CHAPTER LXIII.

{VICTORIA. 1851}

General Condition of Great Britain: Agitation against “the Papal Aggression,” and strong national feeling against the Pope and the Church of Rome; Efforts of the “Protectionists,” and hostility of the people to that party..... Parliamentary Conflicts: Resignation of the Russell Ministry, and its Resumption of Power..... Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations..... The Census..... General Condition of Ireland..... The Court..... Colonial Affairs: War in South Africa; Discovery of Gold in California; Hostility of the Arabs near Aden..... Foreign Affairs: European Relations..... Outrage upon an English gentleman by an Austrian officer in Florence..... Deaths of Eminent Persons in 1851.

{A.D. 1851}

The year 1851 opened more auspiciously upon England than several preceding years. There was neither pestilence nor famine in Great Britain or Ireland. No commercial panic smote the prosperity of the country. Crime was not more than usually prevalent, and was rather on the decrease. The royal family were in health, and their happiness was a subject of universal care, as their persons were the objects of devoted loyalty. No sovereign in the world held so high a place in the affections of her people, or presided over dominions on the whole so united and prosperous.

The great home subject of interest was “the papal aggression,” referred to in a former chapter. Nearly all classes of Englishmen were indignant at the terms in which the pope decreed the new arrangements for the episcopal government of his church in England. There were many, especially among the dissenters, who considered that the true policy to pursue on the part of the English people was to view the whole affair with contempt, but even these were angry at the haughty contumely with which the pope’s bulls and rescripts treated the queen, government, and people of England not of the Roman Catholic communion. Mr. Roebuck was especially the champion of the pope and the new hierarchy, asserting the right of Romish hierarchs to assume territorial titles here, as they did in the United States. Lord John Russell was the champion of the anti-aggression movement, and his pen and tongue were animated by a peculiar fervour in the controversy. The dissenters and many churchmen doubted his lordship’s sincerity, believing that his zeal was simulated, and that he cared more for the service rendered to his government by raising a politico-religious cry at a critical period of his parliamentary ascendancy, than he did for protecting the rights of the crown, or the honour of Protestantism, against such invasions of either as the papal procedure had initiated. Whatever might have been the case in this respect, the agitation led by his lordship against the papal aggression was the chief means of carrying him safely through the session, in which the parliamentary tactics of his party and of his government were without consistency or cleverness, and the financial management of his chancellor of the exchequer as clumsy in detail, and what might be called manipulation, as destitute of invention, originality, and foresight.

When parliament was opened on the 4th of February, by her majesty in person, the public anti-popery demonstrations were very decided, and an outburst of loyalty came from all classes, such as only could arise from a thoroughly excited state of the public mind. It was known that Lord John Russell was to bring in a bill making it penal for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to assume territorial ecclesiastical titles, and this gave to the people an extraordinary interest in the progress of her majesty in state to the House of Lords. From her palace at Pimlico to her palace in Whitehall vast crowds collected, who rent the air with tumultuous and excited cheers and exclamations of loyalty. On no occasion of a royal progress were the assembled multitudes greater, and the peculiar excitement of their voices and deportment was such as no great festal occasion evokes. The royal speech referred to the cause of this excitement, and when her majesty assured the assembled senators that she was determined to preserve “the rights of her crown, and the independence of the nation,” her elocution was at once so precise, emphatic, and animated, as to cause an unusual sensation among her hearers; and when the passage was read by the general public, accompanied by the fervent panegyrics of the press, the public zeal against the papal brief was, if possible, intensified.

The general conduct of the Roman Catholic body, hierarchy, and press, was provocative of popular anger, and calculated to create an illiberal feeling towards Roman Catholics. Various pretensions were asserted in a highhanded manner by the Roman Catholic bishops in their epistolary communications; and their literary organs spared the Protestants of England no bitterness of invective, to which the most exasperating polemics could give expression.

The public irritation on this controversy was kept up during the whole year, for the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy were not moderated, and in Ireland the chief bishops of the Roman Catholic church openly derided and defied the power of the government and people of England to put any law against their assumptions into practical effect. It is probable that these magnates had good information that Lord John and his government merely intended to carry a bill which might be held _in terrorem_—a mode of legislating against the church of Rome, which an experienced politician must have known was futile.

The bill brought into parliament by Lord John, to vindicate the rights of his royal mistress and the independence of England, was called “the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” and may be described in a single sentence as providing penalties, in the shape of a moderate fine of £100, against every Romish ecclesiastic assuming a territorial title belonging to the Protestant hierarchy. The Roman Catholic members of the commons opposed it with a vituperative eloquence, neither creditable to their religion, country, nor the especial cause of their advocacy. The whig ministry, and their supporters on both sides of the house, justified the bill on narrow and inconsistent grounds. The Protestant abettors of “the aggression” treated the hubbub raised as unworthy the greatness of England—the pope being a poor prince of very little power. Disraeli, with even more than his usual ability, supported the measure of the government, urging that the pope had, it was true, no formidable military force, but he had an army of a million of priests, and still greater numbers of persons belonging to various religious orders, the members of which were wholly devoted—mind, body, and estate—to his behests. This reasoning produced considerable effect on the house, and destroyed the effect of Mr. Roebuck’s arguments for allowing the Roman Catholic religion to develop itself in its own way. The bill met with so much opposition in its later stages from Sir James Graham and the Peelite party, that its progress was somewhat obstructed; but the vehement demands out of doors for its enactment, lowered the tone of the parliamentary opposition to it, and it was carried ultimately by a very large majority. It was introduced, by Lord John Russell, as early as the 7th of February. In consequence of the opposition it encountered, the cabinet divested it of several of the more stringent clauses, and on the 7th of March Sir George Grey reintroduced the bill, after a temporary absence from office of the government. It was not until the close of July that the bill received the royal assent.

Several cases were brought into courts of justice throughout the year, which kept up the irritation thus excited. Among these was the case of Miss Talbot, a Roman Catholic lady under the guardianship of the Earl of Shrewsbury, a Roman Catholic peer. The lady had a fortune of £80,000. She was advised by her guardians to enter a nunnery, and was placed there to pass through the preliminary stages before finally taking the veil. In that case, the whole of the vast property she possessed would be made over to the Roman Catholic church. The Berkeley family brought the matter into court, and such an exposure was made of the bigotry of Lord Shrewsbury, and the schemes set on foot to deprive the young lady of her property in favour of the church, as exasperated the already intensely excited popular mind. The young lady married Lord Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, and so settled the contest, at the same time disproving the allegations and oaths of the ecclesiastical party, who sought to victimize her, that she was about to take the veil in the result of her own importunity for permission so to do.

The public indignation against the Church of Rome was much stimulated by a remarkable law case, Métairie _versus_ Wiseman and others. The co-defendants with the cardinal were several Roman Catholic priests, and some laymen known as much devoted to sacerdotal influence. The plaintiff was one Julie Métairie, next of kin to a deceased Roman Catholic gentleman, a native of France, whom it was alleged, when in a state of mental incapacity, was induced by a priest named Holdstock to make a testament of his property in favour of the Church of Rome, and of certain charities favoured by that church. It was given in evidence that the man had been a sceptic nearly all his life, hated priests, and was especially prejudiced against the peculiar disposition of his property, which the priests alleged that he had actually made upon his death-bed. A Roman Catholic physician, one Gasquet, had called in the priest. It appeared on the trial that no will, or other document, disposing of his property, could be produced by Cardinal Wiseman, or the priests his co-defendants, in the handwriting of the deceased, or of his attorney. A document, however, was drawn up by a Roman Catholic barrister, at the confessor’s request; and, according to the affidavits, the dying man was held up in the bed by the priest, while the latter took hold of the hand of the expiring man, and with it signed a deed, conveying £7,000 to certain trustees for Roman Catholic uses. Cooke, the barrister, by whom the deed was drawn up, prepared a power of attorney, by which the property was placed in his hands upon the decease of M. Carrée (the name of the man thus entrapped). This paper also the dying man was made to sign, but he intimated his desire to retain the papers which he signed, but was not allowed. One of the allegations made at the trial which most prejudiced the public was, that the priest who effected the trick did not again visit the dying man, who was permitted to die unabsolved, unanointed, without any of the “consolations” which Roman Catholics prize so much.

The plaintiff, on behalf of himself and other relatives of the deceased, filed a bill in chancery, demanding judgment upon the invalidity of the deeds by which M. Carrée’s property was wrested from his relatives, and placed in the hands of the priests. After nine days’ argument the defendants paid the money into court. The matter was not again argued, as the defendants consented to pay £4,000 out of the £7,000 over to the relatives not to proceed. This was accepted to avert any uncertainty in the issue dependant upon doubtful points of law, and to avoid exhausting the property by litigation. The public expected that the priests, in order to the vindication of their own proceedings in the case, would have promoted the investigation, and have, in case of a decision in their favour, acted generously towards the relatives of the alleged legatee.

Various cases in which priestly pretension and intolerance were rumoured, kept alive the feeling created by the trials referred to; so that during the whole year manifestations of popular resentment towards the Roman Catholic Church, and especially its ecclesiastics, were put forth in almost every part of Great Britain. When the 5th of November arrived, the day upon which the detection of Guy Faux’s attempt to blow up the parliament usually receives a popular celebration, there was an outburst of patriotic hostility to the Church of Rome, which the magistrates in London and the great cities of the provinces in vain endeavoured to prevent or moderate. Cardinal Wiseman and the Pope were carried about the streets in effigy, and the figures by which they were ludicrously caricatured, were burnt amidst the acclamations of vast crowds, not always confined to the lower orders.

Various events in Ireland, of violence offered to clergymen and scripture readers, and assassinations of gentlemen whose protestant zeal was prominent, aided the circumstances which in England kept the public exasperation against popery at so high a pitch.

Incidents of persecution abroad, not materially differing from common occurrences, and such as happen without particular notice by the English people at other periods, were related and commented upon by the English press in terms of the bitterest reproach to the Roman Catholic religion, and its abettors. On the whole, no subject occupied the minds of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom so constantly throughout the year 1851, as that of the aggressive acts and spirit of the papal court and its ultramontane supporters.

The public mind was also much agitated by the question of “Protection of Industry.” A powerful party, consisting chiefly of the landlords, clergy, shipping interest, farmers, and certain sections of persons who had profited by “protection duties,” were determined, if possible, to revoke the decision of the legislature in favour of a free trade in corn, and to reverse the policy of Sir Robert Peel, of relaxing and finally removing all differential duties and taxes, imposed otherwise than for revenue, upon foreign commodities. The leaders of this reactionary party were very eloquent men—the Earl of Derby, and Benjamin Disraeli. Both these gifted persons have since been repeatedly in power, and, while evidently as hostile to a free-trade policy in office as well as when out of office, yet they affected in their parliamentary orations to be on the side of the popular theory of free trade, and often made speeches so glaringly inconsistent with those previously made by them as to damage the reputation of public men in the national esteem. Presuming upon the ignorance, or forgetfulness, of the population at large, the peer and the commoner have frequently spoken as though they had been the invariable champions of freedom of commerce, and of civil and religious liberty. In 1851 they were the persistent and acrimonious opponents of freedom, religious, political, and commercial, and by their eloquence stimulated those who sympathised with them, and incensed those who believed that a great economical victory had been accomplished by the free-trade legislation of Sir Robert Peel, which was irreversible. Those who considered that the “Derby-Disraeli party” only used their anti-free-trade agitations to accomplish a mere party purpose, to regain office, and check the general progress of free institutions and reform, were exasperated at the political charlatanism which they considered to be thus displayed, so that the public lost temper with the party, and was disposed even to violent manifestations of its hostility. A remarkable instance of this occurred at Tarnworth, previously the seat of the lately deceased parliamentary champion of the repeal of the corn-laws, Sir Robert Peel. The landowners of North Warwickshire, and their party adherents, convened a public meeting to discuss their alleged grievances, and selected Tamworth as the place of meeting. The populace and the free-traders declared that the place chosen was not one which would naturally be appointed for such a gathering, and believed that Tamworth was named for the meeting in order to insult the memory of Sir Robert Peel, and by a display of strength affront the liberal party, in matters of commerce, on the spot where the ashes of their chief reposed. The Protectionists would not yield to any suggestions concerning the bad taste displayed as to the moral battle-ground they had chosen. They were warned that it would become a material battle-field as well, but the warnings were rejected. The ringleaders in the great agricultural demonstration, Lord Lewisham, and Messrs. Newdegate and Spoon er, members of parliament, marshalled their hosts, and it was intended to make such a demonstration of strength on behalf of the agricultural interest as would awe the government, and impress the country with an idea of the growing power of the party. The populace, however, attacked the meeting—a severe conflict ensued; the Protectionists were driven from the town. The vehicles of the agricultural party were broken or thrown over Tamworth Bridge; many persons were dangerously wounded, especially among the Protectionists; and the issue was a fresh demonstration of the unpopularity of protectionist doctrines, and of their chief advocates. The moral effect of the incident throughout the country was adverse to the party who promoted the assemblage. The riot occurred on the 28th of May, and the strong popular hostility evinced, had its influence in parliament in emboldening the hostile eloquence of the free-traders, and damped the ardour of the protectionist gatherings in the coming autumn.

