this warning, Lord Melbourne refused to advise the Queen to insert a statement of the Prince's religion in her speech, though it was by no means superfluous on such an occasion, since, if he were a Roman Catholic, a marriage with him would have incurred a forfeiture of the crown. The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, regarded it as a positive duty to require that the fact of the Prince being a Protestant should be mentioned, so as to show the care of Parliament to prevent any constitutional precautions from being overlooked, such statement having, indeed, been usually made on similar occasions. When he, therefore, moved an amendment to insert the word 'Protestant' in the description of the Prince, Lord Melbourne did not venture to divide the House against it; but still his management gave an ungracious appearance to the transaction, as if there had been in any quarter an unwillingness to recognize the fact of the Prince's Protestantism till the recognition was forced on the government by the action of the Parliament.
The third question, as affecting the relative ranks and positions of the different members of the royal family, cannot be said to have been wholly unconnected with the provisions of the constitution; and the mismanagement of the minister was, perhaps, even more sure to attract notice in this case than in the other, since to introduce into a bill a clause which had no connection whatever with its title had something of the appearance of a deliberate slight to the two Houses. A bill to naturalize the Prince was, of course, indispensable. But into it the ministers, without any notice, had introduced a clause enabling him 'during his life to take precedence in rank after her Majesty in Parliament and elsewhere as her Majesty might think fit and proper, any law, statute, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.' It was admitted that no such precedence had been given to Prince George of Denmark, nor to Prince Leopold. And there were obvious difficulties in the way of conferring such a life-long precedence, because, as Lord Brougham had pointed out, it was possible that the Queen might die without issue, in which case the King of Hanover would become King of England also, and his son the Prince of Wales; and it would have been an inconceivable anomaly that a foreign naturalized prince should take precedence of the Prince of Wales, whose special rank and importance was recognized in many acts of Parliament. This objection was so clearly insuperable, that Lord Melbourne consented to alter the clause so as to give the Prince precedence only 'after the heir- apparent.' But even this concession failed to satisfy the objectors, the King of Hanover, among others, positively refusing to waive his precedence over any foreign prince. And eventually the minister withdrew the clause altogether, and the bill, as it was passed, was confined to the naturalization of the Prince. Lord Melbourne had thus contrived to make the Queen and Prince appear as if they were desirous to induce the two Houses by a sort of trick to confer on the Prince a precedence and dignity to which he was not entitled, and to render the refusal of Parliament to be so cajoled a fresh cause of mortification to the royal pair. The course that was eventually adopted is understood to have been suggested by the Duke of Wellington-to withdraw the affair altogether from the cognizance of Parliament, and to leave it to the Queen to confer on the Prince whatever precedence she might choose, as it was certainly within her right to do. And so, a few days after the bill had passed, she did by letters- patent give him precedence next to herself 'on all occasions and in all meetings, except when otherwise provided by act of Parliament,' as, seventeen years later, she, in the same way, with the cordial approval of the whole nation, conferred on him the title of Prince Consort. And apart from its convenience, as avoiding all unseemly discussions, this would seem to have been the most natural and proper mode of settling such a matter. The Queen is the fountain of honor in this kingdom, and at her own court she can certainly confer on any of her own subjects whatever precedence she may think fit, while it may be doubted whether any act of a British Parliament could give precedence at a foreign court. It was, probably, not in his character of Duke of Cumberland, but as an independent sovereign, that the King of Hanover maintained his claim to superior precedence; and it was plain that the most illustrious subject could not possibly at any court be allowed to rank above a king. With reference to its possible effect on the subsequent relations of Peel and his followers with the court, it was, perhaps, well that a few months later they had the opportunity of proving that no personal objection to the Prince himself had influenced their course in these transactions, by giving a cordial assent to the ministerial proposal of conferring the Regency on him in the event of the Queen giving an heir to the throne, and dying while he was still a minor. The principle was the same as that which had guided the arrangements for a Regency ten years before; but it was not inconceivable that Parliament might have hesitated to intrust so large an authority to so very young a man, and him a comparative stranger, such as the Prince still was, had the leaders of the Opposition given the slightest countenance to such an objection.
