1866.

FINAL SUCCESS.

91

connects Great Britain with the United States, will
prove an additional link between the nations whose
friendship is founded in their common interest and
reciprocal esteem.' The rejoicings in America were
exuberant. Suddenly, however, the signals became
faint; the messages grew inarticulate, and before long
the power of communication ceased altogether. The
cable became a mere cable again; the wire that spoke
with such a miraculous eloquence had become silent.
The construction of the cable had proved to be
defective, and a new principle had to be devised by
science. Yet something definite had been accom-
plished. It had been shown that a cable could be
stretched and maintained under the ocean more than
two miles deep and two thousand miles across.
other attempt was made in 1865, but it proved again
a failure, and the shivered cable had to be left for the
time in the bed of the Atlantic. At last, in 1866 the
feat was accomplished, and the Atlantic telegraph
was added to the realities of life. It has now become
system. We have

An

a distinct part of our civilised
ceased to wonder at it. We accept it and its con-
sequent facts with as much composure as we take the
existence of the inland telegraph or the penny post.
It seems hard now to understand how people got on
when it took a fortnight to receive news from the
United States. Since the success of the Atlantic
cable many telegraphic wires have been laid in the
beds of oceans. All England chafed as at an insuffer-
able piece of negligence on the part of somebody the
other day, when it was found in a moment of national

emergency that there was a lack of direct telegraphic communication between this country and the Cape of Good Hope, and that we could not ask a question of South Africa and have an answer within a few minutes. Perhaps it may encourage future projectors and inventors to know, that in the case of the Atlantic cable as in that of the Suez Canal, some of the highest scientific authority was given to proclaim the actual hopelessness, the wild impracticability, the sheer physical impossibility of such an enterprise having any success. 'Before the ships left this country with the cable,' wrote Robert Stephenson in 1857, 'I very publicly predicted as soon as they got into deep water a signal failure. It was in fact inevitable.' Nine years after, the inevitable had been avoided; the failure turned to success.

CHAPTER LII.

THE LEAP IN THE DARK.

THE autumn and winter of agitation passed away, and the time was at hand when the new Ministry must meet a new session of Parliament. The country looked with keen interest, and also with a certain amused curiosity, to see what the Government would do with Reform in the session of 1867. When Lord Derby took office he had not in any way committed himself and his colleagues against a Reform Bill. On the contrary, he had announced that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to see a very considerable proportion of the now excluded class admitted to the franchise; but he had qualified this announcement by the expression of a doubt whether any measure of Reform on which the two great political parties could agree would be likely to satisfy the extreme Reformers, or to put a stop to agitation. More than once Lord Derby had intimated plainly enough that he was willing to make one other effort at a settlement of the question, but if that effort should not succeed he would have nothing more to do with the matter. He was well known to have taken office reluctantly, and he gave it to be clearly understood

that he did not by any means propose to devote the remainder of his life to the business of rolling Reform Bills a little way up the Parliamentary hill merely in order to see them rolled down again. Most persons assumed, however, that Mr. Disraeli would look at the whole question from a different point of view ; that he had personal and natural ambition still to gratify; and that he was not likely to allow the position of his party to be greatly damaged by any lack of flexibility on his part. The Conservatives were in office, but only in office; they were not in power. The defection among the Liberals, and not their own strength or success, had set the Tories on the Ministerial benches. They could not possibly keep their places there without at least trying to amuse the country on the subject of Reform. The great majority of Liberals felt sure that some effort would be made by the Government to carry a bill, but their general impression was that it would be a measure cleverly put together with the hope of inducing the country to accept shadow for substance; and that nothing would come of it except an interval during which the demand of the unenfranchised classes would become more and more earnest and impassioned. It had not entered into the mind of anyone to conceive that Lord Derby's Government were likely to entertain the country by the odd succession of surprises which diversified the session, and to assist at the gradual formation, by contribution from all sides, sets, and individuals, of a Reform measure far more broadly liberal and democratic than anything which

1867.

THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT.

95

Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone would have ventured or cared to introduce.

Parliament opened on February 5. The Speech from the Throne alluded, as everyone had expected that it would, to the subject of Reform. 'Your attention,' so ran the words of the speech, 'will again be called to the state of the representation of the people in Parliament;' and then the hope was expressed that 'Your deliberations, conducted in a spirit of moderation and mutual forbearance, may lead to the adoption of measures which, without unduly disturbing the balance of political power, shall freely extend the elective franchise.' The hand of Mr. Disraeli, people said, was to be seen clearly enough in these vague and ambiguous phrases. How, it was asked, can the franchise be freely extended, in the Reformer's sense, without disturbing the balance of political power unduly, in Mr. Disraeli's sense? Again and again, in session after session, he had been heard arguing that a great enlargement of the suffrage to the working classes must disturb the balance of political power; that it would in itself be a disturbance of the balance of political power; that it would give an immense preponderance to a class 'homogeneous'. such was Mr. Disraeli's own favourite word-in their interests and fashions. How then could he now offer to introduce any such change? And what other change did anyone want? What other change would satisfy anybody who wanted a change at all? More and more the conviction spread that Mr. Disraeli would only try to palm off some worthless