European Genealogy and History
www.georgiapioneers.com
by
ANNE E. KEELING
Author of
"General Gordon: Hero and Saint," "The Oakhurst
Chronicles,"
"Andrew Golding," etc.
Second Edition.
Revised and Enlarged, 1897
[Illustration:
Queen
[Illustration:
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
THE GIRL QUEEN AND
HER KINGDOM
CHAPTER II.
STORM AND SUNSHINE
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRIMEAN WAR
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BEGINNINGS OF
SORROWS
CHAPTER VII.
CHANGES GOOD AND
EVIL
CHAPTER VIII.
OUR COLONIES
CHAPTER IX.
INTELLECTUAL AND
SPIRITUAL PROGRESS
CHAPTER X.
PROGRESS OF THE
EMPIRE FROM 1887 TO 1897
CHAPTER XI.
PROGRESS OF
WESLEYAN METHODISM UNDER QUEEN
CONCLUSION
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Queen
The Coronation of
Queen
Duchess of
Elizabeth Fry
Rowland Hill
Father Mathew
George Stephenson
Wheatstone
St. James's Palace
The Queen in Her
Wedding-Dress
Sir Robert Peel
Daniel O'Connell
Richard Cobden
John Bright
Lord John Russell
Thomas Chalmers
John Henry Newmann
Balmoral
Napoleon III
The
Lord Ashley
Earl of
Duke of
Lord Canning
Sir Colin Campbell
Henry Havelock
Sir John Lawrence
Prince Frederick
William
Princess Royal
Charles Kingsley
Lord Palmerston
Abraham Lincoln and
his son
Princess Alice
The Mausoleum
Dr. Norman Macleod
Prince of Wales
Princess of
Osborne House
Sir Robert Napier
Mr. Gladstone
Lord Beaconsfield
Lord Salisbury
General Gordon
Duke of
Duchess of
Sydney Heads
Robert Southey
William Wordsworth
Alfred Tennyson
Robert Browning
Charles Dickens
W. M. Thackeray
Charlotte Bronte
Lord Macaulay
Thomas Carlyle
William Whewell,
D.D.
Sir David Brewster
Sir James Y.
Simpson
Michael Faraday
David Livingstone
Sir John Franklin
John Ruskin
Dean Stanley
"I was sick,
and ye visited me"
Duke of
The Imperial
Institute
Duke of Clarence
Duke of
Duchess of
Princess Henry of
Battenberg
Prince Henry of
Battenberg
The Czarina of
H. M. Stanley
Dr. Fridtjof Nansen
Miss Kingsley
J. M. Barrie
Richard Jefferies
Rev. J. G. Wood
Dean Church
Professor Huxley
Professor Tyndall
C. H. Spurgeon
Dr. Horatius Bonar
Sir J. E. Millais,
P.R.A.
Sir Frederick
Leighton, P.R.A.
Wesley preaching on
his father's tomb
Group of
Presidents:--No. 1
Centenary Meeting
at
Key to Centenary
Meeting
Wesleyan Centenary
Hall
Group of
Presidents:--No. 2
Sir Francis Lycett
The Methodist
Settlement, Bermondsey.
Theological
Institution,
Theological
Institution, Didsbury
Theological
Institution, Headingley
Theological
Institution, Handsworth
The North House,
Queen's College,
Children's Home,
Group of
Presidents:--No. 3
[Illustration: The
Coronation of Queen
[Illustration:
CHAPTER I.
THE GIRL-QUEEN AND
HER KINGDOM.
Rather more than
one mortal lifetime, as we average life in these
later days, has
elapsed since that June morning of 1837, when
Victoria of
England, then a fair young princess of eighteen, was
roused from her
tranquil sleep in the old palace at Kensington, and
bidden to rise and
meet the Primate, and his dignified associates the
Lord Chamberlain
and the royal physician, who "were come on business
of state to the
Queen"--words of startling import, for they meant
that, while the
royal maiden lay sleeping, the aged King, whose
heiress she was,
had passed into the deeper sleep of death. It is
already an
often-told story how promptly, on receiving that summons,
the young Queen
rose and came to meet her first homagers, standing
before them in
hastily assumed wrappings, her hair hanging loosely,
her feet in
slippers, but in all her hearing such royally firm
composure as deeply
impressed those heralds of her greatness, who
noticed at the same
moment that her eyes were full of tears. This
little scene is not
only charming and touching, it is very
significant,
suggesting a combination of such qualities as are not
always found
united: sovereign good sense and readiness, blending
with quick, artless
feeling that sought no disguise--such feeling as
again betrayed
itself when on her ensuing proclamation the new
Sovereign had to
meet her people face to face, and stood before them
at her palace
window, composed but sad, the tears running unchecked
down her fair pale
face.
That rare spectacle
of simple human emotion, at a time when a selfish
or thoughtless
spirit would have leaped in exultation, touched the
heart of
nation's feeling is
aptly expressed in the glowing verse of Mrs.
Browning, praying
Heaven's blessing on the "weeping Queen," and
prophesying for her
the love, happiness, and honour which have been
hers in no stinted measure.
"Thou shalt be well beloved," said the
poetess; there are
very few sovereigns of whom it could be so truly
said that they
_have_ been well beloved, for not many have so well
deserved it. The
faith of the singer has been amply justified, as
time has made
manifest the rarer qualities joyfully divined in those
early days in the
royal child, the single darling hope of the nation.
Once before in the
recent annals of our land had expectations and
desires equally
ardent centred themselves on one young head. Much of
the loyal devotion
which had been alienated from the immediate family
of George III. had
transferred itself to his grandchild, the Princess
Prince of Wales,
and Caroline of
with vivid interest
the young romance of Princess Charlotte's happy
marriage, and had
bitterly lamented her too early death--an event
which had
overshadowed all English hearts with forebodings of
disaster. Since
that dark day a little of the old attachment of
and "patriot
king," William IV; but the hopes crushed by the death
of the
much-regretted
better warrant for
miserable marriage,
but of a fitting union; her parents had been
sundered only by
death, not by wretched domestic dissensions. People
heard that the
mortal malady which deprived her of a father had been
brought about by
the Duke of Kent's simple delight in his baby
princess, which
kept him playing with the child when he should have
been changing his
wet outdoor garb; and they found something touching
and tender in the
tragic little circumstance. And everything that
could be noticed of
the manner in which the bereaved duchess was
training up her
precious charge spoke well for the mother's wisdom
and affection, and
for the future of the daughter.
It was indeed a
happy day for
fourth son of
George III, was wedded to Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, the
widowed Princess of
Leiningen--happy, not only because of the
admirable skill
with which that lady conducted her illustrious
child's education,
and because of the pure, upright principles, the
frank, noble
character, which she transmitted to that child, but
because the family
connection established through that marriage was
to be yet further
serviceable to the interests of our realm. Prince
Albert of
Saxe-Coburg was second son of the Duchess of Kent's eldest
brother, and thus
first cousin of the Princess Victoria--"the
Mayflower,"
as, in fond allusion to the month of her birth, her
mother's kinsfolk
loved to call her: and it has been made plain that
dreams of a
possible union between the two young cousins, very nearly
of an age, were
early cherished by the elders who loved and admired
both.
[Illustration:
Duchess of
Colnaghi & Co.,
The Princess's
life, however, was sedulously guarded from all
disturbing
influences. She grew up in healthy simplicity and
seclusion; she was
not apprised of her nearness to the throne till
she was twelve
years old; she had been little at Court, little in
sight, but had been
made familiar with her own land and its history,
having received the
higher education so essential to her great
position; while
simple truth and rigid honesty were the very
atmosphere of her
existence. From such a training much might be
hoped; but even
those who knew most and hoped most were not quite
prepared for the
strong individual character and power of
self-determination
that revealed themselves in the girlish being so
suddenly
transferred "from the nursery to the throne." It was quickly
noticed that the
part of Queen and mistress seemed native to her, and
that she filled it
with not more grace than propriety. "She always
strikes me as
possessed of singular penetration, firmness, and
independence,"
wrote Dr. Norman Macleod in 1860; acute observers in
1837 took note of
the same traits, rarer far in youth than in full
maturity, and
closely connected with the "reasoning, searching"
quality of her
mind, "anxious to get at the root and reality of
things, and
abhorring all shams, whether in word or deed." [Footnote]
[Footnote:
"Life of Norman Macleod, D.D." vol. ii.]
