1850 ON THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS. 289 revolution in Ireland, and keeping the confidence of the Radicals, which is necessary for a peaceful carrying out of Parliamentary and Financial Reform. 'This object can only be obtained by a junction of the two parties now, leaving the Papal measure an open question, allowing Lord John to bring it forward, and Sir James Graham to oppose it, while it may be further modified to meet the views of Lord Stanley and the Protectionists. This Bill passed, there will be nothing left to interfere with an identity of opinion in the new Coalition. The Irish Members will feel confidence in the intentions of the Government; the country will feel a security in the experience and conservative tendency of the men who are to prepare the measure of reform in the franchise; the Radicals will feel confidence in Sir James Graham's economical bias, and the Queen will have an efficient and strong Government.' 'So matters stand in theory. In practice innumerable personal difficulties will have to be overcome; as, for instance, who is to form that Government? The Queen has the fullest confidence, however, in the patriotism of the men who have to combine, and hopes from it, that they will make every personal sacrifice on account of the difficulty of the situation, and the danger the country will be exposed to by further vacillation in the conduct of her Government. "The Queen requests the Duke of Wellington's opinion upon the problem here proposed.' Nothing could indicate more clearly the absolute deadlock into which the political machine had been brought, than the fact, that the idea could have been for a moment entertained of leaving the mode of dealing with the Papal aggression as an 'open question,' in a Coalition Ministry. The spectacle of the members of Government, speaking and voting against each other on this the most prominent and vehemently agitated question of the day, would have been humiliating to the actors in it, and revolting to public feeling. Who, moreover, might say that discord on this topic would not extend to other questions? All this, as might have been expected, was 1 Among the Prince's papers of this period is an autograph 'Scheme for a Coalition Government of Whigs and Peelites, sketched by the Prince for his own amusement.' His scheme was realised in most of its details on the formation of Lord Aberdeen's Administration in December, 1852. But one name appears in it, which has never been found in any Ministerial arrangementsMr. Roebuck as Vice-President of the Board of Control. VOL. II.-13 290 LORD J. RUSSELL RESUMES OFFICE. 1820 strongly felt by both Lord Lansdowne and by the Duke of Wellington. On the day of Lord John Russell's resignation (23rd February), the Duke, who happened to be a guest at Windsor Castle, had expressed his regret to the Queen that it had become necessary, as in the present posture of affairs a Liberal Government seemed to him to be the only possible or safe one. In this conclusion he was confirmed by the failure of Lord Stanley to attach to him 'the confidence and support of any of the colleagues in office and supporters of the views of the late Sir Robert Peel.' On a review of the whole facts, his conclusion, as expressed to the Queen in the Memorandum just quoted, was, 'that the party still filling the offices, till Her Majesty's pleasure shall be declared, is the one best calculated to carry on the Government at the present moment.' Accordingly, on the 3rd of March, Her Majesty again invited Lord John Russell and his colleagues to resume office. The invitation was accepted, and the same evening both Houses were informed of the fact. They were not unprepared for it, but received, with indifference, the announcement of what was plainly regarded by them as a pis aller which must for the moment be endured. A meeting of 162 Members friendly to the Government was held at Downing Street next day, at which assurances of loyal support were given. The Liberal party had learned too sharp a lesson from the consequences of leaving their leader in the lurch, on Mr. Locke King's motion, to be likely to fall again into the same error. It was equally the interest of Lord Stanley's followers not again to provoke a crisis. Affairs might thus be expected to go on smoothly for a time, and the Government resumed its functions, thoroughly conscious of its own weakness, and with little hope of adding to its strength. On the 7th of March the subject of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was resumed, when Sir George Grey formally announced that the more stringent clauses were to be withdrawn, and that it would be confined to a simple declaration of the illegality of these Titles. In this form it pleased nobody. It disappointed the expectations raised by the Durliam Letter, and was viewed as a pitiful outcome of all the indignation and distrust with which press and platform had rung for months against the ambitious arrogance of the Papal 2 When Mr. Locke King, later in the session, tried to advance his Bill to the second reading, the majority against it (2nd of April) was 216, in a House of 382 Members. 1850 CLOSE OF SESSION. 