Читать книгу The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Vol. 1-4) - Robert Thomas Wilson - Страница 18

Table of Contents

Opening of Parliament in 1846—The Queen’s Speech—The Debate on the Address—Sir Robert Peel’s Statement—Mr. Disraeli’s Philippics—Bishop Wilberforce on Peel’s Reception by the House of Commons—Peel’s Mistake—Lord George Bentinck’s Attack on the Prince Consort—The Queen’s Explanations—The Court and the Peelites—The Corn Bill in the House of Lords—Lord Stanley’s Political Dinner-Party—The Duke of Wellington and the Peers—Triumph in the Lords and Defeat in the Commons—Peel’s Coercion Bill for Ireland—A Factious Opposition—Fall of the Government—Lord Aberdeen’s adroit Diplomacy—The Oregon Controversy and its Settlement—The Government’s Policy in India—War in the Punjab—Victories over the Sikhs—Resignation of the Ministry—The Queen’s Farewell to Peel—Her Suggestion of a Coalition—Wellington and Cobden advise Peel to dissolve—Reasons for his Refusal—The Queen and the Duke of Wellington—The Duke’s Letter to Lord John Russell—Lyndhurst and Reconstruction—Disintegration of the Tory Party—The Peelites in Opposition—A Hint from Aristophanes—Tory Persecution of Peel.

It was on the 19th of January, 1846,36 that the Queen opened in person the Parliament which revolutionised the commercial policy of England, and transferred the political centre of gravity from the territorial to the commercial aristocracy of the country. The Royal procession was formed at Buckingham Palace in the usual order. Her Majesty and Prince Albert descended the grand staircase shortly before two o’clock, the Queen wearing a lustrous diamond circlet on her fair white brow. The Prince was habited in a Field-Marshal’s uniform, and the orders of the Garter and Golden Fleece shone on his breast. The State coach with its eight cream-coloured horses then drove with the Royal party to the Palace of the Legislature, and as her Majesty passed through the densely crowded Royal Gallery it was seen that she was labouring under deep but suppressed emotion.

From the Throne she read, in clear but thrilling tones, the following speech:—

“My Lords and Gentlemen,—

“It gives me great satisfaction again to meet you in Parliament, and to have the opportunity of recurring to your assistance and advice.

“I continue to receive from my allies, and from other foreign Powers, the strongest assurances of the desire to cultivate the most friendly relations with this country.

“I rejoice that, in concert with the Emperor of Russia, and through the success of our joint mediation, I have been enabled to adjust the differences which have long prevailed between the Ottoman Porte and the King of Persia, and had seriously endangered the tranquillity of the East.

“For several years a desolating and sanguinary warfare has afflicted the States of the Rio de la Plata. The commerce of all nations has been interrupted, and acts of barbarity have been committed unknown to the practice of a civilised people. In conjunction with the King of the French I am endeavouring to effect the pacification of these States.

“The Convention concluded with France in the course of last year, for the more effectual suppression of the Slave Trade, is about to be carried into immediate execution by the active co-operation of the two Powers on the coast of Africa. It is my desire that our present union, and the good understanding which so happily exists between us, may always be employed to promote the interests of humanity, and to secure the peace of the world.

THE QUEEN OPENING PARLIAMENT IN 1846.

OPENING OF PARLIAMENT IN 1846: ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL PROCESSION AT THE HOUSE OF LORDS. (See p. 220.)

“I regret that the conflicting claims of Great Britain and the United States, in respect of the territory on the north-western coast of America, although they have been made the subject of repeated negotiation, still remain unsettled. You may be assured that no effort, consistent with national honour, shall be wanting on my part to bring this question to an early and peaceful termination.

“Gentlemen of the House of Commons,—

“The estimates for the year will be laid before you at an early period. Although I am deeply sensible of the importance of enforcing economy in all branches of the expenditure, yet I have been compelled, by a due regard to the exigencies of the Public Service, and to the state of our Naval and Military establishments, to propose some increase in the estimates which provide for their efficiency.

“My Lords and Gentlemen,—

“I have observed with great regret the frequent instances in which the crime of deliberate assassination has been of late committed in Ireland. It will be for you only to consider whether any measures can be devised calculated to give increased protection to life, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of so dreadful a crime.

“I have to lament that in consequence of a failure of the potato crop in many parts of the United Kingdom there will be a deficient supply of an article of food which forms the chief subsistence of great numbers of my people. The disease by which the plant has been affected has prevailed to the utmost extent in Ireland. I have adopted all such precautions as it was in my power for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings which may be caused by this calamity; and I shall confidently rely on your co-operation in devising such other means for effecting the same benevolent purpose as may require the sanction of the Legislature.

“I have had great satisfaction in giving my assent to the measures which you have presented to me from time to time, calculated to extend commerce, and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibitory and the relaxation of protective duties. The prosperous state of the revenue, the increased demand for labour, and the general improvement which has taken place in the internal conditions of the country are strong testimonies in favour of the course you have pursued.

“I recommend you to take into your early consideration, whether the principles on which you have acted may not with advantage be more extensively applied, and whether it may not be in your power, after a careful review of the existing duties on many articles, the produce of manufacture of other countries, to make such further reductions and remissions as may tend to ensure the continuance of the great benefits to which I have adverted, and, by enlarging our commercial intercourse, to strengthen the bonds of amity with Foreign Powers.

