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 Design Patterns
Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Produced by KevinZhang
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Contents

Preface to CD ........................................................ 5

Preface to Book ...................................................... 7

Foreword ............................................................. 9

Guide to Readers .................................................... 10

1 Introduction ...................................................... 11
1.1 What Is a Design Pattern? ...................................... 12
1.2 Design Patterns in Smalltalk MVC ............................... 14
1.3 Describing Design Patterns ..................................... 16
1.4 The Catalog of Design Patterns ................................. 18
1.5 Organizing the Catalog ......................................... 21
1.6 How Design Patterns Solve Design Problems ...................... 23
1.7 How to Select a Design Pattern ................................. 42
1.8 How to Use a Design Pattern .................................... 44

2 A Case Study: Designing a Document Editor ......................... 46

2.1 Design Problems ................................................ 46
2.2 Document Structure ............................................. 47
2.3 Formatting ..................................................... 53
2.4 Embellishing the User Interface ................................ 56
2.5 Supporting Multiple Look-and-Feel Standards .................... 60
2.6 Supporting Multiple Window Systems ............................. 64
2.7 User Operations ................................................ 72
2.8 Spelling Checking and Hyphenation .............................. 77
2.9 Summary ........................................................ 90

Design Pattern Catalog .............................................. 93

3 Creational Patterns ............................................... 94

Abstract Factory ................................................... 99
Builder ........................................................... 110
Factory Method .................................................... 121
Prototype ......................................................... 133
Singleton ......................................................... 144

Discussion of Creational Patterns .................................. 153

2
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

4 Structural Patterns .............................................. 155

Adapter ........................................................... 157
Bridge ............................................................ 171
Composite ......................................................... 183
Decorator ......................................................... 196
Façade ............................................................ 208
Flyweight ......................................................... 218
Proxy ............................................................. 233

Discussion of Structural Patterns ................................. 246

5 Behavioral Patterns .............................................. 249

Chain of Responsibility ........................................... 251
Command ........................................................... 263
Interpreter ....................................................... 274
Iterator .......................................................... 289
Mediator .......................................................... 305
Memento ........................................................... 316
Observer .......................................................... 326
State ............................................................. 338
Strategy .......................................................... 349
Template Method ................................................... 360
Visitor ........................................................... 366

Discussion of Behavioral Patterns ................................. 382

6 Conclusion ....................................................... 388

6.1 What to Expect from Design Patterns ........................... 388
6.2 A Brief History ............................................... 392
6.3 The Pattern Community ......................................... 393
6.4 An Invitation ................................................. 395
6.5 A Parting Thought ............................................. 396

A Glossary ......................................................... 397

B Guide to Notation ................................................ 404

B.1 Class Diagram ................................................. 404
B.2 Object Diagram ................................................ 406
B.3 Interaction Diagram ........................................... 407

C Foundation Classes ............................................... 409

C.1 List .......................................................... 409
C.2 Iterator ...................................................... 412
C.3 ListIterator .................................................. 413

3
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

C.4 Point ......................................................... 413

C.5 Rect .......................................................... 414

Bibliography ....................................................... 416

4
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Preface to CD

As we were writing Design Patterns, we knew the patterns we weredescribing had

value because they had proven themselves in manydifferent contexts. Our hope was
that other software engineers wouldbenefit from these patterns as much as we had.

Now, three years after its debut, we find ourselves both grateful andthrilled
by how the book has been received. Lots of people use it.Many tell us the patterns
have helped them design and build bettersystems. Many others have been inspired
to write their own patterns,and the pool of patterns is growing. And many have
commented on whatmight be improved about the book and what they would like to
see inthe future.

A recurring comment in all the feedback has been how well-suited thebook is to
hypertext. There are numerous cross-references, andchasing references is
something a computer can do very well. Sincemuch of the software development
process takes place on computers, itwould be natural to have a book like ours
as an on-line resource.Observations like these got us excited about the potential
of thismedium. So when Mike Hendrickson approached us about turning the bookinto
a CD-ROM, we jumped at the chance.

Two years and several megabytes of e-mail later, we're delighted thatyou can
finally obtain this edition, the Design Patterns CD,and put its unique capabilities
to work. Now you can access a patternfrom your computer even when someone has
borrowed your book. You can search the text for key words and phrases. It's also
considerably easier to incorporate parts of it in your own on-line
documentation.And if you travel with a notebook computer, you can keep the
bookhandy without lugging an extra two pounds of paper.

Hypertext is a relatively new publishing venue, one we arelearning to use just

like everyone else. If you have ideas on howto improve this edition, please send
them [email protected] you have questions or suggestions
concerning the patternsthemselves, send them to
[email protected] list. (To subscribe, send e-mail to
[email protected] the subject "subscribe".) This list has quite
a few readers, and many of them can answer questions as well as we can—andusually
a lot faster! Also, be sure to check out thePatterns Home Page
athttp://hillside.net/patterns/.There you'll find other books and mailing lists
on patterns, notto mention conference information and patterns published on-line.

This CD entailed considerable design and implementation work. We areindebted to

Mike Hendrickson and the team at Addison-Wesley for theiron-going encouragement
and support. Jeff Helgesen, Jason Jones, andDaniel Savarese garner many thanks
5
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

for their development effort andfor patience despite what must appear to have
been our insatiableappetite for revision. A special acknowledgment is due IBM
Research,which continues to underwrite much of this activity. We also thankthe
reviewers, including Robert Brunner, Sandeep Dani, Bob Koss, ScottMeyers, Stefan
Schulz, and the Patterns Discussion Group at theUniversity of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. Their advice led to at leastone major redesign and several minor
ones.

Finally, we thank all who have taken time to comment on DesignPatterns. Your
feedback has been invaluable to us as we striveto better our understanding and
presentation of this material.

