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• 01 - Ch. 18: Chartism and Young Ireland, Pt. 1

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  Section 1 of A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

  Recording by Pamela Nagami. A History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy. Chapter 18, Chartism and Young Ireland, Part 1. The year 1848 was an era in the modern history of Europe.

  It was the year of unfulfilled revolutions. The fall of the dynasty of Louis-Philippe may be said to have set the revolutionary tide flowing. The event in France had long been anticipated by keen-eyed observers. There are many predictions delivered and recorded before the revolution was yet near which show

  that it ought not to have taken the world by surprise. The reign of the bourgeois king was unsuited in its good and in its bad qualities alike to the genius and the temper of the French people. The people of France have defects enough which friends and enemies are ready to point out to them, but it can hardly be denied that they like at least the appearance of a certain

  splendor and magnanimity in their systems of government. This is indeed one of their weaknesses. It lays them open to the allurements of any brilliant adventurer, like the first Napoleon or the third, who can promise them national greatness and glory at the expense perhaps of domestic liberty.

  But it makes them peculiarly intolerant of anything mean and sordid in a system or a ruler. There are peoples no doubt who could be persuaded and wisely persuaded to put up with a good deal of the ignoble and the shabby in their foreign policy for the sake of domestic comfort and tranquility, but the French people are always impatient of anything like meanness in their rulers and the government of Louis-Philippe was especially mean.

  Since foreign policy was treacherous, its diplomatists were commissioned to act as tricksters, the word of a French minister at a foreign court began to be regarded as on a level of credibility with a dicer's oath. The home policy of the king was narrow-minded and repressive enough, but a man who played upon the national weakness more wisely might have persuaded his people to be content with

  defects at home for the sake of prestige abroad. From the hour when it became apparent in France that the nation was not respected abroad, the fall of the dynasty was only a matter of time and change. The terrible story of the Depralan family helped to bring about the catastrophe. The alternate weakness and obstinacy of the government forced it on and the king's own

  lack of decision made it impossible that when the trial had come it could end in any way but one. Louis-Philippe fled to England and his flight was the signal for long pent-up fires to break out all over Europe. Revolution soon was aflame over nearly all the courts and capitals of the continent.

  Revolution is like an epidemic. It finds out the weak places in systems. The two European countries which being tried by it stood at best were England and Belgium. In the latter country the king made frank appeal to his people and told them if they wished to be rid of him he was quite willing to go.

  Language of this kind is new in the mouths of sovereigns and the Belgians are a people well able to appreciate it. They declared for their king and the shock of the revolution passed harmlessly away. In England and Ireland the effect of the events in France was instantly made manifest. The Chartist agitation at once came to a head.

  Some of the Chartist leaders called out for the dismissal of the ministry, the dissolution of the parliament, the charter and no surrender. A national convention of Chartists began its sittings in London to arrange for a monster demonstration on April 10th. Some of the speakers openly declared that the people were now quite ready to fight for

  their charter. Others more cautious advised that no step should be taken against the law until at least it was quite certain that the people were stronger than the upholders of the existing laws. Nearly all the leading Chartists spoke of the revolution in France as an example offered

  in good time to the English people and it is somewhat curious to observe how it was assumed in the most evident good faith that what we may call the wage-receiving portion of the population of these islands constitutes exclusively the English people. What the educated, the wealthy, the owners of land, the proprietors of factories, the ministers of the different denominations, the authors of books, the painters of pictures,

  the bench, the bar, the army, the navy, the medical profession, what all these or any of them might think with regard to any proposed constitutional changes was accounted a matter in no wise affecting the resolve of the English people. The moderate men among the Chartists themselves were soon unable to secure a hearing and the word of order went round among the body that the English people must have the charter or

  a republic. What had been done in France enthusiasts fancied might well be done in England. It was determined to present a monster petition to the House of Commons demanding the charter and in fact offering a last chance to Parliament to yield quietly to the demand. The petition was to be presented by a deputation who were to be conducted by a vast procession

  up to the doors of the House. The procession was to be formed on Kennington Common, the space then unenclosed which is now Kennington Park on the south side of London. There the Chartists were to be addressed by their still trusted leader, Fergus O'Connor, and they were to march in military order to present their petition.

  The object, undoubtedly, was to make such a parade of physical force as should overall the legislature and the government and demonstrate the impossibility of refusing a demand backed by such a reserve of power. The idea was taken from O'Connor's policy in the monster meetings, but there were more of the Chartists who hoped for something more than a mere demonstration of physical force

  and who would have been heartily glad if some untimely or unreasonable interference on the part of the authorities had led to a collision. A strong faith still survived at that time in what was grandiosely called the might of earnest numbers. The ardent young Chartists, who belonged to the time of life when anything seems possible

  to the brave and faithful, and when facts and examples count for nothing unless they favor one's own views, fully believed that it needed but the firing of the first shot, the sparkle of the first sword drawn, to give success to the arms, though but the bare arms of the people, and to inaugurate the reign of liberty. Therefore, however differently and harmlessly events may have turned out, we may be certain

  that there went to the rendezvous at Kennington Common on that April 10th many hundreds of ignorant and excitable young men who desired nothing so much as a collision with the police and the military and the reign of liberty to follow. The proposed procession was declared illegal and all peaceful and loyal subjects were warned not to take any part in it.

  But this was exactly what the more ardent among the Chartists expected and desired to see. They were rejoiced that the government had proclaimed the procession unlawful. Was not that the proper occasion for resolute patriots to show that they represented a cause above despotic law?

  Was not that the very opportunity offered to them to prove that the people were more mighty than their rulers and that the rulers must obey or abdicate? Was not the whole sequence of proceedings thus far exactly after the pattern of the French Revolution? The people resolve that they will have a certain demonstration in a certain way, the oligarchical

  government declare that they shall not do so, the people persevere and of course the next thing must be that the government falls exactly as in Paris. When poor Dick Swiveler in Dickens' story is recovering from his fever, he looks forth of his miserable bed and makes up his mind that he is under the influence of some such magic spell as he has become familiar with in the Arabian Nights.

  His poverty-stricken little nurse claps her thin hands with joy to see him alive and Dick makes up his mind that the clapping of the hands is the sign understood of all who read the Eastern Romance and that next must appear at the Princess's summons the row of slaves with jars of jewels on their heads. Poor Dick reasoning from his experiences in the Arabian Nights was not one wit more astray

  than enthusiastic chartists reasoning for the sequence of English politics from the evidence of what had happened in France. The slaves with the jars of jewels on their heads were just as likely to follow the clap of the poor girl's hands as the events that had followed a popular demonstration in Paris to follow a popular demonstration in London.

  To begin with, the chartists did not represent any such power in London as the liberal deputies of the French Chamber did in Paris. In the next place, London does not govern England and in our time at least never did. In the third place, the English government knew perfectly well that they were strong in the general support of the nation and were not likely to yield for a single moment to

  the hesitation which sealed the fate of the French monarchy. The chartists fell to disputing among themselves very much as O'Connell's repealers had done. Some were for disobeying the rules of the authorities and having the procession, provoking rather than avoiding a collision. At a meeting of the Chartist Convention held the night before the demonstration, the eve

  of liberty as some of the orators eloquently termed it, a considerable number were forgoing armed to Kennington Common. Fergus O'Connor had, however, sense enough still left to throw the weight of his influence against such an insane proceeding and to insist that the demonstration must show itself to be, as it was from the first proclaimed to be, a strictly pacific proceeding.

  This was the parting of the ways in the Chartist as it had been in the repeal agitation. The more ardent spirits at once withdrew from the organization. Those who might even at the very last have done mischief if they had remained part of the movement withdrew from it and Chartism was left to be represented by an open air meeting and a petition to Parliament, like all the other demonstrations that the metropolis

  had seen to pass, hardly heeded across the field of politics. But the public at large was not aware that the fangs of Chartism had been drawn before it was let loose to play on Kennington Common that memorable 10th of April. London awoke in great alarm that day. The Chartists, in their most sanguine moments, never ascribed themselves half the strength

  that honest alarmists of the bourgeois class were ready that morning to ascribe to them. The wildest rumors were spread abroad in many parts of the metropolis. Long before the Chartists had got together on Kennington Common at all, various remote quarters of London were filled with horrifying reports of encounters between the insurgents and the police or the military in which the Chartists invariably had the better, and as

  a result of which they were marching in full force to the particular district where the momentary panic prevailed. London is worse off than most cities in such a time of alarm. It is too large for true accounts of things rapidly to diffuse themselves. In April 1848, the street telegraph was not in use for carrying news through cities,

  and the rapidly succeeding editions of the cheap papers were as yet unknown. In various quarters of London, therefore, the citizen was left, through the greater part of the day, in all the agonies of doubt and uncertainty. There was no lack, however, of public precautions against an outbreak of armed Chartism. The Duke of Wellington took charge of all the arrangements regarding the public buildings

  and defending the metropolis generally. He acted with extreme caution and told several influential persons that the troops were in readiness everywhere, but that they would not be seen unless an occasion actually rose for calling on their services. The coolness and presence of mind of the stern old soldier are well illustrated in the fact

  that to several persons of influence and authority who came to him with suggestions for the defense of this place or that, his almost invariable answer was, done already or done two hours ago or something of the kind. A vast number of Londoners enrolled themselves as special constables for the maintenance of law and order.

  Nearly 200,000 persons, it is said, were sworn in for this purpose, and it will always be told as an odd incident of that famous scare that the Prince Louis Napoleon then living in London was one of those who volunteered to bear arms in the preservation of order. Not a long time was to pass before the most lawless outrage on the order and life of a peaceful city was to be perpetrated by the special command of the man who was so ready

  to lend the saving aid of his constable's staff to protect English society against some poor hundreds or thousands of English working men. The crisis, however, luckily proved not to stand in need of such saviors of society. The Chartist demonstration was a wretched failure. The separation of the Chartists who wanted force from those who wanted orderly proceedings

  reduced the project to nothing. The meeting on Kennington Common, so far from being a gathering of half a million of men, was not a larger concourse than a temperance demonstration had often drawn together on the same spot. Some 20,000 or 25,000 persons were on Kennington Common, of whom at least half were said to

  be mere lookers-on, come to see what was to happen, and caring nothing whatever about the people's charter. The procession was not formed, O'Connor himself strongly insisting on obedience to the orders of the authorities. There were speeches of the usual kind by O'Connor and others, and the opportunity was made available

  by some of the more extreme and consequently disappointed Chartists to express in very vehement language their not unreasonable conviction that the leaders of the Convention were humbugs. The whole affair in truth was an absurd anachronism. The lovers of law and order could have desired nothing better than that it should thus come forth in the light of day and show itself.

  The clap of the hand was given, but the slaves with the jars of jewels did not appear. It is not that the demands of the Chartists were anachronisms or absurdities. We have already shown that many of them were just and reasonable, and that all came within the fair scope of political argument. The anachronism was in the idea that the display of physical force could any longer be needed

  or be allowed to settle a political controversy in England. The absurdity was in the notion that the wage-receiving classes and they alone are the people of England. The great Chartist petition itself which was to have made so profound an impression on the House of Commons proved as utter a failure as the demonstration on Kennington Common. Mr. O'Connor in presenting this portentous document boasted that it would be found to

  have 5,700,000 signatures in round numbers. The calculation was made in very round numbers indeed. The Committee on Public Petitions were requested to make a minute examination of the document and to report to the House of Commons. The Committee called in the service of a little army of law-stationers clerks and went to

  work to analyze the signatures. They found to begin with that the whole number of signatures genuine or otherwise fell short of two millions, but that was not all. The Committee found in many cases that whole sheets of the petition were signed by the one hand and that eight percent of the signatures were those of women.

  It did not need much investigation to prove that a large proportion of the signatures were not genuine. The name of the Queen, of Prince Albert, of the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Colonel Sipthorpe and various other public personages appeared again and again on the Chartist roll.

  Some of these eminent persons would appear to have carried their zeal for the People's Charter so far as to keep signing their names untiringly all over the petition. A large number of yet stranger allies would seem to have been drawn to the cause of the Charter. Cheeks the Marine was a personage very familiar at that time to the readers of Captain Marriott's

  Sea Stories and the name of that mythical hero appeared with bewildering iteration in the petition. So did Davy Jones. So did various persons describing themselves as pug nose, flat nose, wooden legs and by other such epithets acknowledging curious personal defects.

  We need not describe the laughter and scorn which these revelations produced. There really was not anything very marvelous in the discovery. The petition was got up in great haste and with almost utter carelessness. Sheets used to be sent anywhere and left lying about anywhere on a chance of obtaining signatures. The temptation to schoolboys and practical jokers of all kinds was irresistible.

  Wherever there was a mischievous hand that could get hold of a pen, there was some name of a royal personage or some Cheeks the Marine at once added to the muster roll of the Chartists. As a matter of fact, almost all large popular petitions are found to have some such buffooneries mixed up with their serious business. The Committee on Petitions have on several occasions had reason to draw attention to

  the obviously fictitious nature of signatures appended to such documents. The petitions in favor of O'Connell's movement used to lie at the doors of chapels all Sunday long in Ireland with pen and ink ready for all who approved to sign. And it was many a time the favorite amusement of schoolboys to scroll down the most grotesque names and nonsensical imitations of names.

  But the Chartist petition had been so loudly boasted of, and the whole Chartist movement had created such a scare that the delight of the public generally at any discovery that threw both into ridicule was overwhelming. It was made certain that the number of genuine signatures was ridiculously below the estimate formed by the Chartist leaders, and the agitation after terrifying respectability for a long

  time suddenly showed itself as a thing only to be laughed at. The laughter was stentorian and overwhelming. The very fact that the petition contained so many absurdities was in itself an evidence of the sincerity of those who presented it. It was not likely that they would have furnished their enemies with so easy and tempting a

  way of turning them into ridicule if they had known or suspected that there was any lack of genuineness in the signatures or that they would have provided so ready a means of decrying their truthfulness as to claim five millions of names for a document which they knew to have less than two millions. The Chartist leaders in all their doings showed a want of accurate calculation and of the

  frame of mind which desires or appreciates such accuracy. The famous petition was only one other example of their habitual weakness. It did not bear testimony against their good faith. The effect, however, of this unlucky petition on the English public was decisive. From that day, Chartism never presented itself to the ordinary middle-class Englishmen as

  anything but an object of ridicule. The terror of the agitation was gone. There were efforts made again and again during the year by some of the more earnest and extreme of the Chartist leaders to renew the strength of the agitation. The outbreak of the Young Ireland movement found many sympathizers among the English

  Chartists, more especially in its earlier stages, and some of the Chartists in London and other great cities endeavored to light up the fire of their agitation again by the help of some brands caught up from the pile of disaffection which Mitchell and Mar were setting ablaze in Dublin. The monster gathering of Chartists was announced for Whitmonday, June 12th, and again the metropolis

  was thrown into a momentary alarm. Very different in strength, however, from that of the famous 10th of April. Again precautions were taken by the military authorities against the possible rising of an insurrectionary mob. Nothing came of this last gasp of Chartism.

  The Times of the following day remarked that there was absolutely nothing to record, nothing except the blankest expectation, the most miserable gaping gossiping and grumbling of disappointed listeners, the standing about, the roaming to and fro, the dispersing and the sneaking home of some poor simpletons who had wandered forth in the hope of some miraculous crisis in their affairs.

  It is impossible not to pity those who were thus deceived, not to feel some regret for the earnestness, the hope, and the ignorant passionate energy which was thrown away. Nor can we feel only surprise and contempt for those who imagined that the charter and the rule of what was called in their jargon the people would do something to regenerate their miserable lot.

  They had at least seen that up to that time Parliament had done little for them. There had been a Parliament of aristocrats and landlords, and it had for generations troubled itself little about the class from whom Chartism was recruited. The scepter of legislative power had passed into the hands of a Parliament made up in great measure of the wealthy middle ranks, and it had thus far shown no inclination to

  distress itself over much about them. Almost every single measure Parliament has passed to do any good for the wage-receiving classes and the poor generally has been passed since the time when the Chartists began to be in power. Our corn laws repeal, our factory acts, our sanitary legislation, our measures referring

  to the homes of the poor, all these have been the work of later times than those which engendered the Chartist movement. It is easy to imagine a Chartist replying in the early days of the movement to some grave remonstrances from wise legislators. He might say,

  You tell me I am mad to think the Charter can do anything for me and my class, but can you tell me what else ever has done or tried to do any good for them? You think I am a crazy person because I believe that a popular Parliament could make anything of the task of government. I ask you, what have you and your like made of it already?

  Things are well enough no doubt for you and your class, a pitiful minority, but they could not be any worse for us and we might make them better so far as the great majority are concerned. We may fairly crave a trial for our experiment. No matter how wild and absurd it may seem, it could not turn out for the majority any

  worse than your scheme has done. It would not have been very easy then to answer a speaker who took this line of argument. In truth, there was, as we have already insisted, grievance enough to excuse the Chartist agitation and hope enough in the scheme the Chartists proposed to warrant its fair discussion. Such movements are never to be regarded by sensible persons as the work merely of knaves

  and dupes. Chartism bubbled and sputtered a little yet in some of the provincial towns and even in London. There were Chartist riots in Ashton, Lancashire and an affray with the police and the killing before the affray, it is painful to have to say, of one policeman.

  There were Chartists arrested in Manchester on the charge of preparing insurrectionary movements. In two or three public houses in London some Chartist juntas were arrested and the police believed they had got evidence of a projected rising to take in the whole of the metropolis. It is not impossible that some wild and frantic schemes of the kind were talked of and partly

  hatched by some of the disappointed fanatics of the movement. Some of them were fiery and ignorant enough for anything, and throughout this memorable year thrones and systems kept toppling down all over Europe in a manner that might well have led feather-headed agitators to fancy that nothing was stable and that in England too the whistle of a few conspirators might bring about a transformation scene.

  All this folly came to nothing but a few arrests and a few not-heavy sentences. Among those tried in London on charges of sedition merely was Mr. Ernest Jones who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Mr. Jones has been already spoken of as a man of position and high culture, a poet whose verses sometimes might almost claim for their author the possession of genius.

  He was an orator whose speeches then and after obtained the enthusiastic admiration of John Bright. He belonged rather to the school of revolutionist which established itself as young Ireland than to the class of poor fussles and cuffies and uneducated working men who made up the foremost ranks of the aggressive Chartist movement in its later period.

  He might have had a brilliant and a useful career. He outlived the Chartist era, lived to return to peaceful agitation, to hold public controversy with the eccentric and clever Professor Blackie of Edinburgh on the relative advantages of republicanism and monarchy and to stand for a parliamentary borough at the general election of 1868 and then his career was closed by death.

  The close was sadly premature even then. He had plunged immaturely into politics and although a whole generation had passed away since his debut, he was but a young man comparatively when the last scene came. Here comes not inappropriately to an end the history of English Chartism. It died of publicity, of exposure to the air, of the anti-corn law league, of the evident

  tendency of the time to settle all questions by reason, argument and majorities, of growing education, of a strengthening sense of duty among all the more influential classes. When Sir John Campbell spoke its obituary years before as we have seen, he treated it as simply a monster killed by the just severity of the law. Ten years' experience taught the English public to be wiser than Sir John Campbell.

  Chartism did not die of its own excesses. It became an anachronism. No one wanted it anymore. All that was sound in its claims asserted itself and was in time conceded, but its active or aggressive influence ceased with 1848.

  The history of the reign of Queen Victoria has not any further to concern itself about Chartism. Not since that year has there been serious talk or thought of any agitation asserting by the use or even the display of armed force in England. The spirit of the time had meanwhile made itself felt in a different way in Ireland.

  For some months before the beginning of the year, the Young Ireland Party had been established as a rival association to the repealers who still believed in the policy of O'Connell. It was inevitable that O'Connell's agitation should beget some such movement. The great agitator had brought the temperament of the younger men of his party up to a fever heat and it was out of the question that all that heat should subside in the veins of young

  collegians and schoolboys at the precise moment when the leader found that he had been going too far and gave the word for peace and retreat. The influence of O'Connell had been waning for a time before his death. It was a personal influence depending on his eloquence and his power. And these, of course, had gone down with his physical decay.

  The Nation newspaper, which was conducted and written for by some rising young men of high culture and remarkable talent, had long been writing in a style of romantic and sentimental nationalism which could hardly give much satisfaction to or derive much satisfaction from the somewhat cunning and trickish agitation which O'Connell had set going. The Nation and the clever youths who wrote for it were all for nationalism of the Hellenic

  or French type and were disposed to laugh at constitutional agitation and to chafe against the influence of the priests. The famine had created an immense amount of unreasonable but certainly not unnatural indignation against the government who were accused of having paltored with the agony and danger of the time and having clung to the letter of the doctrines of political economy when

  death was invading Ireland in full force. The young Ireland party had received a new support by the adhesion of Mr. William Smith O'Brien to their ranks. Mr. O'Brien was a man of considerable influence in Ireland. He had large property and high rank.

  He was connected with or related to many aristocratic families. His brother was Lord Inchiquin. The title of the Marquisate of Toman was in the family. He was undoubtedly descended from the famous Irish hero and King Brian Baru and was almost inordinately proud of his claims of long descent.

  He had the highest personal character and the finest sense of honor but his capacity for leadership of any movement was very slender. A poor speaker with little more than an ordinary country gentleman's share of intellect, O'Brien was a well-meaning but weak and vain man whose head at last became almost turned by the homage which his followers and the Irish people generally paid to him.

  He was in short a sort of Lafayette Monquet. Under the happiest auspices, he could never have been more than a successful Lafayette. But his adhesion to the cause of young Ireland gave the movement a decided impulse. His rank, his legendary descent, his undoubted chivalry of character and purity of purpose lent a romantic interest to his appearance as the recognized leader or at least the figurehead

  of the young Irelanders. Smith O'Brien was a man of more mature years than most of his companions in the movement. He was some 43 or 44 years of age when he took the leadership of the movement. Thomas Francis Marr, the most brilliant orator of the party, a man who under other conditions might have risen to great distinction in public life, was then only about two or three

  and twenty. Mitchell and Duffy, who were regarded as elders among the young Irelanders, were perhaps each some 30 years of age. There were many men more or less prominent in the movement who were still younger than Marr.

  One of these who afterwards rose to some distinction in America and is long since dead, wrote a poem about the time when the young Ireland movement was at its height in which he commemorated sadly his attainment of his 18th year and deplored that at an age when Chatterdon was mighty and Keats had glimpses into spirit land, the age of 18 to wit, he, this young Irish patriot, had yet accomplished nothing for his native country.

  Most of his companions sympathized fully with him and thought his impatience natural and reasonable. The young Ireland agitation was at first a sort of college debating society movement and it never became really national. It was composed for the most part of young journalists, young scholars, amateur literateurs,

  poets on erbe, orators molded on the finest patterns of Athens and the French Revolution and aspiring youths of the Cherubino time of life who were ambitious of distinction as heroes in the eyes of young ladies. Among the recognized leaders of the party there was hardly one in want of money. Some of them were young men of fortune or at least the sons of wealthy parents.

  Not many of the dangerous revolutionary elements were to be found among these clever, respectable and precocious youths. The young Ireland movement was as absolutely unlike the Chartist movement in England as any political agitation could be unlike another. Unreal and unlucky as the Chartist movement proved to be, its ranks were recruited by

  genuine passion and genuine misery. End of section one.

• 02 - Ch. 18: Chartism and Young Ireland, Pt. 2

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  Before the death of O'Connell, the formal secession of the Young Ireland Party from the regular repealers had taken place. It arose out of an attempt of O'Connell to force upon the whole body a declaration condemning the use of physical force, of the sword, as it was grandiosely called, in any patriotic movement whatever. It was in itself a sign of O'Connell's failing powers and judgment that he expected to get a body of men about the age of Mawr to make a formal declaration against the weapon of Leonidas and Miltiades and all the other heroes dear to classically instructed youth. Mawr declaimed against the idea and a burst of poetic rhetoric, which made his followers believe that a new gratin of bolder style was coming up to recall the manhood of Ireland that had been banished by the agitation of O'Connell and the priests. I am not one of those tame moralists, Young Order exclaimed, who say that liberty is not worth one drop of blood.

  Against this miserable maxim, the noblest virtue that has saved and sanctified humanity appears in judgment. From the blue waters of the Bay of Solomus, from the valley over which the sun stood still and lit the Israelite to victory, from the cathedral in which the sword of Poland has been sheathed in the shroud of Kosciuszko, from the convent of St. Isidore, where the fiery hand that rent the ensign of St. George upon the plains of Ulster has molded into dust, from the sands of the desert where the wild genius of the Algerine so long has scared the eagle of the Pyrenees, from the Ducal Palace in this kingdom, where the memory of the gallant and seditious Geraldine enhances more than royal favor the splendor of his race, from the solitary grave within this mute city, which a dying bequest has left without an epitaph, Oh, from every spot where heroism has had a sacrifice or a triumph, a voice breaks in upon the cringing crowd that cherishes this maxim crying away with it, away with it.

  The reader will probably think that a generation of young men might have enjoyed as much as they could get of this sparkling declamation, without much harm being done thereby to the cause of order. Only a crowd of well-educated young Irishmen, fresh from college and with the teaching of their country's history which the nation was pouring out weekly in prose and poetry, could possibly have understood all its historical allusions. No harm indeed would have come of this graceful and poetic movement were it not for events which the young Ireland party had no share in bringing about. The Continental Revolutions of the year 1848 suddenly converted the movement from a literary and poetical organization into a rebellious conspiracy. The fever of that wild epoch spread itself at once over Ireland.

  When crowns were going down everywhere, what wonder if Hellenic young Irelandism believed that the moment had come when the crown of the Saxon invader II was destined to fall. The French Revolution and the flight of Louis Philippe set Ireland in a rapture of hope and rebellious joy. Lamartine became the hero of the hour. A copy of his showy, superficial Girondiste was in the hand of every true young Irelander. Mower was at once declared to be the vergnio of the Irish Revolution.

  Smith O'Brien was called upon to become its Lafayette. A deputation of young Irelanders with O'Brien and Mower at their head waited upon Lamartine and were received by him with a cool, good sense which made Englishmen greatly respect his judgment and prudence, but which much disconcerted the hopes of the young Irelanders. Many of these latter appeared to have taken in their most literal sense some words of Lamartine's about the sympathy of the new French Republic with the struggles of oppressed nationalities and to have fancied that the Republic would seriously consider the propriety of going to war with England at the request of a few young men from Ireland headed by a country gentleman and member of Parliament. In the meantime, a fresh and a stronger influence than that of O'Brien or Mower had arisen in young Irelandism. Young Ireland itself now split into two sections, one for immediate action, the other for caution and delay.

  The party of action acknowledged the leadership of John Mitchell. The organ of this section was the newspaper started by Mitchell in opposition to the nation, which had grown too slow for him. The new journal was called the United Irishman and in a short time it had completely distanced the nation in popularity and in circulation. The deliberate policy of the United Irishman was to force the hand first of the government and then of the Irish people. Mitchell had made up his mind so to rouse the passion of the people as to compel the government to take steps for the prevention of rebellion by the arrest of some of the leaders.

  Then Mitchell calculated upon the populace rising to defend or rescue their heroes and then the game would be afoot. Ireland would be entered in rebellion and the rest would be for fate to decide. This looks now a very wild and hopeless scheme, so of course it proved itself to be. But it did not appear so hopeless at the time, even to cool heads. At least it may be called the only scheme which had the slightest chance of success.

  We do not say of success in establishing the independence of Ireland, which Mitchell sought for, but in setting a genuine rebellion afoot. Mitchell was the one formidable man among the rebels of 48. He was the one man who distinctly knew what he wanted and was prepared to run any risk to get it. He was cast in the very mold of the genuine revolutionist and under different circumstances might have played a formidable part. He came from the northern part of the island and was a Protestant dissenter.

  It is a fact worthy of note that all the really formidable rebels Ireland has produced in modern time, from Wolf Tone to Mitchell, have been Protestants. Mitchell was a man of great literary talent, indeed a man of something like genius. He wrote a clear, bold, incisive prose, keen in its scorn and satire, going directly to the heart of its purpose. As mere prose, some of it is worth reading even today for its cutting force and pitiless irony. Mitchell issued in his paper, week after week, a challenge to the government to prosecute him.

  He poured out the most fiery sedition and used every incentive that words could supply to rouse a hot-headed people to arms or an impatient government to some act of severe repression. Mitchell was quite ready to make a sacrifice of himself if it were necessary. It is possible enough that he had persuaded himself into the belief that a rising in Ireland against the government might be successful. But there is good reason to think that he would have been quite satisfied if he could have stirred up, by any process, a genuine and sanguinary insurrection which would have read well in the papers and redeemed the Irish nationalists from what he considered the disgrace of never having shown that they knew how to die for their cause.

  He kept on urging the people to prepare for warlike effort, and every week's United Irishman contained long descriptions of how to make pikes and how to use them, how to cast bullets, how to make the streets as dangerous for the hoofs of cavalry horses as Bruce made the field of Bannockburn. Some of the recipes, if we may call them so, were of a peculiarly ferocious kind. The use of vitriol was recommended among other destructive agencies. A feeling of detestation was not unnaturally aroused against Mitchell, even in the minds of many who sympathized with his general opinions,

  and those whom we may call the Girondists of the party somewhat shrank from him and would gladly have been rid of him. It is true that the most ferocious of these vitriolic articles were not written by him, nor did he know of the famous recommendation about the throwing of vitriol until it appeared in print. He was, however, justly and properly as well as technically responsible for all that appeared in a paper started with such a purpose as that of the United Irishman, and it is not even certain that he would have disapproved of the vitriol throwing recommendation if he had known of it in time.

  He never disavowed it, nor took any pains to show that it was not his own. The fact that he was not its author is therefore only mentioned here as a matter more or less interesting, and not at all as any excuse for Mitchell's general style of newspaper war-making. He was a fanatic, clever and fearless. He would neither have asked quarter nor given it, and undoubtedly if Ireland had had many men of his desperate resolve,

  she would have been plunged into a bloody and obstinate and a disastrous contest against the strength of the British government. In the meantime, that government had to do something. The Lord Lieutenant could not go on forever allowing a newspaper to scream out appeals to rebellion and to publish every week minute descriptions of the easiest and quickest way of killing off English soldiers. The existing laws were not strong enough to deal with Mitchell and to suppress his paper.

  It would have been of little account to proceed against him under the ordinary laws which condemned seditious speaking or writing. Prosecutions were in fact set on foot against O'Brien and Maurer and Mitchell himself for ordinary offenses of that kind, but the accused men got bail and went on meantime speaking and writing as before, and when the cases came to be tried by a jury, the government failed to obtain a conviction. The government therefore brought in a bill for the better security of the Crown and government,

  making all written incitement to insurrection or resistance to the law felony punishable with transportation. This measure was passed rapidly through all its stages. It enabled the government to suppress newspapers like the United Irishmen and to keep in prison without bail, while awaiting trial anyone charged with an offense under the new act. Mitchell soon gave the authorities an opportunity of testing the efficacy of the act in his person.

  He repeated his incitements to insurrection, was arrested and thrown into prison. The climax of the excitement in Ireland was reached when Mitchell's trial came on. There can be little doubt that he was filled with a strong hope that his followers would attempt to rescue him. He wrote from his cell that he could hear around the walls of his prison every night the tramp of hundreds of sympathizers, felons and heart and soul.

  The government, for their part, were in full expectation that some sort of rising would take place. For the time, Smith O'Brien, Maurer and the other young Irelanders were thrown into the shade and the eyes of the whole country were turned upon Mitchell's cell. Had there been another Mitchell out of doors, as fearless and reckless as the Mitchell in the prison, a sanguinary outbreak would probably have taken place.

  But the leaders of the movement outside were by no means clear in their own minds as to the course they ought to pursue. Many of them were well satisfied of the hopelessness and folly of any rebellious movement, and nearly all were quite aware that in any case the country just then was wholly unprepared for anything of the kind. Not a few had a shrewd suspicion that the movement never had taken any real hold on the heart of the country. Some were jealous of Mitchell's sudden popularity and in their secret hearts were disposed to curse him for the trouble he had brought on them.

  But they could not attempt to give open utterance to such sentiment. Mitchell's boldness and resolve had placed him at a sad disadvantage. He had that superiority of influence over them, that downright determination always gives a man over colleagues who do not quite know what they would have. One thing, however, they could do and that they did. They discouraged any idea of an attempt to rescue Mitchell.

  His trial came on. He was found guilty. He made a short but powerful and impassioned speech from the dock. He was sentenced to 14 years' transportation. He was hurried under an escort of cavalry through the streets of Dublin, put on board a ship of war, and in a few hours was on his way to Bermuda.

  Dublin remained perfectly quiet. The country outside hardly knew what was happening until Mitchell was well on his way, and far-seeing persons smiled to themselves and said the danger was all over. So, indeed, it proved to be. The remainder of the proceedings partook rather of the nature of burlesque.

  The young Ireland leaders became more demonstrative than ever. However, the Nation newspaper now went in openly for rebellion, but rebellion at some unnamed time and when Ireland should be ready to meet the Saxon. It seemed to be assumed that the Saxon, with a characteristic love of fair play, would let his foes make all the preparations they pleased without any interference,

  and that when they announced themselves ready, then but not until then, would he come forth to fight with them. Smith O'Brien went about the country holding reviews of the Confederates as the young Irelanders called themselves. The government, however, showed a contempt for the rules of fair play,

  suspended the habeas corpus act in Ireland, and issued warrants for the arrest of Smith O'Brien and Mower and other Confederate leaders. The young Irelanders received the news of this unshivelric proceeding with an outburst of anger and surprise which was evidently genuine. They had clearly made up their minds that they were to go on playing

  at preparation for rebellion as long as they liked to keep up the game. They were completely puzzled by the new condition of things. It was not very clear what Leonidas or Vernio would have done under such circumstances. It was certain that if they were all arrested the country would not stir hand or foot on their behalf. Some of the principal leaders, therefore, Smith O'Brien, Mower, Dillon and others,

  left Dublin and went down into the country. It is not certain even yet whether they had any clear purpose of rebellion at first. It seems probable that they thought of evading arrest for a while and trying meantime if the country was ready to follow them into an armed movement. They held a series of gatherings which might be described as meetings of agitators

  or marshallings of rebels according as one was pleased to interpret their purpose. But this sort of thing very soon drifted into rebellion. The principal body of the followers of Smith O'Brien came into collision with the police at a place called Balangary in Tipperary. They attacked a small force of police who took refuge in the cottage of a poor widow named Cormac.

  The police held the house as a besieged fort and the rebels attacked them from the famous cabbage garden outside. The police fired a few volleys. The rebels fired with what wretched muskets and rifles they possessed but without harming a single policeman.

  After a few of them had been killed or wounded, it never was perfectly certain that any were actually killed. The rebel army dispersed and the rebellion was all over. In a few days after, poor Smith O'Brien was taken quietly at the railway station in Thirlis, Tipperary. He was calmly buying a ticket for Limerick when he was recognized.

  He made no resistance whatever and seemed to regard the whole mummery as at an end. He accepted his fate with the composure of a gentleman and indeed in all the part which was left for him to play he bore himself with dignity. It is but justice to an unfortunate gentleman to say that some reports which were rather ignobly set abroad about his having

  showed a lack of personal courage in the Balangary fray were, as all will readily believe, quite untrue. Some of the police deposed that during the fight, if fight it could be called, poor O'Brien exposed his life with entire recklessness. One policeman said he could have shot him easily at several periods of the little drama

  but he felt reluctant to be the slayer of the misguided descendant of the Irish kings. It afterwards appeared also that any little chance of carrying on any manner of rebellion was put a stop to by Smith O'Brien's own resolution that his rebels must not seize the private property of anyone. He insisted that his rebellion must pay its way and the funds were soon out.

  The confederate leader woke from a dream when he saw his followers dispersing after the first volley or two from the police. From that moment he behaved like a dignified gentleman equal to the fate he had brought upon him. Maurer and two of his companions were arrested a few days after as they were wandering hopelessly and aimlessly through the mountains of Tipperary.

  The prisoners were brought for trial before a special commission held at Clamel in Tipperary in the following September. Smith O'Brien was the first put on trial and he was found guilty. He said a few words with grave and dignified composure simply declaring that he had endeavored to do his duty to his native country

  and that he was prepared to abide the consequences. He was sentenced to death after the old form in cases of high treason to be hanged, beheaded and quartered. Maurer was afterwards found guilty. Great commiseration was felt for him.

  His youth and his eloquence made all men and women pity him. His father was a wealthy man who had had a respected career in parliament and there had seemed at one time to be a bright and happy life before young Maurer. The short address in which Maurer vindicated his actions when called upon to show cause why sentence of death should not be passed upon him

  was full of manly and pathetic eloquence. He had nothing, he said, to retract or to ask pardon for. I am not here to crave with faltering lip the life I have consecrated to the independence of my country. I offer to my country as some proof of the sincerity with which I have thought

  and spoken and struggled for her the life of a young heart. The history of Ireland explains my crime and justifies it. Even here, where the shadows of death surround me and from which I see my early grave opening for me in no consecrated soil, the hope which beckoned me forth on that perilous sea whereon I have been wrecked

  animates, consoles, enraptures me. No, I do not despair of my poor old country, her peace, her liberty, her glory. Maurer was sentenced to death with the same hideous formalities as those which had been observed in the case of Smith O'Brien. No one, however, really believed for a moment that such a sentence

  was likely to be carried out in the reign of Queen Victoria. The sentence of death was changed into one of transportation for life, nor was even this carried out. The convicts were all sent to Australia and a few years after Mitchell contrived to make his escape followed by Maurer.

  The manner of escape was at least of doubtful credit to the prisoners, for they were placed under parole and a very nice question was raised as to whether they had not broken their parole by the attempt to escape. It was a nice question, which in the case of men of very delicate sense of honor could, one would think, hardly have arisen at all.

  The point in Mitchell's case was that he actually went to the police court, within whose jurisdiction he was, formally and publicly announced to the magistrate that he withdrew his parole and invited the magistrate to arrest him then and there. But the magistrate was unprepared for his coming and was quite thrown off his guard.

  Mitchell was armed and so was a friend who accompanied him and who had planned and carried out the escape. They had horses waiting at the door, and when they saw that the magistrate did not know what to do they left the court, mounted the horses, and rode away. It was contended by Mitchell and by his companion, Mr. P.J. Smith.

  Afterwards, a distinguished member of Parliament, that they had fulfilled all the conditions required by the parole and had formally and honorably withdrawn it. One is only surprised how men of honor could thus puzzle and deceive themselves. The understood condition of a parole is that a man who intends to withdraw it shall place himself before his captors in exactly the same condition as he was

  when on his pledged word of honor they allowed him a comparative liberty. It is evident that a prisoner would never be allowed to go at large on parole if he were to make use of his liberty to arrange all the conditions of an escape and when everything was ready, take his captors by surprise, tell them he was no longer bound by the conditions of the pledge

  and that they might keep him if they could. This was the view taken by Smith O'Brien who declined to have anything to do with any plot for escape while he was on parole. The advisors of the Crown recommended that a conditional pardon should be given to the gallant and unfortunate gentleman who had behaved in so honorable a manner.

  Smith O'Brien received a pardon on condition of his not returning to these islands, but this condition was withdrawn after a while and he came back to Ireland. He died quietly in Wales in 1864. Mitchell settled for a while in Richmond, Virginia, and became an ardent advocate of slavery

  and an impassioned champion of the Southern Rebellion. He returned to the North after the Rebellion and more lately came to Ireland where owing to some defect in the criminal law he could not be arrested, his time of penal servitude having expired although he had not served it.

  He was still a hero with a certain class of the people. He was put up as a candidate for an Irish county and elected. He was not allowed to enter the House of Commons, however. The election was declared void and a new writ was issued. He was elected again and some turmoil was expected when suddenly Mitchell,

  who had long been in sinking health, was withdrawn from the controversy by death. He should have died before. The later years of his life were only an anticlimax. His attitude in the dock in 1848 had something of dignity and heroism in it and even the staunchest enemies of his cause admired him.

  He had undoubtedly great literary ability and if he had never reappeared in politics the world would have thought that a really brilliant light had been prematurely extinguished. Mower served in the Army of the Federal States when the war broke out and showed much of the soldier's spirit and capacity.

  His end was premature and inglorious. He fell from the deck of a steamer one night. It was dark and there was a strong current running. Help came too late. A false step, a dark night, and the muddy waters of the Missouri

  closed the career that had opened with so much promise of brightness. Many of the conspicuous young Irelanders rose to some distinction. Charles Gavin Duffy, the editor of The Nation, who was twice put on his trial after the failure of the insurrection, but whom the jury would not on either occasion convict,

  became a member of the House of Commons and afterwards emigrated to the colony of Victoria. He rose to be Prime Minister there and received knighthood and a pension. Thomas Darcy McGee, another prominent rebel, went to the United States and thence to Canada

  where he rose to be a minister of the Crown. He was one of the most loyal supporters of the British connection. His untimely death by the hand of an assassin was lamented in England as well as in the colony. He had served so well.

  Some of the young Irelanders remained in the United States and won repute. Others returned to England and of these not a few entered the House of Commons and were respected there. The follies of their youth quite forgotten by their colleagues, even if not disavowed by themselves.

  A remarkable illustration of the spirit of fairness that generally pervades the House of Commons is found in the fact that everyone there respected John Martin who to the day of his death, avowed himself in Parliament and out of it

  a consistent and unrepentant opponent of British rule in Ireland. He was respected because of the purity of his character and the transparent sincerity of his purpose. Martin had been devoted to Mitchell in his lifetime and he died a few days after Mitchell's death.

  The young Ireland movement came and vanished like a shadow. It never had any reality or substance in it. It was a literary and poetic inspiration altogether. It never took the slightest hold of the peasantry. It hardly touched any men of mature years.

  It was rather pretty playing at rebellion. It was an imitation of the French Revolution as the Girondists imitated the Patriots of Greece and Rome. But it might perhaps have had a chance of doing memorable mischief if the policy of the one only man in the business

  who really wasn't earnest and was reckless had been carried out. It is another illustration of the fact which O'Connell's movement had exemplified before, that in Irish politics a climax cannot be repeated or recalled. There is something fitful in all Irish agitation.

  The national emotion can be brought up to a certain temperature and if at that boiling point nothing is done, the heat suddenly goes out and no blowing of a cyclopean bellows can rekindle it. The repeal agitation was brought up to this point

  when the meeting at Clontarf was convened. The dispersal of the meeting was the end of the whole agitation. With the young Ireland movement, the trial of Mitchell formed the climax. After that, a wise legislator would have known

  that there was nothing more to fear. Pétion, the revolutionary mayor of Paris, knew that when it rained his partisans could do nothing. There were in 1848 observant Irishmen who knew that after the Mitchell climax had been reached

  the crowd would disperse, not to be collected again for that time. These two agitations, the Chartist and the young Ireland, constituted what may be called our tribute to the power of the insurrectionary spirit that was abroad over Europe in 1848.

  In almost every other European state, revolution raised its head fiercely and fought out its claims in the very capital under the eyes of bewildered royalty. The whole of Italy from the Alps to the Straits of Messina

  and from Venice to Genoa was thrown into convulsion. Our Italy once again shone o'er with civil swords. There was insurrection in Berlin and in Vienna. The emperor had to fly from the latter city as the pope had fled from Rome.

  In Paris there came a red republican rising against a republic that strove not to be red, and the rising was crushed by Cavignac with a terrible strenuousness that made some of the streets of Paris literally to run with blood.

  It was a grim foreshadowing of the Commune of 1871. Another remarkable foreshadowing of what was to come was seen in the fact that Prince Louis Napoleon, long in exile from France, had been allowed to return to it, and at the close of the year in the passion for law and order

  at any price borne of the red republican excesses had been elected president of the French Republic. Hungary was in arms. Spain was in convulsion. Even Switzerland was not safe.

  Our contribution to this general commotion was to be found in the demonstration on Kennington Common and the abortive attempt at arising near Balangary. There could not possibly be a truer tribute to the solid strength of our system.

  Not for one moment was the political constitution of England seriously endangered. Not for one hour did the safety of our great communities require a call upon the soldiers instead of upon the police. Not one charge of cavalry was needed to put down

  the fiercest outburst of the rebellious spirit in England. Not one single execution took place. The meaning of this is clear. It is not that there were no grievances in our system calling for redress.

  It is not that the existing institutions did not bear heavily down on many classes. It is not that our political or social system was so conspicuously better than that of some European countries

  which were torn and plowed up by revolution. To imagine that we owed our freedom from revolution to our freedom from serious grievance would be to misread altogether the lessons offered to our statesmen

  by that eventful year. We have done the work of whole generations of reformers in the interval between this time and that. We have made peaceful reforms political, industrial, legal, since then,

  which, if not to be had otherwise, would have justified any appeal to revolution. There, however, we touch upon the lesson of the time. Our political and constitutional system rendered an appeal to force

  unnecessary and superfluous. No call to arms was needed to bring about any reform that the common judgment of the country might demand. Other peoples flew to arms because they were driven by despair,

  because there was no way in their political constitution for the influence of public opinion to make itself felt, because those who were in power held it by the force of bayonets

  and not of public agreement. The results of the year were, on the whole, unfavorable to popular liberty. The results of the year that followed were decidedly reactionary.

  The time had not come in 1848 or 1849 for liberal principles to assert themselves. Their great deed, to quote some of the words of our English poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was too great.

  We, in this country, were saved alike from the revolution and the reaction by the universal recognition of the fact among all who gave themselves time to think that public opinion, being the ultimate ruling power,

  was the only authority to which an appeal was needed and that in the end justice would be done. All but the very wildest spirits could afford to wait, and no revolutionary movement is really dangerous which is only the work of the wildest spirits.

  End of Section 2.

• 03 - Ch. 19: Don Pacifico, Pt. 1

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  section 3 of a history of our own times volume 2 by Justin McCarthy this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami chapter 19 don pacifico part 1 the name of don pacifico was as familiar to the world some quarter of a century ago as that of mr. jager was about the time of the French invasion of Mexico don pacifico became famous for a season as

  the man whose quarrel had nearly brought on a European war caused a temporary disturbance of good relations between England and France split up political parties in England in a manner hardly ever known before and established the reputation of Lord Palmerston as one of the greatest parliamentary debaters of this time among the memorable speeches delivered in the English House of

  Commons that of Lord Palmerston on the don pacifico debate must always take a place it was not because the subject of the debate was a great one or because there were any grand principles involved the question originally in dispute was unutterably trivial and paltry there was no particular principle involved it was altogether what is called in commercial litigation a

  question of account a controversy about the amount and time of payment of a doubtful claim nor was this speech delivered by Lord Palmerston one of the grand historical displays of oratory that even when the sound of them is lost send their echoes to roll from soul to soul it was not like one of Burke's great speeches or one of Chatham's it was not one calculated to provoke keen

  literary controversy like Sheridan's celebrated Begum speech which all contemporaries held to be unrivaled but which a later generation assumes to have been rather flashy rhetoric there are no passages of splendid eloquence in Palmerston's pacifico speech its great merit was its wonderful power as the contribution to parliamentary argument as a masterful appeal to the feelings the

  prejudices and the passions of the House of Commons as a complete parliamentary victory over a combination of the most influential eloquent and heterogeneous opponents don pacifico was a Jew a Portuguese by extraction but a native of Gibraltar and a British subject his house in Athens was attacked and plundered in the open day on April 4th 1847 by an Athenian mob who was headed it was

  affirmed by two sons of the Greek Minister of War the attack came about in this way it had been customary in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot in 1847 the police of Athens were ordered to prevent this performance and the mob disappointed of their favorite amusement ascribed the new orders to the influence of the Jews don pacifico

  his house happened to stand near the spot where the Judas was annually burnt don pacifico was known to be a Jew and the anger of the mob was wrecked upon him accordingly there could be no doubt that the attack was lawless and that the Greek authorities took no trouble to protect pacifico against it don pacifico made a claim against the Greek government for compensation he

  estimated his losses direct and indirect at nearly 32,000 pounds sterling another claim was made at the same time by another British subject a man of a very different stamp from don pacifico this was mr. Finley the historian of Greece mr. Finley had gone out to Greece in the enthusiastic days of Byron and Cochran and Church in Hastings and he settled in Athens when the independence of Greece

  had been established some of his land had been taken for the purpose of rounding off the new palace gardens of King Otto and mr. Finley had declined to accept the terms offered by the Greek government to which other landowners in the same position as himself had assented some stress was laid by Lord Palmerston's antagonists in the course of the debate on the fact that mr.

  Finley thus stood out apart from other landowners in Athens mr. Finley however had a perfect right to stand out for any price he thought fit he was in the same position as a Greek resident of London or Manchester whose land is taken for the purpose of a railroad or other public improvement and who declines to accept the amount of compensation tendered for it in the first instance the

  peculiarity of the case was that mr. Finley was not left as the supposed Greek gentleman assuredly would be to make good his claims for himself in the courts of law neither Dom Pacifico nor mr. Finley had appealed to the law courts at all but about this time our foreign office it had several little complaints against the Greek authorities we had taken so considerable part in

  setting up Greece that our ministers not unnaturally thought Greece ought to show her gratitude by attending a little more closely to our advice on the other hand Lord Palmerston had made up his mind that there was constant intrigue going on against our interests among the foreign diplomatists in Athens he was convinced that France was perpetually plotting against us there and that Russia

  was watching an opportunity to supersede once for all our influence by completely establishing hers don pacificos sheets counterpane's and gold watch had the advantage of being made the subject of a trial of strength between England on the one side and France and Russia on the other there had been other complaints as well Ionian subjects of her majesty had sent in

  remonstrances against lawless or high-handed proceedings and amid shipment of her majesty's ship Phantom landing from a boat at night on the shore of Patras had been arrested by mistake none of these questions would seem at first sight to wear a very grave international character all they needed for settlement it might be thought was a little open discussion and the exercise

  of some good sense and moderation on both sides it cannot be doubted that the Greek authorities were lax and careless and that acts had been done which they could not justify it is only fair to say that they do not appear to have tried to justify some of them but they were of opinion that certain of the claims were absurdly exaggerated and in this belief they proved to be well

  sustained the Greeks were very poor and also very dilatory and they gave Lord Palmerston a reasonable excuse for a little impatience unluckily Lord Palmerston became possessed with the idea that the French minister in Greece was secretly setting the Greek government on to resist our claims for the Foreign Office had made the claims ours they had lumped up the

  outrages on Ionian seamen the mistaken arrest of the midshipmen who had been released with apologies the moment his nationality and position were discovered mr. Finley's land and don pacificos household furniture and one claim converted it into a national demand and insisted that Greece must pay up within a given time or take the consequences Greece hesitated and accordingly the

  British fleet was ordered to the Piraeus it made its appearance very promptly there and seized all the Greek vessels belonging to the government and to private merchants that were found within the waters the Greek government appealed to France and Russia as powers joined with us in the treaty to protect the independence of Greece France and Russia were both disposed to make bitter

  complaint of not having been consulted in the first instance by the British government nor was their feeling greatly softened by Lord Palmerston's peremptory reply that it was all a question between England and Greece with which no other power had any business to interfere the Russian government wrote an angry and indeed an offensive remonstrance the Russian foreign

  minister spoke of the very painful impression produced upon the mind of the Emperor by the unexpected acts of violence which the British authorities had just directed against Greece and asked if Great Britain abusing the advantages which are afforded to her by her immense maritime superiority intended to disengage herself from all obligation and to authorize all great

  powers on every fitting opportunity to recognize toward the weak no other rule but their own will no other right but their own physical strength the French government perhaps under the pressure of difficulties and uncertain affairs at home in their unsettled state showed a better temper and intervened only in the interests of peace and good understanding something like a friendly

  arbitration was accepted from the French and the French government sent a special representative to Athens to try to come to terms with our minister there the difficulties appeared likely to be adjusted all the claims except those of Don Pacifico were a matter of easy settlement and at first the French Commissioner seemed even willing to accept Don Pacifico's stupendous

  valuation of his household goods but Pacifico had introduced other demands of a more shadowy character he said that he had certain claims on the Portuguese government and that the papers on which these claims rested for support were destroyed in the sacking of his house and therefore he felt entitled to ask for 26,618 pounds as compensation on that account also the French Commissioner

  was a little staggered at this demand and declined to accede to it without further consideration and as our minister Mr. Wise did not believe he had any authority to abate any of the now national demand the negotiation was for the time broken off in the meantime however negotiations had still been going on between the English and the French governments in London and these

  had resulted in a convention disposing of all the disputed claims by the terms of this agreement a sum of 8,500 pounds was to be paid by the Greek government to be divided among the various claimants and Greece was also to pay whatever some might be found to be fairly due on account of Don Pacifico's Portuguese claims after these had been investigated by arbitrators this would

  seem a very satisfactory and honorable arrangement but some demon of mischief appeared to have this unlucky affair in charge from the first the two negotiations going on in London and Athens simultaneously got in each other's way instructions as to what had been agreed to in London were not forwarded to Athens quickly enough by the English government and when the

  French government sent out to their commissioner the news of the convention he found that Mr. Wise knew nothing about the matter and had no authority which as he conceived would have warranted him in departing from the course of action he was following out Mr. Wise therefore proceeded with his measures of coercion and at length the Greek government gave way the

  convention having however been made in the meantime in London there then arose a question as to whether that convention or the terms extorted at Athens should be the basis of arrangement over this Trumpery dispute which a few words of frank good sense and good temper on both sides would have easily settled a new quarrel seemed at one time likely to break out between

  England and France the French government actually withdrew their ambassador miss you drew on the Luis from London and there was for a short time a general alarm over Europe but the question in dispute was really too small and insignificant for any two rational governments to make it a cause of serious quarrel and after a while our government gave way and agreed to an

  arrangement which was in the main all that France desired when after a long lapse of time the arbitrators came to settle the claims of dawn Pacifico it was found that he was entitled to about one thirtieth of the sum he had originally demanded he had assessed all his claims on the same liberal and fanciful scale as that which he adopted in estimating the value of his household

  property don pacifico it seems charged in his bill 150 pounds sterling for a bedstead 30 pounds for the sheets of the bed 25 pounds for two coverlets and 10 pounds for a pillowcase Cleopatra might have been contented with bed furniture so luxurious as don pacifico represented himself to have in his common use the jewelry of his wife and daughters he estimated at 2,000 pounds he gave no

  vouchers for any of these claims saying that all his papers had been destroyed by the mob it seemed to that he had always lived in a humble sort of way and was never supposed by his neighbors to possess such splendor of ornament and household goods while the controversy between the English and French governments was yet unfinished a parliamentary controversy between the

  former government and the opposition in the House of Lords was to begin Lord Stanley proposed a resolution which was practically a vote of censure on the government the resolution in fact expressed the regret of the house to find that various claims against the Greek government doubtful in point of justice or exaggerated in amount have been enforced by coercive measures

  directed against the commerce and people of Greece and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations with foreign powers the resolution was carried after a debate of great spirit and energy by a majority of 37 Lord Palmerston was not dismayed the ministry is seldom greatly troubled by an adverse vote in the House of Lords the Foreign Secretary writing about the result of

  the division the following day merely said we were beaten last night in the Lords by a larger majority than we had up to the last moment expected but when we took office we knew that our opponents had a larger pack in the Lords than we had and that whenever the two packs were to be fully dealt out theirs would show a larger number than ours still it was necessary that something

  should be done in the Commons to counterbalance the stroke of the Lords and accordingly Mr. Roebuck acting as an independent member although on this occasion in harmony with the government gave notice of a resolution which boldly affirmed that the principles on which the foreign policy of the government had been regulated were such as were calculated to maintain the honor and

  dignity of this country and in times of unexampled difficulty to preserve peace between England and the various nations of the world on June 24th 1850 a night memorable and parliamentary annals as the opening night of the debate which established Lord Palmerston's position as a great leader of party mr. Roebuck brought forward his resolution a reader unaccustomed to parliamentary tactics

  may fail to observe the peculiar shrewdness of the resolution it was framed at least it reads as if it had been framed to accomplish one purpose while professing to serve another it was intended of course as a reply to the censure of the House of Lords it was to proclaim to the world that the representative chamber had reversed the decision of the House of Peers and

  acquitted the ministry but what did mr. Roebuck's resolution actually do did it affirm that the government had acted rightly with regard to Greece the dealings with Greece were expressly censured by the House of Lords but mr. Roebuck proposed to affirm that the general policy of the ministry deserved the approval of the House of Commons it was well known that there were many men

  of liberal opinions in the House of Commons who did not approve of the course pursued with regard to Greece but who would yet have been very sorry to give a vote which might contribute to the overthrow of a liberal government the resolution was so framed as to offer to all such an opportunity of supporting the government and yet satisfying their consciences for it might be thus put to

  them you think the government were too harsh with Greece perhaps you are right but this resolution does not say that they were quite free of blame in their way of dealing with Greece it only says that their policy on the whole has been sound and successful and of course you must admit that they may have made a little mistake with regard to Greece but admitting that do you not still think

  that on the whole they have done very well and much better than any Tory ministry would be likely to do this is all that Roebuck's resolution asks you to affirm and you really cannot vote against it end of section 3

• 04 - Ch. 19: Don Pacifico, Pt. 2

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  XIX. DON PACIFICO, PART II. A large number of liberals were no doubt influenced by this view of the situation and by the framing of the resolution, but there were some who could not be led into any approval of the particular transaction which the resolution, if not intended to cover, would certainly be made to cover. There were others, too, who even on the broader field opened purposely up by the resolution,

  honestly believed that Lord Palmerston's general policy was an incessant violation of the principle of non-intervention and was therefore injurious to the character and safety of the country. In a prolonged and powerful debate some of the foremost men on both sides of the House opposed and denounced the policy of the government for which, as everyone knew, Lord Palmerston was almost exclusively responsible.

