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

of Free Trade Principles—Assassination of Mr. Drummond—The Question of Criminal Insanity—Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cobden—Disturbances in South Wales: “Rebecca” and her Daughters—Condition of Women in Mines and Collieries—Lord Ashley and the Factories Act—Opinion of the Queen and Prince Albert on the Qualities of Sir Robert Peel—Levees held by the Prince—The Frescoes for the Houses of Parliament—Encouragement of Fresco-Painting by the Queen and Prince Albert—The Summer House in the Gardens of Buckingham Palace—Visit of her Majesty and the Prince to Louis Philippe at the Château d’Eu—The Duke of Wellington on the Necessity for a Council of Regency—Designs of France on the Succession to the Spanish Throne—Dishonest Engagement of the French King—English Opinion completely Misled—Royal Visits to Belgium, to Cambridge, and to the Midlands—The Prince as a Fox-hunter—Model Farming—Events in India: Wars in Scinde and Gwalior.

      A very important and very happy result of Prince Albert’s influence was seen in the revived popularity of the Queen after a few years had passed. In 1839, as the reader is aware, the feeling with which her Majesty was regarded by a wide section of the people revealed a danger of no inconsiderable magnitude, and threatened to give a peculiarly acrid character to political discussion. By 1842 this sentiment had very nearly disappeared; and the change was largely due to the companionship and advice of the Queen’s consort. We must not forget, however, the excellent guidance which the Prince himself received from Baron Stockmar; and although Englishmen cannot but have felt a little jealous that their political and social state was so much influenced by foreigners, they must have been none the less grateful for the fact, let it come how it might. For the improved state of public feeling Prince Albert obtained no credit at the time. The people knew very little about him, and the aristocracy, who had opportunities of seeing his Royal Highness, considered him somewhat cold and haughty. The opinion was not altogether unwarranted, though it proceeded from a misapprehension. A certain reserve of manner resulted almost inevitably from the severe moral restrictions which the Prince laid upon himself; but who would not purchase so great a gain at the cost of a few external attractions, not necessarily associated with the higher virtues?

      During the first few years of her reign the Queen had not the benefit (such as it is) of those poetical eulogiums which are reasonably to be expected by a court which maintains a Poet Laureate. Although Southey, the then holder of the office, did not die until 1843, his mental state had for some years been such as to render all intellectual work impossible. In this interregnum of Parnassus, Leigh Hunt—who, a generation earlier, had been imprisoned for libelling the Prince Regent, but who was converted to courtliness by the liberal development of modern times—addressed some verses to the Queen, in the earliest of which, with the quaint familiarity of his genius, he commends her Majesty for possessing “the ripe Guelph cheek, and good, straight Coburg brow,” which were held to be significant of “pleasure and reason.” The poet afterwards alludes to the recent birth of the Princess Royal in lines of touching beauty. Still speaking of the Queen herself, he writes:—

      “May her own soul, this instant, while I sing,

       Be smiling, as beneath some angel’s wing,

       O’er the dear life in life, the small, sweet, new,

       Unselfish self, the filial self of two,

       Bliss of her future eyes, her pillow’d gaze,

       On whom a mother’s heart thinks close, and prays.”

      Another poem, more particularly addressed to the Princess Royal, “Three Visions occasioned by the Birth and Christening of the Prince of Wales,” and some “Lines on the Birth of the Princess Alice” (which occurred on the 25th of April, 1843), appeared in due succession. But the poetical interregnum came to an end in the spring of 1843, when, owing to the death of Southey, Wordsworth succeeded to the post; and the volunteer lyrist was heard no more on such topics. His few courtly poems are singularly pervaded by that profound faith in the speedy coming of a kind of golden age of peace, wisdom, health, gentleness, and universal prosperity, which characterised the earlier years of the present century, and especially the mind of Leigh Hunt, but which, in the disappointments and gathering melancholy of the present day, wears an aspect at once mournful and tender. The conclusion of the poem to the Princess Alice is worth quoting, because of the sad failure of its aspiration, combined with its remarkable truthfulness in other respects. Still harping on that wondrous age of human perfection which seems as far off as ever, the poet exclaims:—

      “Thee, meantime, fair child of one

       Fit to see that golden sun,

       Thee may no worse lot befall

       Than a long life, April all;

       Fuller, much, of hopes than fears,

       Kind in smiles and kind in tears,

       Graceful, cheerful, ever new,

       Heaven and earth both kept in view,

       While the poor look up, and bless

       Thy celestial bounteousness.

       And, when all thy days are done,

       And sadness views thy setting sun,

       Mayst thou greet thy mother’s eyes,

       And endless May in Paradise.”

      Shortly after the birth of the Princess Alice the Queen wrote to the King of the Belgians:—“Albert has been, as usual, all kindness and goodness. Our little baby is to be called Alice, an old English name, and the other names are to be Maud (another old English name, and the same as Matilda), and Mary, as she was born on Aunt Gloucester’s birthday. The sponsors are to be the King of Hanover, Ernestus Primus (now the Duke of Coburg), poor Princess Sophia Matilda, and Feodore; and the christening [is] to be on the 2nd of June.” The ceremony went off very well; but the King of Hanover arrived too late to be present. In after years the Princess Alice became the wife of the Grand Duke of Hesse, and was well known for her intelligent benevolence and charity. She died on the 14th of December, 1878.

      Unfettered by indirect influences, the Government of Sir Robert Peel was

      LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

      now acquiring the confidence of the country by the masterly way in which its chief handled the great questions of the hour. One of the first things to be dealt with was the financial deficit left by the Whigs, which had reached the alarming total of more than ten millions for the previous six years. This was met by the creation of an Income Tax of sevenpence in the pound; and in the memorable statement which Sir Robert Peel made to the House of Commons on the 11th of March, 1842, a confident expectation was held out that the proceeds of such an impost would not merely fill up the deficit, but yield a surplus such as would enable the Ministry to reduce the taxes on commodities to an immense extent. All incomes below £150 were to be exempt from the new, or rather the revived, tax; but no distinction was made between the precarious income resulting from trades, professions, and employments, and that derived from the much more assured source of landed and other property. This was regarded by the professional and mercantile classes as an injustice; but though the tax was not popular, most persons were compelled to admit that they saw no other way out of the difficulty. Sir Robert Peel argued that the maximum of indirect taxation had been reached, and that to accumulate further duties on the necessaries and luxuries of life would be productive of the greatest injury to trade, while to reduce them would operate as a stimulus to manufactures and to commerce. If, then, indirect taxation was shut out by the very circumstances of the case, a tax on income was all that remained. Such an impost, amounting to no less than ten per cent. on the income of the country, was cheerfully borne during the war with Bonaparte; yet people thought it hard that, with no war at all, they were to be subjected to the same vexatious demand, though at the much lower rate of something less than three per cent. It was understood at the time that the tax was not to last beyond three, or at the most five, years; but in fact it has never been taken off to this day, though varying in amount from time to time. We must never forget, however, that its existence, unpleasant and objectionable as it is in some respects, has enabled successive Governments to remove many millions of taxation, which hampered trade, and seriously