291 hierarchy. It did not remove the objections of the statesmen who deprecated all legislative action on the subject; and it added another topic of grievance and agitation to those of which Ireland already cherished too many. Still the popular sentiment, that something must be done, to show that the country was as strongly Protestant at heart as ever, bore down every opposition. The debate upon the second reading went on for seven nights. Among those who spoke most vigorously against the Bill were Sir J. Graham, Gladstone, Roundell Palmer, Cobden, Bright, Roebuck, Milner Gibson, Hume; but on the division their supporters numbered only 95, while no fewer than 438 voted for the second reading. Notwithstanding this majority, the opposition to the measure in its subsequent stages was so obstinately continued, that it was not till the 6th of July that it was read a third time in the House of Commons. Two nights of debate sufficed for the discussion on the second reading in the House of Lords, where it was carried by 265 votes as against 38. The Bill underwent further discussion on two other nights, but was finally passed without alteration on the 29th of July. It soon afterwards received the Royal assent, and becoming, as its opponents predicted it would become, a dead letter, was repealed in 1871 (34 & 35 Vic. c. 53). In other respects, the session of 1851 was comparatively barren of legislation. Yielding to the objections urged to his first Budget, Sir Charles Wood withdrew it for another, which he submitted to the House of Commons on the 5th of April. The Window Tax was totally repealed, and in its stead a House Tax substituted, of ninepence in the pound. An attempt by Mr. Herries to cut down the Income Tax, with a view to its total repeal, was defeated by a majority of only 48, but Mr. Hume succeeded in carrying a motion against the Government that the grant of this tax should be limited to one year. An important measure was passed for enabling the Court of Chancery, by the creation of new judicial offices, to perform its functions with more despatch. But the time lost in the discussions on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the distraction caused by the Great Exhibition, led to the postponement of many questions which might otherwise have pressed for a solution. CHAPTER XLII. · Arrangements for Opening of Great Exhibition-Foreign Ambassadors refuse to present Address on the Occasion-Opening Day, described by the Queen-Great SuccessCongratulations to the Prince-His Speeches at the Royal Academy Dinner, and at Meeting of Society for Propagating the Gospel. THE anxiety caused by the prolonged Ministerial crisis had added so greatly to the fatigue of their busy and exhausting life in London, that the Queen and Prince were glad to snatch a few days of rest and pure air at Osborne, to which they went on the 8th of March. One of the extensive alterations devised there by the Prince, the remodelling of the valley which slopes from the lower terrace towards the sea-a piece of bold and most successful landscape-gardening-had just been completed. The Prince records his satisfaction with it in his diary; and the labors of a correspondence, always great, and now infinitely augmented by the preparations for the coming Exhibition, were agreeably relieved by the planting of rhododendrons and other shrubs, to give color and richness to the new outlines of his landscape pictures. Greedily did he turn to the sweet restoratives which Nature ministered from the spectacle of Europe falling back into the trammels of irresponsible power. How he felt on this subject may be inferred from a few words in a letter at this time to Colonel Phipps :-" An outbreak at Paris would be terrible, as giving the Russian reaction all over the Continent still further power and excuse.' The effect of this reaction in Germany touched him in his most sensitive point. Its influence had become paramount at Berlin. In one direction only was Russian policy acceptable to him. The efforts which Austria was now making to introduce her whole Empire into the German Bund—a project most obnoxious to the National German party-was viewed with no less hostility by Russia, to whom the accession of strength which this would have brought to Austria was as unpalatable as the idea of an United Germany. 1851 ARRANGEMENTS FOR GREAT EXHIBITION. 293 On the 25th of March the Court returned to London, and from this time the attention of the Prince was engaged night and day in the arrangements for opening the Exhibition on the 1st of May. The building had been completed and given. over to the Commissioners by the 1st of January. It had risen with a rapidity wholly unexampled, and by its beauty and fitness had surpassed all that had been hoped from the ingenuity of its plan. Goods were now pouring in from all quarters, and the success of the Exhibition as a magnificent spectacle of the industry of all nations was no longer doubtful. It still, however, both at home and abroad, was the subject of attack. During the debate on the Address on the first night of the session, Colonel Sibthorp had prayed that hail or lightning might descend from heaven to defeat the ill-advised project. If others did not invoke doom on the structure itself, they were no less fervent in prophesying doom to property, to morals, nay, even to the State itself, as the inevitable result of bringing into London a concourse of all the bad characters in Europe. These fears, absurd at the best, became ludicrous in the light of the actual facts as they presented themselves in the holiday aspect of London during the next six months. But they cost the Prince and his coadjutors a world of trouble, as may be seen by the following letter to the Dowager Duchess of Coburg: 'Just at present I am more dead than alive from overwork. The opponents of the Exhibition work with might and main to throw all the old women into panic and to drive myself crazy. The strangers, they give out, are certain to commence a thorough revolution here, to murder Victoria and myself, and to proclaim the Red Republic in England; the plague is certain to ensue from the confluence of such vast multitudes, and to swallow up those whom the increased price of everything has not already swept away. For all Thackeray's 'May Day Ode' expressed to a nicety the prevailing feeling on the subject: But yesterday a naked sod, The dandies sneered from Rotten Row, And cantered o'er it to and fro; And see, 'tis done! As though 'twere by a wizard's rod, Leaps like a fountain from the grass To meet the sun! This beautiful poem, cut from The Times, was preserved by the Prince, as it well deserved to be, among his private records of the Exhibition. |