THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued).

Peace and Prosperity in 1864—Birth of an Heir to the Prince of Wales—Lord Derby's happy Speech-Fruitlessness of the Parliamentary Debates—Mr. Gladstone's Budget—Mr. Stansfeld and Mazzini—The Government and the London Conference on the Danish Question—Votes of Censure in both Houses—Mr. Gladstone on Parliamentary Reform—The Premier's Forecast—Resignation of Mr. Lowe—Lord Westbury on Convocation—Garibaldi's Visit to England—His Reception in London—The Duke of Newcastle and Nassau Senior—The Shakespeare Tercentenary—"Essays and Reviews" again—The Colenso Controversy—Mr. Disraeli and the Angels—The Fenians in Dublin—Origin of the Belfast Riots—Their Progress—Excesses of Orangemen and Roman Catholics—The Military Called Out—Trials of the Rioters—The Ashantee War—The Maori War—Waitara Block and its consequences—Suppression of the Rebellion—Final Defeat of the Taepings—Bombardment of Simonasaki—The Cyclone at Calcutta—Its Ravages.

THE year 1864 was for Britain as uneventful as the years which immediately preceded and followed it. The course of peaceful industry and the accumulation of wealth went on undisturbed, and the gradual abatement of the distress in Lancashire diffused a general feeling of relief and satisfaction. The revenue was found to display a wonderful elasticity. The Session of Parliament was opened by commission on the 4th of February. In the Royal Speech her Majesty expressed her confidence that Parliament would sympathise with her in her gratitude to the Almighty on account of the Princess of Wales having given birth (January 8) to a son, "an event which has called forth from her faithful people renewed demonstrations of devoted loyalty and attachment to her person and family."

In the debate on the Address Lord Derby adverted, with that felicity of phrase for which he was notorious, to the birth of an heir to the Prince of Wales, afterwards known as Prince Albert Victor and the Duke of Clarence and Avondale. "At this time last year," he said, "we offered our humble congratulations to her Majesty on the auspicious marriage of the heir to the Throne with a Princess every way qualified to share the high destiny reserved for him, and whose personal beauty and attractions, and the natural and unaffected charm of whose manner, secured for her, from the first moment of her entrance into this kingdom, the admiration and, I may say, the affection of her adopted country. On this occasion we have to congratulate her Majesty and the nation on the happy issue of that marriage, in the birth of an heir to the Throne in the second generation; and although, my lords, happily for this country monarchical institutions are so firmly established in the hearts and affections of the people, and their attachment to them has been so strengthened by the private virtues and personal qualities of the illustrious lady who occupies the throne that it is not with us, as it might be with other countries, a subject of additional congratulation that we thereby obtain greater stability for the Throne, or greater security for the dynasty, yet we may be permitted to rejoice at the prospect we have before us of a direct line of succession from the present illustrious wearer of the crown and her immediate descendants—from a Sovereign who has done so much to cast a lustre on that crown, and also to strengthen the hold which monarchical institutions have upon this nation.... I am sure there is not one of your lordships who does not offer up a fervent prayer to the Throne of Grace that that bright prospect may remain unclouded, and that, long after the youngest of your lordships has passed away from this scene, the throne of these realms may be occupied by the descendants of the illustrious Prince and of his new-born heir—

Et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis."

In the course of this Session many measures of political or social reform—the Ballot, the Reduction of the County Franchise, the Abolition of Church Rates and of Tests, the Permissive Bill—were introduced into Parliament and discussed, but in no single instance were they carried. Sterility attended all the legislative throes of our political assemblies. Nor are the debates on foreign affairs either pleasant or profitable reading; for in the midst of much acrimonious criticism of the proceedings of the Ministry, the general result comes out clearly, that the critics, had they been in the place of the Government, would have pursued substantially the same policy. Thus, although Mr. Cobden, in his speech on the resolution brought in by Mr. Disraeli censuring the foreign policy of the Government, severely blamed the proceedings of Lord Russell with reference to Schleswig-Holstein, the grounds of his censure were, not that we had disregarded treaties, or broken faith with Denmark, but that we had laboured so much as we had done to maintain the former and preserve the latter. Similarly, the cautious and pacific temper of the man of business, so strikingly contrasted with the temper of the senators and statesmen which in former times inspired our policy, appeared in the review which he took of the British army and navy, dispersed about the world, and engaged in the protection of our colonies; thence inferring that to engage in a war with any of the great Continental Powers would be for Britain attended with extreme difficulty and expense. And the same prudential spirit appeared, in various degrees, to animate the majority of our public men.