“Any measures which you may adopt for effecting these great objects will, I am convinced, be accompanied by such precautions as shall prevent permanent loss to the revenue, or injurious results to any of the great interests of the country.

“I have full reliance on your just and dispassionate consideration of matters so deeply affecting the public welfare.

“It is my earnest prayer that, with the blessing of Divine Providence on your councils, you may be enabled to promote friendly feelings between different classes of my subjects, to provide additional security for the continuance of peace, and to maintain contentment and happiness at home, by increasing the comfort and bettering the condition of the great body of my people.”

When the Queen retired, then the difficulty of some of our Constitutional forms became apparent. It was remarked at the time that, had her Majesty suddenly come down in the middle of the Session, and, usurping the functions of Ministers, laid a startling project of legislation before Parliament, she could not have found herself more thoroughly the mover of a controversial Bill than, in spite of herself, she had become that afternoon. Every caution had been exercised, it will be observed, in keeping all mention of the Corn duties out of the Royal Speech. Yet, within a few hours after it was read, the two Houses were engaged in an acrimonious debate, not on the guarded generalities of the Address from the Throne, but on the proposal for the total and immediate Repeal of the Corn Laws. The Queen’s Speech, looked at apart from the events of the day, might seem to recommend something less than that. But it was that, and nothing less, which was in men’s minds and hearts, and for once in our Parliamentary history the Debate on the Address was not a barren criticism of the general policy of the Government, but really a sharp discussion on a special measure foreshadowed dimly in the Royal Speech.

The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1846, in its bearing on the fate of the Corn Law Bill, has been so ably told both by Dr. Cooke Taylor, in his “Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,” and by Mr. John Morley, in his “Life of Cobden,” that it is hardly necessary here to do more than glance at its salient points. In the House of Lords the debate on the Address was brief and bitter—at least as bitter as the Duke of Richmond, who assailed Sir Robert Peel, could make it. But in the House of Commons the proceedings were more exciting. Lord Francis Egerton (afterwards Earl of Ellesmere) moved, and Mr. Beckett Denison, who had driven Lord Morpeth out of his seat for the West Riding, because his Lordship had joined the Anti-Corn-Law League, seconded the Address. Sir Robert Peel followed, and vindicated his change of policy, resting the chief strength of his case on his own observations, first, of the effect of the gradual relaxation of Protective duties which he had tried, and secondly, on the failure of the potato crop—a report on which had been drawn up for him by Professor Lindley and Dr. Lyon Playfair. It was in this speech that he intimated he was at first prepared to suspend the Corn Law by an Order in Council, but that his colleagues objected to that course on the ground that, if once opened to foreign corn, the ports could never again be closed. Lord John Russell followed, and explained how he had failed to form a Ministry; and then Lord George Bentinck, waiving his right as leader of the Protectionists to reply, put up Mr. Disraeli to deliver one of the first of those violent philippics against Peel which gave him a unique reputation as a Parliamentary sabreur. What could the House think of a statesman, he asked, who having, as he had boasted, served four sovereigns, was finally compelled, by the observations of the last three years, to change his opinion on a subject which had been discussed in his hearing from every conceivable point of view during a quarter of a century? He likened him to the Capitan Pasha of the Sultan, who, on the plea that he hated a war, ended it by going over to the enemy, and betraying his Imperial master. Peel’s speech, said Mr. Disraeli, was “a glorious example of egotistical rhetoric.” He was “no more a great statesman than a man who got up behind a carriage was a great whip. Both were anxious for progress, and both wanted a good place.” It was a brilliant, dazzling, witty harangue, and it caught the humour, not of the betrayed Protectionists merely, but to some extent of the House also. Looking back on Peel’s speech now, one can detect a false note in it. Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, who went to hear the debate, in a letter to Miss Noel, says that the Prime Minister’s statement was received with “a kind of thundering sullenness.”37 He unconsciously irritated the House by his assumption that the case for the Corn Laws must needs fall after he had personally put the matter to the test of a three years’

ST. STEPHEN’S CLOISTERS, WESTMINSTER HALL.

experiment. It lessened the grace of his submission to events and facts, when he argued as if the observations and experiments and researches of all the greatest economists in the world during a score of years were not in any sense conclusive till verified by Sir Robert Peel. And all through the debates, it is quite clear that he contrived to embitter his opponents by seeming to talk down to them. His tone was that of one who thought they were rather to be pitied than blamed, because they could not understand that if three years had sufficed to change the opinion of their leader, three minutes ought to suffice for the conversion of his followers. One crisis and one set of circumstances hardly convinced men, whose class interests were at stake, that Protection was wrong, especially after Sir Robert

LORD STANLEY (AFTERWARDS FOURTEENTH EARL OF DERBY).

Peel himself had taught them to disregard the experience of a quarter of a century. Peel, when he showed how keenly he felt Mr. Disraeli’s sarcasms, failed to remember that the arrows which stung him came from his own quiver.