Throughout the parliamentary session the agricultural interest made its complaints incessantly heard. The leaders declared that the landed gentry and farmers were rapidly proceeding to ruin in consequence of free-trade, and their vaticinations of frightful calamities to the nation were singular displays of extraordinary hypocrisy, or delusions. Amongst the most doleful prophets and lugubrious friends of agriculture was Benjamin Disraeli. He was also the most acrimonious of advocates, while defending claims ignored by the nation as unjust, denounced by political economists as injurious; and, obviously in the exclusive and selfish interests of a class, he denounced the advocates of free commerce as without honour, honesty, or patriotism, sparing his opponents neither as individuals nor as members of a party. The moral effect of this unprincipled vituperation upon the country was injurious to the party it was intended to serve, and lessened the confidence which the people had been accustomed to repose in the integrity of public men. Early in the session Mr. Disraeli introduced a resolution on agricultural distress. An opening, almost an invitation, for him to do so was given by Lord John Russell, who, with his usual mal-adroit attempts to conciliate his opponents, inserted in the queen’s speech an expression of regret for the distress borne by the agricultural interest. Disraeli accordingly proposed, “That the severe distress which continues to exist among the owners and occupiers of land, lamented in her majesty’s speech, renders it the duty of the government to introduce, without delay, measures for their effectual relief.” In his speech he advocated the remission of taxes from the landed interest, as the alternative to protection, attributing the distress complained of to the repeal of the corn laws. The chancellor of the exchequer, in a matter of fact speech, refuted Mr. Disraeli’s allegations that land was taxed disproportionately to other property, or that the repeal of the corn laws had failed of its object. Sir James Graham, in a clever _ad captandum_ speech, called upon the house and the country to beware that the real object of Mr. Disraeli and his party was to re-impose the corn laws. Mr. Labouchere argued upon the same view of the policy of Mr. Disraeli’s party, which Sir James Graham had exposed. Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Cobden in very eloquent terms adopted the same strain. The latter gentleman said that there could be no doubt of the meaning of Mr. Disraeli’s motion, for whether a duty on corn, or compensation for the loss of it, were the object immediately aimed at, the result would be the same—the advantage of a class at the expense of the country. He threatened the renewal of a national agitation against the exclusive selfish policy of the landlord class. Lord John Russell declared that he considered Mr. Disraeli’s motion as fraught with more dangerous consequences than any motion which in the course of his public life he ever recollected. Mr. Disraeli’s resolution was negatived by a majority of only fourteen.

At this juncture in the agricultural agitation political affairs in parliament assumed peculiar and various complications. On the 20th of February Mr. Locke King, the member for East Surrey, asked for leave to bring in a bill to make the franchise in counties, in England and Wales, the same as in boroughs—the occupation of a tenement of the value of £10 a year. Lord John Russell refused the assent of his government, pledging himself to bring in a bill to improve the representation, a promise which through many succeeding years his lordship was in no hurry to fulfil. The motion of Mr. King was carried against the government by a majority in the proportion of nearly two to one. It was generally felt that this vote virtually sealed the fate of the government. The agricultural party were therefore emboldened to renew their previous tactics on the discussion of the budget, and to press for the especial exemption of their class from a large proportion of the general taxation. The budget had been previously introduced (on the 17th), in a committee of ways and means. The income had exceeded the expenditure by more than two and a half millions sterling. This fact left an opening for the reduction of taxation, which the agriculturists had already claimed in their own peculiar interest. They were prepared upon the 21st of February, upon the order for going into committee on ways and means, to make propositions, which, if carried, would appropriate to themselves the two millions and a half of surplus as effectually as if the money were taken and divided among them. Lord John Russell requested the postponement of the order of the day to the 24th, intimating that he was moved to desire this postponement for especial reasons. It was well known that his lordship felt himself incapable of carrying on the government against the attacks of the Protectionists, on one hand, and the parliamentary reformers on the other. On the 24th Lord John informed the house of this fact, and declared that he spoke “as the organ of a government which no longer existed.” Lord Stanley had been invited by her majesty to form a government, but did not succeed, and she again called upon Lord John to construct a new cabinet. His lordship informed the house that he had undertaken the task, and requested an adjournment. On the 28th the house resumed its sitting. It then appeared that Lord Aberdeen had been summoned by her majesty to form a ministry, but his lordship, Sir James Graham, and the Peel party generally, refused to co-operate with Lord John in the ecclesiastical titles bill, the Peelite section of both houses, especially its leader, Lord Aberdeen, being committed to the new ecclesiastical party called Puseyites, who sympathised with the efforts of the Roman Catholics to restore the grandeur of their hierarchy. Lord Aberdeen dared not face the popular feeling on that question. Finally, the Duke of Wellington’s advice having been sought by his royal mistress, he advised her, as the best solution of the difficulty, to confide to Lord John Russell the reconstruction of his ministry. The protectionist party determined to oppose the government on every measure which afforded a chance, by small defeat, of weakening its influence over the house and the country. When the ecclesiastical titles bill again came before the house, Sir F. Thesiger moved three amendments, the object of which was to make it more effective. This the party of Sir Frederic knew well neither Lord John, his ministry, nor the Whigs generally, really desired. By this means the true whig view of the question was forced out. Lord John resisted the amendments. The house was indignant. His lordship confided in the votes of the Roman Catholic members, but they, anxious to humiliate him, walked out of the house in a body. The amendments were carried amidst the derisive cheers of the Protectionists. Large majorities in every case defeated the half measures of Lord John. So little did he appear to comprehend the spirit of the house and the country, that instead of bowing to their decision, or resigning his office, he attempted on the third reading of the bill to reverse the votes carried by such overwhelming majorities: he failed still more signally than before. He stood in a false position to the house, the country, and the Roman Catholic party. He had brought in, with vast pretensions to a zealous Protestantism on his lips, a measure which was never intended by him, or his party, to answer the purpose proclaimed. His opponents took it out of his hands with skill and moderation, and made it much more practicable for its ostensible purpose, although still short of a sound and efficient bill to restrain the hierarchy of Rome from the assumptions it desired.

The Protectionists found another occasion to damage the government during the discussion of the budget. On the 5th of April the chancellor of the exchequer made his second financial statement for the year, which was much more favourably received than the former one. He, however, retracted some of the boons conceded in the first budget to the agricultural interest. This gave satisfaction to the majority, but exasperated the protectionist party, which attempted to defeat the government on the question of the income tax, by direct resolutions moved by Mr. Herries; a considerable majority defeated the movement. On the bill going into committee Mr. Hume, then in the zenith of his influence, moved an amendment to the effect that the tax should be maintained for one year only. The honourable member was an extreme Liberal in politics, but his support of the free-trade party was neither very warm nor very intelligent. His amendment was energetically opposed by the government, and by the free-trade leaders, especially Mr. Cobden and Mr. Sidney Herbert. The Protectionists rallied round Mr. Hume, and the little circle of radical members who, like Mr. Hume, were suspected of being heterodox to the free-trade doctrines. The temporary coalition was led by Mr. Disraeli, always in the van when a political or parliamentary trick was the hope of his party. The government was defeated, and acquiesced in the motion. This success greatly encouraged the Protectionists, who made a direct assault upon the government, on the 8th of May, when Mr. Cayley proposed the abolition of the malt tax, but was beaten by a large majority.

On the 17th of June Mr. Bass moved that half the malt tax should be repealed in October, 1852. On a division the motion was rejected. Various other attempts were made on isolated subjects to support the landlord interest by the remission of taxes bearing on it. Lord Naas repeatedly defeated the government on the mode of assessing the spirit duties, but ultimately the ministry got rid of the resolutions of his lordship. In June Mr. Disraeli moved a series of resolutions on the position and prospects of the country and the policy of the government, in which he was supported by the entire strength of the tory party. The object of the resolutions was to oppose the application of the surplus revenue to the reduction of taxes, such as the window, coffee, and timber duties, until the result of a select committee on the income tax, proposed by Mr. Hume, should be known. The object of the resolutions was to preserve the surplus revenue for the reduction of taxes borne by a single class, that of the landlords, and for their exclusive benefit. It was the question of the right of peculiar advantage by the landed interest brought out in another form. Mr. Disraeli appeared to great disadvantage as a financier, political economist, and even as a party leader. His speech was factious in spirit, resting upon no sound principles of policy or economy, and altogether unworthy of the leader of a great party, and of one who aspired to a reputation for statesmanship. The chancellor of the exchequer made an unusually happy speech in reply. It was not usual for that honourable member to indulge in the witty and satirical vein which so cleverly and appropriately pervaded that particular oration. The disingenuousness and factiousness of Disraeli roused the spirit of Sir Charles, and inspired him with a sarcasm unlike his own serious and even dull tone of address. He accused Mr. Disraeli with delivering a two hours’ speech on fiscal and economical subjects, from which a single proposition could not be extracted, and concluding by trite reflections upon the necessity of maintaining public credit, couched in highflown language about the empire of the Cæsars, with its triple crown, the mines of Golconda, pillared palanquins, and other things having as little to do with the question. These poetic fancies were very pleasing, but the house would have better liked to hear arguments in support of a motion against repealing taxes. The following passage from the speech of the chancellor of the exchequer excited much mirth among the members, at the expense of the protectionist leader:—“Mr. Disraeli would not jeopardize public credit (by repealing taxes); but only six days after Mr. Hume’s motion (for continuing the income tax only one year) was carried, Mr. Cayley moved the house to remit £5,000,000 by the repeal of the malt tax. If it be wrong to jeopardize public credit, surely it was as much endangered on the 8th of May (when Mr. Cayley proposed the remission of the malt tax), as it was on the 30th of June (when the ministers proposed to repeal duties which affected the whole community), yet on the division list in favour of Mr. Cayley’s motion I find the name of Benjamin Disraeli! Can it be that there are two Benjamins in the field? One Benjamin voting for the reduction of five millions of taxes, and another Benjamin who is afraid to meddle with a surplus of £1,600,000.”

The effect of this cutting and just satire upon the dishonest pretences of Mr. Disraeli in refusing the repeal of taxes to the amount of the surplus revenue, on the ground of maintaining public credit, was exceedingly striking. The house was at first convulsed with laughter, after which serious murmurs rolled along the benches to the right of the speaker’s chair, and the Conservatives, in sullen and moody silence, showed their consciousness of the moral effect of this _exposé_, especially as the resolutions were lost by a very large majority. The speech of Sir Charles Wood was much quoted out of doors, and Mr. Disraeli became, for a considerable time, most unpopular throughout the country. It was much mooted among the opposition whether he should not be deposed from a leadership which his eloquence did not always serve, and which his reckless inconsistency so often damaged.

The Protectionists were unable to make any impression upon the house or the country favourable to a reversal of free trade, or the removal from the landed gentry of the taxes which they professed bore most heavily upon them.

In connection with the protectionist agitation, the navigation laws, and their repeal, held an angry prominence. The shipowners agitated the peculiar burdens on shipping almost as loudly as the landlords complained of the peculiar burdens on land. The cause of the shipowners was espoused by the landlords, and among them the Earl of Derby was the most prominent. The act of 1849, for the removal of maritime restrictions, was discussed in both houses, and the shipowners and landed interests demanded that the legislature should retrace its steps on that subject. The house, however, maintained the policy of 1849.

GENERAL PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY OF 1851.

