TWO PRIME MINISTERS

“You forget, my dearest love, that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London, therefore two or three days is already a long time to be absent.”--_Queen Victoria’s Letter to Prince Albert._ 1840.

“We know we say how very good our Queen is, And what a manager and what a mother! But though all this so very plainly seen is, We cannot quite our discontentment smother. Her virtues we admire, but what we mean is, Of two moves she should choose the one or t’other; The one is--coming out amongst the nation, The other--going in for abdication.” _Contemporary verse._ 1868.

Of the men who held the exalted post of Prime Minister during the last forty years of Queen Victoria’s reign, the two most notable were Gladstone and Disraeli. They were in almost every way in extreme opposition to each other, and they had a profound dislike for each other. Gladstone’s dislike was downright and caustic, and Disraeli’s sarcastic and suave. Gladstone had intellectual depth, Disraeli was superficial and brilliant; the one was devoted to ruling an improved England, the other to wielding Imperial power; the first found his greatest pleasure in living with the old Greek writers, notably Homer, the other in writing graceful and satirical novels. Their points of agreement belonged purely to their external life. They were both faithful lovers and both won the adoration of their wives. Mrs. Gladstone, once known as “the beautiful Catherine Glynn,” was in her age once heard at a royal concert discoursing upon her married happiness, and concluded with the remark, “But perhaps, my dear, you don’t know what it is to have an affectionate husband!” She also once spoke of her husband as “surrounded with a halo of humility.” But a beautiful story is that of a clergyman calling to see Gladstone, and being entertained by Mrs. Gladstone until her husband, who was writing upstairs, was disengaged. The visitor lamented the terrible state of affairs in Ireland, but added consolingly--

“There is One above who will set all right.”

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Gladstone; “he’ll be down directly!”

Disraeli married Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, who was the widow of a friend, and fifteen years older than himself. He would tell her in joke that he had married her for money, but she would only smile and say, “But if you had to do it again you would do it for love”; to which he would agree. She called him, as many other people did, “Dizzy,” and he spoke of her as Mary Anne. It was a case in which the quality of protectiveness was exercised by the wife, for Mrs. Disraeli stood ever between her husband and trouble, and counted herself as nothing. She was once driving to the House with him, when her hand got crushed in the carriage door, but she bore the pain silently, smilingly, for fear knowledge of the accident should distract his mind from the important speech he was about to make. She was more discriminating than Mrs. Gladstone, perhaps because she had a strong sense of humour, and she once said to a friend, “Dizzy has the most wonderful moral courage in the world, but no physical courage. When he has a shower-bath, I always have to pull the string.”

Certainly in their home lives both the Gladstones and the Disraelis came well up to the Queen’s ideal of perfection. Gladstone once, staying at Windsor, was talking to a colleague on serious political questions, when a slight noise was heard through an open door, much to the horror of the colleague.

“Never mind,” said Gladstone; “it is only my wife. For forty years she has heard me discuss matters of State, but never once has anything come back to me.”

Gladstone had come naturally to a parliamentary life, but Disraeli, hampered by his race and comparative poverty, had had to fight for it from the beginning. It is said that when he saw the first caricature of himself he jumped for joy, declaring that now his career was made. As a boy of fourteen he had been christianized, but he never really changed his religious beliefs, and for that reason could fight equally well on any side of Christian dispute. Yet he had once said, “You will see many things, but there are two which you will never _not_ see me--a Jew and a Radical.”

When Darwinism was first discussed he thought it politic to condemn it in a speech at Oxford.

“What is the question?” he asked. “It is now placed before society with, I might say, a glib assurance which to me is astonishing--the question is, is man an ape or an angel? (A laugh.) Now, I am on the side of the angels. (Cheers.)” This saying has become a “familiar quotation”; _Punch_ fastened on it thus--

“On the side of the angels, my Dizzy? ah, then, How happy the angels should be! The ally whom they least could have looked for of men, In their army enlisted to see!”

