 Section 1 of A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, VOLUME 1. A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA TO THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1880 VOLUME 1 by Justin McCarthy, CHAPTER I THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE QUEEN, PART 1. Before half-past two o'clock on the morning of June 20, 1837, William IV was lying dead in Windsor Castle, while the messengers were already hurrying off to Kensington Palace to bear to his successor her summons to the throne. The illness of the King had been but short, and at one time, even after it had been pronounced alarming, it seemed to take so hopeful a turn that the physicians began to think it would pass harmlessly away. But the King was an old man, was an old man even when he came to the throne, and when the dangerous symptoms again exhibited themselves their warning was very soon followed by fulfillment. The death of King William may be fairly regarded as having closed an era of our history. With him we may believe ended the reign of personal government in England. William was indeed a constitutional king in more than mere name. He was to the best of his lights a faithful representative of the constitutional principle. He was as far in advance of his two predecessors in understanding and acceptance of the principle as his successor has proved herself beyond him. Constitutional government has developed itself gradually, as everything else has done in English politics. The written principle and code of its system it would be as vain to look for as for the British Constitution itself. King William still held to and exercised the right to dismiss his ministers when he pleased, and because he pleased. His father had held to the right of maintaining favorite ministers in defiance of repeated votes of the House of Commons. It would not be easy to find any written rule or declaration of constitutional law pronouncing decisively that either was in the wrong. But in our day we should believe that the constitutional freedom of England was outraged, or at least put in the extremist danger if a sovereign were to dismiss a ministry at mere pleasure or to retain it in despite of the expressed wish of the House of Commons. Virtually therefore there was still personal government in the reign of William IV. With his death the long chapter of its history came to an end. We find it difficult now to believe that it was a living principle, openly at work among us if not openly acknowledged, so lately as in the reign of King William. The closing scenes of King William's life were undoubtedly characterized by some personal dignity, as a rule sovereigns show that they know how to die. Perhaps the necessary consequence of their training, by virtue of which they come to regard themselves always as the central figures in great state pageantry, is to make them assume a manner of dignity on all occasions when the eyes of their subjects may be supposed to be on them. Even if the dignity of bearing is not the free gift of nature. The manners of William IV had been, like those of most of his brothers, somewhat rough and overbearing. He had been an unmanageable naval officer. He had again and again disregarded or dissipated orders, and at last it had been found convenient to withdraw him from active service altogether and allow him to rise through the successive ranks of his profession by a merely formal and technical process of ascent. In his more private capacity he had, when younger, indulged more than once in unseemly and insufferable freaks of temper. He had made himself unpopular while Duke of Clarence by his strenuous opposition to some of the measures which were especially desired by all the enlightenment of the country. He was, for example, a determined opponent of the measures for the abolition of the slave trade. He had wrangled publicly in open debate with some of his brothers in the House of Lords, and words had been interchanged among the royal princes which could not be heard in our day even in the hottest debates of the more turbulent House of Commons. But William seems to have been one of the men whom increased responsibility improves. He was far better as a king than as a prince. He proved that he was able, at least to understand, that first duty of a constitutional sovereign which to the last day of his active life, his father, George III, never could be brought to comprehend, that the personal predilections and prejudices of the king must sometimes give way to the public interest. Nothing perhaps in life became him like to the leaving of it. His closing days were marked by gentleness and kindly consideration for the feelings of those around him. When he awoke on June 18th, he remembered that it was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. He expressed a strong, pathetic wish to live over that day, even if he were never to see another sunset. He called for the flag which the Duke of Wellington always sent him on that anniversary, and he laid his hand upon the eagle which adorned it and said he felt revived by the touch. He had himself attended since his accession the Waterloo banquet. But this time the Duke of Wellington thought it would perhaps be more seemly to have the dinner put off and sent accordingly to take the wishes of his majesty. The king declared that the dinner must go on as usual and sent to the Duke a friendly, simple message expressing his hope that the guests might have a pleasant day. He talked in his homely way to those about him, his direct language seeming to acquire a sort of tragic dignity from the approach of the death that was so near. He had prayers read to him again and again, and called those near to him to witness that he had always been a faithful believer in the truths of religion. He had his dispatch boxes brought to him, and tried to get through some business with his private secretary. It was remarked, with some interest, that the last official act he ever performed was to sign with his trembling hand the pardon of a condemned criminal. Even a far nobler reign than his would have received new dignity if it closed with a deed of mercy. When some of those around him endeavored to encourage him with the idea that he might recover and live many years yet, he declared with his simplicity, which had something oddly pathetic in it, that he would be willing to live ten years yet for the sake of the country. The poor king was evidently under the sincere conviction that England could hardly get on without him. His consideration for his country, whatever whimsical thoughts it may suggest, is entitled to some at least of the respect which we give to the dying grown of a pit or a mirabeau, who fears with too much reason that he leaves a blank not easily to be filled. Among royal tarry-bricks William had been jocularly called by Robert Burns fifty years before, when there was yet a popular belief that he would come all right and do brilliant and gallant things, and become a stout sailor in whom a seafaring nation might feel pride. He disappointed all such expectations, but it must be owned that when responsibility came upon him he disappointed expectations and knew in a different way, and was a better sovereign, more deserving of the complementary title of Patriot King than even his friends would have ventured to anticipate. There were eulogies pronounced upon him after his death in both houses of Parliament as a matter of course. It is not necessary, however, to set down to mere court homage or parliamentary form some of the praises that were bestowed on the dead king by Lord Melbourne and Lord Bruim and Lord Gray, a certain tone of sincerity, not quite free perhaps from surprise, seems to run through some of these expressions of admiration. They seemed to say that the speakers were at one time or another considerably surprised to find that after all William really was able and willing on grave occasions to subordinate his personal likings and dislikings to considerations of state policy and to what was shown to him to be for the good of the nation. In this sense, at least, he may be called a Patriot King. We have advanced a good deal since that time, and we require somewhat higher and more positive qualities and a sovereign now to excite our political wonder. But we must judge William by the rains that went before, and not the rain that came after him, and with that consideration born in mind we may accept the panagiric of Lord Melbourne and Lord Gray and admit that on the whole he was better than his education, his early opportunities, and his early promise. William IV, third son of George III, had left no children who could have succeeded to the throne, and the crown passed therefore to the daughter of his brother, fourth son of George, the Duke of Kent. This was the Princess Alexandrina Victoria, who was born at Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819. The princess was therefore at this time little more than 18 years of age. The Duke of Kent died a few months after the birth of his daughter, and the child was brought up under the care of his widow. She was well brought up, both as regards her intellect and her character her training was excellent. She was taught to be self-reliant, brave, and systematical. Prudence and economy were inculcated on her as though she had been born to be poor. One is not generally inclined to attach much importance to what historians tell us of the education of contemporary princes or princesses, but it cannot be doubted that the Princess Victoria was trained for intelligence and goodness. The death of the King of England has everywhere caused the greatest sensation. Cousin Victoria is said to have shown astonishing self-possession. She undertakes a heavy responsibility, especially at the present moment when parties are so excited and all rest their hopes on her. These words are an extract from a letter written on July 4, 1837, by the late Prince Albert, the Prince Consort of so many happy years. The letter was written to the Prince's father from Bunn. The young Queen had indeed behaved with remarkable self-possession. There is a pretty description which has been often quoted, but which will bear sighting once more given by Miss Wynn of the manor in which the young Sovereign received the news of her accession to the throne. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of Conningham, left Windsor for Kensington Palace where the Princess Victoria had been residing to inform her of the King's death. It was two hours after midnight when they started and they did not reach Kensington until five o'clock in the morning. They knocked, they rang, they thumped, for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate. They were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms where they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform her royal highness that they requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay, in another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, We are come on business of state to the Queen, and even her sleep must give way to that. It did, and to prove that she did not keep them waiting in a few minutes, she came into the room in a loose white nightgown in Shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet and slippers, tears in her eyes but perfectly collected and dignified. The Prime Minister, Lord Melburn, was presently sent for, and a meeting of the Privy Council summoned for eleven o'clock, when the Lord Chancellor administered the usual oaths to the Queen, and her majesty received in return the oaths of allegiance of the Cabinet ministers and other Privy Councilors present. Mr. Greville, who is usually as little disposed to record any enthusiastic admiration of royalty and royal personages, as Humboldt, or von Hagen von Enza, could have been, has described the scene in words well worthy of quotation. The King died at twenty minutes after two yesterday morning, and the young Queen met the Council at Kensington Palace at eleven. Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behavior, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this trying occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace, notwithstanding the short notice which was given. The first thing to be done was to teach her her lesson, which for this purpose Melburn had himself to learn. She bowed to the lords, took her seat, and then read her speech in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment. She was quite plainly dressed and in mourning. After she had read her speech and taken and signed the oath for the security of the Church of Scotland, the privy Councilors were sworn, the two royal dukes first by themselves, and as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt a contrast between their civil and their natural relations, and this was the only sign of emotion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging. She kissed them both, and rose from her chair, and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn and who came one after another to kiss her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she make the slightest difference in her manner or show any in her countenance to any individual, of any rank, station, or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne and the ministers and the Duke of Wellington and Peel approached her. She went through the whole ceremony, occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction, when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and ingratiating. Sir Robert Peel told Mr. Greville that he was amazed at her manner and behavior, at her apparent deep sense of her situation, and at the same time her firmness. The Duke of Wellington said in his blunt way that if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her performer part better. At twelve, says Mr. Greville, she held a council at which she presided with as much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her life, and though Lord Lansdown and my colleague had contrived between them to make some confusion with the council papers, she was not put out by it. She looked very well, and though so small and stature and without much pretension to beauty, the gracefulness of her manner and the good expression of her countenance, give her on the whole a very agreeable appearance, and with her youth inspire an excessive interest in all who approach her, and which I can't help feeling myself. In short, she appears to act with every sort of good taste and good feeling as well as good sense, and as far as it is gone nothing can be more favorable than the impression that she has made, and nothing can promise better than her manner and conduct do, though Mr. Greville somewhat superfluously adds, it would be rash to count too confidently upon her judgment and discretion in more weighty matters. The interest or curiosity with which the demeanor of the young queen was watched was all the keener because the world in general knew so little about her. Not merely was the world in general thus ignorant, but even the statesmen and officials in closest communication with court circles were in almost absolute ignorance. According to Mr. Greville, whose authority, however, is not to be taken too implicitly, except as to matters which he actually saw, the young queen had been privately kept in such seclusion by her mother, never, he says, having slept out of her bedroom, nor been alone with anybody but herself and the baroness Lateson, that not one of her acquaintance, none of the attendants at Kensington, not even the duchess of Northumberland, her governess, have any idea what she is or what she promises to be. There was enough in the court of the two sovereigns who went before Queen Victoria to justify any strictness of seclusion which the duchess of Kent might desire for her daughter. George IV was a Charles II without the education or talents. William IV was a Frederick William of Prussia without the genius. The ordinary manners of the society at the court of either had a full flavor to put it in the softest way, such as a decent taproom would hardly exhibit in a time like the present. No one can read even the most favorable descriptions given by contemporaries of the manners of those two courts without feeling grateful to the duchess of Kent for resolving that her daughter should see as little as possible of their ways and their company. It was remarked with some interest that the queen subscribed herself simply Victoria, and not as had been expected, Mr. Grebel mentions in his diary of December 24, 1819 that the duch of Kent gave the name of Alexandrina to his daughter in compliments to the Emperor of Russia. She was to have had the name of Georgiana, but the duch insisted upon Alexandrina being her first name. The regent sent for Liefen, the Russian ambassador, husband of the famous Princess de Liefen, and made him a great many compliments on le persiflant, on the emperors being Godfather, but informed him that the name of Georgiana could be second to no other in this country, and therefore she could not bear it at all. It was a very wise choice to employ simply the name of Victoria around which no ungenial associations of any kind hung at that time, and which can have only grateful associations in the history of this country for the future. CHAPTER I It is not necessary to go into any formal description of the various ceremonials and pageantries which celebrated the accession of the new sovereign, the proclamation of the queen, her appearance for the first time on the throne in the House of Lords when she prorogued Parliament in person, and even the gorgeous festival of her coronation which took place on June 28 and the following year, 1838, may be passed over with a mere word of record. It is worth mentioning, however, that at the coronation procession one of the most conspicuous figures was that of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, the opponent of More and Wellington in the peninsula, the commander of the Old Guard at Lutson, and one of the strong arms of Napoleon at Waterloo. Soult had been sent as ambassador extraordinary to represent the French government and people at the coronation of Queen Victoria, and nothing could exceed the enthusiasm with which he was received by the crowds in the streets of London on that day. The white-haired soldier was cheered wherever a glimpse of his face or figure could be caught. He appeared in the procession in a carriage, the frame of which had been used on occasions of state by some of the princes of the House of Condé, and which Soult had had splendidly decorated for the ceremony of the coronation. Even the Austrian ambassador, says an eyewitness, attracted less attention than Soult, although the dress of the Austrian Prince Esther Hazy, down to his very boot heels, sparkled with diamonds. The comparison savers now of the ridiculous but is remarkably expressive and effective. Prince Esther Hazy's name in those days suggested nothing but diamonds. His diamonds may be said to glitter through all the light literature of the time. When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wanted a comparison with which to illustrate excessive splendor and brightness, she founded in Mr. Pitt's diamonds. Prince Esther Hazy's served the same purpose for the riders of the early years of the present reign. It was therefore perhaps no very poor tribute to the stout old mustache of the Republic and the Empire to say that at a London pageant his war-worn face drew attention away from Prince Esther Hazy's diamonds. Soult himself felt very warmly the genuine kindness of the reception given to him. Years after, in a debate in the French Chamber when Monsieur Guiseaux was accused of too much partiality for the English alliance, Marshal Soult declared himself a warm champion of that alliance. I fought the English down to Toulouse, he said, when I fired the last cannon in defense of the national independence. In the meantime I have been in London and France knows the reception which I had there. The English themselves cried, Viva Soult! They cried Soult forever. I had learned to estimate the English on the field of battle. I have learned to estimate them in peace and I repeat that I am a warm partisan of the English alliance. History is not exclusively made by cabinets and professional diplomatists. It is highly probable that the cheers of a London crowd on the day of the Queen's coronation did something genuine and substantial to restore the good feeling between this country and France and he faced the bitter memory of Waterloo. It is a fact well worthy of note amid whatever records of court ceremonial and of political change that a few days after the accession of the Queen, Mr. Montefiore was elected sheriff of London, the first Jew who had ever been chosen for that office and that he received knighthood at the hands of Her Majesty when she visited the city on the following Lord Mayor's Day. He was the first Jew whom royalty had honoured in this country since the good old times when royalty was pleased to borrow the Jew's money or order instead the extraction of his teeth. The expansion of the principle of religious liberty and equality which has been one of the most remarkable characteristics of the reign of Queen Victoria could hardly have been more becomingly inaugurated than by the compliment which sovereign end city paid to Sir Moses Montefiore. The first signature attached to the act of allegiance presented to the Queen at Kensington Palace was that of her eldest surviving uncle, Ernest Duke of Cumberland. The fact may be taken as an excuse for introducing a few words here to record the severance that then took place between the interests of this country or at least the reigning family of these realms and another state which had for a long time been bound up together in a manner seldom satisfactory to the English people. In the whole history of England it will be observed that few things have provoked greater popular dissatisfaction than the connection of a reigning family with the crown or rulership of some foreign state. There is an instinctive jealousy on such a point which even when it is unreasonable is not unnatural. The Sovereign of England had better be Sovereign of England out of no foreign state. Many favorable auspices attended the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne, some at least of these who were associated with her sex. The country was in general disposed to think that the accession of a woman to the throne would somewhat clarify and purify the atmosphere of the court. It had another good effect as well and one of a strictly political nature. It severed the connection which had existed for some generations between this country and Hanover. The connection was only personal, the success of Kings of England being also by succession sovereigns of Hanover. The crown of Hanover was limited in its descent to the male line and it passed on the death of William IV to his eldest surviving brother, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. The change was in almost every way satisfactory to the English people. The indirect connection between England and Hanover had at no time been a matter of gratification to the public of this country. Many cooler and more enlightened persons than honest Squire Western had feud with this favour and at one time with distrust, the division of interests which the ownership of the two crowns seemed almost of necessity to create in our English sovereigns. Hence it must be owned that the people of this country were not by any means sorry to get rid of the Duke of Cumberland. Not many of George III's sons were popular. The Duke of Cumberland was probably the least popular of all. He was believed by many persons to have had something more than an indirect or passive or innocent