Zurich, Switzerland E.G.

Sydney, Australia R.H.

Urbana, Illinois R.J.

Hawthorne, New York J.V.

August 1997

6
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Preface to Book

This book isn't an introduction to object-oriented technology or design. Many

books already do a good job of that. This book assumes you are reasonably proficient
in at least one object-oriented programming language, and you should have some
experience in object-oriented design as well. You definitely shouldn't have to
rush to the nearest dictionary the moment we mention "types" and "polymorphism,"
or "interface" as opposed to "implementation” inheritance.

On the other hand, this isn't an advanced technical treatise either. It’s a book
of design patterns that describes simple and elegant solutions to specific problems
in object-oriented software design. Design patterns capture solutions that have
developed and evolved overtime. Hence they aren't the designs people tend to
generate initially. They reflect untold redesign and recoding as developers have
struggled for greater reuse and flexibility in their software. Design patterns
capture these solutions in a succinct and easily applied form.

The design patterns require neither unusual language features nor amazing
programming tricks with which to astound your friends and managers. All can be
implemented in standard object-oriented languages, though they might take a little
more work than ad hoc solutions. But the extra effort invariably pays dividends
in increased flexibility and reusability.

Once you understand the design patterns and have had an "Aha!" (and not just a
"Huh?") experience with them, you won't ever think about object-oriented design
in the same way. You'll have insights that can make your own designs more flexible,
modular, reusable, and understandable—which is why you're interested in
object-oriented technology in the first place, right?

A word of warning and encouragement: Don't worry if you don’t understand this
book completely on the first reading. We didn’t understand it all on the first
writing! Remember that this isn't a book to read once and put on a shelf. We hope
you'll find yourself referring to it again and again for design insights and for
inspiration.

This book has had a long gestation. It has seen four countries, three of its authors'
marriages, and the birth of two (unrelated) offspring.Many people have had a part
in its development. Special thanks are due Bruce Anderson, Kent Beck, and André
Weinand for their inspiration and advice. We also thank those who reviewed drafts
of the manuscript: Roger Bielefeld, Grady Booch, Tom Cargill, Marshall Cline,
Ralph Hyre, Brian Kernighan, Thomas Laliberty, Mark Lorenz, Arthur Riel, Doug
Schmidt, Clovis Tondo, Steve Vinoski, andRebecca Wirfs-Brock. We are also grateful
to the team at Addison-Wesley for their help and patience: Kate Habib,Tiffany
Moore,Lisa Raffaele,Pradeepa Siva, and John Wait.Special thanks to Carl Kessler,
7
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Danny Sabbah, and Mark Wegman at IBMResearch for their unflagging support of this
work.

Last but certainly not least, we thank everyone on the Internet andpoints beyond
who commented on versions of the patterns, offeredencouraging words, and told
us that what we were doing was worthwhile.These people include but are not limited
toJon Avotins,Steve Berczuk,Julian Berdych,Matthias Bohlen,John Brant,Allan
Clarke,Paul Chisholm,Jens Coldewey,Dave Collins,Jim Coplien,Don
Dwiggins,Gabriele Elia,Doug Felt,Brian Foote,Denis Fortin,Ward Harold,Hermann
Hueni,Nayeem Islam,Bikramjit Kalra,Paul Keefer,Thomas Kofler,Doug Lea,Dan
LaLiberte,James Long,Ann Louise Luu,Pundi Madhavan,Brian Marick,Robert
Martin,Dave McComb,Carl McConnell,Christine Mingins,Hanspeter Mössenböck,Eric
Newton,Marianne Ozkan,Roxsan Payette,Larry Podmolik,George Radin,Sita
Ramakrishnan,Russ Ramirez,Alexander Ran,Dirk Riehle,Bryan Rosenburg,Aamod
Sane,Duri Schmidt,Robert Seidl,Xin Shu,and Bill Walker.

We don't consider this collection of design patterns complete andstatic; it's

more a recording of our current thoughts on design. Wewelcome comments on it,
whether criticisms of our examples, referencesand known uses we've missed, or
design patterns we should haveincluded. You can write us care of Addison-Wesley,
or send electronicmail to [email protected]. You can also
obtainsoftcopy for the code in the Sample Code sections by sending themessage
"send design pattern source" to [email protected]. And now
there's a Web page at
http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/patterns/DPBook/DPBook.html for late-breaking
information and updates.

Mountain View, California E.G.

Montreal, Quebec R.H.

Urbana, Illinois R.J.

Hawthorne, New York J.V.

August 1994

8
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Foreword

Consider the work of a future software archeologist, tracingthe history of

computing. The fossil record will likely show clearstrata: here is a layer formed
of assembly language artifacts,there is a layer populated with the skeletons of
high orderprogramming languages (with certain calcified legacy partsprobably
still showing some signs of life). Each such layer willbe intersected with the
imprint of other factors that have shapedthe software landscape: components,
residue from the greatoperating system and browser wars, methods, processes, tools.
Eachline in this strata marks a definitive event: below that line,computing was
this way; above that line, the art of computing hadchanged.

Design Patterns draws such a line of demarcation;this is a work that represents

a change in the practice ofcomputing. Erich, Richard, Ralph, and John present
a compellingcase for the importance of patterns in crafting complex
systems.Additionally, they give us a language of common patterns that canbe used
in a variety of domains.

The impact of this work cannot be overstated. As I travel aboutthe world working
with projects of varying domains andcomplexities, it is uncommon for me to
encounter developers whohave not at least heard of the patterns movement. In the
moresuccessful projects, it is quite common to see many of thesedesign patterns
actually used.

With this book, the Gang of Four have made a seminalcontribution to software
engineering. There is much to learnedfrom them, and much to be actively applied.