In the foregoing notices of proceedings in parliament, reference was made to them in connection with the great subjects which agitated the country at large. Those notices necessarily abridge the relation of this section of the chapter.

Although the session was not fruitful in legislation, a considerable range of important subjects was embraced by the discussions which took place. The ministry was desirous to improve the laws, and carry some useful measures. Private members in vain sought opportunity to direct the attention of parliament to practical and useful legislation: the great agitations of the day, and mere party disputes, consumed the time of the house. The Protectionists caught at so many opportunities for prolonged debates, for the purposes of gaining some pecuniary advantage, and of worrying the ministry, that the public business was greatly impeded. The Peelites, especially in the commons, were hostile to the ecclesiastical titles bill. That small section of the house which prided itself in following the policy of Sir Robert Peel in everything, belonged, in almost every individual case, to the Puseyite party in the established church, and viewed with apparently bitter animosity the attempt of Lord John Russell to curb the pretensions of the Romish hierarchy. Mr. Gladstone and Sir James Graham, always hostile to the religious liberties of Protestant dissenters, led the opposition to the government measure. It was obvious enough that the house and the country were resolved upon the passing of the bill, but the Peelite and Puseyite orators resisted it at every stage, with a zeal and activity which surpassed that of the Roman Catholic members. In vain the government pressed upon the house the urgency of the public business, and the number of the measures which ought to occupy attention: Puseyites and Protectionists maintained debates on every possible occasion, rendering legislative measures on a great variety of subjects impracticable.

The ministerial crisis has been already referred to, and its termination, by the announcement (on the 3rd of March) that the government had resumed office.

The defeat of the government on the motion of Mr. Locke King, for leave to bring in a bill to assimilate the elective franchise in boroughs and counties upon a ten-pound value occupation has incidentally been noticed in connection with the ministerial crisis. Mr. Locke King brought in his bill, and moved the second reading on the 2nd of April. The debate which ensued was remarkable from the circumstance that Lord John Eussell pledged himself to bring in, at the beginning of the next session, a bill to extend the franchise. This pledge, up to the close of the session of 1859, more than eight years, has never been redeemed. The excuse urged has been always the same—the pressure of public business—an excuse, the sincerity of which cannot be accepted by the most credulous friends of his lordship’s party. Mr. Disraeli declared that he desired to see the “great settlement of 1831” improved, in the sense of confirming “the proper territorial influence and power,” which he assured the house was essential to the liberties of the English nation. Mr. Disraeli desired an improvement of the Reform Bill which would consolidate the power of a class: Lord John promised a reform which would increase the power of the people. Persuaded by his lordship’s specious promises, those of Mr. Fox Maule, and other members of the government, the Liberals supported the government, and Mr. Locke King’s bill was lost by a vast majority. The speech of Mr. Bright much conduced to this result, as he showed that the ten-pound occupants, in counties, would be under the control of the landed interest, which Mr. Bright denounced as opposed to the material interests and civil and religious liberties of the people.

Mr. Henry Berkeley endeavoured to secure another measure of reform—the conducting of elections by vote by ballot. The government resisted this, and Lord John Eussell, with a tone of ridicule and acrimony, offered the motion an ostentatious opposition. The government was beaten by a majority of eighty-seven to fifty. The bill was read a first time, but Mr. Berkeley did not proceed with it, the same pretence set up by the government on Locke King’s motion soothing the reformers.

Mr. Cobden signalized himself by proposing a resolution pledging the house to arbitration in case of national differences. Mr. Cobden’s motion was in itself impracticable, his statistics partial, and his tone personal and unjust to the statesman by whom our foreign relations had been conducted. Lord Palmerston replied in one of the most happy speeches he ever delivered, vindicating himself from the implications made by Mr. Cobden. Mr. Roebuck supported Mr. Cobden, whom, and whose party, he has so often opposed since, when their peculiar opinions were advocated in a similar manner. The motion was withdrawn, in consequence of the conviction of all parties being strongly expressed that the course proposed by Mr. Cobden was utterly impossible.

In the House of Lords a remarkable debate arose upon a proposition of the Earl of St. Germains, to make marriage with a deceased wife’s sister legal. The measure was opposed by the bishops. The Bishop of Norwich made a speech of remarkable clearness and force in opposition. Lord Campbell, the lord-chief-justice, made an oration of an eccentric and illogical character; its spirit and temper were even worse than its arguments; the people of Germany and America were referred to in a manner the most insulting and unjust. The bishops and the law lords defeated the bill.

Lord Redesdale, one of the champions of Puseyism in the established church, made a motion in the peers for the revival of convocation, which was successfully opposed by the evangelical “primate of all England.”

One of the subjects introduced during the session which excited most interest in the country, was the removal of Jewish disabilities. Lord John Russell produced a bill in the commons which was carried, but was thrown out in the lords. Events followed of an important nature and of historical interest. An alderman of the city of London, named Salomons, had been elected to sit in parliament for the borough of Greenwich. He determined to take his seat. He presented himself at the table of the house on the 18th of July, but refused to take the oaths “on the true faith of a Christian,” the form prescribed by the rules of the house. He was then ordered by the speaker to withdraw. Mr. Salomons sat down on one of the benches of the ministerial side of the house, but the speaker insisted upon his withdrawal, upon which he returned to the bar, but under protest of his right to take his seat. Called upon, in the course of the discussion which ensued, by various members to do so, he repeatedly resumed his seat, addressed the house, and voted on divisions concerning himself. After long protracted and violent discussions, he was conducted forcibly by the sergeant-at-arms below the bar. The house, at the instance of Lord John Russell, resolved that he had not a right to sit until he took the oath of abjuration on the true faith of a Christian. Lord John at the same time intimated his intention to persevere in seeking the emancipation of Jewish citizens from all civil disabilities on account of their religion. These events in the English House of Commons attracted the attention of the Jewish community all over the world, and the reports were perused extensively abroad as well as at home.

On the 27th of May a party debate arose upon the conduct of Lord Torrington, when governor of Ceylon. Debates occurred in both houses, the object of the opponents of government being to condemn the policy of Lord Torrington, and the friends of government to uphold him. Nothing was proved against his lordship sufficient to justify the course pursued against him, but it was made plain that his appointment to the government of a colony as distracted as it was important, did not arise from the noble lord’s fitness, but from his political interest; and that Earl Grey, the whig colonial minister, had performed his official duties in a way crotchety, self-sufficient, and arrogant—in the spirit of the partizan rather than of the patriot.

Various bills were passed in reference to administrative departments of the church, and of the state. A bill for the removal of Smithfield market was carried on humane and sanitary considerations, after a discreditable opposition from the corporation of London. Law reform made some progress, especially in connection with the court of chancery. There were several sharp discussions and important motions on colonial and foreign affairs, which will be more appropriately noticed when referring to those departments of the history of the year.

On the 8th of August parliament was prorogued, and the legislative history of 1851 terminated.

EXHIBITION OF THE INDUSTRY OF ALL NATIONS.

Among the home incidents of the year none excited more general interest than “the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations,” which was opened on the 1st of May. During 1850 public expectation had been intensely directed to it. The patronage of the queen, and the active assistance as well as patronage of her consort, threw a halo of respectability and popularity around the undertaking. The design was to erect a large temporary building, into which might be brought, in an honourable and peaceful rivalry, specimens of the manufacture and art of all nations. The site selected for the building was Hyde Park, near the Prince’s Gate. Mr. Paxton (afterwards Sir Joseph Paxton), gardener to the Duke of Devonshire, devised a plan for erecting the building of glass—a bold and novel scheme, which resulted in a structure elegant and useful. Mr. Fox (afterwards Sir Charles) was the principal contractor. All concerned worked with zeal and skill, and their task was brought to a satisfactory termination. The building was a parallelogram, 1,848 feet long by 408 feet wide. The distribution of the articles sent for exhibition was upon the principle of giving to each country a separate compartment in the building, with the exception that all working machinery was placed together at the north-west end. It would require a volume to describe the wonderful variety and beauty of the productions of skill and labour brought together in this Crystal Palace of industry; nothing equal to it for curious and instructive interest had ever before been realized. On the 1st of May this fairy fabric was opened with all the circumstances of pomp which royalty and multitudes of persons gathered from many nations could present. There were arrivals from almost every nation; and from Europe and America the numbers were so great that the vast area of London seemed thronged day by day, and almost night by night, with crowds. The various national physiognomies and costumes gave a picturesque effect to the streets and parks, and especially to the interior and neighbourhood of the building for the Exhibition on the opening day. Everything connected with its inauguration was auspicious, and public order was preserved in a wonderful manner; all men from all nations and peoples seemed earnest to maintain the harmony and decorum of the happy occasion. Those classes of English society which made themselves notorious for their hostility to human progress, and especially to the increase of manufactures in England, had been opposed to the project of the Exhibition; and had it not been for the ardour with which the prince, the husband of her majesty, took up the enterprise, opposition from these classes would have been far more vigorous and virulent. All the fears of the objectors to the undertaking proved groundless, and all their vaticinations false; improvement to the national industry, and social enjoyment of England, and a happy intercourse with their brethren of many nations were the results. It was, however, a long time after the Exhibition had accomplished its good purposes, and the last fragment of its material was swept away from the site it had occupied, before the murmurs and objections of the anti-progress classes died away.

THE CENSUS.

This year was remarkable for the accurate knowledge obtained of the amount of the population, the decennial census having been taken. The importance of this subject can hardly be overrated. Population, as we are taught by an inspired instructor, is a leading element in the prosperity of a nation: “In the multitude of the people is the king’s honour; but in the want of people is the destruction of the prince.” Only in modern times have we arrived at any enumeration of the people on competent authority; the estimates of earlier periods are of comparatively little value. Amidst the scenes of carnage presented in the first thousand years of our authentic history, the natural growth of the population was constantly checked, and there were probably periods when the numbers were greater than just after the desolations produced by the Roman conquest, at which time the population of Great Britain was estimated at only 1,700,000 persons. After the desolating wars of the Roses ended with the accession of Henry VIL, in 1485, to the English throne, the numbers of the whole of the people in Great Britain were estimated as only 3,000,000. In the time of Elizabeth they reached 4.000,000, according to a calculation based upon the parish registers. Mr. Reckman, an authority on this matter, gives the following estimates:—

Years. Population. Rate of Increase.

1600............ 4,811,700 ............ 15–66

1630............. 5,600,317 ............ 16–38

1670............ 5,773,646 ............ 3–09

1700........... 6,045,608 ............ 4–70

1750........... 6,517,035 ............ 7–51

1760........... 6,479,730 ............ 7–28

1770........... 7,227,586 ............ 11–54

1780........... 7,814,827 ............ 8–12

1790........... 8,540,738 ............ 9–29

1800........... 9,187,176 ............ 7–56

From the last of these periods we have had a census every ten years; the following are the results:—

Years. Population. Rate of Increase.

1801 ............ 10,267,893 ............

