Sixty Years a Queen Part 7

The rest struggled on as far as the Jugdulluck Pa.s.s. Then came the end: the hillsides were crowded with fierce mountaineers; the 44th Regiment were ordered to the front; they mutinied and threatened to shoot their officers, broke their ranks, and were cut down in detail by the Afghans.

A general ma.s.sacre followed. Out of more than 16,000 souls who marched out of Cabul, a sorry score of fugitives were all that left that horrible defile alive. Sixteen miles from Jellalabad, only six remained: still the murdering knife was plied, until, at last, one solitary haggard man, Dr. Brydon, rode into Jellalabad to tell of the literal annihilation of the army of Cabul, and announce to General Sale, commanding in that place, that his wife was in the hands of Akbar Khan.

There is little more to add. It had been part of Elphinstone's shameful bargain with Akbar Khan that Jellalabad and Candahar should be evacuated before the army of Cabul should reach the former place, and orders had been sent to General Sale in Jellalabad and General Nott in Candahar to abandon these towns. Luckily, these officers were of the right British stamp, and they refused to obey. Akbar Khan besieged Sale in Jellalabad; Sale not only held that place but gave battle to the Afghans outside the fort, routed them, and made ready to co-operate with General Nott at Candahar for a forward movement on Cabul. But the faculties of Lord Auckland, the Governor-General, seemed paralysed. Regardless of British prestige, the very keystone of our rule in India, he ordered the precipitate recall of all the troops in Afghanistan. Luckily, again, his term of office was just drawing to a close, and Lord Ellenborough came out to take the reins of government. At first he issued a proclamation endorsing the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but more spirited counsel prevailed in the end. The re-conquest of Cabul was accomplished by the entry of General Pollock into the capital on September 15, 1842, when it was found that the unfortunate Shah Soojah had paid the penalty of the greatness thrust on him by English diplomacy, and had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by the people he had been set to rule. Of the English ladies and children who had been taken under the protection of Akbar Khan the story has been written in a once famous book, Lady Sale's _Journal_. The husband of that lady, General Sir Robert Sale, was sent to recover the captives, who had suffered innumerable hardships. General Elphinstone had died--the best thing that could happen for his fame; the rest were found in a hill fort in the Indian Caucasus, in charge of a chief, who, having heard of Akbar Khan's defeat, was easily bribed to surrender his trust. The retreat from Cabul had begun on January 6, but the news did not reach England till March 7.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Thomas Sully._} {_By permission of Messrs. Graves._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN 1838.

This portrait was painted from life at Buckingham Palace by Mr. Sully, an American Artist, whose daughter, about the same age as Her Majesty, took the Queen's place and wore the jewels while these were being painted into the picture. Her Majesty came in while the young lady was thus attired and conversed with her.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_By permission of Messrs. Graves._

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, ABOUT 1845.

This ill.u.s.tration is from a very beautiful coloured lithograph prepared in 1851 in compliance with Her Majesty's kind suggestion that a portrait should be prepared which, in those days of expensive prints, might be sold at a price within the reach of her less well-to-do subjects.]

[Sidenote: The Corn Duties.]

The Tories--or, as they must in future be called, the Conservatives--had been carried to power by a strong wave of reaction in 1841, but it was the destiny of their leader, Sir Robert Peel, to shake the fabric of the Party to its base. There was a story current, of dubious authenticity, about this statesman, how that in his early days his father, also Sir Robert, warned Lord Liverpool that if the young man did not get office immediately he would go over to the Whigs and be lost to his party, whereupon Liverpool immediately appointed him Irish Secretary. No doubt Peel was far more disposed for progress and reform than the average Whig, and there was something paradoxical in the fate that made him leader of the Tories. At first all went smoothly; the leader of the House of Commons was chief of the Ministerial forces and master of the Opposition also. But the first note of approaching storm was sounded on the eve of the meeting of Parliament in February, 1842. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Privy Seal, resigned his office and seat in the Cabinet on January 31. The reason for this, as the Duke afterwards announced in Parliament, lay in the following expression in the Queen's Speech:--"I recommend to your consideration the state of the laws which affect the importation of corn, and of other articles, the produce of foreign countries." This little sentence, wedged in among the usual ceremonial or occasional paragraphs, contained the kernel of the Ministerial programme, and at once excited extraordinary interest in the country. On February 9, when Peel was to propound his scheme, the delegates of the Anti-Corn Law League marched down in procession to Westminster, and it required all the force of the police on duty to keep them from taking possession of the lobby of the House of Commons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Lowes d.i.c.kinson._} {_National Portrait Gallery._

RICHARD COBDEN, 1804-1865.