Of the two men politically no one can doubt which Victoria preferred. The Prince Consort had once said of the Liberal, “Mr. Gladstone is a very clever man, and as he was educated at Oxford, he is able to believe anything he chooses.”[7] And, with her subservient regard for the lightest word of the Prince, the Queen accepted this libel upon an honest statesman. Gladstone was also too subtle and intellectual for her, she _could_ not understand him, always feeling irritated at the end of an interview, probably for the same reason that a Liberal once gave for his dislike of the Minister, “Oh, he is always so damnably right.”

Gladstone regarded Victoria with the deepest loyalty and respect, both personally and because he felt the Crown to be sacred; he accepted to their fulness the assertions that she studied every question put before the country, and would go into details in explanation of his views, which she could not follow; and once she said petulantly after he was gone, “He talks to me as though I were a public meeting.”

Disraeli, on the contrary, spoke a little on politics, told her some amusing stories, discussed intricate German relationships and German art, found occasion to make her laugh and to impress her with her high importance. He had no scruples either about the use of flattery. “First of all remember,” he said to a colleague who was going out to Baden with the Queen, “that she is a woman!” This and his charming manner give the secret of his ascendancy over Victoria; she was what we now call a mid-Victorian woman, and her Conservative adviser realized it and treated her with the chivalrous air and the banalities which were then regarded as the correct thing for the “inferior sex.” So Disraeli’s gaiety delighted her, his deference soothed her wounded self-respect, and his flattery confirmed her belief that all she did was right. She took him into her confidence and gave him a definite part in her life, and he was nearly at the height of his ambition; not quite, for there was one little thing still to achieve.

Gladstone’s deep respect and sincere loyalty were to her but the dues of her position; that he did not accompany them with an equally deep interest in the small things of her life was an offence, and it would have utterly surprised him to know that she said of him that he showed “little interest” and was “very helpless” in her personal affairs. She is not the only one who has preferred as a friend one who could sympathize with her own point of view rather than one who was absorbed in her matters of business.

This power for sympathy was the secret of Victoria’s friendship for Dr. Norman Macleod. In her diary, under date June 17, 1866, when she was indignant at the discontent of her English people, she wrote of the clergyman--

“He was so amiable and full of sympathy; he also suffers much from constant work and worry and must go abroad for relaxation. Told him how much I required it and that I came here for it, and had had a hard fight for it. He said he quite felt this, and entreated me--‘as you work for us’--always to insist upon coming here.”

There have been many theories for Victoria’s dislike of Gladstone, but they all resolve themselves into incompatibility of manner and outlook, and a dislike for his politics. This double dislike she never hid, often giving it public expression, and at his death many stories were revived about actual personal discourtesies offered, such as keeping him waiting hours when he was summoned for an audience, while she went out for a drive or otherwise followed her usual routine, and refusing to speak to him if she met him anywhere. That Gladstone never allowed this to influence his policy angered her the more, and he, speaking in his age of their strained relations, said that from his first entrance to Windsor to his last there had been occasions when he had had to harden his heart to a flint, for his actions had always been “sole”; that is to say, he had been working for a principle and had had to resist all the Queen’s efforts to shake him from it.

She loved the brave show, the splendid outside fabric, the imperialistic ideas which characterized Disraeli, and had little appreciation of the solid building work which opposed Gladstone to him. It was enough that the former wanted to extend her empire. Gladstone had no interest in that; he had his mind upon the people, and saw that if a revolution was to be avoided the ills of Ireland must be cured, not accentuated by suppression; that if the Queen was to be maintained firmly upon her throne the English must be given the franchise reform that they demanded. Victoria, obsessed by her conviction of divine right, could not see these things at all.

So it was very much to her annoyance that in March 1866, when Prussia was getting ready for its swoop on Austria, she saw Gladstone bring in a Reform Bill. She wanted all her attention for continental happenings, and when she realized that her ministers intended to make this Bill the great measure of the session, and also that it would be a very contentious measure, she declared that it could not possibly be regarded as of sufficient importance to be allowed to upset the Government. She plainly told Lord John Russell that, whatever happened to his Franchise Bill, she would allow no change in the Ministry until the Austro-Prussian war was settled. In return her Cabinet begged her to stay at Windsor through May while the debates were progressing, that she might be at hand if a crisis arose.

