XXII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)…

XXII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

Peace and Prosperity in 1864--Birth of an Heir to the Prince of Wales--Lord Derby's happy Speech-Fruitlessness of the Parliamentary Debates--Mr. Gladstone's Budget--Mr. Stansfeld and Mazzini--The Government and the London Conference on the Danish Question--Votes of Censure in both Houses--Mr. Gladstone on Parliamentary Reform--The Premier's Forecast--Resignation of Mr. Lowe--Lord Westbury on Convocation--Garibaldi's Visit to England--His Reception in London--The Duke of Newcastle and Nassau Senior--The Shakespeare Tercentenary--"Essays and Reviews" again--The Colenso Controversy--Mr. Disraeli and the Angels--The Fenians in Dublin--Origin of the Belfast Riots--Their Progress--Excesses of Orangemen and Roman Catholics--The Military Called Out--Trials of the Rioters--The Ashantee War--The Maori War--Waitara Block and its consequences--Suppression of the Rebellion--Final Defeat of the Taepings--Bombardment of Simonasaki--The Cyclone at Calcutta--Its Ravages.

The year 1864 was for Britain as uneventful as the years which immediately preceded and followed it. The course of peaceful industry and the accumulation of wealth went on undisturbed, and the gradual abatement of the distress in Lancashire diffused a general feeling of relief and satisfaction. The revenue was found to display a wonderful elasticity. The Session of Parliament was opened by commission on the 4th of February. In the Royal Speech her Majesty expressed her confidence that Parliament would sympathise with her in her gratitude to the Almighty on account of the Princess of Wales having given birth (January 8) to a son, "an event which has called forth from her faithful people renewed demonstrations of devoted loyalty and attachment to her person and family."

In the debate on the Address Lord Derby adverted, with that felicity of phrase for which he was notorious, to the birth of an heir to the Prince of Wales, afterwards known as Prince Albert Victor and the Duke of Clarence and Avondale. "At this time last year," he said, "we offered our humble congratulations to her Majesty on the auspicious marriage of the heir to the Throne with a Princess every way qualified to share the high destiny reserved for him, and whose personal beauty and attractions, and the natural and unaffected charm of whose manner, secured for her, from the first moment of her entrance into this kingdom, the admiration and, I may say, the affection of her adopted country. On this occasion we have to congratulate her Majesty and the nation on the happy issue of that marriage, in the birth of an heir to the Throne in the second generation; and although, my lords, happily for this country monarchical institutions are so firmly established in the hearts and affections of the people, and their attachment to them has been so strengthened by the private virtues and personal qualities of the illustrious lady who occupies the throne that it is not with us, as it might be with other countries, a subject of additional congratulation that we thereby obtain greater stability for the Throne, or greater security for the dynasty, yet we may be permitted to rejoice at the prospect we have before us of a direct line of succession from the present illustrious wearer of the crown and her immediate descendants--from a Sovereign who has done so much to cast a lustre on that crown, and also to strengthen the hold which monarchical institutions have upon this nation.... I am sure there is not one of your lordships who does not offer up a fervent prayer to the Throne of Grace that that bright prospect may remain unclouded, and that, long after the youngest of your lordships has passed away from this scene, the throne of these realms may be occupied by the descendants of the illustrious Prince and of his new-born heir--

Et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis."

In the course of this Session many measures of political or social reform--the Ballot, the Reduction of the County Franchise, the Abolition of Church Rates and of Tests, the Permissive Bill--were introduced into Parliament and discussed, but in no single instance were they carried. Sterility attended all the legislative throes of our political assemblies. Nor are the debates on foreign affairs either pleasant or profitable reading; for in the midst of much acrimonious criticism of the proceedings of the Ministry, the general result comes out clearly, that the critics, had they been in the place of the Government, would have pursued substantially the same policy. Thus, although Mr. Cobden, in his speech on the resolution brought in by Mr. Disraeli censuring the foreign policy of the Government, severely blamed the proceedings of Lord Russell with reference to Schleswig-Holstein, the grounds of his censure were, not that we had disregarded treaties, or broken faith with Denmark, but that we had laboured so much as we had done to maintain the former and preserve the latter. Similarly, the cautious and pacific temper of the man of business, so strikingly contrasted with the temper of the senators and statesmen which in former times inspired our policy, appeared in the review which he took of the British army and navy, dispersed about the world, and engaged in the protection of our colonies; thence inferring that to engage in a war with any of the great Continental Powers would be for Britain attended with extreme difficulty and expense. And the same prudential spirit appeared, in various degrees, to animate the majority of our public men.

The financial statement of Mr. Gladstone was again, among all the domestic transactions of the Session, the chief point of attraction. His expectations of buoyancy and expansion in the revenue, as a consequence of that very reduction in fiscal burdens which ostensibly tended to diminish it, were again remarkably verified. On a comparison of the revenue with the expenditure of the past year, it appeared that there was a surplus of £2,037,000. On the general prosperity of the trade of the country, Mr. Gladstone entered into some striking details. The aggregate amount of that trade, it appeared (including imports and exports), had been, in 1861, £377,000,000; but in 1863 it had risen to the unprecedented sum of £444,000,000. The disposal of the surplus was the next point of importance. A great fight was made by the farmers' friends to prevail upon the Government to apply at least a portion of it to the reduction of the malt tax. But the Government wisely resisted all these overtures, and in so doing were supported by a decided majority of the House. That tax, producing so many millions to the revenue, was felt to be too important to be made the subject of experiments; if it was to be touched at all, it must be thoroughly and systematically revised. But although the Government thus resisted the attempts to take off or diminish the duties on malt used in the manufacture of beer, they made a concession to the agriculturists in the shape of a remission of so much of the duty as had been hitherto levied upon malt used for the consumption of cattle. The House finally agreed to apply the surplus in the manner proposed by Mr. Gladstone--that is to say, partly in effecting a substantial reduction in the duties on sugar, partly by taking off a penny in the pound from the income tax.

In course of the discussions on the Navy Estimates a singular incident occurred, which cost the Government the services of one of the Junior Lords of the Admiralty. A trial had recently been held in Paris, in which two conspirators, Greco and Trabucco, were charged with a plot against the Emperor's life. In the course of the trial the Procureur-Général stated that a paper had been found on the person of Greco, directing him, if in want of money, to apply to a Mr. Flowers, at 35, Thurloe Square, Brompton. This, the Procureur added, is the residence of an English member of Parliament, who, in 1855, was appointed banker to the Tibaldi conspirators against the Emperor's life. A reference to the Post Office Directory showed that the member in question was Mr. Stansfeld, the member for Halifax, and one of the Junior Lords of the Admiralty; nor was it difficult to discover that Mr. Flowers, alias M. Fiori, was no other than Mazzini, the ex-triumvir. Mr. Cox, one of the members for Finsbury, first drew the attention of the House, and of the member for Halifax, to the passage in the Procureur-Général's speech, when Mr. Stansfeld, in reply, expressed great indignation that the Crown prosecutor of a friendly Power should have ventured to connect him, a member of the British Parliament and a Minister of the Crown, with the atrocious crime with which the prisoners were charged. He knew nothing either of Greco or of Mr. Flowers, whose letters were addressed to his house. As to Mazzini, he gloried in the friendship of such a man, the greatness and nobility of whose character were little appreciated; and he was persuaded that to say that Mazzini had ever incited to assassination was as base a libel as could be uttered. Mr. Stansfeld's first explanation left the matter still involved in considerable mystery. The subject was revived by Sir Laurence Palk a few nights afterwards and warmly discussed, Mr. Pope Hennessy reading extracts from letters written by Mazzini, with reference to other transactions, in which he appeared to justify assassination in certain cases. Again, on the motion for going into Committee of Supply, Sir H. Strachey moved as an amendment, "That the speech of the Procureur-Général on the trial of Greco, implicating a member of this House, and of her Majesty's Government, in the plot for the assassination of our ally the Emperor of the French, deserves the serious consideration of this House." Mr. Stansfeld admitted that he had at one time allowed his name to be inscribed on bank-notes (issued probably by the society of Carbonari, or revolutionary conspirators to procure the liberation of Italy), which he believed would have been used, not in the interest of assassins, but to aid in the establishment of a free and united Italy; but, acting on the advice of friends, he had withdrawn the permission. Lord Palmerston and other members of the Government warmly defended their colleague, and the amendment of Sir H. Strachey was rejected by a majority of ten. Nevertheless, Mr. Stansfeld resigned his post as Junior Lord.

The existence of the Government was seriously imperilled in July, when Lord Malmesbury, in the Lords, and Mr. Disraeli, in the Commons, moved the following resolution: "That this House has heard with deep concern that the sittings of the conference recently held in London have been brought to a close without accomplishing the important purpose for which it was convened. That it is the opinion of this House, that while the course pursued by her Majesty's Government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of upholding the integrity and independence of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence of this country in the councils of Europe, and thereby diminished the securities for peace." The event concerned is related in the following chapter; at present we notice it merely as an incident in the political history of the Session. In the Lords the Government was defeated by a majority of nine; but this was not unexpected. In the Commons there were some brilliant passages of arms between the party leaders; but Mr. Horsman, it was generally felt, was not far from the truth when he said that "the Government had made mistakes, but their opponents had endorsed them; so the parties were pretty much upon an equality." On a division, the amendment to Mr. Disraeli's resolution, moved by Mr. Kinglake, was carried by a majority of eighteen in a very full House, and Government was saved.

On the question of Parliamentary Reform little interest was at this time felt in the country, and the apathy of the constituencies extended itself to their representatives in the House of Commons. Yet the question may be justly held to have advanced a stage, in consequence of a remarkable declaration made by Mr. Gladstone during the debate on Mr. Baines' Bill for substituting a £6 rental qualification for the existing £10 householder franchise in boroughs. The previous question had been moved by Mr. Cave; but Mr. Gladstone declared that although there was a concurrence of opinion that the present was not a suitable time for the introduction by the Government of a comprehensive measure of Reform, yet he could not vote for the amendment, because it went to deny that the question of the reduction of the franchise was one which ought to be discussed and, if possible, settled. Mr. Baines' Bill was lost by the adoption of the previous question, but it was evident to all that the £10 limit was condemned in general opinion, and could not much longer be maintained. On account of these and similar utterances of his Chancellor, Lord Palmerston said to Lord Shaftesbury, "Gladstone will soon have it all his own way, and whenever he gets my place, we shall have strange doings."

Another Minister was compelled by circumstances to execute upon himself the "happy despatch" before the end of the Session. This was Mr. Lowe, the Vice-President of the Council, whom Lord Robert Cecil (afterwards Lord Salisbury) charged with mutilating the annual reports of Inspectors of Schools, and cutting out passages that did not chime in with his own views, before submitting them to the House. An adverse resolution grounded on this allegation was carried in a thin House, and Mr. Lowe had no choice but to resign. But the explanation which he afterwards offered made it so abundantly clear that the charge was founded on a misunderstanding, and that he had done nothing but what the practice of his and other departments justified, that Lord R. Cecil frankly admitted that, had this explanation been made at first, he should have abandoned his charges; and the House was induced with little difficulty, on the motion of Lord Palmerston, to rescind the inculpatory resolution which it had just passed.

The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury--which, instead of being prorogued immediately after its opening, as had been the case since the reign of Anne, has gradually obtained the royal licence, since the friendly intervention of Lord Derby in 1852, of proceeding to the despatch of business--after discussions of extraordinary prolixity, passed what was called a "Synodical Judgment" (June 21, 1864), condemning the well-known work entitled "Essays and Reviews." Some time afterwards the matter was brought before the Peers, Lord Houghton desiring to know what was the legal effect of the judgment, and whether, in passing it, the Convocation had not exceeded its powers. On this occasion the Lord Chancellor (Lord Westbury) made a speech, the like of which for scathing wit and contemptuous banter, has been seldom heard. "There are," he said, "three modes of dealing with Convocation, when it is permitted to come into action and transact real business. The first is, while they are harmlessly busy, to take no notice of their proceedings. The second is, when they seem likely to get into mischief, to prorogue them, and put an end to their proceedings; the third, when they have done something clearly beyond their powers, is to bring them before a court of justice and punish them." He went on to state that should any attempt be made to give validity to any act of Convocation, without the consent of the Crown, the persons so offending would incur the penalties of præmunire. "I am afraid my noble friend has not considered what the pains and penalties of a præmunire are, or his gentle heart would have melted at the prospect.... I have not ventured--I say it seriously--I have not ventured to present the question to her Majesty's Government; for, my lords, only imagine what an opportunity it would be for my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to spread his net, and in one haul take in £30,000 from the highest dignitary, not to speak of the bishops, deans, archdeacons, canons, vicars, all included in one common crime, all subject to one common penalty.... Assuming that the report of the judgment which I have read is a correct one, I am happy to tell your lordships, that what is called a synodical judgment is simply a series of well lubricated terms--a sentence so oily and so saponaceous that no one could grasp it. Like an eel, it slips through your fingers--it is simply nothing; and I am glad to tell my noble friend that it is literally no sentence." Bishop Wilberforce, to whose nickname, "Soapy Sam," the last passage was an obvious allusion, made a vigorous and dignified reply to this masterpiece of irony.

