XXV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)…

XXV. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The Quietness of Europe--Debate on Poland--The English Prisoners in Abyssinia--Mr. Newdegate and the Encyclical--Visit of the French Fleet--Conclusion of the American War--Sherman's victorious March--Sheridan's Campaign--Lee's last Efforts--Evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg--Lee's Retreat--The Surrender at Appomattox--Grant's General Order--The Death of Lincoln--Inflated Prosperity of India--The Canadian Defences--The Maori War continues--Mr Cardwell's Policy--The Jamaica Rebellion--Grievances of the Blacks--The Trespass Laws--Governor Eyre--The First Riots--Excesses of the Negroes--Their Extent exaggerated--The Rebellion spreads--Governor Eyre proclaims Martial Law--"The Suppression"--Anderson the Informer--Colonel Hobbs--The Maroons--Elkington's Letter--Gordon Ramsay--Some typical Trials--G. W. Gordon--The Court-Martial--The Evidence produced--Gordon is hanged--The total of Deaths--Excitement in England--The Jamaica Committee--Eyre committed for Trial--The Chief Justice's Charge--The Bill thrown out--Recovery of Jamaica--Reform again--It becomes a Government Measure--The Bill of '66--Mr. Gladstone's Speech--Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman--"The Cave"--The Easter Recess--The second Reading--Lord Grosvenor's Amendment--A brilliant Debate--Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone--A Majority of Five--The Government perseveres--The Redistribution Bill--Its Details--Mr. Bouverie's Amendment--It is accepted--Captain Hayter's Amendment--Mr. Disraeli's Strategy--Lord Stanley's Attack--Mr. Walpole's Amendment--Amendments of Mr. Hunt and Lord Dunkellin--Gross Yearly Rental and Rateable Value--The Debate on the Dunkellin Proposal--Defeat of the Government--Their Resignation--Mr. Gladstone's Statement--Earl Russell and the Queen--Lord Derby's Conservative Ministry--The Refusals--Mr. Disraeli's Election Speech--Peace in Parliament--Indian Finance--Prohibition of the Hyde Park Meeting--The Procession marches--Destruction of the Railings--Mr. Walpole weeps--Discussion on his Conduct--The Queen's Speech and the Rinderpest.

In European history the year 1865 will always be looked upon as an interregnum, a breathing time, between the two eventful years that preceded and followed it. It was the interval between two wars; and its history is the history of passions that smouldered and of intrigues that worked in secret. The underground records of diplomacy have much to tell of it; but as for events, there are none. Nor, so far as England is concerned, is there very much to record under the head of foreign policy. The dullness of such foreign debates as Parliament saw in this year contrasts sharply with the keen excitement of the debates of 1864, when Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone flung in each other's face their opposing views of what constitutes the honour of England. Schleswig and Holstein were irrevocably gone now; rightly or wrongly we had stood by and seen them taken; and it was of no use to protest after the event, or to debate about our duty. On the other hand, the quarrel about the division of the spoil had not yet broken out; so we have few despatches from Lord Russell and few scoldings by the Times. The only debate on European affairs that need be chronicled was one on a motion brought forward by Mr. Pope Hennessy on the treatment of Poland by Russia. The terms of the motion referred to Russia's palpable violation of the Treaty of 1815 and entered a protest against it. But Lord Palmerston, and the good sense of the House with him, refused to entertain the resolution; for such a resolution means less than nothing unless it means war if its request is not complied with. Neither Mr. Pope Hennessy nor any one else thought seriously of a war with Russia. In this matter of Poland, in this year at least, we escaped the blunder which we had committed so often and so ludicrously in 1864; as we did not mean to enforce our opinion, we kept it to ourselves.

It was in this year that the public began to hear stirring accounts of the British prisoners in Abyssinia, who were, a short time afterwards, to be raised to a position of such national importance. The full story of their captivity is perhaps better deferred till the time comes for treating of the Abyssinian War, set on foot to rescue them; but the points at issue may shortly be recorded here, as they were told by Lord Chelmsford in the House of Lords during this Session. In July, 1862, Captain Cameron had been sent to Abyssinia as consul, with flattering messages and presents to King Theodore, a half-savage chieftain professing a kind of spurious Christianity. He was well received by the King and treated with honour; especially when, on the breaking out of a war between Egypt and Abyssinia, he attempted to mediate in favour of King Theodore. But this mediation was ill received by the Egyptian authorities and Consul Cameron was induced to desist. This made the King very angry; especially as he had received no answer to an autograph letter that he had written to Queen Victoria on Captain Cameron's arrival in July. With the fickleness of a savage, he turned round upon the consul and began to treat him with great indignity; and matters were complicated by the action of certain missionaries, Mr. Stern and some others, whom the King and his grandees considered to have been acting against the interests of Abyssinia. One of Mr. Stern's interpreters was beaten to death; he himself was also beaten very severely; and then first he and the other missionaries and afterwards Consul Cameron himself were imprisoned and loaded with chains. So they continued for a long time: the British Foreign Office found itself in the difficult position of having either to leave British subjects to take their chance, or run the risk of rousing to fury an African chieftain renowned for his fierce temper, and of arming him against the lives of the unhappy captives. Matters had been in this position about eighteen months, when Lord Chelmsford in the House of Lords, and Sir Hugh Cairns in the Commons--both great Opposition lawyers--questioned the Government very severely about the whole circumstances of the case. Lord Russell and Mr. Layard both made the same defence of the Foreign Office--that it could literally do nothing without sending the captives to certain death. It is well known that the event proved the Foreign Office wrong. But we shall give at a later stage an account of the war of release undertaken by Mr. Disraeli's Government; and to that chapter we must defer the rest of the romantic story.

There was considerable excitement abroad at the opening of this year, especially among the clergy, concerning the Pope and the Roman Question. It will be remembered that in September, 1864, there had been a Convention between France and Italy, under which Italy guaranteed the undisturbed possession of the Pontifical Dominions to the Pope, while France on the other hand engaged to withdraw her troops from Rome. M. Thiers spoke out boldly on the subject of this convention; he saw in it the beginning of the end, and professed little faith in the guarantees of Italy. The object of the French Government was, he maintained, to appear to Italy willing to help her to the possession of Rome, while persuading all the rest of the world to the contrary. The Ultramontanes therefore were distrustful and alarmed, and--when the Encyclical Letter arrived in France, and a circular was issued by the Minister of Justice, forbidding the clergy to distribute the letter among their flocks, or to read in public the first half of it, on the plea that it contained "propositions contrary to the principles on which is founded the Constitution of the Empire,"--several of the more prominent Anti-Gallican bishops broke out into warm remonstrance. The fame of the Encyclical Letter next reached England and created some stir among the ultra-Protestant party. Mr. Newdegate, speaking in the House of Commons on the Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, said that, in his opinion, that was a singularly inopportune moment to propose any change in the test imposed upon Roman Catholic members, seeing that the French Government were just then occupied in grave discussions on the best means of dealing with the latest Papal aggression in the shape of the Pope's Encyclical Letter, which in the interests of order and peace could not be allowed to pass unnoticed. How the Encyclical Letter could affect the question of the Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, Mr. Newdegate's hearers failed to see; it was one of that gentleman's many cries of "Wolf" in Roman Catholic matters. The Convention between France and Italy had no doubt disappointed the Papacy, and the Letter may be looked upon as more or less an expression of that disappointment; but the French Government knew very well that Rome lay too much in the power of France for any serious affront to be offered, and after a little more diplomatic skirmishing they let the matter drop.

Towards the end of August in this year there was a pleasant interchange of courtesies between the French and British fleets at Portsmouth. A British squadron of six ships, five of which were ironclads, received the French Fleet at Spithead. Eleven fine screw steamships and screw frigates, headed by the Emperor's yacht, the Reine Hortense, hove in sight on the morning of the 28th, and were greeted by our ironclads with a gay display of flags, manned riggings, and a succession of deafening salutes. The Admiralty yacht, Osborne, having on board the Duke of Somerset and the other Lords of the Admiralty, went out to meet the Reine Hortense, and accompanied her into the harbour of Portsmouth, the Victory, that gallant old relic of a bygone day, saluting the yachts with nineteen guns as they passed. No sooner were they anchored than the naval grandees on board the Osborne passed over to the Reine Hortense, to pay their respects to the French Minister of Marine, M. Chasseloup-Laubat, and the French admirals accompanying him. The usual compliments were paid, the usual invitations given, after which the Minister of Marine, accompanied by his staff, Chief Almoner, Monseigneur Coquereau, and a splendid show of English vice- and rear-admirals, entered a State barge, and was landed at the King's Stairs in the dockyard. The day was spent by the French guests in paying visits to the different officers of the garrison and in inspecting some new barracks and forts close to Portsmouth; while in the evening the First Lord of the Admiralty entertained them at dinner on board the Duke of Wellington. The landsmen, not to be outdone by the sailors, illuminated Portsmouth and gave a banquet to the French officers. On the 30th of August the same round of visits and festivities was gone through. At a great dinner given at the Royal Naval College in the evening, the Duke of Somerset, after expressing the pleasure which he and his colleagues felt in being able to return the hospitalities showered by France upon the British fleet a month previously at Brest and Cherbourg, proposed the health of the Emperor and Empress, to which M. Chasseloup-Laubat responded by proposing that of the Queen in a speech marked by that French grace and ease which makes a French public dinner so much less formidable than an English one. The French Minister had hardly sat down, and the cheers were still ringing in answer to the toast of "Queen Victoria," when there was a discharge of guns and rockets from the Victory, and immediately the calm summer sea beyond the harbour was alive with thousands of twinkling lights; every ship in the allied squadron stood outlined in many-coloured fires, and hundreds of rockets, sent up from every deck, fell in showers through the clear air of an August evening. Again and again, just as the distant hulls were growing dark, the fairy-like spectacle was renewed. Nor was the town behind-hand; illuminations ran along the shore, and land and sea vied with one another. This magical scene lasted for about half an hour, then one by one the ships faded from sight, the sparkle on the water died out, and, peer as it might into the darkness gathering round Spithead, the eye could distinguish nothing but a distant group of black forms on a grey sea. The dinner was then resumed and a few more toasts and speeches followed; but the event of the evening was over and at an early hour the French guests returned to their ships. For three days more festivities were kept up, and balls, concerts, and déjeuners followed each other in quick succession. The French squadron left Portsmouth on the 2nd of September, after a visit full of pleasure and amusement to all who took part in it.

To the great relief of England the long agony of the Southern Confederation was now rapidly approaching its termination. Sherman's great march had brought him and his army of 60,000 men to Savannah, the capital of Georgia; but it did not end there. His movements were delayed by heavy rains; but on the 1st of January, 1865, he set forth, moving his army directly northward, as if Augusta were the point of attack. Suddenly turning to his right, and crossing the river Savannah, he entered the swampy fertile plains of South Carolina. Devastation marked the track of his columns. Beauregard had not a force under his orders sufficient for the defence of Columbia, and he therefore directed General Wade Hampton, who was in command there, to evacuate the city. That general did so, having first caused to be brought out into the streets and set on fire all the large stores of cotton which the place contained, lest it should fall into Federal hands. A portion only of Sherman's army entered the town, in the middle of the day on the 17th of February, but before the night it was in flames. The loss of Columbia involved the fall of Charleston, including Fort Sumter and other defences; for since the sea was closed against them from behind by the blockading fleet, no hope of ultimate escape remained for the defenders, if they waited till they were hemmed in by a superior force on the land side. From Columbia Sherman advanced on the 23rd of February, but instead of marching to the attack of Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, he struck off to the right, crossed the Great Pedee River, and passing the State boundary at Sneedsboro', again concentrated his army at Fayetteville (March 11). General Johnston, who ought never to have been superseded, was now re-appointed to the command of the Confederate army opposed to Sherman. As the Federal left, under Slocum, was advancing from Fayetteville towards Goldsboro', Johnston vigorously attacked at Bentonville (March 20) hoping to envelop and crush it before it could be supported; but the success of the attempt did not correspond to his expectations. Sherman's victorious march terminated at Goldsboro', for to that point a strong Federal force under General Schofield had fought its way up from the coast just before his arrival.

The last act of the great drama was now to open. The campaign in Virginia was commenced by Sheridan, who, at the head of a well-equipped and most formidable force of 10,000 cavalry, moved from Winchester in the Shenandoah valley (March 2nd) with the intention of striking Lynchburg, the town among the ranges of the Alleghanies whence Richmond now drew its principal supplies. Early met him at Waynesboro' and was utterly routed; but the intelligence that he received from his scouts led Sheridan to believe that Lynchburg was too well defended to fall to a mere cavalry force; he changed his plan, therefore, and led his troopers round the left and rear of Lee's army, intending to join Grant in his encampment before Petersburg. The Confederate arrays of cavalry, which two years before had been the terror of Pennsylvania and Washington, were now so attenuated by death and hardships that no effectual resistance could be offered to Sheridan, who, carrying blight and destruction in his train, burning bridges and stores, tearing up railways and destroying canals, moved across the enemy's country to White House on the Pamunkey river, whence he marched to the James, and reported to Grant in front of Petersburg on the 27th of March.

Seeing that the force in his front was continually being augmented, Lee appears to have concluded that the only course left for him was to deal a heavy and unexpected blow at the least guarded point about the centre of Grant's lines, which, if successful, would cut his army in two, enforce new arrangements for concentration, and perhaps leave time for the detachment of a portion of Lee's army to the assistance of Johnston, sufficient, with the troops under that general's command, to meet and defeat Sherman. The point which he selected was Fort Steadman, nearly due east of Petersburg. Here General Gordon, with two divisions, bore down at daybreak on the 25th of March on the Federal lines, and captured at the first onset Fort Steadman and three adjoining batteries, turning their guns against the retreating defenders. But an overwhelming force was soon brought up by General Meade, which not only drove the Confederates out of the works they had occupied, taking 2,000 prisoners, but, pursuing the advantage, pushed back the whole of that part of the Confederate line, thus rendering Lee's contemplated movement into North Carolina more than ever hazardous. A still more decisive success was gained on the 1st of April, when Sheridan, attacking Lee's right wing, under Pickett, at Five Forks, with a force two or three times as numerous, turned its left at the same time that he attacked in front, and, being successful in both operations, utterly broke and routed the Confederates, 5,000 of whom were taken prisoners. On the next day (Sunday, April 2) Grant ordered a general advance against the defences of Petersburg. The attack was made at daybreak, and although the exhausted Confederates stood bravely to their arms, so great was the preponderance of numbers that they could not prevent the Federals from wresting several redoubts from their hands, so that Petersburg itself stood in danger of falling before the next vigorous assault. Such was the position of affairs at 11 o'clock, when Lee, who had just seen A. P. Hill, one of the most trusted of his lieutenants, shot dead while directing a charge to regain a portion of the works, and fully recognised the imminent peril to which Richmond was exposed through the inability of the gallant army that had so long defended it to hold its ground any longer against the overwhelming masses of the enemy, felt it his duty to send a message of warning to the Confederate President. The message was in nearly these words:--"My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be evacuated this evening." Before retiring General Ewell set some warehouses on fire and soon a full third of the city was destroyed. Petersburg was evacuated simultaneously with Richmond. After desperate attempts to evade his pursuers of whom Sheridan was the most persistent, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court-house on April the 9th.

The capitulation of the Army of Virginia was a signal for the close of hostilities everywhere. Sherman, on hearing of the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, advanced from Goldsboro' against Johnston, who soon proposed to surrender upon terms. Sherman was induced to sign a provisional convention (April 18th), the effect of which would have been to continue and confirm to the existing State Governments in the Confederate States the enjoyment of legislative and executive powers. Of course, this convention was instantly disallowed at Washington, and in signing it, even provisionally, it is clear that Sherman exceeded his powers. Johnston then surrendered his army (April 26th) on precisely the same terms as those that had been granted to Lee. A general order, addressed by Grant on the 2nd of June to the "Soldiers of the Armies of the United States," in thanking them for their patriotic exertions, formally announced the termination of hostilities. The armies were everywhere disbanded as soon as possible, the men returning to the pursuits of industry; by the 15th of October upwards of 785,000 men had been mustered out of the service. But a terrible crime cast a gloom over the rejoicings with which the people of the Northern States were celebrating the conclusion of the war, namely, the assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington, by the actor, John Wilkes Booth. The great President was shot on the 14th of April and died on the following day. In the course of the war recruits to the number of 2,688,523 men had been enlisted into the armies of the Union. Of these, about 1,500,000 were effective soldiers. On the Union side, 275,000 men were either killed outright or died of their wounds, or perished by disease; and on the Confederate side the loss of life must have been little if at all less.

"Her Majesty rejoices at the continued tranquillity and increasing prosperity of her Indian dominions; and she trusts that the large supply which those territories will afford of the raw material of manufacturing industry, together with the termination of the Civil War in the United States of North America, will prevent the recurrence of the distress which long prevailed among the manufacturing population of some of the northern counties." These words, from the Queen's Speech which closed the Session of 1865, give a true insight into the state of the most important of the dependencies of Britain. India was, in 1865, very tranquil and exceptionally prosperous. As the events of the next year showed, it was even too prosperous; the successful attempt to introduce the cultivation of cotton, and, partially at least, to make India take the place of America as a source of cotton-supply, had led to over-speculation and a reckless spirit of investment. It is the fault of all speculators in exceptional times to fancy that the exceptional times will last for ever. The Bombay merchants, with rashness, and, indeed, ignorance that must now appear scarcely credible, presumed upon the long continuance of the American War; they imagined an eternal blockade of Charleston and thought that the mills of Manchester would look for ever to the cotton-fields of Gujerat. Hence this year of which we are speaking was a year of extraordinary prosperity in India. The prosperity, too, affected the revenue; and Sir Charles Wood was able to present a satisfactory Indian Budget when he made his financial statement before the House of Commons. As usual, the statement was deferred till the end of the Session, for Parliament had little patience for the concerns of its vast Eastern empire; but the figures showed a surplus, and a surplus is always welcome. The most notable point was Sir Charles Wood's statement of the money that had been spent in public works during the six previous years. This amounted to no less than seventy-three millions sterling; £34,500,000 on irrigation, roads, buildings, etc., and £38,500,000 on railways. This last figure speaks volumes; some notion of the extension of the internal commerce of India may be derived from it.

It was natural that the termination, or the approach of the termination, of the American War should cause some anxiety as to the views of the United States with regard to Canada. This anxiety was not lessened by a notification that was received early in this year from the Washington Government to the effect that the United States intended to withdraw from an agreement entered into with Britain in 1817, by which both Powers had agreed not to equip naval armaments on the Canadian lakes. This intention of the United States Government was the result of certain "raids" made by Confederate guerillas from a base of operations in Canada, without encouragement of course, but unfortunately without successful hindrance, from the Canadian authorities. The two Houses of Parliament took prompt notice of the action of the United States; and the matter was linked on to the question of a grant for the defences of Quebec, moved in the Commons by Lord Hartington, Secretary at War. A good deal of vigorous language was used, not too friendly to America, not too complimentary to Government; for many persons felt that there was a possibility of serious complications, even of war, between the two countries, on the ground of supposed breaches of neutrality on the part of Great Britain during the American struggle. Events, however, have proved that Mr. Bright was right when he said that if there came a war, it would be one not arising out of national necessities, but out of Cabinet manœuvring; "and that," he said, "I consider a most improbable event." The matter ended by a vote of £50,000, part of a larger installment, being carried for the defences of Quebec; it being understood that the Canadian Government were to fortify Montreal out of their own revenues. But a few days afterwards Mr. Cardwell eased the apprehension of the House by announcing the receipt of intelligence that the Washington Government intended to withdraw its notice for the abrogation of the agreement of 1817. In the course of a few months the American War ended, as has just been described, and the relations between the United Kingdom and the United States entered upon a new phase.

With the exception of the events in Jamaica about to be related, nothing of much importance seems to have taken place in the remaining colonies of Great Britain during the year 1865. The Maori War, however, in New Zealand still dragged on, and formed the subject of a debate in the House of Commons, which called forth from Mr. Cardwell the views of Government as to the proper policy to be pursued by Britain. Mr. Cardwell's statement indicated that there was a disposition on the part of the home authorities to consider whether the time had not come for taking a new departure. He said that "the former arrangement, by which the colony could command the services of a large force of the Queen's troops on paying a merely nominal contribution to the expenses incurred for that force, was at an end." It was decided, in other words--and this with the willing acquiescence of the Governor, Sir George Grey--that the best policy for the interests of the colony was to leave it pretty much to take care of itself. British opinion declared strongly against a war of extermination, in the outset of which the natives had, by the confession of the British Governor, been in the right; and it was thought that, by teaching the colonists that they could not always look to Britain to fight their battles for them, a more pacific mode of dealing with the natives would be entered upon, to the benefit both of the colonists and the Maoris.

It was towards the end of October in this year that the alarming news arrived of an insurrection of the negroes in Jamaica, which was at once seen to be the most serious event that had happened in any British colony or dependency since the Indian Mutiny. Few, however, suspected that the importance of the event itself would be lost in the still greater importance of the secondary issues which it raised--the questions of the duties of Colonial Governors, of the legality of martial law, and so forth. These, as will appear in the sequel, were the questions to which the Jamaica insurrection, or riot, gave rise. They were argued in the newspapers, in Parliament, and in courts of law, with passionate earnestness on both sides; for both those who approved of the acts done in the suppression, and those who disapproved of them, felt that a crisis of great magnitude had arrived, and that a proper settlement of the points at issue was essential to the welfare of the colonies, and, through them, to the welfare of Britain.