Her answer was that she intended to go to Balmoral as usual, and she expected the Government to allow no crisis to occur.

So while the House was in the midst of an energetic struggle, Victoria left England to follow her pleasant but mild occupations in the Highlands: driving, riding, sketching, visiting hallowed spots, and hearing sympathetic words from Dr. Macleod. But her command could not control the conflict of six hundred men, and in the middle of June the Government was defeated by eleven votes, causing a tremendous scene of ebullient joy among the Tories.

Victoria was extremely “provoked,” and said she was taken entirely by surprise. Had she been--what it is so often claimed that she was--a truly constitutional sovereign, no surprise could have fallen upon her; it was her unconscious tendency to absolute monarchy which had made her believe that it was only necessary for her to speak to be obeyed. Lord John Russell was then very old, and felt that he had done his last public work; the journey to Balmoral was too much for him to contemplate, so he sent his resignation by messenger, which also displeased the Queen.

While she was in Scotland monster Reform meetings were held in all large towns, and yet she wrote back to Russell that the state of Europe was dangerous, the country was apathetic about reform, and it was inconsistent with the duty that ministers owed herself and the country to abandon their posts on what was, after all, only a matter of detail. She desired them to reconsider their decision. The Cabinet met to do as she wished, but found that the only plan was resignation. Victoria returned to Windsor nine days after the ministerial defeat, and it was another nine days before Lord Derby was sent for and accepted office, with Disraeli as his foremost man. The people of London rose in turbulence at the death of Reform, and a great crowd surrounded Gladstone’s house one day when he was not there. Fearing a riot, the police begged Mrs. Gladstone to appear for one minute on the balcony to satisfy them, and then the people dispersed.

It is curious in this struggle between Queen and Parliament, and in later ones, to contrast Victoria’s action in leaving the country without a Government for eighteen days, and going to Balmoral for a month when a great crisis was expected, with her youthful sentiments which head this chapter.

It was in July this year that a five days’ battle took place in Hyde Park between the police and an army of roughs, who took advantage of the Reform agitation to do as they pleased; and then were broken down those Hyde Park railings about which so much has been heard of late years.

The whole world seemed awry, for in addition to wars abroad and rows at home Ireland was being filled with money, pikeheads and Irish-Americans to fight England, and the Habeas Corpus Act had to be suspended. It was done in somewhat peculiar circumstances, there being great anxiety to conclude the matter before the end of the week. The Queen was at Osborne, and to her on the Saturday a telegram was sent for her assent. The members remained in the House until midnight, and then, as the answer had not arrived, dispersed. At 12.30--that is, on Sunday morning--a messenger came with the assent, and the House was convoked, and though not fifty men were present the new law was promulgated, in spite of the law against Sunday legislation.

Disraeli had done his utmost to turn Russell’s Government out on Reform, and had succeeded; he himself, finding the “apathetic” public too eager and vociferous to let him drop that measure, determined to “dish the Whigs” and bring in a Reform Bill of his own. He was afraid, though, that the Opposition would retaliate in kind, so, with the Queen’s consent, tried to arrange that the fate of his Government should not be allowed to depend on his bill. It was a cry of “Heads I win, tails you lose!” which did not please the Liberals. He had once said of Peel that he had found the Whigs bathing and had walked away with their clothes; in this case Disraeli had helped the Liberals to undress for the plunge and had then walked off with their garments.

He relied upon the “Adullamites,” so called because they were Liberals who dissented from Gladstone’s bill, and whom Bright likened to the enemies of Saul who hid with David in the Cave of Adullam. These, however, instead of joining Disraeli, ran away shivering when he said “Reform,” upon which Gladstone uttered an eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not commit Adullamy.” When the new bill, torn to pieces, reversed, its black made white and its white black, was at last passed, Lowe, the chief of the Adullamites, piously made the best of events by saying of the new voters, “We must now educate our masters.”

