 Chapter 37 The Orsini Bombs Explode in Paris and London, Part 1 The last chapter has told us that Lord Palmerston introduced a measure to transfer to the Crown the Government of India, but that unexpected events in the meanwhile compelled him to resign office and call Lord Darby and Mr. Disraeli to power. These events had nothing to do directly with the general policy of Lord Palmerston or Lord Darby. At midday of January 14th, 1858, no one could have had the slightest foreboding of anything about to happen which could affect the place of Lord Palmerston in English politics. He seemed to be as popular and as strong as a minister well could be. There had been a winter session called together on December 3 to pass a bill of indemnity for the Government who had suspended the Bank Charter Act during the terrible money panic of the autumn and the failures of banks and commercial firms. The Bank was authorized by the Suspension of the Charter Act to extend its circulation two millions beyond the limit of that Act. The effect of this step in restoring confidence was so great that the Bank had only to put in circulation some 900,000 pounds beyond the limit of 1844 and even that sum was replaced and a certain reserve established by the close of the year. Most people thought the Government had met the difficulty promptly and well and were ready to offer their congratulations. Parliament adjourned at Christmas and was to meet early in February. The Princess Victoria, eldest daughter of the Queen, was to be married to the Prince Frederick William, eldest son of the then Prince of Prussia, now German Emperor and it was to be Lord Palmerston's pleasant task when Parliament resumed in February to move a vote of congratulations to Her Majesty on her child's marriage. Meantime however, on the evening of January 14, Felice Orsini, an Italian exile, made his memorable attempt to assassinate the Emperor of the French. Orsini lost himself and he drew the English Government down at the same time. Felice Orsini was well known in England. After his romantic escape from a prison at Mantua, he came to this country and delivered lectures in several towns. He described the incidents of his escape and denounced Austrian rule in Italy and was made a lion of in many places. He was a handsome, soldierly looking man with intensely dark eyes and dark beard, in appearance almost the model Italian conspirator of romance. He was not an orator, but he was able to tell his story clearly and well. One great object which he had in view was to endeavour to rouse up the English people to some policy of intervention on behalf of Italy against Austria. It is almost impossible for a man like Orsini to take the proper measure of the enthusiasm with which he is likely to be received in England. He goes to several public meetings, he is welcomed by Eman's crowds, he is cheered to the echo and he gets to be under the impression that the whole country is on his side and ready to do anything he asks for. He does not understand that the crowds go for the most part out of curiosity, that they represent no policy or action whatever and that they will have forgotten all about him by the day after tomorrow. Of those who went to hear Orsini and who applauded him so liberally, not one in ten probably had a distinct idea as to who he was or what cause he represented. He was an Italian exile who would escape from tyranny of some sort somewhere and he was a good looking man and that was enough for many or most of his audiences. But Orsini was thoroughly deceived. He convinced himself that he was forming public opinion in England, that he was inspiring the people, that the people would inspire the government and that the result would be an armed intervention on behalf of Lombardy and Venetia. At a meeting which he held in Liverpool, a merchant of that town who sympathized cordially with Orsini's cause had the good sense to get up and tell Orsini that he was cruelly deceiving himself if he fancied that England either would or could take any step to intervene on behalf of the Italian provinces then held by Austria. Orsini at first thought little of this warning. After a while however he found out that the advice was sound and just, he saw that England would do nothing. He might have seen that even the English liberals with the exception of a very few enthusiasts were entirely against his projects. They were in fact just as much opposed to the principle of intervention in the affairs of other states as the conservatives. But Orsini set himself to devise explanations for what was simply the prudent and just determination of all the statesmen and leading politicians of the country. He found the explanation in the subtle influence of the emperor of the French. It happened that during Orsini's residence in this country the emperor and empress of the French came on a visit to the queen at Osborne and Orsini saw in this a conclusive confirmation of his suspicions. Disappointed, despairing and wild with anger against Louis Napoleon he appears then to have allowed the idea to get possession of him that the removal of the emperor of the French from the scene was an indispensable preliminary to any policy having for its object the emancipation of Italy from Austrian rule. He brooded on this idea until it became a project and a passion. It transformed a soldier and a patriot into an assassin. On January 14th, Orsini and his fellow conspirators made their attempt in the rue La Pelletier in Paris. As the emperor and empress of the French were driving up to the door of the opera house in that street, Orsini and his companions flung at and into the carriage three shells or bombs shaped like a pair and filled with detonating powder. The shells exploded and killed and wounded many persons. So minute were the fragments into which the bombs burst that five hundred and sixteen wounds great and little were inflicted by the explosion. This attempt at assassination was unfavorably distinguished from most other attempts by the fact that it took no account of the number of innocent lives which it imperiled. The murderers of William the Silent of Henry IV of Abraham Lincoln could at least say that they only struck at the objects of their hate. In Orsini's case, the emperor's wife, the emperor's attendants and servants, the harmless and unconcerned spectators in the crowd who had no share in Austrian misgovernment, were all exposed to the danger of death or of horrible mutilation. Ten persons were killed, 156 were wounded. For any purpose it aimed at, the project was an utter failure. It only injured those who had nothing whatever to do with Orsini's cause or the condition of the Italian populations. We may as well dispose at once also of a theory which was for a time upheld by some who would not indeed justify or excuse Orsini's attempt, but who were inclined to believe that it was not made holy in vain. Orsini failed it was said, but nevertheless the emperor of the French did soon after take up the cause of Italy. And he did so because he was afraid of the still living confederates of the Lombard Skyvola and wished to purchase safety for himself by conciliating them. Even the Prince Consort wrote to a friend on April 11, 1858 about Louis Napoleon, I fear he is at this moment meditating some Italian development which is to serve as a lightning conductor for ever since Orsini's letter he has been all for Italian independence. Historical revelations made at a later period showed that this is all together a mistake. We now know that at the time of the Congress of Paris Count Cavour had virtually arranged with the emperor the plans of policy which were afterwards carried out and that even before that time Cavour was satisfied in his own mind as to the ultimate certainty of Louis Napoleon's cooperation. Those who are glad to see Italy a nation may be glad too to know that Orsini's bombs had nothing to do with her success. Orsini was arrested. Curiously enough his arrest was made more easy by the fact that he himself received a wound from one of the fragments of shell and he was tracked by his own blood marks. Great as his crime was he compelled a certain admiration from all men by the manner in which he bore his fate. He avowed his guilt and made a strenuous effort to clear of all complicity in it a man who was accused of being one of the conspirators. He wrote from his prison to the emperor, beseeching him to throw his influence into the national cause of Italy. He made no appeal on his own behalf. The emperor, it is believed, was well inclined to spare his life but the comprehensive heinousness of the crime which took in so many utterly blameless persons rendered it almost impossible to allow the leading conspirator to escape. As it was, however, the French government certainly showed no unreasonable severity. Four persons were put on trial as participators in the attempt, three of them having actually thrown the bombs. Only two, however, were executed, Orsini and Piedi. The other two were sentenced to penal servitude for life. This on the whole was merciful dealing. Three Fenians it must be remembered were executed in Manchester for an attempt to rescue some prisoners in which one police officer was killed by one shot. Orsini's project was a good deal more criminal. Most sane persons will admit then a mere attempt to rescue a prisoner and it was the cause not of one but of many deaths. Orsini died like a soldier, without bravado and without the slightest outward show of fear. As he and his companion Piedi were mounting the scaffold, he was heard to encourage the latter in a quiet tone. Piedi continued to show signs of agitation and then Orsini was heard to say in a voice of gentle remonstrance, try to be calm, my friend, try to be calm. France was not very calm under the circumstances. An outburst of anger followed the attempt in the Rue Lapelletier. But the anger was not so much against Orsini as against England. One of the persons charged along with Orsini, although he was not tried in Paris for he could not be found there, was a Frenchman Simon Bernard who had long been living in London. It was certain that many of the arrangements for the plot were made in London. The bombs were manufactured in Birmingham and were ordered for Orsini by an Englishman. It was known that Orsini had many friends and admirers in this country. The imperialists in France at once assumed that England was a country where assassination of foreign sovereigns was encouraged by the population and not discouraged by the laws. The French minister for foreign affairs, Count Vilevsky, wrote a dispatch in which he asked whether England considered that hospitality was due to assassins, ought English legislation, he asked, to contribute to favour their designs and their attempts? And can it continue to shelter persons who by their flagrant acts put themselves outside the pale of common rights and under the ban of humanity? The Duke de Persigny, then ambassador of France and England, made a very foolish and unfortunate reply to a deputation from the Corporation of London in which he took on himself to point out that if the law of England was strong enough to put down conspiracies for assassination it ought to be put in motion and if it were not it ought to be made stronger. Persigny did not indeed put this forward as his own contribution of advice to England. He gave it as an expression of the public feeling of France and as an explanation of the anger which was a flame in that country. France, he said, does not understand and cannot understand this state of things, and in that lies the danger, for she may mistake the true sentiments of her ally and may cease to believe in England's sincerity. Talk of that kind would have been excusable and natural on the part of an imperialist orator in the core législatif in Paris, but it was silly and impertinent when it came from a professional diplomatist. That flavour of the canteen and the barrack room which the Prince Consort detected and disliked in the Emperor's associates was very perceptible in Persigny's harangue. The barrack room and the canteen however had much more to say in the matter. Addresses of congratulation were poured in upon the Emperor from the French army and many of them were full of insulting allusions to England as the sheltering ground of assassination. One