share in the orange plot discovered and exposed by Joseph Hume in 1835, or setting aside the claims of the young Princess Victoria and putting himself the Duke of Cumberland on the throne. A scheme which its authors pretended to justify by the preposterous assertion that they feared the Duke of Wellington would otherwise seize the crown for himself. His manners were rude, overbearing, and sometimes even brutal. He had personal habits which seemed rather fitted for the days of Tiberius or for the court of Peter the Great, than for the time and sphere to which he belonged. Rumor not unnaturally exaggerated his defects, and in the mouths of many his name was the symbol of the darkest and fiercest passions and even crimes. Some of the popular reports with regard to him had their foundation only in the common detestation of his character and dread of his influence, but it is certain that he was profligate, selfish, overbearing, and quarrelsome. A man with these qualities would usually be described in fiction, as at all events bluntly honest and outspoken. But the Duke of Cumberland was deceitful and treacherous. He was outspoken in his abuse of those with whom he quarreled, and in his style of anecdote in jocular conversation, but in no other sense. The Duke of Wellington whom he hated told Mr. Greville that he once asked George IV why the Duke of Cumberland was so unpopular, and the King replied, because there never was a father well with his son, or husband with his wife, or lover with his mistress, or friend with his friend, that he did not try to make mischief between them. The first thing he did on his accession to the Throne of Hanover was to abrogate the constitution which had been agreed to by the estates of the kingdom, and sanctioned by the late William IV. Radicalism, said the King, writing to an English nobleman, has been here all the order of the day, and all the lower classes appointed to office are more or less imbued with these laudable principles, but I have cut the wings of this democracy. He went, indeed, pretty vigorously to work, for he dismissed from their offices seven of the most distinguished professors of the University of Goodigan, because they signed a protest against his arbitrary abrogation of the constitution. Among the men thus pushed from their stools were Gervinus, the celebrated historian and Shakespearean critic, at that time professor of history and literature, Avalt, the orientalist and theologian, Jacob Grimm, and Frederick Dalman, professor of political science. Gervinus, Grimm, and Dalman were not merely deprived of their offices, but were actually sent into exile. The exiles were accompanied across the frontier by an immense concourse of students who gave them a triumphent delight in true student fashion, and converted what was meant for degradation and punishment into a procession of honor. The offense against all rational principles of civil government in these arbitrary proceedings on the part of the new king was the more flagrant, because it could not even be pretended that the professors were interfering with political matters outside their province, or that they were issuing manifestos calculated to disturb the public peace. The University of Goodigan, at that time, sent a representative to the estates of the kingdom, and the protest to which the seven professors attached their names was addressed to the Academical Senate and simply declared that they would take no part in the ensuing election because of the suspension of the Constitution. All this led to somewhat serious disturbances in Hanover which it needed the employment of military forces to suppress. It was felt in England that the mere departure of the Duke of Cumberland from this country would have made the severance of the connection with Hanover desirable, even if it had not been in other ways an advantage to us. Later times have shown how much we have gained by the separation. It would have been exceedingly inconvenient, to say the least, if the crown worn by a sovereign of England had been hazarded in the war between Austria and Prussia in 1866. Our reigning family must have seemed to suffer in dignity if that crown had been roughly knocked off the head of its wearer who happened to be an English sovereign, and it would have been absurd to expect that the English people could engage in a quarrel with which their interests and honor had absolutely nothing to do for the sake of a mere family possession of their ruling house. Looking back from this distance of time and across a change of political and social manners far greater than the distance of time might seem to explain, it appears difficult to understand the passionate emotions which the accession of the young queen seems to have excited on all sides. Some influential and prominent politicians talked and wrote as if they were really a possibility of the Tories attempting a revolution in favor of the Hanoverian branch of the royal family, as if some such crisis had again come round as that which tried the nation when Queen Anne died. On the other hand, there were heard, loud and shrill cries, that the queen was destined to be conducted by her constitutional advisors into a precipitate pathway leaning straight down into popery and anarchy. The Times insisted that the anticipations of certain Irish Roman Catholics respecting the success of their warfare against church and state under the auspices of these not untried ministers into whose hands the all but infant queen has been compelled by her unhappy condition to deliver herself and her indignant people are to be taken for nothing and as nothing but the chimeras of a band of visionary traitors. The Times even thought it necessary to point out that for her majesty to turn papist, to marry a papist or in any manner follow the footsteps of the Coburg family whom these incendiaries describe as papists would involve an immediate forfeiture of the British crown. On the other hand, some of the radical and more especially Irish papers talked in the plainest terms of Tory plot to depose or even to assassinate the queen and put the Duke of Cumberland in her place. O'Connell, the great Irish agitator, declared in a public speech that if it were necessary he could get five hundred thousand brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honour, and the person of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne is now filled. Mr. Henry Gratton, the son of the famous orator and like his father a Protestant, declared at a meeting in Dublin that if her majesty were once fairly placed in the hands of the Tories I would not give an orange peel for her life. He even went on to put his rhetorical declaration into a more distinct form. If some of the low miscreants of the party got round her majesty and had the mixing of the royal bowl at night I fear she would have a long sleep. This language seems almost too absurd for sober record and yet was hardly more absurd than many things said on what may be called the other side. A Mr. Bradshaw, Tory member for Canterbury, declared at a public meeting in that ancient city that the sheet anchor of the Liberal Ministry was the body of Irish papists and wraparise whom the priests returned to the House of Commons. These are the men who represent the bigoted savages, hardly more civilized than the natives of New Zealand, but animated with a fierce undying hatred of England. Yet on these men are bestowed the countenance and support of the Queen of Protestant England, for alas her majesty is Queen only of a faction and is as much of a partisan as the Lord Chancellor himself. At a conservative dinner in Lancashire a speaker denounced the Queen and her ministers on the same ground so vehemently that the Commander-in-Chief addressed a remonstrance to some military officers who were among the guests at this excited banquet, pointing out to them the serious responsibility they incurred by remaining in any assembly when such language was uttered and such sentiments were expressed. No one, of course, would take impassioned and inflated harangs of this kind on either side as a representative of the general feeling. Sober persons all over the country must have known perfectly well that there was not the slightest fear that the young Queen would turn a Roman Catholic, or that her ministry intended to deliver the country up as a prey to Rome. Sober persons everywhere too must have known equally well that there was no longer the slightest cause to feel any alarm about a Tory plot to hand over the throne of England to the detested Duke of Cumberland. We only desire, in quoting such outrageous declarations to make more clear, the condition of the public mind and to show what the state of the political world must have been when such extravagance and such delusions were possible. We have done this partly to show what were the trials and difficulties under which Her Majesty came to the throne and partly for the mere purpose of illustrating the condition of the country and of political education. There can be no doubt that all over the country, passion and ignorance were at work to make the task of constitutional government peculiarly difficult. A vast number of the followers of the Tories and countryplaces really believed that the Liberals were determined to hurry the sovereign into some policy tending to the degradation of the monarchy. If any cool and enlightened reasoner were to argue with them on this point and endeavour to convince them of the folly of ascribing such purposes to a number of English statesmen whose interests, position and honour were absolutely bound up with the success and the glory of the state, the indignant and unreasoning Tories would be able to cite the very words of so great and so sober-minded estatesmen as Sir Robert Peel, who in his famous speech to the electors of Tamworth promised to rescue the Constitution from being made the victim of false friends and the country from being trampled under the hoof of a ruthless democracy. If on the other hand a sensible person were to try to persuade hot-headed people on the opposite side that it was absurd to suppose the Tories really meant any harm to the freedom and the peace of the country and the security of the succession, he might be invited, with significant expression, to read the manifesto issued by Lord Durham to the electors of Sunderland, in which that eminent statesman declared that in all circumstances, at all hazards, be the personal consequences what they may, he would ever be found ready when called upon to defend the principles on which the Constitution of the country was then settled. We know now very well that Sir Robert Peel and Lord Durham were using the language of innocent metaphor. Sir Robert Peel did not really fear much the hoof of the ruthless democracy. Lord Durham did not actually expect to be called upon, at any terrible risk to himself, to fight the battle of freedom on English soil. But when those whose minds had been bewildered and whose passions had been inflamed, by the language of the times on the one side, and that of O'Connell on the other, came to read the calmer and yet sufficiently impassioned words of responsible statesman, like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Durham, they might be excused, if they found rather a confirmation than a refutation of their arguments and their fears, the truth is that the country was in a very excited condition, and that it is easy to imagine a succession of events which might at a moment have thrown it into utter confusion. At home and abroad things were looking ominous for the new reign. To begin with, the last two reigns had on the whole done much to loosen not only the personal feeling of allegiance, but even the general confidence and the virtue of monarchical rule. The old plan of personal government had become an anomaly, and the system of a genuine constitutional government, such as we know, had not