434 PROPOSED STATUE TO PRINCE. 1853 'Now Palmerston is again in his seat and all is quiet. The best of the joke is, that, because he went out, the Opposition journals extolled him to the skies, in order to damage the Ministry, and now the Ministerial journals have to do so, in order to justify the reconciliation (?). . . . I fear the whole affair will damage the Ministry seriously. Palmerston gulps down, it is true, all his objections to the Reform Bill (which is to be altered in none of its essentials), but he will lead the world to believe that it is to him concessions have been made. 'Meanwhile, we are getting nearer and nearer war, and I entertain little hope of its being averted. The Emperor of Russia is manifestly quite mad. We shall now be compelled to take possession of the Black Sea, so as to prevent further disasters like that of Sinope, and he may very well regard this as a war measure, and himself declare war; or it may be brought on any day by the fleets coming into collision. God be merciful to the world, if it come to this! . . .' Reserving the painful subject of the calumnious attacks upon the Prince, which were continued from this time till Parliament met in February, for another chapter, let us close this by a letter of a most characteristic kind addressed by him to Lord Granville a few weeks before. A proposal had been set on foot in the City for erecting a statue of the Prince in commemoration of the Great Exhibition, and had given rise to much discussion. From notoriety of this kind the Prince shrank with peculiar sensitiveness; still, there were not wanting hints in the press from the class of publicists, who know people better than those people know themselves, that he was himself the instigator of the movement. Some of his friends thought that it would be well for him to make a public protest against the proposed statue. As, however, he had never been consulted, and did not even know to whom he could address his protest, he felt that it would be officious and uncalled for. 'My dear Lord Granville,-Many thanks for your letter, evincing such kind interest in what concerns me. 'I did not see the letter in The Times; but I read yesterday's leading article, which led me at once to considerations similar to those which struck you. Moreover, it is evident to me that the Lord Mayor started the plan chiefly as 1853 IIIS OBJECTIONS TO IT. 435 the means of bringing himself into notice, after other Mayors had gone to Paris, taken the lead in education, &c.; and that The Times is attacking the plan chiefly to hit the Lord Mayor, as it had hit his predecessors. My unfortunate person will thus probably become their battle-ground; and although the first article of The Times is civil, its music generally goes on crescendo, and the next may be purposely offensive, and meet with 'shouts of applause from a portion of the audience. me." 'Still, I do not see how I can with any dignity or respect for myself take notice of the squabble, and cry out for mercy, or to whom I could write such a letter as you suggest. I have never been consulted in any way in the matter, and the people have a perfect right to subscribe for and erect a monument in remembrance of the Great Exhibition; nor could I volunteer to say, "You must not connect it in any way with 'I can say, with perfect absence of humbug, that I would much rather not be made the prominent feature of such a monument, as it would both disturb my quiet rides in Rotten Row to see my own face staring at me, and if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity, like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy. The Times' argument, however, that it would be premature to place a statue to me, is of no great force in this instance, as I suppose it is not intended to recognise general merits in me, which ought yet to be proved, and might possibly be found wanting on longer acquaintance, but rather to commemorate the fact of the Exhibition of 1851, over which I presided; which fact will remain unaltered were I to turn out a Nero or a Caligula. 'As in all cases of doubt what to do, it is generally safest to do nothing, I think it better to remain perfectly quiet at present. If I were officially consulted, I should say, "Mark the corners of the building by permanent stones, with inscriptions containing ample records of the event, and give the surplus money to the erection of the museums of art and science." 'Believe me, &c. 'Windsor Castle, 3rd November, 1853.' CHAPTER L. Violent Attacks in the Press upon the Prince-Letters on the Subject by the Queen, the Prince, Lord Aberdeen, and Baron Stockmar-He is vindicated in Parliament by Leaders of the Ministry and of the Opposition-The Calumnies cease. 'He that will not be patient of slander must procure himself a chair out of this world's circle,' was a saying of the great Lord Burghley. The Prince had already had his full share of the misrepresentation to which eminence is always liable. He had borne it without a murmur; but he was now to have his 'patience of slander' put to the fullest test. On the announcement of Lord Palmerston's resignation, some of the journals conspicuous for their admiration of that statesman's talents began to throw out insinuations in various forms that the Prince had used his position to control the action of the Government, and to advance the interests of foreign dynasties to the prejudice of England. The folly of these charges was at least equal to their malignity. The journalist who could say of the Prince-as, however, was saidthat he was the chief agent of the Austro-Belgian-CoburgOrleans clique, the avowed enemies of England, and the subservient tools of Russian ambition,' might have been thought, by his very language, to have forfeited all claim to a moment's consideration. For he asked the British people to believe that the man, of whose intelligence and pure feeling they had long had experience, was foolish enough and heartless enough to imperil the interests of his Queen, of his children, and of the country of his adoption, for the sake of distant relatives, and of dynasties with which the well-known tenor of his political opinions had again and again shown that he was in no sympathy. What, too, must all our Governments have been about, that such an influence could have been possible, or that there could have been a shadow of truth in the further charge, that 'our foreign policy was mainly directed by the Prince Consort?' 