Sixty Years a Queen: The Story of Her Majesty's Reign

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Title: Sixty Years a Queen: The Story of Her Majesty's Reign

Author: Sir Herbert Maxwell

Release date: March 22, 2013 [eBook #42386]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber's note:

Many of the images in the book have multi-line captions, and
the first line of most of them contains attributions (credits)
set off by unpaired curly braces. For example,
J. A. Vinter.} {National Portrait Gallery.
SIR ROWLAND HILL
under a portrait tells us the the portrait of Sir Rowland
Hill was by J. A. Vinter and hangs in the National Portrait
Gallery. Some illustrations have only an artist or only a
location.

Sidenotes have been repositioned to immediately precede the
paragraphs in which they occurred.

Inverted asterisms are indicated by three asterisks ***.

Table of Contents added by transcriber.

SIXTY YEARS A QUEEN.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface iii

PART ONE: SIXTY YEARS A QUEEN

CHAPTER I.

1837-1838.

Death of William IV.--Princess Alexandrina Victoria summoned to
the Throne--Ignorance of the Public about the young Queen--Her
early training--Severance of the Crown of Great Britain and
Hanover--Prorogation of Parliament--Early Railways--Electric
Telegraph--The Coronation--Popular Reception of Wellington and
Soult--State of Parties--Result of General Election--Rebellion
in Canada--The Earl of Durham--Debate on Vote by Ballot. 3

CHAPTER II.

1837-1842.

Lord Melbourne's services and character--Prevailing discontent
of the Working Classes--Its Causes--The Chartists--Riots at
Newport and elsewhere--Fall of the Ministry--Sir Robert Peel
sent for--The "Bedchamber Question"--Melbourne recalled to
Office--The Penny Post--Its remarkable Success--Betrothal of the
Queen--Character of Prince Albert--Announcement to
Parliament--Debates--Marriage of the Queen and Prince
Albert--War declared with China--Capture of Chusan--Bombardment
of the Bogue Forts--Peace concluded under the Walls of Nankin. 18

CHAPTER III.

1841-1846.

Unpopularity of the Whigs--Fall of the Melbourne
Ministry--Peel's Cabinet--The Afghan War--Murder of Sir A.
Burnes and Sir W. Macnaghten--The Retreat from
Cabul--Annihilation of the British Force--The Corn Duties--The
Pioneers of Free Trade--Failure of Potato Crop in Ireland--Lord
John Russell's conversion to Free Trade--Peel and Repeal--Rupture
of the Tory Party--The Corn Duties repealed--Defeat and
Resignation of the Government--Review of Peel's Administration. 30

CHAPTER IV.

1833-1849.

The Churches of England and Scotland--"Tracts for the
Times"--Newman, Keble, and Pusey--"Ten Years' Conflict" in
Scotland--Disruption of the Church--Dr. Chalmers--Rise of the
Free Church--Affairs of British India--First Sikh War--Battles
of Meeanee, Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sobraon--Second Sikh
War--Murder of Vans Agnew and Anderson--Battle of
Ramnuggur--Siege and Fall of Mooltan--Battles of Chilianwalla
and Goojerat--Annexation of the Punjab. 41

CHAPTER V.

1846-1850.

The Irish Famine--Smith O'Brien's Rebellion--Widow Cormack's
Cabbages--The Special Commission--Revival of the Chartist
Movement--The Monster Petition--Its Exposure and Collapse of the
Movement--Revolutionary Movements in Britain compared with those
in other Countries--Growing Affection for the Queen--Its
Causes--Royal Visit to Ireland--The Pacifico Imbroglio--Rupture
with France Imminent--_Civis Romanus Sum_--Lord Palmerston's
Rise--Sir Robert Peel's Death--The Invention of Chloroform. 47

CHAPTER VI.

1849-1851.

Prince Albert's Industry--His proposal for a Great
Exhibition--Adoption of the Scheme--Competing Designs--Mr.
Paxton's selected--Erection of the Crystal Palace--Colonel
Sibthorp denounces the Scheme--Papal Titles in Great
Britain--Popular Indignation--The Ecclesiastical Titles
Bill--Defeat of Ministers on the Question of the
Franchise--Difficulty in finding a Successor to Russell--He
resumes Office--Opening of the Great Exhibition--Its success and
close. 55

CHAPTER VII.

1851-1853.

Louis Napoleon's Coup d'État--Condemned in the English
Press--Lord Palmerston's Indiscretion Rebuked by the Queen--He
Repeats it and is Removed from Office--Opening of the New Houses
of Parliament--French Invasion Apprehended--Russell's Militia
Bill--Defeat and Resignation of Ministers--The "Who? Who?"
Cabinet--Death of the Duke of Wellington--His Funeral--The
Haynau Incident--General Election--Disraeli's First
Budget--Defeat and Resignation of Ministers--The Coalition
Cabinet--Expansion of the British Colonies--Repeal of the
Transportation Act. 63

CHAPTER VIII.

1853-1854.

The "Sick Man"--Position of the Eastern Question--Projects of
the Emperor Nicholas--The Custody of the Holy Places--Prince
Menschikoff's Demand--Russian Invasion of Moldo-Wallachia--The
Vienna Note--Declaration of War by the Porte--Destruction of the
Turkish Fleet--Resignation of Lord Palmerston--Great Britain and
France Declare War with Russia--State of the British Armaments. 73

CHAPTER IX.

1854-1856.

Mr. Gladstone's War Budget--Humiliation and Prayer--The Invasion
of the Crimea--The Battle of Alma--A Fruitless Victory--Effect
in England--War Correspondents--Balaklava--Cavalry Charges by
the Heavy and Light Brigades--"Our's Not to Reason Why"--Russian
Sortie--Battle of Inkermann--Breakdown of Transport and
Commissariat--Hurricane in the Black Sea--Florence
Nightingale--Fall of the Coalition Cabinet--Lord Palmerston
Forms a Ministry--Victory of the Turks at
Eupatoria--Unsuccessful Attack by the Allies--Death of Lord
Raglan--His Character--Battle of Tchernaya--Evacuation of
Sebastopol--Surrender of Kars--Conclusion of Peace. 79

CHAPTER X.

1857-1858.

The Lorcha _Arrow_--War with China--Defeat of the
Government--Dissolution of Parliament--Palmerston returns to
Office--Startling News from India--Mutiny at Meerut--The
Chupatties--Loyalty of the Sikhs--Lord Canning's Presence of
Mind--Disarmament of Sepoys at Meean Meer--The Rising at
Cawnpore--Nana Sahib's Treachery--The Massacre--Siege of
Delhi--The Relief of Lucknow--Death of Havelock--Sir Hugh Rose's
Campaign--The Ranee of Jhansi--Capture and Execution of Tantia
Topee--End of the East India Company's Rule--Marriage of the
Princess Royal. 92

CHAPTER XI.

1858-1860.

Commercial Panic in London--Suspension of the Bank Charter
Act--The Orsini Plot--The Conspiracy to Murder Bill--Defeat and
Resignation of the Government--Lord Derby's Second
Administration--Disraeli's Reform Bill--Vote of No
Confidence--Defeat and Resignation of the Government--Lord
Palmerston's Second Administration--Threatened French
Invasion--The Volunteers--The Paper Duty Repealed by the Commons
and Restored by the Lords--A Constitutional Problem--Its
Solution--War with China--British and French Defeat at
Pei-ho--Return of Lord Elgin to China--Wreck of the
_Malabar_--Capture of the Tangku and Taku Forts--Occupation of
Tien-tsin--Murder of British Officers and others--Capitulation
of Pekin--Destruction of the Summer Palace--Treaty with China. 108

CHAPTER XII.

1861-1865.

The American Civil War--Recognition of Confederate States as
Belligerents--English Opinion in Favour of the Confederates--The
_Trent_ Affair--Dispatch of Troops to Canada--Death of the
Prince Consort--His Last Memorandum--The Cruiser
_Alabama_--Claims against Great Britain--Arbitration--Award
Unfavourable to Great Britain--Public Indignation--Marriage of
the Prince of Wales--The Schleswig-Holstein
Difficulty--Neutrality Observed by Great Britain--Popular
Sympathy with Denmark--Dissolution of Parliament--Result of the
Elections--Death of Lord Palmerston. 117

CHAPTER XIII.

1866-1872.

Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill--The Cave of Adullam--Defeat and
Resignation of the Ministry--Retirement of Earl Russell--Lord
Derby's Last Administration--Disturbance in Hyde
Park--Commercial Panic--Completion of the Atlantic Cable--Mr.
Disraeli's Reform Bill--Secessions from the Cabinet--The
Fenians--War with Abyssinia--Retirement of Lord Derby--The Irish
State Church--Dissolution of Parliament--Liberal Triumph--Mr.
Gladstone's Cabinet--Disestablishment of the Irish Church--Death
of Lord Derby--Irish Land Legislation--National Education--Army
Purchase--The Ballot Bill--Adoption of Secret Voting. 127

CHAPTER XIV.

1870-1880.

The Franco-German War--Russia seizes her Opportunity--The Irish
University Bill--Defeat and Resignation of Ministers--Mr.
Gladstone resumes Office--Dissolution of
Parliament--Conservative Victory--The Ashanti War--Mr.
Disraeli's Third Administration--Mr. Gladstone Retires from the
Leadership--Annexation of the Fiji Islands--Purchase of Suez
Canal Shares--Visit of the Prince of Wales to India--The Queen's
New Title--Threatening Action of Russia--The Bulgarian
Massacres--Disraeli becomes Earl of Beaconsfield--The
Russo-Turkish War--Great Britain Prepares to Defend
Constantinople--Secession of Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby--The
"Jingo" Party--The Berlin Congress and Treaty--"Peace with
Honour"--Massacre at Cabul--War with Afghanistan--The Zulu
War--Disaster of Isandhlana. 138

CHAPTER XV.

1879-1881.

The Condition of Egypt--Mr. Goschen's Commission--Ismail's _Coup
d'état_--His Deposition by the Sultan--Establishment of the Dual
Control--The First Midlothian Campaign--Commercial and
Agricultural Depression--Sudden Dissolution of Parliament--Lord
Derby joins the Liberals--Second Midlothian Campaign--Great
Liberal Victory--Mr. Gladstone's Second Administration--Charles
Stuart Parnell and the Irish Home Rule Party--War with
Afghanistan--Battle of Maiwand--General Roberts's March--Defeat
of Ayub Khan and Evacuation of Cabul and Candahar--Revolt of the
Transvaal--Battles of Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill--Establishment
of the Boer Republic--Weakness of the Conservative
Opposition--The Fourth Party--Irish Affairs--Boycotting--A New
Coercion Bill--The Irish Land Bill--Resignation of the Duke of
Argyll--Death of Lord Beaconsfield--Military Revolt in
Egypt--Bombardment of Alexandria--Expedition against
Arabi--Battles of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir--Overthrow of
Arabi. 150

CHAPTER XVI.

1881-1887.

Imprisonment of Irish Members of Parliament--Assassination of
Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke--Prevalence of Outrages
in Ireland--A New Coercion Bill--Trial and Execution of the
Phoenix Park Murderers--The Dynamite Conspiracy--Corrupt
Practices Act--The Affairs of Egypt--General Gordon sent to
Khartoum--Gordon Besieged--Inaction of the Government--Relief of
Khartoum Undertaken--Too Late!--Death of Gordon--Lord Wolseley's
Campaign--Abandonment of the Soudan--Mr. Gladstone's Reform
Bill--The Question of Redistribution of Seats--The Frontier
Question in Afghanistan--Defeat of Ministers on the Budget and
their Resignation--Lord Salisbury's First
Administration--Dissolution of Parliament--The Irish Party and
the Balance of Power--Mr. Gladstone's Third Administration--His
Conversion to Home Rule--Rupture of the Liberal Party--The Home
Rule Bill Rejected--Dissolution of Parliament--Unionist
Victory--Lord Salisbury's Second Administration--Lord Randolph
Churchill Resigns--The Round Table Conference. 161

CHAPTER XVII.

1887-1897.

Adoption of the Closure by the House of Commons--The Queen's
Jubilee--Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey--The Imperial
Institute--"Parnellism and Crime"--Appointment of Special
Commission of Judges--Their Report--Fall of Parnell--Disruption
of the Irish Party--Deaths of Parnell and W. H. Smith--The
Baring Crisis--The Local Government Bill--Establishment of
County Councils--Free Education--Death of the Duke of
Clarence--General Election--Mr. Gladstone's Fourth Midlothian
Campaign--The Newcastle Programme--Victory of Home Rulers--The
Second Home Rule Bill--Its Rejection by the Lords--Parish
Councils and Employers' Liability Acts--Mr. Gladstone Resigns
the Leadership--Lord Rosebery becomes Prime Minister--Disunion
of Ministerialists--Defeat and Resignation of the
Government--Lord Salisbury's Third Administration--General
Election--Unionist Triumph--The Eastern Question--Massacres in
Armenia--Lord Rosebery Resigns the Leadership--Trouble in the
Transvaal--Dr. Jameson's Raid--The German Emperor's Message--The
Venezuelan Dispute--President Cleveland's Message. 172

CHAPTER XVIII.

Material Progress during the Reign--Modern Locomotion--The
Bicycle--Motor Carriages--The Proposed Channel Tunnel--Steam
Navigation--Ironclads--The Telephone--The
Phonograph--Electricity as an Illuminant--Photography--Its
Effect on Painting and Engraving--Victorian
Architecture--Absence of Principle in Design--Universal
Education--Its Effect on Moral Character and Literary
Habits--The Predominance of Fiction--The Growth and Character of
British Journalism--The Advance of Natural Science--Surgery and
Medicine--Vaccination--Antiseptic and Aseptic
Treatment--Bacteriology--The Röntgen Rays--Sanitary
Legislation--Conclusion. 184

PART TWO: THE DIAMOND JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

The Central Idea of the Celebrations--The Imperial Character of
the Pageant--The Colonial Premiers Invited--The
Decorations--Influx of Visitors--Grand Stands--Precautions
against Accidents--Thanksgiving Services on Accession Day--The
Queen's Arrival in London--Night in the Streets. 193

CHAPTER II.

The Weather--A brilliant day for a brilliant pageant--The
Queen's Message to her people--The Colonial Procession--The
Royal Procession--Loyal enthusiasm--The Queen's reception at the
City boundary--The Service at the steps of St. Paul's--The halt
at the Mansion House--In the Borough--Return to the
Palace--Presents to the Queen--Congratulations from abroad--The
Royal Dinner. 202

CHAPTER III.

Illuminations in London--Festivities in the Provinces and the
Colonies--Addresses of Congratulation from the Lords and
Commons--Gathering of School Children on Constitution
Hill--State Performance at the Opera--The Princess of Wales's
Dinners to the Poor--State Reception--Special Performance at the
Lyceum--Torchlight Evolutions by Etonians at Windsor--Naval
Review at Spithead--The Fleet Illuminated--The Colonial Troops
at the Naval Review. 219

CHAPTER IV.

The Queen's Visit to Kensington--Garden Party at Buckingham
Palace--Review at Aldershot--Gift of a Battleship--The Prince of
Wales's Hospital Fund--The Jubilee Medals--Conclusion. 232

THE JUBILEE HYMN. 240

INDEX.

ERRATA.

FOOTNOTES.

Transcriber's Notes.

SIXTY YEARS A QUEEN.

[Illustration: HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN HER ROBES OF STATE

From the

Painting by F. WINTERHALTER

Graciously lent by Her Majesty specially for "Sixty Years a Queen."]

[Illustration:

Sixty Years
a Queen

The Story of her Majesty's Reign

TOLD BY

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BART, M.P.

ILLUSTRATED--Chiefly from the Royal Collections

by Special Permission.

ARRANGED & PRINTED BY EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE,
HER MAJESTY'S PRINTERS, LONDON.

PUBLISHED BY HARMSWORTH BROS. LIMITED,
24, TUDOR STREET, E.C.]

[Illustration]

PREFACE

An attempt has been made in the following pages to give a general view
of the principal events in the reign of Queen Victoria and the changes
resulting from the development of the means of travel and communication,
the accumulation of wealth, the acquirement of political power by the
people, and the spread of education among them. In making this attempt
the author had to choose between compiling a dry chronicle, and placing
before his readers the salient points in a period of rapid and
successful progress. He chose the latter; but, in order to carry his
purpose into effect within the limits assigned to him, he had to pass in
silence over the names of many persons distinguished in politics,
science, literature, art, and warfare. Those, or the descendants of
them, whose achievements entitle them to an honoured place in the annals
of their age, will understand that it was possible only to find room for
mention of a few of the illustrious band who have contributed to the
great work of empire and civilisation.

Especially in regard to literature, it may be felt that the reference to
that department is out of all proportion to its importance. But the
subject is so vast that it is almost hopeless to deal with, to any good
purpose, in two or three pages. Attention has, however, been drawn in
the concluding chapter to the effects of universal compulsory education
on our national prosperity, moral character, and intellectual life. In
respect of its action on the material well-being of the population, it
is not unreasonable to attribute to its influence part of the marked
decrease in pauperism in the last quarter of a century, even if the more
equable diffusion of wealth be reckoned the principal factor in that
process. If the results quoted cannot be proved to be the direct outcome
of universal education, at all events they synchronise in a remarkable
manner with the period of its existence.

Turning next to the literary habits of the people, it is not possible to
doubt the important bearing which recreative reading has upon the
national character. We are not, and probably never shall be, a nation of
students, but we have become within the limits of the present reign a
nation of readers. The press of the country is free--free in a sense
that has never been tolerated in any other State. Public men and
measures are submitted to searching criticism in a degree that would be
wholly intolerable but for the general high tone maintained in British
journalism. There are few things more remarkable in our civilisation
than the abundance of excellent writing supplied to the daily and weekly
press, and the sound morality which pervades it.

Next to the newspaper press, and hardly inferior to it in influence, is
the mass of fiction produced year after year in ever-increasing volume.
To ascertain how vastly its attractions prevail over those of
historical, poetic, philosophic, or scientific works, it is only
necessary to consult the returns of any free library. For good or for
ill, the thoughts of countless readers, old and young, are continually
engaged on the fictitious fortunes, dilemmas, and vicissitudes of
imaginary individuals. On the whole, the influence of this literature is
harmless and in some degree salutary, though it is true that within
recent years a school of novelists has arisen, containing some skilful
and attractive writers, who rely on winning popularity by going as near
as they dare to the worst kind of realism pursued by certain French
authors. It will do incalculable damage, not only to English literature,
but to the English character, if the public, in whose hands is the
verdict, encourage perseverance in this line. Hitherto, in the present
century, fiction has been maintained in Great Britain at a higher level
than it has ever touched before. The most popular writers of
romance--Scott, Marryat, Thackeray, Dickens (not to mention any living
authors)--dealt, indeed, with the foibles, crimes, and misfortunes of
men and women, but they never failed to keep a high ideal before their
readers. Their favourite characters were depicted as at war with evil:
not always successful, not without frailty, and even folly; but no
religion ever preached a purer morality than did these masters in the
story-teller's craft. It will be deplorable if people learn to employ
their leisure, not in narratives of heroism, self-denial, and innocent
love, but in studies of degradation and despair, and restless stirring
of sexual problems.

Some of the most striking and valuable discoveries in physical science
receive mention in the course of this narrative, as being among the more
memorable features of the reign, but it has been impossible even to
allude to countless others, almost as important to the welfare and
progress of humanity. Less obvious to the general public, but not less
remarkable, has been the application of the exact and comparative method
to intellectual research, so that, although students still differ, and
are likely to continue to the end of time to differ on some of the
conclusions at which they arrive, for the first time in the world's
history they are of one mind about the right system of enquiry.

There are still to be witnessed in the Queen's realm those violent
contrasts between vast wealth and grinding poverty, which must ever
arise in every civilised State in periods of great commercial and
productive activity. They are a standing perplexity and distress to
philanthropists; but one of the brightest features in the reign of Queen
Victoria, of infinitely deeper significance than the accumulation of
riches by the nation and by individuals, is the degree to which that
wealth has penetrated the middle and industrial classes.

The effect of the application of steam to machinery, which coincided so
nearly with the beginning of the present reign, was, indeed, injurious
to certain limited industries, but the general result has been a
continuous rise in the wages paid to artisans. The first few years of
the factory system, coupled with a lamentable ignorance of, and
indifference to, sanitary principles, brought a terrible increase of
disease, squalor, and suffering in their train. This soon attracted the
attention of philanthropists, among whom the leading place must be
assigned to the Earl of Shaftesbury; and year by year the two rival
political parties have vied with each other in applying remedial and
protective legislation to the evils of overcrowding, insanitary
dwellings, and other dangers besetting extraordinary industrial
activity. There are slums still, but they must be hunted for, instead of
forcing themselves on attention as was the case not long ago in almost
every large town. Artisans' dwellings, far exceeding in comfort, in
solidity, and in sanitation anything that our forefathers may have
dreamt of, are now the rule and not the exception.

