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[Footnote 264: In the course of the session, in order to tranquillize the public mind on the subject, secret committees were appointed by both Houses of Parliament to investigate the subject, from whose inquiries it appeared that, since the days when the government was endangered by the plots of the Jacobites, the power had been very sparingly used. The most conspicuous instance of its employment had been in the case of Bishop Atterbury, several of whose letters had been opened, and were produced in Parliament to justify the bill of 'pains and penalties' which was passed against him. The power had been confined to Great Britain till the latter part of the last century, when it was judged desirable to extend it also to the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. But, since the Peace of Amiens, the number of letters opened in a year had not, on an average, exceeded eight; nor was there the least ground for suspecting that a single one had been opened except on such information as fully warranted suspicion.
The practice, however, was not confined to our own government. In the second volume of the 'Life of Bishop Wilberforce' a page is given of his diary, dated July 18, 1854, which records a conversation in which the Duke of Newcastle and Lord John Russell took part, and in which it is mentioned that the French government, under the administration of M. Guizot, opened letters, and that the practice was not confined to monarchical or absolute governments, for 'the American government opens most freely all letters.' And, with reference to this particular case, the Duke of Newcastle said that 'Sir James Graham really opened Mazzini's letters on information which led to a belief that a great act of violence and bloodshed might be prevented by it.'-
[Footnote 265: A subsequent act, passed since the date at which the present history closes, has repealed even this exception. By the 33d Victoria, c. 14 ('Law Reports,' p. 169), it is enacted that 'an alien, to whom a certificate of naturalization is granted, shall in the United Kingdom be entitled to all political and other rights, powers, and privileges, and be subject to all obligations to which a natural born British subject is entitled as subject in the United Kingdom,' etc.; and at the general election of 1880 the Baron de Ferrieres, a Belgian nobleman, who had been naturalized in 1867, was elected M.P. for Cheltenham.]
[Footnote 266: In one instance-on the question whether twelve should be the number of hours, as proposed by the Government-the majority against that number was 186 to 183. But immediately afterward a majority of 188 to 184 decided against Lord Ashley's alternative proposal of ten hours.]
[Footnote 267: As President of the Board of Trade. He afterward was raised to the Peerage as Lord Taunton.]
[Footnote 268: The second reading was carried in the House of Lords by 49 to 37.]
[Footnote 269: See 'Peel's Memoirs,' ii., 173.]
[Footnote 270: It has been observed that till the Corn-laws were repealed there had been no instance whatever of any person who had been engaged in trade becoming a cabinet minister. Since that time there have been several, some of whom only relinquished their share in houses of business on receiving their appointments, and some who are generally understood to have continued to participate in the profits of trade while members of an administration.]
[Footnote 271: Alison, quoting the General Report of the Census Commissioners, estimates the deaths caused by famine and the diseases engendered by it at the appalling number of 590,000, and states the sums advanced under different acts of Parliament to meet the emergency at L7,132,268.-
[Footnote 272: The same statesman who has previously been mentioned as Lord Stanley, and whom the death of his father had recently raised to the House of Peers.]
[Footnote 273: In 1853 he said to Lord Clarendon, speaking of a new bill which he was pressing on Lord Aberdeen, then Prime-minister, 'I am for making it as Conservative as possible, and that by a large extension of the suffrage. The Radicals are the ten-pound holders. The five-pound holders will be Conservative, as they are more easily acted upon.'-
[Footnote 274: 'Life of the Prince Consort,' iv., 395.]
[Footnote 275: 'Life of the Prince Consort,' v., 56.]
CHAPTER XIII. Dismissal of Lord Palmerston.-Theory of the Relation between the Sovereign and the Cabinet.-Correspondence of the Sovereign with French Princes.-Russian War.-Abolition of the Tax on Newspapers.-Life Peerages.-Resignation of two Bishops.-Indian Mutiny.-Abolition of the Sovereign Power of the Company.-Visit of the Prince of Wales to India.-Conspiracy Bill.-Rise of the Volunteers.-National Fortifications.-The Lords Reject the Measure for the Repeal of the Paper-duties.-Lord Palmerston's Resolutions.-Character of the Changes during the last Century.
The frequency of ministerial changes at this time has already been mentioned, and the first of them took place at the beginning of 1852, under circumstances which throw some light on a question which has never been exactly defined-the duty of the different members of a cabinet to one another, to the Prime-minister, and to the sovereign.
Queen Victoria had a high idea of her duties and responsibilities. From any legal responsibility she was aware that she was exempt; but she did not the less consider that a moral responsibility rested on her not to be content to give her royal sanction as a mere matter of form to every scheme or measure which might be submitted to her, but to examine every case for herself, to form her own opinion, and, if it differed from that of her ministers, to lay her objections and views fairly before them, though prepared, as the constitution required, to act on their decision rather than on her own, if, in spite of her arguments, they adhered to their judgment. And in carrying out this notion of her duty she was singularly aided by the Prince, her husband, a man of perfectly upright character, of great general ability, and who, from the first moment of his married life, regulated his views of every question, domestic and foreign, by its bearing on English interests and English feelings, to which he early acclimatized himself with a remarkable readiness of appreciation.
In the administration of Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary, and during its latter years foreign affairs occupied more of the attention of the country than matters of domestic policy.
The revolution of 1848, which overthrew the Orleans dynasty, had produced in France a state of affairs but little removed from anarchy, which was scarcely mitigated by the election of Prince Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the new republic for four years, so constant was the opposition which the Republican party in the Assembly offered to every part of his policy. They even carried their opposition so far as to form a deliberate plan for the impeachment of his minister and himself, and for his arrest and imprisonment at Vincennes. But he was well- informed of all these dangers, and on the morning of the 2d of December, 1851 (the day, as was commonly believed, having been selected by him as being the anniversary of his uncle's great victory of Austerlitz), he anticipated them by the arrest of all the leading malcontents in their beds; which he followed up by an appeal to the people to adopt a new constitution which he set before them, the chief article of which was the appointment of a President for ten years.
No one could avoid seeing that what was aimed at was the re-establishment of the Empire in his own person. And so arbitrary a deed, as was inevitable, produced great excitement in England and anxious deliberations in the cabinet. Their decision, in strict uniformity with the principle that rules our conduct toward foreign nations, was to instruct our ambassador in Paris, Lord Normanby, to avoid any act or word which could wear the appearance of an act of interference of any kind in the internal affairs of France. But, on Lord Normanby reporting these instructions to the French Foreign Secretary, M. Guizot, he learned, to his surprise and perplexity, that Lord Palmerston had interfered already by expressing to the French ambassador in London, M. de Walewski, his warm approval of the President's conduct;[276] and Lord Normanby, greatly annoyed at being directed to hold one language in Paris, while the head of his department was taking a widely different tone in Downing Street-a complication which inevitably 'subjected him to misrepresentation and suspicion'-naturally complained to the Prime-minister of being placed in so embarrassing a situation.
Both the Queen and the Prime-minister had for some time been discontented at the independent manner in which Lord Palmerston apparently considered himself entitled to transact the business of his department, carrying it so far as even to claim a right to send out despatches without giving them any intimation of either their contents or