Grady Booch
Chief Scientist, Rational Software Corporation

9
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Guide to Readers

This book has two main parts. The first part (Chapters 1 and 2)describes what
design patterns are and how they help you designobject-oriented software. It
includes a design case study thatdemonstrates how design patterns apply in practice.
The second partof the book (Chapters 3, 4, and 5) is a catalog of the actual
designpatterns.

The catalog makes up the majority of the book. Its chapters dividethe design
patterns into three types: creational, structural, andbehavioral. You can use
the catalog in several ways. You can readthe catalog from start to finish, or
you can just browse from patternto pattern. Another approach is to study one of
the chapters. Thatwill help you see how closely related patterns distinguish
themselves.

You can use the references between the patterns as a logicalroute through the
catalog. This approach will give you insightinto how patterns relate to each other,
how they can be combinedwith other patterns, and which patterns work well together.
Figure 1.1(page 23) depicts these references graphically.

Yet another way to read the catalog is to use a more problem-directedapproach.

Skip to Section 1.6 (page 23) to read about some common problems in designing
reusable object-orientedsoftware; then read the patterns that address these
problems. Somepeople read the catalog through first and then use aproblem-directed
approach to apply the patterns to their projects.

If you aren't an experienced object-oriented designer, then start withthe simplest

and most common patterns:

• Abstract Factory (page 99)

• Adapter (157)
• Composite (183)
• Decorator (196)
• Factory Method (121)
• Observer (326)
• Strategy (349)
• Template Method (360)

It's hard to find an object-oriented system that doesn't use at leasta couple
of these patterns, and large systems use nearly all of them.This subset will help
you understand design patterns in particular andgood object-oriented design in
general.

10
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 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

1. Introduction

Designing object-oriented software is hard, and designing reusable

object-oriented software is even harder. You must find pertinent objects, factor
them into classes at the right granularity, define class interfaces and inheritance
hierarchies, and establish key relationships among them. Your design should be
specific to the problem at hand but also general enough to address future problems
and requirements. You also want to avoid redesign, or at least minimize it.
Experienced object-oriented designers will tell you that a reusable and flexible
design is difficult if not impossible to get "right" the first time. Before a
design is finished, they usually try to reuse it several times, modifying it each
time.

Yet experienced object-oriented designers do make good designs. Meanwhile new

designers are overwhelmed by the options available and tend to fall back on
non-object-oriented techniques they've used before. It takes a long time for
novices to learn what good object-oriented design is all about. Experienced
designers evidently know something inexperienced ones don't. What is it?

One thing expert designers know not to do is solve every problem from first
principles. Rather, they reuse solutions that have worked for them in the past.
When they find a good solution, they use it again and again. Such experience is
part of what makes them experts. Consequently, you'll find recurring patterns
of classes and communicating objects in many object-oriented systems. These
patterns solve specific design problems and make object-oriented designs more
flexible, elegant, and ultimately reusable. They help designers reuse successful
designs by basing new designs on prior experience. A designer who is familiar
with such patterns can apply them immediately to design problems without having
to rediscover them.

An analogy will help illustrate the point. Novelists and playwrights rarely design
their plots from scratch. Instead, they follow patterns like "Tragically Flawed
Hero" (Macbeth, Hamlet, etc.) or "The Romantic Novel" (countless romance novels).
In the same way, object-oriented designers follow patterns like "represent states
with objects" and "decorate objects so you can easily add/remove features." Once
you know the pattern, a lot of design decisions follow automatically.

We all know the value of design experience. How many times have you had design
déjà-vu—that feeling that you've solved a problem before but not knowing exactly
where or how? If you could remember the details of the previous problem and how
you solved it, then you could reuse the experience instead of rediscovering it.
However, we don't do a good job of recording experience in software design for
others to use.

11
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

The purpose of this book is to record experience in designing object-oriented

software as design patterns. Each design pattern systematically names, explains,
and evaluates an important and recurring design in object-oriented systems. Our
goal is to capture design experience in a form that people can use effectively.
To this end we have documented some of the most important design patterns and
present them as a catalog.

Design patterns make it easier to reuse successful designs and architectures.

Expressing proven techniques as design patterns makes them more accessible to
developers of new systems. Design patterns help you choose design alternatives
that make a system reusable and avoid alternatives that compromise reusability.
Design patterns can even improve the documentation and maintenance of existing
systems by furnishing an explicit specification of class and object interactions
and their underlying intent. Put simply, design patterns help a designer get a
design "right" faster.

None of the design patterns in this book describes new or unproven designs. We
have included only designs that have been applied more than once in different
systems. Most of these designs have never been documented before. They are either
part of the folklore of the object-oriented community or are elements of some
successful object-oriented systems—neither of which is easy for novice designers
to learn from. So although these designs aren't new, we capture them in a new
and accessible way: as a catalog of design patterns having a consistent format.

Despite the book's size, the design patterns in it capture only a fraction of
what an expert might know. It doesn't have any patterns dealing with concurrency
or distributed programming or real-time programming. It doesn't have any
application domain-specific patterns. It doesn't tell you how to build user
interfaces, how to write device drivers, or how to use an object-oriented database.
Each of these areas has its own patterns, and it would be worthwhile for someone
to catalog those too.

What is a Design Pattern?

Christopher Alexander says, "Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over
and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution
to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times
over, without ever doing it the same way twice" [AIS+77]. Even though Alexander
was talking about patterns in buildings and towns, what he says is true about
object-oriented design patterns. Our solutions are expressed in terms of objects
and interfaces instead of walls and doors, but at the core of both kinds of patterns
is a solution to a problem in a context.