  The allied troops who led the attack, says Mr. Evelyn Ashley in his life of Lord Palmerston, were English protectionists and foreign absolutists. It is strange that an able and usually fair-minded man should be led into such an absurdity. Lord Palmerston himself called it a shot fired by a foreign conspiracy aided and abetted by a domestic intrigue. But Lord Palmerston was the minister personally assailed and might be excused perhaps for believing at the moment

  that warring monarchs were giving the fatal wound and that the attack on him was the work of the combined treachery of Europe. An historian looking back upon the events after an interval of a quarter of a century ought to be able to take a calmer view of things. Among the English protectionists who took a prominent part in condemning the policy of Lord Palmerston was Mr. Gladston, Mr. Cobden, Sir Robert Peel, Sir William Molesworth and Mr. Sidney Herbert.

  In the House of Lords, Lord Broom, Lord Canning and Lord Aberdeen had supported the resolution of Lord Stanley. The truth is that Lord Palmerston's proceedings were fairly open to difference of judgment even on the part of the most devoted liberals and the most independent thinkers. It did not need that a man should be a protectionist or an absolutist to explain his entire disapproval of such a course of conduct as that which had been followed out with regard to Greece.

  It seems to us now, quietly looking back at the whole story, hardly possible that a man with, for example, the temperament and the general views of Mr. Gladston could have approved of such a policy. Obviously impossible that a man like Mr. Cobden could have approved of it. These men simply followed their judgment and their conscience. The principal interest of the debate now rests in the manner of Lord Palmerston's defense. This speech was indeed a masterpiece

  of parliamentary argument and address. It was, in part, a complete exposition and defense of the whole course of the foreign policy which the noble speaker had directed. But although the resolution treated only of the general policy of the government, Lord Palmerston did not fail to make a special defense of his action toward Greece. He based his vindication of this particular chapter of his policy on the ground which of all others gave him most advantage in addressing a parliamentary

  assembly. He contended that in all he had done he had been actuated by the resolve that the poorest claimant who bore the name of an English citizen should be protected by the whole strength of England against the oppression of a foreign government. His speech was an appeal to all the elementary emotions of manhood and citizenship and good fellowship. To vote against him seemed to be to declare that England was unable or unwilling to protect her children. A man appeared

  to be guilty of an unpatriotic and ignoble act who censured the minister whose only error, if error it were, was the too proud and generous resolve to make the name of England and the rights of Englishmen respected throughout the world. A good deal of ridicule had been heaped not unnaturally on Don Pacifico, his claims, his career and his costly bed furniture. Lord Palmerston turned that very ridicule to good account for his own cause. He repelled with a warmth of

  seemingly generous indignation the suggestion that because a man was lowly, pitiful, even ridiculous, even of doubtful conduct in his earlier career, therefore he was one with whom a foreign government was not bound to observe any principles of fair dealing at all. He protested against having serious things treated jocosly, as if any man in Parliament had ever treated serious things more often in a jocos spirit. He protested against having the House kept in a roar of laughter at the poverty

  of one's sufferer or at the miserable habitation of another, at the nationality of one man or the religion of another, as if because a man was poor he might be bastionadoed and tortured with impunity, as if a man who was born in Scotland might be robbed without redress or because a man is of the Jewish persuasion he is a fair mark for any outrage. Lord Palmerston had also a great advantage given to him by the argument of some of his opponents that whatever the laws of a foreign

  country a stranger has only to abide by them and that a government claiming redress for any wrong done to one of its subjects is completely answered by the statement that he has suffered only as inhabitants of the country themselves have suffered. The argument against Lord Palmerston was pushed entirely too far in this instance and it gave him one of his finest opportunities for reply. It is true as a general rule in the intercourse of nations that a stranger who goes voluntarily into

  a country is expected to abide by its laws and that his government will not protect him from their ordinary operation in every case where it may seem to press hardly or even unfairly against him. But in this understanding is always involved a distinct assumption that the laws of the state are to be such as civilization would properly recognize, supposing that the state in question professes to be a civilized state. It is also distinctly assumed that the state must be able

  and willing to enforce its own laws where they are fairly invoked on behalf of a foreigner. If, for instance, a foreigner has a just claim against some continental government and that government will not recognize the claim or recognizing it will not satisfy it and the government of the injured man intervenes and asks that his claim shall be met, it would never be accounted a sufficient answer to say that many of the inhabitants of the country had

  been treated just in the same way and had got no redress. If there were a law in Turkey or any other slave-owning state that a man who could not pay his debts was liable to have his wife and daughter sold into slavery, it is certain that no government like that of England would hear of the application of such a law to the family of a poor English trader settled in Constantinople. There is no clear rule easy to be laid down. Perhaps there can be no clear rule on

  the subject at all, but it is evident that the governments of all civilized countries do exercise a certain protectorate over their subjects in foreign countries and do insist in extreme cases that the laws of the country shall not be applied or denied to them in a manner which a native resident might think himself compelled to endure without protest. It is not even so in the case of harsh and barbarous laws alone or of the denial of justice in a harsh and barbarous way. The

  principle prevails even in regard to laws which are in themselves unexceptionable and necessary. No government, for example, will allow one of its subjects living in a foreign country to be brought under the law for the levying of the conscription there and compelled to serve in the army of the state. All this only shows that the opponents of Lord Palmerston made a mistake when they endeavored to obtain any general assent to the principle that a minister does wrong who asks

  for his fellow subjects at the hands of a foreign government any better treatment than that which the government in question administers and without revolt to its own people. Lord Palmerston was not the man to lose so splendid an opportunity. He really made it appear as if the question between him and his opponents was that of the protection of Englishmen abroad, as if he were anxious to look after their lives and safety while his opponents were urging the odious principle

  that when once an Englishman puts his foot on a foreign shore his own government renounced all intent to concern themselves with any fate that might befall him. Here was a new turn given to the debate, a new opportunity afforded to those who while they did not approve exactly of what had been done with Greece were nevertheless anxious to support the general principles of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy. This speech was a marvelous appeal to what are called English

  interests. In a peroration of thrilling power Lord Palmerston asked for the verdict of the House to decide whether as the Roman in days of old held himself free from indignity when he could say, Chi vis Romanus sum, so also a British subject in whatever land he may be shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong. When Lord Palmerston closed his speech the overwhelming plaudits of the House foretold

  the victory he had won. It was indeed a masterpiece of telling defense. The speech occupied some five hours in delivery. It was spoken as Mr. Gladston afterwards said from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next. It was spoken without the help of a single note. Lord Palmerston always wisely thought that in order to have full command of such an audience a man should if possible never make use of notes. He was quite conscious of his own lack of the higher gifts of imagination and emotion

  that make the great orator. But he knew also what a splendid weapon of attack and defense was his fluency and readiness and he was not willing to weaken the effect of its spontaneity by the interposition of a single note. All this great speech therefore, full as it was of minute details, names, dates, figures, references of all kinds, was delivered with the same facility, the same lack of effort, the same absence of any adventitious age to memory which characterized

  Palmerston's ordinary style when he answered a simple question. Nothing could be more complete than Palmerston's success. Chius Romanus settled the matter. Who was in the House of Commons so rude that he would not be a Roman? Who was there so lacking in patriotic spirit that would not have all his countrymen as good as any Roman citizen of them all? It was to little purpose that Mr. Gladstone in his speech of singular argumentative power pointed out that a Roman citizen was the

  member of a privileged caste, of a victorious and conquering nation, of a nation that held all others bound down by the strong arm of power, which had one law for him and another for the rest of the world, which asserted in his favor principles which it denied to all others. It was in vain that Mr. Gladstone asked whether Lord Palmerston thought that was the position which it would become a civilized and Christian nation like England to claim for her citizens. The glory of being a

  Kiwis Romanus was far too strong for any mere argument drawn from fact and common sense to combat against it. The phrase had carried the day. When Mr. Cockburn in supporting Lord Palmerston's policy quoted from classical authority to show that the Romans had always avenged any wrongs done to their citizens and cited from one of Cicero's speeches against Veres, The house cheered more tumultuously than ever. In vain was the calm grave studiously moderate

  remonstrance of Sir Robert Peel, who while generously declaring that Palmerston's speech made us all proud of the man who delivered it, yet recorded his firm protest against the style of policy which Palmerston's eloquence had endeavored to glorify. The victory was all with Palmerston. He had, in the words of Shakespeare's Rosalind, wrestled well and overthrown more than his enemies. After a debate of four nights a majority of forty-six was given for the resolution. The

  ministry came out not only absolved but triumphant. The odd thing about the whole proceeding is that the ministers in general heartily disapproved of the sort of policy which Palmerston put so energetically into action. At least they disapproved, if not his principles, yet certainly his way of enforcing them. Before this debate came on, Lord John Russell had made up his mind that it would be impossible for him to remain in office with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary. Nonetheless,

  did Lord John Russell defend the policy of the Foreign Office in a speech which Palmerston himself described as admirable and first-rate? The ministers felt bound to stand by the actions which they had not repudiated at the time when they were done. They could not allow Lord Palmerston to be separated from them in political responsibility when they had not separated themselves from moral responsibility for his proceedings in time. Therefore, they had to defend in Parliament what

  they did not pretend to approve in private. The theory of a cabinet, always united when attacked, rendered doubtless such a course of proceeding necessary in parliamentary tactics. It would perhaps be hard to make it seem quite satisfactory to the simple and unsophisticated mind. No part of our duty calls on us to attempt such a task. It was a famous victory. We must only settle the question, as old Caspar disposed of the doubts about the propriety of the praise given to the

  Duke of Marlborough and our good Prince Eugène. It is not telling a lie, says someone in Thackeray. It is only voting with your party. But Thackeray had never been in the House of Commons. Of many fine speeches made during this brilliant debate we must notice one in particular. It was that of Mr. Cockburn then-member for Southampton, a speech to which allusion has already been made. Never in our time has a reputation been more suddenly, completely and deservedly made than Mr. Cockburn

  won by his brilliant display of ingenious argument and stirring words. The manner of the speaker lent additional effect to his clever and captivating eloquence. He had a clear, sweet, penetrating voice, a fluency that seemed so easy as to make listeners sometimes fancy that it ought to cost no effort, and a grace of gesture such as it must be owned the courts of law where he had had his training did not often teach. Mr. Cockburn defended the policy of Palmerston with an effect only

  inferior to that produced by Palmerston's own speech, and with a rhetorical grace and finish to which Palmerston made no pretension. In writing to Lord Normanby about the debate, Lord Palmerston distributed his praise to friends and enemies with that generous impartiality which was a fine part of his character. Gladstone's attack on his policy he pronounced a first-rate performance. Peel and Disraeli he praised likewise, but as to Cockburn's he said,

  I do not know that I ever in the course of my life heard a better speech from anybody without any exception. The effect which Cockburn's speech produced on the house was well described in the house itself by one who rose chiefly for the purpose of disputing the principles it advocated. Mr. Cobb then observed that when Mr. Cockburn had concluded his speech, one half of the treasury benches were left empty while honorable members ran after one another,

  tumbling over each other in their haste to shake hands with the honorable and learned member. Mr. Cockburn's career was safe from that hour. It is needless to say that he well upheld in after years the reputation he won in a night. The brilliant and sudden success of the member from Southampton was but the fitting prelude to the abiding distinction won by the Lord Chief Justice of England. End of Section 4.

• 05 - Ch. 19: Don Pacifico, Pt. 3

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  section 5 of a history of our own times volume 2 by Justin McCarthy this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Pamela Nagami chapter 19 don pacifico part 3 one association of profound melancholy clings to that great debate the speech delivered by sir Robert Pio was the last that was destined to come from his lips the debate closed on the morning of

  Saturday June 29th it was nearly four o'clock when the division was taken and Pio left the house as the sunlight was already beginning to stream into the corridors and lobbies he went home to rest but his sleep could not be long he had to attend a meeting of the royal commissioners of the great industrial exhibition at 12 and the meeting was important the site of the building had

  to be decided upon and Prince Albert and the commissioners generally relied greatly on the influence of sir Robert Pio to sustain them against the clamorous objection out of doors to the choice of a place in Hyde Park Pio went to the meeting and undertook to assume the leading part in defending the decision of the commissioners before the House of Commons he returned home for a

  short time after the meeting and then set out for a ride in the park he called at Buckingham Palace and wrote his name in the Queen's visiting book then as he was riding up Constitution Hill he stopped to talk to a young lady a friend of his who was also riding his horse suddenly shied and flung him off and Pio clinging to the bridle the animal fell with its knees on his shoulders the

  injuries which he received proved beyond all skill of surgery he lingered now conscious now delirious with pain for two or three days and he died about 11 o'clock on the night of July 2nd most of the members of his family and some of his dearest old friends and companions in political arms were beside him when he died the tears of the Duke of Wellington in one House of Parliament and

  the eloquence of mr. Gladstone in the other were expressions as fitting and adequate as might be of the universal feeling of the nation there was no honor which Parliament in the country would not willingly have paid to the memory of Pio Lord John Russell proposed with the sanction of the crown that his remains should be buried with public honors but Pio had distinctly declared

  in his will that he desired his remains to lie beside those of his father and mother in the family vault at Drayton Bassett all that Parliament in the country could do therefore was to decree a monument to him in Westminster Abbey the offer of a peerage was made to Lady Pio but as might perhaps have been expected it was declined Lady Pio declared that her desire was to hear no

  other name than that by which her husband had been known she also explained that the express wish of her husband recorded in his will was that no member of his family should accept any title or other reward on account of any services Pio might have rendered to his country no desire could have been more honorable to the statesmen who had formed and expressed it none certainly

  more in keeping with all that was known of the severely unselfish and unostentatious character of Sir Robert Pio yet there were persons found to misconstrue his meaning and to discover offense to the order of aristocracy in Pio's determination a report went about that the great statesman's objection to the acceptance of a peerage by one of his family implied a disparagement of

  the order of peers and was founded on feelings of contempt or hostility to the House of Lords mr. Goldburn who was one of Pio's executors easily explained Pio's meaning if indeed it needed explanation to any reasonable mind Pio was impressed with the conviction that it was better for a man to be the son of his own works and he desired that his sons if they were to bear titles and

  distinctions given them by the state should win them by their own services and worth and not simply put them on as an inheritance from their father as regards himself it may well be that he thought the name under which he had made his reputation became him better than any new title he had not looked for reward of that kind and might well prefer to mark the fact that he did not

  specially value such distinctions nor would it be any disparagement to the peerage the thing which in the case of a man with Pio's opinions is utterly out of the question to think that much of the dignity of a title depends on its long descent and its historic record and that a fire new specially invented title to a man already great is a disfigurement or at least is a disguise

  rather than an adornment when titles were abolished during the Great French Revolution Mirabeau complained of being called citizen rickety in the official reports of the assembly with your rickety he said angrily you have puzzled all Europe for days Europe knew count Mirabeau but was for some time bewildered by citizen rickety so Robert Pio may well have objected to a

  reversal of the process and to the bewildering of Europe by disguising a famous citizen in a new peerage Pio's death Lord Palmerston wrote to his brother a few days after putting the remark at the close of a long letter about the recent victory of the government and the congratulations he had personally received is a great calamity and one that seems to have no

  adequate cause he was a very bad and awkward rider and his horse might have been sat by any better equestrian but he seems somehow or other to have been entangled in the bridle and to have pulled the horse to step or kneel upon him the injury to the shoulder was severe but curable that which killed him was a broken rib forced with great violence inwards into the lungs the

  cause of Pio's death would certainly not have been adequate as Lord Palmerston put it if great men needed prodigious and portentous events to bring about their end but the stumble of a horse has been found enough in other instances to Pio seemed destined for great things yet when he died he was but in his 63rd year he was some years younger than Lord Palmerston who may be

  said without exaggeration to have just achieved his first great success many circumstances were pointing to Pio as likely before long to be summoned again to the leadership of the government of the country it is superfluous to say that his faculties as parliamentary orator or statesman were not showing any signs of decay an English public man is not supposed to show signs of

  decaying faculties at 62 the shying horse and perhaps the bad ridership settled the question of Pio's career between them we have already endeavored to estimate that career and to do justice to Pio's great qualities he was not a man of original genius but he was one of the best administrators of other men's ideas that ever knew how and when to leave a party and to serve a country

  he was never tried by the severe tests which tell whether a man is a statesman of the highest order he was never tried as Kuvur for example was tried by conditions which placed the national existence of his country in jeopardy he had no such trials to encounter as were forced on pit he was the minister of a country always peaceful safe and prosperous but he was called upon at a

  trying moment to take a step on which assuredly much of the prosperity of the people and nearly all the hopes of his party along with his own personal reputation were imperiled he did not want courage to take the step and he had the judgment to take it at the right time he bore the reproaches of that which had been his party with dignity and composure he was undoubtedly as Lord

  beckons field calls him a great member of Parliament but he was surely also a great minister perhaps he needed only a profound or trial at the hands of fate to have earned the title of a great man to the same year belongs the close of another remarkable career on August 26 1850 Louis Philippe lately King of the French died at Claremont the guest of England few men in history had gone

  through greater reverses son of Philippe a Galitae brought up in a sort of blending of luxury and scholastic self-denial under the contrasting influence of his father and his teacher Madame de Jean Lee a woman full at least a virtuous precept and Rousseau like profession he showed great force of character during the revolution he still regarded France as his country though she

  no longer gave a throne to any of his family he had fought like a brave young soldier at Valmy and jam up a Galitae fees says Carlisle speaking of the young man at Valmy equality jr. a light gallant field officer distinguished himself by intrepidity it is the same intrepid individual who now as Louis Philippe without the equality struggles under sad circumstances to be called King of the

  French for a season it is he who has Carlisle also describes it saves his sister with such spirit and energy when Madame de Jean Lee with all her fine precepts would have left her behind to whatever danger behold the young princely brother struggling hitherward hastily calling bearing the princess in his arms hastily he has clutched the poor young lady up in her very nightgown

  nothing saved of her goods except the watch from the pillow with brotherly despair he flings her among the band boxes into John Lee's chaise into John Lee's arms the brave young egalitae has a most wild moral to look for but now only himself to carry through it the brave young egalitae had indeed a wild time before him a wanderer an exile a fugitive a teacher in Swiss and American

  schools bearing many and various names as he turned to many callings and saw many lands always perhaps keeping in mind that Danton had laid his great hand upon his head and declared that the boy must one day be King of France then in the whirligig of time the opportunity that long might have seemed impossible came round at last and the soldier exile college teacher wanderer among American

  Indian tribes resident of Philadelphia and of Bloomingdale in the New York suburbs is King of the French well had Carlisle gauged his position after some years of rain when he described him as struggling under sad circumstances to be called King of the French for a season he ought to have been a great man he had had a great training all his promises a man faded when his seeming success began

  to shine he had apparently learned nothing of adversity he was able to learn nothing of prosperity and greatness of all men whom his time had tried he ought best to have known one might think the vanity of human schemes and the futility of trying to uphold Thrones on false principles he intrigued for power as if his previous experience had taught him that power

  once obtained was inalienable he seemed at one time to have no real faith in anything but chicane he made the fairest professions and did the meanest falsest things he talked to Queen Victoria in language that might have brought tears into a father's eyes and he was all the time planning the detestable juggle of the Spanish marriages he did not even seem to retain the courage of his youth

  it went apparently with whatever of true unselfish principle he had when he was yet a young soldier of the Republic he was like our own James the second who as a youth extorted the praise of the great Turin for his bravery and as a king earned the scorn of the world for his pusillanimous imbecility some people say that there remained a gleam of perverted principle in Louis Philippe which broke

  out just at the close and unluckily for him exactly at the wrong time it is asserted that he could have put down the movement of 1848 in the beginning with one decisive word certainly those who began that movement were as little prepared as he for its turning out a revolution it is generally assumed that he halted and dallied and refused to give the word of command out of sheer

  weakness of mind and lack of courage but the assumption according to some is unjust their theory is that Louis Philippe at that moment of crisis was seized with a conscientious scruple and believed that having been called to power by the choice of the people called to rule not as King of France but as King of the French as King that is to say of the French people so long as they

  chose to have him he was not authorized to maintain himself on that throne by force the feeling would have been just and right if it were certain that the French people or any majority of the French people really wished him away and were prepared to welcome a republic but it was hardly fair to those who set him on the throne to assume at once that he was bound to come down from it at the

  bidding of no matter whom how few or how many and without in some way trying conclusions to see if it were the voice of France that summoned him to descend or only the outcry of a moment and a crowd the scruple if it existed lost the throne in which we are far from saying that France suffered any great loss we are bound to say that mr. tierre who ought to have known does not seem to

  have believed in the operation of any scruple of the kind and ascribes the King's fall simply to blundering into bad advice but it would have been curiously illustrative of the odd contradictions of human nature and especially curious as illustrating that one very odd and mixed nature if Louis Philippe had really felt such a scruple and yielded to it he had carried

  out with full deliberation and in spite of all remonstrance schemes which tore asunder human lives blighted human happiness played at dice with the destinies of whole nations and might have involved all Europe in war and it does not seem that he ever felt one twinge of scruple or acknowledged one pang of remorse his policy had been unutterably mean and selfish and

  deceitful his very bourgeois virtues on which he was so much inclined to boast himself had been a sham for he had carried out schemes which defied and flouted the first principles of human virtue and made as light of the honor of woman as of the integrity of man it would humor the irony of fate if he had sacrificed his crown to a scruple which a man of really high principle would

  well have felt justified and banishing from his mind one is reminded of the daughter of Macklin the famous actor who having made her success on the stage by appearing constantly in pieces which compelled the most liberal display of foreman limbs to all the house and all the town died of a slight injury to her knee which she allowed to grow mortal rather than permit any doctor to look at

  the suffering place in Louis Philippe's case too this scruple would show so oddly that even the sacrifice it entailed could scarcely make us regard it with respect he died in exile among us the clever unwise grand mean old man there was a great deal about him which made him respected in private life and when he had nothing to do with state intrigues and the foreign policy of

  courts he was much liked in England were for many years after his sons lived but there were Englishmen who did not like him and did not readily forgive him one of these was Lord Palmerston Lord Palmerston wrote to his brother a few days after the death of Louis Philippe expressing his sentiments thereupon with the utmost directness the death of Louis Philippe he said delivers me from

  my most artful and inveterate enemy whose position gave him in many ways the power to injure me Louis Philippe always detested Lord Palmerston and according to tier was constantly saying witty and spiteful things of the English minister which good-natured friends as constantly brought to Palmerston's ears when Lord Palmerston did not feel exactly as a good Christian ought to have

  felt he at least never pretended to any such feeling the same letter contains immediately after a reference to Sir Robert Peel it too is characteristic though I am sorry for the death of peel from personal regard and because it is no doubt a great loss to the country yet so far as my own political position is concerned I do not think that he was ever disposed to do me any good turn a

  little while before Prince Albert writing to his friend Baron Stockmar had spoken of Peel as having somewhat unduly favored Palmerston's foreign policy in the great Pacifico debate or at least not having born as severely as he might upon it and for a certainly not selfish reason he peel could not call the policy good and yet he did not wish to damage the ministry and this solely

  because he considered that a protectionist ministry succeeding them would be dangerous to the country and had quite determined not to take office himself but would the fact that his health no longer admitted of his doing so have been sufficient as time went on to make his followers and friends bear with patient resignation their own permanent exclusion from office I doubt

  it the prince might well doubt it if peel had lived it is all but certain that he would have had to take office it is curious however to notice how completely Prince Albert and Lord Palmerston are at odds in their way of estimating peels political attitude before his death Lord Palmerston's quiet way of setting peel down is one who would never be disposed to do him a good

  turn is characteristic of the manner in which the Foreign Secretary went in for the game of politics Palmerston was a man of kindly instincts and genial temperament he was much loved by his friends his feelings were always directing him toward a certain half indolent benevolence but the game of politics was to him like the hunting field one cannot stop to help a friend

  out of a ditch or to lament over him if he is down and seriously injured for the hour the only thing is to keep on one's way in the political game Lord Palmerston was playing enemies were only obstacles and it would be absurd to pretend to be sorry when they were out of his path therefore there is no affectation of generous regret for Louis Philippe political rivals even if

  something like obstacles to Palmerston is of opinion that PO would never be disposed to do him a good turn and therefore indulges in no sentimental regret for his death he is a loss to the country no doubt and personally one is sorry for him of course and all that which done God take King Edward to his mercy and leave the world for me to bustle in the world certainly was more

  free henceforth for Lord Palmerston's active and unresting spirit to bustle in and of section 5

• 06 - Ch. 20: The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, Pt. 1

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  The autumn of 1850 and the greater part of 1851 were disturbed by an agitation which seemed strangely out of keeping with our present condition of religious liberty and civilization. A struggle with the papal court might appear to be a practical impossibility for the England of our time. The mind has to go back some centuries to put itself into what would appear the proper framework for such events. Legislation or even agitation against papal aggression would

  seem about as superfluous in our modern English days as the use of any of the once popular charms which were believed to hinder witches of their will. The story is extraordinary and is in many ways instructive. For some time previous to 1850 there had been, as we have seen already, a certain movement among some scholarly mystical men in England toward the Roman Church. We have already shown how this movement began and how little it could fairly be said to represent any

  actual impulse of reaction among the English people, but it unquestionably made a profound impression in Rome. The court of Rome then saw everything through the eyes of ecclesiastics, and a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic not well acquainted with the actual conditions of English life might well be excused if, when he found that two or three great Englishmen had gone over to the church, he fancied that they were but the vanguard of a vast popular or national movement. It is

  clear that the court of Rome was quite mistaken as to the religious condition of England. The most chimerical notions prevailed in the Vatican. To the eyes of papal enthusiasm the whole English nation was only waiting for some word and season to return to the spiritual jurisdiction of Rome. The Pope had not been fortunate in many things. He had been a fugitive from his own city and had been restored only by the force of French arms. He was a thoroughly good, pious, ingenious man,

  not seeing far into the various ways of human thought and national character. And to his mind, there was nothing unreasonable in the idea that heaven might have made up for the domestic disasters of his reign by making him the instrument of the conversion of England. No better proof can be given of the manner in which he and his advisers misunderstood the English people than the step with which his sanguine zeal inspired him. The English people, even while they yet bowed to the spiritual

  supremacy of the papacy, were always keenly jealous of any ecclesiastical attempt to control the political action or restrict the national independence of England. The history of the relations between England and Rome for long generations before England had any thought of renouncing the faith of Rome might have furnished ample proof of this to anyone who gave himself the trouble to turn over a few pages of English chronicles. The Pope did not read English and his

  advisers did not understand England. Accordingly, he took a step with the view of encouraging and inviting England to become converted, which was calculated specially and instantly to defeat its own purpose. Had the great majority of the English people been really drawing toward the verge of a reaction to Rome, such an act as that done by the Pope might have startled them back to their old attitude. The assumption of papal authority over England only filled the English people with a new

  determination to repudiate and resist every pretension at spiritual authority on the part of the court of Rome. The time has so completely passed away and the supposed pretensions have come to so little that the most zealous Protestants can afford to discuss the whole question now with absolute impartiality and unruffled calmness. Everyone can clearly see now that if the Pope was mistaken in the course he took, and if the nation in general was amply justified in

  resenting even a supposed attempt at foreign interference, the piece of legislation to which the occasion gave birth was not a masterpiece of statesmanship, nor was the manner in which it was carried through always creditable to the good sense of Parliament and the public. The papal aggression in itself was perhaps a measure to smile at rather than to arouse great national indignation. It consisted of the issue of a papal bull given at St. Peter's Rome under the seal of

  the fishermen and directing the establishment in England of a hierarchy of bishops deriving their titles from their own seas which we constitute by the present letter in the various apostolic districts. It is a curious evidence of the little knowledge of England's condition possessed by the court of Rome then that although five-sixths at least of the Catholics in England were Irish by birth or extraction, the newly appointed bishops were all or nearly all Englishmen

  unconnected with Ireland. An Englishman of the present day would be probably inclined to ask on hearing the effect of the bull, is that all? Being told that that was all he would probably have gone on to ask, what does it matter? Who cares whether the Pope gives new titles to his English ecclesiastics or not? What Protestant is even interested in knowing whether a certain Catholic bishop living in England is called Bishop of Mesopotamia or of Lambeth? There always were

  Catholic bishops in England. There were Catholic archbishops. They were free to go and come, to preach and teach as they liked, to dress as they liked. For all that nineteen out of every twenty Englishmen cared they might have been also free to call themselves what they liked. Any Protestant who mixed with Roman Catholics or knew anything about their usages knew that they were in the habit of calling their bishops, my lord, and their archbishops, your grace. He knew of course that

  they had not the slightest legal right to use such high-sounding titles but this did not trouble him in the least. It was only a ceremonial intended for Catholics and it did not give him either offense or concern. Why then should he be expected to disturb his mind? Because the Pope chose to direct that the English Roman Catholics should call a man Bishop of Liverpool or Archbishop of Westminster. The Pope could not compel him to call them by any such names if he did not think fit

  and unless his attention had been very earnestly drawn to the fact he never probably would have found out that any new titles had been invented for the Catholic hierarchy in England. This was the way in which a great many Englishmen regarded the matter even then but it must be owned that there was something about the time and manner of the papal bull calculated to offend the susceptibility of a great and independent nation. The mere fact that a certain movement towards Rome

  had been painfully visible in the ranks of the English Church itself was enough to make people sensitive and jealous. The plain sense of many thoroughly impartial and cool-headed Englishmen showed them that the two things were connected in the mind of the Pope and that he had issued his bull because he thought the time was actually coming when he might begin to take measures for the spiritual annexation of England. His pretensions might be of no account in themselves but the fact

  that he made them in the evident belief that they were justified by realities produced a jarring and painful effect on the mind of England. The offense lay in the Pope's evident assumption that the change he was making was the natural result of an actual change in the national feeling of England. The anger was not against the giving of the new titles but against the assumption of a new right to give titles representing territorial distinctions in this country. The agitation that sprang up was

  fiercely heated by the pastoral letter of the chief of the new hierarchy. The Pope had divided England into various dioceses which he placed under the control of an archbishop and twelve suffragans and the new Archbishop was Cardinal Wiseman. Under the title of Archbishop of Westminster and Administrator Apostolic of the Diocese of Southwark, Cardinal Wiseman was now to reside in London. Cardinal Wiseman was already well known in England. He was of English descent

  on his father's side and of Irish on his mother's. He was a Spaniard by birth and a Roman by education. His family on both sides was of good position. His father came of a long line of Essex gentry. Wiseman had held the professorship of Oriental languages in the English College at Rome and afterwards became rector of the college. In 1840 he was appointed by the Pope one of the vicars apostolic of England and held his position here as Bishop of Melopotamus in

  Partibus Infidelium. He was well known to be a fine scholar, an accomplished linguist, and a powerful preacher and controversialist. But he was believed also to be a man of great ecclesiastical ambition. Ambition for his church that is to say, of singular boldness and of much political ability. The Pope's action was set down as in great measure the work of Wiseman. The cardinal himself was accepted in the minds of most Englishmen as a type of the

  regular Italian ecclesiastic. Bold, clever, ambitious, and unscrupulous. The very fact of his English extraction only militated the more against him in the public feeling. He was regarded as in some sense one who had gone over to the enemy and who was the more to be dreaded because of the knowledge he carried with him. Perhaps it is not too much to say that in the existing mood of the English people the very title of cardinal exasperated the feeling against Wiseman.

  Had he come as a simple archbishop the aggression might not have seemed so marked. The title of cardinal brought back unwelcome memories to the English public. It reminded them of a period of their history when the forces of Rome and those of the national independence were really arrayed against each other in a struggle which Englishmen might justly look on as dangerous. Since those times there had been no cardinal in England. Did it not look ominous that a cardinal should

  present himself now? The first step taken by Cardinal Wiseman did not tend to charm away this feeling. He issued a pastoral letter addressed to England on October 7th, 1850 which was set forth as given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome. This description of the letter was afterwards stated to be in accordance with one of the necessary formularies of the Church of Rome but it was then assumed in England to be an expression of insolence and audacity intended to remind the

  English people that from out of Rome itself came the assertion of supremacy over them. This letter was to be read publicly in all the Roman Catholic Churches in London. It addressed itself directly to the English people and it announced that your beloved country has received a place among the fair churches which normally constituted form the splendid aggregate of Catholic Communion. Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament from which its light

  had long vanished and begins now anew its course of regularly adjusted action around the center of unity, the source of jurisdiction of light and of vigor. It must be allowed that this was rather imprudent language to address to a people peculiarly proud of being Protestant, a people of whom their critics say not wholly without reason that they are somewhat narrow and unsympathetic in their Protestantism, that their national tendency is to believe in the existence of nothing really good

  outside the limits of Protestantism. In England, the National Church is a symbol of victory over foreign enemies and domination at home. It was not likely that the English people could regard it as anything but an offense to be told that they were resuming their place as a part of an ecclesiastical system to which they of all peoples looked with dislike and distrust. We are not saying that the feeling with which the great bulk of the English people regarded Cardinal Wiseman's church was just

  or liberal. We are simply recording the unquestionable historical fact that such was the manner in which the English people regarded the Roman Church in order to show how slender was the probability of their being moved to anything but anger by such expressions as those contained in Cardinal Wiseman's letter. But the letter had hardly reached England when the country was aroused by another letter coming from a very different quarter and intended as a counterblast to the papal assumption of

  authority. This was Lord John Russell's famous Durham letter. Russell had the art of writing letters that exploded like bombshells in the midst of some controversy. His Edinburgh letter had set the cabinet of Sir Robert Peel on to recognize the fact that something must be done with the free trade question and now his Durham letter spoke the word that let loose a very torrent of English public feeling. The letter was in reply to one from the Bishop of Durham and was

  dated Downing Street, November the 4th. Lord John Russell condemned in the most unmeasured terms the assumption of the Pope as a pretension of supremacy over the realm of England and a claim to soul and undivided sway which is inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation as asserted even in the Roman Catholic times. Lord John Russell went on to say that his alarm was by no means equal to

  his indignation, that the liberty of Protestantism had been enjoyed too long in England to allow of any successful attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon men's minds and consciences and that the laws of the country should be carefully examined and the propriety of adopting some additional measures deliberately considered. But Lord John Russell went further than all this. He declared that there was a danger that alarmed him more than any aggression from a foreign sovereign

  and that was the danger within the gates from the unworthy sons of the Church of England herself. Clergymen of that church, he declared, had been leading their flocks step by step to the verge of the precipice. What, he asked, meant the honor paid to saints, the claim of infallibility for the church, the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, the muttering of the liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it is written, the recommendation of auricular confession,

  and the administration of penance and absolution. The letter closed with a sentence which gave a special offense to Roman Catholics, but which Lord John Russell afterwards explained, and indeed the context ought to have shown, was not meant as any attack on their religion or their ceremonial. I have little hope that the propounders and framers of these innovations will desist from their insidious course, but I rely with confidence on the people of England,

  and I will not bait one jot of heart or hope so long as the glorious principles and the immortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be held in reverence by the great mass of a nation which looks with contempt on the mummeries of superstition and with scorn at the laborious endeavors which are now making to confine the intellect and enslave the soul. It is now clear from the very terms of this letter that Lord John Russell meant to apply these words to the practices within the

  English Church which he had so strongly condemned in the earlier passages and which alone he said he regarded with any serious alarm, but the Roman Catholics in general and the majority of persons of all sects accepted them as a denunciation of popery. The Catholics looked upon them as a declaration of war against Catholicism. The fanatical of the other side welcomed them as a trumpet call to a new no-popery agitation. The very day after the letter appeared was the Guy

  Fawkes anniversary. All over the country the effigies of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman took the place of the regulation Guy and were paraded and burnt amid tumultuous demonstrations. A colossal procession of guys passed down Fleet Street, the principal figure of which a gigantic form of 16 feet high, seated in a chariot, had to be bent down and compelled to veil his crest in order to pass under Temple Bar. This titanic Guy was the new Cardinal in his red robes.

  In Exeter a yet more elaborate anti-papal demonstration was made. A procession of 200 persons in character dresses marched round the venerable cathedral amid the varied effulgence of colored lights. The procession represented the Pope, the new Cardinal, and the Inquisition, various of the Inquisitor's brandishing instruments of torture. Considerable sums of money were spent on these popular demonstrations.

  The only interest in which now is that they serve to illustrate the public sentiment of the hour. Mr. Disraeli good-naturedly endeavored at once to foment the prevailing heat of public temper and at the same time to direct its fervor against the ministry themselves by declaring in a published letter that he could hardly blame the Pope for supposing himself at liberty to divide England into bishoprics, seeing the encouragement he had got from the ministers

  themselves by the recognition they had offered to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland. The fact is, Mr. Disraeli said, the whole question has been surrendered and decided in favor of the Pope by the present government. The ministers who recognized the Pseudo-Archbishop of Tuam as a peer and apprellate cannot object to the appointment of a Pseudo-Archbishop of Westminster even though he be a Cardinal. As a matter of fact, it was not the existing

  government that had recognized the rank of the Irish Catholic prelates. The recognition had been formally arranged in January 1845 by a royal warrant or commission for carrying out the Charitable Bequests Act which gave the Irish Catholic prelates rank immediately after the prelates of the established Church of the same degree. But the letter of Mr. Disraeli, like that of Lord John Russell, served to inflame passions on both

  sides and to put the country in the worst possible mood for any manner of wholesome legislation. Never during the same generation had there been such an outburst of anger on both sides of the religious controversy. It was a curious incident in political history that Lord John Russell, who had, more than any Englishman then living, been identified with the principles of religious liberty, who had sat at the feet of Fox and had for his closest friend the Catholic poet Thomas

  Moore, came to be regarded by Roman Catholics as the bitterest enemy of their creed and their rights of worship. The ministry felt that something must be done. They could not face Parliament without some piece of legislation to satisfy public feeling. Many, even among the most zealous Protestants, deeply regretted that Lord John Russell had written anything on the subject. Not a few Roman Catholics of position and influence bitterly lamented the indiscretion of

  the papal court. The mischief, however, was now fairly afoot. The step taken by the pope had set the country aflame. Every day crowded and tumultuous meetings were held to denounce the action of the court of Rome. Before the end of the year something like seven thousand such meetings had been held throughout the kingdom. Sometimes the Roman Catholic party mustered strong at such demonstrations and the result was rioting and disturbance. Addresses poured in upon the Queen and the

  ministers calling for decided action against the assumption of papal authority. About the same time Father Gavazzi, an Italian Republican who had been a priest, came to London and began a series of lectures against the papacy. He was a man of great rhetorical power with a remarkable command of the eloquence of passion and denunciation. His lectures were at first given only in Italian and therefore did not appeal to a popular English audience. But they were reported in the papers at much length

  and they contributed not a little to swell the tide of public feeling against the pope and the court of Rome. The new Lord Chancellor, Lord Truro, created great applause and tumult at the Lord Mayor's dinner by quoting from Shakespeare the words under my feet I'll stamp thy Cardinal's hat in spite of pope or dignities of church. Charles Keen the Tragedian was interrupted by thundering peals of applause and the rising of the whole audience to their feet when as King John he

  proclaimed that no Italian priest shall tie their toll in our dominion. Long afterwards and when the storm seemed to have wholly died away, Cardinal Wiseman going in a carriage through the streets of Liverpool to deliver a lecture on a purely literary subject to a general audience was pelted with stones by a mob who remembered the papal assumption and the passions excited by the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. End of section six.

• 07 - Ch. 20: The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, Pt. 2

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  CHAPTER XX. THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL, PART II. The opening of Parliament came. The Ministry had to do something. No Ministry that ever held power in England could have attempted to meet the House of Commons without some project of a measure to allay public excitement. On February 4th, 1851, the Queen in person opened Parliament. Her speech contained some sentences which were listened to with the

  profoundest interest because they referred to the question which was agitating all England. The recent assumption of certain ecclesiastical titles conferred by a foreign power has excited strong feelings in this country, and large bodies of my subjects have presented addresses to me, expressing attachment to the throne and praying that such assumptions should be resisted. I have assured them of my resolution to maintain the rights of my Crown and the independence of the

  nation against all encroachments from whatever quarter they may proceed. I have at the same time expressed my earnest desire and firm determination under God's blessing to maintain unimpaired the religious liberty which is so justly prized by the people of this country. How little of inclination to any measures dealing unfairly with Roman Catholics was in the mind of the Queen herself, may be seen from a letter in which when the excitement was at its height she had expressed

  her opinion to her aunt the Duchess of Gloucester. I would never have consented to anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sincerely, Protestant as I always have been and always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves Protestants while they are in fact quite the contrary, I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at the public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion which is

  so painful and so cruel toward the many good and innocent Roman Catholics. However, we must hope and trust this excitement will soon cease and that the wholesome effect of it upon our own church will be lasting. The papal aggression question, Lord Palmerston wrote to his brother just before the opening of Parliament, will give us some trouble and give rise to stormy debates. Our difficulty will be to find out a measure which will satisfy reasonable Protestants without violating those

  principles of liberal toleration which we are pledged to. I think we shall succeed. The thing itself in truth is little or nothing and does not justify the irritation. What has goaded the nation is the manner, insolent and ostentatious in which it was done. We must bring in a measure. The country will not be satisfied without some legislative enactment. We shall make it as gentle as possible. The violent party will object to it for its mildness and will endeavor to drive us farther. A measure

  brought in only because something must be done to satisfy public opinion is not likely to be a very valuable piece of legislation. The ministry in this case was embarrassed by the fact that they really did not particularly want to do anything except to satisfy public opinion for the moment and get rid of all the controversy. They were placed between two galling fires. On the one side were the extreme Protestants to whom Palmerston alluded as violent and who were eager for severe

  measures against the Catholics and on the other were the Roman Catholic supporters of the ministry who protested against any legislation whatever on the subject. It would have been simply impossible to find any safe and satisfactory path of compromise which all could consent to walk. The ministry did the best they could to frame a measure which should seem to do something and yet do little or nothing. Two or three days after the meeting of Parliament Lord John Russell introduced his bill

  to prevent the assumption by Roman Catholics of titles taken from any territory or place within the United Kingdom. The measure proposed to prohibit the use of all such titles under penalty and to render void all acts done by or bequests made to persons under such titles. The Roman Catholic Relief Act imposed a penalty of £100 for every assumption of a title taken from an existing see. Lord John Russell proposed now to extend the penalty to the assumption of any title whatever from any place

  in the United Kingdom. The reception which was given to Lord John Russell's motion for leave to bring in this bill was not encouraging. Usually leave to bring in a bill is granted as a matter of course. Some few general observations of extemporaneous and guarded criticism are often made but the common practice is to offer no opposition. On this occasion however it was at once made manifest that no measure however gentle to use Lord Palmerston's word would be

  allowed to pass without obstinate opposition. Mr. Roebuck described the bill as one of the meanest, pettiest and most futile measures that ever disgraced even bigotry itself. Mr. Bright called it little paltry and miserable, a mere sham to bolster up Church ascendancy. Mr. Disraeli declared that he would not oppose the introduction of the bill but he spoke of it in language of as much contempt as Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Bright had used calling it a mere piece of petty persecution. Was

  it for this, Mr. Disraeli scornfully asked, that the Lord Chancellor trampled on a Cardinal's hat amid the patriotic acclamations of the metropolitan municipality? Sir Robert Ingalls on the part of the more extreme Protestants objected to the bill on the ground that it did not go far enough. The debate on the motion for leave to bring in the bill was renewed for night after night and the fullest promise of an angry and prolonged resistance was given. Yet so strong was the

  feeling in favor of some legislation that when the division was taken, 395 votes were given for the motion and only 63 against it. The opponents of the measure had on their side not only all the prominent champions of religious liberty, like Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, but also Protestant politicians of such devotion to the interests of the Church as Mr. Roundel Palmer, afterward Lord Selbrunn and Mr. Beresford Hope, and of course they had with

  them all the Irish Catholic members. Yet the motion for leave to bring in the bill was carried by this overwhelming majority. The ministers had at all events ample justification so far as parliamentary tactics were concerned for the introduction of their measure. If however we come to regard the ministerial proposal as a piece of practical legislation, the case to be made for them is not strong, nor is the abortive result of their efforts at all surprising. They set out on

  the enterprise without any real interest in it or any particular confidence in its success. It is probable that Lord John Russell alone of all the ministers had any expectation of a satisfactory result to come of the piece of legislation they were attempting. We have seen what Lord Palmerston thought on the whole subject. The ministers were in fact in the difficulty of all statesmen who bring in a measure not because they themselves are clear as to its necessity or its efficacy,

  but because they find that something must be done to satisfy public feeling and they do not know of anything better to do at the moment. The history of the ecclesiastical titles bill was therefore a history of blunder, unlucky accident, and failure from the moment it was brought in until its ignominious and ridiculous repeal many years after and when its absolute impotence had been not merely demonstrated but forgotten. The government at first as we have seen resolved to

  impose a penalty on the assumption of ecclesiastical titles by Roman Catholic prelates from places in the United Kingdom and to make null and void all acts done or requests made in virtue of such titles. But they found that it would be absolutely impossible to apply such legislation to Ireland. In that country a Catholic hierarchy had long been tolerated and all the functions of a regular hierarchy had been in full and formal operation. To apply the new measure to Ireland would have

  been virtually to repeal the Roman Catholic Relief Act and restore the penal laws. On the other hand the ministers were not willing to make one law against titles for England and another for Ireland. They were driven therefore to the course of withdrawing two of the stringent clauses of the bill and leaving it little more than a mere declaration against the assumption of unlawful titles. But by doing this they furnished stronger reasons for opposition to both of the two very

  different parties who had hitherto denounced their way of dealing with the crisis. Those who thought the bill did not go far enough before were of course indignant at the proposal to sheer it of whatever little force it had originally possessed. They on the other hand who had opposed it as a breach of the principle of religious liberty could now ridicule it with all the greater effect on the ground that it violated a principle without even the pretext of doing any practical

  good as a compensation. In the first instance the ministry might plead that the crisis was exceptional and that it called for exceptional measures, that something must be done and that they could not stand on ceremony even with the principle of religious liberty when the interest of the state was at stake. Now they left it in the power of their opponents to say that they were breaking a principle for the sake of introducing a non-entity. The debates were long,

  fierce, and often passionate. The bill, even cut down as it was, had a vast majority on its side, but some of the most illustrious names in the House of Commons were recorded against it. By far the most eloquent voices in the House were raised to condemn it. The Irish Roman Catholic members set up a persistent opposition to it and up to a certain period of its progress put in requisition all the forms of the House to impede it. This part of the story ought not to be passed over

  without mention of the fact that among other effects produced by the ecclesiastical titles bill, perhaps the most distinct, was the creation of the most worthless band of agitators who ever pretended to speak with the voice of Ireland. These were the men who were called in the House, the Pope's brass band, and who were regarded with as much dislike and distrust by all-intelligent Roman Catholics and Irish nationalists as by the most inveterate Tories. These men leaped into

  influence by their denunciations of the ecclesiastical titles bill. They were successful for a time and palming themselves off as patriots upon Irish constituencies. They thundered against the bill. They put in motion every mechanism of delay and obstruction. Some of them were really clever and eloquent. Most of them were loud-voiced. They had a grand and heaven-sent opportunity given to them and they made use of it. They had a leader, the once famous John Sadlier. This man

  possessed marked ability and was further gifted with an unscrupulous audacity at least equal to his ability. He went to work deliberately to create for himself a band of followers by whose help he might mount to power. He was a financial swindler as well as a political adventurer. By means of the money he had suddenly acquired and by virtue of his furious denunciations of the anti-Catholic policy of the government, he was for a time able to work the Irish popular

  constituencies so as to get his own followers into the house and become for the hour a sort of little O'Connell. He had with him some two or three honest men whom he deluded into a belief in the sincerity of himself and his gang of swindling adventurers and it is only fair to say that by far the most eloquent man of the party appears to have been one of those on whom Sadlier was thus able to impose. Mr. Sadlier's band afterwards came to a sad grief.

  He committed suicide himself to escape the punishment of his frauds. Some of his associates fled to foreign countries and hid themselves under feigned names. James Sadlier, brother and accomplice of John, was among these and underwent that rare mark of degradation in our days, a formal expulsion from the house of commons. The pope's brass band and its subsequent history culminating in the suicide on Hampstead Heath was about the only practical result of the

  ecclesiastical titles bill. The bill reduced in stringency as has been described made however some progress through the house. It was interrupted at one stage by events which had nothing to do with its history. The government got into trouble of another kind. At the opening of the session, Mr. Disraeli introduced a motion to the effect that the agricultural distress of the country called upon the government to introduce without delay some measures for its relief.

  This motion was in fact the last spasmodic cry of protection. Many influential politicians still believed that the cause of protection was not wholly lost, that a reaction was possible, that the free trade doctrine would prove a failure and have to be given up, and they regarded Mr. Disraeli's as a very important motion calling for a strenuous effort in its favor. The government treated the motion as one for restored protection and through all their strength into the struggle

  against it. They won but only by a majority of 14. A few days after, Mr. Locke King, member for East Surrey, asked for leave to bring in a bill to assimilate the county franchise to that existing in Buras. Lord John Russell opposed the motion and the government was defeated by 100 votes against 52. It was evident that this was only what is called a snap vote, that the house was taken by surprise, and that the result in no wise represented the general feeling of

  parliament. But still it was a vexatious occurrence for the ministry already humiliated by the small majority they had obtained on Disraeli's motion. Their budget had already been received with very general marks of dissatisfaction. The chancellor of the Exchequer only proposed a partial and qualified repeal of the window tax, an impost which was justly detested, and he continued the income tax. The budget was introduced shortly before Mr. Locke King's motion and every day

  that had elapsed since its introduction only more and more developed the public dissatisfaction with which it was regarded. Under all these circumstances, Lord John Russell felt that he had no alternative but to tender his resignation to the queen. Leaving his ecclesiastical titles bill suspended in air, he announced that he could no longer think of carrying on the government of the country. The question was, who should succeed him? The queen sent for Lord Stanley afterwards,

  Lord Darby. Lord Stanley offered to do his best to form a government, but was not at all sanguine about the success of the task nor eager to undertake it. He even recommended that before he made any experiment, Lord John Russell should try if he could not do something by getting some of the P-Lites, as they were then beginning to be called, the followers of Sir Robert Peel, who had held with him to the last, to join him and thus patch up the government anew.

  This was tried and failed. The P-Lites would have nothing to do with the ecclesiastical titles bill and Lord John Russell would not go on without it. On the other hand, Lord Aberdeen, the chief of the P-Lites in the House of Lords, would not attempt to form a ministry of his own, frankly acknowledging that in the existing temper of the country it would be impossible for any government to get on without legislating in some way on the papal aggression. There was nothing for it but for

  Lord Stanley to try. He tried without hope and of course he was unsuccessful. The position of parties was very peculiar. It was impossible to form any combination which could really agree upon anything. There were three parties out of which a ministry might be formed. These were the Whigs, the Conservatives and the P-Lites. The P-Lites were a very rising and promising body of men. Among them were Sir James Graham, Lord Canning, Mr. Gladstone,

  Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell and some others almost equally well known. Only these three groups were fairly in the competition for office, for the idea of a ministry of radicals and Manchester men was not then likely to present itself to any official mind. But how could anyone put together a ministry formed from a combination of these three? The P-Lites would not coalesce with the Tories because of the protection question to which Mr. Disraeli's motion had given a new

  semblance of vitality and because of Lord Stanley's own declaration that he still regarded the policy of free trade as only an experiment. The P-Lites would not combine with the Whigs because of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. The Conservatives would not disavow protective ideas. The Whigs would not give up the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. No statesman therefore could form a government without having to count on two great parties being against him on one question or the

  other. All manner of delays took place. The Duke of Wellington was consulted, Lord Lansdowne was consulted, the wit of man could suggest nothing satisfactory. The conditions for extracting any satisfactory solution did not exist. There was nothing better to be done than to ask the ministers who had resigned to resume their places and muddle on as best they could. It is not enough to say that there was nothing better to be done, there was nothing else to be done. They were at all events

  still administering the affairs of the country and no one would relieve them of the task. Ipso facto they had to stay. The ministers returned to their places and resumed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It was then that they made the change in its conditions which has already been mentioned and thus created new arguments against them on both sides of the House of Commons. They struck out of the bill every word that might appear like an encroachment on the Roman church

  within the sphere of its own ecclesiastical operations and made it simply an act against the public and ostentatious assumption of illegal titles. The bill was wrangled over until the end of June and then a large number, some 70 of the Irish Catholic members, publicly seceded from the discussion and announced that they could take no further part in the divisions. On this some of the strongest opponents of the papal aggression, led by Sir Frederick Thessager, afterwards Lord

  Chelmsford, brought in a series of resolutions intended to make the bill more stringent than it had been even as originally introduced. The object of the resolutions was principally to give the power of prosecuting and claiming a penalty to anybody, provided he obtained the consent of the law officers of the Crown, and to make penal the introduction of bulls. The government opposed the introduction of these amendments and were put in the awkward position of having to act as antagonists

  of the party in the country who represented the strongest hostility to the papal aggression. Thus for the moment the author of the Durham letter was seemingly converted into a champion of the Roman Catholic side of the controversy. His championship was ineffective. The Irish members took no part in the controversy and the government were beaten by the ultra-Protestant party on every division. Lord John Russell was bitterly taunted by various of his opponents and was asked with

  indignation why he did not withdraw the bill when it ceased to be any longer his own scheme. He probably thought by this time that it really made little matter what bill was passed, so long as any bill was passed, and that the best thing to do is to get the controversy out of the way by any process. He did not therefore withdraw the bill, although Sir Frederick Thessager carried all his stringent clauses. When the measure came on for a third reading, Lord John Russell moved

  the omission of the added clauses, but he was defeated by large majorities. The bill was done with so far as the House of Commons was concerned. After an eloquent and powerful protest from Mr. Gladstone against the measure, as one disparaging to the great principle of religious freedom, the bill was read a third time. It went up to the House of Lords, was passed there without alteration, although not without opposition, and soon after received the royal assent.

  This was practically the last the world heard about it. In the Roman Church everything went on as before. The new Cardinal Archbishop still called himself Archbishop of Westminster. Some of the Irish prelates made a point of ostentatiously using their territorial titles in letters addressed to the ministers themselves. The bitterness of feeling, which the papal aggression and the legislation against it had called up, did not indeed pass away very soon.

  It broke out again and again, sometimes in the form of very serious riot. It turned away at many an election the eyes and minds of the constituencies from questions of profound and genuine public interest to dogmatic controversy and the hates of jarring sectaries. It furnished political capital for John Sadlier and his band and kept them flourishing for a while, and it set up in the Irish popular mind a purely imaginary figure of Lord John Russell, who became regarded

  as the malign enemy of the Catholic faith and of all religious liberty. But save for the quarrels aroused at the time, the act of the pope and the act of parliament were alike dead letters. Nothing came of the papal bull. England was not restored to the communion of the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London retained their places and their spiritual jurisdiction as before. Cardinal Wiseman remained only a prelate of Roman Catholics.

  On the other hand, the Ecclesiastical Titles Act was never put in force. Nobody troubled about it. Many years after, in 1871, it was quietly repealed. It died in such obscurity that the outer public hardly knew whether it was above ground or below. Certainly, if the whole agitation showed that England was thoroughly Protestant, it also showed that English Protestants had not much of the persecuting spirit. They had no inclination to molest their Catholic neighbors and only asked

  to be let alone. The pope, they believed, had insulted them. They resented the insult. That was all. End of Section 7.

• 08 - Ch. 21: The Exhibition in Hyde Park, Pt. 1

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  CHAPTER XXI. THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK, PART I. The first of May, 1851, will always be memorable as the day on which the Great Exhibition was opened in Hyde Park. This year, 1851, indeed is generally associated in the memory of Englishmen with that first

  great international exhibition. As we look back upon it, pleasant recollections come up of the great glass palace in Hyde Park, the palace up-springing from the verdant sod which Thackeray described so gracefully and with so much poetic feeling. The strange crowds of the curious of all provinces and all nations are seen again, the marvelous

  and at that time wholly unprecedented collection of the products of all countries, the glitter of the Koh-i-Noor, the palm trees beneath the glass roof, the leaping fountains, the statuary, the oars, the ingots, the huge blocks of coal, the lacework, the loomwork, the oriental stuffs, all these made on the mind of the ordinary inexpert a confused impression of lavishness and profusion and order and fantastic beauty which was then wholly novel and could

  hardly be recalled except in mere memory. The novelty of the experiment was that which made it specially memorable. Many exhibitions of a similar kind have taken place since. Some of these far surpassed that of Hyde Park in the splendor and variety of the collections brought together, two of them at least, those of Paris in 1867 and in 1878, were infinitely

  superior in the array and display of the products, the dresses, the inhabitants of far-divided countries. But the impression which the Hyde Park exhibition made upon the ordinary mind was like that of the boy's first visit to the play, an impression never to be equaled, no matter by what far superior charm of spectacle it may and after years again and again be followed.