1811 ............ 12,047,455 ............ 14

1821 ............ 15,180,350 ............ 18

1831 ............ 16,364,893 ............ 15

1841 ............ 18,658,372 ............ 14

1851 ............ 20,936,468 ............ 12

It will thus be seen that our people more than doubled their numbers during the first half of the present century. The population is now more than twelve times as great as it was immediately after the Roman conquest. These numbers did not increase in equal proportion over the face of the whole island. Some of the rural districts have been thinned by emigration, which had proceeded with great rapidity for some time, partly to the manufacturing districts, and partly to the colonies and to the United States of America. The agricultural districts also furnished the greater proportion of recruits for the army, an average of from thirty to forty thousand a year. The number of emigrants from the whole of Great Britain during 1842 amounted to 128,344. The great increase of population has been in our manufacturing towns, such as Birmingham, where there were only 73,670 persons in 1801, and 173,081 in 1851; Sheffield, which in 1736 contained 14,105, had increased to 88,447 in 1851; Manchester, exclusive of Salford, had only 41,032 in 1734, whereas in 1851 it had 316,213; Liverpool, in 1700, had no more than 5,145 inhabitants, in 1851 it had 375,955. Glasgow three hundred years ago contained only 4,500 inhabitants, in 1851 its numbers reached 344,986. The density of the population was found to vary in different parts of England, and Wales, from as few as eighteen persons in a square mile, to as many as 185,751 in a similar area. A very curious and interesting illustration has been furnished of the increased proximity of the inhabitants, in consequence of the increase of population, during the present century. A messenger to deliver a thousand letters, at a thousand houses of average proximity, in 1801, would have to travel two hundred and six miles; but in 1851 he could perform his work by travelling only one hundred and forty-three miles. As the people were no longer serfs of the soil, but free to rove as their interests or pleasure dictated, a wonderful readiness to change the locality of their homes had displayed itself during the first half of this century, and especially the last decade of it. In this way large additions were made to the population of certain great centres of trade. It was found that the disposition to settle in London was greatest in the Metropolitan, Southern, Eastern, and South Midland Counties. The people to the north of Nottingham, Leicester, &c., were less inclined to live in London. Their tendency, strengthened by the opportunity of finding employment, was to resort to the great manufacturing districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. The census led incidentally to considerations connected with the general progress of Great Britain. Its material and social interests kept pace with its population. It is a law which operates with the increase of the people, that the increase of the means of supporting them augments in a superior ratio. The masses realized the advantages of progressive science and art, the variety of manufacture, division of labour, freedom of commerce, and freedom of thought. They were in possession of many luxuries as well as comforts not known even to noble and royal persons in previous ages of our history. The 3,647,611 inhabited houses of Great Britain, from the palace of the monarch down to the humble dwelling of the cottager, presented a striking contrast to the miserable hovels of the poor, and the inconvenient magnificence of the great, in the bygone periods of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history, and of the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts. Great improvements had began in the domiciles of the lower classes; in the sanitary condition of cities and towns: and in draining, lighting, and paving. The progress of the arts and manufactures in Great Britain had been then very great. Coal and iron, which lie at the base of our manufacturing industry, were appreciated, and had reached a great production. Until 1740 wood only had been used for the smelting of iron; after that year coal was applied successfully. In 1788 the produce was several thousand tons; in. 1800 it was one hundred and eighty thousand; in 1851 it reached the enormous amount of two millions and a half. Iron and steel were brought into use for the most excellent tools, as well as for the works in which they have been employed. This branch of improvement made a remarkable progress, little known beyond the circles of men of science and artizans. It has been correctly observed that the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage could not have been executed by means of the imperfect tools which were formerly in the hands of our machinists. We are indebted to the efforts made for the completion of that apparatus for some of the most beautiful tools.

The marvellous increase of our cotton, woollen, and silk manufactures, more especially, strikingly illustrate the general law of material progress with the increase of population. To give the details of these statistics would be entering upon a subject too extensive for our limits, but the reader would find them an interesting accompaniment to the population reports of 1851.

IRELAND.

The year 1851 was singularly free from agitation in Ireland; still the social condition of that country was not free from its usual elements of disturbance. The papal scheme for establishing a territorial hierarchy in England, caused in Ireland an extraordinary degree of exultation. Addresses from the altars, and through the columns of the press, testified the sacerdotal enthusiasm that the event enkindled. The opposition of Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and others—who either openly espoused Puseyism or had an inclination towards its dogmas—to the ecclesiastical titles bill greatly encouraged the priest party in Ireland. Yet the Irish and English Roman Catholic laity had little sympathy. O’Connell had often publicly declared that the aristocratic predilections of the English Roman Catholic gentry, and their prejudice against the Irish people, of all sects and parties, made them a dead weight upon the Roman Catholic cause, to which his party tact and _ad captandum_ oratory had given buoyancy. He had thoroughly indoctrinated the Irish Roman Catholic laity, and even the older clergy, with this view. The younger members of the priesthood were so thoroughly ultramontane, that they, without counteracting Mr. O’Connell’s statements and opinions on this subject, at least publicly, gave way to the wildest hopes and aspirations of papal ascendancy in England, and ultimately, through English instrumentality, in the colonies. The ecclesiastical titles bill called forth the most malignant denunciations of Lord John Russell, politically and personally; the house of Bedford was singled out from the aristocracy of England for vehement abuse; a wild controversy raged through the land; sermons against Protestantism, remarkable for the absence of all argument such as the Roman Catholic priests of the old school prided themselves on using, and pervaded by a fierce fanaticism, were delivered throughout the country; and all reply on the part of Protestant clergymen were treated not as theological arguments, but as insults, which disturbed the public peace, and constituted a peculiar “Catholic grievance.” Many Protestants in Ireland countenanced this feeling; controversy and proselyteism, on the part of the Church of Rome, were by such Protestants held up as a proof of Roman Catholic zeal. Controversy and proselyteism on the part of the Protestant clergy were denounced as proofs of clerical imprudence, an attack on the “rights” of Roman Catholics, and a proof of some connection, open or covert, with Orangemen. This description of feeling amongst certain classes of Protestants in the higher ranks in England and Ireland was fashionable, but the honest zeal of the middle and poorer classes of Protestants restrained its manifestation. The columns of the Roman Catholic newspapers, and the sermons of the priests, during 1851, in Ireland, furnished extraordinary specimens of vindictive fanaticism.

Although public disturbances and assassinations were less common in 1851 than was usual in Ireland, there were some heartless proofs of class and religious animosity. In the month of July a singular trial took place evincing this. A gentleman named Smyth, of landed property, and considerable influence in his county, was, with one Helier, put upon his trial for the murder of his own mother, for the purpose of inheriting her property. Witnesses were called who swore to complicity, or a knowledge of complicity on the part of others, in a conspiracy, in which Mr. Blood Smyth was the moving person, for the murder of his mother. The evidence of these persons revealed a state of moral feeling, in the south of Ireland, among the peasant and low farmer class, perfectly atrocious. The result of the trial was, that the clearest proof was obtained that the deceased lady had died a natural death; that no attempt to murder her had ever been made; that the alleged criminals had really no motive for such a crime; that they were innocent, and that the accusation was the fruit of a conspiracy among dismissed servants and tenants of the accused, in order to be revenged upon him. The family of the accused were considered over zealous Protestants, and this formed an additional incitement to combine for the purpose of a legal assassination more cruel and terrible than if he had, like so many other Irish gentlemen, been shot down upon the public road. The latter terrible fate befell Mr. E. White, of Abbeleix, for asserting his right to some peat land which he had purchased. This circumstance offended the “Ribband” men, who in open day lodged a bullet in his heart, in a populous neighbourhood. The murderers were well known, but the populace sympathised with them. In the north of Ireland several gentlemen and men of humble note fell victims to the weapons of the “Ribband” assassins, under circumstances plainly indicating the complicity of the great mass of the peasantry of the Roman Catholic communion. Mr. Bateson, brother of Sir Robert Bateson, was beaten to death with bludgeons on the road near Castle Blayney. Men were arrested against whom the strongest proofs of guilt were produced, but the jury refused to convict. The difficulty of obtaining Roman Catholic members of juries to convict in Ribband cases, even upon the clearest evidence, greatly impeded the course of justice in Ireland. Mr. Eastwood, a magistrate, and deputy-lieutenant of a county, incurred a fate similar to that of Mr. Bateson. It was generally felt by the peaceable and loyal in Ireland, and by the people of England generally, that justice was not scrupulously administered by the whig party in Ireland. Anxious to preserve their majority by the votes of the Irish Roman Catholic members, and of latitudinarian members who represented Roman Catholic constituencies, the Whigs were unwilling to do anything, however called for by equity or imperial policy, which offended the popular party in Ireland, unless a _quid pro quo_ were attainable in increased English support. The ecclesiastical titles bill, however imperfect (designedly so), secured an amount of British support which more than balanced any loss of Irish members; but in Ireland the priest party were coaxed by the Whigs, and concessions made to them unworthy the dignity of imperial administration. The whig government in Ireland was utterly unprincipled and corrupt. At the close of the year a great law case established that in a singular manner. The case is given in law reports as Birch _versus_ Somerville, Bart. Birch was a Dublin newspaper proprietor; Somerville, Bart., the Irish secretary. The action was for £7,000 “for work and labour done.” The work and labour was the support of the whig government in _The World_ newspaper, in a mode and for ends utterly disreputable. The Earl of Clarendon, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and Sir W. Somerville, personally prompted this Birch, whose paper had an infamous reputation. These high officers of state disposed of the public money, and it may be also their own, to bribe this Birch. The Earl of Clarendon was examined, and admitted that Birch had been in his pay for years to support law and order; and acknowledged that independent of the money given to Birch in Ireland, he had also received money in London for the same object. The moral effect of this trial was so damaging to the government of Lord Clarendon, that it lost all hold upon the support of the respectable classes in Ireland. Lord Naas subsequently brought the subject under the notice of the House of Commons, when its damaging effects upon the existence of the Russell ministry was such as would probably have led to its downfall, irrespective of all casual circumstances or internal feuds.

The census of Ireland, taken this year, revealed the following facts as compared with 1841. In the metropolitan province of Leinster, in 1841, the number of houses was 320,051; a diminution had taken place of considerably more than 40,000 houses—the number being 277,552. The reduction in the number of families was nearly the same, from 362,134 to 321,991. The population was lessened from 1,973,731 to 1,667,771. The reduction in the other provinces was even greater in proportion; so that, in all Ireland, the number of houses was decreased, within the decade, from 1,384,360 to 1,115,007; and the population from 8,175,124 to 6,515,794; a decrease of more than twenty per cent.—the total decrease being 1,659,330.

With a population of more than six millions and a half, a fertile soil, and temperate climate, it was felt that Ireland ought to become a powerful and prosperous country. Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Switzerland, all the different states of Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia, were inferior to Ireland in the number of inhabitants and in national resources. Good government, and good conduct on the part of the people, it was generally believed, would develop the country to a condition of prosperity rivalling that of most other lands.

THE COURT.

The incidents of the year affecting royalty were few. On the 27th of August her majesty, consort, and several of the royal children, left the marine residence at Osborne, Isle of Wight, for Balmoral, in the Scottish Highlands. The royal progress was marked by the usual manifestations of loyalty. On the 7th of October the court left Balmoral. Two accidents occurred on the railway to the train in which her majesty travelled; the first on the journey to Edinburgh, when, after leaving Forfar, the axle of a carriage-truck became heated by friction, and some delay occurred, which caused alarm at Edinburgh. It gratified the inhabitants of the Scottish capital that her majesty and suite took up their brief abode at Holyrood Palace. Between Glasgow and Edinburgh, while the train was driven at the rate of thirty miles an hour, one of the feeding pipes from the tender to the engine burst with a loud explosion; the train was obscured in steam, and came to a stand at Kirkliston, where it was obliged to remain until assistance arrived from Edinburgh. During these accidents the composure and courage of the queen struck all observers with astonishment. It had been arranged that Liverpool should be visited by the royal travellers; and a magnificent reception was prepared for them. Her majesty was not, however, favoured upon the occasion with that beautiful weather which generally smiles upon her voyages, journeys and public appearances in her great cities. One of the most gloomy and rainy days ever known at Liverpool frowned upon the loyal efforts of its inhabitants. This did not repress their enthusiasm. A vast concourse filled the streets, and made the most hearty demonstrations of welcome to their queen. From Liverpool the court proceeded to Worsley Hall, the mansion of the Earl of Ellesmere. This was probably, the most remarkable of all her majesty’s previous journeys. The queen and suite embarked at Liverpool, in barges, and proceeded by the Bridgewater Canal to Worsley. While at Worsley, only a few miles from Manchester, her majesty paid a visit to that great city. On no occasion, even in the metropolis, was so vast a multitude of persons collected to see the queen; and, probably, on no occasion was she ever welcomed in a provincial city with so prodigal an expenditure and splendid a display of loyalty. Manchester and Salford were both traversed in their great principal thoroughfares by the royal procession, attended with military pomp, and many persons of very great eminence in the nation were in her suite. The profuse expenditure, displayed in flags and decorations, attracted the notice of the royal lady so much, that she expressed her regret that the citizens of Manchester should have gone to so great an expense on her account. A large public pleasure-ground in Salford, set apart by public subscriptions for the recreation of the people, and designated Peel Park, in honour of the free-trade champion, lay in the route taken by the royal _cortège_. In that park one of the most extraordinary fights was presented to her majesty ever witnessed by a monarch—eighty thousand Sunday-school children, of all religious denominations, were assembled to see their queen. The bringing together of such a mass of young persons, and the arrangements for placing them in a proper position to see and to be seen, was a work of anxiety and toil of which those only can form a conception who took part in it. Much of the credit of the occasion was due to the late Robert Needham, Esq., solicitor, of Manchester, who, with extraordinary toil, from the effects of which he never recovered, arranged and carried out the vast work. The writer of this history was present on the occasion, and can never forget the spectacle, which partook of the sublime and the affecting. Together with the vast host of children, dressed in holiday array, and with the fair and open countenances for which the children of Saxon Lancashire are remarkable, there were their teachers and ministers, and in the rear a vast multitude consisting of the parents and friends of these children, and of the religious congregations whose zeal and liberality provided instruction for their juvenile charge. There were fourteen tiers of galleries around the chief carriage-way of the park. These tiers were so arranged that the _cortège_, passing along the road, could see at once the whole array, and the children from every tier see the queen and her attendants. As her majesty entered the park, the whole host raised their voices and began the national anthem. For a few moments the effect was sublime; it was, however, only during the first verse. The boys of the Irish Roman Catholic schools burst the limitations of their orders, and of their positions, and raised a tumultuous shout, which was caught up in an instant by the other children, and almost as soon by the vast multitudes who filled the park. The author of these pages has witnessed many public entries of royal persons into great cities, and many, especially, in the great metropolis of these islands, but never were sounds or scenes presented to his senses so imposing and inspiring as on that occasion. The queen was evidently much affected, and the great Duke of Wellington, who was in her suite, and was an object of nearly as hearty demonstrations as even her majesty, showed emotion, and was heard to say that he had never witnessed so interesting a scene. The young members of the royal household were naturally objects of intense interest to the multitude of children, and they, by their greetings and eager expression of countenance, showed how much they felt the excitement which such a multitude of young persons was calculated to inspire in princes and princesses of their own age. Probably, when many more years have run their course, and some of these royal children shall sit on thrones, they will remember a lesson profitable to royalty—the loyal spirit of the juvenile population of Manchester, and of all that population, in the year 1851. Doubtless the same virtues which, on the part of their royal parents, commanded respect and affection, will characterise those scions of the royal house of England, who already tread with early, but no uncertain step, the path of honour and goodness in which their queenly exemplar and teacher has conducted them. The great Manchester demonstration was followed by illuminations so general and so costly that her majesty and her suite were represented as taking an interest in them, such as pyrotechnical displays did not usually excite. From Worsley the queen and a portion of her suite proceeded to Windsor.

