New York, after a voyage of fifteen clear days. This famous ship, and the Sirius, whose voyage was simultaneous almost to a day, were the first vessels which had crossed the Atlantic by steam-power alone, sails having been used in combination with steam on previous occasions. The Great Western was in those days the largest steamer ever known, her tonnage being equal to that of the largest merchant-ships. She was built at Bristol, and sailed from that port on the 7th of April. When she entered the harbour of New York, she had still a surplus of one hundred and forty-eight tons of coal on board, and the problem was solved as to whether a steamer could be constructed large enough to carry sufficient fuel for so long a voyage. The size, tonnage, and speed of this historic vessel have been greatly surpassed in later times; but the fact of a ship crossing the Atlantic in fifteen days was a very genuine astonishment to the people of 1838. Two years later (1840), the Cunard line of steamers was established at Liverpool, which soon entirely eclipsed Bristol as the great commercial port on the western side of England, and as the packet-station for the American service. Another interesting feature of the year 1838 was the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway throughout its entire length. The precise date was the 17th of September, and thenceforward the railway system progressed rapidly. The line in question, however, was not the first that had been placed at the disposal of the public. The original railway for the use of passengers was that constructed by Edward Pease and George Stephenson between Stockton and Darlington, and opened on the 27th of September, 1825. The next was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, commenced in October, 1826, and opened on the 15th of September, 1830—on which occasion, Mr. Huskisson, a prominent statesman of the time, was accidentally killed. Nevertheless, the development of the system is associated almost entirely with the reign of Queen Victoria, and we hardly think of railways as belonging, even in their inception, to an earlier period.
The Parliamentary Session of 1838 came to a close on the 16th of August. Having taken her seat on the throne, the Queen was addressed by the Speaker of the House of Commons on the subject of the suspension of the constitution of Lower Canada (which had been set aside as a preliminary to the introduction of more liberal arrangements when the rebellion should be suppressed), and on some other matters of less general interest. Her Majesty gave the Royal assent to a number of Bills, and then proceeded to read the Speech, which presents nothing of importance. The Government were heartily glad to be free for some months from the criticism and the menaces of a Parliament not very cordially inclined towards Lord Melbourne and his colleagues. When the House of Commons reassembled after the General Election in 1837, Ministers found themselves with a majority of only twelve. Conservative support saved them from discomfiture on several occasions; but this very fact was not unnaturally considered fatal to their reputation as Whigs. The breach between the Cabinet and the advanced section of the party became wider and more impassable during the session of 1838: the recess, therefore, came as an immense relief. In addition to their troubles in the Lower House, Ministers had to encounter, in the other branch of the Legislature, the invectives of Lord Brougham, who had quarrelled with his old friends in consequence of not being reappointed to the Chancellorship in 1835. The affairs of Canada, moreover, had brought the Whigs into collision with Lord Durham, whose nature was almost as passionate and imperious as that of Brougham himself. Their demerits were probably not so great as their enemies tried to show; but the conduct of affairs was weak, and Tories and Radicals were alike dissatisfied, though often for the most diverse reasons.
A good deal of discontent, also, was growing up in the country itself. The price of bread was high; wages were low; trade was not prosperous; and the operation of the new Poor Law was considered unnecessarily harsh. In the autumn of 1838, meetings were held in various localities, at which some of the speakers addressed inflammatory language to the assembled people, who belonged to the artisan and labouring classes. A body of men had arisen, calling themselves Chartists. They demanded a Charter of popular rights, the six points of
NEWARK CASTLE.
which were Manhood Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Payment of Members, Abolition of the Property Qualification, and Equal Electoral Districts. Several of these objects have since been carried out, either wholly or nearly so; but, in the days of which we write, they seemed dangerous and visionary in the highest degree. The middle classes, who had carried the Reform Bill of 1832 with the assistance of the grades below them, considered that enough had been done when their own interests were satisfied. A reaction had set in, and the prosperous were afraid of advancing on to the paths of revolution. Even Lord John Russell declared against further organic changes, and, in the absence of any leaders of distinguished social status, the humbler orders took the agitation into their own hands. A sentiment of vague discontent arose very speedily after the passing of the great measure which changed the representation. Bad harvests and general distress gave acrimony to the spirit of political discussion, and in the summer of 1838 a committee of six Members of Parliament and six working men, assembling at Birmingham, prepared a Bill embodying their views of what
MR. DISRAELI IN HIS YOUTH. (After the Portrait by Maclise.)
was required by the country in general, and the labouring classes in particular. This was the document which soon afterwards received the name of “the People’s Charter”—on the suggestion, it is said, of Daniel O’Connell. The direction of the movement fell into the hands of the more violent members. Physical force was threatened; torchlight meetings were held; processions were formed, in which guns, pikes, and other weapons were openly displayed; and on the 12th of December the Government issued a proclamation against all such gatherings. Chartism, however, was not destroyed by this measure. Some degree of truth pervaded its extravagance, and its influence has been felt in later days.
It is about this period, or a little earlier, that we become aware of two great names in modern statesmanship, one of which is still potent in the political world, while the other has but recently passed into the sphere of completed history. Mr. Gladstone—then a young man of twenty-three—was returned for Newark, in December, 1832, to the first reformed Parliament. He was then a Conservative, with the same High Church leanings which, in the midst of considerable changes on other subjects, he has manifested ever since. His ability, his mental culture, and his habits of business, attracted the attention of Sir Robert Peel, who, in his short-lived Administration of 1834-5, made him a Junior Lord of the Treasury, and afterwards Under-Secretary for Colonial Affairs; but it was not until the beginning of Victoria’s reign that he became conspicuous. Probably no one—not even himself—could at that time have anticipated the greatness he was subsequently to achieve; but he was slowly maturing his powers, and acquiring that extraordinary knowledge of public affairs for which he has since been famous.
His rival, Mr. Disraeli, afterwards Lord Beaconsfield, did not enter Parliament until the latter half of 1837—the first Parliament of the reign of Queen Victoria. He was the son of Isaac D’Israeli, an author of distinction, the descendant of a family of Jews, formerly connected with Spain and Italy. Isaac having quarrelled with the Wardens of the Synagogue, his son Benjamin was brought up as a Christian from an early period of his life. By 1837-8, he had made a name for himself by a variety of novels, embodying those political and social ideas which afterwards influenced his conduct as a public man—a sort of Toryism, with an infusion of democratic sympathy. It was as a species of Radical, though with Tory support, that he first endeavoured to obtain a seat in the House of Commons; but a few years later he found no difficulty in displaying the Conservative colours without reserve. The inconsistency, though of course not susceptible of being entirely explained away, was hardly so extreme as might at first appear. Mr. Disraeli hated the Whigs, and objected to several features of the Reform Bill, as giving too much power to the middle classes, and too little to the working classes, and as tending in this way to the increased predominance of the great Whig families. He appeared, therefore, to be attacking the same enemy, whether from a Radical or a Tory platform. In a letter written on the 17th of January, 1874, this was the explanation given by Mr. Disraeli himself. “It seemed to me,” he said, “that the
