which was read by the Lord Chancellor.”[241] It was the first State ceremony at which the Queen had assisted since the death of her husband, and the scene in the Upper House was unusually brilliant. The bright dresses of the Peeresses, the mass of gorgeous colour on the floor of the House, where the Peers wore their robes, the flashing lights from glittering orders and uniforms worn by the splendid company of foreign diplomatists, afforded a spectacle that gladdened the artistic eye. It was marred only by the wild and disorderly scramble of the members of the House of Commons for places. They trooped into the Royal presence like a band of disorderly roughs let loose from Donnybrook Fair. The Speaker was hustled aside and jammed against the edge of the Bar as he vainly attempted to make his obeisance to the Queen. The leading members of the Government vanished in the struggle, though Sir Charles Wood was ultimately discovered in an attitude of agony almost impaled on the sharp carving of an oaken lion rampant. As for the sword of the Sergeant-at-Arms, it got entangled with everybody’s legs, including his own.
The reaction which followed the excitement of the ceremony had caused much nervous depression, and the Queen was accordingly recommended to seek repose at Osborne. “I am happy to think,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to her mother, in a letter referring to the event, “that you are quiet at Osborne after all you had gone through. The emotion and all other feelings recalled by such an event must have been very powerful and have tried you much. It was noble of you, my darling mama, and the great effort will bring compensation. Think of the pride and pleasure it would have given darling papa—the brave example to others not to shrink from their duty; and it has shown that you felt the intense sympathy which the English people evinced and still evince in your misfortune.”
It was soon apparent that the question of Reform would exhaust the energies of the Legislature, and on the 12th of March Mr. Gladstone introduced what came to be known as the Russell-Gladstone Reform Bill. It proposed to reduce the County Franchise from £50 rental to £14, and the Borough Franchise from £10 to £7. It also gave votes to lodgers and £50 depositors in savings banks. The rate-paying clauses of the Reform Act were abolished. The Bill, it was estimated, would admit to the franchise 172,000 new voters in counties, 204,000 in towns, and 24,000 under the Lodger and Savings Banks qualifications, i.e., 400,000 in all. Of these, one-half belonged to the working classes properly so-called. The House of Commons was not in a pleasant humour for dealing with Reform. The timid classes were alarmed by a speech which Mr. Gladstone delivered during Easter at Liverpool, in which he declared that “the Government had crossed the Rubicon, broken the bridge, and burned their boats behind them.” This, it was vowed, meant that he for one was prepared to roll the Constitution down the inclined plane of Democracy. The country gentlemen were angry, because they thought the Government had compensated them shabbily for the losses they suffered from the Cattle Plague. The plutocracy were in low spirits, because in spring a great financial collapse had smitten the City. Some country banks had failed. The greater part of the stock of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway was offered in the market for “a mere song.” On the 10th of May the bank of Messrs. Overend and Gurney stopped payment, with liabilities amounting to £19,000,000. On the 11th the City was in a frenzy of despair, and Government had to authorise the Bank of England to issue notes beyond the legal limit. Other financial institutions perished, and the blight of bankruptcy fell on the land. English credit on the Continent was so low that the Foreign Office issued a circular explaining to foreigners the distinction drawn in England between insolvency and lack of money. Employers of labour, again, were irritated against the working classes now claiming the franchise, for Trades Unions were growing more aggressive and turbulent every day. The Fenian disturbances in Ireland also gave rise to much uneasiness. The uncertain condition of the Continent led people to urge that, instead of wasting time in debating Reform, Parliament ought to make the defensive system of the Empire effective. Above and beyond all things, it was felt that a Reform Bill involved a dissolution, and to Members of the House of Commons who had just spent large sums of money in getting elected, this was a sufficient temptation to oppose Reform. If we consider the natural effect of all these different motives and feelings on a House of Commons elected to support Lord Palmerston’s colourless domestic policy, we can easily understand why the Russell-Gladstone Bill fared badly. It was opposed by the Tories and by nominal Liberals