A few days after the Session opened, Sir Robert Peel, in explaining his plan for getting rid of the Corn duties, made it clear that Repeal was to be total, but not immediate. Writing to Mrs. Cobden on the 28th of January, Cobden says:—“Peel is at last delivered, but I hardly know whether to call it a boy or a girl. Something between the two, I believe. His Corn measure makes an end of all Corn laws in 1849, and in the meantime it is virtually a fixed duty of 4s. He has done more than was expected of him, and all but the right thing.” As a matter of fact, there was to be a sliding scale till 1849, the maximum duty being 10s. when wheat was under 48s. a quarter, and the minimum duty being 4s. when wheat was 54s. a quarter. On the 2nd of March, when the House went into Committee on the resolution, Mr. Villiers’ amendment, insisting on immediate, as well as total, Repeal, was lost by a large majority, and on the 11th of May the Corn Bill reached the third reading. The debate lasted three nights, and at 4 a.m. on the 16th it was passed by a majority of 98 in a House of 516.

Before tracing the subsequent stages of this controversy, it may not be amiss to allude to one of the most curious incidents that marked its progress. On the 27th of January, when Sir Robert Peel’s resolutions embodying his financial policy came before the House of Commons, the presence of Prince Albert in the gallery, as a spectator of the scene, roused the jealousy and wrath of the Tories. Lord George Bentinck, in the course of the debate, waved his hand excitedly towards his Royal Highness, and accused him of being “seduced by the First Minister of the Crown to come down to this House to usher in, to give éclat, and, as it were, by reflection from the Queen, to give the semblance of a personal sanction of her Majesty to a measure which, be it for good or evil, a great majority at least of the landed, aristocracy of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, imagine fraught with deep injury, if not ruin, to them.” This was an insinuation at once ridiculous and unjust. The truth is that the Queen, from her girlhood, has had a somewhat exaggerated idea of the instructive value of Parliamentary debates. She is to this day an ardent student of all Parliamentary reports. She has the true Parliamentary instinct peculiar to England and English-speaking communities which leads them to take a strange but genuine delight in Parliamentary discussion. Indeed, she has been known to tell her Ministers not only what she thought of a particular debate, but how she herself would have handled the subject-matter of it had she been a member of the House of Commons; in fact, it was in replying to a communication of this kind that Lord Palmerston once observed, in the felicitous vein of a courtier, that it was a lucky thing for Ministers who had the misfortune to differ from her Majesty, that they had not to answer her arguments in Parliament. Under the influence of these ideas, the Queen naturally induced Prince Albert to attend the great historic debate of the 14th of January—“to hear a fine debate,” as she herself has said, “being so useful to all princes.”38 Party feeling, however, ran so high in 1846, that Lord George Bentinck and the Tory Protectionists put the worst construction on a perfectly innocent act. The Prince Consort simply went to listen to the discussion, just as the Prince of Wales and his son went to hear Mr. Gladstone introduce his Government of Ireland Bill in the House of Commons on the 8th of April, 1886; and it is a mark of the sweetened temper of political life in these latter days that not only did no Tory complain of the Prince’s presence on that occasion, but nobody even resented the kid-glove plaudits with which the young Prince Albert Victor, with the generous but irrepressible enthusiasm of youth, greeted Mr. Gladstone’s stately and impressive peroration.39 Lord George Bentinck’s attack on the Prince Consort was deficient alike in tact and taste; but it is only fair to say that there was the shadow of an excuse for it. It had been whispered that the Court had become Peelite—and the rumour was not without foundation in fact. The Prince Consort reflected its sympathies quite accurately when he wrote to Baron Stockmar, on the 16th of February, that Peel was “abused like the most disgraceful criminal,” adding not only that factions would combine to crush him—as they did—but that this “would be a great misfortune.”

In the House of Lords the course of the Corn Bill was comparatively smooth. Lord Stanley took the leadership of the Protectionists, but the disintegration of parties was complete. Nothing illustrates this better than a caustic remark which Lord Stanley threw out at a great political dinner-party at his house, two days after the Bill had been passed by the Commons. On that occasion he said, scoffingly, that it was most diverting to see a Liberal like Lord Bessborough whipping up the Bishops to support the Duke of Wellington on a Free Trade question.40 In the Upper House the opposition to the Bill virtually collapsed. Lord Stanley, when argumentative, was tame, and, when personal, vituperative. The ablest of the Bishops, in the name of the Church, repudiated the idea that the Protectionist policy had benefited the rural poor; and Wilberforce distinguished himself, especially, by his graphic picture of the sufferings which the agricultural labourers were enduring. The Duke of Wellington, however, decided the matter by telling the Peers that they would be wise to bow to public opinion with a good grace, and not commit themselves to a struggle between the Crown and the people. But he was hardly candid in pretending that the Crown in this matter was opposed to the people. This idea can be disproved by an extract from that remarkable letter in which the Queen, in speaking of Peel’s resumption of office, eulogises his chivalrous behaviour towards herself, and adds, with unaffected sincerity, “I have never seen him so excited and determined, and such a good cause must succeed.”41 The Lords, however, acting on the Duke’s advice, only engaged in a sham fight, and the final stage of the Bill passed without debate or division. The night on which Peel’s triumph in the Lords was announced was the night on which, however, his Ministry fell in the Commons. It was the night on which a combination of factions, as the Prince Consort had predicted, rejected what was called the Coercion Bill for Ireland, and wrecked the most popular Cabinet that ever governed England.