In general, a pattern has four essential elements:

12
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

1. The pattern name is a handle we can use to describe a design problem, its
solutions, and consequences in a word or two. Naming a pattern immediately
increases our design vocabulary. It lets us design at a higher level of
abstraction. Having a vocabulary for patterns lets us talk about them with
our colleagues, in our documentation, and even to ourselves. It makes it
easier to think about designs and to communicate them and their trade-offs
to others. Finding good names has been one of the hardest parts of developing
our catalog.
2. The problem describes when to apply the pattern. It explains the problem
and its context. It might describe specific design problems such as how
to represent algorithms as objects. It might describe class or object
structures that are symptomatic of an inflexible design. Sometimes the
problem will include a list of conditions that must be met before it makes
sense to apply the pattern.
3. The solution describes the elements that make up the design, their
relationships, responsibilities, and collaborations. The solution doesn't
describe a particular concrete design or implementation, because a pattern
is like a template that can be applied in many different situations. Instead,
the pattern provides an abstract description of a design problem and how
a general arrangement of elements (classes and objects in our case) solves
it.
4. The consequences are the results and trade-offs of applying the pattern.
Though consequences are often unvoiced when we describe design decisions,
they are critical for evaluating design alternatives and for understanding
the costs and benefits of applying the pattern. The consequences for
software often concern space and time trade-offs. They may address language
and implementation issues as well. Since reuse is often a factor in
object-oriented design, the consequences of a pattern include its impact
on a system's flexibility, extensibility, or portability. Listing these
consequences explicitly helps you understand and evaluate them.

Point of view affects one's interpretation of what is and isn't a pattern. One
person's pattern can be another person's primitive building block. For this book
we have concentrated on patterns at a certain level of abstraction. Design patterns
are not about designs such as linked lists and hash tables that can be encoded
in classes and reused as is. Nor are they complex, domain-specific designs for
an entire application or subsystem. The design patterns in this book are
descriptions of communicating objects and classes that are customized to solve
a general design problem in a particular context.

A design pattern names, abstracts, and identifies the key aspects of a common
design structure that make it useful for creating a reusable object-oriented design.
The design pattern identifies the participating classes and instances, their roles
and collaborations, and the distribution of responsibilities. Each design pattern

13
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

focuses on a particular object-oriented design problem or issue. It describes

when it applies, whether it can be applied in view of other design constraints,
and the consequences and trade-offs of its use. Since we must eventually implement
our designs, a design pattern also provides sample C++ and (sometimes) Smalltalk
code to illustrate an implementation.

Although design patterns describe object-oriented designs, they are based on

practical solutions that have been implemented in mainstream object-oriented
programming languages like Smalltalk and C++ rather than procedural languages
(Pascal, C, Ada) or more dynamic object-oriented languages (CLOS, Dylan, Self).
We chose Smalltalk and C++ for pragmatic reasons: Our day-to-day experience has
been in these languages, and they are increasingly popular.

The choice of programming language is important because it influences one's point

of view. Our patterns assume Smalltalk/C++-level language features, and that
choice determines what can and cannot be implemented easily. If we assumed
procedural languages, we might have included design patterns called "Inheritance,"
"Encapsulation," and "Polymorphism." Similarly, some of our patterns are supported
directly by the less common object-oriented languages. CLOS has multi-methods,
for example, which lessen the need for a pattern such as Visitor (page 366). In
fact, there are enough differences between Smalltalk and C++ to mean that some
patterns can be expressed more easily in one language than the other. (See Iterator
(289) for an example.)

Design Patterns in Smalltalk MVC

The Model/View/Controller (MVC) triad of classes [KP88] is used to build user

interfaces in Smalltalk-80. Looking at the design patterns inside MVC should help
you see what we mean by the term "pattern."

MVC consists of three kinds of objects. The Model is the application object, the
View is its screen presentation, and the Controller defines the way the user
interface reacts to user input. Before MVC, user interface designs tended to lump
these objects together. MVC decouples them to increase flexibility and reuse.

MVC decouples views and models by establishing a subscribe/notify protocol between

them. A view must ensure that its appearance reflects the state of the model.
Whenever the model's data changes, the model notifies views that depend on it.
In response, each view gets an opportunity to update itself. This approach lets
you attach multiple views to a model to provide different presentations. You can
also create new views for a model without rewriting it.

The following diagram shows a model and three views. (We've left out the controllers
for simplicity.) The model contains some data values, and the views defining a
14
 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

spreadsheet, histogram, and pie chart display these data in various ways. The
model communicates with its views when its values change, and the views communicate
with the model to access these values.

Taken at face value, this example reflects a design that decouples views from
models. But the design is applicable to a more general problem: decoupling objects
so that changes to one can affect any number of others without requiring the changed
object to know details of the others. This more general design is described by
the Observer (page 326) design pattern.

Another feature of MVC is that views can be nested. For example, a control panel
of buttons might be implemented as a complex view containing nested button views.
The user interface for an object inspector can consist of nested views that may
be reused in a debugger. MVC supports nested views with the CompositeView class,
a subclass of View. CompositeView objects act just like View objects; a composite
view can be used wherever a view can be used, but it also contains and manages
nested views.

