XXXII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)…

XXXII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

Law-making in 1870--The Queen's Speech--The Irish Land Problem--Diversities of Opinions--The Agrarian Agitation--Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill introduced--Its Five Parts--Grievances of the Irish Tenant--Free Contract--The Ulster Custom--Compensation for Eviction--The Landlord's Safeguards--The Irish Labourer--Mr. Gladstone's Peroration--Direct and Indirect Opposition--The Second Reading carried--Agrarian Outrages--Mr. Fortescue's Coercion Bill--Mr. Disraeli's Amendment to the Land Bill--A Clever Speech--Mr. Lowe's Reply--Progress of the Debate--The Bill through the Commons--Tactics of the Lords--Amendments proposed and withdrawn--Avoidance of a Collision between the Houses--The Bill becomes Law.

By the side of the vast Continental events that made the year 1870 one of the memorable years of the world, domestic politics looked small and feeble. And yet they were by no means small; few years, in fact, had so much to show of work actually done and finished by the cumbrous Parliamentary machine. It was a well-known maxim of English politics, that a Ministry could never depend upon carrying more than one measure of first-rate importance in a single Session. Whatever nominal majority might sit behind a Minister, he knew that in the actual state of society interests were so complicated, prejudices so many-sided, that it was hard enough to lead the majority into the lobby once in the year on a great question, and he seldom attempted to do more. Yet the year 1870 presented the strange phenomenon of a Session marked by the carrying of two great measures, each of them met by vigorous opposition, each of them full of interference with vested interests--the Irish Land Act and the Education Act. Mr. Bright expressed the general sense of the difficulty of much legislation when he said at Birmingham, in January, "You cannot easily drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar." But Mr. Forster happily took up his metaphor a short time afterwards: "Let the Irish Land omnibus pass through first, and Lord de Grey and I will drive our Education omnibus in afterwards."

Parliament met on the 8th of February, and the great measure of the Session--the Irish Land Bill--was soon afterwards brought forward. Of the three branches which, according to Mr. Gladstone's figure, had grown upon the tree of Protestant ascendency in Ireland, one--the Church--had fallen; there remained the Land and Education. The last, which proved in the end the most difficult question, was to be left to a future Session; but with regard to the Land the Queen's Speech was explicit. "It will be proposed to you," it said, "to amend the laws respecting the occupation and acquisition of land in Ireland, in a manner adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that country, and calculated, as her Majesty believes, to bring about improved relations between the several classes concerned in Irish agriculture, which collectively constitute the great bulk of the people. These provisions, when matured by your impartiality and wisdom, as her Majesty trusts, will tend to inspire, among persons with whom such sentiments may still be wanting, that steady confidence in the law, and that desire to render assistance in its effective administration, which mark her subjects in general; and thus will aid in consolidating the fabric of the Empire."

This utterance, clothed in the English peculiar to Speeches from the Throne, showed definitely that Government were committed to a measure of a comprehensive kind. All through the previous autumn and winter, in fact, public opinion had been ripening for such a measure. The newspapers began to be full of articles on the subject; statistics--official, semi-official, and unofficial--were being collected and published in all directions. The Times sent a special commissioner to Ireland, and published his letters in a place of honour. Pamphleteers abounded; every one, from crotchety landlords or crotchety tenant-right-men or peasant-proprietor-men, up to such authorities as Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Campbell, a well-known Indian administrator, wrote down their views. The class in possession were uneasy; and yet, as the event proved, there was very little for them to be uneasy about--or rather, the limitations that were finally imposed on them were not very severe. In fact, the history of the treatment of the Irish Land Question is throughout extremely singular. It is perfectly true, as Lord Cairns said, that "at all times and in all countries there is no kind of agitation which ever has been so serious or so difficult to deal with as an agitation on the subject of land." It is also true in a measure, to continue his words, that "for fourteen months this subject had been exciting the minds of the people." Agrarian crime was rife in Ireland--the Fenian spirit was for the moment all the more savage for the attempt at conciliation made in the passing of the Church Disestablishment Act. Fifty-nine grave cases--cases of delicta majora--were recorded in 1869; and of these, eighteen were murders, most of them agrarian. On the other hand, as we have said, the public press, both in England and in Ireland, was teeming with discussion of land problems, yet in spite of all this evidence of excitement, it is undoubtedly true that the Land Bill was passed through both Houses with far less difficulty than had been the case with the Church Bill; and that the debates upon it, the criticisms passed on it, and the reception it met with, were, on the whole, quiet, satisfactory, and dignified. The "agitation" of which Lord Cairns spoke was, except for the numerous single crimes that accompanied rather than belonged to it, singularly temperate. The importance of the occasion, the strong sense in almost every mind of a dangerous existing injustice, seemed to compel the advocates of both sides into a course of mutual forbearance. Fenianism had done at least that good: it had shown that Irish discontent was a reality and that its first element was an agrarian element.

The debate on the Address showed clearly what the expectations of both parties in Parliament were: Mr. Disraeli's speech consisted of indications of what, according to him, the Government Bill ought not to be; and Mr. Gladstone's answer was an appeal for a patient hearing. On the 15th of February Mr. Gladstone brought forward his Land Bill--the anti-Fenian character of which was shown by a motion proposed a short time before by him, to the effect that O'Donovan Rossa, the Fenian convict, who had been elected member for Tipperary, "had become, and continued incapable of being elected or returned as a member of the House," and 293 members had voted for this motion against 16 on the other side. The formal motion of the Prime Minister was "to obtain leave to bring in a Bill to amend the law relating to the occupation and ownership of land in Ireland," and the Bill which he brought forward was divided into five parts. The first part (secs. 1--31) deals with the Law of Compensation to Tenants, giving a legal status to the "customs" known as the Ulster tenant-right custom and others that prevail in different parts of Ireland, and establishing the principle of compensation to the tenant for improvements and for disturbance by the act of the landlord. The second part deals with the Sale of Lands to Tenants; the third, with Advances by, and Powers of, the Board of Works; the fourth, with Legal Proceedings and the Court which was to try cases; the fifth, with miscellaneous questions relating to new tenancies. In his speech--as lucid and interesting as his great expository speeches always were--Mr. Gladstone began by a review of the history of the Parliamentary treatment of the question since the first Reform Act. That history was to be summed up in one word--procrastination. "What I hope is," he said, "that having witnessed the disaster and difficulty which have arisen from this long procrastination, we shall resolve in mind and heart by a manful effort to close and seal up for ever, if it may be, this great question which so intimately concerns the welfare and happiness of the people of Ireland." Government had certainly made, he declared, and were making, this "manful effort;" they had cleared their mind of all the anti-Celtic prepossessions so common in England; they had made themselves masters of all the facts which the recent voluminous literature of the question had brought to light. Then he passed to the "present sensitiveness" of Ireland, which he traced to recent interruptions of Irish prosperity, to evictions, and to the conversion of much land from tillage to pasture. But the flaws of existing legislation had much to do with it also; notably the Act which in some respects had done much good, the Encumbered Estates Act. This Act had sprung from a desire to introduce capital into Ireland, and it created great facilities in the sale of land owned by impoverished proprietors. But it contained "one fatal oversight." Lord Devon's Commission in 1845, endorsed by Sir Robert Peel's Government, had recognised the right of the tenant to be invested with a title to improvements--that is, to claim a full allowance for the value of improvements effected by him in the land he occupied. This claim, Mr. Gladstone said, was doubtless generally admitted by the landlords; but when the properties came, as they so often did, into the Encumbered Estates Court, the tenant found himself legally robbed of his equitable claim. The Court sold the lands just as they were, and took no notice of the distinction between the soil itself and the improvements made by the tenant. "So," he went on to say, "the improvements were sold away from the tenant to persons who paid a price for them and the price was paid to the outgoing landlord, who undoubtedly ought not to have been entitled to claim the property in them, and would not have been so entitled if the legislation recommended in 1845 had been adopted." In this and similar ways the Prime Minister showed that Acts which had been passed at various times with the most benevolent intentions towards Ireland, had defeated themselves, and helped ruin, instead of strengthening, the peace and prosperity of the country. The same thing, he added, might be said about emigration--a process natural and divinely beneficial when voluntary and free; but when compulsory, as was practically the case with Ireland, hardly to be distinguished from banishment.

These being some among the practical grievances of the Irish people with regard to their land, it was proposed to do away with them, or at least to diminish their force, by law. Free contract, said Mr. Gladstone, is undoubtedly the best arrangement, ideally speaking, in the relations between landlord and tenant, as in the other relations of life; but free contract is often practically impossible, and in some cases is with general approval overridden by the law. "You will not allow the man who has a factory to contract with the persons he employs on terms which suit their inclinations, but which you have forbidden.... These are cases which justify interference; but much stronger is the case for Ireland, because in substance these contracts, though nominally free, have not been really free under the peculiar conditions of life which that country offers." The Irishman is practically dependent on the soil--he has no choice of careers as he has in a mining and manufacturing country. "Strict freedom of contract, then, having been proved to be a great evil, what is the precise nature of that evil? The Devon Commission has pointed it out. It is that insecurity of tenure which not only abridges the comforts of the cultivator of the soil, but which limits and paralyses his industry, and at the same time vitiates his relations in a number of cases with the landlord, and in a still greater number with the law under which and the society in which he lives." To remedy this insecurity, a number of plans were extant; and already some were crying out for stability, some for perpetuity, some for fixity of tenure--phrases which all meant the same thing, the conversion of occupiers into owners. These plans Mr. Gladstone rejected, and went on to ask if no more moderate arrangement had been discovered, or could be found in the actual facts of Ireland. Certainly such arrangement could be found, notably in the "Custom of Ulster," and in the customs more or less analogous to it prevailing in other parts of Ireland; and to lands held under these customs Mr. Gladstone first looked. "It is not necessary at present," he said, "to investigate the history of the Ulster custom; whether it represents the ancient Irish ideas derived from the period of tribal possession; whether it represents the covenants which were inserted by James I. in the Charters granted to the settlers in the province; whether it has grown out of the happy political relations subsisting, for the most part, between the landlords and the occupiers, which have induced landlords to view favourably the growth of such a usage; or whether, lastly, it represents the payment of a kind of insurance for the safety of the incoming tenant when he obtains that possession of land which is so prized and valued in that country." Whatever were the origin of the custom, Government was content to take the Ulster custom as matter of fact, to convert it into a law, and to allow it to be examined into as a simple question of fact, in cases where a dispute might arise, by the Courts which would be established under this Bill. As such the Ulster custom would be regarded, where it existed, as including two elements--compensation for improvements, and the price of goodwill. The customs which prevailed in other parts of Ireland, being all of them much more partial, vague, and uncertain, were only to be made law under certain conditions. First, under such customs, a tenant was only to be allowed to claim payment of money on leaving his holding if he was disturbed in his tenancy by the act of his landlord. Secondly, he was not to be allowed to claim if evicted for non-payment of rent. Thirdly, he was not to be allowed to claim if he sublet his land (except for cottages) without his landlord's consent. Fourthly, not only arrears of rent, but damages done to the farm, might be pleaded by the landlord as a set-off. Fifthly, a landlord might bar the pleading of any such custom if he gave the tenant a lease, under certain conditions, of not less than thirty-one years.

But what was to be done where no such protecting custom could be pleaded? Outside Ulster--outside the shelter of similar usages--the tenant, if not protected by any lease, "felt the full force of that tremendous evil of insecurity of tenure." To meet the case of such persons, Government proposed a scale of damages for evictions, with power to those tenants "having a farm not rented, but valued in the public valuation at £100 and upwards, to contract themselves out of this section of the Act." This was the most important clause in the Bill, and, as will appear, the most memorable divisions afterwards took place upon it and in connection with it in committee and in the Lords. The compensation was of course to be decided by the Courts established by the Bill; and in applying the scale, the judge, said Mr. Gladstone, "is required by the Act to have regard to two things--first, the improvements which have been executed by the tenant on his farm; and, secondly, the loss which the occupier is about to sustain by being ejected from his holding." The "improvements" were to include ordinary improvements, such as draining and fencing, and also the greater improvements, such as permanent buildings and reclamation of land. The scale was to be--if the holding was valued in the public valuation at over £10, the judge might award to the tenant a sum not exceeding seven years' rent; if the holding was between £10 and £50, he might award a sum not exceeding five years' rent; if between £50 and £100, a sum not exceeding three years' rent; if above £100, a sum not exceeding two years' rent. "In the ordinary case of eviction for non-payment of rent," Mr. Gladstone added, "or for subdividing the land, the House will understand that the scale does not apply at all." Moreover, the word "improvement" was rigidly defined, and was to be taken to mean "something which would add to the letting value of the land, and suitable to the nature of the holding as an agricultural holding"--not any fancy improvements which were not suitable to the purposes of agriculture. The great change which the Bill effected was, in fact, a change in the legal presumption. Previously, as Mr. Gladstone said, the law had presumed all improvements to be the work of the landlord, and had given them to him. The Bill proposed to reverse this presumption, and to presume that improvements were the work of the occupier, giving to the landlord the business of showing the presumption wrong in any special case.

The importance which Government attached to these enactments about improvements is shown by the elaborate machinery which they devised to enable the landlord, if he chose, to bar the claim. This was a machinery of leasehold tenure, which was to allow the landlord to keep the general claim for goodwill off his estate. "This cannot be done by one lease," said Mr. Gladstone, "for if the landlord, at the end of one of these statutory leases, does not think fit to continue the system of leases, goodwill will immediately grow up as a plant grows from the ground." A series of leases would be required to do it, and, by continuous leases, a landlord might keep his land perfectly free from any claim to goodwill.

"I may now, perhaps, be asked," added Mr. Gladstone, "what we have done for the Irish labourer. For him we have done what the case will permit. We have allowed the tenant to subdivide and sublet for cottages and gardens.... We have offered advances from the Public Funds.... But the one great boon--and it is a great boon--which it is in the power of the Legislature to give to the agricultural labourer in Ireland, is to increase the demand for his labour, and, by imparting a stimulus to that part of the country, to insure its requiring more strong arms to carry it on, and thereby to bring more bidders into the market for those arms, and raise the natural and legitimate price of their labour.... If we can only convince every man that, from the time this Act passes, he will be able to prosecute his industry in security and in the manner most advantageous to himself, we shall confer upon the agricultural labourer the greatest boon which it is in our power to bestow."

These were the main features of the Bill which Mr. Gladstone committed to the House in a peroration singularly dignified and self-restrained. It was not, he said, to be expected that evils of such long standing as Irish evils were should be cured in a day, and it was impossible that they should be cured if the Bill were to be "poisoned by the malignant agency of angry or bitter passions." The passing of the Bill was to be looked on, not as the triumph of party over party, but "as a common work of common love and goodwill to the common good of our common country." "With such objects and in such a spirit," he concluded, "the House will address itself to the work and sustain the feeble efforts of Government. And my hope, at least, is high and ardent that we shall live to see our work prosper in our hand; and that in that Ireland which we desire to unite to England and Scotland by the only enduring ties--those of free will and free affection--peace, order, and a settled and cheerful industry will diffuse their blessings from year to year and from day to day over a smiling land."

A Bill of this complicated kind could obviously not be discussed on the first reading, so no debate took place until the second reading on the 7th of March. From the reception given to Mr. Gladstone's statement on February 15th, it was clear that the Conservatives did not mean to offer a point-blank opposition to the principle of the Bill. Mr. Gathorne Hardy, who acted as leader of the Opposition on that night, owned that his party "had a keen sense of the evils existing among the landlords, tenants, and labourers of Ireland at present," and hinted that they would reserve their principal criticisms till the Bill was in committee. The direct hostility to the Bill came from another quarter--from the extreme Irish party. Mr. Bryan, who was one of them, and Captain White, member for Tipperary, proposed and seconded an amendment to the second reading, to the effect that the Bill should be read again that day six months. But the views of members who protested against the principle of a landlord being ever allowed to raise his rents, and who openly asked not only for "fixity of tenure," but for fixity at nominal payments, could hardly hope to find favour in a Parliament of landlords. The principal speakers who criticised the Government plan were men of quite other views. Dr. Ball, Colonel Wilson-Patten, Mr. Henley, Mr. Ward Hunt, and Mr. Disraeli protested, not against the insufficient rights bestowed upon the occupier, but against the injury done to the landlord. Dr. Ball, the member for Dublin University, who brought to the Conservative side a remarkable contribution of eloquence and force, protested very strongly against the principle of interfering with freedom of contract. "You in England," he said, "have been working for centuries to make landlord and tenant not ascertain their rights by litigation, but have them established on the solid basis of contract.... I say you have got the best system; and I believe it to be the best because I believe that Englishmen, having set their hearts on the best system, would be content with nothing less. What do I ask for my country? I ask the right to rise to the same standard as yourselves. I demand that you will not lay down a rule of this kind and say, 'This is good enough for Ireland. There is a positive incapacity in the Irish landlord to deal with his tenants by contract, and in the Irish tenant to take care of himself by contract. The Scotch and English are able to do it. Therefore the true system shall be reserved as a privilegium for them; but the Irish shall not be able to attempt it, because we shall put a clause in an Act of Parliament to prevent it.'" And Mr. Disraeli, in a similar strain, protested both against legalising the custom of Ulster ("because it does not exist," he said) and against interference with the freedom of contract. And yet, as we said, it was plain that the Conservative party were too well convinced of the strength of Government to attempt a wholesale rejection of the Bill. In the division that closed the debate on the second reading, Mr. Gladstone carried them into the lobby with him, and the principle of the Bill was affirmed by 442 against 11.

This majority was a clear enough intimation that the principles of the Government Bill were accepted by the House. Among the eleven "Noes" were found only three Tories--among them the veteran Mr. Henley, whose staunch adherence to landlord-right was not to be shaken by any amount of "political necessity," such as Mr. Disraeli talked of. But Mr. Henley, Sir W. Bagge, and Mr. Lowther--who for once found themselves in the strange company of the Extreme Left of Home Rulers and Roman Catholics--could only offer an ineffectual protest against the "tenants' Bill." The principle, that of legalising customs of compensation where found, and of making a statutory scale of compensation for loss of occupancy in the absence of any custom, had been once for all affirmed. It was evident, however, that the Bill would be severely handled in committee; and the prospect became all the clearer from certain fresh signs of agrarian terrorism which began to appear just after the second reading. County Mayo began to be disturbed by the visits of masked and armed men to the farmhouses, with the object of making the farmers swear to "break up their pasture lands." These outrages--more like the proceedings of Australian bushrangers or American Ku-klux men than of inhabitants of these islands--did not dispose Parliament to leniency in regard to Irish disaffection. Mr. Chichester Fortescue proposed, on the 17th of March, a Bill which would effectually meet these agrarian cases; and in a fortnight it became law. Its effect was to place certain districts of Ireland practically in a state of siege; it forbade the possession of firearms by unlicensed persons; it gave rights of search to constables; it took more stringent measures against threatening letters; it allowed discretionary arrests of suspected persons; it allowed the grand jury to give damages, chargeable on the county, to the families of murdered men; and it increased almost indefinitely the right of Government to seize newspapers. This Bill, which nothing but extreme necessity could have justified, passed Commons and Lords almost without a struggle; the Lords especially agreeing with Lord Salisbury, who said, "You must teach the Irish people to fear the law before you can induce them to like it."

