CHAPTER LXIV.

{VICTORIA. 1852}

Home Affairs: General State of Great Britain; Religious Agitations; Death of the Duke of Wellington; The Court; Parliamentary Discussions; Changes of Ministry..... Ireland: Animosities on Account of Religion; Insecurity of Life; Terrible Assassinations..... Colonies: War at the Cape; Gold in California; General Condition of the British Colonies..... Foreign Affairs: Electric Telegraph Between London and Paris; Revival of the French Empire; English Policy in Reference to that Event; Indignant Feeling of the English nation towards Austria and the despotic Princes of Italy; Efforts of the British Navy to put down Piracy and Slavery.

{A.D. 1852}

The year 1852, like its predecessor, opened in the British Isles with fierce religious controversies. The agitation about the papal aggression had not died away, and events occurred, from day to day, inflaming the spirit of religious difference. Yet this was not an unmixed evil—“The greatest blessings have been achieved by discussions, errors suffer in the ordeal; truth never does; the dross is consumed in the fire; the gold comes out more brilliant, more precious, more pure.”*

* Rev. Dr. Cumming’s “Apocalyptic Sketches,” p. 153

What was generally called the Achilli trial, early in the year, aggravated the existing religious dissensions, and extended the spirit of polemical conflict. Although the trial did not take place until June, the public anticipated it with intense excitement. Dr. Achilli had been a Roman Catholic priest; he left the Church of Rome, and devoted himself to preach against its tenets, and the spirit of persecution which it breathed. He produced a powerful impression both in Great Britain and Ireland. It became exceedingly important to silence him, and the Romish church resorted to its old instrument in such cases, defamation. The Rev. Mr. Newman, a Roman Catholic priest, a convert from the Church of England, who had, as a clergyman of that church, distinguished himself at Oxford by his Jesuitical casuistry in upholding Puseyism, and teaching that, by receiving the Church of England Articles in a “_non-natural sense_,” clergymen might remain in her communion, and receive her emoluments, while they taught the doctrines peculiar to the Church of Rome, publicly attacked the character of Dr. Achilli, averring that he was unworthy of credit, because he had been expelled from the Church of Rome for dissolute habits. Achilli took an action for libel, which was tried in the Court of Queen’s Bench, when a verdict was given in favour of Dr. Achilli. The case assumed a peculiar aspect from the fact that a number of women had been brought from Italy, by the Roman Catholic priests, who swore that they had participated with Dr. Achilli in criminal intercourse. The doctor solemnly swore that some of these women he had never seen, and that, in respect to others whom he had known, no accusation had ever until then been brought against him. The mode in which these women gave their testimony, and the contradictory character of it, left the jury no alternative but to believe the allegations of Dr. Achilli, that the case was got up against him, by a conspiracy of Roman Catholic priests, for the purpose of destroying his moral reputation, and thereby preventing his effective preaching from injuring their sectarian interests.

Another event still more aggravated the _odiumtheologicum_ which prevailed. In the town of Stockport fierce religious riots broke out between the Irish Roman Catholics and the Protestants of that town. A religious procession of an offensive nature was got up by the Roman Catholic clergy. This was resented by the Protestant population as an insult: the Roman Catholic party persisted in the aggressive movement, and the result was riot and bloodshed for several days. This event produced terrible excitement elsewhere: and in Ireland some of the newspapers in the Roman Catholic interest incited the people to commit violence upon their Protestant neighbours. In addition to the animosity which raged between Protestants and Romanists, the controversy concerning the admission of Jews to parliament divided other sections of the community. The parliamentary debates on this subject in the previous year were remembered, and the remembrance embittered by various incidents. Among these was the trial of Miller _versus_ Salomons. Mr. Salomons having been elected member for Greenwich, presented himself in the House of Commons, and voted. The action was to enforce a penalty of £500 for having voted without taking the oath of abjuration. The case was tried in the Court of Exchequer, before the barons, who were, with the exception of Baron Martin, unanimous in a decision against Mr. Salomons. This trial took place in April, and had the effect of exasperating the wealthy Jewish community of London and exciting the liberal politicians, who desired the emancipation of their Jewish fellow citizens from all civil disabilities on account of their religion.

The general condition of Great Britain was prosperous. The influx of gold from the newly-discovered gold regions, especially those of Australia, stimulated enterprise. The recent remissions of duties afforded relaxation to the pressure of taxation upon industry; trade was good; the industrial classes were contented; the farmers, sharing in the general prosperity, yielded less willingly to make themselves instruments of agitation in the hands of Lord Derby. Benjamin Disraeli, and other less prominent leaders of the opponents of free-trade, especially in corn. With the exception of the Cape of Good Hope, the tidings received from the colonies were favourable. No foreign war threatened, although many apprehended that the “_coup d’état_” by leading to the revival of the empire, would also lead to a revival of the old imperial attitude of France to England,—that of menace and ambition. The policy pursued by the British government was, however, so conciliatory and fair, that no opportunity was left for France to make a quarrel. It was moreover the interest of the French president to court alliance with England, to prevent the possibility of a continental coalition against him, which he knew would never dare the power of France while England was her ally. The discussions connected with the outrage committed upon Erskine Mather, Esq., at Florence, by Austrian officers, alone agitated the country in connection with foreign politics. The progress of that event was laid fully before the reader in the last chapter. During the debates about it in parliament and the press, in 1852, a strong public sentiment was evoked against the Duke of Tuscany, and the Austrian government and army. Much sympathy was felt towards the young Englishman who had so well maintained his country’s honour, and to his father, by whom he was sustained in the manly and patriotic course which he had adopted. The procedure of the diplomatic agents of the English government, of the English government itself, and of the foreign minister, Lord Malmesbury most especially, excited the indignation of the people, and tended much to weaken the cabinet of which Lord Malmesbury was so prominent a member: probably the apathy and want of manly spirit and patriotism displayed by the British government and its _employés_ in the Florence affair, did more to shake the confidence of the people in the administration than all the party attacks to which in its short existence it was exposed.

Among the home events of the year which excited general interest were a series of earthquakes, which spread alarm over a large portion of Great Britain. Such rare phenomena in this island naturally attracted the attention of the philosophical, and affected the multitude with awe. On the 4th of November the inhabitants of the north-western districts of England felt the shocks usually characteristic of earthquake. The chief force of the subterranean commotion seemed to be beneath Liverpool and the districts that surround it. In Manchester the shock was felt more severely than in most other districts. On the opposite coast of Ireland, especially in the counties of Dublin and Wicklow, the vibrations of the earth were nearly as remarkable as in Lancashire and Cheshire.

DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

The decease of the most remarkable man in Europe, perhaps in the world, the great Duke of Wellington, filled the country with grief, commanded the sympathy of all nations friendly to Great Britain, and the attention of civilized men in every portion of the world. In England, it was the most important event of the year’s history. No man exercised the same influence over her fortunes. His name was a tower of strength before her enemies, and his wisdom the chief and _dernier ressort_ in her councils. He was the most confidential private counsellor of the queen, who regarded him with the veneration and affection due to the friend of her childhood, when she was neglected by the corrupt court of one uncle, and the apathetic court of another, the sovereigns of the empire over which she also was destined to reign. The removal of the great Duke was an irreparable loss to her majesty and to the country she so wisely ruled; and in no branch of the public service was this loss felt more than in the army, which he had raised to an unprecedented pitch of efficiency and glory. A brief notice of the life of this extraordinary man is desirable, that the reader may more clearly see the important influence his death necessarily had upon the position and policy of the United Kingdom. Concerning the origin and career of this glorious man, J. H. Stocqueler has made the following striking remarks:—

“Nobly born, carefully educated, and connected with people enjoying considerable political influence, he was subjected to no early wrestlings with fate. He was launched upon the stream of life under the most favourable auspices, tasting neither the bitterness of poverty nor the humiliation of obscurity. His public life, from first to last, was one uninterrupted chain of glory, each link more brilliant than its predecessor, and, unlike other great adventurers, whose course from insignificance to splendour was broken, through a series of mischances or their own unsteadiness of character, his progress knew no culminating point—his fame no tarnish, his fortunes no reverse.

“But the even tenor of his career is no disparagement of the vast merit of the Duke of Wellington. If his antecedents were less humble than the public beginnings of other men, let it be remembered that he reached a higher eminence than any personage of whom the annals of England possess a record—always excepting John, Duke of Marlborough, his prototype in all things but political virtue. Nor has his upward path been free from a thousand obstructions, which none but a gigantic mind and a firm heart could surmount. His difficulties began with his direct responsibility. His triumphs followed as the results of his indomitable perseverance, his unflinching courage, and his amazing constancy.”

The most accurate and, at the same time, brief account of the birth, education, and early professional progress of the future hero, is one written by the author just quoted.*

* Stocqueler’s “Life of Wellington,” p. 23.

“It was in March, 1769, that Arthur Wellesley first saw the light. Biographers differ as to the date and the locality; but it appears by the evidence taken before a parliamentary committee in 1791, to inquire into a petition against his return for the borough of Trim, on the ground of his being a minor, that he was really born at Dangan Castle, in the county of Meath, Ireland, at the time alleged above. His father was the second Earl of Mornington, who enjoyed much celebrity for his nice musical taste; his mother, Anne, the eldest daughter of Viscount Dungannon. Early in life Arthur Wellesley was sent to Eton College for his education, in conjunction with his afterwards distinguished brother, Richard.

“Being desirous for the military profession he was sent to the college of Angiers, directed by Pegnard, a celebrated French engineer.

“At the age of eighteen, after he had gone through a course of French military instruction, Arthur Wellesley was gazetted to an ensigncy in the 73rd regiment. This was in March, 1787. Nine months later he was promoted to a lieutenancy in the 76th. Subsequent exchanges carried him into the 41st foot, and the 12th Light Dragoons.

“In 1791 (30th of June), being then twenty-two years of age, he procured a company in the 58th Foot, whence, four months later, he exchanged to a troop in the 18th Light Dragoons. Under the system in force in the British army, officers, avid of rapid promotion, must seek it in other regiments than their own, if their immediate seniors are prepared to purchase advancement. As Arthur Wellesley had had no opportunities of displaying zeal and gallantry in the field during these four years of service, his quick progress may be fairly set down to the combined action of ministerial favour, and a sufficiency of pecuniary means. Neither at school, nor college, nor in the performance of the easy regimental duty peculiar to a time of peace, and incidental to five exchanges, did he display any of those qualities which developed themselves in so remarkable a manner a few years later.

“Previous to obtaining his company, Lieutenant Wellesley was returned a member of the Irish parliament. He sat for three years, during a portion of which time he was an aide-de-camp to the Earl of Westmoreland, then Lord-lieutenant of Ireland.

“The young member occasionally spoke, always in opposition to liberal measures; and his oratory was characterised more by a curt and decided form of expression than by the efflorescence then popular among the Grattans, Cuffs, Parnells, and other members of the legislature. His opinions were of the tory cast; and, even at that early period he opposed himself to any consideration of the Catholic claims, and to schemes of parliamentary reform. As an aide-de-camp, and a member of a Protestant family, his sentiments were, of course, coloured by the opinions of the noblemen and statesmen with whom he associated.”

The early military services of Arthur Wellesley, both in Europe and in India, were brilliant. Some of his first exploits in action were marked by promptitude and genius rivalling in lustre the feats of his proudest days. In India, his conquests of the refractory chiefs, Dhoondiah and the Peishwah, and his successes in the Mysorean war, under Baird, were full of daring and of glory.*

* For an extended account of General Wellesley’s Indian campaigns see “Nolan’s History of the British Empire in India and the East.” Virtue; City Road and Ivy Lane, London.

As a general officer, he showed every quality which commanded respect from his seniors, reverence from his juniors, confidence alike in those whom he commanded, and those who devolved responsibility upon him, and the astonishment and admiration of his enemies. The treatment he received in India was not just nor considerate, and to the latest period of his life he felt that neither by his brother the Marquis Wellesley, the East India Company, nor the government at home, was he requited as his merits deserved, nor did he deem that their conduct to him while on actual service was what it should have been. The self-mastery and loyalty with which he endured slights and injustice while rendering great services, have probably never been exhibited equally by any soldier of ancient or modern times. On the occasion of his being superseded at Bombay by General Baird, he wrote:—“My former letters will have shown you how much this will annoy me; but I have never had much value for the public spirit of any man who does not sacrifice his private views and convenience when it is necessary.”**

** “The Duke of Wellington’s Supplementary Despatches relating to India.” Edited by his Son.

The time has arrived when foreign writers, even in France, are beginning to do justice to the hero’s fame, and to the genius displayed in his Indian campaigns, which have been so much overlooked both at home and abroad, although so well appreciated in India. An able writer, a French officer—Captain Brialmont—has, in a recent work,*** especially drawn the attention of military men in France to the Indian campaigns of General Wellesley.