  Golden indeed were the expectations with which hopeful people welcomed the exhibition of 1851. It was the first organized to gather all the representatives of the world's industry into one great fair and there were those who seriously expected that men who had once been prevailed upon to meet together in friendly and peaceful rivalry would never again be persuaded to

  meet in rivalry of a fiercer kind. It seems extraordinary now to think that any sane person can have indulged in such expectations or can have imagined that the tremendous forces generated by the rival interests, ambitions and passions of races could be subdued into harmonious cooperation by the good sense and good feeling born of a friendly meeting.

  The Hyde Park exhibition and all the exhibitions that followed it have not as yet made the slightest perceptible difference in the warlike tendencies of nations. The Hyde Park exhibition was often described as the festival to open the long reign of peace. It might as a mere matter of chronology be called without any impropriety the festival

  to celebrate the close of the short reign of peace. From that year, 1851, it may be said fairly enough that the world has hardly known a week of peace. The coup d'état in France closed the year. The Crimean war began almost immediately after and was followed by the Indian mutiny and

  that by the war between France and Austria, the long civil war in the United States, the the Apollitan enterprises of Garibaldi and the Mexican intervention until we come to the war between Austria, Prussia and Denmark, the short sharp struggle for German supremacy between Austria and Prussia, the war between France and Germany and the war between Russia and Turkey.

  Such were in brief summary the events that quickly followed the great inaugurating festival of peace in 1851. Of course, those who organized the great exhibition were in no way responsible for the exalted and extravagant expectations which were formed as to its effects on the history of the world and the elements of human nature, but there was a great deal too much of the dithy rambic

  about the style in which many writers and speakers thought fit to describe the exhibition. With some of these, all this was the result of genuine enthusiasm. In other instances, the extravagance was indulged in by persons not habitually extravagant, but on the contrary, very sober, methodical and calculating, who by the very fact of their possessing eminently these qualities were led into a total misconception of the influence

  of such assemblages of men. These calm and wise persons assumed that because they themselves, if shown that a certain course of conduct was for their material and moral benefit, would instantly follow it and keep to it, it must therefore follow that all peoples and states were amenable to the same excellent principles of self-discipline.

  War is a foolish and improvident, not to say a moral and atrocious way of trying to adjust our disputes, they argued. Let peoples, far divided in geographical situation, be only brought together and induced to talk this over and see how much more profitable and noble is the rivalry of peace and trade and commerce, and they will never think of the coarse and brutal arbitrament of battle

  any more. Not a few others it must be owned indulged in the high-flown glorification of the Reign of Peace to come, because the exhibition was the special enterprise of the Prince Consort, and they had a natural aptitude for the production of courtly strains. But among all these classes of piano singers, it did happen that a good deal of unmerited

  discredit was cast upon the results of the great exhibition, for the enterprise was held responsible for illusions, it had of itself nothing to do with creating, and disappointments, which were no consequences of any failure on its part. Even upon trade and production, it is very easy to exaggerate the beneficent influences of an international exhibition.

  But that such enterprises have some beneficial influences beyond doubt, and that they are interesting, instructive, well calculated to educate and refine the minds of nations, may be admitted by the least enthusiastic of men. The first idea of the exhibition was conceived by Prince Albert, and it was his energy and influence which succeeded in carrying the idea into practical execution.

  Probably no influence less great than that which his station gave to the Prince would have prevailed to carry to success so difficult an enterprise. There had been industrial exhibitions before on a small scale and of local limit. But if the idea of an exhibition in which all the nations of the world were to compete had occurred to other minds before, as it may well have done, it was merely as a vague

  thought a daydream without any claim to a practical realization. Prince Albert was the president of the Society of Arts, and this position secured him a platform for the effective promulgation of his ideas. On June 30, 1849, he called a meeting of the Society of Arts at Buckingham Palace. He proposed that the Society should undertake the initiative in the promotion of an exhibition

  of the works of all nations. The main idea of Prince Albert was that the exhibition should be divided into four great sections. The first, to contain raw materials and produce. The second, machinery for ordinary industrial and productive purposes and mechanical inventions

  of the more ingenious kind. The third, manufactured articles, and the fourth, sculpture, models, and the illustrations of the plastic arts generally. The idea was at once taken up by the Society of Arts and by their agency spread abroad. On October 17, in the same year, a meeting of merchants and bankers was held in London

  to promote the success of the undertaking. In the first few days of 1850, a formal commission was appointed for the promotion of the exhibition of the works of all nations to be holden in the year 1851. Prince Albert was appointed president of the commission. The enterprise was now fairly launched.

  A few days after, a meeting was held in the Mansion House to raise funds in aid of the exhibition, and £10,000 was at once collected. This of course was but the beginning, and a guarantee fund of £200,000 was very soon obtained. On March 21, in the same year, the Lord Mayor of London gave a banquet at the Mansion House

  to the chief magistrates of the cities, towns, and boroughs of the United Kingdom for the purpose of inviting their cooperation in support of the undertaking. Prince Albert was present and spoke. He had cultivated the art of speaking with much success, and had almost entirely overcome whatever difficulty stood in his way from his foreign birth and education.

  He never quite lost his foreign accent. No man coming to a new country at the age of manhood, as Prince Albert did, ever acquired the new tongue in such a manner as to lose all trace of a foreign origin, and to the end of his career, Prince Albert spoke with an accent which, however carefully trained, still betrayed its early habitudes.

  But except for this slight blemish, Prince Albert may be said to have acquired a perfect mastery of the English language, and he became a remarkably good public speaker. He had indeed nothing of the orator in his nature. It was but the extravagance of courtliness which called his polished and thoughtful speeches oratory.

  In the prince's nature, there was neither the passion nor the poetry that was essential to genuine eloquence, nor were the occasions on which he addressed the English people likely to stimulate a man to eloquence. But his style of speaking was clear, thoughtful, stately, and sometimes even noble. It exactly suited its purpose.

  It was that of a man who did not set up for an orator, and who when he spoke, wished that his ideas, rather than his words, should impress his hearers. It is very much to be doubted whether the English public would be quite delighted to have a prince who is also a really great orator. Genuine eloquence would probably impress a great many respectable persons as a gift not

  exactly suited to a prince. There is even still a certain distrust of the artistic in the English mind as of a sort of thing which is very proper in professional writers and painters and speakers, but which would hardly become persons of the highest station. Prince Albert probably spoke just as well as he could have done with successful effect

  upon his English audiences. At the dinner in the mansion house, he spoke with great clearness and grace of the purposes of the great exhibition. It was, he said, to give the world a true test, a living picture of the point of industrial development at which the whole of mankind has arrived and a new starting point from

  which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions. It must not be supposed, however, that the project of the great exhibition advanced wholly without opposition. Many persons were disposed to sneer at it. Many were skeptical about its doing any good.

  Not a few still regarded Prince Albert as a foreigner and a pedant, and were slow to believe that anything really practical was likely to be developed under his impulse and protection. A very whimsical sort of opposition was raised in the House of Commons by a once famous eccentric, the late Colonel Sibthorpe.

  Sibthorpe was a man who might have been drawn by Smollett. His grotesque gestures, his over-boiling energy, his uncouth appearance, his huge mustache marked him out as an object of curiosity in any crowd. He was the subject of one of the most amusing pieces of impromptu parody ever thrown off by a public speaker, that in which O'Connell travestied Dryden's famous lines about the

  three poets in three distant ages born and pictured three colonels in three different countries born, winding up with, The force of nature could no farther go To beard the one she shaved the other two. One of the gallant Sibthorpe's special weaknesses was the distrust and detestation of all foreigners. Foreigners, he lumped together as a race of beings whose chief characteristics were potpourri

  and immorality. While three-fourths of the promoters of the exhibition were dwelling with the strongest emphasis on the benefit it would bring by drawing into London the representatives of all nations, Colonel Sibthorpe was denouncing this agglomeration of foreigners as the greatest curse that could fall upon England.

  He regarded foreigners much as Isaac of York and Ivanhoe regards the Knights Templars. When, asks Isaac in Bitter Remonstrance, did Templars breathe ought but cruelty to men and dishonor to women? Colonel Sibthorpe kept asking some such question with regard to foreigners in general and their expected concourse to the exhibition.

  In language somewhat too energetic and broad for our more polite time, he warned the House of Commons and the country of the consequences to English morals which must come of the influx of a crowd of foreigners at a given season. Take care, he exclaimed in the House of Commons, of your wives and daughters. Take care of your property and your lives.

  He declared that he prayed for some tremendous hailstorm or visitation of lightning to be sent from heaven expressly for the purpose of destroying in advance the building destined for the ill-omened exhibition. When free trade had left nothing else needed to complete the ruin of the nation, the enemy of mankind, he declared, had inspired us with the idea of the Great Exhibition, so

  that foreigners who had first robbed us of our trade might now be enabled to rob us of our honor. End of Section 8.

• 09 - Ch. 21: The Exhibition in Hyde Park, Pt. 2

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  CHAPTER XXI. THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK, PART II. The objections raised to the exhibition were not by any means confined to Colonel Sibthorpe or to his kind of argument. After some consideration, the royal commissioners had fixed upon Hyde Park as the best site for the great building, and many energetic and some influential voices were raised in fierce outcry against what was called the profanation of the park. It

  was argued that the public use of Hyde Park would be destroyed by the exhibition, that the park would be utterly spoiled, that its beauty could never be restored. A petition was presented by Lord Campbell to the House of Lords against the occupation of any part of Hyde Park with the exhibition building. Lord Broom supported the petition with his characteristic impetuosity and vehemence. He denounced the attorney general with indignant

  eloquence because that official had declined to file an application to the court of chancery for an injunction to stay any proceeding with the proposed building in the park. He denounced the House of Lords itself for what he considered its servile deference to royalty in the matter of the exhibition and its site. He declared that when he endeavored to raise the question there, it was received in dead silence, and he asserted that an effort to bring on a discussion

  in the House of Commons was received with a silence equally profound and servile. Such facts, he shouted, only show more painfully that absolute prostration of the understanding which takes place even in the minds of the bravest when the word prince is mentioned in this country. It is probably true enough that only the influence of a prince could have carried the scheme to success against the storms of opposition that began to blow

  at various periods and from different points. Undoubtedly, a vast number, probably the great majority of those who supported the enterprise in the beginning, did so simply because it was the project of a prince. Their numbers and their money enabled it to be carried on and secured it the test of the world's examination and approval. In that sense, the very servility which accepts with delight whatever a prince proposes stood the exhibition in good stead.

  A courtier may plead that if English people in general had been more independent and less given to admiration of princes, the excellent project devised by Prince Albert would never have had a fair trial. Many times during its progress, the prince himself trembled for the success of his scheme. Many a time he must have felt inclined to renounce it or at least to regret that he had ever taken it up. Absurd as the opposition to the scheme

  may now seem, it is certain that a great many sensible persons thought the moment singularly inopportune for the gathering of large crowds and were satisfied that some inconvenient if not dangerous public demonstration must be provoked. The smoldering embers of chartism they said were everywhere under society's feet. The crowds of foreigners whom Colonel Sibthorpe so dreaded would calmer people said naturally include large numbers of the Reds

  of all continental nations who would be only too glad to coalesce with chartism and discontent of all kinds for the purpose of disturbing the peace of London. The agitation caused by the papal aggression was still in full force and flame. By an odd coincidence the first column of the exhibition building had been set up in Hyde Park almost at the same moment with the issue of the papal bull establishing a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. These

  conditions looked gloomy for the project. The opponents of the exhibition, wrote the prince himself, work with might and main to throw all the old women here into a panic and to drive myself crazy. The strangers they give out are certain to commence a thorough revolution here, to murder Victoria and myself and to proclaim the Red Republic in England. The plague is certain to ensue from the confluence of such vast multitudes and to swallow up

  those whom the increased price of everything is not already swept away. For all this I am to be responsible and against all this I have to make efficient provision. Most of the continental sovereigns looked coldly on the undertaking. The King of Prussia took such alarm at the thought of the Red Republicans whom the exhibition would draw together that at first he positively prohibited his brother, then Prince of Prussia, now German Emperor,

  from attending the opening ceremonial and though he afterwards withdrew the prohibition he remained full of doubts and fears as to the personal safety of any royal or princely personage found in Hyde Park on the opening day. The Duke of Cambridge, being appealed to on the subject, acknowledged himself also full of apprehensions. The objections to the site continued to grow up to a certain time. The exhibition, Prince Albert wrote once to Baron

  Stockmar, his friend and advisor, is now attacked furiously by the Times and the House of Commons is going to drive us out of the park. There is immense excitement on the subject. If we are driven out of the park the work is done for. At one time indeed this result seemed highly probable but public opinion gradually underwent a change and the opposition to the site was defeated in the House of Commons by a large majority. Even however when the question of the site had been disposed of

  there remained immense difficulties in the way. The press was not on the whole very favorable to the project. Punch in particular was hardly ever weary of making fun of it. Such a project while yet only in embryo undoubtedly furnished many points on which satire could fasten and nothing short of complete success could save it from falling under a mountain of ridicule. No half success would have rescued it. The ridicule was naturally provoked and aggravated to an unspeakable

  degree by the hyperbolical expectations and preposterous dithy rambix of some of the well-meaning but unwise and somewhat too obstreperously loyal supporters of the enterprise. To add to all this as the time for the opening drew near some of the foreign diplomatists in London began to sulk at the whole project. There were small points of objection made about the position and functions of foreign ambassadors at the opening ceremonial and what the Queen and Prince meant for politeness

  was in one instance at least near being twisted into cause of offense. Up to the last moment it was not quite certain whether an absurd diplomatic quarrel might not have been part of the inaugural ceremonies of the opening day. The Prince did not despair however and the project went on. There was a great deal of difficulty in selecting a plan for the building. Huge structures of brickwork looking like enormous railway sheds. Costly and hideous at once were proposed. It seemed almost

  certain that some one of them must be chosen. Happily a sudden inspiration struck Mr. afterwards Sir Joseph Paxton who was then in charge of the Duke of Devonshire's superb grounds at Chatsworth. Why not try glass and iron? he asked himself. Why not build a palace of glass and iron large enough to cover all the intended contents of the exhibition and which should be at once light, beautiful and cheap. Mr. Paxton sketched out his plan hastily and the idea was eagerly accepted

  by the royal commissioners. He made many improvements afterwards in his design but the palace of glass and iron arose within the specified time on the green turf of Hyde Park. The idea so happily hit upon was serviceable in more ways than one to the success of the exhibition. It made the building itself as much an object of curiosity and wonder as the collections under its crystal roof. Of the hundreds of thousands who came to the exhibition a goodly proportion were drawn to Hyde Park rather

  by a wish to see Paxton's palace of glass than all the wonders of industrial and plastic art that it enclosed. Indeed Lord Palmerston writing to Lord Normanby on the day after the opening of the exhibition said, the building itself is far more worth seeing than anything in it though many of its contents are worthy of admiration. Perhaps the glass building was like the exhibition project itself in one respect. It did not bring about the revolution which it was confidently expected to

  create. Glass and iron have not superseded brick and stone any more than competitions of peaceful industry have banished arbitrament by war but the building like the exhibition itself fulfilled admirably its more modest and immediate purpose and was in that way a complete success. The structure of glass is indeed in every mind inseparably associated with the event and the year. The Queen herself has written a very interesting account of the success of the opening day. Her description is

  interesting as an expression of the feelings of the writer, the sense of profound relief and rapture, as well as for the sake of the picture it gives of the ceremonial itself. The enthusiasm of the wife over the complete success of the project on which her husband had set his heart and staked his name is simple and touching. If the importance of the undertaking and the amount of fame it was to bring to its author may seem a little overdone not many readers will complain

  of the womanly and wifely feeling which could not be denied such fervent expression. The great event wrote the Queen has taken place a complete and beautiful triumph a glorious and touching sight one which I shall ever be proud of for my beloved Albert and my country. The park presented a wonderful spectacle crowd streaming through it carriages and troops passing quite like the coronation day and for me the same anxiety no much greater anxiety on account of my beloved Albert.

  The day was bright and all bustle and excitement. The Green Park and Hyde Park were one densely crowded mass of human beings in the highest good humor and most enthusiastic. I never saw Hyde Park look as it did as far as the eye could reach. A little rain fell just as we started but before we came near the Crystal Palace the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice upon which the flags of all nations were floating. The glimpse of the transept through the iron gates the waving

  palms flowers statues myriads of people filling the galleries and seats around with the flourish of trumpets as we entered gave us a sensation which I can never forget and I felt much moved. The sight as we came to the middle was magical so vast so glorious so touching one felt as so many did whom I have since spoken to filled with devotion more so than by any service I have ever heard. The tremendous cheers the joy expressed in every face the immensity of the building the

  mixture of palms flowers trees statues fountains the organ with 200 instruments and 600 voices which sounded like nothing and my beloved husband the author of this peace festival which united the industry of all nations of the earth all this was moving indeed and it was and is a day to live forever. God bless my dearest Albert. God bless my dearest country which has shown itself so great today. One felt so grateful to the great God who seemed to pervade all and to

  bless all. The success of the opening day was indeed undoubted there were nearly 30,000 people gathered together within the building and nearly three quarters of a million of persons lined the way between the exhibition and Buckingham Palace and yet no accident would ever occurred nor had the police any trouble imposed on them by the conduct of anybody in the crowd. It was impossible wrote Lord Palmerston for the invited guests of a lady's drawing room to have conducted themselves

  with more perfect propriety than did this see of human beings. It is needless to say that there were no hostile demonstrations by red republicans or malignant chartists or infuriated Irish Catholics. The one thing which especially struck foreign observers and to which many eloquent pens and tongues bore witness was the orderly conduct of the people nor did the subsequent history of the exhibition in any way belie the promise of its opening day. It continued to attract delighted

  crowds to the last and more than once held within its precincts at one moment nearly a hundred thousand persons a concourse large enough to have made the population of a respectable continental capital. In another way the exhibition proved even more successful than was anticipated. There had been some difficulty in raising money in the first instance and it was thought something of a patriotic risk when a few spirited citizens combined to secure the accomplishment of the

  undertaking by means of a guarantee fund. But the guarantee fund became in the end merely one of the forms and ceremonials of the exhibition for the undertaking not only covered its expenses but left a huge sum of money in the hands of the royal commissioners. The exhibition was closed by Prince Albert on October 15th. That at least may be described as the closing day for it was then that the awards of prizes were made in presence of the prince and a large concourse of people.

  The exhibition itself had actually been closed to the general public on the 11th of the month. It has been imitated again and again. It was followed by an exhibition in Dublin, an exhibition of the paintings and sculptures of all nations in Manchester, three great exhibitions in Paris, the international exhibition in Kensington in 1862, the enterprise too of Prince Albert although not destined to have his presence at its opening, an exhibition at Vienna, one in

  Philadelphia and various others. Where all nations seem to have agreed to pay Prince Albert's enterprise the compliment of imitation it seems superfluous to say that it was a success. Time has so toned down our expectations in regard to these enterprises that no occasion now arises for the feeling of disappointment which was long associated in the minds of one sanguine persons with the Crystal Palace of Hyde Park. We look on such exhibitions now as useful agencies in the work of industrial

  development and in promoting the intercourse of peoples and thus cooperating with various other influences in the general business of civilization. But the impressions produced by the Hyde Park exhibition were unique. It was the first thing of the kind. The gathering of peoples it brought together was as new, odd and interesting as the glass building in which the industry of the world was displayed. For the first time in their lives Londoners saw the ordinary aspect of London

  distinctly modified and changed by the incursion of foreigners who came to take part in or to look at our exhibition. London seemed to be playing at holiday in a strange carnival sort of way during the time the exhibition was open. The Hyde Park enterprise bequeathed nothing very tangible or distinct to the world except indeed the palace which built out of its fabric not its ruins so gracefully ornaments one of the soft hills of Sydenham. But the memory of the exhibition

  itself is very distinct with all who saw it. None of its followers was exactly like it or could take its place in the recollection of those who were its contemporaries. In a year made memorable by many political events of the greatest importance of disturbed and tempestuous politics abroad and at home of the deaths of many illustrious men and the failure of many splendid hopes. The exhibition in Hyde Park still holds its place in memory not for what it brought or accomplished

  but simply for itself its surroundings and its house of glass. End of section 9.

• 10 - Ch. 22: Palmerston, Pt. 1

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  CHAPTER XXII. PALMERSTON PART I. The death of Sir Robert Peel had left Lord Palmerston the most prominent, if not actually the most influential among the statesmen of England. Palmerston was a strenuous, self-asserting character.

  He loved whenever he had an opportunity to make a stroke, as he frequently put it himself off his own bat. He had given himself up to the study of foreign affairs as no minister of his time had done. He had a peculiar capacity for understanding foreign politics and people, as well as foreign languages, and he had come somewhat to pique himself upon his knowledge.

  As Bacon said, that he had taken all learning for his province, Palmerston seemed to have made up his mind that he had taken all European affairs for his province. His sympathies were markedly liberal. As opinions went then, they might have been considered among statesmen almost revolutionary, for the conservative of our day is to the full as liberal as the average liberal of

  1848 and 1850. In all the popular movements going on throughout the continent, Palmerston's sympathies were generally with the peoples and against the government. While he had, on the other hand, a very strong contempt which he took no pains to conceal, even for the very best class of the continental demagogue.

  It was not, however, in his sympathies that Palmerston differed from most of his colleagues. He was not more liberal even in his views of foreign affairs than Lord John Russell. He was probably not so consistently and on principle a supporter of free and popular institutions. But Lord Palmerston's energetic, heedless temperament, his exuberant animal spirits

  and his profound confidence in himself and his opinions made him much more liberal and spontaneous in his expressions of sympathy than a man of Russell's colder nature could well have been. Palmerston seized a conclusion at once and hardly ever departed from it. He never seemed to care who knew what he thought on any subject.

  He had a contempt for men of more deliberate temper and often spoke and wrote as if he thought a man slow in forming an opinion must needs be a dull man, not to say a fool. All opinions not his own he held in good-humored scorn. In some of his letters we find him writing of men of the most undoubted genius and wisdom, whose views have since stood all the test of time and trial, as if they were mere blockheads

  for whom no practical man could feel the slightest respect. It would be almost superfluous to say in describing a man of such a nature that Lord Palmerston sometimes fancied he saw great wisdom and force of character in men for whom neither then nor since did the world in general show much regard. As with a man, so with a cause, Lord Palmerston was to all appearance capricious in his sympathies.

  His power and more earnest minds were sometimes offended at what seemed the lack of deep-seated principle in his mind and his policy, even when it happened that he and they were in accord as to the course that ought to be pursued. His levity often shocked them. His blunt, brusque ways of speaking and writing sometimes gave downright offence.

  In his later years Lord Palmerston's manner in Parliament and out of it had greatly mellowed and softened and grown more genial. He retained all the good spirits and the ready, easy, marvelously telling humor, but he had grown more considerate of the feelings of opponents in debate, and he allowed his genuine kindness of heart a freer influence upon his mode of speech.

  He had grown to prefer on the whole his friend or even his honorable opponent to his joke. They who only remember Palmerston in his very later years in the House of Commons and who can only recall to memory that bright, racy humor which never offended will perhaps find it hard to understand how many enemies he made for himself at an earlier period by the levity and flippancy of his manner.

  Many grave statesmen thought that the levity and flippancy were far less dangerous even when employed in irritating his adversaries in the House of Commons than when exercised in badgering foreign ministers and their governments and sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was unsparing in his lectures to foreign states. He was always admonishing them that they ought to lose no time in at once adopting the principles

  of government which prevailed in England. He not uncommonly put his admonitions in the tone of one who meant to say, If you don't take my advice, you will be ruined and your ruin will serve you right for being such fools. While therefore he was a conservative in home politics and never even professed the slightest personal interest in any projects of political reform in England, he got the credit all over

  the continent of being a supporter, promoter and patron of all manner of revolutionary movements and a disturber of the relations between subjects and their sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was not inconsistent in thus being a conservative at home and something like a revolutionary abroad. He was quite satisfied with the state of things in England.

  He was convinced that when a people had got a well-limited suffrage and a respectable House of Commons elected by open vote, a House of Lords and a constitutional sovereign, they had got all that in a political sense man has to hope for. He was not a far-seeing man, nor a man who much troubled himself about what a certain class of writers and thinkers are fond of calling problems of life.

  It did not occur to him to think that as a matter of absolute necessity, the very reforms we enjoy in one day are only putting us into a mental condition to aspire after and see the occasion for further reforms as the days go on. But he clearly saw that most continental countries were governed on a system which was not only worn out and decaying, but which was the source of great practical and personal evils

  to their inhabitants. He desired therefore, for every country, a political system like that of Great Britain, and neither for Great Britain nor for any other country, did he desire anything more. He was accordingly looked upon by continental ministers as a patron of revolution and by English radicals as the steady enemy of political reform.

  Both were right from their own point of view. The familiar saying among continental conservatives was expressed in the well-known German lines, which affirm that if the devil had a son, he must be surely Palmerston. On the other hand, the English radical party regarded him as the most formidable enemy they had.

  Mr. Cobden deliberately declared him to be the worst minister that had ever governed England. At a later period, when Lord Palmerston invited Cobden to take office under him, Cobden referred to what he had said of Palmerston and gave this as a reason to show the impossibility of his serving such a chief.

  The good-natured statesman only smiled and observed that another public man who had just joined his administration had often said things as hard of him in other days. Yes, answered Cobden quietly, but I meant what I said. England therefore had many enemies among European statesmen. It is now certain that the Queen frequently winced under the expressions of ill-feeling

  which were brought to her ears as affecting England and, as she supposed herself and which she believed to have been drawn on her, by the inconsiderate and impulsive conduct of Palmerston. The prince consort on whose advice the Queen very naturally relied was a man of singularly calm and earnest nature.

  He liked to form his opinions deliberately and slowly, and disliked expressing any opinion until his mind was well made up. Lord Palmerston, when secretary for foreign affairs, was much in the habit of writing and answering dispatches on the spur of the moment and without consulting either the Queen or his colleagues.

  Palmerston complained of the long delays which took place on several occasions when in matters of urgent importance he waited to submit dispatches to the Queen before sending them off. He was of opinion that during the memorable controversy on the Spanish marriages the interests of England were once in danger of being compromised by the delay thus forced upon him. He contended, too, that where the general policy of a state was clearly marked out and

  well known, it would have been idle to insist that a foreign secretary capable of performing the duties of his office should wait to submit for the inspection and approval of the sovereign and his colleagues every scrap of paper he wrote on before it was allowed to leave England. If such precautions were needful, Lord Palmerston contended, it could only be because the person holding the office of foreign secretary was unfit for his post, and he ought therefore

  to be dismissed, and some better qualified man put in his place. Of course, there is some obvious justice in this view of the case. It would perhaps have been unreasonable to expect that at a time when the business of the Foreign Office had suddenly swelled to unprecedented magnitude, the same rules and formalities could be kept up which had suited slower and less busy days.

  But the complaint made by the Queen was not that Palmerston failed to consult her on every detail and to submit every line relating to the organization of the Foreign Office for her approval before he sent it off. The complaint was clear and full of matter for very grave consideration. The Queen complained that on matters concerning the actual policy of the State, Palmerston

  was in the habit of acting on his own independent judgment and authority, and that she found herself more than once thus pledged to a course of policy which she had not had an opportunity of considering and would not have approved if she had had such an opportunity, and that she hardly ever found any question absolutely intact and uncompromised when it was submitted to her judgment.

  The complaint was justified in many cases. Lord Palmerston frequently acted in a manner which almost made it seem as if he were purposely ignoring the authority of the sovereign. In part, this came from the natural impatience of a quick man, confident in his own knowledge of a subject and chafing at any delay which he thought unnecessary and merely formal.

  But it is not easy to avoid a suspicion that Lord Palmerston's rapidity of action sometimes had a different explanation. Two impressions seem to have had a place deeply down in the mind of the Foreign Secretary. He appears to have felt sure that, roughly speaking, the sympathies of the English people were with the Continental movements against the sovereigns, and that the sympathies of

  the English court were with the sovereigns against the popular movements. In the first belief he was undoubtedly right. In the second he was probably right. It is not likely that a man of Prince Albert's peculiar turn of mind could have admitted much sympathy with revolution against constituted authority of any kind.

  Even his liberalism, undoubtedly a deep and genuine conviction, did not lead him to make much allowance for any disturbing impulses. His orderly intellectual nature, with little of fire or passion in it, was prone to estimate everything by the manner in which it stood the test of logical argument. He could understand arguing against a bad system better than he could understand taking

  the risk of making things worse by resisting it. Some of the published memoranda or other writings of Prince Albert are full of a curious interest as showing the way in which a calm, intellectual, and earnest man could approach some of the burning questions of the day with the belief, apparently, that the great antagonisms of systems and of opposing national forces could be argued into moderation and persuaded into

  compromise. In Prince Albert there were two tendencies counteracting each other. His natural sympathies were manifestly with the authority of thrones. His education taught him that thrones can only exist by virtue of their occupants recognizing the fact that they do not exist of their own authority and taking care that they do not

  become unsuited to the time. The influence of Prince Albert would therefore be something very different from the impulses and desires of Lord Palmerston. It is hardly to be doubted that Palmerston sometimes acted upon this conviction. He thought he understood better than others not only the tendencies of events in foreign

  politics but also the tendencies of English public opinion with regard to them. He well knew that so long as he had public opinion with him, no influence could long prevail against him. His knowledge of English public opinion was something like an instinct. It could always be trusted.

  It had indeed no far reach. Lord Palmerston never could be relied upon for a judgment as to the possible changes of a generation or even a few years, but he was an almost infallible guide as to what a majority of the English people were likely to say if asked at the particular moment when any question was under dispute.

  He never really guided, but always followed, the English public, even in foreign affairs. He was, it seems, almost needless to say an incomparably better judge of the direction English sentiment was likely to take than the most acute foreigner put in such a place as Prince Albert could possibly hope to be. It may be assumed, then, that some at least of Lord Palmerston's actions were dictated

  by the conviction that he had the general force of that sentiment to sustain him in case his mode of conducting the business of the Foreign Office should ever be called into account. A time came when it was called into account. The Queen and the Prince had long chafed under Lord Palmerston's cavalier way of doing business.

  So far back as 1849, Her Majesty had felt obliged to draw the attention of the Foreign Secretary to the fact that his office was constitutionally under the control of the Prime Minister and that the dispatches to be submitted for her approval should therefore pass through the hands of Lord John Russell. Lord John Russell approved of this arrangement, only suggesting, and the suggestion is of

  some moment in considering the defense of his conduct afterwards made by Lord Palmerston, that every facility should be given for the transaction of business by the Queens attending to the draft dispatches as soon as possible after their arrival. The Queen accepted the suggestion good-humoredly, only pleading that she should not be pressed for an answer within a few minutes as is done now sometimes.

  One can see tolerably well what a part of the difficulty was even from these slight hints. Lord Palmerston was rapid in forming his judgments as in all his proceedings, and when once he had made up his mind was impatient of any delay which seemed to him superfluous. Prince Albert was slow, deliberate, reflective, and methodical.

  Lord Palmerston was always sure he was right in every judgment he formed, even if it were adopted on the spur of the moment. Prince Albert loved reconsideration and was open to new argument and late conviction. However, the difficulty was got over in 1849. Lord Palmerston agreed to every suggestion, and for the time all seemed likely to go smoothly.

  It was only for the time. The Queen soon believed she had reason to complain that the new arrangement was not carried out. Things were going on, she thought, in just the old way. Lord Palmerston dealt as before with foreign courts according to what seemed best to him

  at the moment, and his sovereign and his colleagues often only knew of some important dispatch or instruction when the thing was done and could not be conveniently or becomingly undone. The Prince, at Her Majesty's request, wrote to Lord John Russell complaining strongly of the conduct of Lord Palmerston. The letter declared that Lord Palmerston had failed in his duty toward her, and not from

  oversight or negligence but upon principle and with astonishing pertinacity against every effort of the Queen. Besides which, Lord Palmerston does not scruple to let it appear in public as if the sovereign's negligence in attending to the papers sent to her caused delay and annoyance. Even before this it seems that the Queen had drawn up a memorandum to lay down in clear

  and severe language the exact rules by which the Foreign Secretary must be bound in his dealings with her. The memorandum was not used at that time, as it was thought that the remonstrances of the sovereign and the Prime Minister alike could hardly fail to have some effect on the Foreign Secretary.

  This time, however, the Queen appears to have felt that she could no longer refrain, and accordingly the following important memorandum was addressed by Her Majesty to the Prime Minister. It is well worth quoting in full, partly because it became a subject of much interest and controversy afterwards, and partly because of the tone of peculiar sternness rare indeed from a sovereign

  to a minister in our times in which its instructions are conveyed. Osborne, August 12, 1850. With reference to the conversation about Lord Palmerston which the Queen had with Lord John Russell the other day, and Lord Palmerston's disavowal that he ever intended any disrespect to her by the various neglects of which she has had so long and so often to complain,

  she thinks it right, in order to prevent any mistake for the future, to explain what it is, she expects from the Foreign Secretary. She requires, first, that he will distinctly state what he proposes to do in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she has given her royal sanction. Second, having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered

  or modified by the minister, such an act she must consider as failure in sincerity toward the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the foreign ministers before important decisions are taken based upon that intercourse, to receive the foreign dispatches

  in good time, and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off. The Queen thinks it best that Lord John Russell should show this letter to Lord Palmerston. The tone of the memorandum was severe, but there was nothing unreasonable in its stipulations. On the contrary, it simply prescribed what everyone might have supposed to be the elementary

  conditions on which the duties of a sovereign and a foreign minister can alone be satisfactorily carry on. Custom as well as obvious convenience demanded such conditions. The Duke of Wellington declared that when he was prime minister, no dispatch left the foreign office without his seeing it.

  No sovereign, one would think, would consent to the responsibility of rule on any other terms. We have perhaps got into the habit of thinking, or at least of saying, that the sovereign of a constitutional country only rules through the ministers. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the sovereign has no constitutional functions

  whatever provided by our system of government, and that the sole duty of a monarch is to make a figure in certain state pageantry. It has sometimes been said that the sovereign in a country like England is only the signet ring of the nation. If this were true, it might be asked, with unanswerable force, why a veritable signet

  ring, costing a few pounds and never requiring to be renewed, would not serve all purposes quite as well and save expense. But the position of the sovereign is not one of meaningless inactivity. The sovereign has a very distinct and practical office to fulfill in a constitutional country. The monarch in England is the chief magistrate of the state, specially raised above party

  and passion and change, in order to be able to look with a clearer eye to all that concerns the interests of the nation. Our constitutional system grows and develops itself year after year as our requirements and conditions change, and the position of the sovereign, like everything else, has undergone some modification.

  It is settled now beyond dispute that the sovereign is not to dismiss ministers, or a minister, simply from personal inclination or conviction, as until a very recent day it was the right and the habit of English monarchs to do. The sovereign now retains in virtue of usage, having almost the force of constitutional law the ministers of whom the House of Commons approves, but the Crown still has the right

  in case of extreme need of dismissing any minister who actually fails to do his duty. The sovereign is always supposed to understand the business of the state, to consider its affairs and to offer an opinion and enforce it by argument on any questions submitted by the ministers. When the ministers find that they cannot allow their judgment to bend to that of the sovereign,

  then indeed the sovereign gives way or the ministers resign. In all ordinary cases the sovereign gives way, but it was never intended by the English constitution that the ministers in the country were not to have the benefit of the advice and judgment of a magistrate who is purposely placed above all the excitements and temptations of party, its triumphs and its reverses, and who is assumed therefore to have no other

  motive than the good of the state in offering an advice. The sovereign would grossly fail in public duty and would be practically disappointing the confidence of the nation who consented to act simply as the puppet of the minister and to sign mechanically and without question every document he laid on the table. In the principles which she laid down therefore the Queen was strictly right, but the memorandum

  was nonetheless a severe and a galling rebuke for the Foreign Secretary. We can imagine with what emotions Lord Palmerston must have received it. He was a proud, self-confident man, and it came on him just in the moment of his greatest triumph. Never before, never since, did Lord Palmerston win so signal and so splendid a victory as

  that which he had extorted by the sheer force of his eloquence and his genius from a reluctant House of Commons in the Don Pacifical debate. Never probably in our parliamentary history did a man of years so advanced accomplish such a feat of eloquence, argument and persuasion as he had achieved. He stood up before the world the foremost English statesman of the day.

  It is easy to imagine how deeply he must have felt the rebuke conveyed in the memorandum of the Queen. We know as a matter of fact from what he himself afterwards said that he did feel it bitterly. But he kept down his feelings. Whether he was right or wrong in the matter of dispute he undoubtedly showed admirable

  self-control and good temper in his manner of receiving the reprimand. He wrote a friendly and good-humored letter to Lord John Russell saying, I have taken a copy of this memorandum of the Queen and will not fail to attend to the directions which it contains. The letter then gave a few lines of explanation about the manner in which delays had arisen

  in the sending of dispatches to the Queen, but promised to return to the old practice and expressing a hope that if the return acquired an additional clerk or two the Treasury would be liberal in allowing him that assistance. Nothing could be more easy and pleasant. It might have seemed the ease of absolute carelessness, but it was nothing of the kind.

  Lord Palmerston had acted deliberately and with a purpose. He afterwards explained why he had not answered the rebuke by resigning his office. The paper, he said, was written in anger by a lady as well as by a sovereign and the difference between a lady and a man could not be forgotten even in the case of the occupant of the throne. He had no reason to suppose that this memorandum would ever be seen by or be known to anybody

  but the Queen, John Russell, and myself. Again, I had lately been the object of violent political attack and had gained a great and signal victory in the House of Commons and in public opinion. To have resigned then would have been to have given the fruits of victory to antagonists whom I had defeated and to have abandoned my political supporters at the very moment

  when by their means I had triumphed. But beyond all that, Lord Palmerston said that by suddenly resigning, I should have been bringing for decision at the bar of public opinion a personal quarrel between myself and my sovereign, a step which no subject ought to take, if he can possibly avoid it, for the result of such a course must be either fatal to him or injurious to the country.

  If he should prove to be in the wrong, he would be irretrievably condemned. If the sovereign should be proved to be in the wrong, the monarchy would suffer. It is impossible not to feel a high respect for the manner in which having come to this determination Lord Palmerston had once acted upon it. As he had resolved not to resent the rebuke, he would not allow any gleam of feeling to

  creep into his letter which should show that he felt any resentment. Few men could have avoided the temptation to throw into a reply on such an occasion something of the tone of the injured, the unappreciated, the martyr, the wronged one who endures much and will not complain. Lord Palmerston felt instinctively the bad taste and unwisdom of such a style of reply.

  He took his rebuke in the most perfect good humor. His letter must have surprised Lord John Russell. Macaulay observes that Warren Hastings, confident that he knew best and was acting rightly, endured the rebukes of the East India Company with a patience which was sometimes mistaken for the patience of stupidity.

  It is not unlikely that when the prime minister received Lord Palmerston's reply, he may have mistaken its patience for the patience of downright levity and indifference. Lord Palmerston went a step farther in the way of conciliation. He asked for an interview with Prince Albert and he explained to the prince in the most emphatic and indignant terms that the accusation against him of being purposely wanting in

  respect to the sovereign was absolutely unfounded. Had it been deserved, he ought to be no longer tolerated in society. But he does not seem in the course of the interview to have done much more than argue the point as to the propriety and convenience of the system he had lately been adopting in the business of the Foreign Office.

  So for the hour the matter dropped. Other events interfered. There were many important questions of domestic policy to be attended to and for some time Lord Palmerston's policy and his way of conducting the business of the Foreign Office did not invite any particular attention.

  But the old question was destined to come up again in more serious form than before. End of Section 10.

• 11 - Ch. 22: Palmerston, Pt. 2

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  Section 11 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 22, Palmerston, Part 2. The failure of the Hungarian Rebellion through the intervention of Russia called up a wide and deep feeling of regret and indignation in this country.

  The English people had very generally sympathized with the cause of the Hungarians and rejoiced in the victories which up to a certain point the arms of the insurgents had won. When the Hungarians were put down at last, not by the strength of Austria, but by the intervention of Russia, the anger of Englishmen in general found loud-spoken expression. Louis Cochut, who had been dictator of Hungary during the greater part

  of the insurrection and who represented, in the English mind at least, the cause of Hungary and her national independence, came to England. He was about to take up his residence as he then intended in the United States and on his way there he visited England. He had applied for permission to pass through French territory and had been refused the favor. The refusal only gave one additional reason to the English people for welcoming him with special cordiality.

  He was accordingly received at Southampton, in Birmingham, in London, with an enthusiasm such as no foreigner except Garibaldi alone had ever drawn in our time from the English people. There was much in Cochut himself as well as in his cause to attract the enthusiasm of popular assemblages. He had a strikingly handsome face and a stately presence. He was picturesque and perhaps even theatric in his dress and his bearing. He looked like a picture.

  All his attitudes and gestures seemed as if they were meant to be reproduced by a painter. He was undoubtedly one of the most eloquent men who ever addressed an English popular audience. In one of his imprisonments, Cochut had studied the English language chiefly from the pages of Shakespeare. He had mastered our tongue as few foreigners have ever been able to do, but what he had mastered was not the common colloquial English of the streets and

  the drawing rooms. The English he spoke was the noblest in its style from which a student could supply his eloquence. Cochut spoke the English of Shakespeare. He could address a public meeting for an hour or more with a fluency not inferior seemingly to that of Gladstone, with a measured dignity and well-restrained force that was not unworthy of bright, and in curiously expressive, stately, powerful, pathetic English, which sounded as if it belonged to a higher time

  and loftier interests than ours. Viewed as a mere performance, the achievement of Cochut was unique. It may well be imagined what the effect was on a popular audience when such eloquence was poured forth in glowing eulogy of a cause with which they sympathized, and in denunciation of enemies and principles they detested. It was impossible not to be impressed by the force of some of the striking and dramatic passages in Cochut's fervid, half-oriental orations. He stretched out his right

  hand and declared that the time was when I held the destinies of the House of Habsburg in the hollow of that hand. He apostrophized those who fought and fell in the rank and file of Hungary's champions as unnamed demigods. He prefaced a denunciation of the papal policy by an impassioned lament over brief hopes that the pope was about to lead the liberal movement in Italy and reminded his hearers that there was a time when the name of Pio Nono coupled with that of Louis Cochut was

  thundered in vivas along the sunny shores of the Adriatic. Every appeal was vivid and dramatic, every allusion told. Throughout the whole there ran the thread of one distinct principle of international policy to which Cochut endeavored to obtain the assent of the English people. This was the principle that if one state intervenes in the domestic affairs of another for the purpose of putting down revolution, it then becomes the right and may even be the duty of any third state

  to throw in the weight of her sword against the unjustifiable intervention. As a principle, this is nothing more than some of the ablest and most thoughtful Englishmen had advocated before and have advocated since, but in Cochut's mind and in the understanding of those who heard him, it meant that England ought to declare war against Russia or Austria or both, the former for having intervened between the emperor of Austria and the Hungarians, and the latter for

  having invited and profited by the intervention. The presence of Cochut and the reception he got excited a wild anger and alarm among Austrian statesmen. The Austrian minister was all sensitiveness and remonstrance. The relations between this country and Austria seemed to become every day more and more strained. Lord Palmerston regarded the anger and the fears of Austria with a contempt which he took no pains to conceal. Before the Hungarian exile had reached this country,

  while he was still under the protection of the Sultan of Turkey and Austria was in wild alarm lest he should be set at liberty and should come to England, Lord Palmerston wrote to a British diplomatist saying, what a childish silly fear this is of Cochut. What great harm could he do to Austria while in France or England? He would be the hero of half a dozen dinners in England at which would be made speeches not more violent than those which have been made on platforms here

  within the last four months and he would soon sink into comparative obscurity, while on the other hand so long as he is a state detainee in Turkey he is a martyr and the object of never ceasing interest. Lord Palmerston understood thoroughly the temper of his countrymen in general. The English public never had any serious notion of going to war with Austria in obedience to Cochut's appeal. They sympathized generally with Cochut's cause or with the cause which they

  understood him to represent. They were taken with his picturesque appearance and his really wonderful eloquence. They wanted a new hero and Cochut seemed positively cut out to supply the want. The enthusiasm cooled down after a while as was indeed inevitable. The time was not far off when Cochut was to make vain appeals to almost empty halls and when the eloquence that once could cram the largest buildings with excited admirers was to call aloud to solitude. There

  came a time when Cochut lived in England forgotten and unnoticed, when his passing away from England was unobserved as his presence there had long been. There seems, one can hardly help saying, something cruel in this way of suddenly taking up the representative of some foreign cause, the spokesman of some mission, and then when he has been filled with vain hopes, letting him drop down to disappointment and neglect. It was not perhaps the fault of the

  English people if Cochut mistook, as many another man in like circumstances has done, the meaning of English popular sympathy. The English crowds who applauded Cochut at first meant nothing more than general sympathy with any hero of continental revolution and personal admiration for the eloquence of the man who addressed them. But Cochut did not thus accept the homage paid to him. No foreigner could have understood it in his place. Lord Palmerston understood it

  thoroughly and knew what it meant and how long it would last. The time, however, had not yet come when the justice of Lord Palmerston's words was to be established. Cochut was the hero of the hour, the comet of the season. The Austrian statesmen were going on as if every word spoken at a Cochut meeting were a declaration of war against Austria. Lord Palmerston was disposed to chuckle over the anger thus displayed. Cochut's reception, he wrote to his brother, must have been gall and

  wormwood to the Austrians and to the absolutists generally. Some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, however, became greatly alarmed when it was reported that the foreign minister was about to receive a visit from Cochut in person to thank him for the sympathy and protection which England had accorded to the Hungarian refugees while they were still in Turkey and without which it is only too likely they would have been handed over to Austria or Russia. It was thought that for the

  foreign secretary to receive a formal visit of thanks from Cochut would be regarded by Austria as a recognition by England of the justice of Cochut's cause and an expression of censure against Austria. If Cochut were received by Lord Palmerston, the Austrian ambassador, it was confidently reported, would leave England. Lord John Russell took alarm and called a meeting of the cabinet to consider the momentous question. Lord Palmerston reluctantly consented to appease

  the alarms of his colleagues by promising to avoid an interview with Cochut. It does not seem to us that there was much dignity in the course taken by the cabinet. Lord Palmerston actually used and very properly used all the influence England could command to protect the Hungarian refugees in Turkey. He had intimated very distinctly and with the full approval of England that he would use still stronger measures if necessary to protect at once the Sultan and the

  refugees. It seems to us that having done this openly and compelled Russia and Austria to bend to his urgency, there could be little harm in his receiving a visit from one of the men whom he had thus protected. Austria's sensibilities must have been of a peculiar nature indeed, if they could bear Lord Palmerston's very distinct and energetic intervention between her and her intended victim, but could not bear to hear that the rescued victim had paid Lord Palmerston a formal visit

  of gratitude. At all events, it does not seem as if an English minister was bound to go greatly out of his way to conciliate such very eccentric and morbid sensibilities. We owe to a foreign state with which we are on friendly terms a strict and honorable neutrality. Our ministers are bound by courtesy, prudence, and good sense not to obtrude any expression of their opinion touching the internal dissensions of a foreign state on the representatives of that state or the public,

  but they are not by any means bound to treat the enemies of every foreign state as our enemies. They are not expected to conciliate the friendship of Austria, for example, by declaring that anyone who is disliked by the Emperor of Austria shall never be admitted to speech of them. If Koshut had come as the professed representative of an established government and had sought an official interview with Lord Palmerston in that capacity,

  then indeed it would have been proper for the English foreign secretary to refuse to receive him. Our ministers with perfect propriety refuse to receive Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidel, the emissaries of the Southern Confederation, as official representatives of any state, but it is absurd to suppose that when the civil war was over in America, an English statesman in office would be bound to decline receiving a visit from Mr. Jefferson Davis. We know, in fact,

  that the ex-king of Naples, the ex-king of Hanover, Don Carlos, and the royal representatives of various lost causes are constantly received by English ministers and by the Queen of England, and no representatives of any of the established governments would think of offering a remonstrance. If the Emperor of Austria was likely to be offended by Lord Palmerston's receiving a visit from Koshut, the only course of an English minister, as it seems to us, was to leave him

  to be offended and to recover from his anger whenever he chose to allow common sense to resume possession of his mind. The Queen of England might as well have taken offense at the action of the American government, who actually gave not merely private receptions but public appointments to Irish refugees after the outbreak of 1848. Lord Palmerston, however, gave way and did not receive the visit of Koshut.

  The hoped-for result, that of sparing the sensibilities of the Austrian government, was not attained. In fact, things turned out a great deal worse than they might have done if the interview between Lord Palmerston and Koshut had been quietly allowed to come off. Meetings were held to express sympathy with Koshut, and addresses were voted to Lord Palmerston thanking him for the influence he had exerted in preventing the surrender

  of Koshut to Austria. Lord Palmerston consented to receive these addresses from the hands of deputations at the Foreign Office. The deputations represented certain metropolitan parishes and were the exponents of markedly radical opinions. Some of the addresses contained strong language with reference to the Austrian government and the Austrian sovereign. Lord Palmerston observed in his reply that there were expressions contained in the addresses with

  which he could hardly be expected to concur, but he spoke in a manner which conveyed the idea that his sympathies generally were with the cause which the deputations had adopted. This was the speech containing a phrase which was identified with Palmerston's name and held to be specially characteristic of his way of speaking, and indeed of thinking, for many years after, in fact, to the close of his career. The noble lord told the deputation

  that the past crisis was one which required on the part of the British government much generalship and judgment, and that a good deal of judicious bottle-holding was obliged to be brought into play. The phrase bottle-holding, borrowed from the prize ring, offended a good many persons who thought the past crisis far too grave and the issues it involved too stern to be properly described in language of such levity. But the general public was amused and delighted

  by the words, and the judicious bottle-holder became more of a popular favorite than ever. Some of the published reports put this a good deal more strongly than Lord Palmerston did, or at least than he intended to do, and he always insisted that he had said no more to the deputations than he had often said in the House of Commons, and that he had expressly declared he could not concur in some of the expressions contained in the addresses. Still, the whole

  proceeding considerably alarmed some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues and was regarded with distinct displeasure by the Queen and Prince Albert. The Queen specially requested that the matter should be brought up before a Cabinet Council. Lord John Russell accordingly laid the whole question before his colleagues and the general opinion seemed to be that Lord Palmerston had acted with want of caution. No formal resolution was adopted. It was thought that

  the general expression of opinion from his colleagues and the known displeasure of the Queen would be enough to impress the necessity for greater prudence on the mind of the Foreign Secretary. Lord John Russell, in communicating with Her Majesty as to the proceedings of the Cabinet Council, expressed a hope that it will have its effect upon Lord Palmerston, to whom Lord John Russell has written, urging the necessity of a guarded conduct in the present

  very critical condition of Europe. This letter was not written when startling evidence was on its way to show that the irrepressible Foreign Secretary had been making a stroke off his own bat again, and a stroke this time of capital importance in the general game of European politics. The possible indiscretion of Lord Palmerston's dealing with a deputation or two from Finsbury and Islington became a matter of little interest when the country was called

  upon to consider the propriety of the Foreign Secretary's dealings with the new ruler of a new state system with the author of the coup d'etat. End of section 11.