Jamaica, as everybody knows, is the largest of the British colonies in the West Indies, and has been in British possession since the time of Cromwell. Commercially and socially, the island had never recovered the collapse that followed the abolition of slavery in 1834. Thus, while in 1830 the amount of sugar exported was 100,000 hogsheads, in 1850 it had fallen to 40,000; while in 1809 the coffee exports were 52,500,000 lbs., in 1850 they were 5,120,000, or not quite one-tenth. This state of things, distressing to every one, and especially to those who regard the emancipation of the slaves as a right act, is clearly shown by a comparison of the accounts with those of all the other West India Islands to have been the result of some cause not operating in them. That cause was bad government. Distress was very prevalent in 1865, especially in the eastern part of the island; wages were extremely low; capital was withdrawn from the country; everything pointed to such legislation and such administration of the law as should conciliate, and even relieve, the great and growing poverty of the labouring class. Instead of this, new "Trespass Laws" were made, creating offences out of what the negroes had always as their right--gathering yams, picking occasional sugar-canes in passing by a field, and so on; and also converting into a "trespass" the occupation of certain lands, to which the occupiers thought they had a right rent free. Popular opinion, naturally warm enough on points like these, was roused to great heat by agitation, especially by a letter directed in 1865 to Mr. Cardwell, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, by Dr. Underhill, a well-known Baptist. This letter was taken up by the local Radical party, led by Mr. G. W. Gordon; meetings were held in many places, and, as is natural from the character of the negro, the language used was often not over-wise. Still there were real grievances; and it is an undoubted fact that these grievances were met in a scandalous manner by the Government of the island. Mr. Gordon was treated by Governor Eyre, not as the representative of a suffering class, but as a firebrand whom it was right to extinguish. The magisterial benches--badly constituted, as the Royal Commission afterwards declared--were filled up by unpopular men; the complaints of the blacks were hardly noticed; memorials sent up to the Colonial Office through the Governor were tampered with in transit; obnoxious laws remained unrepealed; the "piccaninny gangs," or gangs of children for field labour, were not discouraged;--in a word, nothing was done to remedy a very serious condition of affairs; they were left to break out in a violent explosion--the natural result.

Whatever doubts may exist as to the antecedent events, and the state of the island before the outbreak, the facts of the outbreak itself, and of the measures taken in suppression or retaliation, are clear beyond all question, and may be told on the authority of official documents, and of the statements of witnesses before the Royal Commissioners. The early stages of the riots have been recorded by one of the victims of the 11th of October, Baron von Kettelholt, custos of St. Thomas-in-the-East. They comprised the beating and illegal imprisonment of some policemen by the mutineers, and further outrages were anticipated. His letter was dated the 10th of October, and was received by Governor Eyre on the morning of the 11th, and he immediately ordered Major-General O'Connor, the senior military officer, to send off 100 men in a man-of-war to the scene of the disturbances. Meanwhile, however, the regular attack which the custos had dreaded had been made. The magistrates and others were in the court-house at about three o'clock in the afternoon; the volunteers, thirty or so in number (according to the evidence of Mr. Rutty, who was one of them), had been drawn up for two hours or more, when a bugle was heard and a large mob was seen approaching. They were armed with "cutlasses and bayonets fixed on long sticks, muskets and pistols, and various kinds of weapons." They advanced irregularly; once they halted; a bandsman went forward extending his arms as if to make peace, the custos from the court-house shouted "Peace," and then, when they were within a few yards of the volunteers, there came a shower of bricks and stones. The order was given to the volunteers, whether from their captain or the custos is uncertain, to fire and a volley was poured in. The mob was roused to frenzy; the volunteers retreated into the rooms under the court-house and into other shelter, and the people fired in upon them and upon those assembled in the court-house, through the windows. Presently the school-house was set on fire and soon the burning spread to the court-house, in which the whites were assembled. Mr. Georges, who was one of them, tells us that he leaped out of a back window and got into the committee-room underneath, and that while there he saw Mr. Walton leap out after him and run for his life, but to no purpose. Baron Alfred von Kettelholt, son-in-law of the custos, just escaped; but his father-in-law was killed. Mr. Georges, with three gunshot wounds in his thigh, lay hidden in some shrubs till midnight and so escaped. Dr. Gerrard was allowed his life, "because he was the doctor;" but the negroes kept him among them by the expedient of taking his boots off. Mr. Rutty, a volunteer, tried to pass for his assistant, but was beaten almost to death, stripped to his shirt, and left to die or recover as he might. Mr. Price, a negro, was with the custos and the magistrates, so he was pronounced "a black man with a white heart" and was killed. Lieutenant Hall, Captain Hitchings, Mr. Herschell, a clergyman, and many more of the whites assembled, were killed.

Many charges of revolting barbarity were made against the rioters; but it is only just to say that nothing more atrocious than murder has been proved against them. For instance, in Governor Eyre's first despatch to Mr. Cardwell he mentioned numberless rumours of horrible deeds--how Lieutenant Hall had been pushed into a building which was set on fire, till he was "literally roasted alive;" how the fingers of the custos were cut off "and kept as trophies by the rebels." It was proved, however, by Mr. Rutty, who was present, that Lieutenant Hall was shot dead in the heat of the struggle, and the hand of the custos was mutilated, but not, apparently, with any specially barbarous intent. He and many of the rest were put to death with "cutlasses," that is, the knives or bill-hooks used in dressing the sugar-cane; and cutlasses in the hands of a mob are likely to be wildly used. These facts it is important to bear in mind; for half the criminality of the proceedings of the soldiers afterwards springs from the fact that they were done upon hearsay evidence, upon rumours of barbarities which, dreadful as the original murders had been, were enormously exaggerated. Neither during the attack on the court-house, nor in the plunder of Amity Hall, nor elsewhere, were any women or children injured, though, in many cases, the rioters had them in their power. This fact, at least, happily distinguishes the deplorable Jamaica outbreak from such carnivals of savagery as the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

During the next day or two there was undoubtedly great excitement among the negro population throughout all the east end of Jamaica, and the white residents were in danger. The Morant Bay rioters broke up into parties, and dispersed in two or three directions--up Blue Mountain valley, towards Manchioneal, towards Golden Grove, and elsewhere. In some parts they were joined by the negroes of the neighbourhood; many excesses, almost entirely in the way of plunder, were committed. A mob attacked Hordley estate and wrecked the furniture and set fire, but without effect, to one of the "trash-houses" (a house used in sugar-making); but something may be learned of the absence of the worst kind of ferocity from the fact that the ladies of the house were in the other trash-house and were never looked for or discovered. The great cry was "Colour for colour," but more energy was spent in shouting the cry than in seeking out whites to wreak vengeance on.

These events were, of course, enough to move the white population of the island to a high pitch of excitement and to call for prompt action from the Government. Governor Eyre's proceedings may be told nearly in his own words, as given in his report to Mr. Cardwell and in his evidence afterwards before the Royal Commission. His official residence was Spanish Town, an inland town, fourteen miles from Kingston. His private residence was at Flamstead, fourteen miles from Kingston and twenty-three from Spanish Town, where, according to the Opposition papers in the colony, he spent a good deal of time rearing chickens. How Mr. Eyre wrote to General O'Connor, requesting 100 men to be sent to Morant Bay, has been already told. After that order had been sent, Mr. Eyre returned to his residence at Flamstead, "to be present at a dinner-party which was to meet there the next day." This was Thursday, the 12th, the day after the riot; and the news came just in time to spoil the Governor's dinner-party. At half-past five a letter came from a magistrate with the news and the Governor at once rode off to Kingston, to concert fresh measures. It is enough to say that 200 men were immediately despatched to Morant Bay; a detachment of white troops was ordered to march from Newcastle to intercept the march of the "rebels" into Blue Mountain valley; and the Governor himself took measures for proceeding to the scene of action. Just before he started, that is, between eight and ten on the morning of the 13th, he presided at a council of war and, on the advice of the Attorney-General of the island, drew up a proclamation of martial law.

The events which followed, and which had their support and authority in this proclamation, are commonly called "the suppression." From the time when Captain de Horsey, of the sloop Wolverine, wrote to Governor Eyre that he had landed a company of soldiers at Morant Bay, and was preparing to detach 114 of his own sailors to co-operate with them, to the time when "Martial Law" expired, not only was all law suspended throughout the east of the island, but all the guarantees of evidence were dispensed with, and the life of every negro man and negro woman hung upon the will of an angry soldiery and an excited Provost-Marshal. Hence the Morant Bay disturbance--which, grave and shocking as it was, has been proved beyond question to have been a local riot and not the first outbreak of a rebellion--was seized upon without question and at once as a rebellion, and to be punished as such. The soldiers, sailors, and marines acted in three or four directions at once; from Morant Bay, from Port Antonio on the north-east side, and from Newcastle towards the mountainous region in the centre of the country. The towns were all occupied and their inhabitants, who were as much frightened as Governor Eyre had been, were not much injured by the soldiery; but the whole of the country districts were scoured with troops; negroes, unarmed as well as armed, were shot down as they ran from soldiers, or captured, tried by summary courts-martial, convicted on the evidence of informers, or on no evidence at all, and hanged or flogged, or flogged first and hanged afterwards. It was enough that a man should have been unpopular with the authorities of his district, or that he should have a bad character, or that a witness should inform against him, or that he should have been "seen with Bogle," and he was forthwith hanged or flogged as a rebel. This last charge, in fact, touches the root of the whole matter. Paul Bogle, the leader of the attack on the court-house, was a dangerous man and a rebel. Undoubtedly he was guilty of high treason and his life was forfeit. But by all the evidence given before the Commission, and notably that given by William Anderson, the informer, it appears that the only real "rebels," that is, the only persons who intentionally and of their own free will took up arms against the Government of the Queen, were Paul Bogle, M'Laren, and perhaps half a dozen more. The rest were on the first day a riotous mob, who thought that, by making a demonstration before the court-house, they would obtain the repeal of a burdensome law and the removal of an unpopular custos; and afterwards they were a mob afraid for their lives, herding together for defence against the "white men," and still acting, without power of resistance, as Paul Bogle bade them. The part played by this William Anderson, from whose evidence that statement comes, is typical of the nature of the "suppression." He was one of those who went with Bogle, on Bogle "calling for five tamarind switches to make a rod, and for guns." He ran away on the first opportunity; he was taken up by a constable, tried by court-martial, and was offered his life on condition that he would be a guide to the soldiers. It was Colonel Hobbs, commanding the 6th Royals, who undertook the task of acting upon the evidence of this Anderson, who, of course, was careful to ensure his own safety by handing over a sufficient number of his countrymen to the colonel's justice. Nor were the soldiers of Colonel Hobbs alone or exceptional in their method of vengeance. The "black soldiers," that is the maroons, descendants of the old Spanish slaves, and the enemies of the African negro population, shot one hundred and sixty on the road to Manchioneal. One thousand houses of the natives were burnt down by the soldiers. And how these acts were regarded by the superior officers at Kingston, cannot be better shown than in the words of the afterwards celebrated letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Elkington, Deputy Adjutant-General, to Colonel Hobbs. "I send you an order," he wrote on the 18th of October, "to push on at once to Stony Gut, but I trust you are there already. Hole is doing splendid service with his men all about Manchioneal, and shooting every black man who cannot account for himself (sixty on the line of march): Nelson, at Port Antonio, hanging like fun by court-martial." Nor was it the officers alone who had life and death in their hands--it was the soldiers individually; above all, it was the Inspector of Police, Gordon Ramsay. For instance, some soldiers, accompanied by the same Dr. Morris who fired two shots with his revolver into the body of the negro Donaldson as he was hanging, dragged out of his cabin one Ned Bryan, tied him to a tree and forthwith shot him. Bryan and his brother had been at Kingston all through the riots, and only landed at Manchioneal on the 15th of October! That is one instance, literally taken at random from a mass of evidence. To illustrate Ramsay's proceedings is easier still. He owned to the hanging of 184, six of them females; to the flogging of 237, eight of them females--but in this last respect he was perhaps outdone by Captain Hole, who owned before the Commission that he had flogged sixteen women and among them one woman twice! Those who care to read of Ramsay's brutality, and of the nature of the "cat" frequently used--whipcord mixed with knotted wire--had better consult the evidence of R. Clarke, of P. Bruce, and of Ramsay himself.

But the story would only be half instructive were we to omit the record of the quasi-judicial proceedings by which some of the barbarities were guaranteed. Three memorable reports of trials are printed at the end of the Commissioners' blue-book, and to them, as showing what a court-martial may be, what a foregone conclusion, what a mockery of justice, we may refer any curious readers. The cases are those of William Grant, George M'Intosh, and Samuel Clarke--all of whom were sentenced to death by court-martial. The case of M'Intosh is, perhaps, the most instructive of the three. He was sentenced by Colonel Lewis--and General Nelson approved the sentence--literally for no crime at all, except for having spoken at a public meeting in the house of Mr. George William Gordon, whose friend he was. The evidence which hanged the others was about equally valuable.

But the case that was the most outrageous, and rapidly became the most famous of all, was that of Mr. G. W. Gordon himself. On his trial and execution was based the greater part of the attempt to obtain legal redress in the English courts of law; around his body, so to speak, was fought the question of the legality of martial law, of the responsibility of officers and colonial governors, and of the rights of colonists. The story need not be told at great length. It is sufficient to say that Mr. Gordon was a negro gentleman, a member of the Jamaica Assembly, a prominent Baptist and leader of Opposition, the friend of the poorer classes of negroes, and in high disfavour with Governor Eyre. This gentleman was residing peacefully at Kingston at the time of the outbreak. Governor Eyre's own words show how little he cared for legality. "Throughout my tour in the Wolverine and Onyx," writes the Governor to Mr. Cardwell, "I found everywhere the most unmistakable evidence that Mr. George William Gordon, a coloured member of the House of Assembly, had not only been mixed up in the matter, but was himself, through his own misrepresentation and seditious language addressed to the black people, the chief cause and origin of the whole rebellion. Mr. Gordon was now in Kingston, and it became necessary to decide what action should be taken with regard to him. Having obtained a deposition on oath that certain seditious printed notices had been sent through the post-office, directed, in his handwriting, to the parties who have been leaders in the rebellion, I at once called upon the custos to issue a warrant and capture him. For some little time he managed to evade capture; but finding that, sooner or later, it was inevitable, he proceeded to the house of General O'Connor, and there gave himself up. I at once had him placed on board the Wolverine for safe custody and conveyance to Morant Bay."

Now, even supposing the proclamation of martial law to have been legal, which we believe it not to have been, it expressly excluded Kingston from the operation of martial law. What Governor Eyre did, therefore, was to seize a political opponent, to carry him off in a ship of war from a district under civil jurisdiction to a district under military jurisdiction, and then to hand him over to the tender mercies of a court-martial. The court was composed of two naval lieutenants and an ensign lately gazetted; one of the lieutenants being the same Lieutenant Brand who with a couple of "dingy boys" from his ship, had "had the pleasure" (his own words) of hanging the first "rebel," and shooting him with his own revolver as he hung; who had openly said that "nothing would give him greater pleasure than hanging this----Gordon." Mr. Gordon was an old man; he had been barbarously treated; he was wretchedly ill. Before his trial he was called out by Ramsay, the Provost-Marshal, to witness the execution of Grant, who had been a political friend of his. "Look there," said Ramsay; "that is your friend Grant, and you will be hanged like him." A Mr. Joseph G. Smith, a volunteer, thus tells, in his evidence before the Commission, how witnesses were collected against Mr. Gordon:--

"Afterwards I went into the guard-room, and he [Ramsay] was then swearing five of the prisoners, with their hands fastened and a rope round their necks, and he was swearing them in these words, 'You shall well and truly state what G. W. Gordon has to do with the rebellion;' and between each part of this a sailor came down with the whip over their shoulders."

On evidence of this kind, the evidence of men who had had the promise of their lives if they would accuse him, Mr. Gordon was tried. As to the taking of the evidence, we have the words of the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn, in his famous charge to the grand jury in the case of Nelson and Brand: "He could not be tried on that evidence. No competent judge acquainted with his duties could have received that evidence. Three-fourths--I had almost said nine-tenths--of the evidence upon which that man was convicted and sentenced to death, was evidence which, according to no known rules--not only of ordinary, but of military law--according to no known rules of right or justice, could possibly have been admitted." But even supposing it had been admitted, all that was proved was that Mr. Gordon had written letters to, and been on friendly terms with, some of the rioters; but none of the letters were produced except one, where he said that "the people of Jamaica were very wretched." He was proved to have called the Governor "a bad man." He was proved to have had an action-at-law against the late custos von Kettelholt. Above all, he was proved to have spoken at public meetings, and to have dwelt on the misery of the negroes and the way in which their case was misrepresented to the Colonial Office. For these offences--literally for none other--he was sentenced to death. Lieutenant Brand signed his sentence, and Brigadier Nelson approved it. "He asked to see the Reverend Mr. Panther, Wesleyan minister," wrote Brigadier Nelson; "I considered it inexpedient." Without the consolations of religion, condemned on less than no evidence by an unauthorised and incompetent tribunal, Mr. Gordon was hanged on the 23rd of October, 1865. He had been in life the representative of the negroes of Jamaica in their cry for equal government; in death he was their representative in their cry for justice.

"The total number of deaths caused by those engaged in the suppression amounted to 439, and the total number of dwellings burned was 1,000.... The whole number subjected to the degrading punishment [of flogging], during the continuance of martial law, we think could not be less than 600." These are the words of the Report of the Royal Commission, consisting of General Sir Henry Storks, Governor of Malta, Mr. Russell Gurney, Recorder of London, and Mr. Maule, Recorder of Leeds, who were sent out to Jamaica in the beginning of 1866, and who sat for fifty-one days examining witnesses. Long before the Commission went out, however--in fact, as soon as the news of the "suppression" arrived in England--public opinion had been roused. Public meetings took place, and a committee--the Jamaica Committee--was formed headed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, to see that full investigations were made, and that legal remedies were sought against those who had been guilty of illegal excess. Mr. Carlyle came forward as a champion of Governor Eyre. The Jamaica Committee announced that, "having been advised that the facts disclosed in the Report of the Royal Commissioners afford a proper ground for an indictment for murder to be preferred against Mr. Eyre and the other persons concerned in the trial and execution of Mr. Gordon, and that no other mode of vindicating the law in reference to those facts is open to them, they have instructed their solicitors to proceed forthwith with an indictment against Mr. Eyre." They did proceed with an indictment against Mr. Eyre, Brigadier Nelson, and Lieutenant Brand. Mr. Eyre was domiciled in the country--he had been recalled from Jamaica and superseded--and the question of committing him for trial was argued before a Shropshire bench of magistrates. The Shropshire bench of magistrates declined to commit him. The London stipendiary magistrate, being a trained lawyer, understood his duty differently in the case of Nelson and Brand; he committed them for trial at the Central Criminal Court. The prosecution failed in the end; but not before it had elicited from the Lord Chief Justice a charge to the grand jury so elaborate, so learned, so telling, and so clear, that it may be said to have once for all defined the scope of "martial law," and to have once for all settled the rights and duties of local authorities in dealing with riot or insurrection. Two points stand out clear from the Chief Justice's charge: first, that martial law, exercised in Great Britain or in any of her dependencies, means the law administered by courts-martial--the law, that is to say, which is laid down for the trial of military offenders by military courts; secondly, that, by the Petition of Right and all the statutes and examples which have confirmed it, civilians are in no case amenable to this law. What, then, the Governor and the military authorities in Jamaica had the right to do, was to use all diligence in suppressing what, for a moment--though probably wrongly--appeared to be a formidable insurrection; and to do this by military force. They had undoubtedly the right to put to death or flog any rebel captured with arms in his hands; their justification in this was, that highest law--necessity and the right of self-preservation. They had also the right to seize any dangerous persons and hand them over to the civil courts. But they had no right to assume a jurisdiction over the whole actions of civilians, to hang and flog and burn on mere charges of "complicity" or of past guilt. The trial of Mr. Gordon--all the trials that took place in the county of Surrey in that dreadful time--were no trials at all; they were military cruelty and race tyranny aping the forms of law. The grand jury threw out the bill, but made a formal presentment, "strongly recommending that martial law should be more clearly defined by legislative enactment." Mr. Eyre and his subordinates escaped, and in 1872, numerous suits instituted by his opponents having failed and a considerable revulsion of feeling having taken place in his favour, his expenses were paid by Government. It is a consolation that the changes which followed upon her ordeal of fire were fruitful to Jamaica. After Sir Henry Storks returned from his temporary government of the island, a new Governor was found in a distinguished and able Indian official, Sir John Peter Grant. Under his rule security was established and brought a moderate measure of prosperity in its train.

During the whole of the year 1866 two great subjects occupied everybody's mind--the war in Germany, its antecedents and its consequences, and Parliamentary Reform at home. We may proceed at once to tell the story of the unsuccessful attempt of Lord Russell's Government to carry the Reform Bill, and of the serious popular agitation that followed upon their overthrow. The cause of the defeat of the Bill of 1860 was undoubtedly the indifferent attitude of Lord Palmerston, which represented that of the public. In 1865 Mr. Baines brought in a Bill, which was defeated. Soon afterwards Lord Palmerston died and the principal barrier to a successful Bill was removed. Even before his death, in the months that were spent in canvassing for the general election, "both among Liberal and Tory candidates," said Mr. Bright, "the question of Reform was mentioned in some way or other, either in their written or spoken addresses to their constituents." But when, after the news arrived that the veteran Prime Minister had died, Lord Russell succeeded to his place, and Mr. Gladstone took the position of unfettered leader of the House of Commons, it was known that Reform was to be immediately approached as a Government measure. Many of their colleagues were averse from re-opening the question and to overcome their scruples a mild Bill was promised.

