Sixty Years a Queen Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MODERN EXPRESS Pa.s.sENGER ENGINE.

This engine, No. 1870 of the North Eastern Railway, was built in 1896 by the Gateshead works. It is a "non-compound" engine, with the largest coupled driving wheels. .h.i.therto known, viz., 7 ft. 7 in. The diameter of the cylinders inside is 20 in. A sister engine (No. 1869) was constructed at the same time, and the weight of each of them with tender fully loaded is over 90 tons.]

The "velocity" referred to was regulated to an average of about twenty miles an hour; but the diarist makes mention of a foolhardy driver who ventured to run forty miles an hour, and was promptly dismissed by the directors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY BROAD GAUGE ENGINE "NORTH STAR."

This engine was designed by Sir Daniel Gooch in 1836 and built by Robert Stephenson & Co. in 1837. It was one of the first engines belonging to the Great Western Railway Company, and continued at work until 1870, running a total distance of 429,000 miles.]

[Sidenote: Electric Telegraph.]

The application of another of the forces of Nature to the service of human intercourse has brought about a change in political, military, social, and commercial relations even more complete than that wrought by steam. The invention of the electric telegraph coincided very nearly with the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1835 Mr. Morse, an American citizen, produced a working model of an instrument designed to communicate alphabetical symbols by the interruption of the electric current, but he failed to persuade Congress to furnish him with the funds necessary to the practical application of his discovery. Next year he tried to take out a patent for it in this country; but, meanwhile, Cooke and Wheatstone had antic.i.p.ated him with one instrument, and the brothers Highton with another, both of which were soon in use on railways. The growth of this means of communication may be seen in the "Post Office Annual," which shows that in the year 1895-96 about seventy-nine million telegrams were delivered through the Post Office, besides those dealt with by certain public companies.

[Sidenote: The Coronation.]

The Queen's Coronation was deferred till June 1838. It would be tedious to dwell on the splendour of the ceremonial. Perhaps the most readable, and not the least truthful, account has been preserved in one of Barham's _Ingoldsby Legends--Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the Coronation_, set to the tune of _The Groves of Blarney_, and beginning--

"Och! the Coronation, what celebration For emulation with it can compare?

When to Westminster the Royal Spinster And the Duke of Leinster all in order did repair.

'Twas there ye'd see the new Polishemen,[A]

Making a skrimmage at half afther four; And the Lords and Ladies, and the Miss O'Gradys All standing round before the Abbey door."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _J. Doyle_ ("_H. B._").} {_"Political Sketches," 1838._

LA BELLE ALLIANCE.

This sketch represents Marshal Soult meeting his old antagonist, Lord Hill, at the Duke of Wellington's. "At last," he says, "I meet you, I, who have run after you so long!" "La Belle Alliance" is well known as the name of a particular spot, which was one of the points of attack at the Battle of Waterloo.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _C. R. Leslie, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection._

A. Lord Willoughby de Eresby.

B. The Duke of Norfolk.

C. The Marquis of Conyngham.

D. The Archbishop of Canterbury.

E. Her Majesty the Queen.

F. Lord Melbourne.

G. The Bishop of London.

H. The Duke of Wellington.

J. The d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland.

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AFTER HER CORONATION IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY,

June 28, 1838.

Lord Willoughby de Eresby, as Hereditary Lord High Chamberlain, held the Crown, and Lord Melbourne as First Lord of the Treasury, the Sword of State. The Duke of Norfolk was Earl Marshal, the Marquis of Conyngham Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Wellington Lord High Constable of England, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland Mistress of the Robes.]

[Sidenote: Popular Reception of Wellington and Soult.]

Two personages in the procession, who had met under far different circ.u.mstances in earlier years, met with a tremendous ovation wherever they moved. One of these was the Duke of Wellington--our Great Duke--and the other was the veteran Duke of Dalmatia--the puissant Marechal Soult of the Peninsula and Waterloo--once the redoubtable foe of England. Mr.