regiment declared that it longed to demand an account from the land of impunity which contains the haunts of the monsters who are sheltered by its laws. This regiment begged of the Emperor to give them the order, and we will pursue them even to their stronghold. In another address it was urged that the infamous haunt, repérant femme in which machinations so infernal are planned, London that is, should be destroyed forever. Some of these addresses were inserted in the moniteur, then the official organ of the French government. It was afterwards explained that the official sanction thus apparently given to the ratamontades of the French colonels was a mere piece of inadvertence. There were so many addresses sent in, it was said, that some of them escaped examination. Count Vilevsky expressed the regret of the Emperor that language and sentiment so utterly unlike his own should have found their way into publicity. It is certain that Louis Napoleon would never have deliberately sanctioned the obstreperous buffoonery of such sentences as we have referred to. But anyhow the addresses were published, were read in England, and aroused in this country an amount of popular resentment not unlikely to explode in utterances as vehement and thoughtless as those of the angry French colonels themselves. End of section 14. Section 15 of A History of Our Own Times Volume 3 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 37 The Orsini Bombs Explode in Paris and London Part II Let us do justice to the French colonels. Their language was ludicrous, nothing but the grossness of its absurdity saved it from being intolerably offensive. But the feeling which dictated it was not unnatural. Foreign countries always find it hard to understand the principles of liberty which are established in England. They assume that if a state allows certain things to be done, it must be because the state wishes to see them done. If men are allowed to plot against foreign sovereigns in England, it can only be, they argue, because the English government likes to have plots carried on against foreign sovereigns. It would be impossible to deny that people in this country are singularly thoughtless in their encouragement of any manner of foreign revolution. Even where there are restrictive laws, public opinion will hardly sanction their being carried out. London is and long has been the headquarters of revolutionary plot. No one knew that better than Louis Napoleon himself. No one had made more unscrupulous use of a domicile in London to carry out political and revolutionary projects. Associations have been formed in London to supply men and money to Don Carlos, to Queen Isabella, to the Polish revolutionists, to Hungary, to Garibaldi, to the Southern Confederation, to the Circassians, to anybody and everybody who could say that he represented a defeat or a victory or a national cause or anything. In 1860, Lord John Russell admitted in the House of Commons that it would be impossible to put into execution our laws against foreign enlistment because every political party, in almost every man, was concerned in breaking them at one time or another. He referred to the fact that some forty years before the cause of Greece against Turkey had been taken up openly in London by public men of the highest mark, and that money, arms, and men were got together for Greece without the slightest pretense of concealment. While he was speaking, a legion was being formed in one place to fight for Victor Emmanuel against the Pope. In another place, to fight for the Pope against Victor Emmanuel. Every refugee was virtually free to make London a basis of operations against the government which had caused his exile. There were, it is right to say, men who construed the conditions upon which they were sheltered in England with conscientious severity. They held that they were protected by this country on the implied understanding that they took no part in any proceedings that might tend to embarrass her in her dealings with foreign states. They argued that the obligation on them, whether declared or not, was exactly the same as that which rests on one who asks and obtains the hospitality and shelter of a private house, the obligation not to involve his host in quarrels with his neighbors. Monsieur Louis Blanc, for example, who lived some twenty years in England, declined on principle to take part in secret political movements of any kind during all that time. But the great majority of the exiles of all countries were incessantly engaged in political plots and conspiracies, and undoubtedly some of these were nothing more or less than conspiracies to assassinate. Many of the leading exiles were intimately associated with prominent and distinguished Englishmen, and these same exiles were naturally associated to some extent with many of their own countrymen of a lower and less scrupulous class. It had therefore happened more than once before this time, and it happened more than once afterwards, that when a plot at assassination was discovered, the plotters were found to have been on more or less intimate terms with some leading exiles in London who themselves were well acquainted with eminent Englishmen. Men with a taste for assassination are to be found among the camp followers of every political army. To assume that because the leaders of the party may have been now and then associated with them, they must therefore be acquainted with and ought to be held responsible for all their plots is not less absurd than it would be to assume that an officer in a campaign must have been in the secret when some reprobate of his regiment was about to plunder a house. But the French colonels saw that the assassin this time was not a nameless scoundrel, but a man of birth and distinction like Felice Orosini, who had been received and welcomed everywhere in England. It is not very surprising if they assumed that his projects had the approval and favour of English public opinion. The French government indeed ought to have known better. But the French government lost for the moment its sense and self-control. A semi-official pamphlet published in Paris and entitled The Emperor Napoleon III in England actually went the ridiculous length of describing an obscure debating club in a Fleet Street public house where a few dozen honest fellows smoked their pipes of a night and talked hazy politics as a formidable political institution where Regicide was nightly preached to fanatical desperados. Thus we had the public excited on both sides. The feeling of anger on this side was intensified by the conviction that France was insulting us because she thought England was crippled by her troubles in India and had no power to resist an insult. It was while men here were smarting under this sense of wrong that Lord Palmerston introduced his famous measure for the suppression and punishment of conspiracies to murder. The bill was introduced in consequence of the dispatch of Count Vilevsky. In that dispatch it was suggested to the English government that they ought to do something to strengthen their law. Full of confidence, Count Vilevsky said, in the exalted reason of the English cabinet, we abstained from all indication as regards the measures which it may be suitable to take. We rely on them for a careful appreciation of the decision which they shall judge most proper and we congratulate ourselves in the firm persuasion that we shall not have appealed in vain to their conscience and their loyalty. The words were very civil. They were words as sweet as those of which Cassius says that they rob the high-blabies and leave them honeyless. Nor was the request they contained in itself unreasonable. Long afterwards this country had to acknowledge and reply to the demand of the United States that a nation cannot get rid of her responsibility to a foreign people by pleading that her municipal legislation does not provide for this or that emergency. If somebody domiciled among us shoots his arrow over the house and hurts our foreign brother, it is not enough for us to say when complaint is made that we have no law to prevent people from shooting arrows out of our premises. The natural rejoinder is, then you would better make such a law. You are not to injure us and get off by saying your laws allow us to be injured. But the conditions under which the request was made by France had put England in the worst possible mood for exceeding to it. We have all heard of the story of General Jackson, who was on one occasion very near-refusing and wrath a reasonable and courteous request of the French government, because his secretary, in translating the letter for Jackson who did not know French, began with the words, the French government demands. Jackson vehemently declared that if the French government dared to demand anything of the United States they should not have it. It was only when it had been made clear to him that the French word de Monday did not by any means correspond with the English word demand that the angry soldier consented even to listen to the representation of France. The English public mind was now somewhat in Jackson's mood. It was under the impression that France was making a demand and was not in the temper to grant it. Amidst questions were put to the government in both houses of parliament. In the house of commons Mr. Robuck asked whether any communications had passed between the governments of England and France with respect to the Alien Act or any portion of our criminal code. Lord Palmerston answered by mentioning Count Velevsky's dispatch which he said should be laid before the house. He added a few words about the addresses of the French regiments and pleaded that allowance should be made for the irritation caused by the attempt on the life of the Emperor. He was asked a significant question. Had the government sent any answer to Count Velevsky's dispatch? No was the reply. Her Majesty's government had not answered it, not yet. Two or three days after Lord Palmerston moved for leave to bring in the conspiracy to murder bill. The chief object of the measure was to make conspiracy to murder a felony instead of a mere misdemeanor as it had been in England and to render it liable to penal servitude for any period varying from five years to a whole life. Lord Palmerston made a feeble and formal attempt to prove that his bill was introduced simply as a measure of needed reform in our criminal legislation and without special reference to anything that had happened in France. The law against conspiracy to murder was very light in England, he showed, and was very severe in Ireland. It was now proposed to make the law the same in both countries. That was all. Of course no one was deceived by this explanation. The bill itself was as much of a sham as the explanation. Such a measure would not have been of any account whatever as regarded the offenses against which it was particularly directed. As Lord John Russell said in the debate, it would argue great ignorance of human nature to imagine that a fanatic of the Ortostini class or any of those whom such a man could fascinate by his influence would be deterred by the mere possibility of a sentence of penal servitude. Lord Palmerston we may be sure did not put the slightest faith in the efficacy of the piece of legislation which he had undertaken to recommend to Parliament. It was just as in the case of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. He was compelled to believe that the government would have to do something. And he came after a while to the conclusion that the most harmless measure would be best. He had had an idea of asking Parliament to empower the Secretary of State to send out of the country foreigners whom the government believed to be engaged in plotting against the life of a foreign sovereign. The government being under obligation to explain the grounds for their belief and their action to a secret committee of Parliament or to a committee composed of the three chiefs of the law courts. Such a measure as this would probably have proved effective. But it would have been impossible to induce the House of Commons to pass such a bill or to entrust such power to any government. Indeed if it were not certain that Palmerston did entertain such a project the language he used in his speech when introducing the conspiracy