Parliament opened amid general interest and excitement with regard to Reform; and in March Mr. Gladstone brought in his "Bill to extend the Right of Voting at Elections of Members of Parliament in England and Wales." This important Bill, upon which was based so much of the Reform Bill of 1867, was at first sight extremely moderate. In the first place, it advanced the property qualification for the borough franchise which Lord Russell's Bill had fixed at £6 to £7--a step which Mr. Gladstone explained as follows: "A £6 rental, calculated upon the most careful investigation, and after making every allowance and deduction that ought to be made, would give 242,000 new voters, whom I should take as all belonging to the working class. I should then arrive at a gross total of 428,000 persons" (that is, by adding together old and new electors), "which would, in fact, probably place the working classes in a clear majority upon the constituency. Well, that has never been the intention of any Bill proposed in this House. I do not think it is a proposal that Parliament would ever adopt.... I do not think that we are called upon by any overruling or sufficient consideration, under the circumstances, to give over the majority of the town constituencies into the hands of the working class. We therefore propose to take the figure next above that which I have named--namely, a clear annual value of £7." Under the £7 qualification it was calculated that 144,000 voters of the working class would be admitted to the borough franchise--enough to give the artisan class its due weight and share in elections, without swamping the other elements of the constituency. Mr. Gladstone also proposed--by means of the abolition of the ratepaying clauses of the Reform Act of 1832, by registration of compound householders, and by a lodger franchise applicable to persons occupying rooms of the annual value of £10--to further increase the number of borough voters by 60,000, giving a general increase of 204,000. To this increase must be added the proposed number of new county voters, "fourteen-pound tenants," 172,000 in number; and the depositors in saving-banks, etc., 24,000 more. In all, the number of new voters to be added by the Bill was estimated at 400,000, equally divided, according to the belief of the framers of the Bill, between the middle class and the artisans.

Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill on March 12th, 1866, in a speech worthy of the occasion. At the outset he read the passage in the Queen's Speech which bore upon the question:--"When that information (relative to the existing rights of voting) is complete, the attention of Parliament will be called to the result thus obtained, with a view to such improvement in the laws which regulate the rights of voting in the election of members of the House of Commons as may strengthen our free institutions and conduce to the public welfare." Words like these gave him a good starting-point. He appealed to them and to the numerous occasions on which the same recommendation had been given from the Throne. "By no less than five Administrations, in no less than six Speeches of the Queen anterior to that of the present year," had the need of Reform been suggested to the House. Such an accumulation of authority, he went on to say, seemed to excuse him from the necessity of arguing the abstract question of the advisability of Reform. He took that for granted. Again, Mr. Lambert's work had been so well and quickly done that Government found itself ready to offer the Bill at once, without waiting a year. But--here was the important point--partly with a view to break up the opposition to Government's proposals, partly to prevent the Bill from becoming unwieldy and its progress too slow, it was to consist really of two Bills. The first was a Bill for the Extension of the Franchise; the second, to be considered after the settlement of the first, was to be concerned with the Redistribution of Seats. Into Mr. Gladstone's details we need not follow him, for we have already sketched the main provisions of his Bill. He commended it to the House, hoping that "if, unhappily, issue was to be taken adversely upon the Bill, it would be, above all, a plain and direct issue"--that is, whether or not there ought to be enfranchisement downwards. In other words, Mr. Gladstone, though he had nearly ignored the general question of the need of Parliamentary Reform, courted discussion of that general question. He brought in his Bill, not like a Trojan horse (he said) "approaching the walls of the sacred city, and filled with armed men, bent upon ruin, plunder, and conflagration," but rather as bringing recruits to the Parliamentary army--children to the Parliamentary family. "Give to these persons," ran his peroration, "new interests in the Constitution; new interests which, by the beneficent processes of the law of nature and Providence, shall beget in them new attachment; for the attachment of the people to the Throne, the institutions, and the laws under which they live is, after all, more than gold and silver, and more than fleets and armies; at once the strength, the glory, and the safety of the land."

The night following the introduction of the Bill was marked by the second of Mr. Lowe's famous Reform speeches, and the first of those fierce attacks upon the Russell Ministry which more than anything else contributed to bring in the Conservatives in the following year. Mr. Lowe was then member for Calne. He had held office under Lord Palmerston as Vice-President of the Council from 1859 to 1864, and had long been known in the House as an accomplished man and ready debater; but probably few, in 1866, had any idea of the real greatness of his oratorical gift, and of the splendid displays he was to make of it before the close of the Session. At the very outset of his speech on the 13th of March he denied the necessity of Reform altogether. And then came the famous passage that made Mr. Lowe the bugbear of the working classes. "Look at what a [working-class] majority implies. I shall speak very frankly on this subject, for--having lost my character by saying that the working man could get the franchise for himself, which has been proved to be true, and for saying which, he and his friends will not hate me one bit the less--I shall say exactly what I think. Let any consider--I have had such unhappy experiences, and many of us have--let any gentleman consider the constituencies he has had the honour to be concerned with. If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look for them in the constituencies? Do you go to the top or to the bottom?" Lastly, Who asked for the Bill? Not the people, not the House of Commons, but the Radical leaders, as a salve for a theoretical and not a practical grievance! "All I can say," concluded Mr. Lowe, "is, that if my right honourable friend does succeed in carrying this measure through Parliament, when the passions and interests of the day are gone by, I do not envy him his retrospect. I covet not a single leaf of the laurels that may encircle his brow. I do not envy him his triumph. His be the glory of carrying it; mine of having, to the utmost of my poor ability, resisted it." The cheers that greeted this speech--and not only the Opposition, but for a moment the Ministerialists, were carried away by its eloquence and wit--were a kind of omen of the difficulties that the Government were to meet with during the progress of the measure. In this debate on the first reading, Mr. Horsman, the Liberal member for Stroud, took up the same position of hostility to the measure as Mr Lowe; and it was in answer to him that Mr. Bright threw out his famous nickname for the new party. "He has retired into what may be called his political cave of Adullam, and he has called about him every one that was in distress, and every one that was discontented." The name of "Adullamites" was ever afterwards given to the group of seceding Liberals, and their position was called the "Cave."

The Bill was brought in, and read a first time, and the House adjourned for the Easter Holidays to think over the situation. It was evident that a storm was coming and questions perhaps graver than that of the fate of a Cabinet or of a measure were dependent on the issue. A great meeting was held at Liverpool, at which Mr. Gladstone made a speech in defence of the Bill. Mr. Lowe's Liberal constituents at Calne wrote him a strong protest against his conduct and clearly indicated that he must not ask for a continuance of their confidence. His answer to them was, in fact, an answer to a perfect chorus of invective with which he was greeted by every Liberal newspaper and in every meeting of Liberals throughout the country.

He maintained that he had but fulfilled the announcement which he had made to them at the time of his election in 1865, when the words of his address had been, "I attach too much importance to the blessings we already enjoy, to risk them in pursuit of ideal perfection, or even of theoretical improvement." And, while with perfect frankness he affirmed his belief that "ignorant, drunken, venal, violent" people were to be found at the bottom of the constituencies, he denied that he had meant the words to apply to a whole class of his countrymen. But this disclaimer availed little; the words had been spoken, and they stuck. The popular excitement which they caused continued after the failure of the Bill and throughout the winter of 1866, and was directed mainly against the "renegade Liberals." Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech was of the most uncompromising kind. "We do not desire," he said, "we should be the first to resist, sudden and violent sweeping changes; but the progressive enlargement of the popular franchise--with due regard to the state and circumstances of the country--we do not consider liable to the application of any of these epithets. Having produced this measure, framed in a spirit of moderation, we hope to support it with decision.... We stake ourselves, we stake our existence as a Government, and we also stake our political character, on the adoption of the Bill in its main provisions. You have a right to expect from us that we should tell you what we mean, and that the trumpet which it is our business to blow shall give forth no uncertain sound. Its sound has not been, and I trust will not be, uncertain. We have passed the Rubicon, we have broken the bridge and burned the boats behind us.... The defeat of the Bill, what would it procure? an interval, but not an interval of repose--an interval of fever, an interval of expectation, an interval for the working of those influences which might extend even to the formidable dimensions of political danger."

The great debate on the second reading began on the 12th of April; and never within living memory had a finer display of eloquence, argument, and energy been witnessed within the walls of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone had seen enough of the spirit of opposition that had been awakened to render it necessary for him to make an elaborate speech on moving the second reading, directed mainly against the amendment of which notice had been given by Lord Grosvenor, the eldest son of the Marquis of Westminster. This amendment, which was to be seconded by Lord Stanley, was to the effect "that it was inexpedient to consider this Bill until the House had before it the whole scheme of representation;" that is to say, that it was inexpedient to break up the Reform legislation into two parts, to separate the question of the franchise from the question of redistribution. Mr. Kinglake, a supporter of Government, moved an amendment to the same effect, though he was ready to postpone redistribution until the second reading had been carried. This compromise was accepted by Government. It is not necessary to go through the points that Mr. Gladstone raised; for to do so would be to anticipate the course of the debate, so exhaustive and voluminous was his eloquence. The former part of the speech was of a more general kind than that which had introduced the Bill originally; it was a sort of answer to Mr. Lowe and to those who had denied the necessity and the demand for Reform, and it dwelt with immense force upon the pledges given in past years by Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Horsman, and others, now strenuous opposers of Reform in any shape. Mr. Gladstone had previously denounced as a "deplorable arrangement," "a gross blunder springing from that kind of cleverness which so often outwits itself," the design of the opponents of the Bill to place themselves under the guidance of "the representatives of two of our noblest and most ancient houses." Indeed, it looked very much like a combination of aristocracy against democracy, when from the Liberal side of the House rose Lord Grosvenor to move an amendment, and from the Conservative side rose Lord Stanley to second it. Lord Grosvenor's speech was not specially effective, except from the family weight of the speaker. It mainly turned upon the affront put upon the Whig families by Government, in not having sufficiently taken them into their counsels. Lord Stanley was more telling. Alluding to the coming general election, he protested against the chance of allowing the extension of the suffrage to be dealt with by one Parliament, and the redistribution of seats by another. The Franchise Bill, if carried, would confer a great increase of power upon the Radical element in the constituencies--an increase of power which would lead to the return of a much more Radical Parliament than the present, pledged by the very circumstances of its existence to extreme measures. Was it safe to leave to its tender mercies a question involving so many complicated interests as that of the redistribution of seats? Mr. John Stuart Mill, in an able speech, followed Lord Stanley, and had no difficulty in showing this to be the real grievance and bugbear of the great families who had still so much influence over British politics, though Lord Stanley had hardly ventured to put it into such a definite form; but were there any real grounds for this fear of the working classes? For it was at bottom that and nothing else. The blue book of Mr. Lambert, said Mr. Mill, after an eloquent vindication of the rights of the workmen as a class, had revealed the fact that but twenty-six per cent. of the electors were of the working classes.

Mr. Mill's speech may be said to have established his parliamentary reputation, and many of the subsequent speakers took great pains to answer his arguments. Indeed, it was necessary to do so, if the opposition to the Bill was to be justified, for Mr. Mill's speech had been a vigorous attempt to show that on many important questions legislation would be wiser and better if the working classes were more represented. Education, sanitary reform, the diminution of pauperism, the diminution of crime--in a word, the social side of politics--would, he maintained, be better handled by a reformed than by an unreformed Parliament; and, if so, an approach to democracy should rather be welcomed than feared. These were the points chiefly dwelt upon by the Opposition speakers--by the orthodox Conservatives like Sir Hugh Cairns, by Mr. Disraeli, by the "Cave," represented by Mr. Laing, Mr. Horsman, Lord Elcho, and notably Mr. Lowe.

Mr. Disraeli's summing up of the case of the Opposition was clever, but not very telling; it was, except at the end, too vague. The end, however, gave Mr. Gladstone what he wanted. Quoting from the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and addressing himself to Mr. Gladstone's famous assertion that the working classes were "the same flesh and blood" as the upper classes, Mr. Disraeli said:--"Sir George Lewis would not have built up the constituent body on the rights of man. He would not have entrusted the destiny of the country to the judgment of a numerical majority. He would not have counselled the Whig party to reconstruct their famous institutions on the American model, and to profit in time by the wisdom of the children of their loins. Sir, it is because I wish to avert from this country such calamities and disasters that I shall vote for the amendment of the noble lord."

When the leader of the Tory party sat down, Mr. Gladstone rose and took for his starting-point the last words of Mr. Disraeli. "At last, sir," he said, "we have obtained a clear declaration from an authoritative source; and we now know that a Bill which, in a country with five millions of adult males, proposes to add to the present limited constituency 200,000 of the middle class and 200,000 of the working class is, in the judgment of the leader of the Tory party, a Bill to reconstruct the Constitution on American principles." The speech which followed was, for sheer eloquence, one of the very greatest of Mr. Gladstone's parliamentary efforts; it began at one o'clock in the morning, and, after reviewing the whole course of the debate, it ended at three. "You may drive us from our seats," he ended, "you may slay, you may bury the measure that we have introduced. But we will write upon its gravestone for an epitaph this line, with certain confidence in its fulfilment--

'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!'

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of these debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, those great social forces are against you; they work with us; they are marshalled in our support. And the banner which we now carry in the fight, though perhaps at some moment of the struggle it may droop over our sinking heads, yet will float again in the eye of heaven, and will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the Three Kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and not distant victory."

It was three o'clock in the morning when Mr. Gladstone finished his speech, but the crowded and excited House showed no signs of fatigue. When the Speaker put the question, the roar of "Ayes" and "Noes" which answered him was heard far beyond the walls of the House by the waiting crowds outside. Amid great excitement the two camps parted into their respective lobbies, and shortly afterwards the result of the division was announced as follows:--For the second reading, 318; against it, 313. Majority for Government, 5. Both sides of the House cheered the announcement of these critical numbers--the Liberals for the fact of a majority, the Conservatives for the smallness of it. When the uproar had somewhat abated, Mr. Gladstone stated that he would declare what course the Government proposed to take on the Monday following, the 30th of April. In the few days which intervened there were many rumours abroad as to the probable resignation of the Cabinet. However, when the House re-assembled, Mr. Gladstone announced that the Government did not consider the division on Lord Grosvenor's motion any sufficient reason for resigning, and that they were prepared to proceed with the Bill in the manner which the House seemed to prefer. They would now lose no time in producing the Redistribution Scheme as well as the Scottish and Irish Bills, and they promised that the House should have ample time to consider the Redistribution Scheme before going on with the Franchise Bill. In answer to some reproaches of inconsistency from the Opposition benches, Mr. Gladstone replied that the Government had indeed pledged themselves to stand or fall by the Bill, but as yet the Bill had not fallen--the alteration now effected in it was, after all, a question of arrangement only, and did not affect any vital principle of it.

On the 7th of May the Redistribution of Seats Bill was introduced. The Bill provided, first, for the redistribution of seats, properly so called; and secondly, for a more accurate settlement of borough boundaries than had been accomplished by the Reform Bill of 1832. With regard to the first question, Mr. Gladstone announced that Government had no intention of trying to get rid of bribery by a wholesale extinction of small boroughs. In the first place, to get rid of bribery was not the object of the Bill; and secondly, corruption, that "leprosy of English politics," was not confined to small boroughs, and no hard and fast line of electoral purity could be drawn between boroughs above or beneath the ten thousand line of population. Moreover, the question of small boroughs had since the Reform Act assumed a very different aspect. In 1832 the extreme measure of extinction--"capital punishment," as Mr. Lowe called it--had to be employed wholesale, since in many places throughout England the exercise of the franchise had become a mere "mockery of the representative system." Now, however, every member did in some way or other represent the views, as well as the interests, of a real local community; and the representation of the small boroughs was in so much better a state generally that no such summary measures as those adopted in 1832 ought now to be taken with regard to it. No borough, then, was to be absolutely extinguished, but "the fair demands of justice and growing population," in other words, the electoral deficiencies of the great manufacturing towns, were to be met by the milder expedient of arranging small boroughs in groups--a principle which had been already successfully adopted in Scotland and Wales. These groups were to be arranged according to geographical convenience; in some cases they were to consist of two boroughs, in others of three, and in one case of four. "When the population amounts to less than fifteen thousand we propose to assign one representative, and when it exceeds that number we propose to give it two." Mr. Gladstone then proceeded to run through the names of the various groups proposed. There were eight pairs of boroughs: in seven instances the group was composed of three, and in one, as we have said, of four. That is to say, that where two or more small towns had been accustomed to return each of them a representative, they were, in future, to constitute a group returning one jointly. Mr. Gladstone calculated that by these arrangements forty-nine seats would be set free for redistribution, and having now sketched the disenfranchisement side of the scheme, he proceeded to consider the still more important question of enfranchisement. The franchise was to be given for the first time to the six boroughs of Burnley, Stalybridge, Gravesend, Hartlepool, Middlesborough, and Dewsbury. Government proposed to apportion the remaining forty-three seats as follows:--Twenty-six additional members were to be given to the English counties, a third member to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, one member to the University of London, four additional members to the metropolitan constituencies of Chelsea and the Tower Hamlets, and one to the borough of Salford. The seven seats still remaining were to be handed over to Scotland. Ireland and Wales, Government considered, were already adequately represented, and they were, therefore, left out of account in this division of the spoils of redistribution. With regard to the question of borough boundaries, a vexed and difficult one, the Bill proposed little in the way of actual legislation. It provided that "wherever the municipal boundary includes any area that is not now within the parliamentary boundary, the parliamentary boundary is to be so far enlarged as to include that area." The Commissioners of Enclosures were to decide the boundaries of the newly enfranchised towns, of the newly separated halves of the Tower Hamlets, and, in cases of municipal extension--such as occurred when any outlying suburb of a town became large enough and united enough to claim municipal privileges--the parliamentary line was to follow whatever local line might be adopted.

In conclusion, Mr. Gladstone stated that Government was prepared to treat the two Bills--the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill--exactly as the House thought best. They were willing, if the House desired it, to make one Bill out of them, but in no circumstances would Ministers advise a prorogation of Parliament till both questions had been disposed of. This marked concession to the demands of the Opposition only produced some captious remarks from Mr. Disraeli, to the effect that Government did not know its own mind; and that, in leaving the choice of the mode of procedure to the House, it was abdicating its functions.

After leave was given to bring in the Bill, the Scottish and Irish Reform Bills were introduced. The Scottish Bill provoked some discussion, but, on the whole, the House seemed to have made up its mind to let the Franchise question comparatively alone till the Redistribution of Seats, which most members considered a far more personal and pressing question, should have been settled. In the week that intervened between the introduction and the second reading of the Redistribution Bill, two notices were put upon the order book of the House, which gave Government ample warning of a troublesome time coming. One was Mr. Bouverie's motion to consolidate the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill and make one measure of them; the other and more important one, moved by Captain Hayter, was to the effect "that in the opinion of this House the system of grouping proposed by Government is neither convenient nor equitable, nor sufficiently matured to form the basis of a satisfactory measure." Before they came on for discussion, however, the Redistribution Bill passed the second reading without formal opposition, though Mr. Disraeli took the opportunity of making a vigorous defence of small boroughs. After the Whitsuntide holidays the hottest part of the contest began. Lord Russell wrote a strong appeal to Lord Grosvenor, but without effect. Government announced that they were prepared to fuse the two Bills, and that they were willing to give every facility for discussion of Captain Hayter's amendment, but the "Cave" and the Conservatives were not to be conciliated; and Sir Rainald Knightley's motion, to add to the twofold Bill, already unwieldy in size, provisions against bribery and corruption at elections, both surprised and annoyed Ministers. Mr. Gladstone opposed it warmly. As he said afterwards, "We had already an overweighted measure, and it was impossible to find time to consider it alone," without adding to it any fresh material for discussion. But the Opposition rallied round the motion, and it was carried by a majority of ten against Government. Mr. Gladstone once more gave way and announced that if Sir Rainald Knightley could produce a matured scheme for the prevention of bribery at the proper time and place, Government would not oppose the discussion of it. Captain Hayter's amendment against the system of grouping was brilliantly debated for five nights. Mr. Mill, Mr. Lowe, Sir Hugh Cairns, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli showed themselves at their best; and the clever skirmishing of Mr. Lowe, and the more serious but hardly more logical speeches of Mr. Disraeli, contrasted well with Mr. Mill's grave sarcasms upon the "dense solid force of sheer stupidity" in the Conservative party, and the sincere enthusiasm of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Disraeli, in the speech which concluded the debate, did his best to defend his party from the charge of factious opposition; but when one considers what a much more sweeping Bill than the one they were at present opposing, on the ground of its Radical tendencies, was passed by him and his party in the following year, his arguments appear hardly convincing. When he resumed his seat, the amendment was negatived by 403 to 2, the greater part of the Opposition having left the House to avoid voting, seeing that Lord Grosvenor's defection from their ranks left them little or no chance of obtaining a majority against Government.

So far, and upon questions of general principles, Government had in the main, though with great difficulty, and at least one hair-breadth escape, been successful; that is to say, the House as a whole, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Lowe, were agreed that Reform in some shape or other was inevitable. But the Opposition were also agreed in the determination not to let the Russell Ministry settle the question. A successful Reform Bill would have continued the Liberals in power, as later it kept the Conservatives in office, and Mr. Disraeli saw his opportunity and seized it. Reform, especially that side of it which is concerned with the redistribution of seats, rouses the most apathetic Conservative member, and Mr. Disraeli could therefore count upon the undivided support of his party. But Mr. Gladstone's majority would have baffled all their efforts, had it not been for the unexpected defection of the "Cave." The opposition of Lord Grosvenor, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Horsman, and others to the Bill meant victory to the Conservatives; and Mr. Disraeli would not have been Mr. Disraeli had he not known how to use the advantage thus given him. So that while in committee the fortunes of the Bill went wavering backwards and forwards over the debatable ground of "rateable value," or "gross yearly rental," all the world knew that it was in reality no question of details, no question indeed of Reform, but a question of a Liberal or a Conservative Ministry that was being so obstinately fought out. The general consciousness of this gave an unusual piquancy to the discussion of even the dullest of those details of which a Reform Bill is full. The cleverness and determination of the opponents of the Ministry were notably shown in a most unexpected attack upon the Bill made by Lord Stanley on June 7th. The House in committee was engaged in debating the 4th clause of the now consolidated Bill, relating to the county franchise, which it was proposed to reduce to £14. Mr. Gladstone had just made an elaborate defence of the clause against a hostile amendment moved by Mr. Walpole, and all seemed going on as usual, when, to the amazement of the Tory side of the House, no less than of the Liberals, Lord Stanley, the member for Lynn, advanced quietly to the table and moved "that the portion of the joint Bill which relates to the redistribution of seats be taken first," or, in other words, that the Franchise Bill should be postponed sine diê. "This brief speech," says the historian of the year, "had the effect of a coup de théâtre." Lord Stanley went on to give various plausible reasons for the motion, but the House, in spite of its astonishment, was not to be taken in.