The son of a yeoman farmer in Suss.e.x. Entered Parliament as Member for Stockport in 1841 and immediately took the lead in the House of Commons of the party identified with the cause of Free Trade, a cause he had already done much to strengthen. He opposed the Crimean War, and brought about the fall of the Palmerston Government in 1857, by carrying a vote condemning their action in regard to the Chinese War. He negotiated the commercial treaty with France in 1860.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Frank Holl, R.A._} {_By permission of the Birmingham Liberal a.s.sociation._

JOHN BRIGHT, 1811-1889.

He was the son of a Rochdale cotton spinner; entered Parliament as M.P.

for Durham in 1843, and represented Manchester 1847-54, and Birmingham from that date to his death. He was appointed President of the Board of Trade in 1868, and in 1873 and again in 1881 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and one of the most eloquent and convincing speakers of the century. He is princ.i.p.ally remembered for his advocacy of the Repeal of the Corn Laws.]

[Sidenote: The Pioneers of Free Trade.]

[Sidenote: Failure of Potato Crop in Ireland.]

This League was a remarkable organisation under a no less remarkable leader. Richard Cobden, the son of a yeoman farmer, was employed in his youth in a London warehouse, and then became partner in a Manchester cotton factory. He first attracted notice as a pamphleteer, attacking some of the most cherished traditions of British statesmanship. He travelled far and wide on the business of his firm, and in every country he visited his thoughtful mind gathered material for the doctrines inseparably a.s.sociated with his name. He first entered Parliament in 1841, being recognised at that time as the leader of the movement in the country against the corn duties. Mr. Charles Villiers had won for himself the position of parliamentary head of the Free Trade party; to him Cobden came not as a rival but as a wise, resourceful ally. A third figure was soon to be added to this famous group in the person of John Bright, a Quaker manufacturer in Rochdale. A notable trio, each supplying the complement of the other's qualities; Villiers, of aristocratic birth and connections, well acquainted with the rules and peculiar temperament of the House of Commons, ardent, industrious, and well informed; Cobden, a man of the people, temperate, just, "the apostle of common-sense," and singularly persuasive; Bright, intensely--sternly in earnest, possessing gifts of oratory denied to his colleagues, but exercising them with a discretion rare among fluent speakers. Lastly, one attribute shared equally by each of the three men--absolute integrity and complete disinterestedness. They were Radicals, but they dissociated themselves from all ties of political party, looking for no reward from either side, but ready to support any Minister who would carry out their views. Their appeal was addressed to the understanding, not to the pa.s.sions, of men: their aim was to secure cheap food for the ma.s.ses, but they never stooped to inflammatory tirades against the cla.s.ses. Hence the steady, rapid growth of the League, and its irresistible influence on the Queen's Ministers. Mr.