The financial statement of Mr. Gladstone was again, among all the domestic transactions of the Session, the chief point of attraction. His expectations of buoyancy and expansion in the revenue, as a consequence of that very reduction in fiscal burdens which ostensibly tended to diminish it, were again remarkably verified. On a comparison of the revenue with the expenditure of the past year, it appeared that there was a surplus of £2,037,000. On the general prosperity of the trade of the country, Mr. Gladstone entered into some striking details. The aggregate amount of that trade, it appeared (including imports and exports), had been, in 1861, £377,000,000; but in 1863 it had risen to the unprecedented sum of £444,000,000. The disposal of the surplus was the next point of importance. A great fight was made by the farmers' friends to prevail upon the Government to apply at least a portion of it to the reduction of the malt tax. But the Government wisely resisted all these overtures, and in so doing were supported by a decided majority of the House. That tax, producing so many millions to the revenue, was felt to be too important to be made the subject of experiments; if it was to be touched at all, it must be thoroughly and systematically revised. But although the Government thus resisted the attempts to take off or diminish the duties on malt used in the manufacture of beer, they made a concession to the agriculturists in the shape of a remission of so much of the duty as had been hitherto levied upon malt used for the consumption of cattle. The House finally agreed to apply the surplus in the manner proposed by Mr. Gladstone—that is to say, partly in effecting a substantial reduction in the duties on sugar, partly by taking off a penny in the pound from the income tax.

In course of the discussions on the Navy Estimates a singular incident occurred, which cost the Government the services of one of the Junior Lords of the Admiralty. A trial had recently been held in Paris, in which two conspirators, Greco and Trabucco, were charged with a plot against the Emperor's life. In the course of the trial the Procureur-GÉnÉral stated that a paper had been found on the person of Greco, directing him, if in want of money, to apply to a Mr. Flowers, at 35, Thurloe Square, Brompton. This, the Procureur added, is the residence of an English member of Parliament, who, in 1855, was appointed banker to the Tibaldi conspirators against the Emperor's life. A reference to the Post Office Directory showed that the member in question was Mr. Stansfeld, the member for Halifax, and one of the Junior Lords of the Admiralty; nor was it difficult to discover that Mr. Flowers, alias M. Fiori, was no other than Mazzini, the ex-triumvir. Mr. Cox, one of the members for Finsbury, first drew the attention of the House, and of the member for Halifax, to the passage in the Procureur-GÉnÉral's speech, when Mr. Stansfeld, in reply, expressed great indignation that the Crown prosecutor of a friendly Power should have ventured to connect him, a member of the British Parliament and a Minister of the Crown, with the atrocious crime with which the prisoners were charged. He knew nothing either of Greco or of Mr. Flowers, whose letters were addressed to his house. As to Mazzini, he gloried in the friendship of such a man, the greatness and nobility of whose character were little appreciated; and he was persuaded that to say that Mazzini had ever incited to assassination was as base a libel as could be uttered. Mr. Stansfeld's first explanation left the matter still involved in considerable mystery. The subject was revived by Sir Laurence Palk a few nights afterwards and warmly discussed, Mr. Pope Hennessy reading extracts from letters written by Mazzini, with reference to other transactions, in which he appeared to justify assassination in certain cases. Again, on the motion for going into Committee of Supply, Sir H. Strachey moved as an amendment, "That the speech of the Procureur-GÉnÉral on the trial of Greco, implicating a member of this House, and of her Majesty's Government, in the plot for the assassination of our ally the Emperor of the French, deserves the serious consideration of this House." Mr. Stansfeld admitted that he had at one time allowed his name to be inscribed on bank-notes (issued probably by the society of Carbonari, or revolutionary conspirators to procure the liberation of Italy), which he believed would have been used, not in the interest of assassins, but to aid in the establishment of a free and united Italy; but, acting on the advice of friends, he had withdrawn the permission. Lord Palmerston and other members of the Government warmly defended their colleague, and the amendment of Sir H. Strachey was rejected by a majority of ten. Nevertheless, Mr. Stansfeld resigned his post as Junior Lord.