The tendency of the motion and the animus which prompted it were very plainly visible, and the indignant Liberal benches applauded every word of Mr. Gladstone's speech in answer to it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer ironically complimented the Opposition upon their perfect knowledge of the "art of ambush." At last, it seemed, they had made up their minds, so long in uncertainty, as to what step they should take next, and this new strategy was the result of their cogitations. Loudly cheered by his supporters, Mr. Gladstone went on to say that Government would never suffer the conduct of the measure to be taken out of their hands by such a motion. They were pledged to accomplish, or at least to attempt, the enfranchisement of the people, and to that object they would adhere so long as they retained the support of the House. Lord Stanley's motion was defeated by a majority of 27, a larger majority than had yet fallen to the lot of Government since the beginning of the Reform debates, for the strong sense of unfair treatment among the Liberals kept several waverers loyal to the Ministry who would otherwise have voted with the Opposition. Nor was this all. "The engineer was indeed for once hoist with his own petard," for the feeling awakened by Lord Stanley's motion did Government good service in the next division which they had to encounter, namely, upon Mr. Walpole's amendment, the debate on which had been interrupted by Lord Stanley's speech. Mr. Walpole was beaten by a majority of 14.

A far more vital question, however, was raised on June 11th by Mr. Ward Hunt, member for Northamptonshire, and one leading to much more important consequences. He proposed to make the basis of the county franchise, not the "gross yearly rental" of any given property, but its "rateable value;" while Lord Dunkellin followed suit with a similar motion with regard to the borough franchise. The Bill as originally drawn up gave the borough franchise "to the occupier, as owner or tenant of premises of any tenure within the borough, of a clear yearly value of seven pounds or upwards;" and the same expression was used in the case of the county franchise; clear yearly value meaning the same as "gross estimated rental."

The "gross estimated rental" of a house, according to the Union Assessment Committee Act of 1862, is defined as "the rent at which the hereditaments might reasonably be expected to let from year to year, free from all usual tenants' rates and taxes and tithe commutation rent-charge, if any." But the rateable value, the yearly value, that is to say, at which the house is assessed in the rate-books for rating purposes, is computed from the "gross estimated rental" by making various deductions. The scale of these deductions varies according to local needs; thus, in some places, "rateable value" is ascertained by deducting 10 per cent. from "gross estimated rental," in others 15 per cent., and in others as much as 35 or 36 per cent. The substitution of "rateable value" for "clear yearly value" in clauses 4 and 5 of the Bill would considerably diminish the number of new voters to be enfranchised by the Bill. That is to say, a £5 rating franchise would even hardly admit as many voters as the £7 rental franchise, because the "rateable value" was always something below the "gross estimated rental," and sometimes, as we have seen, very much below it. Mr. Ward Hunt said frankly that the object of his amendment was to raise the county franchise to a higher standard than if the clause passed without amendment. He thought the £14 franchise would admit an excessive number of votes.

Mr. Gladstone in a short, clear speech defended the basis adopted by Government, and once more patiently explained what was meant by the terms "rateable value" and "gross estimated rental," an explanation of which many members of the House stood greatly in need. A smart passage of arms followed between the Solicitor-General and Mr. Disraeli; and finally, upon a division, the amendment was negatived by a narrow majority of seven votes. Lord Dunkellin's motion, to the same effect with respect to the borough franchise, met with very different success. Its mover supported the principle of rating rather than rental, because he believed it, he said, to be the more convenient, inexpensive, and constitutional method of giving the franchise of the two. Whatever were the inequalities of rating, the inequalities of rental, he contended, were greater still. Mr. Gladstone again rose in answer, this time to give so determined a statement of the course Government intended to pursue, that it was at once felt that the crisis of the whole matter had at last been reached. A warm and exciting debate followed. Mr. Bright strongly supported Government, urging that if the amendment were carried, the great aim and object of the Bill would be defeated, and the legitimate hopes of the working classes once more disappointed. Other speakers followed, but all the world knew there was not much to be said now on either side. Finally, Mr. Gladstone clinched his first speech by the brief repetition of Government's determination not to accept the amendment, and to regard the carrying of it as incompatible with the further progress of the Bill. It was a quarter-past one o'clock when the crowded House divided, and amid a scene of great excitement the following numbers were announced: For the amendment, 315; against it, 304. Majority against Government, 11. Long and loud was the cheering of the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had won his battle, and the immediate political future, at least, was in the hands of the Conservatives.

On the day following this important division it was generally known that the Russell Ministry was at an end; in fact, in the evening Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone formally announced to the two Houses that the Ministry had sent in their resignations to the Queen, and motions of adjournment to the following Monday, the 25th of June, were agreed to. It was on Tuesday, the 26th, however, that Mr. Gladstone made his promised statement in the House of Commons. The House was crowded in every part, and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose, he was greeted with a burst of tumultuous cheering. "Sir," he said, "the suspense, which the House yesterday so kindly consented to prolong, is at an end, and her Majesty has been pleased to accept the resignation of their offices, which was last week tendered by the Government. The House is aware that her Majesty thought fit in her wisdom to postpone the acceptance of that tender when it was first made. It appeared to her Majesty that, upon the first aspect of the vote which led to the tender of our resignation, it might, perhaps be considered as a matter of mere machinery and detail, susceptible of adjustment, rather than as one which tended to break up the framework of the Bill; and her Majesty also felt, and I think the House and the country, without distinction of party, will agree in that sentiment, that, in the present state of affairs on the continent of Europe, there is necessarily a disadvantage in a change of Government. Without the slightest approach to any invidious preference or distinction, it may truly be said that at such a moment it is not easy for any incoming Administration to step at once into the exact conditions of relations with Governments and Ministers abroad which was enjoyed by their predecessors; and that difficulty, whatever may be its amount, is in itself a public disadvantage." Upon these grounds, then, the Queen had been for some little time unwilling to accept their resignation, until a long conference with Lord Russell had convinced her that the step was inevitable, and the resignations were accepted.

The accuracy of this statement is fully borne out by the correspondence between Lord Russell and the Queen, published by Mr. Spencer Walpole in his "Life of Lord John Russell." From the first her Majesty had desired that, in view of the serious state of the Continent, the Ministry should act in a spirit of compromise and conciliation. The Prime Minister fully acknowledged the critical condition of foreign affairs, and therefore strongly advised her Majesty to postpone her visit to Scotland. But he also wrote that "Lord Russell would ill serve your Majesty's interests and those of the country if, by any premature concession, he were to expose his own character and that of Mr. Gladstone to the loss of public confidence, and those who would most taunt and reproach them with such a concession would be their implacable and inveterate enemies." This was before the division on Lord Dunkellin's motion; after it had occurred, he wrote that the proceedings of the last few weeks had convinced the Ministry that nothing was to be gained by protracted discussions on the Bill, that the reasons against a dissolution, founded on the general apathy of the South of England, appeared to them valid, and that there was no alternative to a resignation. The Queen replied that she had been completely taken by surprise, as she understood that there was no crisis, and that she did not consider Ministers were fulfilling their duty to herself or the country by abandoning their posts in consequence of a defeat on a matter of detail and not of principle. The Premier stuck to his text that Lord Dunkellin's amendment was a vital issue; he thought, however, that it might be possible to postpone the Bill with a declaration that it would be submitted unaltered to the present or a new Parliament. Finally, the Cabinet determined that if they could obtain from the House an expression of confidence together with a desire for the reintroduction of the Bill at an early period, they would retain their offices. When there appeared no reasonable prospect of the fulfilment of these conditions, they had no option but to resign.

The dislocation of the Liberal party was so complete that no reasonable prospect remained of a stable Government being formed by any of the fractions into which it had been temporarily shivered. When, therefore, the Queen sent for Lord Derby and requested him to form a Ministry, that statesman, although the Conservative party was in so decided a minority in the House of Commons, accepted without hesitation the responsibility of undertaking the government of the country. Mr. Disraeli became Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Walpole went to the Home Office; Lord Stanley and Lord Cranborne were appointed Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and for India respectively; General Peel and Sir John Pakington accepted the chief posts in the War Office and the Admiralty; Lord Carnarvon became Secretary for the Colonies; and the Marquis of Abercorn accepted the Vice-royalty of Ireland. This, it will be evident, was a purely Conservative Administration; such, however, had not been the desire of Lord Derby, who made overtures to some of the leaders of the recalcitrant Liberals, which were declined. Mr. Lowe was approached, so were Lord Grosvenor and Lord Lansdowne; the last would have joined, had not his sudden death intervened. Lord Shaftesbury also declined, and so did Lord Clarendon, either because, according to Bishop Wilberforce, he "hated Disraeli," or because, according to Lord Malmesbury, the Conservative irregulars were preparing an attack on his foreign policy. The Adullamites would have joined a Government under Lord Stanley, whose explanation of his father's ill success with the dissentient Whigs made a few days later to his constituents at Lynn, was doubtless the true one. "We have not desired," he said, "to form our Administration upon any narrow party basis There are many of the Whig party whose sympathies are well known to be with us, whose support in debate and divisions we have no doubt of receiving, and whose official co-operation, where it has been asked, has only been withheld not on account of any real or wide difference of political opinion, but rather from that natural and honourable scruple which makes men shrink from the appearance of changing their party--of walking, as the phrase is, across the floor of the House--under circumstances where they may possibly appear to be personal gainers by the change."

Mr. Disraeli went down for re-election to his constituents in Buckinghamshire, and there delivered an address that adumbrated with considerable clearness the course which the new Government intended to, and which it actually did, pursue. There was a notion that the Conservatives were more favourable to intervention in the affairs of foreign countries than the Liberals; that in their hands the country was more likely to drift into war; and this notion, so fatal to the popularity of any political party with that pacific generation of Englishmen, Mr. Disraeli took great pains to dispel. "The abstention of England from any unnecessary interference in the affairs of Europe is the consequence, not of her decline of power, but of her increased strength. England is no longer a mere European Power; she is the metropolis of a great maritime empire, extending to the boundaries of the farthest ocean. It is not that England has taken refuge in a state of apathy, that she now almost systematically declines to interfere in the affairs of the continent of Europe. England is as ready and as willing to interfere as in old days, when the necessity of her position requires it. There is no Power, indeed, that interferes more than England. She interferes in Asia, because she is really more an Asiatic Power than a European. She interferes in Australia, in Africa, and in New Zealand, where she carries on war often on a great scale. Therefore it is not because England does not recognise her duty to interfere in the affairs of the continent of Europe, that persons are justified in declaring that she has relinquished her imperial position, and has taken refuge in the otium cum dignitate which agrees with the decline of life, of power, and of prosperity. On the contrary, she has a greater sphere of action than any European Power, and she has duties devolving upon her on a much larger scale." On the subject of Parliamentary Reform Mr. Disraeli was decidedly explicit. He would not for one moment allow that Reform was a Liberal preserve, and that in dealing with the question the Conservatives were poaching on forbidden ground. "I hear very often," he said, "that the subject of Parliamentary Reform is the great difficulty of the present Ministry, and will be their stumbling-block. I am quite of a different opinion. I see no difficulty in the subject at all; and if we stumble, rest assured we shall not stumble over the subject of Parliamentary Reform. If Parliamentary Reform is to be dealt with, I consider the present Government have as good a right to deal with it as any body of statesmen in existence. The great Reform Bill of 1832 was mainly devised by Lord Derby, and was entirely carried by his energy; and with regard to the only measure on the subject, since the great Reform Bill, ever mentioned with respect, why, I myself brought it in. I have remarked, during the recent campaign in the House of Commons, that every division that took place, and every strong manifestation of opinion which was expressed, ratified the principle upon which the Bill of 1859 was founded. And night after night, sitting in that House opposite to me, distinguished Liberals of all hues rose, and, in a tone of courteous penitence, publicly avowed how much they regretted they had voted against the Bill of 1859."

On the 9th of July, the new arrangements having been completed, Lord Derby made a Ministerial statement in the House of Lords, the leading ideas of which were in close agreement with those enunciated by Mr. Disraeli in the speech from which we have just quoted. At this late period of the Session, the Budget for the year having been already discussed and settled, it was out of the question that the new Government should do more than wind up the business of legislation with all possible despatch, and then dismiss the members to their homes. In a considerable section of the large Liberal majority that now crowded the Opposition benches, a determination was apparent to give the new Ministry a fair trial, and neither to join in, nor permit the success of, any factious or precipitate attempt to place them in a minority.

Besides that of the Premier, but one important Ministerial statement was made before the close of the Session; this, which was delivered by Lord Cranborne on the 19th of July, related to the finances of India, and was regarded on both sides of the House as a masterly and lucid exposition. Though so far satisfactory, inasmuch as it showed that, during the last three years, the Indian Government had very nearly succeeded in establishing an equilibrium between receipts and expenditure, it was calculated to occasion some anxiety on account of the proofs which it afforded of the inelastic character of a large proportion of the sources from which the Indian revenue is derived, of the complete failure of the income tax, on the introduction of which such ardent hopes had been founded, and of the degree in which the prosperity of Indian finance was dependent on the rise or fall of the opium tax. The estimate of revenue from this single tax was £8,500,000; and Lord Cranborne reluctantly admitted that "opium had become the essential element in Eastern finance." Yet the general picture which he drew of the material condition of India was eminently satisfactory. The railway expenditure had been a source of enormous success; the Great Indian Peninsula line paid 7 per cent. on its capital, and the East Indian nearly 5 per cent., though neither of them was fully and thoroughly opened. Taking a comprehensive survey of the condition of India, he said that "education was progressing; public works, particularly of irrigation, were going on; railways advancing; the Ganges Canal had been rendered more fitted for its great purposes; and there was much evidence of prosperity."

The administrative skill and prudence of the new Home Secretary were severely tested before the close of the Session. On the committee of the Reform League of London Mr. Edmond Beales and Colonel Dickson were the most influential persons, and in a series of meetings they had taught their audiences to believe that without manhood suffrage and the ballot the British Constitution was one-sided and imperfect. The advent to power of a Conservative Ministry raised the ardour of the Leaguers to a pitch of yet more enthusiastic warmth than before, and it was announced that a great public meeting would be held in Hyde Park, on the evening of the 23rd of July, in order to demand the immediate extension of the suffrage. The authorities feared that the demonstration, occurring at so late an hour, might be taken advantage of by the "roughs" to create a disturbance, under cover of which thefts on a large scale might be perpetrated; it was resolved, therefore, that this meeting should be prohibited. Placards signed by the Chief Commissioner of Police, Sir Richard Mayne, were, early in the afternoon, extensively posted throughout London, stating that the park gates would be closed to the public at five o'clock. The League and its adherents viewed the attempt to suppress their oratory with the deepest indignation, and a written notice was forwarded by the "Demonstration Committee" to the various sub-committees, to the effect that the members were to march in procession to the park, and, if prevented from entering it, were then to form four deep, and proceed by way of Grosvenor Place, Victoria Street, and past the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square. The Procession of Leaguers was formed on Clerkenwell Green, when several speeches of a highly inflammatory nature were delivered before the march was commenced.

The procession set out shortly before five o'clock, and proceeded along Holborn and Oxford Street to the Marble Arch. Here things presented an animated appearance. A force of foot and mounted police, numbering 1,600 or 1,800, had been assembled within the park, under the direction of Sir Richard Mayne and Captain Harris; and at five o'clock the gates were closed. A large number of spectators had previously entered the park, to witness the arrival of the procession; and with these the police did not interfere. Arrived at the Marble Arch, Mr. Beales, Colonel Dickson, and other prominent Leaguers, alighted from the foremost carriages, and going up to the gate, demanded admission to the park from the police. This was refused, on the authority of "our Commissioner;" and then Mr. Beales, re-forming the procession as well as he could in the midst of the dense crowd, led as many as would follow him down Park Lane, and, by the streets already named, to Trafalgar Square. Here several speeches were delivered, but all accounts represent the proceedings as remarkably tame.

Meanwhile the mob that had gathered about the Marble Arch, both in Park Lane and in Bayswater Road, exasperated at the loss of the excitement which the meeting would have afforded them, and partly, no doubt, animated by resentment at what seemed needlessly arbitrary conduct on the part of the police, pressed close up to the park railings; the bolder spirits seized them, shook them; grasped by hundreds of strong hands at once, they swayed--they gave way. In an instant a hundred practicable breaches afforded that admission into the park which the police had denied. Down came the police, horse and foot, upon the invaders; but they were distracted by the multitude of inroads, and disconcerted by the ease with which the railings were laid prostrate in every direction. They used their truncheons freely, and many a head was cut open; but the mob, besides the advantage of overwhelming numbers, took to stone-throwing, and many of the police were severely injured. Sir Richard Mayne, who had himself been wounded, then sent for the military. A detachment of Foot Guards soon arrived, followed by a troop of Life Guards. The mob cheered the soldiers, who posted themselves near the Marble Arch, occasionally marching upon any specially dense assemblage of persons, and compelling them to shift their ground. Speeches were made by excited orators at various points within the park, after the mob had forced their way in; but the confusion that prevailed was such that little attention seems to have been paid to them. On the southern side of the park also, in the Knightsbridge Road, a number of mischievous persons congregated, and broke down two hundred yards of the park railing. After the arrival of the soldiers, the police endeavoured to make a number of arrests, in doing which they met with violent resistance, and were in many cases severely handled. The partisans of order were presently reinforced by a second detachment of Foot Guards, who, with the first detachment, received orders to be in readiness to fire, should it become necessary. Encounters between the police and the mob then grew less frequent, and finally quiet was restored when another body of Life Guards arrived, and assisted in removing the mob from the park. Much stone-throwing was all this time going on in the streets, and the windows of the Athenæum and United Service Clubs, as well as of a number of private houses, were broken. No lives were lost, though a considerable number of persons received severe injuries.

Mr. Walpole, the new Home Secretary, a man of remarkable humanity and gentleness, was afflicted beyond measure by the turn matters had taken. He received a deputation of the Leaguers at the Home Office two days afterwards, and in conversation with them actually shed tears, and came to the somewhat ignominious understanding with them, that Government would cause the police and the military to be withdrawn from the park until the question as to the legal right of the people to claim admission to it had been decided, the League meanwhile undertaking to do its best to prevent any breach of the peace or other misconduct within the park enclosure! The consequence of such deplorable weakness may be conceived. In a London paper of the following week it was stated: "The park is still infested, night after night, by numerous bands of thieves and ruffians, who are left to prey on defenceless passengers or unwary loungers after dusk, without the slightest interference of the park-keepers or the police. Several gross outrages, perpetrated in Hyde Park, about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, since the enclosure was destroyed last week, have been narrated by the sufferers themselves, or by witnesses to the fact, in letters to the daily papers.... A herd of men and boys, estimated at 300 or 400, of the worst class of habitual malefactors, are permitted to assemble and prowl about the ground, waiting for an opportunity of plunder."

In Parliament the conduct of Government in prohibiting the meeting was much canvassed and, by some speakers, severely censured. Mr. Ayrton said that, instead of appealing at once to force, the Home Secretary ought to have met the people in a conciliatory spirit on the matter of right and should have issued a temperate notification explaining how the case really stood. Mr. Mill declared that if the people had not a right to meet in the parks, they ought to have it. He added that, as Government seemed inclined to enrol their names on the list of those who could do more mischief in an hour than others could repair in years, he exhorted them to consider seriously the gravity of what they had done on this occasion. But the majority of speakers on both sides of the House, including statesmen of long experience, were of opinion that Government, though perhaps every step taken by Mr. Walpole might not have been judicious, were substantially justified in what they had done; and Mr. Disraeli declared that "it had never entered the minds of Ministers that the real working man, whose general orderly conduct he cordially acknowledged, would commit acts of riot, but they believed that the scum of the great city would take advantage of such an assemblage, and the justice of their apprehensions was proved by the event."

The Queen's Speech at the close of the Session was read by the new Lord Chancellor (Lord Chelmsford) on the 10th of August. It contained several paragraphs on the Fenian conspiracy, and the doings of the Fenians both in Ireland and in Canada, recording in terms of grateful acknowledgment the good faith and promptitude of the United States Government in checking at the outset "any attempted invasion of a friendly State." It alluded with satisfaction to the fact that, although the late Ministry, in the presence of a financial crisis of almost unexampled severity, had authorised the Bank of England to infringe the letter of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, if such a step were required for the accommodation of their customers, yet no such infringement had actually taken place, the Bank having been able to weather the storm without it. It spoke of the gradual mitigation of the cattle plague, of the late visitation of cholera, and of the successful laying of the Atlantic cable. The murrain had, indeed, continued its ravages during the earlier half of the year; but, fortunately, as time went on, the stringent precautions that had been enforced by the Privy Council produced the desired effect: the cases showed a progressive reduction in number; and by the end of the year the plague, though not extinct, was in a material degree abated. Wales continued almost wholly exempt from the disease; in the South of England its virulence was continually on the decline; only in the north-western counties it seemed to hold its ground tenaciously, and in the dairy farms of Cheshire many ancient pastures were given up in despair to the plough. The total loss to the country from the disease, even in this year of improvement, was computed at not less than £3,500,000 in money.

