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

year now passing under notice (1842), Sir Robert Peel reduced the Customs duties on 750 out of 1,200 articles, and entirely abolished the duties on some minor foreign commodities. The reduction of indirect taxation in the ensuing three years was about £12,000,000.

      While thus opening a new and in many ways better prospect to the country, the Premier still clung to Protectionist measures with regard to foreign corn. On the 9th of February—a month before the introduction of the new Tariff—he brought forward his Sliding Scale, by which the duties on foreign wheat, oats, and barley, rose or fell according to the cheapness or dearness of what was grown at home. The arrangement gave satisfaction to no one. Mr. Cobden and his followers would accept nothing but absolute freedom of trade; the landed proprietors were content with nothing short of absolute Protection; and between these two extremes were the Whigs, who preferred—for the present, at least—the low fixed duty which they had proposed the year before. Nevertheless, Peel carried his Sliding Scale, for he had a good party vote at his back. The members of the Anti-Corn-Law League, however, had the greatest cause for rejoicing, for it was evident that matters were moving in the direction of Free Trade. People began to talk of the Corn Laws as doomed, and even Sir Robert Peel, in his speech of March 11th, when introducing his Tariff proposals, observed:—“I believe that on the general principle of Free Trade there is now no great difference of opinion, and that all agree in the general rule that we should purchase in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest.” He still held back from applying this rule to corn; but no one could doubt how his mind was tending, and some four years later he began that beneficent course of Free Trade legislation which Liberal Governments afterwards perfected. The Leaguers acquired fresh spirit from the prospect of approaching triumph, and renewed meetings were held, both in London and the provinces.

      In the early part of 1843 a very painful incident occurred, which excited the liveliest sympathy of the Queen and Prince Albert, and which for a time seemed to place the life of Sir Robert Peel in jeopardy. On the 20th of January, a man named Daniel McNaughten shot Mr. Edward Drummond, the private secretary of the Premier, as he was passing along Whitehall between the Admiralty and the Horse Guards. The unfortunate gentleman expired on the 25th of the same month, and some were found to maintain that the fatal issue was due more to the bleeding ordered by his medical attendants than to the effects of the pistol-shot. However this may have been, it is certain that the practice of phlebotomy decreased shortly after this melancholy event, and has never since regained the position it once held in medical practice. McNaughten, on being seized, and conveyed to the nearest police-station, declared that the Tories had been persecuting him for many years, and that that was his justification for committing the act. From this expression, and some others to which he gave utterance, it was inferred that his intention was to shoot Sir Robert Peel, and that he mistook Mr. Drummond for the First Minister, to whom the secretary seems to have borne some slight resemblance. The public mind was much excited by what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to make the head of the Government personally responsible for a supposed, and doubtless an imaginary, wrong. Taken in conjunction with the recent attacks upon the Queen, the crime was thought by many to reveal a widespread conspiracy against the deepest principles of social order, and the alarm in Court circles, and amongst the members of the Administration, was naturally very great. Of course there was exaggeration in this feeling; matters were not really so bad as they appeared. But for some time it was considered necessary that Sir Robert Peel should be guarded by policemen in plain clothes, and measures were taken to protect the Court. Alluding to the assassination in a letter to King Leopold, dated January 31st, the Queen observes:—“Poor Drummond is universally regretted. Indeed, I seldom remember so strong an interest (beginning with ourselves) being taken in, and so much feeling so generally shown towards, a private individual. People can hardly think of anything else. I trust it will have the beneficial effect of making people feel the difference between complete madness, which deprives a man of all sense, and madness which does not prevent a man from knowing right from wrong.” This distinction does not seem to have been present to the minds of the jury before whom McNaughten was tried early in March. They returned a verdict that the prisoner was “Not guilty, on the ground of insanity;” and he was ordered to be kept in confinement during her Majesty’s pleasure. The public, however, were greatly

      “REBECCA” RIOT IN SOUTH WALES. (See p. 138.)

      discontented with this finding; and the general question, as to what was to be considered the standard of irresponsible mania, was submitted to the whole of the Judges, who were desired to answer the question, “If a person under an insane delusion as to existing facts commits an offence in consequence thereof, is he thereby excused?” The answer was given on the 19th of July, 1843,

      LORD ASHLEY (AFTERWARDS EARL OF SHAFTESBURY).

      when an unanimous opinion was pronounced, that he was equally liable with the person of sane mind.

      Lady Peel was made very ill by the terrible event of January; and the habitual equanimity of Sir Robert himself underwent some disturbance. This was seen on the 16th of February, during the debate on Lord Howick’s motion for a Committee of the whole House to consider the reference in the Queen’s Speech at the opening of Parliament (February 2nd) to the long-continued depression of manufacturing industry. In the course of the discussion, Mr. Cobden said that he held Sir Robert Peel personally responsible for the existing lamentable and dangerous state of affairs. The words were not well chosen; but the Premier, who was out of health at the time, and suffering from anxiety and sorrow, passionately leapt to the conclusion that Mr. Cobden was uttering a thinly-veiled incentive to his assassination. The distinguished Free Trader denied the imputation, received a direct contradiction from his adversary, and ultimately explained, in the midst of great confusion, that what he meant was that the right honourable Baronet was responsible by virtue of his office. The time was one of abnormal excitement, and great allowance must be made both for Peel and Cobden, but especially for the former. Only a few weeks later, Mr. Goulburn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, applied at Bow Street Police Office for a warrant to arrest a retired officer of the navy, who had threatened to shoot him.

      The unsettled condition of the country was shown by some disturbances which occurred about this time in South Wales. The small farmers in that portion of the Principality complained much of the heavy road-taxes which had been recently imposed. The tolls were often so onerous as to absorb the profit arising from the commodities which these humble people took to market. A number of gates had been set up, which were generally believed to be beyond the provisions of the law; and as these were destroyed with impunity, many people resolved to make a crusade against all toll-gates, wheresoever they might be found. In a wild and thinly-peopled country like Wales, authority is necessarily weak; and the conspirators against the gates were able to carry out their projects with less interference than would have been encountered in many other parts of the island. But it was considered advisable that these operations should take place after dark, and the winter of 1842-3 was rendered memorable by a series of successful attacks upon the toll-bars, attended by circumstances which were at once picturesque and alarming. The leader of the movement called himself “Rebecca,” from a strange misapplication of a passage in Genesis, and dressed himself in women’s clothes. Several of his followers were similarly disguised, and those who preserved their proper character as men wore masks over their faces. In the middle of the night the toll-keepers were aroused by a disorderly mob, armed with guns, and bearing torches, saws, and hatchets. Not only were the gates cut down and thrown on the adjacent land, but the toll-houses also were destroyed, and the occupants obliged to finish their night’s rest, if they could finish it at all, in the open field, or on the bleak hill-side. So general was the support given to these rioters that the police and soldiery were frequently baffled in their endeavours to come up with them. But at first no personal outrages were committed. Unfortunately, however, a much worse spirit afterwards set in. Some Chartist emissaries were sent into South Wales; political ideas, having reference to the abolition of tithes, of Church rates, and of the existing Poor Law, were mixed up with the original objects of the association; and in the autumn of 1843 incendiarism and murder marked the progress of this disorderly band. At the same period,