Anonymous

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued).

The Quietness of Europe—Debate on Poland—The English Prisoners in Abyssinia—Mr. Newdegate and the Encyclical—Visit of the French Fleet—Conclusion of the American War—Sherman's victorious March—Sheridan's Campaign—Lee's last Efforts—Evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg—Lee's Retreat—The Surrender at Appomattox—Grant's General Order—The Death of Lincoln—Inflated Prosperity of India—The Canadian Defences—The Maori War continues—Mr Cardwell's Policy—The Jamaica Rebellion—Grievances of the Blacks—The Trespass Laws—Governor Eyre—The First Riots—Excesses of the Negroes—Their Extent exaggerated—The Rebellion spreads—Governor Eyre proclaims Martial Law—"The Suppression"—Anderson the Informer—Colonel Hobbs—The Maroons—Elkington's Letter—Gordon Ramsay—Some typical Trials—G. W. Gordon—The Court-Martial—The Evidence produced—Gordon is hanged—The total of Deaths—Excitement in England—The Jamaica Committee—Eyre committed for Trial—The Chief Justice's Charge—The Bill thrown out—Recovery of Jamaica—Reform again—It becomes a Government Measure—The Bill of '66—Mr. Gladstone's Speech—Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman—"The Cave"—The Easter Recess—The second Reading—Lord Grosvenor's Amendment—A brilliant Debate—Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone—A Majority of Five—The Government perseveres—The Redistribution Bill—Its Details—Mr. Bouverie's Amendment—It is accepted—Captain Hayter's Amendment—Mr. Disraeli's Strategy—Lord Stanley's Attack—Mr. Walpole's Amendment—Amendments of Mr. Hunt and Lord Dunkellin—Gross Yearly Rental and Rateable Value—The Debate on the Dunkellin Proposal—Defeat of the Government—Their Resignation—Mr. Gladstone's Statement—Earl Russell and the Queen—Lord Derby's Conservative Ministry—The Refusals—Mr. Disraeli's Election Speech—Peace in Parliament—Indian Finance—Prohibition of the Hyde Park Meeting—The Procession marches—Destruction of the Railings—Mr. Walpole weeps—Discussion on his Conduct—The Queen's Speech and the Rinderpest.

IN European history the year 1865 will always be looked upon as an interregnum, a breathing time, between the two eventful years that preceded and followed it. It was the interval between two wars; and its history is the history of passions that smouldered and of intrigues that worked in secret. The underground records of diplomacy have much to tell of it; but as for events, there are none. Nor, so far as England is concerned, is there very much to record under the head of foreign policy. The dullness of such foreign debates as Parliament saw in this year contrasts sharply with the keen excitement of the debates of 1864, when Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone flung in each other's face their opposing views of what constitutes the honour of England. Schleswig and Holstein were irrevocably gone now; rightly or wrongly we had stood by and seen them taken; and it was of no use to protest after the event, or to debate about our duty. On the other hand, the quarrel about the division of the spoil had not yet broken out; so we have few despatches from Lord Russell and few scoldings by the Times. The only debate on European affairs that need be chronicled was one on a motion brought forward by Mr. Pope Hennessy on the treatment of Poland by Russia. The terms of the motion referred to Russia's palpable violation of the Treaty of 1815 and entered a protest against it. But Lord Palmerston, and the good sense of the House with him, refused to entertain the resolution; for such a resolution means less than nothing unless it means war if its request is not complied with. Neither Mr. Pope Hennessy nor any one else thought seriously of a war with Russia. In this matter of Poland, in this year at least, we escaped the blunder which we had committed so often and so ludicrously in 1864; as we did not mean to enforce our opinion, we kept it to ourselves.

It was in this year that the public began to hear stirring accounts of the British prisoners in Abyssinia, who were, a short time afterwards, to be raised to a position of such national importance. The full story of their captivity is perhaps better deferred till the time comes for treating of the Abyssinian War, set on foot to rescue them; but the points at issue may shortly be recorded here, as they were told by Lord Chelmsford in the House of Lords during this Session. In July, 1862, Captain Cameron had been sent to Abyssinia as consul, with flattering messages and presents to King Theodore, a half-savage chieftain professing a kind of spurious Christianity. He was well received by the King and treated with honour; especially when, on the breaking out of a war between Egypt and Abyssinia, he attempted to mediate in favour of King Theodore. But this mediation was ill received by the Egyptian authorities and Consul Cameron was induced to desist. This made the King very angry; especially as he had received no answer to an autograph letter that he had written to Queen Victoria on Captain Cameron's arrival in July. With the fickleness of a savage, he turned round upon the consul and began to treat him with great indignity; and matters were complicated by the action of certain missionaries, Mr. Stern and some others, whom the King and his grandees considered to have been acting against the interests of Abyssinia. One of Mr. Stern's interpreters was beaten to death; he himself was also beaten very severely; and then first he and the other missionaries and afterwards Consul Cameron himself were imprisoned and loaded with chains. So they continued for a long time: the British Foreign Office found itself in the difficult position of having either to leave British subjects to take their chance, or run the risk of rousing to fury an African chieftain renowned for his fierce temper, and of arming him against the lives of the unhappy captives. Matters had been in this position about eighteen months, when Lord Chelmsford in the House of Lords, and Sir Hugh Cairns in the Commons—both great Opposition lawyers—questioned the Government very severely about the whole circumstances of the case. Lord Russell and Mr. Layard both made the same defence of the Foreign Office—that it could literally do nothing without sending the captives to certain death. It is well known that the event proved the Foreign Office wrong. But we shall give at a later stage an account of the war of release undertaken by Mr. Disraeli's Government; and to that chapter we must defer the rest of the romantic story.

There was considerable excitement abroad at the opening of this year, especially among the clergy, concerning the Pope and the Roman Question. It will be remembered that in September, 1864, there had been a Convention between France and Italy, under which Italy guaranteed the undisturbed possession of the Pontifical Dominions to the Pope, while France on the other hand engaged to withdraw her troops from Rome. M. Thiers spoke out boldly on the subject of this convention; he saw in it the beginning of the end, and professed little faith in the guarantees of Italy. The object of the French Government was, he maintained, to appear to Italy willing to help her to the possession of Rome, while persuading all the rest of the world to the contrary. The Ultramontanes therefore were distrustful and alarmed, and—when the Encyclical Letter arrived in France, and a circular was issued by the Minister of Justice, forbidding the clergy to distribute the letter among their flocks, or to read in public the first half of it, on the plea that it contained "propositions contrary to the principles on which is founded the Constitution of the Empire,"—several of the more prominent Anti-Gallican bishops broke out into warm remonstrance. The fame of the Encyclical Letter next reached England and created some stir among the ultra-Protestant party. Mr. Newdegate, speaking in the House of Commons on the Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, said that, in his opinion, that was a singularly inopportune moment to propose any change in the test imposed upon Roman Catholic members, seeing that the French Government were just then occupied in grave discussions on the best means of dealing with the latest Papal aggression in the shape of the Pope's Encyclical Letter, which in the interests of order and peace could not be allowed to pass unnoticed. How the Encyclical Letter could affect the question of the Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, Mr. Newdegate's hearers failed to see; it was one of that gentleman's many cries of "Wolf" in Roman Catholic matters. The Convention between France and Italy had no doubt disappointed the Papacy, and the Letter may be looked upon as more or less an expression of that disappointment; but the French Government knew very well that Rome lay too much in the power of France for any serious affront to be offered, and after a little more diplomatic skirmishing they let the matter drop.

Towards the end of August in this year there was a pleasant interchange of courtesies between the French and British fleets at Portsmouth. A British squadron of six ships, five of which were ironclads, received the French Fleet at Spithead. Eleven fine screw steamships and screw frigates, headed by the Emperor's yacht, the Reine Hortense, hove in sight on the morning of the 28th, and were greeted by our ironclads with a gay display of flags, manned riggings, and a succession of deafening salutes. The Admiralty yacht, Osborne, having on board the Duke of Somerset and the other Lords of the Admiralty, went out to meet the Reine Hortense, and accompanied her into the harbour of Portsmouth, the Victory, that gallant old relic of a bygone day, saluting the yachts with nineteen guns as they passed. No sooner were they anchored than the naval grandees on board the Osborne passed over to the Reine Hortense, to pay their respects to the French Minister of Marine, M. Chasseloup-Laubat, and the French admirals accompanying him. The usual compliments were paid, the usual invitations given, after which the Minister of Marine, accompanied by his staff, Chief Almoner, Monseigneur Coquereau, and a splendid show of English vice- and rear-admirals, entered a State barge, and was landed at the King's Stairs in the dockyard. The day was spent by the French guests in paying visits to the different officers of the garrison and in inspecting some new barracks and forts close to Portsmouth; while in the evening the First Lord of the Admiralty entertained them at dinner on board the Duke of Wellington. The landsmen, not to be outdone by the sailors, illuminated Portsmouth and gave a banquet to the French officers. On the 30th of August the same round of visits and festivities was gone through. At a great dinner given at the Royal Naval College in the evening, the Duke of Somerset, after expressing the pleasure which he and his colleagues felt in being able to return the hospitalities showered by France upon the British fleet a month previously at Brest and Cherbourg, proposed the health of the Emperor and Empress, to which M. Chasseloup-Laubat responded by proposing that of the Queen in a speech marked by that French grace and ease which makes a French public dinner so much less formidable than an English one. The French Minister had hardly sat down, and the cheers were still ringing in answer to the toast of "Queen Victoria," when there was a discharge of guns and rockets from the Victory, and immediately the calm summer sea beyond the harbour was alive with thousands of twinkling lights; every ship in the allied squadron stood outlined in many-coloured fires, and hundreds of rockets, sent up from every deck, fell in showers through the clear air of an August evening. Again and again, just as the distant hulls were growing dark, the fairy-like spectacle was renewed. Nor was the town behind-hand; illuminations ran along the shore, and land and sea vied with one another. This magical scene lasted for about half an hour, then one by one the ships faded from sight, the sparkle on the water died out, and, peer as it might into the darkness gathering round Spithead, the eye could distinguish nothing but a distant group of black forms on a grey sea. The dinner was then resumed and a few more toasts and speeches followed; but the event of the evening was over and at an early hour the French guests returned to their ships. For three days more festivities were kept up, and balls, concerts, and dÉjeuners followed each other in quick succession. The French squadron left Portsmouth on the 2nd of September, after a visit full of pleasure and amusement to all who took part in it.

