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

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СКАЧАТЬ She had learned to respect and trust the Prime Minister and his colleagues, one of whom, Lord Aberdeen, had, by his gentle manners and cultured companionship, won the hearts of the Queen and the Prince Consort. The country, in the opinion of the Queen, was in a critical condition. One of the great political parties was shattered as a governing organisation, and her Majesty and her husband both knew how safe and valuable was the pilotage of those with whom, says Sir Theodore Martin, “they had grown familiar, not merely in the anxious counsels of State, but in the intimacies of friendship.”

      There can be no doubt that the feeling of the Queen and of the country alike ran in favour of retaining Sir Robert Peel at the head of affairs. After he resigned, and the Whig Administration, headed by Lord John Russell, took his place, the sentiments of the Sovereign were, curiously enough, reproduced unconsciously by Mr. Wakley in the House of Commons. Referring to the change of Government, he said, “I am utterly at a loss to understand why it was that Sir Robert Peel left his place in the Cabinet, and gave up his situation to others who are scarcely prepared to carry out the Liberal principles which the Right Honourable Baronet professed in the last speech that he delivered to this House.... At this moment Sir Robert Peel is the most popular man in the kingdom. He is believed in, he is almost adored by the masses, who believe that no Minister before him ever made such sacrifices as he has made in their behalf.” Punch had, however, anticipated Mr. Wakley as an exponent of popular feeling when Sir Robert Peel tendered his resignation in December, 1845. The great comic journal then gave its readers a picture, showing Peel and Lord John Russell as rival candidates for the office of page to the Queen, and her Majesty settling the claims of one by saying, “I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place, John.” This was also the feeling even of the Whig gentry, who thought Lord John needlessly bold in forcing on such a disagreeable question as the Repeal of the Corn Laws in his letter to the electors of London. “I hear,” wrote Lord Clarendon, to Lord Lyndhurst, on the 17th of December, 1845, “Lord John has gone down to Windsor to-night; and I can assure you that the most acceptable news he can bring back to his whole party would be that he had not considered himself justified in undertaking the task proposed to him by the Queen.”45 That the Queen was still desirous of retaining her Ministers in office after they again resigned in June, 1846, is expressly taken for granted in a letter addressed by the Duke of Wellington to Peel on the 21st of June.46 It is put beyond all doubt by a letter dated the 7th of July from her Majesty to the King of the Belgians, in which she says:—“Yesterday (6th of July) was a very hard day for me. I had to part from Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable losses to us and to the country. They were both so much overcome that it quite upset me, and we have in them two devoted friends. We felt so safe with them.” At Court it was thought that Sir Robert should dissolve, or coalesce with the more moderate Whigs. The Duke of Wellington was for dissolution, and, by a curious coincidence, for the same reason which Mr. Cobden seems to have given in a private letter which he wrote to the fallen Minister recommending that step. Peel’s public services, and the confidence which the industrial classes had in his policy, would, he thought, induce the country to give him a working majority.47 On the other hand, Sir Robert Peel thought that to dissolve on a Coercion Bill for Ireland “would shake the foundations of the legislative union,” and ensure “a worse return of Irish Members—rendered more desperate, more determined to obstruct, by every artifice, the passing of a Coercion Bill in the new Parliament.” In fact, he was at pains to impress on the Queen the tradition which she is understood to have handed down to a later generation of statesmen that, with the exception of “No Popery,” the most dangerous of all election cries is “Coercion for Ireland.”48 There was another cogent reason which had weight with the Queen. Her Majesty has ever regarded the power to dissolve Parliament as a sacred trust vested in her for the protection of the country, and the Crown, against factious Parliaments. But it is a power like the talisman in

      LORD CAMPBELL.

      Balzac’s story, that loses its virtue by repeated use on trivial occasions. “The hope of getting a stronger minority,” said Peel, in his Memorandum to the Duke of Wellington, “is no justification for a Dissolution.” And yet, with all his popularity, that was his highest hope. The differences between Lord John Russell and Lord Grey were not acute enough to cause a schism in the Whig Party. The Free Traders, on whom the Duke of Wellington relied so much, had given all the glory of Repeal to Cobden. They were exhausting their energies and enthusiasm in organising a testimonial to him, and had none to spare for the reconstruction of a new Party of Progressive Reform, under the leadership of Peel. As for the Radicals and the Irish Nationalists, they would have declared war to the knife against the Minister who made Coercion for Ireland his cry. As for the Tory Party, Sir Robert was to them in the position of the man mentioned in Scripture, who found his worst foes in his own household. On the whole, it was perhaps wise that he resisted the temptation to yield to such potent influences as those of the

      THE HORSEGUARDS, FROM THE PARADE GROUND.

      Queen, the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Cobden, and firmly refused to dissolve Parliament.

      The next question that disturbed the Court was what would the Duke of Wellington do? The Queen was personally most anxious that he should remain at the head of the army as Commander-in-Chief, in spite of any change of Ministry. She had, on the occasion of Sir Robert Peel’s interview with her in December, when he first resigned, expressed this wish. But she knew that if the Duke consented he would unwittingly give great strength to Lord John Russell’s Government, and with characteristic shrewdness she judged that Sir Robert Peel might possibly regard with little favour a proposal which was rather like asking him to lend his rival one of his strongest colleagues. But her Majesty mooted the matter with such grace and tact, that Sir Robert Peel was not only eager to give his assent, but assured her that he would do everything in his power to remove any difficulty that might arise on the part of the Duke.49 At the same time, he also undertook to convey to Lord Liverpool, for whom the Queen had a very high regard, the letter in which she earnestly urged him to retain the appointment of Lord Steward. The Duke of Wellington was well aware of Sir Robert’s views, and concurred with him fully in sacrificing all considerations of party tactics to the wishes expressed by the Sovereign, whose popular sympathies interpreted national feeling with so much accuracy and precision. Thus it came to pass that when Lord John Russell’s Ministry took office in July, his Grace was quite prepared to receive from the Prime Minister a personal request from her Majesty, inviting him to retain his post as Commander-in-Chief of the army. But the grim warrior felt it his duty to explain definitely, in writing, to Lord John the exact significance that was to be attached to his consent. In a letter to Lord Lyndhurst,50 dated the 23rd of July, his Grace says:—“I told you that in consequence of her Majesty having conveyed to me her commands that I should continue to fill the office of Commander-in-Chief of her Majesty’s Land Forces, through her Minister, Lord John Russell, I had given my consent; but that I had explained myself to Lord John nearly in the very words of, and had referred to, a letter which I had written to her Majesty in December last, when her Majesty had herself in writing intimated the same command to me, on the occasion of the retirement of Sir Robert Peel from her Majesty’s service, and Lord John Russell having received her commands to form a Government. Here follow the very terms used:—‘It is impossible for F.M. the Duke of Wellington to form a political connection with Lord John Russell, or to have any relations with the political course of the Government over which he will preside. Such arrangement would not conciliate public confidence, be creditable to either party, or be useful to the service of her Majesty; nor, indeed, would the performance of the duties of the Commander-in-Chief require that it should exist. On the other hand, the performance of these duties would require that the person filling the office should avoid to belong to or act in concert with any political party opposed to the Government.’ Her Majesty was thus made aware of the position in which I was about to place myself in case her Majesty should communicate to me her official command that I should resume the command of her army.”

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