Mere quotation of figures will not make clear the increased share of the
national wealth which now finds its way into the pockets of the working
classes, because the unprecedented cheapness of all the necessaries and
many of the luxuries of life (intoxicants alone excepted) has raised the
buying power of wages in a degree which cannot be estimated. Mr. W. H.
Mallock, a well-known writer on this subject, has recently devoted some
close enquiry to it, and has brought out some remarkable results. He
quotes the calculation of statisticians upon the income of the nation in
1851, when it was estimated at £600,000,000, and in 1881, when it was
reckoned at £1,200,000,000, having doubled itself in thirty years. He
then deducts from these totals the amounts assessed to income-tax,
arriving by this process at the total paid in wages (or the total of all
incomes under £150), which was £340,000,000 in 1851, and £660,000,000 in
1881. In those thirty years the wage-earning class had increased in
number from 26,000,000 to 30,000,000, or 16 per cent., while the wages
paid to them had increased by nearly 100 per cent. In fact the income of
the working classes in 1881 was about equal to that of the whole nation
in 1851, with largely increased purchasing power, owing to reduction in
prices.

But this does not exhaust the evidence of the diffusion of wealth which
has been going on, a process which is apt to be overlooked in the
attention attracted to the building up of a few colossal fortunes. Mr.
Mallock shows, by taking the increase in the number of incomes between
£150 and £1,000 a year, how greatly the middle classes have increased in
numbers. Persons assessed for taxation on incomes between these limits
have increased in number during the period under consideration from
300,000 to 990,000, that is, in a ratio of nearly 250 per cent. It is
hardly possible to over-estimate the importance of these figures in
their bearing on the prospects of the stability of the present social
system in Great Britain. Had this enormous increase in wealth been
accumulated in a few hands, it must have given a great impetus to the
revolutionary agencies always present under settled governments. But its
dispersal among a multitude of owners broadens the foundations of
authority, and at the same time acts as a powerful check upon
legislation for a limited class.

It must be admitted that, side by side with the advance in general
welfare, certain less desirable incidents of our civilisation claim
attention. One of these is the recurrence of disputes on a large scale
between employers and workmen, resulting in industrial strikes far
exceeding in extent and intensity anything of the sort that could be
organised before the legislature relaxed the laws against conspiracy and
combination. Although labour disputes are conducted now with a general
absence of the violence which almost invariably accompanied them in
earlier days, they are not without deplorable results in the losses
entailed on the working classes during their continuance, and in the
damaging effect they sometimes bring upon the industries affected. But
the principle of arbitration is gradually winning its way, and the fact
that on several recent occasions recourse to this reasonable method has
proved successful in averting a prolonged struggle, encourages the hope
that employers and employed are beginning to recognise their common
advantage in conciliation.

It is less easy to prescribe a remedy for the admitted evil of the
excessive aggregation of the people in centres of industry, and the
corresponding depletion of the rural districts. This tendency has been
at work ever since Virgil wrote his--

"O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
Agricolas"--

and perhaps from long before. Increased facilities of locomotion, and
the stimulus lent by education to intellectual energy, have intensified
the movement; but at all events the worst effects of it on the national
physique are being mitigated by the attention directed to sanitary
engineering.

One of the results of general education has been to give greater breadth
and accuracy to the popular aspirations for the Empire. Five and twenty
years ago the British Colonies were regarded, even by experienced
statesmen, with a degree of indifference, which it is difficult for the
present generation to realize. It seemed to be assumed that, sooner or
later, each of them would throw off the bond attaching it to the Mother
country, and that nothing was to be gained by maintaining a union of
which the value could not be shown in a profit and loss account. A
complete change has come over public opinion in this respect. Imperial
federation is in the air; the precise means by which it is to be secured
have not been formulated, but the sentiment is as strong in the general
mind of the natives of these islands as it seems to be in that of the
Queen's subjects in India, in Canada, and in Australasia. Although the
presence of a large proportion of the Dutch race in our South African
Colonies renders the feeling in that land less pronounced, it is not
unreasonable to hope that even there just laws, wise administration, and
the prestige of a mighty empire will prevail to dispel suspicion and
establish a lasting harmony.

The example of good government, which has been set forth at home during
the present reign, is one in which every Briton may take a just pride.
Party politics are as vehement as ever, and sometimes descend into
acrimony; but the last traces of corruption have disappeared from public
life, and all the acts of administration are open to the most searching
scrutiny.

Not less remarkable is the change which has come over the habits of all
classes in regard to alcoholic indulgence, which, throughout the last
century and a considerable portion of the present one, remained as a
reproach on our social life. Formerly, though intemperance was looked on
as undesirable, it was not thought discreditable, or, at least, not
incompatible with the discharge of the most important offices. But at
the present time indulgence in drink is regarded as a bar to all except
ordinary manual labour, and even in that department the working man is
steadily emancipating himself from the thraldom which, at no distant
date, lay so heavily upon all classes.

These, and many others such as these, are some of the features which
distinguish the longest reign in our annals. So important are they,
regarded as affecting the happiness of millions of human beings, that
the remarkable length of the reign sinks into secondary moment compared
with its character. It has been an age of material progress more swift
and political change more permanent than any which preceded it, and
there have not been wanting those who viewed each successive step in the
movement with apprehension, predicting disaster to cherished
institutions--to the monarchy itself. The result, so far, has been to
falsify those predictions. The British monarchy reposes at present on
surer foundations than military prowess or legislative sagacity can
supply; it rests on the genuine affection of the people. Power has been
committed to them during these sixty years in no illiberal measure; in a
very practical sense they are masters, under the Almighty, of the
destiny of the empire, for they can, by their votes, put those Ministers
in power who shall do their pleasure. How comes it that this power has
been exercised with a moderation very different from that which there is
plenty of historical precedent for anticipating? There are doubtless
many contributory causes--an abundant employment owing to the expansion
of industry, cheap food, the diffusion of wealth, the readiness of the
British people to avail themselves of new lands, the hold which
religious principles keep upon them, and the instinctive conservatism
which affects, often unconsciously to themselves, all but those who
adopt extreme views in politics. All these, and many more, must be taken
into account in considering what has taken place; but there is one which
a watchful observer will reckon more direct in its effect than any of
them--namely, the personal character of the Monarch. Vigilant as she is
known to have been in attention to public affairs, conscientious as she
has shown herself in complying with the limitations of our Constitution,
Queen Victoria has set before her people a perfect Court and a model
home. Not by design has this been done, not by laborious compliance with
irksome rules or straining for public approval, but by the action of a
true nature, guided by a vigorous intellect and resolute will.

What might have been the result of the enormous development of popular
power if the Monarch had been one whose character had attracted no
affection or respect, it is idle to speculate. It is enough that every
true Briton is able to say, with heartfelt gratitude: "Thank Heaven that
throughout this critical period of change we have remained the subjects
of Victoria the Great and Good!"

SIXTY YEARS A QUEEN:

THE STORY OF VICTORIA'S REIGN

TOLD BY

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BART., M.P.

[Illustration: _Sir G. Hayter, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA IN CORONATION ROBES.]

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE.]

SIXTY YEARS

A QUEEN.

CHAPTER I.

1837-1838.

At the present day, tidings, however fateful or momentous, flash
silently over unconscious fells and floods to the uttermost limits of
Empire; but it was otherwise sixty years ago. Throughout the brief night
of June 19, 1837, the land echoed to the furious galloping of horses and
the ceaseless rattle of flying wheels; for William the King lay dying at
Windsor Castle.

[Sidenote: Death of William IV.]

[Sidenote: Princess Alexandrina Victoria summoned to Throne.]

He drew his last breath before dawn on the 20th, and mounted messengers
thronged the highways yet more thickly than before in the early hours of
morning. Among them were two of very high degree--Dr. Howley, Archbishop
of Canterbury, and the Marquis of Conyngham, Lord Chamberlain--charged
to proceed post haste to Kensington Palace in order to summon the
Princess Victoria to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland. Leaving
Windsor shortly after two in the morning, they did not reach Kensington
till five o'clock. The Palace was wrapped in silence; it was with great
difficulty that even the gate-porter could be roused, and there was
further delay inside the courtyard. At last the Archbishop and the Lord
Chamberlain obtained admission, were shown into a room, and left to
themselves. After waiting some time they rang the bell, and desired the
sleepy servant who answered it to convey to the Princess their request
for an immediate audience, on business of extreme urgency. Again the
impatient dignitaries were left alone, and once more they pealed the
bell. This time they were informed by the Princess's attendant that Her
Royal Highness was asleep, and must on no account be disturbed.

"We are come," was their reply, "on business of State to the Queen, and
even _her_ sleep must give way to that."

The attendant yielded, and then, to quote the simple but vivid
description by Miss Wynn, "in a few minutes she (the Queen) came into
the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off,
and her hair falling on her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in
her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified."

[Illustration: _Sir W. Beechy, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

H.R.H. VICTORIA MARIA LOUISA, DUCHESS OF KENT, AND HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN
AT THE AGE OF THREE.]

Next, the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was summoned, and Charles
Greville has described in his diary how the young Queen met the Privy
Council at eleven o'clock.

[Sidenote: Ignorance of Public about the young Queen.]

"Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the
chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and
behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary,
and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and
inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally
excited great curiosity to see how she would act on this trying
occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace,
notwithstanding the short notice that was given."

[Illustration: _R. Westall, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AT THE AGE OF ELEVEN.]

Bowing to the lords present, Queen Victoria, quite simply dressed in
black, took her seat, and proceeded to read her speech in clear, calm
accents. Then, having taken the oath for the security of the Church of
Scotland, she received the allegiance of the Privy Councillors present,
the two Royal Dukes having precedence of the others.

"As these two old men," wrote Greville, "her uncles, knelt before her
... I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the contrast between
their civil and natural relations."

At noon the Queen held a Council, at which the excellent impression she
had made already was confirmed. Throughout the trying ceremonies of the
first day of her reign she bore herself with a dignity and composure
which amazed, as much as it delighted, her Ministers.

Princess Alexandrina Victoria, upon whose young shoulders the weight of
the Empire had been laid so suddenly, was the only child of Edward, Duke
of Kent, fourth son of George III., by her Serene Highness Victoria
Maria Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and widow of
the Prince of Leiningen. William IV., third son of George III., had left
no children born in wedlock; on his death, therefore, the succession
devolved on his niece, who was born on May 24, 1819, and was therefore
just over eighteen at her accession. Nothing would have been more
natural than that the character of the Princess, as heiress to the
Crown, and the qualifications for rule of which she might have given
promise even at that tender age, should have been widely and eagerly
discussed, or, at least, that the late King's Ministers should have
formed some opinion of them; but this was not the case. The gossiping
Greville repeatedly lays stress on the seclusion in which Her Royal
Highness had been brought up, her inexperience, and the complete
ignorance of the public about her character and even her appearance; so
much so, that "not one of her acquaintance, none of the attendants at
Kensington, not even the Duchess of Northumberland, her governess, have
any idea of what she is or promises to be." It may easily be imagined,
therefore, how greatly the severity of the sudden ordeal to which the
girl-Queen was exposed was intensified by the anxious and curious
interest of those who were present at her first Council.

[Illustration: _Sir D. Wilkie, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY'S FIRST COUNCIL, AT KENSINGTON PALACE, June 20, 1837.]

[Illustration:

1. HER MAJESTY.
2. Duke of Argyll, Lord Steward.
3. Earl of Albemarle, Master of the Horse.
4. The Right Honourable G. Byng, Comptroller.
5. C. C. Greville, Esq., Clerk of the Council.
6. Marquess of Anglesea.
7. Marquess of Lansdowne, President of the Council.
8. Lord Cottenham, Lord High Chancellor.
9. Lord Howick, Secretary at War.
10. Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for the Home Department.
11. The Right Honourable T. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
12. Viscount Melbourne, First Lord of the Treasury.
13. Lord Palmerston, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
14. The Right Honourable J. Abercrombey, Speaker of the House of
Commons.
15. Earl Grey.
16. The Earl of Carlisle.
17. Lord Denman, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench.
18. The Right Honourable F. Erskine, Chief Judge of the Bankruptcy
Court.
19. Lord Morpeth, Chief Secretary for Ireland.
20. The Earl of Aberdeen.
21. Lord Lyndhurst.
22. The Archbishop of Canterbury.
23. His Majesty the King of Hanover.
24. The Duke of Wellington.
25. The Earl of Jersey.
26. The Right Honourable J. W. Croker.
27. The Right Honourable Sir R. Peel, Bart.
28. H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex.
29. Lord Holland, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
30. Sir J. Campbell, Her Majesty's Attorney-General.
31. Marquess of Salisbury.
32. Lord Burghersh.
33. The Right Honourable T. Kelly, Lord Mayor of London.

Of all the illustrious personages here represented, Her Majesty is now
the sole survivor.]

[Sidenote: Her early training.]

For the seclusion in which the Princess Victoria had been brought up,
sufficient cause will be apparent to those who have studied the domestic
annals of the Court during the reigns of her uncles George IV. and
William IV., which were, in truth, in accord with the worst traditions
of Royalty. The Duke of Kent had died shortly after the birth of his
daughter, and his widow, over-anxious, perhaps, to screen the young life
from contagion of evil, sought to protect the Princess Victoria by a
training which, in most modern families, would be regarded as
unnecessarily severe. But deep-rooted custom requires drastic treatment
to remove it. On weak or light natures such discipline is too often seen
to work disastrous reaction; happily, the young Queen was inspired by an
intellect of such fibre, and a spirit of such temper, that she responded
to her early training by establishing and maintaining in her Court such
a high moral ideal as has never been known since the days of the
mythical Round Table.

[Illustration: KENSINGTON PALACE.

Her Majesty the Queen was born in the ground-floor room occupying the
farthest angle of the building on the extreme right of the picture. A
tablet within the room records the fact.]

[Illustration: _S. P. Denning._} {_From the Dulwich Gallery._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AT THE AGE OF FOUR.]

[Sidenote: Severance of the Crown of Great Britain and Hanover.]

Queen Victoria's accession was the cause of the departure from England
of a Prince deservedly unpopular, whose signature stands first among
those appended to the Act of Allegiance executed at Kensington Palace.
Hitherto, for more than one hundred and twenty years, succession to the
throne of Great Britain had carried with it the crown of Hanover; but,
inasmuch as that crown was limited to the male line, it passed, on the
death of King William, to his eldest surviving brother, the Duke of
Cumberland. It is not necessary to discuss here the character of that
Prince--it is enough to say that his departure to take up his
inheritance in Hanover was probably cause of regret to very few persons
in this country and reason for rejoicing to a great many. Nor, in
looking back over the history of the past sixty years, can any
thoughtful person fail to recognise advantage in the severance of the
monarchies of Great Britain and Hanover. Any loss of prestige or dignity
which might have been anticipated has been amply outweighed by the
freedom enjoyed by this country from continental complications. England,
while she has forfeited no weight in the Councils of Europe, is in a far
stronger position to enforce her will when necessary, and the
development of rapid and easy transit have protected Englishmen from any
disadvantage that might have been apprehended from an exclusively
insular Court.

[Illustration: _W. Fowler._} {_From the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AS PRINCESS VICTORIA.]

One of the incidents of the ceremony of accession commented on with most
interest was the fact that, in signing the Oath for the security of the
Church of Scotland, the Queen wrote only "Victoria," instead of her full
name "Alexandrina Victoria." Surely it was a happy inspiration which
prompted the choice of the single name--prophetic, as it has turned out,
of the character of the coming reign. Probably not one in a thousand of
her subjects are aware that Her Majesty has two baptismal names, though
there is historic interest attached to their origin. The Duke of Kent
gave his daughter the name of Alexandrina in compliment to the Empress
of Russia, intending her second name should be Georgiana. The Regent,
however, objected to the name Georgiana being second to any other in
this country; so, as the Princess's father was determined that
Alexandrina should be the first name, it was decided she should not bear
the other one at all.

[Sidenote: Prorogation of Parliament.]

On July 17 the Queen went in State to the House of Lords to prorogue
Parliament. After listening to an Address made by the Speaker on behalf
of the House of Commons, and giving her consent to certain bills, Her
Majesty proceeded to read her speech to Parliament in clear and
unfaltering accents. The concluding paragraph, viewed in the light of
subsequent events, must be admitted to have been more amply fulfilled
than most human promises, however sincerely spoken:--

"I ascend the throne with a deep sense of the responsibility imposed on
me; but I am supported by the consciousness of my own right intentions,
and by my dependence on the protection of Almighty God. It will be my
care to strengthen our institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, by
discreet improvement wherever improvement is required, and to do all in
my power to compose and allay animosity and discord. Acting upon these
principles, I shall, upon all occasions, look with confidence to the
wisdom of Parliament and the affection of my people, which form the true
support of the dignity of the Crown and ensure the stability of the
Constitution."

[Illustration: _W. Behnes._} {_From the Royal Collection._

BUST OF HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN AS PRINCESS VICTORIA.]

Every opportunity which was afforded to Parliament and the public of
passing judgment on the Queen's demeanour tended to deepen the
favourable impression already created. Greville--the "Man in the Street"
of those days--he of whom Lowe afterwards wrote--

"For forty years he listened at the door,
He heard some secrets and invented more,"

is not an authority on which too much reliance should be placed, yet his
diary is useful as a reflection of passing events. It is full of
enthusiastic praise of the new Monarch.

"All that I hear of the young Queen leads to the conclusion that she
will some day play a conspicuous part, and that she has a great deal of
character.... Melbourne thinks highly of her sense, discretion, and good
feeling; but what seems to distinguish her above everything are caution
and prudence, the former in a degree which is almost unnatural in one so
young, and unpleasing because it suppresses the youthful impulses which
are so graceful and attractive.... With all her prudence and discretion
she has great animal spirits, and enters into the magnificent novelties
of her position with the zest and curiosity of a child.... The smallness
of her stature is quite forgotten in the majesty and gracefulness of her
demeanour."

Sixty years ago! It is the second and third generation from that time
which now cries "God save the Queen! Long live Victoria!" Never before
in the history of our nation has it fallen to the lot of any historian
to tell the story of such a long reign, to chronicle such unbroken
national progress, to trace such a series of peaceful changes, to record
such accumulation of wealth and diffusion of comfort in a like period.

[Sidenote: Early Railways.]

Sixty years ago! The population of these islands was then some
twenty-five millions; it amounts now to upwards of thirty-eight
millions. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, about thirty miles long,
had been open for eight years, causing far-sighted folk to predict an
important change in the mode of travelling. The Liverpool and Birmingham
Railway was opened in the year of the Queen's accession. In 1838 the
line between London and Birmingham was finished, and trains were timed
to do the distance--112-1/4 miles--at the average speed of twenty miles
an hour. The London and Croydon Railway began running in 1839, and in
1840 there were 838 miles of railway open in the United Kingdom. At the
present time there are 20,000 miles open, owned by companies which in
1894 had an authorised capital of £1,099,013,785, earning a gross
revenue of £84,310,831, and a net profit of £37,102,518.

[Illustration: _Sir G. Hayter, R.A._} {_From the Print published by
Messrs. Graves._

HER MAJESTY TAKING THE OATH ON HER ACCESSION.]

In order to convey the impressions of an educated traveller by the new
mode of transit, the temptation to quote once more from the lively
Greville is irresistible. In July 1837 he became tired of hearing
nothing in London except about the Queen and the coming elections, so he
resolved to see the new Birmingham and Liverpool Railway. Reaching
Birmingham in 12-1/2 hours by coach, he "got upon the railroad at
half-past seven in the morning. Nothing can be more comfortable than the
vehicle in which I was put, a sort of chariot with two places, and there
is nothing disagreeable about it but the occasional whiffs of stinking
air which it is impossible to exclude altogether. The first sensation
is a slight degree of nervousness and a feeling of being run away with,
but a sense of security soon supervenes, and the velocity is
delightful."

[Illustration: STEPHENSON'S LOCOMOTIVE, "THE ROCKET."

This engine was constructed by Messrs. Stephenson & Co. in 1829, to
compete in the trial of locomotive engines held at Rainhill, on the
Liverpool and Manchester Railway in October of that year, where it
gained the prize of £500. The "Rocket" worked on the Liverpool and
Manchester line till 1837, when it was removed to the Midgeholm Railway,
near Carlisle. It ceased running in 1843-4, and was presented to the
South Kensington Museum in 1862.]

[Illustration: A MODERN EXPRESS PASSENGER ENGINE.

This engine, No. 1870 of the North Eastern Railway, was built in 1896 by
the Gateshead works. It is a "non-compound" engine, with the largest
coupled driving wheels hitherto known, viz., 7 ft. 7 in. The diameter of
the cylinders inside is 20 in. A sister engine (No. 1869) was
constructed at the same time, and the weight of each of them with tender
fully loaded is over 90 tons.]