Villiers had advocated for many years the total abolition of the corn duties, and nothing less would now satisfy the League. Russell, who scouted the very idea of absolutely free imports, had yielded so far as to propose, in 1841, a fixed duty on foreign corn, greatly less than the existing rate, which varied between 27_s._ and 1_s._ per quarter, according to the market price. Peel came forward in 1842 with a more liberal remission of duty, but although his Bill was pa.s.sed by a very large majority, all it did was to make the country party behind him uneasy without conciliating the Anti-Corn Law people. No one but men of the Manchester school--"Cobdenites," as they afterwards came to be called--no one, either Whig or Tory, dreamt of denying that protection was desirable, even necessary, for agriculture. Peel's first measure was framed to protect wheat growers against a fall in the average price below 56_s._ a quarter, and also to protect the consumer against a higher price. But the corn duties had been fixed in 1815: a whole generation had grown up under them: their outworks could not be tampered with without risking the stability of the whole structure. It required a momentum of extraordinary force to carry the movement against them to success. That impetus came, in the autumn of 1845, from two sources equally unforeseen. First arrived news of a destructive disease, wasting the potato crop in Ireland. Potatoes had grown to be to the Irish peasant what wheat is to English, what oats still were to Scottish labourers. The Government were informed that one-third of the food of the people was already destroyed, that the disease was still spreading, and no estimate could be formed of how much of the crop could be saved.

Deadly disaster was imminent, and the Cabinet was summoned to many anxious deliberations. The Prime Minister advocated that in order to avert famine all ports should be thrown open to corn ships. He coupled this advice with the warning that, once the duties were suspended, he did not think it would be possible to re-establish them. The warning weighed more with the Cabinet than the advice. Three Ministers only--Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and Sidney Herbert--supported Peel's proposal. It was set aside, and a Commission was appointed instead to take measures to mitigate the immediate necessity in Ireland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Designed by J. Flaxman, R.A._} {_In the Royal Collection._

SILVER GILT BOWL.

This beautiful specimen of art workmanship was made for King George IV.

when Prince of Wales; the gilding alone cost 2,000. The ladle was made for the baptism of the present Prince of Wales.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _H. G. Hine._} {_From "Punch."_

GENUINE AGITATION.

_A Scene from "Julius Caesar," with Wellington as Ghost._

In reply to questions drawing attention to the Repeal Agitation in Ireland, the Duke of Wellington in the Lords, and Sir Robert Peel in the Commons, expressed (May 9, 1843) the resolution of the Government to uphold the Union at all costs, and hinted at the probable adoption of coercive measures. The artist has made O'Connell himself the victim of agitation at this implied threat.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _R. Doyle._} {_From "Punch."_

PAPA COBDEN TAKING MASTER ROBERT A FREE TRADE WALK.

The reference is to Sir Robert Peel's gradual conversion to the views of the "Manchester School."]

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

1. Her Majesty the Queen.

2. Prince Consort.

3. Duke of Cambridge.

4. Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

5. Princess Augusta of Cambridge.

6. d.u.c.h.ess of Cambridge.

7. d.u.c.h.ess of Kent.

8. King of Prussia.

9. Earl Delawarr, Lord Chamberlain.

10. Earl of Liverpool, Lord Steward.

11. Duke of Suss.e.x.

12. d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch, Mistress of the Robes.

13. Bishop of London.

14. Archbishop of Canterbury.

15. Prince George of Cambridge.

THE CHRISTENING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES IN ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL, WINDSOR, January 25, 1842.]

[Sidenote: Lord John Russell's conversion to Free Trade.]

The other source of impetus referred to was Lord John Russell's declaration at this juncture of his total conversion to the principle of free trade in corn. His proposed modification in 1841 of the duties had been less liberal than that of Peel in 1842. It had been a fixed duty instead of a sliding scale. But there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his conversion or to suspect him of merely desiring to gain a party advantage. The circ.u.mstances of the Anti-Corn Law party at the moment were not such as to tempt the leader of the Opposition to embrace their programme out of a mere desire to steal a march on his opponents.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1837. 1897.

456,000 1,065,487

Tonnage of Colonial Shipping. Same scale as larger diagram.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1837.--2,335,000 tons. 1897.--12,293,539 tons.

THE GROWTH OF BRITISH COMMERCE, AS INDICATED BY THE TONNAGE OF BRITISH SHIPS IN 1837 AND IN 1897.

The diagram ill.u.s.trates at once the difference in type between the ships of the two dates, and the increase in tonnage of the whole mercantile marine, the latter being indicated by the comparative lengths of the ships. Each dotted square represents a million tons.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SECTION OF THE "GREAT EASTERN," THE LARGEST SHIP EVER BUILT.