To the great relief of England the long agony of the Southern Confederation was now rapidly approaching its termination. Sherman's great march had brought him and his army of 60,000 men to Savannah, the capital of Georgia; but it did not end there. His movements were delayed by heavy rains; but on the 1st of January, 1865, he set forth, moving his army directly northward, as if Augusta were the point of attack. Suddenly turning to his right, and crossing the river Savannah, he entered the swampy fertile plains of South Carolina. Devastation marked the track of his columns. Beauregard had not a force under his orders sufficient for the defence of Columbia, and he therefore directed General Wade Hampton, who was in command there, to evacuate the city. That general did so, having first caused to be brought out into the streets and set on fire all the large stores of cotton which the place contained, lest it should fall into Federal hands. A portion only of Sherman's army entered the town, in the middle of the day on the 17th of February, but before the night it was in flames. The loss of Columbia involved the fall of Charleston, including Fort Sumter and other defences; for since the sea was closed against them from behind by the blockading fleet, no hope of ultimate escape remained for the defenders, if they waited till they were hemmed in by a superior force on the land side. From Columbia Sherman advanced on the 23rd of February, but instead of marching to the attack of Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, he struck off to the right, crossed the Great Pedee River, and passing the State boundary at Sneedsboro', again concentrated his army at Fayetteville (March 11). General Johnston, who ought never to have been superseded, was now re-appointed to the command of the Confederate army opposed to Sherman. As the Federal left, under Slocum, was advancing from Fayetteville towards Goldsboro', Johnston vigorously attacked at Bentonville (March 20) hoping to envelop and crush it before it could be supported; but the success of the attempt did not correspond to his expectations. Sherman's victorious march terminated at Goldsboro', for to that point a strong Federal force under General Schofield had fought its way up from the coast just before his arrival.

GENERAL GRANT.

The last act of the great drama was now to open. The campaign in Virginia was commenced by Sheridan, who, at the head of a well-equipped and most formidable force of 10,000 cavalry, moved from Winchester in the Shenandoah valley (March 2nd) with the intention of striking Lynchburg, the town among the ranges of the Alleghanies whence Richmond now drew its principal supplies. Early met him at Waynesboro' and was utterly routed; but the intelligence that he received from his scouts led Sheridan to believe that Lynchburg was too well defended to fall to a mere cavalry force; he changed his plan, therefore, and led his troopers round the left and rear of Lee's army, intending to join Grant in his encampment before Petersburg. The Confederate arrays of cavalry, which two years before had been the terror of Pennsylvania and Washington, were now so attenuated by death and hardships that no effectual resistance could be offered to Sheridan, who, carrying blight and destruction in his train, burning bridges and stores, tearing up railways and destroying canals, moved across the enemy's country to White House on the Pamunkey river, whence he marched to the James, and reported to Grant in front of Petersburg on the 27th of March.

Seeing that the force in his front was continually being augmented, Lee appears to have concluded that the only course left for him was to deal a heavy and unexpected blow at the least guarded point about the centre of Grant's lines, which, if successful, would cut his army in two, enforce new arrangements for concentration, and perhaps leave time for the detachment of a portion of Lee's army to the assistance of Johnston, sufficient, with the troops under that general's command, to meet and defeat Sherman. The point which he selected was Fort Steadman, nearly due east of Petersburg. Here General Gordon, with two divisions, bore down at daybreak on the 25th of March on the Federal lines, and captured at the first onset Fort Steadman and three adjoining batteries, turning their guns against the retreating defenders. But an overwhelming force was soon brought up by General Meade, which not only drove the Confederates out of the works they had occupied, taking 2,000 prisoners, but, pursuing the advantage, pushed back the whole of that part of the Confederate line, thus rendering Lee's contemplated movement into North Carolina more than ever hazardous. A still more decisive success was gained on the 1st of April, when Sheridan, attacking Lee's right wing, under Pickett, at Five Forks, with a force two or three times as numerous, turned its left at the same time that he attacked in front, and, being successful in both operations, utterly broke and routed the Confederates, 5,000 of whom were taken prisoners. On the next day (Sunday, April 2) Grant ordered a general advance against the defences of Petersburg. The attack was made at daybreak, and although the exhausted Confederates stood bravely to their arms, so great was the preponderance of numbers that they could not prevent the Federals from wresting several redoubts from their hands, so that Petersburg itself stood in danger of falling before the next vigorous assault. Such was the position of affairs at 11 o'clock, when Lee, who had just seen A. P. Hill, one of the most trusted of his lieutenants, shot dead while directing a charge to regain a portion of the works, and fully recognised the imminent peril to which Richmond was exposed through the inability of the gallant army that had so long defended it to hold its ground any longer against the overwhelming masses of the enemy, felt it his duty to send a message of warning to the Confederate President. The message was in nearly these words:—"My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be evacuated this evening." Before retiring General Ewell set some warehouses on fire and soon a full third of the city was destroyed. Petersburg was evacuated simultaneously with Richmond. After desperate attempts to evade his pursuers of whom Sheridan was the most persistent, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court-house on April the 9th.

The capitulation of the Army of Virginia was a signal for the close of hostilities everywhere. Sherman, on hearing of the fall of Richmond and Petersburg, advanced from Goldsboro' against Johnston, who soon proposed to surrender upon terms. Sherman was induced to sign a provisional convention (April 18th), the effect of which would have been to continue and confirm to the existing State Governments in the Confederate States the enjoyment of legislative and executive powers. Of course, this convention was instantly disallowed at Washington, and in signing it, even provisionally, it is clear that Sherman exceeded his powers. Johnston then surrendered his army (April 26th) on precisely the same terms as those that had been granted to Lee. A general order, addressed by Grant on the 2nd of June to the "Soldiers of the Armies of the United States," in thanking them for their patriotic exertions, formally announced the termination of hostilities. The armies were everywhere disbanded as soon as possible, the men returning to the pursuits of industry; by the 15th of October upwards of 785,000 men had been mustered out of the service. But a terrible crime cast a gloom over the rejoicings with which the people of the Northern States were celebrating the conclusion of the war, namely, the assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, Washington, by the actor, John Wilkes Booth. The great President was shot on the 14th of April and died on the following day. In the course of the war recruits to the number of 2,688,523 men had been enlisted into the armies of the Union. Of these, about 1,500,000 were effective soldiers. On the Union side, 275,000 men were either killed outright or died of their wounds, or perished by disease; and on the Confederate side the loss of life must have been little if at all less.

"Her Majesty rejoices at the continued tranquillity and increasing prosperity of her Indian dominions; and she trusts that the large supply which those territories will afford of the raw material of manufacturing industry, together with the termination of the Civil War in the United States of North America, will prevent the recurrence of the distress which long prevailed among the manufacturing population of some of the northern counties." These words, from the Queen's Speech which closed the Session of 1865, give a true insight into the state of the most important of the dependencies of Britain. India was, in 1865, very tranquil and exceptionally prosperous. As the events of the next year showed, it was even too prosperous; the successful attempt to introduce the cultivation of cotton, and, partially at least, to make India take the place of America as a source of cotton-supply, had led to over-speculation and a reckless spirit of investment. It is the fault of all speculators in exceptional times to fancy that the exceptional times will last for ever. The Bombay merchants, with rashness, and, indeed, ignorance that must now appear scarcely credible, presumed upon the long continuance of the American War; they imagined an eternal blockade of Charleston and thought that the mills of Manchester would look for ever to the cotton-fields of Gujerat. Hence this year of which we are speaking was a year of extraordinary prosperity in India. The prosperity, too, affected the revenue; and Sir Charles Wood was able to present a satisfactory Indian Budget when he made his financial statement before the House of Commons. As usual, the statement was deferred till the end of the Session, for Parliament had little patience for the concerns of its vast Eastern empire; but the figures showed a surplus, and a surplus is always welcome. The most notable point was Sir Charles Wood's statement of the money that had been spent in public works during the six previous years. This amounted to no less than seventy-three millions sterling; £34,500,000 on irrigation, roads, buildings, etc., and £38,500,000 on railways. This last figure speaks volumes; some notion of the extension of the internal commerce of India may be derived from it.

It was natural that the termination, or the approach of the termination, of the American War should cause some anxiety as to the views of the United States with regard to Canada. This anxiety was not lessened by a notification that was received early in this year from the Washington Government to the effect that the United States intended to withdraw from an agreement entered into with Britain in 1817, by which both Powers had agreed not to equip naval armaments on the Canadian lakes. This intention of the United States Government was the result of certain "raids" made by Confederate guerillas from a base of operations in Canada, without encouragement of course, but unfortunately without successful hindrance, from the Canadian authorities. The two Houses of Parliament took prompt notice of the action of the United States; and the matter was linked on to the question of a grant for the defences of Quebec, moved in the Commons by Lord Hartington, Secretary at War. A good deal of vigorous language was used, not too friendly to America, not too complimentary to Government; for many persons felt that there was a possibility of serious complications, even of war, between the two countries, on the ground of supposed breaches of neutrality on the part of Great Britain during the American struggle. Events, however, have proved that Mr. Bright was right when he said that if there came a war, it would be one not arising out of national necessities, but out of Cabinet manoeuvring; "and that," he said, "I consider a most improbable event." The matter ended by a vote of £50,000, part of a larger installment, being carried for the defences of Quebec; it being understood that the Canadian Government were to fortify Montreal out of their own revenues. But a few days afterwards Mr. Cardwell eased the apprehension of the House by announcing the receipt of intelligence that the Washington Government intended to withdraw its notice for the abrogation of the agreement of 1817. In the course of a few months the American War ended, as has just been described, and the relations between the United Kingdom and the United States entered upon a new phase.

With the exception of the events in Jamaica about to be related, nothing of much importance seems to have taken place in the remaining colonies of Great Britain during the year 1865. The Maori War, however, in New Zealand still dragged on, and formed the subject of a debate in the House of Commons, which called forth from Mr. Cardwell the views of Government as to the proper policy to be pursued by Britain. Mr. Cardwell's statement indicated that there was a disposition on the part of the home authorities to consider whether the time had not come for taking a new departure. He said that "the former arrangement, by which the colony could command the services of a large force of the Queen's troops on paying a merely nominal contribution to the expenses incurred for that force, was at an end." It was decided, in other words—and this with the willing acquiescence of the Governor, Sir George Grey—that the best policy for the interests of the colony was to leave it pretty much to take care of itself. British opinion declared strongly against a war of extermination, in the outset of which the natives had, by the confession of the British Governor, been in the right; and it was thought that, by teaching the colonists that they could not always look to Britain to fight their battles for them, a more pacific mode of dealing with the natives would be entered upon, to the benefit both of the colonists and the Maoris.

MEETING OF LEE AND GRANT AT APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE. (See p. 382.)

It was towards the end of October in this year that the alarming news arrived of an insurrection of the negroes in Jamaica, which was at once seen to be the most serious event that had happened in any British colony or dependency since the Indian Mutiny. Few, however, suspected that the importance of the event itself would be lost in the still greater importance of the secondary issues which it raised—the questions of the duties of Colonial Governors, of the legality of martial law, and so forth. These, as will appear in the sequel, were the questions to which the Jamaica insurrection, or riot, gave rise. They were argued in the newspapers, in Parliament, and in courts of law, with passionate earnestness on both sides; for both those who approved of the acts done in the suppression, and those who disapproved of them, felt that a crisis of great magnitude had arrived, and that a proper settlement of the points at issue was essential to the welfare of the colonies, and, through them, to the welfare of Britain.

THE ATTACK ON THE COURT-HOUSE, ST. THOMAS-IN-THE-EAST. (See p. 386.)