bill might lead one to believe that nothing could have been further from his thoughts. He disclaimed any intention to propose a measure which should give power to a government to remove aliens on mere suspicion. He was sure it was needless for him to say he had no such intention. He had however such an intention at one time. His biographer Mr. Evelyn Ashley is clear on that point and there cannot be better authority. It must have been only for a moment that Palmerston even thought of making a proposal of the kind to an English Parliament. He had not been long enough in the Home Office, it would seem, to understand thoroughly the temper of his countrymen. Indeed in this instance he made a mistake every way. When he assented to the introduction of the ecclesiastical Titles Bill he was right in thinking that English public opinion wished to have something done. But in this case the inclination of public opinion was the other way. It wished to have nothing done, at least just at that moment. Mr. King Lake moved an amendment formally expressing the sympathy of the House with the French people on account of the attempt made against the Emperor, but declaring it inexpedient to legislate in compliance with the demand made in Count Vilevsky's dispatch of January 20th until further information is before it of the communications of the two governments subsequent to the date of that dispatch. A discussion took place in which Mr. Robuck pointed out, very properly, that in any new measure of legislation it was not punishment of crime accomplished that was required, but discovery of crime meditated. And he also showed with much effect that in some cases, when the English government had actually warned the government of France that some plot was afoot and that the plotters had left for Paris, the Paris police were unable to find them out or to benefit in any way by the action of the English authorities. Mr. Disraeli voted for the bringing in of the bill and made a cautious speech in which he showed himself in favor of some sort of legislation, but did not commit himself to approval of that particular measure. This prudence proved convenient afterwards when the crisis of the debate showed that it would be well for him to throw himself into the ranks of the opponents of the measure. The bill was read a first time, 299 votes were for it, only 99 against. But before it came on for a second reading, public opinion was beginning to declare ominously against it. The fact that the government had not answered that this batch of Count Vilevsky told heavily against them. It was afterwards explained that Lord Cowley had been instructed to answer it verbally, and that Lord Palmerston thought this course the more prudent and the more likely to avoid an increase of irritation between the two countries. But public opinion in England was not now to be propitiated by councils of moderation. The idea had gone abroad that Lord Palmerston was truckling to the Emperor of the French, and that the very right of asylum which England had so long afforded to the exiles of all nations was to be sacrificed at the bidding of one who had been glad to avail himself of it in his hour of need. End of Section 15. Section 16 of A History of Our Own Times Volume 3 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 37. The Orsini Bombs Explode in Paris and London. Part 3. This idea received support from the arrest of Dr. Simon Bernhard, a French refugee who was immediately put on trial as an accomplice in Orsini's plot. Bernhard was a native of the south of France, a surgeon by profession and had lived a long time in England. He must have been an outward aspect at least the very type of a French red Republican conspirator to judge by the description given of him in the papers of the day. He is described as thin and worn, with dark restless eyes, shallow complexion, a thick moustache and a profusion of long black hair combed backwards and reaching nearly to his shoulders, and exposing a broad but low and receding forehead. The arrest of Beknaak may have been a very proper thing, but it came in with the most untimely effect upon the government. It was understood to have been made by virtue of information sent over from Paris, and no one could have failed to observe that the loosest accusations of that kind were always coming from the French capital. Many persons were influenced in their belief of Beknaak's innocence by the fact, which does assuredly count for something, that Orsini himself had almost with his dying breath declared that Beknaak knew nothing of the intended assassination. Not a few made up their minds that he was innocent because the French government accused him of guilt, and still more declared that innocent or guilty he ought not to be arrested by English authorities at the bidding of a French emperor. At the same time the Kantillon story was revived. The story of the legacy left by the first Napoleon to the man who attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington, and it was insisted that the legacy had been paid to Kantillon by the authority of Napoleon III. The debate was over and the conspiracy bill disposed up before the Beknaak trial came to an end, but we may anticipate by a few days and finish the Beknaak story. Beknaak was tried at the central criminal court under existing law. He was defended by Mr. Edwin James, a well-known criminal lawyer, and he was acquitted. The trial was a practical evidence of the in-utility of such special legislation as that which Lord Palmston attempted to introduce. A new law of conspiracy could not have furnished any new evidence against Beknaak or persuaded a jury to convict him on such evidence as there was. In the prevailing temper of the public the evidence should have been very clear indeed to induce an ordinary English jury to convict a man like Beknaak, and the evidence of his knowledge of an intended assassination was anything but clear. Mr. Edwin James improved the hour. He made the trial an occasion for his speech denunciatory of tyrants generally, and he appealed an impassioned language to the British jury to answer the French tyrant by their verdict which they did accordingly. Mr. James became a sort of popular hero for the time and consequence of his oration. He had rhetorical talent enough to make him a sort of old Bailey Erskine, a buzz-fuzz barrier. He set up for a liberal politician and tribune of the people, and was enabled after a while to transfer his eloquence to the House of Commons. He vapored about as a friend of Italy and Garibaldi, and oppressed nationalities generally for a year or two, got into money and other difficulties and had to extinguish his political career suddenly and ignominiously. He was indeed heard of after. He went to America and he came back again, but we need not speak of him any more. In the midst of the commotion caused by Bernard's arrest and by the offer of two hundred pounds reward for the detection of an Englishman named Alsop, also charged with complicity in the plot, Mr. Milner Gibson quietly gave notice of an amendment to the second reading of the Conspiracy Bill. The amendment proposed to declare that while the House heard with regret the allegation that the recent crime had been devised in England and was always ready to assist in remedying any proved defects in the criminal law, yet it cannot but regret that Her Majesty's government previously to inviting the House to amend the Law of Conspiracy by the second reading of this bill at the present time have not felted to be their duty to make some reply to the important dispatch received from the French government dated Paris, January 20th, 1858, and which has been laid before Parliament. It might have been seen at once that this was a more serious business for the government than Mr. King Lake's amendment. In forecasting the result of a motion in the House of Commons much depends on the person who brings it forward. Has he a party behind him? If so, then the thing is important. If not, let his ability be what it will, his motion is looked on as a mere expression of personal opinion, interesting perhaps, but without political consequence. Mr. King Lake was emphatically a man without a party behind him. Mr. Gibson was emphatically a man of party and of practical politics. Mr. King Lake was a brilliant literary man who had proved little better than a failure in the House. Mr. Gibson was a successful member of Parliament and nothing else. No one could have supposed that Mr. Gibson was likely to get up a discussion for the mere sake of expressing his own opinion or making a display. He was one of those who had been turned out of Parliament when Palmerston made his triumphant appeal to the country on the China question. He was one of those whom Punch made fun of by a new adaptation of the old In the Apadaqua story. One of those who could not sit because they had no seats. Now he had just been returned to Parliament by another constituency, and he was not likely to be the mouthpiece of a merely formal challenge to the policy of the government. When the debate on the second reading came on, it began soon to be seen that the condition of things was grave for Lord Palmerston. Every hour and every speech made it more ominous. Mr. Gladston spoke eloquently against the government. Mr. Disraeli suddenly discovered that he was bound to vote against the second reading, although he had voted for the first. The government, he argued, had not yet answered the dispatch as they might have done in the interval, and as they had not vindicated the honour of England, the House of Commons could not entrust them with the measure they demanded. Lord Palmerston saw that in homely phrase the game was up. He was greatly annoyed. He lost his temper and did not even try to conceal the fact that he had lost it. He attacked Mr. Milner Gibson fiercely, declared that he appears for the first time in my memory as the champion of the dignity and honour of the country. He wandered off into an attack on the whole peace party, or Manchester School, and told some story about one of their newspapers which laid it down as a doctrine, that it would not matter if a foreign army conquered and occupied England so long as they were allowed to work their mills. All this was in curiously bad taste. For a genial and kindly as well as a graceful man, it was singular how completely Lord Palmerston always lost his good manners when he lost his temper. Under the influence of sudden anger, luckily a rare influence with him, he could be actually vulgar. He was merely vulgar, for example, when on one occasion, wishing to throw ridicule on the Pacific principles of Mr. Bright, he alluded to him in the House of Commons as the honourable and reverend gentleman. Lord Palmerston, in his reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, showed a positive spitefulness of tone and temper very unusual in him, and especially unbecoming to a losing man. A statesman may rise as he will, but he should fall with dignity. When the division was taken, it appeared that there were 215 votes for the Second Reading and 230 votes against it. The government therefore was left in a minority of 19. 