CHAPTER V.

Victoria-Gladstone and Disraeli, 1865-1887.

1. Russell, who since 1861 had sat in the Lords as Earl Russell, succeeded Palmerston as Prime Minister. His place as leader of the Commons was taken by Earl Russell's Gladstone, burning with reforming zeal and Ministry, “unmuzzled,” as he boasted, since his recent 1865-66. rejection as member for Oxford University. A terrible cattle-plague now wrought havoc among the farmers; while on Black Monday, 11th May 1866, a Commercial Panic spread ruin amidst bankers, merchants, and their customers. New troubles broke out in Ireland. But politics mostly turned on the question of Parliamentary Reform. The Radicals had long been dissatisfied with the Reform Act of 1832. For many years the old Whigs had declared it a "final settlement," and Russell won the nickname of Finality John." But the cry for "thorough" Reform grew so loud that Russell himself brought in other Bills in 1852 and 1854, though they excited little interest, and did not pass. Again, in 1859, Disraeli took up the question with as little success. Russell's second failure, in 1860, to the disgust of Bright and the Radicals, shelved Reform for the rest of Palmerston's life. But now that his influence was removed, Gladstone brought forward a new Reform Bill. It was a moderate measure, and proposed to Bill of 1866, cut down the voting qualification to a 14 and the Cave yearly rental in the counties, and a £7 limit in of Adullam. the boroughs. But the Palmerstonians, who hated the notion of Reform, led by Lord Elcho and the shrewd and caustic Robert Lowe, retired, as Bright said, "into a new Cave of Adullam, to which, like David, they invited every one in distress and discontented." Conservatives and Adullamites joined together to defeat the ministry, and in June 1866 drove it out of office.

The Reform

The Third

2. For a third time the uneasy task fell to Derby and Disraeli of forming a stop-gap ministry from a minority in the Lower House. But Disraeli saw that there was a new chance to a constructive Con- Derby-Disraeli servative leader, and, as a great Reform Agita- Ministry, tion at last broke out, he boldly renewed his old declaration for Parliamentary Reform. "You cannot," he told his followers, "establish a party of mere resistance

1866-68.

D

to change, for change is inevitable in a progressive country. The point is whether the change be carried out in deference to the customs and traditions of the people, or in deference to abstract principles and general doctrines." In 1867 he proposed his Reform Bill. Hot partisans rejoiced at "dishing the Whigs, and the mass of the party loyally followed their leader, though some feared the "leap in the dark," and Lord Cranborne (afterwards Marquis of Salisbury) and Lord Carnarvon left the ministry in disgust. Disraeli's Bill was greatly cut about by the Liberal majority, but in August he successfully carried it through. Next year Irish and Scotch Reform Acts completed the great change. The following were the chief provisions of the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1868 :

The Second Reform Acts 1867-68.

(1) All male householders got votes in English and Scotch boroughs, if rated to pay poor's rate; but in Ireland a £4 rating limit was fixed. Lodgers who paid £10 a year for unfurnished rooms could also vote. (2) Occupiers of £12 a year (14 in Scotland) got votes in the counties. (3) 11 boroughs were disfranchised, 4 for bribery, and 35 having less than 10,000 inhabitants lost one member. (4) The vacant seats were given mostly to the greater counties, especially Lancashire and the West Riding; but ten new boroughs got one member apiece; two new London boroughs (Chelsea and Hackney) got two each; Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow got a third member; and Salford, Dundee, and Merthyr a second; while 10 new boroughs returned one apiece, as also did London University and the Scotch Universities (grouped in pairs). (5) To give some representation to minorities, an elector could only vote for two wherever there were three members to be returned. Household Suffrage was thus brought in in the boroughs, and a great step was made towards democracy, for it was plain that the middle-class county constituencies could not last very much longer, now that all workmen who happened to live in boroughs had their votes.

The AustroPrussian War 1866.

3. A war broke out in 1866 between Austria and Prussia, for the supremacy of Germany, and ended with the crushing defeat of the former at Sadowa in Bohemia, and a treaty which broke up the German Confederation of 1815, turned out Austria from all dealings with German affairs, and built up a North German Confederation, with Prussia at its head. It was a great triumph for King William and Bismarck, and nearly brought about German unity; for Prussia ruled the new Confederation, and had absorbed, with other States, Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, which since 1837 had been a separate kingdom from England, under Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, the nearest male heir, and his son, the blind King

George. Italy also took advantage of Austria's distress, and went to war with her old master, though she was beaten by land and sea. Yet Prussia's success procured the evacuation of Venetia by the Austrians, and its transference to Victor Emanuel's kingdom. All through both struggles England kept a strict neutrality. But in 1867 Lord Stanley (son of the Premier), the Foreign Secretary, backed up France in getting the great fortress of Luxemburg dismantled and neutralised like Belgium.

In 1868 England was compelled to wage a petty war against King Theodore of Abyssinia, a brave, reckless barbarian who had imprisoned some English subjects. Sir R. Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) The Abyssinian led 12,000 troops, mostly Indian, to Theodore's War, 1868. inland stronghold of Magdala, and compelled the release of the captives. Theodore slew himself in a fit of despair, A rough settlement was made with his successor, and the English troops retired as quickly as possible. A new departure was made by Lord Carnarvon's successfully carrying out the federation of the chief North American Colonies as the Dominion of Canada.