Jamaica, as everybody knows, is the largest of the British colonies in the West Indies, and has been in British possession since the time of Cromwell. Commercially and socially, the island had never recovered the collapse that followed the abolition of slavery in 1834. Thus, while in 1830 the amount of sugar exported was 100,000 hogsheads, in 1850 it had fallen to 40,000; while in 1809 the coffee exports were 52,500,000 lbs., in 1850 they were 5,120,000, or not quite one-tenth. This state of things, distressing to every one, and especially to those who regard the emancipation of the slaves as a right act, is clearly shown by a comparison of the accounts with those of all the other West India Islands to have been the result of some cause not operating in them. That cause was bad government. Distress was very prevalent in 1865, especially in the eastern part of the island; wages were extremely low; capital was withdrawn from the country; everything pointed to such legislation and such administration of the law as should conciliate, and even relieve, the great and growing poverty of the labouring class. Instead of this, new "Trespass Laws" were made, creating offences out of what the negroes had always as their right—gathering yams, picking occasional sugar-canes in passing by a field, and so on; and also converting into a "trespass" the occupation of certain lands, to which the occupiers thought they had a right rent free. Popular opinion, naturally warm enough on points like these, was roused to great heat by agitation, especially by a letter directed in 1865 to Mr. Cardwell, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, by Dr. Underhill, a well-known Baptist. This letter was taken up by the local Radical party, led by Mr. G. W. Gordon; meetings were held in many places, and, as is natural from the character of the negro, the language used was often not over-wise. Still there were real grievances; and it is an undoubted fact that these grievances were met in a scandalous manner by the Government of the island. Mr. Gordon was treated by Governor Eyre, not as the representative of a suffering class, but as a firebrand whom it was right to extinguish. The magisterial benches—badly constituted, as the Royal Commission afterwards declared—were filled up by unpopular men; the complaints of the blacks were hardly noticed; memorials sent up to the Colonial Office through the Governor were tampered with in transit; obnoxious laws remained unrepealed; the "piccaninny gangs," or gangs of children for field labour, were not discouraged;—in a word, nothing was done to remedy a very serious condition of affairs; they were left to break out in a violent explosion—the natural result.

Whatever doubts may exist as to the antecedent events, and the state of the island before the outbreak, the facts of the outbreak itself, and of the measures taken in suppression or retaliation, are clear beyond all question, and may be told on the authority of official documents, and of the statements of witnesses before the Royal Commissioners. The early stages of the riots have been recorded by one of the victims of the 11th of October, Baron von Kettelholt, custos of St. Thomas-in-the-East. They comprised the beating and illegal imprisonment of some policemen by the mutineers, and further outrages were anticipated. His letter was dated the 10th of October, and was received by Governor Eyre on the morning of the 11th, and he immediately ordered Major-General O'Connor, the senior military officer, to send off 100 men in a man-of-war to the scene of the disturbances. Meanwhile, however, the regular attack which the custos had dreaded had been made. The magistrates and others were in the court-house at about three o'clock in the afternoon; the volunteers, thirty or so in number (according to the evidence of Mr. Rutty, who was one of them), had been drawn up for two hours or more, when a bugle was heard and a large mob was seen approaching. They were armed with "cutlasses and bayonets fixed on long sticks, muskets and pistols, and various kinds of weapons." They advanced irregularly; once they halted; a bandsman went forward extending his arms as if to make peace, the custos from the court-house shouted "Peace," and then, when they were within a few yards of the volunteers, there came a shower of bricks and stones. The order was given to the volunteers, whether from their captain or the custos is uncertain, to fire and a volley was poured in. The mob was roused to frenzy; the volunteers retreated into the rooms under the court-house and into other shelter, and the people fired in upon them and upon those assembled in the court-house, through the windows. Presently the school-house was set on fire and soon the burning spread to the court-house, in which the whites were assembled. Mr. Georges, who was one of them, tells us that he leaped out of a back window and got into the committee-room underneath, and that while there he saw Mr. Walton leap out after him and run for his life, but to no purpose. Baron Alfred von Kettelholt, son-in-law of the custos, just escaped; but his father-in-law was killed. Mr. Georges, with three gunshot wounds in his thigh, lay hidden in some shrubs till midnight and so escaped. Dr. Gerrard was allowed his life, "because he was the doctor;" but the negroes kept him among them by the expedient of taking his boots off. Mr. Rutty, a volunteer, tried to pass for his assistant, but was beaten almost to death, stripped to his shirt, and left to die or recover as he might. Mr. Price, a negro, was with the custos and the magistrates, so he was pronounced "a black man with a white heart" and was killed. Lieutenant Hall, Captain Hitchings, Mr. Herschell, a clergyman, and many more of the whites assembled, were killed.

Many charges of revolting barbarity were made against the rioters; but it is only just to say that nothing more atrocious than murder has been proved against them. For instance, in Governor Eyre's first despatch to Mr. Cardwell he mentioned numberless rumours of horrible deeds—how Lieutenant Hall had been pushed into a building which was set on fire, till he was "literally roasted alive;" how the fingers of the custos were cut off "and kept as trophies by the rebels." It was proved, however, by Mr. Rutty, who was present, that Lieutenant Hall was shot dead in the heat of the struggle, and the hand of the custos was mutilated, but not, apparently, with any specially barbarous intent. He and many of the rest were put to death with "cutlasses," that is, the knives or bill-hooks used in dressing the sugar-cane; and cutlasses in the hands of a mob are likely to be wildly used. These facts it is important to bear in mind; for half the criminality of the proceedings of the soldiers afterwards springs from the fact that they were done upon hearsay evidence, upon rumours of barbarities which, dreadful as the original murders had been, were enormously exaggerated. Neither during the attack on the court-house, nor in the plunder of Amity Hall, nor elsewhere, were any women or children injured, though, in many cases, the rioters had them in their power. This fact, at least, happily distinguishes the deplorable Jamaica outbreak from such carnivals of savagery as the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

During the next day or two there was undoubtedly great excitement among the negro population throughout all the east end of Jamaica, and the white residents were in danger. The Morant Bay rioters broke up into parties, and dispersed in two or three directions—up Blue Mountain valley, towards Manchioneal, towards Golden Grove, and elsewhere. In some parts they were joined by the negroes of the neighbourhood; many excesses, almost entirely in the way of plunder, were committed. A mob attacked Hordley estate and wrecked the furniture and set fire, but without effect, to one of the "trash-houses" (a house used in sugar-making); but something may be learned of the absence of the worst kind of ferocity from the fact that the ladies of the house were in the other trash-house and were never looked for or discovered. The great cry was "Colour for colour," but more energy was spent in shouting the cry than in seeking out whites to wreak vengeance on.

These events were, of course, enough to move the white population of the island to a high pitch of excitement and to call for prompt action from the Government. Governor Eyre's proceedings may be told nearly in his own words, as given in his report to Mr. Cardwell and in his evidence afterwards before the Royal Commission. His official residence was Spanish Town, an inland town, fourteen miles from Kingston. His private residence was at Flamstead, fourteen miles from Kingston and twenty-three from Spanish Town, where, according to the Opposition papers in the colony, he spent a good deal of time rearing chickens. How Mr. Eyre wrote to General O'Connor, requesting 100 men to be sent to Morant Bay, has been already told. After that order had been sent, Mr. Eyre returned to his residence at Flamstead, "to be present at a dinner-party which was to meet there the next day." This was Thursday, the 12th, the day after the riot; and the news came just in time to spoil the Governor's dinner-party. At half-past five a letter came from a magistrate with the news and the Governor at once rode off to Kingston, to concert fresh measures. It is enough to say that 200 men were immediately despatched to Morant Bay; a detachment of white troops was ordered to march from Newcastle to intercept the march of the "rebels" into Blue Mountain valley; and the Governor himself took measures for proceeding to the scene of action. Just before he started, that is, between eight and ten on the morning of the 13th, he presided at a council of war and, on the advice of the Attorney-General of the island, drew up a proclamation of martial law.

The events which followed, and which had their support and authority in this proclamation, are commonly called "the suppression." From the time when Captain de Horsey, of the sloop Wolverine, wrote to Governor Eyre that he had landed a company of soldiers at Morant Bay, and was preparing to detach 114 of his own sailors to co-operate with them, to the time when "Martial Law" expired, not only was all law suspended throughout the east of the island, but all the guarantees of evidence were dispensed with, and the life of every negro man and negro woman hung upon the will of an angry soldiery and an excited Provost-Marshal. Hence the Morant Bay disturbance—which, grave and shocking as it was, has been proved beyond question to have been a local riot and not the first outbreak of a rebellion—was seized upon without question and at once as a rebellion, and to be punished as such. The soldiers, sailors, and marines acted in three or four directions at once; from Morant Bay, from Port Antonio on the north-east side, and from Newcastle towards the mountainous region in the centre of the country. The towns were all occupied and their inhabitants, who were as much frightened as Governor Eyre had been, were not much injured by the soldiery; but the whole of the country districts were scoured with troops; negroes, unarmed as well as armed, were shot down as they ran from soldiers, or captured, tried by summary courts-martial, convicted on the evidence of informers, or on no evidence at all, and hanged or flogged, or flogged first and hanged afterwards. It was enough that a man should have been unpopular with the authorities of his district, or that he should have a bad character, or that a witness should inform against him, or that he should have been "seen with Bogle," and he was forthwith hanged or flogged as a rebel. This last charge, in fact, touches the root of the whole matter. Paul Bogle, the leader of the attack on the court-house, was a dangerous man and a rebel. Undoubtedly he was guilty of high treason and his life was forfeit. But by all the evidence given before the Commission, and notably that given by William Anderson, the informer, it appears that the only real "rebels," that is, the only persons who intentionally and of their own free will took up arms against the Government of the Queen, were Paul Bogle, M'Laren, and perhaps half a dozen more. The rest were on the first day a riotous mob, who thought that, by making a demonstration before the court-house, they would obtain the repeal of a burdensome law and the removal of an unpopular custos; and afterwards they were a mob afraid for their lives, herding together for defence against the "white men," and still acting, without power of resistance, as Paul Bogle bade them. The part played by this William Anderson, from whose evidence that statement comes, is typical of the nature of the "suppression." He was one of those who went with Bogle, on Bogle "calling for five tamarind switches to make a rod, and for guns." He ran away on the first opportunity; he was taken up by a constable, tried by court-martial, and was offered his life on condition that he would be a guide to the soldiers. It was Colonel Hobbs, commanding the 6th Royals, who undertook the task of acting upon the evidence of this Anderson, who, of course, was careful to ensure his own safety by handing over a sufficient number of his countrymen to the colonel's justice. Nor were the soldiers of Colonel Hobbs alone or exceptional in their method of vengeance. The "black soldiers," that is the maroons, descendants of the old Spanish slaves, and the enemies of the African negro population, shot one hundred and sixty on the road to Manchioneal. One thousand houses of the natives were burnt down by the soldiers. And how these acts were regarded by the superior officers at Kingston, cannot be better shown than in the words of the afterwards celebrated letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Elkington, Deputy Adjutant-General, to Colonel Hobbs. "I send you an order," he wrote on the 18th of October, "to push on at once to Stony Gut, but I trust you are there already. Hole is doing splendid service with his men all about Manchioneal, and shooting every black man who cannot account for himself (sixty on the line of march): Nelson, at Port Antonio, hanging like fun by court-martial." Nor was it the officers alone who had life and death in their hands—it was the soldiers individually; above all, it was the Inspector of Police, Gordon Ramsay. For instance, some soldiers, accompanied by the same Dr. Morris who fired two shots with his revolver into the body of the negro Donaldson as he was hanging, dragged out of his cabin one Ned Bryan, tied him to a tree and forthwith shot him. Bryan and his brother had been at Kingston all through the riots, and only landed at Manchioneal on the 15th of October! That is one instance, literally taken at random from a mass of evidence. To illustrate Ramsay's proceedings is easier still. He owned to the hanging of 184, six of them females; to the flogging of 237, eight of them females—but in this last respect he was perhaps outdone by Captain Hole, who owned before the Commission that he had flogged sixteen women and among them one woman twice! Those who care to read of Ramsay's brutality, and of the nature of the "cat" frequently used—whipcord mixed with knotted wire—had better consult the evidence of R. Clarke, of P. Bruce, and of Ramsay himself.