As to Fenianism, it is too long a tale. The Fenians thought to capture Chester Castle, they rescued prisoners in Manchester, and unintentionally killed a policeman, which led to the hanging of three men who were by no means proved to have been the assassins; in dastard callousness they blew up a part of Clerkenwell Prison, killing many innocent people; and they threatened to kidnap the Queen, an idea which tickled her Majesty wonderfully, who declared, laughing, that they would find her a very troublesome prisoner. But every one felt that she was in real danger, and on her return from Balmoral that autumn her advisers ordered a Scotch regiment to accompany, under arms, the royal train from Ballater to Carlisle, a regiment of footguards being sent to the latter place to go with the train to Windsor. However, the Queen would have none of it; she saw wisely that such a course would mean visible public division between herself and her people, so she resolutely refused to sanction the arrangement, saying that she felt the fullest confidence in her people.

It had often been urged that the Queen or the Prince of Wales should have a house in Ireland, but unfortunately this was never brought about, though at this time a report spread through the sister isle that the Prince and Princess intended to spend a portion of each year there, and that her Majesty would go to Killarney in 1867. It was not, however, till April 1868 that Albert Edward and Alexandra paid the promised visit, and then the Irish people, jealous, passionate and generous, met them with cheers, presented the Princess with two white doves--which later found a home at Sandringham--and themselves kept the streets of Dublin free from confusion, no troops appearing at all; which is a tribute, not only to the Irish, but to the courage of the royalties.

Prince Arthur, who went there a year later, did not fare quite so well. He was young and injudicious, and identified himself far too much with the Orange faction, so that enthusiasm died. After going to Dublin, Killarney and Belfast he went on to Londonderry, and the night of his arrival a sharp collision took place between the triumphing Protestants and the embittered Roman Catholics, in which two men were killed. This led to an unforgettable incident at Cork. In 1868 Prince Alfred had made a tour in Australia, which almost ended tragically, for while at a public breakfast at Port Jackson he was shot in the back by a Fenian named O’Farrell. The ball entered near the spine and ran round the body without touching any vital part. The Prince recovered; O’Farrell it was who died--by hanging. The Queen was in deep distress, weeping at any mention of it, and so she feared greatly while her younger son was in Ireland.

At Cork two prisoners, Costello and Colonel Warren, having been released, were given a dinner before starting for America by the mayor of the town, a man named O’Sullivan, who made a long speech, in many respects temperate, but at the end alluding to the presence of the young prince in their land; and then, reverting to the Fenians, he declared that O’Farrell, who had shot the Duke of Edinburgh, was a noble and patriotic man.

Prince Arthur returned quite safely to England, but Victoria was more than ever embittered against Ireland, and a great depression fell upon her for herself and her family, in no way relieved by the demand in Parliament that the Mayor of Cork should be suspended from his functions; he, however, solved the difficulty by resigning.

Disraeli became Prime Minister in the spring of 1868. He was sixty-four years old, and had worked for this position all his life against tremendous odds, but he had conquered all; and now, having attained, he quickly secured a position of confidential trust given to no other man. Moncure Conway said of him: there is “something so picturesque in a Jewish lad bringing the royal family and the aristocracy to his feet. He has done it, too, in the wise and gentle ways of Solomon, by unbroken civility and friendliness.”

So “the solitary gladiator,” as _Punch_ once called him, ended at last his long, lonely struggle and became first man in England. There was much chaff and the recrudescence of many stories, one of which lived longer than himself. In 1862 he had made a speech in which he said that he “observed that there was a great deficiency in our national character, and which, if neglected, might lead to the impairing not only of our social happiness, but even the sources of our public wealth; and that was a deficiency of culture. But he was not satisfied in detecting, he resolved to supply it.” Ever afterwards Dizzy’s intention to educate the nation was a subject for joking.

His great position was his but for a short time, his Ministry being defeated over the second serious measure brought forward--Gladstone’s Irish Church Bill. Sydney Smith had thus described the condition of the State Church in Ireland at the time--

“On an Irish Sabbath the bell of a neat parish church often summons to church only the parson and an occasional conforming clerk, while two hundred yards away a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel and pelted by all the storms of heaven.”

For this unwanted and unused Church the Irish peasant had to pay, and Gladstone saw here one method of reducing Irish grievance and doing justice to Irish need. His bill was to abolish the State Church in Ireland. The country was with him, the Queen against him. She was the head of the Church, and to interfere with that institution was to aim a blow at her prerogative.