146 Conservatives were in the majority and 84 Liberals. Besides these, there were such of the Peelite Party as Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladston, Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Sidney Herbert. Lord Palmerston at once made up his mind to resign. His resignation was accepted. Not quite a year had passed since the general election sent Lord Palmerston into power triumphant over the routed Liberals and the prostrate Manchester School. The leaders of the Manchester School were actually driven from their seats. There was not a cobblin or a bright to face the conqueror in Parliament. Not quite a year, and now on the motion of one of the lieutenants of that same party returned to their position again, Lord Palmerston is ejected from office. Palmerston once talked of having his tit for tat with John Russell. The Peace Party now had their tit for tat with him. Cassio hath beaten thee, and thou by that small hurt has cashiered Cassio. Lord Palmerston had the satisfaction before he left office of being able to announce the capture of Canton. The operations against China had been virtually suspended, it will be remembered when the Indian mutiny broke out. To adopt the happy illustration of a clever writer, England had dealt with China for the time, as a back woodsman sometimes does with a tree in the American forests, girdle it with an axe so as to mark it out for felling at a more convenient opportunity. She had now got the cooperation of France. France had a complaint of long-standing against China on account of the murder of some missionaries for which redress had been asked in vain. The Emperor of the French was very glad to have an opportunity of joining his arms with those of England in any foreign enterprise. It advertised the Empire cheaply, it showed to Frenchmen how active the Emperor was, and how closely he had at heart the honour and the interests of France. An exposition to China in association with England could not be much of a risk and would look well in the newspapers. Whereas if England were to be allowed to go alone, she would seem to be making too much of a position for herself in the East. There was therefore an Allied attack made upon Canton, and of course the city was easily captured. Commissioner Ye himself was taken prisoner, not until he had been sought for and hunted out in most ignominiest fashion. He was found at last hidden away in some obscure part of a house. He was known by his enormous fatness. One of our officers caught hold of him. Ye tried still to get away. A British seaman seized Ye by his pigtail, twisted the tail several times round his hand, and the unfortunate Chinese dignitary was thus a helpless and ludicrous prisoner. He was not hurt in any serious way, but otherwise he was treated with about as much consideration as schoolboys show towards a captured cat. The whole story of his capture may be read in the journals of the day, in some of which it is treated as though it weren't exploit worthy of heroes, and as if a Chinese with a pigtail was obviously a person on whom any of the courtesies of war would be thrown away. When it was convenient to let loose Ye's pigtail, he was put on board in English Manowar and afterwards sent to Calcutta where he died early in the following year. Unless report greatly belied him, he had been exceptionally cruel even for a Chinese official. It was said that he had ordered the beheading of about 100,000 rebels. There may be exaggeration in this number, but as Voltaire says in another case, even if he reduced the total to half, s'il a serait encore admirable. The English and French envoys, Lord Elgin and Peroncro, succeeded in making a treaty with China. By the conditions of the treaty, England and France were to have ministers at the Chinese court, on certain occasions at least, and China was to be represented in London and Paris. There was to be toleration of Christianity in China, and a certain freedom of access to Chinese rivers for English and French mercantile vessels, and to the interior of China for English and French subjects. China was to pay the expenses of the war. It was further agreed that the term Barbarian was no longer to be applied to Europeans in China. There was great congratulation in England over this treaty, and the prospect it afforded of a lasting peace with China. The peace thus procured lasted, in fact, exactly a year. Lord Palmerston then was out of office. Having nothing in particular to do, he presently went over to Compiègne on a visit to the Emperor of the French. For the second time, his friendship with Louis Napoleon had cost him his place. End of Section 16. Section 17 of a History of Our Own Times, Volume 3 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami, Chapter 38, On the True Faith of a Christian, Part 1. When Mr. Disraeli became once more leader of the House of Commons, he must have felt that he had almost as difficult a path to tread as that of him described in Henry IV, who has to or walk a current, roaring loud on the unsteady fast footing of a spear. The Ministry of Lord Darby, whereof Mr. Disraeli was undoubtedly the sense-carrier, was not supported by a parliamentary majority, nor could it pretend to great intellectual and administrative ability. It had in its ranks two or three men of something like statesman capacity and a number of respectable persons possessing abilities about equal to those of any intelligent businessman or county magistrate. Mr. Disraeli, of course, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Stanley undertook the colonies. Mr. Walpole made a painstaking and conscientious Home Secretary as long as he continued to hold the office. Lord Momsbury muddled on with foreign affairs somehow. Lord Ellenbra's brilliant eccentric light perplexed for a brief space the Indian Department. General Peel was Secretary for War and Mr. Henley, President of the Board of Trade. Lord Nace, afterwards Lord Mayo, became Chief Secretary for Ireland, and was then supposed to be nothing more than a kindly, sweet-tempered man, of whom his most admiring friends would never have ventured to foreshadow such a destiny as that he should succeed to the place of a canning and an Elgin, and govern the new India to which so many anxious eyes were turned. Sir John Packington was made First Lord of the Admiralty because a place of some kind had to be found for him, and he was as likely to do well at the head of the Navy as anywhere else. A ridiculous story, probably altogether untrue, used to be told of President Lincoln in some of the difficult days of the American Civil War. He wanted a Commander-in-Chief, and he happened to be in conversation with a friend on the subject of the war. Suddenly addressing the friend he asked him if he had ever commanded an army. No, Mr. President, was the reply. Do you think you could command an army? I presume so, Mr. President. I know nothing to the contrary. He was appointed Commander-in-Chief at once. One might, without great stretch of imagination, conceive of a conversation of the same kind taking place between Sir John Packington and Lord Darby. Sir John Packington had no reason to know that he might not prove equal to the administration of the Navy, and he became First Lord of the Admiralty accordingly. No conservative government could be supposed to get on without Lord John Manners, and luckily there was the Department of Public Works for him. Lord Stanley was regarded as a statesman of great and peculiar promise. The party to which he belonged were inclined to make him an object of his special pride because he seemed to have, in a very remarkable degree, the very qualities which most of their leading members were generally accused of wanting. The epithet which Mr. Mill, at a later period applied to the Tories, that of the stupid party, was the expression of a feeling very common in the political world and under which many of the conservatives themselves winced. The more intelligent a conservative was, the more was he inclined to chafe at the ignorance and dullness of many of the party. It was therefore with particular satisfaction that intelligent Tories saw among themselves a young statesman who appeared to have all those qualities of intellect and those educational endowments which the bulk of the party did not possess and what was worse did not even miss. Lord Stanley had a calm meditative intellect. He studied politics as one may study as science. He understood political economy, that newfangled science which so bewildered his party, and of which the Peelites and the Manchester men made so much account. He had traveled much, not merely making the old-fashioned Grand Tour, which most of the Tory country gentlemen had themselves made, but visiting the United States and Canada and the Indies, East and West. He was understood to know all about geography and cotton and sugar, and he had come up into politics in a happy age when the question of free trade was understood to be settled. The Tories were proud of him, as the democratic mob is proud of an aristocratic leader, or as a working men's convention is proud of the cooperation of some distinguished scholar. Lord Stanley was strangely unlike his father in intellect and temperament. The one man was almost indeed the very opposite of the other. Lord Darby was all instinct and passion. Lord Stanley was all method and calculation. Lord Darby amused himself in the intervals of political work by translating classic epics and odes. Lord Stanley beguiled an interval of leisure by the reading of Blue Books. Lord Darby's eloquence, when at its worst, became fiery nonsense. Lord Stanley's sank occasionally to be nothing more than platitude. The extreme of the one was rhapsody, and of the other, commonplace. Lord Darby was too hot and impulsive to be always a sound statesman. Lord Stanley was too coldly methodical to be the statesman of a crisis. Both men were to a certain sense superficial and deceptive. Lord Darby's eloquence had no great depth in it, and Lord Stanley's wisdom often proved somewhat thin. The career of Lord Stanley did not afterwards bear out the expectations that were originally formed of him. He proved to be methodical, sensible, conscientious, slow. He belonged perhaps to that class of men about whom Gerta said that if they could only once commit some extravagance, we should have greater hopes of their future wisdom. He did not commit any extravagance. He remained careful, prudent, and slow. But at the time when he accepted the Indian secretary's ship, it was still hoped that he would, to use a homely expression, warm to his work, and on both sides of the political contest, people looked to him as a new and a great figure in conservative politics. He was not an orator. He had nothing whatever of the orator in language or in temperament. His manner was ineffective. His delivery was decidedly bad. But his words carried weight with them, and even his common places were received by some of his party as the utterances of an oracle. There were men among the conservatives of the back benches who secretly hoped that in this wise young man was the upcoming statesman who was to deliver the party from the thralldom of eccentric genius, and of an eloquence which, however brilliantly it fought their battles, seemed to them hardly a respectable sort of gift to be employed in the service of gentlemanly like Tory principles. Lord Stanley had been in office before. During his father's first administration, he had acted as undersecretary for foreign affairs. On the death of Sir William Molesworth, Lord Palmerston had offered the colonial secretary ship to Lord Stanley, but the latter, although his Toryism was of the most moderate and liberal kind, did not see his way to take a seat in a liberal administration. His appearance, therefore, as a cabinet minister in the government formed by his father, was an event looked to with great interest all over the country. The Liberals were not without a hope that he might someday find himself driven by his conscientiousness and his clear unprejudiced intelligence into the ranks of avowed liberalism. It was confidently predicted of him in a liberal review two or three years after this time that he would one day be found a prominent member of a liberal cabinet under the premiership of Mr. Gladston. For the present, however, he is still the rising light, a somewhat cold and colorless light indeed of conservatism. A raid against the Conservatives was a party disjointed indeed for the present, but capable at any moment if they could only agree of easily overturning the government of Lord Darby. The superiority of the opposition in debating power was simply overwhelming. In the House of Commons, Mr. Disraeli was the only first class debater, with the exception perhaps of the new Solicitor General, Sir Hugh Carons, and Sir Hugh Carons being new to office was not expected as yet to carry very heavy metal in great debate. The best of their colleagues could only be called a respectable second class. Against them were Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladston, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright, every one of whom was a first class debater, some of them great parliamentary orators, some too with the influence that comes from the fact of their having led ministries and conducted wars. In no political assembly in the world does experience of office and authority tell for more than in the House of Commons, to have held office confers a certain