This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  Gradually the sympathy of her people and her ministers turned against the Queen. Her self-imposed seclusion became too trying. People like to see their monarch. They could not. She shied away from the noise and the ceremonials that were part of her expected duties, especially those in London. She became a stranger in her own capital. In 1864, a notice was tied to Buckingham Palace railings: ‘These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant’s declining business.’ After all, many of her people were experiencing a misery of their own.

  1861 was the year of the new census. In the mid-1860s, there were about twenty-one million people living in England and Wales, more than three million in Scotland, and in Ireland about five-and-a-half million. The 1861 census shows that of those twenty-one million English and Welsh, more than two-and-a-quarter million were agricultural workers or domestic servants – still the two commonest occupations.

  The Britain of the 1860s was prosperous but it was also a land in which there was squalor, poverty and sometimes little hope. Many believed the future was far away from the British Isles: the nineteenth century was the time of the great migration of peoples. In the 1860s alone, 1.7 million would leave. Some would return, but most would have left for good, not all of them to escape the weather. Shortly before Christmas 1860, the south of England was covered by rains, then frosts and snow. The terrible weather stopped all work on the Thames waterfront and, crucially, in the docks. Britain was by then a great ship-owning nation. There were, for example, about 160,000 seamen in England and Wales; more than 30,000 bargemen and lightermen; about the same number of dock-workers. London was one of the busiest ports in the world. Newspapers of the time report that the frost froze the London docks on 17 December and didn’t ease until 19 January. And if the docks couldn’t work, then neither could the hauliers nor the markets. Thousands were laid off. The Poor Laws were supposed to help but, in many cases, they failed to do so – a reminder that this was a period when the advances of the age outstripped the social needs of the people. Many of those freezing London dockers would have started their working lives loading and unloading sailing ships. Now there were vessels with steam engines even though sail was by no means finished – the famous Cutty Sark wasn’t launched until 1869, the year the Suez Canal opened. (Sailing cargo ships were a common enough sight on the oceans.)

  The railways now criss-crossed the country and, as transport spread, so did suburbs of tightly packed housing, especially small houses, 20 per cent of which often contained two families. In industry, Joseph Whitworth had patented his standard sizes in threads and screws. The Bessemer converter and then the Siemens-Martin steel-making process accelerated the change from iron to steel. And although most of British industry relied on small firms, new systems meant factories were expanding and therefore changing the shape and skyline of towns that were now becoming cities. Never before had there been such a pace of British social, political and commercial change. In less than half a century Britain had triumphed over its old enemy France and then become its ally; science, medicine and technology had altered the potential that could hardly have been imagined even in the 1790s. Slavery had been abolished in the British colonies although drudgery was hardly different in the poorhouses of towns and cities. The Great Reform Act of 1832 had set a baseline for democracy even if there was more than a century to go before an all but perfect form of universal suffrage and responsibility was in place. Over all this, Victoriana thrived now as an Empire and not simply as a colonial collection. Change was also rumbling through Europe. Italy was becoming a State, much to the suspicion of the Catholic Church in Rome where the dogma of Immaculate Conception had been declared in 1854 and where Papal Infallibility would be proclaimed sixteen years later. Germany, which had been a confederation of thirty-eight sovereign States since the 1814 Congress of Vienna had suffered a ground-swollen Revolution in 1848. Demands for reforms, including the powers of the monarchy led indirectly to Kaiser William I of Prussia appointing as Prime Minister a man who would become the most powerful politician in Continental Europe during the second half of the century, Otto von Bismarck (1815–98). In 1871, by joining the German Empire with the Kingdom of Prussia following the French defeat in the Franco–Prussian War, Germany became a unified State. That French defeat rankled so much that it brought about French refusal to ease German reparations after the First World War and so encouraged the German nationalism that led to the Second World War.

  Less than a year after Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Palmerston was ready to concede that he needed the late Prince Consort’s advice. Albert would have known what was going on in Germany, especially what was in the mind of Bismarck. Here was a difficult political and strategic conundrum that Palmerston could not answer and it was a sensitive matter since the Queen’s daughter, Victoria, was married to Kaiser William’s son, Frederick, or Fritz as he was always known. It was their son who became known in Britain, especially in the First World War, as Kaiser Bill.

  Palmerston did not understand what Bismarck was up to. He should have done. During Palmerston’s time at the Foreign Office, he had doubled the number of dispatches coming into Whitehall from the embassies and he had read them. But back then, Bismarck was simply a Prussian ambassador to St Petersburg and Paris; now he was in a position of considerable power and, to Bismarck, absolute power was everything. Therefore, when the Poles rose against the Russians, Bismarck supported the Russians. He’d never cared for the idea of Polish independence and he looked to the future when he, in turn, might need Russian support. Britain could do little about it. Public opinion supported the Polish rebels, so too did Palmerston, but he didn’t want to go to war. Worse still, neither Palmerston nor his Foreign Secretary Lord Russell seemed to remember the strategic axiom of never making threats unless you can carry them out. Militarily, Britain could not help the Poles. And when there was trouble in Denmark in 1864, during which the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were attached to Prussia, Palmerston ought to have been better prepared. Once more there was a royal family connection: the Prince of Wales married in March 1863. His bride was Princess Alexandria of Denmark so it was no wonder that the Danes thought it reasonable for the British to side with them.

