The Corrupt Practices Bill was read a second time on the 4th of June, and it not only restricted expenditure on elections, but inflicted stringent penalties for bribery and intimidation in every form, making candidates responsible for the acts of their agents, prohibiting the use of public-houses as committee-rooms, and the payment of conveyances to bring voters to the poll. The Tories, the Parnellites, and one or two Radicals like Mr. Peter Rylands, fought hard to relax the stringency of the measure. It was obstructed in Committee, but ultimately passed both Houses with no important alterations. The Agricultural Holdings Bill was also strongly opposed. It gave tenants a right to compensation for improvements, which was to be inalienable by contract. The most important amendment, which was moved and carried by Mr. A. J. Balfour, limiting compensation to the actual outlay, represented the spirit in which the Opposition sought to destroy the utility of the Bill. As Mr. Clare Sewell Read (one of the Conservatives who represented the agricultural interests) observed, this amendment enabled the landlord to say to the tenant, “Heads I win; tails you lose. If your improvement succeeds, I get the profit out of it, and you only the outlay; if it does not succeed, you get the loss.” The amendment was struck out on Report, and, though the House of Lords tried to mutilate the Bill, their worst amendments were rejected by the Commons, and the measure passed. The controversy in the House of Lords was remarkable for Lord Salisbury’s failure to hold his Party at the end firm to the policy of resistance. A useful Bill prohibiting payment of wages in public-houses was also passed. Nor was Ireland neglected. The Tramways Act enabled Irish Local Authorities to construct, with the support of Government guarantees, tramways and light railways, and the Government further assented to provisions to promote by State aid a scheme for transferring labourers from “congested” to thinly-peopled districts. In August a Bill was passed setting apart a portion of the Irish Church surplus to promote the building of fishing harbours. A useful Irish Registration Bill was rejected by the Peers, but Mr. T. P. O’Connor contrived to pass a Bill enabling Rural Sanitary Authorities to borrow money from the Government for the construction of labourers’ cottages. It cannot, however, be said that the Irish Members were grateful for these measures. They still pursued their favourite policy of exasperation, and their alliance with the Tories led to a more systematic and daring use of obstruction than had ever been seen in the House of Commons. At first Sir Stafford Northcote seemed unwilling to countenance obstructive tactics; but Lord Randolph Churchill’s bitter attacks on his leadership in the Times (April 2), and the impatience of the Tory Party, forced the hesitating hand of their leader in the Commons. The evil assumed such serious dimensions that Mr. Bright denounced at Birmingham, in terms of indignant eloquence,[185] “the men who now afflict the House, and who from night to night insult the majesty of the British people.” Thus it came to pass, as the Times said in its review of the Session, that “the main part of the legislation of the year, with the exception of one or two Bills, was huddled together, and hustled through in both Houses during the month of August, amidst an ever-dwindling attendance of Members.” There was only one Bill which was not obstructed—the Explosives Act; in fact, it was passed in a panic. The events that led to its production were somewhat startling. On the night of the 15th of March an attempt was made to blow up the Local Government Board Offices in Whitehall by dynamite, and about the same time a similar outrage was perpetrated on the offices of the Times in Printing House Square. Guards of soldiers and police were immediately posted at all places likely to be attacked, and the connection of these crimes with the seizures of dynamite which were from time to time made by the police in provincial towns, and the arrest of eight conspirators engaged in the “dynamite war” at Liverpool in March, could scarcely be doubted. On the 9th of April Sir William Harcourt’s Explosives Act was therefore carried through both Houses after an unavailing protest from Lord Salisbury, who complained that the Peers were taken by surprise.[186] After the Bill had become law packages of dynamite were seized at Leicester and Cupar-Fife; four men were condemned at Liverpool as dynamitards; several arrests were made at Glasgow; and on the 30th of October there were two explosions in the tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway—between Westminster and Charing Cross, and between Praed Street and Edgware Road.
THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, KENSINGTON.