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XXVI. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The Cholera--Laying of the Atlantic Cable--Previous Failures--The Great Eastern's first Attempt--Her second Voyage--The Undertaking accomplished--Recovery of the broken Cable--Reform Demonstrations--The Guildhall Meeting--Meetings at Manchester, Leeds, and Elsewhere--Mr. Bright and the Queen--The Government prepares a Bill--"Black Friday"--The Overend and Gurney Failure--Limited Liability--Royal Marriages--Prize-Money--The Loss of the London--A bad Harvest--The Fenian Trials--Lord Wodehouse's Letter--Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act--Rapid Legislation--Wholesale Arrests--The Army purged--Renewal of the Act--Lord Kimberley's Speech--Sweeny and Stephens--The Niagara Raid--General Spear's Exploit--A peaceful Winter--Whewell and Keble.

The visitation of the cholera in England in 1866 was light in comparison with what it was in some foreign cities, and with what it had been in former years in London. The deaths did not materially affect the returns of mortality for the year; they fell short of eight thousand. In Austria it was computed that at least 100,000 persons were carried off by cholera in this year, and there was hardly a week in which the deaths in London were not exceeded by those in some Continental cities with scarcely a tenth of its population. This result was certainly owing in great part to the sanitary precautions and improvements carried out by the Cholera Committee. The disease kept extending itself as the summer advanced, until it reached its culminating point in the fortnight between the 21st of July and the 4th of August; in the week ending on the last-named day 1,053 deaths from cholera were reported in London. Then all at once it began to subside, and before the month of August had passed, the Lord Mayor was enabled to suggest a large appropriation of the funds which had been liberally subscribed by charitable persons (the Queen sent £500) for the formation and support of cholera hospitals, to the assistance of those who had been left orphans by the epidemic.

The enterprise of laying an insulated electric cable at the bottom of the Atlantic in order to secure instantaneous telegraphic communication between Europe and America--first attempted in 1857, crowned with a fleeting and illusory success in 1858, and partially accomplished in 1865--was in the summer of this year completely realised, not only by the successful laying of the cable of 1866, but by the recovery from the bottom of the sea of the cable of 1865, which was then pieced on to a new wire rope, and carried safely onward to the shore of Newfoundland. A brief survey of the previous unsuccessful attempts will not be uninstructive. In the first, that of 1857, the cable was of a clumsy and ponderous description, if compared with the lighter and relatively stronger ropes afterwards adopted. Two men-of-war, the Agamemnon and the Niagara, composed the expedition; the Niagara paying out the cable. When 380 miles had been paid out, the cable broke and the ships returned to port. In 1858 the same ships were employed and a new plan was tried. The ships proceeded to the middle of the Atlantic, each with 1,500 miles of cable on board; here they effected a splice of the two ends of their respective cargoes and proceeded in different directions, the Agamemnon to the eastward, the Niagara to the westward, paying out as they went. Even to the uninitiated this plan would appear to expose the cable to a needless amount of additional strain, and therefore to increase the risk of fracture. Twice the cable broke after less than fifty miles had been paid out; a third time the cable broke, when about 140 miles had been submerged; a third time the vessels returned to the watery rendezvous, but they now failed to meet, and each returned separately to Queenstown. A fourth attempt, at the end of July, was more successful; though the signalling was repeatedly interrupted during the paying-out process, the cable did not actually break and the object was supposed to have been accomplished. The Niagara brought her end to Trinity Bay on the 5th of August, and on the same day the Agamemnon brought hers to Valentia. Messages of congratulation were interchanged between the Queen and the President of the United States (Mr. Buchanan), and for a short time there was exultation. But a suspiciously great expenditure of electricity was required on one side of the ocean in order to affect the instrument on the other. The indications became feebler and feebler, and before any commercial use had been made of the cable, they ceased entirely.

Much disappointment was felt in both continents and for some years no fresh attempt was made. In 1864 a new company was formed, under the auspices of which a new cable was manufactured on a simpler and better plan, and in July, 1865, the Great Eastern, accompanied by the Sphinx and the Terrible, men-of-war, commenced to lay it from Valentia. One thousand two hundred miles of cable had been paid out, and a distance of only 600 miles remained to be traversed, when, while engaged in hauling in upon the cable, in order to discover and remove a "fault," the adventurers had the mortification of seeing it suddenly part. All three ships then began to fish for the cable with the greatest diligence; but although repeatedly grappled, it always snapped before it could be raised to the surface and, after losing an inconceivable amount of rope, the expedition returned to England.

From the diary kept by the Secretary of the Anglo-American Telegraph Construction Company on board the Great Eastern, we extract a few interesting particulars with reference to her successful voyage in 1866. She took her departure from Berehaven, Bantry Bay, on the 12th of July, having the cable stowed away in large coils in two immense tanks, one forward, the other aft. The ship was commanded by Captain Anderson; the "cable crew" and everything connected with the laying of the cable were under the superintendence of Mr. Canning. The plan was, that the immense vessel, propelled both by paddles and screw, and, therefore, more manageable than a vessel dependent on one source of motion, should steam slowly ahead, paying out the cable as she went over the stern, through machinery invented for the purpose in the preceding year by Messrs. Canning and Clifford, which had been found to answer admirably. The shore end of the cable, which had been laid at Foilhummerum Bay, in Valentia Island, some days previously, was brought on board the Great Eastern on the 13th, and made fast to the cable; as soon as the splice was effected, the paying-out process immediately commenced. For some days the weather was everything that could be wished. Three men-of-war took part in the expedition, ready to give immediate aid, if necessary--the Terrible, the Albany, and the Medway. The insulation of the cable was perfect; communication between the ship and Valentia was uninterruptedly maintained, and the last news from Europe, received through the cable, was printed each day on board, under the title of The Great Eastern Telegraph. The chief check to the prosperous progress of the undertaking occurred on the 18th of July, and it was a very alarming one. A "foul flake," or tangle, took place in the after-tank, containing, originally, more than 800 miles of cable, while the paying-out was tranquilly going on, a short time after midnight, and was not cleared for an hour and a half. From this time no incident of much moment marked the progress of the expedition. As the Great Eastern neared Newfoundland, the weather became foggy, and the Albany was sent on to Heart's Content, a harbour in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, to clear the north-east side of the harbour of shipping, and place a boat with a red flag for Captain Anderson to steer to for anchorage. By dint of good management--the men-of-war forming a line of communication between the shore and the Great Eastern, and that one which was nearest to her guiding her through the fog by the repeated firing of guns--she was piloted into Trinity Bay without accident on the morning of the 27th of July. The shore end was quickly laid and the electric union of Europe and America was at last complete. On the 28th Lord Carnarvon telegraphed to Lord Monck at Ottawa felicitations on the happy result of an enterprise which could not fail to draw closer the ties of amity and fellowship uniting Canada to England; and on the 30th congratulatory messages were exchanged between the Queen and President Johnson.

But this was not all. The task of fishing for the broken end of the cable of 1865, which the loss of all her spare rope had, as we have seen, compelled the Great Eastern to abandon in the previous September, was now resumed with all the eager hope and confidence engendered by success. The cable had been lost at the depth of about 2,000 fathoms, and experience had shown that to pick it up at one lift from that enormous depth was impracticable, the mere weight of the cable, in its resistance to the force employed by the picking up machinery, being sufficient to snap it. It was arranged, therefore, that the Great Eastern herself, and the attendant men-of-war, tracing back the cable for the space of several miles from the point of fracture, should grapple for it, and when found raise it, not to the surface, but to various heights from the bottom, so that several miles of cable should be raised to an altitude intermediate between the bottom and the surface, and be secured there by buoys attached to the grappling ropes; and thus the final lift, being only from this intermediate altitude, might present reasonable chances of success. But this plan of operations, simple though it be in the telling, involved a great amount of anxious and exhausting labour, and mechanical and practical difficulties of various kinds. Eventually it was recovered on September 1st and was found to be perfectly sound.

The miscarriage of Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill led to periodical demonstrations during the summer and autumn in favour of the extension of the franchise. An organised agitation provided that mass meetings should be held in several of the largest cities in Great Britain at convenient intervals of time. The riots in and near Hyde Park arose, as we have seen, out of a Reform demonstration; and the irrepressible Mr. Beales, whom Mr. Walpole's exquisite sensibility on the subject of broken heads had probably rather emboldened than mollified, arranged, in concert with the London Working Men's Association, a great Reform meeting in the Guildhall on the 8th of August. The Lord Mayor took the chair and opened the proceedings with the melodramatic declaration that "the man must have a heart of stone who could witness this magnificent sight without the deepest emotion." Mr. Beales, in moving the first resolution, feelingly alluded to the perils which he had undergone in the cause of the people on the 23rd of July, and concluded by saying, "The prohibition of the League meeting on the 23rd July, and the exclusion of the public from Hyde Park on that day, have done far more than a hundred such meetings could have done to advance the cause of Reform, and unite the people in its support.... No half-and-half measure of Reform will now be listened to. The banner of the League, having inscribed on it, 'Residential and Registered Manhood Suffrage, and the Ballot,' is now hailed in all quarters." Mr. Odger, seconded the next resolution, which menaced the existing Government with the withdrawal of all sympathy and support on the part of the Reformers if they did not speedily introduce a Bill for the amendment of the representation of the people. Mr. Coffey, also, and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh spoke in the course of the evening.

About six weeks after this (September 24th) a meeting, supposed to be larger than any that had been ever assembled in England, was held at Manchester. Bodies of men from the numerous manufacturing towns and villages in the neighbourhood were marching into Manchester all the morning, carrying flags inscribed with the words "National Reform Union," and proceeded to a large open space called Campfield, where six platforms had been erected. Notwithstanding the torrents of rain that continued throughout the day, the numbers assembled were estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000 persons. In connection with each of the six platforms three identical resolutions were moved and passed; the general effect of these resolutions was to identify the people of Manchester, in opinions and political action, with Mr. Beales and his fellow-agitators. A high tribute was paid to some of the members of the late Government and other friends of Reform, particularly Mr. Bright, and Mr. Mill. A resolution passed in the evening at a great meeting in the Free Trade Hall showed how deeply the eloquent and sarcastic invectives of Mr. Lowe were felt and resented by their objects:--"This meeting, while recording its indignation at the insults offered in Parliament and by the press to the working classes and their advocates, calls on the people of this country to allow themselves no longer to be trifled with by an oligarchic few, and to rally round those men who have upheld their cause." On the 8th of October a great Reform meeting was held at Leeds. The dreary open space above the town, called Woodhouse Moor, was the scene of the gathering, at which it was estimated that not less than 200,000 persons were collected. Resolutions of a similar character to those adopted at Manchester were passed; several speakers fiercely attacked Mr. Lowe and vindicated the character of the working men from the aspersions that had been heaped upon it; nor was the usual vote of confidence in Mr. Bright forgotten. A similar demonstration took place in Edinburgh in November. An immense working man's meeting had been arranged for the 3rd of December, to be held at Beaufort House, Kensington, but it proved to be less imposing than the promoters had intended, not much more than an eighth of the 200,000 working men whose presence had been reckoned upon, actually making their appearance. The oratory was somewhat reckless, but an antidote was speedily forthcoming. At a Reform meeting of the London Trades in St. James's Hall (December 4th), Mr. Ayrton was understood to censure the Queen for not recognising the people when they gathered in such numbers in front of one of her palaces. In reply to these remarks, Mr. Bright said:--"I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are possessors of crowns, but I could not sit and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. I think that there has been, by many persons, a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. And I venture to say this, that a woman--be she the Queen of a great realm, or be she the wife of one of you labouring men--who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affections, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you." Every sentence of this vindication was greeted with cheers, and at its close there was loud and prolonged cheering, amidst which the body of people in the hall arose and sang a verse of "God save the Queen."

So persevering and wide-spread an agitation in pursuit of a political object in a country constitutionally governed must have disposed the Conservative Government, even if originally averse from mooting it, to make the question of Parliamentary Reform the serious subject of their counsels. But we have already seen, from the speech of Mr. Disraeli in Buckinghamshire, that, although the Government regarded itself as wholly unpledged, the question of Reform was one that had no terrors for the versatile and experienced leader of the party in the House of Commons; and in the course of the winter it became known that the Ministry were engaged in framing a large and comprehensive measure, and would introduce it early in the ensuing Session.

One of the severest commercial crises ever known in Great Britain will make the months of May and June, 1866, memorable in the history of banking and finance. The crash that caused so many goodly and solid-seeming commercial and financial structures to topple over and collapse in irretrievable ruin was the natural reaction after a period of feverish, over-sanguine, and partly unsound speculation. The year 1865 had witnessed the launch on the money market of a vast number of new undertakings, carried on by companies offering the advantage of limited liability to their shareholders, and professing to hold out to the fortunate investor opportunities of enriching himself beyond the wildest dream of avarice. As the spring of 1866 wore on, the solvency and utility of some of these speculations came seriously into question, and a tendency to realise manifested itself. There was one immense financing firm which in the magnitude of its discounts had no equal in London. This was the Limited Liability Company of Overend, Gurney, and Co., the shareholders of which had, as a great privilege, purchased the goodwill of the business of the well-known firm of Overend and Gurney the year before, for the sum of £500,000. At the time they thus sold their business, the firm, as the subsequent judicial investigation proved, was hopelessly insolvent to the extent of many millions. The representatives of the new company must have been either quixotically confiding, or culpably remiss, or financially incompetent, not to have obtained some inkling, at the time of the negotiations for the purchase, of the real state of affairs; it seems certain, however, that their ignorance was as complete as that of the world outside. In March or April it became known that certain firms and companies, with which Overend, Gurney, and Co. had had large transactions, were in difficulties or had suspended payment; a feeling of uneasiness arose; the shares of the company, which had been quoted at a good premium, fell below par; and some of the new shareholders, becoming alarmed, commenced to sell out. An immediate further depreciation of the shares was, of course, the consequence; this led to increased alarm and to pressure from the company's creditors. The directors, perceiving ruin to be imminent, sought assistance from the Bank of England; but the authorities of that establishment, after investigating the affairs of the company sufficiently to convince themselves that no slight or temporary measures of relief would be of the least avail, declined to grant the accommodation requested. Meanwhile, the run upon them was increasing, and the price of the shares continually falling; and on the afternoon of May 10th the company had no choice but to close its doors and suspend payment. The liabilities were stated at the enormous sum of £11,000,000; the assets, it was feared, and with great reason as the events proved, would, even if realised in the most favourable circumstances, leave an enormous margin of indebtedness. Friday morning ushered in a day of universal panic and consternation in London city, such as had not been seen since the disastrous year of 1857. The multitude of buyers and sellers, bulls and bears, knaves and dupes, brokers and investors, who swarm during the business hours of the day in the streets surrounding the Royal Exchange, consented together, as if by a tacit understanding, to call the day "Black Friday." Every half-hour some well-known firm or company, which but the day before had presented a smiling and prosperous front to the world, was announced to have suspended payment. Crowds of despairing depositors collected round the door of Overend, Gurney, and Co., in Lombard Street, and discussed in tones of anger or despondency the prospects of the bankruptcy. Upon all the private banks the run was intensely severe; the managers of these sought assistance from the Bank of England, and, when the securities were unexceptional, were in no instance refused. But the consequence was that the Bank, whose reserves at the beginning of the day were close upon £7,000,000, although it charged 9 per cent. all day for accommodation, found itself, when the business of the day was over, with the reserves reduced to little over £3,000,000. What measures the Bank authorities were driven to in face of this alarming reduction will presently be related. The crash of falling houses was resounding all day in the financial ear. The English Joint-Stock Company was one of the first to go, dragging down with it thirty-one provincial branches in its fall. Failures for less than half a million were so comparatively unimportant as to arouse little attention. The convulsion reached its climax towards the close of the day, when the stoppage of the great firm of railway contractors, Peto, Betts, and Co., with liabilities exceeding £4,000,000, was announced. The authorities of the Bank of England communicated to the Treasury, as in duty bound, the drain that menaced the exhaustion of their reserves. The emergency was so serious that Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone, after conferring with a great number of bankers and directors of finance companies, agreed to allow the credit of the country to be employed, though the permission involved an infringement of the law. Late on Friday night Mr. Gladstone announced in the House of Commons that an authority would be sent next morning from the Treasury to the Bank, to continue discounting good bills, even though their reserves should thereby be reduced below the minimum required by law, provided that they made no such discounts at a lower rate of interest than 10 per cent. The panic in the City was greatly allayed when the decision of the Government was made known; confidence began to revive; and eventually the Bank did not find it necessary to infringe the law. Yet one more gigantic failure occurred before the crisis passed. This was the stoppage of Agra and Masterman's Bank, a house of old standing, and with a most extensive Indian connection, the business of which, as in the case of Overend and Gurney, had been lately transferred by its former proprietors to a limited liability company. The run on this particular bank was so persistent that in the four weeks which intervened between the beginning of the crisis and their own stoppage, they paid away more than £3,000,000 over the counter, yet were unable to avert the catastrophe.

In consequence of the disasters thus described, and many other minor failures that we have not noticed, numbers of families found themselves reduced from affluence to poverty; many had to descend to a lower position in society, and an extensive contraction of expenditure took place, the effects of which were felt through all the channels of trade, and especially by those who minister to the amusements and luxuries of the affluent. It was remarked that the principle of limited liability, which, when first introduced, was held to confer so great a boon upon investors, inasmuch as it sheltered the individual proprietors of any joint-stock adventure from that awful responsibility for the whole debts of the concern, which the law, as it formerly stood, imposed upon them--had come to be so worked in practice as to make this immunity from risk, in numberless cases, illusory. It had become customary to announce a new company with a nominal share capital of large amount, but to state in the prospectus that only one or two pounds would be called up on each share, and skilfully to induce the belief, by glowing accounts tending to impress the reader with a sense of the safe and lucrative character of the speculation, that no further calls would require to be made. Suppose there to be five new companies, each coming out with a share capital of £200,000, in £20 shares, and calling up £1 per share, with an intimation that it was not probable that any further call would be necessary, but that in no possible circumstances, so certain was the prospect of speedy and ample profits, could the calls exceed £3 per share. A man who had saved £3,000 might think he was following a wise and safe course by investing part of that sum in the shares of the five companies, buying, let us say, two hundred shares in each, on which he would have to pay up £1,000, and supposing that, if the worst came to the worst, he would not be called upon for more than his £3,000. But a commercial crisis arrived; the companies got into difficulties; they had, perhaps, launched out into expense far exceeding the amount paid upon the shares, and every one who had a claim upon them turned round and pressed for his money. In such circumstances, whether the companies suspended payment or not, they were obliged to make fresh calls upon the unpaid portion of the shares. Thus our imaginary investor might find himself, in an extreme case, called upon to furnish £20,000 upon his shares, instead of the £3,000 which he had fondly fancied to be the utmost that would ever be demanded of him. It was in this way that the shareholders of many limited liability companies found themselves, unless persons of large capital, face to face with ruin, because they had unthinkingly entangled themselves in a liability which, limited as it was, yet, when pressed to its full extent, was more than they could sustain.

A variety of minor incidents falling under the year 1866 may here be briefly noticed. The House of Commons gave proof of its unabated loyal attachment to the House of Hanover by voting to the Princess Helena, on the occasion of the announcement of her intended marriage to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, an annual allowance of £6,000 a year, and a dowry of £30,000--a donation similar to that which had been granted to the Princess Alice. The marriage took place at Windsor Castle on the 5th of July. Another marriage, which excited much popular interest--for the well-known geniality and good-nature of the bride made her a universal favourite--was that of the Princess Mary of Cambridge, at Kew, on the 12th of June, to the Duke of Teck. The great Banda and Kirwee prize-money case was argued, and decided in this year. From the magnitude of the booty which was the subject of litigation, and the number and position of the claimants, the pleadings were followed with interest. In the course of the campaign of 1858 in Central India, which stamped out the last remains of the mutiny in that region, General Whitlock had led a British force to Banda, driven out the Nawab, and taken possession of a rich booty in gold and jewels collected there, the value of which was estimated at not less than £800,000. The question to be decided was--to whom did this booty of right belong? Ought it to be awarded to General Whitlock's force exclusively, by which Banda was taken--or were other divisions, even though serving at a distance, entitled to their share, on the ground that it was by their co-operation that the taking of Banda was rendered possible? The family of Lord Clyde, who was Commander-in-Chief in India at the time, also appeared as claimants. Dr. Lushington delivered judgment in the case on the 30th of June. He included under the description of "General Whitlock's forces," to whom he awarded the sum in litigation, "any troops left by General Whitlock on his march, but which at the time of the capture formed a portion of his division, and were still under his command." Lord Clyde and his staff were also declared entitled to share in the booty captured at Banda and Kirwee; but the claim of Sir Hugh Rose and his army, employed at the time in the important collateral operation of the siege of Jhansi, but which had never effected an actual junction with General Whitlock, and all other claims, were disallowed. The foundering of the London, a large iron steamship, in the Bay of Biscay, in the January of this year, with a loss of two hundred and twenty lives, including Dr. Woolley, the principal of the new Sydney University, and the well-known actor, Gustavus Brooke, was memorable for the calm courage displayed by the captain, Captain Martin, who sent off his chief engineer in the only boat that could be launched, saying that his own duty was to stay by the ship. This boat, with nineteen persons on board, was picked up by a passing vessel. The wonderful procession of meteors, radiating from a point in the north-eastern sky, seen on the night of the 13th of November, though not a proper subject for a political and social history, could never be forgotten by any that witnessed it. A deficient harvest deepened the painful impression which the monetary disasters of 1866 had left on the minds of the people. In the critical months of August and September the weather was unusually wet and stormy, and the wheat crop suffered much in consequence. A great deal of corn was housed in bad condition and no inconsiderable portion wasted or spoiled. The result was a yield considerably below the average and the prices of grain were consequently much enhanced. The prices of other necessaries were also raised; although this was probably to a great extent due to a permanent cause, with which the bad harvest had nothing to do-viz. that gradual rise in the price of all articles of necessary consumption, which, commencing from the discovery of the gold-fields of California, the continual influx of gold, in quantities before unknown, into the markets of the world, slowly but surely effected. These untoward circumstances, combined with a contraction of the demand for labour, arising from commercial failures and discredit, made the winter of 1866-67 a period of considerable suffering to the poor in England.