Never has a Bill been visited with a more imposing show of amendments than the Land Bill in committee. Three hundred alterations, like the three hundred conspirators against King Porsenna, were banded together to work its fall, or at least to hamper its activity. The Ulster custom was debated for many hours, and met with all kinds of observations--from those alike who said with Mr. Disraeli, "You cannot legalise the custom of Ulster, because it does not exist," and those who regarded the Bill as a poor instalment of reform, to be accepted under protest. When the third clause came before the House, Mr. Disraeli brought forward an important amendment, directed against the principle of compensation for eviction as distinguished from compensation for improvements. He wished to insert the words, limiting the compensation, "in respect of unexhausted improvements made by him, or any predecessor in title, and of interruption in the completion of any course of husbandry suited to the holding." Mr. Disraeli charged Government with changing their original Bill in one most important point--namely, with intending to bring in a new clause practically extending the Ulster custom to the other parts of Ireland. The third clause, as originally drawn, proposed to give the outgoing tenant compensation for the improvements--"a subject on which both sides were unanimous; the marrow of all Land Bills; the result on which investigation and discussion have enabled the country to arrive at a mature conclusion, and which, if secured," said Mr. Disraeli "would, in my opinion, do all that in justice is required." But there were words at the end of the original clause which were ambiguous; "that compensation should be given for the loss sustained by the tenant on quitting his holding." These words Mr. Disraeli declared that he and his friends had understood to mean what his amendment now stated--namely, that over and above receiving compensation for his improvements, "the tenant would, on quitting his holding, be secured the fair usufruct of any husbandry or skill in the tillage of the land which he had not yet received." So that Mr. Disraeli had originally intended his amendment to be a mere declaratory amendment, for the removal of a verbal ambiguity. But to his great surprise, he found that at the last moment Government had themselves amended the clause; that they had thrown the proposal for compensation for improvements into the background, and brought out as a chief part of the clause "that compensation is to be given to any tenant at the termination of his lease, on the assumption that the termination of his occupancy is a grievance for which the tenant ought to be compensated. This clause, then, in its later form, is a clause which does not conceal that, in the opinion of the framers of the Bill, occupation involves a right of property."

Here was ground on which the question of the Bill might very well have been fought on the second reading; and it is not unlikely that, if the clause had originally been drawn as it afterwards was, Government would not have been allowed to wait so long without a struggle. That "occupation should be held to involve a right of property"--that a tenant should have a right to claim part-ownership in the land he occupied--was a notion which the English landlord shuddered to contemplate. Mr. Disraeli played very skilfully upon that landlord sentiment. He dwelt upon the fact that the principle was "opposed to all the fundamental principles of our legislation for the country generally;" and protested against applying principles to Ireland without considering their effect upon England and Scotland. And even in Ireland, he maintained, this admission of tenant-right in so extreme a form would have disastrous results. The landlord, finding that the new law gave his tenant a right to a third of his freehold--seven years' rent; twenty-one years' rent being the average value of a freehold in Ireland--and seeing an escape from this claim in the clause which barred the right in the case of non-payment of rent, would take advantage of this, "the only position of strength left him." He would wait till the tenant did not pay his rent--a very frequent occurrence in Ireland--and then he would evict mercilessly. To escape a repetition of the danger he would consolidate his farms, and the old tenants would have to wander away to new homes. They, to avoid this last extremity, would appeal to "those rural ethics with the consequences of which we are all familiar." The rural logic of the Irish tenant would run thus: "I have lost my holding because I did not pay my rent. Can anything be more flagrantly unjust than that a man should be deprived of his contingent right to a third of the freehold because he does not pay his rent?" Or in other words, "Am I to lose seven years' rent because I have failed to pay half a year's?" As a consequence the Irish tenant would act upon his rural ethics, and either have his landlord's land or his life. "So far from the improvement of the country, so far from terminating all these misunderstandings and heartburnings which we seem now so anxious upon both sides of the House to bring to a close, you will have the same controversies still raging, only with increased acerbity, and under circumstances and conditions which inevitably must lead to increased bitterness and increased perils to society."

Mr. Disraeli's speech, which, clever as it was, struck rather at the exclusion of tenants evicted for non-payment of rent from the benefits of the Bill than at the compensation given for eviction on other grounds, was answered both by Mr. Lowe and Mr. Chichester Fortescue. Mr. Lowe called his language a "declaration of war;" and indeed an amendment moved by the leader of the Opposition upon a Government Bill is seldom anything else. Mr. Lowe dwelt upon the "terrible state of Ireland" springing from the habit of wholesale eviction; upon the need of sometimes transgressing the strict laws of political economy; upon the happy mean of the Government Bill, which verged neither towards the Scylla of Mr. Disraeli nor towards the Charybdis of the advocates of fixity of tenure. "There is no doubt," he said, "that harsh conduct by the landlord, and evictions in times long past, have popularised murder in Ireland, and have made people look upon a murderer as a man not entirely in the wrong. When this feeling has once been created, observe the progress it makes. It has now passed from the landlord and tenant to the people themselves; outrages which used to be mainly directed against the landlord and persons in his employ are now directed against others: no injury is too slight--the discarding of a servant, the dismissal of a porter by a railway official, underselling by a tradesman--anything is a sufficient excuse for shedding blood. What is the fountain of bitterness from which these waters first flowed? Has not this demoralising practice sprung up mainly because the law did not give the tenant relief, and the tenant grew to think he was entitled to take the law into his own hands?" Again, what better established rule of political economy was there than that every man should be free to exercise any calling he liked? Yet we had a system of trade licences--a plain violation of this rule; and other rules might be found similarly violated for purposes of State necessity--the Government monopoly of the Post Office, for instance. And as to the "middle course" of Government, "we have gone," said Mr. Lowe, "to neither extreme. We have endeavoured, without shaking the foundations of property, to give adequate relief to the tenants; we have entirely repudiated the notion of fixity of tenure; and I think the Irish landlords are very wise in acquiescing. What would be the only result suppose the Bill failed? Why, they would be in this most miserable position: they would find themselves in the claws of the right honourable gentleman who would then be at the head of the Government, with a fine working minority in the House. When that time came," said the speaker, in allusion to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, and his power of "educating his party"--"when that time came they might indeed tremble. I think I already hear the speech which the right honourable gentleman would make to the House. He would say it was a mockery and a delusion to give compensation to the tenant in case of eviction; such a remedy would fail because it did not go deep enough; and the only panacea for Ireland was fixity of tenure, with a periodical re-valuation of rents."

This gloomy prospect, however, was not to be realised. It was not reserved for Mr. Disraeli to repeat the tactics of 1866 and 1867, and first to turn out a Government on Conservative grounds, and then out-Herod their Liberalism by a Bill of his own. The debate flowed on. Mr. Gathorne Hardy was furious with Mr. Lowe, and then went on to denounce the clause: "I say that by doing this you are creating a property that did not exist before. You are giving a man something which he never had before; and you cannot give it him without taking it from somebody else." Sir Roundell Palmer, who, on questions of property as on ecclesiastical questions, was always rather Conservative than Liberal, took the opportunity of criticising the whole Bill from the point of view of "caution," and suggested many difficulties in the way of the treatment of prospective tenancies. But Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. Gladstone after him, maintained both the moderate character of the Bill generally, and the fact that "this clause was the central and essential part, without which it would not be worth the while of Parliament to pass the Bill." Mr. Gladstone's speech was at once temperate and firm. He dwelt upon the fact which Mr. Disraeli had slighted--the fact that the Bill was "wholly and absolutely exceptional." He did not attempt an abstract justification of its principles; on the contrary, he admitted fully that such interference with the laws of political economy was only to be justified by stern necessity. In fact, Government hoped that this measure might soon work such a cure in the Irish temper as to cut away the ground of necessity from under its own feet, in which case it would naturally fall into abeyance. "Twenty years, and thereafter until Parliament shall otherwise determine"--that was to be the limit of the operation of the Bill: a limit clearly showing both the conviction of Government as to its exceptional character, and their hope that it would one day cease to be necessary. But at present no such alteration could be made in it as that which Mr. Disraeli proposed, aimed, as it was, against "one of the main pillars of the Bill." "One of the grand provisions of the Bill was the confirmation of Irish customs. Another grand principle was that improvements made by the tenant were the property of the tenant. And a third principle of the Bill, which was by far the most prominent in the lengthened statement it was my duty to inflict upon the House, was that damages for eviction were to be paid to the tenant."

The division which followed upon this debate was perhaps the most important of the Session, and it was a great triumph for the Government. The Ayes were 220; the Noes, 296; so that by a majority of 76 the new principle, which did most undoubtedly confer a new property upon the Irish tenant, was affirmed by the House of Commons. With this great victory the success of the Government Bill became assured; and the frequent divisions upon the later clauses, and upon amendments moved from both sides of the House, were one and all Government successes. The next night to that on which Mr. Disraeli's amendment was lost, Mr. Gladstone carried his own amendment, inserting after the word "compensation," the words, "for the loss which the Court shall find to have been sustained by him in quitting his holding," by a majority of 111. The further alteration which the clause underwent, was that all tenants of holdings at £50 a year and upwards were placed in the class of those with whose freedom of contract the Bill did not interfere--a different thing from excluding them altogether from the right to claim damages for eviction in the absence of contract. The former amendment was consented to by Mr. Gladstone, although unwillingly; the latter, proposed by Mr. W. Fowler, was lost by a majority of 32. But there is no necessity for us to follow the Bill through every little stage of its progress through committee. On the 30th of May it appeared in its amended shape, waiting for the third reading; and it passed without a division, amid murmurs of protest from the Conservative benches, and articulate protest from Mr. Hardy, who confessed that he looked to the Lords to assert themselves in the interest of landed property, and remedy the injustice of "damages for eviction." Mr. Gladstone knew his strength, and said little on that point. He only appealed to the consciences of the Irish landlords. "If," he said, "we were to put to the Irish landlords, categorically, the question, 'Will you take the Bill as it is, or will you have it lost?' I may be wrong, but my firm conviction is that the cry of those landlords would be, 'Let the Bill pass into law!'" And, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, it did pass into law that night.

There remained the House of Lords. The second reading was moved by Lord Granville, who had, of course, a much less difficult task to perform than Mr. Gladstone had had on the first introduction of the Bill in the House of Commons. The subject had been so long before the public, the discussion of it had been so full, that not only did the Lords know the details of the Bill already, but their own opinions of it were pretty well known to one another. Lord Granville did not expect much opposition to the main outlines of the Bill, nor did he meet with much. The Duke of Richmond, the Conservative leader, fixed mainly upon the duration of the leases specified by the Bill, and wanted to shorten the length of those leases which would exempt parties from its operation from thirty-one to twenty-one years. When this was the chief objection made by the leader of the Opposition, it was evident that the Bill would not be seriously imperilled, though Lord Salisbury might "condemn with his whole heart" the principle of compensation for eviction; though Lord Leitrim might object to "every part of it, from the title downwards;" and though Lord Clancarty might cry out that "it was a Bill of pains and penalties against the Irish landlord." The second reading passed without a division, though the Opposition declared their intention of making serious alterations in committee. Committee, indeed, is the proper battle-ground--the only possible battle-ground--for a Bill of this nature. A Bill may be rejected on the second reading when it is a Bill of one principle, definite and unmistakable; but the Irish Land Bill had three principles at least, according to Mr. Gladstone's enumeration; and according to the Lord Chancellor's, it had six. To reject it on the second reading, therefore, would have been to reject not one principle, but three, or even six, which, as the House of Commons was not composed entirely of Mr. Henleys, nor the House of Lords of Lord Leitrims, was hardly possible.

In committee the Duke of Richmond appeared much more hostile than he had appeared on the second reading. He carried, by 92 to 71--not large numbers, considering the importance of the question and the number of the Peers who actually compose the House--a most important amendment, reducing the scale of compensation for eviction. He demanded that the full scale of seven years' rent should only be awarded in the case of holdings under £4 a year--not under £10, as the Government figure stood; and the rest of the compensation clause was altered by him in a similar spirit. Of the other amendments carried by him, the most notable were--one which forbade a tenant to claim compensation if he had "assigned," i.e. let, his farm to another, without the landlord's approval; another, which aroused a feeling of indignation in many hearts, forbade a tenant to let gardens to his labourers under penalty of losing the protection of the Act; another was the same as that which he had given notice of at the time of the second reading. Two other amendments of great importance were also carried--one, by Lord Salisbury, fixing £50, instead of £100, as the maximum rental under which a tenant might claim compensation for eviction; and one, by Lord Clanricarde, removing the legal presumption which the Bill had declared was to be in favour of the tenant, and providing that all claims for compensation for improvements should be proved by actual evidence. But before the Bill was finally sent down to the Commons, the chances of a collision between the two Houses, which seemed threatening, were very much lessened by the spontaneous reversal by the Lords of many of their own amendments. In particular, that of Lord Salisbury--which he had carried in defiance of the nominal chief of his party; and which, if persisted in, would have robbed the measure of half its force--was withdrawn. In the end, the only one of the Lords' amendments that was allowed to remain in the Bill was that which assured to the landlord a modified veto on his tenant's right to assign; and with this alteration the Bill was read for the third time. It received the Royal Assent on the 1st of August--a memorable day in the history of emancipation; and thus this measure, so novel in principle, so bold and yet so temperate in design, took its place among the laws of the United Kingdom. To say that it had much immediate effect in quieting the temper of the Irish people would be untrue; but it must be remembered that the bitterness of centuries is not cured in a year.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXIII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The Elementary Education Bill--Mr. Forster--The existing State of Education--Deficiencies of the System--The Union and the League--Mr. Forster and the Cabinet--Mr. Forster's Speech--"Good Schools"--Undenominational Inspection--The Conscience Clause--Voluntary Schools and Compulsion--The School Boards--Districts and Fees--Powers of School Boards--The Religious Difficulty--Attendance--Mr. Forster's Peroration--Mr. Dixon's Amendment--Mr. Forster's Reply--Mr. Winterbotham's Speech and the Churchmen--Mr. Dixon's Motion withdrawn--Partial Concessions--The Cowper-Temple Amendment--Amendment moved by Mr. Richards--Mr. Forster's admirable Conduct--Changes in the Bill--It becomes Law--Outrage in Greece--Seizure of Tourists by Greek Brigands--Negotiations for their Ransom--The Brigands demand an Amnesty--Intrigues of the Opposition--The Greek Government determines on a coup de main--Mr. Erskine's Negotiations--The Troops move on Oropus--Murder of the Prisoners--Indignation in England--Army and Navy Estimates--The Budget--Other Legislation--Disaster in the Eastern Seas--Obituary of the Year.

Two days after the introduction of the Irish Land Bill, on the 17th of February, Mr. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council, brought in his Elementary Education Bill, a measure which, fair as were its opening prospects, was destined ultimately to become far more of a bone of contention in England than many Irish questions. Mr. Forster had kept his secret admirably. It was, of course, known that Government had pledged themselves to deal with the Education Question during the Session, and that the construction of an Education Bill had been long ago entrusted to Mr. Forster. As the Radical member for Bradford, Mr. Forster had many times proved his Liberal principles, and had already gained the respect and attention of the House before taking office. His vigorous character, his capacity for hard work, and his known ability seemed to point him out as specially fitted to deal with the vexed and intricate problem of National Education. But how was he going to deal with it? What line were Government, as represented by him, about to take up with regard to the great questions of free education, compulsion, and State aid to denominational schools? The London newspapers guessed in vain. No one out of the Cabinet had any idea of the provisions of the Bill before the night of the 17th of February, when Mr. Forster disclosed his scheme to a crowded House. His speech, as a speech, was perhaps a greater success than any he had achieved before. Perfect mastery of his subject gave a freedom and self-possession to his manner in which it had sometimes been wanting, and his whole demeanour was that of a man who had gone to the bottom of a great question, and who felt himself to be the most competent person to lead the opinion of the House and the country to a satisfactory decision with regard to it.

Before describing the means by which Government hoped to effect a radical change in the educational condition of the country, it may be as well to glance over the system of National Education as it existed at the time of Mr. Forster's speech. The whole system of National Education in England before the Act of 1870 was a matter of voluntary effort. In bygone ages, Greek philosophy had held the education of children to be one of the most essential duties of the State as such--a duty which could not be relegated to private hands, and which the State was bound to conduct with reference to the general welfare of the community. In more modern times Prussia had recognised this political view of education, and had made the training of every Prussian child a State matter. In England alone, with her over-fondness for self-government, and her love for the system of local provision for local needs, voluntaryism remained intact; and the education of the poor was left wholly at the discretion and in the hands of their richer and more intelligent neighbours. Voluntary effort must come first; then, indeed, State help would follow in the shape of building grants or annual grants, coupled with the condition of Government inspection; but in all cases the help given by the State had to be called forth by the prior voluntary action of some particular individual or some particular neighbourhood. It had long been felt that the results of this system were most unsatisfactory and inadequate; and as the Reform question advanced, and political enfranchisement had to be yielded step by step to the working classes, the gross and widespread ignorance prevailing among the lower orders began to force itself more and more strongly upon the attention of the country. Mr. Lowe only expressed the general feeling in a bitter and cynical way when, after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1867, he pointed out the power that it had conferred upon the working-man, and uttered the famous phrase, "Let us educate our masters!" The amount of educational destitution existing in England in 1870 may be roughly gathered from the following statistics. From the Census of 1851 it appeared that about one-fourth of the population of England were of an age to go to school--that is to say, from the ages of three to thirteen or four to fourteen. In 1870 the population of England was twenty-one millions, so that about five millions and a half of children would be of what is technically called the school age. Of these, 23 per cent. had to be allowed for as absent from school from allowable causes, such as sickness; half a million were at school for the upper or middle classes; and rather less than two millions and a half of the remaining three and a half millions were actually at school. There remained about one million one hundred thousand children who were not at school at all. Nor did this represent by any means the whole extent of the deficiency. Of the two and a half millions represented as actually at school, only a very small proportion indeed could possibly derive real benefit from the education offered them, because, as was abundantly proved by statistics, far the greater number of children were removed from school before their twelfth year--that is to say, before the age when the average child, much more the child of poor and uneducated parents, becomes capable of anything like lasting and profitable learning. This evil of short-lived and irregular attendance had been increasing during the years preceding 1870 rather than diminishing, and it was admitted on all hands to form one of the most serious elements of the educational difficulty. With regard to local deficiencies, especially to the educational needs of our large towns, let Mr. Forster speak for himself. "It is calculated," he said, "that in Liverpool the number of children between five and thirteen who ought to receive an elementary education is 80,000; but, as far as we can make out, 20,000 of them attend no school whatever, while at least another 20,000 attend schools where they get an education not worth having. In Manchester--that is, in the borough of Manchester, not including Salford--there are about 65,000 children who might be at school; and of this number 16,000 go to no school at all.... As a Yorkshireman I am sorry to say that, from what I hear, Leeds appears to be as bad as Liverpool; and so also, I fear, is Birmingham."

The educational need, then, could scarcely be denied, though extreme Conservatives, like Lord Robert Montagu, might attempt to palliate it. But the question of "how is this need to be supplied?" admitted of very different answers; and opinion was indeed divided into at least two hostile camps with regard to it, represented by the National Education Union and the famous Birmingham League. The avowed object of both was "to bring a good education within the reach of every child in the country." But the Union proposed to accomplish this by means of the existing system, supplemented and reformed; the League, on the contrary, aimed at the destruction of the existing system, and at the gradual erection of something wholly different upon its ruins. The Union desired, above all things, to keep education in England denominational and founded upon religious teaching; while the League asserted strongly that education ought to be wholly undenominational, that State aid should only be given to secular instruction, and that religion should be provided by the voluntary efforts of all religious sects, the Church of England included. The doctrines of the League were supported inside the House of Commons by men like Mr. Mundella, Mr. Dixon, and Mr. Fawcett; and outside it, by the bulk of the Dissenting communities, who saw in the programme of the League a protest against the undisputed supremacy of the Church in education. On the other hand, the sequel showed that the partisans of the more moderate policy advocated by the Union had Mr. Forster himself in the main on their side, a large majority (both Liberals and Conservatives) in the House, and the whole influence and power of the Church of England. The Church talked of her "claims," and pointed triumphantly to the work done by her, and by her alone, in the cause of education; while the Dissenters complained of grievances, accused the clergy of intentional violations of the Conscience Clause then existing, and professed to regard their zeal for education as a mere cloak for widespread projects of priestly aggrandisement. Between these contending factions Mr. Forster had to take his stand, and to frame a Bill which should if possible satisfy both.