It has already been said that the unruly state of Ireland had been

SIR JAMES GRAHAM.

aggravated by famine, and that evictions, following refusal of rent, had been avenged by outrages. In the Queen’s Speech it had been indicated that measures to restore order in Ireland would be framed; but it was not till the end of June that a Coercion Bill was brought forward in the House of Commons for second reading. This was the Bill which was fatal to the Ministry. According to an old legend of the Moslems, a good angel and a bad angel walk on either side of a man all through life, and Lord Balling has very justly observed that, whilst Free Trade was the good angel of Peel’s Administration, its bad angel was Coercion for Ireland. The introduction of a Coercion Bill for Ireland, after the safety of the Corn Law Bill was assured, was taken as a plausible pretext for dissolving the alliance between the Whigs and the Government. It was regarded by the Protectionists as an excellent opportunity for punishing the Ministers for deserting them. Perhaps, if the truth were known, it was regarded by Sir Robert Peel himself as a good field in which to meet a defeat that was

VIEW IN OREGON: THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND MOUNT HOOD.

inevitable, and which would send him into the retirement for which latterly he had begun to crave. A great deal has been said and written as to the reasons which induced the various parties to form combinations against the Administration that had done the State such noble service. The motives of its enemies, however, were simple enough. The Protectionists had what they called their “betrayal” to avenge; the Whigs considered that Peel had behaved most ungenerously to the Melbourne Ministry, whose conciliatory Irish policy, as worked out by Lord Normanby and Mr. Drummond, had promised well for that country. They firmly believed that if they were in power they could control Ireland by kindness, but that in applying such a policy, they did not dare to trust as a colleague the Minister who had so unscrupulously overthrown Lord Melbourne. A union between Peel and Lord John Russell, such as the Queen desired to bring about, was also impossible for another reason—Peel would not part company with Sir James Graham. Lord John Russell, on the other hand, would not consent to act with Sir James, whom the Whigs detested as an unforgivable renegade. The Coercion Bill for Ireland was therefore doomed from the outset, not on its merits, but by party passion. This was so strong, that the Whigs in the House of Lords, as if to give Peel warning of his fate, actually combined with the Protectionists to defeat Lord Lyndhurst’s Charitable Trusts Bill, although it was directed against abuses which every Whig was pledged to attack. “We, alas,” Lord Campbell confesses, “with shame,” had “not enough virtue to withstand the temptation of snatching a vote against the Government”42—a vote, by the way, which kept alive heinous abuses for eight years longer.

The Upper House, however, was not quite so factious over the Irish Coercion Bill. It was introduced by the Earl of St. Germains, who explained that it enabled the Government not only to proclaim any district in Ireland in which crime prevailed, but to quarter extra police on it at the expense of the ratepayers. Stringent clauses prohibiting the possession of arms, and preventing people from quitting their houses between sunset and sunrise, were added. These were, in fact, the clauses which whetted the wit of the younger Radicals against what they derisively termed, not an Irish Coercion, but an “Irish Curfew Bill.” The Lords were also told that outrages in Ireland had risen from 1,496 in 1844, to 3,642 in 1845, and the Bill passed through the Upper House with very trifling opposition. It was in the Commons that it was destined to be made the battle-ground of factions. The Protectionists pretended that Peel was not in earnest in introducing it; for, though the Bill was announced in January, it was not till the 30th of March that Sir James Graham moved the first reading, and not till late in June that the second reading was taken. The Whigs and Radicals objected to the Bill because they held that conciliation, and not repression, was wanted in Ireland. The Irish members taunted Peel with having created the disturbances in Ireland by changing the tolerant policy of Melbourne, Normanby, and Drummond, and by giving Irish judicial appointments to the most violent Orange partisans. Others, like Mr. Roche, asked “Why don’t you feed the Irish peasantry, if, as is clear, hunger is making them discontented?” The position of men like Mr. Cobden was most embarrassing. As Liberals, they were bound to vote against the Bill. But then they did not wish to expel Peel from office—and Peel had said that by the Bill he would stand or fall. They decided at last to vote against the measure, and rightly, for it was impossible to carry on the Queen’s Government with three parties in the House—Peelites, Protectionists, and Whig Tree Traders. A single vote, moreover, could not save the Ministry, for Peel’s enemies would soon have organised another combination against him on another question. The Bill was accordingly defeated by a vote of 219 to 292, and the great Ministry which effected a peaceful revolution, and created a new era of government in England, fell before a majority of 73. Though 106 Protectionists returned to their old allegiance, and voted with Peel, 70 voted against him, and they, combined with all the Whigs and Radicals, rendered the defeat of the Government so complete that even Peel’s antagonists forbore to cheer. Writing on the 4th of July to Lord Hardwicke in India, the fallen Minister said he had every reason to forgive his enemies for “having conferred upon him the blessing of the loss of power.”43