*** “History of the Life of Arthur, Duke of Wellington,” from the French of M. Brialmont, Captain of the Staff of the Belgian Army. With emendations and additions by the Kev. G. K. Gleig, M.A., Chaplain-General to the Forces.

In describing the conduct of the general at Assaye, Brialmont remarks:—“It was an inspiration of the greatest hardihood which induced the English general to engage a force ten times as great as his own, and covered in its front by an important river. The battle of Assaye will always be regarded as one of the boldest enterprises of that general, whom certain authors represent as endowed only with the qualities which are necessary for defensive warfare.”

Some time after his arrival in Europe, he was entrusted with a command in Portugal, against the French then occupying that country. He was much embarrassed by his own government, and the wilfulness of the people to rescue whom was his mission. The convention of Cintra arrested his successes. The stupidity of his superiors defeated his schemes of conquest. “Yet, even as things stood, the success achieved was of no ordinary character. The British soldiers had measured their swords against some of the best troops of the empire, and with signal success. The ‘Sepoy General’ had indisputably shown that his capacity was not limited to oriental campaigns. He had effected the disembarkation of his troops—always a most hazardous feat—without loss, had gained two well-contested battles, and in less than a single month had actually cleared the kingdom of Portugal of its invaders. The army, with its intuitive judgment, had formed a correct appreciation of his services, and the field-officers engaged at Vimiera testified their opinions of their commander by a valuable gift: but it was clear that no place remained for General Wellesley under his new superiors, and he accordingly returned to England, bringing with him conceptions of Spanish affairs which the event but too speedily verified.”*

* Traveller’s Library: “Memoir of the Duke of Wellington.”

Previous to the expedition to Portugal, and after his return, he sat in parliament, and held the office of Secretary for Ireland. In 1809 he received the thanks of parliament for his military services at Vimiera and Rolica. In the meanwhile, disaster frowned upon the arms of Spain. “Her armies were dispersed, her government bewildered, and her people dismayed; the cry of resistance had ceased, and, in its stead, the stern voice of Napoleon, answered by the tread of 300,000 veterans, was heard throughout the land.”**

** “History of the Peninsular War,” by Sir William Napier.

Portugal was menaced. Sir John Cradock, who commanded, was unequal to the occasion, and the British government was about to withdraw the English army of occupation, when it occurred to Lord Castlereagh that Sir Arthur Wellesley ought to be consulted. That officer counselled the augmentation of the British forces, and drew up a plan of defence. The government offered him the command of the Portuguese, which he declined. Finally, Cradock was recalled, and Sir Arthur accepted the command of the allied English and Portuguese. He again landed in Portugal, amidst the acclamations of troops and people, and, with his characteristic activity, commenced operations. Then followed the passage of the Douro, one of the most daring exploits recorded in the history of war.***

*** Captain Brialmont says that French generals admit that the passage of the Douro was bold even to rashness.

The passage of the Douro foiled the French commander, and compelled him to retire. After various complicated movements, the rival armies confronted one another at Talavera, where a dreadful conflict issued in victory to the British. The British, unsustained by proper support, through the negligence of the English government, and the irrational conduct of the Portuguese, were compelled to fall back. Before doing so, Wellesley accomplished another grand feat—the execution of the lines of Torres Vedras. This defensive position was skilfully selected, and as skilfully fortified. Such was the secrecy and celerity observed in the construction of the works, that the French had learned nothing of their existence, numerous as were their spies, and the English army generally knew as little of it as the French. When the moment arrived for the execution of his project, the English general retired behind these lines, in the face of an overwhelmingly numerous enemy, who gazed with wonder upon the impregnable defences which were presented to their view.

Before, however, the British accomplished their retreat, one more victory testified their greatness in battle, and the superiority of their chief. The English took post on the heights of Busaco. The French attacked the position, and were repulsed. Having entered the lines of Torres Vedras, the British awaited the advance of the grand army which was to drive them into the sea. Massena advanced in his pride and his power, but recoiled from the task of storming such well-prepared positions. Having waited long enough, without being able to make any impression upon the English lines of defence, to bring disease, discouragement, and scarcity of provisions upon his own army, he retired, harassed in his retreat by the exulting English. While Wellesley was thus engaged in personally superintending the defence of Lisbon, by maintaining the fortified lines thrown up between the Douro and the sea, he was also occupied with general plans for ultimately driving the French out of the Peninsula, directing operations in places at a distance from his head-quarters, and carrying on a laborious correspondence with the Portuguese and British civil authorities, and even with the Spanish patriots. When Massena was driven into Spain, Wellesley’s first care was the reconquest of the frontier fortresses. Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz, fell into the hands of the British general, then Lord Wellington. His successes were, however, obtained with great difficulty and loss of his soldiers, through the inadequate supply of material to his army by the home authorities. Every fortress which was not strategically abandoned by the French, was won by the skill of the general-in-chief, and the recklessness of life shown by his soldiers, in spite of the want of almost every appliance proper for an army. The sieges which Wellington prosecuted to a successful result “will always reflect immortal honour on the troops engaged, and will always attract the strongest interests of an English reader; but which must, nevertheless, be appealed to as illustrations of the straits to which an army may be led by want of military experience in the government at home. By this time the repeated victories of Wellington and his colleagues had raised the renown of British soldiers to at least an equality with that of Napoleon’s veterans, and the incomparable efficiency, in particular, of the Light Division was acknowledged to be without a parallel in any European service. But in those departments of the army where excellence is less the result of intuitive ability, the forces under Wellington were still greatly surpassed by the trained legions of the emperor. While Napoleon had devoted his whole genius to the organization of the parks and trains which attend the march of an army in the field, the British troops had only the most imperfect resources on which to rely. The engineer corps, though admirable in quality, was so deficient in numbers, that commissions were placed at the free disposal of Cambridge mathematicians. The siege trains were weak and worthless against the solid ramparts of Peninsular strongholds. The intrenching tools were so ill made that they snapped in the hands of the workmen, and the art of sapping and mining was so little known that this branch of the siege duties was carried on by drafts from the regiments of the line, imperfectly and hastily instructed for the purpose. Unhappily, such results can only be obviated by long foresight, patient training, and costly provision; it was not in the power of a single mind, however capacious, to effect an instantaneous reform, and Wellington was compelled to supply the deficiencies by the best blood of his troops.”*

* “Memoir of the Duke of Wellington.”

The terms in which this illustrious man complained of the incompetency of the government at home are instructive to those who, in the present generation, contend for reform. “I do not receive one-sixth part of the money necessary to keep so great a machine in motion.” “The French army is well supplied,” he wrote on one occasion, “the Spanish army has everything in abundance, and we alone, on whom everything depends, are dying of hunger.” “I am left entirely to my own resources,” he wrote in 1810, “and find myself obliged to provide, with the little which I can procure, for the wants of the allies, as well as for those of the English army. If I yield, God help me, for nobody will support me.” This sorrowful language was too true, for so utterly corrupt was the English administration, that in order to save themselves from public odium, they would have ruined him. A distinguished reviewer of one of the memoirs of his grace thus comments upon the treatment which he received:—“From the inadequate supplies of money sent to him from his government, he had to create a paper-money of his own, and to increase his supplies by opening a trade in corn with America. When he complained of the attention which the home government paid to the criticism of some of his officers, they replied that these officers were better generals than he; they compelled him to send back the transports on which, in the event of a defeat, the safety of his army depended; and on one occasion Lord Liverpool gave instructions to an officer of engineers at Lisbon of which Wellington knew nothing, and which began with these words, which were also news to him:—‘As it is probable that the army will embark in September, &c.’” So much was the duke dependant on his own resources that, being unable to prevent the departure of some of his generals, he was often obliged to discharge himself, on the same clay, the duties of general of cavalry, leader of the advanced guard, and commander of two or three columns of infantry. His want of material was such that at the siege of Badajoz he had to employ guns cast in the reign of Philip II., and, for lack of mortars, he had to mount his howitzers upon wooden blocks; while at Burgos he was obliged to suspend the attack till a convoy of ammunition should come up, which had been expected for six weeks. He was even obliged to complain of his army. “We are an excellent army on parade,” he said, “an excellent one to fight, but take my word for it, defeat or success would dissolve us.” The discipline was by no means perfect. After the battle of Vittoria the soldiers obtained among them by way of booty about a million sterling; many regiments disbanded themselves, and some three weeks afterwards the commander-in-chief had to announce that there were still 12,500 marauders among the mountains absent from duty.

Notwithstanding every impediment which the lazy, conceited, and impracticable character of the Spaniards, the want of civil organization in Portugal, and the ignorance and incapacity of his own government could interpose, Lord Wellington, in a series of campaigns, and of great and sanguinary battles, drove the French from Spain, followed them into France, defeated them at Bayonne, Orthes, and Toulouse, and only paused in his career of victory upon the announcement of the allies entering Paris, and the abdication of Napoleon.

The policy and conduct of the Duke of Wellington during the occupation of France by the allies were stern, but just and wise. He was inflexible in carrying out the objects of the allies, but temperate and equitable in curbing the vindictive propensities of the allied chiefs and armies. He met the great continental sovereigns and generals in Paris on a footing highly honourable to himself and his nation; his influence preponderated in their counsels, and he received more marks of deference than any other man of the times and the occasion.

On his return to England, his name and person were surrounded by honours. He received in the House of Lords at once the recognition of all the steps of the peerage—they had been conferred upon him in his absence. He was the idol of the court and the aristocracy, and to a considerable extent of the people. The escape of Napoleon from Elba led to the British and Prussian campaign in Belgium, which involved the sanguinary battles of Quatrebras and Waterloo, in the former of which Ney sustained a terrible repulse from Wellington, and in the latter Napoleon was utterly defeated and put to flight, and the way to Paris opened for the conquerors. Once more the duke occupied France with his armies, and with still greater opportunity than at the close of his previous campaign for displaying the eminent qualities which he possessed in the council, as well as in the field. After the peace, and the banishment of Napoleon to St. Helena. Wellington obtained an extraordinary influence in the councils of successive British sovereigns, and became one of the most active and potential politicians in Europe. His career of war had closed—a new public race was run by him, in which his countrymen were less disposed to regard him with favour. How he fulfilled his new destinies is still matter of discussion. The tory school of politicians, to which he belonged, consider him as having in a great measure forsaken his party, and lowered the standard of his principles. Liberal politicians regard him as having struggled to maintain class interests contrary to the convictions of his great mind, and in subservience to the interests and prejudices of his “order.” His country generally has, therefore, not given him credit for the highest order of statesmanship, but reveres his memory as that of a man who served the country and the crown with fidelity, and who studied the national honour in all things. Probably the following estimate of his political capacity, position, and services, is as accurate as any ever given to the public:—“By a destiny unexampled in history, the hero of these countless conquests survived to give more than one generation of his countrymen the benefit of his civil services. Such an ordeal has never before been endured by any public character. Military experience does not furnish the fittest schools of statesmanship, especially when the country to be governed is that of a free, intelligent, and progressive people. But, if the political principles of the great man who has now departed were not always reconcilable with the opinions and demands of modern advancement, they were at least consistent in themselves, were never extravagantly pressed, never tyrannically promoted, and never obstinately maintained to the hindrance of the government or the damage of the state. In estimating Wellington’s politics it must never be forgotten that he was a politician of 1807, and that he descended to us the last representative of a school that had passed. If he was less liberally-minded than the statesmen of his later days, we may fairly inquire how many of his own generation would have been as liberal as he?”