On the 18th of November the court received, by electric telegraph, intelligence of the death of the King of Hanover, her majesty’s uncle, in the 81st year of his age. He had never been regarded as kind to her majesty when Princess Victoria; and had been by far the most unpopular prince in the family of George III. A considerable party among the Tories, both in England and Ireland, gave rather open expression to their desire that the Duke of Cumberland (King of Hanover), rather than the rightful claimant, the Princess Victoria, should come to the throne on the decease of William IV. Great indignation was excited at the time by the supposed existence of a conspiracy to effect this object, for the success of which there could have been no hope, so thorough was the detestation of the people to the Duke of Cumberland, and so generous their recollections of the Duke of Kent, and their feeling to his only child—their rightful sovereign. Whatever might have been the feeling of her majesty on these matters, she commanded the court to go into mourning upon her uncle’s decease.

COLONIAL AFFAIRS.

_The Cape of Good Hope_.—The earliest important events of the year connected with our colonial empire occurred in the Cape settlements. During the autumn and winter of the previous year the governor, Sir Harry Smith, suppressed all indications of rebellion, deposed the chief, Sandilia, and proclaimed his mother sutee in his stead. Sandilia, however, prowled about the English borders making incursions for plunder. Sir Harry directed a column, six hundred strong, under the command of Colonel Mackinnon, to disperse the marauders. That officer committed the error so common on the part of British commanders—he marched without flanking parties, or an advanced guard, except a party of Caffre police, who of course led him into an ambuscade, at the expense of a number of officers and men killed and wounded. This success on the part of the savages led to a general rising of the tribes, especially the brave and cruel Gaikas; the English colonists lost much property and many lives. No adequate means had been adopted either by the government or colonists to guard against the deceit common among uncivilized races. Sir Harry Smith, and the troops which he commanded, were in imminent peril at Fort Cox. By the beginning of the year 1851 the Caffres had penetrated to the very heart of the colony. Sir Harry Smith escaped from Fort Cox, at the head of a flying escort, to King William’s Town, where he established his head-quarters throughout the war. On the 21st of January the first general action was fought at Fort Hare and the Fingo village of Abee. The Caffres were the assailants, and numbered about six thousand men. There were two 24–pounders in Fort Hare, and their fire drove back the aggressors, who had suffered severely during their repeated assaults. The garrison made a sortie at a moment of confusion in the Caffre ranks, caused by the havoc of the guns; the sortie was successful, but not until after a fierce conflict at close quarters. The force at Sir Harry Smith’s command was totally inadequate to suppress such an insurrection, unless, indeed, by singular good fortune, and with most severe loss. The Hottentots, encouraged by the success of the Caffres, burst into sudden rebellion, and committed numerous murders upon the settlers, as well as inflicting loss upon the armed bands of loyalists, and troops, with whom constant skirmishes were maintained. The natives in the English pay, even the Cape Mounted Rifles, deserted in great numbers, and strove earnestly to organize Caffres and Hottentots for more effective war. Colonel Somerset, now promoted to the rank of major-general, succeeded in coming upon the main force of the Hottentots with two columns of British, one six hundred and the other three hundred strong. The general committed precisely the same errors, and in the same manner, as Lord Clyde and his lieutenants in India, in the mutiny of 1857, afterwards made the English nation accustomed to expect from British officers—the stronghold of the Hottentots was so carelessly invested that they escaped, and the war, which, so far as they were concerned, might have been terminated, was consequently prolonged. In various actions which took place the Caffres and Hottentots fought well; the Fingoes, the allies of the British, fought indifferently. The English suffered from successful ambushes on the part of the enemy, and from being badly supplied with ammunition. Colonel Fordyce, who was very active, but not always successful, in command of separate columns under the orders of General Somerset, was killed, and many brave officers and men fell.

On the 31st of October a draft of a constitution for the colony, dispatched by Earl Grey, arrived at Cape Town. It was transmitted to the Cape for the approval of the legislative council, in order eventually, by the queen’s sanction, to become law. According to that document the parliament of the colony was to consist of the governor, the legislative council, and a house of assembly. The legislative council was to be elective, the members retiring by rotation at intervals of five years, until ten years had expired, when the members should hold their places in the council for ten years. The house of assembly to consist of members elected for five years. The franchise to be possessed by occupiers of tenements of the value of £25. The sessions were to be annual. The colonists received this constitution with unbounded joy, and petitioned the queen to grant this as the charter of the colony, without any reference to the legislative council then existing, in which the petition declared that the people had no confidence. The granting of a constitution to the Cape was the result of the energetic requests of the colonists, their dissatisfaction with the administration of Earl Grey in the colonial office in London, and the demands of the English House of Commons: the matter was also expedited by the enormous charges for the Caffre war upon the imperial exchequer, which the English government and parliament were anxious to escape; the readiest and safest mode of accomplishing which the House of Commons declared was by granting to the colonists self-government. Lord Derby, regretting the liberty conceded to the colonists, threw obstacles in the way of the measure, but, by a very small majority, he was defeated in the House of Lords.

The rebellion at the Cape of Good Hope was prolonged during the opening months of 1851, and finally died out from the exhaustion of the enemy, in the presence of reinforcements of British troops. As tidings of its progress arrived in England, they occasioned grave discussions in the press, and party debates in parliament.

The Cape of Good Hope alone, of all the British colonies, was a source of public anxiety during the year 1851. India, so often the field of conflict, triumph, and disaster, afforded comparatively few incidents of great public interest suited to the records of a general history. Peace, loyalty, material development, and prosperity characterised the colonial chronicle of the year.

_Discovery of Gold in Australia_.—In September news reached England of the discovery of gold fields at Bathurst, in New South Wales. Before the close of the year intelligence was received in England of fresh discoveries; these were in Victoria. The immediate consequence of the gold discoveries was disadvantageous to the colonies, as men of all trades and professions forsook their callings to repair to the “diggings,” and the shepherds abandoned their flocks, so that hundreds of thousands of stock were lost, or perished. The ultimate effect upon British Australia was, however, most prosperous—several of the colonies of that vast region becoming enriched with mineral wealth. Although the public announcement of the treasures contained in the mineral resources of certain of the Australian settlements was made at the period above referred to, it was known to the authorities many years previously that gold might be obtained, but, under the influence of a false policy, the fact was concealed.

_Hostility of the Arabs at Aden_.—The British settlement at Aden, important because of the command of the Arabian Sea, which it enabled the English to maintain, suffered this year in various ways. The station was most sickly, and the Europeans, and Bombay sepoys, in garrison, were alike exposed to heavy mortality. The Arabs resorted to violence and assassination; British officers were murdered if they strayed beyond the limits of the garrison. The crews of British merchantmen on the coast were attacked, and some wrecked mariners were massacred.

The Mohammedan populations of the British empire showed indications of intense irritability against the English, and, indeed, everywhere amongst Mohammedans, animosity to Europeans appeared to increase.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS—EUROPEAN RELATIONS.

_France_.—The relations of the United Kingdom with France, are not only more important in themselves than those which the former sustains with any other nation, but they influence the whole foreign policy of the British government. France is ascendant upon the continent notwithstanding the rivalry of Russia, and the policy of France often complicates the relations of England with other powers. This has arisen frequently from national jealousy, and as frequently from the sudden and extreme changes to which the government of France is liable in its form and principles. The revolution of 1848 brought France morally nearer to England. Louis Philippe had much difficulty in holding in rein the war spirit, which for, his own selfish and crooked policy, he had himself evoked. After that corrupt prince was driven from the throne by the people he had betrayed, a friendly feeling sprung up towards England. The moderate republican party regarded Great Britain as a land of freedom, and the natural ally of France. That party, however, maintained its ascendancy but for a short time. The Napoleonists, red republicans, priests, and peasants, united in the support of Charles Louis Napoleon Buonaparte. He was elected president of the republic, and 1851 witnessed, through his instrumentality, events of great magnitude, and which exercised potent influence upon the public mind and policy of England.

There can be no doubt that from the hour Louis Napoleon took his place in the National Assembly he had resolved, by the aid of the partizans of his name, the priests, and their agents connected with the press, to undermine the assembly, and hold it up to the ridicule and resentment of the country. The hostility of that body to universal suffrage, and the advocacy of that political theory by the Buonapartists, gave to the president of the French republic a popularity with the “reds,” which otherwise he never could have obtained.