Disraeli fought with all his might, but he was defeated twice, by majorities of sixty-one and sixty-five. What was he to do? It was death to his hopes, to his long-coveted eminence. He determined to consult his best friend, not his wife but in this case the Queen, and he did it without first talking the matter over with his colleagues, which made them very wroth. He advised her Majesty to dissolve Parliament, thinking that the country would surely return him; or, he added as an afterthought, she might prefer to appoint a new Ministry.

It broke the Queen’s heart to part with her pleasant, gossipy minister, she shuddered at the thought of having to labour again under the taskmaster Gladstone, and she took a day to consider the question; after which she decided upon a dissolution which was not to take place until the autumn, when the new Reform Bill would come into operation.

Then Disraeli had to explain the decision to the House; not at all, even for his imperturbable self, a pleasant task; and in his trepidation--that may not sound the right word, but it is the only one which adequately explains his method of doing it--he put the burden of the decision upon the shoulders of the Queen. The Prime Minister’s only constitutional course after such a defeat would have been to resign and let matters develop; he had no right to put two ways before the Queen and make her responsible for a certain line of policy, to expose her to the anger and distrust of a nation demanding justice. If Victoria had been a statesman she would have realized this, and have refused to allow Disraeli to use her partiality for him to keep him in power.

There was naturally a great and acrimonious discussion in the House, Disraeli being described as “a suffering minister who was holding office by the wish of the Queen for the benefit of the people.” Mr. Bright denounced the great injury he had done the Crown “by representing the Queen in the character of an enemy in the cause of religious freedom.... Any man who puts the sovereign in the front of a great struggle like this, who points to the Irish people and says from the floor of this house, ‘Your Queen holds the flag under which we, the enemies of religious equality and justice to Ireland, are marshalled’--I say that the minister who does that is guilty of a very high crime and a great misdemeanour against his sovereign and against his country.” It was reported that the Prime Minister, in a somewhat pointless speech, entirely lost his temper and shook his fist at Bright.

The Duke of Richmond in the Lords did not make matters better, as he bluntly stated that the Queen had refused to accept the resignation of her minister, and had given him the freedom of dissolving Parliament when he chose.

All this was unfortunate for the Queen’s peace of mind; not that she repented showing so much favour to Disraeli, or even believed that she had exceeded the power which the Constitution laid down for her; but because she was still unpopular, still the subject of intense criticism, having met her people solely by paying a very occasional one, two or three days’ visit to London during the year. Thus her name was still prominent in a sinister fashion, and her flight to Scotland immediately after her interview with Disraeli roused deep indignation. She did not, in popular words, stay to face the music. Though messengers were sent to Balmoral every day, immediate communication with her was impossible, and it was felt that, whatever her virtues, she definitely put her pleasure before the country’s needs. The outcry was loud enough to necessitate an announcement that her “journey to Scotland had been undertaken solely in consequence of her health.”

This, having been heard often before, and Victoria’s appearance, when she was seen, being generally one of robustness, gave a turn to public criticism which was menacing. It was hinted by some and frankly stated by other newspapers that if her Majesty was ill the malady must be mental as well as physical. Contrasts were drawn between her appearance and “the thin, pale face of the gentle princess who had so long nobly borne the fatigues of a vicarious queen.” The Tory Press more or less contented itself with the advantage its party had gained, the Liberal Press was more outspoken, the Sunday papers spoke yet more openly, and, needless to say, _The Tomahawk_ went to the extreme--

“We confess we are, with extreme reluctance, compelled to arrive at the conclusion that her Majesty has no longer the power, however earnest be her desire or strong her determination, to endure the strain inseparable from her high office, and which she has in former years so ably fulfilled. If three weeks is the longest period which she is able to spend in the Imperial capital each year, if all the functions which the Head of the Realm should discharge have to be vicariously discharged by the Heir Apparent and his Consort, it is evidently for the true interest and well-being of the Queen as well as of the nation that a Regency Bill should be passed as soon as possible. Six years is a long probation, and if the energies of the Queen are still so overwhelmed by her great sorrow as to affect materially the discharge of her important duties, it is surely far more considerate towards both the Sovereign and the woman that she should be relieved from the distressing weight which the unavoidable neglect of such duties must occasion to her sensitive and conscientious nature. At present her Majesty cannot but feel the deepest regret that, through her own infirmities, so much inconvenience and loss of time should be inflicted on her ministers in carrying on any communication with her during this very urgent crisis, and cannot but resent acutely the faintest hint of a suspicion that her absence is owing to any want of courage or self-denial.”