1854 SYSTEMATIC ATTACKS ON THE PRINCE. 437 The voice which gave utterance to these charges was the same voice which had made itself heard at the end of 1851. Again the suggestion was made, that now as then the resignation of Lord Palmerston was due to an influence behind the throne.' The coincidence was at least remarkable; not the less so, that when Lord Palmerston withdrew his resignation, the journals known to support his views immediately changed their tone with respect to the Prince and to the Court. But the outcry which had been raised was now taken up by others. It was gravely put forward as a great political crime, that the Prince was occasionally present at the interviews between the Queen and her Ministers, that the Queen discussed political questions with him, that he ventured to have opinions on matters of policy foreign and domestic, and that these had weight in guiding and strengthening the opinions of Her Majesty. As if the Sovereign must not by the very instincts of nature lean for counsel, in the continuous care of her kingdom, upon her nearest and surest friend, and that friend a Privy Councillor, subject to the same rules as her Ministers, and liable to the same penalties! An active correspondence with foreign courts was alleged to be kept up by the Prince, with the view of defeating the policy of Her Majesty's responsible advisers, and thus secrets of state, it was said, ceased to be secret, where it was most important they should not be known. No effort was spared by the class of politicians whose cue it was to injure the monarchy, or to resent upon the Prince their personal or political dislikes, to influence public opinion to his prejudice. They were so far successful, that, as was said at the time by the Spectator-a paper then distinguished for the breadth and independence of its views—'a whisper, which was first insinuated for party purposes, has grown into a roar, and a constructive hint has swelled into a positive and monstrous fiction. . The story, not only told in all parts of England a day or two ago, but by some believed, was, that Prince Albert was a traitor to his Queen, that he had been impeached for high treason, and, finally, that on a charge of high treason he had been arrested and committed to the Tower!' How the Prince bore up under imputations, which, though he might despise them, were especially painful to him, after all he had done to win the confidence of this country, will best be shown by his correspondence. To Baron Stockmar he wrote, on the 7th of January, 1854: 438 ATTACKS ON PRINCE CONTINUED. 1854 'Dear Stockmar,-Physically we are all well, except a catarrh on my part. Morally, in this new year, as in the old, we have a world of torment. 'The attacks upon me continue with uninterrupted violence, only with this difference, that the Radical press has given them up, and the Protectionist papers now vie with each other in the unscrupulous falsehoods and vehemence with which they persevere in them. There is no kind of treason to the country of which I have not been guilty. All this must be borne tranquilly until the meeting of Parliament on the 31st, when Aberdeen and John Russell are prepared to undertake my defence. The Eastern question makes no progress for the better, and war in spring is becoming every day more probable. 'The Cabinet is now at one about the Reform measure, and Palmerston has accepted the whole Bill! Louis Napoleon and he are the idols of the public, "the favourites for the Derby!" Again, on the 11th of January, he writes : : 'I will write you only one word about the unceasing attacks upon me in the press here, which have really reached an incredible height. I do this in no spirit of petty complaint over what I am quite able to bear calmly and in reliance on my good conscience, but only to keep you au cou rant. 'Parliament meets on the 31st, and till then not the least notice will be taken of all that has been said; but it will then come in all probability to an éclaircissement, should those who stab in the dark not be afraid of an open conflict. My health is tolerable; I am somewhat teased with rheumatic pains in the shoulder and with catarrh. 'I enclose the Daily News' leading article of to-day.' I miss you terribly at times like these, when a talk with you would do me so much good.' 1 This article proceeded on the assumption, that all the charges against the Prince were well founded. It acknowledged his 'many estimable and amiable qualities,' but with a sagacity, which the readers of this work can appreciate for themselves, it adds: We never expected that, educated as he has been, connected as he is by family ties, he ever could be brought to feel and act as an English Liberal.' He is afterwards spoken of as a Prince who has breathed from childhood the air of Courts tainted by the imaginative servility of Goethe-who has been indoctrinated in early manhood in the stationary or retrograde political principles of the school of Niebuhr and Savigny !' |