But the story would only be half instructive were we to omit the record of the quasi-judicial proceedings by which some of the barbarities were guaranteed. Three memorable reports of trials are printed at the end of the Commissioners' blue-book, and to them, as showing what a court-martial may be, what a foregone conclusion, what a mockery of justice, we may refer any curious readers. The cases are those of William Grant, George M'Intosh, and Samuel Clarke—all of whom were sentenced to death by court-martial. The case of M'Intosh is, perhaps, the most instructive of the three. He was sentenced by Colonel Lewis—and General Nelson approved the sentence—literally for no crime at all, except for having spoken at a public meeting in the house of Mr. George William Gordon, whose friend he was. The evidence which hanged the others was about equally valuable.

But the case that was the most outrageous, and rapidly became the most famous of all, was that of Mr. G. W. Gordon himself. On his trial and execution was based the greater part of the attempt to obtain legal redress in the English courts of law; around his body, so to speak, was fought the question of the legality of martial law, of the responsibility of officers and colonial governors, and of the rights of colonists. The story need not be told at great length. It is sufficient to say that Mr. Gordon was a negro gentleman, a member of the Jamaica Assembly, a prominent Baptist and leader of Opposition, the friend of the poorer classes of negroes, and in high disfavour with Governor Eyre. This gentleman was residing peacefully at Kingston at the time of the outbreak. Governor Eyre's own words show how little he cared for legality. "Throughout my tour in the Wolverine and Onyx," writes the Governor to Mr. Cardwell, "I found everywhere the most unmistakable evidence that Mr. George William Gordon, a coloured member of the House of Assembly, had not only been mixed up in the matter, but was himself, through his own misrepresentation and seditious language addressed to the black people, the chief cause and origin of the whole rebellion. Mr. Gordon was now in Kingston, and it became necessary to decide what action should be taken with regard to him. Having obtained a deposition on oath that certain seditious printed notices had been sent through the post-office, directed, in his handwriting, to the parties who have been leaders in the rebellion, I at once called upon the custos to issue a warrant and capture him. For some little time he managed to evade capture; but finding that, sooner or later, it was inevitable, he proceeded to the house of General O'Connor, and there gave himself up. I at once had him placed on board the Wolverine for safe custody and conveyance to Morant Bay."

STREET SCENE, KINGSTON, JAMAICA.

(From a Photograph by J. Valentine and Son, Dundee.)

Now, even supposing the proclamation of martial law to have been legal, which we believe it not to have been, it expressly excluded Kingston from the operation of martial law. What Governor Eyre did, therefore, was to seize a political opponent, to carry him off in a ship of war from a district under civil jurisdiction to a district under military jurisdiction, and then to hand him over to the tender mercies of a court-martial. The court was composed of two naval lieutenants and an ensign lately gazetted; one of the lieutenants being the same Lieutenant Brand who with a couple of "dingy boys" from his ship, had "had the pleasure" (his own words) of hanging the first "rebel," and shooting him with his own revolver as he hung; who had openly said that "nothing would give him greater pleasure than hanging this——Gordon." Mr. Gordon was an old man; he had been barbarously treated; he was wretchedly ill. Before his trial he was called out by Ramsay, the Provost-Marshal, to witness the execution of Grant, who had been a political friend of his. "Look there," said Ramsay; "that is your friend Grant, and you will be hanged like him." A Mr. Joseph G. Smith, a volunteer, thus tells, in his evidence before the Commission, how witnesses were collected against Mr. Gordon:—

"Afterwards I went into the guard-room, and he [Ramsay] was then swearing five of the prisoners, with their hands fastened and a rope round their necks, and he was swearing them in these words, 'You shall well and truly state what G. W. Gordon has to do with the rebellion;' and between each part of this a sailor came down with the whip over their shoulders."

On evidence of this kind, the evidence of men who had had the promise of their lives if they would accuse him, Mr. Gordon was tried. As to the taking of the evidence, we have the words of the Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Alexander Cockburn, in his famous charge to the grand jury in the case of Nelson and Brand: "He could not be tried on that evidence. No competent judge acquainted with his duties could have received that evidence. Three-fourths—I had almost said nine-tenths—of the evidence upon which that man was convicted and sentenced to death, was evidence which, according to no known rules—not only of ordinary, but of military law—according to no known rules of right or justice, could possibly have been admitted." But even supposing it had been admitted, all that was proved was that Mr. Gordon had written letters to, and been on friendly terms with, some of the rioters; but none of the letters were produced except one, where he said that "the people of Jamaica were very wretched." He was proved to have called the Governor "a bad man." He was proved to have had an action-at-law against the late custos von Kettelholt. Above all, he was proved to have spoken at public meetings, and to have dwelt on the misery of the negroes and the way in which their case was misrepresented to the Colonial Office. For these offences—literally for none other—he was sentenced to death. Lieutenant Brand signed his sentence, and Brigadier Nelson approved it. "He asked to see the Reverend Mr. Panther, Wesleyan minister," wrote Brigadier Nelson; "I considered it inexpedient." Without the consolations of religion, condemned on less than no evidence by an unauthorised and incompetent tribunal, Mr. Gordon was hanged on the 23rd of October, 1865. He had been in life the representative of the negroes of Jamaica in their cry for equal government; in death he was their representative in their cry for justice.

"The total number of deaths caused by those engaged in the suppression amounted to 439, and the total number of dwellings burned was 1,000.... The whole number subjected to the degrading punishment [of flogging], during the continuance of martial law, we think could not be less than 600." These are the words of the Report of the Royal Commission, consisting of General Sir Henry Storks, Governor of Malta, Mr. Russell Gurney, Recorder of London, and Mr. Maule, Recorder of Leeds, who were sent out to Jamaica in the beginning of 1866, and who sat for fifty-one days examining witnesses. Long before the Commission went out, however—in fact, as soon as the news of the "suppression" arrived in England—public opinion had been roused. Public meetings took place, and a committee—the Jamaica Committee—was formed headed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, to see that full investigations were made, and that legal remedies were sought against those who had been guilty of illegal excess. Mr. Carlyle came forward as a champion of Governor Eyre. The Jamaica Committee announced that, "having been advised that the facts disclosed in the Report of the Royal Commissioners afford a proper ground for an indictment for murder to be preferred against Mr. Eyre and the other persons concerned in the trial and execution of Mr. Gordon, and that no other mode of vindicating the law in reference to those facts is open to them, they have instructed their solicitors to proceed forthwith with an indictment against Mr. Eyre." They did proceed with an indictment against Mr. Eyre, Brigadier Nelson, and Lieutenant Brand. Mr. Eyre was domiciled in the country—he had been recalled from Jamaica and superseded—and the question of committing him for trial was argued before a Shropshire bench of magistrates. The Shropshire bench of magistrates declined to commit him. The London stipendiary magistrate, being a trained lawyer, understood his duty differently in the case of Nelson and Brand; he committed them for trial at the Central Criminal Court. The prosecution failed in the end; but not before it had elicited from the Lord Chief Justice a charge to the grand jury so elaborate, so learned, so telling, and so clear, that it may be said to have once for all defined the scope of "martial law," and to have once for all settled the rights and duties of local authorities in dealing with riot or insurrection. Two points stand out clear from the Chief Justice's charge: first, that martial law, exercised in Great Britain or in any of her dependencies, means the law administered by courts-martial—the law, that is to say, which is laid down for the trial of military offenders by military courts; secondly, that, by the Petition of Right and all the statutes and examples which have confirmed it, civilians are in no case amenable to this law. What, then, the Governor and the military authorities in Jamaica had the right to do, was to use all diligence in suppressing what, for a moment—though probably wrongly—appeared to be a formidable insurrection; and to do this by military force. They had undoubtedly the right to put to death or flog any rebel captured with arms in his hands; their justification in this was, that highest law—necessity and the right of self-preservation. They had also the right to seize any dangerous persons and hand them over to the civil courts. But they had no right to assume a jurisdiction over the whole actions of civilians, to hang and flog and burn on mere charges of "complicity" or of past guilt. The trial of Mr. Gordon—all the trials that took place in the county of Surrey in that dreadful time—were no trials at all; they were military cruelty and race tyranny aping the forms of law. The grand jury threw out the bill, but made a formal presentment, "strongly recommending that martial law should be more clearly defined by legislative enactment." Mr. Eyre and his subordinates escaped, and in 1872, numerous suits instituted by his opponents having failed and a considerable revulsion of feeling having taken place in his favour, his expenses were paid by Government. It is a consolation that the changes which followed upon her ordeal of fire were fruitful to Jamaica. After Sir Henry Storks returned from his temporary government of the island, a new Governor was found in a distinguished and able Indian official, Sir John Peter Grant. Under his rule security was established and brought a moderate measure of prosperity in its train.

During the whole of the year 1866 two great subjects occupied everybody's mind—the war in Germany, its antecedents and its consequences, and Parliamentary Reform at home. We may proceed at once to tell the story of the unsuccessful attempt of Lord Russell's Government to carry the Reform Bill, and of the serious popular agitation that followed upon their overthrow. The cause of the defeat of the Bill of 1860 was undoubtedly the indifferent attitude of Lord Palmerston, which represented that of the public. In 1865 Mr. Baines brought in a Bill, which was defeated. Soon afterwards Lord Palmerston died and the principal barrier to a successful Bill was removed. Even before his death, in the months that were spent in canvassing for the general election, "both among Liberal and Tory candidates," said Mr. Bright, "the question of Reform was mentioned in some way or other, either in their written or spoken addresses to their constituents." But when, after the news arrived that the veteran Prime Minister had died, Lord Russell succeeded to his place, and Mr. Gladstone took the position of unfettered leader of the House of Commons, it was known that Reform was to be immediately approached as a Government measure. Many of their colleagues were averse from re-opening the question and to overcome their scruples a mild Bill was promised.