Parliament was prorogued on the 29th of July; and the records of the remaining five months of the year contain little or nothing of public interest. Earlier in the year, the visit of a distinguished foreigner had been attended with so much of popular excitement and enthusiasm that it deserves a passing notice. There was sufficient real feeling and real knowledge about the Italian question among the masses of the metropolis to secure the champion of a free Italy a warm reception, but before his arrival the infectious enthusiasm of the well-informed few had spread to the ignorant many, to those who scarcely knew that such a country as Italy existed, and only thought vaguely of Garibaldi as a friend of the poor and oppressed. All along the line from Southampton to the capital crowds filled the stations, while at Nine Elms, where the General was to alight, a multitude of working men, arranged in procession according to their trades, awaited him on that April afternoon. Side by side with them stood peers and members of Parliament, and when Garibaldi arrived he was received like a prince, though there was a touch of passion in the reception which is granted to few princes. At Wandsworth Road a halt was made while a monster procession of trades unions filed past. Upwards of 30,000 men took part in it, and as they passed the General one and all broke out in cheers and cries. To the dense multitude gathered at Vauxhall and Kennington, 30,000 men would have been as nothing. Trafalgar Square was one vast sea of faces as the procession entered it, while along Pall Mall the clubs were lit up, and the windows and balconies filled with spectators. At last Stafford House was reached, and the long, fatiguing, exciting journey came to an end. Garibaldi was hoarse and wearied; the excitement had been almost too much for him, and after his introduction to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, his friends saw his retirement in the care of his host with relief. So far his visit had been an unexampled success; London had given him a noble welcome, as the most cynical confessed. He was fêted, the best houses in London were open to him, while the leaders of society vied with one another in efforts to please and amuse him. Throughout it all he remained his simple unconscious self, unfeignedly pleased by the admiration and attention shown him, but always glad when he could escape the throng around him for a minute or two, and chat in a corner with a friend. On the 20th, when he went to receive the freedom of the City of London, the same unmixed enthusiasm greeted him. It began to be said, at the end of the General's visit, that the red shirt was an emblem of revolution, and that if he stayed longer in England, a dangerous temper might be developed among the workmen who cheered him so lustily. That his visit was shortened by a hint from the Government is well known, but the actuating motive was not fear of a rising at home, but the representations of the Austrian and Italian Ministers. On the 27th of April he quitted Plymouth in the Undine.

Few of those who departed in the course of this year from their wonted places among men awakened in the hearts of the mourning survivors more sad and sympathetic regrets than Henry Pelham Clinton, fifth Duke of Newcastle. But fifty-three years old, and endowed by nature with an eager and buoyant temperament, he was just the man who might have been expected to pass a long life in doing good and faithful service for his country, and then to die in harness. But the gloom of a ghastly private sorrow had long hung over him; the incurable wound of an intolerable injury rankled in his soul. Nassau William Senior, the eminent political economist, died this year at the age of 74. He was an eminent and representative member of the English school of economists, in whose hands the science of wealth tended to be mathematical and precise and aimed at excluding those moral and sentimental considerations from which most Continental economists thought that it could not be disjoined. His mind, remarkable for the clear dry light that it brought to the analysis and classification of facts, was deficient in imagination and sensibility, though it made advances in this direction in the course of his later years, as his journals and letters testify.

On the 23rd of April, 1864, exactly three hundred years would have elapsed since the birth of Shakespeare; and before the anniversary arrived there was a general stir in literary and dramatic circles, out of a persuasion that a date so marked should be signalised by a national festival of a splendid character, which would show the world how England honoured her greatest poet. Something, eventually, was done, and, to some limited extent, well done. A pavilion was erected by public subscription at Stratford-upon-Avon, which was to serve the threefold purpose of dining-room, theatre, and hall of discussion. On the morning of the 23rd of April the Mayor of Stratford received, in the Town Hall, an address from the "Free German Institute of Arts and Sciences at Frankfort-on-the-Main." Professor Max Müller, in presenting this address, delivered a remarkable and somewhat inconclusive speech. He urged that hero-worship should henceforward replace for England that veneration of the saints which was so dear to our forefathers. In London the memory of Shakespeare was honoured in various ways, but the only truly public demonstration was that arranged by the Working Men's Committee. It was resolved to plant an oak in honour of Shakespeare at the foot of Primrose Hill. A young oak sapling was, by the Queen's permission, obtained from Windsor Park; a procession of trades was organised from Russell Square; and after an oration had been delivered by Mr. George Moore, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Phelps, the celebrated actor at Sadler's Wells Theatre, planted the tree, and a Mrs Banks, sprinkling it with water brought from the Avon at Stratford, christened it "Shakespeare's Oak."

The progress of Rationalism on all sides, and even among the clergy of the Establishment, made itself felt this year in various ways. The same Lord Chancellor, who made so merry in Parliament with the "synodical judgment" of Convocation upon "Essays and Reviews," had previously, in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, given to two of the contributors to that volume the full benefit of the extremely latitudinarian character of his own theological sentiments. Dr. Rowland Williams and Mr. Wilson had been condemned in the Court of Arches on two of the reformed articles of charge exhibited against them, and sentenced to a year's suspension. One article exhibited against Dr. Williams which the Court below held to be proved, charged him with maintaining that the Bible, or Holy Scripture, was "an expression of devout reason," and the written voice of the congregation--not the Word of God, nor containing any special revelation of His Truth, or of His dealings with mankind, nor of the rule of our faith. Another charged him with alleging that "the doctrine of merit by transfer is a fiction," and argued that this was at variance with the express language of the eleventh of the Thirty-nine Articles, which teaches that "we are accounted righteous before God only for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not of our own works and deservings." With regard to the first article, the judgment of the Judicial Committee, as delivered by the Lord Chancellor, was to the effect that the language used by Dr. Williams had been harshly interpreted; as to the second, the Court accepted Dr. Williams's explanation, that by the term "fiction" he did not intend "false or fictitious statement," but merely "the phantasm in the mind of an individual that he has received or enjoyed merit by transfer." Upon the whole, the committee were of opinion that Dr. Williams had not outstepped the limits imposed by the formularies of the Church of England on the freedom of thought and discussion, and therefore decided that the sentence of a year's suspension must be reversed. In the case of Mr. Wilson, charged with encouraging the hope that the last judgment of God upon the wicked might not be really one consigning them to eternal punishment, the committee similarly held that this opinion was fairly tenable by clergymen of the Church of England, and therefore reversed the penal sentence of the Court of Arches.

An incident in the great Colenso anomaly, which occurred partly in this and partly in the following year, when stripped of the legal technicalities in which it was enveloped, resulted no less favourably for the advocates of free thought than the trial of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson. In virtue of letters patent issued from the Crown, erecting Capetown into a metropolitan see, with Dr. Gray for its first bishop, and Natal as one of the suffragan sees--giving also to the metropolitan bishop jurisdiction over his suffragans, with a right of appeal only to the Archbishop of Canterbury--Bishop Gray had cited Bishop Colenso to appear in his diocesan court of Capetown and answer to the charges of heresy, founded on the novel doctrines broached in his Essay on the Pentateuch, which had been brought against him. Dr. Colenso denied the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Capetown in hac re, and declined to appear; nevertheless, Bishop Gray proceeded to hear the charges and, having decided them to be proved, pronounced a sentence of deposition against Bishop Colenso, and prohibited his clergy from paying him canonical obedience. Dr. Colenso, however, in due course lodged an appeal with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, as the depositary of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical causes, and prayed, not only that the sentence against him might be declared null and void, but that the letters patent conferring jurisdiction on the Bishop of Capetown might be declared to have been illegal and of no effect ab initio. The case was argued on the 14th of December and following days, but the judgment of the Judicial Committee was not delivered till March in the following year, when the court decided that the proceedings of Bishop Gray were null and void as law. The fact was that the zeal of the Bishop had outrun his discretion and entirely disregarded the remonstrances of Dr. Tait, the judicious Bishop of London.

But the Rationalising and anti-dogmatic party were not allowed to carry all before them; their flank was vigorously assailed by Mr. Disraeli, in November, who, in a speech delivered at a meeting of the Oxford Diocesan Society, attacked the new scepticism with all the resources of his bitter wit and unsparing rhetoric. He spoke of the clerical underminers of the doctrines which at their ordination they had vowed to maintain, whose works, he said--insufferably dull and interminably prolix--would, if we were compelled to peruse them, go far to realise for us that perpetuity of punishment which their authors denied. The highest science, he went on to say, was that which interpreted the highest nature, namely, the nature of man; but when he compared the new interpretations with the old, he was not prepared to say that the lecture-room was more scientific than the Church. "What is the question which is now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astounding? That question is this--Is a man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new-fangled theories. I believe they are foreign to the conscience of humanity; and I say more--that even in the strictest intellectual point of view I believe the severest metaphysical analysis is opposed to such conclusions."

In Ireland, the unhappy consequences which result from the secular oppression of one race or religion by another were painfully illustrated this year by the riots at Belfast. Earlier in the year a significant event had occurred in Dublin, which first disclosed the strength and wide extension of the Fenian conspiracy. A Fenian convention had met the year before in America, but that the society numbered thousands and tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters in Ireland itself was not generally known before the Rotunda meeting, on the 23rd of February, 1864. This meeting--having been called by The O'Donoghue, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and other leaders of the National party, to testify their indignation at the proposal to erect a monument in Dublin to the memory of the Prince Consort--was mobbed, soon after the proceedings began, by a preconcerted attack of Fenians, and after a good deal of fighting vanquished and dispersed.

But the desperate riots which took place at Belfast, in the autumn, threw all minor scuffles into the shade. There had been a great demonstration at Dublin, on the 8th of August, in honour of Daniel O'Connell, and a monument had been inaugurated to his memory. The demonstration itself went off quietly. But the Protestants of Belfast felt, when the accounts of the Dublin proceedings reached them through the newspapers, extremely annoyed. Accordingly they eagerly prepared a counter-demonstration. An insulting effigy of O'Connell was made and carried through the streets, attended by thousands of mill-workers; and in the evening it was publicly burnt. Nor was this all. Next day the Protestants announced that having burnt O'Connell, they must now proceed to bury him. A coffin was prepared and borne solemnly to the gate of the Friar's Bush Cemetery, where it was, of course, refused admittance; after which it suffered the same fate as the effigy, and the ashes were thrown into the river running through the town. The bonfire, however, was still blazing, and the crowds around it were still engaged in hooting the "Liberator," when it became known that the Catholics were out in the Protestant quarters of the town, smashing windows and breaking furniture.

Night put an end to the disturbance for the time, but on the following day matters became serious. Between five and six o'clock in the morning, affrays occurred between various bodies of mill-workers going to work. The day passed off quietly, but in the evening an encounter took place between the Catholics and the inhabitants of Brown Square. The Catholics were for the time beaten off; but returning, armed with brickbats and other missiles, they fell upon the constabulary, who had by this time arrived upon the scene, leaving five or six severely wounded. All through the night the fray continued. The police made some captures, but nothing damped the spirit of the Catholic mob, and the rioting continued unabated during the whole of the following day, and throughout Friday and Saturday. Sunday was quiet, but Monday brought with it fresh scenes of disorder. A body of Roman Catholic navvies attacked the Protestant houses in Brown Street and the national school, wrecking both the buildings and their contents. While thus engaged, they were set upon by a party of exasperated Orangemen, and a regular fight ensued. The authorities saw that it was high time extreme measures were taken. The military were called out, under Mr. Lyons, J.P., and posted in the Protestant districts. But the Irish blood was up, and the sight of the soldiers produced none of the hoped-for effect upon the reckless mob. Next day, both soldiers and police fired upon the people. Two were shot dead in the mêlée, and between fifty and sixty seriously injured. There was a fearful rumour in the course of the day that the ship-carpenters, mostly Orangemen, had seized upon the gunpowder stores. The gunpowder, however, was saved by the prompt action of the authorities. On the 17th the ship-carpenters vowed vengeance upon the navvies, who had wrought such havoc at the outset of the riots, and having forced their enemies into the mudbanks in the harbour, they fired upon them from the shore, killing one and wounding nine or ten. It being quite evident that the Belfast authorities had no adequate force at hand, large reinforcements were sent to the number of about 4,000 men. These troops, encamped in the city, succeeded in preventing any further violence on a large scale. At length, on the 24th, Belfast was reported tranquil, and the bruised and sobered rioters began to look forward uneasily to the reckoning to come. Unfortunately, the mischief did not end with Belfast; other parts of Ireland caught the spirit of the rioters. But the authorities had been put on their guard, and the prompt despatch of troops to Dundalk and Newry nipped the disturbances there in the bud. At the spring assizes in the following year, 1865, many persons concerned in the riots were brought up for trial. The judge dwelt on the serious nature of the disturbances. According to the report of Dr. Murney, surgeon to the General Hospital, 316 persons had received more or less severe injuries, 219 had recovered, 11 died; while at the time the report was presented (November 6, 1864) there were 98 cases of gun-shot wounds still under treatment. "This," said Baron Deasy, "reads more like the Gazette after a very serious military or naval engagement, than the return presented to a judge of assize at the assizes in this country." In most cases a verdict of guilty was returned, and the sentences varied from two years' imprisonment with hard labour to three months'.

It can seldom happen in a vast Empire that a year should pass without some hostile collision taking place, either in one of its outlying colonies, or in one of the semi-civilised yet wealthy communities which its merchants frequent. In 1864 little wars raged at the Cape Coast in Africa, and in New Zealand, at that time Britain's youngest and fairest colony; while both in China and Japan hostilities, in which we were more or less engaged, were carried on. The Governor of Cape Coast Castle having refused to give up to the King of Ashantee two of his slaves who had taken refuge within British territory, the King made an incursion into the lands of the Fantees, a friendly tribe inhabiting that portion of the coast which adjoins our settlement. Thereupon Governor Pim ordered a force to proceed on an expedition into the Ashantee country, which, however, produced no coercive effect on the barbarian, and resulted in a heavy loss in officers and men, owing to the pestiferous nature of the climate. The matter was of no great consequence, yet, when it came to be debated in the House of Commons, it nearly upset the Government. Sir John Hay moved a resolution of censure, and, while acquitting the inferior authorities of blame, endeavoured to fix it all on the Cabinet. Sir John Hay's resolution, in a rather full House, was rejected by the narrow majority of seven.