The "velocity" referred to was regulated to an average of about twenty
miles an hour; but the diarist makes mention of a foolhardy driver who
ventured to run forty miles an hour, and was promptly dismissed by the
directors.

[Illustration: THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY BROAD GAUGE ENGINE "NORTH
STAR."

This engine was designed by Sir Daniel Gooch in 1836 and built by Robert
Stephenson & Co. in 1837. It was one of the first engines belonging to
the Great Western Railway Company, and continued at work until 1870,
running a total distance of 429,000 miles.]

[Sidenote: Electric Telegraph.]

The application of another of the forces of Nature to the service of
human intercourse has brought about a change in political, military,
social, and commercial relations even more complete than that wrought by
steam. The invention of the electric telegraph coincided very nearly
with the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1835 Mr. Morse, an
American citizen, produced a working model of an instrument designed to
communicate alphabetical symbols by the interruption of the electric
current, but he failed to persuade Congress to furnish him with the
funds necessary to the practical application of his discovery. Next year
he tried to take out a patent for it in this country; but, meanwhile,
Cooke and Wheatstone had anticipated him with one instrument, and the
brothers Highton with another, both of which were soon in use on
railways. The growth of this means of communication may be seen in the
"Post Office Annual," which shows that in the year 1895-96 about
seventy-nine million telegrams were delivered through the Post Office,
besides those dealt with by certain public companies.

[Sidenote: The Coronation.]

The Queen's Coronation was deferred till June 1838. It would be tedious
to dwell on the splendour of the ceremonial. Perhaps the most readable,
and not the least truthful, account has been preserved in one of
Barham's _Ingoldsby Legends--Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the
Coronation_, set to the tune of _The Groves of Blarney_, and beginning--

"Och! the Coronation, what celebration
For emulation with it can compare?
When to Westminster the Royal Spinster
And the Duke of Leinster all in order did repair.
'Twas there ye'd see the new Polishemen,[A]
Making a skrimmage at half afther four;
And the Lords and Ladies, and the Miss O'Gradys
All standing round before the Abbey door."

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").} {_"Political Sketches," 1838._

LA BELLE ALLIANCE.

This sketch represents Marshal Soult meeting his old antagonist, Lord
Hill, at the Duke of Wellington's. "At last," he says, "I meet you, I,
who have run after you so long!" "La Belle Alliance" is well known as
the name of a particular spot, which was one of the points of attack at
the Battle of Waterloo.]

[Illustration: _C. R. Leslie, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

A. Lord Willoughby de Eresby.
B. The Duke of Norfolk.
C. The Marquis of Conyngham.
D. The Archbishop of Canterbury.
E. Her Majesty the Queen.
F. Lord Melbourne.
G. The Bishop of London.
H. The Duke of Wellington.
J. The Duchess of Sutherland.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AFTER HER CORONATION IN
WESTMINSTER ABBEY,

June 28, 1838.

Lord Willoughby de Eresby, as Hereditary Lord High Chamberlain, held the
Crown, and Lord Melbourne as First Lord of the Treasury, the Sword of
State. The Duke of Norfolk was Earl Marshal, the Marquis of Conyngham
Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Wellington Lord High Constable of England,
and the Duchess of Sutherland Mistress of the Robes.]

[Sidenote: Popular Reception of Wellington and Soult.]

Two personages in the procession, who had met under far different
circumstances in earlier years, met with a tremendous ovation wherever
they moved. One of these was the Duke of Wellington--our Great Duke--and
the other was the veteran Duke of Dalmatia--the puissant Maréchal Soult
of the Peninsula and Waterloo--once the redoubtable foe of England. Mr.
Justin McCarthy has suggested that "the cheers of a London crowd on the
day of the Queen's coronation did something genuine and substantial to
restore the good feeling between this country and France, and efface the
bitter memories of Waterloo." On the other hand, the anti-monarchical
party in France attributed the popular reception of Soult in London to
the prevalence of sympathy with Republican views. Certain it is that
when, in later years, Soult championed the English alliance in the
French Assembly he referred with feeling to his reception at Queen
Victoria's coronation: "I fought the English," he said, "down to
Toulouse, when I fired the last shot in defence of national
independence; in the meantime I have been in London, and France knows
how I was received. The English themselves cried 'Vive Soult!' They
cried 'Soult for ever!'" One may formulate rules of diplomacy and
international courtesy, but who shall weigh the effect of sympathy
between a generous people and a former gallant foe?

[Illustration: _Sir G. Hayter._} {_From the Royal Collection._

THE CORONATION OF HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, June 28,
1838.

The moment depicted is when the Archbishop, having placed the Crown on
the head of the Queen, and the emblems of sovereignty in her hands, has
returned to the altar. It was at this time that the members of the Royal
Family, the peers and the peeresses assumed their coronets. The whole
Abbey rang with cheers and cries of "God save the Queen," and the
animation of the scene reached its climax.]

Parliament had voted £243,000 for the expenses of George IV.'s
coronation--perhaps the effect of a newly-extended franchise may be
traced in the more economical figure of £70,000, which sufficed for that
of our present Queen.

[Illustration: LORD JOHN RUSSELL, AFTERWARDS EARL RUSSELL (1792-1878).

Sat in the House of Commons for forty-seven years. He introduced the
great Reform Bill in 1831 and was twice Prime Minister (1846-52, and
1865-6). He was raised to the Peerage in 1861.]

[Sidenote: State of Parties.]

The battle of Reform had been fought out in the country and in
Parliament five years before the accession, and there were, as yet, no
signs--to quote Sir Robert Peel's famous expression at Tamworth--of the
Constitution being "trampled under the hoof of a ruthless democracy." On
the whole, life--its business and pleasures--seemed to be going forward
on much the same lines as before the great Act, dreaded, as it had been,
as intensely by one party, as it had been pressed forward and welcomed
by the other. Lord Melbourne was the head of a Whig Administration, of
which, as everybody knows, the late King had waited impatiently for the
first decent opportunity to get rid. But Melbourne and Lord John Russell
(who, with the office of Home Secretary, was leader of the House of
Commons) had to reckon with an advance wing of their own party, already
known as Radicals, and were at least as profoundly averse from their
projects as they were from the Tory policy. Melbourne and Russell
desired to put down Radicalism and proceed with moderate and safe
reforms, above all in Ireland, where the chronic discontent was being
fanned to eruption by the exertions of Daniel O'Connell. The King's
death had relieved the Whig Cabinet from the adverse influence of the
Court; moreover, the reliance placed from the first by the young Queen
upon Lord Melbourne, and the intimate relations between them, brought
about by the circumstances of the case, enabled the Whigs to assume the
peculiar rôle of their opponents--that of the special supporters of the
throne.

[Illustration: _M. Noble._} {_National Portrait Gallery._

SIR ROBERT PEEL (1788-1850).

Was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1812, Home Secretary in
1822, and again in 1828-30 under the Duke of Wellington. In 1830 he
reconstructed the Metropolitan Police. He was Prime Minister in 1834-5,
and again from 1841 to 1846. His second Administration was distinguished
by the total abolition of the Duty on Corn.]

The Tories,[B] on the other hand, approached with much misgiving the
General Election, which, according to the law as it then stood, followed
of necessity on the demise of the monarch. They knew that the Duchess of
Kent had favoured Whig principles in the education of the Queen; they
saw that Melbourne's personal charm had secured for him complete
ascendancy in the councils of the new Sovereign, and they had nothing to
expect in the country but reverse.

[Sidenote: Result of General Election.]

However, the unpopularity of the new Poor Law told against Ministers in
the rural constituencies, and the elections left parties almost
unchanged. When the first Parliament of Queen Victoria assembled on
November 20, 1837, the Whig Government reckoned a majority of about
thirty in the House of Commons. "Of power," wrote the contemporary
compiler of the _Annual Register_, "in a political sense, they had none.
They could carry no measure of any kind but by the sufferance of Sir
Robert Peel."

One incident in the short winter session of 1837, often as it has been
recorded, retains a lasting interest because of the subsequent celebrity
of the individual who gave rise to it. Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the son of
a distinguished man of letters, had just entered Parliament for the
first time as Member for Maidstone. He chose a debate on Irish Election
Petitions as the opportunity for his maiden speech. "A bottle-green
frock coat," writes an eye-witness, "and a waistcoat of white, of the
Dick Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited a network of
glittering chains; large, fancy pattern pantaloons, and a black tie,
above which no shirt-collar was visible, completed the outward man. A
countenance lividly pale, set out by a pair of intensely black eyes, and
a broad but not very high forehead, overhung by clustering ringlets of
coal-black hair, which, combed away from the right temple, fell in
bunches of well-oiled ringlets over his left cheek."

[Illustration: AN EARLY SIGNAL CABIN.]

[Illustration: A MODERN SIGNAL CABIN.

The Cabin here represented is that at Crow West Junction, Lancashire and
Yorkshire Railway.]

Not a prepossessing personality in the eyes of the British House of
Commons, and when the young orator proceeded to launch into profuse and
florid metaphor, accompanied by exaggerated theatrical gestures, the
forbearance usually shown towards a new member's first appearance was
overborne by impatience at Disraeli's ludicrous affectation. He spoke
amid incessant interruption and laughter. "At last, losing his temper,
which until now he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in the
midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indignantly in the face,
raised his hands, and opening his mouth as widely as its dimensions
would admit, said in a remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, 'I have
begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last; ay,
sir, and though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear
me.'" The contrast between the early manner of this statesman, and his
peculiarly quiet and leisurely bearing in the debates of later years,
betrays the close study which he devoted to outward effect.

The Prime Minister, William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, was a
typical Whig, genuinely disposed to moderate reform, but in the habit of
meeting Radical suggestions with the discouraging question, "Why not
leave it alone?" Of similar political temperament was his lieutenant in
the Commons, Lord John Russell. It very soon became evident that the
Radicals, though diminished in numbers by the result of the elections,
were likely to give Ministers trouble in the new Parliament. In the
Upper Chamber, Lord Brougham, who had conceived a violent dislike to
Melbourne, began to employ his fiery energy and power of acrid invective
against the Government, and showed himself ready to place himself at the
head of the Radicals. In his first serious attack on Ministers he allied
himself with the Tory Lord Lyndhurst. The opportunity arose out of
events in Canada, to which it is necessary briefly to refer.

[Illustration: {_From the "G.W.R. Magazine."_

THE FIRST TELEGRAPH STATION (SLOUGH STATION, G.W.R., 1844).]

[Illustration: HER MAJESTY'S STATE COACH.

This Coach, used at Her Majesty's Coronation, was designed by Sir
William Chambers, and finished in the year 1761. The paintings, of which
the following are the most important, were executed by Cipriani. _The
Front Panel_:--Britannia seated on a throne holding a Staff of Liberty,
attended by Religion, Justice, Wisdom, Valour, Fortitude, Commerce,
Plenty, and Victory, presenting her with a Garland of Laurel; in the
background a view of St. Paul's and the River Thames. _The Right
Door_:--Industry and Ingenuity giving a Cornucopia to the Genius of
England, and on each side History recording the Reports of Fame, and
Peace burning the Implements of War. _The Back Panel_:--Neptune and
Amphitrite issuing from their palace in a triumphant car, drawn by
sea-horses, attended by the Winds, Rivers, Tritons, and Naiads, bringing
the tribute of the world to the British shore. _Upper part of Back
Panel_:--The Royal Arms, ornamented with the Order of St. George; the
Rose, Shamrock, and Thistle entwined. _The Left Door_:--Mars, Minerva,
and Mercury supporting the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, and on each
side the Liberal Arts and Sciences protected. The design of the Coach
itself is in keeping with the above ideas. The length of the Carriage is
24 feet; width, 8 feet 3 inches; height, 12 feet; length of pole, 12
feet 4 inches; weight, 4 tons. The harness is made of red morocco
leather. On State occasions eight cream-coloured horses, as here
represented, are used.]

[Sidenote: Rebellion in Canada.]

By the Constitution of 1791 Canada had been divided into two Provinces,
Upper and Lower Canada, each with its separate Governor, Executive
Council (corresponding to a Privy Council), Legislative Council,
appointed by the Crown for life, and Representative Assembly. The bulk
of the people of Lower Canada were of French descent, Catholics, and
intensely conservative of the mode of life and habits of France before
the Revolution. English law had been established there by proclamation
in 1763, but by the wise Act of 1774 French civil law was restored, and
free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion guaranteed. Probably all
would have gone tranquilly with the Province had its French population
been left to themselves. But they had restless neighbours in Upper
Canada. Englishmen, and especially Scots and Ulstermen, had settled
there in large numbers, busy, pushing men of business, traders, and
farmers, developing their land with energy, overflowing, as their
children multiplied, into the territory of their French fellow-subjects,
and there forming a British party, impatient of the antique legal
procedure, the foreign law of land tenure, and the sleepy,
unbusiness-like ways of the Lower Province. Hence arose friction which
soon became chronic. The Legislative Council, nominees of the Crown,
naturally favoured the British section, thereby finding themselves at
issue with the Representative Assembly. Discontent had been smouldering
for many years, and at last matters came to a crisis. The Representative
Assembly resolved to resist further encroachment. Headed by Louis
Papineau, a militia officer and Member for Montreal, they drew up a
protest and laid their grievances before the Governor, Lord Gosford.
They complained of arbitrary infringement of the Constitution and other
matters, demanded that the Legislative Council should be made elective,
and ended by refusing to vote supplies. Public meetings were held, and
addressed in inflammatory language by Papineau, who dwelt on the example
set by the United States in resisting tyranny. Lord Gosford met matters
with a high hand. Warrants were issued for the arrest of certain
representatives; resistance to their execution resulted in violence, and
the transition to rebellion was as speedy as probably it was
involuntary. _Proximus ardet_--the flame spread to Upper Canada, of
which the people had grievances of their own, though of a different kind
from those of their French neighbours, and a rising took place under the
leadership of one McKenzie, a revolutionary journalist. But the chief
danger arose from the sympathetic action of certain American citizens,
who, to the number of several hundreds, assembled under a person named
Van Rensselaer, and took possession of Navy Island in the Niagara
River, forming part of Canadian territory. At the present day, with the
dense population of the United States and rapid means of transit, such a
position of affairs would undoubtedly prove extremely critical; happily
the British authorities proved able to deal with it successfully. The
rebels being ill-prepared for impromptu war, Lord Gosford put down the
rising in Lower Canada, though not without considerable bloodshed. In
Upper Canada, the Governor, Major Head, better known afterwards as Sir
Francis Head, an amusing writer, sent every regular soldier at his
command to the assistance of Lord Gosford, and, declaring he would rely
on the loyal Canadians to suppress the rebellion, handed over 6,000
stand of arms to the Mayor of Toronto. The people responded gallantly,
delighted by this mark of confidence; ten or twelve thousand men
assembled under arms, and a single encounter with McKenzie's force was
enough to decide the fate of the revolt. Desultory skirmishing took
place with bodies of American "sympathisers" at various points along the
frontier before the affair could be said to be over, and there can be no
doubt that, had the United States Government adopted a less friendly
attitude, British rule in Canada might have stood in very great
jeopardy.

[Illustration: EARLY TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT, FROM PADDINGTON STATION.

On January 1, 1844, the following message was received from Slough by
this instrument:--"A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill, and
the suspected murderer was seen to take a first-class ticket for London
by the train which left Slough at 7.42 p.m. He is in the garb of a
Quaker, with a brown great coat on, which reaches nearly down to his
feet. He is in the last compartment of the second first-class carriage."
The murderer, Tawell, was identified, apprehended, and convicted. This
was the first occasion on which a telegraphic message overtaking a
criminal led to his arrest.]

[Illustration: COOKE AND WHEATSTONE'S EARLIEST NEEDLE TELEGRAPH,
REQUIRING FIVE WIRES (1837).]

[Illustration: _From an old Print_} {_at the South Kensington Museum._

TRAINS ON THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY, RUNNING AT THE TIME OF
HER MAJESTY'S ACCESSION.

The upper figure represents a first-class train, carrying Her Majesty's
Mails, and the lower one a second-class train with open carriages.]

[Illustration: OLD GREAT WESTERN PASSENGER CARRIAGE.]

The Imperial Parliament was summoned to meet on January 16, 1838, to
consider the Canadian situation. A Bill was introduced suspending the
Constitution of Lower Canada, and empowering the Queen to appoint a
Governor and Special Council, who should assume for the time all the
functions of the legislature in that Province. The Duke of Wellington,
as leader of the Opposition in the Lords, and Sir Robert Peel in the
Commons, supported the Government, and the only opposition was offered
by the Radicals. Brougham attacked the Bill in a speech of which
Melbourne complained as "a most laboured and extreme concentration of
bitterness." In the other House the chief point of interest to readers
of the debate at this day lies in a speech by Mr. W. E. Gladstone, the
Tory Member for Newark, who taunted Mr. Joseph Hume and the Radicals
with their failure to perform in session their boastful promises during
the recess.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN'S SALOON CARRIAGE ON THE LONDON AND
NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.

This is the carriage which has been used by Her Majesty for many years
on her journeys to and from Scotland. It contains sitting and sleeping
compartments (the former having padded walls and ceiling, lined with
watered silk), and accommodation for Her Majesty's personal attendants.
It is about 60 feet long.]

[Sidenote: The Earl of Durham.]

The Governor appointed under the Act was the Earl of Durham, a man of
remarkable ability, who had embraced Radical principles with great
ardour. This, however, did not prevent him interpreting his office as
that of a practical dictator--he far exceeded the powers vested in him
by the Act. In dealing with offenders he would not stoop to the only way
of obtaining convictions--that of packing juries--and adopted the
arbitrary course of ordering into exile those connected with the late
rebellion, on pain of death if they returned. Looking back to the
existing state of things, it is impossible to question the real clemency
and wisdom of the new Governor's ordinances; nevertheless, they were at
once attacked in the Imperial Parliament, and vigorously denounced as
tyrannical and unconstitutional. Lord Durham had made many enemies in
both Houses. Lord Lyndhurst and the Tories joined forces with Lord
Brougham and the Radicals in pressing Ministers to disallow the
ordinances of which they had already approved. Brougham perceived the
opportunity of discomfiting the hated Melbourne, and he pressed it. The
Ministry were not strong enough to resist. Lord Durham was recalled,
and, though his recommendations were ultimately carried into effect by
making Canada a self-governing colony, he never recovered the unmerited
disgrace he had suffered. Proud, impetuous, and sensitive, he fell into
ill-health, and died in 1840 at the age of forty-eight. His end must
ever be regarded as one of those misfortunes arising out of Party
government, for his policy has been amply vindicated since, lying as it
does at the foundation of the whole modern scheme of Colonial
government.

[Illustration: _Photo by_} {_Elliott & Fry._

THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES PELHAM VILLIERS.

Born 1802. Is a grandson of the First Earl of Clarendon, and has
represented Wolverhampton in Parliament continuously from 1835 to the
present day. He took part, with Cobden and Bright, in the Free Trade
movement, and in the passing of the Ballot Act. He and Mr. Gladstone are
the only survivors of those who sat in Queen Victoria's first
Parliament.]

[Sidenote: Debate on Vote by Ballot.]

One other debate in the Commons during this session must be referred to,
if it be only to mark the wide interval which separates the Liberal
Party of the present day from the Whig leaders at the beginning of the
reign. On February 15 Mr. Grote brought forward his annual motion in
favour of the Ballot in Parliamentary elections. Hitherto little
interest had been attached to the project, owing to the disfavour with
which it was regarded by all but extreme Radicals. On this occasion,
however, several Ministers and many supporters of the Government were
known to have pledged themselves at the polls to the principle of secret
voting. Lord John Russell had declared that to carry such a measure
would be tantamount to a repeal of the Reform Act of 1832; that for the
Government to promote it would be a breach of faith to those who had
supported the extension of the franchise, and he refused to be any party
to "what neither his sense of prudence nor of honour would justify." Sir
Robert Peel supported the Government in resisting the motion, and it was
rejected by a majority of 117 in a House of 513 Members. This was hailed
as a moral victory by the supporters of the Ballot. Brougham was
jubilant, and told the Lords they must make up their minds to this fresh
reform. A few days later he declared in Greville's room that it would
become law in five years from that time, and many people regarded it as
paving the way to Republican government. On the other hand Greville
quotes Charles Villiers, "one of the Radicals with whom I sometimes
converse," as declaring that it would prove a Conservative measure, and
that better men would be chosen. In effect, it took, not five years, but
thirty-four, to reconcile Englishmen to the practice of secret voting;
and Mr. Villiers has lived to see that the protection thereby afforded
to the voter has certainly not operated to the exclusion of
Conservatives from office. But it would be unphilosophic to argue that
what was conceded in 1872 to an experienced and educated electorate,
without evil consequences, might have been bestowed with equal safety in
1838, only five years after the great measure of enfranchisement.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._")} {_Political Sketches_, 1838.