It was well for
virile strength as
well as womanly sweetness; for it was indeed a
cloudy and dark day
when she was called to her post of lonely
grandeur and hard
responsibility; and to fill that post rightly would
have overtasked and
overwhelmed a feebler nature. It is true that the
peace of Europe,
won at
within our borders
and without them, there were the signs of coming
storm. The
condition of
earth-shaking
revolution announced itself not doubtfully.
It would be hardly
possible to exaggerate the wretched state of the
sister isle, where
fires of recent hate were still smouldering, and
where the poor
inhabitants, guilty and guiltless, were daily living
on the verge of
famine, over which they were soon to be driven. Their
ill condition much
aggravated by the intemperate habits to which
despairing men so
easily fall a prey. The expenditure of
proof spirits alone
had in the year 1829 attained the sum of
L6,000,000.
In
were living on bad
and scanty food, and were housed so wretchedly
that they might
envy the hounds their dry and clean kennels. A dark
symptom of their
hungry discontent had shown itself in the strange
crime of
rick-burning, which went on under cloud of night season
after season,
despite the utmost precautions which the luckless
farmers could
adopt. The perpetrators were not dimly guessed to be
half-famished
creatures, taking a mad revenge for their wretchedness
by destroying the
tantalising stores of grain, too costly for their
consumption; the
price of wheat in the early years of Her Majesty's
reign and for some
time previously being very high, and reaching at
one moment (1847)
the extraordinary figure of a hundred and two
shillings per
quarter.
There was
threatening distress, too, in some parts of the
manufacturing
districts; in others a tolerably high level of wages
indicated
prosperity. But even in the more favoured districts there
was needless
suffering. The hours of work, unrestricted by law, were
cruelly long; nor
did there exist any restriction as to the
employment of
operatives of very tender years. "The cry of the
children" was
rising up to heaven, not from the factory only, but
from the
underground darkness of the mine, where a system of pitiless
infant slavery
prevailed, side by side with the employment of women
as beasts of
burden, "in an atmosphere of filth and profligacy." The
condition of too
many toilers was rendered more hopeless by the
thriftless follies
born of ignorance. The educational provision made
by the piety of
former ages was no longer adequate to the needs of
the ever-growing
nation; and all the voluntary efforts made by clergy
and laity, by
Churchmen and Dissenters, did not fill up the
deficiency--a fact
which had only just begun to meet with State
recognition. It was
in 1834 that Government first obtained from
Parliament the
grant of a small sum in aid of education. Under a
defective system of
poor-relief, recently reformed, an immense mass
of idle pauperism
had come into being; it still remained to be seen
if a new Poor Law
could do away with the mischief created by the old
one.
Looking at the
earliest years of Her Majesty's rule, the first
impulse is to
exclaim:
"And all this
trouble did not pass, but grew."
It seemed as if
poverty became ever more direful, and dissatisfaction
more importunate. A
succession of unfavourable seasons and failing
crops produced
extraordinary distress; and the distress in its turn
was fruitful first
of deepened discontent, and then of political
disturbances. The
working classes had looked for immediate relief
from their burdens
when the Reform Bill should be carried, and had
striven hard to
insure its success: it had been carried triumphantly
in 1832, but no
perceptible improvement in their lot had yet
resulted; and a
resentful feeling of disappointment and of being
victims of
deception now added bitterness to their blind sense of
misery and injury,
and greatly exasperated the political agitation of
the ten stormy
years that followed.
No position could
well be more trying than that of the inexperienced
girl who, in the
first bloom of youth, was called to rule the land in
this wild
transitional period. Her royal courage and gracious tact,
her transparent
truthfulness, her high sense of duty, and her
precocious
discretion served her well; but these young excellences
could not have
produced their full effect had she not found in her
first Prime
Minister a faithful friend and servant, whose loyal and
chivalrous devotion
at once conciliated her regard, and who only used
the influence thus
won to impress on his Sovereign's mind "sound
maxims of
constitutional government, and truths of every description
which it behoved
her to learn." The records of the time show plainly
that Lord
Melbourne, the eccentric head of William IV's last Whig
Administration, was
not generally credited with either the will or
the ability to play
so lofty a part. His affectation of a lazy,
trifling,
indifferent manner, his often-quoted remonstrance to
impetuous would-be
reformers, "Can't you let it alone?" had earned
for him some angry
disapproval, and caused him to be regarded as the
embodiment of the
detested _laissez-faire_ principle. But under his
mask of nonchalance
he hid some noble qualities, which at this
juncture served
Queen and country well.
Considered as a
frivolous, selfish courtier by too many of the
suffering poor and
of their friends, he was in truth "acting in all
things an
affectionate, conscientious, and patriotic part" towards
his Sovereign,
"endeavouring to make her happy as a woman and popular
as a Queen,"
[Footnote] telling her uncourtly truths with a blunt
honesty that did
not displease her, and watching over her with a
paternal tenderness
which she repaid with frank, noble confidence. He
was faithful in a
great and difficult trust; let his memory have due
honour.
[Footnote: C. C. F.
Greville: "A Journal of the Reign of Queen
Under
with some serenity,
though the political horizon remained threatening
enough, and the
temper of the nation appeared sullen. "The people of
the Queen's
earliest public appearances, when "not a hat was raised
nor a voice
heard" among the coldly curious crowd of spectators. But
the splendid show
of her coronation a half-year later awakened great
enthusiasm--enthusiasm
most natural and inevitable. It was youth and
grace and goodness,
all the freshness and the infinite promise of
spring, that wore
the crimson and the ermine and the gold, that sat
enthroned amid the
ancient glories of the Abbey to receive the homage
of all that was
venerable and all that was great in a mighty kingdom,
and that bowed in
meek devotion to receive the solemn consecrating
blessing of the
Primate, according to the holy custom followed in
time when Dunstan
framed the Order of Coronation, closely following
the model of the
Communion Service. Some other features special to
_this_ coronation
heightened the national delight in it. Its
arrangements
evidently had for their chief aim to interest and to
gratify the people.
Instead of the banquet in Westminster Hall,
which could have
been seen only by the privileged and the wealthy, a
grand procession
through
foreign
ambassadors, and proceeding from
Westminster Abbey
by a route two or three miles in length, so that
the largest
possible number of spectators might enjoy the magnificent
pageant. And the
overflowing multitudes whose dense masses lined the
whole long way, and
in whose tumultuous cheering pealing bells and
sounding trumpets
and thundering cannon were almost unheard as the
young Queen passed
through the shouting ranks, formed themselves the
most impressive
spectacle to the half-hostile foreign witnesses, who
owned that the
sight of these rejoicing thousands of freemen was
grand indeed, and
impossible save in that
was not greatly
loved by its rivals. An element which appealed
powerfully to the
national pride and the national generosity was
supplied by the
presence of the Duke of Wellington and of Marshal
Soult, his old
antagonist, who appeared as French ambassador. Soult,
as he advanced with
the air of a veteran warrior, was followed by
murmurs of admiring
applause, which swelled into more than murmurs
for the hero of
of sweet humanity
was added to the imposing scene within the Abbey
through what might
have been a painful accident. Lord Rolle, a peer
between seventy and
eighty years of age, stumbling and falling as he
climbed the steps
of the throne, the Queen impulsively moved as if to
aid him; and when
the old man, undismayed, persisted in carrying out
his act of homage,
she asked quickly, "May I not get up and meet
him?" and
descended one or two steps to save him the ascent. The
ready natural
kindliness of the royal action awoke ecstatic applause,
which could hardly
have been heartier had the applauders known how
true a type that
act supplied of Her Majesty's future conduct. She
has never feared to
peril her dignity by descending a step or two
from her throne,
when "sweet mercy, nobility's true badge," has
seemed to require
such a descent. And her queenly dignity has never
been thereby
lessened. "She never ceases to be a Queen," says
Greville _a propos_
of this scene, "and is always the most charming,
cheerful, obliging,
unaffected Queen in the world."