Lord Melbourne's ministry was hardly strengthened by the circumstances under which it resumed office. Yet the close of the same year witnessed a reform of which it is hardly too much to say that no single measure of this century has contributed more to the comfort of the whole mass of the people, with which it has also combined solid commercial benefits. Hitherto the Post-office had been managed in a singular manner, and the profit derived from it had been treated as something distinct from the ordinary revenue of the kingdom. In the reign of Charles II. it had been given to the Duke of York, and the grant was regarded as conferring on him such extensive rights, that when, some years afterward, an enterprising citizen set up a penny post for the delivery of letters in the City and its precincts, the Duke complained of the scheme as an infraction of his monopoly, and the courts of law decided in his favor. That grant ceased, as a matter of course, on the Duke's accession to the throne; and in the reign of Queen Anne a portion of the Post-office proceeds was appropriated, with the general consent of a grateful country, to reward the great achievements of the Duke of Malborough, a perpetual charge on it of L5000 a year being annexed to the dukedom. In those days the postage of a letter was twopence for short distances, and threepence for any distance beyond eighty miles.[251] But those charges had been gradually increased; about the middle of the century the lowest charge was fixed at fourpence, rising in proportion to the distance, till the conveyance of a single letter from one extremity of the kingdom to the other cost eighteen-pence. Such a rate could not fail to be very profitable; and by the beginning of the present reign the yearly profit exceeded a million and a half of money. The heaviness of the charge, however, had latterly attracted attention, and had been the cause of many complaints, as being a great discouragement, and, in the case of the poorer classes, a complete obstacle to communication. However, neither the ministers nor the Parliament had succeeded in devising any remedy, since a system affording so large a return was not a thing lightly to tamper with, when those who complained suddenly found a practical leader in Mr. Rowland Hill, who published a pamphlet on the subject, in which he affirmed the cost of the conveyance of each letter even for such a distance as from London to Edinburgh to be infinitely less than a farthing; and that, consequently, all the rest of the postage was a tax for the purposes of revenue. When this fact was once established, it needed no argument to prove that to increase the tax paid by each recipient of a letter in proportion to the distance at which he lived from the writer was an indefensible unfairness; and, after much investigation and discussion, Mr. Hill succeeded in converting the ministers to his view. Accordingly, the Budget for 1839, introduced by Mr. Spring Rice, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, contained a clause which reduced the postage for every letter weighing less than an ounce to a uniform charge of a penny, to be prepaid by means of a stamp to be affixed to each letter by the sender. It was not without plainly-expressed reluctance that the scheme was consented to by the Opposition; nor can their hesitation be considered as unreasonable, in the very unsatisfactory condition of the finances of the kingdom at the time. The balance-sheet of the preceding year showed a considerable deficiency. There was a large unfunded debt; and even Mr. Hill's most sanguine calculations admitted a probable loss to the Post-office of L1,200,000 for the first year or two; though he expressed his confidence that eventually the correspondence of the kingdom would be found to increase so largely as to make up for the greater part, if not the whole, of the deficiency. His anticipations were far outran by the reality.
In 1839 the Postmaster-general estimated the number of letters sent yearly by the post at less than twenty- five millions. They are now upward of a thousand millions, a number the conveyance of which (with the addition of newspapers, whose circulation had also been greatly augmented by a recent reduction of the tax to a penny) would have severely taxed the whole carrying power of the kingdom before the introduction of railroads. Nor have the benefits of the new system been confined to ourselves. Foreign nations have followed our example, though not quite in the same degree, till an international postage is at length established throughout the whole of the civilized world. And it has not been only the happiness of private individuals that has been augmented by this facility of communication. In its gradual development it has largely promoted the extension of trade of every kind, and, by facilitating a commercial intercourse between nations, it cannot but contribute to the maintenance of friendship and peace.
The full advantages of this reform could not be seen at first; but, even had it been appreciated as fully as we appreciate it now, no approval of it could have counterbalanced the general dissatisfaction with which the ministry was regarded. At home the finances were falling into great disorder, the expenditure of the year greatly exceeding the income; while the feeling that their Irish policy was dictated by a wish to purchase at any price the support of