Egypt furnished the Opposition with many opportunities for embarrassing the Ministry. Lord Hartington had seriously damaged the prestige of the Government by his pusillanimous declaration at the opening of the Session that the English troops would be recalled from Egypt in six months. Though Mr. Gladstone, on his return from Cannes, was compelled to throw his colleague over and explain that this statement was purely conjectural, the distrust which Lord Hartington had inspired could not be completely eradicated. A more serious difficulty, however, arose out of the exorbitant tolls which the Suez Canal Company levied on the shipping trade. Yielding to the pressure of shipping and commercial interests, Mr. Gladstone sanctioned an agreement by which M. de Lesseps was to provide additional accommodation by digging a second canal. He was also to reduce the tolls gradually, and admit a few Englishmen to his Board of Management. In return the British Government were to procure him the concession of the land for the second canal, and enable him to raise a loan of £8,000,000 at 3-1/4 per cent. A storm of opposition was raised to this project, on the ground that it recognised M. de Lesseps’s monopoly to the canalisation of the Isthmus of Suez. The agreement, which was announced on the 28th of April, was abandoned on the 23rd of July.
In South Africa the policy of the Government was attacked during the Session on the ground that it connived at the oppression of the native chiefs by the Boers, who were not carrying out the Transvaal Convention. The restoration and overthrow of Cetewayo also provoked criticism, but the verdict of the country was that the debates all ended in demonstrating one point, which was this: the existing tangle of affairs in South Africa was entirely due to the policy of the late Government, and the existing Government had not been able to discover any way of satisfactorily neutralising the blunders of their predecessors. But no question arising in British dependencies created so much strife as the Indian Criminal Procedure Amendment Bill, popularly called the Ilbert Bill. Lord Lytton had laid down a rule whereby every year one-sixth of the vacancies in the Indian Civil Service must be filled up by natives. As they advanced in the Magistracy and became eligible for service as District Magistrates and Sessions Judges, a difficulty arose. Either they must, like European officials of the same grades, be allowed to try Europeans as well as native offenders against the Criminal Law, or they must be virtually wasted. Moreover, an offensive slight must be put on the Indian servants of the Empress, by prohibiting them from exercising all the functions pertaining to their grade and rank. In Presidency towns no difficulty arose. There native magistrates of this grade were allowed to have jurisdiction over Europeans, the theory being that they acted under the moral censorship of a European press. But in country districts it was alleged that they could not be trusted. In fact, European magistrates must, according to the opponents of the Bill, be found for every district in which even a handful of Europeans were living. Yet, as Lord Lytton had diminished the number of Europeans in the Service and put natives in their places, a serious administrative difficulty might be created if the native judges were not entrusted with the duties of the Europeans whom they had displaced. An explosion of race-hatred was the result of the Ilbert Bill, and the same class of Anglo-Indians who denounced “Clemency” Canning during the “White Terror” of 1857, now denounced Lord Ripon in the same violent language. They even attempted to induce the Volunteers to resign, and Sir Donald Stewart, the Commander-in-Chief, who, like Sir Frederick Roberts, supported the measure, condemned the “wicked and criminal attempts” which the opponents of the Bill had made to stir up animosity against the Government in the Army. Ultimately a compromise was arrived at, by which a European when tried before a native judge could claim a jury, of which not less than one-half must consist of Europeans or Americans. Curiously enough, at the time this controversy was being developed into a fierce antagonism of races in India, tidings came to England to the effect that a tribe in Orissa had begun to worship the Queen as a goddess.[187] When the natives on the frontier elevated General John Nicholson to the dignity of a god, the stout soldier used to order his worshippers to be flogged for their idolatry. Whether any official steps were taken to discourage a cult that might have rendered the Queen-Empress ridiculous, was never known. The sect who took her for their deity seems to have vanished from Indian history.