THE THREE SINGLES.

Lord Brougham in 1837 had opposed the Government measures relating to
Canada. For some time he stood alone, and it was not until the Bill for
Abolishing the Canadian Legislature had made considerable progress, that
he found himself supported by the Earl of Mansfield and Lord
Ellenborough. But though acting together on this occasion, each had his
own separate motive and argument, and perhaps there were not three
members of the House of Peers who better deserved to be acting singly
and without party connection. Lord Brougham is here represented with the
Earl of Mansfield on his right arm and Lord Ellenborough on his left.]

[Illustration: _Sir F. Grant, P.R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN 1839,

Attended by Viscount Melbourne, the Marquis of Conyngham, who raises his
hat, the Hon. George S. Byng, the Earl of Uxbridge, and Sir George
Quinton.]

CHAPTER II.

1837-1842

The ardour and intelligence with which the Queen applied herself to
master the details of ceremony and business incident to her position at
the head of a great Empire, did not protect her from censorious and even
malicious criticism. It was natural, perhaps, that the exclusive
confidence reposed by Her Majesty in Lord Melbourne should excite the
jealousy of others, whose exalted rank gave them what they considered a
superior claim to access to the presence.

[Sidenote: Lord Melbourne's services and character.]

Lord Melbourne's constant attendance at Court had compelled him to
change his demeanour in a very remarkable degree. Hitherto, his
affectation had been to conceal all traces of seriousness in transacting
business; he would sprawl on a sofa, blow a feather about the room,
balance a chair, or dandle a cushion while receiving deputations--the
very incarnation of indolence--to the despair of those who anxiously
desired to engage his attention, and who could scarcely be persuaded by
those who knew him best that he had spent strenuous hours in getting up
the subject under discussion, was perfectly acquainted with all its
details, and was, besides, listening most attentively to all that was
said. His physician, Dr. Copeland, knew how really hard the Prime
Minister worked, and told Bishop Wilberforce that he (Melbourne) used to
transact business all day in his bedroom with his secretaries in order
that bores might be dismissed with the information that "my lord had not
yet left his bedroom."

[Illustration: THE THRONE ROOM AT WINDSOR CASTLE.]

But besides this tiresome frivolity of manner, there was another habit
in regard to which Melbourne had to put severe restraint on himself in
the Royal presence. It had been his custom to season his conversation
with a multitude of indecorous oaths. Mr. Denison (afterwards Speaker,
and subsequently Viscount Ossington) spoke to him one day about some
points in the Poor Law Bill, then under consideration. Melbourne was
just going out for a ride, and referred Denison to his brother George.
"I have been with him," replied Denison, "but he damned me, and damned
the Bill, and damned the paupers." "Well, damn it! what more could he
do?" quoth Melbourne, and rode off.

In spite of all his affectation and a degree of underlying weakness,
this Minister performed a singularly valuable public service to his
country in the support and advice he afforded the Queen at the most
critical time of her life; a service that was explicitly and handsomely
acknowledged in the House of Lords by his chief opponent there, the Duke
of Wellington, in 1841.

[Illustration: _Sir David Wilkie, R.A._} {_By permission of the
Corporation of Glasgow._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN 1839.]

[Sidenote: Prevailing discontent of the Working Classes.]

[Sidenote: Its causes.]

There was a great deal of brooding discontent in the country at the
opening of Queen Victoria's reign, which soon passed into a phase
calling for active measures of repression. Some have recognised in the
Chartist movement the chagrin of the working classes, who having
imparted to the mills of State the impetus necessary to grind out
political rights for their employers--the merchants, farmers, and middle
class generally--found themselves no better equipped for political
action than they were before. But such a suggestion finds no reflection
in actual experience of popular movements. Agitators might declaim in
vain against the injustice of a restricted franchise if their hearers
had no other cause for discontent. The real root of bitterness lay in
the suffering and distress caused by the severe winter of 1837-8, the
high price of bread,[C] and, on the top of all, detestation of the new
Poor Law. It is genuine grievances such as these which, from time to
time, force on the attention of those who suffer from them the glaring
contrast between the privations of the many and the superfluities of the
few. So, in 1838, hungry crowds were easily persuaded to listen to
denunciations of the privileged classes; to believe that the Queen and a
dilettante Prime Minister were insensible to their sufferings so long as
their own tables were abundantly supplied; and that Government was no
more than a machine for enriching the classes at the expense of the
masses.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_, "_H. B._"} {_Political Sketches_, 1837.

DANIEL O'CONNELL, M.P.,

1775-1847.

Known as "The Liberator." Was an Irish barrister. Elected to the House
of Commons in 1828, he was the principal advocate of Catholic
Emancipation, and founder of the "Loyal National Repeal Association."
The sketch represents him on the watch for an opportunity to attack the
Government with the weapon of "Repeal."]

It has to be remembered, also, that during the development of crowded
centres of population, consequent on the rapid increase in various
industries, the artizan and mining classes found themselves at a great
disadvantage in negotiating with their employers, owing to the stringent
laws regulating trades unions. A whole generation was to pass away
before, in 1875, Mr. (now Viscount) Cross should pass a measure
abolishing criminal proceedings in cases of breach of engagement,
placing employer and workman on equal terms before the law, and enacting
that nothing which it was legal for a single workman to do should be
illegal when done by a combination of workmen or a trades union.

[Sidenote: The Chartists.]

The Whig leaders having declined to re-open the question of electoral
reform, a document was drawn up at a conference between a few Radical
members of Parliament and the representatives of the Working Men's
Association, formulating the demands made on behalf of the proletariate.
Universal male suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by ballot, abolition
of the property qualification required at that time from a member of
Parliament, payment of members, and equal electoral districts, were the
six points insisted on; of which three, it will be seen, have since been
practically carried into effect. "There is your Charter!" exclaimed
O'Connell, handing it to the secretary of the Working Men's Association;
"agitate for it, and never be content with anything less." The term took
the popular fancy; the programme became known as the Charter, and those
who supported it were hereafter known as Chartists.

Not a very formidable programme after all, nor one that might not be
advanced by constitutional means, but one that, like many other popular
agitations, fell into dangerous paths by the imprudent zeal of some of
its advocates, and still more, by the violence of the discontented,
unfortunate, or predatory waifs of civilisation, ever ready to promote
any social change for the sake of what plunder it may bring within their
reach.

[Sidenote: Riots at Newport and elsewhere.]

In November 1839 the miners of the Newport district of Monmouthshire
assembled to the number of 10,000 under a tradesman called Frost and
attempted to release from gaol one Vincent, who had been imprisoned for
using seditious language. The mayor and magistrates of Newport, with a
handful of soldiers, offered a gallant resistance; the rioters were
dispersed with a loss of ten killed and fifty wounded, the mayor, Mr.
Phillips, receiving two gunshot wounds. Frost and two others were
afterwards convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. But the
dawn of milder methods of government had begun: the death sentence was
commuted by the Royal mercy to one of transportation for life: even that
was subsequently relaxed, and Frost was allowed to return to England
some years later to find himself and the Chartists an unquiet memory of
the past.

[Illustration: STEAMER POINT, ADEN.

The Peninsula of Aden was added to Her Majesty's dominions by conquest
in 1839. Its situation at the mouth of the Red Sea, on the direct route
to India and the East, makes it invaluable as a coaling-station both for
naval and mercantile purposes. In this district rain falls only about
once in three years. The town is supplied with wells and storage tanks
cut in the solid rock, the construction of which cost over £1,000,000.]

But in spite of the punishment of the Newport rioters, and hundreds of
others in different places, Chartism continued to spread until it
became merged in the more intelligent and fruitful agitation for the
repeal of the Corn Laws.

This great question was brought under the consideration of Parliament,
in the session of 1839, by Lord Brougham in the Lords on February 18,
and the following day by Mr. Charles Villiers in the Commons; but the
motion for inquiry was negatived without a division in the former and by
a majority of 189 in the latter. Both Parliament and country, however,
were to hear plenty about the Corn Duties in the next few years.

The Whig Ministry were now approaching the end of their second year of
office, and steadily losing favour in the country. They had earned the
enmity of the Chartists by their apathy to further reform; and the novel
advantage of Royal confidence in and affection for a Whig Prime Minister
did not affect the general drift of middle-class opinion. Meanwhile,
Peel was indefatigable on the platform securing popular support for the
new Conservatism.

[Illustration: _Hume Nisbet._}

"WILLIAM FAWCETT," THE FIRST P. & O. STEAMSHIP, IN THE GUT OF GIBRALTAR,
1837.

This was the first steamer employed in carrying mails to the Peninsular
ports in 1837. Tonnage, 206; horse-power, 60.]

[Sidenote: Fall of the Ministry.]

Drifting thus helplessly in the doldrums of unpopularity the Government
suddenly foundered on April 9, the immediate cause being a Bill for the
suspension of the Constitution of Jamaica. The second reading was
carried, indeed, by a majority of five; but the resignation of the
Ministry was immediately placed in Her Majesty's hands and accepted. It
put an end to an intolerable situation. Three days before the division
Greville wrote in his diary: "The Government is at its last gasp: the
result of the debate next week may possibly prolong its existence, as a
cordial does that of a dying man, but it cannot go on. They are
disunited, dissatisfied, and disgusted in the Cabinet."

[Illustration: _W. W. Lloyd._}

A MODERN LINER COMING UP THE THAMES.

The Royal Mail Steamer "Caledonia," belonging to the P. & O. Company, is
given as a contrast to the "William Fawcett." Tonnage, 7,758,
horse-power, 11,000.]

[Sidenote: Sir Robert Peel sent for.]

[Sidenote: The "Bedchamber Question."]

The Queen sent first for the Duke of Wellington, but he, having probably
little relish for leading a Government without a majority in the House
of Commons, excused himself on the grounds of his age and deafness, and
advised Her Majesty to lay the task on Sir Robert Peel. That statesman
replied, that having been party to a vote of the House which brought
about the situation, nothing should make him recoil from the obvious
difficulty of it, and he formed a Cabinet without delay. Then arose a
peculiar and unforeseen difficulty, known as "The Bedchamber Question."
Peel found no difficulty in filling up the important posts in the
Government, until it was explained to him that the Court Offices were
vacated with the Administrative ones, and that they also must be
supplied. He took up a Red Book, as he afterwards explained in
Parliament, learnt from it for the first time what were the different
appointments, and submitted to the Queen a list of names to replace all
except those below the rank of Lady of the Bedchamber. But Her Majesty
had other views, and the reader will more readily understand her
reluctance to part with those personal attendants, of whom she had grown
fond, by remembering the singular isolation of her youth, and the very
few acquaintances she possessed at the beginning of her reign.

[Sidenote: Melbourne recalled to Office.]

A difficulty of such slender proportions seems one that might have been
got round, but it was not to be. The Queen was inflexible, and Peel, on
principle, resigned his office. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues were
recalled; explanations followed in both Houses, and the incident
disappeared in a cloud of angry gossip. Peel was relieved from a
position the reverse of enviable, and Melbourne had to stand the brunt
of a tirade from the relentless Brougham and resume the reins which he
had allowed to slip from a somewhat reluctant hand.

[Illustration: EARLY TRAVELLING POSTAL VAN, LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM
RAILWAY.]

As for the cause of dispute, it was not finally disposed of till after
the Queen's marriage, when, on the suggestion of Prince Albert, it was
settled that on a change of Ministry the Queen should arrange for the
voluntary resignation of any ladies whom, being relations or very
intimate friends of leaders in opposition, it might, in the opinion of
the Prime Minister, be inconvenient to retain in office.

[Illustration: TRAVELLING POSTAL VAN ON THE LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN
RAILWAY.

Interior, showing sorters at work, and exterior with net extended for
taking in mails, and bag hung ready for delivery while the train is in
motion.]

[Sidenote: The Penny Post.]

It sometimes happens that Ministries which are least conspicuous by the
brilliancy of their career or the talents of those who compose them,
nevertheless confer the most lasting benefits on the nation. The
crowning achievement of the Melbourne administration originated neither
with a Minister, nor with one of those permanent officials upon whom
Ministers rely to make up for their own inexperience of departmental
work, but with a humble school teacher. Nobody at this day connects
penny postage with the name of Mr. Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, who paved the way for it in the Budget of 1839, but it is
inseparably associated with the memory of its inventor, Sir Rowland
Hill. The son of a schoolmaster, Rowland had an extraordinary inborn
love for arithmetic, and became mathematical master in his father's
school. This natural talent, it is said, was directed to the study of
Post Office statistics by an anecdote told of Coleridge, who happened to
see a poor woman in the Lake district refuse to accept delivery of a
letter from a postman because she could not afford to pay the
postage--one shilling. Coleridge, hearing that the letter was from her
brother, good-naturedly insisted on paying the fee, notwithstanding the
woman's reluctance; but no sooner was the postman's back turned than she
showed him that the letter consisted of nothing but a blank sheet. It
had been agreed between her and her brother that he should send her such
a blank sheet once a quarter so long as things went well with him,
marking the cover so that she should not require to accept delivery, and
that in this way she should get his mute message without need to pay
postage. Hill detected the economic fallacy which opened the way to such
innocent roguery, and rested not till he had devised means to remedy it.
He published his design in pamphlet form in 1837, advancing the bold
proposition that the smaller the fee charged for carrying letters the
greater would be the multiplication of correspondence, and the larger
the profit to the Department. He proposed an uniform charge upon letters
of one penny a half ounce, irrespective of distance. It was the
application to the public service of a commercial principle by which
large fortunes have been repeatedly realised in private business, but
the plan was unhesitatingly condemned by the Post Office authorities.
The Postmaster-General, Lord Lichfield, spoke of it in the House of
Lords as the wildest and most extravagant scheme of all the wild and
extravagant ones he had ever listened to. Colonel Maberley, Secretary to
the Post Office, declared the experiment was certain to fail, though he
was of opinion that no obstruction should be placed in the way of it,
lest the Government should afterwards be blamed for not giving it a
trial. Lastly, Sydney Smith may be quoted as representing educated
public opinion: "A million of revenue is given up," he said, "to the
nonsensical Penny Post Scheme, to please my old, excellent, and
universally dissentient friend, Noah Warburton. I admire the Whig
Ministry, and think they have done more good things than all the
Ministries since the Revolution; but these concessions are sad and
unworthy marks of weakness, and fill reasonable men with alarm."

[Illustration: _J. A. Vinter._} {_National Portrait Gallery._

SIR ROWLAND HILL, 1795-1879.

Originator of the system of uniform Penny Postage with prepayment by
stamps.]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE GENERAL POST OFFICE AT THE TIME OF THE
INTRODUCTION OF PENNY POSTAGE.]

Mr. Warburton and Mr. Wallace were the two members of Parliament who
most warmly advocated the project of Rowland Hill. But credit is due to
the courage shown by Mr. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who,
in the face of a deficit of three-quarters of a million, was bold enough
to adopt the scheme and make provision for it in his Budget. Sir Robert
Peel and Mr. Goulbourn criticised the proposal mainly on the ground that
it involved a risk of loss to the revenue which ought not to be incurred
in the existing state of the finances; but on a division the resolution
was carried by a majority of 102, and the Bill carrying it into effect
subsequently passed without a division. This reform, the offspring of
the genius of an obscure mathematical teacher, and so modestly brought
to light, has since been adopted by every civilised community in the
world. To realise the boon thereby conferred on commercial and general
intercourse it is only necessary to recall the postal regulations in
force in Great Britain previous to 1839. Letters could not be prepaid;
the charge for postage varied according to distance, and also according
to the weight, shape, and size of letters. Thus, a letter posted in
London for Brighton cost the recipient a fee of eightpence; the rate
from London to Aberdeen was 1_s._ 3-1/2_d._, and to Belfast 1_s._ 4_d._
No wonder, then, that, in a time of expanding trade, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer found himself supported in his proposal by countless
petitions from commercial centres in favour of cheaper postage. But
there was more than this: there was the flagrant injustice of the
system of official franks. Members of the Government and of Parliament
had the privilege of free postage, not only for their own letters but
for those of their friends by simply writing their names on the cover.
This privilege had grown to the dimensions of a gross abuse; people who
enjoyed the friendship of a Minister were not the least shy of pestering
him for franks; the revenue was defrauded, and those who were least able
to bear the cost had to pay a high fee in order to recoup the Department
for the loss on letters written by wealthy people.

[Illustration: GENERAL POST OFFICE, ST. MARTIN'S LE-GRAND, IN 1837.

This building, erected in the reign of George IV., is still used as the
central office for sorting and forwarding the mails.]

[Illustration: MAIL COACHES LEAVING THE GENERAL POST OFFICE, 1837.

_From a print of that date._]

Such being the case for reform from a popular point of view, it was
hardly less urgent from a departmental one. The Post Office had then, as
it has now, a monopoly of conveying correspondence; but the high rates
charged had driven people to various means of infringing that monopoly.
There had arisen all sorts of illegal and clandestine enterprises for
carrying letters at cheap rates. It had been proved before the Committee
which considered Mr. Hill's scheme that five-sixths of the
correspondence between London and Manchester had been smuggled for many
years; one great firm having despatched sixty-seven letters by unlawful
agency for every one that went through the Post Office. Between 1815 and
1835 the population had increased by thirty per cent., and the
stage-coach duty by 128 per cent., yet the revenue of the Post Office
had remained stationary.

The proposed reduction from an average rate of sixpence farthing to one
penny was certainly a startling one. The Committee above referred to had
recommended an uniform twopenny rate, but Spring Rice told the House of
Commons that he had become convinced that the loss to the revenue (for
no practical man, except, perhaps, Rowland Hill himself, doubted that
loss there must be) would be less from a penny rate. He estimated in his
Budget the sacrifice at about £700,000.

[Sidenote: Its remarkable Success.]

The wildest enthusiasts can never have contemplated what have been the
actual results as revealed by the Post Office returns of 1895-6. In 1837
there were 80,000 letters and 44,000 newspapers delivered through the
Post Office in the United Kingdom--a total of 124,000 deliveries. In the
twelve months of 1895-6 the returns show that the deliveries (exclusive
of telegrams) amounted to the stupendous figure of 3,031,553,196,
representing 2,248 times the volume of business transacted in 1837, and
producing a nett profit of £3,632,122. Certain races of primitive
savages, it is said, have never acquired the art of counting beyond two;
everything beyond a pair being reckoned as "plenty." Such figures as
those quoted above baffle even ordinary civilised powers of calculation;
very few persons are able to apprehend the idea of a million; much less
can they grasp the reality of growth represented in thousands of
millions. Perhaps, the magnitude of the Post Office business at the
present day can be best illustrated by its miscarriages. The value of
property found in letters opened in the Returned Letter Offices in 1896
amounted to £580,000.

[Illustration: GENERAL POST OFFICE--NEW NORTH BUILDING.

This building, completed in 1895, is occupied by the official,
financial, and clerical staffs of the Post Office.]

[Illustration: {_From an Engraving._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN LEAVING WINDSOR CASTLE FOR THE REVIEW,

September 28, 1837.

The Queen, who is in semi-military habit and rides a white horse, is
attended by her uncle, the King of the Belgians, on her right, with Lord
Hill, Commander of the Forces, on her left, and the Duke of Wellington
behind.]

The Penny Post, then, endures as the single masterpiece of the Melbourne
Ministry, affording another example, if one were wanting, how men become
famous for the achievements on which they pride themselves least.
Macaulay, having returned from India at this time, had re-entered
Parliament as member for Edinburgh, and joined the Cabinet as Secretary
for War. Greville quotes him as having declared that he wished he could
destroy all that he had written up to that date, for he thought "his
time had been thrown away upon _opuscula_ unworthy of his talents." He
had resolved to apply himself to serious work--the History of England.
But much of his literary renown rests on these _opuscula_: most people
esteem Macaulay the essayist far more highly than Macaulay the historian
or Macaulay the Minister. Greville himself, in relating this anecdote,
unconsciously illustrates the inability of men to judge of their own
performances. Speculating what Macaulay might have been "if he had
wasted his time and frittered away his intellect as I have done mine,"
the diarist proceeds, "if I had been carefully trained and subjected to
moral discipline, I might have acted a creditable and useful part."
Possibly; but in that case the journal, by which alone Greville is
remembered, had never been written.

[Illustration: CENTRAL POSTAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE.

This large building, officially known as the "G.P.O. West," occupies the
corner of Newgate Street opposite to the General Post Office at St.
Martin's-le-Grand. It was erected in 1870-74, and is entirely devoted to
telegraphic business. The uppermost three floors are operating rooms, of
the interior of one of which we give a view on page 31.]

[Sidenote: Betrothal of the Queen.]