The existence of the Government was seriously imperilled in July, when Lord Malmesbury, in the Lords, and Mr. Disraeli, in the Commons, moved the following resolution: "That this House has heard with deep concern that the sittings of the conference recently held in London have been brought to a close without accomplishing the important purpose for which it was convened. That it is the opinion of this House, that while the course pursued by her Majesty's Government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of upholding the integrity and independence of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence of this country in the councils of Europe, and thereby diminished the securities for peace." The event concerned is related in the following chapter; at present we notice it merely as an incident in the political history of the Session. In the Lords the Government was defeated by a majority of nine; but this was not unexpected. In the Commons there were some brilliant passages of arms between the party leaders; but Mr. Horsman, it was generally felt, was not far from the truth when he said that "the Government had made mistakes, but their opponents had endorsed them; so the parties were pretty much upon an equality." On a division, the amendment to Mr. Disraeli's resolution, moved by Mr. Kinglake, was carried by a majority of eighteen in a very full House, and Government was saved.

On the question of Parliamentary Reform little interest was at this time felt in the country, and the apathy of the constituencies extended itself to their representatives in the House of Commons. Yet the question may be justly held to have advanced a stage, in consequence of a remarkable declaration made by Mr. Gladstone during the debate on Mr. Baines' Bill for substituting a £6 rental qualification for the existing £10 householder franchise in boroughs. The previous question had been moved by Mr. Cave; but Mr. Gladstone declared that although there was a concurrence of opinion that the present was not a suitable time for the introduction by the Government of a comprehensive measure of Reform, yet he could not vote for the amendment, because it went to deny that the question of the reduction of the franchise was one which ought to be discussed and, if possible, settled. Mr. Baines' Bill was lost by the adoption of the previous question, but it was evident to all that the £10 limit was condemned in general opinion, and could not much longer be maintained. On account of these and similar utterances of his Chancellor, Lord Palmerston said to Lord Shaftesbury, "Gladstone will soon have it all his own way, and whenever he gets my place, we shall have strange doings."

Another Minister was compelled by circumstances to execute upon himself the "happy despatch" before the end of the Session. This was Mr. Lowe, the Vice-President of the Council, whom Lord Robert Cecil (afterwards Lord Salisbury) charged with mutilating the annual reports of Inspectors of Schools, and cutting out passages that did not chime in with his own views, before submitting them to the House. An adverse resolution grounded on this allegation was carried in a thin House, and Mr. Lowe had no choice but to resign. But the explanation which he afterwards offered made it so abundantly clear that the charge was founded on a misunderstanding, and that he had done nothing but what the practice of his and other departments justified, that Lord R. Cecil frankly admitted that, had this explanation been made at first, he should have abandoned his charges; and the House was induced with little difficulty, on the motion of Lord Palmerston, to rescind the inculpatory resolution which it had just passed.

The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury—which, instead of being prorogued immediately after its opening, as had been the case since the reign of Anne, has gradually obtained the royal licence, since the friendly intervention of Lord Derby in 1852, of proceeding to the despatch of business—after discussions of extraordinary prolixity, passed what was called a "Synodical Judgment" (June 21, 1864), condemning the well-known work entitled "Essays and Reviews." Some time afterwards the matter was brought before the Peers, Lord Houghton desiring to know what was the legal effect of the judgment, and whether, in passing it, the Convocation had not exceeded its powers. On this occasion the Lord Chancellor (Lord Westbury) made a speech, the like of which for scathing wit and contemptuous banter, has been seldom heard. "There are," he said, "three modes of dealing with Convocation, when it is permitted to come into action and transact real business. The first is, while they are harmlessly busy, to take no notice of their proceedings. The second is, when they seem likely to get into mischief, to prorogue them, and put an end to their proceedings; the third, when they have done something clearly beyond their powers, is to bring them before a court of justice and punish them." He went on to state that should any attempt be made to give validity to any act of Convocation, without the consent of the Crown, the persons so offending would incur the penalties of prÆmunire. "I am afraid my noble friend has not considered what the pains and penalties of a prÆmunire are, or his gentle heart would have melted at the prospect.... I have not ventured—I say it seriously—I have not ventured to present the question to her Majesty's Government; for, my lords, only imagine what an opportunity it would be for my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to spread his net, and in one haul take in £30,000 from the highest dignitary, not to speak of the bishops, deans, archdeacons, canons, vicars, all included in one common crime, all subject to one common penalty.... Assuming that the report of the judgment which I have read is a correct one, I am happy to tell your lordships, that what is called a synodical judgment is simply a series of well lubricated terms—a sentence so oily and so saponaceous that no one could grasp it. Like an eel, it slips through your fingers—it is simply nothing; and I am glad to tell my noble friend that it is literally no sentence." Bishop Wilberforce, to whose nickname, "Soapy Sam," the last passage was an obvious allusion, made a vigorous and dignified reply to this masterpiece of irony.

