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satisfactory and better-defined footing was a due recognition of the efforts that had been made to raise and keep up that body and of the success that had attended them. The first volunteer rifle-corps was formed at Cheltenham in 1852, with the sanction of the Queen, conveyed in a letter from Sir G. Grey to Earl Fitzhardinge just before the Russell administration retired, in 1852. But the movement did not obtain much extension till the breaking-out of the war between France and Sardinia on the one hand, and Austria on the other, in May 1859. Two days after the Emperor Napoleon quitted Paris to put himself at the head of the French army, a notice was issued from the War Office sanctioning the formation of volunteer rifle and artillery corps under the provisions of the act Geo. III. chap. 54. From this time the movement spread rapidly, and volunteer corps were formed in almost all of the most considerable towns of the kingdom. As the existence of these bodies enabled the government to maintain a smaller force than they would otherwise have deemed necessary, they encouraged it by all the means in their power. It was to effect this object, and to silence some murmurs that had proceeded from the volunteers, that the government introduced the measure to which we have referred. It led to a farther extension of the volunteer system, and stimulated those who belonged to the volunteer corps to improve themselves in their drill and to practise shooting, so as to become nearly equal, and in some respects even superior to the rifle corps of the regular army, over whom they had the advantage of more cultivated intelligence.

We have already intimated that the legislative work done in the course of this session was exceedingly small. A great part of it was spent in discussions on the distress that prevailed in the manufacturing districts; and Mr. Gladstone succeeded in carrying a measure the general scope of which may be gathered from its somewhat complicated title of "The Union Relief Acts Continuance Bill;' allowing the application of money raised on the security of the rates to the purpose of paying wages to distressed operatives employed in the construction of roads and other public works. This was done at the earnest request of the workmen themselves, who petitioned the government to relieve them by giving them work rather than by supporting them

1863.]

DEATH OF THACKERAY.

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in idleness. The Prison-Ministers bill secured to Roman Catholic prisoners the attendance and ministrations of priests of the communion to which they belonged. Another measure, of which Lord Westbury was the author, and which redounds greatly to the honour of his disinterestedness, enacted that the advowsons of no fewer than three hundred and twenty benefices in the patronage of the lord chancellor should be sold, and the proceeds devoted to the augmentation of the income of their incumbents. The government failed in an attempt to obtain a grant of money for the purchase of the buildings which had been erected for the reception of the articles sent to the International Exhibition of 1862. During the session the ministry lost, in Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, one of its most diligent and useful members; a man remarkable for the solidity of his attainments. Up to the time of his death he filled the office of minister-of-war with great efficiency. During a visit he made to his constituents he was seized with a sudden attack of illness, that speedily proved fatal.

The speech delivered at the prorogation of parliament was marked by the ominous omission of the clause in which the sovereign was generally made to announce to the legislature that her relations with foreign states were friendly and satisfactory. The cause of the omission of this usual assurance was the danger of war that existed in many quarters. There was a possibility of our being drawn into taking part in the struggle going on in America; there was intelligence that hostilities with Japan had either been already begun, or were hourly expected to commence; our diplomatic relations with Brazil were interrupted; a war was being carried on in New Zealand against the Maories; and finally, a serious dispute had arisen between France and Austria respecting Poland, in which, if it should be carried farther, the strong public feeling that existed in this country in favour of oppressed Poland would hardly allow us to remain neutral. At a later period complications arose between Denmark and Germany, which seemed at one time likely to involve this country.

On the eve of Christmas-day, one whose name was familiar as a household word, whose books were in every library, and had been read with interest by everybody, suddenly disappeared. On the morning of the 24th of

December, William Makepeace Thackeray was found calmly sleeping his last sleep. His was a mind that saw the ugly side of human nature, and depicted it with vividness and exaggeration, cynically placing it in the clearest light, yet with no cynical intent, for his nature overflowed with benevolence and kindly humour; and if he painted vice in its darkest colours, it was only to make men hate it more intensely. His portraits were indeed drawn in somewhat sombre colours, but there was withal in them a trueness to life that had made him not a few enemies among those who fancied that they saw their own likeness in his delineations of character. But their enmity did not survive his death; and the unexpected intelligence of that event, coming as it did a few days after the report of a speech he had delivered at the Charterhouse full of rich humour and right feeling, was received with universal regret at a season which his works had contributed in no small degree to cheer and enliven. By the desire of his family his funeral was strictly private; but there stood by the open grave to which the body of the great humourist was committed his friend and literary rival, Charles Dickens, as well as most of the literary celebrities of the day. Three years before, Thackeray and Dickens had been chiefmourners at the interment of Douglas Jerrold; now one of them followed the other to his last resting-place, into which he also was shortly to descend.