Before the close of the year announcement was made of an event of the
highest importance, which was to affect in a very large degree the
material progress of the nation as well as the character and happiness
of the monarch. On November 23 the Queen held a Privy Council at
Buckingham Palace, and made known her intention to marry her cousin, the
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

"About eighty Privy Councillors were present," writes Greville, "the
folding doors were thrown open and the Queen came in, attired in a plain
morning gown, but wearing a bracelet containing Prince Albert's picture.
She read the declaration in a clear, sonorous, sweet-toned voice, but
her hands trembled so excessively that I wonder she was able to read the
paper which she held."

[Illustration: _W. C. Ross, A.R.A._} {_By permission of Messrs. Graves._

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT AT THE TIME OF HIS MARRIAGE.]

[Sidenote: Character of Prince Albert.]

Prince Albert, the second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld,
by Louisa, daughter of Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Attenburg, was very
nearly the same age as the Queen, having been born on August 26, 1819.
Royal alliances are so often the outcome of purely political or
prudential calculation that people are apt to assume that the deeper
personal feelings are not allowed to weigh with the persons most
concerned; but young men and women are not the less human because they
are born in the purple, and Queen Victoria's marriage was as much a love
match as that of any village maid. But she had set her affections on one
of a disposition and habits not commonly to be found in any station of
life. Not only was Prince Albert remarkably handsome and amiable, but he
had sedulously cultivated natural gifts of a very high order. He had
made himself a good musician, he had penetrated far in natural science,
made a special study of social politics, and was well read in general
literature. He was known to have steered a clear course among the
temptations which peculiarly beset a young man of princely rank and
fortune. All this he might have been, and yet, had there not been
something to balance it, he might have proved no fitting consort of the
young Queen of the English. But there was another side to his character.
Erudite, he was completely without the fastidious or shy manner which
sometimes imparts a blemish to learning, for his manner in society was
extremely fascinating; of artistic tastes, he was soon to prove himself
capable in business. Last, but not least, in view of an English public,
he was an accomplished horseman, and devoted to field sports.

[Illustration: _W. A. Knell._} {_From the Royal Collection._

THE LANDING OF PRINCE ALBERT AT DOVER, February 6, 1840.

His Royal Highness experienced very bad weather in crossing the
Channel.]

[Sidenote: Announcement to Parliament.]

The Queen opened Parliament in person on January 16, 1840, and her
speech included the formal announcement of her betrothal to Prince
Albert. Strangely enough the first criticism came from the Duke of
Wellington, of all her subjects the least likely to question Her
Majesty's decision. He complained that it ought to have been officially
declared that Prince Albert was a Protestant, and he moved to insert the
word "Protestant" in the Address in reply to the speech from the throne.
Lord Melbourne thought the amendment was superfluous, but it was agreed
to without a division.

[Sidenote: Debates.]

Less harmonious were the proceedings of the following week in the other
House, when Lord John Russell moved for a grant of £50,000 a year to the
Queen's consort, to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund. Colonel
Sibthorpe, a Tory member, well-known for his eccentricity, moved an
amendment to substitute £30,000, which was supported by Sir Robert Peel
and the Opposition. Lord John resisted it with great warmth, declaring
that "no Sovereign of this country had been insulted in such a manner as
her present Majesty had been"; but the Government were badly defeated by
a combination of Tories and Radicals, and Colonel Sibthorpe's amendment
was carried by a majority of 104.

[Illustration: _W. Drummond._} {_From an Engraving in the British
Museum._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN HER BRIDAL DRESS.]

[Sidenote: A famous duel.]

The fact is that people who have grown up familiar only with the present
relations of the Royal family with the public can hardly realise how
prevalently censorious opinions were held regarding the Queen, and how
much prejudice Prince Albert had to live down. On the 17th of the very
month in which these debates took place, a duel was fought between Mr.
Horsman, Whig member for Cockermouth, and Mr. Bradshaw, who had used
discourteous and disloyal language about the Queen in a speech made at
Canterbury. Horsman had said that Bradshaw had the tongue of a traitor
and the heart of a coward. After an exchange of shots, the seconds
induced Bradshaw to retract and apologise. It may be mentioned here that
the abolition of duelling was one of the first objects to which Prince
Albert devoted his efforts after his naturalisation. He proposed the
substitution of Courts of Honour to arbitrate in quarrels between
gentlemen, and though he did not prevail on the Commander-in-Chief to
establish these, there can be no doubt that the Prince's personal
influence was greatly the cause of suppressing a system which was in
full force during the early years of the reign.

[Illustration: _Sir G. Hayter, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection_ (_by
permission of Messrs. Graves, Publishers of the Engraving_).

A. Prince George of Cambridge.
B. Duchess of Cambridge.
C. Princess Mary.
D. Prince Ernest.
E. Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
F. Queen Adelaide.
G. Prince Albert.
H. The Queen.
J. Duke of Sussex.
K. Archbishop of Canterbury.
L. Duchess of Kent.
M. Princess Augusta of Cambridge.
N. Duke of Cambridge.
P. Princess Sophia Matilda.

THE MARRIAGE OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT AT THE CHAPEL ROYAL, ST.
JAMES'S, February 10, 1840.]

[Sidenote: The Queen fired at.]

The Queen's marriage to Prince Albert was celebrated on February 10,
1840. During the summer of that year the Queen was fired at by a lunatic
potboy as she drove up Constitution Hill with the Prince, but happily
escaped all injury. One sometimes hears doubts expressed about the
necessity for the elaborate precautions taken for the safety of Royal
personages, who, it is supposed by some people, might safely trust
themselves more freely to the goodwill of their subjects. But there is
nothing more certain than this--that, however popular or deserving a
monarch may be, there are always crazed or desperate individuals with
schemes of insult or violence, waiting an opportunity to carry them out.

[Sidenote: War declared with China.]

The relations of Great Britain and the East India Company with China had
for some years been drifting into very unfriendly conditions, arising
out of the opium trade. The Chinese Government had strictly prohibited
the importation of opium--a measure commanding the sincere sympathy of
those in this country who condemned all use of opium as an unmitigated
physical and moral evil. But India derived enormous profits from the
opium trade, and her traders used every device to evade the
restrictions. It was suspected, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord
Palmerston, endorsed the suspicion, that the policy of the Chinese
Government had nothing to do with the morality of the trade, but was
concerned only to protect the native opium industry. The wheels of
diplomacy ran heavily between the "Heavenly Dynasty" and the British
Foreign Office for many years, till at last they were brought to a stand
by the sudden outbreak of war. Lord Palmerston had appointed three
superintendents to look after the interests of British traders in
Chinese ports, and invested them with a semi-diplomatic character. Thus
it came to pass that when, after months of procrastination, Her
Majesty's Government at last announced that "they could not interfere
for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the
country with which they traded," thus practically forbidding the opium
trade, Captain Elliott, the chief superintendent, read between the lines
of the despatch, and, on the Chinese authorities seizing a large
quantity of opium in British vessels, requested the Governor of India to
send warships for the protection of Englishmen trading in China. The
request was promptly complied with by the despatch of two frigates, the
_Volage_ and the _Hyacinth_, which attacked a Chinese fleet of
twenty-nine junks below Hong Kong, blew up one of them, sunk three, and
knocked the rest about in fine style.

[Illustration: _W. H. Overend._} {_From Contemporary Sketches._

THE "VOLAGE" AND "HYACINTH" ENGAGING TWENTY-NINE CHINESE JUNKS.]

[Sidenote: Capture of Chusan.]

[Sidenote: Bombardment of the Bogue Forts.]

A strong armament of fourteen warships and several transports was
assembled at Singapore, the command of which was given to Admiral
Elliott. Before his arrival, however, in the _Melville_, 74, the second
in command, Commodore Sir J. Gordon Bremer, captured the island of
Chusan, on July 5, with its capital--a walled city six miles in
circumference. Negotiations for peace were then opened, but the Chinese
authorities prolonged them on so many various pretexts, while busily
erecting batteries at the Bogue, near Canton, that Commodore Bremer
broke off the proceedings and prepared for action. The Bogue Forts were
bombarded, and two of them were captured on January 7, 1841; after
further fruitless parleying the bombardment was re-opened on February
19, and the whole chain of defences were taken. After each successive
engagement, Captain Elliott, the civil superintendent, attempted to
obtain a pacific settlement with the enemy; but forbearance was
invariably interpreted by the Mandarin as a sign of weakness, and it was
not till the troops under Sir Hugh Gough, had fought their way to the
walls of Canton that Captain Elliott was able to announce that terms of
peace had been agreed to, just forty-five minutes before a general
attack on Canton was to have taken place.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").} {_Political Sketches, 1840._

CHINESE JUGGLERS.

Sir J. Graham, who attacked the Government with a Motion in regard to
the conduct of the Chinese War in 1840 and nearly defeated them, is here
represented as drawing forth reels of Chinese Papers and Blue Books from
Lord Palmerston. John Bull, in the background, is remarking, "What an
enormous quantity of paper for any man to swallow!"]

[Illustration: SIGNATURES OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE CONSORT IN 1840.]

[Sidenote: Peace concluded under the Walls of Nankin.]

Once more peace negotiations broke down: hostilities were resumed;
Chusan was re-occupied; Amoy, believed by the Chinese to be impregnable,
was taken by assault on August 25, 1842; the capture of Chinghai and
Ningpo followed; and when Sir H. Gough appeared before Nankin the
Chinese Government finally agreed to accept the terms imposed as the
conditions of peace. Five millions and three-quarters sterling were
exacted as an indemnity; the island of Hong Kong was ceded to Great
Britain, and five principal Chinese ports were thrown open to British
trade.

[Illustration: _C. R. Leslie, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

A. Duchess of Gloucester.
B. Duchess of Kent.
C. Duke of Sussex.
D. Queen Adelaide.
E. Archbishop of Canterbury christening
F. the Royal Infant.
G. Archbishop of York.
H. The Queen.
J. Prince Consort.

THE CHRISTENING OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE, February 10,
1841.

Her Majesty's eldest child, the Princess Royal, was born November
21, 1840, and christened Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa.]

CHAPTER III.

1841-1846.

[Sidenote: Unpopularity of the Whigs]

The closing months of the Melbourne Ministry afford melancholy matter
for chronicle. The Government went on steadily losing popularity in the
country and forfeiting respect in Parliament. The sword, long impending,
descended at last. Mr. Baring, who had succeeded Spring Rice as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to confess to a deficiency in his
Budget of nearly two millions, which he proposed to meet by a
re-adjustment of the sugar and timber duties, which brought about the
defeat of the Government by a majority of thirty-six. Still, Ministers
did not resign. Russell had determined at length to make a bid for the
Free Trade vote, and gave notice of his intention to propose a permanent
reduction in the duty on corn. But the announcement fell flatly; people
only saw in this sudden conversion another desperate effort to retain
office, for the Whigs hitherto had been inflexible in resistance to Free
Trade demands. Melbourne had sworn roundly that of all the mad projects
he had ever heard of the surrender of duties was the maddest; and
Russell had been equally explicit, though employing fewer expletives.
The duty on imported corn had been established by legislation in 1815,
and was on a sliding scale according to current prices. The impost was
27_s._ on each quarter of wheat when the price fell below 60_s._, and
diminished in proportion as the price rose till it stood at 1_s._ when
the price of the quarter was 73_s._ and upwards.

[Illustration: TELEGRAPH CABLE SHIP "MONARCH."

This ship was built and is maintained by the Post Office specially for
the laying and repairing of submarine telegraph cables. She is fitted
with sheaves in the bows, over which the cables are led. The "Alert" is
another ship employed for the same purpose.]

[Illustration: A PORTION OF A TELEGRAPHIC OPERATING ROOM AT THE GENERAL
POST OFFICE, LONDON.

The number of telegraphic messages transmitted from the various London
offices in the year 1895-6 was 27,025,193, and the total for the United
Kingdom, 78,839,610. As many as six messages--three in each
direction--are now transmitted along a single wire at the same time.]

[Sidenote: Fall of the Melbourne Ministry.]

The next move in Parliament was a vote of no confidence, moved by Sir
Robert Peel, and then at last Lord John Russell announced that Her
Majesty had been advised to dissolve Parliament immediately. Writs were
made returnable on August 19, by which date the political tables had
been completely turned. The Conservatives who went to the country in a
minority of thirty returned with a majority of seventy-six. It is
notable that in recording this result the _Annual Register_ for the
first time exchanges the title of Whigs for that of Liberals.

[Sidenote: Peel's Cabinet.]

[Sidenote: The Afghan War.]

Before following the fortunes of the Administration formed by Sir Robert
Peel, reference must be made to mournful news which, while people at
home were crowding round the hustings and polling booths, were slowly
approaching this country from Central Asia. The most serious reverse to
British policy and the greatest disaster to British arms which have
happened in the present century were the outcome of events which may
thus briefly be recapitulated. In 1837 Captain Alexander Burnes,
Orientalist and traveller, arrived as British agent at Cabul, capital of
the province of that name, in the north of Afghanistan. The Prince of
that fragment of the ancient Empire of Ahmed Shah was Dost Mahomed Khan,
an usurper, it is true, but a popular hero, a soldier of remarkable
ability, and a sagacious and bold ruler. Dost professed the friendliest
feelings towards England, but, for some reasons now unknown, was
profoundly distrusted by the Foreign Office. Captain Burnes thoroughly
trusted Dost, but his repeated assurance failed to convince his
employers that in his disputes with neighbouring States, Dost greatly
preferred relying on English influence to accepting the advances
continually made to him by Russia and Persia. Burnes was instructed to
regard Dost as dangerously treacherous, and at last Lord Auckland,
Governor-General of India, made a treaty with Runjeet Singh, hostile to
Dost, and with the purpose of restoring Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, whom Dost
had deposed from the throne of Cabul. A British force invaded Cabul,
overthrew the brave Dost, and enthroned Soojah, whom nobody wanted. But
Dost Mahomed was a foe of no ordinary mettle. On November 2, 1840, he
encountered the allied force of the English and Shah Sooja at
Purwandurrah, and if he did not actually win the battle, the gallantry
of his Afghan cavalry caused it to be drawn. Dost, however, was too wise
to believe that he could resist for long the force of England. On the
evening after the battle he rode into his enemy's camp and placed his
sword in the hand of Sir W. Macnaghten, the British Envoy at Soojah's
Court. Dost was honourably treated, his sword was returned to him, he
was sent to India and provided with a residence and pension.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").

LORD AUCKLAND,

1784-1849.

Governor-General of India, 1835-1841.]

[Sidenote: Murder of Sir A. Burnes and Sir W. Macnaghten.]

But Dost was the darling of his people. They hated Soojah, whom the
English had forced on them, and they rose in revolt against him. Burnes
was the earliest victim, for although, in truth, he had all along stood
stoutly for Dost, the insurgents believed him to have betrayed their
ruler. He and his brother and all their party, man, woman, and child,
were hacked to pieces. Akbar Khan, second and favourite son of Dost
Mahomed, now put himself at the head of the insurrection, and the
shameful part of the story began. Hitherto, there had been blunders
enough in English dealings with this brave people: but there is nothing
to blush for in blunders provided they are clear of disgrace; one
cannot, however, ignore the truth that, after a few weeks' fighting,
British troops, having been repeatedly beaten, became so demoralised
that their officers could not get them to stand before the fierce
Afghans. General Elphinstone, the chief in command, was an experienced,
able soldier; but his health had broken down before the insurrection
began, and he had written to the Governor-General begging to be relieved
of his command, which he felt he was physically unfit to continue.
Unfortunately there was some delay in appointing his successor, and the
trouble came before Elphinstone could be relieved. Against the personal
courage of Brigadier Shelton, the second in command, no reflections have
ever been made, but he proved lamentably supine at moments when prompt
action was most required. Affairs went from bad to worse with the
British force in cantonments outside Cabul, until at last Elphinstone,
grievously weakened by disease, could be brought to contemplate no
course but abject surrender. Abject surrender! not quite unconditional,
it is true, but on most humiliating terms, including the release of Dost
Mahomed and the immediate evacuation of Cabul by the British.

[Illustration: _Sir Keith A. Jackson._} {_From "Sketches in
Afghanistan."_

CABUL IN 1839.

Cabul, the seat of government of the Ameer of Afghanistan, is at the
present time (1897) an open town, though it was formerly surrounded by
walls of brick and mud. The only building of any importance is the Bala
Hissar, or Citadel, containing the apartments of the Ameer. Besides
being a place of great strategic importance, Cabul is the centre of the
trade of Central Asia.]

Bad as this was there was darker disgrace to come. The evacuation was
delayed--on the part of the British from a foolish "Micawber" hope that
"something would turn up"--on the part of the Afghans, no doubt, in
order that the advent of winter should make the passes impracticable.
Macnaghten, the British Envoy, seems to have been infected by the
prevailing demoralisation, and fell into a trap prepared for him by
Akbar Khan. At the very moment when he (Macnaghten) was negotiating
openly with the chiefs in Cabul he entered into a conspiracy with Akbar
to destroy them, to establish Shah Soojah as nominal monarch, and to
secure the appointment of Akbar as Vizier. Macnaghten's punishment made
no long tarrying, for Akbar was acting a subtle part. Macnaghten,
accompanied by three officers, rode out one morning to a conference with
Akbar on the west bank of the Cabul river. It was a solitary place, as
befitted the discussion of the contemplated treachery, but they had not
been conferring long before they were surrounded by a crowd of armed
country people. The British officers remonstrated with Akbar; at that
moment Macnaghten and his companions were seized from behind; a scuffle
took place; Akbar drew a pistol, a gift from the Envoy himself, and shot
him in the body. Macnaghten fell from his horse and was instantly hewn
in pieces; Captain Trevor was killed also, and the other two officers,
Mackenzie and Laurence, were carried off to the town.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").}

LORD ELLENBOROUGH,

1790-1871.

Governor-General of India, 1841-1844.]

[Illustration: _W. Simpson, R.I._} {_From Sketches and Descriptions
obtained on the spot._

THE REMNANT OF AN ARMY.

The gate shown is the Cabul Gate of Jellalabad. It was from the top of
that gate that the sentry on duty first caught sight of the solitary
figure, clad in sheepskin coat and riding a bay pony, lean, hungry, and
tired, who alone survived the massacres in the Khyber and Jugdulluck
Passes. Dr. Brydon's form was bent from weakness, and he was so worn out
with fatigue that he could scarcely cling to the saddle. The
snow-covered mountain in the background is the Ram Koond.]

[Sidenote: The Retreat from Cabul.]

[Sidenote: Annihilation of the British Force.]

Deeper and deeper grows the horror--more profound the shame--as the
story proceeds. General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton lay in their
cantonments with 4,500 fighting men, with guns, and camp followers to
the number of 12,000. Macnaghten's bloody remains were dragged in
triumph through the streets of Cabul, yet not an arm was raised to
avenge him. Major Eldred Pottinger was for cutting their way out and
dying on the field, but no one would listen to him: negotiations were
opened with Akbar Khan, and the British force were allowed to march out,
leaving all their guns except six, all their treasure and six officers
as hostages. They started, upwards of 16,000 souls, to march through the
stupendous Khyber Pass to Jellalabad in the very depth of winter. Akbar
Khan's safe-conduct proved the shadow of a shade; either he would not,
or, as seems to have been the case, he could not, protect them from
hordes of fanatic Ghilzies, who hovered along the route--shooting,
stabbing, mutilating the wretched fugitives. Akbar, indeed rode with
Elphinstone, and probably it was true, as he declared, that he could do
nothing with his handful of horse to keep off the infuriated hillmen. At
last it became evident that a choice must be made of a few who might be
saved either from a bloody death or from perishing of cold in the snow
and searching wind. Akbar proposed to take all the women and children
into his own custody and convey them to Peshawur. The awful nature of
the dilemma may be imagined when such a proposal was agreed to. Lady
Macnaghten was placed in charge of the assassin of her husband: with her
went Lady Sale, Mrs. Trevor, and eight other Englishwomen; and, as an
extreme favour, a few married men were allowed to accompany their wives.
General Elphinstone and two other officers were also taken as hostages.
The rest struggled on as far as the Jugdulluck Pass. Then came the end:
the hillsides were crowded with fierce mountaineers; the 44th Regiment
were ordered to the front; they mutinied and threatened to shoot their
officers, broke their ranks, and were cut down in detail by the Afghans.
A general massacre followed. Out of more than 16,000 souls who marched
out of Cabul, a sorry score of fugitives were all that left that
horrible defile alive. Sixteen miles from Jellalabad, only six remained:
still the murdering knife was plied, until, at last, one solitary
haggard man, Dr. Brydon, rode into Jellalabad to tell of the literal
annihilation of the army of Cabul, and announce to General Sale,
commanding in that place, that his wife was in the hands of Akbar Khan.