In 1822, the duke appeared at the allied conference at Vienna, the object of which was to put down the rising demand on the continent for constitutional government. Spain was intensely agitated, and its imbecile monarch was afraid to resist any longer the call for free institutions, so loudly and unanimously made by his subjects. The continental sovereigns viewed the slightest approach to political freedom with alarm. The restored Bourbon government of France took the lead in the policy of repression, and demanded the countenance of the continental powers, and of England, for an invasion of Spain, to support the king in trampling out the last spark of liberty among his subjects. Mr. Canning was minister for foreign affairs in England. He instructed the Duke of Wellington to resist the proposal of France, and to insist upon non-intercession. Either his grace performed his part inadequately, as was generally believed in England, or the continental sovereigns, having used England for the destruction of Napoleon, were agreed to thwart her influence, and make no concessions to her opinion, for they unanimously supported the project of a French invasion of Spain. This event took place, inflicting upon the Spanish people more indignity, disdain, and injury than the invasions by Napoleon had done. The British government talked much and did nothing. “The Holy Alliance” took no notice of the indignant orations in the British parliament, the protests of the ministry, and the explanations of the duke. A French invasion overthrew liberty in Spain within little more than ten years of the date when a British army had driven out the French in the name of liberty, independence, and non-intervention. The Spaniards never believed that the duke was free from some participation in this aggression, and his popularity, such as it was at the close of the war, was never regained in that country. The event also deprived the Spaniards of all confidence in professions of non-intervention and respect for national independence in England. They did not believe that her powerless protests were sincere, but regarded her as having made the previous war in the Peninsula for a policy exclusively her own—the suppression of the popular and imperial elements in France. The Duke of Wellington, in his place in the house of peers, declared that he had faithfully carried out Mr. Canning’s instructions, but that the allied courts were unmoved by arguments or protests.

In 1826 the duke was sent by his sovereign on an especial embassy to St. Petersburg. He was not favourably impressed with the Emperor Nicholas or his people. He regarded the whole policy of Russia as faithless and aggressive, and only friendly to England as far as she might be made, through the false representations of the Russian diplomatists, unconsciously subservient to the territorial aggrandisement of Russia, especially in the direction of Turkey. The Emperor Nicholas himself the duke learned to regard with distrust, mingled with personal contempt for his duplicity.

At home, the duke was the object of innumerable honours. A mansion was erected for him, called Apsley House, at Hyde Park Corner, £200,000 was voted to purchase for him and the inheritors of the title, the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in Hampshire, which is entailed, on condition of the noble owner, for the time being, annually presenting a tri-colour flag to her majesty, on the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. These flags have been since accumulating, and hang in the armoury of Windsor Castle, with similar trophies commemorative of the battle of Blenheim, rendered by the heirs of the great Duke of Marlborough.

In 1818 the duke was made master-general of the ordnance; in 1819, governor of Plymouth; and in 1820, colonel of the Rifle Brigade.

The great continental courts in 1818 gave him the rank of field-marshal in their respective armies, together with military and civil distinctions, such as were only customarily conferred on crowned heads, or the very noblest of their subjects.

Meanwhile the British Isles were intensely agitated; a cry for parliamentary reform resounded from the gates of Buckingham Palace to the Land’s-end, to John O’Groat’s house, and to the cliffs of Connemara. Roman Catholic emancipation was another demand, which was ceaselessly heard, and the Protestant dissenters of England were active and importunate in demanding redress for the grievances of which they complained. The duke was adverse to all these concessions, and determined to resist them as long as they could be resisted, with safety to the crown and peerage. The people hated the prince-regent, and when he reached the throne as the fourth George, he was one of the most unpopular monarchs in Europe. The measures adopted by this prince to preserve illiberal institutions were bloody and remorseless; executions for political offences were numerous all over the land, men of virtue and honour were incarcerated for liberal opinions uttered or printed, public meetings were put down by charges of cavalry, or by cannon loaded with grape and canister, drawn up against an unarmed and really loyal people, exasperated by unendurable oppressions. Against these wickednesses the duke exerted no influence, raised his voice in no protest, but was in the minds of the people regarded as one of the haughtiest of their oppressors. On the death of Lord Liverpool, and the appointment of Mr. Canning to the premiership, he received from the duke an uncompromising, bitter, and ungenerous opposition. Canning was professedly a Conservative, but his opinions were moderately liberal, and everything liberal was resisted by Wellington and his _alter ego_ in politics, Mr. Peel, afterwards Sir Robert. There was a bigoted and angry party spirit in all the duke’s proceedings. He would not command the army nor direct the ordnance, but resigned all his military offices, because the king made Canning the chief of a ministry in which the duke himself served. Canning and Huskisson introduced a corn-bill, which was the first relaxation proposed by members of a government to the corn-law. This measure had been prepared in the Liverpool cabinet, and received the assent of the duke himself; yet such was his animosity to the moderately liberal policy of Canning, that he proposed the rejection of the bill in the lords, and threw it out. There was a want of honour and good faith in this conduct, wholly at variance with the manly, frank, straightforward character of the duke, and there is no way of accounting for it but by supposing that he was instigated to the course he adopted by Peel, whose tortuous and uncertain principles and policy began to assume prominence. It was Peel’s character throughout his career to betray all who trusted in him as a leader, and to cany by trick and treachery all the measures against which, in his public life, he most vehemently and acrimoniously inveighed. The duke was taunted in the house with intriguing for the premiership. He declared, in reply, that he was “unqualified for such a situation.” Nevertheless, when offered, he accepted it. He declared that he “should be mad even to think of it;” but he did think of it, at all events afterwards, and took it, and also filled it better than his tory predecessors. Perhaps the truth of the case was, that Peel originated all the intrigues against Canning, in which the duke was unconsciously an abettor of the designs of that artful man. Peel saw that his best hope of attaining to the chief post in the councils of the country was by using skilfully and patiently the influence he had acquired over the duke. He foresaw, as it was easy to foresee, that events would soon make the duke tired of the post, and that he would in such case certainly devolve it upon him, as “his man of all work.” One of the most harassing oppositions to which an English premier was ever exposed was directed and led by Wellington and Peel against Canning, chiefly on the ground of his willingness to concede Catholic emancipation, and some relaxation of the duties upon corn, and the restrictions upon trade. In this opposition the duke was sincere, but there is good ground for believing that Peel, filled with envy against Canning, was already laying his own schemes for carrying concession even farther than Canning or Huskisson ever dreamed of doing. Canning was shamelessly deserted and betrayed on all hands. He displayed wonderful ability, justifying the language of Byron: “Canning is a genius, almost a universal one, a scholar, a wit, a statesman, an orator, and a poet.” He struggled against the factious opposition treacherously carried on in the name of principles by men who, like Peel, felt no homage for them, until his proud and sensitive heart broke. The Peel and Wellington faction killed him. In the fourth month of his premiership he died at his post, leaving to posterity a great name, and an eternal reproach against his unprincipled persecutors.

Lord Goderich (“prosperity Robinson”) could not carry on the government. The duke was made premier, eight months after he had publicly declared his own incapacity for such an office. One of his first acts, notoriously under the influence of Peel, was to give office to Huskisson, the champion of free trade, and the energetic colleague of Canning! He added four more of Canning’s colleagues. Thus, after he and Peel had declared Canning and his cabinet to be irreligious, revolutionary, and dangerous to the country, in all the cant phrases of the time, their very first act was to take possession, as it were, of the Canning cabinet itself, and next of the Canning policy, on account of which the illustrious dead had been solemnly denounced by the one, and vituperated, in a manner far exceeding parliamentary licence, by the other. The repeal of the corporation and test acts, demanded by the dissenters, the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and the claims of the commercial community, and the political economist, for a relaxation of the protectionist policy were now to be satisfied; but the policy chosen was to keep all these parties at bay, to resist all melioration of things as they were as long as possible, and then to concede nothing on the ground of justice, or of human rights, but only what popular power could force. This policy Peel did not manage happily, and the duke was brought down with him as by a dead weight. The parliamentary tact of Peel, his debating power, his aptitude for public business, and the singular influence of the duke, worked wonders for a time; but eventually much more had to be conceded to the public power, than, if at first and generously, the government had shown a reforming spirit, would have been at once insisted upon.

Lord John Russell moved for a repeal of the corporation and test acts, oppressions which goaded the dissenters, and which in themselves were as profane as they were hypocritical. Of course the duke and Mr. Peel resisted this, but the House of Commons carried the measure.

Instead of the duke and “his man Friday,” as the wags of the day termed Peel, resigning, as men of honour ought to have done, they resolved to take up the measure against which they had voted and argued, and uttered the most earnest warnings on the sacred ground of religion! The duke carried the measure through the House of Lords!

A month afterwards a corn-bill, the first inroad actually effected upon the protective system, was carried in the House of Commons. The duke declared the repeal or modification of the corn-laws to be especially wicked, as injuring the landed interest; nevertheless, he took up the measure and carried it through. Corn might come in, if only Whigs and Radicals could be kept out. Thus early, measures which Canning proposed with consistency and honour,—and for proposing which these men hunted him to death,—they inconsistently, and with a violation of principle which lowered the character of public men, carried through parliament to preserve the ministerial ascendancy of Peel and the party.

As the session advanced the spirit of reform both in and out of parliament advanced. Penryn and East Retford were rotten boroughs, with only a handful of constituents. The reformers demanded the transfer of the representation from two such insignificant and corrupt places to Manchester and Birmingham. The duke would not consent to the enfranchisement of the two great centres of manufactures; he held fast by the rotten boroughs. Huskiseon, Grant, Lamb, and Lords Dudley and Palmerston resigned. Thus the Canning cabinet was expunged, and a pure tory remainder formed the nucleus of a new ministry, which was composed of Lord Aberdeen, Sir H. Hardinge, and Sir George Murray,—men in every way immeasurably inferior to those who, no longer able to follow the bigoted yet inconsistent and time-serving policy of the duke and Peel, were obliged to resign office.

The state of Ireland now became alarming. The Roman Catholic population, led by O’Connell, menaced insurrection, and a system of agitation was maintained very effective, and very embarrassing to government. The Roman Catholics knew that nothing would be conceded by Wellington and Peel on principle, but that anything might be wrung from them, if, by the concession, they supposed that they thereby gave a longer lease of power to the privileged classes. The army began to discuss the question of religious disability, and a third of the force was alleged to be Roman Catholic. The duke came to the conclusion that to avert civil war, Roman Catholic emancipation must be effected. In his public statements he greatly exaggerated the dangers of withholding the measure; but as neither he nor Peel were supposed at heart to be very earnest, although very illiberal Protestants, the public considered it a new trick to take popular public measures out of the hands of the liberal party, to pass them in forms less in harmony with the principles involved in them, than would have been the case if carried by the Whigs. In February, 1829, the measure of Roman Catholic emancipation was announced in the speech from the throne, and was carried through parliament by all the power which the ministry could command. The high Protestants lost confidence in the duke, and the Earl of Winchelsea impeached his private honour in connection with the events which had transpired. On the 31st of March the duke and the earl met in Battersea Fields to fight a duel. The duke fired and missed; Lord Winchelsea fired in the air, and the affair terminated. Throughout the political transactions of his premiership his grace showed much passion, and a tyranny to his colleagues in office more suitable to the barrack-room than the cabinet. Peel was the abettor of all this, and by many deemed the inventor of it. After conceding such a large measure of religious liberty, his grace seemed to dislike more inveterately than ever all measures of free-trade and parliamentary reform. The French revolution of 1830 excited the whole country, and an agitation for reform of threatening magnitude arose and spread throughout the land. He had the hardihood to attempt prosecutions of the press, although by such means the French king had brought about his dethronement. He defied public feeling, and did so with an air of peremptory authority and insolence offensive to parliament and the people. He became one of the most unpopular men in England. Almost all parties united in deeming him unfit to lead the government of the country in such a crisis. He was hooted by mobs in the streets; the windows of his mansion were broken, and had to be defended by iron casings. A new parliament was elected; a reform was demanded. The duke met the demand by a sturdy defiance. He declared, “that the country already possessed a legislature which answered all the good purposes of legislation, that the system of representation possessed the full and entire confidence of the country, and that he was not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of reform, but would resist such, as long as he held any station in the government of the country.” With those words the career and credit of the duke as a statesman may be said to have closed. A perfect hurricane of rage arose around him through all the land. He was hurled from power, and the Whigs came into office pledged to a Reform Bill, which, after vain and fierce opposition, became the law of the land. King William IV. became alarmed at the rapid progress of reform; he suddenly dismissed the Whigs, and “sent for the duke.” The latter failed again in his discernment of the true slate of public feeling in England. He refused to become premier, advised the king to send for Sir Robert Peel (what the latter had been all along planning and expecting). Sir Robert arrived and formed a ministry, the duke becoming minister of foreign affairs and leader of the government party in the House of Lords. This ministry was speedily swept away by the popular indignation, and the Whigs again returned to power. From that time the duke seems to have made expediency his sole rule of political action; he became heart and soul a Peelite. In 1841 he had an opportunity of upholding Sir Robert Peel in power for some time, and of aiding him in the great work of commercial and economical reform, against which both had all their life protested and straggled. It can hardly be urged in excuse for the duke’s long opposition to commercial reform, that questions of finance and political economy were out of the proper range of his subjects, for he was a first-rate financier, and a successful student of political economy. He is represented to have said of himself that his true genius was the Exchequer rather than the War Office. “At one of the most critical conjunctures of the Peninsular war, he drew up a most able paper on the true principles of Portuguese banking; and at Seringapatam, after very serious evils had been experienced from a long-standing debasement of the coinage, a memorandum was accidentally discovered in the treasury from the pen of Colonel Wellesley, every prediction and observation of which had been exactly verified by events.” His desire to stand by his order, to uphold government by that order, and to maintain its revenues by the protection of territorial produce overpowered alike his sense of justice, and his patriotism.