[Illustration:
Elizabeth Fry]
That "the
people" were more considered in the arrangements for this
coronation than
they had been on any previous occasion of the sort
was a circumstance
quite in harmony with certain other signs of the
times. "The
night is darkest before the dawn," and amid all the gloom
which enshrouded
the land there could be discerned the stir and
movement that
herald the coming of the day. Men's minds were turning
more and more to
the healing of the world's wounds. Already one great
humane enterprise
had been carried through in the emancipation of the
slaves in British
Colonies; already the vast work of prison reform
had been well
begun, through the saintly Elizabeth Fry, whose life of
faithful service
ended ere the Queen had reigned eight years. The
very year of Her
Majesty's accession was signalised by two noteworthy
endeavours to put
away wrong. We will turn first to that which
_seems_ the least
immediately philanthropic, although the injustice
which it remedied
was trivial in appearance only, since in its
everyday triviality
it weighed most heavily on the most numerous
class--that of the
humble and the poor.
[Illustration:
Rowland Hill]
How would the
Englishman of to-day endure the former exactions of the
Post Office? The
family letters of sixty years ago, written on the
largest sheets
purchasable, crossed and crammed to the point of
illegibility,
filled with the news of many and many a week, still
witness of the time
when "a letter from
eightpence, to
and
fourpence"; when, "if the letter were written on more than one
sheet, it came
under the operation of a higher scale of charges," and
when the privilege
of franking letters, enjoyed and very largely
exercised by
members of Parliament and members of the Government, had
the peculiar effect
of throwing the cost of the mail service exactly
on that part of the
community which was least able to bear it. The
result of the
injustice was as demoralising as might have been
expected. The
poorer people who desired to have tidings of distant
friend or relative
were driven by the prohibitory rates of postage
into all sorts of
curious, not quite honest devices, to gratify their
natural desire
without being too heavily taxed for it. A brother and
sister, for
instance, unable to afford themselves the costly luxury
of regular
correspondence, would obtain assurance of each other's
well-being by
transmission through the post at stated intervals of
blank papers duly
sealed and addressed: the arrival of the postman
with a missive of
this kind announced to the recipient that all was
well with the
sender, so the unpaid "letter" was cheerfully left on
the messenger's
hands. Such an incident, coming under the notice of
Mr. Rowland Hill,
impressed him with a sense of hardship and wrong in
the system that
bore these fruits; and he set himself with strenuous
patience to remedy
the wrong and the hardship. His scheme of reform
was worked out and
laid before the public early in 1837; in the third
year of Her
Majesty's reign it was first adopted in its entirety,
with what immense
profit to the Government we may partly see when we
contrast the
seventy-six or seventy-seven millions of _paid_ letters
delivered in the
postage with the
number exceeding a thousand millions, and still
increasing--delivered
yearly during the last decade; while the
population has not
doubled. That the Queen's own letters carried
postage under the
new regime was a fact almost us highly appreciated
as Her Majesty's
voluntary offer at a later date to bear her due
share of the income
tax.
It is well to
notice how later Postmasters General, successors of
Rowland Hill in
that important office, have striven further to
benefit their
countrymen. In particular, Henry Fawcett's earnest
efforts to
encourage and aid habits of thrift are worthy of
remembrance.
Again, it is during
the first year of Her Majesty's reign that we
find Father Mathew,
the Irish Capuchin friar, initiating his vast
crusade against
intemperance, and by the charm of his persuasive
eloquence and
unselfish enthusiasm inducing thousands upon thousands
to forswear the
drink-poison that was destroying them. In two years
he succeeded in
enrolling two million five hundred thousand persons
on the side of
sobriety. The permanence of the good Father's
immediate work was
impaired by the superstitions which his poor
followers
associated with it, much against his desire. Not only were
the medals which he
gave as badges to his vowed abstainers regarded
as infallible
talismans from the hand of a saint, but the giver was
credited with
miraculous powers such as only a Divine Being could
exercise, and which
he disclaimed in vain--extravagances too likely
to discredit his
enterprise with more soberly judging persons than
the imaginative
Celts who were his earliest converts. But,
notwithstanding
every drawback, his action was most important, and
deserves grateful
memory. We may see in it the inception of that
great movement
whose indirect influence in reforming social habits
and restraining
excess had at least equalled its direct power for
good on its pledged
adherents. Though it is still unhappily true that
drunkenness slays its
tens of thousands among us, and largely helps
to people our
workhouses, our madhouses, and our gaols, yet the fiend
walks not now, as
it used to do, in unfettered freedom. It is no
longer a
fashionable vice, excused and half approved as the natural
expression of
joviality and good-fellowship; peers and commoners of
every degree no
longer join daily in the "heavy-headed revel" whose
deep-dyed stain
seems to have soaked through every page of our
last-century
annals. And it would appear as though the vice were not
only held from
increasing, but were actually on the decrease. The
statistics of the
last decade show that the consumption of alcohol is
diminishing, and
that of true food-stuffs proportionally rising.
[Illustration:
Father Mathew]
There were other
enterprises now set on foot, by no means directly
philanthropic in
their aim, which contemplated utility more than
virtue or
justice--enterprises whose vast effects are yet
unexhausted, and
which have so modified the conditions of human
existence as to
make the new reign virtually a new epoch. As to the
real benefit of
these immense changes, opinion is somewhat divided;
but the majority
would doubtless vote in their favour. The first
railway in
opened in 1830, the
day of its opening being made darkly memorable by
the accident fatal
to Mr. Huskisson, as though the new era must be
inaugurated by a
sacrifice. Three years later there was but this one
railway in
1837 the Liverpool
and
and
passed for
transmitting the mails by rail; in 1839 there was the
opening of the
rolling, and the
supersession of ancient modes of communication was a
question of time
merely. The advance of the new system was much
accelerated at the
outset by the fact that railway enterprise became
the favourite field
for speculation, men being attracted by the
novelty and tempted
by exaggerated prospects of profit; and the mania
was followed, like
other manias, with results largely disastrous to
the speculators and
to commerce. But through years of good fortune
and of bad fortune
the iron network has continued to spread itself,
until all the land
lies embraced in its ramifications; and it is
spreading still,
like some strange organism the one condition of
whose life is
reproduction, knitting the greatest centres of commerce
with the loneliest
and remotest villages that were wont to lie far
out of the
travelled ways of men, and bringing _Ultima Thule_ into
touch with
[Illustration:
George Stephenson]
Meanwhile the steam
service by sea has advanced almost with that by
land. In 1838 three
steamships crossed the
country and
_Sirius_, from
they made,--of
fifteen days in the first case, and seventeen days in
the second,--and by
their using steam power _alone_ to effect the
transit, an
experiment that had not been risked before. It was now
proved feasible,
and in a year or two there was set on foot that
regular steam
communication between the
ever since has
continued to draw them into always closer connection,
as the steamers,
like swift-darting shuttles, weave their multiplying
magic lines across
the liquid plain between.
The telegraph wires
that run beside road and rail, doing the office
of nerves in
transmitting intelligence with thrilling quickness from
the extremities to
the head and from the head to the extremities of
our State, are now
so familiar an object, and their operations, such
mere matters of
every day, that we do not often recall how utterly
unfamiliar they
were sixty years ago, when Wheatstone and Cooke on
this side the
methods for giving
signals and sounding alarms in distant places by
means of electric
currents transmitted through metallic circuits.
Submarine
telegraphy lay undreamed of in the future, land telegraphy
was but just
gaining hearing as a practicable improvement, when the
crown was set on
Her Majesty's head amid all that pomp and ceremony
at
task of realising
the manifold hindrances that beset human
intercourse at that
day, when a journey by coach between places as
important and as
little remote from each other as Leeds and
occupied sixteen
mortal hours, with changes of horses and stoppages
for meals on the
road, and when letters, unless forwarded by an
"express"
messenger at heavy cost, tarried longer on the way than
even did
passengers; while some prudent dwellers in the country
deemed it well to
set their affairs in order and make their wills
before embarking on
the untried perils of a journey up to town. These
days are well
within the memory of many yet living; but if the newer
generations that
have arisen during the present reign would
understand what it
is to be hampered in their movements and their
correspondence as
were their fathers, they must seek the remoter and
more savage
quarters of
African wilds,
untouched by civilisation, where as yet there runs not
the iron horse,
worker of greater marvels than the wizard steeds of
fairy fable, that
could, transport a single favoured rider over wide
distances in little
time. The subjugated, serviceable nature-power
Steam, with its
fellow-servant the tamed and tutored Lightning, has
wonderfully
contracted distance during these fifty years, making the
earth, once so vast
to human imagination, appear as a globe shrunken
to a tenth of its
ancient size, and bringing nations divided by half
the surface of that
globe almost within sound of each other's speech.