In the latter part of 1850, a great review of troops took place at Sartory, during which cries, from many of the soldiers, of “Vive l’Empereur” were heard, and were encouraged by the generals in the Buonapartist interest. Some officers who repressed those exclamations, and others who refused to join in them, were dismissed by Louis Napoleon’s executive. These circumstances raised formidable debates in the assembly, and afterwards led to votes and demonstrations hostile to Louis Napoleon. On the other hand a large number of the representatives, who were indebted for their return chiefly to the priesthood, and what remained of a landed aristocracy, used every instrumentality they could bring into requisition to damage the executive, to lower the authority of the president, and to create a monarchical reaction. While they brought forth as a crime the fact that the soldiers had cried “Vive l’Empereur” they took every opportunity themselves to utter the party shouts of “Vivent les Bourbons!” or “Vivent les Orleans!” A singular circumstance exhibited the efforts of a large proportion of the assembly to bring about a monarchical reaction. During the prorogation a permanent committee was formed, in which a small minority of republicans was placed by the votes of the assembly. There were twelve reactionists; these men were found to be in constant communication with the two branches of the exiled Bourbons. Six of them spent most of the time of the prorogation at Wiesbaden, with the _pseudo_. court of the elder Bourbon branch; the other six went to England, and were constantly at Claremont with the Orleanist branch of the exregal house. As M. Flaudin taunted these sections of the assembly with desiring, they really purposed that Louis Napoleon should be a _president fainéant_, while yet permitted to retain the nominal functions of government. Louis Napoleon strengthened himself by a new ministry, in which the assembly, by a large majority, declared its want of confidence. M. Montalembert and some others, who were expected to vote on the side of the opposition, voted with the Buonapartists. This made it evident that a strong party among the priesthood deemed it the best policy to support Louis Napoleon, as the friend of the pope’s temporal power at Rome, and of the Roman Catholic religion in France. A very large number of the priests, and of the lay devotees, refused to trust Louis Napoleon as a friend of the church. They did not forget that his first public act, on arriving at the estate of manhood, was to create, or at all events aid in council, and in the field, an insurrection against the pope. Neither did they forget that, although a French army garrisoned Rome, to support the pope under the auspices of the president of the French republic, that the president in his less fortunate days had animadverted in severe terms upon the education and patriotism of the Roman Catholic clergy of France. He had in one of his works drawn invidious comparisons between them and the German clergy, much to the disadvantage of the former. The following was especially quoted by that section of the French clergy and laity who were unwilling to give the president a warm support:—“The clergy will cease to be ultramontane when they shall be obliged, as formerly, to distinguish themselves by learning, and to obtain their education from the same sources as the generality of’ citizens. Southern Germany, without contradiction, is the country in which the Roman Catholic clergy are the best instructed, the most tolerant, and the most liberal; and why are they so? Because the young men who in Germany destine themselves to the priesthood, learn theology in common with students destined for other professions. Instead of being from infancy sequestered from the world, and obtaining in ecclesiastical seminaries a spirit hostile to the society in the midst of which they have to live, they learn at an early age to be citizens, before being priests. The consequence is that the German Catholic clergy are distinguished by great enlightenment and ardent patriotism. There are no sacrifices which they are not ready to make for the triumph of liberty, and for the independence of Germany. In their eyes to be a priest is to teach morality and charity; is to make common cause with all the oppressed; to preach justice and toleration; to predict the reign of equality; and to teach men that political redemption must follow religious liberty. Let the education of the clergy be the same in France as it is in Germany, and it will produce the same results. By the union of priests and laymen there will be a double action which will be favourable to society; priests will become citizens, and citizens will become more religious. Then—but then only—we shall be happy to see, as in Germany, the ministers of religion at the head of education, teaching youth the morality of Christ, which destroyed slavery, taught men, that they are equal, and impressed on them that God has placed in their hearts faith and love, in order to believe in what is right, and to love one another.”*

* “Complete Works of the Emperor Napoleon III.,” vol. ii. Chapter on “The Clergy and the State.”

The espousal of the president’s cause by M. Montalembert, then recognised as the lay leader of the ultramontane party, decided many waverers, notwithstanding their affection for the elder Bourbons, and their horror of such liberal enunciations by Louis Napoleon.

When the president’s ministry of favourites was turned out by the vote of the assembly, he resorted to the extraordinary measure of forming a ministry of men who had no votes in that body. This he alleged was only a provisional ministry, but the assembly did not place faith in these assurances, and offered it every opposition. The new ministry were allowed to sit in the assembly as ministers, to answer any interpellations, or make any statements connected with their offices. This ministry remained in office until the 11th of April, when it gave place to that which it had provisionally succeeded, and which in its turn encountered the opposition of the assembly.

During the months of April and May petitions were got up in Paris, and the provinces, in favour of a revision in the constitution Of 1848. On the 28th of May the assembly was entitled, by its original constitution, to entertain the question of a general revision of the constitution of the state, but no alteration could take place unless approved by three-fourths of the entire votes. Motions for an alteration in the constitution were made by the Buonapartists, and supported in various details by the monarchists of both branches of the Bourbons. The great aim of these parties was the prolongation of the president’s official term, and the enacting of laws to prohibit and punish public banquets and public meetings of a political nature. For this purpose, and for any purpose of repression (as he had said in a speech at Djion), the assembly was always ready to respond to the demands of the president of the republic. Although so ready to uphold the ministry in their repressive measures there was a determination in the assembly to frustrate their power as the ministry of Louis Napoleon. This they soon effected by a formal vote of censure, for using improper influence in order to obtain from the provinces, through the medium of the public functionaries, petitions for a revision of the constitution.

The new ministry was still in the interest of the president of the republic. The assembly, which had been prorogued on the 10th of August, recommenced its duties on the 4th of November. Business began by a long “message” presented in the name of the president of the republic, the main feature of which, and that which excited most attention in the assembly, and in France, was a proposal to abolish the electoral law of the 31st of May, 1850, and to re-establish the electoral law of the 15th of March, 1849. The last named provided that all citizens of age, who have resided six months in the commune were electors. The law of May, 1850, abolished universal suffrage. That act of the legislature was a revolution; the assembly by passing it virtually abolished the constitution, which could be only legitimate as the act of a constituent assembly. The assembly was to a large extent elected under the influence of the priests, who struggled incessantly to accomplish a reactionary policy. From the moment that universal suffrage was abolished, the great mass of the people abetted the pretensions of the president of the republic, whose writings had always advocated universal suffrage. Thus the assembly secured the ascendancy of Louis Napoleon by the very means which they believed most efficacious in thwarting his power and restoring that of the Bourbons. When the reading of the message of the president of the republic terminated, the assembly presented a scene of strange agitation, which was rendered still more intense when the minister by whom the message was read, M. Thurigny, demanded “urgency.” A violent discussion ensued upon this demand. The discussion took its tone from the known ambition of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, and his open attempts to tamper with the army. To prevent a _coup d’état_, of which many became apprehensive, the assembly began a struggle to obtain more direct power over the troops. A _projet de loi_ was brought forward by the questors to that effect. The ministry and the Buonapartists demanded that the sole power over the army should be vested in the chief of the state—the president of the republic, and not in the president of the legislative assembly. General St. Arnaud, afterwards commander-inchief of the French army in the Crimea, was foremost in the interest of Louis Napoleon. It would be difficult to say which of the two parties, that consisting of the Buonapartists and the executive on the one hand, or the majority of the assembly on the other, was the more unconstitutional, faithless, and ambitious. The allegation of M. Cremieux was true, “the majority of the assembly had no great attachment to the republic. It incessantly invoked the constitution, which it every day trampled under foot. The assembly was afraid because it did not feel behind it that force which supported assemblies.” The assembly voted against the government by a large majority. The conflict between that body and the executive increased from day to day. Both parties contemplated a _coup d’etat_, and each proceeded to its execution characteristically. The assembly prepared a bill, the real object of which was to facilitate the impeachment of the president of the republic. Numerous causes for impeachment were provided, such as the president taking command of the armed force in person, inciting his own re-election to the presidency, or attempting to change the form of government. The most serious provision of this _projet de loi_, was that whenever the president of the republic was accused, “_the accused immediately ceases his functions_.” By the introduction of this project things were brought to a pass, between the assembly and the president of the republic, in which the power of one or other must perish. If Louis Napoleon permitted the project to become law his personal destruction would be effected by the legitimist majority. If he were not re-elected president of the republic, and descended into private life, he would be politically ruined, for he was heavily in debt, and no pecuniary resources were at his disposal sufficient for his maintenance as a public man. Then or never must he make some bold and comprehensive movement to countervail the majority of the assembly. The issue of this conflict has been presented by the author, in another of his works, with such brevity, that he cannot hope to offer a more complete condensation. It was as follows:—“On the 1st of December a proclamation was put forth dissolving the assembly, and calling upon the people by universal suffrage to accept a government identical with the scheme of Napoleon I. when first consul. The proclamation made known the desire of the president to surrender his position into the hands of the people, or to accept the headship of a new government on the plan he proposed, and resting on universal suffrage. These proclamations were posted on all the walls of Paris by dawn of the 2nd of December; all the leading men of the assembly were arrested; Paris was filled with troops. After struggles on the part of the assembly, and many casualties in the streets, the eventful day of the 2nd of December wore away. On the 3rd the people awoke from the stupefaction with which the suddenness of the _coup_ struck them, and preparations were made by the republicans and red republicans for resistance. On the 4th that resistance was offered; barricades were erected, and every token of a fierce contest quickened into life. Whenever an opportunity occurred, the soldiery were assassinated, and the military retaliated with savage vengeance. Men, women, and children were swept from the streets by discharges of musketry and grape. By the night of the 4th, the conflict was over. The president ruled all things. The ‘ticket’ put to the electors was as follows:—‘The French people wills the maintenance of Louis Napoleon Buonaparte’s authority, and delegates to him the powers necessary to frame a constitution on the basis of his proclamation of the 2nd of December.’ This was to be carried by a simple affirmative or negative by all Frenchmen twenty-one years of age, in possession of their civil rights. On the 20th and 21st of December the ballot took place, and the result was that more than eight millions of men voted in the affirmative. The votes of the army were taken separately. The army in France voted almost unanimously for Buonaparte; in Algiers a large majority was against him. Before twelve months the empire was proclaimed.”*

* Nolan’s “History of the War against Russia,” vol. ii., chap, lxxvii. J. S, Virtue, City Road.

Events of domestic interest to France have been treated at this length under the head of our own foreign relations, because upon the event just related turned the European policy of England during many years. The closing events of 1851, in France, influence materially the foreign relations, and even the domestic policy, of England, while these sheets are passing through the press, at the close of 1859. Eight years have rolled away, and yet the power of Louis Napoleon in France, achieved by the revolution which he effected by the _coup d’état_ of 1851, was the hinge upon which turned the foreign policy of the United Kingdom, even in 1860, not only in Europe, but in Asia, not only in the eastern but in the western hemisphere.

When the tidings arrived in England of the strange, sudden, and daring occurrences at Paris, men’s minds were greatly agitated. A conflict of opinion arose in parliament and throughout the nation. Some regarded the _coup d’état_ as Montalembert regarded it in 1859, as a violation of conscience, a treason, a perjury, a sanguinary violation of the rights of the French people; others deemed it an advantage gained by order, and even freedom, over anarchy and the despotism of red republicanism; they spoke of it as Montalembert did in 1851, when he addressed his countrymen, and told them that “to vote against Louis Napoleon would be to declare in favour of the socialist revolution, the only thing which can at present succeed the existing government.” It will, however, belong to other chapters of this history to depict the effect upon English affairs, and English public opinion, of the policy and power of him who seized the reins of government, in France, with a hand as daring as that of his renowned uncle.

DISCUSSIONS IN THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT CONCERNING THE STATE OF AFFAIRS AT NAPLES.

Throughout the year 1851 the state of the kingdom of Naples attracted the attention of the civilized world, but made most impression in England. The King of Naples was a bigot and a tyrant, a man of obstinate will, and he exhibited a fierce hatred to both civil and religious liberty. During the European struggle for freedom, in 1848, he swore to give a constitution to his subjects, and to observe it for ever. Utterly faithless in his own character, he violated his oath when the opportunity of power permitted. The description Milton gives as the probable result of restoring Satan and his fallen host to their primitive glory, on professions of repentance, depicts the actual conduct of the Neapolitan Bourbon when he attained to power, after being spared by his subjects the humiliation so generally the lot of European princes in the great year of revolutions—

“Height would recall high thought, and ease recant Vows made in pain, as violent and void.”

A pamphlet, written by Mr. Gladstone, roused intelligent persons in England, and in Europe generally, to the atrocities perpetrated upon virtuous, loyal, and even illustrious subjects, in sheer wantonness of power, by the Neapolitan king. Lord Palmerston, then at the head of foreign affairs, sent a copy of the pamphlet to the English minister at every court of Europe, with the design of calling the attention of all civilized nations to the oppression with which the people of the kingdom of Naples were overwhelmed by their perjurious prince. This announcement was received by enthusiastic cheers in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, however, was disappointed in his expectation that the moral influence of Europe would be brought to bear upon the Neapolitan government, in favour of humanity. Some of the European states upheld the conduct of the King of Naples, and the pope especially lent him his moral support, although twenty thousand citizens of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies were incarcerated for expressing liberal opinions, or demanding the institutions which the king had sworn to respect. Thus supported by the despotic states, and the sovereign pontiff, he bid defiance to the constitutional states of Europe, and even increased the cruelties of his stern absolutism.

DIPLOMATIC DISPUTE WITH AUSTRIA AND TUSCANY, ARISING FROM AN OUTRAGE UPON A YOUNG ENGLISH GENTLEMAN AT FLORENCE.