Again, we could think of this as a design that lets us treat a composite view
just like we treat one of its components. But the design is applicable to a more
general problem, which occurs whenever we want to group objects and treat the
group like an individual object. This more general design is described by the

15
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his duty in view of the spread of destitution. This perplexity, M. Guizot
contends, was that not of a sordid placeman, but of “a sincere and
conscientious mind carried forward in the direction of its own inclination by
a great flood of public opinion and passion, and struggling painfully against
its adversaries, its friends, and itself.” When the Queen met Sir Robert Peel
with a smile on the 20th of December, and said “she was glad to be able to
ask him to withdraw his resignation,” she was, according to this theory,
really lifting a cloud of gloom from his anxious head, and congratulating
him on the ending of that state of suspense in which his troubled mind had
been painfully poised. It may be a

THE DEPUTATION FROM LONDON AND DUBLIN

CORPORATIONS BEFORE THE QUEEN. (See p. 216.)
coincidence, but in corroboration of M. Guizot’s view we must note that a
sigh of relief echoes through the letter in which the careworn Minister, six
days after he resumed office, informed the Princess Lieven of the fact.
“However unexpected is the turn which affairs have taken, it is,” he writes,
“for the best. I resume power with greater means of rendering public service
than I should have had if I had relinquished it. But it is a strange
dream!”[26]
Yet, if one considers for a moment the great process of political
evolution over which the Queen was from her girlhood called on to preside,
one finds nothing really miraculous in the dream. It was merely a phase of
the beatific vision of a partially enfranchised democracy, which for the
moment dazed all sorts and conditions of men. The late Lord Dalling, who
lived through this stirring epoch of bloodless revolution, says that “previous
to the Reform Bill and the Municipality Bills, everybody in England looked
up: the ambitious young man looked up to the great nobleman for a seat in
Parliament; the ambitious townsman to the chief men in his borough for a
place in the Corporation. Subsequently to these measures, men desirous to
elevate their position looked down. The aristocratic tendency of other days
had thus become almost suddenly a democratic one. This democratic
tendency, which has gone on increasing, had made itself already visible at
the period when the Corn Law agitation began. It had been natural until
then to consider this subject relative to the interests of the upper classes; it
was now becoming natural to consider it in relation to the interests of the
lower classes. The question presented itself in a perfectly different point of
view, and politicians found, somewhat to their surprise, that all former
arguments had lost their force. It was this change in the spirit of the times
which had occasioned within such a very few years a total change in the
manner of looking at matters affected by the Legislature.”[27] Lord
Beaconsfield’s apologists sometimes say that what embittered him against
the capitalists of the Anti-Corn-Law League, was his conviction that though
they had the cry of cheap bread on their lips, the whisper of low wages was
at their hearts. The wage-rate, no doubt, had a potent influence in recasting
public opinion at this time. But it did not recast it in the Disraelitish mould.
The working classes discovered, through the lucid teaching of Cobden, that
wages did not fall because the Corn duty was low, and that they did not rise
because it was high. When they made that discovery, the only argument that
could protect Protection in a reformed Parliament vanished from the minds
of men who were not partisans of the patrician order. Politicians of calm
and enlightened judgment felt, as they felt the air they breathed, that public
opinion in 1845-46 was becoming more and more hostile to the Corn Laws.
The Queen and the entourage of the Court, then greatly under the influence
of Baron Stockmar, who was in constant communication with Prince Albert,
were evidently among the first to become sensitive to the change, but like
Peel, Wellington, and Russell, they frankly acknowledged what must follow
from it.
England was in truth all through 1845 moving fast to that “total and
immediate repeal” of the Corn Laws which Cobden demanded, and the
county gentry, Whig as well as Tory, equally dreaded. When Russell and
Peel were in fact waiting for what Prince Bismarck calls “the psychological
moment” to proclaim the new departure, the “psychological moment” came
with the terrible incident which caused the spectre of famine to stalk over
Ireland. That incident was the failure of the potato crop, and it removed the
question of the Corn Laws far away from the battle-ground of rival political
or economic theories. The problem was no longer one of maintaining or
abandoning a territorial system. At the beginning of 1846 it became a
question of deciding whether so many hundred thousand of our fellow-
creatures in Ireland should perish in the agonies of hunger, or whether, by
removing the Corn duty, her Majesty’s Government at one blow would
strike down the barrier that prevented bread from reaching the lips of a
starving peasantry. For the wretched cotters in Ireland the winter of 1845-46
was, truly, one of extreme privation. “Those who had savings,” writes Mr.
Greg,[28] “lived off them, but among the really poor there was widespread
destitution.” Forced to sell their clothes for food, the Irish peasantry refused
to pay rent, and when rent was extorted by harsh process of law, retaliatory
outrages immediately followed. The ghastly outlook in Ireland gave the
Anti-Corn-Law agitators welcome leverage for their movement in England,
and they increased their activity every day. Lord John Russell, on the 22nd
of November, 1845, wrote the Edinburgh Letter to the electors of the City
of London, warning them that the Whig Party, in view of the state of the
country, were ready to put an end to a system which had been proved to be
the blight of commerce and the bane of agriculture. This, we have seen,
forced Peel’s hands. As Mr. Bright said to Lord John, whom he met, after
the issue of his manifesto, on the platform of a railway station in Yorkshire,
“Your letter has made total and immediate repeal inevitable; nothing can
save it” (the Corn Law).[29] Peel himself did not conceal from the Queen
that he could perhaps keep the Whigs at bay for three years, and shortly
before his death he told Cobden the same thing. But neither the monarch
nor her Minister dared to procrastinate in the face of popular destitution,
and they felt compelled to obey, no matter at what cost or sacrifice, the
dictates of reason and humanity. For it was not from Ireland only that the
moan of a suffering people broke upon the ear of a sorrowing Queen. It is
true that the venal and factious press of that country at first attempted to