[Illustration:
Wheatstone.]
That there is
damage as well as profit in all these increased
facilities of
intercourse must be apparent, since there is evil as
well as good in the
human world, and increased freedom of
communication
implies freer communication of the evil as of the good.
But we may well
hope that the cause of true upward progress will be
most served by the
vast inevitable changes which, as they draw all
peoples nearer
together, must deepen and strengthen the sense of
human brotherhood,
and, as they bring the deeds of all within the
knowledge of all,
must consume by an intolerable blaze of light the
once secret
iniquities and oppressions abhorrent to the universal
conscience of
mankind. The public conscience in these realms at least
is better informed
and more sensitive than it was in the year of
William IV's death
and of
CHAPTER II.
STORM AND SUNSHINE.
[Illustration: St.
James's Palace.]
The beneficent
changes we have briefly described were but just
inaugurated, and
their possible power for good was as yet hardly
divined, when the
young Queen entered into that marriage which we may
well deem the
happiest action of her life, and the most fruitful of
good to her people,
looking to the extraordinary character of the
husband of her
choice, and to the unobtrusive but always advantageous
influence which his
great and wise spirit exercised on our national
life.
The marriage had
been anxiously desired, and the way for it
judiciously
prepared, but it was in no sense forced on either of the
contracting parties
by their elders who so desired it.
of Saxe-Coburg,
second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the
Queen's maternal
uncle, was nearly of an age with his royal cousin;
he had already,
young as he was, given evidence of a rare superiority
of nature; he had
been excellently trained; and there is no doubt
that Leopold, king
of the Belgians, his uncle, and the Queen's, did
most earnestly desire
to see the young heiress of the British throne,
for whom he had a
peculiar tenderness, united to the one person whose
position and whose
character combined to point him out as the fit
partner for her
high and difficult destinies. What tact, what
patience, and what
power of self-suppression the Queen of England's
husband would need
to exercise, no one could better judge than
Leopold, the
widowed husband of Princess Charlotte; no one could more
fully have
exemplified these qualities than the prince in whom
Leopold's
penetration divined them.
The cousins had
already met, in 1836, when their mutual attraction
had been
sufficiently strong; and in 1839, when
his elder brother
Ernest, was again visiting
already produced
became ineffaceably deep. The Queen, whom her great
rank compelled to
take the initiative, was not very long in making up
her mind when and
how to act. Her favoured suitor himself, writing to
a dear relative,
relates how she performed the trying task, inviting
him to render her
intensely happy by making "the _sacrifice_ of
sharing her life
with her, for she said she looked on it as a
sacrifice. The
joyous openness with which she told me this enchanted
me, and I was quite
carried away by it." This was on October 15th;
nearly six weeks
after, on November 23rd, she made to her assembled
Privy Council the
formal declaration of her intended marriage. There
is something
particularly touching in even the driest description of
this scene; the
betrothed bride wearing a simple morning dress,
having on her arm a
bracelet containing
which helped to
give her courage; her voice, as she read the
declaration clear,
sweet, and penetrating as ever, but her hands
trembling so
excessively that it was surprising she could read the
paper she held. It
was a trying task, but not so difficult as that
which had devolved
on her a short time before, when, in virtue of her
sovereign rank, she
had first to speak the words of fate that bound
her to her suitor.
[Illustration:
Endowed with every
charm of person, mind, and manner that can win and
keep affection,
loved him and whom
he loved, to secure for her a happiness rare in
any rank, rarest of
all on the cold heights of royalty. This was not
all; he was the
worthy partner of her greatness. Himself highly
cultivated in every
sense, he watched with keenest interest over the
advance of all
cultivation in the land of his adoption, and
identified himself
with every movement to improve its condition. His
was the soul of a
statesman--wide, lofty, far-seeing, patient;
surveying all great
things, disdaining no small things, but with
tireless industry
pursuing after all necessary knowledge. Add to
these intellectual
excellences the moral graces of ideal purity of
life, chivalrous
faithfulness of heart, magnanimous self-suppression,
and fervent piety,
and we have a slight outline of a character which,
in the order of
living force on the
destinies of nineteenth-century
Queen had good
reasons for the feeling of "confidence and comfort"
that shone in the
glance she turned on her bridegroom as they walked
away, man and wife
at last, from the altar of the Chapel Royal, on
February 10th,
1840. The union she then entered into immeasurably
enhanced her
popularity, and strengthened her position as surely as
it expanded her
nature. Not many years elapsed before Sir Robert Peel
could tell her
that, in spite of the inroads of democracy, the
monarchy had never
been safer, nor had any sovereign been so beloved,
because "the
Queen's domestic life was so happy, and its example so
good." Only the
Searcher of hearts knoweth how great has been the
holy power of a
pure, fair, and noble example constantly shining in
the high places of
the land.
[Illustration: The
Queen in her Wedding-Dress. _After the Picture by_
Drummond.]
It was hinted by
the would-be wise, in the early days of Her
Majesty's married
life, that it would be idle to look for the royally
maternal feeling of
an
constitutional
sovereign. The judgment was a mistake. The formal
limitations of our
Queen's prerogative, sedulously as she has
respected them,
have never destroyed her sense of responsibility;
wifehood and
motherhood have not contracted her sympathies, but have
deepened and
widened them. The very sorrows of her domestic life have
knit her in
fellowship with other mourners. No great calamity can
befall her humblest
subjects, and she hear of it, but there comes the
answering flash of
tender pity. She is more truly the mother of her
people, having
walked on a level with them, and with "Love, who is of
the valley,"
than if she had chosen to dwell alone and aloof.
[Illustration: Sir
Robert Peel.]
For some years
after her marriage the Queen's private life shows like
a little isle of
brightness in the midst of a stormy sea. Within and
without our borders
there was small prospect of settled peace at the
very time of that
marriage. We have said that Lord Melbourne was
still Premier; but
he and his Ministry had resigned office in the
previous May, and
had only come back to it in consequence of a
curious
misunderstanding known as "the Bedchamber difficulty." Sir
Robert Peel, who
was summoned to form a Ministry on
defeat and
resignation, had asked from Her Majesty the dismissal of
two ladies of her
household, the wives of prominent members of the
departing Whig
Government; but his request conveyed to her mind the
sense that he
designed to deprive her of all her actual attendants,
and against this
imagined proposal she set herself energetically.
"She could not
consent to a course which she conceived to be contrary
to usage, and which
was repugnant to her feelings." Peel on his part
remained firm in
his opinion as to the real necessity for the change
which he had
advocated. From the deadlock produced by mere
misunderstanding
there seemed at the time only one way of escaping;
the defeated Whig
Government returned to office. But Ministers who
resumed power only
because, "as gentlemen," they felt bound to do so,
had little chance
of retaining it. In September 1841, Lord Melbourne
was superseded in
the premiership by Sir Robert Peel, and then gave a
final proof how
single-minded was his loyal devotion by advising the
new Prime Minister
as to the tone and style likely to commend him to
their royal
mistress--a tone of clear straightforwardness. "The
Queen," said
Melbourne--who knew of what he was speaking, if any
statesman then
did--"is not conceited; she is aware there are many
things she cannot
understand, and likes them explained to her
elementarily, not
at length and in detail, but shortly and clearly."
The counsel was
given and was accepted with equal good feeling, such
as was honourable
to all concerned; and the Sovereign learned, as
years went on, to
repose a singular confidence in the Minister with
whom her first
relations had been so unpropitious, but whose real
honesty, ability,
and loyalty soon approved themselves to her clear
perceptions, which
no prejudice has long been able to obscure.
We are told that in
later years Her Majesty referred to the
disagreeable
incident we have just related as one that could not have
occurred, if she
had had beside her
employ in
explaining matters," while she refused the suggestion that
her impulsive
resistance had been advised by any one about her. "It
was entirely my own
foolishness," [Footnote] she is said to have
added--words
breathing that perfect simplicity of candour which has
always been one of
her most strongly marked characteristics.
[Footnote:
"Greville Memoirs," Third Part, vol. i.]
Though the matter caused
a great sensation at the time, and gave rise
to some dismal
prophesyings, it was of no permanent importance, and
is chiefly noted
here because it throws a strong light on Her
Majesty's need of
such an ever-present aid as she had now secured in
the husband wise
beyond his years, who well understood his
constitutional
position, and was resolute to keep within it, avoiding
entanglement with
any party, and fulfilling with equal impartiality
and ability the
duties of private secretary to his Sovereign-wife.