The state of Ireland in 1866 was such as to excite grave and sorrowful reflections. We have described in a former chapter the circumstances in which Stephens, the chief head-centre, effected his escape from confinement in 1865, and how a special commission was appointed, in order to try Fenian prisoners. During January the Fenian trials were going on in Dublin before Mr. Justice Keogh, and a number of the accused were sentenced to terms of penal servitude, varying from ten to five years. But the terrors of the law, and the grave and solemn tones of ermined justice, reprobating the guilt and folly of the Fenian conspiracy, were contumaciously set at naught by many of the prisoners. Patrick Hayburne, of the "Emmet Guard," in the Fenian brotherhood, a young man, the only support of his mother, on being found guilty, requested the judge to sentence him to a term of penal servitude rather than to two years' imprisonment. Mr. Justice Keogh expressed his pity for the misguided youth, and passed the latter sentence, on which the prisoner exclaimed, "I will have the same principles afterwards." In Dublin, and still more in Limerick, the populace loudly cheered Fenian prisoners as they were being taken to gaol. A number of strangers continued to arrive in Dublin, many of them betraying by their military bearing that they had seen service in the field, whom the police knew to be in communication with those suspected of Fenianism, but who were careful to commit no overt act that would bring them within the grasp of the law, and, on being questioned, said that they were come to Ireland to see their friends. Arms of all kinds were continually being seized; even three pieces of artillery were discovered, just on the point of being despatched to Drogheda. The attempts to seduce soldiers from their allegiance, in spite of the severity of the Special Commission against this particular offence, were found to increase in frequency. In addition to the former reward of £1,000 offered by the Government for the apprehension of Stephens, a further sum of £1,000 was now offered for such private information as should lead to his capture; but no informer came forward. All this was generally known before the meeting of Parliament; but the despatch of the Lord-Lieutenant, dated February 14th, proposing the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, proved that matters were more grave than the public had any idea of. Lord Wodehouse wrote:--

"The state of affairs is very serious. The conspirators, undeterred by the punishment of so many of their leaders, are actively organising an outbreak, with a view to destroy the Queen's authority. Sir Hugh Bose details the various plans they have in contemplation, and he draws no exaggerated picture. There are scattered over the country a number of agents, who are swearing in members, and who are prepared to take the command when the moment arrives. These men are of the most dangerous class. They are Irishmen, imbued with American notions, thoroughly reckless, and possessed of considerable military experience, acquired in a field of warfare [the Civil War in America] admirably adapted to train them for conducting an insurrection here. There are 340 such men known to the police in the provinces, and those known in Dublin amount to about 160, so that in round numbers there are 500. Of course, there are many more who escape notice. This number is being augmented by fresh men constantly arriving from America. In Dublin itself there are several hundred men (perhaps about 300 or 400) who have come over from England and Scotland, who receive 1s. 6d. a day, and are waiting for the time of action. Any one may observe these men loitering about at the corners of the streets. As to arms, we have found no less than three regular manufactories of pikes, bullets, and cartridges in Dublin. The police believe that several more exist. Of course, bullets are not made unless there are rifles to put them in. The disaffection of the population in some counties, such as Cork, Tipperary, Waterford, and Dublin, is alarming; and it is day by day spreading more and more through every part of the country. But the most dangerous feature of the present movement is the attempt to seduce the troops. Are we to allow these agents to go on instilling their poison into our armed force, upon which our security mainly depends?" Lord Wodehouse concluded his despatch by declaring that he could not be responsible for the safety of the country if power was not forthwith given to Government to seize the leaders; on that condition he hoped still to avert serious mischief.

On the receipt of this letter, Sir George Grey, then Home Secretary, immediately requested Lord Russell to summon a meeting of the Cabinet and, when it was convened, laid Lord Wodehouse's letter before them, and urged that his application with regard to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act should be acceded to. The Cabinet unanimously agreed that there was no choice but to accede to the application, and it was determined that a Bill for the purpose should be introduced into the House of Commons on the next day (Saturday, February 17th), and carried through all its stages, so as to receive the Royal Assent, and become law on the same day, and be carried into execution by the Irish Government not later than Monday. This was accordingly done. At twelve o'clock next day Sir George Grey brought in a Bill to suspend for six months the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland. His arguments were chiefly derived from Lord Wodehouse's letter, and they were of a nature that the governments of nations, in the legislative no less than in the executive branches, usually find irresistible. Yet it was a saddening thought, that sixty-five years after the Union, and thirty-four years after the first Reform Bill, so little progress had been made in attaching the masses of the Irish people to the Constitution under which an Englishman thought it his happiness to live! Mr. Bright gave impressive utterance to this feeling, when he spoke of the shame and humiliation which he felt at being called on for the second time, in a Parliamentary career of twenty-two years (the first occasion was at the time of Smith O'Brien's rising in 1848), to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland. He asserted that Ireland was in a state of chronic agitation, and that the numerical majority of the Irish people were in favour of a complete separation. Although this was not the occasion for entering upon the general question of the state of Ireland, and the nature of the remedial measures that were required, he could not but express his conviction that the institutions under which Irishmen were required to live were not such as could command their affection or call forth their loyalty; yet he believed there was a mode of making Ireland loyal, and he threw the responsibility of discovering it on Government and on the Imperial Parliament. Mr. Roebuck, alluding to the asserted fact that the Catholic clergy in Ireland were opposed to the Fenians--who on their side scouted the notion of submission to priestly authority, and endeavoured to undermine the influence of the clergy over the people--said that nevertheless he attributed much of the present discontent to the Roman Catholic priesthood, who for years had taught the people to hate English rule, but who, now that they found themselves threatened by this conspiracy, had become wondrous loyal. He went on to ridicule the sentiment of nationality, on the ground that every great empire in the world's history had been made up of different nationalities. Leave was given to introduce the Bill by a majority of 364 to 6 votes; it passed through all its stages without further discussion and was then sent up to the Lords, who disposed of it with equal celerity. But the Royal Assent had to be given before the measure could become law; and the Queen was at this time at Osborne. As soon as the Bill had passed the Lords, a telegram announcing the result was sent to Earl Granville, who was in attendance on her Majesty at Osborne, and who thereupon solicited and obtained the Queen's signature to the usual formal document, authorising her assent to be given to the Bill by Commission. The sittings of both Houses were suspended till 11 p.m., by which time it was calculated that the special train conveying the document might have arrived. But midnight came and still the messenger did not appear; at half-past twelve, however, the despatch box, bearing the important document, was brought to the Lord Chancellor. Some time elapsed before it was properly filled up and then the clerk entered, carrying the Royal Commission. The House of Commons was sent for to hear the Royal Assent given to the Bill in question, and soon the Speaker, accompanied by about fifty members, appeared at the bar of the House. The Commissioners then stated that it was her Majesty's will and pleasure to give her assent to the Bill and it became law. This was about twenty minutes to one on the Sunday morning. Probably no statute could ever pass with much more celerity than this, the first Act of the new Parliament.

But rapid as were the operations of the legislature, the Dublin executive considered the state of affairs so critical as to justify it in anticipating the passing of the law. On Saturday morning, February 17th, the arrests of suspected persons commenced, and were continued through the day, nearly 250 persons being in custody at nightfall. No resistance was in any case offered to the police, nor were any captures of arms effected on this day. Thirty-seven American citizens, of Irish extraction, most, if not all, of whom had served in the Civil War, were among the persons arrested. The suddenness of the blow appears to have utterly disconcerted the conspirators. The suspicious-looking strangers, who had for weeks past haunted the streets of Dublin, disappeared; the steamers to Liverpool were crowded with passengers; and for several days the steamboats sailing for America took away numbers of bellicose gentlemen, who found that the Irish revolution was not to come off just yet. The authorities, however, neglected no necessary precaution; the vans conveying prisoners to Kilmainham or Richmond were guarded by troops; all the soldiers of the garrison not on duty were confined to their quarters all night, ready to turn out at a moment's notice; and no strangers were admitted within the gates of the Pigeon-house Fort, which guards the mouth of the Liffey, on any pretence. The most important arrest was believed to be that of Patrick J. M'Donnell, said to have been at the head of the movement since the escape of Stephens. In the provinces some noteworthy incidents occurred. On the same night on which the arrests were effected in Dublin, a body of Fenians were practising drill at a place called Cullen in county Tipperary; a patrol of police came up and endeavoured to disperse them; the Fenians then fired upon and wounded some of the police, one man mortally. At Trim, in county Meath, several arrests were made, among them that of Mr. Malone, one of the wealthiest and most respectable merchants in the town; other persons moving in a respectable position were also captured. At Queenstown, about a month later, two of the Town Commissioners were arrested. These instances showed that the passage in the Queen's Speech at the opening of the Session, speaking of the Fenian movement as "a conspiracy adverse alike to authority, property, and religion, and disapproved and condemned alike by all who are interested in their maintenance," was unfortunately not quite exact.

In making a great display of force at the outset, the Irish executive was probably pursuing the wisest and also the most humane course. Troops kept pouring into Dublin; the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards and the 85th Regiment arrived there before the end of February, and were followed by the 6th Dragoon Guards and a body of artillerymen, as well as a detachment of the Military Train corps from Woolwich. The most stringent measures were taken for stamping out any signs of disaffection that might manifest themselves among the troops; nor was this severity without cause, for not privates only, but several non-commissioned officers, were found to have either taken the Fenian oath, or uttered treasonable language, or been seen habitually in the company of notorious Fenians. Through the greater part of March frequent arrests continued to be made; and by that time the ranks of the disaffected were so depleted and discouraged, partly by the arrest of the leaders, partly by the rush to America and England of those who knew themselves to be most compromised among their followers, that all fear of an outbreak was at an end.

The Act for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus was originally passed for six months only, and would have expired on the 1st of September; but as the new Ministry felt that to allow it to expire would endanger the public peace, they sought and obtained from Parliament at the beginning of August the enactment of a Bill renewing the former Act for an indefinite period. Lord Naas, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, stated that from the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act up to the 23rd of July, 419 persons who had been imprisoned had been discharged, generally on condition that they should leave the country. From every authority he learned that it would be dangerous to permit the sudden and simultaneous liberation of the 320 prisoners who remained in custody; yet such liberation was unavoidable if the Act were allowed to expire. He spoke of the fact that, although suppressed in Ireland, at any rate as to any public manifestations, the Fenian conspiracy still existed in force in another country; that there were still in Ireland newspapers advocating the Fenian cause, which disseminated seditious and treasonable sentiments through the country; and that secret drillings of the population had been lately renewed. Mr. Maguire protested against the renewal of the Act, on the ground that there was no disorder now in Ireland which the ordinary powers of the law were not adequate to deal with. On the other hand, Mr. Gladstone--while stating his opinion that the renewal of the Act burdened Government with a very heavy responsibility, and made it incumbent on them to investigate with renewed ardour, and to remove by wise legislation, whatever grievances and inequalities, existing in the laws and institutions of Ireland, supplied a necessary aliment to the disaffection of the Irish people--declared that if the late Government had been still in power it would have been their duty to have made the same application to Parliament as that which was then being made by the existing Government. The Bill was passed by a large majority in the Commons, and on being sent up to the House of Lords, was supported in a remarkable speech by the Earl of Kimberley, formerly Lord Wodehouse. The ex-Lord-Lieutenant declared that if he had remained in office he should have recommended the adoption of this Bill by Parliament. No one except those intimately acquainted with the facts could be aware how formidable the Fenian conspiracy had been. Since 1798 there had not existed so dangerous a condition of the public mind as in the past year. The promoters of the scheme had not been found in the poorer and more ignorant classes, but belonged to the class that was best described as artisans and small tradesmen; whilst in the south-west of Ireland, if a rebellion had broken out, there was no doubt the farmers also would have been ready to take part in it. Adverting to the alleged grievances of Ireland, the speaker observed that the question of land tenure was one that must shortly occupy the earnest attention of Parliament, and that the anomaly of the Irish Church must also be considered. The Bill soon became law; and, although nothing like an open rising was attempted during the remainder of the year, nor was a drop of blood shed, still it is impossible to doubt but that the extraordinary powers placed in the hands of the executive enabled them to act with far greater promptitude against the first symptoms of insurrection, and with far less of friction and popular irritation, than would have been possible in conjunction with the somewhat cumbrous safeguards and formalities which in quiet times protect the personal liberty of the subject.

Seditious and alarmist articles in Irish papers, rumours carefully propagated of Fenian expeditions about to land on some point of the Irish coast, and the certainty that arms were being continually manufactured or imported, and distributed through the country, kept the Government on the qui vive all through the autumn; but the rumours were probably malicious, and certainly false, and no actual outbreak occurred. In America matters did not proceed quite so smoothly. Since the arrival of Stephens in the United States, the Fenians in that country had been distracted by a split that arose between their leaders. That the British Empire should be destroyed was a political axiom admitted both by Sweeny and Stephens: it was only upon the modus operandi that these redoubtable chiefs differed. Sweeny appears to have considered that it was necessary to annex Canada first, and thence proceed to the conquest of Ireland; Stephens, on the other hand, desired that all other plans should be made subordinate to the preparation of a formidable Fenian expedition, which should disembark at some point in the west of Ireland. Loud was the debate and voluble the discussion. The Fenian "senate" and most of the American Fenians adhered to Sweeny, while the Irish whose expatriation was of recent date swore by Stephens. Sweeny denounced Stephens as a "British spy," and doubtless Stephens was not at a loss for a fit epithet by which to characterise Sweeny. The valiant Sweeny, as the year wore on, took measures to test the soundness of his strategic plan for the invasion of Ireland viâ Canada. On the morning of the 1st of June, 1866, a body of Fenians, numbering 1,000 men, under the command of a Colonel O'Neil, crossed the Niagara River from Buffalo, where it enters Lake Erie, and occupied the farm or hamlet called Fort Erie on the Canadian shore. The news of this absurd raid, with which the Fenians of the United States had been threatening Canada for months past, quickly reached Toronto; and the authorities there at once despatched all the troops they could collect to the scene of action. One thousand five hundred men, mostly regulars, under the command of Colonel Peacocke, marched by way of the Falls of Niagara and the village of Chippeway; while 500 militiamen, under Colonel Dennis, were sent by rail to Port Colborne. The Fenians made no forward movement that day, nor were they molested at Fort Erie; but by some extraordinary accident Colonel Dennis and a few of his men allowed themselves to be taken prisoners by them. The command of the militia then devolved upon Colonel Booker, who, on the morning of June 2nd, led his men forward from Port Colborne, along the margin of Lake Erie, to attack the invaders. Colonel Peacocke, misled by a report that the Fenians were marching upon Chippeway, led his forces to that place, and thus had no share in the trifling action that ensued. Arrived at a village called Ridgway, about half-way between Port Colborne and Fort Erie, Colonel Booker fell in with the Fenian column, which was advancing along the lake. A skirmish ensued, in which six militiamen were killed and forty wounded, the Fenians suffering about equally. Finding himself outnumbered, Colonel Booker retired towards Port Colborne. The Fenians did not pursue; probably by this time they had heard of the proximity of Colonel Peacocke with his regulars. Wisely deeming discretion the better part of valour, they recrossed the Niagara on the night of the 2nd of July, leaving a few of their wounded and some stragglers--in all about sixty men--in the hands of the loyalists.

Another raid, still more foolish and reckless than the first, was executed by the Fenians on the 7th of June, when, to the number of 2,000 or 3,000 men, led by a General Spear, they crossed the frontier from the State of Vermont and occupied a little village called Pigeon Hill, not far from Montreal. Some slight skirmishes between this force and some bodies of yeomanry and militia that were hastily sent against them took place; after which Spear led his warriors back again, and was immediately arrested, along with Sweeny and another Fenian leader called Roberts, by the United States authorities. Indeed, nothing could be more honourable than the conduct of the American Government during the whole affair. President Johnson issued a proclamation denouncing the act of the Fenians in carrying war into the territories of a friendly nation as a gross violation of the laws of the United States, and requiring all Union officials to repress such illegal acts by every means in their power, and to place under arrest any persons who should be found committing them. The indignation of the Canadians at these outrages--as disgraceful as they were absurd--was very great; and the funerals of the slain militiamen were celebrated with extraordinary pomp, and attended by an immense concourse of persons.

Fenianism had its victims in America; in Ireland, as has been seen, its ebullitions were so far bloodless. The day before Christmas-day, which rumour had assigned as the date of a rising, passed off in tranquillity; and the threats and predictions of the national journals were found to be mere waste of words. The conspirators must have been conscious that their proceedings hitherto had been less formidable than ridiculous, and they determined, if they could, to give the authorities some justification for the additional precautions that had been taken.

One of the most strongly marked personalities of the day--that of William Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge--was taken from English society in the March of this year. Cambridge men all over the world associated for many years their recollections of the University with the well-known form of the Master of Trinity. His towering and stalwart form, flashing eye, strong vibrating voice, the generally menacing and formidable aspect of the man, were external characteristics that deeply impressed every freshman on his arrival, and were never forgotten in after life. Many works on various subjects attested the activity and versatility of his intellect; but it is only those on mathematical and physical problems that possess exceptional value. John Keble, who died at Bournemouth on the 29th of March, in his seventy-fourth year, participated but little in the public life of England. His was not the dignified and conspicuous career of the ecclesiastical luminary of a great city; the press did not circulate the masterpieces of his pulpit eloquence; nor was he a frequenter of missionary or charitable platforms; yet it is probably no exaggeration to say that for thirty years no one man so powerfully influenced the inner life of the Church of England as the vicar of Hursley. The readers of Cardinal Newman's "Apologia" will remember how strikingly this point is brought out by him, how clearly he traces back to the mind of John Keble, rather than to that of any other single man, the germ of the great Tractarian movement, while the "Christian Year" appealed to the devotional necessities of innumerable souls.

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XXVII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued)

The Schleswig-Holstein Difficulty--Austria favours a Settlement--Bismarck's Terms rejected--His high-handed Proceedings--Convention of Gastein--Bismarck at Biarritz--The Italian Treaty--Question of Disarmament--Fresh Austrian Proposals--Bismarck advocates Federal Reform--La Marmora's Perplexity--He abides by Prussia--Efforts of the Neutral Powers--Failure of the projected Congress--Rupture of the Gastein Convention--The War begins--The rival Strengths--Distribution of the Prussian Armies--Collapse of the Resistance in North Germany--Occupation of Dresden--The Advance of the Prussian Armies--Battle of Küniggrätz--Cession of Venetia--Italian Reverses--The South German Campaign--Occupation of Frankfort--The Defence of Vienna--French Mediation--The Preliminaries of Nikolsburg--Treaty of Prague--Conditions awarded to Bavaria and the Southern States--The Secret Treaties--Their Disclosure--Humiliation of the French Emperor--His pretended Indifference.

While the strife of parties was raging in the lobbies of the House of Commons during the Reform debates of 1866, a warfare of a more decisive kind was in course of preparation in Germany. Its connection with English history, however, being of the slightest, we shall confine ourselves to a brief notice. At the close of 1864 the first symptom of ill-will between the allied Powers that had cut with the sword the Schleswig-Holstein knot made itself apparent. To Austria every day during which the joint occupation was prolonged brought fresh cause of trouble and anxiety. However long she might keep her troops in the duchies, not an acre of soil, she knew well, could ever fall to her share; the expense of the occupation was considerable; and a quarrel with Prussia must instantly, as she clearly foresaw, render her position untenable. Her policy, therefore, was to get the Schleswig-Holstein question settled as soon as possible and settled in the way that would least benefit Prussia, and be most for the advantage of Austria's position in Germany. The Austrian Government thought that they saw their way to such a satisfactory settlement when they observed the continued loyalty and enthusiasm with which the German population of the duchies clung to the Prince whom they regarded as their rightful Duke, and also noted the strength of the desire that animated the Governments of the middle and many of the minor German States to favour the erection of an independent State and disappoint the ambition of Prussia. The Prussian Minister seemed himself to waver in the face of the compact opposition which the disclosure of the designs of Prussia upon the duchies had called forth, though he secured a declaration from the Prussian jurists that the claims of the Augustenburg candidate were invalid. In February, 1865, he sent a despatch to Vienna, in which he expressed the willingness of the King that Schleswig-Holstein should become an independent German State, but upon condition that its military force should be at the disposal of Prussia, and that to the same Power certain fortresses in the duchies, with suitable territory attached to them, should be made over. These proposals were rejected by Count Mensdorff and the German Diet. Bismarck thereupon proceeded to fresh aggressions. Prussia transferred her naval station on the Baltic from Dantzic to Kiel, and declared her intention of fortifying the harbour: the Austrian commissioner protested, and ordered up two Austrian ships of war to Kiel; yet his Government gave way, and Prussia established herself firmly at that important harbour. Bismarck also ejected from Schleswig-Holstein the Prince of Augustenburg. It was clearly seen at Vienna that the plan of joint administration would no longer work: if war was to be staved off, some different modus vivendi must be established in the duchies. But the Minister was moving too fast for his master, accordingly, a meeting was arranged between the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria at Gastein, in Tyrol. Hither came the Sovereigns in August, attended by their chief Ministers; an understanding was speedily arrived at, and the Convention of Gastein was the result.