There is little more to add. It had been part of Elphinstone's shameful
bargain with Akbar Khan that Jellalabad and Candahar should be evacuated
before the army of Cabul should reach the former place, and orders had
been sent to General Sale in Jellalabad and General Nott in Candahar to
abandon these towns. Luckily, these officers were of the right British
stamp, and they refused to obey. Akbar Khan besieged Sale in Jellalabad;
Sale not only held that place but gave battle to the Afghans outside the
fort, routed them, and made ready to co-operate with General Nott at
Candahar for a forward movement on Cabul. But the faculties of Lord
Auckland, the Governor-General, seemed paralysed. Regardless of British
prestige, the very keystone of our rule in India, he ordered the
precipitate recall of all the troops in Afghanistan. Luckily, again, his
term of office was just drawing to a close, and Lord Ellenborough came
out to take the reins of government. At first he issued a proclamation
endorsing the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but more spirited counsel
prevailed in the end. The re-conquest of Cabul was accomplished by the
entry of General Pollock into the capital on September 15, 1842, when it
was found that the unfortunate Shah Soojah had paid the penalty of the
greatness thrust on him by English diplomacy, and had been assassinated
by the people he had been set to rule. Of the English ladies and
children who had been taken under the protection of Akbar Khan the story
has been written in a once famous book, Lady Sale's _Journal_. The
husband of that lady, General Sir Robert Sale, was sent to recover the
captives, who had suffered innumerable hardships. General Elphinstone
had died--the best thing that could happen for his fame; the rest were
found in a hill fort in the Indian Caucasus, in charge of a chief, who,
having heard of Akbar Khan's defeat, was easily bribed to surrender his
trust. The retreat from Cabul had begun on January 6, but the news did
not reach England till March 7.

[Illustration: _Thomas Sully._} {_By permission of Messrs. Graves._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN 1838.

This portrait was painted from life at Buckingham Palace by Mr. Sully,
an American Artist, whose daughter, about the same age as Her Majesty,
took the Queen's place and wore the jewels while these were being
painted into the picture. Her Majesty came in while the young lady was
thus attired and conversed with her.]

[Illustration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_By permission of Messrs. Graves._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, ABOUT 1845.

This illustration is from a very beautiful coloured lithograph prepared
in 1851 in compliance with Her Majesty's kind suggestion that a portrait
should be prepared which, in those days of expensive prints, might be
sold at a price within the reach of her less well-to-do subjects.]

[Sidenote: The Corn Duties.]

The Tories--or, as they must in future be called, the Conservatives--had
been carried to power by a strong wave of reaction in 1841, but it was
the destiny of their leader, Sir Robert Peel, to shake the fabric of the
Party to its base. There was a story current, of dubious authenticity,
about this statesman, how that in his early days his father, also Sir
Robert, warned Lord Liverpool that if the young man did not get office
immediately he would go over to the Whigs and be lost to his party,
whereupon Liverpool immediately appointed him Irish Secretary. No doubt
Peel was far more disposed for progress and reform than the average
Whig, and there was something paradoxical in the fate that made him
leader of the Tories. At first all went smoothly; the leader of the
House of Commons was chief of the Ministerial forces and master of the
Opposition also. But the first note of approaching storm was sounded on
the eve of the meeting of Parliament in February, 1842. The Duke of
Buckingham, Lord Privy Seal, resigned his office and seat in the Cabinet
on January 31. The reason for this, as the Duke afterwards announced in
Parliament, lay in the following expression in the Queen's Speech:--"I
recommend to your consideration the state of the laws which affect the
importation of corn, and of other articles, the produce of foreign
countries." This little sentence, wedged in among the usual ceremonial
or occasional paragraphs, contained the kernel of the Ministerial
programme, and at once excited extraordinary interest in the country. On
February 9, when Peel was to propound his scheme, the delegates of the
Anti-Corn Law League marched down in procession to Westminster, and it
required all the force of the police on duty to keep them from taking
possession of the lobby of the House of Commons.

[Illustration: _Lowes Dickinson._} {_National Portrait Gallery._

RICHARD COBDEN, 1804-1865.

The son of a yeoman farmer in Sussex. Entered Parliament as Member for
Stockport in 1841 and immediately took the lead in the House of Commons
of the party identified with the cause of Free Trade, a cause he had
already done much to strengthen. He opposed the Crimean War, and brought
about the fall of the Palmerston Government in 1857, by carrying a vote
condemning their action in regard to the Chinese War. He negotiated the
commercial treaty with France in 1860.]

[Illustration: _Frank Holl, R.A._} {_By permission of the Birmingham
Liberal Association._

JOHN BRIGHT, 1811-1889.

He was the son of a Rochdale cotton spinner; entered Parliament as M.P.
for Durham in 1843, and represented Manchester 1847-54, and Birmingham
from that date to his death. He was appointed President of the Board of
Trade in 1868, and in 1873 and again in 1881 Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and one of the
most eloquent and convincing speakers of the century. He is principally
remembered for his advocacy of the Repeal of the Corn Laws.]

[Sidenote: The Pioneers of Free Trade.]

[Sidenote: Failure of Potato Crop in Ireland.]

This League was a remarkable organisation under a no less remarkable
leader. Richard Cobden, the son of a yeoman farmer, was employed in his
youth in a London warehouse, and then became partner in a Manchester
cotton factory. He first attracted notice as a pamphleteer, attacking
some of the most cherished traditions of British statesmanship. He
travelled far and wide on the business of his firm, and in every country
he visited his thoughtful mind gathered material for the doctrines
inseparably associated with his name. He first entered Parliament in
1841, being recognised at that time as the leader of the movement in
the country against the corn duties. Mr. Charles Villiers had won for
himself the position of parliamentary head of the Free Trade party;
to him Cobden came not as a rival but as a wise, resourceful ally. A
third figure was soon to be added to this famous group in the person
of John Bright, a Quaker manufacturer in Rochdale. A notable trio,
each supplying the complement of the other's qualities; Villiers, of
aristocratic birth and connections, well acquainted with the rules and
peculiar temperament of the House of Commons, ardent, industrious,
and well informed; Cobden, a man of the people, temperate, just,
"the apostle of common-sense," and singularly persuasive; Bright,
intensely--sternly in earnest, possessing gifts of oratory denied to
his colleagues, but exercising them with a discretion rare among fluent
speakers. Lastly, one attribute shared equally by each of the three
men--absolute integrity and complete disinterestedness. They were
Radicals, but they dissociated themselves from all ties of political
party, looking for no reward from either side, but ready to support any
Minister who would carry out their views. Their appeal was addressed
to the understanding, not to the passions, of men: their aim was to
secure cheap food for the masses, but they never stooped to inflammatory
tirades against the classes. Hence the steady, rapid growth of the
League, and its irresistible influence on the Queen's Ministers. Mr.
Villiers had advocated for many years the total abolition of the corn
duties, and nothing less would now satisfy the League. Russell, who
scouted the very idea of absolutely free imports, had yielded so far as
to propose, in 1841, a fixed duty on foreign corn, greatly less than
the existing rate, which varied between 27_s._ and 1_s._ per quarter,
according to the market price. Peel came forward in 1842 with a more
liberal remission of duty, but although his Bill was passed by a very
large majority, all it did was to make the country party behind him
uneasy without conciliating the Anti-Corn Law people. No one but men
of the Manchester school--"Cobdenites," as they afterwards came to be
called--no one, either Whig or Tory, dreamt of denying that protection
was desirable, even necessary, for agriculture. Peel's first measure
was framed to protect wheat growers against a fall in the average
price below 56_s._ a quarter, and also to protect the consumer against
a higher price. But the corn duties had been fixed in 1815: a whole
generation had grown up under them: their outworks could not be tampered
with without risking the stability of the whole structure. It required
a momentum of extraordinary force to carry the movement against them
to success. That impetus came, in the autumn of 1845, from two sources
equally unforeseen. First arrived news of a destructive disease, wasting
the potato crop in Ireland. Potatoes had grown to be to the Irish
peasant what wheat is to English, what oats still were to Scottish
labourers. The Government were informed that one-third of the food of
the people was already destroyed, that the disease was still spreading,
and no estimate could be formed of how much of the crop could be saved.
Deadly disaster was imminent, and the Cabinet was summoned to many
anxious deliberations. The Prime Minister advocated that in order to
avert famine all ports should be thrown open to corn ships. He coupled
this advice with the warning that, once the duties were suspended,
he did not think it would be possible to re-establish them. The
warning weighed more with the Cabinet than the advice. Three Ministers
only--Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and Sidney Herbert--supported
Peel's proposal. It was set aside, and a Commission was appointed
instead to take measures to mitigate the immediate necessity in Ireland.

[Illustration: _Designed by J. Flaxman, R.A._} {_In the Royal
Collection._

SILVER GILT BOWL.

This beautiful specimen of art workmanship was made for King George IV.
when Prince of Wales; the gilding alone cost £2,000. The ladle was made
for the baptism of the present Prince of Wales.]

[Illustration: _H. G. Hine._} {_From "Punch."_

GENUINE AGITATION.

_A Scene from "Julius Cæsar," with Wellington as Ghost._

In reply to questions drawing attention to the Repeal Agitation in
Ireland, the Duke of Wellington in the Lords, and Sir Robert Peel in the
Commons, expressed (May 9, 1843) the resolution of the Government to
uphold the Union at all costs, and hinted at the probable adoption of
coercive measures. The artist has made O'Connell himself the victim of
agitation at this implied threat.]

[Illustration: _R. Doyle._} {_From "Punch."_

PAPA COBDEN TAKING MASTER ROBERT A FREE TRADE WALK.

The reference is to Sir Robert Peel's gradual conversion to the views of
the "Manchester School."]

[Illustration: _Sir G. Hayter._} {_In the Royal Collection._

1. Her Majesty the Queen.
2. Prince Consort.
3. Duke of Cambridge.
4. Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.
5. Princess Augusta of Cambridge.
6. Duchess of Cambridge.
7. Duchess of Kent.
8. King of Prussia.
9. Earl Delawarr, Lord Chamberlain.
10. Earl of Liverpool, Lord Steward.
11. Duke of Sussex.
12. Duchess of Buccleuch, Mistress of the Robes.
13. Bishop of London.
14. Archbishop of Canterbury.
15. Prince George of Cambridge.

THE CHRISTENING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES IN ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL, WINDSOR,
January 25, 1842.]

[Sidenote: Lord John Russell's conversion to Free Trade.]

The other source of impetus referred to was Lord John Russell's
declaration at this juncture of his total conversion to the principle of
free trade in corn. His proposed modification in 1841 of the duties had
been less liberal than that of Peel in 1842. It had been a fixed duty
instead of a sliding scale. But there is no reason to doubt the
sincerity of his conversion or to suspect him of merely desiring to gain
a party advantage. The circumstances of the Anti-Corn Law party at the
moment were not such as to tempt the leader of the Opposition to embrace
their programme out of a mere desire to steal a march on his opponents.

[Illustration: 1837. 1897.

456,000 1,065,487

Tonnage of Colonial Shipping. Same scale as larger diagram.]

[Illustration: 1837.--2,335,000 tons. 1897.--12,293,539 tons.

THE GROWTH OF BRITISH COMMERCE, AS INDICATED BY THE TONNAGE OF BRITISH
SHIPS IN 1837 AND IN 1897.

The diagram illustrates at once the difference in type between the ships
of the two dates, and the increase in tonnage of the whole mercantile
marine, the latter being indicated by the comparative lengths of the
ships. Each dotted square represents a million tons.]

[Illustration: SECTION OF THE "GREAT EASTERN," THE LARGEST SHIP EVER
BUILT.

The "Great Eastern" was designed by Mr. Isambard K. Brunel, and built by
Mr. Scott Russell of Millwall, at a cost of £732,000. Her keel was laid
in May 1854 and she was launched on January 31, 1858. Her length was 692
feet; width between bulwarks, 83 feet; height, 60 feet; tonnage, 22,500;
displacement when loaded, 27,384 tons; horse-power, 11,000. 30,000
wrought-iron plates were used in her hulk. She was built on the
"cellular" principle, with two skins 2 feet apart, and driven by both
paddle wheels and screw. As a passenger steamer she did not succeed; but
she laid the first successful Atlantic cable (1866) and picked up and
repaired the earlier one which had parted in mid-ocean. She was
afterwards purchased for public exhibition and finally broken up in
1891.]

[Sidenote: Peel and Repeal.]

[Sidenote: Rupture of the Tory Party.]

The immediate effect of Russell's conversion, coming on the top of
alarming news from Ireland, was to send Peel forward on a course he had
been contemplating for years. He read a memorandum to the Cabinet on
December 2 recommending that Parliament should be summoned early in
January, and that he should submit a Bill for the practical and
immediate repeal of the Corn Laws. Lord Stanley and the Duke of
Buccleuch refused their support to this policy. The Duke of Wellington
said he was still in favour of maintaining the Corn Laws, but that if
Peel considered that their repeal was necessary for the maintenance of
his position "in Parliament and in the public view," he would support
the measure. The Cabinet adjourned till next day. By some accident--it
was said that a lady was the means of it--the _Times_ became possessed
of the secret, and on December 4 the startling announcement appeared in
its columns that the Cabinet had resolved on the Repeal of the Corn
Laws. The only modern parallel to the consternation ensuing in the clubs
and the country may be found in that which took place when, in 1886, it
was made known that Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet had decided to give Home
Rule to Ireland. Many refused to believe the statement in the _Times_,
alleging that it was impossible that a Cabinet secret could have leaked
out in this way. The _Standard_ published an emphatic, though not
authoritative, contradiction of the story. Excitement and dismay,
delight and disgust, contended for mastery wheresoever a few men
gathered together: in a few days all was known. Lord Stanley--the
"Rupert of debate," as Disraeli afterwards called him--and the Duke of
Buccleuch resigned their seats in the Cabinet. Peel would not consent to
proceed without the unanimous consent of his colleagues; on December 5
he went to Osborne and tendered his resignation to the Queen. Lord John
Russell was at once sent for to form a Ministry: he attempted to do so,
but failed: Lord Grey's distrust of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy
proving a fatal obstacle to it. Peel, on being required to do so by the
Queen, withdrew his resignation and resumed the duties of office. The
Duke of Buccleuch returned as Privy Seal, but Lord Stanley was not to be
reconciled, and Mr. Gladstone entered the Cabinet for the first time as
Colonial Secretary.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").} {_Political Sketches._

A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE CARES OF OFFICE AND THE EASE OF OPPOSITION.

Lord Aberdeen. Lord Palmerston.]

[Sidenote: The Corn Duties repealed.]

Parliament met on January 22, 1846. Expectation was at the boiling
point; it was one of those rare occasions, happening not more than once
or twice in an ordinary reign, when the ears of the whole country await
an announcement of interest to every class in it. Adopting an unusual,
almost unprecedented, course, the Prime Minister rose immediately after
the speeches of the mover and seconder of the Address: he entered into
no details of the measure foreshadowed in the Queen's Speech, but he
removed all shadow of doubt that the Ministry had resolved on the total
repeal of the corn duties. Those who know the ways of the House of
Commons will best understand the significance of a comment made by one
who was present. "He did not get a solitary cheer from the people behind
him except when he said that Stanley had always been against him ... and
then the whole of those benches rung with cheers." Perhaps nothing in
his speech gave deeper offence to his Party than the concluding
sentence, in which he declared that he found it "no easy task to ensure
the harmonious and united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud
aristocracy, and a reformed House of Commons."

[Illustration: _J. Doyle._ ("_H. B._").} {_Political Sketches, 1846._

AN AWKWARD SITUATION.

The Irish Famine of 1845 caused Sir Robert Peel to embrace the principle
of Free Trade; and his party, incensed at what they considered his
"treason," rejected his Coercion Bill, and brought about the fall of his
ministry.]

[Illustration: THE GROWTH OF MAIL STEAMERS REPRESENTED BY THE CUNARD
LINE FLEET FROM 1840 TO THE PRESENT DAY.

The year 1838 was the starting point of Atlantic Ocean racing. In that
year the _Great Western_ and the _Sirius_ crossed in 18 days and 15 days
respectively. The first Cunarder, the _Britannia_, appeared in 1840, and
made the westward passage in 14 days. The following year she crossed
eastward in 10 days. In 1851 the record was reduced to 9 days 18 hours
westward by the _Baltic_, and 9 days 20 hours 16 min. eastward by the
_Pacific_. In 1863 the _Scotia_, of the Cunard line, crossed eastward in
8 days 3 hours, and in the following year returned in 8 days 15 hours 45
min. Five years later the _City of Brussels_, of the Inman Line,
travelled between New York and Liverpool in 7 days 22 hours 3 min., but
the _Baltic_, of the White Star Line, lowered this by 2 hours four years
later. The _Arizona_ and _Alaska_ improved the speed between 1880 and
1885, the latter making the passage eastward in 6 days 22 hours. The
ill-fated _Oregon_ came eastward in 6 days 11 hours 9 min. in 1884,
while the _Etruria_ went westward in 6 days 1 hour 55 min. In 1889 the
_City of Paris_ lowered the eastward and westward journeys to 5 days 22
hours 50 min., and 5 days 19 hours 18 min., respectively, while two
years later the _Teutonic_ reduced this still further by 3 hours each
way. Finally the _Campania_ and _Lucania_ appeared in 1893, the latter
establishing the record eastwards of 5 days 8 hours 38 min. and
westwards of 5 days 7 hours 23 min. Mails have been carried per the
_Lucania_ between New York Post Office and the London Central Office in
156·7 hours.]

The spokesman of the angry Tories was one of whom much was to be heard
in coming years. Benjamin Disraeli had done nothing as yet to redeem the
apparently hopeless failure of his maiden speech in 1837. Outwardly, a
remarkable figure enough, in a Parliamentary sense he was no more than
obscure when he rose from his seat on the Government benches to lead the
first attack on the new policy. He was bitter, he was personal, but he
was adroitly opportune; and his fame as a statesman dates from that
day.

[Sidenote: Defeat and Resignation of the Government.]

[Illustration: _G. F. Watts, R.A._} {_In the National Portrait Gallery._

THE SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY,

1801-1885.

The Rt. Hon. Anthony Ashley-Cooper entered Parliament, as M.P. for
Woodstock, in 1826. He was then known as Lord Ashley. In 1842 he secured
the exclusion of women and children from mines, and in 1844 the passing
of the Ten Hours Bill. He succeeded to the Earldom in 1851. His life was
devoted to practical philanthropy.]

The immediate result was a split--a secession. The House of Commons
ratified Peel's policy by a majority of ninety-seven, but Disraeli
himself has put on record the feelings which animated Peel's ancient
supporters. "Vengeance had succeeded in most breasts to the more
sanguine sentiment: the field was lost, but at any rate there should be
retribution for those who had betrayed it."

The opportunity for vengeance was not long delayed. The Corn Bill left
the House of Commons on May 15. On June 25 it passed the third reading
in the House of Lords, and the most momentous measure of Queen
Victoria's reign awaited only the Royal Assent to complete it. On that
very night the House of Commons were to divide on one of those Bills
conferring extraordinary powers on the Executive in Ireland which it has
been the fate of successive Governments to introduce--Coercion Bills, as
they are called for short. The Protectionists perceived what lay in
their power: if they threw their weight in with the regular Opposition
and O'Connell's Irish Catholics, they could defeat their lost leader.
About eighty of them did so: the rest stayed away and Ministers were
left in a minority of seventy-three.

Peel resigned: "he had lost a party but won a nation." He never returned
to office, but, though he did not live to see it, the principles for
which he fought and fell became those of the Conservative party.

[Sidenote: Review of Peel's Administration.]

During the five years of his last Administration he had restored
equilibrium to the national finances. He turned the deficit of two
millions to which he succeeded to a surplus of five millions in 1845. He
carried the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth against the
votes of half his own party, though it cost him the loss of his
colleague, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone himself lived to abolish
the grant, for it was he who ruled the whirlwind that swept away the
Irish State Church in 1866, and the Maynooth grants disappeared with it.
Peel's Administration must also be credited with a marked advance in
legislation for the working classes. Lord Ashley (better known in later
years as Earl of Shaftesbury) had obtained the appointment of a
Commission to inquire into the employment of women in collieries: the
horrible evils thereby brought to light, the infamous degradation of
women and girls, harnessed like beasts of draught with a girdle round
their waist--unclothed, unwashed, and sometimes hopelessly
crippled--deeply moved the public mind, and the Act of 1842, prohibiting
the employment of females in mines, passed almost without opposition.
More prolonged was the resistance to the Factory Act of 1844, regulating
the hours of labour of youthful persons. This beneficent legislation
should not be overlooked in the glare of conflict over the Corn Laws.

[Illustration: _Sir E. Landseer, R.A._} {_In the Royal Collection (by
permission of Messrs. Graves)._

THE QUEEN, PRINCE CONSORT, AND PRINCESS ROYAL, AT WINDSOR CASTLE,
1843.]

[Illustration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_In the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY RECEIVING KING LOUIS PHILIPPE AT WINDSOR CASTLE, October 8,
1844.