In 1843, he resumed the office of “commander-in-chief of the land forces,” which he held until his decease. In his management of the army, he displayed the same repugnance to reform as in civil life, and a determination to resist all changes that lessened aristocratic influence in its government, or the promotion of its officers. The liberal views and measures which spontaneously emanated from the Duke of Cambridge, in 1858–9, would have been impossible to the Duke of Wellington, except under such a pressure of popular power as made a concession of some things necessary to preserve others. The improvements which gradually grew up in the condition of the common soldier seldom, almost never, had his approbation, and were generally carried out by successive whig governments in opposition to the commander-in-chief.

On the 10th of April, 1848, when the great Chartist meeting took place near London, the dispositions made by the great duke to put down any attempt at insurrection, excited the admiration of all military men.

At no period in the Duke of Wellington’s history did he so fully enjoy the confidence and respect of his countrymen as when death approached. The mode of his death was such as might be expected at his advanced age. It was easy—as the lamp expires when the oil which fed it becomes exhausted. One of the honours which he bore was that of warden of the Cinque Ports; he was therefore staying at Walmer Castle when his brief but fatal illness occurred. His remains were there placed in a coffin, which the inhabitants and the troops of the surrounding garrisons were permitted to see. On the 10th of November, the body was removed to London, and laid in state at Chelsea Hospital, where a vast concourse of persons were permitted to see it. Thence it was taken to the Horse Guards, whence the funeral procession went forth to St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the dome of which, beside the body of Nelson, it was to be deposited. The funeral was the grandest which ever took place in England, or perhaps in Europe. Military representatives from all the important nations in Europe, except Austria, attended. Vast multitudes of people crowded the thoroughfares along which the procession moved, and of that multitude exceeding great numbers were dressed in deep black. In parliament and throughout the country, demonstrations of respect for the memory of the departed hero were made, and the court went into mourning. Thus closed the life and obsequies of one of the greatest men to whom the British Isles had ever given birth. His grace was a widower at his death. He had married, in 1806, an Irish lady of rank, the Honourable Catherine Pakenham, daughter of the second Baron Longford, and sister to the gallant Generals Pakenham, who distinguished themselves under the command of his grace in the Peninsular. The duchess died in 1831, leaving two sons, the Marquis of Douro, heir to the title, and Lord Charles Wellesley, both military men. Lord Charles Wellesley, from loss of sight, has since been obliged to give up the military profession; and the successor to the great duke, although a man of general talent, and allowed by military men to possess remarkable ability for the profession of arms, has not followed that career, but maintains a high position at court and in public affairs.

THE COURT.

There were few incidents connected with the court in 1852 interesting to the general reader. Her majesty and the royal family spent the usual season in London, especially in connection with ministerial changes and parliamentary proceedings. Windsor Castle and Osborne House also received their royal proprietor at the accustomed seasons. In the summer, however, her majesty made a cruise in her yacht, before retiring to her autumnal Scottish retreat. A royal yacht squadron escorted the queen and the royal household from Cowes along the southern coast of England to Plymouth, the party landing at various points celebrated for their picturesque situation. Having cruised about the south and south-west coast, the squadron returned to Osborne. At the close of August, her majesty, the prince, and the elder five children left Osborne for Balmoral. Her residence there was shortened by tidings of the death of the Duke of Wellington, which reached her September 16th. Early in October she left for Windsor, visiting _en route_ the Menai Straits, and passing through the tubular bridge.

A curious circumstance occurred to her majesty on the 30th of August. The royal lady was then made aware that she was legatee to a large fortune, bequeathed by a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn. He was a man of singularly penurious habits, allowing himself to be in want of necessary food, and neglecting cleanliness. An old housekeeper, who had served him twenty-six years, he left without any provision whatever. The sum bequeathed to his sovereign was £250,000.

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS AND PARTY CONFLICTS DURING 1852.

The parliamentary history of 1852 was in various respects eventful. It was rendered so by the character of the debates both on home and foreign questions, by the rivalry of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, for the leadership of the whig party, the changes of ministry, and the last effort of the tory and protectionist party to gain ascendancy.

On the 3rd of February the queen opened parliament in person. “The speech” referred to the necessity of amending the Reform Bill. Lord John Russell hoped by this means to prolong his lease of power, which was seriously menaced in consequence of his dismissal of Lord Palmerston from the cabinet the previous year. Such was the confidence reposed in that noble lord by the commons and the country for the management of foreign negotiations, that from the moment it was understood that serious differences existed between the premier and the foreign secretary, the government lost its moral power. An impression also gained ground throughout the country that Prince Albert interfered with the legitimate transaction of business at the foreign office, that the premier was so much of a courtier as to connive at this, and that Lord Palmerston, having asserted the dignity and independence of an English minister, became an object of dislike to the prince, Lord John sacrificing his colleague to the caprices of the court. Whatever might have been the truth, these impressions prevailed among the people, and contributed to Lord John Russell’s displacement from office. Even after both those noblemen gave explanations in the commons, the public retained the impressions, sympathised with Lord Palmerston, and withdrew much of their confidence from Lord John, nor has his lordship been able to regain the popularity he previously possessed, even up to the time these sheets are passing through the press, near the commencement of the year 1860.

Parliament had only just met when Sir Benjamin Hall, by questions directed to the premier, brought out a statement of the circumstances which led to his dismissal of the popular foreign minister. It appeared that without any instigation from Lord John, the queen complained to him of the management of the foreign office. Her majesty demanded that all despatches should be shown to her, that no decision on foreign questions should be made by the foreign minister until her opinion was taken, that no despatch which she had signed should be arbitrarily altered by the minister, and that she should receive early and prompt intimation of all negotiations between the foreign office and the ministers of foreign courts. Her majesty directed Lord John Russell to show the document conveying her demands to the foreign secretary. From the production of this stern, severe, and rebukeful missive from the royal hand, it became evident either that Lord Palmerston had failed in his duty, abused the confidence of her majesty, and behaved with intolerable insolence, assumption, and arrogance, or that a conspiracy existed to prejudice the mind of the queen against a faithful and most competent minister, and that the premier either aided that conspiracy, or took no decided stand to resist it. It appeared that the main occasion of the cabinet and court differences with Lord Palmerston was in connection with the _coup d’état_ in Paris. The court and the premier sympathised with the house of Orleans, and consequently with the opposition given by the French assembly to the president of the republic. Lord Palmerston believed that the assembly provoked the conduct of the president by invading his constitutional rights, and by violating the constitution formed by the constituent assembly, and in virtue of which the legislative assembly of France existed. Despatches sent to the English minister at Paris, the Marquis of Normanby, of a private nature, were by that nobleman shown to the French minister for foreign affairs, and out of that event arose the complication. Lord Palmerston pleaded unqualified innocence of the impeachment implied in her majesty’s written commands to Lord John. Lord Normanby was well known to be of Lord John’s section of the whigs, and a court favourite. From all these circumstances, the country drew the following conclusions with extraordinary unanimity:—that Lord Palmerston acted with more independence of the first minister than was customary on the part of a secretary of state, but that his great talents, great experience, great influence at home and abroad, justified him; that Lord John Russell was imprudent in overlooking the peculiar claims and qualifications of the foreign minister, displayed an unworthy jealousy of his great colleague, and probably by his private complaints of insubordination, caused the letter of her majesty, so humiliating to her long-tried and most able minister; that Lord Normanby either showed grave indiscretion, or played his part in a plot adverse to Lord Palmerston; and finally, that the court was unduly sympathetic with the Orleans dynasty. No efforts on the part of Lord John Russell’s friends could root out these convictions from the general public, and although the House of Commons said little about it, there were sufficient indications given that such convictions were largely shared there. In the debate that ensued, all sides of the house expressed confidence in Lord Palmerston’s sense of duty and responsibility, and respect and admiration for his talents. It became at once evident that the days of Lord John Russell’s ministry were numbered, and that it must be long, in any fresh ministerial combinations, before he could occupy the same high post in the counsels of her majesty.

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

On the 9th of February, Lord John made a statement as to his views of parliamentary reform. His lordship proposed the disfranchisement of all small constituencies proved to be corrupt by a system of inquisition adapted to the purpose. He declared that a ten-pound franchise in boroughs was too high, and proposed a five-pound franchise. The county franchise of fifty pounds he would reduce to twenty pounds. The copyholds and long leaseholds of ten-pound qualification he would reduce to five pounds. All persons living within boroughs paying two pounds a-year assessed taxes he would enfranchise as county voters. Boroughs having less than five hundred electors were to have the number of the enfranchised augmented by adding neighbouring towns in the same representations. Property qualification of members to be repealed. Reform, mainly on the game plan, to be extended to Scotland and Ireland.

Mr. Hume expressed dissatisfaction with any measure that did not comprise the ballot and triennial parliaments, and a large number of liberal members sympathised with the radical leader. The majority of the liberal members received the announcement of the premier with great favour. His lordship proposed introducing a bill on the 23rd of February. Sir Robert Inglis and Mr. Newdegate opposed the measure with expressions of earnest apprehension, because it was proposed by Lord John to abolish the oath of abjuration. Mr. Disraeli, however, offered the chief opposition to the measure. He endeavoured to lead the house to postpone the consideration of the bill, but obviously for the object of gaining time to throw out the bill itself. Sir George Grey, in a speech of unusual felicity, exposed the dishonesty of Mr. Disraeli’s pretences as to the necessity of delay in order to perfect measures which he was eager to defeat.

The house gave leave to bring in the bill. It never was brought in, new events depriving its author and the cabinet of the power to carry any measure. The foregoing statement of the character of the proposed reform bill of 1852 is, however, important, as the question of reform occupied attention for several years subsequently in a serious degree, and “the proposed bill of 1852” was constantly referred to by all parties in the discussions which took place.

THE MILITIA BILL.—DEFEAT AND RESIGNATION OF THE CABINET.

On the 16th of February, Lord John, in a committee of the whole house, explained his intentions in reference to the local militia acts. This question excited considerable interest, as the Duke of Wellington and Sir John Burgoyne had pointed out the possibility of an invasion, and the defenceless state of the coasts and of the country generally. The _coup d’état_ in France had also created considerable public uneasiness. The secrecy, sternness of purpose, swiftness of action, boldness, and indifference to bloodshed shown by the president of the French republic, caused most men to reflect upon the possibility of some terrible _coup de main_ being attempted against England; the president, in his writings as Prince Charles Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, having so often asserted that he represented a defeat, the defeat of Waterloo, which France must avenge. Lord John proposed to allow the plan of “the old regular militia” to fall out of use, and to establish a new scheme for a local militia. Ireland was to be exempt from the measure. In twelve months, the number of men to be raised was 70,000, in two years 100,000, in three years 130,000, after which period Great Britain alone should furnish, if necessary, 180,000 men.

Lord Palmerston’s expulsion from the cabinet was then about to tell on the ministry, and the future history of party. His lordship opposed the ministerial measure; and, released from ministerial privacy, declared that he had urged upon Lord John in vain since the year 1846 the organization of a militia. His lordship opposed the plan of a local militia, preferring the old force, and, as an Irish peer, expressed some warmth that Ireland was excluded from the arrangement.