Parliament was prorogued on the 29th of July; and the records of the remaining five months of the year contain little or nothing of public interest. Earlier in the year, the visit of a distinguished foreigner had been attended with so much of popular excitement and enthusiasm that it deserves a passing notice. There was sufficient real feeling and real knowledge about the Italian question among the masses of the metropolis to secure the champion of a free Italy a warm reception, but before his arrival the infectious enthusiasm of the well-informed few had spread to the ignorant many, to those who scarcely knew that such a country as Italy existed, and only thought vaguely of Garibaldi as a friend of the poor and oppressed. All along the line from Southampton to the capital crowds filled the stations, while at Nine Elms, where the General was to alight, a multitude of working men, arranged in procession according to their trades, awaited him on that April afternoon. Side by side with them stood peers and members of Parliament, and when Garibaldi arrived he was received like a prince, though there was a touch of passion in the reception which is granted to few princes. At Wandsworth Road a halt was made while a monster procession of trades unions filed past. Upwards of 30,000 men took part in it, and as they passed the General one and all broke out in cheers and cries. To the dense multitude gathered at Vauxhall and Kennington, 30,000 men would have been as nothing. Trafalgar Square was one vast sea of faces as the procession entered it, while along Pall Mall the clubs were lit up, and the windows and balconies filled with spectators. At last Stafford House was reached, and the long, fatiguing, exciting journey came to an end. Garibaldi was hoarse and wearied; the excitement had been almost too much for him, and after his introduction to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, his friends saw his retirement in the care of his host with relief. So far his visit had been an unexampled success; London had given him a noble welcome, as the most cynical confessed. He was fÊted, the best houses in London were open to him, while the leaders of society vied with one another in efforts to please and amuse him. Throughout it all he remained his simple unconscious self, unfeignedly pleased by the admiration and attention shown him, but always glad when he could escape the throng around him for a minute or two, and chat in a corner with a friend. On the 20th, when he went to receive the freedom of the City of London, the same unmixed enthusiasm greeted him. It began to be said, at the end of the General's visit, that the red shirt was an emblem of revolution, and that if he stayed longer in England, a dangerous temper might be developed among the workmen who cheered him so lustily. That his visit was shortened by a hint from the Government is well known, but the actuating motive was not fear of a rising at home, but the representations of the Austrian and Italian Ministers. On the 27th of April he quitted Plymouth in the Undine.

Few of those who departed in the course of this year from their wonted places among men awakened in the hearts of the mourning survivors more sad and sympathetic regrets than Henry Pelham Clinton, fifth Duke of Newcastle. But fifty-three years old, and endowed by nature with an eager and buoyant temperament, he was just the man who might have been expected to pass a long life in doing good and faithful service for his country, and then to die in harness. But the gloom of a ghastly private sorrow had long hung over him; the incurable wound of an intolerable injury rankled in his soul. Nassau William Senior, the eminent political economist, died this year at the age of 74. He was an eminent and representative member of the English school of economists, in whose hands the science of wealth tended to be mathematical and precise and aimed at excluding those moral and sentimental considerations from which most Continental economists thought that it could not be disjoined. His mind, remarkable for the clear dry light that it brought to the analysis and classification of facts, was deficient in imagination and sensibility, though it made advances in this direction in the course of his later years, as his journals and letters testify.