Mr. Forster had set about his great undertaking in that spirit of conscientious thoroughness which characterised him through life. From his well-known biography by Sir Wemyss Reid, we gather that so early as the 21st of October, 1869, he had submitted to the Cabinet an exhaustive memorandum, in which the four ideals of the Birmingham League, the National Education Union, Mr. Bruce's Bill of 1868, and Mr. Lowe's plan for supplementing voluntary effort by compulsory rates were submitted to the most searching criticism. He decided that Mr. Lowe's scheme was the best of the four, but suggested that it might be strengthened in various ways, and concluded--"In venturing to submit the above suggestions, I may be allowed to add my conviction that in dealing with this Education Question boldness is the only safe policy; that any measure which does not profess to be complete will be a certain failure; but that we shall have support from all sides if, on the one hand, we acknowledge and make use of present educational efforts, and, on the other hand, admit the duty of the central Government to supplement these efforts by means of local agency." His views found favour with the Ministry, but meanwhile the Birmingham League had begun to stir, and Mr. Forster was much annoyed by rumours that the Cabinet was of divided mind, and that the measure would in consequence be postponed. On the 6th of December we find him writing to Mr. Glyn, the Ministerial Whip, an earnest protest against procrastination. He received a fairly reassuring reply; nevertheless there were dissensions in the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was immersed in Irish land tenure, and Lord De Grey, the President of the Council, had to bring considerable pressure to bear so as to prevent the measure from being shelved. In the end Mr. Forster's memorandum was practically adopted, though his proposals for compulsion were made less stringent, and his provision that the aid given to already existing schools should be confined to secular education was, somewhat injudiciously, toned down.

We cannot do better than let Mr. Forster describe his Bill mainly in his own words. The first problem, then, to be solved, said the Vice-President of the Council, was this: "How can we cover the country with good schools?" The answer to this must be influenced by three considerations--considerations of the duties of parents to their children, of the duty of Government to the taxpayer, and of the duty of every educational reformer to those who were already labouring in the cause of education, and to the system which they at great cost had built up and supported. That is to say, "in solving this problem, there must be, consistently with the attainment of our object, the least possible expenditure of public money, the utmost endeavour not to injure existing and efficient schools, and the most careful absence of all encouragement to parents to neglect their children." The principles upon which the present Bill is founded, he continued, "are two in number--legal enactment that there shall be efficient schools everywhere throughout the kingdom; and compulsory provision of such schools, if and where needed, but not unless proved to be needed. So much for the principles of the Bill. Coming now to the actual provisions by which they are to be enforced, it will suggest itself to the minds of all that there must be to begin with a system of organisation throughout the country. We take care that the country shall be properly mapped and divided so that its wants may be duly ascertained. For this we take present known divisions and declare them to be school districts, so that upon the passing of this Bill there will be no portion of England or Wales not included in one school district or another. We have taken the boundaries of boroughs as regards towns, and parishes as regards the country--and when I say parish, I mean the civil parish, and not the ecclesiastical district. With regard to the metropolis, we have come to the conclusion, subject to the counsel and advice of the metropolitan members, that the best districts we can take in the metropolis are, where they exist, the school districts already formed for workhouse schools; and where they do not exist, the boundaries of the vestries. Having thus got our districts, our next duty is to ascertain their educational condition, and for that purpose we take power to collect returns which will show us what in each district is the number of schools, of scholars, and of children requiring education. We also take power to send down inspectors and officers to test the quality of the schools and of the education given in them. Then if in any one of these districts we find the elementary education to be sufficient in quantity, efficient in quality, and suitable in character, that is to say, hampered by no religious or other restriction to which parents can reasonably object, we leave that district alone; and we shall continue to leave it alone so long as it fulfils those conditions. And I may as well state that for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of a district we count all schools that will receive our inspectors, whether private or public, whether aided or unaided by Government, whether secular or denominational."

Here Mr. Forster, before describing the means by which districts insufficiently supplied with schools were to be sufficiently supplied, explained an important change in the character of Government inspection to be introduced. "Hitherto," he said, "the inspection has been denominational; we propose that it shall no longer be so." The reasons for this change were obvious. In the first place, an invidious distinction was kept up between Church inspectors and inspectors of other denominations--the former alone having the right to inquire into the teaching of doctrines in any school. Thus both sides were in many cases aggrieved. Clergymen complained that their school children were subjected to examination in religious doctrine by an inspector whose religious views differed from their own, while a Wesleyan or an Independent school could not be subjected to any such examination at all. On the other hand, the Dissenters were justly irritated by a distinction that seemed to imply that their peculiar tenets were not, and could not be, recognised by the State in the same way as the doctrines of the Church. The denominational character of the inspection also very much complicated the whole system of inspection, introducing many practical difficulties into the division of inspecting-districts, and so on. In consideration of all these objections, and believing that the existing system was favourable neither to religion in general nor to the Church cause in particular, "we propose," said Mr. Forster, "that after a limited period one of the conditions of public elementary schools shall be, that they shall admit any inspector without any denominational provision."

The next provision of the Bill concerned the framing of a stringent conscience clause to be accepted by every elementary denominational school before public money would be granted to it. There had been at one time strong opposition on the part of a fraction of the Church party to any conscience clause whatever. It became evident, however, several months before the introduction of the Education Bill, that public opinion, both lay and clerical, was strengthening in its favour, and the adoption of a conscience clause into the programme of the National Education Union virtually settled the matter. The Conscience Clause in the Bill of 1870 ran as follows:--

"No scholar shall be required, as a condition of being admitted into or of attending or of enjoying all the benefits of the school, to attend or to abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any place of religious worship, or to learn any such catechism or religious formulary, or to be present at any such lesson or instruction or observance as may have been objected to on religious grounds, by the parent of the scholar sending his objection in writing to the managers or principal teacher of the school, or one of them."

By far the most practical objection that had been made to a conscience clause had been that it would be in reality of little or no use in any case where the clergyman or other manager of a school should be bent on setting it aside. "That, however," said Mr. Forster, "is not the view that I have formed from my personal experience. In the first place, I do not know any case in which our present conscience clause has been applied in which it has not been found thoroughly effective; but our new clause will be different in this important respect, that whereas the old clause was applicable only in some cases to building grants, the new one will apply to all grants, and especially to all annual grants. It is perfectly clear in its operation, and I am quite sure that no manager of a school will risk the loss of the annual grant by violating its conditions."

Mr. Forster went on to state that every opportunity would be afforded to the upholders of the voluntary system to do what was necessary for themselves, and thus avoid the interference of Government. "We have said," he continued, "that we must have provision for public elementary schools. The first question then is, by whom is it to be made? Now here for a time we shall test the voluntary zeal of the district. Not only do we not neglect voluntary help, but, on condition of respecting the rights of parents and the rights of conscience, we welcome it. To see, then, whether voluntary help will be forthcoming, we give a year to test the zeal and willingness of any volunteers who may be disposed to help; but we ought not to give longer time, because we cannot afford to wait." If therefore the educational need had not been met in any given district by voluntary effort at the expiration of the year of grace, the State would step in and supply the deficiency. The next point was one of great importance. The Bill admitted the principle of compulsion, so often attacked as un-English; and in certain districts and under certain conditions, elementary education was in future to be enforced. It will be seen that Mr. Forster was afterwards obliged to defend himself from the charge of timidity and half-heartedness in this matter of compulsion. Having gone so far, it was asked, why not go farther; and having once admitted the justice of the principle of compulsion, why not make it the general law of the land, instead of allowing its application to depend upon the caprice of individual school boards who might adopt it here and there? Yet Mr. Forster was not to blame, but the Cabinet, though he loyally held his peace and never let it appear that he was defending a principle to which his private convictions were opposed.

The machinery of school boards--the newest and most prominent feature in the Bill--by means of which education was to be provided by the State where voluntaryism failed, had next to be explained to the House. For Government did not propose to educate the nation by means of an enormous and omnipotent central department. This would indeed have been un-English, for local action and self-government have been throughout English history the mainstays of English life. Local resources were still to supply local wants, but they were to be made to do this in a far more effective, systematic, and public manner than heretofore. "Voluntary local action," said Mr. Forster, "has failed, therefore our hope is to invoke the help of municipal organisation. Where we have proved the educational need, we supply it by local administration--that is, by means of rates, aided by money voted by Parliament, expended under local management, with central inspection and control.... Undoubtedly this proposal will affect a large portion of the kingdom. I believe it will affect almost all the towns and a great part of the country."

With regard to the area of the school districts, Mr. Forster had already indicated the boundaries established by the Bill. In the provinces, the parish was to be looked upon as the unit of area--Government of course reserving to themselves the power of throwing two or more parishes together if necessary--rather than the union, as being smaller, more convenient, and freer from practical difficulties. In London the existing school districts were to be taken, and, where these did not exist, the boundaries of vestries. And in every school district where the voluntary system had proved inadequate to meet the educational demand, a school board was to be elected--that is to say, a body of responsible and official persons, whose business it would be to provide sufficient and suitable education for the whole district over which their power extended. "But the next question that arises is--How are we to elect our school boards in the provinces (London having been already provided with school boards under a previous Bill), and whom are they to elect? Now first who is to elect? Well, the electoral body we have chosen for the towns is the town council. I do not think there can be much dispute upon that point. In the country we have taken the best body we can find--the select vestry where there is one, and a vestry where there is no select vestry. Secondly--Whom are they to elect?" The answer to this was very simple. The electors were to choose whom they thought fit without limitation of choice; but there was to be a limit of numbers. The school board was to consist of never less than three or more than twelve members. Mr. Forster had come to the conclusion that it was not desirable to add ex officio members to the board, thinking very rightly that "the very men fit to be ex officio members would come in with greater influence and almost equal certainty if subjected to popular election." Nor were the boards to be saddled with Government nominees--a proceeding that would make Government responsible for the failures as well as the successes of any given board. Government only reserved to themselves the rights of a final court of appeal in any case where the work of the board was either carelessly done or done in opposition to the spirit of the Act. In any such case Government claimed a right to step in and manage the district for as long as it thought fit.

The important question of school fees, important in one way to the poor parent and in another to the taxpayer, came next to be considered. Government, however, said Mr. Forster, had no intention of making elementary education in England free. In the first place, such a change could only be effected at the cost of a great sacrifice to the country--a sacrifice of some six or seven hundred thousand pounds yearly--an amount that it might fairly be calculated would be reached by the parents' pence under the new scheme. And in the second place, supposing that the country were ready to undertake the sacrifice, the framers of the Bill were, on general principles, wholly averse from it. To relieve the parent of all payment for his children's education would be, said Mr. Forster, to weaken the sense of parental obligations in him, and to pauperise those who had hitherto kept themselves free from the taint of pauperism. Some provision, however, was to be made for extreme poverty, and real inability to pay school fees was in no case to prove a bar to any child's education. "We take two powers," said the speaker, "we give the school board power to establish special free schools under special circumstances, which chiefly apply to large towns, where, from the exceeding poverty of the district, or for other very special reasons, they prove to the satisfaction of the Government that such a school is needed and ought to be established.... We also empower the school board to give free tickets to parents who, they think, cannot really afford to pay for the education of their children; and we take care that those free tickets shall have no stigma of pauperism attached to them. We do not give up the school fees, and, indeed, we keep to the present proportions--namely, of about one-third raised from the parents, one-third out of the public taxes, and one-third out of local funds. Where the local funds are not raised by voluntary subscription, the rates will come into action." A question of rates is always, as Mr. Forster went on to say, treading on delicate ground, but the future education rate need alarm no one. Should it ever exceed threepence in the pound--a most unlikely event--Government would step in with a "very considerable extra grant out of the Parliamentary votes." And the education rate would save the prison rate and the pauper rate, and might thus prove the most hopeful and satisfactory of all economies.

With regard to the other powers to be granted to school boards, they were, first of all, to be allowed the choice of alternative courses--either they might meet the need of a particular district by providing extra schools of their own, or they might supply it by assisting and extending existing schools. But supposing they decided upon the latter alternative, they were to exercise their right in no prejudiced or limited manner. "If they do go on the principle of assisting, they must assist all schools on equal terms. They may not pick out one particular denomination and say, 'We shall assist you, but not the other.'" To this part of the Bill belonged the afterwards famous 25th clause, by which school boards were enabled to pay the fees of indigent children at denominational schools out of the rates--a point that was attacked with equal ardour by the liberal philosophers of the Fortnightly Review, the members of the Birmingham League, the Dissenters generally, and all other advocates of secular education, but the supposed iniquity of which was not discovered until after the Bill had passed through committee. For these last Mr. Forster held out no word of hope. Speaking of the restrictions that ought or ought not to be laid upon school managers with regard to religion, he denied the existence of any real religious difficulty at all, the great plea of the secularists. Or rather, he held that there was a theoretical difficulty that might occur to and perplex an honest man in his study, but no practical difficulty that would affect the parents and children considered by the Bill. The Bill decreed that no restriction was to be laid upon school managers with regard to religion. If the neighbourhood that elected them chose, they might leave religious teaching altogether alone, but they certainly should not be forbidden, in any case, to teach or to explain the Bible. "Now just look," said the speaker, "at the age of the children with whom we have to deal. The great majority of them are probably under ten years of age.... We want a good secular teaching for these children, a good Christian training, and good schoolmasters. It may be said that as these children can hardly be supposed to require doctrinal or dogmatic teaching to any great extent, 'Why do you not then prescribe that there should be no doctrinal teaching--why not, in the first place, prescribe that there shall be no religious teaching at all?' Why do we not prescribe that there shall be no religious teaching? Why, if we did so, out of the religious difficulty we should come to an irreligious difficulty.... If we are to prevent religious teaching altogether, we must say that the Bible shall not be used in our schools at all. But would it not be a monstrous thing that the book which, after all, is the foundation of the religion we profess, should be the only book that was not allowed to be used in our schools? It may be said that we ought to have no dogmatic teaching. But how are we to prevent it? Are we to step in and say the Bible may be read, but may not be explained? Are we to pick out Bible lessons with the greatest care, in order that nothing of a doctrinal character may be taught to the children?" A hard and thankless labour indeed, but one which Government would undertake were it convinced that such was the wish of the country. But it was convinced, on the contrary, that the country wished no such thing; and in no case could such a matter be satisfactorily undertaken or discharged by the central Government. In fact, the framers of the Bill felt confident that the religious difficulty would turn out to be one of words and theories only. "Get your school boards together," they said; "give them the practical work to do of providing efficient secular education, and you will see that at the same time they will find ways and means of managing the religious education satisfactorily also. Put the fiercest of controversialists to the practical handling of details, and he will soon find that the imaginary parent possessed by an imaginary hatred of all religion, or a stubborn and exclusive preference for one form of religious teaching rather than another, is almost wholly the creature of his own fancy; and that the so-called religious difficulty is a phantom which vanishes before the open work-a-day atmosphere of facts."

Having now described the school districts, the school boards, and the various minor arrangements connected with them, Mr. Forster came finally to the important question of attendance. In other words, "Having got our schools, how are we to get the children to come to them in anything like sufficient numbers, and with anything like sufficient regularity?" In his answer to this, Mr. Forster enlarged upon the direct compulsion permitted by the Bill. The Short Time Acts, on which so many depended for securing the attendance of children, would no doubt contribute greatly to that object, and they might be so amended as to render them still more effectual. But the difficulty could not be met by their aid alone, and compulsory attendance was therefore to be resorted to, though as we said before, only in a limited and partial degree. "What we do in the Act," said Mr. Forster, "is no more than this. We give power to the school boards to frame by-laws for the compulsory attendance of all children within their district from five to twelve. They must see that no parent is under a penalty--which is restricted to 5s.--for not sending his child to school if he can show reasonable excuse,--reasonable excuse being either education elsewhere, or sickness, or some unavoidable cause, or there not being a public elementary school within a mile. These by-laws are not to come into operation unless they are approved by the Government, and unless they have been laid on the table of this and the other House of Parliament forty days and have not been dissented from."

Having thus described his Bill, with every detail of which he had shown himself perfectly familiar, Mr. Forster concluded in words of genuine and sincere enthusiasm, which could not but awaken the sympathy of all who had listened to him:--

"Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity. It is of no use trying to give technical teaching to our artisans without elementary education. Uneducated labourers--and many of our labourers are utterly uneducated--are, for the most part, unskilled labourers; and if we leave our work-folk any longer unskilled, notwithstanding their strong sinews and determined energy, they will become overmatched in the competition of the world. Upon this speedy provision depends also, I fully believe, the good, the safe working of our constitutional system. To its honour, Parliament has lately decided that England shall in future be governed by popular government. I am one of those who would not wait until the people were educated before I would trust them with political power. If we had thus waited, we might have waited long for education; but now that we have given them political power, we must not wait any longer to give them education. There are questions demanding answers, problems which must be solved, which ignorant constituencies are ill fitted to solve. Upon this speedy provision of education depends also our national power. Civilised communities throughout the world are massing themselves together, each mass being measured by its force; and if we are to hold our position among men of our own race or among the nations of the world we must make up for the smallness of our numbers by increasing the intellectual force of the individual."

The short debate that followed was extremely flattering to Mr. Forster personally. Liberal and Tory complimented the speech and the Bill, regretting only that the framer should occupy what was nominally, at least, a subordinate position in the Ministry, and should speak as the Vice-President of the Council under its President, Lord de Grey, instead of as "the responsible Minister of Public Instruction." Scarcely a murmur of the coming struggle disturbed the amiability of the House, and on the morning of the 18th of February the newspapers were full of Mr. Forster and Mr. Forster's admirable Bill. For a while it seemed as if the concessions of the Bill, and the conciliatory tone of its advocate, had silenced both the League and the Nonconformists, until a series of ominous articles in the Daily News dispelled the illusion, and a cloud of hostile talk and writing began to gather definitely round certain portions of the proposed Act. By the time the second reading arrived, all the world knew that the Government would find the passing of the measure by no means a matter of such plain sailing as had seemed likely at first. And the motion for the second reading was met, in fact, by a motion of Mr. Dixon's (member for Birmingham and founder of the League), to the effect, "That no measure for the elementary education of the people could afford a permanent and satisfactory settlement which left the important question of religious instruction to be determined by the local authorities." Mr. Forster might well point out with some warmth that the success of such an amendment at the present stage of matters could have no other effect than to throw out the Bill and the Government. Such a question, he argued, should be discussed in committee; only when approached in detail could the religious difficulty be either satisfactorily debated or satisfactorily settled. "Unsectarian education"--which, however, throughout he carefully distinguished from secular education--he thought not at all difficult to reach in practice, though extremely hard to define, and personally he strongly supported it. But unsectarian education could never be attained by definite and minute legislation. "Surely," he said, "the time will come when we shall find out how we can agree better on these matters; when men will discover that on the main questions of religion they agree, and that they can teach them in common to their children. Shall we cut off from the future all hope of such an agreement, and say that all those questions which regulate our conduct in life and animate our hopes for the future after death, which form for us the standard of right and wrong--shall we say that all these are to be wholly excluded from our schools?... I confess I have still in my veins the blood of my Puritan forefathers, and I wonder to hear descendants of the Puritans talk of religion as if it were the property of any class or condition of men. The English people cling to the Bible, and no measure would be more unpopular than that which should declare by Act of Parliament that the Bible shall be excluded from the schools!" Cut the knot of the religious difficulty in this way, and a far greater irreligious difficulty would be created. Instead of the few individuals who might, were the Bill passed in its present form, object to paying the school rate, multitudes would be found objecting to an education from which religion was left out. The greater part of Mr. Forster's speech consisted of an appeal on behalf of local government as against central government. What the amendment proposed, he said, was to force the central government to adopt one rigid line of policy, regardless of all the varying circumstances and wishes of the different localities, the result of which could only be to produce endless opposition and heart-burning. Under the Bill the will of the majority in any given neighbourhood would always take effect, whether that will was in favour of secular or religious education. Only let the House set its face against any abstract proposition like the present amendment. In committee would be the place and time to discuss the several points as they arose, fairly and calmly, and to take the sense of the House upon the religious question detail by detail.