By this convention, dated August 14th, 1865, it was agreed that the joint occupation should cease; that--although the right of sovereignty of either Power over both duchies, as acquired by the Treaty of Vienna, remained inviolate--Austria should for the future confine her troops and officials to Holstein, and Prussia hers to Schleswig; that the Powers would propose to the Diet to erect Rendsburg into a Federal fortress; that the duchies should join the Zollverein, or German Customs-union; and that the Emperor of Austria should cede to the King of Prussia his sovereign rights over Lauenburg, acquired by the before-cited Treaty of Vienna, in exchange for the sum of 2,500,000 Danish rix-thalers. The Prussian Chambers, the members of which were still for the most part favourable to the Augustenburg claim, disliked this convention, and let it be understood that they would not vote the money required for the purchase of Lauenburg; but the King of Prussia paid the stipulated sum out of his private purse, and the convention was carried into effect without delay, Austrian troops withdrawing from Schleswig, and Prussian troops withdrawing from Holstein. General Manteuffel was appointed Prussian Governor of Schleswig, and Austria placed General von Gablenz in the similar post in Holstein.

Bismarck was still determined on war. One point alone was doubtful and disquieting--what would France do in the event of war breaking out between Prussia and Austria, especially if Italy took part in the contest? Count Bismarck resolved to seek an interview with Napoleon, in order, if possible, to gain some security that France would be neutral. What passed in the interviews between him and Napoleon at Biarritz is variously stated; but the result proved that the success of the Prussian statesman was complete. On his return through Paris, Bismarck saw the Italian Minister, the Chevalier Nigra, and told him that war between Prussia and Austria was inevitable. "He showed himself full of confidence that France would not be hostile to it;" and so deeply had he reflected on all the conditions of the political problem, so keenly did he realise the importance to Prussia of the Italian alliance, in distracting the attention and dividing the forces of Austria, that he playfully said to Nigra that "if Italy did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her." The French Emperor is supposed to have approved of the project of alliance between Prussia and Italy; and it is certain that he looked forward with pleasure to the severance of Venetia from the Austrian Empire as one result of the anticipated war. But how was France to be indemnified if she observed a friendly neutrality? There can be no doubt that Bismarck, in spite of his later denials, held out such hopes of territorial extension for France, either on the side of the Rhine, or in the form of an annexation of Luxemburg or some part of Belgium, to be actively aided by Prussia, as induced the French Emperor to regard the Prussian programme with favour and hopeful anticipation, and readily to give the desired promise of neutrality. Napoleon would the less care to exact a distinct promise from Bismarck in regard to territorial indemnification, because he, like the rest of Europe at the time, did not share in the superb confidence which the negotiator expressed of the ability of Prussia to overpower Austria; he must have reckoned on the war lasting for a considerable time, with mutually exhaustive results, in which case France might play the part of a mediator, and, while performing that dignified office, not lose sight of her own interests in the general re-adjustment.

Step by step, as though by an inevitable destiny, or unalterable concatenation of events, the fatal hour drew on. At the end of March General Govone was in Berlin, charged by the Italian Prime Minister, General La Marmora, with the duty of negotiating a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Prussia. That Italy would forego the opportunity which a rupture between Prussia and Austria afforded her of obtaining by force the Venetian territories of the latter Power, was hardly to be expected; for such a chance, once let slip, might never occur again. But to Prussia also the alliance of Italy was of the highest importance. With her vast superiority of population, Austria, could her military force have been wholly concentrated against Prussia, though she might have lost battles, could not have been crushed and compelled to yield; such a consummation was only rendered possible by the division and dilution of her strength necessitated by the attack of Italy upon Venetia. Could even Austria have been content to cede Venetia itself, and take Venetia's money value, she might have rid herself of her Transalpine foe and employed her whole strength in Bohemia. Secret overtures had been made at Vienna by the Italian Premier, in the autumn of 1865, for the cession of Venetia by purchase; but the Emperor conceived his military and ancestral honour to be involved and absolutely rejected the proposal. On April 8th the treaty of alliance between Prussia and Italy was signed at Berlin. Prussia, under it, reserved to herself the right of declaring war within three months, in which case Italy bound herself to attack Austria; but Prussia did not bind herself to declare war in Germany, or to help the Italians on their own ground, if Austria attacked Italy. Each Power bound itself not to make peace separately from the other, and to continue the war till Italy had gained Venetia and Prussia secured a corresponding augmentation of territory in Germany. Already--between March 29th and 31st--orders had been issued for the mobilisation of the whole Prussian army, and the necessary movements were effected with extraordinary celerity. Austria, though she had commenced her preparations earlier, was soon distanced by her opponent, and, when the war broke out, her arrangements were still far from complete. The King of Italy published a decree on the 25th of March, increasing the Italian army by 100,000 men.

For several weeks after the treaty between Prussia and Italy had been signed, continual diplomatic fencing was maintained on the part of the two Governments. First there were criminations and recriminations on the question of priority of armaments. On the 6th of April a note from the Prussian Foreign Office was sent to Vienna, insisting on the magnitude of the Austrian preparations, which could not be adequately accounted for by the alleged apprehension of disturbances in Bohemia, and ending with the declaration that nothing was farther from the views of the King than an offensive war. Yet only two days after this, as we have seen, the alliance was concluded with Italy. Nevertheless, there was a basis of truth in the statement as to the King of Prussia's inclinations: he was, in truth, earnestly, almost superstitiously, averse from being the first to resort to arms; and Bismarck had infinite trouble to bring his royal master up to the point of commencing the war. Accordingly the negotiations were conducted in a conciliatory tone. The real feelings of Count Bismarck we learn from a telegram from Count Barral, the Italian Minister at Berlin, sent on the previous day to the Italian Premier, General La Marmora, and published by the latter in his remarkable work, entitled, "A Little More Light on the Political and Military Events of the Year 1866." Count Barral telegraphed, "The impression of the General [Govone] and myself is, that Bismarck is disappointed by the Austrian proposition, and visibly discouraged by the new pacific phase upon which the conflict is about to enter." But now Count Mensdorff found himself in a difficulty. The attitude of the Italian army on the frontiers of Venetia was believed at Vienna to have grown so menacing that it was impossible for Austria to replace matters on a peace footing in Venetia, short of a positive understanding with Italy similar to that which seemed on the point of being concluded with Prussia. We have the distinct assurance of General La Marmora, in the work just quoted, that at this time Italy had made no concentrations of troops whatever--had, in fact, taken no warlike step of any kind. But he admits that the impression to the contrary which prevailed at Vienna was a bonâ fide one, and accounts for its existence in a very curious manner. It was, he thinks, the British Government--the warm and importunate advocate of European peace--which, misled by reports from English diplomatic agents in Italy, who had imagined some inconsiderable movements of troops that were really directed against brigands to be part of a scheme for concentrating the Italian army near the frontier, had conveyed, of course, with the most friendly intentions, this false information to the Austrian Cabinet. However this may have been, the effect of the erroneous persuasion as to Italian armaments, which Austria had taken up, in overclouding the prospects of peace was soon apparent.

Besides disarmament, two other important subjects were debated in the correspondence between Austria and Prussia in these critical weeks. One related to Schleswig-Holstein, the other to the reform of the Confederation. Anxious to withdraw from her hazardous position in the duchies, but to make her withdrawal in such a way as would augment her popularity with the minor German States, Austria invited the Prussian Government, in a note dated April 26th, to make in the Diet a joint declaration that the two Powers would cede the rights acquired by them under the Treaty of Vienna to that claimant of the sovereignty of the duchies whom the Diet recognised as having a predominant right to the succession. Although some collateral offers, such as that Prussia should have full and permanent possession of certain strategic points in the duchies, at Kiel and elsewhere, were added to the main proposal, in order to make it more palatable to the condominant Power, Count Mensdorff probably expected a refusal, and he was not disappointed. Count Bismarck, in his reply (May 7th), professed in the strongest terms Prussia's intention to adhere faithfully to the Treaty of Vienna and the Gastein Convention, but maintained that by those instruments the intervention of any third party, not excepting the Diet, in the affairs of the duchies was precluded. The note went on to say that Prussia, while repudiating the interference of any third party, was always ready to treat with Austria as to the conditions on which she would be disposed to cede her share of the rights accruing to her by the Treaty of Vienna. King William's hesitation was fast disappearing.

The other subject discussed was the reform of the Confederation. The Prussian Envoy proposed in the Diet on the 9th of April that, within a period to be precisely fixed, the Diet should decree the convocation of a National Assembly to be elected by universal and direct suffrage, for the purpose of receiving and deliberating on the proposals of the German Governments for the reform of the Confederation. This proposition, which caused great surprise and excitement in Germany, was referred by a Dietal vote of the 21st of April to a committee of nine; at the same time the Diet requested Prussia to state the nature of the proposals which it intended to submit to the Assembly when convened. Count Bismarck sharply replied (April 27) that the determination of the date at which such a Parliament or Assembly should meet was of the essence of the Prussian proposition; the modes of procedure habitual to the Diet would, he knew, lead to the indefinite adjournment and final miscarriage of the project; however, he would bring under the notice of the committee such information as would show to what regions of political life the Prussian proposals would extend. This promise he redeemed on the 11th of May by laying before the Committee of the Diet the heads of the changes that Prussia deemed necessary. These included the completion of the central power by means of a freely elected German Parliament, the concession to the central power so reorganised of a wide legislative competency, the removal of all fetters on German trade, an improved military system, and the formation of a German navy. Bavaria, as chief of the secondary States, acceded to the proposal on condition that both parties should disarm. Promises were given, but as Austria declined to discontinue her preparations against Italy, Bismarck was able to charge her with insincerity.

Italy, though she had enlarged her army, had not made any distinctly warlike preparations before the appearance of General La Marmora's circular of the 27th of April. From that time war was looked upon as inevitable; and in order to enlist the national feeling more fully in its favour, a decree was published at Florence on May 8th ordering the formation of twenty volunteer battalions, to be placed under the immediate command of Garibaldi. But the Italian Premier was in sore perplexity. He thoroughly distrusted Bismarck, whom he thought quite capable of patching up a peace with Austria and leaving Italy in the lurch, and he had received tempting offers from Paris. On the 5th of May General La Marmora received a telegram in cipher from Paris, of which the first words were, "Decipher for yourself." After he had done so, he found the purport of the telegram (which was from the Chevalier Nigra) to be this--that Austria was willing to cede Venetia to the Emperor Napoleon, who would at once transfer it to the King of Italy, on condition that she should be left free to recoup herself at the expense of Prussia. La Marmora telegraphed back that his first impression was that it was a question of honour and good faith for Italy not to break her engagements with Prussia. Again (May 6th) came the tempting voice from Paris, saying that the Emperor had told Nigra that Prince Metternich was formally authorised to sign the cession of Venetia in exchange for a simple promise of neutrality. If his resolution had been momentarily shaken, other telegrams soon arrived, of a nature to confirm him in it. On May 6th Count Barral telegraphed that he had been just informed by Count Bismarck that the Prussian army might now be regarded as entirely mobilised; and on the 9th Nigra telegraphed from Paris that Govone had just arrived from Berlin, and was under the full conviction that Prussia had absolutely decided to draw the sword, at latest, towards the beginning of June, and would, in any case, declare war if Italy were attacked. Setting against the risks of war the odium which the acceptance of the French proposal, involving as it did a direct breach of faith with Prussia, would bring down upon the young Italian kingdom, and the painful and inconvenient consequences that might ensue from Italy's debt of obligation to France being so greatly extended, the Italian Premier wisely determined to be true to his first faith; and the project for the cession of Venetia to France vanished for the present into space.

The efforts of neutral and friendly Powers were, of course, not wanting to the cause of peace. From the beginning of May the project of a Congress of the five great Powers, together with Italy and the German Confederation, to discuss the three European questions of the most urgent interest--the cession of Venetia, the fate of Schleswig-Holstein, and the reform of the German Confederation--had found favour with the Emperor Napoleon. Russia had cordially accepted the scheme, and Britain also was favourable to it, though with a proviso that marks the progress which Lord Russell, through sad experience and many failures, had made in his diplomatic education. For, although the actual Foreign Minister at this time was the Earl of Clarendon, yet the empressement with which the British Government, at the outset of the negotiations, volunteered a statement that its interference would in no possible circumstances be carried beyond the limits of persuasion, evidently bespeaks the hand of the Minister whose previous attempts at a dictatorial intervention had failed so disastrously. The Marquis d'Azeglio telegraphed on May 11th from London, that "England accepted the Congress in principle, and also the bases which France proposed with reference to the three urgent questions, but refused categorically to bind herself to impose any decision of the kind otherwise than by persuasion."

Some time elapsed before the three mediating Powers could arrive at a precise understanding as to the form in which the Congress should be proposed to Prussia and Austria. Of the three topics for discussion, the first was described by France as "the cession of Venetia;" this was afterwards modified to "the question of Venetia"; but even in this form the Russian Government considered that there was something in the phrase wounding to the susceptibilities of Austria, and obtained the consent of France to the substitution of the words, "difference between Austria and Italy." Everything at last appeared to be in train; it was arranged that the Congress should be held in Paris, and that the principal Ministers for Foreign Affairs in the different States should attend it. Bismarck, knowing the settled resolve of the Emperor Napoleon to facilitate and promote the cession of Venetia to Italy, was not disposed to refuse the invitation to the Congress; he said to those around him that it would end in nothing and that they would simply adjourn from the Congress-chamber to the battle-field; and he told Count Barral (May 26th) that the Congress was a vain simulacrum, and that he saw no human power capable of preventing war. Yet even Bismarck, three days later, was confounded by the insistance with which France appeared to labour to avert war, and said to Barral, in a tone of deep dissatisfaction, "The Emperor of the French now wishes for peace at any price." To go to war against the will of France was, as Bismarck had before admitted to Govone, hardly within the bounds of possibility. An unfriendly neutrality west of the Rhine would have compelled a concentration of Prussian troops in Westphalia and Rhineland which would have left her too weak to contend with Austria in Saxony or Bohemia. On the 28th of May, notes, couched in almost identical terms, from the Governments of France, Britain, and Russia, communicated to the Powers at variance the proposal of the mediating Courts for the convocation of a Congress. Count Bismarck, while stipulating that the proceedings should be brief, and that the opening of the Congress should not be delayed if the representatives of the Confederation were not nominated in time, accepted the proposal for Prussia, but he took an opportunity of declaring to the French Ambassador, M. Benedetti, in vehement and impassioned tones, that the position of affairs was become intolerable and must be brought to a close at all risks. Italy also agreed to the Congress, as well she might, knowing the settled opinion and desire of the Emperor Napoleon with regard to the cession of Venetia. For Austria, the desirable course was not so clear. If she rejected the Congress, she alienated the good opinion of the neutral Powers. Yet if she accepted it, she knew that she could expect no good from its deliberations. The Chevalier Nigra wrote to La Marmora, on the 24th of May, that the French Foreign Minister, Drouyn de Lhuys, had assured him that it was "well understood between the three neutral Powers that the Congress should discuss the cession of Venetia." Beyond question the existence of this "understanding" was known at Vienna; the Austrian statesmen knew that they would enter a Congress the members of which had already made up their minds on the one subject of discussion that vitally affected her interests and her honour. It is true that Austria had a month before offered to cede Venetia; but at that time she reckoned on compensation. If Italy could be induced by the cession to stand neutral, Austria hoped to overrun and annex Silesia. Yet to refuse the Congress absolutely was not to be thought of. Austria, therefore, hit upon a middle course; she professed a readiness to send a plenipotentiary to the Congress, but only on condition that no combination should be discussed which would result in an extension of territory for any one of the States invited. Such a limitation--especially when the preconceived views of the neutral Powers are remembered--was felt on all sides to render the project of a Congress nugatory, and it was accordingly dropped.

Simultaneously Austria invited the Diet to take the affairs of Schleswig-Holstein under its direction, and convoked the Holstein estates. In reply Count Bismarck sent a despatch, on June 3rd, to Vienna, renewing the protest that had been made by the Prussian Envoy in the Diet against the infraction by Austria of the Convention of Gastein, and declaring that Prussia now considered herself justified in reverting to the basis of the Treaty of Vienna, and that the Government had consequently placed the defence of its condominate rights in the hands of General Manteuffel. At the same time, the Prussian Minister addressed a circular to the Prussian representatives at all foreign Courts, accusing Austria of giving direct provocations to Prussia, with the manifest intention of settling the matters in dispute by an appeal to arms. This circular was couched in terms of the bitterest invective and sufficiently indicated that all prospect of accommodation was renounced. Already General von Gablenz had retreated from Holstein before Manteuffel into Hanover. Thereupon Austria demanded from the Diet the mobilisation of the Federal armies, whereupon the Prussian representative, declaring the union dissolved, withdrew from Frankfort, after handing in his plan of reform. Diplomatic relations between Austria and Prussia were suspended on June 12th; on the 15th Bismarck requested Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse-Cassel to disarm. They declined and the war began.

The forces ranged against each other at the opening of the war of 1866 may be briefly exhibited in tabular form, thus:--

Prussian army (exclusive of depôt and garrison troops) 351,000 Armies of German States allied with Prussia 28,600 Italian army 240,840 ------- Total 620,440

Artillery: Prussian guns, 1,092; Italian guns, 480: total, 1,572.

Austrian army:--Infantry, 321,140; cavalry, 26,621; artillery, 24,601; engineers and pioneers, 11,194: total 383,556 Armies of German States allied to Austria 160,586 ------- Total 544,142

Artillery: Austrian guns, 1,036; German guns, 360: total. 1,396.

Thus, merely reckoning the field armies on both sides, the accession of Italy threw a decided preponderance, even of numbers, into the scale of Prussia. Austria, to oppose the Italian army, was obliged to keep 150,000 of her best troops south of the Alps; had one-third of these stood in line at Königgrätz, the fortune of the day would probably have been different. In the special and scientific services Prussia had an additional superiority over Austria; she had 30,000 cavalry, 35,000 artillery, and 18,000 pioneers, while the Austrian strength in each of these branches was considerably smaller. Besides, the Austrian system was thoroughly obsolete, and its organisers had neglected to adopt the needle-gun despite its proved superiority in the Danish war. The Prussian army, thanks to Von Roon and Von Moltke, had been raised, on the contrary, to the highest degree of efficiency.

The forces of the Prussians, which were formed into three armies, were distributed in the following manner. The First Army, commanded by Prince Frederick Charles, the King's nephew, consisted of three infantry and one cavalry corps, numbering 120,000 men; its headquarters were at Görlitz, close to the eastern frontier of Saxony. The Second Army, commanded by the Crown Prince, contained the Guards corps and three others, numbering 125,000 men; the headquarters were at Neisse in Silesia, being purposely placed so far to the south in order to induce a belief that the objective of this army was Olmütz or Brünn, and to disguise as long as possible the real design of leading it across the mountains into Bohemia. The Third Army was that of the Elbe, commanded by General Herwarth von Bittenfeld, whose headquarters were at Halle; it numbered about 50,000 men, including cavalry. Besides these three armies, which were all designed to act against Austria, special forces to the number of about 60,000 men were prepared to invade Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, and afterwards to operate against the forces of the southern States friendly to Austria, as circumstances should direct. The forces that were to attack Hanover were under the command of Lieutenant-General von Falkenstein, the military governor of Westphalia. Those that were detailed against Hesse-Cassel were commanded by General Beyer, whose headquarters were at Wetzlar, the chief town of a small Prussian enclave, surrounded by the territories of Nassau, Hesse-Cassel, and Hesse-Darmstadt.

In the North of Germany the campaign was brief indeed, although it opened with a Prussian reverse. Through some mismanagement the real superiority of force which the Prussians could bring to bear against the Hanoverians was not made available, and Major-General Flies, the Prussian commander, was about to attack an army considerably more numerous than his own. Misleading reports as to the movements both of the Bavarians and Hanoverians had reached Von Falkenstein at Eisenach. He therefore ordered Goeben with his division to watch the Bavarians, who were supposed to be advancing from the south, and despatched Manteuffel towards Mühlhausen, a town between Göttingen and Langensalza, under the erroneous belief that the Hanoverians were now retreating northwards, and meant to seek a strong position among the Harz Mountains. The Hanoverian general, Arenttschildt, entertained no such intention, but, expecting to be attacked from Gotha, he had drawn up his little army on the northern bank of the Unstrut, a marshy stream that runs past Langensalza in a general easterly direction, to join the Saale near Leipsic. The Prussians advanced gallantly, drove in the Hanoverian outposts on the right or south bank of the Unstrut, and attempted to cross the river. But the Hanoverian artillery, judiciously posted and well served, defeated this attempt. A number of partial actions, in which great bravery was exhibited on both sides, occurred in different parts of the field. The Prussians, however, being decidedly over-matched, were unable to gain ground; and about one o'clock General Arenttschildt ordered his brigade commanders to cross the Unstrut and assume the offensive. This was done--ineffectually for a time on the Hanoverian left, where the swampy nature of the ground by the river presented great obstacles to an advance--but with complete success on their right, where General Bülow drove the Prussians steadily before him, and was able to use his superior cavalry with considerable effect. The excellent military qualities of the Prussian soldier, and the deadly rapidity of fire of the needle-gun, prevented the retreat from becoming a disaster. However, General Flies had no choice but to order a general retreat, and fall back in the direction of Gotha. Two guns and two thousand stand of arms fell into the hands of the victors, whose cavalry continued the pursuit till half-past four, making many prisoners. The Hanoverian situation, however, was really desperate, and on the arrival of the main body of the Prussians the Hanoverians were compelled to capitulate. The King fled into Austria, but his ally the Elector of Hesse-Cassel was made a prisoner of war.