The article then set out the qualities of the Prince of Wales for the post of Regent, his zeal, courage, detachment from politics, knowledge of foreign countries, etc., and then pointed out how, “released from the ties of ceremonial duties, relieved from a sense of continual disappointment and vexation, and purged from all suspicions, however ungenerous, our beloved Queen will be able to enjoy an honourable retirement, cheered by the undimmed affection of her subjects.... She will be able to revel in the congenial solitudes of Osborne and Balmoral without any reproach, and to devote her leisure time to any pursuits which her inclination may select.”

These sentiments were repeated elsewhere. A member of Parliament named Reardon gave notice in May that he should address this question to the House: “Whether it be true that her Majesty the Queen has been compelled through delicate health to retire from England during the remainder of this session; and if so, whether it is the intention of her Majesty’s Government, out of consideration to her Majesty’s health, comfort and tranquillity, and in the interest of the royal family and of her Majesty’s subjects throughout the empire, and especially of this metropolis, to advise her Majesty to abdicate.”

This question raised cries of “Order!” and much indignation, but that it could be asked at all was a notable sign of the feeling of the time.

That Queen Victoria was not in very good health is more than probable. Her adjustment to the lonely circumstances of her widowhood was not really complete, she was determined to walk only by the rule she had laid down for herself in the first days, and it was no easy matter always to judge what the Prince would have done. So, distrusting her own decisions, she was ever feeling after the ideas of another, with the result that her nerves were over sensitive, and any disturbance of the usual produced headache. The crisis in the Government was quite enough to upset her.

This August the Queen made the first of her visits abroad under the name of the Duchess of Kent, going to Switzerland, and accepting from Louis Napoleon the loan of his train through France. On her return she went to Balmoral, and spent part of her Highland visit in a new house which she had built for herself: “the widow’s first house, not built by _him_, or hallowed by _his_ memory.” She called it the Glassalt Shiel, and it was in a wild and lonely country, at one end of Loch Muick, the other three sides being bounded within a few hundred yards by rocky mountains. She regarded this place as in full keeping with her condition, and there she could be quite away from all Court and State requirements. It is not to be wondered at that, while she was in such a morbid state of mind, there were people who thought she would be happier dissociated from the active work of governing. She remained in the north until late in November, and only returned in time to take leave of her ministers, for the Liberals had a majority of 128 at the elections. Seeing what a crushing defeat it was, Disraeli refused to meet Parliament again, and at once resigned office.

The Queen offered him a baronetcy, which he refused, and then, to show her appreciation of him, she bestowed upon Mrs. Disraeli the title of Viscountess Beaconsfield, an honour which touched his heart in its tenderest spot. Disraeli was said to be the first Prime Minister without armorial bearings, and the heralds had to supply a coat-of-arms. When he read the description and found the words, “Supporters gorged,” he remarked--

“Now that is absurd! I have done my best to stuff my supporters, but I could never appease their hunger, much less gorge them. If it is heraldic, my dear, let our supporters be described as voracious, not gorged.”

When subsequently a telegram was brought to Gladstone from the Queen it was taken to him into the park, where he was felling a tree, with Evelyn Ashley holding his coat. He went on with his work for a little, then, resting on the handle of his axe, said with deep earnestness--

“My mission is to appease Ireland.”[8]

Mr. Bright, once so anti-royal, was persuaded to join the new Cabinet, which gave pleasure to the Queen, for she believed in his sincerity, and on the last Saturday of the year he was invited to dine and sleep at Windsor and to receive the seals of office. Victoria, with that kindly carefulness which characterized her when she had to meet people, allowed him to modify his Court dress by omitting the sword, in accordance with his Quaker principles, and it was intimated to him that she wished him to omit any part of the ceremonial which was repugnant to his conscience. He had replied that he objected to kneeling, so when her Majesty gave him the seals she held out her hand, saying--

“Mr. Bright, we dispense with the kneeling.”

