The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; vol. 3 of 4

by Robert Wilson

WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THAMES STREET, AND “BIT” OF THE OUTER WALLS.

under whose guidance England had drifted into the Crimean War. The re-opening of the Eastern Question immediately after he took office was considered to be ominous of mischief. For two years there had been friction between Greece and Turkey, the cause being that the Greeks had been assisting the Cretan insurgents both with men and money. The Sultan at last, in a fit of impatience, sent an Ultimatum to Greece threatening war unless the Government made reparation to Turkey for the support which it had given to the Cretan rebellion. The Great Powers obtained for Greece an extension of time for her reply to the 17th of December, and on that date the Athenian Government rejected the Ultimatum. But the rise of Germany had altered all the conditions under which Russia as patron of Greece could attack Constantinople, and it rendered the Anglo-French alliance no longer desirable. Still a Conference was proposed by Count Bismarck in the closing days of 1868 to prevent war, whilst the Greeks were arming in hot haste, and Hobart Pasha was blockading Syria. The great danger lay in Clarendon’s possible adherence to Palmerstonian traditions. If he declared for war in defence of Turkey with France as an ally, the prospect was dismal. Such a policy meant that England would have to face the combination of Germany, and perchance Italy with Russia, and it is certain that the Queen, like the nation, would have resisted it to the last. The Conference did its work well—as might have been expected. It had been proposed by Bismarck, who had a reputation for never associating his name with failures, and the event proved that he had judged rightly of the exigencies of the nations.

CHAPTER XIV.
A HOPEFUL YEAR.

Hopefulness all round—Ministers at the Fishmongers’—The Queen’s Speech—The Legislative Bill of Fare—The Queen and Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Church Policy—Release of Fenians—Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme for Disestablishing the Irish Church—The Debate in the Commons—The Second Reading Carried—The Bill in Committee—Read a Third Time—The Lords and the Bill—Amendments of the Peers—The Lords Bought Off—The Bill becomes Law—Mr. Lowe’s First Budget—The Endowed Schools Bill—The Habitual Criminals Act—The Lords and the Commons’ Legislation—Official Hostility to Reforming Ministers—Weak Members of the Cabinet—Mr. Reverdy Johnson and the Alabama Claims—The Policy of “Masterly Inactivity”—Liberalism in France—Prince Leopold’s Illness—The Queen’s Interview with Mr. Carlyle—Visit of Ismail Pasha to the Queen—The Peabody Statue—Prince Alfred in Australia—The Prince of Wales and Court Dress—Death of Lord Derby—Death of Lady Palmerston—Opening of Blackfriars Bridge and Holborn Viaduct—O’Donovan Rossa, M.P.—Orangemen and Fenians.

Hopefulness was the prevailing feeling with which the year 1869 was hailed by everybody. Politically the country was in a state of tranquillity. The democracy had won a great victory at the polls, and a new and brilliant ministry had been called to power to give effect to the will of the people. Trade, it is true, was still suffering from the shock of 1866. The supply of raw cotton was scarce, and high prices lessened the demand for the manufactured article. The policy of the Trades Unions aggravated the uneasiness of the mercantile community. Superficial observers began to declare that the Unionists, by hampering their employers at home, were driving trade abroad, and a demand for Protection, under the guise of Reciprocity, was heard, though as yet but faintly, amid the din of controversy. Some of the leading men in great commercial centres like Manchester were so impressed with the manifest ignorance of economic principles exhibited in these controversies that they started a series of evening lectures for working men on political economy, Professor Stanley Jevons undertaking to deliver the course.[292] On the other hand, the country was free from all difficulties as to foreign affairs—even the dispute with the United States as to the Alabama claims was supposed to be in a fair way of settlement under the flattering unction of the American Minister’s post-prandial rhetoric. The first weeks of the year were enlivened by the trials of election petitions, and the new tribunal of judges appointed to try on the spot cases of corrupt practices, on the whole, gave general satisfaction, It was felt that if the new court was a judge without a jury, the old one—a committee of the House of Commons—was a jury without a judge, and that in respect of consistency in interpreting the law and logical application of principles, the new court was a vast improvement on the old one.

Though everybody knew that the Irish Church Question must overshadow all others, the utterances of Ministers were eagerly scanned for indications of policy. The spirit of economy, it soon appeared, would reign supreme in the administration, for not only did Mr. Goschen at the Poor Law Board issue orders prohibiting the guardians of the poor in London from giving relief to the able-bodied poor except under conditions of task-work, but the Admiralty issued a circular instructing naval officers to forbid unremunerative and profitless work, and save coals and stores as much as possible. In his speeches to his constituents in Renfrewshire, the Home Secretary, Mr. Austin Bruce, proclaimed his conversion to the ballot; but Mr. Lowe, at Gloucester, seemed to limit himself to rather stale denunciations of the Tory Party. On the 11th of February Ministers dined with the Fishmongers’ Company in the City, but even there their reticence was remarkable. Mr. Gladstone significantly intimated that the Ministry were encouraged in pursuing their Irish policy of conciliation, not only by the verdict of the country, but by “the constitutional character of that Sovereign whose delight it is to associate herself both with the interests and convictions of her people.”[293] Mr. Lowe spoke in a caustic saturnine vein about the difficulty of forcing economy on the servants of the Crown in public departments: they resented an order to save stores as savouring of meanness. And then the House of Commons was always too ready to force up expenditure in detail, whilst clamouring for its reduction in mass. Mr. Bright observed that the Board of Trade was merely a department that sent recommendations to people who rarely paid attention to them, and then launched into an attack on bishops and archbishops, who were, he said, overpaid, owing to the credulity, if not the liberality, of the people. His Grace of York had a few days before claimed that the Episcopal Bench supplied a Liberal element to the House of Lords, and this seems to have tempted Mr. Bright into his display of spleen. Altogether, the first impression produced by the Ministerial speeches was that the Government, though full of good intentions, meant to carry them out in an arrogant and irritating manner. In the meantime a change had taken place in the leadership of the Tory Party in the House of Lords, Lord Malmesbury retiring in favour of Lord Cairns.