Just before the fatal verdict was given, the Queen had the consolation of knowing that, thanks to the adroit diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, who was justly a persona grata at Court, a dispute with the United States as to the settlement of the Oregon territory had ended. This was some slight solace to her Majesty for the vexation of losing a Ministry which she felt convinced was in full touch with national sympathies at a most perilous time, and which she trusted, she says in one of her letters, because she never once knew them recommend anything “that was not for the country’s good, and never for the Party’s advantage only.”44 This controversy with the United States had in 1822 brought us to the verge of war, for, by a Convention in 1818, American and English settlers were to have the privilege of colonising the no-man’s land in Oregon indiscriminately for ten years, a term again renewed in 1827. Quarrels from clashing jurisdictions and conflicting allegiances naturally arose out of this confused state of things, and it was clear that the territory ought to be divided fairly and finally between the two Governments. In March, President Polk had sent a Message to Congress, pointing out that though England was at peace with all the world, she was making unusual warlike preparations “both at home and in her North American possessions.” This, the President broadly hinted, was due to the continuance of the Oregon dispute, and, alluding in an alarmist fashion to the contingency of war between the two nations, he suggested the propriety of also increasing the military and naval forces of the Republic. On the 13th of April, Mr. Reverdy Johnson proposed to the Senate a Resolution, which was carried, giving notice to England that the existing loose arrangement with regard to Oregon should, so far as America was concerned, determine at the end of twelve months, and urging on the Governments of both countries the necessity for taking steps to arrive at an amicable settlement. It was on the 9th of June that Lord Brougham asked Lord Aberdeen if it were true that the Oregon question had really been settled, and Lord Aberdeen answered in the affirmative. He seems to have managed the whole affair very skilfully. Finding that President Polk would not submit the dispute to arbitration, and that he sent a Message to the Senate recommending it to give notice of ending the joint occupation of Oregon, Lord Aberdeen waited to see what the Senate would do. When it passed Mr. Reverdy Johnson’s friendly and suggestive

THE BRITISH ARMY CROSSING THE SUTLEJ.

Resolution, Lord Aberdeen, discarding diplomatic forms, immediately acted on it, and submitted a draft of a new Oregon Convention, formulating his idea of an amicable settlement for the consideration of the United States. Mr. Pakenham, the American Secretary of State, promptly accepted it as the basis of the Treaty, which was ratified on 17th of June, 1846—a Treaty which made the 49th parallel of North latitude the boundary line between the two countries. All land to the north of that line went to Canada; and all land to the south of it, to the United States.

Another cause of anxiety had virtually disappeared before Peel resigned; office. The war cloud that loomed over our Indian frontier had vanished,

THE BATTLE OF FEROZESHAH.

though not till a brilliant and decisive campaign had been fought against the Sikhs in the Punjab.

The power of the Sikh nation was consolidated by Ranjit Sing—an adventurer who, in 1799, obtained a grant of Lahore from Zaman Shah. He gradually conquered the Punjab, and, in 1809, attacked the small Sikh States east of the Sutlej. Those Cis-Sutlej principalities accordingly sought and obtained British protection. In 1818, Ranjit stormed Multan, and carried the Khalsa banner from the extreme south of the Punjab, far away into the valley of Kashmir. In 1839, his son, Kharak Sing, succeeded to his throne, but was supposed to have been poisoned in 1840. After that, the Sikh dominion fell into anarchy, and frequent violations of British territory led to the first Sikh war of 1845.

On the 17th of November, 1845, the Sikhs declared war on the English, and on the 11th of December the first Sikh soldier crossed the Sutlej. On the 18th, the battle of Moodkee was fought by Sir Hugh Gough, afterwards Lord Gough, who was in command of an army of 11,000 men. Moodkee is a village in the Ferozepore district, lying in a plain twenty-six miles south of the Sutlej. Two days before the battle the Sikhs crossed the river at Ferozepore with 4,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, and 22 guns. At Moodkee they were driven from their position after a hard struggle, in which Gough had 215 killed and 657 wounded. The battle may be said to have gone on till the 22nd, when our troops stormed and took the entrenched camp of the enemy at Ferozeshah, twelve miles from the left bank of the Sutlej. The Sikhs attributed their defeat at that place not so much to the skill of our generals, as to the treachery of their own leader. They lost 2,000 men, and the British 694 killed and 1,721 wounded ere the earthworks were carried. Sir Robert Sale and General McCaskell were killed. Many of our losses were due to the blowing-up of the enemy’s camp after we had entered it; many of our men were killed whilst burying the dead, a misfortune attributed to our lack of a strong enough force of cavalry to clear the ground. Sir Henry Hardinge, the Governor-General, was present at both engagements. He had generously offered to serve in a military capacity under Gough, who put him in command of a Division. It was for this reason that Sir Henry wrote to Gough a despatch describing the battle, which had afterwards to be sent by Gough to Sir Henry himself in his capacity as Viceroy. It is interesting to note that our troops, for six days previous to the battle of Moodkee, had marched a distance of 150 miles, and that on the very day on which they fought that battle, they had made a forced march of thirty miles. Yet, though faint with fatigue, hunger, and thirst, when ordered to attack fresh troops, they went into action without a murmur and with the desperate valour that repulsed the enemy. During the night they bivouacked on the stricken field, and next day entrenched themselves, waiting for the onset of the Sikhs. But unexpectedly they were reinforced by two regiments, and then they pressed on to help Sir J. Littler, who was manœuvring at Ferozeshah. It was after joining him that they made the night attack on the enemy’s camp, which crowned their standards with victory. On the 26th of March, London was greatly excited by the tidings of another great victory, which had been won on the 28th of January. This is known as the victory of Aliwal, the battle having been fought at a village of that name about nine miles west of Loodiana, on the left bank of the Sutlej. It had been held by Ranjur Sing, who had crossed the river in force and menaced Loodiana. On the 28th, Sir Harry Smith—determined to clear the left bank of the stream, i.e., the British bank—attacked the Sikhs in great force, and, after a desperate effort, put them to flight. It was, however, a troopers’ battle, being gained by the stubborn valour of the British cavalry, which was hurled in masses, three times, against the Sikhs, each time piercing their lines. The last charge decided the day. The enemy were pushed into the river, where large numbers were drowned, and 67 guns were ultimately taken by the victors. The effect of this battle was immediate. The Khalsa banner vanished, as if by magic, from all the forts on our side of the Sutlej, and the territory east of the river submitted to the Indian Government.