4. Ireland was again the chief trouble. Since the time of the Young Ireland agitation and the Famine, Ireland had been getting a little more prosperous, The Fenians, through the bettering of agriculture and trade. 1863-67. But it had never been contented, though the break-up of the Pope's Brass Band under Sadleir and Keogh had for some years prevented the formation of an Irish party in Parliament. A thoroughgoing revolutionary movement was started about 1863 by a party of Irish and Irish Americans who hated English rule, and aimed at setting up an Irish republic. A secret society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Fenians, was set on foot, headed in Ireland by John O'Leary and James Stephens, one of the Head Centres, and advocated by Jeremiah Donovan, calling himself O'Donovan Rossa, whose newspaper, the Irish People, was one mouthpiece of the new agitation. Though the priests held aloof, frightened by the anti-clerical views of many of the American Irish, the peasants were warmly sympathetic. But in 1865 their plans were betrayed to the Russell Government, and several of the leaders were arrested. Stephens escaped from prison, but O'Donovan Rossa was sentenced to imprisonment for life. One of the last acts of Russell's was to pass an Act suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland. The Irish-American leaders then

In

fled over the Atlantic, where they planned an invasion of Canada. In May 1866 a disorganised band of twelve hundred Fenians crossed the Niagara river, but they were routed by a few militia, and their schemes discouraged and disavowed by the United States Government. February 1867 Michael Davitt and others attacked Chester Castle with a view to getting arms. In September Allen, Larkin, and Gould rescued Kelly and Deasy from a police van at Manchester, shooting the police sergeant in charge, for which crime they were hung. In December the wall of Clerkenwell prison, where several Fenian leaders were confined, was blown down with gunpowder, through which many innocent persons were fearfully injured, several slain, and all London frightened. These acts forced attention to the state of Ireland, where also the Fenians had sought to raise several revolts that proved wretched failures. The Liberals took the opportunity of uniting their scattered Fall of Disraeli, forces in a cry for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. In April 1868 Gladstone carried against the Government a resolution in favour of Disestablishment; but Disraeli refused to give up office until the carrying of his Irish and Scotch Reform Bills allowed him to appeal to a new electorate. He was now Prime Minister, for in February 1868 weak health had forced Derby to resign. Lord Cairns, a rigid Irish protestant, and a fine lawyer, now became Chancellor. But in November the elections went against the Government, and Disraeli resigned.

1868.

1868-74.

5. With a majority of 120 the long struggles of the Liberals for an opportunity to carry out their designs The first Glad- seemed over, and a strong ministry was formed stone Ministry, with Gladstone as Prime Minister, Robert Lowe Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Clarendon Foreign Secretary, Cardwell Secretary for War, H. A. Bruce, a Glamorganshire landowner, Home Secretary, Argyll Indian Secretary, and Childers First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Hartington, son of the Duke of Devonshire, Postmaster-General, Lord de Grey and Ripon (son of "Prosperity Robinson") President, and W. E. Forster, a Yorkshire Quaker, Vice-President of the Council, G. J. Goschen, a city banker, first Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and afterwards Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Earl Spencer Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and the Radical John Bright President of the Board of Trade. The strongly Liberal section soon got the upper hand of

the aristocratic Whigs, and for the next six years their pent-up energies found an outlet in carrying out a series of changes, greater than ever previously attempted.

Disestablish

ment of the Irish Church,

1869.

6. The elections sealed the fate of the Protestant Establishment in Ireland. All Catholic Irishmen looked upon the Established Church as the badge of foreign conquest, and nearly half the Irish Protestants were Nonconformist Presbyterians. The Church had been, to some extent, reformed by the Grey ministry, and was now doing its spiritual work far better than in the eighteenth century. But it was by its very character a memorial of English political ascendency; and after the failure of the "Appropriation Clause" had disposed of the last hope of a scheme for concurrent endowment, its fate was doomed. Yet the Government Bill was almost wrecked when the Lords put in amendments which the Commons would not accept. However, the good sense of Lord Cairns, himself an Irish Churchman, suggested a compromise, and the measure passed.

By the Irish Church Act (1) The Church of Ireland was disestablished, the Church Courts abolished, and the Irish bishops lost their seats in the Lords; (2) The grants to the Catholic seminary at Maynooth and the Regium Donum to the Presbyterians were commuted ; (3) A new corporation, the "Church of Ireland," was created, to which was transferred the churches, cathedrals, parsonages, and all private endowment since 1660. Altogether over 10,000,000 was secured to the Church; (4) Full compensation was given to the clergy for their life interests; (5) The surplus was set aside to relieve unavoidable distress outside the scope of the Poor Law.

7. After settling the Church, the new ministry made a bold attempt to grapple with the Irish land question. The weak points of the Irish land system had been The Irish Land revealed by the Devon Commission, but nothing System. had been done to redress them, and a long series of abortive Bills showed the indifference or thoughtlessness of the successive governments. Speaking roughly, the land law in England and Ireland was the same, but the practical differences were enormous, owing to the very different condition of the two countries. In both countries rents were supposed to be settled by full and free competition. In England this was to some degree real, but in Ireland the needy and improvident peasant farmers, to whom getting a farm was their only help against starvation, were quite unable to bargain on equal terms with their landlords. Moreover, while in England most improvements were made, and all buildings set up by the landlord, in Ireland all improvements were made and buildings set up by the tenant,