From a Photograph] [by Hughes & Mullins, Ryde.
BRINGING HOME THE BODY OF H.R.H. PRINCE HENRY OF BATTENBERG.
Prince Henry had volunteered for the Expedition to Coomassie in the autumn of 1895; he was taken ill with fever on the march and died on his way home. He was buried in Whippingham Church, near Osborne, February 4, 1896. The picture represents the transference of the body from H.M.S. Blenheim to the Royal Yacht Alberta.
It was September before the measure reached the Upper House, whence it was thrown out by the unprecedented proportion of 419 to 14 votes. |Its Rejection by the Lords.| Among the majority were numbered no less than sixty-two peers whom the Queen had created on Mr. Gladstone’s own recommendation. The attention of the Ministerial party was then directed to stirring up popular indignation against the House of Lords on account of their resistance to the popular will. But it has to be confessed that this appeal evoked remarkably little response. On the other hand, considerable impatience was manifested on the part of many supporters of the Government at the general election, on account of the neglect to carry out the multiform promises contained in the Newcastle programme. Accordingly, Parliament was summoned together for a winter session in November in order to consider the Parish Councils and Employers’ Liability Bills. These important measures, which went through the successive stages to completion in the course of 1894, remain the principal achievement of Mr. Gladstone’s last year in the public service. |Mr. Gladstone Resigns the Leadership.| Early in 1894 his withdrawal from active politics was announced; the leadership of the House of Commons devolved upon Sir William Harcourt, and, although Mr. Gladstone did not resign his seat for Midlothian, he brought to a close a period of sixty-two years’ attendance in the House of Commons. His last utterance from the Treasury Bench was a vehement denunciation of the action of the House of Lords in dealing with the Bills last referred to.
R. Ponsonby Staples.] [By permission of Messrs. Graves & Co., Pall Mall.
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS: Mr. GLADSTONE INTRODUCING THE HOME RULE BILL, February 13, 1893.
Mr. Gladstone stands at the table: on the seat behind him are Mr. John Morley, Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Marjoribanks (now Lord Tweedmouth), Mr. Mundella and Sir C. Russell (Lord Russell), and Mr. Herbert Gladstone sits in the “gangway.” Mr. Asquith can be seen between Mr. Gladstone and the clerk at the table. On the front Opposition bench, beginning at the further end, are: Sir E. Clarke, Sir R. Webster (leaning forward), Mr. Goschen, Mr. Balfour, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr. Edward Carson.
The removal of such a puissant personality from their head could not but have a serious effect on the Ministerial array, composed as it was of such Old Liberals as had embraced Home Rule out of confidence in Mr. Gladstone, New Liberals of an extremely Democratic type under the nominal lead of Mr. Labouchere, the Labour representatives, Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites (the last-named being further split into sections at war among themselves). On no single subject were these various groups united save in a desire to get Home Rule out of the way. Home Rule, indeed, had been disposed of, but not in the only way to satisfy its advocates. The difficulty of the situation was intensified by the successor to Mr. Gladstone chosen by Her Majesty. |Lord Rosebery becomes Prime Minister.| In sending for her Foreign Minister, the Earl of Rosebery, she was acting, doubtless, on the advice of Mr. Gladstone himself, but in the choice of a peer there was abundant cause of dissatisfaction to most of the Ministerialists in the House of Commons, who had placed the “mending or ending”—preferably the ending—of the House of Lords in the forefront of their programme. Besides, it was considered by very many that Sir William Harcourt had done more to earn the leadership of the party than Lord Rosebery, and it soon became apparent, not only that this appointment was a cause of further disunion in the Home Rule ranks, but that Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt were far from cordial in their official relations. On June 21, 1895, a listless debate was in progress on the Army Estimates, the House was far less than half full, when Mr. Brodrick moved a reduction of £100 in the salary of the Secretary for War, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, in order to call attention to the alleged deficiency in the stores of small-arms ammunition. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman offered his personal assurance that the amount in store was adequate, but the Opposition declined to accept it in view of the official figures laid before the House. A division was called; there was nothing to indicate the critical nature of it till Mr. Ellis, the chief Ministerial Whip, to whom the Clerk at the Table had handed the paper automatically, passed it on to Mr. Douglas, the chief Opposition Whip, when it was found that the Government were in a minority of eight—132 votes to 125.