All doubt as to the fortune of war ended on the 10th of February, 1846, when Gough fought the terrible battle of Sobraon. The Sikhs had chosen a strong position on the east side of the Sutlej, protecting the Hariki ford, and their rear rested on the village of Sobraon. It was on the Ferozepore side that the fight took place, the Sikhs holding their earthworks defiantly, till cut down almost to the last man. They lost 5,000 men, and but few lived to recross the Sutlej. This crowning victory, in which our losses were 320 killed and 2,083 wounded, cleared the left bank of the river. After news of the victory of Sobraon came to Lahore, the Ranee and her Durbar sent a chief—the Rajah Golab Sing, who had always been on good terms with the British Government—as an envoy, to sue for peace. The Rajah agreed to concede our demands, which were the surrender in full sovereignty of the territory between the Sutlej and Beas rivers; an indemnity of one and a half crore of rupees; the disbandment of the Sikh army, and its reorganisation on the system adopted by the celebrated Maharajah Ranjit Sing, the limitations on its employment to be determined in communication with the Indian Government; the surrender of all guns which had been pointed against us; and the control of both banks of the Sutlej. It was further agreed that Golab Sing and the young Maharajah Duleep Sing should repair to the camp of the Governor-General of India, which they did on the 18th of February, when his Highness the Maharajah formally made his submission. After this, it was arranged he should return to Lahore with the Governor-General and the conquering army, who occupied the city on the 22nd. In the actual Treaty it was further stipulated that no European or American was to be employed by the Maharajah Duleep Sing without the consent of the British Government, and that Golab Sing was to be made Maharajah of the territory lying between the Ravee and the Indus, including the valley of Kashmir, paying every year to our Government, in acknowledgment of British supremacy, a horse, twelve shawl goats, and three pairs of shawls. Subsequently, the conquering army marched in triumph to Delhi, escorting

SIR HENRY HARDINGE.

the trophies and spoils of the sixty days’ war, and displaying them proudly in every city and military station en route, as symbols of British prowess and prestige.

Sir H. Hardinge and Sir H. Gough were thanked in Parliament for their services, and raised to the peerage with munificent pensions. There were some who thought that the State was too lavish in its rewards on this occasion, and the country was reminded that it had done no more for Rodney than it was doing for Gough. Nor was this view altogether indefensible. Good luck rather than good guidance rescued us from a perilous situation in the Punjab, for it is certain that the Indian Government sent our troops to the field in a condition that would have rendered failure certain, had we been contending with European armies. The Sikhs, it is true, were a small nation, but they were a nation of warriors, and therefore formidable. They put into the field a splendidly

THE RIVAL PAGES. (Reduced Fac-simile after Punch.)

“I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place, John.”

THE RIVAL PAGES. (Reduced Fac-simile after Punch.)

“I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place, John.”

equipped and disciplined army of 100,000 men, who, as soldiers, were “bravest of the brave.” This was surely a powerful instrument of warfare, strong enough, in able hands, to change the destinies of an empire, and yet we were quite unprepared to meet such a dangerous enemy. Nothing, in fact, but the personal pluck of our troops at this great crisis saved our Indian dominion on our frontier. The Sikhs, however, it must be also stated, failed where they should have succeeded, because they had no general who was a master of strategy. They divided their army into two large corps. Each moved against our chief forts, Ferozepore and Loodiana, without intending to attack them, and it happened that the distance between these two forts was greater round by the Sikh side of the Sutlej than by ours. The Sikhs, therefore, had to manœuvre in the circumference of a circle, whilst we at the centre could move along its arc. The two Sikh armies were not mutually supporting. Had they both crossed the Sutlej in such fashion that they could have supported each other, we could hardly have attacked them at Ferozeshah, or fought for twenty-four hours against an army 70,000 strong, in an entrenched position, when another Sikh force, 40,000 strong, was within sound of our guns.