deceive the world by denying the existence of wide-spreading potato-rot in
the island. With the cries of the dying ringing in their ears, Irish journalists
disputed with each other as to whether there actually was any famine in the
land. But the facts could not long be concealed, either from the people or
from the Queen. At the end of September, 1845, it had to be generally
admitted that the staple food of Ireland had suddenly disappeared, and that
even in England only the northern counties had escaped from the potato-
disease. To such an extent did the rest of England suffer, that Professor
Lindley declared there was hardly a sound potato to be found in Covent
Garden Market.[30] As Lord Beaconsfield has observed, “This mysterious
but universal sickness of a single root changed the history of the world.”[31]
The Corporations of London and Dublin, on the 3rd of January, 1846,
memorialised the Queen on the subject. Their deputations, who waited on
her at Windsor, received from her a gracious and sympathetic reply to their
statements, which she heard with manifest interest. The Anti-Corn-Law
League felt that it would be good policy to turn the prevailing distress to
account, and it immediately renewed, with redoubled vigour, its agitation
against the duties that kept up the price of bread. Its leaders organised a
series of meetings all over England and Scotland, and although the Chartists
rather held aloof from them, the Free Trade speakers at last fairly touched
the heart of the nation. Extraordinary scenes of enthusiasm took place at
these meetings. In the last week of 1845, at a meeting in Manchester, it was
suggested to raise a quarter of a million pounds sterling to help the agitation
that must strengthen Peel’s hands,[32] and Mr. John Morley has described
how men jumped up from their seats and cried out, one after the other, “A
thousand pounds for me!” “A thousand pounds for us!” and so on, till in
less than two hours £60,000 were subscribed on the spot.[33] Of course, all
this fervour provoked a movement on the other side. The Protectionists
organised a counter agitation, but it was very badly managed. The speakers
selected were persons, of high rank and ample fortune. But they lacked
sympathy and sense, and this defect was fatal to their cause. Their favourite
argument was that there was no famine at all to fear, and they revelled in
demonstrating to people who had nothing to eat, that their continued
prosperity depended on the maintenance of a Corn Law which made bread
dear. The Duke of Norfolk covered the Protectionist agitation with odium
and ridicule, by suggesting that if haply here and there a labouring man felt
hungry, he might derive great benefit by taking at night, just before bed-
time, a pinch of curry-powder as a comforting stomachic. The satirists of
the Radical party made affluent use of this egregious imbecility, and the
Examiner[34] promptly printed a poem headed “Comfort and Curry,” in
which the Duke and Duchess were cruelly quizzed.
What contributed most to strengthen Sir Robert Peel was the agitation
among the agricultural labourers. It was very difficult to resist such an
appeal as theirs, when they pointed to their gaunt forms, and wan and
haggard faces, and said, “Behold this is the result of the Protection that is
kept up for our benefit.” They held meetings, in the beginning of 1846, in
various parts of the country, and from the speeches at these we get a vivid
idea of the sad condition of the English people at this time. One gathering
may be cited as typical. It was held by some two hundred starvelings, who
met in fear—for the gentry frowned upon the movement—on a bleak
winter’s night, by the light of a clouded moon and a few flaring candles at a
cross-road near Wootton Bassett. The chairman said he had six shillings a
week, on which he
 MEETING OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS AT WOOTTON
BASSETT. (See p. 216.)
had to keep his wife and two children, and he complained that it was not
half enough for them to live on. Another speaker, one William Burchall,
said, “that though their wages had risen within the last few months a
shilling a week, bread had risen two shillings, so that the difference was
against them. He was past forty years of age, and he could say that he had
never purchased a pound of good slaughtered beef fit to be carried into the
market. As to mutton, he had purchased a little of that, but never as much as
would average a pound a year in forty years. He knew what veal was, but
never had any at all.” Another man said that, during thirty-nine weeks,
ending 10th of June, 1844, he had earned only £5 19s. 8d., or 3s. 1d. a
week; and that but for getting a little land to rent from Lord Carnarvon, he
and his wife and eight children would have starved. His house rent came to
£4 a year, and his bread bill alone came to from 7s. 7d. to 8s. 8d. a week.
Another man said that he had so little bread to eat that he got weak, and was
then discharged as unfit for service. James Pegler complained he had been
“hunted down” under the Poor Laws, having been, with his wife and family,
forced into the workhouse, and separated from them for eleven months. At
last, he was turned away to get work, and because he went out of the district
to find it, he was taken before the magistrate, charged with desertion, and
sent to prison for a month. “God bless my heart and life,” exclaimed this
poor creature, “I never see’d such a go, to be sure, as how I was served. I
know enough of starvation and misery to make me say ‘God send us Free
Trade.’ ” At this meeting the labourers declared they were thankful that
Providence had put it out of the power of Government “to write taxation on
the bosom of the streams and rivulets that were so bountifully spread
around their neighbourhood.”[35] They were unconsciously illustrating the
wisdom of Paul Louis Courier, who once said that the rich are grateful to
Providence for what it gives—the poor, for what it leaves them.
The Queen, it has been reported, was deeply affected by these
demonstrations of suffering. It is said that she will never forget, as long as
she lives, that she began her reign when the wealth and power of England
were waning. She was, on her accession to the throne, the object of the most
chivalrous devotion that any Queen could inspire. Yet, when crowned, the
tears fell from her eyes, as she thought of her own responsibility in the
midst of a nation sinking deeper and deeper into destitution, and plunging
deeper and deeper into debt. Mrs. Browning, when she read the account of
her Majesty’s coronation, gave apt expression to the popular hopes that
were raised by the significance which the people instinctively attached to
this incident of the ceremony.
 “God save thee, weeping Queen!
Thou shalt be well beloved;
The tyrant’s sceptre cannot move
As those pure tears have moved!
The nature in thy eyes we see
Which tyrants cannot own;
The love that guardeth liberties,
Strange blessing on the nation lies,
Whose Sovereign wept;
Yea, wept to wear a crown.”