When the bill came forth from the committee, Lord Palmerston proposed amendments in harmony with the principles upon which he had criticised the measure on going into committee. The two noble lords were now fairly pitted against one another as rivals for parliamentary influence, and the result was the defeat and resignation of Lord John Russell. The Irish members supported Lord Palmerston in great force, and threw out the ministry. His lordship also received considerable support from the Derby-Disraeli party. From that moment it was obvious that Lord John ceased—at all events for many years, should Lord Palmerston survive—to be the leader of the House of Commons.

THE EARL OF DERBY’S ADMINISTRATION.

The majority in favour of Lord Palmerston’s measure caused the adjournment of the house. The queen sent for Lord Derby, and committed to him the reins of power.

One of the first acts of his lordship, after conferring with Mr. Disraeli and a few of his most attached adherents, was to offer a seat in his cabinet to Lord Palmerston. Mr. Disraeli had, however, in the debate upon the address, renewed his agitation of the previous year for re-adjusting taxation in favour of the landed interest, as compensation for the loss of high prices for corn, which had been secured by protection. As this was only another mode of re-enacting protectionist laws, and one which was especially offensive to all the community not inheriting land, it was impossible for Lord Palmerston to accept office with Lord Derby, even if their political differences were less. Failing to strengthen his government by the accession of Lord Palmerston, Lord Derby, had recourse to Mr. Gladstone, but his repugnance to act with Disraeli personally, and his opposition to the protectionist schemes of both that minister and Lord Derby, rendered all negotiations unsuccessful. The ministry, therefore, became a pure tory and protectionist cabinet, except so far as Lord Stanley was concerned, whose opinions were supposed to be liberal, although connected with the ministry by the influence of his father.

The following ministry was ultimately formed:—

_In the Cabinet._

First Lord of the Treasury ... Earl of Derby.

Lord Chancellor ............... Lord St. Leonards.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr. Disraeli.

President of the Council ...... Earl Lonsdale.

Privy Seal....................... Marquis of Salisbury.

Home Secretary ............... Mr. Horace Walpole.

Foreign Secretary............... Earl of Malmesbury.

First Lord of the Admiralty..... Duke of Northumberland.

President of the Board of Control Mr. Hume.

Post-Master General ............ Earl of Hardwicke.

President of the Board of Trade Mr. Henley.

First Commissioner of Woods/Forests Lord J. Manners

_Not in the Cabinet._

Commander-in-Chief of Her of Majesty’s Land Forces ...... Duke of Wellington.

Master-General of the Ordnance Viscount Hardinge.

Paymaster of the Forces, and Vice-President of the Board of Trade Lord Colchester.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.... Mr. Christopher.

Secretary at War .................... Major Beresford

Secretary of the Admiralty........... Mr. O’Brien Stafford.

Attorney-General...................... Sir Frederick Thesiger.

Solicitor-General .................. Sir Fitzroy Kelly.

Judge Advocate-General................ Mr. Banks.

Chief Poor-Law Commissioner........... Sir George Trollope.

SCOTLAND.

Lord-Advocate.................. Mr. Anderson.

Solicitor-General .............. Mr. Inglis.

IRELAND.

Lord-Lieutenant ............... Earl of Eglinton.

Lord-Chancellor ............... Rt. Hon. Mr. Blackburn.

Chief Secretary................. Lord Naas.

Attorney-General................ Mr. Napier.

Solicitor-General ............. Mr. Whiteside.

QUEEN’S HOUSEHOLD.

Lord-Steward..................... Duke of Montrose.

Lord-Chamberlain................. Marquis of Exeter.

Master of the Horse.............. Earl of Jersey.

Mistress of the Robes .......... Duchess of Athole.

This ministry was but slightly modified during the year, and altogether apart from political changes. The death of the Duke of Wellington led to the appointment of Lord Hardinge to the Horse Guards, Lord Raglan becoming master-general of the Ordnance.

This ministry was not popular. In the cabinet the lord-chancellor was not an accession of strength. Although a very high Tory, he was not liked by the aristocracy; and although a very good lawyer, he was believed by the country to be narrow-minded and prejudiced. Lord John Manners was extremely unpopular, in consequence of his well-known couplet, expressive of the desire that learning and commerce should perish rather than that the power of the aristocracy should be diminished. The Duke of Northumberland was considered utterly unfit for the important duties imposed on him, and it was supposed that he would patronise “jobbing,” and promotion by unfair means.

Out of the cabinet, the English appointments were generally severely criticised, except those of the household and the law officers. These latter were considered able men, but bigoted partizans—clever enough for attorney-general and solicitor-general, but very unsuitable for judges, to which honours the offices notoriously led.

All the Irish appointments were popular in Ireland, although the gentlemen who filled them belonged to a party of so small a minority. Lord Eglinton was a gentleman personally liberal and generally esteemed, generous, and off-hand, fond of Ireland, and adapted to intercourse with the Irish. Mr. Blackburn, the lord-chancellor, was considered the greatest equity lawyer in Ireland, and an impartial judge. Lord Naas, the chief secretary, was an Irishman who knew the country well, and was connected with many popular families. Joseph Napier was held to be a first-rate lawyer and scholar, a polished gentleman, and a sincere Christian. Whiteside was regarded as having too much of the clever, eloquent, fiery Irish agitator in his own constitution, not to have some complaisant sympathy with such qualities in his countrymen. Accordingly, the government worked well in Ireland for its own ascendancy, but every step it took in England rendered the hope of ministerial longevity impossible. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli were personally liked; both were believed to be more liberal than their relation to their party allowed, and their brilliant eloquence made the country proud of them in or out of office.

The time soon arrived for testing the House of Commons as to the amount of toleration it was likely to show to the new ministry. On the 27th of February, Lord Derby offered the lords an exposition of his views, which, even while he was yet speaking, found its way substantially to the commons, and was buzzed about among the members. In his speech, his lordship disavowed any intention to interfere violently with free-trade principles, but avowed himself still a Protectionist, declaring, that in his opinion, the importation of all articles which competed with the industry of the country ought to be taxed, and that corn ought not to be exempt. A report of his lordship’s speech had scarcely reached the commons, when it was evident that so far as the parliament then sitting was concerned, the doom of his ministry was sealed. When, the next day, the wings of the press bore to the country his lordship’s oration, indignation was everywhere excited, and the free-traders were united and strengthened, in a manner they had not been from the time of the repeal of the corn-laws.

Lord Derby made a statement connected with reform, which proved to be nearly as distasteful to a majority of the people out of doors as that on free-trade. He expressed his intention not to proceed with Lord John Russell’s reform bill, which he described as unsettling everything and settling nothing, which began by exciting the country, and finished by dissatisfying it.

His lordship, as if not satisfied with the opposition such statements were likely to raise against him, provided himself with a third element of hostility, by invoking the assistance of his hearers for the extension of the established church, and of an education entirely under the control of the parochial clergy. The dissenters and Roman Catholics were much alarmed ly this portion of his lordship’s speech, and quietly, but extensively and effectually, prepared to give a strenuous opposition to his government. Thus, in his _début_ as premier, Lord Derby contrived to set against him the free-traders, reformers, dissenters, and Roman Catholics, at a moment when there was a majority against him in the commons. The premier’s oratorical onslaught was so indiscreet, that only the most headstrong and ignorant of his own party had any hope that he would display the tact, sagacity, self-control, and party-moderation which alone could enable him to hold his ground against the opposition in the commons, and the general want of confidence in his ministry.

Such was the imprudence of the first minister, that although Earl Grey gave him an easy opportunity of withdrawing his anti-free-trade doctrines, the most in the form of concession which he (Lord Grey) could extort was, that the government had no _present_ intention of proposing a tax on the importation of corn, but regarded it as a question still open, and remaining with the intelligence of the country for solution. Some of the high whig peers expressed their approbation of his lordship’s views in terms of warm support. On the other hand, the Earl of Aberdeen strenuously opposed the purpose which the government evidently contemplated, of imposing a new corn-tax.

In the commons, an adjournment to the 12th of March was proposed and carried.

When the houses resumed their sittings, it became evident to the government that the imprudent speech of Lord Derby had roused the opposition to a high pitch of excitement. Demands were made as to whether the government intended to re-impose the corn-laws. No honest answer could be extracted in either house—experience had made the leaders wary: the answers given were, in effect, that the government would abide by the decision of the country. This reply made it evident that parliament was to be dissolved on the question of free-trade and a corn-law. After the country had reasonably concluded that the question was settled, fierce disputes from end to end of the kingdom were about to be raised. The old members of the Corn-law League accordingly convoked meetings in London and Manchester, and it was determined to resuscitate that powerful body, and with new and more effectual instrumentalities of agitation, upon the first proposition for imposing a tax upon the importation of corn. The uneasiness throughout the country became very great, and a personal ill-will to the two tory leaders began to show itself in the north of England, and throughout Scotland.

On the 15th of March, Lord Beaumont presented a petition from certain inhabitants of the West Biding of Yorkshire, praying the house to set at rest the question of free-trade, as commercial enterprise was seriously injured. Lord Derby answered that he did not consider the question settled, and that the next general election must decide it. On the same evening, Mr. Villiers, the leader of the anti-cornlaw party in the commons, demanded final and explicit explanations from the government, alleging that distrust and alarm filled the country. Mr. Disraeli denied the statements, and resorted to the usual tricks of words to evade the interrogatory; the inference from his reply was that a desperate effort would be made to gain a corn-law majority in a new House of Commons, and, in case of success, re-impose the corn-laws. Lord John Bussell, Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Palmerston, Sir A. Cockburn, and other prominent men on the liberal side of the house, expressed their determination to offer every resistance they could employ to the re-imposition of any duty, in any form, upon the importation of corn.

Rumours began to circulate, that the government would endeavour to go on with the public business in the face of an adverse majority, and on the 19th of March, the Duke of Newcastle demanded explanations in the lords from the premier. The duke presented a petition from the Commercial Association of Manchester, praying for relief from the confusion and uncertainty thrown into commercial operations by the speeches of the leading members of government, in fact, demanding that the question of a corn-law should once more be submitted to the country. Lord Derby denied the assertions of the Manchester Association, refused to dissolve parliament, or to give any explicit information as to his intentions in reference to free-trade.

In the House of Commons, the same night, Lord John Bussell demanded that the public should be at once relieved from all uncertainty by an appeal to the country. So decided and angry was the aspect of the house, and so loud the demonstrations of its determination not to be trifled with on the great subject of a corn-law, that Mr. Disraeli was compelled to give that assurance which Lord Derby refused, and pledged the government to dissolve parliament, and meet the new house within the year, and as soon after the public business necessary to the country was disposed of.

It was, however, found difficult to transact business—the house was so excited; so that the question of dissolution was again and again renewed in angry and almost boisterous terms. Mr. Cobden called the attention of the house to the fact that the country had once more a protectionist government; that the fact was indisputable, and ought to be met with that intelligence and decision which became the greatest question of the day. He urged the house to limit the rates of supply, until the country decided whether it wished a tax upon bread, to enrich the landlords. Mr. Cardwell, in language as decided as that of Mr. Cobden, urged the house to fulfil its constitutional obligations, and compel the government of the minority to give suitable assurances of an early dissolution. Lord John Bussell declared that the government had taken a course for which there was no precedent in the constitutional history of England. He followed Mr. Cobden and Mr. Cardwell in insisting upon the government adopting such a course as to a dissolution, as would remove from the house the necessity of taking measures to assert its own high prerogatives. Mr. Disraeli declined pledging the government more definitely than he had done, which drew from Mr. Bright an invective full of fire, yet marked by a dignity unusual with that honourable member; he demanded that the supplies should be stopped, or the house be assured that no effort would be made by the government to retain power by unconstitutional methods. The result of these vigorous proceedings were statements made in both houses on the part of the ministry, that it was the intention to dissolve parliament and have an autumn session to settle the question of protection. It does not appear that these promises were made in good faith;—at all events no autumn session was called, although a new parliament met in November, and the question in debate set at rest.

The government introduced a militia-bill, which Lord John Bussell and the Whigs generally opposed. Lord Palmerston supported the government, as did the Peel party, his lordship criticising the tactics of Lord John with severity. The opposition between these two statesmen kept the liberal party divided, and alone enabled the government to maintain its course.

Lord Brougham introduced a bill to enable parliament to meet thirty-five days after a dissolution. The bill was carried through both houses without opposition.

The government took up a bill of Lord John Russell’s for the disfranchisement of the borough of St. Albans, on account of gross bribery and corruption. The bill was carried, no opposition being offered except by a small number of Lord Derby’s own party in the House of Lords.