The second night of the debate upon the second reading was marked by an effective and brilliant speech, in behalf of secular education, from Mr. Winterbotham, the young Liberal and Nonconformist member for Stroud. All the opinions and prejudices which the great majority of the House had been accustomed to consider as the mere vulgar talk of back-alley Dissent, they were now to hear expressed in logical and forcible English by a man of liberal culture and large experience, who, while freeing himself from what were regarded as the worst and most narrowing influences of the Nonconformist creed, was yet true to all its main articles, and unfeignedly proud of being a Dissenter. The speech represented far better, and more vividly than anything else in the Education debates, the real feeling of the great Nonconformist party. It embodied their whole claim, and stated their whole grievance with singular sharpness and vigour. It went to the root of the question, and the Church party were fairly startled by the depth and bitterness of the feeling disclosed. The cultivated Churchman, or the philosophic essayist, might equally deplore the additional narrowness and heat imported by Mr. Winterbotham into the controversy upon Education, when he represented the question as so largely affected by social differences and social jealousies. But the fact remained, and subsequent history only brought out more clearly the unhappy and lamentable truth, that the difference between Church and Dissent was, at least in many places throughout England, marked by the worst characteristics of a class quarrel. Such a speech as Mr. Winterbotham's could not but rouse the Churchmen of the House. The challenge was taken up in turn by Lord Robert Montagu, Mr. Beresford Hope, who thought it "impossible to conceive a speech worse-timed, or struck in a more unfortunate key," and that Churchman of Churchmen, Sir Roundell Palmer, who rebuked the Dissenters through Mr. Winterbotham, not without some dignity and reason, for "inflaming the religious difficulty." He declared in decisive language, "that the views advocated by the member for Stroud were such as never could be accepted as the basis of a common system of national education by that portion of the people who belonged to the Established Church." He argued from "the broad facts of existing schools" that the mind of the country as a whole was strongly opposed to the principle of secular education, and in favour of that of religious education. On the other hand, Mr. Miall and Mr. Auberon Herbert spoke strongly in favour of the amendment; while Mr. Samuelson, also a member of the League, announced, as did Mr. Mundella on the third night of the debate, that, while approving heartily of the principle of the amendment, he should vote against it, believing that the advocates of unsectarian education should reserve all their strength for the amendment of the Bill in committee, rather than risk, by such a motion as Mr. Dixon's, the indefinite postponement of the whole question. Mr. Lowe had as usual a witty remark to make upon the situation. It reminded him, he said, of a fine herd of cattle in a large meadow, deserting the grass that was abundant all about them, and delighting themselves by fighting over a bed of nettles in the corner of the field--the bed of nettles being of course the religious difficulty. He denied altogether that Government had "nailed their colours to the mast," and were determined to make no concessions. In fact, his cry was the same as Mr. Forster's: "Let us get into committee; then will be the time to make concessions on both sides." The third night of the debate was marked by several fine speeches. First of all came a clever, popular, ad captandum attack upon the Government by Mr. Vernon Harcourt. He returned Mr. Lowe's hard hits with others equally hard, and drew an amusing picture of the municipal elections of the future, when the Bill had introduced into them the fatal element of religious disagreement. Mr. Mundella and Mr. Jacob Bright took up the middle position of voting against the amendment for conscience' sake, the speech of the former being memorable for its moderation and fairness of tone. Conservative speakers like Sir Charles Adderley were, of course, strong in their denunciations of Mr. Dixon's proposal; but though Government were sure of their majority, it was thought politic not to alienate their Radical supporters by allowing the question to proceed to a division. Mr. Gladstone rose to play the part of peacemaker--which, indeed, was his rôle throughout the Education debates--and promised large concessions on the three important points of compulsion, the election of school boards, and the relation of religious to secular teaching. With this promise the recalcitrant Liberals professed to be contented. Mr. Dixon withdrew his amendment, and the Bill was allowed to pass the second reading.

Except for an occasional question and answer as to the meaning of certain portions of the Bill, the subject of Education was not again brought forward in the House till three months had passed away. That time was spent by the Education Office in a careful collection of statistics, in the preparation of reports, and in various other routine business. And by the statesmen in charge of the Bill it was spent to great profit in observing and noting the true direction of public feeling on the matter. The general current of Liberal opinion was indeed unmistakable, and it was felt on all hands that concessions must be made to it in committee. And concessions indeed were made, so far as Mr. Forster considered the essential principles of the Bill allowed. Meanwhile he had to endure much undeserved opprobrium, since the League persisted in treating him as a scapegoat, and affected to exonerate the rest of the Ministry at his expense. There was a moment when Mr. Gladstone was disposed to yield to the clamour, but Mr. Forster, though much dispirited by the attacks of his former friends, particularly in Bradford, was resolute in adhering to the principles of voluntary schools and Bible teaching. Mr. Gladstone opened the debates in committee on the 16th of June by the announcement that the Government, while rejecting a motion of Mr. Vernon Harcourt's for "undenominational education," combined with "unsectarian instruction in the Bible," on the ground that such phrases were vague and unpractical, were prepared to accept Mr. Cowper-Temple's amendment, "to exclude from all rate-built schools every catechism and formulary distinctive of denominational creeds, and to sever altogether the connection between the local school boards and the denominational schools, leaving the latter to look wholly to the central grant for help." This amendment was practically identical with a compromise, which Mr. Forster had himself suggested in a letter to Lord Ripon written on the 18th of May. In consequence of this, the central grant to all schools, rate-built or voluntary, was to be increased from one-third to one-half the total cost. The remaining half was to be rates and school-pence in the case of board schools, and voluntary subscriptions and school-pence in the case of denominational schools. Mr. Disraeli, in reply, had a great deal to say with regard to this proposal, which he described as an "entirely new Bill;" but Government knew very well that at this particular juncture they had little to fear, and everything to hope, from the Conservatives, and the policy of the League was just now far more important to them than any skirmishing of Mr. Disraeli's. An amendment by Mr. Richards, to the effect that "in any national system of elementary education the attendance should be everywhere compulsory, and the religious teaching supplied by voluntary effort, and not out of public funds," provoked another long debate on the "religious difficulty," in which a few irreconcilable Conservatives joined with Mr. Winterbotham and Mr. Vernon Harcourt to harass the Government. Once more did Mr. Forster defend his position, winding up a practical and temperate speech with language unexpectedly determined. The Government, he said, meant to yield no more ground. "We have considered," he said, "the whole of the religious question, and we present the Bill to the House in the form in which we think we must adhere to it." Upon the supporters of the amendment, should it be successful, must "rest the responsibility of defeating the Bill, and preventing the settlement of the Education Question this year." Once more did Mr. Gladstone endeavour to pour oil on the troubled waters, promising that "effectual guarantees should be taken against the violation of conscience in rate-schools through the acts of a narrow or sectarian spirit," and pointing out to the Nonconformists that, in return for the great concession that was being made to them, in excluding all creeds and catechisms from rate-built schools, they owed some counterbalancing forbearance and consideration to the Church party, which felt as strongly as they, and had greater educational services to plead. But come what might, Government would stand by their Bill, and no more would be yielded. Mr. Richards' amendment, however, was thrown out by 421 to 60--figures which might well give Government confidence. Nor were these proportions substantially altered in later divisions. The Bill was carried through triumphantly, in spite of ardent Churchmen like Sir Stafford Northcote, who were strongly opposed to the Government concessions, no less than of Mr. Dixon and Mr. Jacob Bright. In his diary Mr. Forster described the 30th of June as the day on which the Bill passed through its crisis, and shortly afterwards his position was greatly strengthened by promotion to a seat in the Cabinet. Night after night did he sit through the tedious debates, ready to answer every question and parry every attack, evincing throughout such unfailing good humour, combined with such unflinching determination, that the House was at once impressed and conciliated. Strong in the general support of the Conservatives, joined to that of the moderate Liberals, he defended his Bill at every essential point, regardless of the telling and often bitter criticism of the League. Still certain important alterations were made before the Bill became law; chiefly that the school boards were to be re-elected every three years; that the school rate was not to be levied under a distinct name; that the election of school boards should be on the cumulative principle--that is, that where each voter had a number of votes, he might bestow them all on a single candidate if he chose, instead of being compelled to divide them equally. Finally, after a debate of twenty-one days, the Bill passed the third reading without a division, but amid the anathemas of both classes of irreconcilables. While Mr. Dixon pronounced that Government had aroused "the suspicion, distrust, and antagonism of some of their own most earnest supporters," Mr. Gathorne Hardy charged them with "inaugurating a system of hypocrisy, treachery, and baseness." Mr. Forster enjoyed the fate of all neutrals--of being heartily abused by both belligerents.

In the House of Lords the Bill was well treated, the only important amendment being moved and carried by the Duke of Richmond, to the effect that vote by ballot should not extend to other than metropolitan elections. With this alteration the Bill passed through its last stages and became law, and it may be added that, whatever its defects, it marked an epoch in the history of our educational system. The religious difficulty did not disappear with the passing of the Bill, as was natural to a difficulty which after all was primarily not religious but social. The platforms of the League and the Union--of Nonconformity and the Established Church--were the platforms on which the later elections for school boards were generally fought; but the first elections largely showed that the Bill was being loyally accepted by all parties, and Mr. Forster was greatly pleased when Lord Lawrence, ex-Viceroy of India, agreed to become Chairman of the first School Board for London. Certainly the Act brought education within the reach of every English child, and "covered England with good schools;" and the rancour of the League defeated its own ends when Mr. Forster, on addressing his constituents in the autumn, was received with a vote of censure.

All minor legislative undertakings of the year, even the Land Bill and the Education Act themselves, were for the time wholly eclipsed and driven out of public memory by news that arrived in England, by telegraph, on the 22nd of April--news fraught with personal loss and sorrow to many, which roused throughout England generally a storm of grief and indignation. The facts were these: On the morning of the 11th of April, a party of residents and tourists, comprising Lord and Lady Muncaster, Mr. Herbert, Mr. Vyner, Mr. Lloyd, his wife and child, and Count de Boyl, set out from Athens to visit the battle-field of Marathon, that famous crescent-shaped piece of flat sea-shore, where the destinies of Europe were once staked upon a single throw, and the "teeming East" received that decisive check, the importance of which to subsequent European history none can over-estimate. The gentlemen of the party before setting out had made stringent inquiries in Athens respecting the rumoured presence of brigands in the country round Marathon. Mr. Herbert had received official information to the effect that Attica, was safe, and, the Government declared, perfectly free from brigands. Still, to guard against any possible danger, the Government engaged to send with them an escort of four mounted gendarmes, who were to be joined en route by others. Thus provided, they set out, and, after such a day as a party of cultivated people were likely to spend in such a place as Marathon, they were driving back to Athens in the warm spring evening. Only the four gendarmes were in sight of the carriage--two riding in front, and two behind; but the inmates knew that at least six foot-soldiers were a little way behind them, while it was rumoured that a further body of twenty-five soldiers had left Marathon in their wake, ready to render help if necessary.

What followed may be described in the words of Mr. Erskine's despatch of the 12th of April to Lord Clarendon. "Just before they were to change horses," he says, "and as they were approaching the bridge of Pikermes, at about twelve or fourteen miles from Athens, they were suddenly fired at from the brushwood bordering the road; and at the first discharge the two gendarmes in front fell, badly wounded, from their horses. The carriage then stopped, and the whole party were compelled to alight, and with the two remaining mounted gendarmes, were hurried up the side of the mountain"--Mount Pentelicus, famous in old Greek days. In the midst of the general panic and uproar, the six foot-soldiers came up and opened fire on the brigands. But alas! they were now too late, whatever their help might have been worth a few minutes earlier. The brigands--of whom Mr. Herbert counted at least twenty-one--had formed themselves into a compact square, of which their captain made the centre. Thus arranged, they retreated gradually under the fire of the soldiers, which must for some little time have placed the lives of the prisoners in the utmost danger. Seeing that they produced no effect, and fearing to injure those whom they had been ordered to protect, the soldiers at last discontinued the pursuit and made off to Athens to give the alarm. The eight unfortunate travellers found themselves wholly at the mercy of this wild-looking band of black-browed men, who dragged them roughly up the slopes of Mount Pentelicus without any regard to the fatigue of the ladies and the strength of the little child who clung to them. At the top of the mountain a halt was made, and the ladies were told that they were to be immediately sent back to Athens, in a country cart that happened to be at hand. Ink and paper were supplied to Mr. Herbert, and he was peremptorily ordered to send by them to his friends in Athens a demand for the immediate payment of a ransom of £32,000. Driven by the countryman who owned the cart, the poor ladies--one of whom (Mrs. Lloyd) little knew that she had parted from her husband for the last time on earth--made their way back to Athens.

On the morning of the 13th, a note, conveyed by one of the mounted gendarmes--who had been liberated at the same time as the ladies--reached Mr. Erskine from Takos, the chief of the brigands, saying that if in three days a sum of £50,000 was not forthcoming for the ransom of the "lords," and if all pursuit throughout the kingdom was not suspended, the prisoners would be put to death. In the course of the day Lord Muncaster arrived in the capital, sent by the brigands to negotiate for the ransom. He brought the same message. Let the troops but come into collision with the brigands, and the lives of all the captives would be at once sacrificed. Mr. Erskine of course renewed the most strenuous representation to the Greek Government on the subject, and received in return from the Minister for War, General Soutzos, a solemn assurance that the brigands should remain unmolested till the prisoners were safely restored. General Soutzos treated the whole matter very lightly, would not allow for a moment that the lives of the prisoners were in any danger, and said that he had no doubt the amount demanded for their ransom might be considerably reduced if their friends felt inclined to make any difficulty about it. No thought of bargaining with the brigands, however, entered Mr. Erskine's or Lord Muncaster s head, and the ransom was speedily collected with the help of the chief banker in Athens, who showed himself most active and efficient. But, alas! no sooner was the money forthcoming, and means of transporting it secured, than a new element entered into the situation, and darkened the whole aspect of affairs. This was no less than a demand on the part of the brigands for a complete amnesty for all offences, not only for themselves, but also for such members of the band as had once belonged to it, but were now in prison. And should this fresh demand be refused, they again threatened to destroy their prisoners. The Greek Government found themselves thrown into a fatal dilemma, and it was to their reckless attempt to extricate themselves from it that the whole of the subsequent tragedy was owing. Under the Constitution that secured the throne of Greece to Prince George of Denmark, the King and Ministers were pledged to put down brigandage, the curse of Greek society, with the utmost rigour of the law. How, then, grant such an amnesty as this to the most powerful and most notorious band in Greece? Besides, the Ministry felt from the first that there was more in the demand than met the eye. Such a condition formed no part of ordinary brigand law, and would not have occurred spontaneously to any band of lawless men who saw the prospect of getting a large sum of money immediately after releasing their prisoners. It appeared only too clearly afterwards that the demand was originally none of their making, and that they were throughout supported and influenced by the corrupt and reckless chiefs of the Greek Parliamentary Opposition. It was a party move, meant to secure the downfall of the Ministry; and the brigands, no less than their unfortunate prisoners, were but pieces in the game. Once suggested, the notion no doubt caught the fancy of Takos, the head of the band, a man of superior education to the rest; and elated by the rank and importance of his captives, he may have made up his mind to secure every possible advantage. The other members of the band were by no means eager for the amnesty, and when a few days later they were flying before the soldiery, they bitterly reproached their chief with having demanded it.

Fully alive to the gravity of the situation, Mr. Erskine sent telegram after telegram to Lord Clarendon. Lord Clarendon's answer was clear and peremptory. Britain could allow no constitutional consideration to weigh against the lives of her subjects. The Greek Constitution had been violated before in the same manner in the Cretan insurrection and in other cases; and Englishmen were not to be sacrificed to keep a weak Ministry in power. The Ministry meanwhile were preparing a desperate attempt to recover their reputation and escape from the snare laid for them. They hoped for a successful coup de main, which should at once rescue the prisoners, annihilate the brigands, relieve Government from the responsibility of the ransom, and strengthen the position of the Ministry. At the same time Mr. Erskine was still allowed to believe that, although the amnesty could not be granted, no movement of the troops against the brigands would be permitted until the prisoners were safe. Relying upon this, Mr. Erskine sent a messenger to the brigands, reiterating the assurance of the Government that no pursuit would be attempted; and entreating that they would leave the mountains and bring their prisoners down into the plains, where such delicate men as Mr. Herbert and Count de Boyl need not be exposed to all the hardships of an open-air life. The brigands, who had vowed to trust the word of no Greek Minister, believed Mr. Erskine, left their mountain camp and brought their captives down to the village of Oropus, where they seem to have been on the whole fairly well treated. A few days were then taken up in fruitless negotiations, conducted by a certain Colonel Theagenis, on behalf of the Greek Government--a man afterwards denounced by Sir Henry Bulwer in the House of Commons as the real murderer of the prisoners--and by Mr. Erskine, on behalf of Great Britain.

It is difficult to give a consecutive account of what followed. The Government had made up their mind to take the risk of employing the troops. Mr. Erskine was, above all, anxious that the brigands should not move their prisoners from Oropus, and he seems to have countenanced the action of the Government so far as to consent to a blockade of Oropus, to prevent them from doing so, insisting at the same time in the strongest terms that the brigands should not be in any way molested by the soldiery till the prisoners were safe. Colonel Theagenis was entrusted with the conduct of the whole matter, and it appeared plainly afterwards that he received instructions of which Mr. Erskine knew nothing, and to which he would never have consented. The suspicions of the brigands had been by this time aroused; the Government had been for some days silently moving up troops in the direction of Oropus, and the scouts of the band, posted on all sides of the village, were not slow to discover and report their movement. On the 20th of April, the day before the massacre, letters reached Mr. Erskine from Mr. Herbert, Mr. Lloyd, and Mr. Vyner, which must indeed have thrown him into despair. All spoke of the imminent danger in which these suspected movements of the troops had placed them, and entreated that something might be done to stay the progress of the soldiers. Mr. Noel, an English resident in Eubœa, who had taken a prominent part in the negotiations, telegraphed to say that he felt assured the terms offered would be accepted by the brigands, but that the soldiers must be withdrawn. The band were going to a place not far from Oropus called Sykamenos, whither he was about to follow them with every hope of a successful issue. It was this movement of the brigands, coupled with the orders given to the troops to pursue them should they leave Oropus, that brought about the tragedy of the 21st. On that day the brigands, suspecting the neighbourhood of troops, left Sykamenos before Mr. Noel could come up with them. The troops received information of their movement, followed them, and fired upon them. The brigands, driven to desperation, turned savagely upon their prisoners. They shot Mr. Lloyd before the eyes of the soldiers, who became infuriated at the sight of this murderous act, and made a fierce attack upon the brigands. Six of them were killed, including Christos Arvanitakis (Takos), and one or two were taken alive. The others fled up the country, dragging the other prisoners with them; and upon reaching a place named Skimatari, they stabbed them one by one, Mr. Vyner being the last to suffer. In an hour or two all the labour and anxiety of the last ten days had been rendered fruitless, and four noble and valuable lives had been sacrificed to the culpable rashness and incapacity of those who had sworn to protect and rescue them. Mr. Noel telegraphed the fatal news to Mr. Erskine, and it almost seemed for a time as if another death were to be added to the list, so fearful was the effect of the tragedy upon the man who for ten days had strained every nerve to prevent it.

For a time all England was roused to a frenzy of wrath and grief. At one time it seemed as if nothing less than a war with Greece and the annihilation of her whole existing political system would satisfy English indignation. But there was one person in Greece for whom English people felt almost as much pity as for the victims themselves--and that was the poor young king, who throughout had been the dupe of the unscrupulous partisans about him,--who once in a moment of alarm had made the romantic offer to give himself up to the brigands in the place of the captives,--and who, now that all was over, wrote the most touching letters, full of keen personal shame and grief, to the English Government, while later he made large offers of indemnification out of his own private property to the families of the victims. It was well for Greece that nearly a month elapsed before the question came to be debated to any purpose in Parliament. During the interval the capture of nearly all the brigands had done something toward satisfying the public indignation. The wily leaders of the Opposition, at whose door lay the greater part of the blame, had laid their plans so cunningly that it was extremely difficult to detect and expose them. And after the confessions of the brigands had thrown some light upon this part of the matter, and a steady public opinion in England might perhaps have exacted a heavy penalty for the lives so basely trifled with from those who had used them only as so many pieces in the political game, English attention was diverted by the gigantic impending tragedy of the French and German War; and in the overwhelming interest of those first battle-fields of Wörth and Forbach, the fate of the captives of Marathon was, for the time at least, inevitably forgotten.