The Melbourne
Ministry had had to contend with difficulties
sufficiently
serious, and of these the grimmest and greatest remained
still unsettled. At
the outset of the reign a rebellion in
required strong
repression; and we had taken the first step on a bad
road by entering
into those disputes as to our right to force the
opium traffic on
successful war with
that country. On the other hand, our Indian
Government had
begun an un-called-for interference with the affairs
of
humiliating
reverses to our arms, culminating in one of the most
terrible disasters
that have ever befallen a British force--the
wholesale massacre
of General Elphinstone's defeated and retreating
army on its passage
through the terrible mountain gorge known as the
survivor of this
massacre appeared, a half-fainting man, drooping
over the neck of
his wearied pony, before the fort of Jellalabad,
which General Sale
still held for the English. He only was "escaped
alone" to tell
the hideous tale. The ill-advised and ill-managed
enterprise which
thus terminated had extended over more than three
years, had cost us
many noble lives, in particular that of the
much-lamented
Alexander Burnes, had condemned many English women and
children to a long
and cruel captivity among the savage foe, and had
absolutely failed
as to the object for which it was undertaken--the
instalment of Shah
Soojah, a mere British tool, as ruler of
Mahomed. When the
disasters to our arms had been retrieved, as
retrieved they were
with exemplary promptness, and when the surviving
prisoners were
redeemed from their hard captivity, it was deemed
sound policy for us
to attempt no longer to "force a sovereign on a
reluctant
people," and to remain content with that limit which
"nature
appears to have assigned" to our Indian empire on its
north-western
border. Later adventures in the same field have not
resulted so happily
as to prove that these views were incorrect. Our
prestige was
seriously damaged in Hindostan by this first Afghan war,
and was only
partially re-established in the campaign against the
Sikhs several years
later, despite the dramatic grandeur of that
"piece of
Indian history" which resulted in our annexation of the
Punjaub in 1846--a
solid advantage balanced by the unpleasant fact
that English
soldiers had been proved not invincible by natives.
It will thus appear
that there was not too much that was glorious or
encouraging in our
external affairs in these early years; but the
internal condition
of the country was never less reassuring. The
general discontent
of the English lower orders was taking shape as
Chartism--a
movement which could not have arisen but for the fierce
suspicion with
which the working classes had learnt to regard those
who seemed their
superiors in wealth, in rank, or in political power,
and which the
higher orders retaliated in dislike and distrust of the
labouring
population, whom they considered as seditious enemies of
order and property.
The demon of class hatred was never more alive
and busy than in
the decade which terminated in 1848.
"The
Charter," which was the watchword of hope to so many, and the
very war-note of
discord to many more, comprised six points, of which
some at least were
sufficiently absurd, while others have virtually
passed into law,
quietly and naturally, in due course of time; and if
the universal Age
of Gold which ignorant Chartists looked for has not
ensued, at least
the anarchy and ruin which their opponents
associated with the
dreaded scheme are equally non-existent. So fast
has the time moved
that there is now a little difficulty in
understanding the
passionate hopes with which the Charter was
associated on the
one side, and the panic which it inspired on the
other; and there is
much to move wondering compassion in the profound
ignorance which
those hopes betrayed, and the not inferior misery
amid which they
were cherished. Few persons are now so credulous as
to expect that
annual Parliaments or stipendiary members would insure
the universal reign
of peace and justice; the people have already
found that vote by
ballot and suffrage all but universal have neither
equalised wealth
nor abrogated greed and iniquity; and though there
be some dreamers in
our midst to-day who look for wonderful
transformations of
society to follow on possible reforms, there is
not even in these
dreamy schemes the same amazing disproportion of
means to be
employed and end to be attained as characterised the
Chartist delusion.
[Illustration:
Daniel O'Connell.]
In
political panacea
for every personal and social evil--the Repeal of
the Union with
power of his
passionate Celtic eloquence, and supported by all his
extraordinary
personal influence. Apparently he hoped to carry this
agitation to the
same triumphant issue as that for Catholic
emancipation, in
which he had taken a conspicuous part; but the new
movement did not,
like the old one, appeal immediately and plausibly
to the English
sense of fair play and natural justice. A competent
and not unfriendly
observer has remarked that O'Connell's "theory and
policy were that
to himself."
Whether any salvation for the unhappy land did lie in
such a dictatorship
was a point on which opinion might well be
divided. English
opinion was massively hostile to it; but for years
all the political
enthusiasm of
cause he upheld.
The country might be on the brink of ruin and
starvation, but the
peril seemed forgotten while the dream lasted.
The agitator was
wont to refer to the Queen in terms of extravagant
loyalty, and it
would seem that the feeling was largely shared by his
followers. However
futile and vainglorious his scheme and methods may
appear, we must not
deny to him a distinction, rare indeed among
Irish agitators, of
having steadily disclaimed violence and advocated
orderly and
peaceable proceedings. He thought his cause would be
injured, and not
advanced, by such outrages as before and since his
day have too often
disgraced party warfare in
maxim was that
"the man who commits a crime gives strength to the
enemy." This
opinion was not heartily endorsed by all his followers.
When it became
clear that his dislike of physical force was real,
when he did not
defy the Government, at last stirred into hostile
action by the
demonstrations he organised, there was an end of his
power over the
fiercer spirits whom he had roused against the rule of
"the
Saxon"--luckless phrase with which he had enriched the
Anglo-Irish
controversy, and misleading as luckless. O'Connell died,
a broken and
disappointed man, on his way to
spirit he had
raised and could not rule did not die with him, and the
younger, more
turbulent leaders, who had outbid him for popular
approval, continued
their anti-English warfare with growing zeal
until the year of
fate 1848.
Even the
Principality of Wales had its own peculiar form of
agitation,
sometimes accompanied by outrage, during these wild
opening years. The
farmers and labourers in
and poor, and in
the season of their adversity they found turnpikes
and tolls
multiplying on their public roads. They resented what
appeared a cruel
imposition with wrathful impatience, and ere long
gave expression to
their anger in wild deeds. A text of Scripture
suggested to them a
fantastic form of riot. They found that it was
said of old to
Rebecca, "Let thy seed possess the gate of those which
hate them,"
and ere long "Rebecca and her children," men masking in
women's clothes,
made fierce war by night on the "gates" they
detested,
destroying the turnpikes and driving out their keepers.
These raids were
not always bloodless. The Government succeeded in
repressing the
rioting, and then, finding that a real grievance had
caused it, did away
with the oppressive tolls, and dealt not too
hardly with the
captured offenders; leniency which soon restored
[Illustration:
Richard Cobden.]
[Illustration: John
Bright.]
A peaceful,
strictly constitutional, and finally successful agitation
ran its steady
course in
with those we have
already enumerated. The Anti-Corn-Law League, with
which the names of
Cobden and Bright are united as closely as those
two distinguished
men were united in friendship, had in 1838 found a
centre eminently
favourable to its operations in
leaders were able,
well-informed, and upright men, profoundly
convinced that
their cause was just, and that the welfare of the
people was involved
in their success or failure. They were men of the
middle class,
acquainted intimately with the needs and doings of the
trading community
to which they belonged, and therefore at once
better qualified to
argue on questions affecting commerce, and less
directly interested
in the prosperity of agriculture, than the more
aristocratic
leaders of the nation. Both persuasive and successful
speakers, one of
them supremely eloquent, they were able to interest
even the lowest
populace in questions of political economy, and to
make Free Trade in
Corn the idol of popular passion. Their mode of
agitation was
eminently reasonable and wise; but it _was_ an
agitation, exciting
wild enthusiasm and fierce opposition, and must
be reckoned not
among the forces tending to quiet, but among those
that aroused
anxious care in the first nine years of the reign. And
it was a terrible
calamity that at last placed victory within their
grasp. The blight
on the potato first showed itself in 1845--a new,
undreamed-of
disaster, probably owing to the long succession of
unfavourable
seasons. And the potato blight meant almost certainly
famine in
no food but this
root. The food supply of a whole nation seemed on
the point of being
cut off. A loud demand was made for "the opening
of the ports."