dignity even on mediocrity. The man who is held office and who sits on the front bench opposite the ministry has a sort of prescriptive right to be heard whenever he stands up to address the House, in preference to the most rising and brilliant talker who has never yet been a member of an administration. Mr. Disraeli had opposed to him not merely the eloquence of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, but the authority of Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston. It required much dexterity to make a decent show of carrying on a government under such conditions. Mr. Disraeli well knew that his party held office only on sufferance from their opponents. If they attempted nothing they were certain to be censured for inactivity. If they attempted anything there was the chance of their exposing themselves to the combined attack of all the fractions of the liberal party. Luckily for them it was not easy to bring about such a combination just yet, but whenever it came there was foreshown the end of the ministry. Lord Darby's government quietly dropped the unlucky conspiracy bill. England and France were alike glad to be out of the difficulty. There was a short interchange of correspondence in which the French government explained that they really had meant nothing in particular and it was then announced to both houses of parliament that the misunderstanding was at an end and that friendship had set in again. We have seen already how the India bill was carried. Lord Darby's tenure of office was made remarkable by the success of one measure which must have given much personal satisfaction to Mr. Disraeli. The son of a Jewish father, the descendant of an ancient Jewish race, himself received as a child into the Jewish community, Mr. Disraeli had since his earliest years of intelligence been a Christian. I am as I have ever been, he said himself, when giving evidence once in a court of law, a Christian. But he had never renounced his sympathies with the race to which he belonged and the faith in which his fathers worshipped. He had always stood up for the Jews. He had glorified the genius and the influence of the Jews in many pages of romantic, high-flown, and sometimes very turgid eloquence. He had in some of his novels seemingly set about to persuade his readers that all good and great the modern world had seen was due to the unceasing intellectual activity of the Jew. He had vindicated, with as sweeping a liberality, the virtues of the Jewish race. In one really fine and striking sentence he declares, that a Jew is never seen upon the scaffold unless it be at an auto-defe. Forty years ago he says in his Lord George Bentink, not a longer period than the children of Israel were wandering in the desert, the two most dishonored races in Europe were the Attic and the Hebrew, and they were the two races that had done most for mankind. Mr. Disraeli had the good fortune to see the civil emancipation of the Jews accomplished during the time of his leadership of the House of Commons. It was a coincidence merely. He had always assisted the movement toward that end, unlike some other men who carried on their faces the evidence of their Hebrew extraction and who yet made themselves conspicuous for their opposition to it. But the success did not come from any inspiration of his, and most of his colleagues in power resisted it as long as they could. His former chief, Lord George Bentink, it will be remembered, had resigned his leadership of the party in the House of Commons because of the complaints made when he spoke and voted for the removal of Jewish disabilities. It was in July 1858 that the long political and sectarian struggle came to an end. Baron Lionel Nathan Deroth's child, who has but lately died, was allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons on the 26th of that month as one of the representatives of the City of London, and the controversy about Jewish disabilities was over at last. It is not uninteresting, before we trace the history of this struggle to its close, to observe how completely the conditions under which it was once carried on had changed in recent years. Of late, the opposition to the claims of the Jews came almost exclusively from the Tories, and especially from the Tories in the House of Lords, from the High Churchmen, and from the Bishops. A century before that time the Bishops were for the most part very willing that justice should be done to the Jews, and statesmen and professional politicians, looking at the question perhaps rather from the view of obvious necessity and expediency, were well inclined to favor the claim made for, rather than by, their Jewish fellow subjects. But at that time the popular voice cried out furiously against the Jews. The old traditions of columnity and hatred still had full influence, and the English people as a whole were determined that they would not admit the Jews to the rights of citizenship. They would borrow from them, buy from them, accept any manner of service from them, but they would not allow of their being represented in Parliament. As time went on, all this feeling changed. The public in general became either absolutely indifferent to the question of Jewish citizenship, or decidedly in favor of it. No statesmen had the slightest excuse for professing to believe that an outcry would be raised by the people if he attempted to procure the representation of Jews by Jews in Parliament. We have seen how by steps the Jews made their way into municipal office and into the magistracy. At the same time persistent efforts were being made to obtain for them the right to be elected to the House of Commons. On April 5th, 1830, Mr. Robert Grant, then a colleague of one of the Gurney family in the representation of Norwich, moved for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the civil disabilities affecting British-born subjects professing the Jewish religion. The claim which Mr. Grant made for the Jews was simply that they should be allowed to enjoy all those rights, which we may call fundamental to the condition of the British subject, without having to profess the religion of the state. At that time the Jews were unable to take the oath of allegiance passed in Elizabeth's reign, although it had nothing in its substance or language opposed to their claims, in as much as it was sworn on the evangelists. Nor could they take the oath of abjuration intended to guard against the return of the stewards, because that oath contained the words on the true faith of a Christian. Before the repeal of the Test and Corporations Act in 1828, the sacrament had to be taken as a condition of holding any corporate office and had to be taken before admission. In the case of offices held under the crown, it might be taken after admission. Jews, however, did obtain admission to corporate offices, not expressly as Jews, but as all the centers obtained it, that is by breaking the law and having an annual indemnity bill passed to relieve them from the penal consequences. The Test and Corporations Act put an end to this anomaly as regarded the dissenters, but it unconsciously imposed a new disability on the Jew. The new declaration substituted for the old oath contained the words on the true faith of a Christian. The operation of the law was fatal, says Sir Erskine May, to nearly all the rights of a citizen. A Jew could not hold any office, civil, military, or corporate. He could not follow the profession of the law as a barrister, or attorney, or attorney's clerk. He could not be a schoolmaster, or an usher, at a school. He could not sit as a member of either House of Parliament, nor even exercise the electoral franchise if called upon to take the elector's oath. Thus, although no special act was passed for the exclusion of the Jew from the rights of citizenship, he was effectually shut up in a sort of political and social ghetto. The debate on Mr. Grant's motion was made memorable by the fact that Macaulay delivered then his maiden speech. He rose at the same time with Sir James Macintosh, and according to the graceful usage of the House of Commons, the new member was called on to speak. We need not go over the arguments used in the debate. Public opinion has settled the questions so long and so completely that they have little interest for a time like ours. One curious argument is however worth a passing notice. One speaker, Sir John Rosely, declared that when it was notorious that seats were to be had in that house to any extent for money, he could not consent to allow anyone to become a member who was not also a Christian. Bribery and corruption were so general and so bad that they could not, with safety to the State, be left to be the privilege of any but Christians. If I be drunk, says Master Slender, I'll be drunk with those that have the fear of God and not with drunken knaves. The proposal for the admission of Jews to Parliament was supported by Lord John Russell, O'Connell, Broom and Macintosh. Its first reading, for it was opposed even on the first reading, was carried by a majority of eighteen, but on the motion for the second reading the bill was thrown out by a majority of sixty-three, the votes for it being one hundred and sixty-five and those against it two hundred and twenty-eight. In eighteen thirty-three, Mr. Grant introduced his bill again and this time was fortunate enough to pass it through the commons. The lords rejected it by a majority of fifty. The following year told a similar story. The commons accepted, the lords rejected. Meantime, the Jews were being gradually relieved from other restrictions. A clause in Lord Denman's Act for amending the laws of evidence allowed all persons to be sworn in courts of law in the form which they held most binding on their conscience. Lord Lindhurst succeeded in passing a bill for the admission of Jews to corporate offices. Jews had, as we have already seen, been admitted to the shrievalty and the majesty in the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. In eighteen forty-eight, the struggle for their admission to parliament was renewed, but the lords still held out and would not pass a bill. Meanwhile, influential Jews began to offer themselves as candidates for seats in parliament. Mr. Salomon's contested Shoram and Maidstone successively and unsuccessfully. In eighteen forty-seven, Barron Lionel Rothschild was elected one of the members for the City of London. He resigned his seat when the House of Lords, throughout the Jews' bill, and stood again and was again elected. It was not, however, until eighteen fifty that the struggle was actually transferred to the floor of the House of Commons. In that year, Barron Rothschild presented himself at the table of the House as O'Connell had done and offered to take the oaths in order that he might be admitted to take his seat. For four sessions, he had sat as a stranger in the House of which he had been duly elected a member by the votes of one of the most important English constituencies. Now he came boldly up to the table and demanded to be sworn. He was sworn on the Old Testament. He took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. But when the oath of abjuration came, he omitted from it the words on the true faith of a Christian. He was directed to withdraw and it was decided that he could neither sit nor vote unless he would consent to take the oath of abjuration in the fashion prescribed by the law. In other words, he could only sit in the House of Commons on condition of his perjuring himself. Had he sworn on the true faith of a Christian, the House of Commons, well-knowing that he had sworn to a falsehood, would have admitted him as one of its members. End of Section 17 Section 18 of a history of our own times, Volume 3 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 38 On the True Faith of a Christian, Part 2 Barron Roth's child quietly fell back to his old position. He sat in one of the seats under the gallery, a place to which strangers are admitted but where also members occasionally sit. He did not contest the matter any further. Mr. David Salamance was inclined for a rougher and bolder course. He was elected for Greenwich in 1851 and he presented himself as Barron Roth's child had done. The same thing followed. He refused to say the words on the true faith of a Christian and he was