Justin McCarthy has suggested that "the cheers of a London crowd on the day of the Queen's coronation did something genuine and substantial to restore the good feeling between this country and France, and efface the bitter memories of Waterloo." On the other hand, the anti-monarchical party in France attributed the popular reception of Soult in London to the prevalence of sympathy with Republican views. Certain it is that when, in later years, Soult championed the English alliance in the French a.s.sembly he referred with feeling to his reception at Queen Victoria's coronation: "I fought the English," he said, "down to Toulouse, when I fired the last shot in defence of national independence; in the meantime I have been in London, and France knows how I was received. The English themselves cried 'Vive Soult!' They cried 'Soult for ever!'" One may formulate rules of diplomacy and international courtesy, but who shall weigh the effect of sympathy between a generous people and a former gallant foe?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Sir G. Hayter._} {_From the Royal Collection._

THE CORONATION OF HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, June 28, 1838.

The moment depicted is when the Archbishop, having placed the Crown on the head of the Queen, and the emblems of sovereignty in her hands, has returned to the altar. It was at this time that the members of the Royal Family, the peers and the peeresses a.s.sumed their coronets. The whole Abbey rang with cheers and cries of "G.o.d save the Queen," and the animation of the scene reached its climax.]

Parliament had voted 243,000 for the expenses of George IV.'s coronation--perhaps the effect of a newly-extended franchise may be traced in the more economical figure of 70,000, which sufficed for that of our present Queen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD JOHN RUSSELL, AFTERWARDS EARL RUSSELL (1792-1878).

Sat in the House of Commons for forty-seven years. He introduced the great Reform Bill in 1831 and was twice Prime Minister (1846-52, and 1865-6). He was raised to the Peerage in 1861.]

[Sidenote: State of Parties.]

The battle of Reform had been fought out in the country and in Parliament five years before the accession, and there were, as yet, no signs--to quote Sir Robert Peel's famous expression at Tamworth--of the Const.i.tution being "trampled under the hoof of a ruthless democracy." On the whole, life--its business and pleasures--seemed to be going forward on much the same lines as before the great Act, dreaded, as it had been, as intensely by one party, as it had been pressed forward and welcomed by the other. Lord Melbourne was the head of a Whig Administration, of which, as everybody knows, the late King had waited impatiently for the first decent opportunity to get rid. But Melbourne and Lord John Russell (who, with the office of Home Secretary, was leader of the House of Commons) had to reckon with an advance wing of their own party, already known as Radicals, and were at least as profoundly averse from their projects as they were from the Tory policy. Melbourne and Russell desired to put down Radicalism and proceed with moderate and safe reforms, above all in Ireland, where the chronic discontent was being fanned to eruption by the exertions of Daniel O'Connell. The King's death had relieved the Whig Cabinet from the adverse influence of the Court; moreover, the reliance placed from the first by the young Queen upon Lord Melbourne, and the intimate relations between them, brought about by the circ.u.mstances of the case, enabled the Whigs to a.s.sume the peculiar role of their opponents--that of the special supporters of the throne.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _M. n.o.ble._} {_National Portrait Gallery._

SIR ROBERT PEEL (1788-1850).

Was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1812, Home Secretary in 1822, and again in 1828-30 under the Duke of Wellington. In 1830 he reconstructed the Metropolitan Police. He was Prime Minister in 1834-5, and again from 1841 to 1846. His second Administration was distinguished by the total abolition of the Duty on Corn.]

The Tories,[B] on the other hand, approached with much misgiving the General Election, which, according to the law as it then stood, followed of necessity on the demise of the monarch. They knew that the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent had favoured Whig principles in the education of the Queen; they saw that Melbourne's personal charm had secured for him complete ascendancy in the councils of the new Sovereign, and they had nothing to expect in the country but reverse.

[Sidenote: Result of General Election.]

However, the unpopularity of the new Poor Law told against Ministers in the rural const.i.tuencies, and the elections left parties almost unchanged. When the first Parliament of Queen Victoria a.s.sembled on November 20, 1837, the Whig Government reckoned a majority of about thirty in the House of Commons. "Of power," wrote the contemporary compiler of the _Annual Register_, "in a political sense, they had none.