  In 1863 King Frederick of Denmark died. There was no direct successor and so the next in line was Duke Christian who would become Christian IX of Denmark. The succession was challenged by the German-leaning line of the Danish royal family. Bismarck declared war on Denmark – leading a Prussian–Austrian intervention. The Danes lost Northern and Southern Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. This is the simplified version of the story. Little wonder that when asked what was the solution to the Schleswig–Holstein Question, Palmerston is said to have replied: ‘The Schleswig–Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert [who was dead]. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten the answer.’

  The solution to the Schleswig–Holstein Question was so complicated that it became a euphemism for any subject to which there was no conclusive and textual answer in every political examination paper for the next 100 years. Britain did nothing much, even though it had a treaty with Denmark, because there was not much it could do. Moreover, Palmerston, the man so interested in foreign affairs, completely misread Bismarck’s determination and ability. He called him ‘crazy’. He believed the French could become involved (a lasting fear of his generation), and he believed his military advisers who said the Prussian Army was not very good. Bismarck had outmanoeuvred everybody, as he would continue to do. He had Austria and Russia on his side and a certain belief that France and Britain would not hold together as allies to do anything to stop him. Palmerston and Russell were attacked in the House and in the press. Lord Derby described the government’s foreign policy as ‘a policy of meddle and muddle’. But it is doubtful if the country would have wanted to go to war. Even if it had, it was hardly a realistic notion. Britain was probably inc
apable of sustaining an intervention without the support of its naval power and the assurances of an equally powerful allied army.

  Within a few months, and while Bismarck’s Prussians plotted their next moves (against Austria and then France), Palmerston had grown physically weak. This old Irish peer was in his eighties and, although in the General Election of 1865 Palmerston’s continuing ability to appeal to the middle-class voters (and therefore the vast majority of those allowed to vote) won him another majority, by October of that year, he was dead.

  Victoria, who never settled to him, saw his death as a sad state of affairs for the nation. Palmerston reflected a sometimes overconfident nation by his style, language and prejudices, and especially his notion that all foreigners could do with a good dose of English advice. But Palmerston took his own decisions based on his own readings of any subject. His prejudices tended to be arrived at rather than instinctive. Palmerston was not a party man, he was simply Palmerston and when he was gone so too was a remarkable age of English politicians. Palmerston’s Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell (the grandfather of the philosopher Bertrand Russell), once again became Prime Minister in 1865. The country saw no great foreign policy issue to be resolved and instead expected Russell to bring a new Reform Bill to the House.

  Since 1832, the population pattern had changed – there were now new industries, new towns and bigger boroughs, but the distribution of seats was the same. Russell’s Cabinet decided to take one issue at a time, but without having thought it through. The Reform Bill was defeated in the House and Russell offered his resignation. The Queen refused to accept it, but a week later, she was forced to. Derby became Prime Minister again, and Disraeli his Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  So with Disraeli, the Conservative, in government and with Gladstone, the Liberal, in opposition, the battle line was drawn for the debate on what would become the Second Reform Act. Disraeli took the lead. Derby was Prime Minister, but he was in the Lords; Disraeli was leader of the Commons. The Conservatives had just as much of a problem drafting their own Bill as Russell’s government had had. Three ministers resigned, but eventually it went through. The Reform Act was a political success, although it could never be said to have righted all the thirty-five-year-old legislation it replaced. The urban working-class man (as long as he was a householder) was now allowed to vote, but the working-class man in rural areas was not. There was still no such thing as a secret ballot. Nor were the women allowed to vote. Forty-five new Parliamentary seats were created. The electoral boundaries were reshaped on the advice of a commission, which Disraeli made sure was loaded with Conservatives. But, as might have been expected, working-class voters found few working-class men to send to Westminster.

  Disraeli, not so much interested in the detail as in the result, was triumphant. There was just one further step needed and he had not long to wait. In February 1868 Lord Derby, who had been Prime Minister for less than two years, was too ill to carry on and so Disraeli, at the age of sixty-four, took over the Conservative leadership.

  His letter to the Queen accepting the Premiership quite properly offered his devotion. Disraeli played on her vanity and her undoubted experience, coloured as it was by her assumption of what Prince Albert would have done in almost any circumstance. Little wonder that Victoria rather cared for that letter and, for the moment, Disraeli was where he’d long wanted to be – in Number 10. But by December, the Conservatives would be out and Gladstone and his Liberals would be in.

