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

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      OPENING OF PARLIAMENT IN 1846: ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL PROCESSION AT THE HOUSE OF LORDS. (See p. 220.)

      “I regret that the conflicting claims of Great Britain and the United States, in respect of the territory on the north-western coast of America, although they have been made the subject of repeated negotiation, still remain unsettled. You may be assured that no effort, consistent with national honour, shall be wanting on my part to bring this question to an early and peaceful termination.

      “Gentlemen of the House of Commons,—

      “The estimates for the year will be laid before you at an early period. Although I am deeply sensible of the importance of enforcing economy in all branches of the expenditure, yet I have been compelled, by a due regard to the exigencies of the Public Service, and to the state of our Naval and Military establishments, to propose some increase in the estimates which provide for their efficiency.

      “My Lords and Gentlemen,—

      “I have observed with great regret the frequent instances in which the crime of deliberate assassination has been of late committed in Ireland. It will be for you only to consider whether any measures can be devised calculated to give increased protection to life, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of so dreadful a crime.

      “I have to lament that in consequence of a failure of the potato crop in many parts of the United Kingdom there will be a deficient supply of an article of food which forms the chief subsistence of great numbers of my people. The disease by which the plant has been affected has prevailed to the utmost extent in Ireland. I have adopted all such precautions as it was in my power for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings which may be caused by this calamity; and I shall confidently rely on your co-operation in devising such other means for effecting the same benevolent purpose as may require the sanction of the Legislature.

      “I have had great satisfaction in giving my assent to the measures which you have presented to me from time to time, calculated to extend commerce, and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibitory and the relaxation of protective duties. The prosperous state of the revenue, the increased demand for labour, and the general improvement which has taken place in the internal conditions of the country are strong testimonies in favour of the course you have pursued.

      “I recommend you to take into your early consideration, whether the principles on which you have acted may not with advantage be more extensively applied, and whether it may not be in your power, after a careful review of the existing duties on many articles, the produce of manufacture of other countries, to make such further reductions and remissions as may tend to ensure the continuance of the great benefits to which I have adverted, and, by enlarging our commercial intercourse, to strengthen the bonds of amity with Foreign Powers.

      “Any measures which you may adopt for effecting these great objects will, I am convinced, be accompanied by such precautions as shall prevent permanent loss to the revenue, or injurious results to any of the great interests of the country.

      “I have full reliance on your just and dispassionate consideration of matters so deeply affecting the public welfare.

      “It is my earnest prayer that, with the blessing of Divine Providence on your councils, you may be enabled to promote friendly feelings between different classes of my subjects, to provide additional security for the continuance of peace, and to maintain contentment and happiness at home, by increasing the comfort and bettering the condition of the great body of my people.”

      When the Queen retired, then the difficulty of some of our Constitutional forms became apparent. It was remarked at the time that, had her Majesty suddenly come down in the middle of the Session, and, usurping the functions of Ministers, laid a startling project of legislation before Parliament, she could not have found herself more thoroughly the mover of a controversial Bill than, in spite of herself, she had become that afternoon. Every caution had been exercised, it will be observed, in keeping all mention of the Corn duties out of the Royal Speech. Yet, within a few hours after it was read, the two Houses were engaged in an acrimonious debate, not on the guarded generalities of the Address from the Throne, but on the proposal for the total and immediate Repeal of the Corn Laws. The Queen’s Speech, looked at apart from the events of the day, might seem to recommend something less than that. But it was that, and nothing less, which was in men’s minds and hearts, and for once in our Parliamentary history the Debate on the Address was not a barren criticism of the general policy of the Government, but really a sharp discussion on a special measure foreshadowed dimly in the Royal Speech.

      The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1846, in its bearing on the fate of the Corn Law Bill, has been so ably told both by Dr. Cooke Taylor, in his “Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,” and by Mr. John Morley, in his “Life of Cobden,” that it is hardly necessary here to do more than glance at its salient points. In the House of Lords the debate on the Address was brief and bitter—at least as bitter as the Duke of Richmond, who assailed Sir Robert Peel, could make it. But in the House of Commons the proceedings were more exciting. Lord Francis Egerton (afterwards Earl of Ellesmere) moved, and Mr. Beckett Denison, who had driven Lord Morpeth out of his seat for the West Riding, because his Lordship had joined the Anti-Corn-Law League, seconded the Address. Sir Robert Peel followed, and vindicated his change of policy, resting the chief strength of his case on his own observations, first, of the effect of the gradual relaxation of Protective duties which he had tried, and secondly, on the failure of the potato crop—a report on which had been drawn up for him by Professor Lindley and Dr. Lyon Playfair. It was in this speech that he intimated he was at first prepared to suspend the Corn Law by an Order in Council, but that his colleagues objected to that course on the ground that, if once opened to foreign corn, the ports could never again be closed. Lord John Russell followed, and explained how he had failed to form a Ministry; and then Lord George Bentinck, waiving his right as leader of the Protectionists to reply, put up Mr. Disraeli to deliver one of the first of those violent philippics against Peel which gave him a unique reputation as a Parliamentary sabreur. What could the House think of a statesman, he asked, who having, as he had boasted, served four sovereigns, was finally compelled, by the observations of the last three years, to change his opinion on a subject which had been discussed in his hearing from every conceivable point of view during a quarter of a century? He likened him to the Capitan Pasha of the Sultan, who, on the plea that he hated a war, ended it by going over to the enemy, and betraying his Imperial master. Peel’s speech, said Mr. Disraeli, was “a glorious example of egotistical rhetoric.” He was “no more a great statesman than a man who got up behind a carriage was a great whip. Both were anxious for progress, and both wanted a good place.” It was a brilliant, dazzling, witty harangue, and it caught the humour, not of the betrayed Protectionists merely, but to some extent of the House also. Looking back on Peel’s speech now, one can detect a false note in it. Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, who went to hear the debate, in a letter to Miss Noel, says that the Prime Minister’s statement was received with “a kind of thundering sullenness.”37 He unconsciously irritated the House by his assumption that the case for the Corn Laws must needs fall after he had personally put the matter to the test of a three years’