The story of the Greek massacre may now give place to the story of the tamer debates in Parliament that still remain to be described. The two great Acts that have already been recorded naturally fill the chief place in the Parliamentary history of the year; but there still remain some discussions that are worth describing, some measures whose fate has to be told. First in order come the naval and military proposals of Mr. Childers and Mr. Cardwell--memorable as showing the naval and military condition of Britain at the opening of the great war year, and as indicating more or less completely the lines upon which reorganisation afterwards proceeded. The Naval Estimates of Mr. Childers carried out very thoroughly those principles of economy on which the Liberal Government had laid so much stress on its accession to power. The proposals of the First Lord also included a scheme for the retirement of officers, and were full of details about the intentions of the Admiralty with regard to ships and guns--those never-ceasing perplexities of the modern naval administrator. The gross estimates reached a total of £9,250,000--three quarters of a million less than those of the previous year, and £1,700,000 less than those of 1868. This saving had been arrived at by different expedients; and, popular as the broad result was, the expedients, taken severally, were most of them doubtfully welcomed both in and out of Parliament. The most notable one had been the closing of several of the dockyards, and the consequent throwing out of employment of several thousand workmen. But Mr. Childers presented not only a justification of his policy to the House, but showed that Government had done very much to lessen the distress of the discharged workmen. Thus, of 2,000 who were thrown out of work by the closing of Woolwich Dockyard, 1,000 had been transferred to other establishments, 200 pensioned, gratuities given to 200, and 300 helped to emigrate. This, in fact, was all that could be done. Government found themselves in a dilemma--either they must abandon retrenchment, or they must harass certain interests. They chose to pursue their policy of retrenchment, trusting to their own remedial measures and to the chances of the market for providing for the discharged workmen. Mr. Childers' proposals with regard to keeping up a proper supply of ships were "to push on the most powerful class of armoured ships and the fastest cruisers," experience having shown that these were the two classes most likely to be of use in modern wars--the one for fighting, the other for pursuit. He had much to say about new guns; he promised to send another flying squadron round the world; he detailed his measures for forming a reserve of sailors; and, above all, he unfolded his new scheme of retirement for officers. The details of this scheme, stated shortly, were that admirals of the fleet were to be compelled to retire at 70 years of age, admirals and vice-admirals at 65, rear-admirals at 60, captains at 55, commanders at 50, and lieutenants at 45. With this he proposed a scale of pensions, and promised that the result would be a considerable benefit to the service and a saving to the country of about £300,000 a year.

Mr. Cardwell's army proposals need not be described at length, for they merge into the far more comprehensive proposals of the next year, when the war had compelled the country to look its military affairs in the face, and to consent to a thoroughgoing scheme of reorganisation. Still, even in this year, Mr. Cardwell struck the note of a very decided reform. He proposed reductions both in the colonial and the home army, and laid down the two principles, though he did not fully work them out, upon which the reorganisation of 1871 was based--namely, short service and abolition of purchase. He abolished the rank of ensign and cornet, as a first step towards the latter; he announced his plan of enlistments for twelve years, six to be passed in the regular army and six in the reserve, as a preparation for the former. He proposed to disband the Canadian Rifles, the Cape Mounted Rifles, the 3rd West Indian Regiment, and the African Artillery. He reduced the Indian establishment, and proposed an elaborate method of reducing the strength of all home regiments. By all these measures he brought about a reduction of £1,136,900 on the estimates of the previous year, and of £2,330,800 on those of the year before. The figures by which he described the strength of the army at the beginning of this year were:--Regulars and others available for all services, home and foreign, 109,225; second army of reserve, 20,000; militia, 63,000; yeomanry, 15,300; volunteers, 168,477. In other words, a total of 376,002, nearly half of them being volunteers--figures that tempt one to speculate what would have been the result of all this reduction and economy had the German armies made their appearance before London instead of before Paris!

The revenue of the year, as Mr. Lowe announced in his Budget speech, amounted to £76,505,000; a sum of which nearly four millions were due to the new mode of collecting taxes instituted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer--a mode that for the first year caused the revenue to appear far greater than it really was. The expenditure was £68,223,000; and the surplus was devoted to paying about half the cost of the Abyssinian War, to a reduction of the income tax by a penny in the pound, to a reduction of the sugar duties, and to various smaller reductions. In finance, at least, the annus mirabilis cannot be pronounced unfortunate, so far as England was concerned.

The history of Parliament in 1870 must be completed by a mention of a few Bills that became law, and a few that did not. This year saw the passing of a Bill that practically repealed the law that Pitt had carried in order to exclude Horne Tooke from the House of Commons--a Bill, moved by Mr. Hibbert, to remove the civil disabilities of clergymen. This provided that any clergyman wishing to relinquish the office of priest or deacon might do so by signing a deed, to be registered by the bishop. From the moment of his signing, he was to become free to practise any trade or profession, and to sit in Parliament--to become, in fact, a layman. It may be added that a considerable number of distinguished clergy took advantage of the Act soon after it was passed. Mr. Russell Gurney's Married Women's Property Bill was another of great practical importance; but unfortunately its success was only partial. It proposed to give married women the absolute control of their own earnings, instead of allowing the husband to seize them at his pleasure. The Bill was of course directed mainly towards the class of wage-earning people, where the wife often contributed largely to the family stock by the labour of her hands; and no one who had any knowledge of this class could be ignorant of the fearful amount of misery that a drunken or worthless husband might cause by compelling his wife to keep him in drink and idleness. Mr. Russell Gurney's Bill aimed at curing this state of things; and, in spite of the difficulties of the question, the advantage of protecting married women in the possession of their actual earnings was evident to almost everybody. But in the House of Lords, where there were no members pledged to support women's rights, the Bill was severely handled by the law lords and others. The unbelief of Lord Westbury, the peculiar experience of Lord Penzance, induced them to "amend" the Bill in its most essential points. It passed, but passed mutilated; yet its advocates had helped to familiarise the public mind with its principle, and a measure much more consistent and comprehensive became law in a later year. The House of Lords also threw out for this Session the Bill of Sir John Coleridge for abolishing religious tests in the Universities, and also the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, which the House of Commons had passed. This Bill, which has been described as "a Bill to enable a woman to marry her deceased sister's husband," found great favour with the Dissenters, and was pushed through the Lower House mainly by their exertions. But the House of Lords was more open to High Church influence--Lord Salisbury was a greater power there than Mr. Beresford Hope in the Commons--and was never too willing to pass Bills for the simple removal of disabilities, matrimonial or other.

In the first month of the year, before Parliament met, a terrible catastrophe occurred in the Eastern seas, through which a fine ship-of-war belonging to a friendly nation was run down by an English mail steamer and sunk, the accident being attended by a lamentable loss of life. The United States steam corvette Oneida left the anchorage at Yokohama, the port of Yedo, in Japan, at about five o'clock on the evening of the 24th of January, 1870. Two hours later the noble vessel had sunk beneath the waves and the greater part of her crew had been swept into eternity. It was nearly 7 P.M.; the officers were at dinner below, when the look-out man shouted, "Steamer lights ahead," and the midshipman on watch gave the order to port the helm. The approaching vessel (which proved to be the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamship Bombay) was steering due north, and making for the port of Yokohama; the Oneida appears to have been steering a south-easterly course. Captain Eyre, commanding the Bombay, afterwards deposed on oath, that when the Oneida was first sighted, she was about a mile distant, and that he immediately ported his helm, and kept porting it for a considerable time, in order to clear her. While the Bombay was still heading off to starboard, Captain Eyre deposed that he saw the stranger putting her helm hard a-starboard, and crossing the bow of the Bombay with full sails and steam. The night being dark, the vessels were at that moment not more than a hundred feet apart. Captain Eyre instantly stopped his engines, and put his helm hard a-starboard, hoping to go clear of the approaching vessel. Unfortunately the vessels were too close together for this, and a collision occurred, the bows of the Bombay cutting into the starboard side of the Oneida, about the mizen rigging. Neither ship was entangled with the other; and Captain Eyre, not hearing or seeing, as he said, any signal of distress from the other ship, and being informed that the Bombay was making water, ordered the engines to be set going at full speed and made the best of his way for Yokohama. The unfortunate crew of the Oneida felt themselves to be cruelly abandoned; for, besides the shock and the danger of the collision itself--in consideration of which the unharmed or slightly harmed vessel ought in common humanity to have waited to ascertain the effects of the accident upon the other, before proceeding on her course--several of the Oneida's guns, which happened to be loaded at the time, were almost instantly fired to attract the attention of the Bombay and bring her back. Two of the ship's boats, containing fifty-six men, floated after she had gone down, and were picked up and brought safely to Yokohama; the rest of the officers and crew--a hundred and twenty in number--went down with the ship. A court of inquiry was held at Kanagawa, in Japan, to investigate the circumstances of the collision, and the result was that Captain Eyre's certificate was suspended for six months. The Board of Trade afterwards ratified the finding of the court of inquiry, and expressed their opinion that the sentence of suspension was "inadequate to the gravity of the offence."

We must now turn to the obituary of the year, omitting, however, according to our custom, the domains of literature and art, which are reserved for a later chapter. A statesman of high rank, a judge of great and long-lived reputation, some illustrious soldiers, were among those who died. Of several of these--of Sir De Lacy Evans, of Sir G. F. Seymour, of Sir William Gordon, and of General Windham--it is not necessary to speak; nor of Dr. Gilbert, the cultivated Bishop of Chichester, once the well-known Principal of Brasenose College. More famous than these was Sir Frederick Pollock, formerly Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who began his public career by coming out as Senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1806, and ended it sixty-four years later as a judge who had carried into his retirement the respect and affection of his colleagues and the bar. He was, too, a member of a notable family--for Sir David Pollock, once Chief Justice of Bombay, and Field-Marshal Sir George Pollock, the famous Indian soldier, were his brothers. It is rare for three brothers to reach, as they did, the very highest posts in their different professions, especially if, like these, they start with no advantages of wealth or birth. Lord Clarendon, who died on the 27th of June, had started with those advantages, but he had turned them to good account. He was the head of the Clarendon branch of the Villiers family, which has for a long time been Whig; and he carried out through a long official life the best traditions of Whig policy as a diplomatist, Foreign Secretary, and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, though the chief responsibility for the Crimean War must always rest upon his memory.

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XXXIV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

France in 1870--The Ollivier Ministry--Diminution of Imperial Prestige--Constitutional Reforms submitted to the Popular Vote--Resignation of Daru and Buffet--The Plébiscite--The Military Vote--Lull in European Affairs-The Hohenzollern Incident--The Duc de Gramont's Speech--Excitement in France--The Candidature withdrawn--Benedetti at Ems--His Second Interview with King William--The Alarmist Telegram--War declared at Paris--Efforts of the British Government--Bismarck divulges a supposed Franco-German Treaty--Benedetti's Explanation--Earl Russell's Speech--Belgian Neutrality guaranteed--Unpreparedness of the French Army--Hopes of Alliances--The Emperor's Plans--Saarbrück--Weissenburg--The Emperor partially resigns Command--Wörth--MacMahon at Châlons--Spicheren--The Palikao Ministry--Bazaine Generalissimo--Battle of Borny--Mars-la-Tour--Gravelotte--English Associations for the Sick and Wounded--Palikao's Plan--MacMahon's Hesitation--De Failly's Defeat--MacMahon resolves to Fight--Sedan--The Surrender--Napoleon and his Captors--Receipt of the News in Paris--Impetuosity of Jules Favre--A Midnight Sitting--Jules Favre's Plan--Palikao's Alternative--Fall of the Empire--The Government of National Defence--Suppression of the Corps Législatif--The Neutral Powers: Great Britain, Austria, and Italy.

At his usual New Year's Day reception (the 1st of January, 1870) the Emperor Napoleon expressed himself to the diplomatic body as highly satisfied with the relations existing between his Government and all Foreign Powers. He added, "The year 1870, I am sure, cannot but consolidate this general agreement, and tend to the increase of concord and civilisation." So it might easily have done, had not the rise or fall of his own prestige, and that of his family, been matters of much greater importance in the Emperor's mind--notwithstanding these fine words--than the peace of Europe and the happiness of France.

M. Ollivier, having succeeded in inducing several public men of a higher stamp than had ever before served the Emperor--notably Count Daru and M. Buffet--to join him in the effort that he declared himself resolved to make to give real political liberty to France, appeared before the Chamber with his Ministry fully constituted on the 3rd of January. But these honest politicians of the Left Centre--these men of honour, and character and known antecedents--must have felt considerable surprise, not to say mistrust, when they found what sort of persons they were associated with in the Government and in what hand the executive force of the Empire really lay. Marshal Lebœuf was continued in the post of Minister of War; and courtiers like Marshal Vaillant, the Duc de Gramont, and General Fleury knew the Emperor's secrets and influenced his determinations much more than his responsible Ministers. M. Ollivier himself was a vain, impetuous man, abounding in self-confidence, but lacking in self-respect,--who was dazzled by the attentions shown him by the Emperor, and believed that he had converted his master to Liberal principles; whereas his master did but make a tool of him all along, and in the end caused him to lose the respect of everyone.

Although the country was materially prosperous, the popularity, and therefore the stability, of the Empire had greatly diminished in the last five years. With the temper that ruled in the breasts of French politicians, the aggrandisement of a neighbouring State was necessarily regarded as a check to the policy and a kind of outrage to the feelings of France. Even so moderate a writer as Jules Favre seemed to think that if the candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern had not been withdrawn when it was, the elevation of a Prussian prince to the throne of Spain would have constituted a real casus belli for France. The line of French thought would appear to be this: "Prussia, by annexing a number of provinces without our consent, and not offering us a share, has brought herself relatively nearer to us in power than she was before, and has thereby done us a grievous wrong; if now the ambitious House of Brandenburg, not content with this provoking increase of power, should try to seat one of its princes on the throne--even though it be but a revolutionary throne--of Spain, we Frenchmen will not submit to it; our feelings will boil over; and we must go to war rather than allow it." It is true these things were little felt by the working and trading millions, to whom "peace was their dear delight;" yet even to them a little "glory" now and then was necessary in order to embellish their existence; and, moreover, the Emperor was a man of ideas, knew the French people, and could calculate the force of epigrams and the undermining power of a hostile sentiment. Certainly he could not afford, nor could the Empire afford, to lose any more prestige. Yet at this very moment an incident of the most damaging and discreditable character covered the name of the Bonapartes with infamy, namely, the death of the journalist Victor Noir at the hands of the Emperor's ruffianly cousin Pierre, and the latter's acquittal before the High Court of Justice at Tours.

The position of the Government was strange and precarious; no one seemed exactly to understand it: with the exception of the extreme parties--the courtiers on one side, and the "Irreconcilables" on the other--all the actors on the political stage were moving they knew not precisely whither. M. Ollivier on one occasion (February 23rd) announced that the Government disapproved of the system of official candidatures, and would no more use pressure at the elections. No intelligence could be more unwelcome to a large proportion of the members on the Right, who had owed their seats to Government pressure, and knew that without it they had no chance of being re-elected. A split therefore began to develop itself in the ranks of the majority. But the Emperor still continued to support Ollivier and to play his Liberal game. His instincts and opinions were without doubt genuinely Liberal; and his life was consumed in the attempt to reconcile the gratification of these instincts with the conservation of his dynasty. And yet there must have been something in the apologetic tone that Ollivier often assumed in the Chamber, which must have been a little galling to Napoleon's pride. The Emperor resolved to teach his Liberal supporters a lesson and at the same time to reimpress a large and awkward fact on the minds of his enemies--namely, that he and his system were the choice of France. He instructed M. Ollivier (March 21st) to prepare a Senatus Consultum for the redistribution of powers between the two branches of the Legislature, so that the Senate--the less popular body--should be curtailed of many privileges which it had before enjoyed; while the Corps Législatif--the more popular body--would have its powers extended, especially by giving it the right of originating all money Bills. M. Ollivier introduced the measure into the Senate on the 26th of March. But a few days later he was startled on being informed by the Emperor, that since, in his opinion, the new constitutional changes involved a departure from the basis that the popular vote had ratified in 1852, he was resolved to submit them also to the ordeal of universal suffrage. Ollivier remonstrated vainly against this decision: the Emperor stood firm; and the Minister, either not seeing or not wishing to see the vast difference that his consent made in his position, agreed to continue at the head of affairs and arrange the machinery of the plébiscite.

But Count Daru and M. Buffet, more clear-sighted and self-respecting than their flighty colleague, refused to have anything to do with a plébiscite. For the meaning of it was simply this--that the popular vote covered everything, and was itself the source of right and legality; that France had no right to liberty and just government unless the masses voted to that effect; and that similarly the plébiscite of 1852, having sanctioned a system that arose out of perjury and violence, had made that system immaculate and unquestionable. In taking office, Count Daru and M. Buffet had never intended so to commit themselves; and they now accordingly resigned their bureaux. The Duc de Gramont, a courtier, received the charge of the Foreign Office in succession to Count Daru.

In resorting again to the device of a plébiscite, we cannot doubt that the Emperor had one main object in view--increased stability. The tide of Liberalism, he felt, was continually pushing him onward; piece by piece, the system of administration on which he had ruled France for eighteen years was giving way to its assault; and then, as he had once before said to M. Ollivier, "one always falls on the side on which one leans." Feeling the advances of age--conscious that his powers both of body and mind were being undermined by a harassing and incurable malady--he became more than ever desirous to secure the peaceable transmission of power to his son. If all France could be got to ratify the changes that were now being made in the system of government as decisively as it ratified his assumption of power after the coup d'état of 1851, surely the dynasty might then breathe freely. One would have thought that the friendship and the pledged word of two or three leading generals would have offered a more substantial security for the succession of his son than the illusory test of a plébiscite. Perhaps, however, the Emperor had by this time half convinced himself that a popular vote, taken on a matter which the masses cannot properly judge of, was an honest and lawful mode of devolving power, and also a mode that imparted a peculiar strength and durability to the decision arrived at. The vote was taken in all the departments of France, and separately in the army and navy, with the following result: Oui, seven millions of civilian votes, and three hundred and nine thousand in the army and navy; Non, one million and a half (within five thousand) of civilian votes, and fifty-two thousand in the army and navy.

When, in the autumn of 1852, the Emperor demanded from the popular voice a condonation of the past and a sanction for the future, the Ayes numbered nearly 8,000,000, the Noes only 253,000. The returns of the voting in 1870 marked a notable progress of dissatisfaction since the commencement of the Empire. But it is known that the nature of the military vote was that which chiefly disquieted the Emperor. These fifty thousand soldiers who, in spite of the restraints of discipline and the ties of self-interest, had, by their "Noes," expressed their disapproval of the Imperial system, could not but be regarded as the more active and intelligent spirits in the army, who were more likely, unless their aims were attained, to estrange from the Empire the still loyal majority, than to be absorbed in that majority themselves. What, then, were their aims? In a warlike nation, where the humblest day-labourer is possessed by the sentiment of military glory, the more stirring and ambitious characters in the army are prone to become impatient in a long-continued peace; and this feeling is likely to be enhanced when a neighbouring people, the rival and antagonist of the soldier's country in many an historic campaign, has been winning spolia opima, and gaining victories of extraordinary brilliancy. Such reflections must have agitated the mind of Napoleon as he thought of those fifty thousand "Noes;" and the conviction must have come upon him with a lurid clearness, that the only way to regain the loyalty of the army and to secure the succession of his son lay through war. When the ruler of a great nation, having the absolute control of its military resources, arrives at such a conclusion as this, an occasion is not likely to be long wanting.