like Lord Elcho, Mr. Lowe, Lord Grosvenor, Mr. Horsman, and Mr. Bouverie. It was finally defeated in Committee by Lord Dunkellin, who carried a motion substituting a rating for a rental qualification, the effect of which would have been to limit the franchise to £9 instead of £7 householders in towns, and to £16 instead of £14 householders in counties. The Radicals, however, did not regard the defeat of the measure with much grief, though they had loyally supported Mr. Gladstone. Their hearts were in truth set on obtaining a much lower qualification than the Bill offered. Independent critics again, who had no sympathy with the savage diatribes against the working classes which the Tories and the Liberal seceders poured forth day after day, also considered that the Bill had one serious defect. It did not put the franchise on a basis solid enough to be permanent. To fix it at £7 to-day was only to start an agitation to-morrow to reduce it to £3, or to nothing at all. Far better, it was argued, return to the old Radical programme of Household Suffrage, which, at all events, possessed the elements of finality. In fact, early in June Ministers saw that the Bill was doomed, and an intrigue was set on foot between the Cabinet and the “Adullamites”[242] for the purpose of withdrawing the Bill, on condition that the Liberal seceders would steadily support the Ministers on all other questions. After their defeat on the 18th of June, the Cabinet resigned, and although the Queen was somewhat opposed to this step, she waived her objections to it.
According to Lord Malmesbury, the Government first of all thought of dissolving Parliament, but abandoned this idea, fearing they would lose by it. Lord Malmesbury also says that “the Queen being on a visit to Osborne for ten days, refused to shorten her stay, and the country remained for a month with the Government in abeyance. At last her Majesty returned, and appointed Lord Derby Prime Minister. He tried to form a coalition with some Whig Dukes, and invited Lord Clarendon and the Duke of Somerset to join him. They refused. He then did the same by the Adullamites, most of whom also declined. Young Lord Lansdowne, who at their head had promised to support him, died suddenly, and this accident increased his
PRINCE CHRISTIAN.
(From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey.)
difficulties. Encouraged by a meeting of twenty-three leading Conservatives, held at his house, Lord Derby formed the following Cabinet:—Lord Chancellor, Lord Chelmsford; President of the Council, Duke of Buckingham; Privy Seal, Lord Malmesbury; Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr. Walpole; Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Stanley;[243] Secretary for War, General Peel; Secretary for Colonies, Lord Carnarvon; Secretary for India, Lord Cranborne; Poor Law Board, Mr. Hardy; Board of Trade, Sir S. Northcote; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Disraeli; Secretary for Ireland, Lord Naas; Board of Works, Lord John Manners; Admiralty, Sir John Pakington.”[244] Lord Derby himself personally objected to take office because he could not feel confident of commanding a majority. Some of his friends, like the Marquis of Bath, were indeed angry that he had consented to serve again as Premier without definite pledges of support from the Whigs, whose hostility to Reform had shattered the last Cabinet.
Up to the time when the change of Ministry took place very little business had been done. A Bill dealing with the cattle plague had been introduced by the Home Secretary. It empowered local authorities to kill infected herds and stop all movement of cattle and all fairs in infected areas. For cattle thus sacrificed the owners were to receive from local authorities compensation to the extent of two-thirds of the value, but in no case was this to exceed £20 a head. The money was to be raised, one-third by a rate on the counties, one-third by a rate on the towns, and one-third by the cattle trade itself. The Radical Party admitted the principle of compensation. But Mr. J. S. Mill contended that if the infected animal was shown not to be worth two-thirds of what it would fetch in the market if healthy, the compensation given by the Government was excessive. The Bill, he also complained, compensated the landed interest for a loss some share of which the rest of the community, who were not indemnified, bore in the form of enhanced prices. Then, as the rate was to be purely local, those who suffered least would pay least, whereas the burden of recompense would fall heaviest on districts which suffered most. There could be no doubt that his proposal for a general rate on the land instead of a local rate was just. Mr. Gladstone, impressed by these arguments, agreed to limit the compensation to one-half instead of two-thirds of the value of the slaughtered animals, and the compromise was grudgingly accepted.