On the 23rd of April, 1864, exactly three hundred years would have elapsed since the birth of Shakespeare; and before the anniversary arrived there was a general stir in literary and dramatic circles, out of a persuasion that a date so marked should be signalised by a national festival of a splendid character, which would show the world how England honoured her greatest poet. Something, eventually, was done, and, to some limited extent, well done. A pavilion was erected by public subscription at Stratford-upon-Avon, which was to serve the threefold purpose of dining-room, theatre, and hall of discussion. On the morning of the 23rd of April the Mayor of Stratford received, in the Town Hall, an address from the "Free German Institute of Arts and Sciences at Frankfort-on-the-Main." Professor Max MÜller, in presenting this address, delivered a remarkable and somewhat inconclusive speech. He urged that hero-worship should henceforward replace for England that veneration of the saints which was so dear to our forefathers. In London the memory of Shakespeare was honoured in various ways, but the only truly public demonstration was that arranged by the Working Men's Committee. It was resolved to plant an oak in honour of Shakespeare at the foot of Primrose Hill. A young oak sapling was, by the Queen's permission, obtained from Windsor Park; a procession of trades was organised from Russell Square; and after an oration had been delivered by Mr. George Moore, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Phelps, the celebrated actor at Sadler's Wells Theatre, planted the tree, and a Mrs Banks, sprinkling it with water brought from the Avon at Stratford, christened it "Shakespeare's Oak."

The progress of Rationalism on all sides, and even among the clergy of the Establishment, made itself felt this year in various ways. The same Lord Chancellor, who made so merry in Parliament with the "synodical judgment" of Convocation upon "Essays and Reviews," had previously, in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, given to two of the contributors to that volume the full benefit of the extremely latitudinarian character of his own theological sentiments. Dr. Rowland Williams and Mr. Wilson had been condemned in the Court of Arches on two of the reformed articles of charge exhibited against them, and sentenced to a year's suspension. One article exhibited against Dr. Williams which the Court below held to be proved, charged him with maintaining that the Bible, or Holy Scripture, was "an expression of devout reason," and the written voice of the congregation—not the Word of God, nor containing any special revelation of His Truth, or of His dealings with mankind, nor of the rule of our faith. Another charged him with alleging that "the doctrine of merit by transfer is a fiction," and argued that this was at variance with the express language of the eleventh of the Thirty-nine Articles, which teaches that "we are accounted righteous before God only for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not of our own works and deservings." With regard to the first article, the judgment of the Judicial Committee, as delivered by the Lord Chancellor, was to the effect that the language used by Dr. Williams had been harshly interpreted; as to the second, the Court accepted Dr. Williams's explanation, that by the term "fiction" he did not intend "false or fictitious statement," but merely "the phantasm in the mind of an individual that he has received or enjoyed merit by transfer." Upon the whole, the committee were of opinion that Dr. Williams had not outstepped the limits imposed by the formularies of the Church of England on the freedom of thought and discussion, and therefore decided that the sentence of a year's suspension must be reversed. In the case of Mr. Wilson, charged with encouraging the hope that the last judgment of God upon the wicked might not be really one consigning them to eternal punishment, the committee similarly held that this opinion was fairly tenable by clergymen of the Church of England, and therefore reversed the penal sentence of the Court of Arches.

An incident in the great Colenso anomaly, which occurred partly in this and partly in the following year, when stripped of the legal technicalities in which it was enveloped, resulted no less favourably for the advocates of free thought than the trial of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson. In virtue of letters patent issued from the Crown, erecting Capetown into a metropolitan see, with Dr. Gray for its first bishop, and Natal as one of the suffragan sees—giving also to the metropolitan bishop jurisdiction over his suffragans, with a right of appeal only to the Archbishop of Canterbury—Bishop Gray had cited Bishop Colenso to appear in his diocesan court of Capetown and answer to the charges of heresy, founded on the novel doctrines broached in his Essay on the Pentateuch, which had been brought against him. Dr. Colenso denied the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Capetown in hac re, and declined to appear; nevertheless, Bishop Gray proceeded to hear the charges and, having decided them to be proved, pronounced a sentence of deposition against Bishop Colenso, and prohibited his clergy from paying him canonical obedience. Dr. Colenso, however, in due course lodged an appeal with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, as the depositary of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical causes, and prayed, not only that the sentence against him might be declared null and void, but that the letters patent conferring jurisdiction on the Bishop of Capetown might be declared to have been illegal and of no effect ab initio. The case was argued on the 14th of December and following days, but the judgment of the Judicial Committee was not delivered till March in the following year, when the court decided that the proceedings of Bishop Gray were null and void as law. The fact was that the zeal of the Bishop had outrun his discretion and entirely disregarded the remonstrances of Dr. Tait, the judicious Bishop of London.

