The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition). Robert Thomas Wilson

a Government, and recapitulating the circumstances which, in his judgment, rendered that attempt impracticable.

      It is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that Sir Robert Peel was right in the view which he took of this matter. He could not have carried on the administration of the country under a perpetual liability to backstairs intrigues. Besides, it was the opinion of very high authorities on constitutional law that the appointments of the Royal Household are State appointments, and therefore dependent on the Ministry of the day. Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, however, advised her Majesty to the contrary, and it was the members of the late Government, sitting in council by a questionable stretch of powers that were then merely provisional, who arranged the terms of the letter which the Queen addressed to Sir Robert Peel on the 10th of May. The leader of the Conservatives became for a few days the most unpopular man in England. It was supposed by the Queen, and rather sedulously spread abroad by the Melbourne party, that Peel desired to remove all her personal friends and familiar attendants; but, as we have seen, this was far from being the case. The Whigs endeavoured to create a factitious sentiment on behalf of the Queen by stating that the ladies whose dismissal Peel demanded were “the friends of her Majesty’s youth;” whereas they appear to have been scarcely known to her until their appointment at the beginning of the new reign. That appointment was made on purely political grounds, and the Duchess of Kent was not consulted in the matter. The facts were afterwards made clear by the statesman chiefly concerned; but a great deal of unmerited odium had been incurred, and, in particular, Daniel O’Connell and Feargus O’Connor denounced Sir Robert in unmeasured language, while pouring out fulsome eulogies on the sovereign whose lawful authority they were a few years later to dispute. When the truth became known, a strong reaction set in, and there can be no doubt that what was called the Bedchamber affair was one of the causes of that temporary unpopularity of the Queen to which we have before adverted.

      The Melbourne Government resumed office on the 11th of May, and lost no time in adopting a minute in the following terms:—“Her Majesty’s confidential servants, having taken into consideration the letter addressed by her Majesty to Sir Robert Peel on the 10th of May, and the reply of Sir Robert Peel of the same day, are of opinion that, for the purpose of giving to the Administration that character of efficiency and stability, and those marks of the constitutional support of the Crown, which are required to enable it to act usefully to the public service, it is reasonable that the great officers of the Court, and situations in the Household held by Members of Parliament, should be included in the political arrangements made in a change in the Administration; but they are not of opinion that a similar principle should be applied or extended to the offices held by ladies in her Majesty’s Household.” Two years later (at the suggestion of Prince Albert), the question was settled by a compromise which substantially conceded what Sir Robert Peel had required. The restored Whigs introduced another Jamaica Bill, of a less stringent character, which they carried with the assistance, and under the correction, of the Tories; and the session closed in the midst of general distraction, and the errors of a feeble rule.

      COBURG. (After a Sketch by Prince Albert.)

      CHAPTER IV.

       COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.

       Table of Contents

      English Chartism in the Summer of 1839—Riots in Birmingham—Principal Leaders of the Chartist Party—Excesses of the Artisans in Various Parts of Great Britain and Ireland—Chartist Rising at Newport, Monmouthshire—Conviction of Frost, Williams, and Jones—The Queen and Prince Albert—Early Life of the Prince—His Engaging Qualities—Desire of King Leopold to Effect a Matrimonial Engagement between Prince Albert and the Princess Victoria—First Visit of the Former to England—His Studies in Germany—Informal Understanding between Prince Albert and Queen Victoria—Difficulties of the Case—The Prince’s View of the Matter in the Autumn of 1839—Second Visit to England, and Formal Betrothal—Letter of Baron Stockmar on the Subject—Announcement of the Royal Marriage to the Privy Council and to Parliament—The Appointment of the Prince’s Household—Subjects of Difficulty and Dissension—Question of the Prince’s Religion—Reduction of his Annuity by a Vote of the House of Commons—Progress from Gotha to England, and Reception at Buckingham Palace—Marriage of Prince Albert to the Queen at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s.

      An event of peculiar interest to her Majesty, and almost equally to the nation at large, took place in the second half of 1839; but, before relating the circumstances attending the Queen’s engagement to Prince Albert, it will be desirable to pass in rapid review the state of the country at that period—a state which might well have persuaded a young female sovereign of the need of sharing her responsibilities with one of the stronger sex. The Government, as we have seen, was extremely weak; Ireland, as usual, was giving the utmost trouble; the Colonies were agitated; and England itself was almost on the brink of revolution, owing to the distress existing among the labouring classes, and the incitements of the Chartists. The last of these dangers was the greatest of all. Hunger was preaching insurrection to thousands and tens of thousands of the poor and humble all over the kingdom; some few designing men, and scores of others who, however mistaken in their methods, were sincere and even noble in their aims, were thrusting the pike and the torch into the hands of maddened operatives; and the authorities, for a time, seemed paralysed. On the 14th of June, Mr. Attwood, Member for Birmingham, presented to the House a Chartist petition, signed, it was said, by 1,280,000 persons, and adopted at five hundred public meetings. It was at any rate sufficiently heavy to task the strength of twelve men to carry it out of the House; yet when Mr. Attwood, on the 12th of July, brought forward a motion to submit the grievances described in the petition to a select committee, he could obtain only forty-six votes, against 235 on the adverse side. On the 4th of July, a Chartist riot broke out in Birmingham, during which some policemen, sent from London, were severely handled. It was found necessary to call out the military, and for a time the disturbance seemed at an end. But on the 15th of the same month a much worse rising filled the whole town with consternation. Shops were sacked, houses set on fire in several localities, and the firemen obstructed and menaced in their attempts to extinguish the flames. Property was destroyed to the amount of nearly £50,000, and the vicinity which suffered most was afterwards described by the Duke of Wellington as presenting a worse appearance than that of a city taken by storm.

      It was believed by superficial thinkers that these excesses would prove the death of Chartism; and, under this impression, the Attorney-General, Sir John Campbell, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, made a speech at a public dinner at Edinburgh on the 24th of October. He even spoke of Chartism as a thing already extinguished, and considered that the punishment of the rioters had brought the whole matter to an end. But the movement was served by some men of zeal, earnestness, and intellectual capacity, and it had aroused the deepest feelings of countless men and women who had no voice in the government of the country, and who undoubtedly suffered in divers ways. One of the principal leaders of the party, but by no means one of the wisest, was the Irishman, Feargus O’Connor—an agitator by taste and profession, who nevertheless claimed to be descended from the old kings of Ireland. There were others who said that he was the grandson of one Conyers, an Essex farmer who settled in the sister island, and whose son thought it prudent to Hibernicise his name. If so, the redoubtable Feargus was not so Irish as he seemed; but, however this may have been, he preferred to throw himself into the vortex of English agitation, leaving the Irish work to O’Connell. More reasonable, more argumentative, and more profoundly sincere, were Thomas Cooper, a poet of some power and passion; Henry Vincent, an effective lecturer; and Ernest Jones, a writer for the periodical press. These were all men of decided ability; and their advocacy of Chartist principles gave a more solid character to what might otherwise have passed off in effervescence.

      On the other hand, it is not to be denied that the working classes, maddened by sufferings which their ignorance often led them to impute to wrong causes, committed many deplorable and guilty actions. At the direct incentive of the Trades-Unions, the factory hands sent threatening letters to the masters, fired the mills, made murderous