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THE FOUNTAIN OF CYBELE, MADRID.
and having told Lord Palmerston that he objected to it, he naturally concluded it would not be sent. “Shortly after,” writes Mr. Greville,108 “he (Lord John Russell) was with the Queen, and, in conversation on this topic, he told her what had passed between Palmerston and himself, and what he had said. ‘No! did you say that?’ said the Queen. He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, then,’ she replied, ‘it produced no effect, for the despatch is gone. Lord Palmerston sent it to me. I know it is gone.’”
There was quite a storm of indignation against Lord Palmerston in every political club and coterie when this affair became known. The Queen was angry, and so were Palmerston’s colleagues, some of whom declared that they could not defend his conduct. He was attacked by the Opposition in both Houses; and Lord Lansdowne, who had to plead for him in the Lords, told Lord John Russell that “this must never happen again,” and that in future Lord Palmerston must not be allowed to send out any despatches unless they
BARON STOCKMAR.
(Engraved, by permission, after the Portrait in Sir Theodore Martin’s “Life of the Prince Consort.”)
were sanctioned by Lord John himself.109 It was morally certain that Sir H. Bulwer had, at Lord Palmerston’s instigation, mixed himself up with the intrigues of the revolutionary party in Madrid, and on the 5th of June Mr. Bankes gave expression to the true feeling of every section of the House of Commons, by moving a Vote of Censure on Lord Palmerston. Whigs, Tories, and Radicals were agreed that his conduct had been imprudent and discourteous. The Queen expressed to Lord John Russell her grief over his rude and untoward management of diplomatic business. His colleagues condemned him in private, and yet the attack on him mysteriously collapsed. The debate, says Mr. Greville, cynically, was a fight “with muffled gloves,” and why? Palmerston, for whom the stars in their courses fought, was saved by two strokes of luck. Sir Robert Peel, whose defence of him was a piece of exquisite irony, decided that as the Ministry refused to desert him he must be supported, Peel’s sole object at this time being to protect the only Ministerial combination which could protect Free Trade. The Spanish Government had also put themselves in the wrong in ordering Sir Henry Bulwer to quit Madrid, merely because Lord Palmerston sent them, through him, an insolent and foolish despatch. Members who were prepared to vote for Mr. Bankes’s motion felt that unless it were proved clearly that Sir Henry Bulwer had participated in revolutionary conspiracies, they must vote for the Government, on the score of national honour. The Spanish Ministry failed to prove this, because they dared not set forth their case. One of Sir Henry Bulwer’s instruments in driving the Narvaez Government from office was Serrano, who from corrupt motives revealed the conspiracy to Narvaez. But Serrano was the lover of the Queen of Spain, and had his evidence been adduced against Lord Palmerston, her Majesty would have been unpleasantly compromised. The debate on Mr. Bankes’s motion was thus a Parliamentary victory for Lord Palmerston. But it served to augment the distrust with which the Queen and his own colleagues regarded his harum-scarum method of conducting the business of the Foreign Office.
Parliament, which had been adjourned over the Christmas holidays, again met on the 3rd of February, 1848. Meeting as it did on the eve of a revolution in Europe, and at a time when the masses of the English people were in a ferment of discontent, one might suppose that it was greatly agitated by the tempest of sedition that raged outside its walls. On the contrary, it pursued its course with almost stoical indifference to “the condition-of-England question,” and neither the sullen temper of the English working classes, nor the impending revolt of the “Young Ireland” Party, seems to have given the representatives of the people the slightest concern. In fact, the West Indies now took the place of Ireland and the manufacturing districts of England, as a scene of distress worthy of monopolising the attention of Parliament. What Mr. Disraeli said of similar events in 1834 might well have been said of those of 1848, namely, that “the mean position which the Saxon multitude occupied as distinguished from the Jamaica planters sank deep into their hearts.” Again the attention of the working classes was drawn to the contrast between the interest which Parliament displayed in “a petty and exhausted colony” and “the claims for constitutional rights by the working millions of England.”110 Oddly enough, it was Mr. Disraeli’s own leader, Lord George Bentinck, who, finding that the planters attributed their sufferings to the loss of the protection which differential duties on foreign sugar had given them in the English market, took up their case at this inopportune moment with more warmth than prudence. He moved for and obtained the appointment of a Committee to inquire into their grievances. In June the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, brought forward a proposal to advance £200,000—ultimately the sum was fixed at £170,000—for the purpose of helping planters to get coolie labour. Lord John Russell subsequently announced further concessions. He refused to exclude slave-grown sugar from the English market. He, however, proposed to reduce the duty on colonial sugar, leaving ordinary foreign sugar at its existing rate. But he applied to both colonial sugar and certain varieties of foreign sugar a descending scale of reduction, which would in 1855 end in equalising them, though up to that period a slight advantage would be given to the colonial sugar. The philanthropists attacked the scheme because they demanded the total exclusion of slave-grown sugars. Some Free Traders like Mr. Hume attacked it, because they thought the true remedy lay in letting the colonists have more freedom in importing labour, and in managing their own affairs. A painful scene took place during these debates between Lord George Bentinck and Lord John Russell. Lord George declared in violent language that Mr. Hawes, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, had suppressed a despatch which threw light on colonial distress. Lord John Russell jeered at his antagonist’s connection with the turf, where alone, he said, such tricks were common. Mr. Disraeli retorted by saying that for his services in detecting a turf fraud Lord George Bentinck had been thanked by a Committee, the chairman of which was the Duke of Bedford, Lord John Russell’s brother. During this wrangling the House of Commons was converted into a bear-garden, and members roared and hooted at each other as if they were maniacs. The Government carried their proposal only by a majority of fifteen, and this, together with loss of prestige from bad management and clumsy Parliamentary tactics, further weakened the Cabinet in the eyes of the public. Even the Queen began to think she might soon have to send for Lord Stanley, for it was only Sir Robert Peel’s support that kept the Administration alive.
The financial statement of the Government, which was made, not by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir C. Wood), but by Lord John Russell himself, early in the year, had been disappointing. He estimated a deficit of £2,141,209, and he said it must be met either by increasing taxation, or reducing the cost of the Army and Navy. But the agitation which had been raised by the Duke of Wellington about the defenceless state of the country drove the Ministry to increase the military and naval estimate by £358,000, in addition to which Lord John Russell decided to take a Militia vote of £150,000. He proposed, therefore, to continue the Income Tax, which was to expire in April, 1849, for five years, raising it from 7d. to 1s. in the pound. The duties on copper ore, equal to £41,000, were to be remitted, which would leave a surplus of £113,000 on the Estimates. Never did a Budget raise such a storm of opposition. Were Ministers mad, asked Mr. Hume, that they proposed to increase taxation daring a time of commercial distress and seething political discontent? He and Mr. Cobden demanded, like all the Radicals, a reduction of armaments to meet the estimated deficit on the Budget. All the Protectionists, of course, fell upon the Ministry, crying, “Behold the fatal results of Free Trade!” and demanding the substitution of indirect taxation, or import duties, instead of an increased Income Tax—a tax which, said they, they would never have permitted Sir Robert Peel to impose, had it had not been understood that it was to be only a temporary one. Sir Charles Wood in a few days offered to refer the Estimates to Select and Secret Committees, a proposition violently attacked, as tending to relieve Ministers of their constitutional responsibility, and permit Committees of the House to encroach on the true functions of the Executive. Then the country rose as one man against the