Louis Philippe was the first French Monarch who ever set foot in the
British Islands on a visit of peace. The Prince Consort met him at
Portsmouth and accompanied him to Windsor, where the Queen awaited him.
At the banquet "he talked to me," writes the Queen, "of the time when he
was in a school in the Grisons, a teacher merely, receiving twenty pence
a day, having to brush his own boots, and under the name of Chabot." On
the following day he was installed Knight of the Garter. He left England
on the 13th.]

CHAPTER IV.

1833-1849.

[Sidenote: The Churches of England and Scotland.]

The upheavals which took place simultaneously in the Established
Churches of England and Scotland, during the early years of Victoria's
reign, and so profoundly stirred religious sentiment in both countries,
can scarcely have arisen from independent centres of disturbance, though
the connection between them is not easy to trace. They were the outcome
of an awaking from the condition of inactivity and routine into which
both these Protestant Churches had passed after the agitating events of
the seventeenth century, and an attempt on the part of the more active
intellects, both in clergy and people, to restore ecclesiastical
authority and discipline.

[Illustration: _G. Richmond, R.A._} {_By permission of Mr. McLean._

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 1801-1890.

Cardinal-Deacon of the Church of Rome. Was the son of a London Banker.
Took orders in the Anglican Church in 1824; was appointed Incumbent of
St. Mary's, Oxford, in 1828, and held that appointment until 1842. He
seceded to the Church of Rome in 1845, and was created a Cardinal in
1879 by Leo XIII.]

[Illustration: _Miss Rosa Corder._} {_In the Pusey House, Oxford._

Dr. E. B. PUSEY, 1800-1882.

Regius Professor of Hebrew at Christ Church College, Oxford, 1828. He
wrote several of the "Tracts for the Times." On the secession of Newman
he became the virtual leader of the Tractarian movement.]

[Sidenote: "Tracts for the Times." Newman, Keble, and Pusey.]

The movement in England has been reckoned by the late Cardinal Newman,
himself one of the leading spirits in it before his secession to Rome,
as beginning with a sermon preached by John Keble in the University
pulpit, Oxford, on July 14, 1833, afterwards published under the title
"National Apostasy." About the same time began the publication of
"Tracts for the Times," conducted by a group of earnest, active men,
including Newman, Keble, Pusey, and others, advocating a revival of High
Church observances as a means of quickening spiritual life and a
restoration of the patristic doctrines and practice in Church government
and services. From these tracts the movement became known as
"Tractarian," till in 1841 their publication came to a sudden end by
reason of the famous Tract No. 90, written by Newman, and deeply
offensive to Protestant feeling in England. Newman joined the Church of
Rome in 1845, and thereafter the term "Puseyite" was popularly used to
designate this party.

[Illustration: _G. Richmond, R.A._}

THE REV. JOHN KEBLE, 1792-1866.

One of the leaders of the Tractarian movement. He is best known by his
hymns published under the titles of "The Christian Year" (1827) and
"Lyra Innocentium" (1847). He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, 1831,
and Vicar of Hursley, near Winchester, 1835-1866. Keble College, Oxford,
was erected to his memory.]

[Illustration: _J. Faed._}

DR. THOS. CHALMERS, 1780-1847.

As minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow (1815), he obtained a great
reputation. He was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at St.
Andrew's, 1823, of Theology at Edinburgh in 1828, and led the great
secession in 1843. He was the first Moderator of, and was elected
Principal and Primarius Professor of Theology in, the Free Church of
Scotland.]

[Sidenote: The "Ten Years' Conflict" in Scotland.]

[Sidenote: Disruption of the Church.]

[Sidenote: Dr. Chalmers.]

[Sidenote: Rise of the Free Church.]

The corresponding movement in the Established Presbyterian Church of
Scotland, commonly referred to as the Ten Years' Conflict, arose out of
a question of Church government rather than one of theology. Lay
patronage had been imposed on the Church of Scotland by the Act of 1712.
The revival of spiritual activity, which in England took the shape of
the Tractarian movement, was equally perceptible in Scotland, and
resulted in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland passing the
Veto Act in 1834, by which it was declared to be a fundamental law of
the Church that no pastor could be appointed to a parish against the
will of the majority of the congregation. It was not long before this
led to appeals from the Ecclesiastical to the Civil Courts. In 1842 the
General Assembly presented to the Queen a "claim, declaration, and
protest," accompanied by an address praying for the abolition of
patronage, to which the Home Secretary made reply that the Government
could not interfere. In March 1843, the House of Commons decided by 211
votes to 76 against attempting to redress the grievance, and on May 18
following, the non-intrusion party withdrew from the General Assembly
and constituted the first Assembly of the Free Church, under the
leadership of Dr. Thomas Chalmers. The action was all the more
significant because Chalmers, the most powerful and popular preacher in
the Scottish Church of that day, and a distinguished leader of
ecclesiastical thought, had hitherto been a powerful champion of the
connection of Church and State. But he had thrown himself with great
earnestness into the work of reclaiming the masses and bringing them
into direct relations with the Church, and he felt convinced that this
great work could not be carried to success unless the Church were free
to choose her own instruments. Four hundred and seventy parish ministers
resigned their livings and joined the Free Church. A sustentation fund
was set up, based on a calculation made by Chalmers that a penny a week
from each member of a congregation would produce a stipend of £150 a
year for 500 ministers. It amounted to no less than £367,000 in the
first year of disruption.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").} {_Political Sketches._

AN OLD SO'GER IN MARCHING ORDER.

General Sir Charles Napier, 1782-1853.]

[Illustration: _H. Martens._} {_From a Coloured Engraving._

THE BATTLE OF SOBRAON, February 10, 1846.

This illustration is reduced from a popular, but somewhat quaint,
coloured print representing the 31st Regiment, with Major-General Sir
Henry Smith's division, in action at Sobraon. It forms an instructive
contrast with the military prints of the present day.]

[Sidenote: Affairs of British India.]

[Sidenote: The First Sikh War.]

[Sidenote: Battles of Meeanee, Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sobraon.]

The existence of British territory in India, side by side with territory
under British protection and States wholly under native rule, was a
condition of things neither conducive to peace nor likely to be of a
permanent nature. A single spark dropped among the warlike races
inhabiting that vast peninsula was often enough to cause wide-spreading
conflagration; and, however agreeable it might be to British
consciences, it would be unphilosophic in the highest degree to
attribute the blame for such outbreaks exclusively to the native rulers
and people. Trouble broke out early in 1843 which led to the annexation
by the British of Scinde, a fine territory lying between the Indian
Ocean and the Cutch on the south, and southern Afghanistan and
the Punjab on the north. Scinde had been divided into three
provinces--Hyderabad, Khyrpore, and Meerpore--each ruled by a group of
Ameers or hereditary chiefs, descended from Beloochee conquerors, who,
it was said, most cruelly oppressed the people under them. Successive
treaties had been effected with these rulers by the Indian Government,
but the disaster which fell on the British arms in Cabul seems to have
encouraged them to withhold some of the tribute due by them under the
latest treaty, and they began warlike preparations. In 1842 Lord
Ellenborough appointed Sir Charles Napier Commander-in-Chief of the
British troops in Scinde, with instructions to inflict signal punishment
on any chiefs detected in treachery, at the same time empowering him to
make a fresh treaty, relieving the Ameers from the payment of any
subsidy for the support of British troops. This treaty was at length
signed, though it must be confessed that the Ameers were only induced
to consent to it by the threatening display of Napier's force. On
February 15, 1843, the British Residency at Hyderabad was attacked by
8,000 troops with six guns, led by one or more of the Ameers, and the
garrison of 100 men under Major Outram was driven out after a gallant
resistance. Napier marched to Muttaree the following day with a force of
3,000, attacked the Ameers, who had an army of 22,000 Beloochees, on the
morning of the 17th at Meeanee, six miles from Hyderabad, defeated them,
and captured their whole artillery, ammunition, baggage, and
considerable treasure. The British loss amounted to 256 killed and
wounded. Hyderabad was occupied, but the Ameer of Meerpore was still
under arms, holding a strong position at Dubba, about four miles from
Hyderabad, with 20,000 men. Napier attacked him, and a battle lasting
for three hours ended in the complete defeat of Shere Mahomed and the
occupation of Meerpore by the British. Sir Charles Napier continued
warlike operations at intervals against the hill tribes north of
Shikarpore, and there can be but one opinion of the masterly way in
which he handled the troops under his command. But the policy of the
Governor-General was open to some difference of opinion. He had carried
things with a high hand in dealing with the Ameers, and early in 1844 he
was recalled by the unanimous vote of the Court of Directors of the East
India Company, and Sir Henry Hardinge was appointed in his place.

[Illustration: _Sir F. Grant, P.R.A._} {_By permission of Messrs.
Graves, Pall Mall._

SIR HENRY, AFTERWARDS VISCOUNT, HARDINGE AND HIS STAFF AT FEROZESHAH.]

Hardinge applied himself to the peaceful preparation of railroad schemes
for the development of India, but at the close of 1845 events again
forced the Government forward on the path of fresh conquest. At that
time the Punjab, a kingdom consisting both of independent Sikh States
and those under British protection, was under nominal rule of the
boy-king, Dhuleep Singh, and his mother, the Ranee; but his government
at Lahore was distracted by faction and lay at the mercy of his own
powerful army. In December 1845, the Sikh forces, for some reason which
has never been clearly explained, began massing on the British frontier,
and crossed the Sutlej, 15,000 or 20,000 strong, on the 13th. Sir Hugh
Gough advanced by forced marches to meet them, attacked them at Moodkee
and defeated them, capturing seventeen guns. The Sikhs retired to a
strongly-entrenched camp at Ferozeshah, whither Gough, reinforced by Sir
John Littler's division from Ferozepore, followed them on the 21st. The
Sikh army was now upwards of 50,000 strong, with 108 heavy guns in fixed
batteries. The British force consisted of 16,700 men and sixty-nine
guns, chiefly horse artillery. There ensued one of the severest
conflicts in the history of our Indian Empire. Beginning on the 21st it
lasted through part of the 22nd, and ended in the gallant Sikhs being
driven across the Sutlej with the loss of many killed and wounded, and
no less than seventy guns. The Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge,
acted as a volunteer, second in command to Sir Hugh Gough, in this
memorable action.

[Illustration: _Sir F. Grant, P.R.A._} {_By permission of Messrs.
Graves._

FIELD MARSHAL HUGH, VISCOUNT GOUGH, 1779-1869.

Entered the Army in 1794 and served at the Cape of Good Hope and in the
Peninsular War. He commanded at the Battles of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and
Sobraon, and was raised to the Peerage as a reward for these great
victories. In the second Sikh War in 1848 he commanded in the actions at
Chilianwalla and Goojerat.]

[Sidenote: The Second Sikh War.]

Early in January 1846, Sirdar Runjoor Singh, again advancing towards the
frontier, took up a strong position on the British side of the Sutlej,
threatening Gough's line of communications with Loodiana. Major-General
Sir Harry Smith attacked him at Aliwal on January 28, and,
notwithstanding the great superiority in numbers of the enemy, obtained
a brilliant victory over the Sikhs, capturing their camp and fifty-two
guns. But more fighting had to be done before the army of the Punjab
could be finally subdued. The Sikhs still lay at Sobraon with 30,000 of
their best troops, defended by a triple line of breastworks, flanked by
redoubts, and armed with seventy guns. Here Sir Hugh Gough attacked them
on the morning of February 10, the Governor-General again being present
as second in command. At nine o'clock, after an hour's cannonade,
Brigadier Stacey advanced to storm the entrenchments with four
battalions, which behaved with splendid gallantry under a very heavy and
well-directed fire. They stormed the position, and, being well
supported, forced their way into the fortress. By eleven o'clock all was
over. The Sikhs were in full flight across the Sutlej, leaving behind
them piles of dead and wounded, sixty-seven guns, 200 camel swivels, and
all their baggage and ammunition. The British loss consisted of 320
killed, including seventeen officers (among whom were Major-General Sir
Robert Dick, General McLaren, and Brigadier Taylor), and 2,063 wounded,
including 139 officers. But the carnage among the Sikhs was far more
terrible. It is supposed that not less than eight or ten thousand of
them perished in action or were drowned in crossing the river under the
fire of the British artillery. On February 22 Gough occupied the citadel
of Lahore; the Governor-General issued a proclamation from that place,
and a treaty was subsequently concluded establishing Dhuleep Singh as
Maharajah, tributary to the British Government.

[Sidenote: Murder of Vans Agnew and Anderson. Battle of Ramnuggur.]

War broke out again in the Punjab in 1848. On April 17 Mr. Vans Agnew
and Lieutenant Anderson, British Agents at Mooltan, were murdered. On
August 18 General Whish besieged Mooltan with 28,000 men. Lord Gough
arrived on November 21, and took command of the entire British force.
Next day he advanced to attack the enemy at Ramnuggur, where both banks
of the river were held by the Sikhs. By a most unfortunate piece of
strategy the cavalry division, consisting of the 3rd Dragoons and the
5th, 8th, and 14th Light Horse, supported by Horse Artillery, were
ordered forward under General Cureton to dislodge the enemy from the
left bank of the river. This they accomplished with admirable
gallantry, but not without suffering terrible loss, owing to the
difficult nature of the ground. Colonel Havelock fell at the head of the
14th Light Dragoons; General Cureton and Captain Fitzgerald were also
killed. On December 2 Lord Gough crossed the Chenab, and the enemy,
after exchanging a cannonade for several hours, retired towards the
north-west.

[Sidenote: Siege and Fall of Mooltan.]

Meantime, General Whish was carrying on the siege of Mooltan with an
army of 32,000 men and 150 guns. It is impossible to speak too highly of
the splendid defence made by the Sikhs under Moolraj. By December 29 the
British siege guns were bombarding the city walls at eighty yards range.
On the 30th the principal magazine in the citadel blew up with a
terrific explosion, and the town was in flames. Still the brave garrison
fought on. The bombardment continued without intermission for fifty
hours. On January 2, 1849, the town, or the wreck of what had once been
a town, was taken by assault; but the citadel still held out. From the
4th to the 18th it was incessantly bombarded, and mines were exploded at
intervals under the walls, till at last, on the 21st, two wide breaches
had been made, and a general assault was ordered for the following day.
Moolraj anticipated this by unconditional surrender. His garrison, less
than 4,000 men, marched into the British lines to lay down their arms;
the last man to leave the fort, in the heroic defence of which he had
won undying glory, was Moolraj, dressed in gorgeous silks, splendidly
armed, riding a superb Arab with a scarlet saddle-cloth.

[Sidenote: Battles of Chilianwalla and Goojerat.]

After the fall of Mooltan General Whish joined forces with Lord Gough,
who, as described above, had driven the enemy from their encampment at
Ramnuggur on November 22. It was believed that the rebellion was broken,
and that the Sikhs would not again meet our army in the field. But our
generals had still to learn the extraordinary resolution and resources
of this fine race. Chuttur Singh and his son Shere Singh still commanded
nearly 40,000 men with sixty-two guns, and had captured Attock, a fort
defended by Major Herbert. Gough advanced to attack the chiefs on
January 13, 1849, in their position on the Upper Jhelum near the village
of Chilianwalla, a name of melancholy associations in British annals.
The Sikhs, indeed, withdrew, but they carried with them four British
guns and five stand of colours. The British loss was terrible, amounting
to twenty-six officers and 731 men killed, and sixty-six officers and
1,446 men wounded. Lord Gough was blamed for bad generalship in this
action: he was recalled from his command, and Sir Charles Napier was
appointed in his place. But fortune was kind to a brave soldier. Before
the orders from home could reach him, Gough, having followed the enemy,
retrieved the disaster of Chilianwalla by inflicting on Shere Singh a
crushing defeat at Goojerat on February 21, pursuing him into the Khoree
Pass. On March 6 Shere Singh surrendered unconditionally, and on the
29th a proclamation was issued by the Governor-General permanently
annexing the Punjab to the British Empire.

[Illustration: _D. Maclise, R.A._} {_From the Original Sketch in the
South Kensington Museum._

CHARLES DICKENS, 1812-1870. WITH HIS WIFE AND WIFE'S SISTER.

While the events recorded in these chapters were enacting, those books
were appearing in rapid succession which have made Dickens's name a
household word. Dickens was born at Portsmouth, where his father held an
appointment in the Navy Pay Office. In early life he learned by
experience what poverty meant; but his earliest writings, the "Sketches
by Boz" (1836), brought him immediate celebrity. The "Pickwick Papers"
appeared in 1837, then in succession, "Oliver Twist," "Nicholas
Nickleby," "The Old Curiosity Shop," and "Barnaby Rudge." "David
Copperfield" appeared in 1850, and "Edwin Drood" was in course of
publication (1870) when its author died. He is buried in Poet's Corner,
Westminster Abbey.]

[Illustration: _T. Phillips, R.A._} {_In the National Portrait Gallery._

SIR JOHN FRANKLIN, 1786-1847.

Entered the Navy in 1801, and was present at the Battles of Copenhagen
and Trafalgar. He conducted several Expeditions to the Arctic regions.
In March 1845 he sailed in command of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_ in
search of the "North-West Passage." Nothing was heard of them for years,
but in 1859 the _Fox_, fitted out by Lady Franklin and commanded by Sir
Leopold McClintock, found relics, now in Greenwich Hospital, which left
no doubt of the total loss of the ships and all lives.]

[Illustration: _G. R. Gilbert._} {_In the Royal Collection._

NAVAL REVIEW OF 1845.

Her Majesty and the Prince Consort in the Royal Yacht reviewing the
Experimental Squadron at Spithead, July 15, 1845.]

CHAPTER V.

1846-1850.

[Sidenote: The Irish Famine.]

The condition of affairs in Ireland, with which it had fallen to the
Russell Ministry to deal on entering office in 1846, had become truly
appalling. Nearly a million of money had been expended by Peel's
Government in relief of the distress caused by the failure of the potato
crop in 1845, and the disease had reappeared with greater intensity in
the following season. Further measures of relief were brought forward by
the Prime Minister; charitable subscriptions poured in from every town
in England and Scotland; nearly every country in Europe, including even
Turkey, contributed help in the hour of need, and the United States
Government freighted some of their war vessels with grain for their
starving cousins.

[Illustration: THE FIRST CLOSED DIVING HELMET.

Invented by A. Siebe, 1839. Now in the Patents Museum. South
Kensington.]

Nevertheless, the situation was one of extraordinary perplexity. In the
footprints of famine stalked sedition. Agrarian murders rose to a
frightful figure; secret societies grew apace; midnight drilling went on
in almost every county; and that very peasantry whose destitution had
touched the hearts of the whole civilised world, proved themselves able
to buy enormous quantities of arms and ammunition. In Clonmel alone,
1,138 stand of arms were sold in a few days, and everywhere, to quote a
letter written at the time, "the peasantry are armed or are arming
almost to a man. The stores of the armourer are more frequently
exhausted than the provision stores." So brisk was the demand as to
cause a revival of the gun trade in Birmingham, where the existing stock
of small arms was entirely cleared out. But there could be no doubt of
the reality and severity of the distress. It was worst in the south and
west; famine and famine-fever carried off thousands, and the population
of Ireland, which had stood at eight millions in 1845, could only be
reckoned at six millions in 1848. The difference, however, was not
entirely due to deaths by starvation or disease. The westward stream of
emigration had set in, and tens of thousands of Irish families sought
and found the means of better existence in the land of plenty beyond the
Atlantic.

[Illustration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").} {_Political Sketches, 1847._

AN INTERESTING GROUP; OR, "MISFORTUNE MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS."

Lord Lincoln, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Goulbourne, Mr. Disraeli, Lord George
Bentinck, and Mr. O'Brien.

Lord George Bentinck's plan of relief works for Ireland, which mainly
took the form of railway extension, was at first opposed by the
Government, but afterwards adopted by them, thus bringing this
"interesting group" of men into line.]

But the ferment of rebellion was spreading swiftly among those who
remained. All the misery of the famine was laid at the door of the land
system; not unfrequently coroners' juries returned verdicts of wilful
murder against the Prime Minister or Lord Lieutenant, holding them
directly responsible for not averting the disasters of the country. Once
more the Government had to undertake the hateful task of bringing
forward a Coercion Bill, for the people seemed on the brink of civil
war. Technically that limit was actually transgressed, though the means
were ludicrously inadequate to the end--repeal of the Union. The "Young
Ireland" party, inflamed by the successful revolution in France,
separated from and plunged ahead of O'Connor's Repealers. O'Connor had
precipitated the rupture by endeavouring to induce his party to pledge
themselves against any except constitutional means. His proposal was
laughed to scorn. William Smith O'Brien, brother of Lord Inchiquin,
claiming descent from Brian Boruibh, placed himself at the head of the
"Confederates," as the new party was called, with Meagher, Dillon, and
others as his lieutenants; the _United Irishman_ newspaper was started
in opposition to the less inflammatory _Nation_, the organ of the older
party. It was managed by John Mitchell, who filled its columns week by
week with the most violent and acrid sedition.

