The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Vol. 1-4). Robert Thomas Wilson

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      CHRISTENING OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL. (After the Painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A.)

      complications in the East, which at one time threatened to involve us in a war with France. The Pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, had for some years made himself almost independent of the Turkish Sultan, Mahmoud II., and had annexed the whole of Syria to his recognised dominions. He had an able, energetic, and martial son (or rather an adopted son) named Ibrahim Pasha, who repeatedly worsted the Ottoman forces, overran the larger part of the Turkish dominions in Asia, and even threatened Constantinople itself. After a while, a compromise was effected, by which the Egyptians withdrew from their more advanced positions, but were suffered to retain the province of Syria. This arrangement was concluded in 1833; but, six years later, Mehemet Ali again rose against his suzerain. Mahmoud II. expired on the 1st of July, 1839, shortly after a great battle in Syria, which had ended in the discomfiture of his army, but of which he had not received intelligence at the time of his decease. A few days later, the Capitan Pasha, or Lord High Admiral, Achmet, deserted to Mehemet Ali with the whole of the Turkish fleet, and the Ottoman Empire might have been rent into fragments, had it not been for the interposition of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which, in July, 1840, gave Mehemet Ali to understand that he would not be permitted to proceed in his career of rebellion and conquest. Thus assisted, the young Turkish Sultan, Abdul-Medjid, pronounced the deposition of his Egyptian vassal. Beyrout was bombarded by a combined English, Austrian, and Turkish fleet, and captured in October. Other successes followed, and old Mehemet Ali made his submission to superior power. He was deprived of all his conquests, but permitted to retain Egypt; and thus a very difficult state of affairs was brought to a peaceful conclusion about the close of 1840. There had been no little danger of a rupture with France, owing to the very different views of the Eastern Question taken by that Power and by England. France dreaded the establishment of British influence in Egypt, where she desired to affirm her own superiority; and in the spring of 1840 M. Guizot was sent on a special mission to London, in the hope of composing matters. The Queen received him graciously; yet he has left an account of a dinner at Buckingham Palace, which confirms other descriptions as to the dulness and languor of those entertainments. His negotiations did not proceed very happily; but at length the clouds passed off, and, shortly after the birth of the Princess Royal, all menace of a European war had entirely disappeared.

      A minor but still important incident, belonging to the same period, tended to the creation of a better feeling between England and France, and, in a not distant future, helped forward a striking change in the political condition of the latter country. In May, 1840, during the reign of Louis Philippe, the body of Napoleon I. was removed, by permission of the English Government, from the island of St. Helena to the dominions where the great conqueror had once held such brilliant, yet disastrous, sway. On the 15th of December, the remains were buried with solemn pomp in the Hôtel des Invalides, in Paris. A magnificent monument has since been erected over the grave, and it cannot be doubted that the enthusiasm awakened by the reception of the mighty soldier’s ashes had much to do with the subsequent revival of the Napoleonic Empire.

      A question of great importance, which had been growing up for years, was now acquiring a degree of prominence which renders it advisable that some notice should be taken of its rise and development. The Corn Laws of England had long operated not only as a serious interference with the trade of the country, but as an artificial aggravation of the price of food. From time to time, various attempts had been made to lighten the burden by making the tax dependent on the price of native wheat; but the injury to the populace was always considerable, and the benefit, if there was any benefit at all, was enjoyed simply by the landowners and the agricultural class. Strange to say, the great body of the people, who were chiefly interested in the matter, made little remonstrance during a long term of years, and it required the persistent efforts of an organised body to excite the necessary amount of opposition to an impost which did cruel injustice to the multitude. An association for obtaining the repeal of the Corn Laws was established in London in 1834, and other bodies, animated by the same intention, arose in different parts of the country. Still, their influence was but slight; and it was not until the work was taken up by men peculiarly fitted to carry on the discussion, that the country recognised the evils of a system which made the poor man’s loaf dearer than it ought to be.

      In 1804, a small landed proprietor near Midhurst, in Sussex, had a son born to him, who was afterwards the celebrated Richard Cobden. The boy was soon introduced to business life in London, and subsequently became a partner in a Manchester printed-cotton factory, for which he occasionally travelled. In this way he saw a good deal of the world, and, being a person of a singularly shrewd, penetrating, and reflective mind, he discerned the whole fallacy of the Protective system, and determined to devote his energies to a repeal of the Corn Laws. In 1838, he and some others brought the matter before the attention of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, and from that time forward the question came into the first rank of public discussion. The following year, delegates were sent from the manufacturing districts to London, that their views upon the subject might be brought under the notice of the Legislature. At that time, Cobden had no seat in the House of Commons; but the desired reform was ably supported in that assembly by the brother of the late Earl of Clarendon, Mr. Charles Villiers, who, so far as Parliament is concerned, may be described as the Father of Free Trade. On the 19th of February, 1839, Mr. Villiers moved that the House resolve itself into a Committee of Inquiry on the Corn Laws; and on the 12th of March he moved that certain manufacturers be heard by counsel at the bar of the House against the Corn Laws, as injurious to their private interests. Both motions were rejected by large majorities, and the delegates returned to the North, convinced that nothing would serve their cause but a systematic campaign, directed against the evils from which they suffered, together with the great majority of the people.

      Hence the creation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, the constitution of which was adopted on the 20th of March, 1839, at a meeting in Manchester. The body thus formed was a sort of federation of all similar bodies existing in different parts of the kingdom. It was agreed that delegates from the different local associations should from time to time meet for business at the principal towns