Hardly had the Queen and the country ceased to rejoice over political, diplomatic, and military triumphs, than another painful Ministerial crisis had to be faced. Sovereign and subject were alike touched by the strange and dramatic coincidence of their trusted Minister, at the supreme moment of victory, falling, like Tarpeia, crushed, as if in requital for a great service to the people. On the 26th of June there was a Cabinet meeting to consider the hostile vote on the Irish Coercion Bill, and the Prime Minister went down to Osborne to confer with the Queen. He returned to inform Parliament, on the 29th, that Ministers had tendered their resignations, and only held office till their successors could relieve them of their posts. He also said that he would support Lord John Russell in all his Free Trade measures, and paid an eloquent tribute to Mr. Cobden, to whom he generously gave credit for organising the victory of the Free Traders. When he left the House he was followed home by a cheering crowd.

The resignation of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues was a mournful incident in the Queen’s life. She had learned to respect and trust the Prime Minister and his colleagues, one of whom, Lord Aberdeen, had, by his gentle manners and cultured companionship, won the hearts of the Queen and the Prince Consort. The country, in the opinion of the Queen, was in a critical condition. One of the great political parties was shattered as a governing organisation, and her Majesty and her husband both knew how safe and valuable was the pilotage of those with whom, says Sir Theodore Martin, “they had grown familiar, not merely in the anxious counsels of State, but in the intimacies of friendship.”

There can be no doubt that the feeling of the Queen and of the country alike ran in favour of retaining Sir Robert Peel at the head of affairs. After he resigned, and the Whig Administration, headed by Lord John Russell, took his place, the sentiments of the Sovereign were, curiously enough, reproduced unconsciously by Mr. Wakley in the House of Commons. Referring to the change of Government, he said, “I am utterly at a loss to understand why it was that Sir Robert Peel left his place in the Cabinet, and gave up his situation to others who are scarcely prepared to carry out the Liberal principles which the Right Honourable Baronet professed in the last speech that he delivered to this House.... At this moment Sir Robert Peel is the most popular man in the kingdom. He is believed in, he is almost adored by the masses, who believe that no Minister before him ever made such sacrifices as he has made in their behalf.” Punch had, however, anticipated Mr. Wakley as an exponent of popular feeling when Sir Robert Peel tendered his resignation in December, 1845. The great comic journal then gave its readers a picture, showing Peel and Lord John Russell as rival candidates for the office of page to the Queen, and her Majesty settling the claims of one by saying, “I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place, John.” This was also the feeling even of the Whig gentry, who thought Lord John needlessly bold in forcing on such a disagreeable question as the Repeal of the Corn Laws in his letter to the electors of London. “I hear,” wrote Lord Clarendon, to Lord Lyndhurst, on the 17th of December, 1845, “Lord John has gone down to Windsor to-night; and I can assure you that the most acceptable news he can bring back to his whole party would be that he had not considered himself justified in undertaking the task proposed to him by the Queen.”45 That the Queen was still desirous of retaining her Ministers in office after they again resigned in June, 1846, is expressly taken for granted in a letter addressed by the Duke of Wellington to Peel on the 21st of June.46 It is put beyond all doubt by a letter dated the 7th of July from her Majesty to the King of the Belgians, in which she says:—“Yesterday (6th of July) was a very hard day for me. I had to part from Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable losses to us and to the country. They were both so much overcome that it quite upset me, and we have in them two devoted friends. We felt so safe with them.” At Court it was thought that Sir Robert should dissolve, or coalesce with the more moderate Whigs. The Duke of Wellington was for dissolution, and, by a curious coincidence, for the same reason which Mr. Cobden seems to have given in a private letter which he wrote to the fallen Minister recommending that step. Peel’s public services, and the confidence which the industrial classes had in his policy, would, he thought, induce the country to give him a working majority.47 On the other hand, Sir Robert Peel thought that to dissolve on a Coercion Bill for Ireland “would shake the foundations of the legislative union,” and ensure “a worse return of Irish Members—rendered more desperate, more determined to obstruct, by every artifice, the passing of a Coercion Bill in the new Parliament.” In fact, he was at pains to impress on the Queen the tradition which she is understood to have handed down to a later generation of statesmen that, with the exception of “No Popery,” the most dangerous of all election cries is “Coercion for Ireland.”48 There was another cogent reason which had weight with the Queen. Her Majesty has ever regarded the power to dissolve Parliament as a sacred trust vested in her for the protection of the country, and the Crown, against factious Parliaments. But it is a power like the talisman in

LORD CAMPBELL.

Balzac’s story, that loses its virtue by repeated use on trivial occasions. “The hope of getting a stronger minority,” said Peel, in his Memorandum to the Duke of Wellington, “is no justification for a Dissolution.” And yet, with all his popularity, that was his highest hope. The differences between Lord John Russell and Lord Grey were not acute enough to cause a schism in the Whig Party. The Free Traders, on whom the Duke of Wellington relied so much, had given all the glory of Repeal to Cobden. They were exhausting their energies and enthusiasm in organising a testimonial to him, and had none to spare for the reconstruction of a new Party of Progressive Reform, under the leadership of Peel. As for the Radicals and the Irish Nationalists, they would have declared war to the knife against the Minister who made Coercion for Ireland his cry. As for the Tory Party, Sir Robert was to them in the position of the man mentioned in Scripture, who found his worst foes in his own household. On the whole, it was perhaps wise that he resisted the temptation to yield to such potent influences as those of the

THE HORSEGUARDS, FROM THE PARADE GROUND.