directed to withdraw. He did withdraw. He sat below the bar. A few evenings after, a question was put to the government by a member friendly to the admission of Jews, Sir Benjamin Hall, afterwards Lord Lanover. If Mr. Salamance should take his seat, would the government sue him for the penalties provided by the Act of Parliament in order that the question of right might be tried by a court of law? Lord John Russell replied on the part of the government that they did not intend to take any proceedings, in fact implied that they considered it no affair of theirs. Then Sir Benjamin Hall announced that Mr. Salamance felt he had no alternative but to take his seat and let the question of right be tested in that way. Fourth width, to the amazement and horror of steady old constitutional members, Mr. Salamance, who had been sitting below the bar, calmly got up, walked into the sacred precincts of the house, and took his seat among the members. A tumultuous scene followed. Half the house shouted indignantly to Mr. Salamance to withdraw, withdraw. The other half called out encouragingly to him to keep his place. The perplexity was indescribable. What is to be done with a quiet and respectable gentleman who insists that he as a member of parliament comes and takes his seat in the house and will not withdraw? To be sure if he were an absolute intruder he could be easily removed by the sergeanted arms and his assistants. But in such a case, unless the intruder were a lunatic, he would hardly think of keeping his place when he had been bitten by authority to take himself off. Mr. Salamance, however, had undoubtedly been elected member for Greenwich by a considerable majority. His constituents believed him to be their lawful representative, and in fact had obtained from him a promise that if elected he would actually take his seat. Even then perhaps something might have been done if the house in general had been opposed to the claim of Mr. Salamance and of Greenwich. When Lord Cochran escaped from prison and presented himself in the house, from which he had been expelled, he too was ordered to withdraw. He too refused to do so. The Speaker directed that he should be removed by force. Cochran had a giant strength and on this occasion he used it like a giant. He struggled hard against the efforts of many officials to remove him and some of the woodwork of the benches was actually torn from its place before the gallant seaman could be got out of the house. But in the case of Lord Cochran the general feeling of the house was with the authorities and against the expelled member, who however happened to be in the right while the house was in the wrong. The case of Mr. Salamance was very different. Many members were of opinion and eminent lawyers were among them that in the strictest and most technical view of the law he was entitled to take his seat. Many more were convinced that the principle which excluded him was stupid and barbarous and that the course he was at present taking was necessary for the purpose of obtaining its immediate repeal. Therefore any idea of expelling Mr. Salamance was out of the question. The only thing that could be done was to set to work and debate the matter. Lord John Russell moved a resolution to the effect that Mr. Salamance be ordered to withdraw. Lord John Russell it need hardly be said was entirely in favor of the admission of Jews but thought Mr. Salamance course irregular. Mr. Bernal Osborne moved an amendment declaring Mr. Salamance entitled to take his seat. A series of irregular discussions varied and enlivened by motions for adjournment took place. And Mr. Salamance not only voted in some of the divisions but actually made a speech. He spoke calmly and well and was listened to with great attention. He explained that in the course he had taken he was acting in no spirit of contumacy or presumption and with no disregard for the dignity of the house but that he had been lawfully elected and that he felt bound to take his seat for the purpose of asserting his own rights and those of his constituents. He intimated also that he would withdraw if just sufficient force were used to make him feel that he was acting under coercion. The motion that he be ordered to withdraw was carried. The speaker requested Mr. Salamance to withdraw. Mr. Salamance held his place. The speaker directed the Sergeant at Arms to remove Mr. Salamance. The Sergeant at Arms approached Mr. Salamance and touched him on the shoulder and Mr. Salamance then quietly withdrew. The farce was over. It was evident to everyone that Mr. Salamance had virtually gained his object and that something must soon be done to get the House of Commons and the country out of the difficulty. It is curious that even in ordering him to withdraw the speaker called Mr. Salamance the Honorable Member. Mr. Salamance did well to press his rights in that practical way upon the notice of the house. It is one of the blots upon our parliamentary system that a great question like that of the removal of Jewish disabilities is seldom settled upon its merits. Parliament rarely bends to the mere claims of reason and justice. Some pressure has almost always to be put on it to induce it to see the right. Its tendency is always to act exactly as Mr. Salamance himself formerly did in this case to yield only when sufficient pressure has been put on it to signify coercion. Catholic Emancipation was carried by such a pressure. The promoters of the Sunday trading bill yield to a riot in Hyde Park. A Tory government turned reformers in obedience to a crowd who pulled down the railing of the same enclosure. A Chancellor of the Exchequer modifies his budget and deference to a demonstration of match-selling boys and girls. In all these instances it was right to make the concession, but the concession was not made because it was right. The Irish home rulers, or some of them at least, are convinced that they will carry home rule in the end by the mere force of a pressure brought to bear on Parliament, and their expectation is justified by all previous experience. They have been told often enough that they must not expect to carry it by argument. If Parliamentary institutions do really come to be discredited in this country as many people love to predict, one special reason will be this very experience on the part of the public. That Parliament has invariably conceded to pressure the reforms which it persistently denied to justice. A reform is first refused without reason to be at last conceded without grace. Mr. Salomon's acted wisely, therefore, for the cause he had at heart when he thrust himself upon the House of Commons. The course taken by Baron Rothschild was more dignified, no doubt, but it did not make much impression. The victory seems to us to have been practically one when Mr. Salomon sat down after having addressed the House of Commons from his place among the members. But it was not technically one just then, nor for some time after. Two actions were brought against Mr. Salomon's, not by the government, to recover penalties for his having unlawfully taken his seat. One of the actions was withdrawn, the object of both the like being to get a settlement of the legal question for which one trial would be as good as twenty. The action came on for trial in the Court of Exchequer on December 9, 1851, before Mr. Baron Martin and a special jury. Baron Martin suggested that as the question at issue was one of great importance, a special case should be prepared for the decision of the full Court. This was done and the case came before the Court in January 1852. The issue really narrated itself to this. Were the words, on the true faith of a Christian, merely a form of affirmation, or were they purposely inserted in order to obtain a profession of Christian faith? Did not the framers of the measure merely put in such words, as at the moment seem to them most proper to secure a true declaration from the majority of those to be sworn, and with the understanding that in exceptional cases other forms of asseveration might be employed as more suited to other forms of faith? Or were the words put in for the express purpose of making it certain that none but Christians should take the oath? We know as a matter of fact that the words were not put in with any such intention. No one was thinking about the Jews when the asseveration was thus constructed. Still the Court of Exchequer decided by three votes to one that the words must be held in law to constitute a specially Christian oath, which could be taken by no one but a Christian, and without taking which no one could be a member of parliament, of that parliament which had had bollingbrook for a leader and gibbon for a distinguished member. The legal question then being settled there were renewed efforts made to get rid of the disabilities by an act of parliament. The House of Commons continued to pass bills to enable Jews to sit in parliament, and the House of Lords continued to throw them out. Lord John Russell who had taken charge of the measure introduced his bill early in 1858. The bill was somewhat peculiar in its construction. On a former occasion the House of Lords found another excuse for not passing a measure for the same purpose in the fact that it mixed up a modification of the oath of supremacy with the question of the relief of the Jews. In the present measure the two questions were kept separate. The bill proposed to reconstruct the oath altogether. Some obsolete words about the pretender and the steward family were to be taken out. The inseparations relating to succession, supremacy, and allegiance were to be condensed into one oath to which were added on the true faith of a Christian. Thus far the measure merely reconstructed the form of oath so as to bring it into accord with the existing conditions of things. But then there came a separate clause in the bill providing that where the oath had to be administered to a Jew the words on the true faith of a Christian might be left out. This was a very sensible and simple way of settling the matter. It provided a rational form of oath for all sects alike. It got rid of obsolete anomalies and it likewise relieved the Jews from the injustice which had been unintentionally imposed on them. Unfortunately the very convenience of the form in which the bill was drawn only put, as it will be seen, a new facility into the hands of the anti-reformers in the House of Lords for again endeavoring to get rid of it. Lord John Russell had no difficulty with the House of Commons. He had brought up his bill in good time in order that it might reach the House of Lords as quickly as possible, and it passed a second reading in the Commons without any debate. When it came up to the House of Lords the majority simply struck out the particular clause relating to the Jews. This made the bill of no account whatever for the purpose it specially had in view. The Commons, on the motion of Lord John Russell, refused to ascend to the alteration made by the Lords and appointed a committee to draw up a statement of their reasons for refusing to agree to it. On the motion of Mr. Duncombe it was actually agreed that Baron Roth's child should be a member of the committee, although a legal decision had declared him not to be a member of the House. During the debates to which all this led, Lord Lucan made a suggestion of compromise in the House of Lords which proved successful. He recommended the insertion of a clause in the bill allowing either House to modify the form of both according to its pleasure. Lord John Russell objected to this way of dealing with a great question, but did not feel warranted in refusing the proposed compromise. A bill was drawn up with the clause suggested, and it was rattled if we may use such an expression through both houses. It passed with the oath's bill which the Lords had mutilated and which now stood as an independent measure. A Jew therefore might be a member of the House of Commons if it chose to receive him, and might be shut out of the House of Lords if that House did not think fit to let him in. More than that, the House of Commons might change its mind at any moment, and by modifying the form of oath shut out the Jews again, or shut out any new Jewish candidates. Of course such a condition of things as that could not endure. An act passed not long after