As if in fulfilment of the hopes which the Queen’s conduct and bearing

since her accession had inspired, a happier day was now dawning. There
was every prospect that content would now gladden the reign that began in
sorrow and in tears. The partial relaxation of the Protective tariff during the
last three years had brought hope to the heart of the Sovereign, for it was
certainly followed by some amelioration in the lot of her subjects. Her
Majesty was profoundly impressed by Sir Robert Peel’s inferences from the
success of this experimental loosening of the shackles on commerce. She
was, therefore, naturally inclined to give the weight of her artless
sympathies and “sweet counsel” to a new departure in fiscal policy, that
promised to “make Plenty smile on the cheek of Toil.” The opening of the
Parliamentary Session of 1846 was, therefore, to the Queen no mere formal
or ordinary ceremony of State. It was, in her opinion, and in the opinion of
the Prince Consort, the initiation of a “bloodless revolution,” and the
closing of a distinct epoch in the history of Party Government.

DOG’S HEAD.
(Drawn and Etched by the
Prince Consort.)
 CHAPTER XIII.

THE FREE TRADE PARLIAMENT.

Opening of Parliament in 1846—The Queen’s Speech—The Debate on the Address—Sir

Robert Peel’s Statement—Mr. Disraeli’s Philippics—Bishop Wilberforce on Peel’s
Reception by the House of Commons—Peel’s Mistake—Lord George Bentinck’s
Attack on the Prince Consort—The Queen’s Explanations—The Court and the
Peelites—The Corn Bill in the House of Lords—Lord Stanley’s Political Dinner-Party
—The Duke of Wellington and the Peers—Triumph in the Lords and Defeat in the
Commons—Peel’s Coercion Bill for Ireland—A Factious Opposition—Fall of the
Government—Lord Aberdeen’s adroit Diplomacy—The Oregon Controversy and its
Settlement—The Government’s Policy in India—War in the Punjab—Victories over
the Sikhs—Resignation of the Ministry—The Queen’s Farewell to Peel—Her
Suggestion of a Coalition—Wellington and Cobden advise Peel to dissolve—Reasons
for his Refusal—The Queen and the Duke of Wellington—The Duke’s Letter to Lord
John Russell—Lyndhurst and Reconstruction—Disintegration of the Tory Party—The
Peelites in Opposition—A Hint from Aristophanes—Tory Persecution of Peel.

It was on the 19th of January, 1846,[36] that the Queen opened in person the
Parliament which revolutionised the commercial policy of England, and
transferred the political centre of gravity from the territorial to the
commercial aristocracy of the country. The Royal procession was formed at
Buckingham Palace in the usual order. Her Majesty and Prince Albert
descended the grand staircase shortly before two o’clock, the Queen
wearing a lustrous diamond circlet on her fair white brow. The Prince was
habited in a Field-Marshal’s uniform, and the orders of the Garter and
Golden Fleece shone on his breast. The State coach with its eight cream-
coloured horses then drove with the Royal party to the Palace of the
Legislature, and as her Majesty passed through the densely crowded Royal
Gallery it was seen that she was labouring under deep but suppressed
emotion.
From the Throne she read, in clear but thrilling tones, the following
speech:—
“My Lords and Gentlemen,—
 “It gives me great satisfaction again to meet you in Parliament, and to have the
opportunity of recurring to your assistance and advice.

“I continue to receive from my allies, and from other foreign Powers, the strongest
assurances of the desire to cultivate the most friendly relations with this country.

“I rejoice that, in concert with the Emperor of Russia, and through the success of our
joint mediation, I have been enabled to adjust the differences which have long prevailed
between the Ottoman Porte and the King of Persia, and had seriously endangered the
tranquillity of the East.

“For several years a desolating and sanguinary warfare has afflicted the States of the
Rio de la Plata. The commerce of all nations has been interrupted, and acts of barbarity
have been committed unknown to the practice of a civilised people. In conjunction with the
King of the French I am endeavouring to effect the pacification of these States.

“The Convention concluded with France in the course of last year, for the more
effectual suppression of the Slave Trade, is about to be carried into immediate execution by
the active co-operation of the two Powers on the coast of Africa. It is my desire that our
present union, and the good understanding which so happily exists between us, may always
be employed to promote the interests of humanity, and to secure the peace of the world.
THE QUEEN OPENING PARLIAMENT IN 1846.
 OPENING OF PARLIAMENT IN 1846: ARRIVAL OF THE
ROYAL PROCESSION AT THE HOUSE OF LORDS. (See p.
220.)

“I regret that the conflicting claims of Great Britain and the United States, in respect of
the territory on the north-western coast of America, although they have been made the
subject of repeated negotiation, still remain unsettled. You may be assured that no effort,
consistent with national honour, shall be wanting on my part to bring this question to an
early and peaceful termination.

“Gentlemen of the House of Commons,—

 “The estimates for the year will be laid before you at an early period. Although I am
deeply sensible of the importance of enforcing economy in all branches of the expenditure,
yet I have been compelled, by a due regard to the exigencies of the Public Service, and to
the state of our Naval and Military establishments, to propose some increase in the
estimates which provide for their efficiency.

“My Lords and Gentlemen,—

“I have observed with great regret the frequent instances in which the crime of
deliberate assassination has been of late committed in Ireland. It will be for you only to
consider whether any measures can be devised calculated to give increased protection to
life, and to bring to justice the perpetrators of so dreadful a crime.

“I have to lament that in consequence of a failure of the potato crop in many parts of
the United Kingdom there will be a deficient supply of an article of food which forms the
chief subsistence of great numbers of my people. The disease by which the plant has been
affected has prevailed to the utmost extent in Ireland. I have adopted all such precautions
as it was in my power for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings which may be caused by
this calamity; and I shall confidently rely on your co-operation in devising such other
means for effecting the same benevolent purpose as may require the sanction of the
Legislature.

“I have had great satisfaction in giving my assent to the measures which you have
presented to me from time to time, calculated to extend commerce, and to stimulate
domestic skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibitory and the relaxation of protective
duties. The prosperous state of the revenue, the increased demand for labour, and the
general improvement which has taken place in the internal conditions of the country are
strong testimonies in favour of the course you have pursued.

