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

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СКАЧАТЬ of nothing more than a pair of trousers made of sacking. Their bodies were encrusted with the grime of the coal-dust, and many were completely unsexed, and presented chests that were as flat as those of men. By far the greater part of their lives was passed underground, in the black and cavernous recesses of the mine; and the morality of these unhappy creatures was equal to their physical degradation. Children were also employed, and treated with even greater brutality. Overworked and beaten by their cruel taskmasters, these children grew up stunted and diseased, and it was evident that nothing but widespread ruin, both of body and soul, could result from a system so monstrously opposed to all the laws of nature. The statesman who procured the Commission of Inquiry was Lord Ashley, afterwards still more famous as Earl of Shaftesbury; and it was he who subsequently introduced and carried the Mines and Collieries Act, by which women and girls were forbidden to be employed in any form of mining or colliery labour, and the employment of boys was not to be permitted under the age of ten years. Moreover, the term of apprenticeship was limited, and the Secretary of State was empowered to appoint Inspectors of Mines and Collieries, that the provisions of the Bill should not be evaded by those interested in defeating them. The Act was passed in 1842, but did not come into operation until 1843. Its effect was unquestionably good; yet it was found difficult to restrain many women from continuing the work to which they had been accustomed, and which perhaps they could not readily exchange for anything better. The Mines and Collieries Act was a measure in which we may be certain that the Queen, as a woman and a mother, took the deepest interest, and it is equally beyond question that the benevolent and clear-seeing mind of Prince Albert was also enlisted on behalf of sufferers of so peculiar and helpless an order.

      It was at this time that great attention began to be paid to social as apart from political questions. Lord Ashley devoted a good deal of pains to effecting a limitation of the daily labour of women and young persons in factories. He ultimately obtained from the Government, in 1844, a Factories Act which threw some protection around children who had previously been employed to an extent, and for a number of successive hours, terribly injurious to their physical and moral health. It was the desire of Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, to engraft upon this Bill certain provisions for the education of young persons engaged in the large manufacturing establishments of the country; but, owing to the opposition of the Dissenters, who feared that the influence of the Church would be unduly extended, it was found necessary to abandon the proposed clauses. Even with respect to the main objects of the Bill, there was considerable opposition; for the bigoted adherents of political economy would not tolerate a measure which interfered with what they regarded as the right of contract between the employers and the employed. Their principle was doubtless a good one in the main; but children are so much under the influence of others that some departure from the rule was necessary in their case, especially as it was well known that the evil and the suffering were great. The more bitter opponents of Lord Ashley argued that he ought to look nearer home; that the peasantry on his father’s estates, to which in due course he would succeed, were in a worse condition than the female and juvenile operatives in the factories; that the aristocratic reformer knew nothing about manufacturing life; and that in truth there was not much to complain of. But the fact that the agricultural labourers on the lands of Lord Ashley’s father were poor and miserable, was no reason why Lord Ashley should not interest himself in another class of sufferers; while, as to the condition of the children in the seats of manufacturing industry, there could be no question, to any impartial mind, that it was such as to render the interposition of the law imperatively necessary. The general principle has since been extended in many other Acts of Parliament, even to the protection of women; and the bitter opposition of former times has become less and less. It is now admitted that special circumstances call for special legislation; that care for the young has even yet been insufficiently carried out; and that to sacrifice tender lives to economical theories is little better than to repeat in another form the Hindoo worship of Juggernaut. Some slight extension of the time devoted to education was introduced into the Act of 1844, in place of the more complete provision which it was originally intended to make; and the effect of this arrangement was found to be good, though a still further application of the system would unquestionably have been better.

      As the session of 1843 advanced, the Queen and Prince Albert conceived a yet higher opinion of the great qualities exhibited by Sir Robert Peel. Her Majesty described him to the King of the Belgians as “a man who thinks but little of party, and never of himself.” The Prince, with his remarkable keenness of judgment, anticipated that it would not be long ere Peel would quit the Conservative party, or the Conservatives, in the main, would desert him. In a Memorandum of Mr. Anson’s, dated April 30th, 1843, we read:—“The Prince said yesterday, that Sir Robert Peel was certainly far from popular with the Conservative party. He, for his part, had the greater confidence in Sir Robert for the very cause to which he attributed the want of confidence with which his party regarded him. It was that Sir Robert was determined to adopt his own line, and not to be turned aside by the fear of making political enemies, or losing support. He was determined either to stand or fall by his own opinion; and the Prince felt that in such a man’s hands the interests of the Crown were most secure.” In little more than three years it was seen that Peel did in truth “fall” by devotion to what he considered necessary to the well-being of the

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      country. By his conversion to Free Trade he lost the support of the Conservative party, and was expelled from office by a combination which placed him at a hopeless disadvantage. That he would once more have risen to the head of affairs, had not an accident cut short his life, cannot be doubted; but, with the change of Ministry in 1846, his official existence came to a close.

      The state of her health precluded the Queen from opening Parliament in person on the 2nd of February, 1843, and for the same reason she was unable to hold the usual spring levees. These were accordingly held by Prince Albert, as the representative of her Majesty; but some members of the Court were so much annoyed at the arrangement, which they regarded as an unwarrantable assumption of Royal functions by the Prince, that they absented themselves from these ceremonial gatherings. The speedy recovery of the sovereign after the birth of the Princess Alice soon enabled her Majesty to occupy once more her proper position at the head of the Court, and the general opinion of the public was quite in favour of the step which had been temporarily adopted. This left Prince Albert free to devote himself with the greater application to his duties as head of the Royal Commission on the Fine Arts, which had been appointed with reference to the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. In the summer of 1843, several cartoons, on subjects illustrative of English History and Poetry, were exhibited in Westminster Hall, and prizes were offered for the best productions. The collection excited great interest, and large numbers of persons thronged the magnificent old structure, to scan the designs submitted by the competitors. Those which were ultimately selected have been executed in fresco for the two Houses; but, owing either to climate, or to a bad preparation of the colours, or to both causes combined, these fine works have greatly decayed during the short period since their execution. Prince Albert took a keen interest in fresco-painting, and caused a summer-house in the garden of Buckingham Palace to be decorated in this manner. The result was a series of eight pictures in illustration of Milton’s “Comus.” The artists were Sir Edwin Landseer, Maclise, Uwins, Eastlake, Leslie, Sir William Ross, Dyce, and Stanfield; and the progress of their work was closely watched by her Majesty and the Prince. Mr. Uwins, in a letter to a friend, written on the 15th of August, 1843, gives a very interesting account of the impression produced on his mind by the Queen and her gifted consort. “The Queen,” he observes, “is full of intelligence, her observations very acute, and her judgment apparently matured beyond her age. It has happened to me in life to see something of many Royal personages, and I must say, with the single exception of the Duke of Kent, I have never met with any, either in England or on the Continent of Europe, who have impressed me so favourably as our reigning sovereign and her young and interesting husband. Coming to us twice a day, unannounced and without attendants, entirely stripped of all State and ceremony, courting conversation, and desiring rather reason than obedience, they have gained our admiration and love.... Our peaceful pursuits are in accordance with the scene; СКАЧАТЬ