yet been tried. The very manner in which the reform bill had been carried, the political stratagem which had been resorted to when further resistance seemed dangerous, was not likely to exalt in popular estimate, the value of what was then gracefully called constitutional government. Only a short time before the country had seen Catholic Emancipation conceded, not from a sense of justice on the part of ministers, but avowedly, because further resistance must lead to civil disturbance. There was not much in all this to impress an intelligent and independent people, with a sense of the great wisdom of the rulers of the country, or of the indispensable advantages of the system which they represented. The civil discontent prevailed almost everywhere. Economic laws were hardly understood by the country in general. Class interests were fiercely arrayed against each other. The cause of each man's class filled him with a positive fanaticism. He was not a mere selfish and grasping partisan, but he sincerely believed that each other class was arrayed against his, and that the natural duty of self-defense and self-preservation compelled him to stand firmly by his own. Lord Melbourne was the first Minister of the Crown when the Queen succeeded to the throne. He was a man who then and always after made himself particularly dear to the Queen, and for whom she had the strongest regard. He was of kindly, somewhat indolent nature, fair and even generous toward his political opponents, of the most genial disposition toward his friends. He was emphatically not a strong man. He was not a man to make good grow where it was not already growing, to adopt the expression of a great author. Long before that time his eccentric wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, had excused herself for some of her follies and frailties by pleading that her husband was not a man to watch over any one's morals. He was a kindly counsellor to a young Queen, and happily for herself the young Queen in this case had strong clear sense enough of her own not to be absolutely dependent on any council. Lord Melbourne was not a statesman. His best qualities, personal kindness and good nature apart, were purely negative. He was, unfortunately, not content even with the reputation for a sort of indolent good nature which he might have well deserved. He strove to make himself appear hopelessly idle, trivial and careless. When he really was serious and earnest he seemed to make it his business to look like one in whom no human affairs could call up a gleam of interest. He became the fanferron of levities which he never had. We have amusing pictures of him as he occupied himself in blowing a feather or nursing a sofa cushion while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or that commercial interest. Those who knew him insisted that he really was listening with all his might in main, that he had sat up the whole night before studying the question which he seemed to think so unworthy of any attention, and that so far from being like Horace wholly absorbed in his trifles he was at very great pains to keep up the appearance of a trifler. A brilliant critic has made a lively and amusing attack on this alleged peculiarity. If the truth must be told, says Sidney Smith, our Viscount is somewhat of an imposter. Everything about him seems to petoke in careless desolation. Anyone would suppose from his manner that he was playing at Chuck Farthing with human happiness, that he was always on the heel of pastime, that he would giggle away the great charter and decide by the method of T. Totem whether my lords the bishops should or should not retain their seats in the house of lords. While this is but the mere vanity of surprising and making us believe that he can play with kingdoms as other men can with nine pins. I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings and to brush away the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety, he has reared, but I accuse our minister of honesty and diligence. I deny that he is careless or rash. He is nothing more than a man of good understanding and good principle disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political ruwe. Such a masquerading might perhaps have been excusable or even attractive in the case of a man of really brilliant and commanding talents. Lookers on are always apt to be fascinated by the spectacle of a man of well-recognized strength and force of character playing for a moment the part of an indolent trifler. The contrast is charming in a brilliant Prince Hal, or such a sardinopolis as Byron Drew. In our own time a considerable amount of the popularity of Lord Palmerston was inspired by the amusing antagonism between his assumed levity and his well-known force of intellect and strength of will. But in Lord Melbourne's case the affectation had no such excuse or happy effect. He was not, by any means, a Palmerston. He was only fitted to rule in the quietest times. He was a poor speaker, utterly unable to encounter the keen penetrating criticisms of Lindhurst or the vehement and remorseless invectives of Broom. Debates were then conducted with a bitterness of personality, unknown, or at all events very rarely known in our days. Even in the House of Lords language was often interchanged of the most virulent hostility. The rushing impetuosity and fury of Broom's style had done much then to inflame the atmosphere which in our days is usually so cool and moderate. It probably added to the warmth of the attacks on the ministry of Lord Melbourne that the Prime Minister was supposed to be in a special favour with the young Queen. When Victoria came to the throne the Duke of Wellington gave frank expression to his feelings as to the future of his party. He was of opinion that the Tories would never have any chance with a young woman for sovereign. I have no small talk, he said, and Peel has no manners. It had probably not occurred to the Duke of Wellington to think that a woman could be capable of as sound a constitutional policy and could show as little regard for personal predilections in the business of government as any man. All this, however, only tended to embitter the feeling against the Whig government. Lord Melbourne's constant attendance on the young Queen was regarded with keen jealousy and dissatisfaction. According to some critics the Prime Minister was endeavouring to inspire her with all his own gay heedlessness of character and temperament. According to others Lord Melbourne's purpose was to make himself agreeable and indispensable to the Queen, to surround her with his friends, relations and creatures, and thus to get a lifelong hold of power in England in defiance of political changes in parties. It is curious now to look back on much that was said in the political and personal heats and bitternesses of the time. If Lord Melbourne had been a French mayor of the palace, whose real object was to make himself virtual ruler of the state and to hold the sovereign as a puppet in his hands, there could not have been a greater anger, fear, and jealousy. Since that time we have all learned on the very best authority, that Lord Melbourne actually was himself the person to advise the Queen to show some confidence in the Tories, to hold out the olive branch a little to them, as he expressed it. He does not appear to have been greedy of power or to have used any unfair means of getting or keeping it. The character of the young sovereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make her life as happy and her reign as successful as he could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and gratitude for him, and showed it long after the public had given up the suspicion that she could be a puppet in the hands of a minister. Still it is certain that the Queen's Prime Minister was by no means a popular man at the time of her accession. Even observers who had no political or personal interest whatever in the conditions of cabinets were displeased to see the opening of the new reign so much to all appearance, under the influence of one who either was or tried to be a mere lounger. The deputations went away offended and disgusted when Lord Melbourne played with feathers or dandled sofa cushions in their presence. The almost fierce energy and strenuousness of a man-like broom showed an overwhelming contrast to the happy-go-lucky heirs and graces of the Premier. It is likely that there was quite as much of affectation in the one cases in the other, but the affectation of a devouring zeal for the public service told at least far better than the other in the heat and stress of debate. When the new reign began the ministry had two enemies or critics in the House of Lords of the most formidable character. Either alone would have been a trouble to a minister of far stronger mold than Lord Melbourne, but circumstances threw them both, for the moment, into a chance alliance against him. One of these was Lord Broom. No stronger and stranger a figure than his is described in the modern history of England. He was gifted with the most varied and striking talents and with a capacity for labour which sometimes seemed almost superhuman. Not merely had he the capacity for labour, but he appeared to have a positive passion for work. His restless energy seemed as if it must stretch itself out on every side seeking new fields of conquest. The study that was enough to occupy the whole time and wear out the frame of other men was only recreation to him. He might have been described as one possessed by a very demon of work. His physical strength never gave way. His high spirits never deserted him. His self-confidence was boundless. He thought he knew everything and could do everything better than any other man. He delighted in giving evidence that he understood the business of the specialist better than the specialist himself. His vanity was overweening and made him ridiculous almost as often and as much as his genius made him admired. The comic literature of more than a generation had no subject more fruitful than the vanity and restlessness of Lord Broome. He was beyond doubt a great parliamentary orator. His style was too diffuse and sometimes too uncouth to suit a day like our own when form counts for more than substance, when passion seems out of place in debate and not to exaggerate is far more the object than to try to be great. Broome's action was wild and sometimes even furious. His gestures were singularly ungraceful. His manners were grotesque. But of his power over his hearers there could be no doubt. That power remained with him until a far later date and long after the years when men usually continued to take part in political debate Lord Broome could be impassioned, impressive and even overwhelming. He was not an orator of the highest class. His speeches have not stood the test of time. Apart from the circumstances of the hour and the personal power of the speaker they could hardly arouse any great delight or even interest, for they are by no means models of English style, and they have little of that profound philosophical interest, that pregnancy of thought and meaning, that splendor of eloquence which make the speeches of Burke always classic and even in a certain sense always popular among us. In truth no man could have done with abiding success all the things which Broome did successfully for the hour. On law, on politics, on literature, on languages, on science, on art, on industrial and commercial enterprise he professed two pronouns with the authority of a teacher. If Broome knew a little of law said O'Connell when the former became Lord Chancellor, he would know a little of everything. The anecdote was told in another way, too, which perhaps makes it even more peaked. The new Lord Chancellor knows a little of everything in the world, even of law. Broome's was an excitable and self-asserting nature. He had during many years shown himself an