But for a time everything wore a peaceful aspect, and the results of the plébiscite were even considered on the whole to have strengthened the Emperor's position. It was a matter of course that, on receiving from M. Schneider (May 21st) the official report of the results of the voting, the Emperor should use the language of serenity and cheerful hope. "We must," he said, "more than ever look fearlessly forward to the future." In a debate on the Bill for fixing the army contingent for 1870, M. Ollivier, to whom the Emperor's mind was a sealed book, declared that the Government had no uneasiness whatever; that in no epoch was the peace of Europe more assured; and that no irritating question anywhere existed. When, after the death of Lord Clarendon, Earl Granville repaired to the Foreign Office to take up the portfolio of the deceased statesman, he was informed by Mr. Hammond, the Under-Secretary, that in all his experience he had never known so great a lull in foreign affairs. Two hours later, a telegram from Mr. Layard, the British Minister at Madrid, communicated the decision of the Spanish Council of State to offer the crown of Spain to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. On the same afternoon, the Duc de Gramont informed Lord Lyons, the British ambassador at Paris, that France would use her whole strength to prevent the election of a Prussian Prince, and he requested the co-operation of Britain in warding off this danger to the peace of Europe. On the following day (July 6th) the Duc de Gramont read in the Chamber a memorandum of the views of the Government, the unusual and menacing language of which spread alarm through all the capitals of Europe. "We do not believe," he said, "that respect for the rights of a neighbouring people obliges us to suffer a Foreign Power, by placing a prince upon the throne of Charles V., to disturb the European equilibrium to our disadvantage, and thus to imperil the interests and honour of France. We entertain a firm hope that this will not happen. To prevent it, we count upon the wisdom of the German nation and the friendship of the people of Spain; but in the contrary event, with your support and the support of the nation, we shall know how to do our duty without hesitation or weakness." These words were received with wild and enthusiastic cheering.

The candidature of Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern had been first broached so far back as March, 1869, but at that time it met with no encouragement at Berlin; while M. Benedetti, under instructions from the French Government, represented that such an election could only be viewed by France with serious dissatisfaction. Now, after an interval of more than a year, the project was resumed, and that in circumstances of apparent trickery and intrigue that called forth disapprobation, not in Paris only, but also in London. At a later date the Duc de Gramont suggested, though he had no means of proving, that the idea of reviving the candidature of Prince Leopold came to General Prim from a Prussian source; and he pledged his veracity for the existence of a letter written to Prim by Count Bismarck some time in June, 1870, in which the Prussian Chancellor said that the candidature of the Prince of Hohenzollern was in itself an excellent thing, that it must not be abandoned, and that at a given moment it might be serviceable. The duke declared that though he had never seen this letter himself, it had been read by well-known eminent men. These and other details were related by the Duc de Gramont in order to bear out his theory that Prussia, and in particular Count Bismarck, was the real originator of the war, by means of a series of studied provocations and affronts, designedly framed so as to awaken the warlike passions of the French people, and hurry them into a strife for which he knew that Prussia was far better prepared than France. Whatever may be thought of this theory, it is certain that the suddenness of the whole thing (for the Council of Ministers at Madrid decided on the 5th of July to propose the Prince of Hohenzollern to the Cortes, and to convoke that body for the purpose on the 20th of July) was viewed with suspicion and disfavour in Britain, where no prejudice existed either against Prussia or France. The excitable imagination of Frenchmen immediately developed the incident into a hundred painful and humiliating consequences. "Prussia," they thought, "desires first to isolate us in Europe, and then to crush us. Just as she ruined Austria in 1866 by placing her between two fires--herself on the north, and Italy on the south--so it is her present aim to place France also between two fires--North Germany on the one side, and Spain, with a Prussian prince on its throne and its army reorganised on the Prussian system, on the other."

But the candidature was not adhered to; and this fact, in the absence of more weighty evidence on the other side than has yet been adduced, suffices in the judgment of most men to saddle France with the chief responsibility of the rupture. Lord Granville exerted all his influence at Berlin to procure the withdrawal of the dangerous candidature; and M. Olozaga, the Spanish Minister at Paris (a statesman of great experience, and sincerely friendly to France), alarmed at the terrible excitement around him, took measures with the Prince Anthony of Hohenzollern, the father of Prince Leopold, to induce him to exercise his parental authority and bring about the renunciation by his son of the honour proposed for him. Could this be accomplished, it seemed certain that the storm would blow over, for the Duc de Gramont himself said to Lord Lyons, on the 8th of July, that the voluntary renunciation of his candidature by Prince Leopold would be "a most fortunate solution" of the difficulty. Prince Anthony accordingly wrote to General Prim renouncing all pretensions to the crown of Spain on the part of his son; Prim communicated the renunciation to Olozaga, and by him it was conveyed to the French Government. M. Ollivier was greatly elated, and went about in the lobbies of the French Chambers, telling his friends that all difficulty was at an end, "l'incident est vidé." But, in fact, he was not behind the scenes: to the secret councils of the Emperor, in which the issues of peace or war were discussed, he was not summoned.

Finding, as the result of its pressing representations since the first announcement of the candidature, that the Prussian Government declined all responsibility in regard to it, and professed to consider it as a matter that only concerned the King of Prussia in his capacity of head of the Hohenzollern family, the French Government instructed M. Benedetti to seek an interview with the King, who was then at Ems, and obtain from him an explicit disavowal of all share in the project. "We are in great haste," wrote Gramont, "for we must gain the start in case of an unsatisfactory reply, and commence the movements of the troops on Saturday in order to enter upon the campaign in a fortnight." M. Benedetti accordingly went to Ems, where he obtained an interview with the King on the 10th of July. At first, the King of Prussia said that he had certainly consented to the Prince of Hohenzollern's accepting the crown of Spain; and that having given his consent, it would be difficult for him to withdraw it. Two days later, the Prince's renunciation was known at Paris, and it became then a serious question with the French Government what course it should take. By the peremptory and unusual language that they had employed in the tribune, they had excited the passions and raised the expectations of the people to an extraordinary height, so that merely to accept the renunciation of the candidature appeared too lame and poor a conclusion to the tumult they had raised. The Duc de Gramont accordingly explained to Lord Lyons, on the 13th of July, that while the withdrawal of the candidature put an end to all question with Spain, from Prussia France had obtained literally nothing. M. Benedetti was ordered again to wait on the King and procure from him a guarantee that the project of raising his kinsman to the Spanish throne should not be renewed. The exact terms of the French demand, according to a memorandum placed by the Duc de Gramont in the hands of Lord Lyons, were these: "We ask of the King of Prussia to forbid the Prince of Hohenzollern to alter his present resolution. If he does so, the whole matter is at an end." M. Benedetti saw the King again at Ems, on the 13th, and endeavoured to obtain from him the assurance for the future required by the French Government. But to this the King, although M. Benedetti insisted warmly, and hinted at the serious consequences that might follow upon a refusal, declined to consent. Later in the day Benedetti sent to request another interview; but the King sent word that, as his mind was made up, and he had no other answer to give than that which he had given in the morning, it would be useless to re-open the question. This message--which seems to have been sent naturally and with perfect sincerity and in which M. Benedetti himself, as his despatches prove, saw no discourtesy--was so magnified and distorted as to create, on the minds of all who received the intelligence, the impression of an already consummated rupture. From Berlin the incident was officially telegraphed to most of the European Courts to the following effect--that M. Benedetti had accosted the King in the Kurgarten at Ems, and preferred his last extravagant demand; and that the King had thereupon turned round and ordered an aide-de-camp to tell M. Benedetti that there was no reply and that he would not receive him again.

In France the rumour flew that the King had affronted the French Ambassador and the ardour for war rose to fever heat. Immense crowds of Parisians gathered on the Boulevards (July 14th), singing the "Marseillaise" and eagerly discussing the chances of war. Three meetings of the Council of Ministers were held that day. At the first the peace party had the upper hand, but the voice of the Empress prevailed and at the third meeting, held shortly after midnight, the vote was given for war. At Berlin, on the same day, the King was received, on his return from Ems, by the acclamations of an immense multitude of persons, all animated by stern and enthusiastic resolution. On the next day occurred the memorable scene in the French Chambers which left no doubt remaining that the die was cast, and that the terrible eventuality of a war between France and Prussia was close at hand. The Duc de Gramont in the Senate, and M. Ollivier in the Corps Législatif, communicated a Ministerial message, in which it was stated that the King had refused to give the engagement required by France; that, notwithstanding this, in consequence of their desire for peace, they did not break off the negotiations; but that they had learned, to their surprise, that the King had refused to receive M. Benedetti and had communicated the fact officially to his Cabinet. "In these circumstances, we should have forgotten our dignity and also our prudence, had we not made preparations. We have prepared to maintain the war which is offered to us, leaving to each that portion of the responsibility that devolves upon him."

The Ministerial announcement produced an indescribable ferment in the Legislative Body. The majority applauded vehemently every expression that had a warlike sound; but there were a few sober-minded and independent men on the Opposition benches who endeavoured to gain a hearing,--who demanded that the despatches on which the action of the Government was founded should be laid before the Chamber,--who declared that since the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature they could see no sufficient cause for war. Among these objectors the most prominent was M. Thiers. His remonstrances were met by passionate cries and invectives. "Offend me, insult me," he cried; "I am ready to endure anything to spare the blood of my countrymen, which you are ready to shed so imprudently. You will not reflect for a moment; you will not demand the contents of the despatches, upon which your judgment ought to be founded." "Keep your advice, we do not require it," exclaimed the violent Imperialist, M. Jérôme David. The sitting concluded with the vote of a credit of fifty millions of francs for extraordinary military expenses, as demanded by the Government, by a majority of 245 to 10 voices. On the next day, the Senate, with its President, M. Rouher, at their head, waited upon the Emperor with an address, conceived in the worst French taste, and marked by that appalling disregard of moral considerations which led a noble country into such terrible misfortunes. "Your Majesty," he said, "draws the sword, and the country is with you, trembling with indignation at the excesses that an ambition over-excited by one day's good fortune was sure, sooner or later, to produce." As a matter of fact the war was popular in some sixteen only of the eighty-seven Departments of France.

All through the period of nine days that intervened between the announcement of the French Government on the 15th of July and the speech made by the Duc de Gramont on the 6th, the British Government had laboured heartily and indefatigably for the preservation of peace. All was, however, in vain. The French Ministry had, by the needless publicity and empressement which they had imported into the affair, raised such a tempest of passion and excitement, that soon neither they nor the Parisian public were in a condition to listen to reason. On the other hand, Count Bismarck, while remaining perfectly cool, was not disposed to take extraordinary pains to avert a struggle which he believed to be sooner or later inevitable, and which he was too well informed as to the comparative armaments of the two countries to view with apprehension.

The same spirit of rivalry and combativeness that impelled Count Bismarck in 1866, against the traditions of his country and the declarations of his whole life, to employ revolutionary agencies against Austria because they furnished him with a convenient weapon, now induced him, in contempt of the usages of men of honour and the bienséances of diplomacy, to bring forth from some secret drawer in the Prussian Foreign Office a document that he rightly thought was calculated seriously to damage France and the Emperor in the judgment of the neutral States. On the 25th of July there appeared in the Times what purported to be a textual copy of a project for a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, between France and Prussia. The paper containing it was communicated to the Times from the Prussian Foreign Office and was stated to be in the handwriting of M. Benedetti. The Emperor and the King agreed to the following bases: That France should recognise all the Prussian acquisitions of 1866, and should engage not to oppose the incorporation of the South German States, with the exception of Austria, in the North German Confederation; and that the King, on his part, would facilitate for France the acquisition of Luxemburg by means of an indemnity to be paid to the King of Holland, and would also "lend, if need were, the support of his arms for the conquest of Belgium." At the reading of this audacious proposal, a sentiment of stupefaction came upon the English mind, succeeded by a feeling of lively indignation. But as further correspondence developed accurately what had occurred, the case against France assumed a less unfavourable aspect. On the 29th of July the Duc de Gramont transmitted to London a letter from Benedetti, containing the following explanation of the circumstances. In the first place, he pointed out, that, if the project was a villainy, there were evidently two parties to it; on the very face of the document it was manifest that Prussia was not more averse from entertaining the question of the absorption of Belgium than was France. Secondly, whereas Count Bismarck had stated that this was but one of many such schemes with which he was continually being pestered by the French Ambassador, Benedetti asserted that since 1866 he had had no communications with the Prussian Chancellor upon any matter of the kind; but that in that year, and particularly while the negotiations for the Treaty of Prague were going on, Bismarck, fearful lest France should be provoked by the annexation of Hanover, Frankfort, etc., to Prussia, laid several proposals of this nature before him and discussed them with apparent seriousness. On one such occasion, wishing to put the substance of the conversation in a tangible shape, Benedetti wrote, almost under the direction of Count Bismarck, the rough draft now made public by the Prussian Government; Bismarck took it from him, saying he would show it to the King; after that Benedetti saw and thought no more of it. But when the project was submitted to the Emperor, Benedetti added, he at once rejected it; and he believed that it was also rejected by the King of Prussia.

Whatever might be the exact balance of truth between the conflicting statements, the painful impression was left on the minds of English statesmen, that neither France nor Prussia would have much scruple about destroying the independence of Belgium; and that, if that independence were worth preserving, from the point of view both of the honour and of the interests of Great Britain, new guarantees for its maintenance had become necessary. It is a pleasure to record the manly stand taken on this question by Lord Russell (which was in marked contrast with his abandonment of Denmark, in 1864), when (August 2nd) the subject came up in the House of Lords. Britain's duty, he said, was clear. "It is not a question of three courses. There is but one course and one path--namely, the course of honour and the path of honour--that we ought to pursue. We are bound to defend Belgium. I am told that that may lead us into danger. Now, in the first place, I deny that any great danger would exist if this country manfully declared her intention to perform all her engagements and not to shrink from their performance." After saying that all these intrigues arose from the doubt that prevailed on the Continent whether Britain would adhere to her treaty engagements, he proceeded: "I am persuaded that if it is once manfully declared that England means to stand by her treaties, to perform her engagements--that her honour and her interests would allow nothing else--such a declaration would check the greater part of these intrigues, and that neither France nor Prussia would wish to add a second enemy to the formidable foe which each has to meet."

Being strongly urged forward by the expressions of opinion delivered both in and out of Parliament, Mr. Gladstone's Government acted on this critical occasion both promptly and skilfully. Earl Granville prepared the text of a treaty guaranteeing the independence of Belgium during the continuance of the war and twelve months afterwards, and proposed its acceptance, simultaneously, but separately, to the two belligerent Powers. The substantial proviso of the treaty was to this effect: "His Majesty [Emperor of the French, or King of Prussia] having declared that, in spite of the state of war existing between [France and North Germany], he is determined to respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as it shall be respected by [North Germany, or France], her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland declares, on her part, that if, during the continuance of hostilities, the [North German, or French] armies should violate that neutrality, she will be prepared to co-operate with [his Imperial Majesty, or his Prussian Majesty] with the view of defending, in such manner as shall be mutually agreed upon, by employing to that end her naval and military forces, and of maintaining, in conjunction with [his Imperial Majesty, or his Prussian Majesty], then and afterwards, the independence and neutrality of Belgium." The other contracting Power agreed to co-operate with Great Britain for the accomplishment of the same end. The treaty was to be in force during the continuance of the war between France and Germany, and for a term of twelve months after the ratification of any treaty of peace concluded between those Powers; after which time, the independence and neutrality of Belgium would continue, so far as the high contracting parties were respectively concerned, to be maintained, as heretofore, in accordance with the first article of the Quintuple Treaty of the 19th of April, 1839. This treaty was accepted and signed by Prussia immediately, and by France also, after a little hesitation. Its provisions slumbered indeed, but there is no reason to suppose that they were without effect. Had there been no such treaty, it is possible that, during the operations near the Belgian frontier which terminated in the capitulation of Sedan, the neutrality of the Belgian territory would have been forcibly violated by one or the other belligerent; the area over which the devastating effects of war were experienced would have been extended; and serious political complications, from which it would have been difficult for any one of the great Powers to hold aloof, must infallibly have supervened.

So much heat and haste had been apparent in the proceedings of the French Government since the first rise of the Hohenzollern incident that it was generally expected that very few days would pass after the formal declaration of war (July 19th) before the French Army of the North would be arrayed along the frontier of Rhenish Prussia, ready to take the field in overwhelming force. But day followed day and nothing decisive was done. It appears that the arrangements for mobilisation--especially in what relates to transport--were found to be extremely defective. In truth, the military system of France was rotten and honeycombed with abuses; wherever unexpected pressure was applied, it gave way. In the subordinate posts there were many excellent and honourable men--it needs but to mention such names as MacMahon, Trochu, and Vinoy to establish the fact--but the real power lay with the Emperor and his personal friends or favourites. He is said, after the first great disaster had occurred, to have had continually on his lips the words, "I have been deceived." Doubtless he had been deceived; "cooked" reports had been submitted to him; money received for substitutes, instead of being so applied, had gone no one knew where, and the regiments were disgracefully attenuated in consequence; jobbery and corruption, extending into every department, made every service on which the usefulness of soldiers depends less efficient by many degrees than it ought to have been. Thus it happened that it was not till quite the end of the month that a respectable French force was collected at the frontier, and it was in sore stress for provisions. Meanwhile, the Prussians silently mustered three powerful armies behind the Rhine, intending to fall with an irresistible onset, when the fitting moment should arrive, on the heedless and vainglorious foe. The Emperor left Paris on the 28th of July, accompanied by his son Louis, and assumed the chief command of the army at Metz on the following day.

Napoleon appears to have reckoned even to the last moment that dislike and jealousy of Prussia would move the South German Governments to separate their interests from hers in the great struggle that was impending, or at least to wait and see how events fell out before finally committing themselves. How--knowing as he did the existence of the secret treaties of 1866, by which Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden bound themselves to assist Prussia, if attacked--he could seriously entertain such a hope, it is not easy to understand. The Governments of those States, on this occasion in full sympathy with their subjects, were animated by a hearty indignation at the unwarrantable attack made on Germany and they speedily sent in their adhesions to Prussia. Their military contingents were assigned, under the supreme command of the King of Prussia, to the third of the great armies that were being formed for the protection of German interests. These armies furnished a grand total of 338,000 men, to which enormous force France could for the moment only oppose 200,000. Marshal Lebœuf unfortunately imagined that the Foreign Office had concluded alliances with Austria and Italy, and that a great part of the Prussian army would in consequence be detained on the southern frontier. He was justified to this extent that Austria was willing enough to wound Germany, but yet afraid to strike. Count Beust saw that an immediate participation of Austria in the war would involve the appearance of Russia in the field on the side of King William. He determined therefore to restrict himself for the present to armed mediation in concert with Italy and to that end advised Napoleon III. to place the Italians in possession of Rome. Here were obviously the materials for a triple alliance and affairs were further advanced on the 2nd of August when the Papal States were evacuated by the French Government. Austria and Italy, however, stipulated for the preliminary success of the French troops as a condition of their armed support, in which case they promised to assume a position of armed neutrality, then to demand the exact performance of the treaty of Prague, i.e. the independence of the South German States, and to take the field in the event of refusal by the 15th of September. According to the Duc de Gramont a draft treaty had actually been drawn up, but before it could be signed the French armies had been dispersed.

The Emperor's plan of campaign, as explained in a pamphlet which he drew up while at Wilhelmshöhe, was to draw together 150,000 men from Metz and 100,000 from Strasburg, and with a force of 250,000 men cross the Rhine at Maxan, between Rastadt and Spires, while his rear was covered by the advance of a reserve force of 50,000, under Marshal Canrobert, from Châlons to Metz. Marching towards Dresden, the Emperor hoped to meet and defeat the North German forces, and, being thus interposed between North and South Germany, to intimidate the South German Powers into an attitude of acquiescence while he followed up his advantage against Prussia, and endeavoured to break up the newly cemented and, as he fain would believe, fragile ties that united Prussia to the countries annexed in the last war. If Germany had been unready; if Bismarck had been no more far-seeing than Persigny, and Moltke no more vigilant than Lebœuf; lastly, if the Emperor could have disposed of a hundred thousand more men, the plan might have been promising, perhaps even feasible. But when the Emperor remembered the enormous strength of the Prussian armies in 1866, and reflected that the populations then annexed were instantly brought within the cords of the Prussian military system, it is wonderful (even supposing him to have been under a complete delusion as to the probable conduct of Bavaria and Würtemberg) that he did not see that 250,000 men--on paper--was an utterly inadequate force wherewith to attempt so vast an enterprise as that he meditated.