• 12 - Ch. 22: Palmerston, Pt. 3

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  The news of the coup d'etat took England by surprise. A shock went through the whole country. Never, probably, was public opinion more unanimous, for the hour at least, than in condemnation of the stroke of policy ventured on by Louis Napoleon and the savage manner in which it was carried to success. After a while, no doubt, a considerable portion of the English public came to look more leniently on what had been done. Many soon grew accustomed to the sight of the

  massacres along the boulevards of Paris and lost all sense of their horror. Some disposed of the whole affair after the satisfactory principle so commonly adopted by English people in judging of foreign affairs, and assumed that the system introduced by Louis Napoleon was a very good sort of thing for the French. After a while, a certain admiration, not to say adulation, of Louis Napoleon began to be a kind of faith with many Englishmen, and the coup d'etat was condoned and even approved

  by them. But there can be no doubt that when the story first came to be told in England, the almost universal voice of opinion condemned it as strongly as nearly all men of genuine enlightenment and feeling condemned it then and since. The Queen was particularly anxious that nothing should be done by the British ambassador to commit us to any approval of what had been done. On December 4th, the Queen wrote to Lord John Russell from Osborne, expressing

  her desire that Lord Norman be our ambassador at Paris should be instructed to remain entirely passive and say no word that might be misconstrued into approval of the action of the Prince President. The cabinet met that same day and decided that it was expedient to follow most closely Her Majesty's instructions, but they decided also and very properly that there was no reason for Lord Norman be suspending his diplomatic functions. Lord Norman be had in

  fact applied for instructions on this point. Next day, Lord Palmerston as foreign secretary wrote to Lord Norman be informing him that he was to make no change in his diplomatic relations with the French government. Lord Norman be's reply to this dispatch created a startling sensation. Our ambassador wrote to say that when he called on the French minister for foreign affairs to inform him that he had been instructed by Her Majesty's government not to make any change

  in his relations with the French government, the minister, Monsieur Tougot, told him that he had heard two days before from Count Walewski, the French ambassador in London, that Lord Palmerston had expressed to him his entire approval of what Louis Napoleon had done and his conviction that the Prince President could not have acted otherwise. It would not be easy to exaggerate the sensation produced among Lord Palmerston's colleagues by this astounding piece of news. The Queen wrote

  at once to Lord John Russell asking him if he knew anything about the approval which the French government pretend to have received, declaring that she could not believe in the truth of the assertion as such an approval given by Lord Palmerston would have been in complete contradiction to the line of strict neutrality and passiveness which the Queen had expressed her idea to see followed with regard to the late convulsions at Paris. Lord John Russell replied that he had already

  written to Lord Palmerston saying that he presumed there was no truth in the report. The reply of Lord Palmerston was delayed for what Lord John Russell thought an unreasonable length of time at such a crisis, but when it came it left no doubt that Lord Palmerston had expressed to Count Walewski his approval of the coup d'etat. Lord Palmerston observed indeed that Walewski had probably given to Monsieur Turgeau a somewhat highly colored report of what he had said and that the report

  had lost nothing in passing from Monsieur Turgeau to Lord Normanby, but the substance of the letter was a full admission that Lord Palmerston approved of what had been done and had expressed his approval to Count Walewski. The letters of explanation which the foreign minister wrote on the subject, whether to Lord Normanby or to Lord John Russell, were elaborate justifications of the coup d'etat. They were in fact exactly such arguments as a minister of Louis Napoleon might

  with great propriety address to a foreign court. They were full of an undisguised and characteristic contempt for anyone who could think otherwise on the subject than as Lord Palmerston thought. In replying to Lord John Russell, the contempt was expressed in a quiet sneer. In the letters to Lord Normanby, it was obtrusively and offensively put forward. Lord John Russell in vain endeavored to fasten Palmerston's attention on the fact that the question was not whether the action of

  Louis Napoleon was historically justifiable, but whether the conduct of the English foreign minister in expressing approval of it without the knowledge and against the judgment of the Queen and his colleagues was politically justifiable. Lord Palmerston simply returned to his defense of Louis Napoleon and his assertion that the Prince President was only anticipating the intrigues of the Orléans family and the plans of the Assembly. Lord Palmerston indeed gave a very minute account

  of a plot among the Orléans princes for a military rising against Louis Napoleon. No evidence of the existence of any such plot was ever discovered. Louis Napoleon never pleaded the existence of such a plot in his own justification. It is now we believe universally admitted that Lord Palmerston was for once the victim of a mere canard. But even if there had been an Orléanist plot or twenty Orléanist plots, it never has been part of the duty or the policy of an English government

  to express approval of anything and everything that a foreign ruler may do to anticipate or put down a plot against him. The measures may be unjustifiable in their principle or in their severity. The plot may be of insignificant importance, utterly inadequate to excuse any extraordinary measures. The English government is not in ordinary cases called upon to express any opinion whatever. It had in this case deliberately decided that all expression of

  opinion should be scrupulously avoided lest by any chance the French government should be led to believe that England approved of what had been done. Lord Palmerston endeavored to draw distinction between the expressions of a foreign secretary in conversation with an ambassador and a formal declaration of opinion. But it is clear that the French ambassador did not understand Lord Palmerston to be merely indulging in the irresponsible gossip of private life and that Lord Palmerston

  never said a word to impress him with the belief that their conversation had that colorless and unmeaning character. In any case it was surely a piece of singular indiscretion on the part of a foreign minister to give to the French ambassador even in private conversation an unqualified opinion in favor of a stroke of policy of which the British government as a whole and indeed with the one exception of Lord Palmerston entirely disapproved. To give such an opinion without

  qualification or explanation was to mislead the French ambassador in the grossest manner and to send him away as in fact he was sent under the impression that the conduct of his chief had the approval of the sovereign and government of England. Let it be remembered further that the foreign secretary who did this had been again and again rebuked for acting on his own responsibility, for saying and doing things which pledged or seemed to pledge the responsibility of the

  government without any authority, that a formal threat of dismissal actually hung over his head in the event of his repeating such indiscretions and we shall be better able to form some idea of the sensation which was created in England by the revelation of Lord Palmerston's conduct. Many of his colleagues had cordially sympathized with his views on the occasion of former indiscretions and even while admitting that he had been indiscreet yet acknowledged to themselves that their opinion

  on the broad question involved was not different from his but even these drew back from any approval of his conduct in regard to the coup d'etat. The almost universal judgment was that he had gone surprisingly wrong. Not a few finding it impossible to account otherwise for such a proceeding came to the conclusion that he must have been determined somehow to bring about a rupture with his colleagues of the cabinet and had chosen this high-handed assertion of his will as the best

  means of flinging his defiance in their teeth. Lord John Russell made up his mind. He came to the conclusion that he could no longer go on with Lord Palmerston as a colleague in the foreign office and he signified his decision to Lord Palmerston himself. While I concur, thus Lord Russell wrote, in the foreign policy of which you have been the advisor, and much as I admire the energy and ability with which it has been carried into effect, I cannot but observe that

  misunderstandings perpetually renewed, violations of prudence and decorum too frequently repeated, have marred the effects which ought to have followed from a sound policy and able administration. I am therefore most reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with advantage to the country. Rather, unfortunately, Lord John Russell endeavored to soften the blow by offering, if Lord Palmerston should be willing, to recommend

  him to the Queen to fill the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. This was a proposal which we agree with Mr. Evelyn Ashley, Lord Palmerston's biographer, in regarding as almost comical in its character. Lord Palmerston's whole soul was in foreign affairs. He had never affected any particular interest in Irish business. He cared little even for the home politics of England. It was out of the question to suppose that he would consent to bury himself in the vice regal court of

  Dublin and occupy his diplomatic talents in composing disputes for precedence between Protestant deans and Catholic bishops and in doling out the due proportion of invitations to the various ranks of aspiring traders and shopkeepers and their wives. Lord Palmerston declined the offer with open contempt and indeed it can hardly be supposed for a moment that Lord John Russell expected he would have seriously entertained it. The quarrel was complete. Lord Palmerston ceased for the time

  to be Foreign Secretary and his place was taken by Lord Granville. Seldom has a greater sensation been produced by the removal of a minister. The effect which was created all over Europe was probably just what Lord Palmerston himself would have desired. The belief prevailed everywhere that he had been sacrificed to the monarchical and reactionary influences all over the continent. The statesmen of Europe were under the impression that Lord Palmerston was put out of office as an

  evidence that England was about to withdraw from her former attitude of sympathy with the popular movements of the continent. Lord Palmerston himself fell under a delusion which seems marvelous and a man possessed of his clear strong common sense. He conceived that he had been sacrificed to reactionary intrigue. He wrote to his brother to say that the real ground for his dismissal was a weak truckling to the hostile intrigues of the Orléans family, Austria, Russia, Saxony and Bavaria

  and in some degree of the present Prussian government. All these parties, he said, found their respective views and systems of policy thwarted by the course pursued by the British government and they thought if they could remove the minister, they would change the policy. They had for a long time past defectually poisoned the mind of the Queen and Prince against me and John Russell giving way rather encouraged than discontent the desire of the Queen to remove me from the

  Foreign Office. So strongly did the idea prevail that an intrigue of foreign diplomatists had overthrown Palmerston that the Russian ambassador Baron Bruno took the very ill-advised step of addressing to Lord John Russell a disclaimer of any participation in such a proceeding. The Queen made a proper comment on the letter of Baron Bruno by describing it as very presuming inasmuch as it insinuated the possibility of changes of governments

  in this country taking place at the instigation of foreign ministers. Lord Palmerston was of course entirely mistaken in supposing that any foreign interference had contributed to his removal from the Foreign Office. The only wonder is how a man so experienced as he could have convinced himself of such a thing. At least it would be a wonder if one did not know that the most experienced author or artist can always persuade himself that a disparaging

  critique is the result of personal and malignant hostility. But that the feeling of the Queen and the Prince had long been against him can hardly admit of dispute. Prince Albert seems not to have taken any pains to conceal his dislike and distrust of Palmerston. Nearly two years before, when the French ambassador was recalled for a time, the Prince wrote to Lord John Russell to say that both the Queen and himself were exceedingly sorry to hear of the recall adding,

  We are not surprised, however, that Lord Palmerston's mode of doing business should not be borne by the susceptible French government with the same good humor and forbearance as by his colleagues. At the moment when Lord John Russell resolved on getting rid of Lord Palmerston, Prince Albert wrote to him to say that the sudden termination of your difference with Lord Palmerston has taken us much by surprise, as we were wont to see such differences terminate

  in his carrying his points and leaving the defense of them to his colleagues and the discredit to the Queen. It is clear from this letter alone that the court was set against Lord Palmerston at that time. The court was sometimes right where Lord Palmerston was wrong, but the fact that he then knew himself to be an antagonism to the court is of importance both in judging of his career and in estimating the relative strength of forces in the politics

  of England. Lord Palmerston then was dismissed. The meeting of Parliament took place on the 3rd of February following 1852. It would be superfluous to say that the keenest anxiety was felt to know the full reasons of the sudden dismissal. To quote the words used by Mr. Roebuck, the most marked person in the administration, he around whom all the party battles of the administration had been fought, whose political existence had been made the political existence

  of the government itself, the person on whose being in office the government rested their existence as a government, was dismissed, their right hand was cut off, their most powerful arm was taken away, and at the critical time when it was most needed. The House of Commons was not long left to wait for an explanation. Lord John Russell made a long speech in which he went into the whole history of the differences between Lord Palmerston and his colleagues and what was more surprising

  to the House, into a history of the late Foreign Secretary's differences with his sovereign and the threat of dismissal which had so long been hanging over his head. The Prime Minister read to the House the Queen's Memorandum, which we have already quoted. Lord John Russell's speech was a great success. Lord Palmerston's was, even in the estimation of his closest friends, a failure. Far different indeed was the effect it produced from the almost magical influence of that

  wonderful speech on the Don Pacifico question which had compelled even unconvinced opponents to genuine admiration. Palmerston seemed to have practically no defense. He only went over again the points put by him and the correspondence already noticed, contended that on the whole he had judged rightly of the French crisis and that he could not help forming an opinion on it and so forth. Of the Queen's Memorandum he said nothing. He did not even attempt to explain how it came about,

  that having received so distinct and severe an injunction, he had ventured deliberately to disregard it in a matter of the greatest national importance. Some of his admirers were of the opinion, then and long after, that the reading of the Memorandum must have come on him by surprise, that Lord John Russell must have sprung a mine upon him, and Palmerston was taken unfairly and at a disadvantage. But it is certain that Lord John Russell gave notice to his late colleague

  of his intention to read the Memorandum of the Queen. Besides, Lord Palmerston was one of the most ready and self-possessed speakers that ever addressed the House of Commons. During the very reading of the Memorandum he could have found time to arrange his ideas and to make out some show of a case for himself. The truth, we believe, is that Lord Palmerston deliberately declined to make any reply to that part of Lord John Russell's speech which disclosed the letter from the Queen.

  He made up his mind that a dispute between a sovereign and a subject would be unbecoming of both, and he passed over the Memorandum in deliberate silence. He doubtless felt convinced that even though such discretion involved him for the moment in seeming defeat, it would in the long run reckon to his credit and his advantage. Lord Dowling, better known as Sir Henry Bulwer, was present during the debate and formed an opinion of Palmerston's conduct which

  seems in every way correct and far-seeing. I must say, Lord Dowling writes, that I never admired him so much as at this crisis. He evidently thought he had been ill-treated, but I never heard him make an unfair or irritable remark, nor did he seem in any wise stunned by the blow he had received or dismayed by the isolated position in which he stood. I should say that he seemed to consider that he had a quarrel put upon him which it was his wisest course to close by receiving the

  fire of his adversary and not returning it. He could not in fact have gained a victory against the premiere on the ground which Lord John Russell had chosen for the combat, which would not have been more permanently disadvantageous to him than a defeat. The faults of which he had been accused did not touch his own honor nor that of his country. Let them be admitted and there was an end of the matter. By and by an occasion would probably arise in which he might choose an advantageous occasion

  for giving battle and he was willing to wait calmly for that occasion. Lord Dowling judged accurately so far as his judgment went, but while we agree with him in thinking that Lord Palmerston refrained from returning his adversary's fire for the reasons Lord Dowling has given, we are strongly of opinion that other reasons too influenced Palmerston. He knew that he was not at that time much liked or trusted by the Queen and Prince Albert. He was not sorry that

  the fact should be made known to the world. He thoroughly understood English public opinion and was not above taking advantage of its moods and its prejudices. He did not think a statesman would stand any the worse in the general estimation of the English public than because it was known that he was not admired by Prince Albert. But the almost universal opinion of the House of Commons and of the clubs was that Lord Palmerston's career was closed. Palmerston is smashed, was the common

  saying of the clubs. A night or two after the debate, Lord Dowling met Mr. Disraeli on the staircase of the Russian embassy and Disraeli remarked to him that there was a Palmerston. Lord Palmerston evidently did not think so. The letters he wrote to friends immediately after his fall show him as jaunty and full of confidence as ever. He was quite satisfied with the way things had gone. He waited calmly for what he called a few days afterwards, my tit for tat with John Russell,

  which came about indeed sooner than even he himself could well have expected. We have not hesitated to express our opinion that throughout the whole of this particular dispute Lord Palmerston was in the wrong. He was in the wrong in many if not most of the controversies which had preceded it. That is to say he was wrong in committing England as he so often did to measures which had not had the approval of the sovereign or his colleagues. In the memorable

  dispute which brought matters to a crisis he seems to us to have been in the wrong not less in what he did than in his manner of doing it. Yet it ought not to have been difficult for a calm observer even at the time to see that Lord Palmerston was likely to have the best of the controversy in the end. The faults of which he was principally accused were not such as the English people would find it very hard to forgive. He was said to be too brusque and high-handed in his

  dealings with foreign states and ministers but it did not seem to the English people in general as if this was an offense for which his own countrymen were bound to condemn him too severely. There was a general impression that his influence was exercised on behalf of popular movements abroad and an impression nearly as general that if he had not acted a good deal on his own impulses and of his own authority he could hardly have served any popular cause so well.

  The coup d'etat certainly was not popular in England. For a long time it was a subject of general reprehension but even at that time men who condemned the coup d'etat were not disposed to condemn Lord Palmerston over much because acting as usual on a personal impulse he had in that instance made a mistake. There was even in his error something dashing, showy, and captivating to the general public. He made the influence of England felt, people said. His chief fault was

  that he was rather too strong for those around him. If any grave crisis came, he, it was murmured, and he alone would be equal to the occasion and would maintain the dignity of England. Neither in war nor in statesmanship does a man suffer much loss of popularity by occasionally disobeying orders and accomplishing daring feats. Lord Palmerston saw his way clearly at a critical period of his career. He saw that at that time there was, rightly or wrongly, a certain jealousy

  of the influence of Prince Albert and he did not hesitate to take advantage of the fact. He bore his temporary disgrace with well-justified composure. The devil aids him surely, says Sussex, speaking to Raleigh of Leicester and Scott's Kenilworth, for all that would sink another ten fathom deep seems but to make him float the more easily. Some rival may have thought thus of Lord Palmerston.

• 13 - Ch. 23: Birth of the Empire. Death of 'The Duke', Pt. 1

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  CHAPTER XXIII. BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE, DEATH OF THE DUKE, PART 1. The year 1852 was one of profound emotion and even excitement in England. An able writer has remarked that the history of the continent of Europe might be traced through the history of England if all other sources of information were destroyed by the influence which every great event in continental affairs produces on the mood and policy of England. As the

  astronomer infers the existence and the attributes of some star his keenest glass will not reveal, by the perturbations its neighborhood causes to some body of light within his ken, so the student of English history might well discover commotion on the continent by the evidence of a corresponding movement in England. All through the year 1852 the national mind of England was disturbed. The country was stirring itself in quite an unusual manner. A military spirit was exhibiting itself

  everywhere, not unlike that told of in Shakespeare's Henry IV. The England of 1852 seems to threaten that ere this year expire we bear our civil swords and native fire as far as France. At least the civil swords were sharpened in order that the country might be ready for a possible and even an anticipated invasion from France. The volunteer movement sprang into sudden existence. All over the country cores of young volunteers were being formed. An immense amount of national enthusiasm

  accompanied and acclaimed the formation of the volunteer army which received the sanction of the crown early in the year and thus became a national institution. The meaning of all this movement was explained some years after by Mr. Tennyson in a string of verses which did more honor perhaps to his patriotic feeling than to his poetic genius. The verses are absurdly unworthy of Tennyson as a poet but they express with unmistakable clearness the popular sentiment

  of the hour. The condition of uncertainty, vague alarm, and very general determination to be ready at all events for whatever might come. Form, form, riflemen, form, wrote the laureate, better a rotten burrow or two than a rotten fleet and a town in flames. True that we have a faithful ally but only the devil knows what he means. This was the alarm and the explanation. We had a faithful ally no doubt but we certainly did not quite know what he meant. All the earlier part of the year had

  witnessed the steady progress of the prince president of France to an imperial throne. The previous year had closed upon his coup d'etat. He had arrested, imprisoned, banished, or shot his principal enemies and had demanded from the French people a presidency for ten years. A ministry responsible to the executive power, himself alone, and two political chambers to be elected by universal suffrage. Nearly 500 prisoners, untried before any tribunal, even that of a drum

  head, had been shipped off to Cayenne. The streets of Paris had been soaked in blood. The president instituted a plebiscite or vote of the whole people and of course he got all he asks for. There was no arguing with the commander of twenty legions and of such legions as those that had operated with terrible efficiency on the boulevards. The first day of the new year saw the religious ceremony at Notre Dame to celebrate the acceptance of the ten years presidency by Louis Napoleon.

  The same day a decree was published in the name of the president declaring that the French eagle should be restored to the standards of the army as a symbol of the regenerated military genius of France. A few days after the prince president decreed the confiscation of the property of the Orléans family and restored titles of nobility in France. The birthday of the emperor Napoleon was declared by decree to be the only national holiday. When the two legislative bodies came

  to be sworn in, the president made an announcement which certainly did not surprise many persons but which nevertheless sent a thrill abroad over all parts of Europe. If hostile parties continued to plot against him, the president intimated and to question the legitimacy of the power he had assumed by virtue of the national vote, then it might be necessary to demand from the people in the name of the repose of France a new title which will irrevocably fix upon my head the power with which

  they have invested me. There could be no further doubt. The Bonapartist Empire was to be restored. A new Napoleon was to come to the throne. Only the devil knows what he means indeed, so people were all saying throughout England in 1852. The scheme went on to its development and before the year was quite out, Louis Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French. Men had noticed as a curious not to say ominous coincidence that on the very day when the Duke of Wellington died, the Moniteur

  announced that the French people were receiving the prince president everywhere as the emperor elect and as the elect of God. And another French journal published an article hinting, not obscurely, at the invasion and conquest of England as the first great duty of a new Napoleonic Empire. The prince president indeed, in one of the provincial speeches which he delivered just before he was proclaimed emperor, had talked earnestly of peace. In his famous

  speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Bordeaux on October 9th, he denied that the restored empire would mean war. I say, he declared, raising his voice and speaking with energy and emphasis, the empire is peace. But the assurance did not do much to satisfy Europe. Had not the same voice, it was asked, declaimed with equal energy and earnestness, the terms of the oath to the Republican Constitution? Never, said a bitter enemy of the new empire, believe

  the word of a bone apart unless when he promises to kill somebody. Such indeed was the common sentiment of a large number of the English people during the eventful year when the president became emperor and Prince Louis Napoleon was Napoleon III. It would have been impossible that the English people could view all this without emotion and alarm. It had been clearly seen how the prince president had carried his point thus far. He had appealed at every step to the memory of the

  Napoleonic legend. He had in every way revived and reproduced the attributes of the reign of the great emperor. His accession to power was strictly a military and a Napoleonic triumph. In ordinary circumstances, the English people would not have troubled themselves much about any change in the form of government of a foreign country. They might have felt a strong dislike for the manner in which such a change had been brought about, but it would have been in no wise a matter of

  personal concern to them. But they could not see with indifference the rise of a new Napoleon to power on the strength of the old Napoleonic legend. The one special characteristic of the Napoleonic principle was its hostility to England. The life of the great Napoleon in its greatest days had been devoted to the one purpose of humiliating England. His plans had been foiled by England. Whatever hands may have joined in pressing him to the ground, there could be no

  doubt that he owed his fall principally to England. He died a prisoner of England and with his hatred of her embittered rather than appeased. It did not seem unreasonable to believe that the successor who had been enabled to mount the imperial throne simply because he bore the name and represented the principles of the first Napoleon would inherit the hatred to England and the designs against England. Everything else that savored of the Napoleonic era had been revived. Why should

  this, its principle characteristic, be allowed to lie in the tomb of the first emperor? The policy of the first Napoleon had lighted up a fire of hatred between England and France which at one time seemed inextinguishable. There were many who regarded that international hate as something like that of the hostile brothers in the classic story, the very flames of whose funeral piles refused to mingle in the air, or like that of the rival Scottish families whose blood it was said would

  never commingle though poured into one dish. It did not seem possible that a new emperor Napoleon could arise without bringing a restoration of that hatred along with him. There were some personal for particular distrust of the upcoming emperor among the English people. Louis Napoleon had lived many years in England. He was as well known there as any prominent member of the English aristocracy. He went a good deal into very various society, literary, artistic, merely fashionable, purely

  rowdy, as well as into that political society which might have seemed natural to him. In all circles the same opinion appears to have been formed of him. From the astute Lord Palmerston to the most ignorant of horse jockeys and ballet girls with whom he occasionally consorted, all who met him seemed to think of the prince in much the same way. It was agreed on all hands that he was a fatuous, dreamy, moony, impractical, stupid young man. A sort of stolid amiability, not enlightened

  enough to keep him out of low company and questionable conduct, appeared to be his principal characteristic. He constantly talked of his expected accession somehow and sometime to the throne of France, and people only smiled pityingly at him. His attempts at Strasbourg and Boulogne had covered him with ridicule and contempt. We cannot remember one authentic account of any Englishman having professed to see any evidence of capacity and strength of mind in Prince Louis Napoleon.

  When the coup d'etat came and was successful, the amazement of the English public was unbounded. Never had any plot been more skillfully and more carefully planned, more daringly carried out. Here evidently was a master in the art of conspiracy. Here was the combination of steady caution and boundless audacity. What a subtlety of design, what a perfection of silent self-control. How slowly the plan had been matured, how suddenly it was flashed upon the world and carried to success.

  No haste, no delay, no scruple, no remorse, no fear. And all this was the work of the dull dawdler of English drawing rooms, the heavy, apathetic, unmoral rather than immoral, haunter of English racecourses and gambling houses. What new surprise might not be feared, what subtle and daring enterprise might not reasonably be expected from one who could thus conceal and thus reveal himself and do both with like success. Louis Napoleon, said a member of

  his family, deceived Europe twice. First, when he succeeded in passing off as an idiot, and next, when he succeeded in passing off as a statesman. The epigram had doubtless a great deal of truth in it. The coup d'etat was probably neither planned nor carried to success by the cleverness and energy of Louis Napoleon. Cooler and stronger heads and hands are responsible for the execution at least of that enterprise. The prince, it is likely, played little more than a passive part

  and might have lost his nerve more than once, but for the greater resolution of some of his associates who were determined to crown him for their own sakes as well as for his. But at the time, the world at large saw only Louis Napoleon in the whole scheme, conception, execution and all. The idea was formed of a colossal figure of cunning and daring, a Brutus, a Calran, a Philip of Spain, and a Napoleon I, all in one. Those who detested him most admired and feared him not the least.

  Who can doubt, it was asked, that he will endeavor to make himself the heir of the revenges of Napoleon? Who can believe any pledges he may give? How enter into any treaty or bond of any kind with such a man? Where is the one that can pretend to say he sees through him and understands his schemes? Had Louis Napoleon any intention at any time of invading England, we are inclined to believe that he never had a regular fixed plan of the kind,

  but we are also inclined to think that the project entered into his mind with various other ideas and plans more or less vague, and that circumstances might have developed it into an actual scheme. Louis Napoleon was, above all things, a man of ideas in the inferior sense of the word. That is to say, he was always occupying himself with vague dreamy suggestions of plans that might in this, that or the other case be advantageously pursued. He had come to power probably with the

  determination to keep it and make himself acceptable to France first of all. After this came doubtless the sincere desire to make France great and powerful and prosperous. At first he had no particular notion of the way to establish himself as a popular ruler, and it is certain that he turned over all manner of plans in his mind for the purpose. Among these must certainly have been one for the invasion of England and the avenging of Waterloo. He let drop hints at times which

  showed that he was thinking of something of the kind. He talked of himself as representing a defeat. He was attacked with all the bitterness of a not unnatural but very unrestrained animosity in the English press for his conduct in the coup d'etat, and no doubt he and his companions were greatly exasperated. The mood of a large portion of the French people was distinctly aggressive. Ashamed to some degree of much that had been done and that they had had to suffer,

  many Frenchmen were in that state of dissatisfaction with themselves which makes people eager to pick a quarrel with someone else. Had Louis Napoleon been inclined he might doubtless have easily stirred his people to the war mood and it is not to be believed that he did not occasionally contemplate the expediency of doing something of the kind. Assuredly if he had thought such an enterprise necessary to the stability of his reign he would have risked even a war with

  England. But it would not have been tried except as a last resource and the need did not arise. No one could have known better the risks of such an attempt. He knew England as his uncle never did and if he had not his uncle's energy or military genius he had far more knowledge of the world and of the relative resources and capabilities of nations. He would not have done anything rash without great necessity or the prospect of very certain benefit in the event of success.

  An invasion of England was not therefore a likely event. Looking back compositely now on what actually did happen we may safely say that few things were less likely. But it was not by any means an impossible event. The more compositely one looks back to it now the more he will be compelled to admit that it was at least on the cards. The feeling of national uneasiness and alarm was not a mere panic. There were five projects with which public opinion all over

  Europe specially credited Louis Napoleon when he began his imperial reign. One was a war with Russia, another was a war with Austria, a third was a war with Prussia, a fourth was the annexation of Belgium, the fifth was the invasion of England. Three of these projects were carried out. The fourth we know was in contemplation. Our combination with France in the first project probably put all serious thought of the fifth out of the head of the French emperor. He got far more prestige out

  of an alliance with us than he could ever have got out of any quarrel with us and he had little or no risk. We do not count for anything the repeated assurances of Louis Napoleon that he desired above all things to be on friendly terms with England. These assurances were doubtless sincere at the moment when they were made and under the circumstances of that moment. But altered circumstances might at any time have induced an altered frame of mind. The very same assurances were made again

  and again to Russia, to Austria, and to Prussia. The pledge that the empire was peace was addressed like the pope's edict, Urbi et Orbi. Therefore we do not look upon the mood of England in 1852 as one of idle and baseless panic. The same feeling broken to life again in 1859 when the emperor of the French suddenly announced his determination to go to war with Austria. It was in this latter period indeed that the volunteer movement became a great national

  organization and that the laureate did his best to rouse it into activity in the verses of hardly doubtful merit to which we have already referred. But in 1852 the beginning of an army of volunteers was made and what is of more importance to the immediate business of our history, the government determined to bring in a bill for the reorganization of the national militia. Our militia was not in any case a body to be particularly proud of at that time. It had fallen into decay and almost into

  disorganization. Nothing could have been a more proper work for any government than its restoration to efficiency and respectability. Nothing too could have been more timely than a measure to make it efficient in view of the altered condition of European affairs and the increased danger of disturbance at home and abroad. We had on our hands at the time too one of our little wars, a capri war, which was protracted to a vexatious length and which was not without serious military

  difficulty. It began in the December of 1850 and was not completely disposed of before the early part of 1853. We could not therefore afford to have our defenses in any defective condition and no labor was more fairly incumbent on the government than the task of making them adequate to their purpose. But it was an unfortunate characteristic of Lord John Russell's government that it attempted so much legislation. Not because some particular scheme commended itself to the

  mature wisdom of the ministry, but because something had to be done in a hurry to satisfy public opinion, and the government could not think of anything better at the moment than the first scheme that came to hand. Lord John Russell accordingly introduced a militia bill, which was in the highest degree inadequate and unsatisfactory. The principal peculiarity of it was that it proposed to substitute a local militia for the regular force that had been in existence. Lord Palmerston saw

  great objections to this alteration and urged them with much bristness and skill on the night when Lord John Russell explained his measure. When Palmerston began his speech, he probably intended to be merely critical as regarded points in the measure which were susceptible of amendment, but as he went on, he found more and more that he had the house with him. Every objection he made, every criticism he urged, almost every sentence he spoke, drew down increasing cheers.

  Lord Palmerston saw that the house was not only thoroughly with him on this ground, but thoroughly against the government on various grounds. A few nights after, he followed up his first success by proposing a resolution to substitute the word regular for the word local in the bill, thus in fact to reconstruct the bill on an entirely different principle from that adopted by its framer. The effort was successful. The P-lights went with Palmerston, the protectionists

  followed him as well, and the result was that 136 votes were given for the amendment and only 125 against it. The government was defeated by a majority of 11. Lord John Russell instantly announced that he could no longer continue in office as he did not possess the confidence of the country. The announcement took the house by surprise. Lord Palmerston had not himself expected any such result from his resolution. There was no reason why the government should not have amended

  their bill on the basis of the resolution passed by the house. The country wanted a scheme of efficient defense, and the government were only called upon to make their scheme efficient. But Lord John Russell was well aware that his administration had been losing its authority little by little. Since the time when it had returned to power simply because no one could form a ministry any stronger than itself, it had been only a government on sufferance.

  Ministers who assumed office in that stopgap way seldom retain it long in England. The Gladstone government illustrated this fact in 1873 when they consented to return to office because Mr. Disraeli was not then in a condition to come in, and were dismissed by an overwhelming majority at the elections in the following spring. Lord Palmerston assigned one special reason for Lord John Russell's promptness in resigning on the change in the militia bill. The great motive for

  the step was, according to Palmerston, the fear of being defeated on the vote of censure about the Cape affairs which was to have been moved today, as it is the late government have gone out on a question which they have treated as a motion merely asserting that they had lost the confidence of the House, whereas if they had gone out on a defeat upon the motion about the Cape, they would have carried with them the direct censure of the House of Commons.

  The letter from Lord Palmerston to his brother from which these words are quoted begins with a remarkable sentence. I have had my tit for tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last. Palmerston did not expect any such result, he declared, but the revenge was doubtless sweet for all that. This was in February 1852, and it was only in December of the previous year that Lord Palmerston was compelled to leave the Foreign Office by Lord John Russell.

  The same influence, oddly enough, was the indirect cause of both events. Lord Palmerston lost his place because of his recognition of Louis Napoleon. Lord John Russell fell from power while endeavoring to introduce a measure suggested by Louis Napoleon's successful usurpation. It will be seen in a future chapter how the influence of Louis Napoleon was once again fatal to each statesman in turn.

  The Russell ministry had done little and initiated less. It had carried on Peel's system by throwing open the markets to foreign as well as colonial sugar, and by the repeal of the navigation laws enabled merchants to employ foreign ships and seamen in the conveyance of their goods. It had made a mild and ineffectual effort at a reform bill, and had feebly favored attempts to admit Jews to parliament. It sank from power with an unexpected collapse

  in which the nation felt small concern. End of section 13.

• 14 - Ch. 23: Birth of the Empire. Death of 'The Duke', Pt. 2

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  CHAPTER XXIII. BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE, DEATH OF THE DUKE, PART 2. Lord Palmerston did not come to power again at that moment. He might have gone in with Lord Darby if he had been so inclined, but Lord Darby, who it may be said had succeeded to that title on the death of his father in the preceding year, still talked of testing the policy of free trade at a general election, and of course, Palmerston was not disposed to have anything

  to do with such a proposition. Nor had Palmerston in any case much inclination to serve under Darby, of whose political intelligence he thought poorly, and whom he regarded principally as what he called a flashy speaker. Lord Darby tried various combinations in vain and at last he had to experiment with a cabinet of undiluted protectionists. He had to take office, not because he wanted to or because anyone in particular wanted him, but simply and solely

  because there was no one else who could undertake the task. He formed a cabinet to carry on the business of the country for the moment and until it should be convenient to have a general election, when he fondly hoped that by some inexplicable process a protectionist reaction would be brought about and he should find himself at the head of a strong administration. The ministry which Lord Darby was able to form was not a strong one. Lord Palmerston described it as containing two men of

  Mark, Darby and Disraeli, and a number of ciphers. It had not except for these two a single man of any political ability and had hardly one of any political experience. It had an able lawyer for Lord Chancellor, Lord St. Leonard's, but he was nothing of a politician. The rest of the members of the government were respectable country gentlemen. One of them, Mr. Harries, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in a short-lived government, that of Lord Goderich, in 1827,

  and he had held the office of Secretary of War for a few months sometime later. He was forgotten by the existing generation of politicians and the general public only knew that he was still living when they heard of his accession to Lord Darby's government. The Earl of Malmesbury, Sir John Packington, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Henley and the rest were men whose antecedents scarcely gave the warrant for any higher claim in public life than the position

  of Chairman of Quarter Sessions, nor did their subsequent career in office contribute much to establish a loftier estimate of their capacity. The head of the government was remarkable for his dashing blunders as a politician, quite as much as for his dashing eloquence. His new lieutenant, Mr. Disraeli, had in former days christened him very happily the Rupert of Debate, after that fiery and gallant prince whose blunders generally lost the battles which his headlong courage had

  nearly won. Concerning Mr. Disraeli himself, it is not too much to say that many of his own party were rather more afraid of his genius than of the dullness of any of his colleagues. It is not a pleasant task in the best of circumstances to be at the head of a tolerated ministry in the House of Commons, a ministry which is in a minority and only holds its place because there's no one ready to relieve it of the responsibility of office. Mr. Disraeli himself at a much later date gave

  the House of Commons an amusing picture of the trials and humiliations which await the leader of such a forlorn hope. He had now to assume that position without any previous experience of office. Rarely indeed is the leadership of the House of Commons undertaken by anyone who has not previously held office, and Mr. Disraeli entered upon leadership and office at the same moment for the first time. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons.

  Among the many gifts with which he was accredited by fame, not a single admirer had hitherto dreamed of including a capacity for the mastery of figures. In addition to all the ordinary difficulties of the ministry of a minority, there was, in this instance, the difficulty arising from the obscurity and inexperience of nearly all its members. Facetious persons dubbed the new administration the Who Who Ministry. The explanation of this odd nickname was found in a

  story, then in circulation about the Duke of Wellington. The Duke, it was said, was anxious to hear from Lord Darby at the earliest moment all about the composition of his cabinet. He was overheard asking the new Prime Minister in the House of Lords the names of his intended colleagues. The Duke was rather deaf, and like most deaf persons spoke in very loud tones, and of course had to be answered in tones also rather elevated. That which was meant for a

  whispered conversation became audible to the whole House. As Lord Darby mentioned each name, the Duke asked in wonder and eagerness, who, who? After each new name came the same inquiry. The Duke of Wellington had clearly never heard of most of the new ministers before. The story went about and Lord Darby's administration was familiarly known as the Who Who Government. Lord Darby entered office with the avowed intention of testing the protection question

  all over again. But he was no sooner in office than he found that the bare suggestion had immensely increased his difficulties. The formidable organization which had worked the free trade cause so successfully seemed likely to come into political life again with all its old vigor. The free traders began to stand together again the moment Lord Darby gave his unlucky hint. Every week that passed over his head did something to show him the mistake he had made

  when he hampered himself with any such undertaking as the revival of the protection question. Some of his colleagues had been unhappily and blunderingly outspoken in their addresses to their constituents seeking for re-election, and had talked as if the restoration of protection itself were the grand object of Lord Darby's taking office. The new chancellor of the Exchequer had been far more cautious. He only talked vaguely of those remedial measures which great

  productive interests suffering from unequal taxation have a right to expect from a just government. In truth Mr. Disraeli was well convinced at this time of the hopelessness of any agitation for the restoration of protection and would have been only too glad of any opportunity for a complete and at the same time a safe disavowal of any sympathy with such a project. The government found their path bristling with troubles created for them by their own mistake

  and giving any hint about the demand for a new trial of the free trade question. Any chance they might otherwise have had of making effective head against their very trying difficulties was completely cut away from them. The Free Trade League was reorganized. A conference of liberal members of the House of Commons was held at the residence of Lord John Russell in Cheshire Place at which it was resolved to extract or extort from the government a full avowal of

  their policy with regard to protection and free trade. The feat would have been rather difficult of accomplishment seeing that the government had absolutely no policy to offer on the subject and were only hoping to be able to consult the country as one might consult an oracle. The Chancellor of the Exchequer when he made his financial statement accepted the increased prosperity of the few years preceding with an unction which showed that he at least had no

  particular notion of attempting to reverse the policy which had so greatly contributed to its progress. Mr. Disraeli pleased the p-lights and the liberals much more by his statement than he pleased his chief or many of his followers. His speech indeed was very clever. A new financial scheme he could not produce for he had not had time to make anything like a complete examination of the finances of the country but he played very prettily and skillfully with the

  facts and figures and conveyed to the listeners the idea of a man who could do wonderful things in finance if he had only had a little time and were in the humor. Everyone outside the limits of the extreme and unconverted protectionists was pleased with the success of his speech. People were glad that one who had proved himself so clever with many things should have shown himself equal to the uncongenial and unwanted task of dealing with dry facts and figures.

  The House felt that he was placed in a very trying position and was well pleased to see him hold his own so successfully in it. Mr. Disraeli merely proposed in his financial statement to leave things as he found them, to continue the income tax for another year as a provisional arrangement pending that complete re-examination of the financial affairs of the country to which he intimated that he found himself quite equal at the proper time. No one could suggest any better course

  and the new chancellor came off on the whole with flying colors. His very difficulties had been a source of advantage to him. He was not expected to produce a financial scheme at such short notice and if he was not equal to a financier's task it did not so appear on his first occasion of trial. The government on the whole did not do badly during this period of their probation. They introduced and carried a militia bill for which they obtained the cordial support of Lord

  Palmerston and they gave a constitution to New Zealand and then in the beginning of July the parliament was prorogued and the dissolution took place. The elections were signalized by very serious riots in many parts of the country. In Ireland particularly party passions ran high. The landlords and the police were on one side, the priests and the popular party on the other and in several places there was some bloodshed. It was not in Ireland however a question about

  free trade or protection. The great mass of the Irish people knew nothing about Mr. Disraeli, probably had never heard his name and did not care who led the House of Commons. The question which agitated the Irish constituencies was of tenant right in the first place and the time had not yet arrived when a great minister from either party was prepared to listen to their demands on this subject. There was also much bitterness of feeling remaining from

  the discussions on the ecclesiastical titles bill but it may be safely said that not one of the questions that stirred up public feeling in England had the slightest popular interest in Ireland and the question which the Irish people considered essential to their very existence did not enter for one moment into the struggles that were going on all over England. The speeches of ministers in England showed the same lively diversity as before on the subject of

  protection. Mr. Disraeli not only threw protection overboard but boldly declared that no one could have supposed the ministry had the slightest intention of proposing to bring back the laws that were repealed in 1846. In fact, he declared, the time had gone by when such exploded politics could ever interest the people of this country. On the other hand, several of Mr. Disraeli's colleagues evidently spoke in the fullness of their simple faith

  that Lord Darby was bent on setting up again the once beloved and not yet forgotten protective system but from the time of the elections nothing more was heard about protection or about the possibility of getting a new trial for its principles. The elections did little or nothing for the government. The dreams of a strengthened party at their back were gone. They gained a little, just enough to make it unlikely that anyone would move a vote of want of confidence at the very outset of their

  reappearance before parliament, but not nearly enough to give them a chance of carrying any measure which would really propitiate the conservative party throughout the country. They were still to be the ministry of a minority, a ministry on sufferance. They were a ministry on sufferance when they appealed to the country but they were able to say then that when their cause had been heard the country would declare for them. They now came back to be a ministry on sufferance

  who had made the appeal and seen it rejected. It was plain to everyone that their existence as a ministry was only a question of days. Speculation was already busy as to their successors and it was evident that a new government could only be formed by some sort of coalition between the Whigs and the P-Lights. Among the noteworthy events of the general election was the return of Macaulay to the House of Commons. Edinburgh elected him in a manner particularly

  complimentary to him and honorable to herself. He was elected without his solicitation, without his putting himself forward as a candidate, without his making any profession of faith or doing any of the things that the most independent candidate was then expected to do, and in fact in spite of his positive declaration that he would do nothing to court election. He had for some years been absent from Parliament. Some difference had arisen between him and certain

  of his constituents on the subject of the Manuth Grant. Complaints too had been made by Edinburgh constituents of Macaulay's lack of attention to local interests and of the intellectual score in which they believed he exhibited in his intercourse with many of those who had supported him. The result of this was that at the general election of 1847 Macaulay was left third on the poll at Edinburgh. He felt this deeply. He might have easily found some other constituency but his

  wounded pride hastened a resolution he had for some time been forming to retire to a life of private literary labor. He therefore remained out of Parliament. In 1852 the movement of Edinburgh toward him was entirely spontaneous. Edinburgh was anxious to atone for the error of which she had been guilty. Macaulay would go no farther than to say that if Edinburgh spontaneously elected him he would deem it a very high honor and should not feel myself justified in refusing to accept a

  public trust offered to me in a manner so honorable and so peculiar. But he would not do anything whatever to court favor. He did not want to be elected to Parliament he said. He was very happy in his retirement. Edinburgh elected him on those terms. He was not long allowed by his health to serve her but so long as he remained in the House of Commons it was as member for Edinburgh. On September 14th 1852 the Duke of Wellington died. His end was singularly peaceful. He fell quietly

  asleep about a quarter past three in the afternoon in Walmer Castle and he did not wake anymore. He was a very old man in his 84th year and his death had naturally been looked for as an event certain to come soon. Yet when it did come thus naturally and peacefully it created a profound public emotion. No other man in our time ever held the position in England which the Duke of Wellington had occupied for more than a whole generation. The place he had won for himself was absolutely

  unique. His great deeds belonged to a past time. He was hardly anything of a statesman. He knew little and cared less about what may be called statecraft and as an administrator he had made many mistakes. But the trust which the nation had in him as a counselor was absolutely unlimited. It never entered into the mind of anyone to suppose that the Duke of Wellington was actuated in any step he took or advice he gave by any feeling but a desire for the good of the state.

  His loyalty to the sovereign had something antique and touching in it. There was a blending of personal affection with a devotion of a state servant which lent a certain romantic dignity to the demeanor and character of one who otherwise had but little of the poetical or the sentimental in his nature. In the business of politics he had but one prevailing anxiety and that was that the Queen's government should be satisfactorily carried on. He gave up again and again his own most

  cherished convictions, most ingrained prejudices, in order that he might not stand in the way of the Queen's government and the proper carrying on of it. This simple fidelity, sometimes rather whimsically displayed, stood him often instead of an exalted statesmanship and enabled him to extricate the government and the nation from difficulties in which a political insight far more keen than his might have failed to prove a guide. It was for this true and tried, this simple

  and unswerving devotion to the national good that the people of England admired and revered him. He had not what would be called a lovable temperament and yet the nation loved him. He was cold and brusque in manner and seemed in general to have hardly a gleam of the emotional in him. This was not because he lacked emotions. On the contrary, his affections and his friendships were warm and enduring and even in public he had more than once given way to outbursts of emotion

  such as a stranger would never have expected from one of that cold and rigid demeanor. When Sir Robert Peel died, Wellington spoke of him in the House of Lords with the tears which he did not even try to control running down his cheeks. But in his ordinary bearing there was little of the manner that makes a man a popular idol. He was not brilliant or dashing or emotional or graceful. He was dry, cold, self-contained. Yet the people loved him and trusted in him,

  loved him perhaps especially because they so trusted in him. No face and figure were better known at one time to the population of London than those of the Duke of Wellington. Of late, his form had grown stooped and he bent over his horse as he rode in the park or down Whitehall like one who could hardly keep himself in the saddle. Yet he mounted his horse to the last and indeed could keep in the saddle after he had ceased to be able to sit erect in an armchair.

  He sometimes rode in a curious little cab of his own devising but his favorite way of going about London was on the back of his horse. He was called par excellence, the Duke. The London working man who looked up as he went to or from his work and caught sight of the bowed figure on the horse took off his hat and told some passerby, there goes the Duke. His victories belonged to the past. They were but traditions even to middle-aged men in the Duke's later years but he was regarded

  still as an embodiment of the national heroism and success a modern St. George in a tightly buttoned frock coat and white trousers. End of section 14. you

• 15 - Ch. 23: Birth of the Empire. Death of 'The Duke', Pt. 3

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  CHAPTER XXIII. BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE, DEATH OF THE DUKE, PART 3. Wellington belonged so much to the past at the time of his death that it seems hardly in place here to say anything about his character as a soldier. But it may be remarked that his success was due in great measure to a sort of inspired common sense which rose to something like genius. He had in the highest conceivable degree the art of winning victories. In war,

  as in statesmanship, he had one characteristic which is said to have been the special gift of Julius Caesar, and for the lack of which, Caesar's greatest modern rival in the art of conquest, the first Napoleon lost all or nearly all that he had won. Wellington not only understood what could be done, but also what could not be done. The wild schemes of almost universal rule which set Napoleon astray and led him to his destruction would have appeared to the strong common sense of

  the Duke of Wellington as impossible and absurd as they would have looked to the lofty intelligence of Caesar. It can hardly be questioned that in original genius Napoleon far surpassed the Duke of Wellington. But Wellington always knew exactly what he could do, and Napoleon often confounded his ambitions with his capacities. Wellington provided for everything, looked after everything, never trusted to his star or to chance or to anything but care and preparation and the proper

  application of means to ends. Under almost any conceivable conditions, Wellington, pitted against Napoleon, was the man to win in the end. The very genius of Napoleon would sooner or later have left him open to the unsleeping watchfulness, the almost infallible judgment of Wellington. He was as fortunate as he was deserving. No man could have drunk more deeply of the cup of fame and fortune than Wellington, and he was never for one moment intoxicated by it. After all his long wars

  and his splendid victories, he had some 37 years of peace and glory to enjoy. He held the loftiest position in this country that any man not a sovereign could hold, and he ranked far higher in the estimation of his countrymen than most of their sovereigns have done. The rescued emperors and kings of Europe had showered their honors on him. His fame was as completely secure during his lifetime as if death, by removing him from the possibility of making a mistake, had consecrated

  it. No new war under altered conditions tried the flexibility and the endurance of the military genius, which had defeated in turn all Napoleon's great marshals, as a prelude to the defeat of Napoleon himself. If ever any mortal may be said to have had in life all he could have desired, Wellington was surely that man. He might have found a new contentment in his honors if he really cared much about them, in the reflection that he had done nothing for himself but all for the state. He

  did not love war. He had no inclination whatever for it. When Lord John Russell visited Napoleon in Alba, Napoleon asked him whether he thought the Duke of Wellington would be able to live thenceforward without the excitement of war. It was probably in Napoleon's mind that the English soldier would be constantly entangling his country in foreign complications for the sake of gratifying his love for the brave squares of war. Lord John Russell endeavored to impress upon the great fallen

  emperor that the Duke of Wellington would as a matter of course lapse into the place of a simple citizen and would look with no manner of regret to the stormy days of battle. Napoleon seems to have listened with a sort of melancholy incredulity and only observed once or twice that it was a splendid game, war. To Wellington it was no splendid game or game of any sort. It was a stern duty to be done for his sovereign and his country and to be got through as quickly as possible. The difference

  between the two men cannot be better illustrated. It is impossible to compare two such men. There is hardly any common basis of comparison. To say which is the greater, one must first make up his mind as to whether his standard of greatness is genius or duty. Napoleon has made a far deeper impression on history. If that be superior greatness it would be scarcely possible for any national partiality to claim an equal place for Wellington. But Englishmen may be content with

  the reflection that their hero saved his country and that Napoleon nearly ruined his. We write this without the slightest inclination to sanction what may be called the British Philistine view of the character of Napoleon. Up to a certain period of his career it seems to us deserving of almost unmingled admiration, just as his country in her earlier disputes with the other European powers seems to have been almost entirely in the right. But his success and his glory were

  too strong for Napoleon. He fell for the very want of that simple steadfast devotion to duty which inspired Wellington always and which made him seem dignified and great even in statesmanship for which he was unfitted and even when in statesmanship he was acting in a manner that would have made another man seem ridiculous rather than respectable. Wellington more newly resembled Washington than Napoleon. He was a much greater soldier than Washington but he was not on

  the whole so great a man. It is fairly to be said for Wellington that the proportions of his personal greatness seem to grow rather than to dwindle as he and his events are removed from us in time. The Battle of Waterloo does not indeed stand as one of its historians has described it among the decisive battles of the world. It was fought to keep the Bonaparts off the throne of France and in 25 years after Waterloo. While the victor of Waterloo is yet living another Bonapart

  was preparing to mount that throne. It was the climax of a national policy which however justifiable and inevitable it may have become in the end would hardly now be justified as to its origin by one intelligent Englishman out of 20. The present age is not therefore likely to become rhapsodical over Wellington as our forefathers might have been merely because he defeated the French and crushed Napoleon. Yet it is impossible for the coolest mind to study the career of Wellington without

  feeling a constant glow of admiration for that singular course of simple antique devotion to duty. His was truly the spirit in which a great nation must desire to be served. The nation was not ungrateful. It heaped honors on Wellington. It would have heaped more on him if it knew how. It gave him its almost unqualified admiration. On his death it tried to give him such a public funeral as Hero never had. The pageant was indeed a splendid and a gorgeous exhibition. It was not

  perhaps very well suited to the temperament and habits of the cold and simple hero to whose honor it was got up. Nor perhaps are gorgeous pageants exactly the sort of performance in which as a nation England particularly excels. But in the vast silent respectful crowd that thronged the London streets, a crowd such as no other city in the world could show, there was better evidence than pageantry or ceremonial could supply of the esteem in which the living generation held the

  hero of the last. The name of Wellington had long ceased to represent any hostility of nation to nation. The crowds who filled the streets of London that day had no thought of the kind of sentiment which used to fill the breasts of their fathers when France and Napoleon were named. They honored Wellington only as one who had always served his country, as the soldier of England, and not as the invader of France or even as the conqueror of Napoleon. The homage to his memory

  was as pure of selfish passion as his own career. The new Parliament was called together in November. It brought into public life in England a man who afterwards made some mark in our politics and whose intellect and debating power seemed at one time to promise him a position inferior to that of hardly anyone in the House of Commons. This was Mr. Robert Lowe, who had returned from one of the Australian colonies to enter political life in his native country. Mr. Lowe was a scholar of a

  highly cultured order and despite some serious defects of delivery, he proved to be a debater of the very highest class, especially gifted with the weapons of sarcasm, scorn, and invective. He was a liberal in the intellectual sense. He was opposed to all restraints on education and on the progress of a career, but he had a detestation for democratic doctrines which almost amounted to a mania. He despised with the whole force of a temperament, very favorable to

  intellectual scorn, alike the rural Tory and the town radical. His opinions were generally rather negative than positive. He did not seem to have any very positive opinions of any kind where politics were concerned. He was governed by a detestation of abstractions and sentimentalities and views of all sorts. An intellectual don Juan of the political world, he believed with Molière's hero that two and two make four and that four and four make eight and he was impatient of any theory

  which would commend itself to the mind on less rigorous evidence. If contempt for the intellectual weaknesses of an opposing party or doctrine could have made a great politician, Mr. Lowe would have won that name. In politics, however, criticism is not enough. One must be able to originate, to mold the will of others, to compromise, to lead while seeming to follow, often to follow while seeming to lead. Of gifts like these, Mr. Lowe had no share. He never became more than a

  great parliamentary critic of the acrid and vitriolic style. Almost immediately on the assembling of the new parliament, Mr. Villers brought forward a resolution not merely pledging the House of Commons to a free trade policy but pouring out a sort of censure on all who had hitherto failed to recognize its worth. This step was thought necessary and was indeed made necessary by the errors of which Lord Darby had been guilty and the preposterous

  vaporings of some of his less responsible followers. If the resolution had been passed, the government must have resigned. They were willing enough now to agree on any resolution declaring that free trade was the established policy of the country but they could not accept the triumphant eulogium which the resolution proposed to offer to the commercial policy of the years when they were the uncompromising enemies of that very policy. They could submit

  to the punishment imposed on them but they did not like this public kissing of the rod and doing penance. Lord Palmerston, who even up to that time regarded his ultimate acceptance of office under Lord Darby as a not impossible event, if once the Darby party could shake themselves quite free of protection, devised an amendment which afforded them the means of a more or less honorable retreat. This resolution pledged the House to the policy of unrestricted competition,

  firmly maintained and prudently extended, but recorded no panegyric of the legislation of 1846 and consequent condemnation of those who opposed that legislation. The amendment was accepted by all but the small band of irreconcilable protectionists. 468 voted for it, only 53 against it, and the moan of protection was made. All that long chapter of English legislation was closed. Various commercial and other interests did indeed afterwards demurred to the application

  of the principle of unrestricted competition to their peculiar concerns, but they did not plead for protection. They only contended that the protection they sought for was not in fact protection at all, but free trade under peculiar circumstances. The straightforward doctrine of protection perished of the debate of November 1852. Still the government only existed on sufferance. Their tenure of office was somewhat rudely compared to that of a bailiff put into

  possession of certain premises, who was liable to be sent away at any moment when the two parties concerned in the litigation choose to come to terms. There was a general expectation that the moment Mr. Disraeli came to set out a genuine financial scheme, the fate of the government would be decided. So the event proved. Mr. Disraeli made a financial statement which showed remarkable capacity for dealing with figures. It was subjected to a far more serious test than his first budget,

  for that was necessarily a mere stopgap or makeshift. This was a real budget, altering and reconstructing the financial system and the taxation of the country. The skill with which the chancellor of the Exchequer explained his measures and tossed his figures about convinced many even of his strongest opponents that he had the capacity to make a good budget if he only were allowed to do so by the conditions of his party's existence. But his cabinet had come into office

  under special obligations to the country party and the farmers. They could not avoid making some experiment in the way of special legislation for the farmers. They had at the very least to put on an appearance of doing something for them. The chancellor of the Exchequer might be supposed to be in the position of the soldier in Hogarth's march to Finchley between the rival claimants on his attention. He has promised and vowed to the one, but he knows that the slightest mark of

  civility he offers to her will be fiercely resented by the other. When Mr. Disraeli undertook to favor the country interest and the farmers, he must have known only too well that he was setting all the free traders and pea lights against him, and he knew at the same time that if he neglected the country party, he was cutting the ground from beneath his feet. The principle of his budget was the reduction of the malt duties and the increase of the inhabited house duty. Some

  manipulations of the income tax were to be introduced chiefly with a view to lighten the impost on farmers' profits, and there was to be a modest reduction of the tea duty. The two points that stood out clear and prominent before the House of Commons were the reduction of the malt duty and the increase of the duty on inhabited houses. The reduction of the malt duty, as Mr. Lowe said in his pungent criticism, was the keystone of the budget. That reduction created

  a deficit which the inhabited house duty had to be doubled in order to supply. The scheme was a complete failure. The farmers did not care much about the concession which had been made in their favor. Those who had to pay for it in double taxation were bitterly indignant. Mr. Disraeli had exasperated the one claimant and not greatly pleased the other. The government soon saw how things were likely to go. The Chancellor of the Exchequer began to see that he had only a desperate

  fight to make. The Whigs, the Free Traders, the P-Lites, and such independent members or unattached members as Mr. Lowe and Mr. Bernal Osborne all fell on him. It became a combat à outrance. It well suited Mr. Disraeli's peculiar temperament. During the whole of his parliamentary career, he has never fought so well as when he has been free to indulge to the full the courage of despair. End of section 15

• 16 - Ch. 24: Mr. Gladstone

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  Section 16 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 24. Mr. Gladston.

  The debate was one of the finest of its kind ever heard in Parliament during our time. The excitement on both sides was intense. The rivalry was hot and eager. Mr. Disraeli was animated by all the power of desperation and was evidently in a mood neither to give nor to take quarter. He assailed Sir Charles Wood, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a vehemence and even a virulence,

  which certainly added much to the piquancy and interest of the discussion so far as listeners were concerned, but which more than once went to the very verge of the limits of parliamentary decorum. It was in the course of this speech that Disraeli, leaning across the table and directing his words full at Sir Charles Wood, declared, I care not to be the right honorable gentleman's critic, but if he has learned his business, he has yet to learn that petulance is not sarcasm and that insolence is not invective.

  The House had not heard the concluding word of Disraeli's bitter and impassioned speech when at two o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladston leaped to his feet to answer him. Then began that long parliamentary duel which only knew a truce when, at the close of the session of 1876, Mr. Disraeli crossed the threshold of the House of Commons for the last time, thenceforward to take his place among the peers as Lord Beckinsfield.

  During all the intervening four and twenty years, these two men were rivals in power and in parliamentary debate as much as ever Pitt and Fox had been. Their opposition, like that of Pitt and Fox, was one of temperament and character, as well as of genius, position, and political opinion. The rivalry of this first heated and eventful night was a splendid display.

  Those who had thought it impossible that any impression could be made upon the House after the speech of Mr. Disraeli had to acknowledge that a yet greater impression was produced by the unprepared reply of Mr. Gladston. The House divided about four o'clock in the morning and the government were left in a minority of nineteen. Mr. Disraeli took the defeat with his characteristic composure.

  The morning was cold and wet. It will be an unpleasant day for going to Osborne, he quietly remarked to a friend as they went down Westminster Hall together and looked out into the dreary streets. That day at Osborne, the resignation of the Ministry was formally placed in the hands of the Queen. In a few days after, the Coalition Ministry was formed.

  Lord Aberdeen was Prime Minister, Lord John Russell took the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston became Home Secretary. Mr. Gladston was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The public were a good deal surprised that Lord Palmerston had taken such a place as that of Home Secretary. His name had been identified with the foreign policy of England

  and it was not supposed that he felt the slightest interest in the ordinary business of the Home Department. Palmerston himself explained in a letter to his brother that the Home Office was his own choice. He was not anxious to join the Ministry at all and if he had to make one he preferred that he should have some office in which he had personally no traditions. I had long settled in my own mind, he said, that I would not go back to the Foreign Office

  and that if I ever took any office it would be the Home. It does not do for a man to pass his whole life in one department and the Home Office deals with the concerns of the country internally and brings one in contact with one's fellow countrymen, besides which it gives one more influence in regard to the militia and the defenses of the country.

  Lord Palmerston in fact announces that he has undertaken the business of the Home Office for the same reason as that given by Fritz in the Grand Duchesse for becoming a schoolmaster. Can you teach? asks the Grand Duchesse. No, is the answer. C'est pour apprendre. I go to learn. The reader may well suspect, however, that it was not only with a view of learning the business of the internal administration and becoming acquainted with his fellow countrymen that Palmerston preferred the Home Office.

  He would not consent to be Foreign Secretary on any terms but his own and these terms were then out of the question. The principal interest felt in the new government was not however centered in Lord Palmerston. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer was the man upon whom the eyes of curiosity and interest were chiefly turned. Mr. Gladston was still a young man in the parliamentary sense at least. He was but 43.

  His career had been in every way remarkable. He had entered public life at a very early age. He had been, to quote the words of Macaulay, a distinguished debater in the House of Commons ever since he was one and twenty. Criticizing his book, The State, in its relations with the Church, which was published in 1838, Macaulay speaks of Gladston as but whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor.

  The time was not so far away when the stern and unbending Tories would regard Gladston as the greatest hope of their most bitter enemies. Lord Macaulay goes on to overwhelm the views expressed by Mr. Gladston as to the relations between State and Church with a weight of argument and gorgeousness of illustration that now seems to have been hardly called for. One of the doctrines of the young statesman, which Macaulay confutes with a special warmth,

  is the principle which, as he states it, would give the Irish a Protestant Church whether they like it or not. The author of the book which contained this doctrine was the author of the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland. Mr. Gladston was by birth a Lancashire man. It is not unworthy of notice that Lancashire gave to the parliaments of recent times their three greatest orators, Mr. Gladston, Mr. Bright, and the late Lord Darby.

  Mr. Gladston was born in Liverpool and was the son of Sir John Gladston, a Scotchman, who founded a great house in the seaport of the Mersey. He entered parliament when very young as a protege of the Newcastle family, and he soon faithfully attached himself to Sir Robert Peel. His knowledge of finance, his thorough appreciation of the various needs of a nation's commerce and business,

  his middle-class origin, all brought him into natural affinity with his great leader. He became a free trader with Peel. He was not in the House of Commons, oddly enough, during the session when the free trade battle was fought and won. It has already been explained in this history that as he had changed his opinions with his leader, he felt a reluctance to ask the support of the Newcastle family for the borough,

  which by virtue of their influence he had previously represented. But except for that short interval, his whole career may be pronounced one long parliamentary success. He was from the very first recognized as a brilliant debater, as one who promised to be an orator. But it was not until after the death of Sir Robert Peel that he proved himself the master of parliamentary eloquence we all now know him to be.