embodied influence, a living speaking force in the promotion of great political and social reforms. If his talents were great, if his personal vanity was immense, let it be said that his services to the cause of human freedom and education were simply inestimable. As an opponent of slavery in the colonies, as an advocate of political reform at home, of law reform, of popular education, of religious equality, he had worked with indomitable zeal, with resistless passion and with splendid success. But his career passed through two remarkable changes which to a great extent interfered with the full efficacy of his extraordinary powers. The first was when, from popular Tribune and Reformer, he became Lord Chancellor in 1830. The second was when he was left out of office on the reconstruction of the Wig Ministry in April 1835, and he passed for the remainder of his life into the position of an independent or unattached critic of the measures and policy of other men. It has never been clearly known why the Wigs so suddenly threw over Broom. The common belief is that his eccentricities and his almost savage temper made him intolerable in a cabinet. It has been darkly hinted that for a while his intellect was actually under a cloud, as people said that of Chatham was during a momentous season. Lord Broom was not a man likely to forget or forgive the wrong which he must have believed that he had sustained at the hands of the Wigs. He became the fiercest and most formidable of Lord Melbourne's hostile critics. The other opponent who has been spoken of was Lord Lindhurst. Lord Lindhurst resembled Lord Broom in the length of his career and in capacity for work, if in nothing else. Lindhurst, who was born in Boston the year before the T ships were boarded in that harbor and their cargoes flung into the water, has been heard addressing the House of Lords in all vigour and fluency by men who are yet far from Middle Age. He was one of the most effective parliamentary debaters of a time which has known such men as Peele and Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli, Bright and Cobdon. His style was singularly and even severely clear, direct and pure. His manner was easy and graceful, his voice remarkably sweet and strong. Nothing could have been in greater contrast than his clear, correct, nervous argument and the impassioned invectives and overwhelming strength of Broom. Lindhurst had, as has been said, an immense capacity for work when the work had to be done, but his natural tendency was as distinctly toward indolence as Broom's was toward unresting activity. Nor will Lindhurst's political convictions ever very clear. By the habit of associating with the Tories and receiving office from them and speaking for them and attacking their enemies with argument and sarcasm, Lindhurst finally settled down into all the ways of Toreism. But nothing in his varied history showed that he had any particular preference that way, and there were many passages in his career when it would seem as if a turn of chance decided what path of political life he was to follow. As a keen debater he was perhaps hardly ever excelled in Parliament, and he had neither the passion nor the genius of an orator, and his capacity was narrow indeed in its range when compared with the astonishing versatility and omnivorous mental activity of Broom. As his speaker he was always equal. He seemed to know no varying moods or fits of mental lassitude. Whenever he spoke he reached at once the same high level as a debater. The very fact may in itself perhaps be taken as conclusive evidence that he was not an orator. The higher qualities of the orator are no more to be summoned at will than those of the poet. These two men were without any comparison the two leading debaters in the House of Lords. Lord Melbourne had not at that time in the upper house a single man of first class or even of second class debating power on the bench of the ministry. An able writer has well remarked that the position of the ministry in the House of Lords might be compared to that of a waterlogged wreck into which enemies from all quarters are pouring their broad sides. The accession of the Queen made it necessary that a new Parliament should be summoned. The struggle between parties among the constituencies was very animated and was carried on in some instances with a recourse to maneuver and stratagem such as in our time would hardly be possible. The result was not a very marked alteration in the condition of parties but on the whole the advantage remained with the Tories. Somewhere about this time it may be remarked the use of the word conservative to describe the latter political party first came into fashion. Mr. Wilson Crocker is credited with the honor of having first employed the word in that sense. In an article in the Quarterly Review some years before he spoke of being decidedly and conscientiously attached to what is called the Tory but which might with more propriety be called the conservative party. During the elections for the new Parliament Lord John Russell speaking at a public dinner at Stroud made allusion to the new name which his opponents were beginning to effect for their party. If that he said is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old distinction of Wigan Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready in opposition to their name of conservative to take the name of reformer and to stand by that opposition. The Tories or conservatives then had a slight gain as the result of the appeal to the country. The new Parliament on its assembling seems to have gathered in the Commons an unusually large number of gifted and promising men. There was something, too, of a literary stamp about it, a fact not much to be observed in Parliaments of a date nearer to the present time. Mr. Groot, the historian of Greece, sat for the City of London. The late Lord Lytton, then Mr. Edward Lytton Bower, had a seat and advanced radical at that day. Mr. Disraeli came then into Parliament for the first time. Charles Buller, full of high spirits, brilliant humor, and the very inspiration of keen good sense, seemed on the sure way to that career of renown, which a premature death cut short. Sir William Molesworth was an excellent type of the school which in later days was called the Philosophical Radical. Another distinguished member of the same school, Mr. Robuck, had lost his seat and was for the moment an outsider. Mr. Gladstone had been already five years in Parliament. The late Lord Carlisle, then Lord Morpeth, was looked upon as a graceful specimen of the literary and artistic young nobleman, who also cultivates a little politics for his intellectual amusement. Lord John Russell had but lately begun his career as leader of the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston was foreign secretary, but had not even then got the credit of the great ability which he possessed. Not many years before Mr. Greville spoke of him as a man who had been twenty years in office and never distinguished himself before. Mr. Greville expresses a mild surprise at the high opinion which persons who knew Lord Palmerston intimately were pleased to entertain as to his ability and his capacity for work. Only those who knew him very intimately indeed had any idea of the capacity for governing Parliament on the country which he was soon afterwards to display. Sir Robert Peel was leader of the Conservative Party. Lord Stanley, the late Lord Darby, was still in the House of Commons. He had not long before broken definitely with the Whigs on the question of the Irish ecclesiastical establishment and had passed over to that Conservative Party of which he afterwards became the most influential leader and the most powerful parliamentary orator. O'Connell and Shial represented the eloquence of the Irish National Party. Decidedly the House of Commons first elected during Queen Victoria's reign was strong in eloquence and talent. Only two really great speakers have arisen in the forty years that followed who were not members of Parliament at that time, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. Mr. Cobden had come forward as the candidate for the borough of Stockport but was not successful and did not obtain a seat in Parliament until four years later. It was only by what may be called an accident that Macaulay and Mr. Robuck were not in the Parliament of 1837. It is fair to say therefore that except for Cobden and Bright the subsequent forty years have added no first class name to the records of parliamentary eloquence. The Ministry was not very strong in the House of Commons. Its conditions indeed hardly allowed it to feel itself strong even if it had had more powerful representatives in either House. Its adherents were but loosely held together. The more ardent reformers were disappointed with ministers. The free trade movement was rising into distinct bulk and proportions and threatened to be formatively independent of mere party ties. The Government had to rely a good deal on the precarious support of Mr. O'Connell and his followers. They were not rich in debating talent in the Commons any more than in the Lords. Sir Robert Peel, the Leader of the Opposition, was by far the most powerful man in the House of Commons. Added to his great qualities as an Administrator and a Parliamentary Debater, he had the virtue then very rare among Conservative statesmen of being a sound and clear financier with a good grasp of the fundamental principles of political economy. His high austere character made him respected by opponents as well as by friends. He had not perhaps many intimate friends. His temperament was cold, or at least his heat was self-contained. He threw out no genial glow to those around him. He was by nature a reserved and shy man in whose manners shyness took the form of pompousness and coldness. Something might be said of him like that which Richter said of Schiller. He was to strangers stony, and like a precipice from which it was their instinct to spring back. It is certain that he had warm and generous feelings, but his very sensitiveness only led him to disguise them. The contrast between his emotions and his lack of demonstrativeness created in him a constant artificiality which often seemed mere awkwardness. It was in the House of Commons that his real genius and character displayed themselves. The atmosphere of debate was to him what Macaulay says wine was to Addison, the influence which broke the spell under which his fine intellect seemed otherwise to lie imprisoned. Peel was a perfect master of the House of Commons. He was as great an orator as any man could be who addresses himself to the House of Commons, its ways and its purposes alone. He went as near perhaps to the rank of a great orator as any one can go who was but little gifted with imagination. Oratory has been well described as the fusion of reason and passion. Passion always carries something of the imaginative along with it. Sir Robert Peel had little imagination and almost none of that passion which in eloquence sometimes supplies its place. His style was clear, strong and stately, full of various argument and apt illustration drawn from books and from the world of politics and commerce. He followed a difficult argument home to its utter conclusions, and if it had in it any lurking fallacy he brought out the weakness into the clearest light, often with a happy touch of humor and quiet sarcasm. His speeches might be described as the very perfection of good sense and high principle clothed in the most impressive language, but they were something more peculiar than this, for they were so constructed in their argument and their style alike as to touch the very core of the intelligence of the House of Commons. They told of the feelings and the inspiration of Parliament as the ballad music of a country tells of its scenery and its national sentiments. Lord Stanley was a