It was early in January, 1852, that the tidings arrived in England of one of the most unprovoked and barbarous outrages ever perpetrated upon one of her sons, but the event itself occurred in 1851. The events of this chapter relate to that year, but as the transactions at Florence, in which England suffered so much humiliation, extended into 1852, it is proper the narrative should also extend into that year, so far as they are concerned.

It appears that a young English gentleman, Mr. Erskine Mather, about nineteen years of age, and his younger brother, Mr. Thomas M. Mather, about sixteen, had been for some time in Paris, where their parents had placed them to promote their education. The elder brother being delicate, had been ordered south as the winter approached. In this search after health they had a desire, at the same time, to acquire in the country a knowledge of the language of Italy, and of the art for which that land is celebrated. They had already spent two or three months at Nice, and in November had moved down to Genoa, and then on to Florence, where they meant to reside for the winter; at which place the injury and insult were inflicted. On the 29th of December Earl Granville, the foreign minister of England, in writing to the Honourable P. C. Scarlett, the _charge d’affaires_ at Florence, thus speaks of these young Englishmen, and the outrage:*—

* From No. 3 Despatch, in Official Documents.

“The story of the young men is so candidly told, and they appear, from the tenor of another letter which has been shown to me, to be such well-conditioned and inoffensive persons, that I cannot question the truth of their statement, or entertain any doubt that a cowardly and cruel injury has been inflicted on the elder of them.” The following are the facts of the case as detailed by the young gentleman himself to M. Salvagnoli, the distinguished Tuscan lawyer, and which were afterwards confirmed, in every point, by the evidence of Italian and French witnesses who saw the deed committed.

STATEMENT OF MR. ERSKINE MATHER TO M. SALVAGNOLI.*

* From 2 in No. 13, Official Papers

On the 29th of December, 1851, my brother and I set out to go and breakfast at a _café_ in the Piazza del Duomo.

Passing by the Piazza San Marco we stopped to look at the band of the regiment, and other soldiers standing about; after waiting three or four minutes we passed on, leaving them still there. When we arrived about the middle of the Via Langa we again heard the music, and, as they were marching the same way, we walked on their right hand nearly to the end of the Via Martelli. That street being very narrow, as you are aware, and at this time rendered more so by a carriage passing along, as our _café_ was on the other side we were obliged to cross between the band and the guard, where they had left a space of about forty or fifty feet, and many other persons were crossing at the same time. While walking arm in arm with my brother I suddenly received a violent blow on my back, making me turn short round. I then perceived that it was given by the officer in advance of the guard, who held in his hand his naked sword, with the flat edge of which he had struck me.

I asked him somewhat angrily, but without threat or gesticulation, in the best Italian I knew, why he had struck me, using nearly these words, “_Perche m’aveti dato questo?_’” While I was speaking to the officer I was suddenly interrupted by another person, dressed in the Austrian uniform, who placed himself between the officer and me, at the same time giving me a blow in the face which drew blood. The blow made me start and fall back; before I could recover myself I received another cut, on the head, from the first officer, which stunned me; it passed through my hat, making a wound nearly three inches and a half in length, and down to the bone, causing the blood to flow violently.

A short time after I begged my brother to follow the officer, that he might recognise him; and I was taken to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, where I was obliged to remain three weeks before I could return home. As it has been said that I used threatening language to the officer after the first blow, I solemnly assure you that it is utterly false and without foundation, which the following reasons will prove:—

1st. It is impossible to believe that I could for a single instant have contemplated an act so full of folly and madness, as alone, and, unarmed, to threaten a man with his sword in hand, at the head of a large body of men by whom he was supported.

2nd. If I had contemplated the folly of opposing an officer under such circumstances, I should have done so by a sudden and instantaneous blow, and not by taking a position, and thus inviting the irresistible assailment of so many armed men.

3rd. Another proof that I was not in a menacing attitude, and was not prepared for any personal attack, is the fact of the second assailant giving me, without opposition or hindrance, a violent blow on the face.

4th. If I had been in a menacing attitude, or prepared for defence, with my arm raised, instead of receiving the blow on my head he would have struck my raised arm.

5th. The wound, which I to this moment bear, was not given, holding the sword short, near the point, as all the military officers who have examined it can testify; which proves that I was at a considerable space from him, only reached by a sword or other weapon: thus he was beyond any threatening attitude of mine, as I was without sword or arms.

Thus I have proved the absurdity of the assertion that I made any threatening resistance; equally untrue is the assertion that the blow was given because wearing a white hat they thought I was a Tuscan. If the first reason had been sufficient, the other, miserable as it is, had not been necessary. But all the defence is palpably false, contradictory, and nothing worth. An untruth defended cannot become truth. All these facts, without troubling you further, prove the truth of my statement, which it has been my duty to give you.

I am, &c,

James Ekskine O. Mather.

The British residents and travellers then at Florence were strongly indignant at so cowardly and unjustifiable an attack on their young countryman. The British residents were the pride and ornament of the Tuscan court on days of high ceremony and festival, but on the grand reception day, the first day of the year, they unanimously intimated officially that they would mark their dissatisfaction of the disgraceful assault by abstaining from presenting themselves, without the fullest investigation and redress were granted. This feeling of indignation rose so high that it was with difficulty the many young Englishmen at Florence could be restrained from making an attack upon the officers of the Croat regiment, Kinsky, amongst whom was Lieutenant Forshalier, the brutal assailant.

After much negotiation at Florence and Vienna, the British _charge d’affaires_ was at length informed, on the 15th of January, by Prince Lichtenstein, that he had been authorized by Marshal Radetzky to state that the marshal approved that an inquiry should be instituted into the affair. This inquiry was gone into in secret, without any professional man being permitted to be present in the interests of justice, or in defence or support of the wounded Englishman. The city of Florence in command of Austrian troops,—its duke replaced on his throne and there supported by them,—all the official men and courts existing, as it were, by the tolerance of those troops, an inquiry to investigate fairly a charge, by those thus humbly protected, against one of the officers of their proud protectors would seem hopeless. Yet such were the manly independence, veracity, and courage of the Italian and French witnesses that the whole truth came out, and, as the British _chargé d’affaires_ afterwards writes to the Duc de Casigliano, the foreign minister of Tuscany, “the evidence which has thus been obtained, conclusively establishes that a most unprovoked outrage was committed on an unarmed and unoffending British subject;” and the British government were satisfied, he said, that “the government of Tuscany must be anxious to mark their abhorrence of this outrage inflicted upon an innocent individual.”*

* Official Papers, No. 18.

Of that evidence Mr. Scarlett, the _chargé d’affaires_, writes to Earl Granville** that, “All the witnesses concur, more or less, in bearing out Mather’s statement.

** Official Papers, No. 18.

None are in contradiction with it. Perhaps the most important evidence is that of Pini, which exactly corroborates Mather’s statement, and certainly there is not a single syllable, from first to last, at variance with it.” Thus speaks Giovanni Pini, the important witness of the scene of blood and outrage:—“On the day in question, about twelve o’clock, more or less, I was in the Via Martelli, about half way down, when I heard coming towards me the Austrian military band, which was accompanying, as usual, the detachment intended to relieve the guard of the city. As soon as the band had passed, I stationed myself on the path where the people were, that is between the band and the soldiers who were behind. The street being rather narrow the people who were close by the band, I may say in a crowd, were pressing upon each other. A few steps further on I observed an Austrian officer, who had a cap on, and was therefore at the time off duty, strike, with his left hand, a young man who was on that side of him, with a blow which hit him on the face, and I suppose it was given with some force, for the young man who received it staggered backwards; and I observed that, as soon as he had recovered himself, another Austrian officer, who was the one at the head of the soldiers, and marching with them with his drawn sword, strike with it the same young man on the head, inflicting a wound on his forehead, from which blood began to flow in such quantities, as wine from a broken bottle. I immediately ran to the assistance of the poor youth, who had been so unreasonably ill-treated, since I could not find that he had offended the soldiers in any manner. Besides myself he was assisted by a gentleman who showed that he was his brother, although he could not speak Italian, and a Frenchman whom I do not know. There was also a priest, who was moreover unknown to me. There were other persons, also, who witnessed the transaction like myself, but I could not discover among them any of my acquaintance. The wounded person, whom I understood to be an Englishman, signified to me his gratitude for the assistance I had afforded him, but said little, as he spoke only in his own language to his brother, who started off from us immediately in order to look at the officer, who had inflicted the wound, so as to be able to recognise him, and then came back directly. He overtook the officer at the Piazza del Duomo, because the detachment was going towards the Piazza del Gran Duca. I and the brother of the wounded man then conveyed him to the first doctor’s shop, which is on the Piazza del Duomo, at the corner of the Via Martelli; but, finding that the apothecary could not treat him, we went off forthwith to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, where the wounded man, having lost much blood, fainted away, and after having been brought to, was put into bed.... From the wounded man himself, as well as from the medical men who were attending in the room, I heard that if the Englishman had not had on his head a rather stout hat, he might have been killed on the spot; but I do not know how deep the wound was.”*

* Page 51 of Official Papers.

Francis Catani, a priest, also gave evidence, to a certain extent, to the same effect, and added, “that he had heard that if the Englishman had not had his hat on his head he would have been killed on the spot, for it was that which alone protected him.”

And the Senator Giuseppe Vai states that “the young Englishman went aside quickly towards the end of my house, the Casa Marchesini, or perhaps rather under it, and at the same time I heard that a few words were rapidly exchanged between them, which I did not understand, because I was too high up to be able to distinguish them (he was at an upper window of his house), and also because the band was making a noise, and at the same moment I saw that the said officer, raising his sabre, gave the young man a blow on the forehead with it, using the cutting edge, by which the latter fell down upon the step by the wall of’ the Casa Marchesini, but with almost the rapidity of lightning he got up again, and when he was standing I saw the blood was flowing from the place where he was struck.... Because this act produced upon me a disagreeable impression I withdrew from the window.”

These extracts of evidence demonstrate the guilty nature of the outrage, and the careful and truthful statement of the young Englishman, as well as his cool and courageous conduct in a case at the time apparently so desperate.

Mr. Mather, the father of these youths, immediately left England for Florence, and, as he passed through London, laid the case before the foreign minister, as far as the detail had reached him by the letters of the younger brother, which were handed to the minister. He arrived at Florence after his son had been three weeks in the hospital; part of that time in a dangerous state. The kind attention and the great skill of the medical officers of that magnificent Florentine institution were doubtless the chief causes of his recovery. The conduct of these young Englishmen under such trying circumstances has been praised by almost every political writer who took an interest in the subject, and there seemed only one opinion throughout the country, that their coolness, courage, and endurance, under great difficulties and personal dangers, could not have been surpassed by the bravest and most experienced men.

Lord Palmerston, after the publication of the Official Papers, on reviewing the whole facts of the case, in a debate upon it in parliament, declared “that he found much to criticise in almost all the parties concerned, except Mr. Mather and his sons.”*

* House of Commons debate, June 14, 1853.