But the Rationalising and anti-dogmatic party were not allowed to carry all before them; their flank was vigorously assailed by Mr. Disraeli, in November, who, in a speech delivered at a meeting of the Oxford Diocesan Society, attacked the new scepticism with all the resources of his bitter wit and unsparing rhetoric. He spoke of the clerical underminers of the doctrines which at their ordination they had vowed to maintain, whose works, he said—insufferably dull and interminably prolix—would, if we were compelled to peruse them, go far to realise for us that perpetuity of punishment which their authors denied. The highest science, he went on to say, was that which interpreted the highest nature, namely, the nature of man; but when he compared the new interpretations with the old, he was not prepared to say that the lecture-room was more scientific than the Church. "What is the question which is now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astounding? That question is this—Is a man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new-fangled theories. I believe they are foreign to the conscience of humanity; and I say more—that even in the strictest intellectual point of view I believe the severest metaphysical analysis is opposed to such conclusions."

In Ireland, the unhappy consequences which result from the secular oppression of one race or religion by another were painfully illustrated this year by the riots at Belfast. Earlier in the year a significant event had occurred in Dublin, which first disclosed the strength and wide extension of the Fenian conspiracy. A Fenian convention had met the year before in America, but that the society numbered thousands and tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters in Ireland itself was not generally known before the Rotunda meeting, on the 23rd of February, 1864. This meeting—having been called by The O'Donoghue, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and other leaders of the National party, to testify their indignation at the proposal to erect a monument in Dublin to the memory of the Prince Consort—was mobbed, soon after the proceedings began, by a preconcerted attack of Fenians, and after a good deal of fighting vanquished and dispersed.

But the desperate riots which took place at Belfast, in the autumn, threw all minor scuffles into the shade. There had been a great demonstration at Dublin, on the 8th of August, in honour of Daniel O'Connell, and a monument had been inaugurated to his memory. The demonstration itself went off quietly. But the Protestants of Belfast felt, when the accounts of the Dublin proceedings reached them through the newspapers, extremely annoyed. Accordingly they eagerly prepared a counter-demonstration. An insulting effigy of O'Connell was made and carried through the streets, attended by thousands of mill-workers; and in the evening it was publicly burnt. Nor was this all. Next day the Protestants announced that having burnt O'Connell, they must now proceed to bury him. A coffin was prepared and borne solemnly to the gate of the Friar's Bush Cemetery, where it was, of course, refused admittance; after which it suffered the same fate as the effigy, and the ashes were thrown into the river running through the town. The bonfire, however, was still blazing, and the crowds around it were still engaged in hooting the "Liberator," when it became known that the Catholics were out in the Protestant quarters of the town, smashing windows and breaking furniture.

Night put an end to the disturbance for the time, but on the following day matters became serious. Between five and six o'clock in the morning, affrays occurred between various bodies of mill-workers going to work. The day passed off quietly, but in the evening an encounter took place between the Catholics and the inhabitants of Brown Square. The Catholics were for the time beaten off; but returning, armed with brickbats and other missiles, they fell upon the constabulary, who had by this time arrived upon the scene, leaving five or six severely wounded. All through the night the fray continued. The police made some captures, but nothing damped the spirit of the Catholic mob, and the rioting continued unabated during the whole of the following day, and throughout Friday and Saturday. Sunday was quiet, but Monday brought with it fresh scenes of disorder. A body of Roman Catholic navvies attacked the Protestant houses in Brown Street and the national school, wrecking both the buildings and their contents. While thus engaged, they were set upon by a party of exasperated Orangemen, and a regular fight ensued. The authorities saw that it was high time extreme measures were taken. The military were called out, under Mr. Lyons, J.P., and posted in the Protestant districts. But the Irish blood was up, and the sight of the soldiers produced none of the hoped-for effect upon the reckless mob. Next day, both soldiers and police fired upon the people. Two were shot dead in the mÊlÉe, and between fifty and sixty seriously injured. There was a fearful rumour in the course of the day that the ship-carpenters, mostly Orangemen, had seized upon the gunpowder stores. The gunpowder, however, was saved by the prompt action of the authorities. On the 17th the ship-carpenters vowed vengeance upon the navvies, who had wrought such havoc at the outset of the riots, and having forced their enemies into the mudbanks in the harbour, they fired upon them from the shore, killing one and wounding nine or ten. It being quite evident that the Belfast authorities had no adequate force at hand, large reinforcements were sent to the number of about 4,000 men. These troops, encamped in the city, succeeded in preventing any further violence on a large scale. At length, on the 24th, Belfast was reported tranquil, and the bruised and sobered rioters began to look forward uneasily to the reckoning to come. Unfortunately, the mischief did not end with Belfast; other parts of Ireland caught the spirit of the rioters. But the authorities had been put on their guard, and the prompt despatch of troops to Dundalk and Newry nipped the disturbances there in the bud. At the spring assizes in the following year, 1865, many persons concerned in the riots were brought up for trial. The judge dwelt on the serious nature of the disturbances. According to the report of Dr. Murney, surgeon to the General Hospital, 316 persons had received more or less severe injuries, 219 had recovered, 11 died; while at the time the report was presented (November 6, 1864) there were 98 cases of gun-shot wounds still under treatment. "This," said Baron Deasy, "reads more like the Gazette after a very serious military or naval engagement, than the return presented to a judge of assize at the assizes in this country." In most cases a verdict of guilty was returned, and the sentences varied from two years' imprisonment with hard labour to three months'.