far more energetic and impassioned speaker than Sir Robert Peel, and perhaps occasionally in his later career came now and then nearer to the height of genuine oratory. But Lord Stanley was little more than a splendid parliamentary partisan, even when long after he was Prime Minister of England. He had very little indeed of that class of information which the modern world requires of its statesmen and leaders. Of political economy, of finance, of the development and discoveries of modern science, he knew almost as little as it is possible for an able and energetic man to know who lives in the throng of active life and hears what people are talking of around him. He once said good humorously of himself that he was brought up in the pre-scientific period. His scholarship was merely such training in the classic languages as allowed him to have a full literary appreciation of the beauty of Greek and Roman literature. He had no real and deep knowledge of the history of the Greek and the Roman people, nor probably did he at all appreciate the great difference between the spirit of Roman and Greek civilization. He had in fact what would have been called at an earlier day an elegant scholarship. He had a considerable knowledge of the politics of his time in most European countries, an energetic and trepid spirit, and with him as Macaulay well said, the science of parliamentary debate seemed to be an instinct. There was no speaker on the ministerial benches at that time who could for a moment be compared with him. Lord John Russell, who had the leadership of the party in the House of Commons, was really a much stronger man than he seemed to be. He had a character of dauntless courage and confidence among his friends, for boundless self-conceit among his enemies. Everyone remembers Sidney Smith's famous illustrations of Lord John Russell's unlimited faith in his own power of achievement. Thomas Moore addressed a poem to him at one time when Lord John Russell thought or talked of giving up political life, in which he appeals to, declares that the instinct of the young statesman is the same as the eaglets to soar with his eyes on the sun and implores him not to think for an instant thy country can spare such a light from her darkening horizon as thou. Later observers, to whom Lord John Russell appeared probably remarkable for a cold and formal style as a debater and for a lack of originating power as a statesman, may find it difficult to reconcile the poet's picture with their own impressions of the reality. But it is certain that at one time the reputation of Lord John Russell was that of a rather reckless man of genius a sort of wig-shelly. He had in truth much less genius than his friends and admirers believed, and a great deal more of practical strength than either friends or foes gave him credit for. He became not indeed an orator, but a very keen debater, who was especially effective in a cold, irritating sarcasm which penetrated the weakness of an opponent's argument like some dissolving acid. In the poem from which we have quoted, Moore speaks of the eloquence of his noble friend as not like those rills from a height which sparkle in foam and in vapor are o'er, but a current that works out its way into the light through the filtering recesses of thought and of lore. Allowing for the exaggeration of friendship and poetry, this is not a bad description of what Lord John Russell's style became in its best. The thin bright stream of argument worked its way slowly out, and contrived to wear a path for itself, through obstacles which at first the looker on might have felt assured it never could penetrate. Lord John Russell's swordsmanship was the swordsmanship of Saladin, and not that of Stout King Richard, but it was very effective sword play in its own way. Our English system of government by party makes the history of Parliament seem like that of a succession of great political duels. Two men stand, constantly confronted during a series of years, one of whom is at the head of the government while the other is at the head of the opposition. They change places with each victory. The conqueror goes into office, the conquered into opposition. This is not the place to discuss either the merits or the probable duration of the principle of government by party. It is enough to say here that it undoubtedly gives a very animated and varied complexion to our political struggles, and invest them indeed with much of the glow and passion of actual warfare. It has often happened that the two leading opponents are men of intellectual and oratorical powers so fairly balanced that their followers may well dispute among themselves as to the superiority of their respective chiefs, and that the public in general may become divided into two schools, not merely political, but even critical, according to their partiality for one or the other. We still dispute as to whether Fox or Pitt was the greater leader, the greater orator. It is probable that for a long time to come the same question will be asked by political students about Gladstone and Disraeli. For many years Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel stood thus opposed. They will often come into contrast and comparison in these pages. For the present it is enough to say that Peel had by far the more original mind, and that Lord John Russell never obtained so great an influence over the House of Commons as that which his rival long enjoyed. The heat of political passion afterwards induced a bitter critic to accuse Peel of lack of originality because he assimilated readily and turned to account the ideas of other men. Not merely the criticism, but the principle on which it was founded, was altogether wrong. It ought to be left to children to suppose that nothing is original but that which we make up as the childish phrase is, out of our own heads. Originality in politics as in every field of art consists in the use and application of the ideas which we get or are given to us. The greatest proof Sir Robert Peel ever gave of high and genuine statesmanship was in his recognition that the time had come to put into practical legislation the principles which Cobden and Villars and Bright had been advocating in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell was a born reformer, he had sat at the feet of Fox, he was cradled in the principles of liberalism, he held faithfully to his creed, he was one of its boldest and keenest champions, he had great advantages over Peel and the mere fact that he had begun his education in a more enlightened school, but he wanted passion quite as much as Peel did and remained still farther than Peel below the level of the genuine orator. Russell, as we have said, had not long held the post of leader of the House of Commons when the first Parliament of Queen Victoria assembled. He was still in a manner on trial and even among his friends, perhaps especially among his friends, there were whispers that his confidence in himself was greater than his capacity for leadership. After the Chiefs of Ministry and of Opposition the most conspicuous figure in the House of Commons was the colossal form of O'Connell, the great Irish agitator of whom we shall hear a good deal more. Among the foremost orators of the House at that time was O'Connell's impassioned lieutenant, Richard Lawlor Shile. It is strange how little is now remembered of Shile, whom so many well qualified authorities declared to be a genuine orator. Lord Beckinsfield, in one of his novels, speaks of Shile's eloquence in terms of the highest praise and disparages canning. It is but a short time since Mr. Gladston selected Shile as one of three remarkable illustrations of great success as a speaker achieved in spite of serious defects of voice and delivery, the other two examples being Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Newman. Mr. Gladston described Shile's voice as like nothing but the sound produced by a tin kettle battered about from place to place, knocking first against one side and then against another. In anybody else, Mr. Gladston went on to say, I would not if it had been in my choice like to have listened to that voice. But in him I would not have changed it, for it was part of a most remarkable whole and nobody ever felt it painful while listening to it. He was a great orator and an orator of much preparation, I believe, carried even two words with a very vivid imagination and an enormous power of language and of strong feeling. There was a peculiar character, a sort of half wildness in his aspect and delivery, his whole figure and his delivery and his voice and his manner were all in such perfect keeping with one another that they formed a great parliamentary picture, and although it is now thirty-five years since I heard Mr. Shile, my recollection of him is just as vivid as if I had been listening to him today. This surely is a picture of a great orator, as Mr. Gladston says Shile was. Nor is it easy to understand how a man without being a great orator could have persuaded two experts of such very different schools as Mr. Gladston and Mr. Disraeli that he deserved such a name. Yet the after years have in a curious but unmistakable way denied the claims of Shile. Perhaps it is because if he really was an orator he was that and nothing more. That our practical age, finding no mark left by him on parliament or politics, has declined to take much account even of his eloquence. His career faded away into second-class ministerial office, and closed at last somewhat prematurely in the little court of Florence, where he was sent as the representative of England. He is worth mentioning here because he had the promise of a splendid reputation, because the charm of his eloquence evidently lingered long in the memories of those to whom it was once familiar, and because his is one of the most brilliant illustrations of that career of Irish agitator which begins in stormy opposition to English government and subsides after a while into meek recognition of its title and adoption of its ministerial uniform. O'Connell we have passed over for the present because we shall hear of him again, but of Shile it is not necessary that we should hear any more. This was evidently a remarkable parliament with Russell for the leader of one party and Peel for the leader of another, with O'Connell and Shile as independent supporters of the ministry, with Mr. Gladston still comparatively new to public life, and Mr. Disraeli to address the commons for the first time, with Palmerston still unrecognized, and Stanley lately gone over to conservatism, itself the newest invented thing in politics, with Groot and Bulwer, and Joseph Hume, and Trousebuller, and Ward and Villers, Sir Francis Burdett, and Smith O'Brien, and the radical Alcibiades of Finsbury, Tom Duncombe. CHAPTER III Canada and Lord Durham, Pt. 1 The first disturbance to the quiet and good promise of the new rain came from Canada. The parliament, which we have described, met for the first time on November 20, 1837, and was to have been adjourned to February 1, 1838. But the news which began to arrive from Canada was so alarming that the ministry were compelled to change their purpose and fix the reassembling of the houses for January 16. The disturbances in Canada had already broken out into open rebellion. The condition of Canada was very peculiar. Lower, or Eastern Canada, was inhabited for the most part by men of French descent, who still kept up in the midst of an active and moving civilization most of the principles and usages which belonged to France before the revolution. Even to this day, after all the changes, political and social, that have taken place, the traveller from Europe sees in many of the towns of Lower Canada an old-fashioned France, such as he had known otherwise only in books that tell of France before 89, nor is this only in small sequestered towns and villages which the impulses of modern ways have yet failed to reach. In busy and trading Montreal, with its residents made up of Englishmen, Scotchmen and Americans, as well as the men of French descent, the visitor is more immediately conscious of the presence of what may be called an old-fashioned Catholicism than he is in Paris or even indeed in Rome. In Quebec, a city which for picturesqueness and beauty of situation is not equaled by Edinburgh or Florence, the curious interest of the place is further increased, the novelty of the sensations it produces in the visitor is made more peaking by the evidences he meets with everywhere through its quaint and steepie streets and under its antiquated archways, of the existence of a society which is hardly in France survived the great revolution. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign, the undiluted character of this French medievalism was of course much more remarkable. It would doubtless have exhibited itself quietly enough if it were absolutely undiluted. Lower Canada would have dozed away in its sleepy picturesqueness held fast to its ancient ways and allowed a bustling giddy world, all alive with commerce and ambition and desire for novelty, and the terribly disturbing thing which unresting people called progress, to rush on its wild path unheeded. But its neighbors and its newer citizens were not disposed to allow lower Canada, thus to rot itself in ease on the decaying wharfs of the St. Lawrence and the St. Charles. In the large towns there were active traders from England and other countries who were by no means content to put up with old world ways and to let the magnificent resources of the place run to waste. Upper Canada, on the other hand, was all new as to its population and was full of the modern desire for commercial activity. Upper Canada was peopled almost exclusively by inhabitants from Great Britain, Scotch settlers with all the energy and push of their country, men from the northern province of Ireland, who might be described as virtually Scotch also came there. The emigrant from the south of Ireland went to the United States because he found there a country more or less hostile to England, and because there the Catholic Church was understood to be flourishing. The Ulsterman went to Canada, as the Scotchman did, because he saw the flag of England flying and the principle of religious establishment which he admired at home still recognized. It is almost needless to say that Englishmen in great numbers were settled there, whose chief desire was to make the colony, as far as possible, a copy of the institutions of England. When Canada was ceded to England by France as a consequence of the victories of Wolf, the population was nearly all in the lower province, and therefore was nearly all of French origin. Since the session, the growth of the population of the other province had been surprisingly rapid and had been almost exclusively the growth, as we have seen, of immigration from Great Britain, one or two of the colonizing states of the European continent and the American Republic itself. It is easy to see on the very face of things some of the difficulties which must arise in the development of such a system. The French of lower Canada would regard with almost more but jealousy any legislation which appeared likely to interfere with their ancient ways, and to give any advantage or favor to the populations of British descent. The latter would see injustice or feebleness in every measure which did not assist them in developing their more energetic ideas. The home government in such a condition of things often has a special trouble with those whom we may call its own people. Their very loyalty to the institutions of the old country impels them to be unreasonable and exacting. It is not easy to make them understand why they should not be at the least encouraged, if not indeed actually enabled, to carry out boldly all the anglicizing policy which they clearly see is to be for the good of the colony in the end. The government has all the difficulty that the mother of a household has, when with the best intentions and the most conscientious resolve to act impartially, she is called upon to manage her own children and the children of her husband's former marriage. Every word she says, every resolve she is induced to acknowledge, is liable to be regarded with jealousy and dissatisfaction on the one side as well as on the other. You are doing everything to favor your own children, the one set cry out. You ought to do something more for your own children is the equally quarrelous remonstrance of the other. It would have been difficult, therefore, for the home government, however wise and far-seeing their policy, to make the wheels of any system run smoothly at once in such a colony as Canada. But their policy certainly does not seem to have been either wise or far-seeing. The plan of government adopted looks as if it were especially devised to bring out into sharp relief all the antagonisms that were natural to the existing state of things. By an act called the Constitution of 1791, Canada was divided into two provinces, the upper and the lower. Each province had a separate system of government, consisting of a governor, an executive council appointed by the Crown, and supposed in some way to resemble the privy council of this country, a legislative council the members of which were appointed by the Crown for life, and a representative assembly the members of which were elected for four years. At the same time the clergy reserves were established by Parliament. One seventh of the waste lands of the colony were set aside for the maintenance of the Protestant clergy, a fruitful source of disturbance and ill feeling. When the two provinces were divided in 1791 the intention was that they should remain distinct, in fact as well as in name. It was hoped that lower Canada would remain altogether French, and that upper Canada would be exclusively English. Then it was thought that they might be governed on their separate systems as securely and with as little trouble as we now govern the Mauritius on one system and Malta on another. Those who formed such an idea do not seem to have taken any council from geography. The one fact that upper Canada can hardly be said to have any means of communication with Europe and the whole Eastern world, except through lower Canada, or else through the United States, ought to have settled the question at once. It was in lower Canada that the greatest difficulties arose. A constant antagonism grew up between the majority of the legislative council, who were nominees of the Crown, and the majority of the representative assembly, who were elected by the population of the province. The home government encouraged and indeed kept up that most odious and dangerous of all instruments for the supposed management of a colony, a British party devoted to the so-called interests of the mother country and obedient to the word of command from their masters and patrons at home. The majority in the legislative council constantly thwarted the resolutions of the vast majority of the popular assembly. Disputes arose as to the voting of supplies. The government retained in their service officials whom the representative assembly had condemned and insisted on the right to pay them their salaries out of certain funds of the colony. The representative assembly took to stopping the supplies, and the government claimed the right to counteract this measure by appropriating to the purpose such public monies has happened to be within their reach at the time. The colony, for indeed, on these subjects the population of lower Canada, right or wrong, was so near to being of one mind that we may take the declarations of public meetings as representing the colony, demanded that the legislative council should be made elective, and that the colonial government should not be allowed to dispose of the monies of the colony at their pleasure. The House of Commons and the government here replied by refusing to listen to the proposal to make the legislative council an elective body and authorizing the provincial government without the consent of the colonial representative to appropriate money in the treasury for the administration of justice and the maintenance of the executive system. This was in plain words to announce to the French population, who made up the vast majority, and whom we had taught to believe in the representative form of government, that their wishes would never count for anything, and that the colony was to be ruled solely at the pleasure of the little British party of officials and crown nominees. It is not necessary to suppose that in all these disputes the popular majority were in the right and the officials in the wrong. No one can doubt that there was much bitterness of feeling arising out of the mere differences of race. The French and the English could not be got to blend. In some places, as it was afterwards said in the famous report of Lord Durham, the two sets of colonists never publicly met together except in the jury box, and then only for the obstruction of justice. The British residents complained bitterly of being subject to French law and procedure in so many of their affairs. The tenure of land and many other conditions of the system were antique French, and the French law worked, or rather did not work, in civil affairs side by side with the equally impeded British law in criminal matters. At last the representative assembly refused to vote any further supplies, or to carry on any further business. They formulated their grievances against the home government. Their complaints were of arbitrary conduct on the part of the governors, intolerable composition of the legislative council which they insisted ought to be elective, illegal appropriation of the public money, and violent prorogation of the provincial parliament. One of the leading men in the movement which afterwards became rebellion in lower Canada was Mr. Louis-Joseph Papineau. This man had risen to high position by his talents, his energy, and his undoubtedly honourable character. He had represented Montreal in the representative assembly of lower Canada, and he afterwards became Speaker of the House. He made himself Leader of the Movement to protest against the policy of the governors, and that of the government at home by whom they were sustained. He held a series of meetings at some of which undoubtedly rather strong language was used, and two frequent and significant appeals were made to the example held out to the population of lower Canada by the successful revolt of the United States. Mr. Papineau also planned the calling together of a great convention to discuss and proclaim the grievances of the colonies. Lord Gosford the governor began by dismissing several militia officers who had taken part in some of these demonstrations. Mr. Papineau himself was an officer of this force. Then the governor issued warrants for the apprehension of many members of the popular assembly on the charge of high treason. Some of these at once left the country. Others against whom warrants were issued were arrested, and a sudden resistance was made by their friends and supporters. Then in the manner familiar to all who have read anything of the history of revolutionary movements, the resistance to a capture of prisoners suddenly transformed itself into open rebellion. The rebellion was not in a military sense a very great thing. At its first outbreak the military authorities were for a moment surprised, and the rebels obtained one or two trifling advantages. But the commander-in-chief at once showed energy adequate to the occasion and used as it was his duty to do a strong hand in putting the movement down. The rebels fought with something like desperation in one or two instances, and there was it must be said a good deal of blood shed. The disturbance, however, after a while