Mr. Gladstone’s hope was to reinvigorate the Government with a little new blood, and rehabilitate it by means of his influence and reputation as a financial administrator and Mr. Bright’s personal popularity among the Nonconformists. Yet the financial work of the Government alone, when administrative
VIEWS IN WINDSOR: OLD MARKET STREET, AND THE TOWN HALL, FROM HIGH STREET.
blunders were detached from it, and relegated to their true place in political perspective, ought to have won for them the gratitude of the nation. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, who perpetually harassed the Ministry because of its growing expenditure—like many financial critics with an imperfect knowledge of book-keeping—failed to see that the apparent growth was not real because much of it was a mere matter of accounting.[55]
SANDRINGHAM HOUSE.
During their five years of power the Government had remitted £9,000,000 of taxation. They had reduced a chaotic Naval Administration to something resembling order, and not far removed from efficiency; and yet at the Admiralty there had been a saving of £1,500,000 on the Estimates of their predecessors. They had taken the Army out of pawn to its officers by abolishing Purchase, and had laid the basis for a compact military organisation; yet they had saved £2,300,000 a year at the War Office. The Army and Navy, though by no means efficient, were much more efficient than they had been when Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry came to power; and yet they were costing the country £4,000,000 less a year.[56] In spite of the great increase in Civil Service expenditure—much of which, like the Education Vote, being morally rather than financially reproductive, showed no “results” in figures on the credit side of the public ledger—there had been since 1857 a decrease in the drain on the taxes of about £1,500,000.[57] Mr. Lowe’s last Budget in 1873 did not discredit the Ministry. In spite of his reductions of taxation in the previous year, he had obtained £2,000,000 more than his estimated income. For the coming year (1873-4) he estimated a surplus of £4,746,000; but he could promise no great remission of taxation, for he had to pay the damages (£3,000,000) which had been awarded at Geneva to the United States Government. Still, he halved the sugar duties and took another penny off the Income Tax. With all his faults, he was accordingly entitled to claim credit for reducing the Income Tax to the lowest point it had ever touched (threepence in the £) since it had been imposed by Peel in 1842. And yet Mr. Lowe could not, even with such a Budget, refrain from expressing his thankfulness in an acrid gibe against the populace. Referring to the marvellous increase in the receipts from Customs and Excise, he said he had been able to produce a good Budget because the nation had drunk itself out of debt.
Apart from the political strife and Ministerial embarrassments which so severely taxed the nerves of the Queen, life at Court was not very eventful. Indeed, it centred chiefly round the Prince and Princess of Wales, who were discharging vicariously and with great popular acceptance most of the social duties of the Crown. This fact was recognised by the Queen herself in a curious indirect kind of way. The Prince of Wales, though very far from being a spendthrift, has never shrunk from incurring expenditure which, in his judgment, was necessary to maintain the dignity and prestige of the Crown in a manner worthy of the great nation whose Sovereignty is his heritage. But he has always refrained from appealing to Parliament for subsidies and subventions, either for himself or his family, other than those to which he is equitably and legally entitled by his official position in the State. This was all the more creditable to him, for two reasons. He was surrounded by companions, some of whom did not scruple to take advantage of his generosity. A considerable section of the public during the controversy that raged over the Princess Louise’s dowry had expressed a strong opinion in favour of limiting future Royal grants to an additional allowance to the Heir Apparent, for the purpose of meeting the unanticipated expenditure which he had incurred by taking the Queen’s place as the head of English Society. Sandringham, moreover, had not turned out a remunerative property, and the Prince was therefore under strong temptations to give a favouring ear to unwise counsels on this delicate subject. These, however, he put aside with manly common sense, and his affairs were arranged on a business-like basis, which would have met with the approval of his father, who was always of opinion that matters of the sort were best managed inside the family circle. The only public indication that was given of arrangements which must necessarily be spoken of with great reserve was afforded by Mr. Gladstone when, on the 21st of July, he introduced a Bill enabling the Queen to bequeath real property to the Prince of Wales, so that he could alienate it at will. The obvious advantage of such a measure was that it imparted a fresh elasticity to the financial resources of the Heir Apparent. For he had discovered a fact hitherto unrevealed in the history of his dynasty in England, namely, that though the Sovereign could bequeath to the Heir Apparent alienable personality, such as hard cash, land or real property so bequeathed, became, when vested in his person on ascending the Throne, the property of the State, and therefore inalienable. In fact, supposing the Queen had left Balmoral, an estate which she and her husband bought out of their private purse, to her eldest son, then, though it had been her own private property, it must become public property whenever the Prince of Wales became King. The state of the law on the subject was inequitable and inconvenient. For if the Queen wished to aid her eldest son in meeting expenses which he was every day incurring on her behalf, she had either to sell her private estates, endeared to her by a thousand tender family associations, or appeal to Parliament for a grant, a course which was as objectionable to her as to the Prince. On the other hand, if these private estates, when inherited by the Prince at her death, could be treated as private property, the Heir Apparent could easily obtain any additional subsidies he might need, by mortgaging his expectations. And yet the generous intentions of the Queen, and the honest purposes of the Prince which formed the motives for the Bill, were snappishly and churlishly misrepresented by several Radicals, and by at least one aristocratic Whig. Mr. George Anderson opposed the Bill because Sovereigns kept their wills secret. Sir Charles Dilke objected to it because he said it allowed the indefinite accumulation of private property in the hands of the Sovereign. His argument, in fact, came to this, that profligacy in the Monarch should be encouraged by the posthumous confiscation of his private estates. As for Mr. Bouverie, he asked what business the Sovereign had to possess large private means? The Bill, however, passed, and an incident which at one time threatened to be unpleasant for the Queen and her children was discreetly closed.