Parliament opened amid general interest and excitement with regard to Reform; and in March Mr. Gladstone brought in his "Bill to extend the Right of Voting at Elections of Members of Parliament in England and Wales." This important Bill, upon which was based so much of the Reform Bill of 1867, was at first sight extremely moderate. In the first place, it advanced the property qualification for the borough franchise which Lord Russell's Bill had fixed at £6 to £7—a step which Mr. Gladstone explained as follows: "A £6 rental, calculated upon the most careful investigation, and after making every allowance and deduction that ought to be made, would give 242,000 new voters, whom I should take as all belonging to the working class. I should then arrive at a gross total of 428,000 persons" (that is, by adding together old and new electors), "which would, in fact, probably place the working classes in a clear majority upon the constituency. Well, that has never been the intention of any Bill proposed in this House. I do not think it is a proposal that Parliament would ever adopt.... I do not think that we are called upon by any overruling or sufficient consideration, under the circumstances, to give over the majority of the town constituencies into the hands of the working class. We therefore propose to take the figure next above that which I have named—namely, a clear annual value of £7." Under the £7 qualification it was calculated that 144,000 voters of the working class would be admitted to the borough franchise—enough to give the artisan class its due weight and share in elections, without swamping the other elements of the constituency. Mr. Gladstone also proposed—by means of the abolition of the ratepaying clauses of the Reform Act of 1832, by registration of compound householders, and by a lodger franchise applicable to persons occupying rooms of the annual value of £10—to further increase the number of borough voters by 60,000, giving a general increase of 204,000. To this increase must be added the proposed number of new county voters, "fourteen-pound tenants," 172,000 in number; and the depositors in saving-banks, etc., 24,000 more. In all, the number of new voters to be added by the Bill was estimated at 400,000, equally divided, according to the belief of the framers of the Bill, between the middle class and the artisans.

Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill on March 12th, 1866, in a speech worthy of the occasion. At the outset he read the passage in the Queen's Speech which bore upon the question:—"When that information (relative to the existing rights of voting) is complete, the attention of Parliament will be called to the result thus obtained, with a view to such improvement in the laws which regulate the rights of voting in the election of members of the House of Commons as may strengthen our free institutions and conduce to the public welfare." Words like these gave him a good starting-point. He appealed to them and to the numerous occasions on which the same recommendation had been given from the Throne. "By no less than five Administrations, in no less than six Speeches of the Queen anterior to that of the present year," had the need of Reform been suggested to the House. Such an accumulation of authority, he went on to say, seemed to excuse him from the necessity of arguing the abstract question of the advisability of Reform. He took that for granted. Again, Mr. Lambert's work had been so well and quickly done that Government found itself ready to offer the Bill at once, without waiting a year. But—here was the important point—partly with a view to break up the opposition to Government's proposals, partly to prevent the Bill from becoming unwieldy and its progress too slow, it was to consist really of two Bills. The first was a Bill for the Extension of the Franchise; the second, to be considered after the settlement of the first, was to be concerned with the Redistribution of Seats. Into Mr. Gladstone's details we need not follow him, for we have already sketched the main provisions of his Bill. He commended it to the House, hoping that "if, unhappily, issue was to be taken adversely upon the Bill, it would be, above all, a plain and direct issue"—that is, whether or not there ought to be enfranchisement downwards. In other words, Mr. Gladstone, though he had nearly ignored the general question of the need of Parliamentary Reform, courted discussion of that general question. He brought in his Bill, not like a Trojan horse (he said) "approaching the walls of the sacred city, and filled with armed men, bent upon ruin, plunder, and conflagration," but rather as bringing recruits to the Parliamentary army—children to the Parliamentary family. "Give to these persons," ran his peroration, "new interests in the Constitution; new interests which, by the beneficent processes of the law of nature and Providence, shall beget in them new attachment; for the attachment of the people to the Throne, the institutions, and the laws under which they live is, after all, more than gold and silver, and more than fleets and armies; at once the strength, the glory, and the safety of the land."

The night following the introduction of the Bill was marked by the second of Mr. Lowe's famous Reform speeches, and the first of those fierce attacks upon the Russell Ministry which more than anything else contributed to bring in the Conservatives in the following year. Mr. Lowe was then member for Calne. He had held office under Lord Palmerston as Vice-President of the Council from 1859 to 1864, and had long been known in the House as an accomplished man and ready debater; but probably few, in 1866, had any idea of the real greatness of his oratorical gift, and of the splendid displays he was to make of it before the close of the Session. At the very outset of his speech on the 13th of March he denied the necessity of Reform altogether. And then came the famous passage that made Mr. Lowe the bugbear of the working classes. "Look at what a [working-class] majority implies. I shall speak very frankly on this subject, for—having lost my character by saying that the working man could get the franchise for himself, which has been proved to be true, and for saying which, he and his friends will not hate me one bit the less—I shall say exactly what I think. Let any consider—I have had such unhappy experiences, and many of us have—let any gentleman consider the constituencies he has had the honour to be concerned with. If you want venality, if you want ignorance, if you want drunkenness and facility for being intimidated; or if, on the other hand, you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look for them in the constituencies? Do you go to the top or to the bottom?" Lastly, Who asked for the Bill? Not the people, not the House of Commons, but the Radical leaders, as a salve for a theoretical and not a practical grievance! "All I can say," concluded Mr. Lowe, "is, that if my right honourable friend does succeed in carrying this measure through Parliament, when the passions and interests of the day are gone by, I do not envy him his retrospect. I covet not a single leaf of the laurels that may encircle his brow. I do not envy him his triumph. His be the glory of carrying it; mine of having, to the utmost of my poor ability, resisted it." The cheers that greeted this speech—and not only the Opposition, but for a moment the Ministerialists, were carried away by its eloquence and wit—were a kind of omen of the difficulties that the Government were to meet with during the progress of the measure. In this debate on the first reading, Mr. Horsman, the Liberal member for Stroud, took up the same position of hostility to the measure as Mr Lowe; and it was in answer to him that Mr. Bright threw out his famous nickname for the new party. "He has retired into what may be called his political cave of Adullam, and he has called about him every one that was in distress, and every one that was discontented." The name of "Adullamites" was ever afterwards given to the group of seceding Liberals, and their position was called the "Cave."

JOHN STUART MILL. (From a Photograph, by F. Hollyer, of the Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.)

The Bill was brought in, and read a first time, and the House adjourned for the Easter Holidays to think over the situation. It was evident that a storm was coming and questions perhaps graver than that of the fate of a Cabinet or of a measure were dependent on the issue. A great meeting was held at Liverpool, at which Mr. Gladstone made a speech in defence of the Bill. Mr. Lowe's Liberal constituents at Calne wrote him a strong protest against his conduct and clearly indicated that he must not ask for a continuance of their confidence. His answer to them was, in fact, an answer to a perfect chorus of invective with which he was greeted by every Liberal newspaper and in every meeting of Liberals throughout the country.

He maintained that he had but fulfilled the announcement which he had made to them at the time of his election in 1865, when the words of his address had been, "I attach too much importance to the blessings we already enjoy, to risk them in pursuit of ideal perfection, or even of theoretical improvement." And, while with perfect frankness he affirmed his belief that "ignorant, drunken, venal, violent" people were to be found at the bottom of the constituencies, he denied that he had meant the words to apply to a whole class of his countrymen. But this disclaimer availed little; the words had been spoken, and they stuck. The popular excitement which they caused continued after the failure of the Bill and throughout the winter of 1866, and was directed mainly against the "renegade Liberals." Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech was of the most uncompromising kind. "We do not desire," he said, "we should be the first to resist, sudden and violent sweeping changes; but the progressive enlargement of the popular franchise—with due regard to the state and circumstances of the country—we do not consider liable to the application of any of these epithets. Having produced this measure, framed in a spirit of moderation, we hope to support it with decision.... We stake ourselves, we stake our existence as a Government, and we also stake our political character, on the adoption of the Bill in its main provisions. You have a right to expect from us that we should tell you what we mean, and that the trumpet which it is our business to blow shall give forth no uncertain sound. Its sound has not been, and I trust will not be, uncertain. We have passed the Rubicon, we have broken the bridge and burned the boats behind us.... The defeat of the Bill, what would it procure? an interval, but not an interval of repose—an interval of fever, an interval of expectation, an interval for the working of those influences which might extend even to the formidable dimensions of political danger."

The great debate on the second reading began on the 12th of April; and never within living memory had a finer display of eloquence, argument, and energy been witnessed within the walls of the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone had seen enough of the spirit of opposition that had been awakened to render it necessary for him to make an elaborate speech on moving the second reading, directed mainly against the amendment of which notice had been given by Lord Grosvenor, the eldest son of the Marquis of Westminster. This amendment, which was to be seconded by Lord Stanley, was to the effect "that it was inexpedient to consider this Bill until the House had before it the whole scheme of representation;" that is to say, that it was inexpedient to break up the Reform legislation into two parts, to separate the question of the franchise from the question of redistribution. Mr. Kinglake, a supporter of Government, moved an amendment to the same effect, though he was ready to postpone redistribution until the second reading had been carried. This compromise was accepted by Government. It is not necessary to go through the points that Mr. Gladstone raised; for to do so would be to anticipate the course of the debate, so exhaustive and voluminous was his eloquence. The former part of the speech was of a more general kind than that which had introduced the Bill originally; it was a sort of answer to Mr. Lowe and to those who had denied the necessity and the demand for Reform, and it dwelt with immense force upon the pledges given in past years by Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Horsman, and others, now strenuous opposers of Reform in any shape. Mr. Gladstone had previously denounced as a "deplorable arrangement," "a gross blunder springing from that kind of cleverness which so often outwits itself," the design of the opponents of the Bill to place themselves under the guidance of "the representatives of two of our noblest and most ancient houses." Indeed, it looked very much like a combination of aristocracy against democracy, when from the Liberal side of the House rose Lord Grosvenor to move an amendment, and from the Conservative side rose Lord Stanley to second it. Lord Grosvenor's speech was not specially effective, except from the family weight of the speaker. It mainly turned upon the affront put upon the Whig families by Government, in not having sufficiently taken them into their counsels. Lord Stanley was more telling. Alluding to the coming general election, he protested against the chance of allowing the extension of the suffrage to be dealt with by one Parliament, and the redistribution of seats by another. The Franchise Bill, if carried, would confer a great increase of power upon the Radical element in the constituencies—an increase of power which would lead to the return of a much more Radical Parliament than the present, pledged by the very circumstances of its existence to extreme measures. Was it safe to leave to its tender mercies a question involving so many complicated interests as that of the redistribution of seats? Mr. John Stuart Mill, in an able speech, followed Lord Stanley, and had no difficulty in showing this to be the real grievance and bugbear of the great families who had still so much influence over British politics, though Lord Stanley had hardly ventured to put it into such a definite form; but were there any real grounds for this fear of the working classes? For it was at bottom that and nothing else. The blue book of Mr. Lambert, said Mr. Mill, after an eloquent vindication of the rights of the workmen as a class, had revealed the fact that but twenty-six per cent. of the electors were of the working classes.

Mr. Mill's speech may be said to have established his parliamentary reputation, and many of the subsequent speakers took great pains to answer his arguments. Indeed, it was necessary to do so, if the opposition to the Bill was to be justified, for Mr. Mill's speech had been a vigorous attempt to show that on many important questions legislation would be wiser and better if the working classes were more represented. Education, sanitary reform, the diminution of pauperism, the diminution of crime—in a word, the social side of politics—would, he maintained, be better handled by a reformed than by an unreformed Parliament; and, if so, an approach to democracy should rather be welcomed than feared. These were the points chiefly dwelt upon by the Opposition speakers—by the orthodox Conservatives like Sir Hugh Cairns, by Mr. Disraeli, by the "Cave," represented by Mr. Laing, Mr. Horsman, Lord Elcho, and notably Mr. Lowe.