By existing laws the ports admitted foreign grain
tinder import
duties varying in severity inversely with the
fluctuating price
of home-grown grain; thus a certain high level in
the cost of corn
was artificially maintained. These regulations,
though framed for
the protection of the native producer, did not bear
so heavily on the
consumer as the law of 1815 which they replaced;
and the principle
represented by them had a large following in the
country. But now
the argument from famine proved potent to decide the
wavering
convictions of some who had long been identified with the
cause of
Protection. The champions of Free Trade were sure of triumph
when Sir Robert
Peel became one of their converts; and the Corn Bill
which he carried in
the June of 1846, granting with some little
reserve and delay
the reforms which the Anti-Corn-Law League had been
formed to secure,
brought that powerful association to a quiet end.
But the threatening
Irish famine and the growing Irish disturbances
remained, to
embarrass the Ministry of Lord John Russell, which came
into power within
less than a week of that great success of the Tory
Minister, defeated
on a question of Irish polity on the very day when
his Corn Bill
received the assent of the House of Lords.
[Illustration: Lord
John Russell.]
We must not omit,
as in passing we chronicle this singular fortune of
a great Minister,
to notice the grief with which Her Majesty viewed
this turn of
events. Amid all the anxiety of the period, amid her
distress at the
cruel sufferings of her servants in
sources of
consolation: the pure and simple bliss of her home-life,
and the assistance
of two most valued counsellors--her husband and
her Prime Minister.
One was inseparably at her side, but one must now
leave it; and she
and the Prince met their inevitable loss with the
dignified outward
acquiescence that was fitting, but with sorrow not
less real. The
Queen would have bestowed on Peel as distinguished an
honour as she could
confer--the Order of the Garter; Peel deemed it
best to decline it
gratefully. "He was from the people and of the
people," and
wished so to remain, content if his Queen could say,
"You have been
a faithful servant, and have done your duty to the
country and to
myself."
In hapless
famine, the general
misery had reached a point where no fiscal
measures, however wise,
could at once alleviate it. The potato famine
held on its
dreadful way, and the darkest moment of Irish history
seemed reached in
the year when one hundred and seventy thousand
persons perished in
that island by hunger or hunger-bred fever. The
new plague affected
completely
overshadowed by the enormous bulk of Irish woe, which the
utmost lavishness
of charity seemed scarcely to lessen. That there
should be
turbulence and even violence accompanying all this
wretchedness was no
way surprising; but in most men's minds the
wretchedness held
the larger place, and deservedly so, for the
sedition, when ripe
enough, was dealt with sharply, though not
mercilessly, in
such a way that ere long all reasonable dread of a
civil war being
added to the other horrors, had passed away; and the
country had leisure
for such recovery as was possible to a land so
desolate.
[Illustration:
Thomas Chalmers.]
There was
contemporaneous distress enough and to spare in Great
failures equally
heavy in
capital was
absorbed by the mad speculations in railway shares; and
even Heaven's gift
of an abundant harvest, by at once lowering the
price of corn,
helped to depress commerce. Many banks stopped
payment, and even
the Bank of England seemed imperilled, saving
itself only by
adopting a bold line of policy advised by Government.
At the same time,
the Chartist movement was gathering the strength
which was to expend
itself in the futile demonstrations of 1848.
[Illustration: John
Henry Newman. _From a photograph by_ Mr. H. J.
Whitlock,
_Birmingham_.]
But as if it were
not enough for every department of political or
commercial life to
be so seriously affected, there was now arising
within the English
National Church itself a singular movement,
destined to affect
the religious history of the land as powerfully,
if not as
beneficially, as did the Evangelical revival of the last
century; and the
National Kirk of Scotland, after long and stern
contention on the
crucial point of civil control in things spiritual,
was ready for that
rending in twain from which arose the Free Kirk;
while other
religious bodies were torn by the same keen spirit of
strife, the same
revolt against ancient order, as that which was
distracting the
world of politics. The bitterness of the disruption
in
at the time all the
fervid power of a Chalmers; men honour the memory
of the champions,
while hoping to see the once sharp differences
composed for ever.
But the "Catholic Revival," initiated under the
leadership of
Newman, Pusey, and Keble, has proved to be no transient
disturbance: and no
figure has in relation to the Church history of
the half-century
the same portentous importance as that of John Henry
Newman, whose
powerful magnetism, as it attracted or repelled, drew
men towards
Romanism or drove them towards Rationalism, his logical
art, made more
impressive by the noble eloquence with which he
sometimes adorned
it, seeming to leave those who came under his spell
no choice between
the two extremes. When he finally decided on
withdrawing himself
from the Anglican and giving in his adhesion to
the Roman
communion, he set an example that has not yet ceased to be
imitated, to the
incalculable damage of the English Establishment.
Happily the massive
Nonconformity of the country was hardly touched
either by his
influence or his example.
It is pleasant to
turn from scenes of doubt and discord, of strife
and sorrow, to that
bright domestic life which was now vouchsafed to
the Sovereign, as
if in direct compensation for the storms that raved
and beat outside
her home--a home now brightened by the presence of
five joyous,
healthy children. It is a charming picture of the royal
pair and of the
manner of life in the palace--styled by one foreigner
"the one
really pleasant, comfortable English house, in which one
feels at one's ease
"--that is given us by the finely discerning
Mendelssohn,
invited by the Prince to "come and try his organ" before
leaving
husband and his
guest at the instrument, enjoying and aiding in their
musical
performance, and singing, "quite faultlessly and with
charming feeling
and expression," a song written by the great master
who was now paying
a farewell visit, with nothing of ceremony in it,
to English royalty.
With a few touches Mendelssohn makes us see the
delightful ease and
comfort of this royal interior, the Queen
gathering up the
sheets of music strewn by the wind over the
floor--the Prince
cleverly managing the organ-stops so as to suit the
master while he
played--the mighty rocking-horse and the two
birdcages beside
the music-laden piano in the Queen's own
sitting-room,
beautiful with pictures and richly-bound books--the
pretty difficulty
about her finding some of Mendelssohn's own songs
to sing to him,
since her music was packed up and taken away to
Claremont--her
naive confession that she had been "so frightened" at
singing before the
master,--all are chronicled with not less zest and
affection than the
graceful gift of a valuable ring "as a
remembrance"
to the artist from the Queen, through Prince Albert. It
is a much more
pleasing impression that we thus obtain than can be
given by details of
State ceremonial and visits from other
sovereigns. Of
these last there was no lack, and the princely
visitors were
entertained with all due pomp and splendour; but
neither on account
of these costly entertainments nor on behalf of
the royal children
did the Sovereign ask the nation for so much as a
shilling, the Civil
List sufficing for every unlooked-for outlay, now
that Prince Albert,
by dint of persevering effort, had succeeded in
putting the
arrangements of the royal household on a satisfactory
footing, sweeping
away a vast number of time-honoured, thriftless
expenses, and
rendering a wise and generous economy possible.
[Illustration:
Balmoral.]
Formerly the great
officers of the Crown were charged with the
oversight of the
commonest domestic business of the palace. Being
non-resident, these
overseers did no overseeing, and the actual
servants were
practically masterless. Hence arose numberless
vexations and
extravagant hindrances. In 1843 this objectionable form
of the division of
labour was brought to an end, and one Master of
the household who
did his work replaced the many officials who, by a
fiction of
etiquette, had been formerly supposed to do everything
while they did and
could do nothing. The long-needed reform could not
but be pleasing to
the Queen, being quite in harmony with the upright
principles that had
always ruled her conduct, she having begun her
reign by paying off
the debts of her dead father--debts contracted
not in her lifetime
nor on her account, and which a spirit less
purely honourable
might therefore have declined to recognise.
[Illustration:
Osborne House.]
Thanks to the
Prince's able management, the royal pair found it in
their power to
purchase for themselves the estate of Osborne, in the
Isle of Wight--a
charming retreat all their own, which they could
adorn for their
delight with no thought of the thronging public;
where the Prince
could farm and build and garden to his heart's
content, and all
could escape from the stately restraints of their
burdensome rank,
and from "the bitterness people create for
themselves in
London." Before very long they found for themselves
that Highland
holiday home of Balmoral which was to be so peculiarly
dear, and in which
Her Majesty--whose first visit to the _then_
discontented
Scotland was deemed quite a risky experiment--was so
completely to win
for herself the admiring love of her Scottish
subjects.
At Balmoral Mr.
