DR. NORMAN MACLEOD.
(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry.)
In spite of a serious defeat on Sir Massey Lopes’ motion on the question of Local Taxation,[43] a narrow escape from defeat on the Collier scandal, and a clever mocking attack by Mr. Disraeli at Manchester in the spring on their sensational policy and their ambiguous utterances on the proposals of their extreme supporters, the Ministers were stronger in Parliament when the Session ended than when it began. Mr. Lowe’s Budget further helped the credit of the Government, for such was the elasticity of the revenue that it foreshadowed a surplus of £3,000,000, and enabled him to remit the twopenny Income Tax which he had imposed in 1871.[44] Ireland, however, was as usual a source of anxiety to the Cabinet. The Tories and Orangemen, indignant at the Disestablishment of the Church, had coalesced with the more moderate Repealers, and set on foot the Home Government Association,[45] from which the Home Rule Party under the leadership of Mr. Isaac Butt sprang. Whenever the Ballot Act was passed, Home Rule candidates began to carry the Irish bye-elections against the Ministerialists—in fact, it was apparent to shrewd observers that the destruction of the Liberal Party in Ireland was now only a matter of time. Earl Russell was probably of this opinion when, in August, he startled the town by publishing a letter in the Times virtually conceding the principle of Home Rule in order to lighten the burden of Imperial legislation with which Parliament was overweighted.[46]
As for the Opposition, their councils were divided. Lord Salisbury was averse from promising any programme. Mr. Disraeli seemed afraid to suggest one that went beyond sanitary reform. Yet the Tories had completely broken the absolute power of Mr. Gladstone in the country, and were still, as the Municipal Elections in November showed, a growing party. The causes which contributed to a reaction in their favour in 1871 were still at work. Mr. Gladstone’s opposition to Sir Massey Lopes’ motion on rating, and the sudden appearance of Trades Unionism among the agricultural labourers gave Conservatism hosts of fresh recruits, for the squires and the farmers naturally rallied to the Party whose leaders stood forth as champions of the threatened interests.
The attempt of O’Connor on the Queen’s life was not the only crime of the kind that darkened the year. On the 8th of February Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, was stabbed to death by a Mahommedan convict at Port Blair, the port of the penal settlement on the Andaman Islands, to which Lord Mayo was paying a visit of inspection. The assassin was a sullen, brooding fanatic who had been transported for killing a relative with whom he had a “blood feud.” The Queen was as much shocked as the country by the event, for by this time it was universally recognised that Lord Mayo was one of the most competent Viceroys who had ever ruled India. His intuitive insight into difficulties, his shrewd perception of character, his frank resoluteness of action, his clearness and decision of purpose, and his dignified and stately bearing rendered Lord Mayo an ideal viceroy. His great work consisted in cementing an alliance with the Afghan Ameer, in imposing an income-tax to rehabilitate the finances of India, and suppressing a rebellious movement among the Wahabee fanatics.
Early in May telegrams were received in London announcing that Dr. Livingstone, the African explorer, as to whose safety much anxiety had been felt, had been discovered by Mr. Stanley, a special correspondent on the staff of the New York Herald, who had been despatched by Mr. J. Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of that journal, to look for the missing traveller. The Queen received these tidings with the deepest gratification, not unmingled with regret that the honour of the discovery should pass to an American expedition. Her interest in Livingstone, and in his last efforts to discover the sources of the Nile, was well known—indeed, when in England the explorer had a private interview with her Majesty, of which an account is given in Mr. Blaikie’s “Personal Life of Dr. Livingstone.” “She [the Queen] sent for Livingstone,” writes Mr. Blaikie, “who attended her Majesty at the Palace without ceremony, in his black coat and blue trousers and his cap surrounded with a stripe of gold lace. This was his usual attire, and the cap had now become the appropriate distinction of one of her Majesty’s Consuls—an official position to which the traveller attaches great importance as giving him consequence in the eyes of natives and authority over the members of the expedition. The Queen conversed with him affably for half-an-hour on the subject of his travels. Dr. Livingstone told her Majesty that he would now be able to say to the natives that he had seen his chief, his not having done so before having been a constant subject of surprise to the children of the African wilderness. He mentioned to her Majesty also that the people were in the habit of inquiring whether his chief were wealthy, and when he answered them that she was very wealthy they would ask how many cows she had got, a question at which the Queen laughed very heartily.” Mr. Stanley had found Livingstone at Ujiji near Lake Tanganyika, and on his way back to Zanzibar he met the English Expedition, which had been despatched by the Royal Geographical Society, carrying succour to the explorer. As Livingstone’s orders were to refuse this tardy aid, the chiefs of the British Expedition had to return. Some people were at first sceptical as to the story told by Mr. Stanley, but doubts were set at rest on the 27th of August, when Lord Granville sent to Mr. Stanley a gold snuff-box set with diamonds as a gift from the Queen. Accompanying the present was the following letter:—
“I have great satisfaction in conveying to you, by command of the Queen, her Majesty’s high appreciation of the prudence and zeal which you have displayed in opening a communication with Dr. Livingstone, and relieving her Majesty from the anxiety which, in common with her subjects, she had felt in regard to the fate of that distinguished traveller. The Queen desires me to express her thanks for the service you have thus rendered, together with her Majesty’s congratulations on your having so successfully carried out the mission which you so fearlessly undertook. Her Majesty also desires me to request your acceptance of the memorial which accompanies this letter.”