  It was he who pronounced what may be called the funeral oration upon Peel in the House of Commons, but the speech, although undoubtedly inspired by the truest and the deepest feelings, does not seem by any means equal to some of his more recent efforts. There is an appearance of elaboration about it which goes far to Moritz effect. Perhaps the first really great speech made by Gladstone was the reply to Disraeli

  on the memorable December morning which we have just described. That speech put him in the very foremost rank of English orators. Then perhaps he first showed to the full the one great quality in which as a parliamentary orator he has never had a rival in our time, the readiness which seems to require no preparation. But can marshal all its arguments as if by instinct at a given moment

  and the fluency which can pour out the most eloquent language as freely as though it were but the breath of the nostrils. When shortly after the formation of the coalition ministry, Mr. Gladstone delivered his first budget, it was regarded as a positive curiosity of financial exposition.

  It was a performance that belonged to the Department of the Fine Arts. The speech occupied several hours and assuredly no listener wished it the shorter by a single sentence. Pitt, we read, had the same art of making a budget speech a fascinating discourse. But in our time no minister has had this gift except Mr. Gladstone. Each time that he essayed the same task subsequently, he accomplished just the same success.

  Mr. Gladstone's first oratorical qualification was his exquisite voice. Such a voice would make commonplace seem interesting and lend something of a fascination to dullness itself. It was singularly pure, clear, resonant and sweet. The orator never seemed to use the slightest effort or strain in filling any hall

  and reaching the ear of the farthest among the audience. It was not a loud voice or of great volume but strong, vibrating and silvery. The words were always aided by energetic action and by the deep gleaming eyes of the orator. Somebody once said that Gladstone was the only man in the house who could talk in italics. The saying was odd but was nevertheless appropriate and expressive.

  Gladstone could, by the slightest modulation of his voice, give all the emphasis of italics, of small print, of large print or any other effect he might desire to his spoken words. It is not to be denied that his wonderful gift of words sometimes let him astray. It was often such a fluency as that of a torrent on which the orator was carried away.

  Gladstone had to pay for his fluency by being too fluent. He could seldom resist the temptation to shower too many words on his subject and his hearers. Sometimes he involved his sentence in parenthesis within parenthesis until the ordinary listener began to think explication in impossibility. But the orator never failed to unravel all the entanglements

  and to bring the passage out to a clear and legitimate conclusion. There was never any halt or incoherency, nor did the joints of the sentence fail to fit together in the right way. Harley once described a famous speech as a circumgiration of incoherent words. This description certainly could not be applied even to Mr. Gladstone's most involved passages,

  but if some of those were described as a circumgiration of coherent words, the phrase might be considered germane to the matter. His style was commonly too redundant. It seemed as if it belonged to a certain school of exuberant Italian rhetoric, yet it was hardly to be called florid.

  Gladstone indulged in few flowers of rhetoric, and his great gift was not imagination. His fault was simply the habitual use of too many words. This defect was indeed a characteristic of the P. Light School of Eloquence. Mr. Gladstone retained some of the defects of the school in which he had been trained, even after he had come to surpass its greatest master.

  Often, however, this superb exuberant rush of words added indescribable strength to the eloquence of the speaker. In passages of indignant remonstrance or denunciation, when word followed word and stroke came down upon stroke with a wealth of resource that seemed inexhaustible,

  the very fluency and variety of the speaker overwhelmed his audience. Interruption only gave him a new stimulus and appeared to supply him with fresh resources of argument and illustration. His retorts leaped to his lips. His eye caught sometimes even the mere gesture that indicated dissent or question,

  and perhaps some unlucky opponent who was only thinking of what might be said in opposition to the great orator, found himself suddenly dragged into the conflict and overwhelmed with a torrent of remonstrance, argument, and scornful words. Gladstone had not much humor of the playful kind,

  but he had a certain force of sarcastic and scornful rhetoric. He was always terribly in earnest. Whether the subject were great or small, he threw his whole soul into it. Once in addressing a schoolboy gathering, he told his young listeners that if a boy ran,

  he ought always to run as fast as he could. If he jumped, he ought always to jump as far as he could. He illustrated his maxim in his own career. He had no idea, apparently, of running or jumping in such measure as happened to please the fancy of the moment.

  He always exercised his splendid powers to the uttermost strain. A distinguished critic once pronounced Mr. Gladstone to be the greatest parliamentary orator of our time on the ground that he made by far the greatest number of fine speeches while admitting that two or three speeches had been made by other men of the day,

  which might rank higher than any of his. This is, however, a principle of criticism which posterity never sanctions. The greatest speech, the greatest poem, give the author the highest place, though the effort were but single. Shakespeare would rank beyond Massinger just as he does now

  had he written only The Tempest. We cannot say how many novels as good as Gilles Blas would make Lesage the equal of Cervantes. On this point, fame is inexorable. We are not therefore inclined to call Mr. Gladstone

  the greatest English orator of our time when we remember some of the finest speeches of Mr. Bright. But did we regard parliamentary speaking as a mere instrument of parliamentary business and debate, then unquestionably Mr. Gladstone is not only the greatest,

  but by far the greatest English orator of our time, for he had a richer combination of gifts than any other man we can remember, and he could use them oftenest with effect. He was like a racer which cannot indeed always go faster than every rival, but can win more races in the year than any other horse.

  Mr. Gladstone could get up at any moment, and no matter how many times a night, in the House of Commons, and be argumentative or indignant, pour out a stream of impassioned eloquence or a shower of figures, just as the exigency of the debate in the moment required.

  He was not, of course, always equal, but he was always eloquent and effective. He seemed as if he could not be anything but eloquent. Perhaps judged in this way he never had an equal in the English Parliament. Neither Pitt nor Fox ever made so many speeches,

  combining so many great qualities. Chatham was a great actor rather than a great orator. Burke was the greatest political essayist who ever addressed the House of Commons. Penning did not often rise above the level of burnished rhetorical commonplace.

  Macaulay, who during his time drew the most crowded houses of any speaker, not even accepting Peel, was not an orator in the true sense. Probably no one, past or present, had in combination so many gifts of voice, manner, fluency and argument, style, reason and passion as Mr. Gladstone.

  The House of Commons was his ground. There he was himself. There he was always seen to the best advantage. As a rule, he was not so successful on the platform. His turn of mind did not fit him well for the work of addressing great public meetings.

  He loved to look too carefully at every side of a question and did not always go so quickly to the heart of it as would suit great popular audiences. The principal defect of his mind was probably a lack of simplicity, a tendency to over-refining and super-subtle argument.

  Not perhaps unnaturally, however, when he did, during some of the later passages of his career, lay himself out for the work of addressing popular audiences, he threw away all discrimination and gave loose to the full force with which, under the excitement of great pressure,

  he was wont to rush at a principal. There seemed a certain lack of balance in his mind, a want of the exact poise of all his faculties. Either he must refine too much or he did not refine at all. Thus he became accused and with some reason of over-refining

  and all but quibbling in some of his parliamentary arguments, of looking at all sides of a question so carefully that it was too long in doubt whether he was ever going to form any opinion of his own, and he was sometimes accused with equal justice of pleading one side of a political cause

  before great meetings of his countrymen with all the passionate blindness of a partisan. The accusations might seem self-contradictory if we did not remember that they will apply, and with great force and justice, to Burke.

  Burke cut blocks with a razor and went on refining to an impatient House of Commons only eager for its dinner, and the same Burke threw himself into antagonism to the French Revolution as if he were the wildest of partisans, as if the question had but one side

  and only fools or villains could possibly say it had any other. Mr. Gladstone grew slowly into liberal convictions. At the time when he joined the coalition ministry, he was still regarded as one who had scarcely left the camp of Toryism and who had only joined that ministry because it was a coalition.

  Years after, he was applied to by the late Lord Derby to join a ministry formed by him, and it was not supposed that there was anything unreasonable in the proposition. The first impulse toward liberal principles was given to his mind probably by his change with his leader from protection to free trade.

  When a man like Gladstone saw that his traditional principles and those of his party had broken down in any one direction, it was but natural that he should begin to question their endurance in other directions. The whole fabric of belief was built up together. Gladstone's was a mind of that order that sees a principle in everything

  and must, to adopt the phrase of a great preacher, make the plowing as much a part of religious duty as the praying. The interests of religion seemed to him bound up with the creed of conservatism. The principles of protection must probably at one time have seemed a part of the whole creed of which one article was as sacred as another.

  His intellect and his principles, however, found themselves compelled to follow the guidance of his leader in the matter of free trade, and when inquiry thus began, it was not very likely soon to stop. He must have seen how much the working of such a principle as that of protection became a class interest in England,

  and how impossible it would have been for it to continue long in existence under an extended and a popular suffrage. In other countries, the fallacy of protection did not show itself so glaringly in the eyes of the poorer classes. For in other countries, it was not the staple food of the population

  that became the principal object of a protective duty. But in England, the bread on which the poorest had to live was made to pay a tax for the benefit of landlords and farmers. As long as one believed this to be a necessary condition of a great unquestionable creed,

  it was easy for a young statesman to reconcile himself to it. It might bear cruelly on individuals or even multitudes, but so would the law of gravitation, as Mill has remarked, bear harshly on the best of men when it dashed him down from a height and broke his bones.

  It would be idle to question the existence of the law on that account or to disbelieve the whole teaching of the physical science which explains its movements. But when Mr. Gladstead came to be convinced that there was no such law as the protection principle at all, that it was a mere sham,

  that to believe in it was to be guilty of an economic heresy, that it was impossible for him not to begin questioning the genuineness of the whole system of political thought of which it formed but a part. Perhaps, too, he was impelled toward liberal principles at home by seeing what the effects of opposite doctrines had been abroad.

  He rendered memorable service to the liberal cause of Europe by his eloquent protest against the brutal treatment of Baron Poedio and other liberals of Naples who were imprisoned by the Neapolitan king, a protest which Garibaldi declared to have sounded the first trumpet call of Italian liberty.

  In rendering service to liberalism and to Europe, he rendered service also to his own intelligence. He helped to set free his own spirit as well as the Neapolitan people. We find him as his career goes on dropping the traditions of his youth, always rising higher in liberalism and not going back.

  One of the foremost of his compiers and his only actual rival in popular eloquence eulogized him as always struggling toward the light. The common taunts addressed to public men who have changed their opinions were hardly ever applied to him. Even his enemies felt that the one idea always inspired him,

  a conscientious anxiety to do the right thing. None accused him of being one of the politicians who mistake, as Victor Hugo says, a weathercock for a flag, with many qualities which seemed hardly suited to a practical politician, with a sensitive and eager temper like that of canning

  and a turn for a theological argument that is a rule Englishmen do not love in a statesman, with an impetuosity that often carried him far astray, and with a deficiency of those genial social qualities that go so far to make a public success in England,

  Mr. Gladstone maintained through the whole of his career a reputation against which there was hardly a serious capital. The worst thing that was said of him was that he was too impulsive and that his intelligence was too restless. He was an essayist, a critic, a Homeric scholar,

  a dilettante in art, music, and old China. He was a theological controversialist. He was a political economist, a financier, a practical administrator whose gift of mastering details has hardly ever been equalled.

  He was a statesman and an orator. No man could attempt so many things and not occasionally make himself the subject of a sneer. The intense gravity and earnestness of Gladstone's mind always, however, saved him from the special penalty of such versatility.

  No satirist described him as not one, but all mankind's epitome. As yet, however, he is only the young statesman who was the other day the hope of the more solemn and solid conservatives and in whom they have not even yet entirely ceased to put some faith. The coalition ministry was so formed that it was not supposed

  a man necessarily nailed his colors to any mast when he joined it. More than one of Gladstone's earliest friends and political associates had a part in it. The ministry might undoubtedly be called an administration of all the talents.

  Except the late Lord Darby and Mr. Disraeli, it included almost every man of real ability who belonged to either of the two great parties of the state. The Manchester School had, of course, no place there, but they were not likely just yet to be recognized as constituting

  one of the elements out of which even a coalition ministry might be composed. End of Section 16.

• 17 - Ch. 25: The Eastern Question, Pt. 1

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  Section 17 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the Public Domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 25. The Eastern Question, Part 1. For forty years England had been at peace. There had indeed been little wars here and there with some of her Asiatic and African neighbors, and once or twice, as in the instance of the quarrel

  between Turkey and Egypt, she had been menaced for a moment with the dispute of a more formidable kind and nearer home. But the trouble had passed away, and from Waterloo downward England had known no real war. The new generation was growing up in a kind of happy belief that wars were things of the past for us, out of fashion, belonging to a ruder and less rational society, like the wearing of armor and the carrying of weapons in the civil streets. It is not surprising, if it seemed

  possible to many, that the England of the future might regard the instruments and the ways of war with the same curious wonder as that which Virgil assumes would one day fill the minds of the rustic laborers whose plows turned up on some field of ancient battle the rusted swords and battered forgotten warriors. During all the convulsions of the continent, England had remained undisturbed. When bloody revolutions were storming through other capitals, London was smiling over the

  dispersion of the Chartists by a few special constables. When the armies of Austria, of Russia, of France, of Sardinia were scattered over vast and various continental battlegrounds, our troops were passing in peaceful pageantry a review before the well-pleased eyes of their sovereign in some stately royal park. A new school, as well as a new generation, had sprung up. This school, full of faith but full of practical shrewd logic as well, was teaching with great

  eloquence and effect that the practice of settling international controversy by the sword was costly, barbarous, and blundering as well as wicked. The practice of the duel in England had utterly gone out. Battle was forever out of fashion as a means of settling private controversy in England. Why then should it be unreasonable to believe that the like practice among nations might soon become equally obsolete? Such certainty was the faith of a great many intelligent persons at the

  time when the coalition ministry was formed. The majority tacitly acquiesced in the belief without thinking much about it. They had never in their time seen England engaged in European war, and it was natural to assume that what they had never seen they were never likely to see. Anyone who retraces attentively the history of English public opinion at that time will easily find evidence enough of a commonly accepted understanding that England had done with great

  wars. Even then perhaps a shrewd observer might have been inclined to conjecture that by the very force of reaction a change would soon set in. Man, said Lord Palmerston, is by nature a fighting and quarreling animal. This was one of those smart saucy generalizations characteristic of its author and which used to provoke many graver and more philosophic persons, but which nevertheless often got at the heart of a question in a rough and ready sort of way. In the season of which we

  are now speaking it was not however the common belief that man was by nature a fighting and a quarreling animal, at least in England. Bad government, the arbitrary power of an aristocracy, the necessity of finding occupation for a standing army, the ambitions of princes, the misguiding lessons of romance and poetry, these and other influences had converted man into an instrument of war. Leave him to his own impulses, his own nature, his own ideas of self

  interest, and the better teachings of wiser guides, and he is sure to remain in the paths of peace. Such was the common belief of the year or two after the great exhibition, the belief fervently preached by a few and accepted without contradiction by the majority as most common beliefs are, the belief floating in the air of the time and becoming part of the atmosphere in which the generation was brought up. Suddenly all this happy quiet faith was disturbed and the long

  peace which the hero of Tennyson's Mod says he thought no peace was over and done. The hero of Mod had, it will be observed, the advantage of explaining his convictions after the war had broken out. The name was indeed legion of those who under the same conditions discovered like him that they had never relished the long long peace or believed in it much as a peace at all. The eastern question it was that disturbed the dream of peace. The use of such phrases as the eastern

  question, borrowed chiefly from the political vocabulary of France, is not in general to be commended, but we can in this instance find no more ready and convenient way of expressing clearly and precisely the meaning of the crisis which had arisen in Europe. It was strictly the eastern question, the question of what to do with the east of Europe. It was certain that things could not remain as they then were and nothing else was certain. The Ottoman power had been settled

  during many centuries in the southeast of Europe. It had come in there as a conqueror and had remained there only as a conqueror occupies the ground his tents are covering. The Turk had many of the strong qualities and even the virtues of a great warlike conqueror but he had no capacity or care for the arts of peace. He never thought of assimilating himself to those whom he had conquered or them to him. He disdained to learn anything from them. He did not care whether or no they learned anything

  from him. It has been well remarked that of all the races who conquered Greeks the Turks alone learned nothing from their gifted captives. Captive Greece conquered all the world except the Turks. They defied her. She could not teach them letters or arts commerce or science. The Turks were not as a rule oppressive to the races that lived under them. They were not habitual persecutors of the faiths they deemed heretical. In this respect they often contrasted favorably with states that ought

  to have been able to show them a better example. In truth the Turk for the most part was disposed to look with disdainful composure on what he considered the religious follies of the heretical races who did not believe in the prophet. They were objects of his scornful pity rather than of his anger. Every now and then indeed some sudden fears outburst the fanatical cruelty towards some of the subject sects horrified Europe and reminded her that the conqueror who had settled herself

  down in her south eastern corner was still a barbarian who had no right or place in civilized life. But as a rule the Turk did not care enough about the races he ruled over to fuel the impulses of the perverted fanaticism which would strive to scourge men into the faith itself believes needful to salvation. At one time there can be little doubt that all the powers of civilized Europe would gladly have seen the Turk driven out of our continent but the Turk was powerful

  for a long series of generations and it seemed for a while rather a question whether he would not send the Europeans out of their own grounds. He was for centuries the great terror the nightmare of western Europe. When he began to decay and when his aggressive strength was practically all gone it might have been thought that the western powers would then have managed somehow to get rid of him. But in the meantime the condition of Europe had greatly changed. No one not actually

  subject to the Turk was afraid of him anymore and other states had arisen strong for aggression. The uncertainties of these states as to the intentions of their neighbors and each other proved a better bulwark for the Turks than any warlike strength of their own could any longer have furnished. The growth of the great Russian empire was of itself enough to change the whole conditions of the problem. Nothing in our times has been more remarkable than the sudden growth

  of Russia. The rise of the United States is not so wonderful for the men who made the United States were civilized men, men of our own race who might be expected to make a way for themselves anywhere and who were moreover put by destiny in possession of a vast and splendid continent having all variety of climate and a limitless productiveness and where they had no neighbors or rivals to molest them. But Russia was peopled by a race who even down to our own times remained

  in many respects little better than semi-barbarous and she had enemies and obstacles on all sides. A few generations ago Russia was literally an inland state. She was shut up in the heart of Eastern Europe as if in a prison. The genius, the craft and the audacity of Peter the Great first broke the narrow bounds set to Russia of his day and extended her frontier to the sea. He was followed after a reign or two by a woman of genius, daring, unscrupulousness and profligacy equal to

  his own, the greatest woman probably who ever sat on the throne, Elizabeth of England, not even accepted. Catherine the Second so ably followed the example of Peter the Great that she extended the Russian frontier in directions which he had not had the opportunity to stretch to. By the time her reign was done Russia was one of the great powers of Europe entitled to enter into negotiations on a footing of equality with the proudest states of the continent.

  Unlike Turkey, Russia had always showed a yearning after the latest developments of science and of civilization. There was something even of affectation provoking the smiles of an older and more ingrained culture in the efforts persistently made by Russia to put on the garments of western civilization. Catherine the Great in a special had set the example in this way. She invited Diderot to her court. She adorned her cabinet with a bust of Charles James Fox. While some of the

  personal habits of herself and of those who surrounded her at court would have seemed too rude and coarse for Eskimo, and while she was putting down free opinion at home with the severity worthy only of some medieval Asiatic potentate, she was always talking as though she were a disciple of Rousseau's ideas and a pupil of Chesterfield and Manners. This may have seemed ridiculous enough sometimes, and even in our own days the contrast between the professions and the

  practices of Russia is a familiar subject of satire, but in nations at least the homage which imitation pays often wins for half-conscious hypocrisy as much success as earnest and sincere endeavor. A nation that tries to appear more civilized than it really is ends very often by becoming more civilized than its neighbors ever thought it likely to be. The wars against Napoleon brought Russia into close alliance with England, Austria, Prussia and other European states of old

  and advanced civilization. Russia was, during one part of that great struggle, the leading spirit of the alliance against Napoleon. Her soldiers were seen in Italy and in France as well as in the east of Europe. The semi-savage state became in the eyes of Europe a power charged along with others with the protection of the conservative interests of the continent. She was recognized as a valuable friend and a most formidable enemy. Gradually it became evident that she could be

  aggressive as well as conservative. In the war between Austria and Hungary, Russia intervened and conquered Austria's rebellious Hungarians for her. Russia had already earned the hatred of European liberals by her share in the partition of Poland and her manner of dealing with the Poles. After a while it grew to be a fixed conviction in the mind of the liberalism of Western Europe that Russia was the greatest obstacle then existing in civilization to the spread of popular ideas.

  The Turk was comparatively harmless in that sense. He was well content now, so much as his ancient ambition shrunk and his ancient war spirit gone out, if his strong and restless neighbors would only let him alone. But he was brought at more than one point into a special collision with Russia. Many of the provinces he ruled over in European Turkey were of Slavonian race and of the religion of the Greek Church. They were thus affined by a double tie to the

  Russian people and therefore the manner in which Turkey dealt with those provinces was a constant source of dispute between Russia and her. The Russians are a profoundly religious people. No matter what one may think of their form of faith, no matter how he may sometimes observe that religious profession contrasts with the daily habits of life, yet he cannot but see that the Russian character is steeped in religious faith or fanaticism. To the Russian fanatic there

  was something intolerable in the thought of a Slav population professing the religion of the Orthodox Church being persecuted by the Turks. No Russian ruler could hope to be popular who ventured to show a disregard for the national sentiment on this subject. The Christian populations of Turkey were to the Russian sovereigns what the Germans of Schleswig-Holstein were to the great German princes of later years, an indirect charge to which they could not if they

  would profess any indifference. A German prince in order to be popular had to proclaim himself enthusiastic about the cause of Schleswig-Holstein. A Russian emperor could not be loved if he did not declare his undying resolve to be the protector of the Christian populations of Turkey. Much of this was probably sincere and single-minded on the part of the Russian people and most of the Russian politicians, but the other states of Europe began to suspect that mingled up with benign ideas of

  protecting the Christian populations of Turkey might be a desire to extend the frontier of Russia to the southward in a new direction. Europe had seen by what craft and what audacious enterprises Russia had managed to extend her empire to the sea in other quarters. It began to be commonly believed that her next object of ambition would be the possession of Constantinople and the Bosphorus. It was reported that a will of Peter the Great had left it as an injunction to his successors

  to turn all the efforts of their policy toward that object. The particular document which was believed to be a will of Peter the Great enjoined on all succeeding Russian sovereigns never to relax in the extension of their territory northward on the Baltic and southward on the Black Sea shores and to encroach as far as possible in the direction of Constantinople and the Indies. To work out this, raise wars continually at one time against Turkey, at another against Persia,

  make dockyards on the Black Sea, by degrees make yourselves masters of that sea as well as of the Baltic, hasten the decay of Persia, and penetrate to the Persian Gulf, establish if possible the ancient commerce of the east via Syria, and push on to the Indies which are the antropo of the world. Once there you need not fear the gold of England. We now know that the alleged will was not genuine but there could be little doubt that the policy of Peter and of his great follower Catherine would

  have been in thorough harmony with such a project. It therefore seemed to be the natural business of other European powers to see that the defects of the Ottoman government such as they were should not be made an excuse for helping Russia to secure the objects of her special ambition. One great power above all the rest had an interest in watching over every movement that threatened in any way to interfere with the highway to India, still more with her peaceful and secure possession

  of India itself. That power of course was England. England, Russia, and Turkey were alike in one respect. They were all Asiatic as well as European powers. But Turkey could never come into any manner of collision with the interests of England in the east. The days of turkeys interfering with any great state were long over. Neither Russia nor England nor any other power in Europe or Asia feared her anymore. On the contrary, there seemed something like a natural antagonism between England

  and Russia in the east. The Russians were extending their frontier toward that of our Indian empire. They were showing in that quarter the same mixture of craft and audacity which had stood them in good stead in various parts of Europe. Our officers and diplomatic emissaries reported that they were continually confronted by the evidences of Russian intrigue in Central Asia. We have already seen how much influence the real or supposed intrigues of Russia had in directing our policy in Afghanistan.

  Doubtless there was some exaggeration and some panic in all the tales that were told of Russian intrigue. Sometimes the alarm spread by these tales conjured up a kind of Russian hobgoblin bewildering the minds of public servants and making even statesmen occasionally seem like a frightened children. The question that at present concerns us is not whether all the apprehensions of danger from Russia were just and reasonable, but whether as a matter of fact they did exist.

  They certainly counted for a great deal in determining the attitude of the English people toward both Turkey and Russia. It was in great measure out of these alarms that there grew up among certain statesmen and classes in this country the conviction that the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish empire was part of the national duty of England. It is not too much therefore to say that the states of Europe generally desired the maintenance

  of the Ottoman empire simply because it was believed that while Turkey held her place she was a barrier against vague dangers which it was not worthwhile encountering as long as they could possibly be averted. Sharply defined the condition of things was this Russia by reason of her sympathy of religion or race with Turkey's Christian populations was brought into chronic antagonism with Turkey. England by reason of her Asiatic possessions was kept in just the same state of

  antagonism to Russia. The position of England was trying and difficult. She felt herself compelled by the seeming necessity of her national interests to maintain the existence of a power which on its own merits stood condemned and for which as a power no English statesman ever cared to say a word. The position of Russia had more plausibility about it. It sounded better when described in an official document or a popular appeal. Russia was the religious state which had made it her mission

  and her duty to protect the suffering Christians of Turkey. England let her state her case no matter how carefully or frankly could only affirm that her motive in opposing Russia was the protection of her own interests. One convenient result of this condition of things was that here among English people there was always a wide difference of opinion as to the national policy with regard to Russia and Turkey. Many public men of great ability and influence were

  of opinion that England had no right to uphold the Ottoman power because of any fancy danger that might come to us from its fall. It was the simple duty of England they insisted to be just and fear not. In private life they contended we should all abhor a man who assisted a ruffian to live in a house which he had only got into as a burglar merely because there was the chance that the dispossession of the ruffian might enable his patron's rival in business to become the owner

  of the premises. The duty they insisted of a conscientious man is clear. He must not patronize a ruffian whatever comes. Let what will happen that he must not do. So it was according to their argument with national policy. We are not concerned in discussing this question just now. We are merely acknowledging a fact which came to be of material consequence when the crisis arose that threw England into sudden antagonism with Russia. End of section 17.

• 18 - Ch. 25: The Eastern Question, Pt. 2

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  CHAPTER XXV. THE EASTERN QUESTION, PART II. That crisis came about during the later years of the reign of Emperor Nicholas. He saw its opening, but not the close of even its first volume. Nicholas was a man of remarkable character.

  He had many of the ways of an Asiatic despot. He had a strong ambition, a fierce and fitful temper, a daring but sometimes, too, a vacillating will. He had many magnanimous and noble qualities and moods of sweetness and gentleness. He reminded people sometimes of an Alexander the Great, sometimes of the Arabian Nights

  version of Harun al-Rashid. A certain excitability ran through the temperament of all his house, which in some of its members broke into actual madness, and in others prevailed no farther than to lead to wild outbreaks of temper such as those that often convulsed the frame and distorted the character of a Charles the Bold or a Coeur de Lyon.

  We cannot date the ways and characters of Nicholas's family from the years of Peter the Great. We must, for tolerably obvious reasons, be content to deduce their origin from the reign of Catherine II. The extraordinary and almost unparalleled conditions of the early married life of that

  much-injured, much-injuring woman would easily account for any aberrations of intellect and will among her immediate descendants. Her son was a madman. There was madness or something very like it among the brothers of the Emperor Nicholas. The Emperor at one time was very popular in England.

  He had visited the Queen and he had impressed everyone with his noble presence, his lofty stature, his singular personal beauty, his blended dignity and familiarity of manner. He talked as if he had no higher ambition than to be in friendly alliance with England. When he wished to convey his impression of the highest degree of personal loyalty and honor, he always spoke of the word of an English gentleman.

  There can indeed be little doubt that the Emperor was sincerely anxious to keep on terms of cordial friendship with England, and what is more, had no idea until the very last that the way he was walking was one which England could not consent to tread. His brother and predecessor had been in close alliance with England. His own ideal hero was the Duke of Wellington.

  He had made up his mind that when the division of the spoils of Turkey came about, England and he could best consult for their own interests and the peace of the world by making the appropriation a matter of joint arrangement. We do not often in history find a great despot explaining in advance and in frank words a general policy like that which the Emperor Nicholas cherished with regard to Turkey.

  We are usually left to infer his schemes from his acts. Not uncommonly we have to set his acts and the fair inferences from them against his own positive and repeated assurances. But in the case of the Emperor Nicholas, we are left in no such doubt. He told England exactly what he proposed to do.

  He told the story twice over. More than that, he consigned it to writing for our clearer understanding. When he visited England in 1844 for the second time, Nicholas had several conversations with the Duke of Wellington and with Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign Secretary, about Turkey and her prospects and what would be likely to happen in the case of her dissolution, which he believed

  to be imminent. When he returned to Russia, he had a memorandum drawn up by Count Neselroda, his secretary, which according to Nicholas's impressions were entertained alike by him and by the British statesman with whom he had been conversing. Mr. Kinglake says that he sent this document to England with the view of covering his retreat,

  having met with no encouragement from the English statesman. Our idea of the matter is different. It may be taken for granted that the English statesman did not give Nicholas any encouragement, or at least that they did not intend to do so, but it seems clear to us that he believed they had done so.

  The memorandum drawn up by Count Neselroda is much more like a formal reminder or record of a general and oral engagement than a withdrawal from a proposal which was evidently not likely to be accepted. The memorandum set forth that Russia and England were alike penetrated by the conviction that it was for their common interest that the Ottoman Empire should maintain itself in its

  existing independence and extent of territory, and that they had an equal interest in averting all the dangers that might place its safety in jeopardy. With this object, the memorandum declared, the essential point was to suffer the port to live in repose without needlessly disturbing it by diplomatic bickering. Turkey, however, had a habit of constantly breaking her engagements, and the memorandum

  insisted strongly that while she kept up this practice, it was impossible for her integrity to be secure, and this practice of hers was indulged in because she believed she might do so with impunity, reckoning on the mutual jealousies of the cabinets and thinking that if she failed in her engagements toward one of them, the rest would espouse her cause. As soon as the port shall perceive that it is not supported by the other cabinets, it

  will give way, and the differences which have arisen will be arranged in a conciliatory manner without any conflict resulting from them. The memorandum spoke of the imperative necessity of Turkey being led to treat her Christian subjects with toleration and mildness. On such conditions, it was laid down that England and Russia must alike desire her preservation.

  But the document proceeded to say that nevertheless, these states could not conceal from themselves the fact that the Ottoman Empire contained within itself many elements of dissolution and that unforeseen events might at any time hasten its fall. In the uncertainty which hovers over the future, a single fundamental idea seems to admit of a really practical application, that is, that the danger which may result from

  a catastrophe in Turkey will be much diminished if, in the event of its occurring, Russia and England have come to an understanding as to the course to be taken by them in common. That understanding will be the more beneficial than as much as it will have the full assent of Austria, between whom and Russia there already exists an entire accord. This document was sent to London and kept in the archives of the Foreign Office.

  It was only produced and made public when, at a much later day, the Russian press began to insist that the English government had always been in possession of the views of Russia in regard to Turkey. It seems to us evident that the Emperor of Russia really believed that his views were shared by English statesmen.

  The mere fact that his memorandum was received and retained in the English Foreign Office might well of itself tend to make Nicholas assume that its principles were recognized by the English government as the basis of a common action, or at least a common understanding, between England and Russia. Nothing is more easy than to allow a fanatic or a man of one idea to suppose that those

  to whom he explains his views are convinced by him and in agreement with him. It is only necessary to listen and say nothing. Therefore, it is to be regretted that the English statesmen should have listened to Nicholas without saying something very distinct to show that they were not admitting or accepting any combination of purpose, or that they should have received his memorandum without some

  distinct disclaimer of their being in any way bound by its terms. Some of the statements in the memorandum were at the least sufficiently remarkable to have called for comment of some kind from the English statesmen who received it. For example, the Emperor of Russia professed to have in his hands not alone the policy of Russia, but that of Austria as well.

  He spoke for Austria, and he stated that he understood himself to be speaking for England too. Accordingly, England, Austria, and Russia were, in his understanding, entering into a secret conspiracy among themselves for the disposal of the territory of a friendly power in the event of that power getting into difficulties.

  This might surely be thought by the English statesmen to bear an ominous and painful resemblance to the kind of pour parler that were going on between Russia, Prussia, and Austria before the partition of Poland, and might well have seemed to call for a strong and unmistakable repudiation on the part of England. We could scarcely have been too emphatic or too precise in conveying to the Emperor of

  Russia our determination to have nothing to do with any such conspiracy. Time went on, and the Emperor thought he saw an occasion for still more clearly explaining his plans and for reviving the supposed understanding with England. Lord Aberdeen came into office as Prime Minister of this country, Lord Aberdeen who was Foreign Secretary when Nicholas was in England in 1844.

  On January 9, 1853, before the re-elections which were consequent upon the new ministerial appointments had yet taken place, the Emperor met our minister, Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, at a party given by the Archduchess Helen at her palace in St. Petersburg, and he drew him aside and began to talk with him in the most outspoken manner about the future of Turkey and the arrangements it might be necessary for England and Russia to make regarding it.

  The conversation was renewed again and again afterwards. Few conversations have had greater fame than these. One phrase which the Emperor employed has passed into the familiar political language of the world. As long as there is memory of an Ottoman Empire in Europe, so long the Turkey of the days

  before the Crimean War will be called the Sick Man. We have on our hands, said the Emperor, a sick man, a very sick man. It will be a great misfortune if one of these days he should slip away from us before the necessary arrangements have been made. The conversations all tended toward the one purpose.

  The Emperor urged that England and Russia ought to make arrangements beforehand as to the inheritance of the Ottoman in Europe, before what he regarded as the approaching and inevitable day when the sick man must come to die. The Emperor explained that he did not contemplate nor would he allow a permanent occupation of Constantinople by Russia, nor on the other hand would he consent to see that city held

  by England or France or any other great power. He would not listen to any plans for the reconstruction of Greece in the form of a Byzantine Empire, nor would he allow Turkey to be split up into little republics, asylums as he said, for the Khoshuts and Motsinis of Europe. It was not made very clear what the Emperor wished to have done with Constantinople if

  it was not to be Russian, nor Turkish, nor English, nor French, nor Greek, nor yet a little republic, but it was evident at all events that Nicholas had made up his mind as to what it was not to be. He thought that Serbia and Bulgaria might become independent states. That is to say, independent states such as he considered the Danubian principalities

  then to be, under my protection. If the reorganization of southeastern Europe made it seem necessary to England that she should take possession of Egypt, the Emperor said he should offer no objection. He said the same thing of Candia. If England desired to have that island, he saw no objection.

  He did not ask for any formal treaty. He said indeed such arrangements as that are not generally consigned to formal treaties. He only wished for such an understanding as might be come to among gentlemen, and he was satisfied that if he had ten minutes' conversation with Lord Aberdeen, the thing could be easily settled.

  If only England and Russia could arrive at an understanding on the subject, he declared that it was a matter of indifference to him what other powers might think or say. He spoke of the several millions of Christians in Turkey whose rights he was called upon to watch over, and he remarked, the remark is of significance, that the right of watching over them was secured to him by treaty.

  The Emperor was evidently under the impression that the interests of England and of Russia were united in this proposed transaction. He had no idea of anything but the most perfect frankness so far as we were concerned. It clearly had not occurred to him to suspect that there could be anything dishonorable, anything England might recoil from, in the suggestion that the two powers ought to enter

  into a plot to divide the sick man's goods between them while the breath was yet in the sick man's body. It did not even occur to him that there could be anything dishonorable in entering into such a compact without the knowledge of any other of the great European powers. The Emperor desired to act like a man of honor, but the idea of Western honor was as yet new

  to Russia and it had not quite got possession of the mind of Nicholas. He was like the savage, who is ambitious of learning the ways of civilization and who may be counted on to do whatever he knows to be in accordance with these ways, but who is constantly liable to make a mistake simply from not knowing how to apply them in each new emergency.

  The very consequences which came from Nicholas's confidential communications with our minister would of themselves testify to his sincerity and, in a certain sense, to his simplicity. But the English government never, after the disclosures of Sir Hamilton Seymour, put any faith in Nicholas. They regarded him as nothing better than a plotter.

  They did not probably even make allowance enough for the degree of religious or superstitious fervor which accompanied and qualified all his ambition and his craft. Human nature is so oddly blunt that we ought not to be surprised if we find a very high degree of fanatical and sincere fervor in company with a crafty selfishness. The English government and most of the English people ever after looked on Nicholas as a

  determined plotter and plunderer who was not to be made an associate in any engagement. On the other hand, Nicholas was as much disappointed as an honest highwayman of the days of Captain McKeith might have been, who on making a handsome offer of his share in a new enterprise to a trusted and familiar pal, finds that the latter is taken with a fit of virtuous indignation and is hurrying off to Bow Street to tell the whole story.

  The English minister and the English government could only answer the Emperor's overtures by saying that they did not think it quite usual to enter into arrangements for the spoliation of a friendly power, and that England had no desire to succeed to any of the possessions of Turkey. The Emperor doubtless did not believe these assurances. He probably felt convinced that

  England had some game of her own in hand into which she did not find it convenient to admit him on terms of partnership. He must have felt bitterly annoyed at the thought that he had committed himself so far for nothing. The communications were of course understood to be strictly confidential and Nicholas had no fear that they would be given to the public at that time. They were, in fact, not made

  publicly known for more than a year after, but Nicholas had the dissatisfaction of knowing that Her Majesty's ministers were now in possession of his designs. He had the additional discomfort of believing that while he had shown his hand to them, they had contrived to keep whatever designs of their own they were preparing a complete secret from him. One unfortunate admission, the significance of which will be seen hereafter, was made

  on the part of the English government during the correspondence caused by the conversation between the Emperor and Sir Hamilton Seymour. It was Lord John Russell who inadvertently, no doubt, made this admission. In his letter to Sir Hamilton Seymour on February 9, 1853, he wound up with the words, The more the Turkish government adopts the rules of impartial law and equal administration,

  the less will the Emperor of Russia find it necessary to apply that exceptional protection which his Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome and inconvenient, though no doubt prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty. These conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour formed but an episode in the history of the events that were then going on. It was an episode of great importance even to the immediate

  progress of the events, and it had much to do with the turn they took towards war, but there were great forces moving toward antagonism in the southeast of Europe that must in any case have come into collision. Russia, with her ambitions, her tendency to enlarge her frontier on all sides, and her natural sympathies of race and religion with the Christian and slave populations under Turkish rule, must, before long, have come into active hostility

  with the port. Even at the present somewhat critical time, we are not under any necessity to persuade ourselves that Russia was actuated in the movements she made by merely selfish ambition and nothing else, that all the wrong was on her side of the quarrel and all the right upon ours. It may be conceded, without any abrogation of patriotic English sentiment,

  that in standing up for the populations so closely affine to her in race and religion, Russia was acting very much as England would have acted under similar circumstances. If we can imagine a number of English and Christian populations under the sway of some Asiatic despot on the frontiers of our Indian empire, we shall admit that it is likely the sentiments of all Englishmen in India would be extremely sensitive on their behalf, and that it would

  not be difficult to get us to believe that we were called upon to interfere for their protection. Certainly, anyone who should try to persuade us that after all, these Englishmen were nearly as well off under the Asiatic and despotic rule as many other people, or as they deserved to be, would not have much chance of a patient hearing from us. The Russian emperor fell back a little after the failure of his efforts with Sir Hamilton

  Seymour, and for a while seemed to agree with the English government as to the necessity of not embarrassing Turkey by pressing too severely upon her. He was no doubt seriously disappointed when he found that England would not go with him, and his calculations were put out by the discovery. He therefore saw himself compelled to act with a certain moderation while feeling his way to some other mode of attack.

  But the natural forces which were in operation did not depend on the will of any empire or government for their tendency. Nicholas would have had to move in any case. There is really no such thing in modern politics as a genuine autocrat. Nicholas of Russia could no more afford to overlook the evidences of popular and national feeling among his people than an English sovereign could. He was a despot by virtue of the national will which he embodied.

  The national will was in decided antagonism to the tendencies of the Ottoman power in Europe, and afterwards to the policy which the English government felt themselves compelled to adopt for the support of that power against the schemes of the emperor of Russia. There had long been going on a dispute about the holy places in Palestine. The claims of the Greek church and those of the Latin church were an antagonism there. The emperor of Russia

  was the protector of the Greek church. The kings of France had long had the Latin church under their protection. France had never taken any views as to the necessity of maintaining the Ottoman power in Europe. On the contrary, as we have seen, the policy of England and that of France were so decidedly opposed at the time, when France favored the independence of Egypt, and England would not hear of it, that the two countries very nearly came to

  war. Nor did France really feel any very profound sympathy with the pretensions which the Latin monks were constantly making in regard to the holy places. There was unquestionably downright religious fanaticism on the part of Russia to back up the demands of the Greek church. But we can hardly believe that opinion in France or in the cabinets of French ministers really concerned itself much about the Latin monks, except in so far as political purposes

  might be subserved by paying some attention to them. But it happened somewhat unfortunately that the French government began to be unusually active in pushing the Latin claims just then. The whole dispute on which the fortunes of Europe seemed for a while to depend was of a strangely medieval character. The holy places in which the Latins raised the claim were the great church in Bethlehem, the sanctuary of the Nativity with the right to place a

  new star there, that which formerly ornamented it having been lost, the tomb of the Virgin, the stone of anointing, the seven arches of the Virgin in the church of the Holy Sepulcher. In the reign of that remarkably pious, truthful, and virtuous monarch, Francis I of France, a treaty was made with a Sultan by which France was acknowledged the protector of the holy places in Palestine and of the monks of the Latin church who took on themselves the care

  of the sacred monuments and memorials. But the Greek church afterwards obtained firmans from the Sultan, each Sultan gave away privileges very much as it pleased him, and without taking much thought of the manner in which his firmans might affect the treaties of his predecessors, and the Greeks claimed, on the strength of these concessions, that they had as good a right as the Latins to take care of the holy places. Disputes were always arising, and

  of course these were aggravated by the fact that France was supposed to be concerned in the protection of one set of disputants and Russia in that of another. The French and the Russian governments did, in point of fact, interfere from time to time for the purpose of making good their claims. The claims at length came to be identified with the states which respectively protected them. An advantage of the smallest kind, gained by the Latins,

  was viewed as an insult to Russia. A concession to the Greeks was a snub to France. The subject of controversy seemed trivial and odd in itself, but it had even in itself a profounder significance than many a question of diplomatic etiquette which has led great states to the verge of war or into war itself. Mr. Kinglake, whose brilliant history of the invasion of the Crimea, is too often disfigured by passages of Solomon-Pompous monotony, has superfluously devoted several

  eloquent pages to prove that the sacredness of association attaching to some particular spot has its roots in the very soil of human nature. The custody of the holy places was in this instance a symbol of a religious inheritance to the monastic disputants and of political power to the diplomatists. It was France which first stirred the controversy in the time just before the Crimean War. That fact is beyond dispute. Lord John Russell had hardly come into office

  when he had to observe in writing to Lord Colley, our ambassador in Paris, that Her Majesty's Government cannot avoid perceiving that the ambassador of France at Constantinople was the first to disturb the status quo in which the matter rested. Not, Lord Russell went on to say, that the disputes of the Latin and Greek churches were not very active, but without some political action on the part of France, those quarrels would never have troubled the relations of friendly

  powers. Lord John Russell also complained that the French ambassador was the first to speak of having recourse to force and to threaten the intervention of a French fleet. I regret to say, the dispatch continued, that this evil example has been partly followed by Russia. The French government were indeed unusually active at that time. The French ambassador, Monsieur de Lavlette, is said to have threatened that a French fleet would appear off Jaffa and even hinted at a French occupation of

  Jerusalem, when, as he significantly put it, we should have all the sanctuaries. One French army occupying Rome and another occupying Jerusalem would have left the world in no doubt as to the supremacy of France. The cause of all this energy is not far to seek. The prince president had only just succeeded in procuring himself to be installed as emperor, and he was very anxious to distract the attention of the Frenchman from domestic politics to some showy and startling policy abroad. He was

  in quest of a policy of adventure. This controversy between the Church of the East and the Church of the West tempted him into activity as one that seemed likely enough to give him an opportunity of displaying the power of France and of the new system without any very great danger or responsibility. Technically, therefore, we are entitled to lay the blame of disturbing the peace of Europe in the first instance on the emperor of the French. But while we must condemn the restless and

  self-interested spirit which thus set itself to stir up disturbance, we cannot help seeing that the quarrel must have come at some time even if the plebiscite had never been invited and a new emperor had never been placed upon the throne of France. The emperor of Russia had made up his mind that the time had come to divide the property of the sick man, and he was not likely to remain long without an opportunity of quarreling with anyone who stood at the side of the sick man's

  bed and seemed to constitute himself a protector of the sick man's interests.

• 19 - Ch. 25: The Eastern Question, Pt. 3

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  The key of the whole controversy out of which the Eastern War arose, and out of which indeed all subsequent complications in the East came as well, was said to be found in a clause of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Keonarje. During the negotiations for the peace which took place in Vienna while the Crimean War was yet going on, the assembled plenipotentiaries declared that the whole dispute was owing to a misinterpretation of a clause in this unfortunate treaty. In a time

  much nearer to our own, the discussion on the same clause in the same treaty was renewed with all the old earnestness and with the same difference of interpretation. It may not perhaps give an uninitiated reader any very exalted opinion of the utility and beauty of diplomatic arrangements to hear that disputes covering more than a century of time and causing at least two great wars arose out of the impossibility of reconciling two different

  interpretations of the meaning of two or three lines of a treaty. The American Civil War was said with much justice to have been fought to obtain a definition of the limits of the rights of the separate states as laid down in the Constitution. The Crimean War was apparently fought to obtain a satisfactory and final definition of the seventh clause of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Keonarje, and it did not fulfill its purpose. The historic value therefore of this

  seventh clause may in one sense be considered greater than that of the famous disputed words which provoked the censure of the Jansenists and the immortal letters of Pascal. The Treaty of Kuchuk-Keonarje was made in 1774 between the Ottoman port and Catherine II of Russia. On sea and land, the arms of the great empress had been victorious. Turkey was beaten to her knees. She had to give up Ezof and Tagaruk to Russia and to declare the Crimea independent of the Ottoman

  Empire, an event which it is almost needless to say was followed not many years after by the Russians taking the Crimea for themselves and making it a province of Catherine's Empire. The Treaty of Keonarje, as it is usually called, was that which made the arrangements for peace. When it exacted from Turkey such heavy penalties in the shape of cession of territory, it was hardly supposed that one seemingly insignificant clause was destined to threaten the very existence of

  the Turkish Empire. The treaty bore date July 10th, 1774, and it was made so to speak in the Tenth of the Victor. The seventh clause declared that the sublime port promised to protect constantly the Christian religion and its churches and also to allow the minister of the Imperial Court of Russia to make on all occasions representations as well in favor of the new church in Constantinople, of which mention will be made in the fourteenth article, as in favor of

  those who officiate therein, promising to take such representations into due consideration as being made by a confidential functionary of a neighboring and sincerely friendly power. Not much possibility of misunderstanding about these words, one might feel inclined to say. We turn then to the fourteenth article alluded to in order to discover if in its wording lies the perplexity of meaning which led to such momentous and calamitous results. We find that by this

  article it is simply permitted to the Court of Russia to build a public church of the Greek right in the Galata Quarter of Constantinople, in addition to the chapel built in the House of the Minister, and it is declared that the new church shall be always under the protection of the ministers of the Russian Empire and shielded from all obstruction and all damage. Here then we seem to have two clauses of the simplest meaning and by no means of first-class

  importance. The latter clause allows Russia to build a new church in Constantinople, the former allows the Russian minister to make representations to the port on behalf of the church and of those who officiate in it. What difference of opinion it may be asked could possibly arise? The difference was this. Russia claimed a right of protectorate over all the Christians of the Greek Church in Turkey as the consequence of the seventh clause of the treaty. She insisted

  that when Turkey gave her a right to interfere on behalf of the worshippers in one particular church, the same right extended so far as to cover all the worshippers of the same denomination in every part of the Ottoman dominions. The great object of Russia throughout all the negotiations that preceded the Crimean War was to obtain from the port an admission of the existence of such a protectorate. Such an acknowledgement would in fact have made the emperor of Russia,

  the patron, and all but the ruler of by far the larger proportion of the populations of Europe and Turkey. The sultan would no longer have been master in his own dominions. The Greek Christians would naturally have regarded the Russian emperor's right of intervention on their behalf as constituting a protectorate far more powerful than the nominal rule of the sultan. They would have known that the ultimate decision of any dispute in which they were concerned

  rested with the emperor and not with the sultan, and they would soon have come to look upon the emperor and not the sultan as their actual sovereign. Now it does not seem likely on the face of things that any ruler of a state would have consented to hand over to a more powerful foreign monarch such a right over the great majority of his subjects. Still, if Turkey, driven to her last defenses, had no alternative but to make such a concession, the emperors of

  Russia could not be blamed for insisting that it should be carried out. The terms of the article in the treaty itself certainly do not seem to admit of such a construction. But for the views always advocated by Mr. Gladstone, we should say it was self-evident that the article never had any such meaning. We cannot, however, dismiss the argument of such a man as Mr. Gladstone as if it were unworthy of consideration, or say that an interpretation is obviously erroneous,

  which he has deliberately and often declared to be accurate. We may as well mention here at once that Mr. Gladstone rests his arguments on the first line of the famous article. The promise of the sultan, he contends, to protect constantly the Christian religion and its churches, is an engagement distinct in itself and disconnected from the engagement that follows in the same clause and which refers to the new building and its ministerance.

  The sultan engages to protect the Christian churches, and with whom does he enter into this engagement? With the sovereign of Russia. Why does he make this engagement? Because he has been defeated by Russia and compelled to accept terms of peace, and one of the conditions on which he is admitted to peace is his making this engagement. How does he make the engagement? By an article in a treaty agreed to between him and the sovereign of Russia.

  But if a state enters into treaty engagement with another that it will do a certain thing, it is clear that the other state must have a special right of remonstrance and of representation of the thing be not done. Therefore, Mr. Gladstone argues that as the sultan made a special treaty with Russia to protect the Christians, he gave in, the very nature of things, a special right to Russia to complain if the protection was not given.

  We are far from denying that there is force in the argument, and it is at all events worthy of being recorded for its mere historical importance. But Mr. Gladstone's was certainly not the European interpretation of the clause, nor does it seem to us the interpretation that history will accept. Lord John Russell, as we have seen, made a somewhat unlucky admission that the claims of Russia to a protectorate were prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty.

  But this admission seems rather to have been the result of inadvertence or heedlessness than of any deliberate intention to recognize the particular claim involved. The admission was afterwards made the occasion of many a severe attack upon Lord John Russell by Mr. Disraeli and other leading members of the opposition. Assuredly, Lord John Russell's admission, if it is really to be regarded as such, was not endorsed by the English government.

  Whenever we find Russia putting the claim into plain words, we find England through her ministers refusing to give it their acknowledgement. During the discussions before the Crimean War, Lord Clarendon, our foreign secretary, wrote to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe a letter embodying the views of the English government on the claim. No sovereign, Lord Clarendon says, having a due regard for his own dignitean independence,

  could admit proposals which conferred upon a foreign and more powerful sovereign a right of protection over his own subjects. If such a concession were made, the result, as Lord Clarendon pointed out, would be that fourteen millions of Greeks would henceforward regard the emperor as their supreme protector and their allegiance to the sultan would be little more than nominal, while his own independence would dwindle into vassalage.

  Diplomacy, therefore, was powerless to do good during all the protracted negotiations that set plain reason that the only object of the emperor of Russia in entering upon negotiation at all was one which the other European powers regarded as absolutely inadmissible. The dispute about the holy places was easily settled. The port cared very little about the matter and was willing enough to come to any fair terms by which the whole controversy could be got

  rid of. But the demands of Russia went on just as before. Prince Menchenikov, a man of the Potemkin school, fierce, rough, and unable or unwilling to control his temper, was sent with demands to Constantinople, and his very manner of making the demands seemed as if it were taken up for the purpose of ensuring their rejection. If the envoy fairly represented the sovereign, the demands must have been so conveyed with the deliberate intention of immediately and irresistibly

  driving the Turks to reject every proposition coming from such a negotiator. Menchenikov brought his proposals with him cut and dry in the form of a convention which he called upon Turkey to accept without more ado. In other words, he put a pistol at Turkey's head and told her to sign it once or else he would pull the trigger. Turkey refused, and Prince Menchenikov withdrew in real or affected rage, and presently the emperor Nicholas sent two divisions of his army across

  the Prut to take possession of the Danubian principalities. Diplomacy, however, did not give in even then. The emperor announced that he had occupied the principalities not as an act of war, but with the view of obtaining material guarantees for the concession of the demands which Turkey had already declared that she would not concede. The English government advised the port not to treat the occupation as an act of war, although fully admitting that it was strictly a

  causes belly, and that Turkey would have been amply justified in meeting it by an armed resistance if it were prudent for her to do so. It would, of course, have been treated as war by any strong power. We might well have retorted upon Russia the harsh but not wholly unjustifiable language she had employed toward us when we seized possession of material guarantees from the Greek government in the harbor of the Piraeus. In our act, however, there was less of that which

  constitutes war than in the arbitrary conduct of Russia. Greece did not declare that our demands were such as she could not admit in principle. She did admit most of them in principle, but was only, as it seemed to our government, or at least to Lord Palmerston, trying to evade an actual settlement. There was nothing to go to war about, and our seizure of the ships, objectionable as it was, might be described as only a way of getting hold of a material guarantee for the discharge of

  a debt which was not in principle disputed. But in the dispute between Russia and Turkey, the claim was rejected altogether. It was declared intolerable. Its principle was absolutely repudiated, and any overt act on the part of Russia must therefore have had for its object to compel Turkey to submit to a demand which she would yield to force alone. This is, of course, in the very spirit of war, and if Turkey had been a stronger power, she would never have dreamed of

  meeting it in any other way than by unarmed resistance. She was, however, strongly advised by England and other powers to adopt a moderate course, and in fact, throughout the whole of the negotiations, she showed a remarkable self-control and a dignified courtesy which must sometimes have been very vexing to her opponent. Diplomacy went to work again, and a Vienna note was concocted which Russia at once offered to accept. The four great powers who were carrying on the business of

  mediation were at first quite charmed with the note, with the readiness of Russia to accept it, and with themselves, and but for the interposition of Lord Stratford to Redcliffe, it seems highly probable that it would have been agreed to by all the parties concerned. Lord Stratford, however, saw plainly that the note was a virtual concession to Russia of all that she specially desired to have, and all that Europe was unwilling to concede to her.