In New Zealand, where a native war had existed since 1860, some decided advantages were gained this year by General Cameron, and certain native tribes gave in their unconditional submission. The war arose out of a quarrel respecting what was known in the colony as "the Waitara purchase." An individual Maori, named Teira, belonging to the tribe of Wiremu Kingi (Anglicè, William King), offered to the Government for sale, in 1859, a block of land on the river Waitara, near Taranaki. The Government, believing that no other rights over the land existed except those of the vendor, agreed to purchase it; but this decision was vehemently protested against by Wiremu Kingi. Troops were sent to Taranaki in 1860, by the aid of whom the block of land was occupied; and thus commenced a harassing and inglorious Maori war, in the course of which the town of Taranaki was seized and plundered, and the entire settlement ravaged by the native insurgents. To Major-General Pratt, who did little more than hold his ground against the Maoris, succeeded Major-General Cameron, an officer of great vigour and ability; but still the resistance of the Maoris, favoured by the wooded nature of the country, and the sparseness of the European population, continued. In 1861 the Duke of Newcastle summoned Sir George Grey (formerly Governor of New Zealand for several years at a most critical period) from the Cape Colony, and entrusted him with the government of New Zealand. After a careful investigation into the original cause of quarrel, Sir George Grey wrote to the Duke of Newcastle (April, 1863) that it was his settled conviction "that the natives are, in the main, right in their allegations regarding the Waitara purchase, and that it ought not to be gone on with." Proclamation was accordingly made to the natives that the purchase was abandoned. But the passions of the Maoris had been roused by the long continuance of a state of war; the proclamation, therefore, produced little effect. On the part of the natives, the war chiefly consisted in the surprise and murder of scattered settlers, or in a guerilla warfare against outposts and small detachments of the troops; on our part, it consisted in a series of attacks on their fortified pahs, or stockades, and in the securing of our flanks and rear by the construction of good military roads. In some cases pahs were stormed with little loss; but the troops were not always so fortunate. The Maori position of Orakau (April, 1864) cost us a loss of sixteen killed and fifty-two wounded to storm; and in an attack on a strong pah at Tauranga, on the north coast, the troops were actually repulsed, with a loss of ten officers and twenty-five rank and file killed, and four officers and seventy-two rank and file wounded. The pah was evacuated by the Maories on the following night, and they were soon after routed with heavy loss while endeavouring to entrench themselves near Tauranga. The Maoris of this district soon afterwards (August, 1864) submitted themselves unconditionally to the Governor, who expressed his intention of dealing leniently with them. The war was thus at an end on the north coast, but lingered on for some time longer in the Waikato country and around Taranaki.

In China, the rebellion of the Taepings was this year almost entirely suppressed, chiefly through the aid of British officers. An Order in Council had been passed authorising British subjects to enter into the service of the Emperor of China; and Colonel Gordon, taking advantage of the order, assisted by other English and American officers, drilled and disciplined a body of Chinese soldiers in the European fashion, and employed them in driving the Taepings and other disorderly characters beyond the thirty-five mile radius which had been stipulated for on behalf of the treaty ports. Following up his advantage, and co-operating with the military mandarins, Gordon, in the summer of 1864, aided them to reduce the town of Soochow, the last stronghold of the Taepings, of whom 30,000, including women and children, were cruelly massacred by the mandarins after the surrender. When the news of the massacre reached the British Government, the Order in Council authorising British subjects to enter the Chinese service was immediately revoked. This, however, did not avert a severe arraignment of their policy in Parliament, in which the Opposition were joined by several non-intervention Radicals. Lord Palmerston's reply was cogent and unanswerable. He pointed out that the general policy of Great Britain towards China was guided by the principle of the extension of commerce, and all the interferences of the Government had been rendered necessary by circumstances connected with the protection of the mercantile interests of Englishmen. As to the cruelty and perfidy of the imperialists, however that might be, the Taepings were infinitely the worse of the two, each of them possessing the normal characteristics of the Chinese.

In Japan several more horrid murders of Englishmen were committed by fanatical natives during the year; and an attempt was made, which was only partially successful, to destroy the batteries of Simonosaki. These batteries commanded the entrance into the inland sea of Japan, and the ruler of the place was in the habit of trying their range on any foreign vessel, of whatever nationality, that attempted to pass. An expedition, consisting of British, French, and Dutch ships-of-war, was organised at Yokohama and, sailing to Simonosaki, subjected the batteries to a heavy cannonade (September 5th), which was, however, vigorously returned and with considerable loss to the expedition. Parties of sailors and marines landed, spiked the guns in some of the batteries, and brought others, to the number of sixty, with three mortars, on board the ships. On the 10th of September a Minister from the ruler of the country, the Prince of Nagato, came off, armed with full powers to conclude a convention, which was ultimately arranged on the following terms:--(1) That the Strait of Simonosaki should be opened to the vessels of all nations; (2) that the shore batteries should neither be armed nor repaired; (3) that the Allied Powers should receive an indemnity, the amount of which was to be fixed by their representatives at Jeddo.

An appalling calamity befell the capital of our Indian empire in the autumn of this year. On the morning of the 5th of October a heavy gale set in from the north-east at Calcutta; gradually it veered round to the eastward, increasing in fury all the time, then to the southward, and finally to the south-west, so as to leave no doubt that it was a true cyclone, or revolving storm. Nearly all the churches and chapels in Calcutta were unroofed or otherwise seriously damaged, and scarcely a house in the city escaped without some injury. The native huts, especially in the suburbs, were nearly all blown down. Except the cocoa-nut and other palms, hardly a tree was anywhere left standing after the storm had passed away. The beautiful avenues in Fort William were entirely destroyed and the Eden Gardens turned into a wilderness. But it was on the river that the storm was attended with the most disastrous consequences. Of more than two hundred ships in the Hooghly, it was said that only ten were left at their moorings after the storm, the rest having been stranded or sunk. The Bengal, one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamers, another British steamer, and a French ship were fairly lifted up and deposited on shore. The total loss of life was very considerable, but does not appear to have been accurately ascertained. In the city and suburbs of Calcutta it was reported at forty-one natives, and two Europeans, besides some twenty seriously wounded by the fall of their houses, and some hundreds of lives were lost on the river. Great distress ensued owing to the scarcity of food, and a relief fund was promptly opened in England and the three Presidencies. In one day Bombay subscribed no less than £10,000.

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XXIII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The Schleswig-Holstein Question--The Nationalities of Denmark--The Connection between Schleswig and Denmark--The Declaration of 1846--Incorporation of Schleswig with Denmark--The Rebellion and its Suppression--The Protocol of London--Defects of the Arrangement--Danification of the Duchies--A Common Constitution decreed and revoked--The King's Proclamation--Schleswig incorporated in Denmark--Federal Execution voted--Russell's high-handed Diplomacy--Death of Frederick VII.--The Augustenburg Candidate--Austria and Prussia override the Diet--Russell's abortive Conference--The Austrian and Prussian Troops advance--Collapse of the Danes--Russell proposes an Armistice--Russell and M. Bille--France declines to interfere--Possibilities of Swedish and Russian Intervention--The Cabinet divided--An Armistice--A futile Conference--The War resumed--Fate of Denmark is sealed--To whom do the Spoils belong?--Summary of Events in Mexico and North America--Southern Filibusters in Canada--Their Acquittal at Montreal--Excitement in America--The Sentence reversed.

The series of transactions on which we have now to enter is one in regard to which few Englishmen, even of those most wedded to the principle of non-intervention, can look back to the part played by their country without pain and some degree of misgiving. In 1864, Schleswig and Holstein, provinces that had been dependent on the crown of Denmark (though under different titles), the first since 1027, the second since 1386, were invaded and overrun by the armed hosts of Austria and Prussia, and forcibly severed from the Danish crown. This was done in disregard of the remonstrances and in defiance of the menaces of England, and in spite of the known disapproval of France. But first for the sake of clearness, a few geographical details may properly be given. Continental Denmark consisted, before the war of 1864, of four provinces--Jutland, in the extreme north; Schleswig to the south of Jutland, bounded on the south by the river Eider; Holstein between the Eider and the Elbe; and Lauenburg, a small province to the east of Holstein, lying between it and Mecklenburg. The language and nationality of Denmark proper are wholly Danish; in Schleswig the population is pretty nearly divided between those who speak Danish and those who speak German, the former occupying the northern, the latter the southern districts of the duchy. Holstein and Lauenburg are wholly German. In religious profession there was no difference of any moment throughout the Danish monarchy; Lutheranism was the prevailing creed of Danes and Germans alike.

Let us now trace back to its origin the connection of the Duchies with Denmark. In the fourteenth century Schleswig, which had previously been conquered by Denmark, was ceded to a Count of Holstein, on the condition that it should never be united to Denmark. Thus the Count-Duke, while still owing allegiance to the German Empire in respect of Holstein, did homage to the Sovereign of Denmark for the Duchy of Schleswig. His line expired in 1375, when it was succeeded by a branch of the House of Oldenburg. In 1448 Duke Adolf's eldest nephew, Count Christian of Oldenburg, had been raised to the throne of Denmark, and soon afterwards, probably not without pressure from his uncle, he confirmed the Constitution, first made in 1326, to the effect that Schleswig should never be united to the Danish Crown. Moreover, when, by Adolf's death, the ducal throne was vacant, the Landrath, or Estates, of Schleswig-Holstein, with whom by ancient constitutional right the choice of a new ruler rested, met in 1460, and elected their late Duke's nephew, Christian I., King of Denmark, to be their Duke, "not as a King of Denmark, but out of affection towards his person." A personal union was thus established between Denmark and Schleswig, which was tolerably well respected during the next two centuries. The incoming King of Denmark was elected, as a matter of course, Duke of Schleswig (and also Count of Holstein), provided that he first swore to ratify the ancient rights and privileges of the united lands. But the union between Denmark and Schleswig became gradually closer, and was extended, in 1533, to offensive as well as defensive alliance. The arrangement was confirmed in 1773, when Schleswig-Holstein reverted to Denmark under the same conditions as had held good under Christian I.

After 1773 there is nothing in the relations between Denmark and Schleswig that need detain us until we come down to the nineteenth century. During the disruption of the German Empire in 1806 the Duchies were formally incorporated into his kingdom by Christian VII., and even after 1815 the German Diet declined to interfere at the request of the Holsteiners. The old Estates having long before come to an end by desuetude, Frederic VI., in 1831 and 1834, granted separate constitutional Chambers to Schleswig and Holstein, by which they were accepted and worked till February, 1848. After 1835, the probability of the extinction of the male line of the House of Oldenburg, through the eventual death without issue of Frederic, only surviving son of Christian VIII., became stronger with each succeeding year. To keep the Danish monarchy together became, therefore, the one paramount object of Danish statesmanship. At first the Danish Court thought of persuading or bribing the Duke of Sonderburg-Augustenburg, representing the younger branch of the elder or royal line of the House of Oldenburg, to whom, if females were excluded, both Schleswig and Holstein would descend at the failure of male heirs in the royal line, to resign his right to the succession. This plan was abandoned by Christian VIII., who appointed a special commission to examine the ancient laws, treaties, and other historic documents in the Danish archives. The result of the commission appeared in the King's letters patent of 8th July, 1846, in which Christian VIII. stated it as his firm conviction that, so far as Schleswig was concerned, in consequence of the letters patent of 1721, and the homage then done, the succession in Schleswig was now the same as in Denmark, and that he should exercise and maintain his right accordingly; while, in regard to Holstein, or certain parts of it, there existed facts militating against an equally positive opinion.

In the ferment that arose in every capital of Europe after the Revolution in Paris of February, 1848, a violent Danish national feeling manifested itself at Copenhagen, and forced the King, Frederic VII., to issue a proclamation declaring that Denmark and Schleswig were thenceforth to form an inseparable union under a common free constitution. The Duchies, incited by a strong democratic and national feeling that had arisen in Germany, regarded this proclamation as a breach of their Constitution, and broke out into rebellion. They were aided, but in a hesitating, irresolute way, by the King of Prussia, and carried on the war with Denmark with various success to the end of the summer of 1850. By the end of 1849 Austria had subdued both Hungary and Sardinia, and had now leisure to look after her interests in Germany. She disapproved of the advances which Frederic William had made to the German democracy, and of his making war on Denmark, and convened a meeting of the Diet at Frankfort with the view of counteracting Prussian schemes. The weak King immediately yielded, especially as Russia was giving urgently and imperiously the same advice, abandoned the Duchies, made peace with Denmark (July 2nd, 1850), and actually assisted her in the task of subjugation. The Duchies resolved to continue the war, but they were defeated in a great battle and soon afterwards compelled to submit. Schleswig was thus recovered; but the Danish troops halted on the frontier of Holstein, in obedience to an article in the Treaty of the 2nd of July, 1850, requiring Denmark to apply for the intervention of the Bund before resorting to hostilities against Holstein. This application was made; and, in reply to it, an Austro-Prussian army, acting in the name of the Bund, marched into Holstein and required the de facto Government to lay down its arms. Thus was the whole of Schleswig-Holstein pacified (January 11, 1851); but military occupation of Holstein was still retained by the German Powers, pending the attainment of a definitive arrangement for the affairs of the Duchies. Negotiations were at once opened between the King of Denmark, on the one part, and Austria and Prussia, representing the Bund, on the other part, and were protracted through the whole of the year 1851. By the Protocol of London of August, 1850, and the Treaty of 1852, the succession to the Kingdom and Duchies was assigned to Prince Christian of Glucksburg; the integrity of the whole Danish monarchy was declared permanent, but the rights of the German Confederation in respect of Holstein and Schleswig were reserved. This arrangement was mainly the work of Lord Palmerston, and was signed by England, France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Count Vitzthum, in "St. Petersburg and London," declares that it was imposed upon him by Russia as the price for the Czar's acquiescence in his coercion of Greece; but there is no reason for supposing that he was acting otherwise than proprio motu.

The matter thus seemed to be settled, but it really was not. For, in the first place, all that the Princess Louise, niece to Christian VIII. and wife of Christian of Glucksburg, could surrender to any one was her right to the succession in Denmark (and possibly in Schleswig); she had no right whatever to the succession in Holstein, because that could only pass to male heirs. Secondly, it was highly questionable in law whether the Princess could execute a valid renunciation of her rights in favour of one who did not stand next in the order of succession to herself, without the consent of those whose right intervened between her and him; but no such consent was ever obtained. Thirdly, the Duke of Augustenburg might with some reason allege that his abandonment of his rights was not made freely, but under compulsion, or else one of his sons (as actually happened) might declare that his father's act did not bind him. Fourthly, even supposing the renunciation of the Duke of Augustenburg and his family to be persevered in, there were other Princes of the Sonderburg line whose rights, at any rate to the Holstein succession, were prior to that of Prince Christian, and who had not renounced those rights. Fifthly, and chiefly, the German Confederation was not a party to the Treaty of London; it was therefore free to resist the arrangement it contained, if it considered the interests of Holstein and the Bund to require it.