It was very fortunate, considering the circumstances in which the inhabitants of the manufacturing districts as well as of other parts of the kingdom were placed by the civil war still raging in America, that the harvest of this year was abundant almost beyond precedent. From all quarters most cheering accounts had been received. The grain-crops were excellent both in quality and quantity, and the result was a considerable diminution in the prices of almost all the necessaries of life, as well as a healthy impulse to the industry and commerce of the country, which was thus assisted to rise out of the distress under which many of her districts had been suffering so long and so severely.

The year 1864 opened with very general apprehensions that the dispute which had arisen between Denmark on the one hand, and Prussia and Austria on the other, with

1861.]

SYMPATHY WITH DENMARK.

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regard to the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein would end in a war, into which this country might not improbably be drawn. Earl Russell, as foreign secretary, was doing his best, by appealing to the faith of treaties, to induce the two great powers who were claiming Schleswig-Holstein in the name of Germany, to moderate their proceedings; but to very little purpose, although in his communications with them he employed language which was almost menacing. Public opinion, however, expressed itself very decidedly against interference in a cause which England had no direct interest in maintaining, and she was consequently placed in the position of a warmly-interested looker-on, while the Danes were heroically contending against the enormously superior forces which the two great German powers brought into the field. But the sympathy of this country was shown, by large private contributions for the relief and assistance of the Danish soldiers wounded in the unequal conflict.

Much of the time of parliament was occupied by debates on the question involved in this war, to the exclusion of many important questions which urgently demanded its attention. In the House of Lords the Earl of Derby strongly condemned the policy of the foreign secretary, which he characterised by two expressive words, long remembered and frequently repeated, 'meddle and muddle.' However, the English generally knew little and cared less about the merits of the question at issue, but their sympathies were warmly excited by the spectacle of a little power like Denmark opposed to the armies of two great powers such as Prussia and Austria; and they were disposed to conclude, without much examination, that the small power must needs be right, and the two great powers wrong, as it was quite certain, that whether right or wrong they could take whatever they chose to demand. The debates on the question were much more remarkable for the warmth and vehemence with which they were conducted, than for the light they threw on the merits of the question at issue.

They did not, however, prevent parliament from discussing some measures of considerable interest and importance. Foremost among these, though attracting much less attention in this country than it deserved, was the

Government-Annuities bill, introduced by Mr. Gladstone, and designed to provide, under the management and security of the government, a great general life and health insurance institution founded on sound principles, and which, it was hoped, would ultimately supplant the numberless sick and burial clubs and friendly societies instituted for the same object, but which being for the most part based on thoroughly unsound principles, were either then bankrupt, or were sure at some future and not very distant time, to be placed in the position of being unable to meet the engagements into which they had entered with their members, and were consequently staving off the inevitable day by inducing young members to become contributors. Great opposition was offered to the plan by the societies which it was designed to supersede.

The budget of the year 1864 obtained the same attendance and attention that the financial statements of Mr. Gladstone had hitherto commanded. It was true that it did not, and, under the circumstances in which the country was placed, could not propose to carry out the great and brilliant financial operations by which some of his previous budgets had been distinguished. However, nothing could be more satisfactory than the statement he was able to make. Our gross exports and imports amounted to 444,000,000l., being about three times as much as they had been in the year 1842, the year in which the great financial reforms so boldly originated by Sir Robert Peel, and so ably carried on by Mr. Gladstone, were commenced. The revenue was estimated at 69,460,000l., and the expenditure at 66,890,000l., placing at the disposal of the chancellor a surplus of 2,570,0007. With this surplus he proposed to take off from the income tax a penny in the pound, to reduce the fire-insurance duty from three shillings to one shilling and sixpence so far as stock-in-trade was concerned, to grant a relief from taxation to the extent of 3,000,000l.; but he successfully resisted an agitation which was carried on for the repeal of the tax on malt, and was supported in that resistance by 347 votes to 99. He subsequently consented to a remission of the duty on malt used for the consumption of cattle.

An agitation for the entire abolition of capital punishment had been carried on for some time, and had now

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