[Illustration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_In the Royal Collection._

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES Christmas 1846.]

[Illustration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_In the Royal Collection._

HER MAJESTY AND THE PRINCE CONSORT WITH THE ROYAL CHILDREN, 1846.

The Princess Royal (born 1840), Prince of Wales (1841), Princess Alice
(1843), Prince Alfred (1844), and Princess Helena (1846).]

[Sidenote: Smith O'Brien's Rebellion.]

[Sidenote: Widow Cormack's Cabbages.]

[Sidenote: The Special Commission.]

It was impossible for the Government to allow this sort of stuff to be
circulated among an excitable peasantry, smarting under imaginary wrongs
and real distress and armed to the teeth; but the existing law contained
no provisions framed to stop it. The Prime Minister, therefore,
introduced and passed what is known as the Treason Felony Act, making
written incitement to insurrection a crime punishable with
transportation, and enabling the Executive to imprison persons charged
with contravention of it. Mitchell was arrested at once, but Smith
O'Brien continued to hold armed meetings in various parts of Ireland:
matters looked threatening, and there was grave apprehension in England
as to the result. On the morning of August 7 it was turned into mirth by
the arrival in London from Liverpool of one of the first telegraphic
despatches of importance ever published in this country. Rebellion had
actually broken out: Smith O'Brien in person had led a considerable
force to attack a body of fifty or sixty police, who defended themselves
in the house of one Widow Cormack, near Ballingarry, in Tipperary. A
good deal of firing took place but very little bloodshed; thanks, on the
one hand, to the indifferent arms carried by the rebels, and, on the
other, to the forbearance of the police, who could easily have shot
O'Brien, so theatrically did he expose himself during the brief contest.
The chief damage was done to the poor widow's cabbages, which the
Confederates trampled to pieces in the garden adjoining the house. The
affair was soon over: the patriots, not relishing a few rounds from the
muskets of the police, melted quickly away, and the heroic O'Brien was
arrested in the act of taking his railway ticket at Thurles station. It
is unlucky for any cause--it is worse, it is fatal to it--when it
becomes ridiculous, and people have never since been able to mention
Smith O'Brien's cabbage garden without a grin. But the general state of
Ireland had grown to be no laughing matter. The number of persons
arrested for complicity in seditions, or for the frequent murders of
landlords, agents, and policemen far exceeded what the ordinary
tribunals of the country could deal with, and a special Commission of
judges was appointed to try them.

[Illustration: THE "SPURN" LIGHTSHIP.

The first light-vessel was moored at the Nore in 1732. Since that date,
to the untechnical eye, the change in the outward appearance of a
lightship has not been great; but the efficiency of the light has been
increased, since 1837, from about 1,500 candles to about 20,000 candles.
The _Spurn_ Lightship shows a light of the power just named, and in
foggy weather sounds a powerful siren in place of the old-fashioned
gong.]

[Illustration: THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE.

The present Lighthouse was erected in 1881, when Smeaton's celebrated
tower was removed to the Hoe at Plymouth, except the lowermost courses,
which are shown in the picture and still remain on the rock. The lantern
sends out a series of flashes of 79,000 candle-power.]

[Illustration: THE SMALLS LIGHTHOUSE IN 1837.

With the exception of Smeaton's tower at the Eddystone and that on the
Bell Rock, this was the only rock Lighthouse on the coast of Great
Britain in 1837. It was built on oak piles, and in stormy weather rocked
like a ship. Its lantern was furnished with twenty-seven argand lamps
with reflectors, giving a light of about 3,000 candle-power. It was
superseded by the present granite tower in 1861.]

[Sidenote: Revival of the Chartist Movement.]

The spirit of revolution was astir in many lands besides Ireland in the
year when Louis Philippe was forced from the throne of France. In
England the Chartist movement was sympathetically inflamed into renewed
activity. A Chartist convention assembled in London in spring and made
arrangements for a monster demonstration to be held on Kennington Common
on April 10. But the Convention had hardly begun deliberating before
disunion appeared in its councils. There were two parties among the
Chartists--the constitutional Radicals and the physical force party. The
latter were for assembling on Kennington Common under arms; but the
venerable leader of the whole movement, Feargus O'Connor, would have
nothing to do with unconstitutional or violent proceedings. The
consequence of this was a rupture in the camp. Every preparation was
made by the authorities to protect London from the ravages of a mob: the
troops were under arms: the police mustered in great force: thousands of
special constables were sworn in, and the Chartist procession was
prohibited. But about 20,000 Chartists did assemble on the Common to
listen to harangues by O'Connor and others. O'Connor then went to the
Home Office, interviewed Sir George Grey, and told him the meeting had
taken place without disorder. "Are you going back to it?" asked Grey.
"No," replied O'Connor, "I've had my toes trodden on till I'm lame: my
pocket has been picked, and I'll have no more to do with them."

[Illustration: DIOPTRIC LANTERN.

The series of circular glass prisms collects the rays from the
lamp--usually an oil lamp with several concentric wicks--and
concentrates them into a horizontal beam of great power. The Lantern
illustrated is that of the Lighthouse at Spurn Point, and is the most
powerful oil Lantern yet made; it has a maximum intensity of 179,000
candles. But this power is greatly exceeded by the electric lights at
St. Catherine's, the Lizard, and elsewhere.]

[Sidenote: The Monster Petition.]

[Sidenote: Its Exposure, and Collapse of the Movement.]

It was ridicule--that universal solvent--which finally shattered this
once formidable Chartist League. A monster petition to Parliament had
been in course of signature for some months. Feargus O'Connor, in
presenting it, declared that 5,700,000 names were attached to it. It was
remitted in the ordinary course to the Committee on Public Petitions,
who employed a number of clerks to examine the signatures. The result
was speedily made known. Instead of nearly six million names, less than
two million were appended to it. Whole sheets of these were found to
have been written by the same hand. But the crowning exposure, which
convulsed the whole nation with laughter, appeared from the analysis of
the names themselves. Those of the Queen and Prince Albert, of Ministers
and leaders of Opposition were of frequent occurrence; noted names in
fiction, especially that of "Cheeks the Marine," a familiar character in
Marryat's novels, then very popular, appeared in every sheet, besides
all sorts of ribaldries, indecencies, and buffooneries. Chartism was a
genuine and an earnest movement: it was an upheaval against class
privileges, a revolt against class grievances. But these privileges and
grievances were in course of removal; the extension of the franchise had
brought about repeal of the corn laws, laid the foundation of free
trade, and redressed some, at least, of the evils prevalent in factories
and mines. Much remained to be done, which has been done since, but
Chartism was to have no hand in the doing of it. As a political force it
collapsed; as a social movement it crumbled away under the intolerable
ridicule of the Monster Petition.

[Illustration: SECTIONS OF THE EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE,

Shewing the interior, and the method of morticing the stones for greater
security. The Lantern is a double dioptric one, and consists of two such
arrangements as that shewn on the left of this page placed one above the
other. The fog-signal is an explosive one of gun-cotton.]

[Sidenote: Revolutionary Movements in Britain compared with those in
other Countries.]

It will be long before English statesmen forget the lessons of 1848-9.
During these years the whole of Europe was convulsed by violent popular
conflicts with authority. In France the Bourbon dynasty collapsed with
the abdication of Louis Philippe, and then, to repeat Mr. Justin
McCarthy's happy phrase, "came a Red Republican rising against a
Republic that strove not to be red," to be drowned in blood by
Cavaignac. The Pope was chased from Rome, the Emperor of Austria from
Vienna, the Italian princes from their duchies, the German rulers from
their principalities; there were sanguinary struggles in Poland, in
Naples, in Sardinia; while Great Britain had only to blush for Widow
Cormack's cabbages and the picking of Feargus O'Connor's pocket at
Kennington. Yet there was no doubt of the earnestness of the leaders of
agitation and insurrection in England: no question about the reality of
the grievances.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, no ineffective safety valves
in times of discontent, were tolerated in the United Kingdom--then, as
now--far beyond the limits of public security, as these were reckoned by
every other European State. But the chief safety of England lay in the
faith of the masses in the power of Parliament to devise measures of
redress, and their confidence that the Sovereign would interpose no bar
to remedial legislation. Nor have that faith and confidence been
betrayed. Throughout all the years that have elapsed since the
dissolution of the Chartist League, Parliament has been diligent in
devising measures to meet the ever-changing and growing wants of the
people, and the Royal Assent has always been cordially given to them.
The Queen and her Consort do not appear very prominently or very often
in the chronicles of these early years, but all the time there had been
growing silently that popular affection for the Sovereign which
disappeared entirely from practical politics with the active reign of
George III. The qualities of Prince Albert, his industry, his untiring
anxiety for the welfare of the people, his unobtrusive influence in
favour of freedom, were becoming known: the Crown was becoming more than
the decorative centre of the Court--the mere frontispiece of the
aristocracy--it was becoming recognised as the actual head of the
British people.

[Illustration: _J. D. Francis._} {_From an Engraving._

HER MAJESTY IN THE WALKING COSTUME OF 1846.]

[Sidenote: Growing Affection for the Queen. Its Causes.]

[Sidenote: Royal Visit to Ireland.]

The growing affection of the people for their Queen was stimulated about
this time by the act of a harebrained scamp who, on May 17, discharged a
rusty pistol, loaded, it is believed, with no deadly missile, at Her
Majesty as she was driving in Constitution Hill with three of her
children. The fact that the wretch was an Irishman was regarded rightly
as being of no political significance, and it was a happy--it was more,
it was a wise--project which was carried into effect by the visit of the
Queen and Prince Albert, with the Prince of Wales and Princess Royal, to
Ireland in August 1849. The Royal yacht was escorted by four warships,
but the reception they met with at Cork, at Dublin, and at Belfast
proved that to be but a formal precaution. Perhaps, had it been possible
in later years that the Monarch and her family should become more
familiar to the warm-hearted Irish, many subsequent misfortunes and
misunderstandings might never have taken place.

[Illustration: A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE IMPORTS AND EXPORTS OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM IN 1837 AND 1897.]

[Sidenote: The Pacifico Imbroglio.]

The Parliamentary session of 1850 must ever be memorable for two
events--the sudden rise of Lord Palmerston into fame and popularity, and
the equally sudden removal of the most illustrious figure in the House
of Commons. The debate, which was the occasion of the first, and
immediately preceded the second of these events, arose out of one of the
most trivial and least creditable matters that ever agitated the
Councils and menaced the peace of a great nation. Certain British
subjects had suffered loss in the destruction of their property during
the disturbances at Athens in 1847, and had lodged claims for
compensation against the Greek Government. The principal sufferer was a
Portuguese Jew, named Pacifico, a British subject in virtue of having
been born in Gibraltar. The Greeks were needy and delayed a settlement.
Then there was Mr. Finlay, too, the historian of Greece, long resident
at Athens, who had a grievance of a different sort, arising out of a
demand made by the Greek Government that he should surrender a piece of
land at less than he considered its value. The strange thing was that
Palmerston took up these private claims as an international question,
although neither of the claimants had tried the experiment of litigation
in the Greek courts. A British squadron was ordered to the Piræus, all
the Greek vessels in that harbour were seized, and Athens was blockaded.
The Greeks appealed to the governments of France and Russia, who
remonstrated with Great Britain touching this high-handed dealing with a
weak State. Russia was rudely outspoken and menacing: she was told
bluntly by Lord Palmerston that it was none of her business. France was
more conciliatory, and by her aid a convention in regard to the disputed
claims was arranged in London. But there was so much delay in
communicating the result to the British Ambassador in Athens, Mr. Wyse,
that he was left in ignorance that a modified payment had been agreed
on, and continued to press for payment of the full claims. Thereupon
arose serious misunderstanding between the British and French
Governments, England being accused of breach of faith. Appearances were
certainly against her; the French Ambassador was recalled from London,
and two great nations seemed on the brink of war.

[Illustration: _J. Leech._} {_From "Punch."_

THE GRECIAN DIFFICULTY.

Mr. Punch: "Why don't you hit one of your own size?"]

[Illustration: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF YE ENGLYSHE IN 1849. No. 8.

YE COMMONS RESSOLVED INTO A COMMYTTEE OF YE WHOLE HOUSE.

_Richard Doyle._} {_From "Punch."_]

[Sidenote: Rupture with France Imminent.]

[Sidenote: Civis Romanus Sum.]

The Government had a wretchedly bad case to defend in Parliament; a
case, too, which had been damaged by the introduction of that element
which had told with such fatal effect against the Chartists and Smith
O'Brien's Confederates--the element of ridicule. For the grasping Jew
Pacifico had specified in his bill against the Greek Government various
possessions strangely out of keeping with what had always been his
modest household. Among the articles alleged to have been destroyed by
fire were a bedstead, valued at £150, sheets for the same at £30, and a
pillow-case at £10. Ministers already beaten in the Upper House stood in
a critical position in the Lower. But Lord Palmerston rose to the
occasion, and exhibited eloquence which hitherto he had not been
suspected of possessing. He spoke with great vigour for nearly five
hours, and wound up with a peroration which, spoken by a man of other
mould than "Old Pam," might have savoured of claptrap, and read in cold
blood at this day, seems to rise no higher than what Americans call
"spread-eagleism." "If," he asked, "a subject of ancient Rome could hold
himself free from indignity by saying _Civis Romanus sum_, shall not a
British subject also, in whatever land he may be, feel confident that
the watchful eye and strong arm of England will protect him against
injustice and wrong?" _Civis Romanus_ carried the House and the country
with the speaker: Palmerston's appeal saved the Government.

[Sidenote: Lord Palmerston's Rise.]

[Sidenote: Sir Robert Peel's Death.]

Sir Robert Peel made his last speech in opposition to the vote of
confidence: though, in referring to Palmerston's defence of the
Government, he declared that "his speech made us all proud of the man
who made it." He delivered his last vote on the fourth day of the
debate, about four o'clock in the morning of June 29. Next day at noon
he attended a meeting of the Royal Commissioners of the Great Exhibition
which was to be held the following year. After the meeting he mounted
his horse, went to write his name in the Queen's book at Buckingham
Palace, and then rode up Constitution Hill. He stopped to talk to the
Hon. Miss Ellis, whom he met riding down from Hyde Park: something
frightened his horse, which, by a sudden bound, unseated him. Peel in
falling kept hold of the reins and pulled the horse on the top of him.
He was internally and fatally injured, one of his ribs having been
broken and forced into the lung. He died on July 2, after terrible
suffering. The doctors were unable to deal with the injuries owing to
the intense agony caused by the slightest movement. It brings to one's
apprehension what an incalculable boon to suffering humanity has since
that time been discovered in the use of anæsthetics. Chloroform had
already been invented, it is true, in 1850; but its employment was
little understood. Three years earlier Charles Greville had witnessed
one of the first operations under chloroform in St. George's Hospital.
How many suffering ones and friends of suffering ones have had cause to
echo the feeling expressed in his journal: "I have no words to express
my admiration for this invention, which is the greatest blessing ever
bestowed on mankind, and the inventor of it the greatest of benefactors,
whose memory ought to be venerated by countless millions for ages yet to
come." In spite of this, it is greatly to be feared that the names of
Guthrie the American and Soubeiran the Frenchman, who simultaneously
discovered chloroform in 1831, and Lawrence of London and Simpson of
Edinburgh, who first employed it in our hospitals, have been almost
forgotten by the many.

[Illustration: _C. J. Staniland, R.I._}

THE LIFEBOAT OF 1837.

The form of Lifeboat introduced by Henry Greathead in 1789, having a
curved keel, and rendered additionally buoyant by means of cork, was
still the recognised form in 1837, and boats built by him have been in
use until quite recently. The Lifeboat crews on the north and east
coasts still prefer, and use, a boat of very similar shape.]

[Illustration: _From a Photo by_} {_Bennetto, Newquay._

THE LIFEBOAT OF 1897.

This is the standard self-righting boat of the Royal National Lifeboat
Institution, and is the outcome of innumerable experiments. The
Institution has a fleet of 298 Lifeboats, and has been the means of
saving, since 1824, no fewer than 39,815 lives. The Illustration shews
the Newquay boat entering the water by means of the slip way.]

[Illustration: THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851, IN HYDE PARK.]

CHAPTER VI.

1849-1851.

[Sidenote: Prince Albert's Industry.]

Reference has been made already to the wise restraint which Prince
Albert imposed upon himself in respect to politics and legislation; but
those would greatly misinterpret the motives and impulses of that active
intellect who should attribute this reserve either to apathy or
constitutional indolence. Prince Albert did not admit that, because he
was withheld by recent developments of representative government from
personal interference in legislation and diplomacy, it was the less
incumbent upon him, as Consort of the Head of the State, to make himself
thoroughly informed on all the leading political questions of the day,
as well as on the special work of the public departments. Added to this
was the active part he took in schemes of social and commercial
improvement, and in scientific and artistic progress. An early riser at
all times, it was his custom, summer and winter, to dispose of a couple
of hours' work before breakfast, and it is no figure of speech to say
that few of the Queen's subjects can have been more constantly or more
laboriously employed than her husband. The Prince had lived down any
popular prejudice which he had to encounter in the early years of his
married life; people had come to understand and appreciate his abilities
and disposition, and the time had come when his genius and industry were
to bear remarkable fruit.

[Illustration: _R. T. Pritchett, F.S.A._} {_By permission of J. F.
Green, Esq._

THE FIRST STEAM LIFEBOAT, "DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND."

Built in 1890; is propelled by a turbine, driven by powerful steam
engines, and is capable of being steered by means of the jets of water
from the turbine, even if the rudder is disabled. She is 50 feet long,
14 feet 4 inches extreme breadth, 3 feet 6 inches deep, and is built of
steel in fifteen watertight compartments. She is stationed at New
Brighton, Cheshire; a similar boat is at Harwich; and a third is now
being built.]

[Sidenote: His Proposal for a Great Exhibition.]

[Sidenote: Adoption of the Scheme.]

Prince Albert was President of the Society of Arts, a body which, dating
from the middle of the eighteenth century, had, from time to time,
offered prizes for specimens of British textile, ceramic, and other
manufactures; but the project of holding a competitive Exhibition on an
international scale originated with the Prince himself. In the course of
July 1849 he had laid his proposals before some of the members of the
Society, and means were at once adopted to arouse the interest of
manufacturers at home, abroad, and in the colonies, and to open
negotiations with foreign governments. The idea caught on at once; the
States of Europe were at peace, and nothing could more surely tend to
obliterate the recollection of recent disturbances than to join in
friendly rivalry in the arts of peace. A Royal Commission was appointed
to carry out the preparations, and the scheme was formally inaugurated
on March 21, 1850, at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor to the Chief
Magistrates of all the towns in the United Kingdom, to which Prince
Albert and the foreign Ambassadors were also invited.

[Illustration: _C. J. Staniland, R.I._} {_From Contemporary Prints._

A. Master. B. Purser. C. Clerk. D. Midshipman. E. Rear-Admiral.
F. Petty Officer. G. Boatswain. H. Carpenter. J. Seaman.

UNIFORMS OF THE BRITISH NAVY, 1837.

In the early part of the reign there was no regulation dress for seamen,
and even in the case of officers the regulations were not enforced as
they are now.]

[Sidenote: Competing Designs.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Paxton's selected.]

[Sidenote: Erection of the Crystal Palace.]

Somerset House had been placed at the disposal of the Commissioners for
the purposes of the Exhibition, but the fervour with which all nations
embraced the idea soon made it manifest that no permanent edifice could
contain more than a small fraction of the exhibits. There was no time to
be lost--the 1st of May 1851 had been fixed for the opening ceremony.
The difficulty was not the cost, for a guarantee fund of £200,000 had
been speedily subscribed; but the designs and specifications had to be
submitted, the materials prepared, and the erection completed, all
within the space of nine months. A site in Hyde Park was chosen, and the
Commissioners set to work to examine no fewer than 245 designs and
specifications sent in by architects all over the world. They had almost
decided in favour of a design by a French architect, when a certain Mr.
Joseph Paxton--not a professional architect, but superintendent of the
Duke of Devonshire's gardens at Chatsworth--produced a scheme so
original and simple that it was adopted at once in preference to all
others. It was an enormous conservatory of glass and iron--1,848 feet
long, 408 feet broad, and 66 feet high--with transepts constructed so as
to contain some of the elms still growing in Hyde Park. The decision of
the Commissioners was not arrived at till July 26: not a single casting
or piece of material had been prepared yet; but the contractors, Messrs.
Fox, Henderson & Co., undertook to deliver the building ready for
painting and fitting on December 31. The ground lying between Albert
Gate and Knightsbridge Barracks on the east and west, between Rotten Row
and St. George's Place on the nor

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