Yet, after all, the arrangements provided by the Treaty of London would probably have resulted in a solid settlement, had not the relations between the Danish Government and the German population of the Duchies, during the eleven years following the Treaty of London, become strained and embittered to a dangerous extent. For this result Denmark was chiefly responsible, and it was in flagrant breach of the Treaty of London, by which Denmark was pledged to observe the ancient rights of the Duchies. The majority in the Rigsraad was largely influenced by the views of the Eider Dane party, a set of politicians fanatically bent upon the elevation and extension of the Scandinavian nationality. This party, unable to expel from their minds the feelings of animosity which the war had engendered, regarded the German inhabitants of the Duchies as the population of a conquered country, and resolved, so far as they dared, and in spite of the engagements by which their King was bound to Austria and Prussia, to make them feel and taste their subjection. The protective Danish tariff was extended to both Duchies, their revenue appropriated to the interests of the kingdom; their military establishment, hitherto kept separate from the Danish forces, was incorporated in that army. The best offices in Schleswig were given to Danes. In the churches and schools of Schleswig the Danish language was substituted for the German, even in districts where not one in twenty understood a word of Danish, and the inhabitants were prohibited from employing private German teachers in their families. It is therefore abundantly clear that the engagement, by which Denmark had pledged her word to Austria and Prussia that "the German and Danish nationalities in Schleswig should meet with equal protection," was not kept. Nor can it be reasonably doubted that the engagement--"That all ties of a non-political kind between Holstein and Schleswig should remain intact"--was not faithfully observed. But, in point of form, it was not the breach of either of these engagements, but that of a third, binding Denmark to submit the common Constitution of the monarchy to the previous examination of the four local Diets, which led directly to the Federal execution and all its momentous consequences. The sequence of events was as follows:--A common Constitution for the monarchy was framed in 1854, and having passed the Danish Parliament, was published by Royal Ordinance (October 2nd, 1855), for the Duchies of Holstein, Schleswig, and Lauenburg, without any previous consultation of their Diets. The matter was taken up by the German Federal Diet, which, in 1858, declared that by Federal law the common Constitution proclaimed in 1855 was illegal, so far as Holstein and Lauenburg were concerned, because it had not been assented to by the Legislatures of these States, and decreed a Federal execution in Holstein in case of the non-abrogation of that Constitution. After many endeavours to evade compliance, Denmark (November, 1858) did abrogate the common Constitution, so far as Holstein and Schleswig were concerned. The execution was accordingly stayed (1860), but on the understanding that the king and his Holstein subjects would in concert frame some arrangement by which, in a manner acceptable to them and to the Diet, Holstein might participate in the common Constitution. But on the 30th of March, 1863, the king published, of his own mere motion, a proclamation fixing the future position of Holstein in the monarchy. The ruling idea of this proclamation was, that since Holstein would not come in to the common Constitution on Denmark's terms, and since it was backed up by the Bund in this resolve, it must be allowed to remain outside; while, as between Denmark and Schleswig, the common Constitution of 1855 should still be maintained. The most important clause was this: That, as regarded the common affairs of the monarchy, the legislative power should be exercised by the king and the Holstein Diet conjointly. The effect of the proclamation was--or would have been--the severance of the Danish monarchy into two distinct groups, united by the personal nexus only--the line of intersection falling between Holstein and Schleswig. When this proclamation became known in Germany, it aroused a strenuous spirit of opposition. The Diet, in July, demanded the retractation of the Ordinance of March 30th, and on the Danish Government's refusal to comply, decreed that Federal execution should take place with the due forms. So far from attempting to appease the rising wrath of Germany, the Danish Government made matters worse by issuing (November 18th) a new Constitution for Denmark and Schleswig, intended to complete the scheme of government which the Patent of March 30th had commenced.

On the 7th of December the Diet voted for immediate execution, and entrusted the fulfilment of its mandate to Saxon and Hanoverian troops. Denmark then withdrew the Ordinance of March 30th; but the excitement in Germany had by this time risen to such a point that the execution could no longer be stayed, though its character was somewhat altered. The Danish troops quietly marched out of every town of Holstein just before the Germans marched in. In most places the Danish arms were then taken down, and the Schleswig-Holstein tricolour was hoisted; but the execution was completed without bloodshed, and on the last day of the year the troops of the Bund were facing the Danes along the line of the Eider.

It is now time to ask what part Britain had been taking in the transactions and negotiations that had resulted in so grave a complication. In September, 1862, Lord Russell had proposed, with reference to the dispute between the Bund and Denmark as to the common Constitution, that the schedule of "common affairs" should be greatly curtailed, and that a large part of what had been hitherto deemed such should be placed within the legislative competence of the local Diets. This proposal Denmark had rejected, on the ground that its adoption must inevitably lead either to anarchy or to a return to arbitrary government. Again, in July, 1863, some days after the decree of the Bund ordering execution in Holstein, Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, had declared, in his place in Parliament, with reference to the proceedings of the German Powers, that (in certain circumstances) "it would not be with Denmark alone they would have to contend." This public declaration inspired the Danes with a firm confidence that England would come to their assistance in case of need, and doubtless made them resist the demands of Germany more obstinately. The despatches of Lord Russell to Lord Bloomfield at Vienna (July 31st) and to Sir Alexander Malet at Frankfort (September 29th) assume a high--almost a menacing--tone. Taught, however, by their experience of British intervention in favour of Poland, German diplomatists were not disturbed by the vehemence of tone that characterised the despatches from the British Foreign Office. Baron von der Pfordten, the Bavarian Envoy to the Diet, told Sir Alexander Malet one day that "he looked on Earl Russell's despatches as so much waste paper." Still the greater German Powers thought it expedient to proceed with caution; and as Lord Russell, in a Memorandum dated November 24th, 1863, had said that "should it appear that Federal troops had entered the Duchy on international grounds, her Majesty's Government might be obliged to interfere," Austria and Prussia persuaded the Diet to proceed by way of execution, and not, as Bavaria and other States would have wished, by way of "prise de possession"--a formally hostile and therefore international act. Up to the end of 1863, then, although British remonstrances had not met with much attention, the general policy of Great Britain in regard to Denmark had not suffered a defeat.

But even before the execution an event had occurred that aggravated tenfold the difficulties of the situation. Frederic VII., King of Denmark, died suddenly on November 15, 1863. On the next day Prince Frederic of Augustenburg, son of a Duke of Augustenburg who had accepted a sum of money for his forfeited estates from Denmark in 1852, and agreed not to oppose the new succession, issued a proclamation, addressed to the "Schleswig-Holsteiners," in which he claimed the succession to both Duchies. The minor States of Germany were inclined to support him; for an independent German State of Schleswig-Holstein would have been an accession of strength to their party in the Diet, and helped them to stand their ground against their two great overbearing confederates, Austria and Prussia. But by this time Count Bismarck, whose one guiding thought was the aggrandisement of the Prussian monarchy out of all these complications, had decided upon his policy. For some months in 1863 the minor States had carried matters their own way; and Baron von der Pfordten, the Bavarian envoy, the ablest exponent of their policy, was for a time the most powerful man in Germany. But now Bismarck, having secured the cordial support of Austria by guaranteeing, on the part of Prussia, the integrity of her possessions, proceeded to take the initiative. On the 28th of December Prussia and Austria proposed to the Diet that since the new Danish Constitution of the 18th of November amounted to a distinct violation of the pledge given in 1851-2, not to incorporate Schleswig with Denmark, nor to take any steps leading thereto, the Diet should, upon international grounds, order the military occupation of Schleswig, as a material pledge for the fulfilment by Denmark of her engagements. Bismarck had probably satisfied himself that no opposition of a material kind would be offered by England in any circumstances; or else, now that Prussia was firmly allied with Austria, he did not fear such opposition. No action was taken by the Diet on this proposal for the moment, and a few days afterwards it was renewed with greater urgency by the two Governments, on the ground that the 1st of January, 1864, was the day on which the new Constitution was fixed to come into force. The minor States had different views; they wished first to get Duke Frederic firmly enthroned in Holstein, after which they would have proceeded quietly to take up the question of Schleswig. When the proposal came to be voted upon in the Diet (January 14, 1864), a combination of the minor States rejected it by a majority of 11 to 5. The representatives of Austria and Prussia then informed the Diet that their Governments intended to carry out the proposal in spite of the adverse vote.

Yielding to the advice of Lord Russell, the Danes had offered no resistance to the execution; but when--probably after hearing of the proposal made to the Diet by Austria and Prussia on the 28th of December--the Foreign Secretary sent Lord Wodehouse to Copenhagen to induce the Danish Government to revoke the Constitution of the 18th of November, the mission was ineffectual. In a despatch of the 31st of December Lord Russell proposed to the Diet that a conference of representatives of the Powers who signed the Treaty of London, together with a representative of the Bund, should meet and take into their consideration the points in dispute between Denmark and Germany; and that in the meantime, and until the conference had finished its labours, the status quo should be maintained. The proposal was received with cold disapproval by most of the members of the Diet, and Sir Alexander Malet wrote, a few days afterwards (January 8th, 1864), "there is an absolute persuasion that England will not interfere materially, and our counsels, regarded as unfriendly, have no weight."

Prussia and Austria, having announced their intention of acting independently of the Diet, carried out their plans with energy and celerity. The Danes saw the gathering storm, yet made no sign of yielding. The truth is, Denmark reckoned with tolerable confidence on receiving material aid from the Western Powers, particularly from England; and this hope was encouraged by the knowledge that Earl Russell was indefatigable in writing to, and sounding the intentions of, nearly every Court in Europe, and that in a despatch to Paris he had spoken of "material assistance" to Denmark to prevent her dismemberment. The Danes also placed considerable reliance on the strength of the Dannewerke, an immense system of earthworks, strengthened by forts, but it was carried on the 5th of February. Retreating northwards, the Danes concentrated under the guns of the fortress of Fredericia, on the borders of Schleswig and Jutland, and behind the lines of Düppel, which command the approach to the island of Alsen. On the 7th of February Wrangel, commander of the Austro-Prussian army, issued a proclamation announcing that Austrian and Prussian commissioners would administer the civil government of Schleswig, and ordered that the German language should be thenceforth used in all branches of the administration. The fortified lines of Düppel were stubbornly defended by the Danes, and their gradual reduction was not effected without severe loss to the assailants. On the 18th of April the last remaining bastions were stormed, and the Prussians became masters of the place. The main body of the Danish army, or rather garrison, retreated into Jutland, leaving a pretty strong force to occupy Alsen. Fredericia, which had been expected to offer a serious resistance, was evacuated soon after the fall of Düppel, the garrison crossing over into Fünen. The Prussians, satisfied with having taken Düppel, made for the present no attempt upon Alsen, and there was a pause in the strife.

The only expedient which seems to have occurred to Earl Russell was to write (February 10th) to Berlin, urging that the belligerents--the war having lasted exactly ten days--should agree to an armistice! The request was, it need hardly be added, ineffectual. But now the Danish Government took measures formally to remind Lord Russell of the obligations under which England lay. M. Torben Bille, the Danish Minister in London, in a despatch, dated February 11th, 1864, stated that his Government indulged the hope that Earl Russell appreciated the steps which Denmark had taken with a view to the maintenance of peace, seeing that these steps had been taken by the Danish Government on the pressing advice of the Cabinet of London; that, however, the pacific desires of Denmark had been frustrated by the ambition of Austria and Prussia, and war had actually broken out; that in this war Denmark, if unaided, must eventually be crushed by the overwhelming numerical superiority of her opponents; that it was necessary, therefore, that, while there was yet time, the Powers friendly to Denmark should come to her aid, "and among those Powers there is none which the Danish Government address with more confidence than England." This was a categorical request, and the chilling reply which it elicited from Lord Russell must have been a bitter mortification to the overmatched and harassed Danes. After admitting generally that Denmark had followed the advice of the British Government, without which that Government "could not have given even its good offices to Denmark to prevent, if possible, the outbreak of hostilities," Lord Russell remarked that, as to "the request that friendly Powers should come to the assistance of Denmark, her Majesty's Government could only say that every step they might think it right to take in the further progress of this unhappy contest could only be taken after full consideration and communication with France and Russia." Such a reply plainly foreshadowed that Great Britain did not intend to fulfil her engagements if other Powers did not fulfil theirs.

Still there can be no doubt that Government felt a real reluctance to abandon Denmark to its fate; and if France had shown any zeal in the matter, it seems not improbable that intervention would have gone the length of material assistance. But the French Emperor had been not a little mortified by Lord Russell's abrupt and decided rejection of his proposal for a general Congress of Powers, made in the autumn of 1863. That proposal, starting from the assumption that the Treaties of 1815 were "upon almost all points destroyed, modified, misunderstood, or menaced," urged the expediency of a joint endeavour, on the part of the nations of Europe, "to regulate the present and secure the future in a Congress." No other European Power, great or small, had absolutely rejected the Emperor's proposal; most had assented to it on the condition of a previous definition of the subjects that should be laid before the Congress; but Lord Russell's unconditional refusal had caused the scheme to fall through. The feeling of mortification thence arising in the mind of the French Emperor led him to view the diplomatic efforts of Great Britain on behalf of Denmark with coldness, and her proposal for a limited Conference on Danish affairs with little favour. Still France, like Great Britain, was bound by the Treaty of 1720, and the fidelity of the Danes to the first Napoleon, and the sufferings which they had undergone in his cause, constituted a moral claim that ought not to have been lightly disregarded. But the Emperor was also deeply mortified by the refusal of Great Britain to interfere on behalf of Poland; accordingly, when Lord Clarendon went to Paris, he was informed, without much circumlocution, that France did not intend to stir in the matter of assisting the helpless Danes.

It may, however, be questioned whether, considering the small number of troops that England could bring into the field, there was any chance of a material intervention being successful in the face of the numerous battalions of two great military monarchies. Had both Austria and Prussia entered into the design of despoiling Denmark with equal heartiness, it may be admitted that material intervention on our part, though it might have retarded, would not have prevented, the catastrophe. But this was not the case; the Austrian Government was acting in the matter rather from a jealous disinclination to allow Prussia to take the lead and decide by herself questions in which German feeling was so deeply engaged, than because it desired to turn Denmark out of a Duchy which had been linked to it for 800 years. It is also nearly certain that Russia and Sweden, whose people sided most warmly with Denmark, would have immediately joined us had we resolved upon giving material aid. Both Russell and Palmerston wished to risk the chance, but their colleagues declined to countenance the step. Accordingly no action was attempted, though Palmerston made what he called "a notch off his own bat" by informing the Austrian Minister, Count Apponyi, that if the Austrian fleet sailed along the British coast and went to the assistance of the Prussians in the Baltic, he, for one, would not endure such an affront. Even this threat produced a strenuous remonstrance from Lord Granville.