The 2nd Corps, under General Frossard, was at Forbach, close to the Prussian frontier, just within which, on the river Saar, was the flourishing little town of Saarbrück, held by a battalion of infantry and three squadrons of cavalry belonging to the 8th North German Corps (First Army). General Steinmetz had assumed the command of that army at Coblenz on the 28th of July, and at the beginning of August had concentrated it in a position where it covered Trèves, and guarded against any sudden inroad into the Rhine province on the side of Thionville. On the 2nd of August Frossard received orders to drive the Prussians out of Saarbrück. The action began at 10.30 A.M., and soon afterwards the Emperor, with the Prince Imperial, arrived on the ground from Metz. The Prussians, though greatly outnumbered, held their ground tenaciously, but were gradually pushed out of the villages to the south of Saarbrück, and finally compelled to evacuate the town and retreat to the wooded heights that look down upon it from the north. The French did not attempt to occupy the town, nor to dislodge the enemy from the heights beyond.

Forty-eight hours after the French made this unmeaning demonstration at Saarbrück, the concentration of the German armies was completed, and their heavy masses were ready to be moved down to and across the French frontier. To the Third Army was given the honour of striking the first blow--doubtless because in it were arrayed the contingents from the South German States, and Prussia desired that France and the world should be convinced without delay of the futility of all calculations that took German dissension for their basis. On the 3rd of August the Crown Prince sent orders from Spires to his corps commanders to advance upon Weissenburg, just across the Alsatian frontier. At this point MacMahon had stationed his second division, commanded by General Abel Douay, in order to cover his communications with the 5th Corps, under De Failly, which was stationed round Bitche. Douay's force, which did not exceed 12,000 men, was left absolutely without reinforcements. The French were outnumbered, probably two to one, but they had a very strong position, and their field guns and chassepôts scattered destruction through the German lines as they slowly forced their way up the height. At one o'clock the assailants were in possession of the castle of Geissberg, near the top of the hill. The leading brigade attacked from the eastward; the other, edging round to the left, and scaling the southern face of the hill, threatened to cut off the French from their line of retreat. Douay had been killed early in the action, and the officer who succeeded to the command, judging that further resistance was unadvisable, ordered a retirement.

On the day after the affair at Saarbrück the Emperor was exceedingly unwell, and the physicians would not allow him to quit his room. It was probably from a sense of great weakness that he came to the resolution of divesting himself of a portion of the responsibility of command, by appointing Marshal Bazaine to the command of the three corps (2nd, 3rd, and 4th) that formed the left wing of the Army of the Rhine, and Marshal MacMahon to that of the 1st; 5th, and 7th Corps, forming its right wing. This was carried out on the 5th, till which day Bazaine remained in ignorance of the Emperor's plan of campaign. The three corps that this order placed at the disposal of MacMahon--namely, his own at Strasburg and Hagenau, De Failly's at Bitche, and Félix Douay's at Belfort--would, if united, have formed an army of about 80,000 men. He wished to effect a concentration, but was overruled by the Emperor, who feared the political consequences of a retreat. Accordingly, in the course of the 5th, MacMahon drew up his army along the high ground to the west of the Sauer. In the first line were the three divisions of his own corps that had not yet been engaged; in the second line he placed the troops who had been beaten at Weissenburg, a division of the 7th Corps that had come up from Belfort and two brigades of cavalry, one of which consisted of two fine regiments of cuirassiers. De Failly was expected with his corps in the course of the day. On the 5th of August, the Crown Prince, still holding the 1st Bavarian Corps in reserve, moved the main body of his army, marching in four columns as before, from the Lauter towards the Sauer. At the headquarters of the Crown Prince no thought was entertained of fighting a battle on the next day, during which the Prince intended to have remained quietly at Sulz. But early on the morning of the 6th of August the impetuosity of the divisional commanders brought on a general battle, after the Germans had suffered severely for their rashness. Soon after twelve, the Crown Prince, finding that the troops already on the field were hotly engaged, and that the French showed no signs of an intention to retreat, determined to bring his whole force into action, in order to deal a crushing blow to an enemy whose greatly inferior numbers could not expect from any quarter to be adequately reinforced. A long cannonade ensued, to which the French, who were deficient in artillery, could not make an effective reply. Then Kirchbach ordered the advanced guard to storm Wörth, which was done about 12.30, and the victorious troops advanced up the hills on the left bank of the Sauer. Soon, however, they were brought to a stand by a biting fire from the French position and made no progress for a long time. A great artillery duel went on for hours on the centre and right of the line. About 11 A.M. the French right had made a forward movement across the Sauer, and drove the Germans out of Gunstett, but were unable to hold it long. Fresh troops continually coming up, General Bose moved his corps across the Sauer in support of Kirchbach; the Würtembergers also joined in this advance, and turning towards the north, after crossing the river, Prussians and Würtembergers steadily pressed forward, and took from the French the village of Elsasshausen about two o'clock; but the resistance was stubborn and the loss proportionately heavy. It was while the Germans were advancing by Elsasshausen that Michel's brigade, composed of two regiments of cuirassiers, made its celebrated but useless charge. With wild fury these devoted horsemen charged into the advancing masses, but the rapid discharges of the needle-gun smote and crushed their ranks, and not more than 150 unwounded men remained after the battle in the whole brigade. Froschweiler, the village to the north of Elsasshausen, attacked both from the south and from the east, was taken at 3.30. MacMahon, outnumbered and beaten, was now compelled to retreat. Keeping his centre and left pretty well together, he fell back on Niederbronn, where he found a division of De Failly's corps, which, through some telegraphic mistake, had not arrived in time to take part in the battle. These fresh troops checked the German pursuit. The French right, demoralised by defeat, and losing almost all its organisation, fled in headlong flight towards Hagenau and Strasburg.

On the day following the battle, MacMahon reached Saverne, on the Strasburg-Paris railway, and proceeded to despatch his troops to Nancy and Châlons. His only course now was to reorganise his army at the camp of Châlons, while Bazaine, with his portion of the Army of the Rhine, detained the enemy round Metz. De Failly, prevented from marching towards Metz by the rapid advance of the First and Second German Armies into French territory, in consequence of the success we are about to describe, fell back from Bitche in a southerly direction, struck the Strasburg-Paris railway, and brought his corps to join MacMahon. The remainder of the 7th Corps was brought up to Châlons soon afterwards from Belfort. The Crown Prince, before crossing the Vosges in pursuit of MacMahon, detached General Werder with the Baden division to invest and besiege Strasburg. General Beyer, the divisional commander, summoned General Uhrich, the governor of the fortress, to surrender, but of course with no result. The town was then invested (August 10th) and several regiments of Prussian Landwehr were presently added to the besieging force.

A second disaster happened on the same day as the battle of Wörth. On the previous day, General Frossard, commanding the 2nd Corps, withdrew his troops from the valley of the Saar to the heights of Spicheren, where his right rested on a difficult wooded country; on his left was the little town of Forbach and the railway to Metz. General Kameke, commanding a division of the 7th Corps (First Army), pushed troops over the Saar at Saarbrück on the morning of the 6th, who came into action with the French batteries on the Rothe Berg (a hill jutting out from the Spicheren plateau) about 11.30 A.M. From that time the battle raged with varying success all through the day till nightfall. Von Göben came up and took the command about three o'clock; about five the Prussians carried the greater part of the heights of Spicheren, though at a terrible cost of life. On the other hand, the French left, between six and seven, advanced along the railway from Stiring and drove back the Germans nearly to the Saar. The bravery of the French in this battle was conspicuous; the losses they inflicted on the Germans were far heavier than those they themselves suffered; and there seems little reason to doubt that with more clear-sightedness and determination on the part of Frossard, and more energetic co-operation on the part of Bazaine (who was at St. Avold with the 3rd Corps, about fifteen miles from Spicheren), or, perhaps, on the part of Bazaine's lieutenants, the Germans would have been repulsed with heavy loss. Frossard does not appear to have held the plateau with a sufficient force; and in a critical period of the action, when German reinforcements were coming up from all sides, he telegraphed to Bazaine, asking him to send him a regiment! It was not till towards six o'clock that he telegraphed to Bazaine to assist him with all the forces at his disposal; but it was then too late. The French were sadly demoralised by their defeat. Frossard retired upon Saargemund, and thence, with what was left of his corps, joined the army that Bazaine was collecting near Metz.

On that fatal Sunday (August 7th) the full truth concerning Wörth and Forbach was known at Paris. A telegram from the Emperor was published, admitting that the army had suffered reverses, but feebly adding, "Tout peut se rétablir" ("All may yet be regained"). An indescribable ferment agitated all minds and hearts. The cry in the streets was for a levée en masse, and the word "déchéance" ("deposition") was often heard. The Corps Législatif met on the 9th of August. Jules Favre and the party of the Left urged the Emperor's recall from the army, and the appointment of a committee with full power for the conduct of war. Ollivier, who showed little sense of the terrible gravity of the situation, spoke in defence of the Ministry, but his speech was received with vehement interruptions and loud denials, and the majority cared not now to screen him from the attacks of the Left. A middle course was taken. The Empress sent for the Count de Palikao (August 10th), and requested him to form a Ministry. He was in command of the military centre of Lyons when summoned to Paris by the Empress. He succeeded in forming a Ministry, in which Magne took charge of the Department of Finance; the Prince de la Tour d'Auvergne, of Foreign Affairs; and Palikao himself became the Minister of War. Vigorous measures were instantly taken to make timely preparation for the worst, in case the armies still in the field should not be able to prevent the Germans from marching upon Paris. General Trochu, a brave and honest soldier, but a little too rigid and positive in his opinions, was appointed to the command of the forces of Paris; a new war loan of one thousand millions of francs was set on foot; the ranks of the National Guard and Mobiles were filled; and great efforts were made to bring into Paris as large a supply of provisions as possible from the surrounding country.

After Forbach there was nothing to hinder the Germans from pushing forward their armies into France. The First and Second Armies, facing to the westward, marched in the direction of Metz--Steinmetz keeping to the north, and Prince Frederick Charles to the south, of the railway connecting Metz with Saarbrück. Bazaine on his part was doing his utmost to re-form and augment the French army round Metz. He was now possessed of uncontrolled authority; for Count Palikao, though he would not consent to Jules Favre's motion for the recall of the Emperor to Paris, lest the excited populace should rise and put a sudden end to the dynasty, wisely yielded on the main point, and prevailed upon the Emperor to resign the chief command.

Accordingly by an Imperial order of the 12th of August Bazaine was appointed generalissimo of the Army of the Rhine, with Colonel Jarras as his chief of the staff. Nevertheless, Napoleon, afraid to return to Paris, unwilling even to trust himself at the camp of Châlons, remained with the army and was the cause of much embarrassment and delay. Bazaine had now under his command the Imperial Guard, the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and part of the 6th Corps, making a total of about 140,000 men. Finding that with his utmost efforts he could not bring together a force capable of coping with the First and Second German Armies in the field, Bazaine resolved to leave Metz for a time to the protection of its encircling forts and powerful garrison, and fall back towards Verdun and Châlons. The movements within the French lines, caused by the preparations for complying with this order, attracted the attention of General Steinmetz and brought on the battle of Borny. Prince Frederic Charles had moved with the Second Army to the southward, intending to cross the Moselle at Pont-à-Mousson and other places above Metz, and then seize the roads leading to Verdun and Paris. Steinmetz seems to have intended only a reconnaissance in force, but the eagerness of the German troops brought on an engagement along the whole line, some miles to the east of Metz, in which (August 14th) neither side gained a decided advantage, but a part of the French army was detained at Metz on the following day; which was the very thing that Steinmetz had desired. The German armies had but to cross the Moselle and Bazaine was caught in a trap.

On the morning of the 16th, no movement having been made that day by the French troops massed in front of Gravelotte on account of the non-arrival of the 3rd and 4th Corps, the heads of the German columns, appearing from the southward about 10 A.M., pushed back Forton's cavalry division, which had bivouacked to the south of the lower Verdun road, and occupied Mars-la-Tour. At first the Germans were in no great force, but their numbers kept increasing and their artillery fire became more and more deadly. At noon Bazaine was compelled to bring up the Guard and place them in line. It was not till two o'clock that the 3rd and 4th Corps came into action on the right of the French line, which then extended in a north-westerly and south-easterly direction across both the Verdun roads, facing the Prussians who were coming up from the south and west. The battle raged all day with great violence; at nightfall the French held their positions and had taken a Prussian flag. But their loss, apparently owing to the superiority of the German artillery, was fearfully heavy; and the Germans were masters of the road to Vionville.

The French bivouacked on the battle-field. On the next day Bazaine found that it was impossible to continue his retreat on Verdun for several reasons. The enemy held the lower road in great force, so that an attempt to break through them would only have brought on another battle against augmented numbers; and almost the same might be said of the upper road, which for a long distance is only separated from the lower by a narrow tract of level or undulating country. Provisions also had fallen short and ammunition still more; and these could only be replenished from the Government establishments in Metz. On the 17th, therefore, the French were engaged all day in falling back to, and strengthening themselves upon a commanding position extending from Amanvillers on the north to Rozerieulles on the south.

In advance of the right front of this position is the village of Verneville, round which Bazaine stationed the 6th Corps under Canrobert. But observing that there was a strong position at the village of St. Privat, commanding the road to Briey, the occupation of which would extend northwards the line already taken up, and make a turning movement on the part of the enemy more difficult, Marshal Canrobert asked permission to move his corps to St. Privat. Bazaine gave his consent; the 6th Corps occupied St. Privat; and the symmetry and defensive strength of the French line were doubtless improved by the change. As in previous engagements the rashness of divisional commanders, particularly Steinmetz, caused the loss of whole brigades before the battle was won by the Germans. Thus a great combined attack of cavalry and artillery was ordered by Steinmetz between four and five. The batteries of the 8th Corps, and three reserve batteries of the 7th Corps, supported by a large body of horse, were pushed across the defile. But they fared no better than their predecessors. The 4th Light Battery, trotting up the hill to the right of St. Hubert, "suffered so severely that, after firing ten rounds, it was put hors de combat, and obliged to retire down the hill." The attack failed and both cavalry and artillery fell back by degrees on their original positions. But gradually the superiority of the Prussian artillery fire told, and Bazaine persisted in keeping his reserves, amounting to a third of his forces, out of the field of action. Finally the Saxon Corps, after a long détour, delivered their attack on the north flank. After several unsuccessful attempts, in which a great many men fell, a combined assault by the Prussian Guards and the Saxon Corps, simultaneously directed on St. Privat from three sides, the north, the west, and the south, forced the brave defenders, soon after seven, to relinquish their hold. The right of Canrobert's corps was then thrown back, but still faced the enemy, and darkness soon terminated the contest. The result was that the French had held their ground everywhere except on the extreme right, but that all the roads leading to Verdun had been taken from them. On the following day Bazaine withdrew his whole army from the plateau and brought them down to within the shelter of the guns of Metz. Only the half-trained levies at Châlons remained to bar the march of the invader upon the brilliant capital of France.

The intelligence of the great battles fought near Metz reached England in various conflicting forms. But it was clear that a French army was cooped up in Metz; that thousands of men were lying, disabled by sickness or wounds, in hospitals, many of which were of a provisional and inadequate character; and that great distress must infallibly fall upon the poor inhabitants of the north-east region of France, which formed the theatre of war. The reckless way in which the French Government began the war had aroused feelings of deep and indignant disapproval among all classes and parties in Great Britain; but now that it was a question of suffering to be alleviated, human needs to be supplied, the warm hearts of British men and women forgot all but the urgency and the duty of charity. Associations for the relief of the sick and wounded were formed in every direction, and received overflowing support; and numbers both of men and women volunteered to tend the wounded of both armies under the protection of the red cross of the Geneva Convention. The German authorities, whose arrangements in view of these and other accidents of war admitted of little improvement, declined to avail themselves of the zeal of foreign volunteers; but by the French, whom overwhelming misfortune had surprised in a state of unreadiness that only brings out the rashness of their Government into stronger relief, all such services were thankfully accepted. Later a very useful organisation was set on foot by the Daily News newspaper for the special purpose of relieving the wants of the peasantry and others in the country round Sedan, whom the devastating fury of the war had left houseless and penniless.

As soon as a clear notion of what had occurred near Metz was obtained by the French Government, it became a matter of very anxious deliberation what course should be adopted. For some days Marshal MacMahon had been actively engaged in forming a new army at the camp of Châlons out of the heterogeneous materials that he had at his disposal. Altogether a force had been collected of 135,000 men. What was to be done with it? Made wise by the event, critics and historians without number have condemned MacMahon's flank march through the Argonne for the purpose of relieving Bazaine, and have written as if it was absurd and incapable of achievement from the first. Then, as it must have been undertaken from some motive, they have seen in the enterprise the reckless and desperate resolve of the Government of the Emperor to sacrifice the interests of France, which would have dictated MacMahon's retirement towards Paris, to the interests of the dynasty, and stake everything on the success of a most hazardous combination, the failure of which, while it was fatal to the Empire, involved France also in its ruin. The Empress and Palikao, so it is commonly said, forced MacMahon to march towards Sedan against his better judgment, they being influenced by purely dynastic considerations. Count Palikao replied to these critics in a book published after the war was over, and it is impossible to deny that his assertions seem to be of great weight. Was the scheme practicable? Count Palikao maintains that it was; and Colonel Rüstow, an independent witness, appears to be of the same opinion. The gist of their argument is that had MacMahon started at once and pursued a direct march, he would have eluded the Crown Prince and relieved Bazaine after a battle with the small force commanded by the Prince of Saxony.

MacMahon, however, when, after long resistance, he acceded to the policy of endeavouring to relieve Bazaine, considered that he would be exposing his right flank too much if he were to lead his army on the line indicated by Palikao: he preferred a more circuitous course which would take his army close to the Belgian frontier and bring it by way of Montmédy and Briey upon Metz. On the 23rd he marched northwards from Rheims, where he had delayed for two days. Even by this route he had sufficient start, in the opinion of Palikao, to have outmarched the Crown Prince, had he given way to no indecision, and made long marches every day without troubling himself about the number of stragglers whom he might leave behind him. He might, it is said, have reached Montmédy on the 25th of August, on the evening of which day the Crown Prince of Prussia first heard of his northward march. "On the 29th, or, at the latest, on the 30th, he could have united with Bazaine before Metz--that is, if the latter broke through the investing lines--and have fought a battle with Prince Frederick Charles, who would then have been no longer able to oppose him with equal forces." But instead of this, the head of MacMahon's army only reached Mouzon on the 28th of August, and he was therefore unable to bring his whole army across the Meuse before it was struck by the Crown Prince.