They could carry no measure of any kind but by the sufferance of Sir Robert Peel."

One incident in the short winter session of 1837, often as it has been recorded, retains a lasting interest because of the subsequent celebrity of the individual who gave rise to it. Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the son of a distinguished man of letters, had just entered Parliament for the first time as Member for Maidstone. He chose a debate on Irish Election Pet.i.tions as the opportunity for his maiden speech. "A bottle-green frock coat," writes an eye-witness, "and a waistcoat of white, of the d.i.c.k Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited a network of glittering chains; large, fancy pattern pantaloons, and a black tie, above which no shirt-collar was visible, completed the outward man. A countenance lividly pale, set out by a pair of intensely black eyes, and a broad but not very high forehead, overhung by cl.u.s.tering ringlets of coal-black hair, which, combed away from the right temple, fell in bunches of well-oiled ringlets over his left cheek."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EARLY SIGNAL CABIN.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MODERN SIGNAL CABIN.

The Cabin here represented is that at Crow West Junction, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.]

Not a prepossessing personality in the eyes of the British House of Commons, and when the young orator proceeded to launch into profuse and florid metaphor, accompanied by exaggerated theatrical gestures, the forbearance usually shown towards a new member's first appearance was overborne by impatience at Disraeli's ludicrous affectation. He spoke amid incessant interruption and laughter. "At last, losing his temper, which until now he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in the midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indignantly in the face, raised his hands, and opening his mouth as widely as its dimensions would admit, said in a remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, 'I have begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last; ay, sir, and though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.'" The contrast between the early manner of this statesman, and his peculiarly quiet and leisurely bearing in the debates of later years, betrays the close study which he devoted to outward effect.

The Prime Minister, William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, was a typical Whig, genuinely disposed to moderate reform, but in the habit of meeting Radical suggestions with the discouraging question, "Why not leave it alone?" Of similar political temperament was his lieutenant in the Commons, Lord John Russell. It very soon became evident that the Radicals, though diminished in numbers by the result of the elections, were likely to give Ministers trouble in the new Parliament. In the Upper Chamber, Lord Brougham, who had conceived a violent dislike to Melbourne, began to employ his fiery energy and power of acrid invective against the Government, and showed himself ready to place himself at the head of the Radicals. In his first serious attack on Ministers he allied himself with the Tory Lord Lyndhurst. The opportunity arose out of events in Canada, to which it is necessary briefly to refer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {_From the "G.W.R. Magazine."_

THE FIRST TELEGRAPH STATION (SLOUGH STATION, G.W.R., 1844).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HER MAJESTY'S STATE COACH.

This Coach, used at Her Majesty's Coronation, was designed by Sir William Chambers, and finished in the year 1761. The paintings, of which the following are the most important, were executed by Cipriani. _The Front Panel_:--Britannia seated on a throne holding a Staff of Liberty, attended by Religion, Justice, Wisdom, Valour, Fort.i.tude, Commerce, Plenty, and Victory, presenting her with a Garland of Laurel; in the background a view of St. Paul's and the River Thames. _The Right Door_:--Industry and Ingenuity giving a Cornucopia to the Genius of England, and on each side History recording the Reports of Fame, and Peace burning the Implements of War. _The Back Panel_:--Neptune and Amphitrite issuing from their palace in a triumphant car, drawn by sea-horses, attended by the Winds, Rivers, Tritons, and Naiads, bringing the tribute of the world to the British sh.o.r.e. _Upper part of Back Panel_:--The Royal Arms, ornamented with the Order of St. George; the Rose, Shamrock, and Thistle entwined. _The Left Door_:--Mars, Minerva, and Mercury supporting the Imperial Crown of Great Britain, and on each side the Liberal Arts and Sciences protected. The design of the Coach itself is in keeping with the above ideas. The length of the Carriage is 24 feet; width, 8 feet 3 inches; height, 12 feet; length of pole, 12 feet 4 inches; weight, 4 tons. The harness is made of red morocco leather. On State occasions eight cream-coloured horses, as here represented, are used.]