Mr. Ward Hunt, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Disraeli’s Cabinet, had not asked or wished to be exempt from kneeling before his Queen; and as he was six feet four inches high, weighing twenty stones, he made an astonishing figure, being taller than Victoria even in that attitude.

One picturesque and turbulent figure passed away this year definitely from the councils of England, and this was Henry Brougham, who died in his sleep at the Villa Eleanor, Cannes, at the age of ninety, his last mania having been the collection of hymns. When Lord Derby took office after the death of Palmerston, Brougham made his last appearance on the political stage, coming into the House with Lord John Russell and Lord Derby, all three looking very broken and old.

After Disraeli’s interview with Victoria at the last Privy Council Meeting of his Government he was seen to come out of the royal closet in great excitement, and Lord Malmesbury, who met and spoke to him, was pushed aside, with the words--

“Don’t bring any more bothers before me; I have enough already to drive a man mad.”

The trouble was that the Archbishop of Canterbury had inconsiderately died, and the Premier wished to appoint Dr. Colenso in his place. The Queen, however, had already chosen the man, Archibald Campbell Tait, to whom good fortune had come through misfortune. For when, in less elevated clerical rank, he had lost five children at once by scarlet fever, and this was brought to the Queen’s notice, she strove to compensate him by inducing Palmerston to give him the Bishopric of Carlisle. The next step was to make him Bishop of London, and now, again over the heads of his seniors, he received the highest ecclesiastical post in the kingdom, which was considered by many as an injustice, induced by sentiment.

Victoria, though having no great regard for the office of bishop, was extremely keen upon choosing all bishops herself, and she made her choice generally with a frank disregard of rule or right, her standard being simplicity, lack of rhetoric and ceremonial; to this was added the factor of personal liking on her part. It was thus that Wilberforce, Stanley and Bradley were raised to high honours.

In February 1869, deploring the introduction of the discussion on the Irish Church and lamenting the loss of Disraeli, Victoria refused to open Parliament, on the score of ill health, and she passed the session in great tribulation of spirit over the bill. Hoping to secure compromise, she invoked the advice of the Bishop of Peterborough, and wrote on February 12, 1869, to Gladstone that she strongly deprecated the hasty introduction of the measure, which would serve only to commit the Government to proposals from which they could not recede, “while it is certain, from what the bishop says, that they would not be accepted on the other side.” The bill was, however, read the third time, with a majority of 114.

In face of this it was little use fighting, save for modification, and her Majesty continued to take daily interest in the progress of the bill; yet at the fiercest point of the struggle, when the Lords, taking up the Die-hard attitude, were trying to destroy it by introducing sixty-one amendments, and incidentally to weaken their own power, she went to Scotland.

“How much more effectually could the Queen assist in the settlement of this question if she were not six hundred miles off,” wrote Gladstone.

On the first reading Tait voted against it, but Wilberforce gave his vote for it, whereupon some one said--

“The Bishop of Oxford is going the wrong way.”

“No,” replied Lord Chelmsford; “he is going the road to Winchester.”

There was much strong language in the higher House, Lord Winchelsea offering to lay his head on the block rather than accede, Gladstone being labelled Jack Cade, and Lord Grey becoming so violent that the Duke of Argyll fastened upon him the now famous title of “the chartered libertine of debate.”

The Commons refused the amendments, the Lords refused conciliation, and at last even Disraeli[9] was alarmed and thoroughly frightened at the state of the political parties and the country, for it was felt that the Lords were in imminent danger. The Queen, from a distance, worked hard writing to every one, pointing out ways of agreement and appealing to Tait to induce the bishops to avoid pushing matters to extremes. It was Lord Cairns who eventually linked the dissentient parties and secured an agreement. Though the Queen disliked the bill extremely she eventually saw that the country demanded it, and she feared more than the bill a conflict between the two Houses, such as would inevitably injure the House of Lords. Thus she hailed with relief the agreement which secured the passage of the bill and saved the Lords intact.