The Queen played but a slight part in public life in the early part of 1883. Whilst at Osborne in January she awarded the Albert Medal to the survivors of the gallant exploring party who distinguished themselves by saving life at the Baddesley Colliery Explosion in May, 1882, and she sent to the Mayor of Bradford an expression of sympathy with the sufferers from the fall of a great chimney stack in that town at the end of the year—a disaster involving the sacrifice of fifty-three lives. On the 14th of February her Majesty held a Council at Windsor, and revised the Royal Speech for the opening of the Session. On the 19th of February she attended the funeral of Pay-Sergeant Mayo, of the Coldstream Guards, at Windsor, who had died suddenly whilst on duty at the Castle, and on the same day, owing to the Prince of Wales holding the opening levee of the season on her behalf, her Majesty was able to be present as one of the sponsors at the baptism of the infant son of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught at Windsor. On the 6th and 13th of March, however, her Majesty held Drawing Rooms at Buckingham Palace. On the 17th of March Lady Florence Dixie alleged that a murderous attack had been made on her in the shrubbery of her house at Windsor, by two men disguised as women. As her ladyship had been writing a good deal on the Irish Question, and as the town was in a panic over the dynamite war waged by the Fenians against public buildings, it was suggested that this outrage might have been planned by one of the Irish Secret Societies. Investigation, however, indicated that Lady Florence must have been labouring under a mistake, and the incident would have passed out of sight but for its effect on the Queen’s peace of mind. Lady Florence Dixie’s story had alarmed the Queen, showing her, as it did, that there was peril almost at the doors of Windsor Castle. Her Majesty sent Lord Methuen, Lady Ely, and Sir Henry Ponsonby with messages of sympathy to Lady Florence Dixie, and finally the Queen’s personal attendant, Mr. John Brown, was despatched to examine the ground and report on the circumstances of the outrage. He caught a chill in the shrubbery of Lady Florence Dixie’s villa, and when he returned to Windsor Castle complained of being ill. He died of erysipelas on the 27th of March, the day after the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Albany was christened. Brown was the son of a tenant of Colonel Farquharson’s and began life as gillie to the Prince Consort. For nineteen years he was the personal attendant of the Queen, and no servant was ever so completely trusted by a royal master or mistress. “John Brown,” writes the Queen in a note to her “Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “in 1858 became my regular attendant out of doors everywhere in the Highlands. He commenced as gillie in 1859, and was selected by Albert and me to go with my carriage. In 1857 he entered our service permanently, and began in that year leading my pony, and advanced step by step by his good conduct and intelligence. His attentive care and faithfulness cannot be exceeded, and the state of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried and weakened, renders such qualifications most valuable, and, indeed, most needful upon all occasions. He has since most deservedly been promoted to be an upper servant and my permanent personal attendant (December, 1865). He has all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-minded, kind-hearted, and disinterested, always ready to oblige, and of a discretion rarely to be met with.” By all accounts Brown seems to have been an honest brusque sort of man, whose fidelity to his master and mistress won their entire confidence. Extraordinary stories were told in Society of his influence over the Queen, and of the almost despotic authority which he wielded over the Royal Family. Even the highest officers of the Royal Household had to speak him fairly, otherwise trouble came to them. He attended the Queen in all her walks and drives, and had the privilege of speaking to her with the rough candour in which he habitually indulged, on any subject he chose to talk about. He had often been engaged in services of a delicate nature for the Royal Family, and it was said that nothing could be said or done, no matter how secretly, at or about the Court, without his immediately knowing of it. Löhlein, the Prince Consort’s old valet, was the only person in the Household whom Brown never dared to meddle with. Through the Court Circular the Queen bewailed the “grievous shock” she felt at the “irreparable loss” of “an honest, faithful, and devoted follower, a trustworthy, discreet, and straightforward man,” whose fidelity “had secured for himself the real friendship of the Queen.” This grief was not only natural but eminently creditable to her. Brown had for years been the guardian of her life, and in the case of Connor’s attack he had defended her with the grim courage of his race. But for him her Majesty could not have enjoyed that freedom of movement out of doors which had been of
JOHN BROWN.