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

Dowager Christina—Secret History of the Conspiracy—M. Guizot’s Pretext—How the English Minister at Madrid was Deceived—Lord Palmerston’s Indiscreet Despatch—The Queen’s Cutting Letter to the Queen Marie Amélie—Metternich’s Caustic Epigram—The Prince Consort’s Resentment against the King of the French—End of the Anglo-French Alliance—Fall of the Republic of Cracow.

      Lord John Russell had no serious difficulty on this occasion in forming a Ministry. The transfer of Ministerial offices was effected at Buckingham Palace on the 6th of July, 1846. Some recognition was due to the Anti-Corn-Law League for the aid it had given the Whigs in their contest for supremacy with the Party which had allied itself with the Protectionists. An office of Cabinet rank would have been offered to Mr. Cobden, but he was desirous of obtaining some respite from the severe strain of political life. His private affairs had suffered from his devotion to the public service, and, as his biographer admits, it would have been difficult to appoint to a high office in the State a politician whose friends were at the time collecting a public subscription on his behalf. Mr. Villiers was offered a place, but refused it. Lord John Russell finally induced Mr. Milner Gibson to represent the Free Trade Party in the Government, as Vice-President of the Board of Trade—a post devoid of high dignity and strong influence. Three of Sir Robert Peel’s colleagues—Mr. Sidney Herbert, Lord Dalhousie, and Lord Lincoln—were invited to join the Government as a concession to the feeling of those who demanded a coalition. The invitation was declined. It was, in truth, one that could not have been honourably accepted, and, therefore, it should never have been made. There was no reason to suppose that these statesmen were ready to remodel their views on Coercion, as suddenly as they had recast their opinions about Corn.

      Leaving Mr. Milner Gibson out of account, we may say that the new Ministry was of the conventional Whig type, the only notable addition to it being Lord Grey, who by this time had overcome his objections to serve in the same Cabinet with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary.52 Lord Lansdowne, as Lord Privy Seal, led the Party in the House of Lords; Sir George Grey went to the Home Office, a perilous post in times of popular distress and discontent; Mr. C. Wood—afterwards Lord Halifax—became

      LORD MACAULAY.

      Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr.—afterwards Lord—Macaulay, Postmaster-General; Lord Bessborough, Lord Lieutenant, and Mr. Labouchere, Chief Secretary for Ireland. John, Lord Campbell, joined the Ministry as Chancellor of the Duchy. He says:—“I ought to have been satisfied, for I received two seals—one for the Duchy of Lancaster, and one for the County Palatine of Lancaster. My ignorance of the double honour which awaited me caused an awkward accident; for when the Queen put two velvet bags into my hand, I grasped one only, and the other, with its heavy weight, fell down on the floor, and might have bruised the Royal toes; but Prince Albert good-naturedly picked it up and restored it to me.”53 The programme of the Government was modest and practical, and independent men were gratified to find that social questions, such as the housing of the poor, and popular education, figured in it prominently. But it rested on no very solid basis, for it was supported by the Peelites against the Protectionists, and by the Protectionists against the Peelites. As for its own immediate followers, they shared the opinion of Mr. Bickham Escott, who, when Lord John Russell explained his position to the House, warned the Government significantly that previous Whig Ministries had failed for two reasons: they startled the people by proclaiming novel principles, and then disgusted the country by insisting on applying them prematurely. It has been said that the Ministry was not in favour at Court, and that Lord John Russell had reason to regret that he was not a persona grata with her Majesty. Such statements are quite unfounded, for the Queen supported her new Ministers as loyally as her old ones. Writing on the relations between her Majesty and her Prime Minister at this time, Lord Campbell says:—“He (Lord John Russell) has always risen with the occasion, and now very worthily fills the office of Prime Minister. His deportment to the Queen is most respectful, but he always remembers that as she can do no wrong he is responsible for all measures of her Government. He is enough at Court to show that he enjoys the Constitutional confidence of the Sovereign without being domiciled there as a favourite.”

      The first question that demanded attention was that of the Sugar Duties. Lord John Russell, on the 20th of July, proposed a plan, the essence of which was a gradual reduction of the differential duties on foreign sugar, till they reached a vanishing point in 1851, when all kinds of sugar, whether of British or foreign growth, would be taxed equally. The Protectionists opposed this project on plain Protectionist principles. But the Peelites, though generally of opinion that the free-grown sugar deserved to be protected a little longer against slave-grown sugar, supported the Government, mainly because they thought a change of Ministry and a general election would be injurious to the country, whilst parties were in a confused state of transition. The second reading of the Bill was therefore carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 130; though in the House of Lords the measure was saved only by a majority of 18. In the Upper House the Government suffered considerably from the opposition of Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, whose brilliant speech, coming as it did from a strong Free Trader, turned many votes. His views, which were shared not only by a large body of impartial and philanthropic Liberals, but were even supposed to find favour at Court, where he exercised at that time great influence over Prince Albert, are worth reproducing. Writing to Miss Noel before the debate, he said:—“I am at present convinced (1) that no extension of Free Trade could be more beneficial to our poor producers and poor consumers at home than that to the Brazils; (2) that the probable effect of the same measure would ultimately benefit our Indian Colonies; (3) that the refusal of the measure will lead either to a dissolution of Parliament or a resignation of the Ministry, both very injurious at this moment—that I therefore earnestly desire to support the motion. But that I am at present convinced that the opening of this trade would lead at once and certainly to a great extension of the Brazilian and Cuban slave trade, and that no demonstrated advantages to be gained or losses to be incurred can for a single instant make me hesitate as to giving the most emphatic negative possible to such a proposal.” The fallacy here is obvious. It sprang from the assumption that a nation is bound to apply its own standard of morality to the commercial institutions and customs of foreign countries, and restrict its foreign trade to those cases where foreigners accept that standard. The universal application of such a principle would soon annihilate commerce as a civilising agency in the world. The United States might refuse to trade with England, because she permitted landlords to evict Irish peasants from rack-rented farms. We might have been called on to buy no tallow or hides from Russia, because they were produced by serfs. To be consistent, the Bishop of Oxford should have demanded cessation of traffic, not only with slave States but with all free States that traded with them. It was curiously illogical to argue that by fettering trade we could free the slave.

      Hardly had Lord John Russell’s Government settled down in office when they were alarmed by the disturbed state of Ireland, where evictions and famine were goading the peasantry on to agrarian outrages. The Whigs were embarrassed by their opposition to Sir Robert Peel’s Coercion Bill, because they had justified their tactics by belittling the disorder and lawlessness which that measure was designed to repress. Many of their own supporters accordingly complained bitterly when Ministers, on the 7th of August, invited the House to prolong the expiring Irish Arms Act till May, 1847. Lord John Russell’s only excuse was, that there was a distinction to be drawn between the proposal of new coercive legislation, and a request to prolong an existing law, without which it was impossible to curb the mania for buying arms and ammunition which was seizing the Irish peasantry. The spirit and tone of the Opposition speeches during the debate on Peel’s coercive measure conveyed, and were meant to convey, to the people of England and Ireland the impression that the Whigs were opposed, not merely to a Coercion Bill, but to a coercive policy, and the distinction between proposing new and prolonging old but expiring repressive legislation was generally felt to be a distinction without a difference. Lord Seymour forced Lord John Russell to withdraw the clauses in the Arms Act relating to domiciliary visits and the branding of arms; but, though this enabled the Government to carry the second reading of the measure on the 10th of August, it was ultimately abandoned on the 17th. On that day the Government fell back on an alternative policy. They introduced a remedial