Queen, the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Cobden, and firmly refused to dissolve Parliament.

The next question that disturbed the Court was what would the Duke of Wellington do? The Queen was personally most anxious that he should remain at the head of the army as Commander-in-Chief, in spite of any change of Ministry. She had, on the occasion of Sir Robert Peel’s interview with her in December, when he first resigned, expressed this wish. But she knew that if the Duke consented he would unwittingly give great strength to Lord John Russell’s Government, and with characteristic shrewdness she judged that Sir Robert Peel might possibly regard with little favour a proposal which was rather like asking him to lend his rival one of his strongest colleagues. But her Majesty mooted the matter with such grace and tact, that Sir Robert Peel was not only eager to give his assent, but assured her that he would do everything in his power to remove any difficulty that might arise on the part of the Duke.49 At the same time, he also undertook to convey to Lord Liverpool, for whom the Queen had a very high regard, the letter in which she earnestly urged him to retain the appointment of Lord Steward. The Duke of Wellington was well aware of Sir Robert’s views, and concurred with him fully in sacrificing all considerations of party tactics to the wishes expressed by the Sovereign, whose popular sympathies interpreted national feeling with so much accuracy and precision. Thus it came to pass that when Lord John Russell’s Ministry took office in July, his Grace was quite prepared to receive from the Prime Minister a personal request from her Majesty, inviting him to retain his post as Commander-in-Chief of the army. But the grim warrior felt it his duty to explain definitely, in writing, to Lord John the exact significance that was to be attached to his consent. In a letter to Lord Lyndhurst,50 dated the 23rd of July, his Grace says:—“I told you that in consequence of her Majesty having conveyed to me her commands that I should continue to fill the office of Commander-in-Chief of her Majesty’s Land Forces, through her Minister, Lord John Russell, I had given my consent; but that I had explained myself to Lord John nearly in the very words of, and had referred to, a letter which I had written to her Majesty in December last, when her Majesty had herself in writing intimated the same command to me, on the occasion of the retirement of Sir Robert Peel from her Majesty’s service, and Lord John Russell having received her commands to form a Government. Here follow the very terms used:—‘It is impossible for F.M. the Duke of Wellington to form a political connection with Lord John Russell, or to have any relations with the political course of the Government over which he will preside. Such arrangement would not conciliate public confidence, be creditable to either party, or be useful to the service of her Majesty; nor, indeed, would the performance of the duties of the Commander-in-Chief require that it should exist. On the other hand, the performance of these duties would require that the person filling the office should avoid to belong to or act in concert with any political party opposed to the Government.’ Her Majesty was thus made aware of the position in which I was about to place myself in case her Majesty should communicate to me her official command that I should resume the command of her army.”

These matters are of some little interest to the new generation, which has been taught that in England the personality of the Sovereign counts for very little in public affairs, and who are only too ready to run away with the idea that, under a discreet and taciturn Queen, the Crown, as Mr. Disraeli once said, has become a cipher, and the Sovereign a serf. Even in her inexperienced youth we see the greatest Minister and the greatest Captain of the age paying chivalrous deference to her Majesty’s personal wishes. It may be said that the incident cited is a trivial one. In our delicate and complex system of party Government no incident affecting the personal relations of a Minister of State, either to the Crown or to a Cabinet, is ever trivial. In this particular case let us ask what followed almost directly from the diplomatic success which the Queen won in persuading Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington to yield to her desire, that even under a Whig Government his Grace should still serve as Commander-in-Chief? Why, this. When Lord Lyndhurst—who, according to the ill-natured insinuations of Lord Campbell, was hankering once more after the Lord Chancellorship—began to intrigue for the purpose of reuniting the broken ranks of the old Conservative Party, he naturally turned to the Duke of Wellington after Peel received his suggestions with marked coldness. Had he won over the Duke to his project, he might have succeeded. But this very letter, which has been quoted, was written by the Duke to explain that, though most anxious to see the Party reconstructed, yet he had, at the request of the Queen, accepted the office of Commander-in-Chief, and was therefore no longer free to act in concert with “any political party not connected with the existing Administration.” It cost Mr. Disraeli the unwearying labour of a quarter of a century to do the work that might have been done in a few sessions, if Lord Lyndhurst had secured the cordial and active co-operation of the Duke of Wellington in his bold enterprise.

But reconstruction at this time was not to be. Peel had no desire to serve again as a partisan leader, or to reorganise the Party he had felt it his duty to shatter, though his career was buried in its ruins. He and his followers joined neither the Protectionists nor the Whigs. They came to be known as the Peelites, and so bitter was the feeling among their old associates that petty objections were raised against their sitting on the Conservative benches after they had quitted office. In a pamphlet privately printed at Edinburgh Sir Robert Peel was derisively recommended to solve the problem of his seat in the House of Commons by taking “another hint from Aristophanes. As we have seen him before adopt from the ‘Knights,’ the admirable trick of the sausage seller, so now he seems to have borrowed a suggestion from the ‘Clouds.’ We are given to understand that in next Parliament he will soar above parties, for he has determined to suspend himself in a basket from the roof.”51