The exertions of the Foreign Secretary to procure the consent of the belligerents and other great Powers to a Conference were at last crowned with a certain measure of success. Austria and Prussia agreed to the Conference but without an armistice. The first meeting was held on the 25th of April, and the prime immediate object of the plenipotentiaries of the non-belligerent Powers was to obtain a suspension of hostilities. Denmark at first insisted that during the armistice her fleets should be allowed to maintain the blockade of the German ports, as an equivalent for the military occupation of the Duchies; but to this the German Powers would not consent. Ultimately Denmark, pressed by Lord Russell, consented to give up the blockade, and an armistice was arranged to last from the 12th of May to the 12th of June. It is painful to trace the course of the negotiations that followed, and their complete futility may dispense us from the task of doing so at any considerable length. It soon became clear that the German Powers deemed the Treaty of 1852 to have been cancelled by the outbreak of war, and the envoy of the Diet declared that Germany would not consent to the re-union of the Duchies to Denmark under any conditions whatever. Austria and Prussia proposed that Schleswig and Holstein should form an independent single State, under the sovereignty of Prince Frederick of Augustenburg; but such a solution the Danish Plenipotentiaries declared to be wholly inadmissible. Lord Russell then brought forward the English proposal, which was that Holstein, Lauenburg, and the southern part of Schleswig, as far as the Schlei and the line of the Dannewerke, should be separated from the Danish monarchy. This arrangement, to the principle of which the Danish Plenipotentiaries acceded, would have left Denmark in possession of about three-fourths of the Duchy of Schleswig. The negotiations being now placed upon the basis of a partition of territory, the neutral Powers obtained with great difficulty the extension of the armistice from the 12th to the 26th of June. Austria and Prussia agreed to a partition, but insisted that the line of demarcation should be traced from Apenrade to Tondern, thus leaving less than half of the Duchy to Denmark, and depriving her of the purely Danish island of Alsen. Denmark would not yield this, and Prussia and Austria would concede no more. On the 18th of June, eight days before the expiration of the armistice, Lord Russell proposed that the question of boundary should be referred to the arbitration of a friendly Power, but to this neither belligerent would consent. Finally, the French Plenipotentiary proposed that the method of plébiscite, or popular vote, should be resorted to, and that the votes of the communes in Schleswig should be taken on the question whether they preferred continued union with Denmark or separation. The Danish Envoy, M. de Quaade, positively negatived this proposal, which was also extremely unpleasing to Austria, in whose Italian dominions the application of the principle of the plébiscite would have instantly terminated her rule. Thus the debates of the Conference came to an end, having produced no result.

The remainder of this melancholy history may be told in a few words. Hostilities recommenced, and on the 29th of June the Prussians forced their way across the narrow sound which divides the island of Alsen from the mainland, and stormed with great gallantry the fieldworks that had been thrown up on the opposite shore. The Prussians carried the position, but the greater part of the Danes made good their escape out of the island. The strong fortress of Fredericia had previously been abandoned; the Prussians were preparing to cross to Fünen; and now nothing remained for the Danes, isolated as they were and without hope of aid, but to submit. Negotiations were opened immediately at Vienna, and on the 1st of August the preliminaries of peace were signed, and embodied in the following October in a formal treaty--the Treaty of Vienna. Denmark ceded Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg, without reserve, to the Emperor of Austria and King of Prussia. Though thus compelled to ratify her own spoliation, the brave little kingdom came out of the struggle with honour, and with an undiminished right to the respect of Europe: it were much to be wished that of all the neutral Powers that looked on and did nothing the same could be said. During the second spell of war Russell made several applications to the Emperor of the French to induce him to interfere in concert with England. At one moment Napoleon wavered, but when Russell discovered that his projects embraced the liberation of Venetia and the conquest of the left bank of the Rhine, he as abruptly withdrew his overtures. Accordingly the war ended in the complete humiliation of British diplomacy. But Prussia declined to surrender the Duchies to the Augustenburg candidate, much to the indignation of the German Diet, and it was clear that another appeal to arms must occur before the spoils could be divided.

Meanwhile, stirring events were in progress in the New World. In Mexico the Archduke Maximilian, having in an evil hour accepted the fatal gift of Napoleon, assumed the Imperial crown, and, aided by French bayonets, proceeded to put down the resistance of the Juarists. But clearly his position was tenable only whilst the expeditionary corps remained, and the American Republic was occupied by its internal dissensions. There, however, the end was in sight, thanks to the overwhelming resources of the North. It is true that the Confederates snatched marked successes in the outlying districts of the vast territory, but in Virginia Grant made good his threat--"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all the summer," and, though Lee's masterly disposal of his forces thwarted the advance upon Richmond and the capture of Petersburg, the Confederate strength was being rapidly drained. In Western Virginia Grant's subordinate, Sheridan, easily held his own against Early and then proceeded to lay waste the territory. Meanwhile Sherman was executing his famous march into Georgia, by which he cut his way through the heart of the enemy's territory, and divided it in twain by a broad belt of wasted country. His progress was facilitated by the substitution of the rash Hood for the cautious Johnston, and, thanks to the incapacity of that general, Savannah, one of the most important towns in the Confederacy, was Sherman's before the end of the year. The naval transactions comprised an action between the notorious Alabama and the Kearsarge, which resulted in the former being sunk off Cherbourg, while the capture of the Mobile forts closed one of the few harbours still open to blockade-runners. The re-election of President Lincoln for a further term of office showed that the North was not going to blench when the supreme crisis was at hand.

An unpleasant incident occurred in the autumn, which, but for the firm and moderate attitude of Mr. Lincoln, might easily have involved us in a serious difficulty with the United States. A considerable number of Confederate refugees had gradually gathered in Canada, men rendered desperate by the wreck of their property and the misfortunes of their country. Some twenty-five of these men, in the month of October, crossed the border into the State of Vermont, and entering the little town of St. Albans in the dead of night attacked and plundered the bank, shooting dead several of the townspeople, and escaping back into Canada. They were soon arrested by the Canadian authorities and the money was recovered. The case being an important one, it was removed from the jurisdiction of the magistrates of St. John's to that of the Supreme Court at Montreal and a writ of habeas corpus was refused. The American Consul, Mr. Edmonds, was instructed to demand their extradition, but this was refused on legal grounds and an investigation was instituted into the affair under the Ashburton Treaty. In the end Judge Coursol decided that his court had no jurisdiction in the case and ordered the release of the raiders from custody. The Canadian Government wisely resolved that so flagrant a miscarriage of justice should not be permitted; in fact, their law advisers gave it as their opinion that the Judge's decision was bad in law; and accordingly warrants were issued for the reapprehension of the criminals. But the news of the Judge's decision, releasing the raiders, had reached New York before the subsequent conduct of the Canadian Government was announced, and it aroused, not unnaturally, great excitement and indignation. However, in his message to the new Congress (December 6, 1864) Mr. Lincoln expressly stated that the colonial authorities of Canada were not deemed to be internationally unjust or unfriendly towards the United States; but that, on the contrary, there was every reason to expect that, with the approval of the home Government, they would take the necessary measures to prevent new excursions across the border. These anticipations were fully justified by the subsequent conduct of the Canadian Government. A strong force of militia was stationed at various points along the frontier, several of the raiders were arrested under the warrant for their re-apprehension, the Court at Montreal reversed its former decision and declared that it had jurisdiction, those captured were tried anew, and at least one of them was adjudged on the evidence to be guilty of robbery and ordered to be given up to the United States.

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XXIV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The National Prosperity in 1865--Debate on the Malt Tax--Remission of Fire Insurance Duty--Mr. Gladstone's Budget--The Army and Navy Estimates--Academic Discussions of large Questions--Mr. Lowe on Reform--The Union Chargeability Bill--The New Law Courts Bill--Debate on University Tests--The Catholic Oaths Bill--Other Ecclesiastical Discussions--The Edmunds Scandal--The Wilde Scandal--Mr. Ward Hunt's Motion--Lord Westbury resigns--The General Election--Mr. Mill and Mr. Gladstone--Result of the Polls--Fictitious Prosperity of Trade--The Rinderpest--Suggestions of the Commissioners--Inaction of the Government--Spread of the Disease--The Fenian Conspiracy--Its Constitution--Lord Wodehouse's Measures--Raid upon the Office of the Irish People--Stephens the Head-Centre--His Arrest and Escape from Richmond Gaol--The Special Commission--Trial of Luby--Documents and Informers--Obituary of the Year--Lord Palmerston and Mr. Cobden.

When Parliament met for the Session of 1865 the Lord Chancellor truly described in a few words the state of Great Britain. "Her Majesty," said the Queen's Speech, "commands us to inform you that the general state of the country is satisfactory, and that the revenue realises its estimated amount." In truth, the opening of the year was as calm, both at home and abroad, as could possibly be, excepting the echoes of storm that still continued to be heard in the West. India was prosperous, save for the cyclone that broke over Calcutta a few months before. In one only of the colonies, New Zealand, was anything visibly disturbed, and there the Maori war seemed to have passed its climax. At home, Lancashire distress had abated; the harvest had been good; the public purse was full. Everybody, so far as politics was concerned, was waiting quietly for the dissolution of Parliament, for which, as Lord Derby said, "all its experienced advisers could do was to find it some gentle occupation, and take care that its dying moments were not disturbed by any unnecessary excitement."

In financial matters, before Mr. Gladstone brought forward his Budget, there had been two important debates in the House of Commons which bore upon it. The first was that on a resolution moved by Sir Fitzroy Kelly, afterwards Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, to the effect, "That in any future remission of indirect taxation, this House should take into consideration the duty on malt, with a view to its immediate reduction and ultimate repeal." The malt duty, from which at that time the revenue received six or seven millions sterling a year, had always been more or less of a grievance to the agriculturists; and the representatives of agricultural constituencies were ever ready to argue against it. Sir F. Kelly and his supporters--Sir E. B. Lytton, the novelist, being his seconder--brought forward several plausible arguments for his motion, principally selected or parodied from the grammar of Free Trade. But Mr. Neate, the member for Oxford, always notable in the House for the crotchety cleverness with which he handled questions of political economy, turned the tables upon the landed interest by an amendment. He moved, "That considering the immunities from taxation now enjoyed by the owners and occupiers of land, they are not entitled to any special consideration on account of the pecuniary pressure of the malt tax; and that if, on other grounds, that tax should be reduced or abolished, compensation to the revenue should be sought, in the first instance, by withdrawing from landed property the advantage it now has in the shape of total exemption from probate duty, and partial exemption from succession duty and income tax." This, however, the House of Commons could not stand; it was too much, at least for an unreformed Parliament. The supporters of the Government--especially Mr. Milner Gibson, who was its spokesman--contented themselves with attacking the resolution and left the amendment alone. The question was met on two grounds--first, that the revenue could not afford to do without it; and secondly, that though malt was a raw material, stimulants and their components were fit subjects for taxation. Sir Fitzroy Kelly's motion was rejected, the previous question having been carried by a majority of 251 to 170.

The other point in which it was proposed to give an instruction to the Government as to the disposal of part of the surplus was Mr. R. B. Sheridan's motion for extending last year's remission of the fire insurance duty to "houses, household goods, and all descriptions of insurable property." This resolution was carried by a large majority, though the Chancellor of the Exchequer opposed it, thinking it rash to bind the Government to any special course before the exact surplus was known. The vote secured that Mr. Gladstone should carry out the reduction in question in his Budget. When the day came for the Budget to be presented, Mr. Gladstone found himself, as usual, in the presence of a crowded and eager House. He did not disappoint his hearers. His Budget speech was, in the words of one of his admirers, one of those "deliverances, crammed with arithmetic and argument, epigram and eloquence, figures and fancy," which he and no other Finance Minister that ever lived in England knew well how to give. In this instance Mr. Gladstone had an unusual opportunity for effective display, from the fact of Parliament having arrived at the end of its existence; he had five previous years spread out before him for review, and could strike out brilliant comparisons and draw large inferences at his pleasure. Some of his figures may be given. He said that the actual expenditure of the year that had just elapsed was £65,951,000, a reduction of £1,514,000 upon the first year of that Parliament and that Ministry, and a reduction of £6,547,000 upon the year 1860-61, when the alarms consequent on the Italian War had caused us to spend vast sums upon the army and navy. As to a comparison between revenue and expenditure, he found himself with a surplus in hand of £3,231,000. Customs, Excise, and all other great heads of revenue had given more than their estimated amount, Excise especially yielding a million and a half of increase. The prosperity of the country he tested on an even larger scale than this, by a comparison of annual revenues during the last twenty-five years; and showed that whereas the average growth of the revenue from year to year, from 1840 to 1852, was £1,030,000, the same growth was, from 1853 to 1859, at the rate of £1,240,000, and from 1859 to 1865 at the rate of £1,780,000. The paper trade, in spite of the outcry of the papermakers when he abolished the duty, was increasing, the amount of raw material imported in 1865 being exactly five times what it had been in 1859. The trade with France, thanks to Mr. Cobden's Commercial Treaty, had doubled in five years. The total amount of exports during the year ending September 30, 1864, was £487,000,000, an increase of £219,000,000 since 1854. In other words, the export trade of the country had nearly doubled in ten years. To all this encouraging retrospect Mr. Gladstone added his own gifts for the future. He had a large surplus to dispose of, and what was he to do with it? As he said, there are always "crowds of hungry claimants" for a surplus; everybody who suffers from a tax that his neighbours are exempt from thinks he suffers an injustice and struggles to get it redressed. It is enough to say that the malt tax was not touched; and that the duty on tea was lessened by sixpence per pound, and the income tax lowered from sixpence to fourpence in the pound. It is needless to add that these reductions were received with gladness by the House and the country, though the irrepressible malt tax repealers felt themselves hardly used.