That commander, immediately he heard of MacMahon's movements, hastened in hot pursuit together with the Prince of Saxony. On the 27th MacMahon became aware that his plan was discovered and wished to retreat but was overruled by the Empress from Paris. On the 30th of August the 5th Corps (De Failly) was at Beaumont near the Meuse. They had arrived there only that morning after a fatiguing march, and a defeat on the previous day; the soldiers were engaged in cooking; and the scouting and outpost duties appear to have been shamefully neglected. While engaged in the multifarious avocations of a camp, and dreaming of no danger, the doomed men were startled by the bursting of shells among them, fired by a battery belonging to the 1st Bavarian Corps (Von der Tann) which had advanced unperceived through the woods. Von der Tann was presently supported by the 4th Corps (Alvensleben II.) and the 12th Corps (Saxons). Surprised and outnumbered, the French made a feeble resistance, and were driven in confusion from the field. Of the beaten troops, some succeeded in crossing the Meuse, others fled northward in the direction of Sedan. MacMahon was deeply distressed on hearing of the ill conduct of the 5th Corps--of the negligence that had allowed it to be surprised, and the ease with which it had suffered itself to be dispersed and demoralised. A portion of the beaten troops had been, as we have seen, cut off from the Meuse, and thrown back in the direction of Sedan: it was this probably, as well as the knowledge that the head of Vinoy's column was at Mézières, which induced MacMahon--although the 1st and 12th Corps had already crossed the Meuse and were marching upon Montmédy, and the 7th Corps crossed it at Villers below Mouzon in the course of the 30th--to give orders on the evening of that day for the abandonment of his former line of march, and the concentration of all the forces under his command upon the heights surrounding the fortress of Sedan and on the right bank of the Meuse above the town. In the course of the 31st this movement was effected. By gross negligence the 11th German Corps was allowed by the French to throw two pontoon bridges, apparently without opposition, across the Meuse at Donchery, over which the whole 11th Corps was transported to the right bank by the morning of the 1st of September, and was shortly afterwards followed by the 5th Corps. By this operation the doom of the French army was sealed, the only fear of the Germans being lest it should cut its way into Belgium. On the evening of the 30th, orders had been sent from the royal headquarters that the Army of the Meuse, occupying the right wing, should prevent the French left from escaping to the eastward, between the Meuse and the Belgian frontier; while the Third Army should continue its march northwards, and attack the enemy wherever he was fallen in with. These orders had been complied with, and the 11th Corps had been pushed across the Meuse at Donchery during the night of the 31st, so that on the morning of the 1st of September seven German Corps and a half, together with cavalry and artillery, forming a force of upwards of 200,000 men, with from 600 to 700 guns, were already posted in such positions as to leave no way of escape for the French. Two independent armies being on the field, the commander of neither of which could properly take orders from the other, the King of Prussia came upon the scene, as he had done before the day of Königgrätz, and assumed supreme command. The battle began very early on the morning of the 1st of September, while the summer haze still covered the low grounds, with the attack of the Bavarians on Bazeilles, which they carried after a desperate resistance. MacMahon, who had been severely wounded, handed over the command to General Wimpffen. Meanwhile the left wing of the Germans had been making alarming progress. The 11th Corps, having reached Vrigne aux Bois at 7 A.M., was ordered by the Crown Prince of Prussia to wheel round to its right and attack St. Menges. This village lies a little to the east of the extremity of the great horse-shoe bend of the Meuse, nearly due north of Sedan. Following the 11th, the 5th Corps also passed round the head of the bend, and took ground to the eastward of Bose. Then turning southwards and deploying into line, both corps advanced against the 7th French Corps, which occupied the hilly ground between Floing and Illy. Before one o'clock the ring of encircling fire had been so closed in that an interval of not more than 4,000 paces separated the left of the 5th Corps from the right of the Guards. Balan, the village between Bazeilles and Sedan, was taken and held by the Bavarians and the 4th Corps about two o'clock. About 4 P.M. the French troops about Balan were ordered to fall back upon Sedan.

At 5 P.M. the heads of all the German columns pushed forwards, and commenced to bombard Sedan with field pieces. It is a small town of 15,000 inhabitants, without detached forts, and powerless to resist artillery. The whole French army being now pent up within its walls, a scene of indescribable confusion arose. Shells fell and exploded upon houses and in the streets; and the shrieks and groans of the wounded, the execrations of the infuriated soldiers, the cries of the miserable inhabitants, the helpless clamour and hubbub that reigned everywhere, combined to form a picture such as only a Virgil or a Dante could paint.

Wimpffen desired to resign his command into the Emperor's hands; but to this Napoleon naturally would not consent. However, the Emperor himself caused a flag of truce to be hoisted over the gates of Sedan. To this it had come; and the sun of France, as the first military Power in Europe, set on that fatal day.

The Emperor desired to surrender his own person into the hands of the King of Prussia, and sent to the latter, by General Reille, who accompanied the German envoy on his return, a letter thus expressed:--

"Sire, my Brother,--Not having been able to die in the midst of my troops, nothing remains for me but to place my sword in the hands of your Majesty."

The King sent a courteous reply, in which he prayed the Emperor to nominate an officer of rank to negotiate with the officer whom he had named on his side, General Moltke, for the capitulation of the French army. Wimpffen undertook the sad and humiliating duty, and met Moltke at the Prussian headquarters, in the village of Donchery. The Frenchman tried hard to obtain terms that fell short of unconditional surrender. But the logic of facts was against him and Moltke, calm as fate and cold as the grave, unfolded to him with pitiless accuracy the full horror of his situation. The terms of surrender were settled at six o'clock on the morning of the 2nd of September and, being ratified by the King, soon afterwards, came into force. The French army became prisoners of war; and all arms and material of war, whether belonging to the army or to the fortress, were to be handed over by a French to a German commission; the officers were to retain their freedom, their arms, and their personal property on giving their word of honour not to serve against Germany during the continuance of the war. There were many officers, however, who preferred the nobler part of sharing captivity with the men rather than renounce the right of bearing arms against Germany so long as the war lasted. The wild excitement, rage, and grief that seized upon the soldiers, when they knew that they were to surrender their arms and go into captivity, surpass the power of description. By batches of about 10,000 at a time, they were transported, during several days, by rail, to Saarbrück and thence to various parts of Germany.

Seeing the struggle it had cost Wimpffen to agree to the terms proposed, Napoleon thought that could he see Bismarck, he might perhaps obtain from him some alleviation of their rigour. About six in the morning, therefore, of the 2nd of September, he set out in a carriage towards Donchery, having sent forward a messenger to inform Count Bismarck of his desire for an interview. Bismarck was still in bed, but immediately rose and rode out to meet the Emperor. He met the carriage a little distance on the Sedan side of the Donchery bridge and, dismounting, respectfully approached it and asked his Majesty's commands. Napoleon said that he wished to speak with the King, whom he imagined to be at Donchery; but Bismarck replied that the King of Prussia was then at Vendresse, some fourteen miles away. Indeed the Count, knowing his master's kindly nature, had removed him to a distance until the terms were signed. Later in the day a meeting was arranged between the Emperor and the King at a country house near Donchery, called the Château de Bellevue. The interview was brief, but Napoleon's eyes filled with tears when he learned that Prince Frederick Charles was still before Metz, and consequently that there was no hope for Bazaine. The Emperor quitted the Château on the morning of the 3rd of September, and proceeded in a close carriage (it was raining heavily) to the Belgian town of Bouillon. Thence escorted by rail to Liége, and entering Prussian territory at Verviers, the illustrious prisoner reached Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel, on the evening of the 5th of September, where suitable preparations had been made for his reception.

M. Jules Favre says that late in the evening of the 2nd of September a trustworthy person came to him, and informed him that Marshal MacMahon had been wounded, that the army had been defeated, and that it, along with the Emperor, was shut up in Sedan. All the next day a feverish anxiety reigned in every part of Paris. What was known was terrible, but a just foreboding whispered that there was still worse behind. A meeting of the Chamber was summoned by the Government for three o'clock on the afternoon of the 3rd of September. Count Palikao announced the failure of Bazaine's sorties out of Metz on the 31st of August and 1st of September, and admitted that, after a partial success, the French army, overwhelmed by numbers, had been driven back, partly upon Mézières, partly upon Sedan, and a small portion across the Belgian frontier. In presence of these grave events the Minister declared that the Government appealed to the strength, vigour, and patriotism of the nation; he added that 200,000 Gardes Mobiles were about to enter Paris, who, united to the forces already there, would ensure the safety of the capital. Jules Favre then rose. Availing himself of an admission made by Palikao that the Emperor was not in communication with his Ministers and gave them no orders, he came to the conclusion that "the Government had ceased to exist," and enlarged upon the means that were at hand for supplying its place. Before separating the Chamber voted urgency for a proposition of M. Argence, calling to arms all men between twenty and thirty-five years, whether married or single. Filled with gloom and anxious apprehension, the members separated till the following day (Sunday, September 4th) at five o'clock.

But soon after the meeting certain intelligence of the capitulation reached Palikao and the Ministers and the news, coming by various channels, soon flew over Paris. Immense crowds filled the boulevards; cries were frequently heard demanding the fall of the Government. M. Favre and some of his friends went to M. Schneider, the President of the Corps Législatif, and prevailed upon him to convene it for a midnight sitting that same night. Jules Favre did not conceal from M. Schneider that he meant to propose the deposition of the Emperor; but to this the latter would by no means give his consent. He and many other honourable members of the Chamber believed themselves, even were there no other argument against a revolution, to be restrained by their oath of fidelity to the Emperor from joining in any project that contemplated either his dethronement or the repudiation of the dynasty.

The plan of Jules Favre and his friends of the Extreme Left was this: that the deposition of the Emperor and his dynasty should be proclaimed, and that the Chambers should assume all the powers of government, exercising them through an executive commission consisting of a few members, in which not only Palikao but also M. Schneider would be retained. The plan was embodied in three articles, which ran as follows:--

Article 1. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and his dynasty are declared to be deposed from the power given them by the constitution.

Article 2. A parliamentary committee, consisting of ----, is entrusted with the powers of government and with the mission to expel the enemy from France.

Article 3. General Trochu remains in his post as Governor of Paris.

The articles prepared by Jules Favre were signed by twenty-seven members of the Corps Législatif, but the name of M. Thiers was not among them. That experienced and wary politician had much confidence in the military knowledge and skill of Count Palikao, and on this account, as well as on account of the general considerations that may be urged against a revolutionary procedure, he would bear no part in a plan for overthrowing the Government. At the midnight sitting of the Chamber, no disguise being any longer possible, Count Palikao announced that the army, having been thrown back after heroic efforts on Sedan, and finding resistance no longer possible, had capitulated, and that the Emperor had been made prisoner. He then demanded an adjournment till noon of the same day (September 4th), that the Government might have time to mature its proposals in this alarming crisis. The adjournment was not opposed; but M. Jules Favre gave notice that he should, at the mid-day sitting, bring forward the motion the terms of which have been already stated. The motion, if the Count Palikao is to be believed, was ill received by the majority of the members.

Between 8 and 9 A.M. a council of Ministers was held at the Tuileries, presided over by the Empress, who displayed exemplary firmness and courage. It was resolved at this council to propose to the Chambers the nomination of a Council of Regency of five members (each member to be nominated by the absolute majority of the Legislative Body), with Count Palikao as its Lieutenant-General. But when he arrived at the Corps Législatif, shortly before noon, and communicated to a number of deputies the plan of the Government, he found that the use of the term "Regency" was generally disapproved. Thiers and his friends desired that the new council should be simply described as a "Council of Government." To this Palikao was unwilling to accede because the words seemed to betoken a breach of continuity between the new Government and the old--to be equivalent therefore to sanctioning revolution. An ingenious expedient occurred to him: it was to alter the words "Council of Regency" into "a Council of the Government and of National Defence;" thus avoiding the unpopular word, and yet implying that the Government had not come to an end, but was prolonged in and transformed into the new Council. The majority of the deputies appeared to approve of the clause so worded; and the Empress, whose consent Palikao was careful to obtain, sent him word that she relied entirely on him and approved of whatever he might do.

The hour for the meeting was now come. The approaches to the hall of the Legislative Body were occupied by troops of the line, and 600 mounted gendarmes were stationed in reserve in the Palais de l'Exposition in the Champs Elysées.

Three propositions were brought before the Chamber: first, that of the Government; secondly, that of Jules Favre; and thirdly, that of M. Thiers. The last was signed by forty-six deputies, and was expressed in the following terms:--

"In view of the existing state of affairs the Chamber names a Commission of Government and of National Defence.

"A constituent Assembly will be convoked as soon as circumstances will permit."

The three propositions were referred to the bureaux in the usual way that a committee might be appointed to report upon them. But while deliberation was going on in the bureaux (which met in committee-rooms distinct from the Legislative Chamber itself) events occurred that soon brought their labours to an untimely end. The Chambers were invaded by an unruly mob and the President was compelled to suspend the sitting. Gambetta with most of the Paris deputies proceeded to the Hôtel de Ville and there proclaimed the Republic. The Government of National Defence was constituted with General Trochu as its President. Already the Empress had fled and the Senate quietly dispersed without the slightest attempt to assert its authority. The other Ministerial posts were thus distributed:--Foreign Affairs, Jules Favre; Interior, Gambetta; War, General Le Flô; Marine, Admiral Fourichon; Justice, Crémieux; Finance, Picard; Public Instruction and Religion, Jules Simon; Prefect of Police, Count Kératry. M. Etienne Arago was appointed Mayor of Paris.

The Corps Législatif did not resign itself without an effort to the violent suppression that had been effected. A deputation of its members, headed by M. Grévy, presently waited on the Provisional Government. M. Grévy stated that a considerable number of members of the Corps Législatif, holding the same principles as those that animated the Provisional Government, and prepared to accept the fall of the Napoleonic system as an accomplished fact, were desirous of continuing the sessions of that body in a spirit of co-operation with the Government at the Hôtel de Ville. It was arranged that a meeting should be held at the Presidency at eight o'clock the same evening, when Jules Favre and Jules Simon, as a deputation from the Provisional Government, would inform their former colleagues of the decision arrived at in reference to M. Grévy's proposal. The subject was then anxiously debated. M. Glais Bizoin informed the Ministers that he had taken upon himself to close the doors of the hall of the Corps Législatif and seal them. This energetic proceeding it was deemed upon the whole advisable to sustain. The continuance of the Corps Législatif would lead, it was feared, to political intrigues and complications of various kinds that would be unfavourable to that concentration of every one's faculties on the task of national defence which it was so desirable to promote. At the meeting in the evening, M. Thiers being in the chair, Jules Favre explained to the members present the reasons that actuated the Provisional Government in declining the co-operation of the Corps Législatif. Thiers replied with exquisite finesse, spoke of Jules Favre as his "cher ci-devant collégue;" said that he could not approve of what had happened, but that he desired none the less earnestly that the courage of those of his colleagues who had not withdrawn before a formidable task might be profitable to the country and gain for it that success which was the ardent desire of every good citizen.

In England the news of the fall of the Empire and the Revolution of the 4th of September was received with mixed feelings. A very general opinion prevailed that the Emperor had been overtaken by a just retribution, though this feeling was qualified by the recollection of the real friendliness that Napoleon had generally manifested towards the country, and in which his sincerity cannot be doubted. With regard to any change the revolution just consummated might make in the position of France, and in the duties of the neutral Powers in her regard, the Government of Mr. Gladstone gave no indication of a belief that, either now or hereafter, interference (unless Belgium were attacked) could become the duty or the interest of England. But, as far as words went, the Provisional Government could not complain of any lack of cordiality. The British ambassador, Lord Lyons, was the first of all the foreign representatives to call on M. Jules Favre at the Foreign Office on the morning of the 5th of September. Lord Lyons was full of good will. He reminded the Minister that his Government had offered its mediation to France, which had refused it. He could not conceal that public opinion in England was still hostile to France and that the mind of the Queen was strongly acted upon by the influence of relationship in favour of Germany. Yet it was possible that, in the course of events, the feeling in England might change; and that a sense of common interest might, if Germany pushed her successes too far and too unscrupulously, make the majority of Englishmen think that of two evils intervention was the less. In reply, M. Jules Favre, after laving great stress on the circumstance that the Imperial Government which rashly began the war had been overthrown, and that the party now in power had from the first been opposed to war, enlarged on those considerations which seemed to him to prove that England had a manifest interest in interfering to prevent France from being seriously weakened. England, he thought, would sink in reputation, and lose the respect that her magnanimous conduct at the beginning of the century had won for her among the nations of Europe, if she tamely suffered a people to which she was bound by so many ties to be destroyed piecemeal. England was now in a position, relatively to France, which might be likened to that in which France stood, relatively to Austria, after the battle of Sadowa. France then extended a generous and protecting hand and saved Austria from ruin; so let England now act towards France. Lord Lyons promised to bring M. Jules Favre's observations under the notice of his Government and, after expressing the strong feeling of sympathy with France in her misfortunes by which he was personally animated, took his departure.

At the time of the formation of the new Government Jules Favre was honestly of opinion that the change in her representation would powerfully recommend the cause of France to the neutral Powers. The Emperor, he argued, made war upon personal or dynastic grounds; the Emperor is overthrown; the true France now makes her voice heard; declares that she would not have gone to war if she could have helped it; that her ideas all lie in the sphere of peace and solidarity of peoples; and that the other Powers of Europe may safely make a collective representation to Prussia in order to bring about peace, because the Republic in France is a guarantee that no wanton aggression will ever be practised towards Germany hereafter. That this view should commend itself to an ardent Republican was natural, but that it should be shared in by other nations, and above all by Germany, was most improbable. Count Bismarck, though Jules Favre did not as yet know it, had already caused it to be understood that Germany held France, not the French Government for the time being, responsible for the declaration of war; and would not now grant peace till she had obtained the most solid guarantees for the future.

Still, though England held back, might not France hope to be aided in her hour of need by one of the other Powers, or by a combination of them? M. Favre was firmly persuaded that both gratitude and interest ought to bring about a collective intervention on the part of the neutral Powers, which should force Prussia to negotiate for peace. Yet the grounds that he himself alleges for this persuasion are vague and inconclusive. The greatest among the neutral Powers "could not," he says, "open its annals without finding glorious instances of the devotedness of our chivalrous nation. All had enjoyed her hospitality, had found her generous, kindly, ready for any sacrifice, and seeking no recompense." Every word of this might be admitted, though not without qualifications; but what then? Admiration for the geniality and fertility of the French mind, recollection of cheering and stimulating hours passed within her borders, ought not to have blinded the neighbours of France to considerations of justice, nor to have induced them to shelter her altogether from the effects of the just resentment of Germany. That intervention was not resorted to later may be a legitimate subject of regret; but no neutral will be convinced by M. Favre's reasoning that it was the duty of his country to intervene immediately after the fall of the Empire. Unless, indeed, there were some special pre-existing obligation, by which a particular nation might be bound, in gratitude and honour, to come to the assistance of France. Jules Favre thought there were two nations thus situated--Austria and Italy. With regard to Austria, the blunt explanations of Prince Metternich, who called at the Foreign Office soon after Lord Lyons, dispelled all expectation of aid in that quarter. Austria had been saved by French intervention after the battle of Königgrätz; Prince Metternich did not think of denying this, nor of extenuating the claim to which such a service rendered his country amenable. He attempted to explain away the belief of the Duc de Gramont respecting words that had fallen from Count Beust. "It is not impossible," he said, "that M. Beust may have spoken of preparing 300,000 men if we were free to do so; but it is just this freedom that has always been denied us. The Emperor and his Ministers will never brave the will of the Czar. Now the latter has threatened that if we were to declare ourselves for France, he would join Prussia. Our hands are therefore bound; but we will do nothing against you; we will even aid you in everything that is reconcilable with our neutrality." These words clearly define the position of Austria at that time. She would willingly have aided France, but the Court of St. Petersburg, impelled by strong family and dynastic ties to sympathy with Prussia, had intimated that if Austria interfered for France, the sword of Russia would be thrown into the opposite scale.

Italy remained: could the nation that owed its very existence to France refuse to lend its aid to its benefactor in this time of peril? To the Italian Ambassador, who called after Prince Metternich, M. Favre used decided, almost peremptory, language. M. Nigra was embarrassed and sad; perhaps he was thinking of the return that the Italian Government were at that moment preparing to make for the generous aid of France in the shape of the annexation of the Papal territory. He did not contradict one of Jules Favre's assertions, but only took his stand on the impossibility of isolated action on the part of Italy. She was ready to unite with other Powers, and even to lead them if they would follow. But nothing was to be done without the support of England or Russia.

These interviews opened the eyes of Jules Favre, and convinced him that France could hope for no armed intervention. She must trust to herself, and put forth her utmost energies to defend her capital, to kindle the flame of patriotism in the population, and to raise new armies in the place of those that had been lost.

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