On June 16th Prince Frederick Charles, moving from Görlitz, crossed the Saxon frontier, and advanced upon Dresden. A junction was effected with Herwarth near Meissen, and both marched to Dresden, which was occupied without opposition on the 18th. By the 20th of June, the whole of Saxony (with the exception of the virgin fortress of Königstein in the Saxon Switzerland) was in the hands of the Prussians. The war had lasted but five days, and already the vigour and rapidity with which Prussia dealt her blows had secured for her advantages of inestimable value. Her right flank was now secure from attack through the prostration of the power of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel; the prestige and the terror of her arms were greatly enhanced by the occupation of the beautiful capital of Saxony; and the conquest of that kingdom had rendered possible the union of two Prussian armies, and secured a corresponding shortening and strengthening of her lines. The Saxon army retreated into Bohemia, and joined the main body of the Austrians under General Benedek.

The Prince broke up his headquarters at Görlitz on the 22nd of June, and marched thence with the main body of the First Army direct for Zittau, the last town in Saxony towards Bohemia. The passes through the mountains were found to be undefended; in fact, the rapid movements of the Prussians had left no time for Benedek to take the necessary measures. Count Clam Gallas, in command of the 1st Austrian Corps, was defeated in a series of battles, extending from the 26th to the 29th of June, and driven behind Gitschin. While the First Army and the Army of the Elbe were thus advancing from the north, the Second Army was moving from Silesia, in circumstances of far greater difficulty and peril, to effect a junction with them in Bohemia. After a defeat at Trautenau, the Crown Prince established communications with Prince Frederick Charles, the movements of the three armies being directed by telegraph from Berlin by Moltke, the chief of the staff. On the 30th the King of Prussia, accompanied by Count Bismarck and General Moltke, left Berlin, and reached headquarters at Gitschin on the 2nd of July. Thus the First Army and the Army of the Elbe were brought into communication with the Army of Silesia; and the imminent peril which had existed of an attack by Benedek, in overwhelming force, upon one of these invading armies, before the other was near enough to help it, was now at an end. Military authorities are agreed in casting great blame on the generalship of Benedek. That he did not take the initiative by an advance into Saxony was probably not his fault; but if compelled to receive the attack, it was manifestly his policy, as he knew the Prussians to be advancing on two sides, to detain one of their armies by a detachment, with orders to throw all possible difficulties in its path, while avoiding a pitched battle; but to fall upon the other with the full remaining strength of his own army, and endeavour to inflict upon it, while isolated, a crushing defeat. He had been thwarted by the energy of the Crown Prince's attack, and, seeing that the campaign was lost, had telegraphed to the Emperor on the 1st of July that a catastrophe was inevitable unless peace was made.

The position which Benedek had taken up, on a mass of rolling hilly ground, the highest point of which is marked by the village and church of Chlumetz, bounded on the west by the Bistritz, and on the east by the Elbe, and with the fortress of Königgrätz in its rear, would have been an exceedingly good one, had he had no other army but that of Frederick Charles to think of. As against the First Army, the line of the Bistritz, with its commanding ridge, its woods affording shelter for marksmen, and the difficulties presented by the (in places) marshy character of its valley, presented a defensive position of the first order. But Benedek had to reckon also with the army of the Crown Prince, and this he well knew; for an Austrian force had been driven out of Königinhof by the Prussian Guards on the evening of the 29th. Prince Frederick Charles attacked at daybreak, advancing through the village of Sadowa, and for hours sustained an unequal struggle with the superior forces of the Austrians. Herwarth was also, about one o'clock, checked in his advance. The First Army could do no more; it was even a question whether it could hold its ground; and the Prussian commanders on the plateau of Dub turned many an anxious glance to the left, wondering why the columns of the Crown Prince did not make their appearance. The King himself frequently turned his field-glass in that direction. The heavy rain that had fallen prevented the march of the Crown Prince from being marked by those clouds of dust that are the usual accompaniment of a moving army. Some Austrian guns about Lipa, it is true, appeared to be firing towards the north, but it was not certain that they were not directed against some movement of Franzecky's division. Yet all this time two corps belonging to the army of the Crown Prince had been in action since half-past twelve with the Austrian right, and one of them was pressing forward to the occupation of ground the defence of which was vital to the continued maintenance of its position by the Austrian army. Their onslaught on Benedek's right at once decided the battle, and, effecting a retreat across the Elbe with the utmost difficulty, he fled eastwards, leaving 18,000 on the field and 24,000 prisoners.

The Emperor, seeing his capital threatened, and the empire menaced with dissolution, determined to rid himself of one enemy by removing the ground of dispute. He accordingly ceded Venetia to the Emperor of the French, with the understanding that it was to be transferred to the King of Italy at the conclusion of the war. Napoleon accepted the cession, and from that time was unremitting in his endeavours to bring hostilities to a termination. His proposal of an armistice was accepted in principle by the King of Prussia, with the reservation that the preliminaries of peace must first be recognised by the Austrian Court. Meanwhile the Italians had suffered decisive defeats at the hands of the Austrians. La Marmora, who took command, crossed the Mincio with 120,000 men, but was defeated by the Archduke Albrecht with smaller numbers upon the field of Custozza (June 24th), and compelled to fall back in disorder. A naval action at Lissa off the Istrian coast also terminated in a complete victory for the Austrians under Admiral Tegethoff.

The course of events in the western portion of the theatre of war must now be briefly described. It will be remembered that, for the purpose of sudden and simultaneous operations against Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, a considerable Prussian force had been collected--drawn partly from the Elbe duchies, partly from the garrisons of neighbouring fortresses--and placed under the command of General Vogel von Falkenstein. After the surrender of the Hanoverians on the 29th of June, this force was concentrated about Gotha and Eisenach, and was free to act against the armies that had taken the field in the cause of Austria and the Diet farther south. Falkenstein had two separate armies in his front--the Bavarians under their Prince Charles, now numbering upwards of 50,000 sabres and bayonets, with 136 guns, and the 8th Federal Corps, commanded by Prince Alexander of Hesse and numbering little short of 50,000 men, with 134 guns. Devoid of co-operation, they suffered a series of defeats at the hands of Falkenstein and Manteuffel in a campaign marked by small battles and intricate manœuvres. On the 16th of July the Prussians marched into Frankfort with all military precautions, a regiment of cuirassiers with drawn swords leading the way. They posted two guns in the great square, and stacked their arms there and in the Zeil. Late at night they broke into groups, and went to the different houses, on which, without previous consultation with the municipality, they had been billeted, forcing their way in without ceremony wherever a recalcitrant householder was found. It was observed that especially large numbers of soldiers were billeted on the houses of those citizens who were known to be anti-Prussian in their politics. One of these, Herr Mumm, was required to lodge and feed 15 officers and 200 men. General Falkenstein took up his quarters in the town, having issued a proclamation announcing that, by orders of the King of Prussia, he had assumed the government of the imperial city, together with Nassau, and the parts of Bavaria that were in Prussian occupation. He at once imposed upon the citizens a war contribution of 7,000,000 gulden (about £600,000), besides 300 horses, and other contributions in kind. The Burgomaster Fellner and the Syndic Müller visited this modern Brennus, to endeavour to obtain some diminution of the impost; but they were only treated to a Prussian version of the classic declaration, "Væ Victis." Falkenstein roughly told the burgomaster that he used the rights of conquest; and is said to have threatened that if his demands were not promptly complied with, the city should be given up to pillage. Thus Count Bismarck paid off his old scores against the German Diet.

Meanwhile the victorious career of Prussia was carrying her arms without a check to the banks of the Danube and under the walls of Vienna. Marshal Benedek, after having put the Elbe between the Prussians and his exhausted troops, had to decide instantly what was to be done. An armistice was thought of; and Von Gablenz was sent on a mission to the Prussian headquarters to see if one could be obtained; but on this, and on a subsequent visit made with the same object, he failed. Benedek found that his army was so disorganised and disheartened by the defeat of the 3rd of July, that it was idle to think of defending the line of the Elbe. He resolved, therefore, to retire within the lines of the fortress of Olmütz, and there re-form his broken ranks and recruit his dilapidated resources. But the press and populace of Vienna clamoured vehemently for his dismissal from the post of Commander-in-Chief; and this was presently done, though not in such a manner as to disgrace him. The Archduke Albrecht, the victor of Custozza, was appointed to the command of the Austrian Army of the North, with General von John for his Chief of the Staff. Benedek was left in command at Olmütz, with orders to send all the corps lately under his command, as soon as they were ready for the field again, by rail to Vienna, there to be united under the Archduke for the defence of the capital. The junction was effected, but the Prussian advance was alarmingly rapid, and on the 20th of July the advance-posts of Herwarth were within fifteen miles of Vienna.

Another battle lost--and with inferior numbers, inferior arms, and inferior strategy, the Austrians could not reasonably count on victory--must have laid Austria utterly prostrate at the feet of Prussia, and would probably have resulted, considering the difficult and exasperating constitutional questions at that time still unsettled between the Emperor's government and the subject kingdoms, in her dismemberment and political degradation. From this fate Austria was saved, not by the moderation of Prussia, but by the firm and friendly mediation of France. The Prussians, both officers and soldiers, were eager to march on to the assault of Vienna, though the Government was deterred by the facts that Hungary was still intact, and the Italian army paralysed by the dissensions of its commanders. But France, having accepted Venetia as a pledge that she would discharge the office of mediator, discharged it effectually. That description of mediation, to which Lord Russell was so much attached, which proclaimed beforehand that it would employ no other agency but "persuasion," did not commend itself to the French mind. It is absurd to suppose that Count Bismarck would have paid any attention to the pleadings of Benedetti had he not well understood that France was mediating sword in hand. On this point the Count's own frank declaration, made in the Prussian Lower House in the December following the war--though its immediate reference is to the question of Schleswig--does not permit us to remain in doubt. He said: "In July last France was enabled, by the general situation of Europe, to urge her views more forcibly than before. I need not depict the situation of this country at the time I am speaking of. You all know what I mean. Nobody could expect us to carry on two wars at the same time. Peace with Austria had not yet been concluded; were we to imperil the fruits of our glorious campaign by plunging headlong into hostilities with a new, a second enemy? France, then, being called on by Austria to mediate between the contending parties, as a matter of course did not omit to urge some wishes of her own upon us." Everything seems to show that Austria owed to France, at this critical moment, her continued existence as a great Power.

But for the time the negotiations hung fire, as Napoleon declined to recognise the federation of all Germany under Prussian leadership, even though Bismarck hinted that France should be allowed to annex Belgium by way of compensation. On the 17th of July the King of Prussia arrived at Nikolsburg, a place about forty miles to the north of Vienna, close to the frontier line of Moravia and Lower Austria. Benedetti was already at Nikolsburg, empowered by the Emperor of Austria to agree to an armistice of five days, nearly upon the conditions originally proposed by Prussia, viz. that Austria should withdraw all her troops, except those in garrisons, to the south of the Thaya; in other words, abandon all Moravia except the fortress and entrenched camp of Olmütz, to the Prussians. On these conditions an armistice was concluded at Nikolsburg, to take effect from noon on the 22nd of July, and to last till noon on the 27th. It was well understood on both sides that this armistice was preparatory to negotiations for peace. These were conducted actively at Nikolsburg, Austria being represented by General Degenfeld and Count Karolyi; Prussia by General Moltke and Count Bismarck. Preliminaries of peace between the two Powers were signed on the 26th of July. The terms agreed to were--That Austria should cease to be a member of the German Confederation; that she should pay a contribution of 40,000,000 thalers towards Prussia's expenses in the war; and that she should offer no opposition to the steps that Prussia might take with regard to Northern Germany. The principal measures thus sanctioned were--the annexation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and the portion of Hesse-Darmstadt which lies to the north of the Main; the concession to Prussia of the reversion of Brunswick on the death of the Duke then living, who was without issue; the entry of Saxony into the new North German Confederation about to be formed; and the grant to Prussia of the supreme military and diplomatic leadership in that Confederation. The Prussian armies were to be withdrawn beyond the Thaya on the 2nd of August, but were to occupy Bohemia and Moravia till the conclusion of the final treaty of peace, and to hold Austrian Silesia until the war indemnity was paid. It was with great difficulty that the Emperor Francis Joseph wrung from the King of Prussia his consent to the continued independence of Saxony. But the little kingdom and its monarch had stood so nobly by Austria during the war that honour demanded of the Emperor that he should not permit them to be sacrificed, even though, by insisting, he risked the re-opening of hostilities.

The definitive treaty of peace between Austria and Prussia was signed at Prague on the 23rd of August. Austria was represented in the negotiation by Baron Brenner, and Prussia by Baron Werther, Bismarck having been obliged to return to Berlin to be present at the opening of the Chambers. In substance the treaty did little more than put into precise and legal form the stipulations agreed to at Nikolsburg. The article respecting Venetia declared that, "his Majesty the Emperor of Austria on his part gives his consent to the union of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom with the kingdom of Italy, without imposing any other condition than the liquidation of those debts which have been acknowledged charges on the territories now resigned in conformity with the Treaty of Zurich." The fifth article transferred to Prussia all the rights that Austria had acquired in the Elbe duchies under the Treaty of Vienna; but the influence of the French Emperor, who would not miss what seemed to him so good an opportunity for the application of his favourite principle of the popular vote, obtained the addition of a clause providing that "the people of the northern district of Schleswig, if by free vote they express a wish to be united to Denmark, should be ceded to Denmark accordingly." With regard to Saxony, the King of Prussia declared himself willing (Article VI.), "at the desire of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria," to allow the territory of that kingdom to remain within its existing limits, reserving to himself the right of settling in a separate treaty the share to be contributed by Saxony towards the expenses of the war, and the position which it should eventually hold within the North German Confederation. This separate treaty was not concluded till the 21st of October of the same year. Under it Saxony retained little more than a nominal independence. She agreed to pay a war contribution of 9,000,000 thalers, to give up all her telegraphs to Prussia, and to enter the North German Confederation; her troops were to form an integral portion of the North German army, under the supreme command of the King of Prussia; Königstein, her strongest fortress, was to be given up to Prussia, and Dresden to be held by a garrison half Prussian, half Saxon. While Prussia was stipulating for the cessation of all common interests between her and Austria, and for the exclusion of the latter from Germany, the question naturally rose: What relations are to subsist hereafter between Prussia and the other South German States--such as Bavaria and Baden--which are neither to join the North German Confederation, nor yet to be excluded altogether from Germany? This question was answered in the fourth article of the treaty, in which the Emperor of Austria, after promising to recognise the North German Confederation which Prussia was about to form, "declares his consent that the German States situated to the south of the line of the Main should unite in a league, the national connection of which with the North German Bund is reserved for a further agreement between both parties, and which will have an international independent existence." The Treaty of Prague further settled that from the war indemnity of 40,000,000 thalers which Austria had agreed to pay, a sum of 15,000,000 thalers should be deducted on account of war expenses claimed by the Emperor from the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and a further sum of 5,000,000 thalers on account of the maintenance of the Prussian troops in the Austrian States which they occupied till the conclusion of peace. The remaining net indemnity of 20,000,000 thalers was to be paid within three weeks of the exchange of ratifications. This sum, it may be mentioned, amounts to £3,000,000 of English money. The principal articles of the treaty between Austria and Prussia having been thus briefly summarised, it now only remains to state that the ratifications of the treaty were formally exchanged at Prague on the 29th of August.

The war was over, but the task of establishing the new internal relations that were henceforth to prevail in Germany remained. Armistices were agreed to on the 2nd of August between Prussia, on the one hand, and Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt, on the other, to last for three weeks. At first Bavaria was very roughly dealt with. The Bavarian Ambassador, Baron von der Pfordten, was some days at Nikolsburg before he could obtain an audience of Count Bismarck. At last (July 27th) he obtained a few minutes' conversation with the Prussian Minister, who curtly stated as the terms of peace, the cession of all Bavarian territory north of the Main to Prussia, the cession of the Bavarian Palatinate to Hesse-Darmstadt, and the payment of a war indemnity. But the final treaty of peace, signed at Berlin on the 22nd of August, was less onerous for Bavaria, it imposed, indeed, a contribution of 30,000,000 gulden; abolished shipping dues on the Rhine and Main, where those rivers were under Bavarian jurisdiction; and transferred all the telegraph lines north of the Main to Prussian control; but it required no such cessions of territory as were exacted by the preliminaries. The causes of this apparent lenity, which must have puzzled those acquainted with the Prussian character, will be explained presently. The treaty with Würtemberg, signed on the 13th of August, imposed a war indemnity of 8,000,000 florins on that kingdom, and provided for its re-entry into the Zollverein. A similar treaty with Baden, signed on the 17th of August, burdened the Grand Duchy with a war indemnity of 6,000,000 gulden. Peace with Hesse-Darmstadt was only concluded on the 3rd of September. Great resentment was felt in Prussia against the Grand Duke, who had been throughout a staunch friend to Austria. On the other hand, the Court of Russia, for family reasons, intervened with urgency on behalf both of Würtemberg and of Hesse-Darmstadt; and the terms imposed on these States were consequently more lenient than had been expected. Darmstadt was required to give up Hesse-Homburg and certain other portions of its territory to Prussia; it was, however, indemnified to a considerable extent at the cost of what had been the independent States of Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfort; the general effect being to consolidate and render more compact the territories both of Prussia and of Darmstadt, where they were conterminous. Hesse-Darmstadt, moreover, though, in respect of that portion of her territories which lay south of the Main, she was a South German State, agreed to enter the North German Confederation.

Besides the public treaties with the States of South Germany which have been just described, Prussia concluded with them at the same time certain secret articles, which were not divulged until months afterwards. According to these, Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg severally entered into a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Prussia, with guarantee of their respective territories, and the concession of the supreme command in time of war to the King of Prussia. Count Bismarck knew that he had been playing a perilous game; he had mortified and exasperated the French Emperor, immediately after the close of the war, by refusing to cede to him certain demands for the Bavarian Palatinate and the Hessian districts west of the Rhine. French vanity had been wounded by the victories, French jealousy had been aroused by the aggrandisement, of Prussia. The whole North German Confederation did but represent a population of 25,000,000; if Germany was to be safe against France, she must be able to dispose at need of the military resources of a population of at least equal magnitude. Weighing all these things with that profound forecast which characterised him, Count Bismarck would seem to have purposely imposed at first harsh conditions on Bavaria in order that he might obtain, as the price of their subsequent remission, the adhesion of that kingdom to an arrangement that would bring its excellent soldiers into line with those of Prussia. Upon all these South German States he skilfully brought to bear an argument derived from the recent demand of France for German territory which he promptly divulged--a demand which, he said, would infallibly be renewed; which it would be difficult in all circumstances to resist; and which, if it had to be conceded, could hardly be satisfied except at the expense of one or other of them. Isolated, they could not resist dismemberment; united with Prussia, and mutually guaranteeing each other's territories, they were safe.

These secret treaties between Prussia and the South German States first came to light in April of the following year. Count Beust, who was then the Austrian Premier, commenting on the disclosure in his despatches to Austrian representatives at foreign Courts, said that Austria would make no complaint and ask for no explanations; at the same time, with much dry significance, he directed their attention to the fact, that the Prussian Government had actually concluded these treaties with the South German States before it signed the Treaty of Prague, the fourth article of which was by them rendered null and meaningless. The Count justly pointed out that an offensive alliance between two States forced the weaker of the two to endorse the foreign policy and follow in the wake of the stronger, and practically destroyed the independence of the former.

For the French Emperor, in spite of the efficacy of the French intervention in favour of Austria, the events of this year must have been full of secret mortification. In Mexico, the empire that he had built up at heavy cost was crumbling to pieces; and he did not feel himself strong enough on the throne--nor was he, in fact, gifted with sufficient strength of moral and intellectual fibre--to persevere in the enterprise against the ill-will of the American Government and the carpings of the Opposition at home. He made up his mind to withdraw the French troops from Mexico, and get out of the affair with as little loss of credit as possible. In spite of checks and disappointments, Napoleon still wore a bold front, and in his public utterances continued to assume the oracular and impassable character that had so long imposed on the world. In the sitting of the Corps-Législatif on the 12th of June an important letter from the Emperor to M. Drouyn de Lhuys was read, in which it was declared that France would only require an extension of her frontiers, in the event of the map of Europe being altered to the profit of a great Power, and of the bordering provinces expressing by a formal and free vote their desire for annexation. The last clause was a judicious reservation, particularly as the doctrine of the popular sovereignty, expressed through plébiscites, was not at all consonant with Prussian ideas, so that there was no chance of Rhine Prussia, or any part of it, being allowed the opportunity, supposing it had desired it, of voting for annexation to France. However, notwithstanding the imperial declaration, the map of Europe was altered to the profit of a great Power, and France obtained no extension of territory. Soon after the close of the Austro-Prussian War, the Emperor asked from the Prussian Government the concession of a small strip of territory to the extreme south of her Rhenish provinces, including the valuable coalfield in the neighbourhood of Saarbrück and Saarlouis, besides acquiescence in the annexations from Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt. This was the last of a series of demands for compensation dating from 1862, by judiciously playing with which Bismarck had kept Napoleon quiet during two European wars. Count Bismarck met the request with a decided refusal, on the ground that the state of national feeling in Germany rendered the cession of a single foot of German territory to a foreign Power an impossible proceeding. The Emperor's mortification must have been extreme; he concealed it, however, and nothing was more hopeful or optimistic than the tone of the circular which he caused to be sent on the 16th of September to the French diplomatic agents abroad. Its object was to convince the nation and all the world that France had not been humiliated, nor disappointed, nor disagreeably surprised, by the late events; on the contrary, that she was perfectly satisfied with what had happened. As to annexations, France desired none in which the sympathy of the populations annexed did not go with her--in which they had not the same customs, the same national spirit with herself. From the elevated point of view occupied by the French Government, "the horizon appeared to be cleared of all menacing eventualities."

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