Sudbury and St. Albans being disfranchised, a question arose as to the appropriation of the four seats. On the 10th of May, Mr. Disraeli brought in a bill for the purpose, proposing that the four vacant seats be given to great county constituencies in the north of England. Mr. Gladstone opposed the measure, on the ground that the government was trifling with the prerogatives of the house. It was a government in a minority, and its duty was to pass no measures but such routine business as the country absolutely required. Mr. Disraeli had given this promise, and, notwithstanding, sought to appropriate to county constituencies the four borough votes of which other constituencies had been penally deprived. The speech of Mr. Gladstone was received with enthusiasm by the house, and his amendment, “That the house do pass to the order of the day,” was carried by a very large majority. That this was purely a party movement of Mr. Gladstone was soon made evident enough, for he assisted the government soon after in carrying a bill for giving New Zealand a constitution; and he himself brought in a measure termed “the Colonial Bishops’ Bill.”

Various motions were brought under the consideration of the house, but were received with impatience, and all further attempts of government to prolong the session by inducing the house to entertain bills, were fruitless; all were bent upon one object,—that of bringing to an issue before the country the question of the re-imposition of a tax upon corn.

FOREIGN POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT.—OUTRAGE ON MR. MATHER AT FLORENCE.

The impatience of the house for a dissolution did not prevent it from discussing the foreign policy of the government. It was considered that Lord Malmesbury had shown a sympathy for despotic states, and had by his diplomacy played into-the hands of Austria, and the petty tyrannical Italian governments. Lord John Russell brought his lordship’s conduct, as well as the policy of the government, before the house on the 14th of June.

In the last chapter, our readers were informed that a young English gentleman of moral excellence and high culture, the son of a patriotic and influential gentleman of the county of Durham, named Mather, was wantonly cut down in the streets of Florence by an Austrian officer. Lord John Bussell exposed the conduct of Lord Malmesbury in this affair, and was ably supported by Lord Palmerston. The government suffered much in reputation, both in the house and throughout the country, from this debate. Their defence was extremely feeble, while the attacks of the opposition glowed with indignant eloquence. Probably at no period of party strife did the two great parties in the house appear more strongly contrasted than during that debate. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston spoke with exceeding force, and uttered sentiments worthy of British patriotism and British statesmanship. Mr. Disraeli, on the other hand, spoke with an apathy, where insults to England and to a defenceless Englishman were concerned, which was discreditable to a statesman of any free country, or indeed to any speaker that had a sympathy with manhood and national dignity. In the elections which ensued, the tone adopted on that occasion by the chancellor of the exchequer, and the conduct of Lord Malmesbury, told effectively against the government in various constituencies in the north of England. A feeling was created that the rights of Englishmen in foreign countries were neglected by their own government, and that so far as English ambassadors and ministers were concerned, Englishmen abroad were at the merey of any foreign tyrant who thought proper to wrong them. This feeling had extended for some years upon the continent, and the debate in the commons promoted by Lords John Russell and Palmerston, brought out such glaring criminality on the part of the English foreign office in connection with Mr. Mather, that the sentiment became strengthened on the continent that unless an English traveller had powerful connections in his own country, he might be made the object of foreign outrage with impunity. Mr. Bernai Osborne only expressed the truth in the strong language with which he concluded his speech, “Lord Malmesbury had trifled with the honour of the country, and disgraced it in the eyes of the whole continent of Europe.” In the House of Lords, warm debates arose upon the same question, in which Lord Malmesbury made a defence still more disingenuous and unpatriotic than it was feeble.

LAW REFORM.

Notwithstanding the difficulties of the government, various useful bills which had been prepared by the Whigs, but which the Russell government was unable to carry, were passed into law. By the end of June, all these measures were enacted as laws.

PROROGATION AND DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT.—GENERAL ELECTION.

On the 1st of July, her majesty in person prorogued her parliament, and announced her intention of speedily dissolving it. This event took place shortly after, and was followed by a general election, when the voice of the country was so decidedly given against protection as to cause the abandonment of all idea by the protectionist party of re-imposing a corn-law. The orators of the government, however, announced throughout the country their intention to promote a parliamentary struggle for the re-adjustment of the public burdens, so as to relieve the landlord interest of a large share of the proportion of the taxes borne by them.

MEETING OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT.

The houses of parliament assembled on the 4th of November. On the 11th her majesty in person delivered the speech from the throne. The speech referred to commercial policy in terms which the Hon. Mr. Villiers denounced as “vague and equivocal.”

BOTH HOUSES CARRY RESOLUTIONS PLEDGING THEM TO THE FREE-TRADE POLICY.

On the 23rd of November, the Hon. Mr. Villiers proposed a series of resolutions affirming the prosperity of the country, and the comfort of the poorer classes, as resulting from the policy of free-trade, and more especially in corn, pledging the house to support the measure of 1846, by which all duties on corn were repealed. The chancellor of the exchequer moved an amendment with the intention of defeating these resolutions. The government, however, assumed the tone of converts to free-trade on the ground that the country had pronounced for it. Mr. Frederick Peel, with bitter and eloquent irony, in the best speech he probably ever delivered in parliament, reminded Mr. Disraeli of his taunts and abuse of Sir Robert Peel for changing his opinions on the subject of a corn-law, and invited the right honourable satirist to account for his own change, if it were effected by any other motive than to retain office. He went to the country advocating the re-imposition of a corn-tax, and on his return presented himself to the house a convert to the opinion that it would be wrong to disturb the settlement of 1846. After a protracted debate, Lord Palmerston proposed an amendment which more generally embodied the public opinion, and was more adapted to party exigencies. All opposition to it on the part of the government was so hopeless, that most of their supporters left the house. Eighty remained, and voted against his lordship; four hundred and eight members supported it. The House of Commons was pledged to the free-trade policy.

A similar debate took place in the lords with nearly identical results. Various measures were discussed without leading to any parliamentary decision or useful law. It was evident that on all subjects of free-trade and financial philosophy the government and the majority of the house were at issue—the one desiring to restore protection under various sly and indirect pretences, the other anxious to develop free-trade principles, and a system of national finance in harmony with the principles of political economy.

THE GOVERNMENT SCHEME OF FINANCE.—DEFEAT AND RESIGNATION OF THE MINISTRY.

On the 3rd of December, the chancellor of the exchequer stated to the house the views which the government entertained of the principles of finance which were applicable to the condition of the country. He declared that he accepted as irreversible the decision of the country in favour of a free commercial policy, and that his object was to harmonize with that the system of national taxation. He proposed to relieve certain interests which he considered had suffered by the free-trade policy. The first of these named by him was the shipping interest. His views connected with that subject met with general approbation, as they comprehended only the removal of special and unjust taxation. He proposed to satisfy the West India interest by allowing sugar to be refined in bond. The opinions stated by the right honourable gentleman were so at variance with his former violent orations in favour of the shipping interest, and that of the sugar-growing countries, as to excite astonishment and amusement in the house. Observing this feeling, he exclaimed, “I may be called a renegade, I may be called a traitor—” but the sentence remained unfinished amidst shouts of laughter from all sides of the house, and reiterated bursts of derisive cheers from the opposition. In fact, the leader of the commons gave up the shipping and colonial interests, with some slight show of concession, which nearly the whole house was prepared to make. The third interest for which he demanded relief was that of the owners of land. He adverted to the local burdens which he had so often pointed out as intolerable to the landowners, and admitted, amidst long-continued peals of laughter, that the agricultural interest had no longer ground of complaint on such matters, and denounced contrary opinions as obsolete. For the relief of the agricultural interest he announced his intention to reduce the malt-tax one half, and to abolish the drawback from spirits made in Scotland. He would reduce one half the duty on hops; he would continue the income-tax, about to expire, but reduce that of farmers by one-half. This announcement was received with demonstrations of astonishment and anger by the opposition. He would impose the income-tax in Ireland, but would exempt the landed interest of that country from its application. This announcement threw the house into extraordinary agitation. Perceiving this, the right hon. gentleman expressed sympathy with the sufferings through which Ireland had passed, and drew from the fact of these sufferings the inference that while imposing new taxes upon other portions of the community in that country, the landed interest ought to be exempt. He would also increase the house-tax, in order that the inhabitants of the metropolis might bear a proportion of the burden from which land would be relieved, and would extend the tax to all houses rated at £10. The right hon. gentleman intimated that his financial scheme should be considered as a first step in a new direction.

The financial statement of the chancellor excited an intense ferment through the country. The landed, the West Indian, and the shipping interests, which were all supposed to derive advantage from protection, supported him, all the rest of the community exhibited an angry opposition. The monied and commercial classes in Ireland, the English manufacturers, and the London householders, were Mr. Disraeli’s fiercest opponents. Besides the popular hostility, Mr. Disraeli had to encounter that of the political economists, and all the leading financiers in the country. The monied interest ridiculed the estimates, and it became evident in a few days after the announcement of his plan to the house, that it had seriously impaired the reputation of its propounder. His unfitness for the post of chancellor of the exchequer was proclaimed everywhere, and every where accepted as true.

On the 6th of December, on the report of the Committee of Supply being brought up, the House of Commons, led on by Mr. Gladstone, showed an uncompromising opposition to the whole scheme of Mr. Disraeli.

After a series of adjournments, Mr. Disraeli replied to the criticism of his opponents in language personally offensive, and full of party violence. This led to a scene of singular excitement: Mr. Gladstone retorted in the most eloquent speech he ever delivered in parliament. Attempts were made by the government party to stifle his voice in uproar, but the house sustained him by repeated and long-continued rounds of applause. Mr. Gladstone’s denunciation of the budget as a delusive and dishonest scheme was followed by a vote which rejected it. The protectionist members voted to a man with the government, but a majority was against them, and the government resigned.

FORMATION OF A NEW MINISTRY.

The queen sent for Lord Lansdowne, by whom she was advised to send for Lord Aberdeen, as the most prominent member of the Peel party, upon whom it would properly devolve to form a government, as that of Lord Derby was defeated on a question of political economy and finance.

On the 27th of December the new government appeared before parliament. Its constitution was as follows:—

_In the Cabinet_

First Lord of the Treasury...... Earl of Aberdeen.

Lord-Chancellor ............... Lord Cranworth.

Chancellor of the Exchequer...... Mr. Gladstone.

President of the Council........ Earl Granville.

Privy Seal....................... Duke of Argyle.

Home Secretary ................ Viscount Palmerston.

Foreign Secretary................ Lord John Russell.

Colonial Secretary ............ Duke of Newcastle.

First Lord of the Admiralty .... Sir James Graham.

President of the Board of Control Sir Charles Wood

Secretary at War................. Mr. Sidney Herbert.

Commissioner of Works/Buildings Sir W. Molesworth.

Honorary.........,.............. Marquis of Lansdowne.

On meeting parliament, an adjournment until February was approved by all parties.

The government was not popular: few of the positions were occupied by those whom the country regarded as the men for the place. The premier had, as foreign minister, neglected the honour of England more than Lord Malmesbury had done. He had been outwitted by Louis Philippe, and had been the sycophant of Russia and Austria. He was, to use his own phraseology, “regarded as a sort of Austro-Russian.” His sympathy with Puseyism made him unpopular with large and influential sections of the religious public. Indeed the Aberdeen cabinet was regarded as, on the whole, more Puseyite than any which England had seen since the rise of the party in the established church. The Duke of Newcastle, to whom the administration of colonial affairs was entrusted, was of the Puseyite school, and his appointment, when known in the colonies, gave great dissatisfaction. The chancellor of the exchequer was more a champion of ecclesiastical exclusiveness than any member of the Derby cabinet, and Mr. Sidney Herbert rivalled Mr. Gladstone in this respect. The Lord Chancellor was also of this politico-ecclesiastical party, and was regarded as a crotchetty man, of little intellectual strength. As an equity lawyer, he had won reputation; as a judge there had been more appeals from his decisions than from all the other judges of the bench.

The appointment of Lord John Russell to the foreign-office, while Lord Palmerston was placed in the home-office, was regarded as an absurd inversion of their appropriate positions, and the arrangement was considered as an unwarrantable concession by Lord Aberdeen to the vanity of the ex-premier. Events justified the suspicions and dislikes of the public, except in the instance of Lord Palmerston, who proved himself to be the most efficient home-minister the country ever possessed.

