[74] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., Vol. II., p. 325.
[75] Times, October 1, 1874.
[76] Prince Arthur was the first of his line who took as his superior dignity a title from Ireland. Several Princes and Princesses of England bore Irish titles, e.g., the Queen herself is Countess of Clare, but they were secondary ones, and denominated inferior dignities.
[77] Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 321.
[78] Times, May 11, 1874.
[79] Spectator, May 23, 1874.
[80] Mr. Carlyle refused the offer, though he had accepted the Prussian Order of Merit.
[81] England Under Lord Beaconsfield, by P. W. Clayden, p. 120.
[82] Mr. Disraeli was blamed for ungenerous discourtesy to Lord Hartington on his first appearance as Opposition Leader. But there was a good justification for the Premier’s contemptuous reply. Lord Hartington’s taunts were foolishly factious, because he had, in a speech at Lewes (21st of January), already defended the Tory Government for not attempting to undo Liberal work, which was, as he put it, “irrevocable.”
[83] The Bill had these defects: (1), It was permissive and not compulsory. (2), It forced local authorities to compensate owners of insanitary dwellings doomed to destruction. The worse the rookeries the higher the rents, and the more extravagant the compensation, so that the Bill put a premium on the creation of rookeries. (3), It enacted that workmen’s houses must be rebuilt on the cleared land. This rendered it impossible to sell the sites at prices covering the cost of clearing them, so that local authorities had (a) to keep the land on hand in the hope of getting their price, during which time the displaced inhabitants were pushed into adjoining neighbourhoods already overcrowded; or (b) after five years to sell the sites by auction at a loss. On the 4th of July, 1879, the Metropolitan Board of Works sold some of their sites to the Peabody Trustees at a loss of £600,000 to the ratepayers of London.