It can seldom happen in a vast Empire that a year should pass without some hostile collision taking place, either in one of its outlying colonies, or in one of the semi-civilised yet wealthy communities which its merchants frequent. In 1864 little wars raged at the Cape Coast in Africa, and in New Zealand, at that time Britain's youngest and fairest colony; while both in China and Japan hostilities, in which we were more or less engaged, were carried on. The Governor of Cape Coast Castle having refused to give up to the King of Ashantee two of his slaves who had taken refuge within British territory, the King made an incursion into the lands of the Fantees, a friendly tribe inhabiting that portion of the coast which adjoins our settlement. Thereupon Governor Pim ordered a force to proceed on an expedition into the Ashantee country, which, however, produced no coercive effect on the barbarian, and resulted in a heavy loss in officers and men, owing to the pestiferous nature of the climate. The matter was of no great consequence, yet, when it came to be debated in the House of Commons, it nearly upset the Government. Sir John Hay moved a resolution of censure, and, while acquitting the inferior authorities of blame, endeavoured to fix it all on the Cabinet. Sir John Hay's resolution, in a rather full House, was rejected by the narrow majority of seven.

In New Zealand, where a native war had existed since 1860, some decided advantages were gained this year by General Cameron, and certain native tribes gave in their unconditional submission. The war arose out of a quarrel respecting what was known in the colony as "the Waitara purchase." An individual Maori, named Teira, belonging to the tribe of Wiremu Kingi (AnglicÈ, William King), offered to the Government for sale, in 1859, a block of land on the river Waitara, near Taranaki. The Government, believing that no other rights over the land existed except those of the vendor, agreed to purchase it; but this decision was vehemently protested against by Wiremu Kingi. Troops were sent to Taranaki in 1860, by the aid of whom the block of land was occupied; and thus commenced a harassing and inglorious Maori war, in the course of which the town of Taranaki was seized and plundered, and the entire settlement ravaged by the native insurgents. To Major-General Pratt, who did little more than hold his ground against the Maoris, succeeded Major-General Cameron, an officer of great vigour and ability; but still the resistance of the Maoris, favoured by the wooded nature of the country, and the sparseness of the European population, continued. In 1861 the Duke of Newcastle summoned Sir George Grey (formerly Governor of New Zealand for several years at a most critical period) from the Cape Colony, and entrusted him with the government of New Zealand. After a careful investigation into the original cause of quarrel, Sir George Grey wrote to the Duke of Newcastle (April, 1863) that it was his settled conviction "that the natives are, in the main, right in their allegations regarding the Waitara purchase, and that it ought not to be gone on with." Proclamation was accordingly made to the natives that the purchase was abandoned. But the passions of the Maoris had been roused by the long continuance of a state of war; the proclamation, therefore, produced little effect. On the part of the natives, the war chiefly consisted in the surprise and murder of scattered settlers, or in a guerilla warfare against outposts and small detachments of the troops; on our part, it consisted in a series of attacks on their fortified pahs, or stockades, and in the securing of our flanks and rear by the construction of good military roads. In some cases pahs were stormed with little loss; but the troops were not always so fortunate. The Maori position of Orakau (April, 1864) cost us a loss of sixteen killed and fifty-two wounded to storm; and in an attack on a strong pah at Tauranga, on the north coast, the troops were actually repulsed, with a loss of ten officers and twenty-five rank and file killed, and four officers and seventy-two rank and file wounded. The pah was evacuated by the Maories on the following night, and they were soon after routed with heavy loss while endeavouring to entrench themselves near Tauranga. The Maoris of this district soon afterwards (August, 1864) submitted themselves unconditionally to the Governor, who expressed his intention of dealing leniently with them. The war was thus at an end on the north coast, but lingered on for some time longer in the Waikato country and around Taranaki.