  The great object of Russia was to obtain an acknowledgement, however vague or covert, of her protectorate over the Christians of the Greek Church in the Sultan's dominions, and the Vienna note was so constructed as to affirm much rather than to deny the claim which Russia had so long been setting up. Assuredly, such a note could at some future time have been brought out in triumph by Russia as an overwhelming evidence of the European

  recognition of such a protectorate. Let us make this a little more plain. Suppose the question at issue were as to the payment of a tribute claim by one prince from another. The one had been always insisting that the other was his vassal, bound to pay him tribute. The other always repudiated the claim in principle. This was the subject of dispute. After a while the question is left to arbitration and the arbitrators, without actually

  declaring in so many words that the claim to the tribute is established, yet go so far as to direct the payment of a certain sum of money, and do not introduce a single word to show that in their opinion the original claim was unjust in principle. Would not the claimant of the tribute be fully entitled in after years, if any new doubt of his claim were raised, to appeal to this arbitration as confirming it? Would he not be entitled to say, the dispute was about my right to tribute,

  here is a document awarding to me the payment of a certain sum, and not containing a word to show that the arbitrators disputed the principle of my claim? Is it possible to construe that otherwise than as a recognition of my claim? We certainly cannot think it would have been otherwise regarded by any impartial mind. The very readiness with which Russia consented to accept the Vienna Note ought to have taught its framers that Russia found all her account in its vague and ambiguous

  language. The Prince Consort said it was a trap laid by Russia through Austria and it seems hardly possible to regard it now in any other light. The Turkish government therefore acting under the advice of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our ambassador to Constantinople, who had returned to his post after a long absence, declined to accept the Vienna Note unless with considerable modifications. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe showed great acuteness and force of character

  throughout all these negotiations. A reader of Mr. King Lake's history is sometimes apt to become nauseated by the absurd pompousness with which the historian overlays his descriptions of the Great Elchi, as he is pleased to call him, and is inclined to wish that the Great Elchi could have imparted some of his own sober gravity and severe simplicity of style to his adulator. Mr. King Lake writes of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe as if he were describing the all compelling

  movements of some divinity or providence. A devoted imperial historian would have made himself ridiculous by writing of the Great Napoleon at the height of his power in language of such inflated mysticism, as this educated Englishman has allowed himself to employ when describing the manner in which our ambassador to Constantinople did his duty during the days before the Crimean War. But the extraordinary errors of taste and good sense into which Mr. King Lake occasionally descends

  cannot prevent us from doing justice to the keen judgment and the inflexible will which Lord Stratford displayed during this critical time. He saw the fatal defect of the note which prepared in Paris had been brought to its supposed perfection at Vienna, and had there received the adhesion of the English government along with that of the governments of the other great powers engaged in the conference. A hint from Lord Stratford made the ministers of the port consider

  it with suspicious scrutiny, and they too saw its weakness and its conscious or unconscious treachery. They declared that unless certain modifications were introduced they would not accept the note. The reader will at first think perhaps that some of these modifications were mere splitting of hairs and diplomatic worse even than lawyer-like quibbles, but in truth the alterations demanded were of the greatest importance for Turkey. The port had to think not of the immediate purpose of

  the note, but of the objects it might be made to serve afterwards. It contained for instance words which declared that the government of His Majesty the Sultan would remain faithful to the letter and the spirit of the stipulations of the treaties of Kayi Nadaje and of Adrianople relative to the protection of the Christian religion. These words in a note drawn up for the purpose of satisfying the emperor of Russia could not but be understood as recognizing the interpretation of the treaty

  of Kayi Nadaje on which Russia had always insisted. The port therefore proposed to strike out these words and substitute the following to the stipulations of the treaty of Kayi Nadaje confirmed by that of Adrianople relative to the protection by the sublime port of the Christian religion. By these words the Turkish ministers quietly affirmed that the only protectorate exercised over the Christians of Turkey is that of the Sultan of Turkey himself. The difference is

  simply that between a claim conceded and a claim repudiated. The Russian government refused to accept the modifications and in arguing against them the Russian minister Count Neselroda made it clear to the English government that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was right when he held the note to be full of weakness and of error. For the Russian minister argued against the modifications on the very ground that they denied to the claims of Russia just that satisfaction that the statesmanship

  and the public opinion of Europe had always agreed to refuse. The prince consort's expression was appropriate. The western powers had nearly been caught in a trap. From that time all hopes of peace were over. There were to be sure other negotiations still. A ghastly semblance of faith and the possibility of a peaceful arrangement was kept up for a while on both sides. Little plans of adjustment were tinkered up and tried and fell to pieces the moment they were tried. It is not

  necessary for us to describe them. Not many persons put any faith or even professed any interest in them. They were conducted amid the most energetic preparations for war on both sides. Our troops were moving toward Malta, the streets of London, of Liverpool, of Southampton and other towns were ringing with the cheers of enthusiastic crowds gathered together to watch the marching of troops destined for the east. Turkey had actually declared war against Russia.

  People now were anxious rather to see how the war would open between Russia and the allies than when it would open. The time when would evidently only be a question of a few days. The way how was a matter of more peculiar interest. We had known so little of war for nearly 40 years that added to all the other emotions which the coming of a battle must bring was the mere feeling of curiosity as to the sensation produced by a state of war. It was an abstraction to the living

  generation, a thing to be read of and discuss and make poetry and romance out of, but they could not yet realize what itself was like. End of Section 19.

• 20 - Ch. 26: Where was Lord Palmerston?, Pt. 1

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  CHAPTER XXVI. WHERE WAS LORD POMERSTON, PART I Meantime, where was Lord Palmerston? He of all men one would think must have been pleased with the turn things were taking. He had had from the beginning little faith in any issue of the negotiations but war. Probably he did not really wish for any other result. We are well inclined to agree with Mr. King Lake that of all the members of the cabinet he alone clearly saw

  his way and was satisfied with the prospect. But according to the supposed nature of his office, he had now nothing to do with the war or with foreign affairs except as every member of the cabinet shares the responsibility of the whole body. He had apparently about as much to do with the war as the postmaster general or the chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster might have had. He had accepted the office of Home Secretary. He had declared that he did not choose to be Foreign

  Secretary any more. He affirmed that he wanted to learn something about home affairs and to get to understand his countrymen and so forth. He was really very busy all this time in his new duties. Lord Palmerston was a remarkably efficient and successful Home Secretary. His unceasing activity loved to show itself in whatever department he might be called upon to occupy. He brought to the somewhat prosaic duties of his new office not only all the virile energy but also all the enterprise

  which he had formerly shown in managing revolutions and dictating to foreign courts. The ticket of leave system dates from the time of his administration. Our transportation system had broken down for in fact the colonies would stand it no longer and it fell to Lord Palmerston to find something to put in its place and the plan of granting tickets of leave to convicts who had shown that they were capable of regeneration was the outcome of the necessity and of his administration. The measures

  to obey the smoke nuisance by compelling factories under penalties to consume their own smoke is also the offspring of Palmerston's activity in the Home Office. The factory acts were extended by him. He went energetically to work in the shutting up of the graveyards in the metropolis and in a letter to his brother he declared that he should like to put down beer shops and let shopkeepers sell beer like oil and vinegar and treacle to be carried home and drunk with wives and children.

  This little project is worthy of notice because it illustrates more fairly perhaps than some far greater plan might do at once the strength and the weakness of Palmerston's intelligence. He could not see why everything should not be done in a plain straightforward way and why the arrangements that were good for the sale of one thing might not be good also for the sale of another. He did not stop to inquire whether as a matter of fact beer is a commodity at all like oil and vinegar and

  treacle whether the same consequences follow the drinking of beer and the consumption of treacle. His critics said that he was apt to manage his foreign affairs on the same rough-and-ready principle. If a system suited England why should it not suit all other places as well? If treacle may be sold safely without any manner of authoritative regulation why not beer? The answer to the latter question is plain because treacle is not beer. So people said with Palmerston's

  constitutional projects for every place why should not that which suits England suit also Spain? Because to begin with a good many people urged Spain is not England. There was one department of his duties in which Palmerston was acquiring a new and somewhat odd reputation. That was in his way of answering deputations and letters. The mere routine business of the Home Office, Palmerston writes to his brother, as far as that consists in daily correspondence

  is far lighter than that of the Foreign Office but during a session of Parliament the whole time of the Secretary of State up to the time when he must go to the House of Commons is taken up by deputations of all kinds and interviews with members of Parliament, militia colonels, etc. Lord Palmerston was always civil and cordial. He was full of a peculiar kind of fresh common sense and always ready to apply it to any subject whatever. He could at any time say some racy thing

  which set the public wondering and laughing. He gave something like a shock to the Presbytery of Edinburgh when they wrote to him through the moderator to ask whether a national fast ought not to be appointed in consequence of the appearance of cholera. Lord Palmerston gravely admonished the Presbytery that the maker of the universe had appointed certain laws of nature for the planet on which we live and that the will or woe of mankind depends on the observance of those

  laws. One of them connecting health with the absence of those noxious exhalations which proceed from overcrowded human beings or from decomposing substances whether animal or vegetable. He therefore recommended that the purification of towns and cities should be more strenuously carried on and remarked that the causes and sources of contagion if allowed to remain will infallibly breed pestilence and be fruitful in death in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a united but

  inactive nation. When Lord Stanley of Alderley applied to Lord Palmerston for a special permission for a deceased dignitary of a church to be buried under the roof of the sacred building the Home Secretary declined to accede to the request in a letter that might have come from or might have delighted Sidney Smith. What special connection is there between church dignities and the privilege of being decomposed under the feet of survivors? Do you seriously mean to imply that a soul is more

  likely to go to heaven because the body which it inhabited lies decomposing under the pavement of a church instead of being placed in a churchyard? England is I believe the only country in which in these days people accumulate putrefying dead bodies amid the dwellings of the living and as the burying bodies under thronged churches you might as well put them under libraries drawing rooms and dining rooms. Lord Palmerston did not see what a very large field of religious and

  philosophical controversy he opened up by some of his arguments both as to the fasting and as to the burial in churchyards. He only saw for the moment what appeared to him the healthy common sense aspect of the position he had taken up and did not think or care about what other positions he might be surrendering by the very act. He had not a poetic or philosophic mind. In clearing his intelligence from all that he would have called prejudice or superstition he had cleared out

  also much of the deeper sympathetic faculty which enables one man to understand the feelings and get at the springs of conduct in the breasts of other men. No one can doubt that his jaunty way of treating grave and disputed subjects offended many pure and simple minds. Yet it was a mistake to suppose that mere levity dictated his way of dealing with the prejudices of others. He had often given the question his deepest attention and come to a conclusion with as much thought as his

  temperament would have allowed to any subject. The difference between him and Graver Men was that when he had come to a conclusion seriously he loved to express his views humorously. He resembled in this respect some of the greatest and the most earnest men of his time. Count Cavour delighted in jocos and humorous answers. So did President Lincoln. So at one period of his public career did Prince Bismarck. But there can be no doubt that Palmerston often made enemies by his seeming

  levity when another man could easily have made friends by saying just the same thing in grave words. The majority of the House of Commons liked him because he amused them and made them laugh and they thought no more of the matter. But the war is now fairly launched and Palmerston is to all appearances what would be vulgarly called out of the swim. Every eye was turned to him. He was like Pitt standing up on one of the back benches to support the administration of Addington.

  For years he had been identified with the Foreign Office and with that sort of foreign policy which would seem best suited to the atmosphere of war and now war is on foot and Palmerston is in the Home Office pleasantly chaffing militia colonels and making sensitive theologians angry by the flippancy of his replies. Perhaps there was something flattering to Palmerston's feeling of self-love in the curious wonder with which people turned their eyes upon him during that interval.

  Everyone seemed to ask how the country was to get on without him and to manage its foreign affairs and when he would be good enough to come down from his quiet seat in the Home Office and assume what seemed his natural duties. A famous tenor singer of our day once had some quarrel with his manager. The singer withdrew from the company. Someone else had to be put in his place. On the first night when the new man made his appearance before the public the great singer

  was seen in a box calmly watching the performance like any other of the audience. The new man turned out a failure. The eyes of the house began to fix themselves upon the one who could sing and who was sitting as unconcernedly in his box as if he never meant to sing anymore. The audience at first were incredulous. It was in a great provincial city where the singer had always been a prime favorite. They could not believe that they were in good faith to be expected to put up with bad singing

  while he was there. At last their patience gave way. They insisted on the one singer leaving his place on the stage and the other coming down from his box and his easy attitude of unconcern and resuming what they regarded as his proper part. They would have their way. They carried their point and the man who could sing was compelled at last to return to the scene of his old triumphs and sing for them again. The attitude of Lord Palmerston and the manner in

  which the public were turned upon him during the early days of the war could hardly be illustrated more effectively than by this story. As yet the only wonder was why he did not take somehow the directorship of affairs. The time was to come when the general voice would insist upon his doing so. One day a startling report ran through all circles. It was given out that Palmerston had actually resigned. So far was he from any intention of taking on himself the direction of affairs,

  even of war or of foreign affairs, that he appeared to have gone out of the ministry altogether. The report was confirmed. Palmerston actually had resigned. It wasn't once asserted that his resignation was caused by difference of opinion between him and his colleagues on the eastern policy of the government. But on the other hand it was as stoutly affirmed that the difference of opinion had only to do with the new reform bill which Lord John Russell was preparing to

  introduce. Now it is certain that Lord Palmerston did differ in opinion with Lord John Russell on the subject of his reform bill. It is certain that this was the avowed cause and the only cause of Palmerston's resignation. But it is equally certain that the real cause of the resignation was the conviction in Palmerston's mind that his colleagues were not up to the demands of the crisis in regard to the eastern war. Lord Palmerston's letters to his brother on the subject are amusing.

  They resemble some of the epistles which used to pass between suspected lovers in old days, in which the words are so arranged that the sentences conveyed an obvious meaning good enough for the eye of jealous authority, but had a very different tale to tell to the one being for whom the truth was intended. Lord Palmerston gives his brother a long and circumstantial account of the differences about the reform bill and about the impossibility of a home secretary

  either supporting by speech a bill he did not like or sitting silent during the whole discussion on it in the House of Commons. He shows that he could not possibly do otherwise under such trying circumstances than resign. The whole letter, until we come to the very last paragraph, is about the reform bill and nothing else. One might suppose that nothing else whatever was entering into the writer's thoughts. But at the end, Palmerston just remembers to add that the

  Times was telling an untruth when it said that there had been no difference in the cabinet about eastern affairs, for in fact there had been some little lack of agreement on the subject, but it would have looked rather silly, Palmerston thinks, if he were to have gone out of office merely because he could not have his own way about Turkish affairs. Exactly. And in a few days after, Palmerston was induced to withdraw his resignation and to remain in the government

  and then he wrote to his brother again explaining how and all about it. He explains that several members of the cabinet told him they considered the details of the reform bill quite open to discussion and so forth. Their earnest representations and the knowledge that the cabinet had on Thursday taken a decision on Turkish affairs in entire accordance with opinions which I had long unsuccessfully pressed upon them, decided me to withdraw my resignation, which I did yesterday.

  Of course, Lord Palmerston quietly adds, what I say to you about the cabinet decision on Turkish affairs is entirely for yourself and not to be mentioned to anybody, but it is very important and will give the allied squadrons the command of the Black Sea. All this was very prudent of course and very prettily arranged, but we doubt whether a single man in England who cared anything about the whole question was imposed upon for one moment. Nobody believed that at such a time

  Lord Palmerston would have gone out of office because he did not quite like the details of a reform bill or that the cabinet would have obstinately clung to such a scheme just then in spite of his opposition. Indeed, the first impression of everyone was that Palmerston had gone out only in order to come back again much stronger than before and that he resigned when he could not have his way in eastern affairs and that he would resume office empowered to have his way

  in everything. The explanations about the reform bill found as impatient listeners among the public at large as the desperate attempts of the young heroine in She Stoops to Conquer to satisfy honest Tony Lumpkin with her hasty and ill-concocted devices about Shake Bag and Green and the rest of them whose story she pretends to read for him from the letter which is not intended to reach the suspicious ears of his mother. When Lord Palmerston resumed his place in the ministry

  the public at large felt certain that the war spirit was now at last to have its way and that the dallyings of the peace lovers were over. Nor was England left long to guess at the reason why Lord Palmerston had so suddenly resigned his office and so suddenly returned to it. A great disaster had fallen upon Turkey. Her fleet had been destroyed by the Russians at Sinope in the Black Sea. Sinope is or was a considerable seaport town and naval station belonging to Turkey and standing

  on a rocky promontory on the southern shore of the Black Sea. On November 30th, 1853 the Turkish squadron was lying there at anchor. The squadron consisted of seven frigates, a sloop and a steamer. It had no ship of the line. The Russian fleet consisting of six ships of the line and some steamers had been cruising about the Black Sea for several days previously issuing from Sebastopol and making an occasional swoop now and then as if to bear down upon the Turkish

  squadron. The Turkish commander was quite aware of the danger and pressed for reinforcements but nothing was done either by the Turkish government or by the ambassadors of the allies at Constantinople. On November 30th, however, the Sebastopol fleet did actually bear down upon the Turkish vessels lying at Sinope. The Turks seeing that an attack was coming at last not only accepted but even anticipated it for they were the first to fire. The fight was hopeless

  for them. They fought with all the desperate energy of fearless and unconquerable men, unconquerable at least in the sense that they would not yield, but the odds were too much against them to give them any chance. Either they would not haul down their flag, which is very likely, or if they did strike their colors the Russian admiral did not see the signal. The fight went on until the whole Turkish squadron, save for the steamer, was destroyed. It was asserted on

  official authority that more than 4,000 Turks were killed, that the survivors hardly numbered 400 and that of these every man was wounded. Sinope itself was much shattered and battered by the Russian fleet. The affair was at once the destruction of the Turkish ships and an attack upon Turkish territory. End of Section 20.

• 21 - Ch. 26: Where was Lord Palmerston?, Pt. 2

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  Section 21 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 26. Where was Lord Palmerston? Part 2. This was the Massacre of Sinope. When the news came to England, there arose one cry of grief and anger and shame. It was regarded as a deliberate act

  of treachery consummated amid conditions of the most hideous barbarity. A clamor arose against the Emperor of Russia as if he were a monster outside the pale of civilized law like some of the furious and treacherous despots of medieval Asiatic history. Mr. King Lake has shown, and indeed the sequence of events must in time have shown everyone, that there was no foundation for these accusations. The attack was not treacherous but openly made, not sudden but

  clearly announced by previous acts and long expected as we have seen by the Turkish commander himself, and it was not in breach even of the courtesies of war. Russia and Turkey were not only formally but actually at war. The Turks were the first to begin the actual military operations. More than five weeks before the affair at Sinope they had opened the business by firing from a fortress on a Russian flotilla. A few days after this act they crossed the Danube

  at Vidn and occupied Kalafat and for several days they had fought under Omar Pasha with brilliant success against the Russians at Oltenitsa. All England had been enthusiastic about the bravery which the Turks had shown at Oltenitsa and the success which had attended their first encounter with the enemy. It was hardly to be expected that the emperor of Russia would only fight where he was at a disadvantage and refrain from attack where his power was

  overwhelming. Still there was an impression among English and French statesmen that while negotiations for peace were actually going on between the Western powers and Russia and while the fleets of England and France were remaining peacefully at anchor in the Bosporus, whither they had been summoned by this time, the Russian emperor would abstain from complicating matters by making use of his Sebastopol fleet. Nothing could have been more unwise than to act

  upon an impression of this kind as if it were a regular agreement. But the English public did not understand at that moment the actual condition of things and may well have supposed that if our government seemed secure and content there must have been some definite arrangement to create so happy a condition of mind. It may look strange to readers now surveying this chapter of past history with cool unimpassioned mind that anybody could have believed in the existence of any arrangement

  by virtue of which Turkey could be at war with Russia and not at war with her at the same time, which would have allowed Turkey to strike her enemy when and how she pleased and would have restricted the enemy to such time, place, and method of retort as might suit the convenience of the neutral powers. But at the time, when the true state of affairs was little known in England, the account of the massacre of Sinope was received as if it had been the tale of some unparalleled

  act of treachery and savagery and the eagerness of the country for war against Russia became inflamed to actual passion. It was at that moment that Palmerston resigned his office. The cabinet was still not prepared to go as far as he would have gone. They had believed that the Sebastopol fleet would do nothing as long as the Western powers kept talking about peace. They now believed perhaps that the Emperor of Russia would say he was very sorry for what had been done and

  promised not to do so anymore. Lord Palmerston, supported by the urgent pressure of the Emperor of the French, succeeded, however, in at last overcoming their determination. It was agreed that some decisive announcement should be made to the Emperor of Russia on the part of England and France, and Lord Palmerston resumed his place, master of the situation. This was the decision of which he had spoken in his letter to his brother, the decision which he said he had long

  unsuccessfully pressed upon his colleagues and which would give the Allied squadrons the command of the Black Sea. It was, in fact, an intimation to Russia that France and England were resolved to prevent any repetition of the Sinope affair, that their squadrons would enter the Black Sea with orders to request, and if necessary to constrain, every Russian ship met in the Uxine to return to Sebastopol, and to repel by force any act of aggression afterwards attempted against

  the Ottoman territory or flag. This was not, it should be observed, simply an intimation to the Emperor of Russia that the great powers would impose and enforce the neutrality of the Black Sea. It was an announcement that if the flag of Russia dared to show itself on that sea, which washed Russia's southern shores, the warships of two far foreign states, taking possession of those waters, would pull it down or compel those who bore it to fly ignominiously into port. This was, in fact,

  war. Of course, Lord Palmerston knew this. Because it meant war, he accepted it and returned to his place, well pleased with the way in which things were going. From his point of view, he was perfectly right. He had been consistent all through. He believed from the first that the pretensions of Russia would have to be put down by force of arms and could not be put down in any other way. He believed that the danger to England from the aggrandizement of Russia was a capital

  danger, calling for any extent of national sacrifice to avert it. He believed that a war with Russia was inevitable, and he preferred taking it sooner to taking it later. He believed that an alliance with the Emperor of the French was desirable, and a war with Russia would be the best means of making this effective. Lord Palmerston, therefore, was determined not to remain in the cabinet unless some strenuous measures were taken, and now, as on a memorable

  former occasion, he understood better than anyone else the prevailing temper of the English people. When the resolution of the Western cabinets was communicated to the Emperor of Russia, he withdrew his representatives from London and Paris. On February 21st, 1854, the diplomatic relations between Russia and the two allied powers were brought to a stop. Six weeks before this, the English and French fleets had entered the Black Sea. The interval was filled up with

  renewed efforts to bring about a peaceful arrangement, which were conducted with as much gravity as if anyone believed in the possibility of their success. The Emperor of the French, who always loved letter writing and delighted in what Cobden once happily called the monumental style, wrote to the Russian Emperor, appealing to him professedly in the interests of peace to allow an armistice to be signed, and to let the belligerent forces on both sides retire

  from the places to which motives of war had led them, and then to negotiate a convention with the Sultan which might be submitted to a conference of the four powers. If Russia would not do this, then Louis Napoleon, undertaking to speak in the name of the Queen of Great Britain, as well as of himself, intimated that France and England would be compelled to leave to the chances of war what might now be decided by reason and justice. The Emperor Nicholas replied that he

  had claimed nothing but what was confirmed by treaties, that his conditions were perfectly well known, that he was still willing to treat on these conditions, but if Russia were driven to arms, then he quietly observed that he had no doubt that she could hold her own as well in 1854 as she had done in 1812. That year, 1812, it is hardly necessary to say, was the year of the burning of Moscow and the disastrous retreat of the French. We can easily understand what faith

  and the possibility of a peaceful arrangement the Russian Emperor must have had when he made the illusion, and the French Emperor must have had when he met his eye. Of course, if Louis Napoleon had had the faintest belief in any good result to come of his letter, he would never have closed it with the threat which provoked the Russian sovereign into his insufferable rejoinder. The correspondence might remind one of that which is said to have passed between two Irish chieftains.

  Pay me my tribute, wrote the one, or else. I owe you no tribute, replied the other, and if… England's ultimatum to Russia was dispatched on February 27, 1854. It was conveyed in a letter from Lord Clarendon to Count Nesselrota. It declared that the British government had exhausted all the efforts of negotiation and was compelled to announce that, if Russia should decline to restrict within purely diplomatic limits, the discussion in which he has for some time past

  been engaged with a sublime port, and does not by return of the messenger, who is the bearer of my present letter, announce her intention of causing the Russian troops under Prince Gorchakov to commence their march with a view to recross the Prut, so that the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia shall be completely evacuated on April 30th next, the British government must consider the refusal or the silence of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg as equivalent to a declaration of war,

  and will take its measures accordingly. It is not, perhaps, very profitable work for the historian to criticize the mere terms of a document announcing a course of action which long before its issue had become inevitable, but it is worthwhile remarking, perhaps, that it would have been better and more dignified to confine the letter to the simple demand for the evacuation of the Danubian provinces. To ask Russia to promise that her controversy with the port should be

  thenceforward restricted within purely diplomatic limits was to make a demand with which no great power would or indeed could undertake to comply. A member of the Peace Society itself might well hesitate to give a promise that a dispute in which he was engaged should be forever confined within purely diplomatic limits. In any case, it was certain that Russia would not now make any concessions tending toward peace. The messenger, who was the bearer of the letter, was ordered not

  to wait more than six days for an answer. On the fifth day the messenger was informed by word of mouth from Count Neselroda that the Emperor did not think it be coming in him to give any reply to the letter. The die was cast. Rather truly the fact was recorded that the die had been cast. A few days after a crowd assembled in front of the Royal Exchange to watch the performance of a ceremonial that had been little known to the living generation. The sergeant-at-arms, accompanied

  by some of the officials of the city, read from the steps of the Royal Exchange Her Majesty's declaration of war against Russia. The causes of the declaration of war were set forth in an official statement published in the London Gazette. This document is an interesting and a valuable state paper. It recites with clearness and deliberation the successive steps by which the Allied powers had been led to the necessity of an armed intervention in the controversy between

  Turkey and Russia. It described in the first place the complaint of the Emperor of Russia against the Sultan with reference to the claims of the Greek and Latin churches and the arrangement promoted satisfactorily by Her Majesty's ambassador at Constantinople for rendering justice to the claim, an arrangement to which no exception was taken by the Russian government. Then came the sudden unmasking of the other and quite different claims of Prince Menchikov, the nature of which

  in the first instance he endeavored as far as possible to conceal from Her Majesty's ambassador. These claims, thus studiously concealed, affected not merely or at all the privileges of the Greek Church at Jerusalem, but the position of many millions of Turkish subjects in their relations to their sovereign the Sultan. The declaration recalled the various attempts that were made by the Queen's government in conjunction with the governments of France, Austria, and Prussia to

  meet any just demands of the Russian Emperor without affecting the dignity and independence of the Sultan, and showed that if the object of Russia had been solely to secure their proper privileges and immunities for the Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire, the offers that were made could not have failed to meet that object. Her Majesty's government therefore held it as manifest that what Russia was really seeking was not the happiness of the Christian communities

  of Turkey, but the right to interfere in the ordinary relations between Turkish subjects and their sovereign. The Sultan refused to consent to this and declared war and self-defense. Yet the government of Her Majesty did not renounce all hope of restoring peace between the contending parties until advice and remonstrance proved wholly in vain, and Russia continued to extend her military preparations. Her Majesty fell called upon, by regard for an ally, the integrity and

  independence of whose empire had been recognized as essential to the peace of Europe, by the sympathies of her people with right against wrong, by desire to avert from her dominions most injurious consequences, and to save Europe from the preponderance of a power which has violated the faith of treaties and defies the opinion of the civilized world, to take up arms in conjunction with the Emperor of the French for the defense of the Sultan. Some passages of this declaration

  have invited criticism from English historians. It opens, for example, with a statement of the fact that the efforts for an arrangement were made by Her Majesty in conjunction with France, Austria, and Prussia. It speaks of this concert of the four powers down almost to the very close, and then it suddenly breaks off and announces that in consequence of all that has happened, Her Majesty has felt compelled to take up arms in conjunction with the Emperor of the French.

  What strange diplomatic mismanagement, it was asked, has led to this singular non sequitur? Why after having carried on the negotiations through all their various stages with three other great powers, all of them supposed to be equally interested in a settlement of the question, is England at the last moment compelled to take up arms with only one of those powers as an ally? The principal reason for the separation of the two Western powers of Europe from the other great

  states was found in the condition of Prussia. Prussia was then greatly under the influence of the Russian court. The Prussian sovereign was related to the Emperor of Russia, and his kingdom was almost overshadowed by Russian influence. Prussia had come to occupy a lower position in Europe than she had ever before held during her existence as a kingdom. It seemed almost marvelous how by any process the country of the great Frederick could have

  sunk to such a condition of insignificance. She had been compelled to stoop to Austria after the events of 1848. The King of Prussia, tampering with the offers of the strong National Party, who desired to make him Emperor of Germany, now moving forward and now drawing back, letting I dare not wait upon I would, was suddenly pulled up by Austria. The famous arrangement, called afterwards the Humiliation of Olmutz and so completely revenged at Sadova,

  compelled him to drop all his triflings with nationalism and repudiate his former instigators. The King of Prussia was a highly cultured, amiable literary man. He loved letters and art in a sort of dilettante way. He had good impulses and a weak nature. He was a dreamer, a sort of philosopher He was unable to make up his mind to any momentous decision until the time for rendering it effective had gone by. A man naturally truthful, he was often led by very weakness into acts that seemed

  irreconcilable with his previous promises and engagements. He could say witty and sarcastic things, and when political affairs went wrong with him, he could console himself with one or two sharp sayings only heard of by those immediately around him, and then the world might go its way for him. He was like Rob Roy, o'er good for banning and o'er bad for blessing. Like our own Charles II, he never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one. He ought to have

  been an aesthetic essayist or a lecturer on art and moral philosophy to young ladies, and an unkind destiny had made him the king of a state specially embarrassed in a most troublous time. So unkindly was popular rumor as well as fate to him that he got the credit in foreign countries of being a stupid sensualist when he was really a man of respectable habits and refined nature, and in England at least, the nickname of King Clico was long the brand by which the popular

  and most mistaken impression of his character was signified. End of Section 21

• 22 - Ch. 26: Where was Lord Palmerston?, Pt. 3

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  The King of Prussia was the elder brother of the present German Emperor. Had the latter been then on the throne, he would probably have taken some timely and energetic decision with regard to the national duty of Prussia during the impending crisis. Right or wrong, he would doubtless have contrived to see his way and make up his mind at an early stage of the European movement. It is by no means to be assumed

  that he would have taken the course most satisfactory to England and France, but it is likely that his action might have prevented the war, either by rendering the powers far too strong to be resisted by Russia, or by adding to Russia an influence which would have rendered the game of war too formidable to suit the calculations of the Emperor of the French. The actual King of Prussia, however, went so far with the Allies as to lead them for a while to

  believe that he was going all the way, but at the last moment he broke off, declared that the interests of Prussia did not require or allow him to engage in a war, and left France and England to walk their own road. Austria could not venture upon such a war without the cooperation of Prussia, and indeed the course which the campaign took seemed likely to give both Austria and Prussia a good excuse for assuming that their interests were not closely engaged in the struggle.

  Austria would most certainly have gone to war if the Emperor of Russia had kept up the occupation of the Danubian principalities, and for that purpose her territorial situation made her irresistible. But when the seat of war was transferred to the Black Sea, and when after a while the Tsar withdrew his troops from the principalities and Austria occupied them by virtue of a convention with the Sultan, her direct interest in the struggle was reduced almost to nothing.

  Austria and Prussia were in fact solicited by both sides of the dispute, and at one time it was even thought possible that Prussia might give her aid to Russia. This, however, she refrained from doing. Austria and Prussia made an arrangement between themselves for mutual defense in case the progress of the war should directly imperil the interests of either, and England and France undertook an alliance, the task of chastising the presumption

  and restraining the ambitious designs of Russia. Mr. Kinglake finds much fault with the policy of the English government, on which he lays all the blame of the severance of interest between the two Western states and the other two great powers. But we confess that we do not see how any course within the reach of England could have secured just then the thorough alliance of Prussia, and without such an alliance it would have been vain to expect that Austria would throw herself

  unreservedly into the policy of the Western powers. It must be remembered that the controversy between Russia and the West really involved several distinct questions, in some of which Prussia had absolutely no direct interest and Austria very little. Let us set out some of these questions separately. There was the Russian occupation of the principalities. In this, Austria frankly acknowledged her capital interest. Its direct bearing was on her more than any other

  power. It concerned Prussia, as it did England and France, inasmuch as it was an evidence of an aggressive purpose which might very seriously threaten the general stability of the institutions of Europe, but Prussia had no closer interest in it. Austria was the state most affected by it, and Austria was the state which could with most effect operate against it and was always willing and resolute if needs were to do so. Then there was the question of Russia's claim to exercise a

  protectorate over the Christian populations of Turkey. This concerned England and France in one sense, as part of the general pretensions of Russia, and concerned each of them separately in another sense. To France, it told of a rivalry with the right she claimed to look after the interests of the Latin Church. To England, it spoke of a purpose to obtain a hold over populations nominally subject to the Sultan, which might in time make Russia virtual master of the approaches

  to our Eastern possessions. Austria too had a direct interest in repelling these pretensions of Russia, for some of the populations they referred to were on her very frontier. But Prussia can hardly be said to have had any direct national interest in that question at all. Then there came, distinct from all these, the question of the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. This question of the Straits, which has so much to do with the whole European

  aspect of the war, is not to be understood except by those who bear the confirmation of the map of Europe constantly in their minds. The only outlet of Russia on the southern side is the Black Sea. The Black Sea is, save for one little outlet at its southwestern extremity, a huge landlocked lake. That little outlet is the narrow channel called the Bosphorus. Russia and Turkey between them surround the whole of the Black Sea with their territory.

  Russia has the north and some of the eastern shore. Turkey has all the southern, the Asia Minor shore and nearly all the western shore. Close the Straits of the Bosphorus and Russia would be literally locked into the Black Sea. The Bosphorus is a narrow channel as has been said. It is some 17 miles in length and in some places it is hardly more than half a mile in breadth. But it is very deep all through so that ships of war can float close up to its very shores

  on either side. This channel, in its course, passes between the city of Constantinople and its Asiatic suburb of Skutari. The Bosphorus then opens into the little sea of Marmora and out of the sea of Marmora the way westward is through the channel of the Dardanelles. The Dardanelles form the only passage into the archipelago and thence into the Mediterranean. The channel of the Dardanelles is like the Bosphorus, very narrow and very deep, but it

  pursues its course for some 40 miles. Anyone who holds a map in his hand will see at once how Turkey and Russia alike are affected by the existence of the Straits on either extremity of the sea of Marmora. Close up these Straits against vessels of war and the capital of the Sultan is absolutely unassailable from the sea. Close them up on the other hand and the Russian fleet in the Black Sea is absolutely cut off from the Mediterranean and the western world.

  But then it has to be remembered that the same act of closing would secure the Russian ports and shores on the Black Sea from the approach of any of the great navies of the west. The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus being alike such narrow channels and being edged alike by Turkish territory were not regarded as high seas. The Sultans always claimed the right to exclude foreign ships of war from both the Straits. The Treaty of 1841 secured this right to Turkey

  by the agreement of the five great powers of Europe. The treaty acknowledged that the port had the right to shut the Straits against the armed navies of any foreign power and the Sultan for his part engaged not to allow any such navy to enter either of the Straits in time of peace. The closing of the Straits had been the subject of a perfect succession of treaties. The Treaty of 1809 between Great Britain and Turkey confirmed by engagement the ancient rule

  of the Ottoman Empire, forbidding vessels of war at all times to enter the Canal of Constantinople. The Treaty of Unchiarskalesi between Russia and Turkey, arising out of Russia's cooperation with the port to put down the rebellious movement of Muhammad Ali, the Egyptian vassal of the latter, contained a secret clause binding the port to close the Dardanelles against all war vessels, whatever thus shutting Russia's enemies out of the Black Sea, but leaving Russia free to pass

  the Bosphorus, so far at least as that treaty engagement was concerned. Later, when the great powers of Europe combined to put down the attempts of Egypt, the Treaty of July 13, 1841, made in London, engaged that in time of peace no foreign ships of war should be admitted into the Straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. This treaty was but a renewal of a convention made the year before while France was still sulking away from the European concert and did nothing more than

  record her return to it. As matters stood then, the Sultan was not only permitted but bound to close the Straits in times of peace and no navy might enter them without his consent even in times of war. But in times of war he might, of course, give the permission and invite the presence and cooperation of the armed vessels of a foreign power in the Sea of Marmara. By this treaty, the Black Sea fleet of Russia became literally a Black Sea fleet and could no

  more reach the Mediterranean and Western Europe than a boat on the Lake of Lucerne could do. Naturally, Russia chafed at this, but at the same time she was not willing to see the restriction withdrawn in favor of an arrangement that would leave the Straits and consequently the Black Sea open to the navies of France and England. Her supremacy in Eastern Europe would count for little. Her power of coercing Turkey would be sadly diminished if the war flag of England,

  for example, were to float side by side with her own in front of Constantinople or in the Uxine. Therefore, it was natural that the ambition of Russia should tend toward the ultimate possession of Constantinople and the Straits for herself. But as this was an ambition the fulfillment of which seemed far off and beset with vast dangers, her object meanwhile was to gain as much influence and ascendancy as possible over the Ottoman government and to make it practically the vassal

  of Russia and in any case to prevent any other great power from obtaining the influence and ascendancy which she coveted for herself. Now the tendency of this ambition and of all the intermediate claims and disputes with regard to the opening or closing of the Straits was of importance in Europe generally as a part of Russian aggrandizement. But of the great powers they concerned England most, France as a Mediterranean and a naval power, Austria only in a third and

  remoter degree, and Prussia at the time of King Frederick William least of all. It is not surprising therefore that the two western powers were not able to carry their accord with Prussia to the extent of an alliance in war against Russia and it was hardly possible then for Austria to go on if Prussia insisted on drawing back. Thus it came that at a certain point of the negotiations Prussia fell off absolutely or nearly so. Austria undertook but a conditional cooperation of which

  as it happened the conditions did not arise and the Queen of England announced that she had taken up arms against Russia in conjunction with the Emperor of the French. To the great majority of the English people this war was popular. It was popular partly because of the natural and inevitable reaction against the doctrines of peace and mere trading prosperity which had been preached somewhat too pertinaciously for some time before. But it was popular too because of its novelty.

  It was like a return to the youth of the world when England found herself once more preparing for the field. It was like the pouring of new blood into old veins. The public had grown impatient of the common saying of foreign capitals that England had joined the peace society and would never be seen in battle anymore. Mr. Kinglake is right when he says that the doctrines of the peace society had never taken any hold of the higher classes in this country at all. They had never we may venture

  to add taken any real hold of the humbler classes of the working men for example. The well-educated thoughtful middle class who knew how much of worldly happiness depends on a regular income, moderate taxation and a comfortable home supplied most of the advocates of peace as it was scornfully said at any price. Let us say in justice to a very noble and very futile doctrine that there were no persons in England who advocated peace at any price in the ignominious sense which

  hostile critics pressed upon the words. There was a small a serious and a very respectable body of persons who out of the purest motives of conscience held that all war was criminal and offensive to the deity. They were for peace at any price exactly as they were for truth at any price or conscience at any price. They were opposed to war as they were to falsehood or to impiety. It seemed as natural to them that a man should die on resisting rather than resist and kill as it does to most

  persons who profess any sentiment of religion or even of honor that a man should die rather than abjure the faith he believes in or tell a lie. It is assumed as a matter of course that any Englishman worthy of the name would have died by any torture tyranny could put on him rather than perform the old ceremony of trampling on the crucifix which certain heathen states were said to have sometimes insisted on as the price of a captive's freedom. To the believers in the peace doctrine the act of

  war was a trampling on the crucifix which brought with it evil consequences unspeakably worse than the mere performance of a profane ceremonial. To declare that they would rather suffer any earthly penalty of defeat or national servitude than take part in a war was only consistent with the great creed of their lives. It ought not to have been held as any reproach to them. Even those who like this writer have no personal sympathy with such a belief and who hold that a war in a just cause

  is an honor to a nation may still recognize the purity and nobleness of the principle which inspired the votaries of peace and do honor to it. But these men were in any case not many at the time when the Crimean War broke out. They had very little influence on the course of the national policy. They were assailed with a flippant and a somewhat ignoble ridicule. The worst reproach that could be given to men like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright was to accuse them of being members of the

  peace society. It does not appear that either man was a member of the actual organization. Mr. Bright's religious creed made him necessarily a votary of peace. Mr. Cobden had attended meetings called with the futile purpose of establishing peace among nations by the operation of good feeling and of common sense. But for a considerable time the temper of the English people was such as to render any talk about peace not only unprofitable but perilous to the very cause of peace itself.

  Some of the leading members of the peace society did actually get up a deputation to the emperor Nicholas to appeal to his better feelings and of course they were charmed by the manners of the emperor who made it his business to be in a very gracious humor and spoke them fair and introduced them in the most unceremonious way to his wife. Such a visit counted for nothing in Russia and at home it only tended to make people angry and impatient and to put the cause of peace in greater

  jeopardy than ever. Viewed as a practical influence the peace doctrine as completely broke down as a general resolution against the making of money might have done during the time of the mania for speculation and railway shares. But it did not merely break down of itself. It carried some great influences down with it for the time. Influences that were not a part of itself. The eloquence that had coerced the intellect and reasoning power of Peel into a complete

  surrender to the doctrines of free trade. The eloquence that had aroused the populations of all the cities of England and had conquered the House of Commons was destined now to call aloud to solitude. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright addressed their constituents and their countrymen in vain. The fact that they were believed to be opposed on principle to all wars put them out of court in public estimation as Mr. Kinglake justly observes when they went about to argue against this

  particular war. In the cabinet itself there were men who disliked the idea of a war quite as much as they did. Lord Aberdeen detested war and thought it so absurd a way of settling national disputes that almost until the first cannon shot had been fired he could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of the intelligent English people being drawn into it. Mr. Gladstone had a conscientious and a sensitive objection to war in general as a brutal and an unchristian occupation.

  Although his feelings would not have carried him so far away as to prevent his recognition of the fact that war might often be a just unnecessary and a glorious undertaking on the part of a civilized nation. The difficulties of the hour were considerably enhanced by the differences of opinion that prevailed in the cabinet. There were other differences there as well as those that belonged to the mere abstract question of the glory or the guilt of war. It soon became clear

  that two parties of the cabinet looked on the war and its objects with different eyes and interests. Lord Palmerston wanted simply to put down Russia and uphold Turkey. Others were specially concerned for the Christian populations of Turkey and their better government. Lord Palmerston not merely thought that the interests of England called for some check to the aggressiveness of Russia, he liked the Turk for himself. He had faith in the future of Turkey. He went so far even as to

  proclaim his belief in the endurance of her military power. Give Turkey single-handed a fair chance, he argued, and she would beat Russia. He did not believe either in the disaffection of the Christian populations or in the stories of their oppression. He regarded all these stories as part of the plans and inventions of Russia. He had no half-beliefs in the matter at all. The Christian populations and their grievances he regarded in plain language as mere humbugs.

  He looked upon the Turk as a very fine fellow whom all chivalric minds ought to respect. He believed all that was said upon the one side and nothing upon the other. He had made up his mind to this long ago and no arguments or facts could now shake his convictions. A belief of this kind may have been very unphilosophic. It was undoubtedly in many respects the birth of mere prejudice independent of fact or reasoning.

  But the temper born of such a belief is exactly that which should have the making of a war entrusted to it. Lord Palmerston saw his way straight before him. The brave Turk had to be supported, the wicked Russian had to be put down. On one side there was Lord Aberdeen, who did not believe anyone seriously meant to be so barbarous as to go to war, and Mr. Gladstone, who shrank from war in general and was not yet quite certain whether England had any right to undertake this war,

  the two being furthermore concerned far more for the welfare of Turkey's Christian subjects than for the stability of Turkey or the humiliation of Russia. On the other side was Lord Palmerston, gay, resolute, clear as to his own purpose, convinced to the heart's core of everything which just then it was for the advantage of his cause to believe. It was impossible to doubt on which side were to be found the materials for the successful conduct of the enterprise which

  was now so popular with the country. The most conscientious men might differ about the prudence or the moral propriety of the war, but to those who once accepted its necessity and wished our side to win, there could be no possible doubt even for members of the peace society as to the importance of having Lord Palmerston either at the head of affairs or in charge of the war itself. The moment the war actually broke out it became evident to everyone that Palmerston's interval

  of comparative inaction and obscurity was well nigh over. End of section 22.

• 23 - Ch. 27: The Invasion of the Crimea, Pt. 1

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  CHAPTER XXVII. THE INVASION OF THE CRIMEA. PART 1. England then and France entered the war as allies, Lord Ragland, formerly Lord Fitzroy Somerset, an old pupil of the Great Duke in the Peninsular War, and who had lost his right arm serving under Wellington at Waterloo, was appointed to command the English forces. Marshal Saint-Arnaud, a bold, brilliant soldier of fortune, was entrusted by the Emperor of the

  French with the leadership of the soldiers of France. The allied forces went out to the east and assembled at Varna on the Black Sea shore from which they were to make their descent on the Crimea. The war meantime had gone badly for the Emperor of Russia in his attempt to crush the Turks. The Turks had found an Omar Pasha, a commander of remarkable ability and energy, and they had in one or two instances received the unexpected aid and counsel of clever and

  successful Englishmen. A singularly brilliant episode in the opening part of the war was the defense of the earthworks of Silistra on the Bulgarian bank of the Danube by a body of Turkish troops under the direction of two young Englishmen, Captain Butler of the Salon Rifles, and Lieutenant Naismith of the East India Company's service. These young soldiers had voluntarily undertaken the danger and responsibility of the defense. Butler was killed, but the Russians

  were completely foiled and had to raise the siege. At Giorgio and other places the Russians were likewise repulsed, and the invasion of the Danubian provinces was already to all intense a failure. Mr. Kinglake and other writers have argued that but for the ambition of the Emperor of the French and the excited temper of the English people, the war might well have ended then and there. The Emperor of Russia had found, it is contended, that he could not maintain an invasion of European

  Turkey. His fleet was confined to its ports in the Black Sea, and there was nothing for him but to make peace. But we confess we do not see with what propriety or wisdom the Allies, having entered on the enterprise at all, could have abandoned it at such a moment and allowed the Tsar to escape thus merely scotched. However brilliant and gratifying the successes obtained against the Russians, they were but a series of what might be called outpost actions. They could not be

  supposed to have tested the resources of Russia or weakened her strength. They had humbled and vexed her just enough to make her doubly resentful and no more. It seems impossible to suppose that such trivial disasters could have affected in the slightest degree the historic march of Russian ambition, supposing such a movement to exist. If we allow the purpose with which England entered the war to be just and reasonable, then we think the instinct of the English people was sound and true,

  which would have refused to allow Russia to get off with one or two trifling checks and to nurse her wrath and keep her vengeance waiting for a better chance some other time. The Allies went on. They sailed from Varma for the Crimea, nearly three months after the raising of the siege of Silistra. There is much discussion as to the original author of the project for the invasion of the Crimea. The Emperor Napoleon has had to describe to him,

  so as Lord Palmerston, so as the Duke of Newcastle, so according to Mr. Kinglake, as the Times newspaper. It does not much concern us to know in whom the idea originated, but it is of some importance to know that it was essentially a civilian's and not a soldier's idea. It took possession, almost simultaneously, so far as we can observe, of the minds of several statesmen, and it had a sudden fascination for the public. The Emperor Nicholas had raised and

  sheltered his Black Sea Fleet at Sebastopol. That fleet had sailed forth from Sebastopol to commit what was called the Massacre of Sinope. Sebastopol was the great arsenal of Russia. It was the point from which Turkey was threatened, from which it was universally believed the embodied ambition of Russia was one day to make its most formidable effort of aggression. Within the fence of its vast sea forts, the fleet of the Black Sea lay screened. From the moment when the vessels of England and

  France entered the Uxine, the Russian fleet had withdrawn behind the curtain of these defenses and was seen upon the open waves no more. If, therefore, Sebastopol could be taken or destroyed, it would seem as if the whole material fabric, put together at such cost and labor for the execution of the schemes of Russia, would be shattered at a blow. There seemed a dramatic justice in the idea. It could not fail to commend itself to the popular mind. Mr. Kinglake has given the world an amusing

  picture of the manner in which the dispatch of the Duke of Newcastle, ordering the invasion of the Crimea, for it really amounted to an order, was read to his colleagues in the cabinet. It was a dispatch of the utmost importance, for the terms in which it pressed the project on Lord Raglan really rendered it almost impossible for the Commander-in-Chief to use his own discretion. It ought to have been considered sentence by sentence, word by word. It was read, Mr. Kinglake

  affirms, to a number of cabinet ministers, most of whom had fallen fast asleep. The day was warm, he says. The dispatch was long. The reading was somewhat monotonous. Most of those who tried to listen found the soporific influence irresistible. As Sam Weller would have said, poppies were nothing to it. The statesman fell asleep and there was no alteration made in the dispatch. All this is very amusing, and it is, we believe, true enough, that at the particular meeting to which Mr. Kinglake

  refers there was a good deal of nodding of sleepy heads and closing of tired eyelids. But it is not fair to say that these slumbers had anything to do with the subsequent events of the war. The reading of the dispatch was purely a piece of formality, for the project it was to recommend had been discussed very fully before, and the minds of most members of the cabinet were finally made up. The 28th of June, 1854, was the day of the slumbering cabinet, but Lord

  Palmerston had during the whole of the previous fortnight at least been urging on the cabinet and on individual members of it separately, the Duke of Newcastle in a special, the project of an invasion of the Crimea and an attempt on Sebastopol. With all the energy and strenuousness of his nature, he had been urging this by arguments in the cabinet, by written memoranda for the consideration of each member of the cabinet separately, and by long, earnest letters

  addressed to particular members of the cabinet. Many of these documents, of the existence of which Mr. Kinglake was doubtless not aware when he set down his vivacious and satirical account of the sleeping cabinet, have since been published. The plan had also been greatly favored and much urged by the emperor of the French before the day of the sleep of the statesman. Indeed, as has been said already, he receives from many persons the credit of having originated it. The plan, therefore, good

  or bad, was thoroughly known to the cabinet and had been argued for and against over and over again before the Duke of Newcastle read aloud to drowsy ears the dispatch recommending it to the commander in chief of the British forces in the field. The perusal of the dispatch was mere form. It would indeed have been better if the most wearied statesman had contrived to pay a full attention to it, but the want of such respect in no wise affected the policy of the country.

  It is a pity to have to spoil so amusing a story as Mr. Kinglake's, but the commonplace truth has to be told that the invasion of the Crimea was not due to the crotchet of one minister and the drowsiness of all the rest. The invasion of the Crimea, however, was not a soldier's project. It was not welcomed by the English or the French commander. It was undertaken by Lord Raglan out of deference to the recommendations of the government and by Marshal Saint-Arnaud out of

  deference to the emperor of the French and because Lord Raglan too did not see his way to decline the responsibility of it. The allied forces were therefore conveyed to the southwestern shore of the Crimea and affected a landing in Kalamita Bay, a short distance north of the point at which the river Alma runs into the sea. Sebastopol itself lies about 30 miles to the south and then more southward still. Divided by the bulk of a jutting promontory from Sebastopol is the

  harbor of Balaklava. The disembarkation began on the morning of September 14, 1854. It was completed on the fifth day and there were then about 27,000 English, 30,000 French, and 7,000 Turks landed on the shores of Catherine the Great's Crimea. The landing was effected without any opposition from the Russians. On September 19, the allies marched out of their encampments and moved southward in the direction of Sebastopol. They had a skirmish or two with a reconnoitering force of Russian

  cavalry and Cossacks, but they had no business of genuine war until they reached the nearer bank of the Alma. The Russians in great strength had taken up a splendid position on the heights that fringed the other side of the river. The allied forces reached the Alma about noon on September 20. They found that they had to cross the river in the face of the Russian batteries armed with heavy guns on the highest point of the hills or bluffs, of scattered artillery, and of dense masses of

  infantry which covered the hills. The Russians were under the command of Prince Menshikov. It is certain that Prince Menshikov believed his position unassailable and was convinced that his enemies were delivered into his hands when he saw the allies approach and attempt to affect the crossing of the river. He had allowed them of deliberate purpose to approach thus far. He might have attacked them on their landing or on their two-days march toward the river,

  but he did not choose to do anything of the kind. He had carefully sought out a strong and what he considered an impregnable position. He had found it, as he believed, on the south bank of the Alma, and there he was simply biding his time. His idea was that he could hold his ground for some days against the allies with ease, that he would keep them there, play with them, until the great reinforcements he was expecting could come to him, and then he would suddenly take the offensive and

  crush the enemy. He proposed to make of the Alma and its banks the grave of the invaders, but with characteristic arrogance and lack of care, he had neglected some of the very precautions which were essentially necessary to secure any position, however strong. He had not taken the pains to make himself certain that every easy access to his position was closed against the attack of the enemy. The attack was made with desperate courage on the part of the allies, but without any great

  skill of leadership or tenacity of discipline. It was rather a pelmel sort of fight in which the headlong courage and the indomitable obstinacy of the English and French troops carried all before them at last. A study of the battle is of little profit to the ordinary reader. It was an heroic scramble. There was little coherence of action between the allied forces, but there was happily an almost total absence of generalship on the part of the Russians. The soldiers of the Tsar

  fought stoutly and stubbornly as they have always done, but they could not stand up against the blended vehemence and obstinacy of the English and French. The river was crossed, the opposite heights were mounted, Prince Menchikov's great redoubt was carried, the Russians were driven from the field, the allies occupied their ground, the victory was to the western powers. Indeed, it would not be unfair to say that the victory was to the English. The French did not take that share

  in the heat of the battle, which their strength and their military genius might have led men to expect. Saint-Arnaud, their commander-in-chief, was in wretched health, on the point of death. In fact, he was in no condition to guide the battle. A brilliant enterprise of General Bosquet was ill-supported and had nearly proved a failure, and Prince Napoleon's division got hopelessly jammed up and confused. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that in the confusion and scramble of the

  whole affair, we were more lucky than the French. If a number of men are rushing headlong and in the dark, towards some distant point, one may run against an unthought of obstacle and fall down and so lose his chance, while his comrade happens to meet with no such stumbling block and goes right on. Perhaps this illustration may not unfairly distribute the parts taken in the battle. It would be superfluous to say that the French fought splendidly where they had any real chance

  of fighting. But the luck of the day was not with them. On all sides, the battle was fought without generalship. On all sides, the bravery of the officers and men was worthy of any general. Our men were the luckiest. They saw the heights, they saw the enemy there, they made for him, they got at him, they would not go back, and so he had to give way. That was the history of the day. The big scramble was all over in a few hours. The first field was fought and we had won.

  The Russians ought to have been pursued. They themselves fully expected a pursuit. They retreated in something like utter confusion, eager to put the Khachka River, which runs south to the Alma and with a somewhat similar course, between them and the imaginary pursuers. Had they been followed to the Khachka, they might have been all made prisoners or destroyed, but there was no pursuit. Lord Raglan was eager to follow up the victory, but the French had as yet hardly

  any cavalry, and Marshal Saint-Dagno would not agree to any further enterprise that day. Lord Raglan believed that he ought not to persist and nothing was done. The Russians were unable at first to believe in their good fortune. It seemed to them for a long time impossible that any commanders in the world would have failed under conditions so tempting to follow a flying and disordered enemy. Except for the bravery of

  those who fought, the battle was not much to boast of. The Allies together considerably outnumbered the Russians, although from the causes we have mentioned, the Englishmen were left throughout the greater part of the day to encounter an enemy numerically superior, posted on difficult and commanding heights. But it was the first great battle which for nearly 40 years our soldiers had fought with a civilized enemy. The military authorities in the country

  were well disposed to make the most of it. At this distance of time, it is almost touching to read some of the heroic contemporaneous descriptions of the great scramble of the Alma. It might almost seem as if, in the imaginings of the enthusiastic historians, Englishmen had never mounted heights and defeated superior numbers before. The sublime triumphs against every adverse condition which had been won by the genius of a Marlborough or a Wellington could not have been celebrated in

  language of more exalted dithy rambic pomp. The gallant medley on the banks of the Alma and the fruitless interval of an action that followed it were told of as if men were speaking of some battle of the gods. Very soon, however, a different note came to be sounded. The campaign had been opened under conditions differing from those of most campaigns that went before it. Science had added many new discoveries to the art of war. Literature had added one remarkable contribution

  of her own to the conditions amid which campaigns were to be carried on. She had added the special correspondent. The old-fashioned historiographer of wars traveled to please sovereigns and ministered to the self-conceit of conquerors. The modern special correspondent had a very different purpose. He watched the movements of armies and criticized the policy of generals in the interests of some journal, which for its part was concerned only for the information of the public.

  No favor that courts or monarchs could bestow was worthy a moment's consideration in the mind even of the most selfish proprietor of a newspaper when compared with the reward which the public could give to him and to his paper for quick and accurate news and trustworthy comment. The business of the special correspondent has grown so much since the Crimean War that we are now inclined to look back upon the war correspondents of those days almost as men did upon the

  old-fashioned historiographer. The war correspondent now scrawls his dispatches as he sits in his saddle under the fire of the enemy. He scrawls them with a pencil noting and describing each incident of the fight so far as he can see it as coolly as if he were describing a review of volunteers in Hyde Park and he contrives to send off his narrative by telegraph before the victor in the field has begun to pursue or has settled down to hold the ground he won and the war correspondent's story is expected

  to be as brilliant and picturesque in style as it ought to be exact and faithful in its statements. In the days of the Crimea things had not advanced quite so far as that. The war was well on before the submarine telegraph between Varma and the Crimea allowed of daily reports but the feats of the war correspondent then filled men's minds with wonder. When the expedition was leaving England it was accompanied by a special correspondent from each of the great daily papers of London. The time

  sent out a representative whose name almost immediately became celebrated Mr. William Howard Russell the pre-chevalier of war correspondence in that day as Mr. Archibald Forbes of the daily news is in this. Mr. Russell rendered some service to the English army and to his country however which no brilliancy of literary style would alone have enabled him to do. It was to his great credit as a man of judgment and observation that being a civilian who had

  never before seen one puff of war smoke he was able to distinguish between the confusion inseparable from all actual levying of war and the confusion that comes of distinctly bad administration. To the unaccustomed eye of an ordinary civilian the whole progress of a campaign the development of a battle the arrangements of the commissariat appear at any moment of actual pressure to be nothing but a mass of confusion. He is accustomed in civil life to find everything

  in its proper place and every emergency well provided for. When he is suddenly plunged into the midst of a campaign he is apt to think that everything must be going wrong or else he assumes contentedly that the whole is in the hands of persons who know better than he and that it would be absurd on his part to attempt to criticize the arrangements of the men whose business it is to understand them. Mr. Russell soon saw that there was confusion and he had the soundness of judgment

  to know that the confusion was that of a breaking down system. Therefore while the fervor of delight in the courage and success of our army was still fresh in the minds of the public at home while every music hall was ringing with the cheap rewards of valor in the shape of popular glorifications of our commanders and our soldiers the readers of the times began to learn that things were badly indeed with the conquering army of the alma. The ranks were thinned by the ravages of cholera.