Mr. Disraeli's summing up of the case of the Opposition was clever, but not very telling; it was, except at the end, too vague. The end, however, gave Mr. Gladstone what he wanted. Quoting from the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and addressing himself to Mr. Gladstone's famous assertion that the working classes were "the same flesh and blood" as the upper classes, Mr. Disraeli said:—"Sir George Lewis would not have built up the constituent body on the rights of man. He would not have entrusted the destiny of the country to the judgment of a numerical majority. He would not have counselled the Whig party to reconstruct their famous institutions on the American model, and to profit in time by the wisdom of the children of their loins. Sir, it is because I wish to avert from this country such calamities and disasters that I shall vote for the amendment of the noble lord."

When the leader of the Tory party sat down, Mr. Gladstone rose and took for his starting-point the last words of Mr. Disraeli. "At last, sir," he said, "we have obtained a clear declaration from an authoritative source; and we now know that a Bill which, in a country with five millions of adult males, proposes to add to the present limited constituency 200,000 of the middle class and 200,000 of the working class is, in the judgment of the leader of the Tory party, a Bill to reconstruct the Constitution on American principles." The speech which followed was, for sheer eloquence, one of the very greatest of Mr. Gladstone's parliamentary efforts; it began at one o'clock in the morning, and, after reviewing the whole course of the debate, it ended at three. "You may drive us from our seats," he ended, "you may slay, you may bury the measure that we have introduced. But we will write upon its gravestone for an epitaph this line, with certain confidence in its fulfilment—

'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!'

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might and majesty, and which the tumult of these debates does not for a moment impede or disturb, those great social forces are against you; they work with us; they are marshalled in our support. And the banner which we now carry in the fight, though perhaps at some moment of the struggle it may droop over our sinking heads, yet will float again in the eye of heaven, and will be borne by the firm hands of the united people of the Three Kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but to a certain and not distant victory."

It was three o'clock in the morning when Mr. Gladstone finished his speech, but the crowded and excited House showed no signs of fatigue. When the Speaker put the question, the roar of "Ayes" and "Noes" which answered him was heard far beyond the walls of the House by the waiting crowds outside. Amid great excitement the two camps parted into their respective lobbies, and shortly afterwards the result of the division was announced as follows:—For the second reading, 318; against it, 313. Majority for Government, 5. Both sides of the House cheered the announcement of these critical numbers—the Liberals for the fact of a majority, the Conservatives for the smallness of it. When the uproar had somewhat abated, Mr. Gladstone stated that he would declare what course the Government proposed to take on the Monday following, the 30th of April. In the few days which intervened there were many rumours abroad as to the probable resignation of the Cabinet. However, when the House re-assembled, Mr. Gladstone announced that the Government did not consider the division on Lord Grosvenor's motion any sufficient reason for resigning, and that they were prepared to proceed with the Bill in the manner which the House seemed to prefer. They would now lose no time in producing the Redistribution Scheme as well as the Scottish and Irish Bills, and they promised that the House should have ample time to consider the Redistribution Scheme before going on with the Franchise Bill. In answer to some reproaches of inconsistency from the Opposition benches, Mr. Gladstone replied that the Government had indeed pledged themselves to stand or fall by the Bill, but as yet the Bill had not fallen—the alteration now effected in it was, after all, a question of arrangement only, and did not affect any vital principle of it.

On the 7th of May the Redistribution of Seats Bill was introduced. The Bill provided, first, for the redistribution of seats, properly so called; and secondly, for a more accurate settlement of borough boundaries than had been accomplished by the Reform Bill of 1832. With regard to the first question, Mr. Gladstone announced that Government had no intention of trying to get rid of bribery by a wholesale extinction of small boroughs. In the first place, to get rid of bribery was not the object of the Bill; and secondly, corruption, that "leprosy of English politics," was not confined to small boroughs, and no hard and fast line of electoral purity could be drawn between boroughs above or beneath the ten thousand line of population. Moreover, the question of small boroughs had since the Reform Act assumed a very different aspect. In 1832 the extreme measure of extinction—"capital punishment," as Mr. Lowe called it—had to be employed wholesale, since in many places throughout England the exercise of the franchise had become a mere "mockery of the representative system." Now, however, every member did in some way or other represent the views, as well as the interests, of a real local community; and the representation of the small boroughs was in so much better a state generally that no such summary measures as those adopted in 1832 ought now to be taken with regard to it. No borough, then, was to be absolutely extinguished, but "the fair demands of justice and growing population," in other words, the electoral deficiencies of the great manufacturing towns, were to be met by the milder expedient of arranging small boroughs in groups—a principle which had been already successfully adopted in Scotland and Wales. These groups were to be arranged according to geographical convenience; in some cases they were to consist of two boroughs, in others of three, and in one case of four. "When the population amounts to less than fifteen thousand we propose to assign one representative, and when it exceeds that number we propose to give it two." Mr. Gladstone then proceeded to run through the names of the various groups proposed. There were eight pairs of boroughs: in seven instances the group was composed of three, and in one, as we have said, of four. That is to say, that where two or more small towns had been accustomed to return each of them a representative, they were, in future, to constitute a group returning one jointly. Mr. Gladstone calculated that by these arrangements forty-nine seats would be set free for redistribution, and having now sketched the disenfranchisement side of the scheme, he proceeded to consider the still more important question of enfranchisement. The franchise was to be given for the first time to the six boroughs of Burnley, Stalybridge, Gravesend, Hartlepool, Middlesborough, and Dewsbury. Government proposed to apportion the remaining forty-three seats as follows:—Twenty-six additional members were to be given to the English counties, a third member to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, one member to the University of London, four additional members to the metropolitan constituencies of Chelsea and the Tower Hamlets, and one to the borough of Salford. The seven seats still remaining were to be handed over to Scotland. Ireland and Wales, Government considered, were already adequately represented, and they were, therefore, left out of account in this division of the spoils of redistribution. With regard to the question of borough boundaries, a vexed and difficult one, the Bill proposed little in the way of actual legislation. It provided that "wherever the municipal boundary includes any area that is not now within the parliamentary boundary, the parliamentary boundary is to be so far enlarged as to include that area." The Commissioners of Enclosures were to decide the boundaries of the newly enfranchised towns, of the newly separated halves of the Tower Hamlets, and, in cases of municipal extension—such as occurred when any outlying suburb of a town became large enough and united enough to claim municipal privileges—the parliamentary line was to follow whatever local line might be adopted.

In conclusion, Mr. Gladstone stated that Government was prepared to treat the two Bills—the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill—exactly as the House thought best. They were willing, if the House desired it, to make one Bill out of them, but in no circumstances would Ministers advise a prorogation of Parliament till both questions had been disposed of. This marked concession to the demands of the Opposition only produced some captious remarks from Mr. Disraeli, to the effect that Government did not know its own mind; and that, in leaving the choice of the mode of procedure to the House, it was abdicating its functions.

After leave was given to bring in the Bill, the Scottish and Irish Reform Bills were introduced. The Scottish Bill provoked some discussion, but, on the whole, the House seemed to have made up its mind to let the Franchise question comparatively alone till the Redistribution of Seats, which most members considered a far more personal and pressing question, should have been settled. In the week that intervened between the introduction and the second reading of the Redistribution Bill, two notices were put upon the order book of the House, which gave Government ample warning of a troublesome time coming. One was Mr. Bouverie's motion to consolidate the Franchise Bill and the Redistribution Bill and make one measure of them; the other and more important one, moved by Captain Hayter, was to the effect "that in the opinion of this House the system of grouping proposed by Government is neither convenient nor equitable, nor sufficiently matured to form the basis of a satisfactory measure." Before they came on for discussion, however, the Redistribution Bill passed the second reading without formal opposition, though Mr. Disraeli took the opportunity of making a vigorous defence of small boroughs. After the Whitsuntide holidays the hottest part of the contest began. Lord Russell wrote a strong appeal to Lord Grosvenor, but without effect. Government announced that they were prepared to fuse the two Bills, and that they were willing to give every facility for discussion of Captain Hayter's amendment, but the "Cave" and the Conservatives were not to be conciliated; and Sir Rainald Knightley's motion, to add to the twofold Bill, already unwieldy in size, provisions against bribery and corruption at elections, both surprised and annoyed Ministers. Mr. Gladstone opposed it warmly. As he said afterwards, "We had already an overweighted measure, and it was impossible to find time to consider it alone," without adding to it any fresh material for discussion. But the Opposition rallied round the motion, and it was carried by a majority of ten against Government. Mr. Gladstone once more gave way and announced that if Sir Rainald Knightley could produce a matured scheme for the prevention of bribery at the proper time and place, Government would not oppose the discussion of it. Captain Hayter's amendment against the system of grouping was brilliantly debated for five nights. Mr. Mill, Mr. Lowe, Sir Hugh Cairns, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli showed themselves at their best; and the clever skirmishing of Mr. Lowe, and the more serious but hardly more logical speeches of Mr. Disraeli, contrasted well with Mr. Mill's grave sarcasms upon the "dense solid force of sheer stupidity" in the Conservative party, and the sincere enthusiasm of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Disraeli, in the speech which concluded the debate, did his best to defend his party from the charge of factious opposition; but when one considers what a much more sweeping Bill than the one they were at present opposing, on the ground of its Radical tendencies, was passed by him and his party in the following year, his arguments appear hardly convincing. When he resumed his seat, the amendment was negatived by 403 to 2, the greater part of the Opposition having left the House to avoid voting, seeing that Lord Grosvenor's defection from their ranks left them little or no chance of obtaining a majority against Government.

So far, and upon questions of general principles, Government had in the main, though with great difficulty, and at least one hair-breadth escape, been successful; that is to say, the House as a whole, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Lowe, were agreed that Reform in some shape or other was inevitable. But the Opposition were also agreed in the determination not to let the Russell Ministry settle the question. A successful Reform Bill would have continued the Liberals in power, as later it kept the Conservatives in office, and Mr. Disraeli saw his opportunity and seized it. Reform, especially that side of it which is concerned with the redistribution of seats, rouses the most apathetic Conservative member, and Mr. Disraeli could therefore count upon the undivided support of his party. But Mr. Gladstone's majority would have baffled all their efforts, had it not been for the unexpected defection of the "Cave." The opposition of Lord Grosvenor, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Horsman, and others to the Bill meant victory to the Conservatives; and Mr. Disraeli would not have been Mr. Disraeli had he not known how to use the advantage thus given him. So that while in committee the fortunes of the Bill went wavering backwards and forwards over the debatable ground of "rateable value," or "gross yearly rental," all the world knew that it was in reality no question of details, no question indeed of Reform, but a question of a Liberal or a Conservative Ministry that was being so obstinately fought out. The general consciousness of this gave an unusual piquancy to the discussion of even the dullest of those details of which a Reform Bill is full. The cleverness and determination of the opponents of the Ministry were notably shown in a most unexpected attack upon the Bill made by Lord Stanley on June 7th. The House in committee was engaged in debating the 4th clause of the now consolidated Bill, relating to the county franchise, which it was proposed to reduce to £14. Mr. Gladstone had just made an elaborate defence of the clause against a hostile amendment moved by Mr. Walpole, and all seemed going on as usual, when, to the amazement of the Tory side of the House, no less than of the Liberals, Lord Stanley, the member for Lynn, advanced quietly to the table and moved "that the portion of the joint Bill which relates to the redistribution of seats be taken first," or, in other words, that the Franchise Bill should be postponed sine diÊ. "This brief speech," says the historian of the year, "had the effect of a coup de thÉÂtre." Lord Stanley went on to give various plausible reasons for the motion, but the House, in spite of its astonishment, was not to be taken in.