which consolidated the acts referring to oaths of allegiance, abjuration, and supremacy, and enabled Jews on all occasions whatever to omit the words on the true faith of a Christian. Thus the Jew was at last placed on a position of political equality with his Christian fellow subjects, and an anomaly and a scandal was removed from our legislation. About the same time as that which saw Baron Roth's child admitted to take his seat in the House of Commons, the absurd property qualification for members of Parliament was abolished. This ridiculous system originally professed to secure that no man should be a member of the House of Commons who did not own a certain amount of landed property. The idea of defining a man's fitness to sit in Parliament according to his possession of landed property was in itself preposterous, but such as the law was it was evaded every day. It had not the slightest real force. Fictitious conveyances were issued as a matter of course. Anyone who desired a seat in Parliament could easily find some friend or patron who would convey to him by formal deed the fictitious ownership of landed property enough to satisfy the requirements of the law. This was done usually with as little pretense at concealment as the borrowing of an umbrella. It was perfectly well known to everybody that a great many members of the House of Commons did not possess, and did not even pretend to possess, a single acre of land their own property. What made the thing more absurd was that men who were rich enough to spend thousands of pounds in contesting boroughs and counties had often to go through this form of having a fictitious conveyance made to them because they did not happen to have invested any part of their wealth in land. Great city magnates known for their wealth and known in many cases for their high personal honor as well had to submit to this foolish ceremonial. The property qualification was a device of the reign of Anne. The evasions of it became so many and so notorious that in George II's time an act was passed making it necessary for every member to take an oath that he possessed the requisite amount of property. In the present reign a declaration was substituted for the oath and it was provided that if a man had not landed property it would be enough for him to prove that he had funded a property to the same amount, six hundred pounds a year for counties and three hundred pounds for boroughs. The manufacture of fictitious qualifications went on as fast as ever. There were many men in good position earning large incomes by a profession or otherwise who yet had not realized money enough to put them in possession of a property of six hundred pounds or three hundred pounds a year. It might take ten thousand pounds to secure an income of three hundred pounds a year, twenty thousand pounds to secure six hundred pounds a year. Scores of members of parliament were well known not to have any such means. To make the anomaly more absurd it should be noted that there was no property qualification in Scotland and the Scotch members were then as now remarkable for their respectability and intelligence. Members for the university too were elected without a property qualification. Mr. Lock King stated in the House of Commons that after every general election there were from fifty to sixty cases in which it was found that persons had declared themselves to be possessed of the requisite qualification who were notoriously not in possession of it. Many men too it was well known were purposely qualified by wealthy patrons in order that they might sit in parliament as mere nominees and political servants. As usual with parliament this anomaly was allowed to go on until a sudden scandal made its abolition necessary. One luckless person who probably had no position and few friends was actually prosecuted for having made a false declaration as to his property qualification. He had been a little more indiscreet or a little more open in his performance than other people and he was pounced upon by old father Antik the law. This practically settled the matter. Everyone knew that many other members of parliament deserved in point of fact just as well as he the three months imprisonment to which he was sentenced. Mr. Lock King introduced a bill to abolish the property qualification hitherto required from the representatives of English and Irish constituencies and it became law in a few days. End of Section 18. Section 19 of A History of Our Own Times Vol. 3 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami Chapter 39 The Ionian Islands. When Lord Ellenborough abruptly resigned the place of president of the Board of Control he was succeeded by Lord Stanley who as we have seen already became secretary of state for India under the new system of government. Lord Stanley had been secretary for the colonies and in this office he was succeeded by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. For some time previously Sir Edward Lytton had been taking somark to place in parliamentary life as to make it evident that when his party came into power he was sure to have a chance of distinguishing himself in office. Bulwer's political career had up to this time been little better than a failure. He started in public life as a radical and a friend of O'Connell. He was indeed the means of introducing Mr. Disraeli to the leader of the Irish party. He began his parliamentary career before the reform bill. He was elected for St. Ives in 1831. After the passing of the bill he represented Lincoln for several years. At the general election of 1841 he lost his seat and it was not until July 1852 that he was again returned to parliament. This time he came in as a member for the county of Hertz. In the interval many things had happened to quote the expression of Mr. Disraeli in 1874. Lytton had succeeded to wealth and to land at the states and he had almost altogether changed his political opinions. From a poetic radical he had become a poetic conservative. In the parliamentary companion for the year 1855 we find him thus quaintly described by his own hand it may be assumed. Concurse in the general policy of Lord Darby would readjust the income tax and mitigate the duties on malt, tea and soap. Some years ago advocated the ballot but seeing its utter inefficiency in France and America can no longer support that theory. Will support education on a religious basis and vote for a repeal of the Meneuth grant? It will perhaps be assumed from this confession of faith that Lytton had not very clear views of any kind as to practical politics. It probably seemed a graceful and poetic thing, redolent of youth and earnest maltrevers, to stand forth as an impassioned radical in early years and it was quite in keeping with the progress of earnest maltrevers to tone down into a thoughtful conservative opposing the Meneuth grant and mitigating the duty on malt and soap as one advanced in years, wealth and gravity. At all events it was certain that whatever Lytton attempted he would in the end carry to some considerable success. His first years in the House of Commons had come to nothing. When he lost his seat most people fancied that he had accepted defeat and had turned his back on parliamentary life forever. But Lytton possessed a marvelously strong will and had a faith in himself which almost amounted to genius. When he wrote a play which proved a distinct failure some of the leading critics assured him that he had no dramatic turn at all. He believed on the contrary that he had then he determined to write another play which should be of all things dramatic and which should hold the stage. He went to work and produced the Lady of Lyon, a play filled with turgid passages and preposterous situations but which has nevertheless in so conspicuous a degree the dramatic or theatric qualities that it has always held the stage and has never been wholly extinguished by any change of fashion or a fancy. In much the same way sir Edward Lytton seems to have made up his mind that he would compel the world to confess him capable of playing the part of a politician. We have in a former chapter of this work alluded to the physical difficulties which stood in the way of his success as a parliamentary speaker and in spite of which he accomplished his success. He was deaf and his articulation was so defective that those who heard him speak in public for the first time often found themselves unable to understand him. Such difficulties would assuredly have scared any ordinary man out of the parliamentary arena forever. But Lytton seems to have determined that he would make a figure in parliament. He set himself to public speaking as coolly as if he were a man like Gladstone or Bright whom nature had marked out for such a competition by her physical gifts. He became a decided and even in a certain sense a great success. He could not strike into a debate actually going on. His defects of hearing shut him off from such a performance and no man who is not a debater will ever hold a really high position in the House of Commons. But he could review a previous night's arguments in a speech abounding in splendid phrases and brilliant illustrations. He could pass for an orator. He actually did pass for an orator. Mr. Disraeli seems to have admired his speaking with a genuine and certainly a disinterested admiration for he described it as though it were exactly the kind of eloquence in which he would gladly have himself excelled if he could. In fact Lytton reached the same relative level in parliamentary debate that he had reached in fiction and the drama. He contrived to appear as if he ought to rank among the best of the craftsmen. Sir Edward Lytton as Secretary for the Colonies seemed resolved to prove by active and original work that he could be a practical colonial statesman as well as a novelist, a playwright and a parliamentary orator. He founded the colony of British Columbia which at first was to comprise all such territories within the Queen's Dominions as are bounded to the south by the frontier of the United States of America to the east by the main chain of the Rocky Mountains to the north by Simpson's River and the Finley branch of the Peace River and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. It was originally intended that the colony should not include Vancouver's island but Her Majesty was allowed on receiving an address from the two houses of the legislature of Vancouver's island to annex that island to British Columbia. Vancouver's island was in fact incorporated with British Columbia in 1866 and British Columbia was united with the Dominion of Canada in 1871. Something however more strictly akin to Sir Edward Lytton's personal tastes was found in the mission to which he invited Mr Gladstone. There had long been dissatisfaction and even disturbance in the Ionian islands. These seven islands were constituted a sort of republic or commonwealth by the Treaty of Vienna, but they were consigned to the protectorate of Great Britain which had the right of maintaining garrisons in them. Great Britain used to appoint a Lord High Commissioner who was generally a military man and whose office combined the duties of commander-in-chief with those of civil governor. The Little Republic had a senate of six members and a legislative assembly of 40 members. It seems almost a waste of words to say that the islanders were not content with British government. For good or ill, the Haleens, wherever they are found, are sure to be filled with an impassioned longing for Hellenic independence. The people of the Ionian islands were eager to be allowed to enter into one system with the Kingdom of Greece. It was idle to try to amuse them by telling them they constituted an independent republic and were actually governing themselves. A duller people than the Greeks of the islands could not be deluded into the idea that they were a self-governing people, while they saw themselves presided over by an English Lord High Commissioner, who was also the commander-in-chief of a goodly British army garrisoned in their midst. They saw that the Lord High Commissioner had a way of dismissing the Republican Parliament whenever he and they could not get on together. They knew that if they ventured to resist his orders, English soldiers would make short work of their effort at