  The arrival of Gladstone and Disraeli at the political pinnacle coincided with the emergence of two distinct political parties, as opposed to vague labels beneath which various small groups congregated. Disraeli was a novelist before he became a politician. His father, Isaac D’Israeli, had written or edited collections of literary and historical anecdotes. Disraeli’s literary education began among his father’s books and he never went to university. But, when he was twenty-two, he published his first novel, Vivian Grey. By the time he’d become an MP, in 1837, Disraeli had published nine books. In the 1840s, his political novels Coningsby and Sybil were published. It is in Coningsby that Disraeli wrote his definition of what Conservatism was then. As for Gladstone, he disliked or, rather, felt bitter towards Disraeli. Yet perhaps his sharpest feeling against him was the way in which he had politically kidnapped the Queen. Gladstone was convinced that Disraeli had blatantly and unscrupulously brought Victoria into the Conservative fold. Disraeli certainly left nothing to chance, although any explanation to be found in his own writings doesn’t go that far. But before the end of 1868 it was William Ewart Gladstone, not Disraeli, who was Prime Minister. And for the next half decade, Disraeli, the Queen’s most devoted servant, would, once more, be on what he saw as the wrong side of the House but he would return to Number 10. Despite Victoria’s reservations, he would be accepted by her as one of, if not the, most favoured Prime Ministers of her time. For all his faults, Disraeli was a man of great courage and honourable emotions – which the Queen understood even if his political enemies, and friends, refused to contemplate them. It was the Oxford historian, Llewellyn Woodward, who wrote that Disraeli ‘brought politics nearer to poetry, or, at all events, to poetical prose, than any English politician since Burke’.

  However, in November 1868, Disraeli’s Conservatives lost the General Election. They did so because they were outwitted by Gladstone on the question of Ireland. Earlier in the year, Disraeli had hoped to shelve the Irish debate by referring the questions of education and land to a commission of inquiry. What could not be hidden, even by a Royal Commission, was the question of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland. Gladstone put down a motion in the House to rid the State of the Church he called a ‘hideous blot’. This meant that the Catholics went over to Gladstone.

  On the first vote, Disraeli was defeated, but the House was adjourned for Easter. After Easter, he was again defeated, but he had anticipated that. His plan was not to resign but to dissolve Parliament. This would delay the end of the government, and give him the chance (which the Queen supported) of winning an election and staying in power. And when the government went to the country, it was defeated. Gladstone and his Liberals had a majority of more than 100 seats. For Disraeli, there were but three consolations. First, Gladstone lost his seat (but would have another, of course). Second, he asked the Queen for, and got, a title for his wife Mary Anne (she became Viscountess Beaconsfield. He became the Earl of Beaconsfield on his retirement eight years later). Third, and most important to Disraeli, he kept the friendship of the Queen.

  None of this impressed Gladstone who was now Prime Minister of a Liberal government. In the first Cabinet sat eight peers and seven commoners (including Gladstone himself ) and featured John Bright, the great orator and reformer, at the Board of Trade; George Villiers, the fourth Earl of Clarendon, at the Foreign Office; Robert Lowe at the Treasury; and Edward Cardwell, who was to reform the army. They were a mixture of reformers, small ‘c’ conservatives, Radicals and Whigs. Gladstone’s first task was Ireland and when the Queen’s telegram arrived asking him to form the next government, he is said to have remarked, ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland.’ Part of this ambition of pacification was the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland which was the official State Church in which only one-eighth of the population worshipped. The other Churches, including the majority persuasion, the Roman Catholics, found the anomaly indefensible. When the Fenian Rising occurred in 1867, Gladstone realized that he had to introduce disestablishment. On 1 March 1869, Gladstone introduced his Irish Church Bill in the Commons. It went through on the second reading by 118 votes and on the third by 114. But the real battle came in the Lords where the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland was judged to be a constitutional matter. The government had told the Lords to send back its Bill without blemish, but the Lords might well vote against it on the second reading. At this point, the Queen intervened. As much as she preferred Disraeli to Gladstone, the monarch would not put up with a constitutio
nal crisis. The Bill went through. The Conservative peers had, for the first time in twenty years, been defeated on an important piece of legislation. But the intervention of the Queen is a reminder that the twenty-first-century debate over the power of the House of Lords has been heard many times. In the nineteenth century, a prime minister could still live in the Lords – but the real power, and the monarch’s concern for that power, rested in the Commons.

  Certainly for hundreds of years, the Lower House had nursed its right to take decisions, with the ‘advice and consent’ of the Upper House. In June 1869, the Commons, the Prime Minister and the monarch reminded their Lordships of their duty to give that advice, but above all, that consent, when the Commons so demanded. And so they did. But that, of course, was not the end of the debate. However, Gladstone’s government was not a set-piece government, not the sort that had almost casually ruled Britain in the 1850s. It was a government full of imagination, an intelligent administration, a government of ideas.

  The judicial system was simplified and modernized and university teaching posts were now thrown open to men of any religious persuasion. And next came the overhaul of the army, the role for Edward Cardwell. The army hated this. In truth, the army had been left to itself since Waterloo, more than half a century ago. Flogging was abolished (in peacetime anyway). And a man could now join up for as little as six years and then go on reserve for six years. But the biggest shock to the military system came when, in 1871, officers found they could no longer buy commissions and the Commander-in-Chief was, for the first time, made subordinate to the Secretary of War. The county infantry regiments were created and soldiers were gradually armed with the new Martini–Henry breech-loading rifle.