The tendency of the motion and the animus which prompted it were very plainly visible, and the indignant Liberal benches applauded every word of Mr. Gladstone's speech in answer to it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer ironically complimented the Opposition upon their perfect knowledge of the "art of ambush." At last, it seemed, they had made up their minds, so long in uncertainty, as to what step they should take next, and this new strategy was the result of their cogitations. Loudly cheered by his supporters, Mr. Gladstone went on to say that Government would never suffer the conduct of the measure to be taken out of their hands by such a motion. They were pledged to accomplish, or at least to attempt, the enfranchisement of the people, and to that object they would adhere so long as they retained the support of the House. Lord Stanley's motion was defeated by a majority of 27, a larger majority than had yet fallen to the lot of Government since the beginning of the Reform debates, for the strong sense of unfair treatment among the Liberals kept several waverers loyal to the Ministry who would otherwise have voted with the Opposition. Nor was this all. "The engineer was indeed for once hoist with his own petard," for the feeling awakened by Lord Stanley's motion did Government good service in the next division which they had to encounter, namely, upon Mr. Walpole's amendment, the debate on which had been interrupted by Lord Stanley's speech. Mr. Walpole was beaten by a majority of 14.

A far more vital question, however, was raised on June 11th by Mr. Ward Hunt, member for Northamptonshire, and one leading to much more important consequences. He proposed to make the basis of the county franchise, not the "gross yearly rental" of any given property, but its "rateable value;" while Lord Dunkellin followed suit with a similar motion with regard to the borough franchise. The Bill as originally drawn up gave the borough franchise "to the occupier, as owner or tenant of premises of any tenure within the borough, of a clear yearly value of seven pounds or upwards;" and the same expression was used in the case of the county franchise; clear yearly value meaning the same as "gross estimated rental."

The "gross estimated rental" of a house, according to the Union Assessment Committee Act of 1862, is defined as "the rent at which the hereditaments might reasonably be expected to let from year to year, free from all usual tenants' rates and taxes and tithe commutation rent-charge, if any." But the rateable value, the yearly value, that is to say, at which the house is assessed in the rate-books for rating purposes, is computed from the "gross estimated rental" by making various deductions. The scale of these deductions varies according to local needs; thus, in some places, "rateable value" is ascertained by deducting 10 per cent. from "gross estimated rental," in others 15 per cent., and in others as much as 35 or 36 per cent. The substitution of "rateable value" for "clear yearly value" in clauses 4 and 5 of the Bill would considerably diminish the number of new voters to be enfranchised by the Bill. That is to say, a £5 rating franchise would even hardly admit as many voters as the £7 rental franchise, because the "rateable value" was always something below the "gross estimated rental," and sometimes, as we have seen, very much below it. Mr. Ward Hunt said frankly that the object of his amendment was to raise the county franchise to a higher standard than if the clause passed without amendment. He thought the £14 franchise would admit an excessive number of votes.

Mr. Gladstone in a short, clear speech defended the basis adopted by Government, and once more patiently explained what was meant by the terms "rateable value" and "gross estimated rental," an explanation of which many members of the House stood greatly in need. A smart passage of arms followed between the Solicitor-General and Mr. Disraeli; and finally, upon a division, the amendment was negatived by a narrow majority of seven votes. Lord Dunkellin's motion, to the same effect with respect to the borough franchise, met with very different success. Its mover supported the principle of rating rather than rental, because he believed it, he said, to be the more convenient, inexpensive, and constitutional method of giving the franchise of the two. Whatever were the inequalities of rating, the inequalities of rental, he contended, were greater still. Mr. Gladstone again rose in answer, this time to give so determined a statement of the course Government intended to pursue, that it was at once felt that the crisis of the whole matter had at last been reached. A warm and exciting debate followed. Mr. Bright strongly supported Government, urging that if the amendment were carried, the great aim and object of the Bill would be defeated, and the legitimate hopes of the working classes once more disappointed. Other speakers followed, but all the world knew there was not much to be said now on either side. Finally, Mr. Gladstone clinched his first speech by the brief repetition of Government's determination not to accept the amendment, and to regard the carrying of it as incompatible with the further progress of the Bill. It was a quarter-past one o'clock when the crowded House divided, and amid a scene of great excitement the following numbers were announced: For the amendment, 315; against it, 304. Majority against Government, 11. Long and loud was the cheering of the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had won his battle, and the immediate political future, at least, was in the hands of the Conservatives.

On the day following this important division it was generally known that the Russell Ministry was at an end; in fact, in the evening Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone formally announced to the two Houses that the Ministry had sent in their resignations to the Queen, and motions of adjournment to the following Monday, the 25th of June, were agreed to. It was on Tuesday, the 26th, however, that Mr. Gladstone made his promised statement in the House of Commons. The House was crowded in every part, and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose, he was greeted with a burst of tumultuous cheering. "Sir," he said, "the suspense, which the House yesterday so kindly consented to prolong, is at an end, and her Majesty has been pleased to accept the resignation of their offices, which was last week tendered by the Government. The House is aware that her Majesty thought fit in her wisdom to postpone the acceptance of that tender when it was first made. It appeared to her Majesty that, upon the first aspect of the vote which led to the tender of our resignation, it might, perhaps be considered as a matter of mere machinery and detail, susceptible of adjustment, rather than as one which tended to break up the framework of the Bill; and her Majesty also felt, and I think the House and the country, without distinction of party, will agree in that sentiment, that, in the present state of affairs on the continent of Europe, there is necessarily a disadvantage in a change of Government. Without the slightest approach to any invidious preference or distinction, it may truly be said that at such a moment it is not easy for any incoming Administration to step at once into the exact conditions of relations with Governments and Ministers abroad which was enjoyed by their predecessors; and that difficulty, whatever may be its amount, is in itself a public disadvantage." Upon these grounds, then, the Queen had been for some little time unwilling to accept their resignation, until a long conference with Lord Russell had convinced her that the step was inevitable, and the resignations were accepted.

The accuracy of this statement is fully borne out by the correspondence between Lord Russell and the Queen, published by Mr. Spencer Walpole in his "Life of Lord John Russell." From the first her Majesty had desired that, in view of the serious state of the Continent, the Ministry should act in a spirit of compromise and conciliation. The Prime Minister fully acknowledged the critical condition of foreign affairs, and therefore strongly advised her Majesty to postpone her visit to Scotland. But he also wrote that "Lord Russell would ill serve your Majesty's interests and those of the country if, by any premature concession, he were to expose his own character and that of Mr. Gladstone to the loss of public confidence, and those who would most taunt and reproach them with such a concession would be their implacable and inveterate enemies." This was before the division on Lord Dunkellin's motion; after it had occurred, he wrote that the proceedings of the last few weeks had convinced the Ministry that nothing was to be gained by protracted discussions on the Bill, that the reasons against a dissolution, founded on the general apathy of the South of England, appeared to them valid, and that there was no alternative to a resignation. The Queen replied that she had been completely taken by surprise, as she understood that there was no crisis, and that she did not consider Ministers were fulfilling their duty to herself or the country by abandoning their posts in consequence of a defeat on a matter of detail and not of principle. The Premier stuck to his text that Lord Dunkellin's amendment was a vital issue; he thought, however, that it might be possible to postpone the Bill with a declaration that it would be submitted unaltered to the present or a new Parliament. Finally, the Cabinet determined that if they could obtain from the House an expression of confidence together with a desire for the reintroduction of the Bill at an early period, they would retain their offices. When there appeared no reasonable prospect of the fulfilment of these conditions, they had no option but to resign.

The dislocation of the Liberal party was so complete that no reasonable prospect remained of a stable Government being formed by any of the fractions into which it had been temporarily shivered. When, therefore, the Queen sent for Lord Derby and requested him to form a Ministry, that statesman, although the Conservative party was in so decided a minority in the House of Commons, accepted without hesitation the responsibility of undertaking the government of the country. Mr. Disraeli became Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Walpole went to the Home Office; Lord Stanley and Lord Cranborne were appointed Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and for India respectively; General Peel and Sir John Pakington accepted the chief posts in the War Office and the Admiralty; Lord Carnarvon became Secretary for the Colonies; and the Marquis of Abercorn accepted the Vice-royalty of Ireland. This, it will be evident, was a purely Conservative Administration; such, however, had not been the desire of Lord Derby, who made overtures to some of the leaders of the recalcitrant Liberals, which were declined. Mr. Lowe was approached, so were Lord Grosvenor and Lord Lansdowne; the last would have joined, had not his sudden death intervened. Lord Shaftesbury also declined, and so did Lord Clarendon, either because, according to Bishop Wilberforce, he "hated Disraeli," or because, according to Lord Malmesbury, the Conservative irregulars were preparing an attack on his foreign policy. The Adullamites would have joined a Government under Lord Stanley, whose explanation of his father's ill success with the dissentient Whigs made a few days later to his constituents at Lynn, was doubtless the true one. "We have not desired," he said, "to form our Administration upon any narrow party basis There are many of the Whig party whose sympathies are well known to be with us, whose support in debate and divisions we have no doubt of receiving, and whose official co-operation, where it has been asked, has only been withheld not on account of any real or wide difference of political opinion, but rather from that natural and honourable scruple which makes men shrink from the appearance of changing their party—of walking, as the phrase is, across the floor of the House—under circumstances where they may possibly appear to be personal gainers by the change."