The other two important financial statements were, of course, those made in moving the Army and Navy Estimates. Of neither is there very much that needs to be recorded. The Marquis of Hartington showed great clearness of head and general administrative ability in moving the Army Estimates; but he had little to say except to move for a reduction of 4,000 men in the establishment. The alarm of 1860 had passed away, and the alarm of 1870 had not come; so there was neither increase nor re-organisation to be accomplished. The only difficulty with which Lord Hartington had to deal was the everlasting gun question, new phases of which were always demanding full consideration. Similarly with the navy, for which a little over ten millions were voted, there was to be a reduction, especially in the coastguard and marines; and fresh ships were also to be built on fresh models. Lord Clarence Paget, who moved the Estimates, pronounced himself satisfied with the efficiency and discipline of the service; and the House generally agreed with him.

Turning from finance to the other departments of public business, one is not surprised to find that in the last Session of an old Parliament, with Lord Palmerston still living and directing its course, but little positive legislation was accomplished. An expiring Parliament is never fertile: it produces infant measures, but has not the force to bring them to maturity; and in the consciousness of approaching death, it makes its peace with the future by recording good resolutions. Lord Palmerston, too, in the last year of his life, showed no intention of departing from his well-known home policy--namely, to let things be ever doing, never done. Thus it happens that the history of the Session of 1865 reads like a table of contents of the five or six Sessions that followed it. Almost all the important questions that were afterwards solved, or at least handled, by the Government of Mr. Gladstone, were brought forward, discussed, and left unanswered in 1865. The Irish land question was touched upon, in a debate on a motion of Mr. Pope Hennessy, at the beginning of the Session, and discussed at length on Mr. Maguire's moving, on March 31st, for a select committee. The Irish Church question was raised by Mr. Dillwyn, and the debate which followed was remarkable as extracting from Mr. Gladstone a clear statement of the views that he afterwards put into effect. Mr. Berkeley brought forward his Ballot Bill, but in vain. The Test question was raised by Mr. Goschen. National Education, both in England and Ireland, was before the House of Commons in two important debates. The O'Donoghue moved an Address to the Crown referring to the question of University Education for Ireland. And lastly, Mr. Baines took the feeling of the House on the question, soon to become all-important, of Parliamentary Reform. Besides these, which may be called premonitory symptoms of future legislation, there was, of course, a good deal of important but unpretending work accomplished, which we may shortly record. But first it will be worth while to dwell for a moment upon one of the abortive measures, that of Mr. Baines, the highly respected member for Leeds.

The main object of Mr. Baines' Bill was substantially the same as that of the Government Bill of the next year--namely, to reduce the limit of the borough franchise from a rental of £10 per annum, where it had been fixed by the Reform Bill of 1832, to a rental of £6. The measure was, as we said, abortive; its introduction seems indeed to have been only intended to stimulate popular interest in the question of Reform; but the debate has become historical from the great speech in which Mr. Robert Lowe, member for Calne, in Wiltshire, passed at once and beyond all question from the second to the front rank of Parliamentary orators. Mr. Lowe had chosen his opportunity well. In proportion to the popular interest in the question, in proportion to the shortness of its own remaining life, was the dislike of the existing House of Commons to the very name of Reform. Hence from the Whig as well as from the Conservative benches--from all, in fact, except the benches below the gangway on the Liberal side--the cheers rang out as Mr. Lowe, the most impartial of cynics, the narrowest of utilitarians, a Liberal without enthusiasm, a Tory without prejudices, delivered the first of his famous philippics against the democracy of the future. The line of argument that he adopted was, first, to show the vanity of any assumption of an abstract right of all men to have a share in their own government--in other words, to establish one standard by which questions of this kind were to be judged, namely, the standard of public utility; and next, to show that in this case public utility demanded that the qualifications for the franchise should remain as they were. "If these abstract rights to a vote exist," said Mr. Lowe, "they are as much the property of the Australian savage and the Hottentot of the Cape as of the educated and refined Englishman. Those abstract rights are constantly invoked for the destruction of society and the overthrow of government, but they can never be successfully invoked as a foundation upon which government may securely rest." This kind of protest against the doctrine of "abstract rights" was followed by a series of illustrations, immensely relished by the House, of the evils of democracy in other countries and of the ruin it would bring upon England. Mr. Lowe attacked in turn "the sentimental argument," "the fatalistic argument," and "the argument of necessity;" denying that the franchise, when made cheap and vulgar, would elevate the working classes; denying that sooner or later the upper class would have to give way; and denying that the working classes were "thundering at the gates" of the upper class and demanding admission with dangerous noise. The rest of the debate is not specially memorable. Sir George Grey, speaking from the Treasury bench, expressed the feelings of the Whigs when he declared, almost in so many words, that the Government had not made up its mind and when he implied that he at least approached the whole question with reluctance.

But, as we said above, not all the measures proposed in this Session failed to be carried; one at least of great practical importance became law. This was the Union Chargeability Bill, brought in by Mr. Villiers, the President of the Poor Law Board. The object of this Bill was to improve still further the working of the new Poor Law of 1834. The principles of the law were, that while all necessitous persons had a claim to relief, this relief was only to be given on conditions--namely, in the case of the able-bodied, in exchange for labour, and this labour to be given, not at the pauper's own home, but in the workhouse. The increased importance of workhouses led to their being consolidated. Instead of a separate and, probably, ill-appointed house in each parish, a large and well-appointed house was established for Unions of parishes, and these were to be under the control of properly elected guardians and of a central office. It appeared from Mr. Villiers that, however well this system had worked in general, much inequality was caused by the overburdening of some parishes, and the inducement which the landowners and occupiers in some others had to drive away the poor. Hence followed a capricious distribution of the burden of the rates. Mr. Villiers proposed the simple plan--a plan, however, strongly opposed by the strenuous defenders of the strict parochial system--that the Union fund should for the future have to support all the poor within the Union, so that where its administration reached its charges should reach too. This very simple and just measure, denounced by some and applauded by others as the first step towards a system of national rating, was a good deal opposed by members of the Conservative party, but was finally carried both through the Commons and the Lords by considerable majorities. Mr. Villiers acknowledged that he proposed it as an instalment towards the removal of "settlement" altogether--that is, towards allowing a pauper to claim to be taken in to any workhouse, no matter what his domicile or "settlement" might be. Few other measures of importance passed into law during this Session. One at least, however, was important enough: this was the Bill for the concentration of the courts of justice into one great building, the site indicated by the promoters being either one on the Thames Embankment, near the Temple, or the space of ground between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields. The proposal was received with satisfaction by the House, the lawyers, and the country; and every sane man was gratified at the thought that English law would be at last administered in courts that were properly built and decently ventilated. Only a few objectors, led by Lord St. Leonards, found fault with the proposal for paying the cost of the building out of the accumulated "Suitors' Fund" in Chancery. It was thought, however, that the great public convenience to be gained amply justified the wrong done to purely imaginary sufferers. The Bill was passed, and, as all Londoners know, the Carey Street site, between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn, was decided upon. But, as is equally well known, beyond choosing the site and demolishing the houses upon it, and selecting a plan to be modified periodically, nothing was done for many years. In due course, however, the Royal Palace of Justice was completed and opened in November, 1882. Greenwich Hospital was also reformed in this Session. A Public Schools Bill was brought forward, but postponed.

This year was a quiet one in the religious world. In the course of it several interesting measures relating to religious tests and subscriptions were brought into Parliament; and though in the end little or nothing was done towards a practical settlement of the questions raised, still public attention was kept alive to them and to the importance of the convictions and feelings at issue. Thus regarded, as steps in an inevitable road, even abortive Reform Bills and Tests Bills lost in the Commons have a lasting interest and value. The University Tests Bill of 1865 was introduced by Mr. Goschen, then one of the members for the City of London, and the motion for the second reading was seconded by Mr. Grant Duff. The Bill, said Mr. Goschen, did not propose to admit Dissenters to the governing body of the University, although it might lead to that result eventually, but to enable degrees to be conferred without reference to religious tests. It would also go beyond the Cambridge Act and give a vote in Convocation; whilst it would admit to certain privileges and emoluments, to obtain which under the present system the degree of Master of Arts was an essential qualification. He could not believe that these concessions would lower the tone or impair the prestige of Oxford. So far from injuring the University, they would rather widen its basis and make it more useful and acceptable to the country, for he was convinced that no system could flourish that practically excluded one half the population from their traditional seat of learning. In a short effective speech Mr. Grant Duff gave three reasons for his support of the Bill: (1) That it would be beneficial rather than hurtful to the Church; (2) that it was an act of simple justice to the Dissenters, who had been from the beginning of their history altogether excluded from the higher education of England; (3) that it would be useful to the University, by enabling it to understand more fully its duties to the nation and the proper scope of its influence and training. But the time was not yet come for the admission of the principle upon which these arguments were based. Lord Cranborne and Mr. Gladstone, alarmed by certain conclusions advanced in Mr. Goschen's speech and persuaded that the effect of the Bill would be to give over the government of the University to Dissenters, offered a warm opposition to it. The promoters of the Bill, said Mr. Gladstone, openly avowed their desire to separate education from religion, and that was a principle to which he was resolutely opposed. Mr. Gathorne Hardy and Mr. Henley followed suit. Finally, Lord Cranborne's amendment--that the Bill should be adjourned for six months--was negatived by 206 votes to 190. But it was felt that with so small a majority it was useless to push the Bill any farther. If such was the temper of the Commons it was well known that the Lords would make short work of it and the measure was temporarily abandoned.

The Roman Catholic Oaths Bill again brought forward the subject of religious tests, only, however, to afford another triumph to religious conservatism. The object of Mr. Monsell, its introducer, was to alter the form of the oath required from Roman Catholic members of Parliament under the Relief Act of 1829, and to substitute for it the simple oath of the Queen's supremacy. The oath as administered under that Act required a Roman Catholic member to swear that he renounced, rejected, and abjured the doctrine that princes excommunicated or deposed by the Pope or any authority of the See of Rome might be deposed or murdered by their subjects or by any person whatever; that he disclaimed, disavowed, and abjured any intention to subvert the Established Church; and that he would never disturb or weaken the Protestant religion, or the Protestant Government in the United Kingdom. Such an oath, it was argued, was not an anachronism; it was a grievance and a degradation. The oath was, indeed, a remnant of the state of things before Catholic Emancipation, and there could be no doubt that the just and liberal course would have been to oblige all members of Parliament, without exception or variation, to take a uniform oath. A strong and finally successful opposition, however, was advanced. Mr. Whalley's and Mr. Newdegate's Protestant consciences took the alarm; "in the interests of social and political order and the peace of families," they felt themselves bound to resist the measure. Sir George Grey, who supported the Bill, was taunted with his Ultramontane leanings; and, according to Mr. Whiteside, the proposed change affected the Constitution, the Church, and the property of the country! However, by the help of Government support, given, said the Opposition, from electioneering motives, the Bill was read a second time and successfully maintained in committee. Substantially unaltered, it was sent up to the Lords, where, however, a night's debate disposed of it. Lord Derby made a long and powerful speech, appealing to every Tory cry and every Tory prejudice, till the measure assumed such formidable proportions that it frightened even its supporters. Lord Harrowby, Lord Chelmsford, and others followed suit, and, in spite of the efforts on the Liberal side, the Bill was lost on division by twenty-one votes.

A word of notice is called for by some other Parliamentary discussions that took place this year on ecclesiastical matters; but as none led to any practical result, they may be dismissed with a word. Mr. Dillwyn's motion about the Irish Church has been already mentioned; it called forth, as we have said, an emphatic declaration from Mr. Gladstone, and to that declaration is to be traced, in a great measure, his rejection by Oxford University. Mr. Newdegate attempted, but without success, to substitute a rate of twopence in the pound on real property for the existing Church rates. In the House of Lords Lord Lyttelton, with the approval of most of the Bishops, proposed a resolution in favour of an increase of the Episcopate--a subject always dear to the High Church party, but considered by the Evangelical party to be of less importance than a development of the parochial system. The dioceses of Exeter, Winchester, and London were pointed to as those that ought to be relieved by the creation of new bishoprics. The resolution, however, was not put to the vote, nor had it any legislative result.

The end of the Session of 1865 was troubled by certain transactions that caused great tribulation to the Government of Lord Palmerston and proved fatal to the career of one of the highest officers of State. These transactions are commonly grouped together under the name of "the Edmunds scandal." The case of Mr. Edmunds was as follows:--In 1833 Lord Brougham, at that time Lord Chancellor, had appointed Mr. Leonard Edmunds to the post of Clerk of the Patents, at the salary of £400 a year, afterwards increased to £600. In 1854 a quarrel took place between Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Woodcroft, also an official of the Patent Office, and each charged the other with irregularities, mismanagement, or worse. Two lawyers of position--Mr. Hindmarch and Mr. Greenwood, both Queen's Counsel--were appointed to make a full inquiry into the cross-accusations; and their finding was adverse to Mr. Edmunds. The authorities, however, were lenient enough to allow him to resign, on his repaying the sums due to the Treasury. Then arose the question which brought Lord Chancellor Westbury into his unfortunate position. Mr. Edmunds, as well as being clerk in the Patent Office, was clerk in the House of Lords; and it was to his evident interest to resign that post before rumours of his troubles in his other office should reach the ears of the Parliament Office Committee and defeat his chance of a pension. Accordingly the Lord Chancellor himself presented Mr. Edmunds' petition; himself moved that the resignation should be accepted and that the question of pension should be referred to a select committee, of which he was to be one; and this without one word of reference to the grave charges hanging over the head of Mr. Edmunds. The select committee was appointed and recommended to the House that a pension of £800 a year should be conferred on Mr. Edmunds; and this recommendation the House adopted. Meanwhile, the Lord Chancellor appointed his son, the Honourable Slingsby Bethell, to the post in the House of Lords vacated by Mr. Edmunds. Before long, however, the floating rumours about Mr. Edmunds' conduct in the Patent Office had caught the public attention, and Lord Stanley expressed the general uneasiness about the affair in some questions that he addressed to the Attorney-General in the House of Commons. Next night the Lord Chancellor himself took up the matter and, courting inquiry, moved for the appointment of a select committee to examine all the circumstances. The committee sat; reported that the charges against Mr. Edmunds were fully proved by evidence; and, by a majority of one, gave it as their opinion that the Lord Chancellor had failed in his duty when he presented Mr. Edmunds' petition without informing the committee of the facts of the case. But, by way of softening their censure, the select committee added, "that they had no reason to believe that the Lord Chancellor was influenced by any unworthy or unbecoming motives in thus abstaining from giving any information to the before-mentioned committee."