In the route to the hospital, in the occurrences there, as well as in the account of the outrage, the graphic details by the generous-hearted Giovanni Pini bring the reader in presence of the cruel and bloody scene. While ill in hospital, pressed by professing friends, the British _chargé d’affaires_ among them, to authorise proceedings in the Tuscan law courts, Mr. E. Mather firmly refused his sanction. He at once elevated the question to its right position by an appeal to the representative of his country for the redress of an injury done to a British subject, and for the future protection of British subjects, to be redressed by the Tuscan government to the satisfaction of that of Britain, without reference to his own private wrong. His young brother, before the day had closed, sought out Mr. Scarlett, the British _chargé d’affaires_, and also Prince Lichtenstein, the Austrian commander-in-chief, taking with him two witnesses to testify to the exactitude of his statement, and to them he poured out in clear and emphatic language the story of the outrage committed. The conduct of these two young Englishmen, without friends in a strange city, relying on their sense of right, and sustained by their own firmness and courage, was truly heroic. Their father, one of the most patriotic and useful public men in the north of England, warmly approved of their course of conduct, and pursued their views for redress. It is humiliating to our country to write what historical truth compels us to admit, that their efforts were met by the chicanery of diplomacy and treachery on the part of British officials, which have left behind an unpleasant impression of incapacity and want of principle, when the purest honour, and a high sense of national justice should have exclusively prevailed. They were well sustained, however, in their course by the generous sympathy of the people of Florence, and at home by the warmest feelings of their countrymen. As an eloquent public writer earnestly expressed himself in reference to their conduct, and that of the Earl of Malmesbury, the successor to Earl Granville:—“Both father and sons have nobly vindicated themselves as Englishmen; it was only when the national honour was confided to the minister, that the national honour was degraded by the spirit of the Jew pedlar.” After several weeks’ delay in Florence, the Mathers removed from that city to Genoa, where the father leaving his sons in safety, and for the purpose of the better recovery of the eldest, himself returned to England, to press the case personally upon the foreign minister of England. His first demand was punishment of the officer who had committed what Lord Granville called, “a cruel and cowardly outrage,” and then, but not without the first was granted, compensation to the injured youth by the government under whoso jurisdiction the culprit acted. The Earl of Malmesbury, then foreign minister (the Whigs having left office), after several imperfect and ineffectual attempts for the better security of his countrymen abroad, by the signal punishment of the Austrian officer, wrote to Mr. Mather, senior, by his under-secretary, a letter, on the 24th of May, 1852, in very pitiable terms, to the effect that no national redress had been obtained; but that one thousand francesconi had been placed to the credit of his son, by the Tuscan government, for the injury which he had sustained. Mr. Mather’s answer, with his indignant refusal of the acceptance of such redress, received high eulogies from the public writers of the day, and brought on debates in both houses of parliament. We extract a portion of the letter:—

“Now, my lord, you will do me the favour to remember, that a British subject, my son, was attacked in Florence by two armed Austrian officers, receiving the most ‘unmerited and brutal treatment,’ as your lordship has expressed it; that he was cut down by one of them, left in his own blood, his life in danger for a length of time, and his health perhaps for ever injured; and all this without any provocation, any offence, as it has been proved by evidence not to be controverted, of the most respectable witnesses,—people the subjects of the state whose officers had so acted,—yet for all this no real redress has been obtained; that officer is still at large, and remains unpunished....

“Whatever personal reparation you might deem proper to demand, which I conceded with regret, to your lordship’s express commands (as I foresaw a probable misapplication of such concession), was, as you know, to give place to public honour.

“You now inform me that Prince Schwarzenberg, the late prime-minister of Austria, ‘prior to his death had addressed a note to her majesty’s government expressing his great regret at the occurrence, and at the act of the Austrian officers.’ The extent of such regret may be estimated by this:—the Austrian officer, who stained the honour of the Austrian army by his bloodthirsty and cowardly act, has been allowed to go free and unpunished, and his conduct has been approved, at least defended, by Prince Schwarzenberg’s lieutenant, the Austrian commander-in-chief in Tuscany, Prince Lichtenstein. This man I frequently saw, in all the pride of military array and overbearing insolence, in the streets of Florence, a public example to his brother officers, and the world, of the impunity with which British subjects may be treated, and the evidence of the low estimation of his superiors for British honour, and British power. This all the while that British statesmen and diplomatists were making urgent demands for redress, your lordship among the number.... Has it been obtained?...

“The patriotic manner in which I have repeatedly expressed myself in this unfortunate affair, as you are pleased to observe, has originated in feelings that induce me now to express the pain which I feel that this crime is sought to be compromised, and the indignation, as far as I am concerned, with which I reject the offer of the Tuscan government, and any participation in such proceedings.

“I will not pretend to be a judge of what is due to the honour of England, but I know what is due to my own.”

The effect of this note was that Lord Malmesbury threw the responsibility on Mr. Scarlett, his representative in Tuscany, and annulled his proceedings. He then sent out Sir Henry Bulwer to endeavour to arrange the affair, or to withdraw the embassy from Florence. A sort of apology was given by the court of Florence for the outrage, and a responsibility was assumed by it for the future, in case of injury to British subjects—as if the law of nations had not already secured it. No redress or punishment for the outrage ever followed Sir Henry’s mission. He might, for all its purposes, have as well remained in England. The Mathers refused to the last the money compensation, and to this hour, in this infamous matter, the guilty officer has never met his just punishment, nor public honour been satisfied. It is known that had the course been pursued which the father and sons adopted, and justice been satisfied, any personal compensation was to have gone chiefly to the public hospital of Florence, and for other public institutions of that refined capital, in which those Englishmen had received so much kindness and sympathy when it was personally dangerous to yield it, in the presence of their barbarous Croat invaders. Mr. Erskine Mather is now a scientific British officer, and bears amidst the ranks of England’s defenders the visible scar of the wound so treacherously and wantonly inflicted upon him because he was an Englishman: a remembrance to every Englishman of how little he may rely upon the defence of his own honour, or the honour of his country in his person, while the diplomacy of England is in the hands of men who sympathise with foreign despotism, or find luxurious and lucrative appointments at foreign courts under the ostensible duty of watching over the interests of their country.

The remaining features of English affairs, in relation to foreign nations, were of too little interest to require notice in these pages.

DEATHS OF EMINENT PERSONS DURING THE YEAR 1851.

No one who knows England can wonder that her annual obituary presents such long lists of great names, when it is remembered how wide-spread is her empire, and how varied her enterprise. It is only possible to select a few of the remarkable persons for notice, whose departure from this life in 1851 excited the attention and regret of large classes, or of the whole nation.

On the 1st of February occurred the death of Mrs. Shelley, widow of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the celebrated poet. Mrs. Shelley was a lady of extraordinary gifts, and these were stimulated by the genius of her husband. As an authoress she will always rank high, although only one of her books has attained a just proportion of fame, “Frankenstein.” That was received throughout Europe and America as one of the most remarkable works of imagination which the 19th century had seen, and it gained for her a reputation as lasting as extensive. “Lodore,” “Volperga,” “The Last Man,” and others produced also a great impression, but not one of a very permanent character, at least, in the British Isles. “The Last Man” deserves a higher estimation than has been awarded to it. There is a very penetrating sadness in all Mrs. Shelley’s works written after the loss of her gifted husband, and an impression of enervated physical strength, and effort to write in spite of depression, is conveyed to the reader.

On the 5 th, at Guildford, Surrey, the Rev. John Pye Smith, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S., for many years Principal of the Independent Congregational College, at Homerton. He was one of the greatest scholars of his age. The author of this work knew him well, and can in truth say his virtues were as conspicuous as his scholarship was profound. He was especially benevolent and modest. A celebrated divine once said of him that he “had a very _troublesome_ conscience,” referring to its extreme tenderness, and his nervous scrupulousness lest he should wear the remotest appearance of evil. His religious works are chiefly critical and controversial, and are written in a style of quiet and graceful simplicity, with great perspicacity of expression and perspicuity of thought. His “Scripture Testimony of the Messiah” is a wonderful monument of human learning and clear, candid, and cogent logic. It is the greatest standard work in the language, on “the Unitarian Controversy.” When he retired from the direction of’ the college at Homerton, where he trained many eminent men for the Christian ministry among congregationalists, three thousand guineas were presented to him as a tribute of respect. At his death the interest of the same was applied to divinity scholars in the college for candidates for the Christian ministry among the congregationalists, established at St. John’s Wood, London, the Principal of which was Dr. John Harris, author of many curious and literary productions much prized in tire religious world.

February 23rd, at Hampstead, London, Joanna Baillie, the celebrated authoress. She was the friend of Sir Walter Scott, who admired both her poetic and dramatic genius exceedingly. Her plays, although open to criticism as to selection of subject, plot, and stage effectiveness, display the poetic power of her mind to great advantage.

April 28th, in London, aged eighty-one, Admiral Sir Edward Codrington. He saw great variety of service as a naval officer, and displayed professional skill and personal courage. In 1826, he received the command of the Mediterranean fleet. He commanded the following year the combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, in the destruction of the Egyptian fleet, at Navarino. A son of this eminent and amiable man subsequently commanded the British army in the Crimea, during a war of England and her allies against Russia.

May 23rd, at Florence, where he officiated as British minister to the court of Tuscany, the Right Honourable Richard Lalor Shiel. He was the son of an Irish merchant, and was born in Dublin. His early education was in the English Jesuit College, at Stonyhurst, a place which made many bad Catholics by the excess of its ultra-montanism. Mr. Shiel was afterwards a student of the Dublin University, where he distinguished himself. He was called to the Irish bar in 1814. He wrote several plays which had merit, and were for a time made popular by the acting of Miss O’Neil. Mr. Shiel was never very successful as a lawyer, his taste lying in the direction of dramatic literature and politics. He began his political career at an early age; his first passionate oration, to a Dublin Roman Catholic audience, was made at eighteen years of age. He became one of the leaders of the Roman Catholic emancipation movement, being second to O’Connell only as a leader of party and an orator; his eloquence, however, was more refined than that of his more potential colleague. His speeches were dramatic, rhetorical, and effective. Their moral tone was offensive, vituperative, and vindictive. He was very small of stature, ungainly and unprepossessing in appearance, and had a strange squeaking voice; but in spite of these and other defects he was, next to O’Connell, the most powerful agent in carrying Roman Catholic emancipation. He was, however, never heartily trusted by O’Connell, who saw his value as an instrument and flattered his vanity by fulsome panegyric: when, however, the great agitator suspected the drift of any movement of Shiel, he turned against him his keen although coarse satire, and, by his contemptuous sneers and ludicrous and striking caricatures, turned the tide of popular feeling against his subtle and unreliable colleague. After Roman Catholic emancipation was achieved Mr. Shiel became a member of the imperial parliament, where he distinguished himself by his eloquence more than he ever did as a tribune. His oratory was, however, characterised more by histrionic passion, rhetorical artifice, and boldness of declamation, than by logic or truth. Many times the beauty of his parliamentary orations dazzled his opponents, and drew forth their admiring eulogy, and often his sarcasms smote them with a severity more terrible than any launched from his side of the house. He became a mere whig partisan; his ambition was office, and he excited the strong resentment of the Irish party, with which he had acted, by his silence where “Irish or Catholic interests” were concerned, if the whig party were opposed to their demands. No orator had espoused with more seeming heartiness various liberal opinions, which he abandoned when he became a pet of the Whigs. Like O’Connell he had harangued with great fervour large democratic assemblages in favour of the voluntary principle in religion, and like O’Connell he mocked it and vituperated it, when it served his purpose to do so. He had been a great anti-slavery agitator, uttering fervent sentiments concerning the equal right of men of all creeds and colours, and the duty and policy of applying this great principle in the West India possessions of England, and all over the world; but when his parliamentary party adopted a course which displeased the anti-slavery party, and a deputation of eminent philanthropists waited upon him, believing that in Richard Lalor Shiel the black man had a friend as true as he had been an eloquent advocate, those gentlemen were received with a haughty insolence, and a contemptuousness which there was not even a decent effort to suppress. Upon the Protestant dissenters of England he poured loud and eloquent praise when he was agitating for Roman Catholic emancipation, as the English dissenters gave an ostentatious support to that movement. When the end was gained which he hoped to serve by such flattery, he manifested a profound animosity to those whose services he had commended. His real views on subjects of civil and religious liberty were selfish and narrow. His professed patriotism was to a certain extent real, but it was narrow and invidious where true, and it was for the most part simulated. He was an object of hatred to the ultramontane party in his own church; and a report prevailed in Europe, which does not appear to have been substantiated, that he was, by that party, ingeniously deprived of life through skilful agency appointed for that purpose.

August 5th, Mrs. Harriet Lee, in her ninety-eighth year. This lady was one of the authoresses of the “Canterbury Tales.” Her works were various and popular.

August 6th, at Hong-Kong, the distinguished missionary, Gutzlaff. He was by birth a Pomeranian, but was associated with the English so intimately as interpreter, and as secretary to the Hong-Kong government, that he was always regarded as a British citizen.

August 12th, aged fifty, the Honourable Elliott Drinkwater Bethune, a man whose efforts for legal reform in England and India won for him the gratitude of the good, and caused him to incur the bitterest hostility of the selfish classes affected by proposals of reform.

November 18th, aged eighty-one, at Herenhausen, the King of Hanover, uncle to her majesty.

December 19th, at Chelsea, London. Joseph Mallord William Turner, the great English landscape painter, whose works are too well known, and whose fame is too widely spread, to require more particular notice.