The Irish appointments were very unpopular amongst the Protestants in Ireland, and among those in England who gave themselves any concern about Irish appointments. The Irish ministry of Lord Derby was greatly superior to that of Lord Aberdeen, in talent, moral standing, and influence in the country where their functions were to be sustained.

With the adjournment of the house closed the parliamentary history of 1852.

IRELAND.

The distracted state of Ireland was, as usual, a source of uneasiness to the empire. There was, indeed, no insurrectionary movement, but the spirit of agrarian outrage continued, and numerous murders were perpetrated of a most savage nature—the country people conniving at the crimes, and secreting the criminals. These evils were, to a great extent, provoked by the unjust state of the law between landlord and tenant. Efforts were made in parliament to mitigate the injustice and oppression to which the tenantry in Ireland were subjected; but the landed interest in England upheld that in Ireland in resisting all melioration.

Religious intolerance continued to agitate every other malady of Ireland. Indeed this was the _fons et origo mali_, for it deprived honest men and patriots of opportunity to combine for their country’s freedom and prosperity. During the elections caused by Lord Derby’s dissolution of parliament, the priests incited the populace, in some places, to acts of disturbance and violence. At Six Miles Bridge the soldiery were attacked while protecting voters in the free exercise of their franchise. Proceedings were taken against a Roman Catholic priest for the part which it was alleged he took in those disturbances. Public opinion considered him to have been the cause of the outbreak, but the tory government, anxious for party purposes to conciliate the Roman Catholics, did not dare to prosecute him.

The Young Ireland agitation was not extinguished, and it received some new inspiration of hope from the escape of Thomas Meagher, from Australia. That adventurous young man made his way from his penal abode at the antipodes to America, where he became a citizen. He was a true patriot, and an ardent friend of liberty; he had no sympathy with the pro-slavery and red republican opinions of his former coadjutor, Mitchell, nor with the raving and malignant bigotry of Charles Gavan Duffy. In the United States he was an object of universal respect, his amiability and eloquence winning, in private and public, “golden opinions from all sorts of men.”

Ireland showed various symptoms of returning prosperity. The only agitation in which the higher classes took part was in opposition to the unjust scheme of Disraeli, to tax the Irish fundholder for the advantage of the English and Irish landholder. This measure was denounced by the capitalists of Ireland as a violation of faith to the public creditor, and sapping tire foundations upon which the security and sacredness of property rested.

The ribbon conspiracy was active during the year, and no suitable effort was made by Lord Derby’s government to uproot it.

COLONIES.

The colonies were generally prosperous throughout the year, and quietude and contentment prevailed. The Cape of Good Hope, and even India, were less disturbed than usual; but in each of these places a few events occurred to which we shall especially refer.

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

In the early part of the year, the troubles which harassed the colony in the previous year exercised some influence. The efforts of the governor to establish tranquillity and good government met with co-operation from the colonists. The Boers, however, showed a disposition hostile to the British, chiefly because they hated the liberty which the English enjoyed and extended to the coloured population. The eagerness of the Boers to subdue to slavery the natives who came within their control, was not abated by the bitter lessons which their past experience had received. Before the year had far advanced, the whole colony was in repose, law and order for a time having been everywhere established.

INDIA.

India generally was quiet throughout this year, except upon the frontiers of Birmese territory. The vast regions comprehended under the name of British India, are never free from some tumults, local insurrections, and sudden and almost unaccountable revolts of petty chiefs. The year 1852 was not without events of this sort, but there was no startling incident except a war with Birmah, which of course was waged from India, and by the governor-general. A brief account of it will appear most appropriately in the relation of the foreign affairs of the empire.

The author of “The Three Presidencies” relates the political events of interest to the English in India, with the following brief but correct summary:—“Throughout India, with the exception of the north-western frontier, the most profound peace has reigned. The only disturbance which broke this complete tranquillity was the periodical incursion of some of the hill-tribes, especially of the Momunds. Their forays were mainly directed against the inhabitants of the villages in their vicinity, where they frequently committed great destruction of life and property. These marauders occupied the forces under Sir Colin Campbell from early in January, at various periods, until quite the end of the year, often falling upon our troops when not expected, and inflicting considerable loss. These freebooters mustered very strong in light horse, by the rapidity of their movements and their intimate knowledge of every mile of the country, bade defiance to such of our troops as were brought against them. In Scinde, the occurrence of the year was the deposition of Ali Morad from his princedom. The plots and falsehoods of this designing intriguer having been completely brought home to him, and it being made clear how nefariously he had deprived both his brothers and the British government of large tracts of territory, no time was lost in stripping him of his ill-gotten honours and estates, and reducing him to the rank of a simple chief. An attempt was made, during 1852, to establish an annual fair at Kurrachee, for the supply of the great commercial marts above the Indus with European goods, and the disposal of their produce in return.”

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.—BIRMESE WAR.

The general relations of Great Britain with other nations were tranquil during the year, although some alarms were entertained as to the intentions of her nearest neighbour on the European continent. The war with Birmah was, however costly and sanguinary and was the most prominent matter of public interest in the foreign relations of the British empire. It was in 1851 that the occasion for hostilities was given by the Birmese, and that the governor-general took measures for reprisal. Various acts of oppression and cruelty to British subjects were perpetrated by the authorities of Ava.*

* For a minute and extended account of the causes of both the wars with Birmah, see Nolan’s “History of the British Umpire in India and the East.” Virtue: City-road.

It was not, however, until 1852 that the conflict assumed a serious character, and that tidings reached the English public of this new Indian war. Early in January, 1852, the King of Ava pretended a willingness to settle the differences between him and the British by negotiations. By this means he succeeded in capturing a number of English residents at Rangoon, whom he subjected to indignity and suffering. Commodore Lambert, who commanded the naval expedition, blockaded the Birmese ports. The governor-general despatched from Calcutta, and the Governor of Madras, from the capital of that presidency, strong bodies of troops. Preparations of an extensive nature were made to bring the war to a speedy issue. Several officers of eminent ability, among them the great and good Havelock, afterwards Sir Henry, and the saviour of India, joined the force. By the 24th of February, six steamers left Bombay for Madras, where they embarked the troops destined for the Birmese campaign, under the command of General Godwin, viz., two European and four native regiments, with four corps of artillerymen, chiefly Europeans. These left Madras on the 29th of March, whilst at Calcutta the armament had been equally hastened. The last of the force despatched there left the Hoogly on the 25th of March, the total having been similar to the Madras force—two European and four native regiments, with their accompaniments of artillery, in four steamers and four transports. These amounted in the aggregate to about eight thousand men.

The 1st of April was the clay appointed for the ultimatum. A steamer was sent to Rangoon, to obtain the king’s reply. The English envoy found the river lined with stockades, and from thence a heavy fire was opened upon him; this was the only answer to the British ultimatum his Birmese majesty deigned to give.

Admiral Austin, with the Bengal force, arrived at this juncture, and at once attacked and conquered Martaban, so that, by the evening of the 5th of April, the British were masters of the place. The Madras troops arrived on the 7th, and the forces of the two presidencies proceeded up the river and attacked the stockades, which were defended by twenty-five thousand men.

Early in May, the British resolved upon attacking Bassein, sixty miles up one of the branches of the Irriwaddy. From that point, the Birmese commander contemplated an invasion of the British province of Arracan. After a desperate struggle, a very small number of British succeeded in storming the stockades and capturing the place.

While the English were engaged capturing Bassein, the Birmese attempted the reconquest of Martaban, but were repulsed with great slaughter, by a very small force, with little loss.

On the 5th of July, Prome was attacked: the conquest was easy, but the conqueror did not deem it necessary to garrison the place; consequently, as he retired to Rangoon, the enemy re-entered Prome.

The incompetency and inactivity of the British general caused July and August to pass uselessly. The whole army murmured. All the abuses of British military official routine prevailed, and the accounts which arrived in England excited, as tidings from India had so often done, much popular discontent. A popular writer thus criticised General Godwin’s conduct, and gave the following relation of his proceedings:—“The expected reinforcements having reached head-quarters, the force available amounted in the month of September to nearly twenty thousand men, in the highest state of efficiency, and quite large enough to have at once swept all before them to the very gates of the emperor’s palace. But this did not appear to be the view taken of the matter by General Godwin, who now made preparation for once more attacking Prome. In tire middle of this month, two regiments, a field-battery, with a detachment of sappers and miners, left Rangoon, followed within a few days by the general, and a party of artillerymen. They ascended the river without opposition until the 9th of October, when, as they approached the stockaded defences of the city, they were fired upon from many sides. The enemy’s gunnery was not of first-rate quality, and in less than two hours was entirely silenced, the ground being completely cleared of the opposing force by the shells thrown from the steamers. The troops were landed towards the evening, and, advancing at once upon a pagoda and the few remaining defences, carried everything before them at the point of the bayonet. Night fell before the town could be reached, and it was therefore not until the next morning that Prome was occupied for the second time by our troops. A large body of Birmese troops, amounting to upwards of six thousand men, were known to be posted within a few miles of the town, strongly entrenched behind stockades, and out of reach of our steamers, the artillery practice from which appears to have impressed them with a proper sense of our superiority in that arm of war. To have dislodged them with the force at his command would have been a matter of comparative ease; but so thought not General Godwin, who, fearful probably of terminating the war too quickly, determined to await the arrival of further troops before attempting any forward movement. He did not wait long, however; but within a day or two left for Rangoon, in search of the troops considered to be requisite for further operations. This reinforcement was dispatched towards the latter part of the month. By this time the Irriwaddy, which had been previously deep enough throughout for our largest steamers, sank so suddenly, and as it appears so unexpectedly, that several of the flotilla were left aground in the middle of the stream, with every prospect of having to remain there until the next rains should float them.”

The English general seemed to be unable to manage the large reinforcements which he had received, or to avail himself of the combinations which the activity of the governor-general made to facilitate the objects of the expedition.

The general resolved to attack Pegu again, which had been abandoned after a previous successful attack. The conquest was easy, and a garrison was established. This detachment was attacked in December by large numbers of the enemy. The garrison was hemmed in, and in the greatest danger; General Godwin, after failing to relieve the place, by ill-judged and inadequate measures, at last sent a strong force, which successfully encountered every obstacle, and dispersed the enemy.

On the 28th of December, 1852, Pegu and Martaban were “annexed” to British India by proclamation of the governor-general. When these tidings reached Ava, a revolution occurred, promoted by the emperor’s brother, with the design of propitiating the English, and making peace. The emperor was made a captive, and his brother ascended the musnid.

Meanwhile, the British forced the great pass between Arracan and Pegu, leading through it two hundred and fifty elephants sent from Calcutta to convey stores to the army under Godwin. Baffled and beaten, the Birmese troops fell back upon the capital early in the year 1853.

The British opened negotiations with the new sovereign, which were tediously protracted until May. An embassy was sent to the Birmese court, and the emperor had the folly and arrogance, after all the disaster and defeat experienced by the arms of Ava, to demand homage from the English envoys. The firmness of these gentlemen, and the fear of renewed hostilities, caused the sovereign to waive his claims to forms and ceremonies of abject submission, and the issue was peaceful. Cordial relations with the Birmese dominions were not however established, either at that juncture or subsequently: but the salutary fear of British power, caused by the war of 1851–2–3, prevented any violent interruption of good neighbourhood on the part of the Birmese.

FRANCE.

The most important of all the foreign relations of Great Britain are those connected with France—the most powerful of all the allies or enemies of England. During 1852, peace and professions of friendship prevailed between the two nations, but there existed considerable apprehension in Great Britain that the designs of the French president were hostile to England, and that the country was inadequately defended. The Duke of Wellington, without giving any opinion as to the intentions of the president, made more powerful than ever by the _coup d’état_, declared that there was danger from the defenceless state of the country, and recommended the government to fortify and aim. His grace inspected the coasts, and by the opinions he pronounced increased the public apprehension of peril, while he also stimulated the confidence of the country in its great capacity for defence. Sir Howard Douglas, the distinguished engineer officer, accompanied the duke in his coast inspections, and in a work* published by him on the subject, he thus describes the duke’s impressions;—

* “Observations on Modern Systems of Fortification.” By General Sir Howard Douglas, Bart.

