The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition). Robert Thomas Wilson

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      CHAPTER XI.

       ENGLAND IN 1845.

       Table of Contents

      Borneo and Sir James Brooke—Cession of Labuan to Great Britain—“Constitutionalism” in the Sandwich Islands—State of the Colonies—Unsuccessful Attack on Madagascar—Commencement of the Overland Route to India—Decline in the Popularity of Sir Robert Peel—Rise of Mr. Disraeli and the Young England Party—Generous Support of Peel by the Queen and Prince Albert—Offer of the Garter to Sir Robert, which he declines—Position of the Premier towards the Aristocracy—Increasing Weakness of the Government—Dangerous State of Ireland—Prince Albert on the Political Situation—Visit of the Queen to Belgium and Prussia—Splendid Reception in the latter Country—Speech of the King of Prussia at Bonn—The Illuminations at Cologne—Prince Albert and Baron von Humboldt—Reception of the Royal Visitors in Bavaria, at Coburg, and at Gotha—The Queen at the Native Place of her Husband—Excursion to the Thuringian Forest—Other Incidents of the German Visit—Second Visit of the Queen and Prince Albert to Louis Philippe at the Château d’Eu—Duplicity of the King—Return of the Royal Party to England—Spread of Railway Enterprise in Great Britain—The Railway Mania and Panic of 1845-6—Increasing Strength of the Free Trade Movement—The Potato Disease in Ireland—Threatenings of Famine—Sir Robert Peel and Free Trade—Letter of Lord John Russell to the Electors of the City of London—Ministerial Crisis—Return of Sir Robert Peel to Power.

      A great Empire, so long as the vigour of its people survives, is continually spreading in new directions—sometimes by indefensible means, at other times by methods which may be justified in accordance with the ordinary nature of human affairs. In the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign considerable activity was shown in the eastern parts of Asia, and some important additions were made to the British possessions. Borneo—the largest island in the world, next to Australia—was brought under the notice of Englishmen, about 1841, by the proceedings of an adventurous explorer. Until then it had been very little known in Great Britain, although discovered by the Portuguese as far back as 1518. The Dutch traded there during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but the distant situation of the island, in the middle of the China Seas, restricted the intercourse of Europeans with its people. The adjacent waters swarmed with pirates, who not only robbed, but committed the most extreme atrocities; and the evil was not firmly taken in hand until a retired Anglo-Indian officer, named James Brooke, resolved to put down buccaneering in the Eastern Archipelago. Providing himself with a large yacht (which, being attached to the Royal Yacht Squadron, possessed in foreign seas the privileges of a ship of war), he practised his crew for about three years in the Mediterranean and other European seas, and departed for the East near the end of October, 1838. Arriving at Sarawak, he and his men lent their aid to the Sultan of Borneo in suppressing an insurrection among the Dyaks, a savage race, distinct from the ruling tribe, who are Malays. In acknowledgment of his services Brooke was made Rajah and Governor of Sarawak in September, 1841, and used his power in efforts to improve the laws and civilise the people. He also obtained the assistance of various British ships of war in the extirpation of piracy, and many persons were slaughtered on the allegation that they were freebooters. At a somewhat later date the English Rajah quarrelled with the Sultan, attacked his capital city, took it by storm, and put the whole army to flight. The Sultan was afterwards reinstated; but Sir James Brooke (as he afterwards became) still held his position as Rajah of Sarawak. The upshot of all these adventures, so far as this period of Queen Victoria’s reign is concerned, was that, in the course of 1846, a treaty was concluded with the Sultan, through the instrumentality of Brooke, by which the island of Labuan, to the north-west of Borneo, was, together with its dependencies, ceded to the British Empire, as a naval station between India and China. A money payment was made to the Sultan, and Sir James Brooke acted for a time as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Labuan. His conduct, however, was much impugned in Parliament by Messrs. Hume and Cobden, who maintained that many innocent persons had been slain, under pretence of their being pirates, and that the inducement to these acts was the “head-money” paid by the British Government to the sailors. These charges, though seemingly not improbable, were never distinctly proved; but the money payment was wisely abolished.

      Travelling still farther from home, we find the Sandwich Islands offered to Great Britain by their king, Kamehameha III., in 1843. Some British subjects had claims against this chieftain, which he knew not how else to meet. The offer was not accepted; but the islands were taken under British protection, and formed into a kind of semi-independent State, with a ridiculous travesty of so-called “Constitutional” government. Two Houses of Parliament were appointed, and met for the first time on the 20th of May, 1845. The dusky-coloured sovereign delivered a speech from the throne, and told his people that it was their possession of the Word of God which had introduced them into the family of nations. All these assumptions of European modes sound extremely ludicrous; yet, since those days, the Sandwich islanders have got on fairly well, so that Kamehameha was not altogether without justification in his hopeful anticipations. To the minds of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the enlargement of the area of civilisation, under the ægis of the British Empire, must have been profoundly interesting. But there were parts of our actual dominions, peopled by men of English race, where the right of self-government was not enjoyed at all. In 1845, we had forty-two colonies, of which only twenty-five had representative institutions, and those of a very incomplete character. The consequence was seen in continual complaints of misgovernment, corruption, and tyranny; and successive Colonial Secretaries seem to have been equally indifferent to the just demands of their countrymen beyond the seas.

      In May, 1845, a new convention was concluded between England and France for the better suppression of the slave trade. A little later in the same year, a French and English squadron made a somewhat futile demonstration off Madagascar, an island on the south-eastern coast of Africa. Madagascar,