self-assertion. They might therefore well be excused if they fail to see much of the independent republic in such a system. It is certain that they got a great deal of material benefit from the presence of the energetic road-making British power, but they wanted to be above all things Greek. Their national principles and aspirations, their personal vanities, their truly Greek restlessness and craving for novelty, all combined to make them impatient of that foreign protectorate, which was really foreign government. The popular constitution which had been given to the Sept-Insular Republic, some 10 years before Sir E. B. Litton's time, had enabled Hellenic agitation to make its voice and its claims more effectual. In England, after the usual fashion, a great many shallow politicians were raising an outcry against the popular constitution, as if it were the cause of all the confusion. Because it enabled discontent to make its voice heard, they condemned it as the cause of the discontent. They would have been forced silencing the alarm bell immediately, and then telling themselves that all was safe. As was but natural, local politicians rose to popularity in the islands in proportion as they were loud in their denunciation of foreign rule, and in their demands for union with the kingdom of Greece. Anybody might surely have foretold all this years before. It might have been taken for granted that so long as any sort of independent Greek kingdom held its head above the waters, the Greek populations everywhere would sympathize with its efforts and long to join their destiny with it. Many English public men, however, were merely angry with these pestilential Greeks who did not know what was good for them. A great English journal complained with a simple egotism that was positively touching, that in spite of all argument, the national assembly, the municipalities, and the press of the Ionian islands had now concentrated their pretensions on the project of a union with the kingdom of Greece. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton had not been long enough in office to have become soaked in the ideas of routine. He did not regard the unanimous opinions of the insular legislature, municipalities, and press as evidence merely of the unutterable stupidity or the incurable ingratitude and wickedness of the Ionian populations. He thought the causes of the complaints and the dissatisfaction were well worth looking into, and he resolved on sending a statesman of distinction out to the islands to make the inquiry. Mr. Gladstone had been for some years out of office. He had been acting as an independent supporter of Lord Palmerston's government. It occurred to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton that Mr. Gladstone was the man best fitted to conduct the inquiry. He was well known to be a sympathizer with the struggles and the hopes of the Greeks generally, and it seemed to the New Colonial Secretary that the mere fact of such a man having been appointed would make it clear to the islanders that the inquiry was about to be conducted in no hostile spirit. He offered therefore to Mr. Gladstone the office of Lord High Commissioner extraordinary to the Ionian Islands, and Mr. Gladstone accepted the offer and its duties. The appointment created much surprise, some anger, and a good deal of ridicule here at home. There seemed to certain minds to be something novel, startling, and positively unseemly in such a proceeding. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton had alluded in his dispatch to Mr. Gladstone's Homeric scholarship, and this was, in the opinion of some politicians, an outrage upon all the principles and proprieties of routine. This, it was muttered, is what comes of literary men in office. A writer of novels is leader of the House of Commons, and he has another writer of novels at his site as Colonial Secretary, and between them they can think of nothing better than to send a man out to the Ionian Islands to listen to the trash of Greek demagogues merely because he happens to be fond of reading Homer. Mr. Gladstone went out to the Ionian Islands and arrived in Corfu in the November of 1858. He called together the Senate and endeavored to satisfy them as to the real nature of his mission. He explained that he had not come there to discuss the propriety of maintaining the English Protectorate, but only to inquire into the manner in which the just claims of the Ionian Islands might be secured by means of that Protectorate. Mr. Gladstone's visit, however, was not a successful enterprise for those who desired that the Protectorate should be perpetual and that the Ionians should be brought to accept it as inevitable. The population of the Islands persisted in regarding him, not as the Commissioner of a Conservative English Government but as Gladstone the Phil Helene. He was received wherever he went with the honors due to a Liberator. His path everywhere was made to seem like a triumphal progress. In vain he repeated his assurances that he came to reconcile the Islands to the Protectorate and not to deliver them from it. The popular instinct insisted on regarding him as at least the precursor of their union to the Kingdom of Greece. The National Assembly passed a formal resolution declaring for union with Greece. All that Mr. Gladstone's persuasions could do was to induce them to appoint a committee and draw up a memorial to be presented improper form to the Protecting Powers. By this time the news of Mr. Gladstone's reception in the Islands and in Athens to which also he paid a visit had reached England and the most extravagant exaggerations were put into circulation. Mr. Gladstone was attacked in an absurd manner. He was accused not merely of having encouraged the pretensions of the Ionian Islanders but even talked of as if he and he alone had been their inspiration. One might have imagined that there was something portentious and even unnatural in a population of Hellenic race feeling anxious to be united with the Greek kingdom instead of being ruled by a British protector imposed by the arbitrary decree of a Congress of Foreign Powers. National complacency could hardly push sensible men to greater foolishness than it did when it set half England wondering and raging over the impertinence of a Greek population who preferred union with a Greek kingdom to dependence upon an English protectorate. English writers and speakers went on habitually as if the conduct of the Islanders were on a par with that of some graceless daughter who forsakes her father's house for the companionship of strangers or of some still more guilty wife who deserts her loving husband to associate herself with some strolling musician. There can be no doubt that in every material sense the people of the islands were much better governed under England's protectorate than they could be for generations, probably for centuries to come under any Greek administration. They had admirable means of communication by land and sea, splendid harbors, regular lines of steamers, excellent roads everywhere. While the people of the kingdom of Greece were hardly better off for all these advantages under Otto than they might have been under Codris. Monsieur Edmond Abu declared that the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands were richer, happier, and a hundred times better governed than the subjects of King Otto. Monsieur Abu detested Greece and all about it, but his testimony thus far is that of the most enthusiastic Phil Helene. Indeed it seems a waste of words to say that where Englishmen ruled they would take care to have good roads and efficient lines of steamers, but Monsieur Abu was mistaken in assuming that the populations of the islands were happier under British rule than they would have been under that of a Greek kingdom. Such a remark only showed a want of the dramatic sympathy which understands the feelings of others and which we especially look for in a writer of any sort of fiction. Monsieur Abu would not have been so successful a romancist if he had always acted on the assumption that people are made happy by the material conditions which in the opinion of other people ought to confer happiness. He would not, we may presume, admit that the people of Alsace and Lorraine are happier under the Germans than they were under the French even though it were to be proved beyond dispute that the Germans made better roads and managed more satisfactorily the lines of railway. The populations of the islands persevered in the belief that they understood better what made them happy than Monsieur Abu could do. The visit of Mr Gladstone, whatever purpose it may have been intended to fulfill, had the effect of making them agitate more strenuously than ever for annexation to the kingdom of Greece. Their wish, however, was not to be granted yet. A new Lord High Commissioner was sent out after Mr Gladstone's return, doubtless with instructions to satisfy what was supposed to be public opinion at home, by a little additional stringency in maintaining the connection between Great Britain and the protected populations. Still, however, the idea held ground that sooner or later Great Britain would give up the charge of the islands. A few years after an opportunity occurred for making the session, the Greeks got rid quietly of their heavy German King Otto, and on the advice chiefly of England, they elected as sovereign a brother of the Princess of Wales. The Greeks themselves were not very eager for any other experiment in the matter of royalty. They seemed as if they thought they had had enough of it, but the great powers and more especially England pressed upon them that they could never be really respectable if they went without a king, and they submitted to the dictates of conventionality. They first asked for Prince Alfred of England, now Duke of Edinburgh, but the arrangements of European diplomacy did not allow of a prince of any of the great reigning houses being set over Greece. In any case, nothing can be less likely than that an English prince would have accepted such a responsibility. The French government made some significant remark to the effect that if it were possible for any of the great powers to allow one of their princes to accept the Greek crown, France had a prince disengaged, who she thought might have at least as good a claim as another. This was understood to be Prince Napoleon, son of Jerome, King of Westphalia, a prince of whom a good deal was heard after, as a good deal had been heard before in the politics of Europe. The suggestion then about the Prince of the House of Denmark was made either by or to the Greeks and it was accepted. The second son of the King of Denmark was made King of Greece, and Lord John Russell, on behalf of the English government, then handed over to the Kingdom of Greece the islands of which Great Britain had had so long to bear the unwilling charge and the retention of which, according to some uneasy politicians, was absolutely necessary alike to the national safety and the imperial glory of England. This is anticipating by a few years the movement of time, but the effects of Mr. Gladstone's visit so distinctly foreshadowed the inevitable result, that it is not worthwhile dividing into two parts this little chapter of our history. Mr. Gladstone's visit the mistaken interpretation put upon it by the Islanders and the reception which chiefly on account of that mistake he had among them must have made it clear to every intelligent person in England that this country could not long continue to force her protector it upon a reluctant population over whom it could not even claim the right of conquest. It ought to have been plain to all the world that England could not long consent with any regard for her own professions and principles. To play the part of Europe's jailer or man in possession. The session of the Ionian Islands marked however the farthest point of progress attained for many years in that liberal principle of foreign policy which recognizes fairness and justice as motives of action more imperative than national vanity or the imperial pride of extended possession. England had to suffer for some time under the influence of a reaction which the session of the islands all just and prudent though it was unquestionably helped to bring about. End of section 19