Greville saw them some little time after their
acquisition of the
place, and witnesses to the "simplicity and ease"
with which they
lived, to the gay good humour that pervaded their
circle--"the
Queen running in and out of the house all day long,
often going out
alone, walking into the cottages, sitting down and
chatting with the
old women," the Prince free from trammels of
etiquette, showing
what native charm of manner and what high,
cultivated
intelligence were really his. The impression is identical
with that conveyed
by Her Majesty's published Journal of that
Highland life; and,
though lacking the many graceful details of that
record, the
testimony has its own value. Happy indeed was the
Sovereign for whom
the black cloud of those years showed such a
silver lining!
Other potentates were less happy, both as regarded
their private
blessings and their public fortunes.
It would be
agreeable to English feelings, but not altogether
consonant with
historic truth, if we could leave unnoticed the
scandalous attempts
on the Queen's life which marked the earliest
period of her reign
and have been renewed in later days. The first
attacks were by far
of the most alarming character, but Her Majesty,
whose escape on one
occasion seemed due only to her husband's prompt
action, never
betrayed any agitation or alarm; and her dauntless
bearing, and the
care for others which she manifested by dispensing
with the presence
of her usual lady attendants when she anticipated
one of these
assaults, immensely increased the already high esteem in
which her people
held her. The first assailant, a half-crazy lad of
low station named
Oxford, was shut up in a lunatic asylum. For the
second, a man named
Francis, the same plea could not be urged; but
the death-sentence
he had incurred was commuted to transportation for
life. Almost
immediately a deformed lad called Bean followed the
example of Francis.
Her Majesty, who had been very earnest to save
the life of the
miserable beings attacking her, desired an alteration
in the law as to
such assaults; and their penalty was fixed at seven
years'
transportation, or imprisonment not exceeding three years, to
which the court was
empowered to add a moderate number of
whippings--punishments
having no heroic fascination about them, like
that which for
heated and shallow brains invested the hideous doom of
"traitors."
The expedient proved in a measure successful, none of the
later assaults,
discreditable as they are, betraying a really
murderous
intention. It has been remarked as a noteworthy
circumstance that
popular English monarchs have been more exposed to
such dangers than
others who were cordially disliked. It is not
hatred that has
prompted these assassins so much as imbecile vanity
and the passion for
notoriety, misleading an obscure coxcomb to think
"His glory would
be great
According to _her_ greatness whom he
quenched."
CHAPTER III.
FRANCE AND ENGLAND.
[Illustration: Buckingham
Palace.]
It is necessary now to look at the relations of our
Government with
other nations, and
in particular with France, whose fortunes just at
this time had a
clearly traceable effect on our own.
For several years
the Court of England had been on terms of
unprecedented
cordiality with the French Court. The Queen had
personally visited
King Louis Philippe at the Chateau d'Eu--an event
which we must go
back as far as the days of Henry VIII to
parallel--and had
contracted a warm friendship for certain members of
his family, in
particular for the Queen, Marie Amelie, for the
widowed Duchess of
Orleans, a maternal cousin of Prince Albert, and
for the perfect
Louise, the truthful, unselfish second wife of
Leopold, King of
the Belgians, and daughter of the King of the
French. It was a
rude shock to all the warm feelings which our Queen,
herself
transparently honest, had learnt to cherish for her royal
friends when the
French King and his Minister, Guizot, entered into
that fatal intrigue
of theirs, "the Spanish marriages." Isabella, the
young Queen of
Spain, and her sister and heiress presumptive, Louisa,
were yet unmarried
at the time of the visit to the Chateau d'Eu; and
about that time an
undertaking was given by the French to the English
Government that the
Infanta Louisa should not marry a French prince
until her sister,
the actual Queen, "should be married and have
children." The
possible union of the crowns of France and Spain was
known for a dream
of French ambition, and was equally well known to
be an object of
dislike and dread to other European Powers. The
engagement which
the French King had now given seemed therefore well
calculated to
disarm suspicion and promote peace; but the one was
reawakened and the
other endangered when it became known that he had
so used his power
over the Spanish court as to procure that the royal
sisters of Spain
should be married on one day--Isabella, the Queen,
to the most unfit
and uncongenial of all the possible candidates for
her hand; Louisa to
King Louis Philippe's son, the Duke of
Montpensier. The
transaction on the face of it was far from
respectable, since
the credit and happiness of the young Spanish
Queen seemed to
have hardly entered into the consideration of those
who arranged for
her the _mariage de convenance_ into which she was
led blindfold; but
when regarded as a violation of good faith it was
additionally
displeasing. Queen Victoria, to whom the scheme was
imparted only when
it was ripe for execution, through her personal
friend Louise,
Queen of the Belgians, replied to the communication in
a tone of earnest,
dignified remonstrance; but apparently the King
was now too
thoroughly committed to his scheme to be deterred by any
reasoning or
reproaches, and the tragical farce was played out. It
had no good results
for France; England was chilled and alienated,
but the Spanish
crown never devolved on the Duchess of Montpensier.
Within two little
years from her marriage that princess and all the
French royal family
fled from France, so hastily that they had
scarcely money
enough to provide for their journey, and appeared in
England as
fugitives, to be aided and protected by the Queen, who
forgot all political
resentment, and remembered only her personal
regard for these
fallen princes.
The overthrow of
the Orleans dynasty in 1848 was a complete surprise,
and men have never
ceased to see something disgraceful in its amazing
suddenness. Here
was a great king, respected for wisdom and daring,
and supposed to
understand at every point the character of the land
he ruled, his power
appearing unshaken, while it was known to be
backed with an army
one hundred thousand strong. And almost without
warning a whirlwind
of insurrection against this solid power and this
able ruler broke
out, and in a few wild hours swept the whole fabric
into chaos. Nothing
caused more surprise at the moment than the
extreme bitterness
of animosity which the insurgents manifested
towards the king's
person, unless it were the tameness with which he
submitted to his
fate and the precipitancy of his flight. There was
something rotten in
the state of things, men said, which could thus
dissolve, crushed
like a swollen fungus by a casual foot. And indeed,
whether with
perfect justice or not, Louis Philippe's Administration
had come to be
deemed corrupt some time ere his fall. The free-spoken
Parisians had
openly flouted it as such: witness a mock advertisement
placarded in the
streets: "_A nettoyer, deux Chambres et une Cour_":
"Two
_Chambers_ and a _Court_ to clean." A French Government that had
been crafty, but
not crafty enough to conceal the fact, that was
rather contemned
for plotting than dreaded for unscrupulous energy,
was already in
peril. The still unsubdued revolutionary spirit,
working under the
smooth surface of French society, was the element
which accomplished
the destruction of this discredited Government.
The outbreak in
France acted like a spark in a powder magazine; ere
long great part of
Europe was shaken by the second great
revolutionary
upheaval, when potentates seemed falling and ancient
dynasties crumbling
on all sides--a period of eager hope to many,
followed by despair
when the reaction set in, accompanied in too many
places by
repressive measures of pitiless severity. The contemptuous
feeling with which
many Englishmen were wont to view such Continental
troubles is well
embodied in the lines which Tennyson put into the
mouth of one of his
characters, speaking of France:
"Yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden
heat,
The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,
The king is scared, the soldier will not
fight.
The little boys begin to shoot and stab,
A kingdom topples over with a shriek
Like an old woman, and down rolls the world
In mock-heroics--
Revolts, republics, revolutions, most
No graver than a schoolboy's barring out;
Too comic for the solemn things they are,
Too solemn for the comic touches in
them."
In this wild year
1848, which saw Revolution running riot on the
Continent, England
too had its share of troubles not less painfully
ridiculous; the
insurrection headed by Smith O'Brien, a chief of the
"Young
Ireland" party, coming to an inglorious end in the affray
that took place at
"the widow McCormick's cabbage-garden,
Ballingarry,"
in the month of July; the greatly dreaded Chartist
demonstration at
Kennington Common on April 10th by its conspicuous
failure having done
much to damp the hopes and spirits of the party
of disorder
generally.