  The men were pursued by cholera to the very battlefield, Lord Ragland himself said. No system can charm away all the effects of climate but it appeared only too soon that the arrangements made to encounter the indirect and inevitable dangers of a campaign were miserably inefficient. The hospitals were in a wretchedly disorganized condition. Stores of medicines and strengthening food were decaying in places where no one wanted them or could well get at them while men were dying

  in hundreds among our tents in the Crimea for lack of them. The system of clothing, of transport, of feeding, of nursing, everything had broken down. Ample provisions had been got together and paid for and when they came to be needed no one knew where to get at them. The special correspondent of the times and other correspondents continued to dim these things into the ears of the public at home. Exaltation began to give way to a feeling of dismay. The patriotic anger against the Russians

  was changed for a mood of deep indignation against our own authorities and our own war administration. It soon became apparent to everyone that the whole campaign had been planned on the assumption that it was to be like the career of the hero whom Byron laments, brief, brave, and glorious. Our military authorities here at home, we do not speak of the commanders in the field, had made up their minds that Sebastopol was to fall like another Jericho at the sound of the war

  trumpets blast. Our commanders in the field were on the contrary rather disposed to overrate than to underrate the strength of the Russians. It was therefore something like the condition of things described in Macaulay's ballad. Those behind cried forward, those in front called back. It is very likely that if a sudden dash had been made at Sebastopol by land and sea, it might have been taken almost at the very opening of the war. But the delay gave the Russians full warning

  and they did not neglect it. On the third day after the battle of the Alma, the Russians sank seven vessels of their Black Sea fleet at the entrance of the harbor of Sebastopol. This was done full in the sight of the allied fleets who at first misunderstanding the movements going on among the enemy thought the Russian squadron was about to come out from their shelter and try conclusions with the western ships. But the real purpose of the Russians became

  soon apparent. Under the eyes of the allies the seven vessels slowly settled down and sank in the water until at last only the tops of their masts were to be seen and the entrance of the harbor was barred as by sunken rocks against any approach of an enemy's ship. There was an end to every dream of a sudden capture of Sebastopol. End of section 23.

• 24 - Ch. 27: The Invasion of the Crimea, Pt. 2

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  CHAPTER XXVII. THE INVASION OF THE CRYMEA. PART 2. The Allied armies moved again from their positions on the Alma, but they did not direct their march to the north side of Sebastopol. They made for Balaklava, which lies south of the city on the other side of a promontory, and which has a port that might enable them to secure a constant means of communication between the armies and the fleets. To reach Balaklava, the Allied forces had

  to undertake a long and fatiguing flank march, passing Sebastopol on their right. They accomplished the march in safety and occupied the heights above Balaklava, while the fleets appeared at the same time in the harbor. Sebastopol was but a few miles off, and preparations were at once made for an attack on it by land and sea. On October 17th, the attack began. It was practically a failure. Nothing better indeed could well have been expected. The fleet could not get near enough

  to the sea-forts of Sebastopol to make their broadsides of any real effect, because of the shallow water and the sunken ships, and although the attack from the land was vigorous and was fiercely kept up, yet it could not carry its object. It became clear that Sebastopol was not to be taken by any coup de main, and the Allies had not men enough to invest it. They were therefore to some extent themselves in the condition of a besieged force, for the Russians had a large army

  outside Sebastopol, ready to make every sacrifice for the purpose of preventing the English and French from getting even a chance of undisturbed operations against it. The Russians attacked the Allies fiercely on October 25th, in the hope of obtaining possession of Balaklava. The attempt was bold and brilliant, but it was splendidly repulsed. Never did a day of battle do more credit to English courage, or less perhaps to English generalship. The cavalry particularly distinguished

  themselves. It was in great measure on our side a cavalry action. It will be memorable in all English history as the battle in which occurred the famous charge of the Light Brigade. Owing to some fatal misconception of the meaning of an order from the commander-in-chief, the Light Brigade, 607 men in all, charged what has been rightly described as the Russian army in position. The brigade was composed of 118 men of the 4th Light Dragoons, 104 of the 8th Hussars,

  110 of the 11th Hussars, 130 of the 13th Light Dragoons, and 145 of the 17th Lancers. Of the 607 men, 198 came back. Long, painful, and hopeless were the disputes about this fatal order. The controversy can never be wholly settled. The officer who bore the order was one of the first who fell in the outset. All Europe, all the world rang with wonder and admiration of the feudal and splendid charge. The poet laureate sang of it in spirited verses. Perhaps its best

  epitaph was contained in the celebrated comment ascribed to the French general Busquet and which has since become proverbial and has been quoted until men are well nigh tired of it. It was magnificent, but it was not war. Next day the enemy made another vigorous attack on a much larger scale, moving out of Sebastopol itself and were again repulsed. The allies were able to prevent the troops who made the sortie from cooperating with the Russian army outside who

  had attacked at Balaklava. The latter were endeavoring to entrench themselves at the little village of Inkerman, lying on the north of Sebastopol, but the stout resistance they met with from the allies frustrated their plans. On November 5th, the Russians made another grand attack on the allies, chiefly on the British, and were once more splendidly repulsed. The plateau of Inkerman was the principal scene of the struggle. It was occupied by the guards and a few

  British regiments, on whom fell, until general Busquet with his French were able to come to their assistance, the task of resisting a Russian army. This was the severest and the fiercest engagement of the campaign. The loss to the English was 2,612, of whom 145 were officers. The French lost about 1,700. The Russians were believed to have lost 12,000 men, but at no time could any clear account be obtained of the Russian losses. It was believed that they

  brought a force of 50,000 men to the attack. Inkerman was described at the time as the soldier's battle. Strategy it was set everywhere. There was none. The attack was made under cover of a dark and drizzling mist. The battle was fought for a while almost absolutely in the dark. There was hardly any attempt to direct the Allies by any principles of scientific warfare. The soldiers fought stubbornly a series of hand-to-hand fights, and we are entitled to

  say that the better men won in the end. We fully admit that it was a soldier's battle. All the comment we have to make upon the epithet is that we do not exactly know which of the engagements fought in the Crimea was anything but a soldier's battle. Of course, with the soldiers, we take the officers. A battle in the Crimea with which general ship had anything particular to do has certainly not come under the notice of this writer. Mr. Kinglake tells us that at Alma,

  Marshal Saint-Augneau, the French commander-in-chief, addressing General Caen Robert and Prince Napoleon, said, With such men as you I have no orders to give. I have but to point to the enemy. This seems to have been the general principle on which the commanders conducted the campaign. There were the enemy's forces. Let the men go at them any way they could. Nor under the circumstances could anything much better have been done.

  When orders were given, it appeared more than once as if things would have gone better without them. The soldier won his battle always. No general could prevent him from doing that. Meanwhile, what were people saying in England? They were indignantly declaring that the whole campaign was a muddle. It was evident now that Sebastopol was not going to fall all at once. It was evident, too, that the preparations had been made on the assumption that it must fall

  at once. To make the disappointment more bitter at home, the public had been deceived for a few days by a false report of the taking of Sebastopol, and the disappointment naturally increased the impatience and dissatisfaction of Englishmen. The fleet that had been sent out to the Baltic came back without having accomplished anything in particular, and although there really was nothing in particular that it could have accomplished under the circumstances,

  yet many people were as angry as if it had culpably allowed the enemy to escape it on the open seas. The sailing of the Baltic fleet had indeed been preceded by ceremonials especially calculated to make any enterprise ridiculous, which failed to achieve some startling success. It was put under the command of Sir Charles Napier, a brave old salt of the fast-fading school of Smollett's commander trunnion, rough, dashing, bullheaded, likely enough to succeed

  where sheer force and courage could win victories, but wanting in all the intellectual qualities of a commander and endowed with a violent tongue and an almost unmatched indiscretion. Sir Charles Napier was a member of a family famed for its warriors, but he had not anything like the capacity of his cousin, the other Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sindhi, or the intellect of Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War. He had won some signal and surprising successes in

  the Portuguese Civil War and in Syria, all under conditions wholly different and with an enemy wholly different from those he would have to encounter in the Baltic, but the voice of admiring friends was tumultuously raised to predict splendid things for him before his fleet had left its port, and he himself quite forgot in his rough self-confidence the difference between boasting when one is taking off his armor and boasting when one is only putting it on.

  His friends entertained him at a farewell dinner at the Reform Club. Lord Palmerston was present and Sir James Graham, the first Lord of the Admiralty, and a great deal of exuberant nonsense was talked. Lord Palmerston, carried away by his natural bonhomie and his high animal spirits, showered the most extravagant praises upon the gallant admiral, intermixed with jokes which set the company laughing consumedly, but which read by the outer public next day seemed unbecoming

  preludes to an expedition that was to be part of a great war and of terrible national sacrifices. The one only thing that could have excused the whole performance would have been some overwhelming success on the part of him who was its hero, but it is not probable that a Dundonald or even a Nelson could have done much in the Baltic just then, and Napier was not a Dundonald or a Nelson. The Baltic fleet came home safely after a while, its commander having brought with

  him nothing but a grievance which lasted him all the remainder of his life. The public were amazed, scornful, wrathful, and they began to think that they were destined to see nothing but failure as the fruit of the campaign. In truth, they were extravagantly impatient. Perhaps they were not to be blamed. Their leaders, who ought to have known better, had been filling them with the idea that they had nothing to do but to sweep the enemy from sea and

  land. The temper of a people thus stimulated and thus disappointed is almost always indiscriminating and unreasonable in its censure. The first idea is to find a victim. The victim on whom the anger of a large portion of the public turned in this instance was the Prince Consort. The most absurd ideas, the most cruel and baseless colonies, were in circulation about him. He was accused of having out of some inscrutable motive made use of all his secret influence to prevent the success of the

  campaign. He was charged with being in conspiracy with Prussia, with Russia, and with no one knew exactly whom, to weaken the strength of England and secure a triumph for her enemies. Stories were actually told at one time of his having been arrested for high treason. He had, in one of his speeches about this time, said that constitutional government was under a heavy trial and could only pass triumphantly through it if the country would grant its confidence to Her Majesty's government.

  In this observation, as the whole context of the speech showed, the Prince was only explaining that the Queen's government were placed at a disadvantage in the carrying on of a war as compared with a government like that of the Emperor of the French, who could act on his own arbitrary will without check, delay, or control on the part of any parliamentary body. But the speech was instantly fastened on as illustrating the Prince's settled and unconquerable dislike of all

  constitutional and popular principles of government. Those who opposed the Prince had not indeed been waiting for his speech at the Trinity House dinner to denounce and condemn him, but the sentence in that speech to which reference has been made opened upon him a new torrent of hostile criticism. The charges which sprang of this heated and unjust temper on the part of the public did not indeed long prevail against the Prince consort. When once the subject came to be taken

  up in Parliament, it was shown almost in a moment that there was not the slightest ground or excuse for any of the absurd surmises and cruel suspicions which had been creating so much agitation. The agitation collapsed in a moment, but while it lasted it was both vehement and intense and gave much pain to the Prince and far more pain still to the Queen, his wife. We have seen more lately and on a larger scale something like the phenomenon of that time. During the war between France and

  Germany, the people of Paris went nearly wild with the idea that they had been betrayed and were clamorous for victims to punish anywhere or anyhow. To many calm Englishmen this seemed monstrously unreasonable and unworthy, and the French people received from English writers many grave rebukes and wise exhortations. But the temper of the English public at one period of the Crimean War was becoming very like that which set Paris wild during the disastrous struggle with

  Germany. The passions of peoples are, it is said to be feared, very much alike in their impulses and even in their manifestations. And if England, during the Crimean War, never came to the wild condition into which Paris fell during the later struggle, it is perhaps rather because on the whole things went well with England than in consequence of any very great superiority of Englishmen in judgment and self-restraint over the excitable people of France. Certainly those who

  remember what we may call the dark days of the Crimean campaign, when disappointment following on extravagant confidence had incited popular passion to call for some victim, will find themselves slow to set a limit to the lengths that passion might have reached if the Russians had actually been successful even in one or two battles. The winter was gloomy at home as well as abroad. The news constantly arriving from the Crimea told only of devastation caused by foes

  far more formidable than the Russians. Sickness, bad weather, bad management. The Black Sea was swept and scourged by terrible storms. The destruction of transport ships laden with winter stores for our men was of incalculable injury to the army. Clothing, blanketing, provisions, hospital necessities of all kinds were destroyed in vast quantities. The loss of life among the crews of the vessels was immense. A storm was nearly as disastrous

  in this way as a battle. On shore, the sufferings of the army were unspeakable. The tents were torn from their pegs and blown away. The officers and men were exposed to the bitter cold and the fierce stormy blasts. Our soldiers had for the most part little experience or even idea of such cold as they had to encounter this gloomy winter. The intensity of the cold was so great that no one might dare to touch any metal substance in the open air with his bare hand

  under penalty of leaving the skin behind him. The hospitals for the sick and wounded at Scutari were in a wretchedly disorganized condition. They were for the most part in an absolutely chaotic condition as regards arrangement and supply. In some instances, medical stores were left to decay at Varna, where were found lying useless in the holds of vessels in Balaklava Bay, which were needed for the wounded at Scutari. The medical officers were able and zealous men.

  The stores were provided and paid for so far as our government was concerned, but the stores were not brought to the medical men. These had their hands all but idle, their eyes and souls tortured by the sight of sufferings which they were unable to relieve for want of the commonest appliances of the hospital. The most extraordinary instances of blunder and confusion were constantly coming to light. Great consignments of boots arrived and

  were found to be all for the left foot. Mules for the conveyance of stores were contracted for and delivered, but delivered so that they came into the hands of the Russians and not of us. Shameful frauds were perpetrated in the instance of some of the contracts for preserved meat. One man's preserved meat, exclaimed punch with bitter humor, is another man's poison. The evils of the hospital disorganization were happily made a means of bringing about

  a new system of attending to the sick and wounded in war which has already created something like a revolution in the manner of treating the victims of battle. Mr. Sidney Herbert, horrified at the way in which things were managed in Scutari and the Crimea, applied to a distinguished woman who had long taken a deep interest in hospital reform to superintend personally the nursing of the soldiers. Ms. Florence Nightingale was the

  daughter of a wealthy English country gentleman. She had chosen not to pass her life in fashionable or aesthetic inactivity and had from a very early period turned her attention to sanitary questions. She had studied nursing as a science and a system and had made herself acquainted with the working of various continental institutions and about the time when the war broke out she was actually engaged in reorganizing the sick governess's institution in Harley Street, London. To her,

  Mr. Sidney Herbert turned. He offered her, if she would accept the task he proposed, plenary authority over all the nurses and an unlimited power of drawing on the government for whatever she might think necessary to the success of her undertaking. Ms. Nightingale accepted the task and went out to Scutari accompanied by some women of rank like her own and a trained staff of nurses. They speedily reduced chaos into order and from the time of their landing in Scutari there was

  at least one department of the business of war which was never again a subject of complaint. The spirit of the chivalric days had been restored under better auspices for its abiding influence. Ladies of rank once more devoted themselves to the service of the wounded and the end was come of the Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prigg type of nurse. Sidney Herbert in his letter to Ms. Nightingale had said that her example, if she accepted the task he proposed, would multiply the good to all

  time. These words proved to have no exaggeration in them. We have never seen a war since in which women of education and of genuine devotion have not given themselves up to the task of caring for the wounded. The Geneva Convention and the burying of the Red Cross are among the results of Florence Nightingale's work in the Crimea. But the siege of Sebastopol was meanwhile dragging heavily along and sometimes it was not quite certain which ought to be called the besieged,

  the Russians in the city or the allies encamped inside of it. During some months the allied armies did little or nothing. The commissariat system and the land transport system had broken down. The armies were miserably weakened by sickness. Cholera was ever and anon raging anew among our men. Horses and mules were dying of cold and starvation. The roads were only deep irregular ruts filled with mud. The camp was a marsh. The tents stood often in pools of water. The men had

  sometimes no beds but straw dripping with wet and hardly any bed coverings. Our unfortunate Turkish allies were in a far more wretched plight than even we ourselves. The authorities who ought to have looked after them were impervious to the criticisms of special correspondence and unassailable by parliamentary votes of censure. A condemnation of the latter kind was hanging over our government. Lord John Russell became impressed with the conviction that the Duke of Newcastle was

  not strong enough for the post of War Minister and he wrote to Lord Aberdeen urging that the War Department should be given to Lord Palmerston. Lord Aberdeen replied that although another person might have been a better choice when the appointments were made in the first instance, yet in the absence of any proved defect or alleged incapacity, there was no sufficient ground for making a kind of speculative change. Parliament was called together before Christmas and after

  the Christmas recess Mr. Roebuck gave notice that he would move for a select committee to inquire into the condition of the army before Sebastopol and into the conduct of those departments of the government whose duty it had been to minister to the wants of the army. Lord John Russell did not believe for himself that the motion could be conscientiously resisted, but as it necessarily involved a censure upon some of his colleagues he did not think he ought to

  remain longer in the ministry and he therefore resigned his office. The sudden resignation of the leader of the House of Commons was a death blow to any plans of resistance by which the government might otherwise have thought of encountering Mr. Roebuck's motion. Lord Palmerston, although Lord John Russell's course was a marked tribute to his own capacity, had remonstrated warmly with Russell by letter as to his determination to resign.

  You will have the appearance, he said, of having remained in office, aiding and carrying on a system of which you disapprove until driven out by Roebuck's announced notice, and the government will have the appearance of self-condemnation by flying from a discussion which they dare not face. While as regards the country, the action of the executive will be paralyzed for a time in a critical moment of a great war with an impending negotiation and we shall exhibit to

  the world a melancholy spectacle of disorganization among our political men at home similar to that which has prevailed among our military men abroad. The remonstrance, however, came too late, even if it could have had any effect at any time. Mr. Roebuck's motion came on and was resisted with vigor by Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. Lord Palmerston insisted that the responsibility ought to fall not on the Duke of Newcastle but on the whole cabinet, and with a generosity which

  his keenest opponents might have admitted to be characteristic of him, he accepted the task of defending an administration whose chief blame was in the eyes of most people, that they had not given the control of the war into his hands. Mr. Gladstone declared that the inquiry sought for by the resolution could lead to nothing but confusion and disturbance, increased disasters, shame at home, and weakness abroad. It would convey no consolation to those whom you seek to

  aid, but it would carry malignant joy to the hearts of the enemies of England. The House of Commons was not to be moved by any such argument or appeal. The one pervading idea was that England had been endangered and shamed by the breakdown of her army organization. When the division took place, 305 members voted for Mr. Roebuck's motion and only 148 against. The majority against ministers was therefore 157. Everyone knows what a scene usually takes

  place when a ministry is defeated in the House of Commons. Cheering again and again renewed, counter-cheers of defiance, wild exaltation, vehement indignation, a whole whirlpool of various emotions seething in that little hall in St. Stephen's. But this time there was no such outburst. The House could hardly realize the fact that the ministry of all the talents had been thus completely and ignominiously defeated. A dead silence followed the announcement of the numbers.

  Then there was a half-breathless murmur of amazement and incredulity. The Speaker repeated the numbers and doubt was over. It was still uncertain how the House would express its feelings. Suddenly someone laughed. The sound gave a direction and a relief to perplexed, pent-up emotion. Shouts of laughter followed. Not merely the pledged opponents of the government laughed. Many of those who had voted with ministers found themselves laughing, too.

  It seemed so absurd, so incongruous, this way of disposing of the great coalition government. Many must have thought of the night of fierce debate little more than two years before, when Mr. Disraeli, then on the verge of his fall from power, and realizing fully the strength of the combination against him, consoled his party and himself for the imminent fatality awaiting them by the defiant words, I know that I have to face a coalition. The combination may be successful.

  The combination has before this been successful, but coalitions, though they may be successful, have always found that their triumphs have been brief. This I know, that England does not love coalitions. Only two years had passed and the great coalition had fallen, overwhelmed with reproach and popular indignation and amid sudden shouts of laughter. End of section 24.

• 25 - Ch. 28: The Close of the War, Pt. 1

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  On February 15, 1855, Lord Palmerston wrote to his brother. A month ago, if any man had asked me to say what was one of the most improbable events, I should have said, my being Prime Minister. Aberdeen was there, Darby was head of one great party, John Russell of the other, and yet in about ten days' time they all gave way like straws before the wind, and so here am I writing to you from Downing Street as First Lord of the Treasury.

  No doubt Lord Palmerston was sincere in the expression of surprise which we have quoted, but there were not many other men in the country who felt in the least astonished at the turn of events by which he had become Prime Minister. Indeed, it had long become apparent to almost everyone that his assuming that place was only a question of time. The country was in that mood that it would absolutely have somebody at the head of affairs who knew his own mind

  and saw his way clearly before him. When the coalition ministry broke down, Lord Darby was invited by the Queen to form a government. He tried and failed. He did all in his power to accomplish the task with which the Queen had entrusted him. He invited Lord Palmerston to join him, and it was intimated that if Palmerston consented, Mr. Disraeli would waive all claim to the leadership of the House of Commons in order that Palmerston should have that place. Lord Darby

  also offered through Lord Palmerston places in his administration to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert. Palmerston did not see his way to join a Darby administration, and without him, Lord Darby could not go on. The Queen then sent for Lord John Russell, but Russell's late and precipitate retreat from his office had discredited him with most of his former colleagues, and he found that he could not get a government together. Lord Palmerston was then, to use his own phrase,

  l'inévitable. There was not much change in the personnel of the ministry. Lord Aberdeen was gone and Lord Palmerston took his place, and Lord Panmura, who had formerly as Fox Mall administered the affairs of the army, succeeded the Duke of Newcastle. Lord Panmura, however, combined in his own person the functions up to that time absurdly separated of secretary at war and secretary for war. The secretary at war under the old system was not one of the principal secretaries of state.

  He was merely the officer by whom the regular communication was kept up between the war office and the ministry, and has been described as the civil officer of the army. The secretary for war was commonly entrusted with the colonial department as well. The two war offices were now made into one. It was hoped by this change great benefit would come to our whole army system. Lord Palmerston acted energetically, too, in sending out a sanitary commission to the Crimea

  and a commission to superintend the Commissariat, a department that almost more than any other had broken down. Nothing could be more strenuous than the terms in which Lord Palmerston recommended the sanitary commission to Lord Raglan. He requested that Lord Raglan would give the commissioners every assistance in his power. They will, of course, be opposed and thwarted by the medical officers, by the men who have charge of the port arrangements, and by those who have the

  cleaning of the camp. Their mission will be ridiculed and their recommendations and directions set aside, unless enforced by the peremptory exercise of your authority. But that authority I must request you to exert in the most peremptory manner for the immediate and exact carrying into execution, whatever changes of arrangement they may recommend. For these are matters on which depend the health and lives of many hundreds of men, I may indeed say, of thousands.

  Lord Palmerston was strongly pressed by some of the more strenuous reformers of the House. Mr. Layard, who had acquired some celebrity before in a very different field, as a discoverer, that is to say in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, was energetic and incessant in his attacks on the administration of the war, and was not disposed, even now, to give the new government a moment's rest. Mr. Layard was a man of a certain rough ability, immense self-sufficiency,

  and indomitable egotism. He was not in any sense an eloquent speaker, he was singularly wanting in all the graces of style and manner, but he was fluent, he was vociferous, he never seemed to have a moment's doubt on any conceivable question, he never admitted that there could by any possibility be two sides to any matter of discussion. He did really know a great deal about the East at a time when the habit of traveling in the East was comparatively rare. He stamped down

  all doubt or difference of view with the overbearing dogmatism of Sir Walter Scott's touchwood, or of the proverbial man who has been there and ought to know, and he was in many respects admirably fitted to be the spokesman of all those, and they were not a few, who saw that things had been going wrong without exactly seeing why, and were eager that something should be done, although they did not clearly know what. Lord Palmerston strove to induce the House not to press for the

  appointment of the committee recommended in Mr. Roebuck's motion. The government, he said, would make the needful inquiries themselves. He reminded the House of Richard II's offer to lead the men of the fallen Tyler's insurrection himself, and in the same spirit he offered on the part of the government to take the lead in every necessary investigation. Mr. Roebuck, however, would not give way, and Lord Palmerston yielded to a demand which had undoubtedly the support of a vast force

  of public opinion. The constant argument of Mr. Layard had some sense in it. The government, now in office, was very much like the government in which the House had declared so lately that it had no confidence. It could hardly, therefore, be expected that the House should accept its existence as guarantee enough that everything should be done which its predecessor had failed to do. Lord Palmerston gave way, but his unavoidable concession brought on a new ministerial crisis.

  Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sidney Herbert declined to hold office any longer. They had opposed the motion for an inquiry most gravely and strenuously, and they would not lend any countenance to it by remaining in office. Sir Charles Wood succeeded Sir James Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty. Lord John Russell took the place of Secretary of the Colonies, vacated by Sidney Herbert, and Sir George Cornwall Lewis followed Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the

  Exchequer. Meanwhile, new negotiations for peace set on foot under the influence of Austria had been begun at Vienna, and Lord John Russell had been sent there to represent the interests of England. The conference opened at Vienna under circumstances that might have seemed especially favorable to peace. We had got a new ally, a state not indeed commanding any great military strength but full of energy and ambition and representing more than any other perhaps the tendencies of

  liberalism and the operation of the comparatively new principle of the rights of nationalities. This was the little kingdom of Sardinia, whose government was then under the control of one of the master spirits of modern politics, a man who belonged to the class of the Richelias and Orange Williams, the illustrious Count Kavur. Sardinia, it may be frankly said, did not come into the alliance because of any particular sympathies that she had with one side

  or the other of the quarrel between Russia and the western powers. She went into the war in order that she might have a locustandi in the councils of Europe from which to set forth her grievances against Austria. In the marvelous history of the uprise of the kingdom of Italy, there is a good deal over which to use the words of Carlyle, morality is not a few must shriek aloud. It would not be easy to defend on high moral principles the policy which struck into

  a war without any particular care for either side of the controversy but only to serve an ulterior and personal, that is to say, national purpose. But regarding the policy merely by the light of its results, it must be owned that it was singularly successful and entirely justified the expectations of Kavur. The Crimean war laid the foundations of the kingdom of Italy. That was one fact calculated to inspire hopes of a peace. The greater the number and strength of

  the allies, the greater obviously the pressure upon Russia and the probability of her listening to reason. But there was another event of a very different nature, the effect of which seemed at first likely to be all in favor of peace. This was the death of the man whom the united public opinion of Europe regarded as the author of the war. On March 2nd, 1855, the emperor Nicholas of Russia died of pulmonary apoplexy after an attack of influenza. In other

  days it would have been said he had died of a broken heart. Perhaps the description would have been more strictly true than the terms of the medical report. It was doubtless the effect of utter disappointment, of the wreck and ruin of hopes to which a life's ambition had been directed and a life's energy dedicated, which left that frame of adamant open to the sudden dart of sickness. One of the most remarkable illustrations of an artist's genius devoted to a political

  subject was the cartoon which appeared in Punch and which was called General Fevrier Turned Traitor. The emperor Nicholas had boasted that Russia had two generals on whom she could always rely, General Janvier and General Fevrier. And now the English artist represented General February, a skeleton in Russian uniform, turning traitor and laying his bony ice-cold hand on the heart of the sovereign and betraying him to the tomb. But indeed it was not General February alone who

  doomed Nicholas to death. The Tsar died of broken hopes, of the recklessness that comes from defeat and despair. He took no precautions against cold and exposure. He treated with a magnanimous disdain the remonstrances of his physicians and his friends. As of Max Piccolomini and Schiller's noble play, so of him, men whispered that he wished to die. The Alma was to him what Austerlitz was to pit. From the moment when the news of that defeat was announced to him, he no longer seemed to have hope

  of the campaign. He took the story of the defeat very much as Lord North took the surrender of Cornwallis as if a bullet had struck him. Thenceforth he was like one whom the old Scotch phrase would describe as Fae, one who moved, spoke, and lived under the shadow of coming death until the death came. The news of the sudden death of the emperor created a profound sensation in England. Mr. Bright at Manchester shortly after rebuked what he considered an ignoble levity in the manner

  of commenting on the event among some of the English journals, but it is right to say that on the whole, nothing could have been more decorous and dignified than the manner in which the English public generally received the news that the country's great enemy was no more. At first, there was, as we have said, a common impression that Nicholas's son and successor, Alexander II, would be more anxious to make peace than his father had been. But this hope was soon gone.

  The new Tsar could not venture to show himself to his people in a less patriotic light than his predecessor. The prospects of the allies were at the time remarkably gloomy. There must have seemed, to the new Russian emperor, considerable ground for the hope that disease and cold and bad management would do more harm to the army of England at least than any Russian general could do. The conference at Vienna proved a failure, and even in some respects a fiasco.

  Lord John Russell, sent to Vienna as our representative, was instructed that the object he must hold in view was the admission of Turkey into the great family of European states. For this end, there were four principal points to be considered. The condition of the Danubean provinces, the free navigation of the Danube, the limitation of Russian supremacy in the Black Sea, and the independence of the port. It was on the attempt to limit Russian supremacy in the Black

  Sea that the negotiations became a failure. Russia would not consent to any proposal which would really have the desired effect. She would agree to an arrangement between Turkey and herself, but this was exactly what the western powers were determined not to allow. She declined to have the strength of her navy restricted, and proposed as a counter resolution that the straits should be opened to the war flags of all nations, so that if Russia were strong as a naval power in

  the Black Sea, other powers might be just as strong if they thought fit. Lord Palmerston, in a letter to Lord John Russell, dryly characterized this proposition involving, as it would, the maintenance by England and France of permanent fleets in the Black Sea to counterbalance the fleet of Russia as a mauvaise plaisanterie. Lord Palmerston indeed believed no more in the sincerity of Austria throughout all these transactions than he did

  in that of Russia. The conference proved a total failure, and in its failure it involved a good deal of the reputation of Lord John Russell. Like the French representative Monsieur Drouin de Luis, Lord John Russell had been taken by the proposals of Austria and had supported them in the first instance, but when the government at home would not have them, he was still induced to remain a member of the cabinet and even to condemn in the House of Commons the recommendations

  he had supported at Vienna. He was charged by Mr. Disraeli with having encouraged the Russian pretensions by declaring at a critical point of the negotiations that he was disposed to favor whatever arrangement would best preserve the honor of Russia. What has the representative of England, Mr. Disraeli indignantly asked, to do with the honor of Russia? Lord John Russell had indeed a fair reply. He could say with justice and good sense that no settlement was likely to be lasting,

  which simply forced conditions upon a great power like Russia, without taking any account of what is considered among nations to be her honor. But he was not able to give any satisfactory explanation of his having approved the conditions in Vienna which he afterwards condemned in Westminster. He explained in Parliament that he did in the first instance regard the Austrian propositions as containing the possible basis of a satisfactory and lasting peace, but that as the

  government would not hear of them he had rejected them against his own judgment and that he had afterwards been converted to the opinion of his colleagues and believed them inadmissible in principle. This was a sort of explanation more likely to alarm than to reassure the public. What manner of danger it was asked on all sides may we not be placed in when our representatives do not know their own minds as to proper terms of peace, when they have no opinion of their own

  upon the subject, but are allowed an approval of certain conditions one day which they are equally allowed in condemning the next. There was a general impression throughout England that some of our statesmen in office had never been sincerely in favor of the war from the first, that even still they were cold, doubtful and half-hearted about it, and that the honor of the country was not safe in such hands. The popular instinct whether it was right as to facts or not was perfectly

  sound as to inferences. We may honor in many instances, we must honor, the conscientious scruples of a public man who distrusts the objects and has no faith in the results of some war in which his people are engaged, but such a man has no business in the government which has the conduct of the war. The men who are to carry on a war must have no doubt of its rightfulness of purpose and must not be eager to conclude it on any terms. In the very interests of peace itself,

  they must be resolute to carry on the war until it has reached the end they sought for. Lord John Russell's remaining in office after these disclosures was practically impossible. Sir E. B. Lytton gave notice of a direct vote of censure on the minister charged with the negotiations at Vienna, but Russell anticipated the certain effect of a vote in the House of Commons by resigning his office. This step at least extricated his colleagues from any share in

  the censure, although the recriminations that passed on the occasion in Parliament were many and bitter. The vote of censure was however withdrawn. Sir William Molesworth, one of the most distinguished of the school, who were since called philosophical radicals, succeeded him as colonial secretary, and the ministry carried one or two triumphant votes against Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Roebuck, and other opponents, or at least unfriendly critics.

  Meanwhile, the emperor of the French and his wife had paid a visit to London and had been received with considerable enthusiasm. The queen seems to have been very favorably impressed by the emperor. She sincerely admired him and believed in his desire to maintain peace as far as possible and to do his best for the promotion of liberal principles and sound economic doctrines throughout Europe. The beauty and grace of the empress likewise won over Queen Victoria. The prince

  consort seems to have been less impressed. He was indeed a believer in the sincerity and good disposition of the emperor, but he found him strangely ignorant on most subjects, even the modern political history of England and France. During the visit of the royal family of England to France, and now while the emperor and empress were in London, the same impression appears to have been left in the mind of the prince consort. He also seems to have noticed a certain barrack

  room flavor about the emperor's entourage, which was not agreeable to his own ideas of dignity and refinement. The prince consort appears to have judged the emperor almost exactly as we know now that Prince Bismarck did then, and as impartial opinion has judged him everywhere in Europe since that time. The operations in the Crimea were renewed with some vigor. The English army lost much by the death of its brave and manly commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan. He was

  succeeded by General Simpson, who had recently been sent out to the Crimea as chief of the staff and whose administration during the short time that he held the command was at least well qualified to keep Lord Raglan's memory green and to prevent the regret for his death from losing any of its keenness. The French army had lost its first commander long ago. The versatile, reckless, brilliant soldier of fortune, Saint-Arnaud, whose broken health had from the opening of the campaign

  prevented him from displaying any of the qualities which his earlier career gave men reason to look for under his command. After Saint-Arnaud's death, the command was transferred for a while to General Caenaubert, who finding himself hardly equal to the task, resigned it in favor of General Pélissier. The Sardinian contingent had arrived and had given admirable proof of his courage and discipline. On August 16, 1855, the Russians under General Leprondy made a desperate effort to raise the

  siege of Sebastopol by an attack on the allied forces. The attack was skillfully planned during the night and was made in great strength. The French divisions had to bear the principal weight of the attack, but the Sardinian contingent also had a prominent place in the resistance and bore themselves with splendid bravery and success. The attempt of the Russians was completely foiled and all northern Italy was thrown into wild delight by the news that the flag of

  Piedmont had been carried to victory over the troops of one great European power and side by side with those of two others. The unanimous voice of the country now approved and acclaimed the policy of Kavur, which had been sanctioned only by a very narrow majority, had been denounced from all sides as reckless and senseless, and had been carried out in the face of the most tremendous difficulties. It was the first great illustration of Kavur's habitual policy of blended audacity

  and cool, far-seeing judgment. It is a curious fact that the suggestion to send Sardinian troops to the Crimea did not originate in Kavur's own busy brain. The first thought of it came up in the mind of a woman, Kavur's niece. The great statesman was struck with the idea from the moment when she suggested it. He thought it over deeply, resolved to adopt it, and carried it to triumphant success. End of section 25.

• 26 - Ch. 28: The Close of the War, Pt. 2

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  CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CLOSE OF THE WAR, PART II. The repulse of the Chirnaya was a heavy, indeed a fatal, stroke for the Russians. The siege had been progressing for some time with considerable activity. The French had drawn their lines nearer and nearer to the besieged city. The Russians, however, had also been throwing up fresh works, which brought them nearer to the lines of the Allies, and sometimes

  made the latter seem as if they were the besieged, rather than the besiegers. The Malikov Tower and the Mamelon battery in front of it became the scenes and the objects of constant struggle. The Russians made desperate night sorties again and again and were always repulsed. On June 7, the English assaulted the quarries in front of the Redan, and the French attacked the Mamelon. The attack on both sides was successful, but it was followed on the 18th

  of the same month by a desperate and wholly unsuccessful attack on the Redan and the Malikov batteries. There was some misapprehension on the side of the French commander, which led to a lack of precision and unity in the carrying out of the enterprise, and it became therefore a failure on the part of both the Allies. A pompous and exalting address was issued by Prince Gorchakov, in which he informed the Russian army that the enemy had been beaten,

  driven back with enormous loss, and announced that the hour was approaching when the pride of the enemy will be lowered, their army swept from our soil like chaff blown away by the wind. On September 5, the Allies made an attack almost simultaneously upon the Malikov and the Redan. It was agreed that as soon as the French had got possession of the Malikov,

  the English should attack the Redan, the hoisting of the French flag on the former fort to be the signal for our men to move. The French were brilliantly successful in their part of the attack, and in a quarter of an hour from the beginning of the attempt, the flag of the empire was floating on the parapets. The English then at once advanced upon the Redan, but it was a very different task from that which the French had had to undertake.

  The French were near the Malikov. The English were very far away from the Redan. The distance our soldiers had to traverse left them almost helplessly exposed to the Russian fire. They stormed the parapets of the Redan despite all the difficulties of their attack, but they were not able to hold the place. The attacking party was far too small in numbers. Reinforcements did not come in time. The English held their own for an hour against odds that

  might have seemed overwhelming, but it was simply impossible for them to establish themselves in the Redan, and the remnant of them that could withdraw had to retreat to the trenches. It was only the old story of the war. Superb courage and skill of officers and men. Outrageously bad generalship. The attack might have been renewed that day, but the English commander-in-chief, General Simpson, declared with naiveté that the trenches were too crowded for him to do

  anything. Thus the attack failed because there were too few men and could not be renewed because there were too many. The cautious commander resolved to make another attempt the next morning, but before the morrow came there was nothing to attack. The Russians withdrew during the night from the south side of Sebastopol. A bridge of boats had been constructed across the bay to connect the north and the south sides of the city, and

  across this bridge Prince Gorchakov quietly withdrew his troops. The bombardment kept up by the Allies had been so terrible and so close for several days, and their long-range guns were so entirely superior to anything possessed by or indeed known to the Russians that the defenses of the south side were being irreparably destroyed. The Russian general felt that it would be impossible for him to hold the city much longer, and that to remain

  there was only useless waste of life. But as he said in his own dispatch, it is not Sebastopol which we have left to them, but the burning ruins of the town which we ourselves set fire to, having maintained the honor of the defense in such a manner that our great-grandchildren may recall with pride, remembrance of it, and send it on to all posterity. It was some time before the Allies could venture to enter the abandoned city. The arsenals

  and powder magazines were exploding. The flames were bursting out of every public building and every private house. The Russians had made of Sebastopol another Moscow. With the close of that long siege which had lasted nearly a year, the war may be said to have ended. The brilliant episode of Kars, its splendid defense, and its final surrender was brought to its conclusion, indeed, after the fall of Sebastopol. But although it naturally

  attracted peculiar attention in this country, it could have no effect on the actual fortunes of such a war. Kars was defended by Colonel Fenwick Williams, an English officer who had been sent all too late to reorganize the Turkish forces in Armenia after they had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the Russians. Never, probably, had a man a more difficult task than that which fell to the lot of Williams. He had to contend against official stupidity,

  corruption, delay. He could get nothing done without having first to remove whole mountains of obstruction and to quicken into life and movement an apathy which seemed like that of a paralyzed system. He concentrated his efforts at last upon the defense of Kars, and he held the place against overwhelming Russian forces and against an enemy far more appalling, starvation itself. With his little garrison, he repelled a tremendous attack

  of the Russian army under General Moraviev in a battle that lasted nearly seven hours, and as the result of which, the Russians left on the field more than five thousand dead. He had to surrender at last to famine. But the very articles of surrender to which the conqueror consented became the trophy of Williams and his men. The garrison were allowed to leave the place with all the honors of war, and as a testimony to the valorous resistance

  made by the garrison of Kars, the officers of all ranks are to keep their swords. Williams and his English companions Colonel Lake, Major Teasdale, Major Thompson, and Dr. Sandwith had done as much for the honor of their country at the close of the war as Butler and Naismith had done at its opening. The curtain of that great drama rose and fell upon a splendid scene of English heroism. The war was virtually over. Austria had been exerting herself throughout

  its progress in the interests of peace, and after the fall of Sebastopol, she made a new effort with greater success. Two of the belligerents were indeed now anxious to be out of the struggle almost on any terms. These were France and Russia. The new emperor of Russia was not a man personally inclined for war, nor had he his father's overbearing and indomitable endeavor. He could not but see that his father had greatly overrated the military strength

  and resources of his country. He had accepted the war only as a heritage of necessary evil with little hope of any good to come of it to Russia, and he welcomed any chance of ending it on fair terms. France, or at least her emperor, was all but determined to get back again into peace. If England had held out, it is highly probable that she would have had to do so alone. For this, indeed, Lord Palmerston was fully prepared as a last resource

  sooner than submit to terms which he considered unsatisfactory. He said so, and he meant it. I can fancy, Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord Clarendon in his bright good-humored way, how I should be hooted in the House of Commons if I were to get up and say that we had agreed to an imperfect and unsatisfactory arrangement. I had better beforehand take the Chiltern hundreds. Lord Palmerston, however, had no occasion to take the Chiltern hundreds. The

  Congress of Paris opened on February 26, 1856, and on March 30, the Treaty of Peace was signed by the plenipotentiaries of the great powers. Prussia had been admitted to the Congress, which therefore represented England, France, Austria, Prussia, Turkey, and Sardinia. The Treaty began by declaring that Kars was to be restored to the Sultan, and that Sebastopol and all other places taken by the Allies were to be given back to Russia. The sublime port

  was admitted to participate in all the advantages of the public law and system of Europe. The other powers engaged to respect the independence and territorial integrity of Turkey. They guaranteed in common the strict observance of that engagement and announced that they would in consequence consider any act tending to a violation of it as a question of general interest. The Sultan issued a Furman for ameliorating the condition of his Christian subjects and

  communicated to the other powers the purposes of the Furman, emanating spontaneously from his sovereign will. No right of interference, it was distinctly specified, was given to the other powers by this concession on the Sultan's part. The article of the Treaty, which referred to the Black Sea, is of a special importance. The Black Sea is neutralized. Its waters and its ports, thrown open to the mercantile marine of every nation, are formally

  and in perpetuity interdicted to the flag of war, either of the powers possessing its coasts or of any other power, with the exceptions mentioned in Articles 14 and 19. The exceptions only reserved the right of each of the powers to have the same number of small armed vessels in the Black Sea to act as a sort of maritime police and to protect the coasts. The Sultan and the Emperor engaged to establish and maintain no military or maritime arsenals in that sea. The navigation

  of the Danube was thrown open. In exchange for the towns restored to him in an order more fully to secure the navigation of the Danube, the Emperor consented to a certain rectification of his frontier in Bessarabia, the territory ceded by Russia to be annexed to Moldavia under the suzerainty of the port. Moldavia and Wallachia, continuing under the suzerainty of the Sultan, were to enjoy all the privileges and immunities they already possessed under the guarantee of

  the contracting powers, but with no separate right of intervention in their affairs. The existing position of Servia was assured. A convention respecting the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus was made by all the powers. By this convention, the Sultan maintained the ancient rule prohibiting ships of war of foreign powers from entering the straits so long as the port is at peace. During time of peace, the Sultan engaged to admit no foreign ships of war into the Bosphorus

  or the Dardanelles. The Sultan reserved to himself the right as in former times of delivering firmans of passage for light vessels under the flag of war employed in the service of foreign powers, that is to say, of their diplomatic missions. A separate convention as to the Black Sea between Russia and Turkey agreed that the contracting parties should have in that sea six light steam vessels of not more than 800 tons and four steam or sailing vessels of not more than

  200 tons each. Thus the controversies about the Christian provinces, the Straits, and the Black Sea were believed to be settled. The great central business of the Congress, however, was to assure the independence and the territorial integrity of Turkey now admitted to a place in the family of European states. As it did not seem clear to those most particularly concerned in bringing about this result, that the arrangements adopted in full Congress had been sufficient to guarantee Turkey

  from the enemy they most feared, there was a tripartite treaty afterwards agreed to between England, France, and Austria. This document bears date in Paris, April 15, 1856. By it, the contracting parties guaranteed jointly and severally the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire and declared that any infraction of the general treaty of March 30th would be considered by them a causes belly. It is probable that not one of the three contracting parties was quite sincere

  in the making of this treaty. It appears to have been done at the instigation of Austria, much less for the sake of Turkey than an order that she might have some understanding of a special kind with some of the great powers and thus avoid the semblance of isolation which she now especially dreaded, having Russia to fear on the one side and seeing Italy already raising its head on the other. England did not particularly care about the tripartite treaty which was pressed upon her

  and which she accepted, trusting that she might never have to act upon it, and France accepted it without any liking for it, probably without the least intention of ever acting on it. The Congress was also the means of bringing about a treaty between England and France and Sweden. By this engagement, Sweden undertook not to cede to Russia any part of her present territories or any rights of fishery, and the two other powers agreed to maintain Sweden by force against aggression.

  The Congress of Paris was remarkable, too, for the fact that the plenipotentiaries before separating came to an agreement on the subject of the right of search and the rules generally of maritime war. They agreed to the four following declarations. First, privateering is and remains abolished. Second, the neutral flag covers enemy's goods with the exception of contraband of war. Third, neutral goods with the exception of contraband of war are not liable to capture

  under an enemy's flag. Fourth, blockades in order to be binding must be effective, that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the enemy's coast. At the opening of the war, Great Britain had already virtually given up the claims she once made against neutrals and which were indeed untenable in the face of modern civilization. She gladly agreed, therefore, to ratify so far as her declaration went the doctrines which would

  abolish forever the principle upon which those and kindred claims once rested. It was agreed, however, that the rules adopted at the Congress of Paris should only be binding on those states that had exceeded or should accede to them. The government of the United States had previously invited the great European powers by a circular to assent to the broad doctrine that free ships make free goods. At the instance of England, it was answered that the adoption of that doctrine

  must be conditional on America's renouncing the right of privateering. To this, the United States raised some difficulty and the declarations of the Congress were therefore made without America's assenting to them. With many other questions, too, the Congress of Paris occupied itself. At the instigation of Count Cavour, the condition of Italy was brought under its notice and there can be no doubt that out of the Congress and the part that Sardinia assumed as

  representative of Italian nationality came the great succession of events which ended in the establishment of a king of Italy in the palace of the Quirinal. The adjustment of the condition of the Danubian principalities, too, engaged much attention and discussion and a highly ingenious arrangement was devised for the purpose of keeping those provinces from actual union so that they might be coherent enough to act as a rampart against Russia without being so coherent as to

  cause Austria any alarm for her own somewhat disjointed, not to say distracted, political system. All these artificial and complex arrangements presently fell to pieces and the principalities became in the course of no very long time an independent state under a hereditary prince. But for the hour it was hoped that the independence of Turkey and the restriction of Russia, the security of the Christian provinces, the neutrality of the Black Sea, and the closing

  of the straits against war vessels had been bought by the war. England lost some 24,000 men in the war of whom hardly a sixth fell in battle or died of wounds. Cholera and other diseases gave grim account of the rest. Forty-one millions of money were added by the campaign to the national debt. Not much it will be seen was there in the way of mere military glory to show for the cost. Our fleets had hardly any chance of making their power felt. The ships of the allies took

  Bomarzunt in the Baltic and Kinburn in the Black Sea and bombarded several places, but the war was not one that gave a chance to a Nelson even if a Nelson had been at hand. Among the accidental and unpleasant consequences of the campaign it is worth mentioning the quarrel in which England became involved with the United States because of our Foreign Enlistment Act. At the close of December, 1854, Parliament hurriedly passed an act authorizing the formation of a foreign legion

  for service in the war and some Swiss and Germans were recruited who never proved of the slightest service. Prussia and America both complained that the zeal of our recruiting functionaries outran the limits of discretion and of law. One of our consuls was actually put on trial at Cologne and America made a serious complaint of the enlistment of her citizens. England apologized, but the United States were out of temper and insisted in sending our minister Mr. Crampton

  away from Washington and some little time passed before the friendly relations of the two states were completely restored. So the Crimean War ended. It was one of the unlucky accidents of the hour that the curtain fell on the Crimea upon what may be considered a check to the arms of England. There were not a few in this country who would gladly have seen the peace negotiations fail in order that England might thereby have an opportunity of reasserting her military

  supremacy in the eyes of Europe. Never during the campaign nor for a long time before it had England been in so excellent a condition for war as she was when the warlike operations suddenly came to an end. The campaign had indeed only been a training time for us after the unnerving relaxation of a long peace. We had learned some severe lessons from it and not unnaturally there were impatient spirits who chafed at the idea of England's having no

  opportunity of putting these lessons to account. It was but a mere chance that prevented us from accomplishing the capture of the Redan despite the very serious disadvantages with which we were hampered in our enterprise as compared with our allies and their simultaneous operation. With just a little better generalship the Redan would have been taken as it was even with the generalship that we had the next attempt would not have been likely to fail but the Russians

  abandoned Sebastopol and our principal ally was even more anxious for peace than the enemy and we had no choice but to accept the situation. The war had never been popular in France. It had never had even that amount of popularity which the French people accorded to their emperors later enterprise the campaign against Austria. Louis Napoleon had had all he wanted. He had been received into the society of European sovereigns and had made what the French public were taught

  to consider a brilliant campaign. It is surprising to anyone who looks calmly back now on the history of the Crimean war to find what an extravagant amount of credit the French army obtained by its share in the operations. Even in this country it was at the time an almost universal opinion that the French succeeded in everything they tried, that their system was perfect, that their tactics were beyond improvement, that they were a contrast to us in every respect. Much of this

  absurd delusion was no doubt the result of a condition of things among us which no reasonable Englishman would exchange for all the imaginary triumphs that a court historiographer ever celebrated. It was due to the fact that our system was open to the criticism of every pen that chose to assail it. Not a spot in our military organization escaped detection and exposure. Every detail was keenly criticized. Every weakness was laid open to public observation.

  We invited all the world to see where we were failing and what were the causes of our failure. Our journals did the work for the military system of England that Matthew Arnold says, Goethe did, for the political and social systems of Europe, struck its finger upon the weak places and said, thou ailest here and here. While the official and officious journals of the French Empire were sounding pay-ins to the honor of the emperor and his successes, to his generals,

  his officers, his commissariat, his transport service, his soldiers, his camp, pioneers and all, our leading papers of all shades of politics were only occupied in pointing out defects and blaming those who did not instantly remedy them. Unpatriotic conduct, it may be said. I truly, if the conduct of the doctor be unfriendly when he tells that we have the symptoms of failing health and warns us to take some measures for rest and renovation. Some of the criticisms of

  the English press were undoubtedly inaccurate and rash, but their general effect was bracing, healthful, successful. Their immediate result was that which has already been indicated, to leave the English army at the close of the campaign far better able to undertake prolonged and serious operations of war than it had been at any time during the campaign's continuance. For the effect of the French system on the French army, we should have to come down a little later

  in history and study the workings of imperialism as they displayed themselves in the confidence, the surprises and the collapse of 1870. Still, there was a feeling of disappointment in this country at the close of the war. This was partly due to dissatisfaction with the manner in which we had carried on the campaign and partly to distrust of its political results. Our soldiers had done splendidly, but our generals and our system had done poorly indeed.

  Only one first-class reputation of a military order had come out of the war, and that was by the common consent of the world awarded to a Russian, to General Totleben, the defender of Sebastopol. No new name was made on our side or on that of the French, and some promising or traditional reputations were shattered. The political results of the war were to many minds equally unsatisfying. We had gone into the enterprise for two things, to restrain the

  aggressive and aggrandizing spirit of Russia and to secure the integrity and independence of Turkey as a power capable of upholding herself with credit among the states of Europe. Events which happened more than 20 years later will have to be studied before anyone can form a satisfactory opinion as to the degree of success which attended each of these objects. For the present, it is enough to say that there was not among thoughtful minds at the time a very strong

  conviction of success either way. Lord Aberdeen had been modest in his estimate of what the war would do. He had never had any heart in it, and he was not disposed to exaggerate its beneficent possibilities. He estimated that it might perhaps secure peace in the east of Europe for some 25 years. His modest expectation was prophetic. Indeed, it a little overshot the mark. 22 years after the close of the Crimean campaign, Russia and Turkey were at war again.

  End of Section 26.

• 27 - Ch. 29: The Literature of the Reign. First Survey, Pt. 1

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  Section 27 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pamela Nagami, Chapter 29, The Literature of the Reign, First Survey, Part 1. The close of the Crimean War is a great landmark in the reign of Queen Victoria. This, therefore, is a convenient opportunity to cast a glance back upon the literary achievements of a period so markedly divided in political interest from any that went before it. The reign of Queen Victoria is the first in which the constitutional and parliamentary system of government came fairly and completely into recognition.

  It is also the reign which had the good fortune to witness the great modern development in all that relates to practical invention and more especially in the application of science to the work of making communication rapid between men. On land and ocean, in air and under the sea, the history of rapid travel and rapid interchange of message coincides with that of the present reign. Such a reign ought to have a distinctive literature. So in truth, it has. Of course, it is somewhat bold to predict long and distinct renown for contemporaries or contemporary schools, but it may perhaps be assumed without any undue amount of speculative venturesomeness that the age of Queen Victoria will stand out in history as the period of a literature as distinct from others as the age of Elizabeth or Anne,

  although not perhaps equal in greatness to the latter and far indeed below the former. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign, a great race of literary men had come to a close. It is curious to note how sharply and completely the literature of Victoria separates itself from that of the era whose heroes were Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth. Before Queen Victoria came to the throne, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats were dead. Wordsworth lived indeed for many years after, so did Southey and Moore, and Savage Lander died much later still.

  But Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and Lander had completed their literary work before Victoria came to the throne. Not one of them added a cubit or an inch to his intellectual stature from that time. Some of them even did work which distinctly proved that their day was done. A new and fresh breath was soon after breathed into literature. Nothing perhaps is more remarkable about the better literature of the age of Queen Victoria than its complete severance from the leadership of that which had gone before it,

  and its evidence of a fresh and genuine inspiration. It is a somewhat curious fact too, very convenient for the purposes of this history, that the literature of Queen Victoria's time thus far divides itself clearly into two parts. The poets, novelists, and historians who were making their fame with the beginning of the reign had done all their best work and made their mark before these later years, with literature followed by a new and different school drawing inspiration from wholly different sources and challenging comparison as antagonists rather than disciples. We speak now only of literature.

  In science, the most remarkable developments were reserved for the later years of the reign. We use the words remarkable developments in the historical rather than in the scientific sense. It would be hardly possible to overrate the benefits conferred upon science and the world by some of the scientific men who made the best part of their fame in the earlier years of the reign. Some great names at once start to the memory. We think of Brewster, the experimental philosopher, who combined in so extraordinary a degree the strictest severity of scientific argument and form,

  with a freedom of fancy and imagination which lent picturesqueness to all his illustrations and invested his later writings especially with an indefinable charm. We think of Michael Faraday, the chemist and electrician, who knew so well how to reconcile the boldest researches into the heights and deeps of science with the sincerest spirit of faith and devotion, the memory of whose delightful improvisations on the science he loved to expound must remain forever with all who had the privilege of hearing the unrivaled lecturer deliver his annual discourses at the Royal Institution. It is not likely that the name of Sir John Herschel, a gifted member of a gifted family, would be forgotten by anyone taking even the hastiest glance at the science of our time, a family of whom it may truly be said, as the German prose writer says of his dreaming hero, that their eyes were among the stars and their souls in the blue ether.

  Richard Owens is in another field of knowledge a great renown. Owens has been called the Cuvier of England and the Newton of natural history, and there cannot be any doubt that his researches and discoveries as an anatomist and paleontologist have marked a distinct era in the development of the study to which he devoted himself. Hugh Miller, the author of The Old Red Sandstone and The Testimony of the Rocks, the devotee and unfortunately the martyr of scientific inquiry, brought a fresh and brilliant literary ability almost as untutored and spontaneous as that of his immortal countryman Robert Burns to bear on the exposition of the studies to which he literally sacrificed his life. If therefore we say that the later period of Queen Victoria's reign is more remarkable in science than the former, it is not because we would assert that the men of this later day contributed in richer measure to the development of human knowledge and especially of practical science than those of the earlier time.

  But it was in the later period that the scientific controversy sprang up and the school arose which will be in the historian sense most closely associated with the epoch. The value of the labors of men like Owen and Faraday and Brewster is often to be appreciated thoroughly by scientific students alone. What they have done is to be recorded in the history of science rather than in the general and popular history of a day. But the school of scientific thought which Darwin founded and in which Huxley and Tyndall taught is the subject of a controversy which may be set down as memorable in the history of the world. All science and all common life accepted with gratitude and without contest the contributions made to our knowledge by Faraday and Brewster.

  But the theories of Darwin divided the scientific world, the religious world and indeed all society into two hostile camps and so became an event in history which the historian can no more pass over than in telling of the growth of the United States he could omit any mention of the Great Civil War. Even in dealing with the growth of science it is on the story of battles that the attention of the outer world must to the end of time be turned with the keenest interest. This is, one might almost think, a scientific law in itself with which it would be waste of time to quarrel. The earlier part of the reign was richer in literary genius than the later has thus far been. Of course the dividing line which we draw is loosely drawn and may sometimes appear to be capricious.