Upon this, the House revoked Mr. Edmunds' pension and there apparently the matter ended. The committee had not condemned the Lord Chancellor; his position remained as before; and yet everybody felt uncomfortable. Hence it was in no lenient mind that the public heard rumours of a fresh scandal, touching the Lord Chancellor still more nearly, in the matter of certain appointments in the Leeds Bankruptcy Court, which Mr. Ferrand brought before the House. The appointment of a select committee followed, and five members were chosen, with Mr. Howes for chairman, to inquire into the whole affair. The result of their investigations, during which all the persons concerned, including the Lord Chancellor, were examined, was to bring to light a most lamentable state of things, the principal facts being the following:--Mr. Wilde, the Registrar of the Leeds Court of Bankruptcy, had been charged, in the year 1864, with improperly passing the accounts of his subordinates, and with borrowing money of them "to the destruction of his independence and efficiency." The Lord Chancellor, through Mr. Miller, the Chief Registrar, called upon him, in May, 1864, to explain the charges; but apparently no satisfactory explanation was forthcoming, for, on the 26th of June, Mr. Miller, by order of the Chancellor, wrote to Mr. Wilde, offering him in a peremptory way the option of resignation, or of appearing in open court to show cause why he should not be dismissed. But Mr. Miller added, without the Chancellor's authorisation, that if Mr. Wilde chose to resign upon a medical certificate, he might perhaps claim a pension; and he took the hint. Mr. Wilde was allowed to retire on a pension, and Mr. Welch was appointed by Lord Westbury to the office he had resigned. Now Mr. Welch was a friend of Mr. Richard Bethell; he was a barrister on the Northern Circuit, and he had money; Mr. Bethell, on the other hand, had, in the month of May, been compelled by his father to resign his post as Registrar in Bankruptcy on account of debt, and money was of importance to him. Here came the scandal. A certain Reverend George Harding gave his evidence before the committee to the effect that, in May, 1864, an arrangement had been made between himself, Mr. Welch, and Mr. Richard Bethell, of the following nature. Mr. Welch was to give Mr. Bethell £500 for his good influences with his father, the Lord Chancellor, and a further £1,000 on receipt of an appointment, one-third of this latter sum to go to Mr. Harding as his share in the transaction. In February, 1865, after Mr. Bethell had been for some time abroad, his claims for a new office were pressed on the Chancellor by Mr. Miller; and hopes were held out that Mr. Welch might be transferred to London, and Mr. Bethell appointed to Leeds. Presuming on this, he went down to Leeds on the 24th, and talked to the officials as if the arrangements were concluded, but meanwhile the Lord Chancellor had changed his mind, and did not appoint his son. The report of the select committee acquitted the Lord Chancellor "from all charge except that of haste and want of caution in granting a pension to Mr. Wilde;" but it went on to say that the inquiry had been a most necessary one. The newspapers were immediately filled with criticisms of the Chancellor's conduct; but Parliament was just about to be prorogued and it was generally supposed that he was to be left free from authoritative censure. But just before the prorogation a motion on the matter was put on the notice-book of the House of Commons by Mr. Ward Hunt, member for Northamptonshire, and afterwards Mr. Disraeli's Chancellor of the Exchequer. He proposed that the Lord Chancellor should be compelled to resign; and a lively debate ensued on the question whether, on the one side, scandalous blunders in the matter of patronage were to be held a capital offence, or whether, on the other side, the blunders were to be held venial and condoned by a comparison of them with the Chancellor's services and successes. The debate ended in the adoption, after the Government had been defeated on the question of adjournment, by a majority of 14 in a House of 340, of an amendment, proposed by Mr. Bouverie, substantially the original vote of censure clothed in milder terms. The next day Lord Westbury resigned, and on the day after made a farewell statement in the House of Lords--a statement in which a genuine contempt for the majority which had condemned him was veiled by language of the most respectful submission. He passed from the Woolsack, to be succeeded by Lord Cranworth, Chancellor for the second time; and the public career of one of the greatest of law reformers closed in disgrace.

A scandal of this kind was by no means a pleasant end to the life of a Parliament, and for the Government by no means a pleasant prelude to a general election. But it cannot be said that public feeling was very deeply or very generally stirred. There was no question of deciding upon the life or death of a Ministry; it was a "natural dissolution;" Parliament had died of old age, and not by the violent hands of a defeated Minister. So most of the constituencies fought out their battles quietly and uneventfully; the Liberals making Reform their war cry, and the Conservatives making answer that Reform was neither necessary nor expedient. It was generally expected that Lord Palmerston's Government would have a considerable majority. Only two contests were looked upon with a very high degree of interest--that for the University of Oxford, where Mr. Gladstone was opposed by Mr. Gathorne Hardy; and that for Westminster, where Mr. John Stuart Mill came forward as a candidate. It was almost the first time, perhaps the very first time, in English history that a philosophical and economical writer of the first rank had come forward to ask for the vote of a constituency solely on the ground of his writings. A large committee was formed, including most of the leading Liberal names in England, to carry him into Parliament at no expense to himself. The exertions of his admirers, the novelty of the experience, and the influence of Mr. Mill's own dignified presence, seen as it was by so many for the first time, carried him to his seat. But enthusiasm for an idea does not hold its ground for very long in England, and thus it came to pass that at the general election of 1868 Mr. Mill was sent back again to private life.

The other election which concentrated public attention was that for the Oxford University. Mr. Gladstone had represented that exceptional constituency for eighteen years, though many attempts had been made to remove him from his seat, as from time to time his opinions showed fresh divergence from those of his youth. On this occasion a powerful opponent was brought forward in Mr. Gathorne Hardy, one of the most influential members of the Conservative party. The constituency of the University was composed of the members of its Convocation--that is, of all persons who had taken a degree not lower than that of Master of Arts, and who retained their names on the register by certain payments. In this election, for the first time, it was legal to use voting-papers, which enabled members to vote without coming up to Oxford to record their votes in person. This provision, passed only in the last Parliament, was fatal to Mr. Gladstone. His Liberalism, supposed to be extreme, and believed to favour views not wholly adverse to the disestablishment of State Churches, cost him his seat. He was beaten by Mr. Hardy by a majority of 180, the numbers being--Hardy 1,904, Gladstone 1,724. Mr. Gladstone took his farewell of the University in an address that expressed his "profound and lasting gratitude" for its support during the "arduous connection of eighteen years." The very night of his defeat, he owned, in the Liverpool Amphitheatre, that he had "clung to the representation of the University with desperate fondness." That day, the 18th of July, was typical of the whole of his life. He stood, to use words of his own, between the "ancient, great, and venerable University" and the "hives of teeming enterprise." He went from Oxford to South Lancashire, and after a campaign of magnificent speech-making, was returned by a narrow majority. We shall have to record, in the history of the next election, his subsequent loss of the same seat; but that loss mattered comparatively little. The real turning-point in his political career, and in the history of his party, was his rejection for Oxford University. From that moment he was, politically speaking, another man.

The total result of the elections was the return of 367 Liberals and 290 Conservatives--a gain of nearly fifty votes to the former party. It will be seen, however, that a large number of those who described themselves as Liberals soon showed their dissent from the policy of the Liberal Government; so that the majority was in reality very much smaller than might have been supposed. The political history of the year ends with the elections. From July to December political passions slept, political voices were dumb; only the Cabinet were at work on the questions of the next year--questions which, after Lord Palmerston's death, became more pressing and important.

Trade and finance were prosperous during this year, though the cotton market had not quite recovered from the shock of the American War. It had, however, partially recovered; and to the manner of its recovery, indeed, is to be indirectly traced much of the disastrous panic of 1866. The history of that panic will be told in a future chapter; at present we may remark that the stoppage of the American supplies caused first of all a stoppage, more or less complete, of English trade; that a new cotton supply was looked for from India, and that hence new and various channels were opened for trade; that thus arose all kinds of feverish, unsteady, and unwise speculation, the newspapers being crowded with daily advertisements of new enterprises, many of them on a gigantic scale. For this year, all went well. Two hundred and eighty-seven new "Limited Liability" companies were started, embracing every kind of undertaking, from the negotiation of foreign loans to the manufacture of an improved blacking. Everybody turned investor. The price of Consols went down from 91³⁄₈ in April to 86³⁄₄ in December, showing that where so many profitable investments were open, people would not buy stock which would pay them only three per cent. In a word, everything looked well, and every one was busy; the crash was as yet far distant, and all had their fortunes to make.

The general prosperity of the country received, however, a severe blow in the outbreak of the cattle plague, which first appeared in June in this year; but by the end of December had carried off more than forty thousand head of cattle. The disease, which was in a high degree contagious, was that known in Germany under the name of Rinderpest; and all that was ascertained of its origin is told in the admirable First Report of the Royal Commissioners (Lord Cranborne, Mr. Lowe, Dr. Lyon Playfair, and several others) who were appointed to investigate it. Two English cows, says the report, were purchased at the Islington Cattle Market on the 19th of June, and on the 27th a veterinary surgeon first noticed symptoms of disease in them. They were in the shed of the cowkeeper who had bought them. Two Dutch cows, bought at the same time and place, were also taken with the disease in another shed. Immediately afterwards, the plague--for it had become a plague--broke out in numerous London sheds, and spread very fast and very destructively. The Islington cowkeeper lost her whole herd, ninety-three in number. In a very few weeks the disease had passed out of London to nearly every county in England, and even to Scotland. It had gone across the sea to Holland with some Dutch oxen that had been sent for sale to the London market, but which were sent back again, because they could not be sold at a remunerative price. Now, among the foreign cattle that had been sold in the Metropolitan Cattle Market about this time were some oxen from Revel on the Baltic; and it was shown that some of these were ill at the time of their landing with what afterwards proved to be the disease. But this, though not improbable in itself, was considered by the Commissioners to be not proved; and they left it an open question whether the plague had been imported this way or viâ Holland. Anyhow there was and is little doubt that the original home of the disease is the steppe country of Southern Russia. Four times at least in previous centuries had the plague, or one very similar to it, appeared in England; the last attack--which continued for the twelve years from 1745 to 1757, carrying off several hundred thousand cattle--formed a precedent of great value for the guidance of the authorities in the present visitation.

The Commissioners found the only regulations in force to be certain Orders in Council, published as a Consolidated Order in September, 1865, under the authority of an Act of Parliament originally passed in 1848, which gave to orders of the kind the force of law. This Consolidated Order appointed inspectors, or caused them to be appointed by the local authorities, gave these inspectors full power to enter any shed, etc., and then and there destroy any infected animal; and made strict regulations forbidding the transit of diseased animals, and closing the Metropolitan Cattle Market, "except for purposes of immediate slaughter." This order, as the Commissioners said, was good but insufficient. The report told the country plainly that difficulties and sacrifices must be expected; that London must import her meat dead and not alive; that the only way to get rid of the disease quickly was to prevent the movement of cattle absolutely. But at the same time such a prohibition would have been a very serious step; it would have caused a sudden and alarming interruption in trade and would probably have led to an evasion of the law. Hence the Commissioners--though a majority of them ventured to recommend the total stoppage of all movement of cattle as the best course--advised certain alternative measures in case the difficulties of that course should be found too great. These alternative recommendations forbade the transit of lean or store stock, and imposed strict regulations on the movements of fat stock for slaughter. The report also suggested great restrictions on the importation of foreign cattle; such as that they should only be allowed to land at certain ports, that the fat stock should be immediately slaughtered, and that various forms of quarantine should be imposed upon the stock not immediately meant for the butcher. For Ireland, where the disease had not appeared, the Commissioners urged the extreme importance of being prepared in case it should appear, and of being ready and able to stamp it out.

These recommendations were, of course, open to the objection that the measures they pointed to were centralising, imperial--in other words, un-English. It was in vain that it was answered that it was the disease which was un-English; that it was against the disease that the objection lay and not against the recommendations. Lord Russell's Government knew that the very breath of an Englishman's life is the liberty "to do what he likes with his own." So the Ministry did what commended it to the people, and what did less than nothing to check the disease. It "empowered the local authorities." It gave to mayors of boroughs and to the county quarter sessions certain powers, apparently extensive, really very limited, towards hindering the plague. It did not even empower the justices in quarter sessions to prevent the movement of sheep, or pigs, or goats from place to place within their jurisdiction. The result was, that the tradition of English liberty was preserved, and that the disease spread like wild-fire. The first report of the Commissioners was dated October 31, 1865; the orders followed very soon; and yet the number of animals attacked, which had been 11,300 up to October 7, increased by January 27 to 120,740. To mark the mortality from the disease it may be observed that of these hundred and twenty thousand, only 14,162 are known to have recovered. Although the fear of approaching contagion drove the farmers to send unusually large numbers of cattle for slaughter--and, therefore, the supply, instead of falling off, increased--the price of meat rose enormously. Instead of eightpence or ninepence, tenpence or a shilling became the common price for a pound of meat. With this increase came a corresponding and more justifiable rise in the price of milk, especially in London. The 7,000 cattle that had been attacked in the London district up to the end of the year were almost entirely milch-cows. Of course, an immediate rise in the price of milk followed and a dislocation of the London milk trade. The dairymen became importers instead of producers. The railways began to develop new facilities for the carriage of milk from the country into London; and then were first to be noticed on a large scale, trucks loaded with great broad-bottomed cans bringing up the produce of the country meadows for the use of the metropolis. No disinterested person can regret this at least among the results of the plague.

