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116

MARRIAGE OF PRINCE'S BROTHER.

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1842

tidings reached the Prince of the approaching marriage of his brother to the Princess Alexandrine of Baden. The marriage was to take place at Carlsruhe on the 3rd of May, and the Prince was urgently pressed to be present. Had he consulted his own wishes, there could have been but one answer; but other considerations prevailed. 'There is no actual impediment,' he writes to his stepmother, but there are divers political and moral considerations, which give the preponderance. to reason over inclination, and therefore I must banish it from my mind.' The Queen, in common with the Prince, looked forward to this marriage with the utmost pleasure. 'My heart,' Her Majesty writes to King Leopold, in terms that are touching as well from their simple force as from the happiness of heart out of which they spring, my heart is full, very full of this marriage; it brings back so many recollections of our dear Verlobung,-as Ernest was with us all the time, and longed so for similar happiness.' And again, in another letter, on the 8th of February, I have entreated Ernest to pass his honeymoon with us, and I beg you to urge him to do it; for he witnessed our first happiness, and we must therefore witness his,'

The state of affairs at home and abroad at this time were such, that it is easy to understand why the Prince should have felt himself bound not to leave Her Majesty's side even for a few days. Public questions of the most vital moment were pressing hourly on her consideration. Scarcity of work, low wages, food at high prices, and consequent wide-spread suffering in the manufacturing districts, had brought about a state of things which caused the Government the deepest anxiety. Though their privations were borne by the people with admirable patience, it was impossible to say at what point this might give way; while the paralysis, which seemed to have fallen upon trade and manufactures, made it hard to divine from what quarter an efficient remedy for the distress might be looked for. In the course of this year serious insurrections, which required to be put down by military force, broke out in the iron and coal districts of Staffordshire and South Wales, in the Potteries, in Manchester and elsewhere in Lancashire, while matters assumed an aspect no less serious among the stalwart and more highly paid workers in the coal and iron mines of Lanark and Renfrew. The military force in the United Kingdom, small at best, and reduced to half its strength by the numbers required for the maintenance of peace

1842

STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

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in Ireland, was taxed to the uttermost. At any hour, the incendiary promptings of Chartist agitators, who had established a thorough system of organization in many districts of the country, might have led to a general rising, with which the military might have found it hard to cope; and yet, such was the state of affairs abroad, that they could not be reinforced by the withdrawal of troops from our colonial and other possessions.

In China, again, we were involved in a serious war. In the West Indies and at the Cape the presence of a strong military force was indispensable. In Affghanistan, the greatest disaster which ever befel the British arms was impending. The presence of our fleet in the Tagus alone prevented a Portuguese insurrection. Spain was distracted by a ruthless civil war; and even then France had taken up a position with respect to the future marriage of the Spanish Queen which it was impossible for England to acknowledge, and which still further endangered our friendly relations with that country, already rudely shaken by what had taken place with regard to the Eastern Question. America, always sensitive, had recently been in a state of unusual exasperation against England on account of the right claimed by British cruisers of searching American vessels to ascertain whether they were British, carrying on the Slave Trade under the American flag; and a question as to the Maine frontier, of a no less perilous character, was now being urgently pressed on for settlement. In these circumstances, incessant demands were made on the Government for an increase of our forces, both military and naval; demands which had to be met in the face of a falling revenue, with a deficit for the year of 2,500,0007., swollen to nearly 5,000,0007. by the expenses of the Affghanistan expedition.

Such was the posture of public affairs on the opening of Parliament; and it is to mistake the position and functions of a British monarch, to suppose that the anxieties of the Minister who was called to grapple with these difficulties, and to find a remedy for the sufferings of her people, were not fully shared by the Queen and by the Prince. They therefore went heartily along with Sir Robert Peel in the bold measure of finance by which he met, and, as the event proved, averted the danger of a threatened national bankruptcy, into which the country had for some time been drifting, by his proposal of an Income Tax, not exceeding 7d. in the pound, on all incomes above 1507.

118

DISASTERS IN INDIA.

1842

The measure was an extreme one. It had never previously been resorted to except under the pressure of a war expenditure; and from its inquisitorial nature, as well as the inequality with which it bears upon individuals, it was of necessity unpopular. But the case was one that demanded an exceptional remedy; and the country responded with admirable spirit to the appeal to its patriotism which Sir Robert Peel made in introducing his measure to the House of Commons on the 11th of March. The Queen had authorised him to announce that it was her wish not to be exempted from the operation of the tax; and the announcement was not without its effect in reconciling her subjects to an impost which that generation had never known. 'In this case,' said Lord John Russell, in his speech against the measure, 'it is indispensable that there should be no exemptions, not even of the highest and most exalted in the realm, of a due sense of which the Sovereign has afforded a shining example, in voluntarily offering to share the burden with the meanest of her subjects.'

The sacrifice made by the nation in accepting the measure was amply requited by the rapid restoration of public credit, the Funds rising at once from 89 to 93. Confidence in the

national resources was restored, when the tax was found to produce two millions more than had been anticipated by its author. The splendid harvest of 1842, after a series of five disastrous years, contributed towards the same result; and although it took some time to revive the drooping energies of trade, and to turn the tide of suffering and want, which had borne so long and heavily upon the poorer classes, still, from this point may be traced the beginning of that current of industrial development and material prosperity which has since flowed almost uninterruptedly and with ever increasing volume.