  Some of those who won their fame in the earlier part continued active workers, in certain instances steadily adding to their celebrity through the succeeding years. The figure of Thomas Carlyle is familiar still to all who live in the neighborhood of Chelsea. It was late in the reign of Victoria that Stuart Mill came out for the first time on a public platform in London after a life divided between official work and the most various reading and study, a life divided too between the seclusion of Black Heath and the more poetic seclusion of Avignon among the nightingales whose song was afterwards so sweet to his dying years. He came strange and shy into a world which knew him only in his books and to which the gentle and grave demeanor of the shrinking and worn recluse seemed out of keeping with the fearless brain and heart which his career as a thinker proved him to have.

  The reign had run for forty years when Harriet Martino was taken from that beautiful and romantic home in the bosom of the lake country to which her celebrity had drawn so many famous visitors for so long a time. The renown of Dickens began with the reign and his death was sadly premature when he died in his quaint and charming home at Gads Hill in the country of Falstaff and Prince Hal some thirty-three years after. Mrs. Browning passed away very prematurely but it might well be contended that the fame or at least the popularity of Robert Browning belongs to this later part of the reign even though his greatest work belongs to the earlier. The author of the most brilliant and vivid book of travel known in our modern English, Eothan, made a sudden renown in the earlier part of the reign and achieved a new and different sort of repute as the historian of the Crimean War during the later part. Still, if we take the close of the Crimean War as an event dividing the reign thus far into two parts, we shall find that there does seem a tolerably clear division between the literature of the two periods.

  We have therefore put in this first part of our history the men and women who had distinctly made their mark in these former years and who would have been famous if from that time out they had done nothing more. It is with this division borne in mind that we describe the reign as more remarkable in the literature of the earlier and in the science of these later years. It is not rash to say that although poets, historians, and novelists of celebrity came afterwards and may come yet, the literature of our time gave its measure as the French phrase is, in that earlier period. Alike in its earlier passages and in its later, the reign is rich in historical labors. The names of Groot, Macaulay, and Carlisle occur at once to the mind when we survey the former period. Mr. Groot's History of Greece is indeed a monumental piece of work. It has all that patience and exhaustive care which principally marked the German historians, and it has an earnestness which is not to be found generally in the representatives of what Carlisle has called the driest dust school.

  Groot threw himself completely into the life and politics of Athens. It was said of him with some truth that he entered so thoroughly into all the political life of Greece as to become now and then the partisan of this or that public man. His own practical acquaintance with politics was undoubtedly of great service to him. We have all grown somewhat tired of hearing the words of Gibbon quoted in which he tells us that the discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers, the reader may smile, has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire. Assuredly, the practical knowledge of politics which Groot acquired during the nine or ten years of his parliamentary career was of much service to the historian of Greece. It has been said indeed of him that he never could quite keep from regarding the struggles of parties in Athens as exactly illustrating the principles disputed between the liberals and the Tories in England. It does not seem to us, however, that his political career affected his historical studies in any way, but by throwing greater vitality and nervousness into his descriptions of Athenian controversies.

  The difference between a man who is mingled anywhere in the active life of politics and one who only knows that life from books and the talk of others is specially likely to show itself in such a study as Groot's history. His political training enabled Groot to see in the statesmen and soldiers of the Greek peoples men and not trees walking. It taught him how to make the dry bones live. Mr. Groot began life as what would have been called in later years a philosophical radical. He was a close friend of Stuart Mill, although he did not always agree with Mill in his opinions.

  During his parliamentary career he devoted himself for the most part to the advocacy of the system of vote by ballot. He brought forward a motion on the subject every session as Mr. Charles Villiers did at one time for the repeal of the Corn Laws. He only gave up the House of Commons in order that he might be free to complete his great history. He did not retain all his radical opinions to the end of his life so thoroughly as Mill did, but owned with a certain regret that in many ways his views had undergone modification and that he grew less and less ardent for political change, less hopeful, we may suppose, of the amount of good to be done for human happiness and virtue by the spread and movement of what are now called advanced opinions. It must be owned that it takes a very vigorous and elastic mind to enable a man to resist the growth of that natural and physical tendency toward conservatism or reaction which comes with advancing years.

  It is as well for society on the whole that this should be so and that the elders as a rule should form themselves into a guard to challenge very pertinaciously all the eager claims and demands for change made by hopeful and restless youth. No one would more readily have admitted the advantage that may come from this common law of life than Groot's friend Mill, although Mill remained, to the close of his career, as full of hope in the movement of liberal opinions as he had been in his boyhood, still, to quote from some noble words of Schiller, reverencing as a man the dreams of his youth. In his later years, Groot withdrew from all connection with active political controversy and was indeed curiously ignorant of the very bearings of some of the greatest questions around the settlement of which the passions and interests of another hemisphere were brought into fierce and vast dispute. We have already had occasion more than once to speak of Macaulay, the great parliamentary debater and statesman. It is the less necessary to say much of him as a historian, for Macaulay will be remembered rather as a man who could do many things brilliantly than as the author of a history. Yet Macaulay's History of England, whatever its defects, is surely entitled to rank as a great work.

  We do not know whether grave scholars will regard it as to the honor of the book or the reverse, that it was by far the most popular historical essay ever produced by an Englishman. The successive volumes of Macaulay's History of England were run after as the Waverly novels might have been at the zenith of their author's fame. Living England talked for the time of nothing but Macaulay's England. Certainly history had never before in our country been treated in a style so well calculated to render it at once popular, fascinating, and fashionable. Every chapter glittered with vivid and highly colored description. On almost every page was found some sentence of glowing eloquence or gleaming antithesis, which at once lent itself to citation and repetition. Not one word of it could have failed to convey its meaning. The whole stood out in an atmosphere, clear, bright, and incapable of misty illusion as that of a Swiss lake in summer.

  No shade or faint haze of a doubt appeared anywhere. The admirer of Macaulay had all the comfort in his studies that a votary of the Roman Catholic Church may have. He had an infallible guide. He had no need to vex himself with doubt, speculation, or even conjecture. This absolute certainty about everything was beyond question one great source of Macaulay's popularity. That resolute conviction which readers of a more intellectual class are especially inclined to distrust has the same charm for the ordinary reader that it has for children, who never care to hear any story if they suppose the narrator does not know all about it in such a way as to render question or contradiction impossible. But although this was one of the causes of Macaulay's popularity, it was not the most substantial cause. The brilliancy of his style, the variety and aptness of his illustrations, and the animated manner in which he contrived to set his ideas of men, places, and events before the reader, these were among the sources of success to which his admirers must look with the greatest satisfaction. It is of late somewhat the fashion to disparage Macaulay. He was a popular idol so long that in the natural course of things it has come to him to have his title to worship, or even to faith, very generally questioned.

  To be unreasonably admired by one generation is to incur the certainty of being unreasonably disparaged by the next. The tendency of late is to assume that because Macaulay was brilliant he must necessarily be superficial. But Macaulay was not superficial. He was dogmatic, he was full of prejudice, he was in all respects a better advocate than judge, he was wanting in the calm, impartial, balancing faculty which an historian of the highest class ought to have. But he was not superficial. No man could make out a better and stronger case for any side of a controversy which he was led to espouse. He was not good at drawing or explaining complex characters. He loved indeed to picture contradictory and paradoxical characters. Nothing delighted him more than to throw off an animated description of some great person who having been shown in the first instance to possess one set of qualities and extreme prominence was then shown to have a set of exactly antagonistic qualities and quite equal prominence. This was not describing a complex character. It was merely embodying a paradox. It was to solder close, as Timon of Athens says, impossibilities and make them kiss.

  There was something too much of trick about this although it was often done with so much power as to bewilder the better judgment of the calmest reader. But where Macaulay happened to be right in his view of a man or an event, he made his convictions clear with an impressiveness and a brilliancy such as no modern author has surpassed. The world owes him something for having protested by precept and example against the absurd notion that the dignity of history required of historians to be grave, pompous, and dull. He was not a Gibbon, but he wrote with all Gibbon's delight in the picturesqueness of a subject and Gibbon's resolve to fascinate as well as to instruct his readers. Macaulay's history tries too much to be an historical portrait gallery. The dangers of such a style do not need to be pointed out.

  They are amply illustrated in Macaulay's sparkling pages. But it is something to know that their splendid qualities are far more conspicuous than their defects. Perhaps very recent readers of history too may feel disposed to be grateful to Macaulay for having written without any profound philosophical theory to expound. He told history like a story. He warmed up as he went along and grew enamored, as a romanticist does, of this character and angry with that other. No doubt he frequently thus did harm to the trustworthiness of his narrative where it had to deal with disputed questions, although he probably enhanced the charms of his animated style.

  But he did not set out with a mission to expound some theory as to a race or a tendency, and therefore pledged beforehand to bend all facts of the physical, the political, and the moral world to the duty of bearing witness for him and proclaiming the truth of his message to mankind.

• 28 - Ch. 29: The Literature of the Reign. First Survey, Pt. 2

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  Section 28 of A History of Our Own Times, Volume 2 by Justin McCarthy. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 29, The Literature of the Rain, First Survey, Part 2. Macaulay was not exactly what the Germans would call a many-sided man. He never was anything but the one Macaulay in all he did or attempted, but he did a great many things well. Nothing that he

  ever attempted was done badly. He was as successful in the composition of a pretty Valentine for a little girl as he was in his history, his essays, his lays of ancient Rome, and his parliamentary speeches. In everything he attempted, he went very near to that success which true genius achieves. In everything, he just fell short of that achievement, but he so nearly attained it that the reader

  who takes up one of Macaulay's books or speeches for the first time is almost sure to believe, under the influence of the instant impression, that the genuine inspiration is there. Macaulay is understood to have for a long time thought of writing romance. If he had done so, we may feel sure that many intelligent readers would have believed on the first perusal of it that it was

  almost on a level with Scott, and only as the first impression gradually faded and they came to read it again have found out that Macaulay was not a Scott in fiction any more than he was a Burke in eloquence or a Gibbon in history. He filled, for a long time, a larger space in the public mind than any other literary man in England, and his style greatly affected literary men. But his

  influence did not pierce deeply down into public feeling and thought as that of one or two other men of the same period undoubtedly did and does still. He did not impress the very soul of English feeling as Mr. Carlyle, for example, has done. No influence suffused the age from first to last more strongly than that of Thomas Carlyle. England's very way of thinking was at one time profoundly

  affected by Carlyle. He introduced the English people to the great German authors, very much as Lessing had introduced the Germans to Shakespeare and the Old English ballads. Carlyle wrote in a style which was so little like that ordinarily accepted as English that the best thing to be said for it was that it was not exactly German. At one time it appeared to be so completely molded on

  that of John Paul Richter that not a few persons doubted whether the newcomer really had any ideas of his own. But Carlyle soon proved that he could think for himself, and he very often proved it by thinking wrong. There was in him a deep strong vein of the poetic. Long after he had evidently settled down to be a writer of prose and nothing else, it still seemed to many that his true

  sphere was poetry. The grim seriousness which he had taken from his Scottish birth and belongings was made hardly less grim by the irony which continually gleamed and scowled through it. Truth and force were the deities of Carlyle's especial worship. The eternal verities sat on top of his Olympus. To act out the truth in life and make others act it out would require some force more strong,

  ubiquitous, and penetrating than we can well obtain from the slow deliberations of an ordinary Parliament with its debates and divisions and everlasting formulas. Therefore to enforce his eternal verities Carlyle always preached up and yearned for the strong man. The poem and action whom the world in our day had not found and perhaps would never appreciate. If this man were found

  it would be his duty and his privilege to drill us all in some vast camp and compel us to do the right thing to his dictation. It cannot be doubted that this preaching of the divine right of force had a serious and sometimes a very detrimental effect upon the public opinion of England. It degenerated often into affectation alike with the teacher and the disciples. But the influence of

  Carlyle in preaching earnestness and truth in art and letters and everything else had a healthy and very remarkable effect entirely outside the regions of the moralist who in this country at least has always taught the same lesson. It is very probable that individual men were made much more truthful in England by Carlyle's glorification of the eternal verities than they would have

  been without it. But his influence on letters and art was peculiar and was not effanescent. Carlyle is distinctly the founder of a school of history and a school of art. In the meanwhile we may regard him simply as a great author and treat his books as literary studies and not as Gospels. Thus regarded we shall find that he writes in a style which every sober critic would feel bound to

  condemn but which nevertheless the soberest critic is forced continually despite himself and his rules to admire. For out of the strange jargon which he seems to have deliberately adopted Carlyle has undoubtedly constructed a wonderfully expressive medium in which to speak his words of remonstrance and admonition. It is a mannerism but a mannerism into which a great deal of the

  individuality of the man seems to have entered. It is not holy affectation or superficiality. Carlyle's own soul seems to speak out in it more freely and strenuously than it would in the ordinary English of society and literature. No tongue, says Richter, is eloquent save in its own language and this strange language which he has made for himself does really appear to be the

  native tongue of Carlyle's powerful and melancholy eloquence. Carlyle is endowed with a marvelous power of depicting stormy scenes and rugged daring natures. At times strange wild piercing notes of the pathetic are heard through his strenuous and fierce bursts of eloquence like the wail of a clarion thrilling between the blasts of a storm. His history of the French Revolution is

  history read by lightning. Of this remarkable book John Stuart Mill supplied the principal material for Mill at one time thought of writing a history of the revolution himself but giving up the idea placed the materials he had collected at the service of Carlyle. Carlyle used the materials in his own way. He is indebted to no one for his method of making up his history. With

  all its defects the book is one of the very finest our age has produced. Its characters stand out like portraits by Rembrandt. Its crowds live and move. The picture of Mirabeau is worthy of the hand of the great German poet who gave us Wallenstein. But Carlyle's style has introduced into this country a thoroughly false method of writing history. It is a method which has little regard for the

  dry light which Bacon approved. It works under the varying glare of colored lights. Its purpose is to express scorn of one set of ideas and men and admiration of another. Given the man we admire then all his doings and ways must be admirable and the historian proceeds to work this principle out. Carlyle's Mirabeau is as truly a creature of romance as the Monte Cristo of Dumas.

  This way of going to work became even more apparent as the mannerisms became more incessant in Carlyle's later writings. In the Frederick the Great for example the reader dares not trust such history. It is of little value as an instructor in the lessons of the times and events it deals with. It only tells us what Carlyle thought of the times in the events and the men who were the

  chief actors in them. Nor does Carlyle bequeath many new ideas to the world which he stirred by his stormy eloquence. That falsehood cannot prevail over truth in the end nor simulacra to the work of realities is not after all a lesson which earth can be said to have waited for up to the 19th century and the coming of Carlyle. And yet it would be hard to point to any other

  philosophical outcome of Mr. Carlyle's teaching. His value is in his eloquence, his power, his passion and pathos, his stirring and lifelike pictures of human character, whether faithful to the historical originals or not, and the vein of poetry which runs through all his best writings and sometimes makes even the least sympathetic reader believe that he has to do with a genuine poet.

  In strongest contrast to the influence of Carlyle may be set the influence of Mill. Except where the professed teachers of religious creeds are concerned there can be found no other man in the reign of Victoria who had anything like the influence over English thought that Mill and Carlyle possessed. Mill was a devoted believer in the possibilities of human nature and of liberty. If Rousseau

  was the apostle of affliction Mill was surely the apostle of freedom. He believed that human society might be brought to something not far removed from perfection by the influence of education and of freedom, acting on the best impulses and disciplining the emotions of men and women. Mill was a strange blending of political economist and sentimentalist. It was not altogether

  in humorous exaggeration that somebody said he was Adam Smith and Petrarch in one. The curious seclusion in which he was brought up by his father, the wonderful discipline of study to which in his very infancy he was subjected would have made something strange and striking out of a commonplace nature and Mill was in any case a man of genius. There was an antique simplicity and

  purity about his life which removed him altogether from the ways of ordinary society. But the defect of his teaching as an ethical guide was that he made too little allowance for the influence of ordinary society. He always seemed to act on the principle that with true education and noble example the most commonplace men could be persuaded to act like heroes and to act like heroes

  always. The great service which he rendered to the world in his political economy and his system of logic is of course independent of his controverted theories and teachings. These works would, if they were all he had written, place him in the very front rank of English thinkers and instructors. But these only represent half of his influence on the public opinion of his time. His faith in

  the principle of human liberty led him to originate the movement for what is called the emancipation of women. Opinions will doubtless long differ as to the advantages of the movement but there can be no possible difference of judgment as to the power and fascination of Mill's advocacy and to the influence he exercised. He did not succeed in his admirable lesson on

  liberty in establishing the rule or principle by which men may decide between the right of free expression of opinion and the right of authority to ordain silence. Probably no precise boundary can ever be drawn and in this as in so much else, lawmakers and peoples must be content with a compromise. But Mills is at least a noble plea for the fullest possible liberty

  of utterance and he has probably carried the argument as far as it ever can be carried. There never was a more lucid and candid reasoner. The most difficult and abstruse questions become clear by the light of his luminous exposition. Something too of human interest and sympathy became infused into the most seemingly arid discussions of political economy by the virtue of his emotional

  and half poetic nature. It was well said of him that he reconciled political economy with human feeling. His style was clear as light. Mill, said one of his critics, lives in light. Sometimes his language rose to a noble and dignified eloquence. Here and there are passages of a grave keen irony. Into the questions of religious belief which arise in connection with his works, it is no part

  of our business to enter. But it may be remarked that his latest writings seem to show that his views were undergoing much modification in his closing years. His opponents would have allowed as readily as his supporters that no man could have been more sincerely inspired with the desire to arrive at the truth and that none could be more resolute to follow the course which his conscience

  told him to be right. He carried this resolute principle into his warmest controversies and it was often remarked that he usually began by stating the case of the adversary better than the adversary could have done it for himself. Applying to his own character the same truthful method of inquiry which he applied to others, Mill has given a very accurate description of one at least of

  the qualities by which he was able to accomplish so much. He tells us in his autobiography that he had from an early period considered that the most useful part he could take in the domain of thought was that of an interpreter of original thinkers and mediator between them and the public. I had always a humble opinion of my own powers as an original thinker except in abstract

  science, logic, metaphysics, and the theoretical principles of political economy and politics but thought myself much superior to most of my contemporaries in willingness and ability to learn from everybody as I found hardly anyone who made such a point of examining what was said in defense of all opinions however new or however old in the conviction that even

  if they were errors there might be a substratum of truth underneath them and that in any case the discovery of what it was that made them plausible would be a benefit to truth. This was not assuredly Mill's greatest merit but it was perhaps his most peculiar quality. He was an original thinker despite his own sincere disclaimer but he founded no new system. He could be trusted to examine

  and expound any system with the most perfect fairness and candor and even where it was least in harmony with his own ideas to do the fullest justice to every one of its claims. Harriet Martino's career as a woman of letters and a teacher began indeed before the reign of Queen Victoria but it was carried on almost without interruption during nearly 40 years of the reign. She was

  political economist, novelist, historian, biographer, and journalist and in no path did she fail to make her mark. Few women could have turned to the occupations of a political writer under greater physical disadvantages and no man in this line of life however well furnished by nature with physical and intellectual qualifications for success could have done better work. She wrote

  some exquisite little stories and one or two novels of more ambitious character. It is praise enough to give them when we say that although fiction certainly was not work for which he was most especially qualified yet what she did seems to be destined to live and hold a place in our literature. She was so far as we know the only Englishwoman who ever achieved distinct and great success

  as a writer of leading articles for a daily newspaper. Her strong prejudices and dislikes prevent her from being always regarded as a trustworthy historian. Her history of the 30 years piece, for it may be regarded as wholly hers, although Charles Knight began it, is a work full of vigorous thought and clear description with here and there passages of genuine eloquence but it is marred in its effect

  as a trustworthy narrative by the manner in which the authoress yields here and there to inveterate and wholesale dislikes and sometimes though not so often or so markedly to an overwrought hero worship. Miss Martineau had to a great extent an essentially masculine mind. She was often reproached with being unfeminine and assuredly she would have been surprised to hear that there was

  anything womanish in her way of criticizing public events and men. Yet in reading her history one is sometimes amused to find that that partisanship which is commonly set down as a specially feminine quality affects her estimate of a statesman. Hers is not by any means the Carlylean way of starting with a theory and finding all virtue and glory in the man who seems to embody it

  and all baseness and stupidity in his opponents. But when she takes a dislike to a particular individual she seems to assume that where he was wrong he must have been wrong of set maligned purpose and that where he chanced to be right it was a mistake and in despite of his own greater inclination to be in the wrong. It is fortunate that these dislikes are not many and also that they soon show

  themselves and therefore cease to be seriously misleading. In all other respects the book well deserves careful study. The life of the woman is a study still more deeply interesting. Others of her sex there were of greater genius even in her own time but no English woman ever followed with such perseverance and success a career of literary and political labor. The blue Peter has long

  been flying at my foremast and now that I am in my 92nd year I must soon expect the signal for sailing. In this quaint and cheery way Mary Somerville many years after the period at which we have now arrived in this work described her condition and her quiet waiting for death. No one surely could have better earned the right to die by the labors of a long life devoted to the education and

  improvement of her kind. Mary Somerville has probably no rival among women as a scientific scholar. Her summary of Laplace's mécanique céleste, her treatise on the connection of the physical sciences and her physical geography would suffice to place any student man or woman in the foremost rank of scientific expounders. The physical geography is the only one of Mrs. Somerville's remarkable works

  which was published in the reign of Queen Victoria but the publication of the other two preceded the opening of the reign by so short a time and her career and her fame so entirely belonged to the Victorian period that even if the physical geography had never been published she must be included in this history. I was intensely ambitious, Mrs. Somerville says of herself in her

  earlier days, to excel in something for I felt in my own breast that women were capable of taking a higher place in creation than that assigned to them in my early days which was very low. It is not exaggeration to say that Mrs. Somerville distinctly raised the world's estimate of woman's capacity for the severest and the loftiest scientific pursuits. She possessed the most

  extraordinary power of concentration amounting to an entire absorption in the subject which she happened to be studying to the exclusion of all disturbing sights and sounds. She had in a supreme degree that which Carlisle calls the first quality of genius an immense capacity for taking trouble. She had also happily for herself an immense capacity for finding enjoyment in almost

  everything in new places people and thoughts in the old familiar scenes and friends and associations. Hers was a noble calm fully rounded life. She worked as steadfastly and as eagerly in her scientific studies as Harriet Martino did with her economics and her politics but she had a more cheery less sensitive less eager and impatient nature than Harriet Martino. She was able to pursue

  her most intricate calculations after she had passed her 90th year and one of her chief regrets in dying was that she should not live to see the distance of the earth from the Sun determined by the transit of Venus and the source of the most renowned of rivers the discovery of which will immortalize the name of Dr. Livingston. End of section 28.

• 29 - Ch. 29: The Literature of the Reign. First Survey, Pt. 3

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  Section 29 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 29, The Literature of the Rain, First Survey, Part 3. The paths of the two poets who first sprang into fame in the present rain are strangely remote from each other. Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning are as unlike in style and choice of

  subject and indeed in the whole spirit of their poetry as Wordsworth and Byron. Mr. Tennyson deals with incident and picturesque form and graceful legend and with so much of doubt and thought and yearning melancholy as would belong to a refined and cultured intellect under no greater stress or strain than the ordinary chances of life among educated Englishmen might be expected to impose.

  He has revived with great success the old Arthurian legends and made them a part of the living literature of England. But the knights and ladies whom he paints are refined, graceful, noble, without roughness, without wild or at all events complex and distracting passions. It may perhaps be said that Tennyson has taken for his province all the beauty, all the nobleness, all the feeling that lie

  near to or on the surface of life and nature. His object might seem to be that which Lessing declared the true object of all art, to delight, but it is to delight in a somewhat narrower sense than was the meaning of Lessing. Beauty, melancholy, and repose are the elements of Tennyson's poetry. There is no storm, no conflict, no complication. Mr. Browning on the other hand delights in

  perplexed problems of character and life, in studying the effects of strange contrasting forces of passion coming into play under peculiar and distracting conditions. All that lies beneath the surface, all that is out of the common track of emulsion, all that is possible, that is poetically conceivable, but that the outer air and the daily walks of life never see, this is what specially

  attracts Mr. Browning. In Tennyson, the night of King Arthur's mythical court has the emotions of a polished English gentleman of our day and nothing more. Mr. Browning would prefer in treating of a polished English gentleman of our day to exhibit him under some conditions which should draw out in him all the strange elementary passions and complications of emotion that lie far

  down in deeps below the surface of the best-ordered civilization. The tendency of the one poet is naturally to fall now and then into the sweetly insipid of the other to wander away into the tangled regions of the grotesque. It is perhaps only natural that under such conditions the one poet should be profoundly concerned for beauty of form and the latter almost absolutely indifferent to

  it. No poet has more finished beauty of style and exquisite charm of melody than Tennyson. None certainly can be more often wanting in grace of form and delight of soft sound than Mr. Browning. There are many passages and even many poems of Browning which show that the poet could be melodious if he would, but he seems sometimes as if he took a positive delight in perplexing the

  reader's ear with harsh, untuneful sounds. Mr. Browning commonly allows the study of the purely psychological to absorb too much of his moods and of his genius. It has a fascination for him which he is seemingly unable to resist. He makes of his poems too often mere searchings into strange deeps of human character and human error. He seldom abandons himself altogether to the inspiration of the

  poet. He hardly ever deserves the definition of the minstrel given in Goethe's ballad who sings but as the songbird sings. Moreover, Mr. Browning has an almost morbid taste for the grotesque. He is not infrequently a sort of poetic callow. It has to be added that Mr. Browning is seldom easy to understand and that there are times when he is only to be understood at the

  expense of as much thought and study as one might give to a controverted passage in an ancient author. This is a defect of art and a very serious defect. The more devoted of Mr. Browning's admirers will tell us no doubt that the poet is not bound to supply us with brains as well as poetry and that if we cannot understand what he says it is the fault simply of our stupidity. But an ordinary

  man who finds that he can understand Shakespeare and Milton, Dryden and Wordsworth, Byron and Keats without any trouble may surely be excused if he does not set down his difficulty about some of Browning's poems wholly to the account of his own dullness. It may well be doubted whether there is any idea so subtle that if the poet can actually realize it in his own mind clearly for

  himself the English language will not be found capable of expressing it with sufficient clearness. The language has been made to do this for the most refined reasonings of philosophical schools, for transcendentalists and utilitarians, for psychologists and metaphysicians. No intelligent person feels any difficulty in understanding what Mill or Herbert Spencer or Huxley

  means and it can hardly be said that the ideas Mr. Browning desires to convey to his readers are more difficult of exposition than some of those which the authors we name have contrived to set out with a white light of clearness all around them. The plain truth is that Mr. Browning is a great poet in spite of some of the worst defects that ever stood between a poet and popularity. He

  is a great poet by virtue of his commanding genius, his fearless imagination, his penetrating pathos. He strikes an iron harp string. In certain of his moods his poetry is like that of the terrible liar in the weird old Scottish ballad, the liar that was made of the murdered maiden's breastbone and which told its fearful tale in tones that would melt a heart of stone. In strength and depth of

  passion and pathos, in wild humor, in emotion of every kind, Mr. Browning is much superior to Mr. Tennyson. The poet laureate is the completer man. Mr. Tennyson is beyond doubt the most complete of the poets of Queen Victoria's time. No one else has the same combination of melody, beauty of description, culture and intellectual power. He has sweetness and strength in

  exquisite combination. If a just balance of poetic powers were to be the crown of undoubtedly Mr. Tennyson must be proclaimed the greatest English poet of our time. The reader's estimate of Browning and Tennyson will probably be decided by his predilection for the higher effort or the more perfect art. Browning's is surely the higher aim in poetic art, but of the art which he assays

  Tennyson is by far the completer master. Tennyson has undoubtedly thrown away much of his sweetness and his exquisite grace of form on mere triflings and pretty conceits. And perhaps as a retribution those poems of his which are most familiar to the popular mouth are just those which least do justice to his genuine strength and intellect. The cheap sentiment of Lady Clara Vier de Vier,

  the yet cheaper pathos of the May Queen, are in the minds of thousands the choicest representation of the genius of the poet who wrote in memoriam and the Mort Darther. Mr. Browning on the other hand has chosen to court the approval of his time on terms of such disadvantage as an orator might who insisted in addressing an assemblage in some tongue which they but imperfectly understood. It

  is the fault of Mr. Browning himself if he has for his only audience and admirers men and women of culture and misses altogether that broad public audience to which most poets have chosen to sing and which all true poets one would think must desire to reach with their song. It is on the other hand assuredly Mr. Tennyson's fault if he has by his too frequent condescension to the

  drawing room and even the young lady school made men and women of culture forget for the moment his best things and credit him with no higher gift than that of singing we're guinibus puerisque. One quality ought to be mentioned as common to these two poets who have so little else in common. They are both absolutely faithful to nature and truth in their pictures of the earth and its

  scenes and seasons. Almost all the great poets of the past age even including Wordsworth himself were now and then content to generalize nature, to take some things for granted, to use their memory or the eyes of others rather than their own eyes when they had to describe changes on leaf or sky or water. It is the characteristic of Tennyson and Browning that they deal with nature in a

  spirit of the most faithful loyalty. Not the branch of a tree nor the cry of a bird nor the shifting colors on sea or sky will be found described on their pages otherwise than as the eye sees for itself at the season of which the poet tells. In reading Tennyson's description of woodland and forest scenes one might almost fancy that he can catch the exact peculiarities of sound in the rustling

  and moaning of each separate tree. In some of Mr. Browning's pictures of Italian scenery every detail is so perfect that many a one journeying along an Italian road and watching the little mouse colored cattle as they drink at the stream may for a moment almost feel uncertain whether he is looking on a page of living reality or recalling to memory a page from the author of The

  Ring in the Book. The poets seem to have returned to the fresh simplicity of a far distant age of poetry when a man described exactly what he saw and was put to describing it because he saw it. In most of the intermediate times a poet describes because some other poet has described before and has said that in nature that there are such and such beautiful things which every true poet

  must see and is bound to acknowledge accordingly in his verse. These two are the greatest of our poets in the earlier part of the rain indeed in the rain early or late so far but there are other poets also of whom we must take account. Mrs. Browning has often been described as the greatest poetess of whom we know anything since Sappho. This description however seems to carry with it a much

  higher degree of praise than it really bears. It has to be remembered that there is no great poetess of whom we know anything from the time of Sappho to that of Mrs. Browning. In England we have hardly any woman but Mrs. Browning alone who really deserves to rank with poets. She takes a place altogether different from that of any Mrs. Heemans or such singer of sweet mild and innocent note.

  Mrs. Browning would rank higher among poets without any allowance being claimed for her sex but estimated in this way which assuredly she would have chosen for herself she can hardly be admitted to stand with the foremost even of our modern day. She is one of the most sympathetic of poets. She speaks to the hearts of numbers of readers who think tennis and all too sweet, smooth and

  trivial, and Robert Browning harsh and rugged. She speaks especially to the emotional in woman. In all moods when men or women are distracted by the bewildering conditions of life, when they feel themselves alternately dazzled by its possibilities and baffled by its limitations, the poems of Elizabeth Browning ought to find sympathetic ears. But the poems are not the highest which

  might appeal to our own moods and echo our own plights, and there was not much of creative genius in Mrs. Browning. Her poems are often but a prolonged sob, a burst of almost hysterical remonstrance or entreaty. It must be owned however that the egotism of emotion has seldom found such exquisite form of outpouring as in her so-called sonnets from the Portuguese, and that what the phraseology

  of a school would call the emotion of altruism has rarely been given forth in tones of such piercing pathos as in the cry of the children. Mr. Matthew Arnold's reputation was made before this earlier period had closed. He is a maker of such exquisite and thoughtful verse that it is hard sometimes to question his title to be considered a genuine poet. On the other hand, it is likely that the very

  grace and culture and thoughtfulness of his style inspire in many the first doubt of his claim to the name of poet. Where the art is evident and elaborate we are all too apt to assume that it is all art and not genius. Mr. Arnold is a sort of miniature Goethe. We do not know that his most ardent admirers could demand a higher praise for him, while it is probable that the description will

  suggest exactly the intellectual peculiarities which leads so many to deny him a place with the really inspired singers of his day. Of the three men whom we have named, we should be inclined to say that Mr. Arnold made the very most of his powers and Mr. Browning the very least. Mr. Arnold is a critic as well as a poet. There are many who relish him more in the critic than in the poet.

  In literary criticism his judgment is refined and his aims are always high if his range is not very wide. In politics and theology he is somewhat apt to be at once fastidious and fantastic. The Song of the Shirt would give Thomas Hood a technical right if he had none other to be classed as a poet of the reign of Queen Victoria. The Song of the Shirt was published in Punch when the reign was

  well on and after it appeared the Bridge of Sighs and no two of Hood's poems have done more to make him famous. He is a genuine, though not a great poet, in whom humor was most properly to be defined as Thackeray had defined it, the blending of love and wit. The Song of the Shirt and the Bridge of Sighs made themselves a kind of monumental place in English sympathies. The plea of the Midsummer

  Fairies was written several years before. It alone would have made for its author a reputation. The Ballad of Ferry Nez is almost perfect in its way. The name of Sir Henry Taylor must be included with the poets of this reign although his best work was done before the reign began. In his work clear, strong intelligence prevails more than the emotional and the sensuous. He makes

  himself a poet by virtue of intellect and artistic judgment for their really do seem some examples of a poet being made and not born. We can hardly bring proctor among the Victorian poets. Macaulay's ringing verses are rather the splendid and successful tour de force of a clever man than the genuine lyrics of a poet. Arthur Clough was a man of rare promise whose lamp was extinguished all

  too soon. Philip James Bailey startled the world by his festus and for a time made people believe that a great new poet was coming but the impression did not last and Bailey proved to be little more than the comet of a season. A spasmodic school which sprang up after the success of Festus and which was led by a brilliant young Scotchman, Alexander Smith, passed away in a spasm as it came

  and is now almost forgotten. Orion, an epic poem by Richard H. Horn, made a very distinct mark upon the time. Horn proved himself to be a sort of Landor manke or perhaps a connecting link between the style of Landor and that of Browning. The earlier part of the reign was rich in singers but the names and careers of most of them would serve rather to show that the poetic spirit

  was abroad in that it sought expression in all manner of forms than that there were many poets to dispute the place with Tennyson and Browning. It is not necessary here to record a list of mere names. The air was filled with the voices of minor singers. It was pleasant to listen to their piping and the general effect may well be commended but it is not necessary that the names of

  all the performers in an orchestra should be recorded for the supposed gratification of a posterity which assuredly would never stop to read the list. Thirty-six years have passed away since Mr. Ruskin leaped into the literary arena with a spring as bold and startling as that of Keene on the Kemble haunted stage. The little volume so modest in its appearance and

  self-sufficient in its tone which the author defiantly flung down like a gauge of battle before the world was entitled, Modern Painters, Their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to All the Ancient Masters by a graduate of Oxford. It was a challenge to establish beliefs and prejudices and the challenge was delivered in the tone of one who felt confident that he could make good

  his words against any and all opponents. If there was one thing that more than another seemed to have been fixed and rooted in the English mind, it was that Claude and one or two others of the old masters possessed the secret of landscape painting. When therefore a bold young dogmatist involved in one common denunciation, Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvatore Rosa, Rauchdal, Paul Potter,

  Canaletto, and the various van-somethings and kook-somethings, more especially and malignantly those who have libeled the sea, it was no wonder that affronted authority raised its indignant voice and thundered at him. Affronted authority, however, gained little by its thunder. The young Oxford graduate possessed, along with genius and profound conviction, an imperturbable and

  magnificent self-conceit against which the surges of angry criticism dashed themselves in vain. Mr. Ruskin sprang into literary life simply as a vindicator of the fame and genius of Turner, but as he went on with his task he found or at least he convinced himself that the vindication of the great landscape painter was essentially a vindication of all true art. Still

  further proceeding with his self-imposed task, he persuaded himself that the cause of true art was identical with the cause of truth and that truth, from Ruskin's point of view, enclosed in the same rules and principles all the morals, all the science, industry, and daily business of life. Therefore, from an art critic he became a moralist, a political economist, a philosopher, a statesman, a preacher,

  anything, everything that human intelligence can impel a man to be. All that he has written since his first appeal to the public has been inspired by this conviction, that an appreciation of the truth in art reveals to him who has it the truth in everything. This belief has been the source of Mr. Ruskin's greatest successes and of his most complete and ludicrous failures. It has

  made him the admiration of the world one week and the object of its placid pity or broad laughter the next. A being who could be Joan of Arc today and Voltaire's Pucelle tomorrow would hardly exhibit a stranger's psychical paradox than the eccentric genius of Mr. Ruskin sometimes illustrates, but in order to do him justice and not to regard him as a mere erratic utterer of eloquent contradictions

  poured out on the impulse of each moment's new freak of fancy, we must always bear in mind the fundamental faith of the man. Extravagant as this or that doctrine may be, outrageous as today's contradiction of yesterday's assertion may sound, yet the whole career is consistent with its essential beliefs and principles. It may be fairly questioned whether Mr. Ruskin has any

  great qualities but his eloquence and his true honest love of nature. As a man to stand up before a society of which one part was fashionably languid and the other part only too busy and greedy and preach to it of nature's immortal beauty and of the true way to do her reverence, Ruskin has and had a position of genuine dignity. This ought to be enough for the work and for the praise of any man, but

  the restlessness of Ruskin's temperament, combined with the extraordinary self-sufficiency which contributed so much to his success where he was master of a subject, sent him perpetually intruding into fields where he was unfit to labor and enterprises which he had no capacity to conduct. Seldom has a man contradicted himself so often, so recklessly, and so complacently as Mr.

  It is venturesome to call him a great critic even in art, for he seldom expresses any opinion one day without flatly contradicting it the next. He is a great writer as Rousseau was, fresh, eloquent, audacious, writing out of the fullness of the present mood and heedless how far the impulse of today may contravene that of yesterday. But as Rousseau was always faithful to his idea

  of truth, so Ruskin is always faithful to nature. When all his errors and paradoxes and contradictions shall have been utterly forgotten, this will remain to his praise. No man since Wordsworth's brightest days did have so much to teach his countrymen and those who speak his language how to appreciate and honor that silent nature which never did betray the heart that loved her. In

  fiction as well as in poetry there are two great names to be compared or contrasted when we turn to the literature of the earlier part of the reign. In the very year of Queen Victoria's accession appeared the Pickwick Papers, the work of the author who the year before had published the sketches by Bas. The public soon recognized the fact that a new and wonderfully original

  force had come into literature. The success of Charles Dickens is absolutely unequaled in the history of English fiction. At the season of his highest popularity Sir Walter Scott was not so popular an author. But that happened to Dickens which did not happen to Scott. When Dickens was at his zenith and when it might have been thought that any manner of rivalry with him was impossible,

  a literary man who was no longer young, who had been working with but moderate success for many years in light literature, suddenly took to writing novels and almost in a moment stepped up to a level with the author of Pickwick. During the remainder of their careers the two men stood as nearly as possible on the same level. Dickens always remained by far the more popular of the

  two but on the other hand it may be safely said that the opinion of the literary world in general was inclined to favor Thackeray. From the time of the Vanity Fair the two were always put side by side for comparison or contrast. They have been sometimes likened to Fielding and Smollett but no comparison could be more misleading or less happy. Smollett stands on a level distinctly and

  considerably below that of Fielding but Dickens cannot be said to stand thus below Thackeray. If the comparison were to hold at all Thackeray must be compared to Fielding for Fielding is not in the least like Dickens but then it must be allowed that Smollett wants many of the higher qualities of the author of David Copperfield. It is natural that men should compare Dickens and Thackeray but

  the two will be found to be curiously unlike when once a certain superficial resemblance ceases to impress the mind. Their ways of treating a subject were not only dissimilar but were absolutely in contrast. They started to begin with under the influence of a totally different philosophy of life if that is to be called a philosophy which was probably only the result of peculiarity

  of temperament in each case. Dickens set out on the literary theory that in life everything is better than it looks. Thackeray with the impression that it is worse. In the one case there was somewhat too much of a mechanical interpretation of everything for the best in the best possible world. In the other the savour of cynicism was at times a little annoying. As each writer

  went on the peculiarity became more and more a mannerism but the writings of Dickens were far more deeply influenced by his peculiarities of feeling or philosophy than those of Thackeray. A large share of the admiration which is popularly given to Dickens is undoubtedly a tribute to what people consider his cheerful view of life. In that too he is especially English. In

  this country the artistic theory of France and other continental nations borrowed from the aesthetic principles of Greece which accords the palm to the artistic treatment rather than to the subject or the purpose or the way of looking at things has found hardly any broad and general acceptation. The popularity of Dickens was therefore in great measure due to the fact that he

  set forth life in cheerful lights and colors. He had of course gifts of far higher artistic value. He could describe anything that he saw with a fidelity which Balzac could not have surpassed and like Balzac he had a way of inspiring inanimate objects with a mystery and motive of their own which gave them often a weird and fascinating individuality. But it must be owned that

  if Dickens peculiar philosophy were effaced from his works the fame of the author would remain a very different thing from what it is at the present moment. On the other hand it would be possible to cut out of Thackeray all his little cynical melancholy sentences and reduce his novels to bare descriptions of life and character without affecting in any sensible degree

  his influence on the reader or his position in literature. Thackeray had a marvelously keen appreciation of human motive and character within certain limits. If Dickens could draw an old quaint house or an odd family interior as faithfully and yet as picturesquely as Balzac so on the other hand not Balzac himself could analyze and illustrate the weaknesses and foibles of

  certain types of character with greater subtlety of judgment and force of exposition than Thackeray. Dickens had little or no knowledge of human character and evidently cared very little about the study. His stories are fairy tales made credible by the masterly realism with which he described all the surroundings and accessories the costumes and the ways of his men and

  women. While we are reading of a man whose odd peculiarities strike us with a sense of reality is if we had observed them for ourselves many a time while we see him surrounded by streets and houses which seem to us rather more real and a hundred times more interesting than those through which we pass every day we are not likely to observe very quickly or to take much heed of the fact when we do

  observe it that the man acts on various important occasions of his life as only people in fairy stories ever do act. Thackeray on the other hand cared little for descriptions of externals. He left his readers to construct for themselves the greater part of the surroundings of his personages from his description of the characters of the personages themselves. He made us acquainted with

  the man or woman in his chapters as if we had known him or her all our life and knowing Pandenus or Becky Sharp we had no difficulty in constructing the surroundings of either for ourselves. Thus it will be seen that these two eminent authors had not only different ideas about life but absolutely contrasting principles of art. One worked from the externals inward the other

  realized the unseen and left the externals to grow of themselves. Three great peculiarities however they shared. Each lived and wrote of and for London. Dickens created for art the London of the middle and poorer classes. Thackeray did the same for the London of the upper class and for those who strive to imitate their ways. Neither ever even attempted to describe a man kept

  constantly above or beyond the atmosphere of mere egotism by some sustaining greatness or even intensity of purpose. In Dickens as in Thackeray the emotions described are those of conventional life merely. This is not to be said in disparagement of either artist. It is rather a tribute to an artist's knowledge of his own capacity and sphere of work that he only attempts

  to draw what he thoroughly understands. But it is proper to remark of Dickens and of Thackeray as a Balzac that the life they described was after all but the life of a coterie or a quarter and that there existed side by side with their field of work a whole world of emotion, aspiration, struggle, defeat and triumph of which their brightest pages do not give a single suggestion. This is

  the more curious to observe because of the third peculiarity which Dickens and Thackeray had in common. A love for the purely ideal and romantic in fiction. There are many critics who hold that Dickens in Barnaby Rudge and the Tale of Two Cities, Thackeray and Esmond exhibited powers which vindicated for their possessors a very rare infusion of that higher poetic spirit which might

  have made of both something greater than the painters of the manners of a day and a class. But to paint the manners of a day and a class as Dickens and Thackeray have done is to deserve fame and the gratitude of posterity. The age of Victoria may claim in this respect an equality at least with that of the rain which produced fielding and Smollett. For if there are some who would demand

  for fielding a higher place on the whole than can be given either to Dickens or to Thackeray, there are not many on the other hand who would not say that either Dickens or Thackeray is distinctly superior to Smollett. The age must claim a high place in art which could in one department alone produce two such competitors. Their effect upon their time was something marvelous. People talked

  Dickens or thought Thackeray. End of section 29.

• 30 - Ch. 29: The Literature of the Reign. First Survey, Pt. 4

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  PASSIONATE will be seen, counted for little, in the works of Dickens and Thackeray. Dickens indeed could draw a conventionally or dramatically wicked man, with much power and impressiveness, and Thackeray could suggest certain forms of vice with wonderful delicacy and yet vividness, but the passions which are common to all human natures in their elementary moods made but little play in the novels of either writer.

  Both were in this respect, for all their originality and genius in other ways, highly and even exclusively conventional. There was apparently a sort of understanding in the minds of each, indeed Thackeray is admitted as much in his preface to Pandenus, that men and women are not to be drawn as men and women are known to be, but with certain reserves to suit conventional etiquette.

  It is somewhat curious that the one only novel writer who during the period we are now considering came into any real rivalry with them was one who depended on passion altogether for her material and her success. The novels of a young woman, Charlotte Bronte, compelled all English society into a recognition not alone of her own sterling power and genius, but also of the fact that profound and passionate

  emotion was still the stuff out of which great fiction could be constructed. Exaltations, agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind, were taken by Charlotte Bronte as the matter out of which her art was to produce its triumphs. The novels which made her fame, Jane Eyre and Villette, are positively aflame with passion and pain.

  They have little variety, they make hardly any pretense to accurate drawing of ordinary men and women in ordinary life, or at all events under ordinary conditions. The authoress had little of the gift of the mere storyteller and her own peculiar powers were exerted sometimes within different success. The familiar on whom she depended for her inspiration would not always come at call.

  She had little genuine relish for beauty except the beauty of a weird melancholy and of decay. But when she touched the chord of elementary human emotion with her best skill, then it was impossible for her audience not to feel that they were under the spell of a power rare indeed in our well-ordered days. The absolute sincerity of the author's expression of feeling lent it great part of its strength

  and charm. Nothing was ever said by her because it seemed to society the right sort of thing to say. She told a friend that she felt sure Jane Eyre would have an effect on readers in general because it had so great an effect on herself. It would be possible to argue that the great strength of the books lay in their sincerity

  alone. That Charlotte Bronte was not so much a woman of extraordinary genius as a woman who looked her own feelings fairly in the face and painted them as she saw them. But the capacity to do this would surely be something which we could not better describe than by the word genius.

  Charlotte Bronte was far from being an artist of fulfilled power. She's rather to be regarded as one who gave evidence of extraordinary gifts which might with time and care and under happier artistic auspices have been turned to such a count as would have made for her a fame with the very chiefs of her tribe. She died at an age hardly more mature than that at which Thackeray won his first distinct

  literary success, much earlier than the age at which some of our greatest novelists brought forth their first completed novels. But she left a very deep impression on her time and the time that has come and is coming after her. No other hand in the age of Queen Victoria has dealt with human emotion so powerfully

  and so truthfully. Hers were not cheerful novels. A cold, gray, mournful atmosphere hangs over them. One might imagine that the shadow of an early death is forecast on them. They love to linger among the glooms of nature, to haunt her darkling wintery twilights,

  to study her stormy sunsets, to link man's destiny and his hopes, fears, and passions somehow with the glaring gloom of storm and darkness, and to read the symbols of his fate as the foredoomed and passion-wasted Antony did in the cloud masses that are Black Vesper's pageants. The supernatural had a constant vague charm for Charlotte Brontë as the painful had.

  Man was to her a being torn between passionate love and the most ignoble impulses and ambitions in common-day occupations of life. Woman was a being of equal passion, still more sternly and cruelly doomed to repression and renunciation. It was a strange fact that in the midst of the splendid material successes and the quietly

  triumphant intellectual progress of this most prosperous and well-ordered age, when even in its poetry and its romance, passion was systematically toned down and put in thrall to good taste and propriety, this young writer should have suddenly come out with her books all thrilling with emotion and all protesting in the strongest possible manner against the theory that the loves and hates of men and women had been tamed by the process of civilization.

  Perhaps the very novelty of the apparition was in great measure a part of its success. Charlotte Brontë did not indeed influence the general public or even the literary public to anything like the same extent that Thackeray and Dickens did. She appeared and passed away almost in a moment. As Miss Martino said of her, she stole like a shadow into literature and then became a

  shadow again. But she struck very deeply into the heart of the time. If her writings were only, as has been said of them, a cry of pain, yet they were such a cry as once heard lingers and echoes in the mind forever after. Godwin declared that he would write in Caleb Williams a book which would leave no man who

  read it the same as he was before. Nothing not unlike this might be said of Jane Eyre. No one who read it was exactly the same as he had been before he opened its weird and wonderful pages. No man could well have made more of his gifts than Lord Lytton.

  Before the coming up of Dickens and Thackeray, he stood above all living English novelists. Perhaps this is rather to the reproach of English fiction of the day than to the renown of Lord Lytton. But even after Dickens and Thackeray and Charlotte Bronte, and later and not less powerful and original writers had appeared in the same field, he still held a place of great mark

  in literature. That he was not a man of genius is perhaps conclusively proved by the fact that he was able so readily to change his style to suit the tastes of each day. He began by writing of Fops and Rouet, of a time now almost forgotten. Then he made heroes of highwaymen and murderers.

  Afterwards, he tried the philosophic and mildly didactic style. Then he turned to mysticism and spiritualism. Later still, he wrote of the French Second Empire. Whatever he tried to do, he did well. Besides his novels, he wrote plays and poems, and his plays are among the very few modern

  productions which managed to keep the stage. He played, too, and with much success at being a statesman and an orator. Count Demosthenes himself had such difficulties of articulation to contend against in the beginning, and Demosthenes conquered his difficulties while some of those in the way of Lord Lytton proved unconquerable.

  Yet Lord Lytton did somehow contrive to become a great speaker and to seem, occasionally, like a great orator in the House of Commons. He was, at the very least, a superb phrase-maker, and he could turn to account every scrap of knowledge in literature, art, or science which he happened to possess. His success in the House of Commons was exactly like his success in Romance and the Drama.

  He threw himself into competition with men of far higher original gifts, and he made so good a show of contesting with them that in the minds of many the victory was not clearly with his antagonists. There was always, for example, a considerable class, even among educated persons who maintained that Lytton was in his way quite the peer of Thackeray and Dickens.

  His plays or some of them obtained a popularity second only to those of Shakespeare, and although nobody cared to read them, yet people were always found to go and look at them. When Lytton went into the House of Commons for the second time, he found audiences which were occasionally tempted to regard him as the rival of Gladstone and Bright. Not a few persons saw in all this a sort of superb charlatanery, and indeed it is certain

  that no man ever made and kept a genuine success in so many different fields as those in which Lord Lytton tried and seemed to succeed. But he had splendid qualities. He had everything short of genius. He had indomitable patience, inexhaustible power of self-culture, and a capacity for

  assimilating the floating ideas of the hour which supplied the place of originality. He borrowed from the poet the knack of poetical expression, and from the dramatist the trick of construction. From the Byronic time, it's professed scorn for the false gods of the world, and from the more modern period of popular science and sham mysticism, its extremes of materialism

  and magic. And of these and various other borrowings, he made up an article which no one else could have constructed out of the same materials. He was not a great author, but he was a great literary man. Mr. Disraeli's novels belong in some measure to the school of Pelham and Godolphin, but

  it should be said that Mr. Disraeli's Vivian Gray was published before Pelham made its appearance. In all that belongs to political life, Mr. Disraeli's novels are far superior to those of Lord Lytton. We have nothing in our literature to compare with some of the best of Mr. Disraeli's novels

  for light political satire and for easy, accurate characterization of political cliques and personages. But all else in Disraeli's novels is sham. The sentiment, the poetry, the philosophy, all these are sham. They have not half the appearance of reality about them that Lytton has contrived to give

  to his efforts of the same kind. In one at least of Disraeli's latest novels, the political sketches and satirizing became sham also. Alton Locke was published nearly 30 years ago. Ben Charles Kingsley became to most boys in Great Britain who read books at all a sort

  of living embodiment of chivalry, liberty, and a revolt against the established order of class oppression in so many spheres of our society. For a long time he continued to be the chosen hero of young men with the youthful spirit of revolt in them, with dreams of republics and ideas about the equality of man. Later on he commanded other admiration for other qualities, for the championship of slave

  systems, of oppression, and the iron reign of mere force. But though Charles Kingsley always held a high place somewhere in popular estimation, he is not to be rated very highly as an author. He described glowing scenery admirably, and he rang the changes vigorously on his two ideas, the muscular Englishman, the glory of the Elizabethan discoveries, and so on.

  He was a scholar and he wrote verses which sometimes one is on the point of mistaking for poetry. So much of the poet's feeling have they in them. He did a great many things very cleverly. Perhaps if he had done less, he might have done better.

  Human capacity is limited. It is not given to mortal to be a great preacher, a great philosopher, a great scholar, a great poet, a great historian, a great novelist, and an indefatigable country parson. Charles Kingsley never seems to have made up his mind for which of these callings to go in especially, and being with all his versatility not at all many-sided, but strictly one-sided

  and almost one-idead, the result was that while touching success at many points he absolutely mastered it at none. Since his novel Westward Ho, he never added anything substantial to his reputation. All this acknowledged, however, it must still be owned that failing in this, that, and the other attempt, and never achieving any real and enduring success, Charles Kingsley was

  an influence and a man of mark in the Victorian age. Perhaps a word ought to be said of the rattling romances of Irish electioneering, lovemaking, which set people reading Charles O'Malley and Jack Hinton even when Pickwick was still a novelty. Charles Leaver had wonderful animal spirits and a broad-bright humor.

  He was quite genuine in his way. He afterwards changed his style completely and with much success, and will be found in the later part of the period holding just the same relative places in the earlier, just behind the foremost men, but in manners so different that he might be a new writer who had never read a line of the roistering adventures of light dragoons which were popular when

  Charles Leaver first gave them to the world. There was nothing great about Leaver, but the literature of the Victorian period would not be quite all that we know it without him. There are many other popular novelists during the period we have passed over, some in their day more popular than either Thackery or Charlotte Bronte.

  Many of us can remember without being too much ashamed of the fact that there were early days when Mr. James and his cavaliers and his chivalric adventures gave nearly as much delight as Walter Scott could have given to the youth of a preceding generation. But Walter Scott is with us still, young and old, and poor James is gone. His once famous solitary horseman has ridden away into actual solitude, and the shades

  of night have gathered over his heroic form. The founding of Punch drew together a host of clever young writers, some of whom made a really deep mark on the literature of their time, and the combined influence of whom, in this artistic and literary undertaking, was on the whole decidedly healthy. Thackery was by far the greatest of the regular contributors to Punch in its early days.

  But the Song of the Shirt appeared in its pages, and some of the brightest of Douglas Gerald's writings made their appearance there. Punch was a thoroughly English production. It had little or nothing in common with the comic periodicals of Paris. It ignored absolutely and of set purpose the whole class of subjects which make up three-fourths

  of the stock and trade of a French satirist. The escapades of husbands and the infidelities of wives formed the theme of by far the greater number of the humorous sketches with pen and pencil in Parisian comicalities. Punch kept altogether aloof from such unsavory subjects. It had an advantage, of course, which was habitually denied to the French papers.

  It had unlimited freedom of political satire and caricature. Politics and the more trivial troubles in trials of social life gave subjects to Punch. The inequalities of class and the struggles of ambitious and vain persons to get into circles higher than their own, or at least to imitate their manners, these supplied for Punch the place of the class of topics on which French papers relied when they had to

  deal with the domestic life of the nation. Punch started by being somewhat fiercely radical, but gradually toned away into a sort of intelligent and respectable conservatism. Its artistic sketches were from the first to last admirable. Some men of true genius wrought for it with the pencil as others did with the pen.

  Doyle, Leach, and Tenniel were men of whom any school of art might well be proud. A remarkable sobriety of style was apparent in all their humors. Of later years, caricature has absolutely no place in the illustrations to Punch. The satire is quiet, delicate, and no doubt superficial. It is a satire of manners, dress, and social ways altogether.

  There is justice in the criticism that of late more especially the pages of Punch give no idea whatever of the emotions of the English people. There is no suggestion of grievance, of bitterness, of passion, or pain. It is all made up of the pleasures and annoyances of the kind of life which is enclosed in a garden party.

  But it must be said that Punch has thus always succeeded in maintaining a good, open, convenient, neutral ground where young men and maidens, girls and boys, elderly politicians and state matrons, law, trade, science, all sex and creeds may safely and pleasantly mingle. It is not so to be sure that great satire is wrought. A swift or a juvenile is not thus to be brought out, but a votary of the present would have

  his answers simple and conclusive. We live in the age of Punch. We do not live in the age of juvenile or swift. End of Section 30. Recording by Pamela Nagami M.D. in Encino, California, July 2019.

  End of A History of Our Own Times from The Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880, Volume 2, by Justin McCarthy.