Among the results of the American War, that which came home most rapidly and strikingly to the English mind was the organisation of the Fenian Conspiracy. Every American knows well the extent of the "Irish element" in the United States. The end of the war threw hundreds of Irishmen out of work. It mattered little whether they had fought for North or South; hatred of "the Saxon," and the chance of making a display in the cause of Erin, were strong bonds of union. Hence arose the Fenian Brotherhood--a military conspiracy, with civil branches, having for its object "the overthrow of the Queen's government in Ireland, and the establishment of the Irish Republic." No one seems to know certainly the origin of the name "Fenian;" but it is probably derived from "Fianna," the ancient Irish militia. At all events, the name of the organisation was suggested by John O'Mahony, of New York, a Celtic scholar of some repute, who had to fly from Ireland, with his life in his hands, in "'48," for an abortive attempt to excite the Tipperary peasantry to armed resistance. "There is no time to be lost," wrote one of the leaders (John O'Leary, afterwards editor of The Irish People); "this year--and let there be no mistake about it--must be the year of action.... The flag of Ireland, of the Irish Republic, must this year be raised." "I was told," said a witness at one of the Fenian trials, "that arms were to be given to carry out those objects.... They told me that the Fenians in Ireland were to be officered by French officers; and since the war was over in America, that they were to be officered by Federal officers." Again a Thomas Mooney wrote, "We have an Irish leader in John O'Mahony, backed by 50,000 veteran Irish soldiers in America ready for the word." These are a few indications, taken at random from many documents that were produced at the trials of various prisoners.

In the possession of one of the convicted prisoners, by name Moore, a blacksmith, was found a pamphlet containing the rules and by-laws of the Fenian Brotherhood, from which the following passages are extracted. They are sufficient to show that the abortive Fenian movement was a thing that had been undertaken in earnest by serious men.

"CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS.

"1. The Fenian Brotherhood.--The Fenian Brotherhood is a distinct and independent organisation. It is composed, in the first place, of citizens of the United States of America, of Irish birth and lineage; and in the second place, of Irishmen, and of friends of Ireland, living elsewhere on the American continent, and in the provinces of the British Empire wherever situated. Its headquarters are, and shall be, within the limits of the United States of America. Its members are bound together by the following general pledge:--

"2. General Pledge.--I [...] solemnly pledge my sacred word of honour as a truthful and honest man, that I will labour with earnest zeal for the liberation of Ireland from the yoke of England, and for the establishment of a free and independent Government on the Irish soil; that I will implicitly obey the commands of my superior officers in the Fenian Brotherhood; that I will faithfully discharge my duties of membership as laid down in the constitution and by-laws thereof; that I will do my utmost to promote feelings of love, harmony, and kindly forbearance among all Irishmen; and that I will foster, defend, and propagate the aforesaid Fenian Brotherhood to the utmost of my power.

"3. Form of Organisation.--The Fenian Brotherhood shall be subdivided into state organisations, circles, and sub-circles. It shall be directed and governed by a Head Centre, to direct the whole organisation; State Centres, to direct state organisations; Centres, to direct circles; and Sub-Centres to direct sub-circles. The Head Centre shall be assisted by a central council of five; by a Central Treasurer, and Assistant Treasurer; by a Central Corresponding Secretary, and a Central Recording Secretary; and by such intermediate officers as the Head Centre may from time to time deem necessary for the efficient working of the organisation.

"4. The Head Centre shall be elected annually by a general congress of representatives of the Fenian Brotherhood, which congress shall be composed of the State Centres and the Centres, together with elected delegates from the several circles of the organisation--each circle in good standing being entitled to elect one delegate."

This document is sufficient to show the kind of organisation and the nature of the designs of the brotherhood. Although a prosecution had been resolved upon before it came into the hands of the authorities, enough was known to make severe measures not only justifiable, but necessary, if Ireland was to be saved from civil war. Lord Wodehouse (afterwards created Earl of Kimberley) was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland at the time, and the credit or responsibility of most of the measures taken rests with him. The blow of authority first fell on the press. A paper called The Irish People had for some time been published in Dublin and widely circulated, which made no secret that its design was to incite the people of Ireland to insurrection and to a forcible severance of the union with England. A Privy Council was held at the Castle on the evening of the 15th of September; Mr. Stronge, the Chief Magistrate, was instructed to draw out warrants; a strong body of police was told off for sudden duty. The warrants were given to the police and they were marched to Parliament Street to the office of The Irish People. Ten persons were arrested in the house, the principal of whom was O'Donovan Rossa; and an immense amount of letters, printed papers, type, and numerous important lists of Fenians were seized and carried off to the Castle yard. Very little disturbance and absolutely no resistance ensued. Nor was any greater difficulty encountered by the Cork police, who made a descent upon the Fenians in that city at the same time. Indeed, the Irish police in general showed themselves very active at this juncture and many of the southern towns were the scene of interesting captures. Each important arrest led to more, or gave a direction to the search, from the discovery of papers compromising other people. One person, for instance, who gave his name as Charles O'Connell, but whose real name was Rafferty, was arrested as he entered Queenstown harbour in a steamer from New York. He had been an American captain and his papers gave an illustration of the aid which Fenian agents had received from officers of high rank on the Federal side.

There were at this time two Head Centres--one in the United States (John O'Mahony), and one in Ireland (James Stephens). This latter--a personage of the highest importance in the brotherhood--was known under many names; his commonest designations being "J. Powell," and "James Stephens;" though he occupied his comfortable house in the neighbourhood of Dublin under the name of James Corbett. Stephens, it ought to be related, had passed three years in the country previous to the establishment of The Irish People. He had traversed and re-traversed the country in a variety of disguises and under a cloud of aliases, sounding the peasantry as to their readiness for rebellion and succeeding even in corrupting the loyalty of small portions of the Irish regiments. He went so far as to try his capacity for "organisation" by making overtures to the Orangemen of the North, but his advances were coldly repelled. The movement, however, was doomed to failure almost from its inception. When the long-threatened blow was on the eve of being struck, discontent broke out amongst the rank and file of the insurrectionary battalions. Hundreds of men who had worn the American uniform were starving in the garrets and kennels of Dublin and London; whilst the great Head Centre and financial fountain himself was living in an extravagant manner. Disgusted at their treatment, about fifty of the immigrants proposed to end the matter promptly by shooting him and precipitating a rebellion on their own responsibility. Stephens was warned of the plot and took steps to pacify his infuriated subordinates. He distributed money amongst them freely and to this sudden outburst of judicious liberality he probably owed his life. This generosity came too late, for America unexpectedly ceased to send supplies and the old murmurings broke out again with redoubled vehemence. This it was that broke the back-bone of the conspiracy and saved Ireland from the horrors of civil war. The police discovered that this James Corbett was the man they were in search of and accordingly surrounded his house early one morning. They met with little resistance, though Stephens and his friends were well supplied with arms. In the same house with Stephens three other prominent Fenians were arrested, one of them being the "Charles J. Kickham" who had been looked for ever since the razzia upon The Irish People newspaper. When the prisoners were brought up for examination, Stephens protested most indignantly against the very existence of the law under which he was to be tried; he refused to take measures for his defence and defied punishment. As it happened, and as perhaps he had guessed beforehand, he never came in want of legal assistance or in danger of punishment. "Bolts and bars could not hold him." He escaped from Richmond Bridewell on the night of November 24, and no amount of police activity or Government reward could secure his recapture. The naked truth is, that at a meeting of the Fenian Secret Council, held in Townsend Street, in Dublin, on the morning of November 22, it was decided to spend £250 in rescuing the imprisoned chief. The service had been offered, the reward was punctually paid, and the "General," as his followers called him, was rescued from his gaolers. It was plainly impossible that an escape of the kind, managed simply by unlocking seven of the prison doors one after another, could have been effected without collusion with some official or other. So Government thought, and suspended the governor of the gaol, and got Byrne, the turnkey, committed for trial. But Stephens never came back. It was not without reason that he had defied English punishments.

But even though the Head Centre was lost, there were enough prisoners in hand to make it necessary to try them by means of a Special Commission. In this case the judges were Baron Fitzgerald and Justice Keogh--both of them men of marked ability and neither likely to act with much leniency towards convicted political prisoners. Their work lasted more than a fortnight in Dublin; then they went to Cork; and then again returned to Dublin, where it was several weeks before the work was over. An example of the mode of trial and of the evidence produced may be found in the case of Thomas Clarke Luby (a man whose father was a Senior Fellow and who was himself a student of Trinity College), which was the first that came before the court. Mr. Luby had been a registered proprietor of The Irish People newspaper, jointly, it appears, with O'Donovan Rossa. Indeed, he was the foremost writer in that paper; to which Stephens, during his entire connection with its personnel, contributed only one sorry article, headed "Isle and Doom." So popular, however, did the journal become amongst the disaffected classes that the older "National" organs had reason to tremble for the security of their existence. Luby was indicted for the crime of treason-felony--a crime newly created by Act of Parliament. According to the Act that creates it, treason-felony may consist of either or all of three offences--compassing or intending to depose the Queen from her Royal authority as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland; intending to levy war against the Queen in order to induce her to change her measures; and conspiring to invite foreigners to invade this realm. It was with these three offences that the prisoner was charged; the Attorney-General for Ireland (Mr. Lawson) prosecuting him and Mr. Butt defending him. The trial seems to have been meant chiefly as an exposure of the nature of the conspiracy and this the evidence certainly effected. Among the documents, perhaps the most important was a letter or commission found in the prisoner's house at the time of his arrest, sealed with black wax and addressed to "Miss Frazer." The police-sergeant who arrested Luby opened this, though he was told it was "a private matter between Mrs. Luby and a lady friend;" and he found it to be the following:--

"I hereby empower Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, and Charles J. Kickham, a committee of organisation, or executive, with the same supreme control over the home organisation--England, Ireland, and Scotland--that I have exercised myself. I further empower them to appoint a committee of appeal and judgment, the functions of which committee will be made known to every member. Trusting to the patriotism and abilities of the executive, I fully endorse their actions beforehand. I call on every man in our ranks to support and be guided by them in all that concerns the military brotherhood.

"J. Stephens."

Side by side with this document, which, while it incriminated Luby, threw further light upon the proceedings of the Fenians, came the evidence of the two informers, Pierce Nagle and Patrick Power. They were both Fenians; Power at least had taken the Fenian oath, and Nagle "acted as a member of the society, but did not take the oath." Nagle told of meetings of the society, mostly near Clonmel; of intriguing in America, in which he had had a part; of "swearing in" new brethren; and of Luby's complicity with all this. He described the way in which the enumeration of members was managed:--"Papers ruled in squares by means of perpendicular and horizontal lines; the squares did not extend to the top, but there was a blank space on which the name of the captain or B was entered; the squares then showed how the captain, the sergeant or C, and the rank and file or D, were armed, also the strength of the company.... A 'V' signified a man armed with a rifle. If it was an inverted 'V,' it signified a man armed with a gun or pistol. A stroke signified that a man was armed with a pike. Where there was a circle, it signified a man--captain, sergeant, or private--not armed at all." Farther on, Nagle described the mode of enrolling:--"I myself enrolled ten or twelve into the society. The mode of enrolling a member was, in the first instance, to administer the oath, which in substance was, that the party should be a member of the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and should be ready to take up arms at a moment's notice." Again, "Cornelius Dwyer Keane reported to Stephens that there were nearly 500 new men in the neighbourhood of Clonakilty. Stephens said he did not know what he should do with the number of men he had, there were so many of them." Evidence also was given as to the manufacture of arms in Ireland, especially pikes. "Give bearer fifty rods," said a note of the Head Centre; and "rods" was the pleasant alias of the formidable "pikes." Lastly, one more document was read at Luby's trial from the packet addressed to "Miss Frazer." It contained three resolutions, and was signed by the great John O'Mahony himself; the first two being a pledge on the part of the American Fenians to get the Irish Republic recognised by every free Government in the world; and a declaration, "that the national organisation at present existing on Irish soil is almost entirely owing to the devoted patriotism and indomitable perseverance of its Head Centre." What was proved, then, in his trial (for we have given the principal points of the evidence) was the existence of a widespread conspiracy, having its roots in America and having for its object the forcible extinction of British rule in Ireland. Luby, also, was proved to have been a prominent conspirator. He was the first to be found guilty and was sentenced--as were some others after him, though many received less--to the punishment of twenty years' penal servitude.

Perhaps a greater number than usual of distinguished persons died in 1865. The names of Lord Palmerston and Mr. Cobden will occur to every one. Of persons less widely famous, the English army lost one of its patriarchs in Viscount Combermere, and one of its most distinguished officers in General Sir George Brown; science lost Sir William Jackson Hooker; and popular scientific enterprise Sir Joseph Paxton and Sir John Richardson; the Roman Catholics of England lost their Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman; and literature lost its distinguished sons Charles Waterton and Isaac Taylor, and its still more distinguished daughter Mrs. Gaskell. On the afternoon of the 18th of October in this year, the news arrived in London of the death of Lord Palmerston, which had taken place that morning at Brockett Hall, Hertfordshire. Had he lived two days longer, he would have been eighty-one years of age; but for some months the strength of the hale old man had been failing, and for a week it had been pretty well known that the end was near. Lord Palmerston had been for fifty years a personage of such importance in British and even European politics, that his death, however much expected, was deeply felt throughout all classes of English society. All alike regarded it as the end of a political period. What was to follow, some looked on with hope, others with dread, none with indifference. Still his genuine if somewhat cynical patriotism was gratefully remembered. Just six months before his own death, Lord Palmerston rose in Parliament to call attention to "the great loss which the House and the country had sustained in the death of Mr. Cobden." There was something strange and a little jarring in the words of official praise in which the successful veteran spoke of the merits of the simple, unobtrusive, yet greater man that was gone, though he, too, had his limitations. More true, more touching, were the few sentences in which his friend and brother-worker, Mr. Bright, told of his own sorrow in Cobden's death; and all who read the words the next morning felt a throb of sympathy. "Sir," he said, "I feel I cannot address the House on this occasion, though every expression of sympathy has been most grateful to my heart; but the time which has elapsed since I was present when the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever actuated or tenanted a human form took its flight is so short, that I dare not even attempt to give utterance to the feelings by which I am oppressed. I shall leave it to some calmer moment, when I may have an opportunity of stating to some portion of my countrymen the lesson which I think may be learned from the life and character of my friend. I have only to say now that, after twenty years of the most intimate and the most brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how much I loved him until I found that I had lost him."

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