It is now well known, that while Sir Robert Peel was urging his measure on the House of Commons with a buoyancy of spirit and a noble confidence in the character and resources of the country and its people, which commanded the admiration of all, his heart was heavy with the tidings which had reached him only the day before, and of which the country then knew nothing, of the massacre of Sir William McNaghten, and the virtual annihilation of the British forces at Cabul. the 10th he had communicated the news to the Queen. was the first calamity,' the Duke of Wellington at the same time told Her Majesty, 'that had befallen us since 1780. He

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1842

QUEEN'S BAL COSTUME.

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feared the troops were too much separated. It was a terrible country to defend.' It was not till the 5th of April, that the full extent of the disaster was known to the Government in all its ghastly details; but the same despatches contained the satisfactory assurance, that no further losses had been sustained. How deeply this calamity was felt by the Queen and the Prince, how fully they shared the dauntless spirit with which it was confronted by the nation, need not be told, any more than the interest with which they watched the masterly operations that rapidly restored to the British name in India all the prestige which it had lost, and established its power upon a basis even firmer than before.

Every effort was made by the Court to give a stimulus to trade in London by the festivities which are supposed to have this effect. Dinners, concerts, balls followed fast upon each other. On the 26th of May, the Queen and the Prince went in state to a Ball given at Covent Garden Theatre for the relief of the Spitalfields weavers. With the same object, a magnificent Bal Costumé had been given at Buckingham Palace a fortnight before. This, the Prince, in writing (7th May) to the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, says, we have organized with the view of helping trade in London, which is greatly depressed. We are to represent Edward III. and Queen Philippa, and the whole Court is to appear in the Court dress of that period. The Duchess of Cambridge is to head a procession of 120 persons, intended to represent France, Italy, and Spain.'

It is curiously illustrative of the soreness of feeling towards England, which was prevalent in France at the time, as well as of the readiness of people, who ought to know better, to believe the most absurd fictions, if they happen to concur with their prejudices, that letters were actually received from the King of the Belgians, stating that great excitement had been created at the Court of Paris by the report, that in this procession 'King John of France was to be represented as a prisoner and in chains!' 3

3

3 It was probably some rumour of this which suggested to Mr. Monckton Milnes and Mr. Charles Buller the idea of an admirable Jeu d'Esprit, which appeared in the Morning Chronicle the day before the Ball, in the shape of a Debate in the French Chamber of Deputies, said to be reported by express.' It began with an interpellation of M. Berryer to the effect-Whether the French Ambassador in England had been invited to the Bal Masqué which is to be given by the haughty descendant of the Plantagenets, for the purpose of awakening the long-buried griefs of France in the disasters of Cressy and

120

QUEEN SHOT AT

1842

While these proofs were still recent of Her Majesty's sympathy with the distress of that class of the community, who, in the language of the Prince, ‘has most of the toil, and least of the enjoyments of the world,' public feeling was revolted by another attempt upon her life, close to the spot where Oxford had made a similar attempt in 1840. The day after the occurrence, the Prince wrote to his father with all the details:

'I hasten to give you a true report of the dreadful occurrence of yesterday, that you may be possessed of the actual facts; and I beg you to communicate the contents of this letter to all our relations, and to send copies of it to dear Grandmama and those who are at a distance, as I have no time today to write more.

'On Sunday the 29th as we were returning from the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, at two o'clock, as we drove along the Mall, there was as usual a crowd of spectators under the trees on our left, who bowed and cheered. When we were nearly opposite Stafford House, I saw a man step out from the crowd and present a pistol full at me. He was some two paces from us. I heard the trigger snap, but it must have missed fire. I turned to Victoria, who was seated on my right, and asked her, "Did you hear that?" She had been bowing to the people on the right, and had observed nothing. I said, "I may be mistaken, but I am sure I saw some one take aim at us." When we reached the Palace I asked the footmen who had been at the back of the carriage if they had not noticed a man step forward and stretch his hand towards the carriage, as if he wanted to throw a petition into it. They had noticed nothing. We were immediately impressed with the importance of keeping what had occurred

Poitiers and the loss of Calais.' M. Berryer was represented as following up his question by a passionate appeal, in which he urged that, 'it was on the banks of the Khine that the cannon of France ought to accompany the dancers of St. James's. Lamartine and De Tocqueville followed in much the same strain, and M. Guizot concluded the debate by a grave asseveration that Lord Aberdeen had given the most satisfactory assurances, that the Queen of England desired to educate her people by a series of Archæological entertainments; but that in deference to the susceptibilities of France, M. de St. Aulaire would represent at the Ball the Virgin of Domremy-he would go as 'Joan of Arc.' This last stroke, it might be thought, would have led dulness itself to suspect a joke. But no. The subject was gravely discussed at the Clubs, and even Sir J. Graham rushed into Sir Robert Peel's rooms in Whitehall Gardens, with the paper in his hand, exclaiming, There is the devil to pay in France about this foolish ball!' See Lord Houghton's Monographs, Lond., 1873, p. 250.

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