Mr. Disraeli went down for re-election to his constituents in Buckinghamshire, and there delivered an address that adumbrated with considerable clearness the course which the new Government intended to, and which it actually did, pursue. There was a notion that the Conservatives were more favourable to intervention in the affairs of foreign countries than the Liberals; that in their hands the country was more likely to drift into war; and this notion, so fatal to the popularity of any political party with that pacific generation of Englishmen, Mr. Disraeli took great pains to dispel. "The abstention of England from any unnecessary interference in the affairs of Europe is the consequence, not of her decline of power, but of her increased strength. England is no longer a mere European Power; she is the metropolis of a great maritime empire, extending to the boundaries of the farthest ocean. It is not that England has taken refuge in a state of apathy, that she now almost systematically declines to interfere in the affairs of the continent of Europe. England is as ready and as willing to interfere as in old days, when the necessity of her position requires it. There is no Power, indeed, that interferes more than England. She interferes in Asia, because she is really more an Asiatic Power than a European. She interferes in Australia, in Africa, and in New Zealand, where she carries on war often on a great scale. Therefore it is not because England does not recognise her duty to interfere in the affairs of the continent of Europe, that persons are justified in declaring that she has relinquished her imperial position, and has taken refuge in the otium cum dignitate which agrees with the decline of life, of power, and of prosperity. On the contrary, she has a greater sphere of action than any European Power, and she has duties devolving upon her on a much larger scale." On the subject of Parliamentary Reform Mr. Disraeli was decidedly explicit. He would not for one moment allow that Reform was a Liberal preserve, and that in dealing with the question the Conservatives were poaching on forbidden ground. "I hear very often," he said, "that the subject of Parliamentary Reform is the great difficulty of the present Ministry, and will be their stumbling-block. I am quite of a different opinion. I see no difficulty in the subject at all; and if we stumble, rest assured we shall not stumble over the subject of Parliamentary Reform. If Parliamentary Reform is to be dealt with, I consider the present Government have as good a right to deal with it as any body of statesmen in existence. The great Reform Bill of 1832 was mainly devised by Lord Derby, and was entirely carried by his energy; and with regard to the only measure on the subject, since the great Reform Bill, ever mentioned with respect, why, I myself brought it in. I have remarked, during the recent campaign in the House of Commons, that every division that took place, and every strong manifestation of opinion which was expressed, ratified the principle upon which the Bill of 1859 was founded. And night after night, sitting in that House opposite to me, distinguished Liberals of all hues rose, and, in a tone of courteous penitence, publicly avowed how much they regretted they had voted against the Bill of 1859."

On the 9th of July, the new arrangements having been completed, Lord Derby made a Ministerial statement in the House of Lords, the leading ideas of which were in close agreement with those enunciated by Mr. Disraeli in the speech from which we have just quoted. At this late period of the Session, the Budget for the year having been already discussed and settled, it was out of the question that the new Government should do more than wind up the business of legislation with all possible despatch, and then dismiss the members to their homes. In a considerable section of the large Liberal majority that now crowded the Opposition benches, a determination was apparent to give the new Ministry a fair trial, and neither to join in, nor permit the success of, any factious or precipitate attempt to place them in a minority.

Besides that of the Premier, but one important Ministerial statement was made before the close of the Session; this, which was delivered by Lord Cranborne on the 19th of July, related to the finances of India, and was regarded on both sides of the House as a masterly and lucid exposition. Though so far satisfactory, inasmuch as it showed that, during the last three years, the Indian Government had very nearly succeeded in establishing an equilibrium between receipts and expenditure, it was calculated to occasion some anxiety on account of the proofs which it afforded of the inelastic character of a large proportion of the sources from which the Indian revenue is derived, of the complete failure of the income tax, on the introduction of which such ardent hopes had been founded, and of the degree in which the prosperity of Indian finance was dependent on the rise or fall of the opium tax. The estimate of revenue from this single tax was £8,500,000; and Lord Cranborne reluctantly admitted that "opium had become the essential element in Eastern finance." Yet the general picture which he drew of the material condition of India was eminently satisfactory. The railway expenditure had been a source of enormous success; the Great Indian Peninsula line paid 7 per cent. on its capital, and the East Indian nearly 5 per cent., though neither of them was fully and thoroughly opened. Taking a comprehensive survey of the condition of India, he said that "education was progressing; public works, particularly of irrigation, were going on; railways advancing; the Ganges Canal had been rendered more fitted for its great purposes; and there was much evidence of prosperity."

The administrative skill and prudence of the new Home Secretary were severely tested before the close of the Session. On the committee of the Reform League of London Mr. Edmond Beales and Colonel Dickson were the most influential persons, and in a series of meetings they had taught their audiences to believe that without manhood suffrage and the ballot the British Constitution was one-sided and imperfect. The advent to power of a Conservative Ministry raised the ardour of the Leaguers to a pitch of yet more enthusiastic warmth than before, and it was announced that a great public meeting would be held in Hyde Park, on the evening of the 23rd of July, in order to demand the immediate extension of the suffrage. The authorities feared that the demonstration, occurring at so late an hour, might be taken advantage of by the "roughs" to create a disturbance, under cover of which thefts on a large scale might be perpetrated; it was resolved, therefore, that this meeting should be prohibited. Placards signed by the Chief Commissioner of Police, Sir Richard Mayne, were, early in the afternoon, extensively posted throughout London, stating that the park gates would be closed to the public at five o'clock. The League and its adherents viewed the attempt to suppress their oratory with the deepest indignation, and a written notice was forwarded by the "Demonstration Committee" to the various sub-committees, to the effect that the members were to march in procession to the park, and, if prevented from entering it, were then to form four deep, and proceed by way of Grosvenor Place, Victoria Street, and past the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square. The Procession of Leaguers was formed on Clerkenwell Green, when several speeches of a highly inflammatory nature were delivered before the march was commenced.

The procession set out shortly before five o'clock, and proceeded along Holborn and Oxford Street to the Marble Arch. Here things presented an animated appearance. A force of foot and mounted police, numbering 1,600 or 1,800, had been assembled within the park, under the direction of Sir Richard Mayne and Captain Harris; and at five o'clock the gates were closed. A large number of spectators had previously entered the park, to witness the arrival of the procession; and with these the police did not interfere. Arrived at the Marble Arch, Mr. Beales, Colonel Dickson, and other prominent Leaguers, alighted from the foremost carriages, and going up to the gate, demanded admission to the park from the police. This was refused, on the authority of "our Commissioner;" and then Mr. Beales, re-forming the procession as well as he could in the midst of the dense crowd, led as many as would follow him down Park Lane, and, by the streets already named, to Trafalgar Square. Here several speeches were delivered, but all accounts represent the proceedings as remarkably tame.

Meanwhile the mob that had gathered about the Marble Arch, both in Park Lane and in Bayswater Road, exasperated at the loss of the excitement which the meeting would have afforded them, and partly, no doubt, animated by resentment at what seemed needlessly arbitrary conduct on the part of the police, pressed close up to the park railings; the bolder spirits seized them, shook them; grasped by hundreds of strong hands at once, they swayed—they gave way. In an instant a hundred practicable breaches afforded that admission into the park which the police had denied. Down came the police, horse and foot, upon the invaders; but they were distracted by the multitude of inroads, and disconcerted by the ease with which the railings were laid prostrate in every direction. They used their truncheons freely, and many a head was cut open; but the mob, besides the advantage of overwhelming numbers, took to stone-throwing, and many of the police were severely injured. Sir Richard Mayne, who had himself been wounded, then sent for the military. A detachment of Foot Guards soon arrived, followed by a troop of Life Guards. The mob cheered the soldiers, who posted themselves near the Marble Arch, occasionally marching upon any specially dense assemblage of persons, and compelling them to shift their ground. Speeches were made by excited orators at various points within the park, after the mob had forced their way in; but the confusion that prevailed was such that little attention seems to have been paid to them. On the southern side of the park also, in the Knightsbridge Road, a number of mischievous persons congregated, and broke down two hundred yards of the park railing. After the arrival of the soldiers, the police endeavoured to make a number of arrests, in doing which they met with violent resistance, and were in many cases severely handled. The partisans of order were presently reinforced by a second detachment of Foot Guards, who, with the first detachment, received orders to be in readiness to fire, should it become necessary. Encounters between the police and the mob then grew less frequent, and finally quiet was restored when another body of Life Guards arrived, and assisted in removing the mob from the park. Much stone-throwing was all this time going on in the streets, and the windows of the AthenÆum and United Service Clubs, as well as of a number of private houses, were broken. No lives were lost, though a considerable number of persons received severe injuries.

Mr. Walpole, the new Home Secretary, a man of remarkable humanity and gentleness, was afflicted beyond measure by the turn matters had taken. He received a deputation of the Leaguers at the Home Office two days afterwards, and in conversation with them actually shed tears, and came to the somewhat ignominious understanding with them, that Government would cause the police and the military to be withdrawn from the park until the question as to the legal right of the people to claim admission to it had been decided, the League meanwhile undertaking to do its best to prevent any breach of the peace or other misconduct within the park enclosure! The consequence of such deplorable weakness may be conceived. In a London paper of the following week it was stated: "The park is still infested, night after night, by numerous bands of thieves and ruffians, who are left to prey on defenceless passengers or unwary loungers after dusk, without the slightest interference of the park-keepers or the police. Several gross outrages, perpetrated in Hyde Park, about eight or nine o'clock in the evening, since the enclosure was destroyed last week, have been narrated by the sufferers themselves, or by witnesses to the fact, in letters to the daily papers.... A herd of men and boys, estimated at 300 or 400, of the worst class of habitual malefactors, are permitted to assemble and prowl about the ground, waiting for an opportunity of plunder."

In Parliament the conduct of Government in prohibiting the meeting was much canvassed and, by some speakers, severely censured. Mr. Ayrton said that, instead of appealing at once to force, the Home Secretary ought to have met the people in a conciliatory spirit on the matter of right and should have issued a temperate notification explaining how the case really stood. Mr. Mill declared that if the people had not a right to meet in the parks, they ought to have it. He added that, as Government seemed inclined to enrol their names on the list of those who could do more mischief in an hour than others could repair in years, he exhorted them to consider seriously the gravity of what they had done on this occasion. But the majority of speakers on both sides of the House, including statesmen of long experience, were of opinion that Government, though perhaps every step taken by Mr. Walpole might not have been judicious, were substantially justified in what they had done; and Mr. Disraeli declared that "it had never entered the minds of Ministers that the real working man, whose general orderly conduct he cordially acknowledged, would commit acts of riot, but they believed that the scum of the great city would take advantage of such an assemblage, and the justice of their apprehensions was proved by the event."

The Queen's Speech at the close of the Session was read by the new Lord Chancellor (Lord Chelmsford) on the 10th of August. It contained several paragraphs on the Fenian conspiracy, and the doings of the Fenians both in Ireland and in Canada, recording in terms of grateful acknowledgment the good faith and promptitude of the United States Government in checking at the outset "any attempted invasion of a friendly State." It alluded with satisfaction to the fact that, although the late Ministry, in the presence of a financial crisis of almost unexampled severity, had authorised the Bank of England to infringe the letter of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, if such a step were required for the accommodation of their customers, yet no such infringement had actually taken place, the Bank having been able to weather the storm without it. It spoke of the gradual mitigation of the cattle plague, of the late visitation of cholera, and of the successful laying of the Atlantic cable. The murrain had, indeed, continued its ravages during the earlier half of the year; but, fortunately, as time went on, the stringent precautions that had been enforced by the Privy Council produced the desired effect: the cases showed a progressive reduction in number; and by the end of the year the plague, though not extinct, was in a material degree abated. Wales continued almost wholly exempt from the disease; in the South of England its virulence was continually on the decline; only in the north-western counties it seemed to hold its ground tenaciously, and in the dairy farms of Cheshire many ancient pastures were given up in despair to the plough. The total loss to the country from the disease, even in this year of improvement, was computed at not less than £3,500,000 in money.

REFORM LEAGUERS AT THE MARBLE ARCH. (See p. 403.)