In China, the rebellion of the Taepings was this year almost entirely suppressed, chiefly through the aid of British officers. An Order in Council had been passed authorising British subjects to enter into the service of the Emperor of China; and Colonel Gordon, taking advantage of the order, assisted by other English and American officers, drilled and disciplined a body of Chinese soldiers in the European fashion, and employed them in driving the Taepings and other disorderly characters beyond the thirty-five mile radius which had been stipulated for on behalf of the treaty ports. Following up his advantage, and co-operating with the military mandarins, Gordon, in the summer of 1864, aided them to reduce the town of Soochow, the last stronghold of the Taepings, of whom 30,000, including women and children, were cruelly massacred by the mandarins after the surrender. When the news of the massacre reached the British Government, the Order in Council authorising British subjects to enter the Chinese service was immediately revoked. This, however, did not avert a severe arraignment of their policy in Parliament, in which the Opposition were joined by several non-intervention Radicals. Lord Palmerston's reply was cogent and unanswerable. He pointed out that the general policy of Great Britain towards China was guided by the principle of the extension of commerce, and all the interferences of the Government had been rendered necessary by circumstances connected with the protection of the mercantile interests of Englishmen. As to the cruelty and perfidy of the imperialists, however that might be, the Taepings were infinitely the worse of the two, each of them possessing the normal characteristics of the Chinese.

In Japan several more horrid murders of Englishmen were committed by fanatical natives during the year; and an attempt was made, which was only partially successful, to destroy the batteries of Simonosaki. These batteries commanded the entrance into the inland sea of Japan, and the ruler of the place was in the habit of trying their range on any foreign vessel, of whatever nationality, that attempted to pass. An expedition, consisting of British, French, and Dutch ships-of-war, was organised at Yokohama and, sailing to Simonosaki, subjected the batteries to a heavy cannonade (September 5th), which was, however, vigorously returned and with considerable loss to the expedition. Parties of sailors and marines landed, spiked the guns in some of the batteries, and brought others, to the number of sixty, with three mortars, on board the ships. On the 10th of September a Minister from the ruler of the country, the Prince of Nagato, came off, armed with full powers to conclude a convention, which was ultimately arranged on the following terms:—(1) That the Strait of Simonosaki should be opened to the vessels of all nations; (2) that the shore batteries should neither be armed nor repaired; (3) that the Allied Powers should receive an indemnity, the amount of which was to be fixed by their representatives at Jeddo.

An appalling calamity befell the capital of our Indian empire in the autumn of this year. On the morning of the 5th of October a heavy gale set in from the north-east at Calcutta; gradually it veered round to the eastward, increasing in fury all the time, then to the southward, and finally to the south-west, so as to leave no doubt that it was a true cyclone, or revolving storm. Nearly all the churches and chapels in Calcutta were unroofed or otherwise seriously damaged, and scarcely a house in the city escaped without some injury. The native huts, especially in the suburbs, were nearly all blown down. Except the cocoa-nut and other palms, hardly a tree was anywhere left standing after the storm had passed away. The beautiful avenues in Fort William were entirely destroyed and the Eden Gardens turned into a wilderness. But it was on the river that the storm was attended with the most disastrous consequences. Of more than two hundred ships in the Hooghly, it was said that only ten were left at their moorings after the storm, the rest having been stranded or sunk. The Bengal, one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamers, another British steamer, and a French ship were fairly lifted up and deposited on shore. The total loss of life was very considerable, but does not appear to have been accurately ascertained. In the city and suburbs of Calcutta it was reported at forty-one natives, and two Europeans, besides some twenty seriously wounded by the fall of their houses, and some hundreds of lives were lost on the river. Great distress ensued owing to the scarcity of food, and a relief fund was promptly opened in England and the three Presidencies. In one day Bombay subscribed no less than £10,000.