“When the late Duke of Wellington visited the coast defences—on the alarm of an invasion, soon after the accession of Louis Napoleon, the present Emperor of France, to the presidency—his grace, being at Seabrook, between Sandgate and Hythe, conversing with his staff and the other officers, the principles of permanent camps and other fixed defences became the subject of discussion, when the duke used the following expressions, ‘Look at those splendid heights all along this coast; give me communications which admit of rapid flank movement along those heights, and I might set anything at defiance.’”

The fears felt in England that a struggle with France would be speedily necessitated were intensified, when, at the close of the year, the president of the republic appealed to the universal suffrage of France, as to whether he should assume the name and power of emperor. This appeal was answered by 7,824,189 “ayes,” and 253,143 “noes.”

On the 1st of December, the senate and legislative corps met, and proceeded to St. Cloud, to announce to the president of the republic that he had been elected sovereign of France. He accepted the splendid boon, and declared himself Napoleon III. The British government recognised the title, declaring that whatever form of government the French people chose to adopt would be acknowledged and respected by England.

GENERAL EUROPEAN RELATIONS.

England interested herself in certain diplomatic discussions concerning the succession to the crown of Denmark, and in the disputes which occurred between the government of Copenhagen and the German Confederation, connected with Schleswig Holstein.

A treaty of commerce and navigation, between her Britannic majesty and the King of the Belgians, also signalized the year.

No other events of serious importance engaged the attention of England in connection with Europe.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Another of the many disputes concerning territory, or rights, perpetually occurring between Great Britain and the United States, took place in 1852. The contest regarded the fisheries off the American coasts; the citizens of the United States claiming the right, in virtue of a certain convention dated 1818, to fish off the coasts, and dry fish on the coasts, of an extensive area of British territory. The British colonial minister, Sir J. Pakington, conceded nearly all that the Americans demanded, to the mortification of the colonial subjects of Great Britain. Discussions concerning Central America, and the formation of a ship-canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific, also engaged the diplomatic abilities of British and American ministers. Ostensible agreements were entered into, but neither nation heartily acquiesced, and no expectation was entertained in England that the people of the United States regarded the settlement as final.

EFFORTS AGAINST THE SLAVE TRADE, AND TO SUPPRESS PIRACY.

The energy put forth by the British government to destroy the traffic in slaves by an armed naval force off the coasts of Africa were this year unremitting and successful. Several vessels trading in slaves were taken, and though the British squadron was not sufficient to suppress, it was a powerful check upon the slave trade.

Naval operations off the Chinese coasts, within the Straits of Malacca and on the coasts of Labuan, were also crowned with success. Through the instrumentality of Rajah Brooke, the Malay pirates were defeated and ultimately extirpated from the bays and creeks of Labuan. The position of the rajah at Sarawak afforded him facilities for directing these enterprises, which his indomitable courage and energy enabled him to make available. His country did not appreciate his deeds as highly as they deserved, and certain cliques in England decried his labours and aspersed his motives. He rendered commerce and his country great and disinterested services.

DEATHS OF EMINENT PERSONS.

During the year 1852, death was as usual busy in the circles of eminent persons: the fame and talents of some of the deceased render it desirable and necessary to record their names upon the page of history.

On the 22nd of January, George Herbert Rodwell, the celebrated composer and writer, was removed from among the living. His musical compositions and stage productions were numerous and popular.

In the month of February, Samuel Prout, F.S.A., celebrated for his drawings in water-colours, and a peculiar style of depicting public buildings, died. Also, Dr. Murray, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, a man of extraordinary influence, acquired by prudence, moderation, patriotism, and consistency of character.

The most remarkable man who departed this life in the British Isles during 1852 was Thomas Moore, the poet. He died in his seventy-third year, at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire, where, through the generous patronage of Lord Lansdowne, the poet spent his most tranquil years. This extraordinary man was born in Aungier Street, Dublin, in the year 1779. The poet’s father was a grocer, but subsequently received an appointment as quarter-master to a regiment. The poetical genius of Thomas Moore was shown at a very early period of life—in his thirteenth year he contributed to the Dublin periodicals. He was at that time under the care of a very celebrated schoolmaster, Mr. Samuel Whyte, who took a deep interest in the precocious genius of his pupil, and had no small share of honour in bringing him into notice. As early as fourteen years of age he entered the Dublin University. He was scarcely more than a year a pupil in the university when he published a paraphrase on the fifth ode of Anacreon. This was so well received that he proceeded to translate the remaining odes, which performance ultimately met with a most encouraging reception. In his nineteenth year, he proceeded to London in the hope of obtaining by subscription a sufficient amount to secure the success of his “Anacreon,” and also to enter as a student the Middle Temple. The work did not appear until 1800, when, under the patronage of the Earl of Moira, he was enabled to dedicate it to the Prince of Wales. In 1802, he published a volume under the designation of, “The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little.” The moral tone of these productions offended the public taste, and inflicted injury upon the poet’s reputation which his subsequent life did not remove, even when the glory of his genius shed lustre upon his name and his country. His more popular works are well known. In politics he was a whig partizan, but was not at heart attached to any school of politics. He was ostensibly a Roman Catholic, and was intolerant as a writer in defence of Romanism, while in private he was most liberal on religious subjects, and showed no earnest belief in any system of theology. He was one of the most accomplished scholars of his day, but was not a profound thinker, and was regarded as rather a lazy writer. His imagination was not of the highest order, but it was rich and diversified. His artistic taste and harmony as a poetical writer were exquisite. His love of music and song was a deep passion. In society, he held every circle as in a spell, so charming were his conversation and manner, and so brilliant and vivacious was his wit. Lord Byron, who had so happy a power of describing a notable character in a single sentence or paragraph, said of him, “He is gentlemanly, gentle, and altogether more pleasing than any individual with whom I am acquainted.”

When Lord Melbourne was in office, in 1835, he counselled her majesty to bestow a pension on the poet of £300 a-year. Moore had found it difficult to realize this sum by his writings, as his prose works did not meet the expectations raised by his poetry. When he became a pensioner he seldom wrote, verifying the predictions of his friends. He exchanged too early in life the department of literature in which he had made so great a reputation for prose, in which he sought by memoirs, historical writing, and even controversy, to increase his income, and establish a new reputation. A passionate love for Ireland pervaded most of his writings, especially his Irish melodies. He constantly breathed a fervid wish from his earliest years for her national independence, and severance from England. Yet when a large portion of his countrymen flew to arms for that purpose, in 1798, he, although nineteen years of age, took no part in the struggle: neither did he show any desire to live in Ireland, but courted English aristocratic society, and served English party interests. During three years before his death, the brain gradually softened, and he sunk into childishness. None of his children survived him. His widow, a charming person, retained a pension of £100 a-year, conferred upon her by the government.

The poetical works of Thomas Moore retain their popularity in many lands. Not only in England, where he spent by far the greater part of his life, and in Ireland, where he was born and educated, and whose popular joys, sorrows, hopes, aspirations, traditions, and prejudices he sung so sweetly, but wherever the English language is spoken, his fame is cherished and his verse repeated. Nor is the delight inspired by his works limited to the language in which they were written. All over the continent of Europe, among the nations whose language is of Latin and Celtic origin, his muse inspires deep interest and pleasure. His extraordinary oriental poem, “Lalla Rookh,” has been translated into Persian, and delights the literary sons of Iran as it erst thrilled the imagination and heart of all persons of poetic temperament in the British Isles. In the city of Dublin, a statue has been erected to his memory, close by the old senate, now used as the Bank of Ireland, and near the poet’s Alma Mater, Trinity College. The statue is a failure, private partiality and _clique_ interest having stifled public competition and robbed the great sculptors, and the poet, of the reward of genius, the city of Dublin of an ornament of which it might have been proud, and his country of the opportunity of paying a suitable tribute of respect to one of the most gifted of her sons. Had M’Dowell or Hogan been allowed to execute a statue for Moore, it would have been accomplished _con amore_, and in a way worthy of the poet and of the sculptor.

The month of February witnessed the death, at the advanced age of ninety, of John Landseer, the celebrated engraver. He left behind him three sons, all eminent—George, Charles, and Sir Edwin.

Among the deaths of remarkable persons in April was that of General Arthur O’Connor, aged eighty-nine, at the Chateau de Rignon, near Nemours. This notable person was one of the leaders in the terrible Irish rebellion of 1798. He was the third son of Roger Connor, of Connorville, by Anne Longfield, sister of Lord Longueville. He was called to the Irish bar in 1788. Lord Longueville returned him to the Irish parliament as representative of Philipstown, in the King’s County, in the year 1790. Lord Longueville afterwards deprived him of his seat in parliament, and disinherited him, by which a loss occurred to Mr. O’Connor of £10,000 a-year, in consequence of his violent advocacy, in the Irish parliament, of “Catholic emancipation.” He afterwards became a leader of the “United Irishmen,” and one of “the Directory of Five,” of that body. After various unsuccessful efforts to separate Ireland from Great Britain, he was arrested, and made an ingenious and desperate effort to escape, assisted by the Earl of Thanet. In 1804, he was deported from Ireland, his life being spared on condition, it was alleged, of some disclosures as to the plans for insurrection even then entertained by him and his colleagues. Buonaparte made him a general of division, and he subsequently received further promotion in the French army. In 1809 he married a niece of Marshal Grouchy, daughter of the Marquis Condorcet, the French mathematician. In 1834, he was permitted by Earl Grey, then in power in England, to revisit Ireland for the purpose of disposing of some property inherited by him, and which the British government had not confiscated. With the proceeds he purchased the chateau where Mirabeau was born, and there General O’Connor died. The celebrated agitator Fergus O’Connor, once member of parliament for Cork, and afterwards for Nottingham, was nephew to the general.

In May, Mrs. Coleridge, only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. She was a lady of extraordinary attainments and vigour. Her acquaintance with the classics was most extensive and accurate, and by her translations from the Latin her reputation was to a great extent made. Wordsworth and Southey were her intimate friends, and intense admirers of her genius. In a review written by an eminent critic, it was remarked of her that “she was the inheritrix of her father’s genius, and almost rival of his attainments.”

In August, in his eightieth year, Thomas Thompson, M.D., F.R.S., London and Edinburgh, Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow, and President of the Glasgow Philosophical Society. Dr. Thompson, as a chemist and inventor, had obtained a great celebrity.

In August, the death of Joseph W. Allen, the celebrated landscape-painter, took place at Hammersmith. He was the son of a schoolmaster in that place.

In September, George Richardson Porter, senior, Secretary of the Board of Trade, Treasurer of the Statistical Society. The statistical writings of this remarkable man brought about many changes in the law, and conduced signally to the repeal of “the corn-laws.”

Dr. Macgillivray, Professor of Natural History, and Lecturer on Botany in the University of Aberdeen. As a writer, a professor, and a philosopher, the doctor obtained an enduring fame, not only in Scotland, but throughout the learned world.

Augustus Nathmure Welby Pugin, the celebrated architect, was among those called away by death in this month.

In November, Gideon Alderson Mantell, LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., F.L.S. He was distinguished in early life by a thirst for knowledge, and a capacity to attain it under the greatest difficulties, being lowly born—the son of a shoemaker at Lewes. As a chemist, a physician, a naturalist, and a geologist, he obtained a wide-spread reputation.

The Countess of Lovelace died this month. This lady had achieved nothing remarkable by any effort or genius of her own, but the country felt great interest in her as the only daughter of the popular poet. Lord Byron: of her he had sung,—

“Ada, sole daughter of my house and heart.”

She was a lady of very elegant mind, and capable of accurate and profound thought; her intellectual attainments were very considerable, and of a nature unusual for ladies. Her remains were laid beside those of her father.

In December, the death of the Rev. Samuel Lee, D.D., was recorded. He was Canon of Bristol, and Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge. His knowledge of languages was vast and critical, and he attained especially a great reputation in the dead languages of the East. He was born in great obscurity, and received his first rudiments of learning in a charity school. He was one of the most remarkable men of the age.

At Kensington, Mr. Stephens, the celebrated entomologist, added another to the list of remarkable persons removed during this year.

It is not possible within the space allotted to this work to notice the removal from life of all the eminent persons recorded in the obituary of this year—persons whose life was a portion of English history in its most interesting aspects, and whose death excited the deep attention and regret of the nation, A record of great political events, merely, will not depict the history or progress of a nation, but as her mighty children one by one disappear from the social state, upon which they have impressed their own intellect and character, their names and deeds should be presented as forming a glorious part of the facts and history of the country and the time.