It would be easy
now to laugh at the frustrated designs of the
Chartist leaders
and at the sort of panic they aroused in London: the
vast procession,
which was to have marched in military order to
overawe Parliament,
resolving itself into a confused rabble easily
dispersed by the
police, and the monster petition, that should
have
numbered six
million signatures, transported piecemeal to the House,
and there found to
have but two million names appended, many
fictitious; the
Chartist leader, completely cowed, thanking the Home
Office for its
lenient treatment; or, on the other hand, London and
its peaceful
inhabitants, distracted with wild rumours of combat and
bloodshed,
apprehending a repetition of Parisian madnesses, and
unaware how
thoroughly the Duke of Wellington, entrusted with the
defence of the
capital and its important buildings, had carried out
all needful
arrangements. The two hundred thousand special constables
sworn in to aid in
maintaining law and order on that day were visible
enough, and had
their utility in conveying a certain impression of
safety; the troops
whom the veteran commander held in readiness were
kept out of sight
till wanted. These rebellious spirits imagining
themselves
formidable and free, when caught in an invisible iron
network--these
terrified citizens, protected all unconsciously to
themselves against
the impotent foe whom they dreaded--might furnish
food for mirth if
we did not remember the real, deep, and widespread
misery which found
inarticulate but piteous expression in the
movement now coming
to confusion under the firm assertion of
necessary
authority. The disturbances must needs be quieted; but
hitherto it has
been the glory of our Victorian statesmen to have
understood that the
grievances which caused them must also be dealt
with. Now that all
which could be deemed wise and good in Chartist
demands has been
conceded, orderly and quietly, the name "Chartism"
has utterly lost
its dread significance.
[Illustration:
Napoleon III.]
No cruelly
vindictive measures of reprisal followed the collapse of
the agitation; none
indeed were needed. The revolutionary epidemic,
which had spread
hitherward from France, found our body politic in
too sound a
condition, and could not fasten on it; and the subsequent
convulsions which
shook our great neighbour hardly called forth an
answering thrill in
England. The strange transactions of December
1851, by means of
which Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince-President of
the new French
republic, succeeded in overthrowing that republic and
replacing it by an
empire of which he was the head, did indeed excite
displeasure and
distrust in many minds; and though it was believed
that his
high-handed proceedings had averted much disorder, the
English Government
was not prepared at once to accept all the
proffered
explanations of French diplomacy; but the then foreign
Secretary, Lord
Palmerston, by the rash proclamation of his
individual
approval, committed the Ministry of which he was one to a
recognition of the
_de facto_ Monarch of France. This step was but
the last of many
instances in which Palmerston had acted without due
reference to the
premier's or the Sovereign's opinion--a course of
conduct which had
justly displeased the Queen, and had drawn from her
grave and pointed
remonstrances. The final transgression led to his
resignation; but
its effects on our relations with France remained.
Meanwhile the
Emperor's consistent and probably sincere display of
goodwill towards
England, the apparent complacency with which the
French nation
acquiesced in his rule, and the outward prosperity
accompanying it,
did their natural work in conciliating approval, and
in making men
willing to forget the obscure and tortuous steps by
which he had
climbed to power. One day he and France were to pay for
these things; but
meanwhile he was a popular ruler, accepted and
approved by the
nation he governed, anxious for its prosperity, and
earnest in keeping
it friendly with Great Britain, which he had found
a hospitable home
in the days of his obscurity, which was again to
offer an asylum to
him in a day of utter disaster and overthrow, and
where his life,
chequered by vicissitudes stranger than any known to
romance, was to
come to a quiet close. It has been the singular
fortune of Her
Majesty to receive into the sacred shelter of her
realm two dethroned
monarchs, two fallen fortunes, two dynasties cast
out from sovereign
power, while her own throne, "broad-based upon her
people's will, and
compassed by the inviolate sea," has stood firm
and unshaken, even
by a breath. And it has been her special honour to
cherish with
affection, even warmer in their adversity, the friends
who had gained her
regard when their prosperity seemed as bright and
their great
position as assured as her own. Visiting the Emperor
Napoleon in his
splendid capital, feted and welcomed by him and his
Empress with every
flattering form of honour that his ingenuity could
devise or his power
enable him to show, she did not forget the
Orleans family and
their calamities, but frankly urged on her host
the injustice of
the confiscations with which he had requited the
supposed hostility
of those princes, and endeavoured to persuade him
to milder measures.
She visited in his company the tomb of the
lamented Duke of
Orleans; and her first care on returning to England
was to show some
kindly attention to the discrowned royalties who
were now her
guests. In the same spirit, in after years, she extended
a friendly hand to
the exiled Empress Eugenie, escaping from new
revolutionary
perils to English safety, and altogether declined to
consider her
personal regard for the lady, whose attractions had
deservedly gained
it in brighter days, as being in any sense
complicated with
matters political. The resolute loyalty with which
she at once
maintained her private friendships and kept them entirely
apart from her
public action compelled toleration from the persons
most inclined to
take umbrage at it.
An instance of
successful and courageous enterprise on Her Majesty's
part may well close
this brief notice of the internal and external
convulsions which
for a time shook, though they did not shatter, the
peace of our realm.
In the late summer of 1849 a royal visit to
Ireland, now just
reviving from its misery, was planned and carried
out with complete
success; the wild Irish enthusiasm blazed up into
raptures of a loyal
welcome, and the Sovereign, who played her part
with all the
graceful perfection that her compassionate heart and
quick intelligence
suggested, was delighted with the little tour,
from which those
who shared in it prophesied "permanent good" for
Ireland. At least
it had a healing, beneficial effect at the moment;
and perhaps more
could not have been reasonably hoped. Later royal
visits to the
sister isle have been less conspicuous, but all fairly
successful.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CRIMEAN WAR.
[Illustration: The
Crystal Palace, 1851.]
The
"Exhibition year," 1851, appears to our backward gaze almost like
a short day of
splendid summer interposed between two stormy seasons;
but at the time men
were more inclined to regard it as the first of a
long series of
halcyon days. Indeed, the unexampled number and
success of the
various efforts to redress injury and reform abuses,
which had
signalised the new reign, might almost justify those
sanguine spirits,
who now wrote and spoke as though wars and
oppression were
well on their way to the limbo of ancient barbarisms,
and who looked to
unfettered commerce as the peace-making civiliser,
under whose
influence the golden age--in more senses than one might
revisit the earth.
[Illustration: Lord
Ashley.]
We have already
referred to certain of the new transforming forces
whose action tended
to heighten such hopes; there are two reforms as
yet unnamed by us,
distinguishing these early years, which are
particularly
significant; though one at least was stoutly opposed by
a special class of
reformers. We refer to the legislation dealing
with mines and
factories and those employed therein, with which is
inseparably
connected the venerable name of the late Lord
Shaftesbury; and to
the abolition of duelling in the army, secured by
the untiring
efforts of Prince Albert, who had enlisted on his side
the immense
influence of the Duke of Wellington.
That peculiar
modern survival of the ancient trial by combat, the
duel, was still
blocking the way of English civilisation when Her
Majesty assumed the
sceptre. A palpable anachronism, it yet seemed
impossible to make
men act on their knowledge of its antiquated and
barbarous
character; legislation was fruitless of good against a
practice
consecrated by false sentiment and false ideas of honour;
but when dislodged
from its chief stronghold, the army, it became
quickly discredited
everywhere, with the happy result noted by a
contemporary
historian, that _now_ "a duel in England would seem as
absurd and
barbarous as an ordeal by touch or a witch-burning."
Militarism, that
mischievous counterfeit of true soldierly spirit,
could not thrive
where the duel was discountenanced; and the friends
of peace might
rejoice with reason.
But those peaceful
agitators, the sagacious, energetic Cobden and his
allies, resented
rather sharply the interference of the Lord Ashley
of that day with
the "natural laws" of the labour market--laws to
whose operation
some of the party attributed the cruelly excessive
hours of work in
factories, and the indiscriminate employment of all
kinds of labour,
even that of the merest infants. Undeterred by
these objections,
convinced that no law which sanctioned and promoted
cruelty did so with
true authority, Lord Ashley persisted in the
struggle on which
he had entered 1833; in 1842 he scored his first
great success in
the passing of an Act that put an end to the
employment of women
and children in mines and collieries; in 1844 the
Government carried
their Factories Act, which lessened and limited
the hours of
children's factory labour, and made other provisions for
their benefit. It
was not all that he had striven for, but it was
much; he accepted
the compromise, but did not slacken in his efforts
still further to
improve the condition of the children. His career of
steady benevolence
far outstretched this early period of battle and
endurance; but
already his example and achievement were fruitful of
good, and his
fellow-labourers were numerous. Nothing succeeds like
success: people had
sneered at the mania for futile legislation that
po