extended to the upper province. Upper Canada too had its complaints against its governors and the home government, and its protest against having its offices all disposed of by a family compact. But the rebellious movement does not seem to have taken a genuine hold of the province at any time. There was some discontent. There was a constant stimulus to excitement kept up from across the American frontier by sympathizers with any republican movement. And there were some excitable persons inclined for revolutionary change in the province itself who zeal caught fire when the flame broke out in lower Canada. But it seems to have been an exotic movement altogether, and so far as its military history is concerned deserves notice chiefly for the chivalrous eccentricity of the plan by which the governor of the province undertook to put it down. The governor was the gallant and fanciful soldier and traveller Sir Francis then made your head. He, who had fought at Waterloo and seen much service besides, was quietly performing the duties of assistant poor law commissioner for the county of Kent when he was summoned in 1835 at a moment's notice to assume the governorship of Upper Canada. When the rebellion broke out in that province major head proved himself not merely equal to the occasion, but boldly superior to it. He promptly resolved to win a grand moral victory over all rebellion then and for the future. He was seized with a desire to show to the whole world how vain it was for any disturber to think of shaking the loyalty of the province under his control. He issued to rebellion in general a challenge not unlike that which Shakespeare's Prince Harry offers to the chiefs of the insurrection against Henry IV. He invited it to come on and settle the controversy by a sort of duel. He sent all the regular soldiers out of the province to the help of the authorities of Lower Canada. He allowed the rebels to mature their plans in any way they liked. He permitted them to choose their own day and hour, and when they were ready to begin their assaults on constituted authority, he summoned to his side the militia and all the loyal inhabitants and with their help he completely extinguished the rebellion. It was but a very trifling affair. It went out or collapsed in a moment. Major head had his desire. He showed that rebellion in that province was not a thing serious enough to call for the intervention of regular troops. The loyal colonists were for the most part delighted with the spirited conduct of their leader and his new fashion way of dealing with rebellion. No doubt the moral effect was highly imposing. The plan was almost as original as that described in Herodotus and introduced into one of Massengers plays when the moral authority of the masters is made to assert itself over the rebellious slaves by the mere exhibition of the symbolic whip. But the authorities at home took a somewhat more prosaic view of the policy of Sir Francis Head. It was suggested that if the fears of many had been realized and the rebellion had been aided by a large force of sympathizers from the United States, the moral authority of Canadian loyalty might have stood greatly in need of the material presence of regular troops. In the end Sir Francis Head resigned his office. His loyalty, courage, and success were acknowledged by the gift of aberrancy, and he obtained the admiration not merely of those who approved his policy, but even of many among those who felt bound to condemn it. Perhaps it may be mentioned that there were some who persisted to the last in the belief that Sir Francis Head was not by any means so rashly chivalrous as he had allowed himself to be thought, and that he had full preparation made, if his moral demonstration should fail, to supply its place in good time with more common place in effective measures. The news of the outbreaks in Canada created a natural excitement in this country. There was a very strong feeling of sympathy among many classes here. Not indeed with the rebellion, but with the colony, which complained of what seemed to be genuine and serious grievances. Public meetings were held at which resolutions were passed ascribing the disturbances in the first place to the refusal of the government of any redress sought for by the colonists. Mr. Hume, the pioneer of financial reform, took the side of the colonists very warmly, both in and out of Parliament. During one of the parliamentary debates on the subject Sir Robert Peale referred to the principal leader of the rebellion in Upper Canada as a Mr. McKenzie. Mr. Hume resented his way of speaking of a prominent colonist and remarked that there was a Mr. McKenzie as there might be a Sir Robert Peale, and created some amusement by referring to the declarations of Lord Chatham on the American Stamp Act, which he cited as the opinions of a Mr. Pitt. Lord John Russell on the part of the government introduced a bill to deal with the rebellious province. The bill proposed in brief to suspend for a time the Constitution of Lower Canada and to send out from this country a Governor General and High Commissioner, with full powers to deal with the rebellion and to remodel the Constitution of both provinces. The proposal met with a good deal of opposition at first on very different grounds. Mr. Robuck, who was then, as it happened out of Parliament, appeared as the agent and representative of the province of Lower Canada, and demanded to be heard at the bar of both the houses in opposition to the bill. After some little demure, his demand was granted, and he stood at the bar first of the Commons and then of the Lords, and opposed the bill on the ground that had unjustly suspended the Constitution of Lower Canada in consequence of disturbances provoked by the intolerable oppression of the home government. A critic of that day remarked that many orators seemed to make it their business to conciliate and propitiate the audience they desired to win over, but that Mr. Robuck seemed, from the very first, to be determined to set all his hearers against him and his cause. Mr. Robuck's speeches were however exceedingly argumentative and powerful appeals. Their effect was enhanced by the singularly youthful appearance of the speaker, who was described as looking like a boy hardly out of his teens. It was evident, however, that the proposal of the government must in the main be adopted. The general opinion of Parliament decided not unreasonably that that was not the moment for entering into a consideration of the past policy of the government, and that the country could do nothing better just then, than send out some man of commanding ability and character to deal with the existing condition of things. There was an almost universal admission that the government had found the right man, when Lord John Russell mentioned the name of Lord Durham. Lord Durham was a man of remarkable character. It is a matter of surprise how little his name is thought of by the present generation, seeing what a strenuous figure he seemed in the eyes of his contemporaries, and how striking a part he played in the politics of a time which has even still some living representatives. He belonged to one of the oldest families in England. The Lamptons had lived on their estate in the North, an uninterrupted succession since the conquest. The male succession, it is stated, never was interrupted since the twelfth century. They were not, however, a family of aristocrats. Their wealth was derived chiefly from coal mines, and grew up in later days. The property at first and for a long time was of inconsiderable value. For more than a century, however, the Lamptons had come to take rank among the gentry of the county, and some member of the family had represented the city of Durham in the House of Commons from 1727 until the early death of Lord Durham's father in December, 1797. William Henry Lampton, Lord Durham's father, was a staunch wig, and had been a friend and associate of Fox. John George Lampton, the son, was born at Lampton Castle in April 1792. Before he was quite twenty years of age, he made a romantic marriage at Gretna Green with a lady who died three years after. He served for a short time in a regiment of Hussars, about a year after the death of his first wife. He married the eldest daughter of Lord Gray. He was then only twenty-four years of age. He had before this been returned to Parliament for the County of Durham, and he soon distinguished himself as a very advanced and energetic reformer. While in the Commons he seldom addressed the House, but when he did speak, it was in support of some measure of reform, or against what he conceived to be antiquated and illiberal legislation. He brought out a plan of his own for Parliamentary reform in 1821. In 1828 he was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Durham. When the Ministry of Lord Gray was formed in November 1830, Lord Durham became Lord Privy Seal. He is said to have had an almost complete control over Lord Gray. He had an impassioned and energetic nature which sometimes drove him into outbreaks of feeling which most of his colleagues dreaded. Various highly colored descriptions of stormy scenes between him and his companions and office are given by writers of the time. Lord Durham, his enemies and some of his friends said, bullied and browbeat his opponents in the Cabinet, and would sometimes hardly allow his father-in-law and official chief, a chance of putting an award on the other side, or in mitigation of his tempestuous mood. He was thorough in his reforming purposes and would have rushed at radical changes with scanty consideration for the time or for the temper of his opponents. He had very little reverence indeed for what Carlisle calls the Majesty of Custom. Whatever he wished, he strongly wished. He had no idea of reticence and cared not much for the decorum of office. It is not necessary to believe all the stories told by those who hated and dreaded Lord Durham in order to accept the belief that he really was something of an enfant terrible, to the stately Lord Grey, and to the easygoing colleagues who were by no means absolutely eaten up by their zeal for reform. In the powerful speech which he delivered in the House of Lords on the Reform Bill, there is a specimen of his eloquence of denunciation which might well have startled listeners even in those days when the license of speech was often sadly out of proportion with its legalized liberty. Lord Durham was especially roused to anger by some observations made in the debate of a previous night by the Bishop of Exeter. He described the prelate speech as an exhibition of coarse and virulent infective, malignant and false insinuation, the grossest perversions of historical facts decked out with all the choicest flowers of pamphleteering slang. He was called to order for these words, and a peer moved that they be taken down. Lord Durham was by no means dismayed. He coolly declared that he did not mean to defend his language as the most elegant or graceful, but that it exactly conveyed the ideas regarding the Bishop, which he meant to express, that he believed the Bishop's speech to contain insinuations which were as false as scandalous, that he had said so, that he now begged leave to repeat the words, and that he pause to give any noble Lord who thought fit an opportunity of taking them down. No one, however, seemed disposed to encounter any farther this impassioned adversary, and when he had had his say, Lord Durham became somewhat mollified and endeavored to soften the pain of the impression he had made. He begged the House of Lords to make some allowances for him, if he spoke too warmly, for as he said, with much pathetic force, his mind had lately been tortured by domestic loss. He thus alluded to the recent death of his eldest son, a beautiful boy, says a writer of some years ago, whose features will live forever in the well-known picture by Lawrence.