The India Office, too, under the Duke of Argyle, was managed so as to add considerably to the prestige of the Government. The affairs of India had indeed been conducted, since the accession of Sir John Lawrence to the Viceroyalty, with consummate ability. The struggle for power in Afghanistan between the descendants of Dost Mahomed had been watched by Lawrence with masterly inactivity. At last, as if by a Providential inspiration, Lawrence came to the conclusion, in 1867, that of all the rival aspirants the fugitive Shere Ali was the one who was to be favoured by Fortune. He avoided an alliance with the usurper Azim Khan, and when Shere Ali at last ascended the throne his friendly overtures were amicably met. When Lord Mayo succeeded Lawrence in 1868, his appointment was denounced as a Tory job. Mr. Gladstone, with great generosity, refused to yield to those who pressed him to recall Mr. Disraeli’s viceroy in 1869, and Lord Mayo developed an unexpected capacity for government. He carried out Lawrence’s frontier policy only with greater warmth of feeling. On the 27th of March Shere Ali met Lord Mayo in durbar at Umballa, and was splendidly entertained. There Lord Mayo formally recognised his guest’s position, and on behalf of the Indian Government arranged to supply him with arms and a subsidy of £120,000 a year to defend his throne.
THE QUEEN’S DRAWING-ROOM, OSBORNE.
(From a Photograph by Hughes and Mullins, Ryde, Isle of Wight.)
Foreign affairs had little interest for the Queen in 1869. In Germany the policy of Von Bismarck was directed to prevent the premature development of the national sentiment in favour of forming a new German Empire. France was engaged in hastily reorganising her military system, and the French Emperor, broken in health and depressed in spirits, had to meet, with anxious heart, the rising tide of Liberalism, which the elections that followed the dissolution of the Legislature, showed was beginning to flow in France. In July, when the Legislative Body met, the Opposition, which used to number about six, numbered 120, and when they threatened to attack the Government M. Rouher offered to come to terms with them.[309] The Emperor’s illness postponed matters for two months, but meantime the old Ministry resigned in favour of a more Liberal one. Finally, a still more Liberal one
ISMAIL PASHA.
was formed by M. Emile Ollivier, at the end of the year, charged with the mission of transforming Bonapartism into Constitutional Monarchy, on the basis of Parliamentary Government. In Spain the revolution of the previous year still dragged on. The financial embarrassments of Italy had rendered the House of Savoy a little unpopular, but the recovery of Victor Emmanuel from a perilous illness, and the birth of an heir presumptive to the Italian Crown, soon restored the popularity of their Monarchy among the Italians. The Pope attained the summit of his ambition by assembling at Rome, on the 8th of December, a grand council of the Latin Church, for the purpose of sanctioning formally the doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Holy Father, speaking ex cathedrâ and quoad sacra.