On the 16th of February Parliament was opened by Commission, the Royal Speech being read by the Lord Chancellor. As the Queen did not attend, it was decided by the Cabinet to propose that Parliament should wait upon her, and present their Address in reply to the Royal Speech, to her personally—a somewhat unusual, though not unprecedented, proceeding when the Queen is herself absent from the opening of Parliament. The Speech was in style a little flabby, especially where it touched on the Irish Church Question. No measure of Disestablishment was definitely promised, but it was announced that Parliament must take in hand the task of “the adjustment of the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland.” The Speech promised reduced estimates,[294] hinted at the restoration of Habeas Corpus to Ireland, and it embodied Mr. Austin Bruce’s pledges in Renfrewshire to bring in a Scottish Education Bill. Perhaps it was because Ministers strove after brevity that they omitted from the Speech many measures to which it was generally known they were committed, e.g., Mr. Bruce’s Bill for dealing with Habitual Criminals, Mr. Goschen’s Poor Law Bill, Mr. Forster’s Middle Class Education Bill, the Bill abolishing University Tests, a Bill to establish Municipal Government in Counties, and a Bill abolishing Imprisonment for Debt. The Address was moved in the House of Commons by Mr. Cowper, selected as a compliment to the Whigs, and Mr. Mundella, who was chosen to please the Radical artisans. The debate on the Address was a tame business. The leaders of the Opposition, desirous of posing as magnanimous adversaries in defeat, offered no serious criticism. The Government leaders had, therefore, virtually nothing to reply to. Previous to the moving of the Address Mr. Gladstone gave notice in the House of Commons that on the 1st of March he should move that the Acts relating to the Irish Church establishment, and to the Maynooth Grant, and also the Resolutions of the House of Commons of 1868 be read; that the House should resolve itself into Committee to consider these Acts and Resolutions. Mr. Forster, too, gave notice of his Middle Class Education Bill. The Attorney-General gave notice of a Bankruptcy Bill; Mr. Goschen announced Bills amending the law assessing Occupiers Holding for short terms, and equalising the Assessment of Metropolitan Property; and the Home Secretary announced his Bill for the more effectual Prevention of Crime. Whatever might be said of the Ministry, it was obviously bent on making its mark on the Statute book. The House of Lords, indeed, began to take alarm at the extreme activity of the Commons. They complained that they were not entrusted with work till after Easter, when the Commons sent them their Bills to revise in the dog days, and Lord Salisbury angrily threatened to obstruct Bills if they were not sent up to the Peers in time for full discussion; but the fault was really that of their Lordships. As Lord Russell put it, to initiate Liberal Bills in the Upper House is to secure their rejection; to bring them there after they have been accepted by large majorities of the House of Commons, gives them a chance of being passed into law.

When the Committee on the Address brought up their report Mr. Gladstone moved that the Address be presented by the whole House to the Queen in person. The Queen’s absence from the opening of a new reformed Parliament had been taken by various Opposition organs as a proof that she was inclined to obstruct the policy of the Ministry. That her Majesty was, as a matter of fact, opposed to Mr. Gladstone’s policy of Disestablishment is apparent from the Diary of Bishop Wilberforce, where, under date 20th March, one finds the following entry:—“Back to Windsor Castle and prepared sermon. Dined with the Queen. A great deal of talk with the Princess Louise; clever and very agreeable. The Queen very affable. So sorry Mr. Gladstone started this about Irish Church, and he is a great friend of yours,” &c. But a still more authoritative disclosure of the Queen’s personal objections to Mr. Gladstone’s plans is given in a letter from the Princess Louis of Hesse. Writing on the 25th of April, in reply to a communication on the subject from the Queen, the Princess says:—“The Irish Church Question, I quite feel with you, will neither be solved nor settled in this way; and instead of doing something which would bring the Catholics more under the authority of the State, they will, I fear, be more powerful.”[295] The Queen’s consent to come to London and receive the Address in reply to the Royal Speech in person was accordingly obtained by Mr. Gladstone for the purpose of taking the sting out of statements which had gone round the Tory Press as to her Majesty’s opposition to his Irish policy. It hardly tended to reconcile the Queen to the views of the Cabinet that her consent to receive the Address was asked in a manner that precluded the possibility of refusal, save at the risk of insulting the Legislature. But in this affair Mr. Gladstone was doomed to disappointment. Before the Address could be presented her Majesty said she must abandon the idea of coming to town to receive it. Prince Leopold suddenly fell ill, and as the Queen was reluctant to leave him, the Address was delivered to her in the usual manner, and answered by her in the stereotyped terms. Thus it came to pass that the first meeting of the reformed Parliament was not honoured with any special mark of personal recognition by the Chief of the State.