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

(baronial sessions) to employ the destitute Irish people on relief works started by State advances, to be repaid in ten years at 3½ per cent. To meet the case of poor districts where repayment was impossible, an appropriation of £50,000—a ridiculously small sum—was set aside for grants in aid. Parliament, in sheer weariness, sanctioned this project, although it was warned that the scheme would divert public money from the improvement of the land to the construction of useless roads and bridges, and tempt the peasantry to neglect husbandry for well-paid labour on superfluous public works. As Mr. Disraeli subsequently said, its effect was to set a population as great as that of Holland to break stones on the roads, and, he might have added, on good roads, that were too often broken up that they might be unnecessarily remetalled.

      Towards the end of the Session the House of Commons plunged into a somewhat exciting controversy over the abuse of corporal punishment in the army. This arose out of the revolting disclosures which were made at an inquest which Mr. Wakley, M.P., Coroner for Middlesex, insisted on holding on the body of a soldier named Whyte, who, on the 15th of July, had died from the effects of 150 lashes which had been administered to him by order of a court-martial. A storm of passionate wrath swept through the land when the truth, in spite of vain efforts at concealment on the part of the military authorities, was revealed. The Duke of Wellington, when he heard of the affair, exclaimed to Mr. Fox Maule, Secretary of State for War, “This shall not occur again. Though I believe that corporal punishment cannot be dispensed with, yet I will not sanction that degree of it which shall lead to loss of life and limb.” In fact, his Grace had reason to fear that the Queen’s indignation would be roused by this scandalous occurrence, for he knew only too well that she held very pronounced views, not altogether in accord with his own, on the subject of military punishment. On one occasion, for instance, when the Duke brought her a soldier’s death-warrant to sign, she asked him, with tears in her eyes, if there was nothing to be said on behalf of the man. The Duke explained that he was an incorrigible deserter, but, after being pressed by her Majesty, admitted that the culprit’s comrades spoke well of him in other respects. Her Majesty replied, eagerly, “Oh, your Grace, I am so glad to hear that,” and, with trembling hand, rapidly scribbled the word “Pardoned” across the fatal scroll, and signed her name with a sigh of relief and a smile of satisfaction. Captain Layard therefore felt sure of his ground when, on the 3rd of August, he rose in the House of Commons to move an Address to the Crown complaining of the use of the lash in the army. His motion was withdrawn, but Dr. Bowring immediately gave notice

      PARDONED: THE QUEEN AND THE DESERTER’S DEATH-WARRANT. (See p. 248.)

      of another motion for the abolition of corporal punishment in the Service. It never came on for discussion, because the Duke of Wellington interposed, and appeased public feeling, by issuing an order restricting the powers of courts-martial, and prohibiting them from inflicting more than fifty lashes even in the worst cases.

      Parliament was prorogued on the 28th of August, the Lord Chancellor reading the Queen’s Speech. Her Majesty congratulated both Houses on the passing of the Corn Law Bill, on the settlement of the Oregon dispute, on the victories in India, and, oddly enough, on “a considerable diminution of crime and outrage in Ireland”—a significant commentary on the abortive attempt of Lord John Russell to prolong the existing Irish Arms Act.

      During 1846 the relations between England and her Colonies were, save in one instance, undisturbed, though in Canada some traces of the bitter feeling engendered by the rebellion were still discernible. The Governor, Lord Metcalfe, had incurred considerable unpopularity, because he had not consulted the Ministry as to filling certain offices, which he maintained were Crown appointments. The old disputes, too, which arose out of attempts to charge compensation to rebels on the fund set aside for compensating loyalists for losses suffered during the rebellion, had left rankling memories behind them. Lord Metcalfe, on his death, was succeeded by Lord Cathcart, who opened the Second Session of the Second Canadian Parliament on the 20th of March. His Excellency’s speech hardly pleased his audience. He referred, naturally, with great good feeling, to the death of his predecessor, Lord Metcalfe. But this only incited the minority to bring forward an amendment, which, while expressing regret at Lord Metcalfe’s death, omitted all reference whatever to the manner in which he had discharged his duties. Though the Colony had no reason, said the representatives of this party, to love military governors, yet they had no objection to congratulate Lord Cathcart on his own appointment. Objectionable, however, as his military education might be to them, it could not, they declared, render him as objectionable as Lord Metcalfe, whose political training and experience were purely Oriental. The one topic of high Imperial importance dealt with by Lord Cathcart was his reference to the adoption of Free Trade by the mother country. The Canadians, it may be said, viewed the new commercial policy of Sir Robert Peel with the utmost alarm. The doctrine of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest had no charms for them, for they were afraid that if the duties were taken off which gave colonial a preference over foreign grain, Canada would be ruined by American competition. On the 12th of May the Canadian Legislative Assembly accordingly adopted an Address, which gave forcible expression to the dismal prediction that Free Trade with England must impoverish Canada, and thus depress one of the best markets then open to English commerce. Mutterings of secession even ran through the Address: it warned the Crown that, when the Canadians found they could not successfully compete with the United States in the only market open to them, they would naturally begin to doubt whether it was “a paramount advantage” to remain subjects of the British Empire. Undoubtedly the Free Trade policy of Peel, whatever good it may have done, had one baneful effect. It alienated the Canadian Colonists from the mother country.

      In Nova Scotia the Governor, Lord Falkland, when he met the Legislative Assembly on the 10th of January, had, like the Queen at home, to lament the prevalence of distress due to the failure of the potato crop. But otherwise the Colonists had a good harvest, not only from the land, but from the sea. It was to this Parliament that the Government suggested the construction of a railway from Halifax to Quebec and Montreal—the first development of the policy which, by linking the different provinces of British America by bands of iron roads, rendered confederation possible.

      New Zealand was the only Colony which gave her Majesty and her Ministers much serious concern during 1846. It was a dependency which was originally meant to be colonised as an experimental test of Mr. Wakefield’s theories.54 A Company was formed for this purpose, and its administrators were to use the proceeds of land sales, to import labour in fair proportion to the land appropriated. They were also to see that settlers did not, by dispersal, degenerate into squatters. The first ruler of the settlement, Governor Hobson and his officials annoyed the Company in the most provoking manner. They selected the land for emigrants foolishly, and they neglected to appropriate £40,000 from land sales to the immigration service. His successor, Captain Fitzroy, found the Colony with a debt of £68,000, an expenditure of £20,000 a year, and a population of 15,000. He issued £15,000 worth of paper money, which he made a legal tender; upset the terms on which settlers had bought native lands; refused on various pretexts to let emigrants, who had paid the Company cash for their lands in England, settle on them when they came out; encouraged native turbulence by ill-timed displays of sympathy; and suppressed a local Volunteer Force, offering the Colony, as a substitute, fifty soldiers, to protect a region 200 miles long, and inhabited by 10,000 persons. In fact, instead of governing the Colony, the Governor had virtually made war on the Colonists, whose hostility to him was pronounced and unconcealed. Perhaps they were a little unjust to him, for the circumstances in which he was placed were full of difficulty. He had to confront a large disaffected aboriginal population. He had only a handful of troops to support him, and there were no places of refuge or defence for the Colonists to fly to. Auckland and Wellington would thus, he thought, have been destroyed by the overpowering forces which the natives were ready to launch against the British settlers, forces which nothing could restrain, save moral influence wielded by a conciliatory Government. However, the feeling against Captain Fitzroy in the Colony was so strong that he was recalled, and Captain Grey was sent out in his stead. His arrival was hailed with delight, for it was supposed to inaugurate a new era in New Zealand.

      Governor Grey, soon after he entered on his duties, began to coerce the turbulent