“I recommend you to take into your early consideration, whether the principles on
which you have acted may not with advantage be more extensively applied, and whether it
may not be in your power, after a careful review of the existing duties on many articles, the
produce of manufacture of other countries, to make such further reductions and remissions
as may tend to ensure the continuance of the great benefits to which I have adverted, and,
by enlarging our commercial intercourse, to strengthen the bonds of amity with Foreign
Powers.

“Any measures which you may adopt for effecting these great objects will, I am
convinced, be accompanied by such precautions as shall prevent permanent loss to the
revenue, or injurious results to any of the great interests of the country.

“I have full reliance on your just and dispassionate consideration of matters so deeply
affecting the public welfare.
 “It is my earnest prayer that, with the blessing of Divine Providence on your councils,
you may be enabled to promote friendly feelings between different classes of my subjects,
to provide additional security for the continuance of peace, and to maintain contentment
and happiness at home, by increasing the comfort and bettering the condition of the great
body of my people.”
When the Queen retired, then the difficulty of some of our Constitutional
forms became apparent. It was remarked at the time that, had her Majesty
suddenly come down in the middle of the Session, and, usurping the
functions of Ministers, laid a startling project of legislation before
Parliament, she could not have found herself more thoroughly the mover of
a controversial Bill than, in spite of herself, she had become that afternoon.
Every caution had been exercised, it will be observed, in keeping all
mention of the Corn duties out of the Royal Speech. Yet, within a few hours
after it was read, the two Houses were engaged in an acrimonious debate,
not on the guarded generalities of the Address from the Throne, but on the
proposal for the total and immediate Repeal of the Corn Laws. The Queen’s
Speech, looked at apart from the events of the day, might seem to
recommend something less than that. But it was that, and nothing less,
which was in men’s minds and hearts, and for once in our Parliamentary
history the Debate on the Address was not a barren criticism of the general
policy of the Government, but really a sharp discussion on a special
measure foreshadowed dimly in the Royal Speech.
The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1846, in its bearing on the fate
of the Corn Law Bill, has been so ably told both by Dr. Cooke Taylor, in his
“Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel,” and by Mr. John Morley, in his “Life
of Cobden,” that it is hardly necessary here to do more than glance at its
salient points. In the House of Lords the debate on the Address was brief
and bitter—at least as bitter as the Duke of Richmond, who assailed Sir
Robert Peel, could make it. But in the House of Commons the proceedings
were more exciting. Lord Francis Egerton (afterwards Earl of Ellesmere)
moved, and Mr. Beckett Denison, who had driven Lord Morpeth out of his
seat for the West Riding, because his Lordship had joined the Anti-Corn-
Law League, seconded the Address. Sir Robert Peel followed, and
vindicated his change of policy, resting the chief strength of his case on his
own observations, first, of the effect of the gradual relaxation of Protective
duties which he had tried, and secondly, on the failure of the potato crop—a
report on which had been drawn up for him by Professor Lindley and Dr.
Lyon Playfair. It was in this speech that he intimated he was at first
prepared to suspend the Corn Law by an Order in Council, but that his
colleagues objected to that course on the ground that, if once opened to
foreign corn, the ports could never again be closed. Lord John Russell
followed, and explained how he had failed to form a Ministry; and then
Lord George Bentinck, waiving his right as leader of the Protectionists to
reply, put up Mr. Disraeli to deliver one of the first of those violent
philippics against Peel which gave him a unique reputation as a
Parliamentary sabreur. What could the House think of a statesman, he
asked, who having, as he had boasted, served four sovereigns, was finally
compelled, by the observations of the last three years, to change his opinion
on a subject which had been discussed in his hearing from every
conceivable point of view during a quarter of a century? He likened him to
the Capitan Pasha of the Sultan, who, on the plea that he hated a war, ended
it by going over to the enemy, and betraying his Imperial master. Peel’s
speech, said Mr. Disraeli, was “a glorious example of egotistical rhetoric.”
He was “no more a great statesman than a man who got up behind a
carriage was a great whip. Both were anxious for progress, and both wanted
a good place.” It was a brilliant, dazzling, witty harangue, and it caught the
humour, not of the betrayed Protectionists merely, but to some extent of the
House also. Looking back on Peel’s speech now, one can detect a false note
in it. Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, who went to hear the
debate, in a letter to Miss Noel, says that the Prime Minister’s statement
was received with “a kind of thundering sullenness.”[37] He unconsciously
irritated the House by his assumption that the case for the Corn Laws must
needs fall after he had personally put the matter to the test of a three years’
 ST. STEPHEN’S CLOISTERS, WESTMINSTER HALL.
experiment. It lessened the grace of his submission to events and facts,
when he argued as if the observations and experiments and researches of all
the greatest economists in the world during a score of years were not in any
sense conclusive till verified by Sir Robert Peel. And all through the
debates, it is quite clear that he contrived to embitter his opponents by
seeming to talk down to them. His tone was that of one who thought they
were rather to be pitied than blamed, because they could not understand that
if three years had sufficed to change the opinion of their leader, three
minutes ought to suffice for the conversion of his followers. One crisis and
one set of circumstances hardly convinced men, whose class interests were
at stake, that Protection was wrong, especially after Sir Robert
 LORD STANLEY (AFTERWARDS FOURTEENTH EARL
OF DERBY).
Peel himself had taught them to disregard the experience of a quarter of
a century. Peel, when he showed how keenly he felt Mr. Disraeli’s
sarcasms, failed to remember that the arrows which stung him came from
his own quiver.
A few days after the Session opened, Sir Robert Peel, in explaining his
plan for getting rid of the Corn duties, made it clear that Repeal was to be
total, but not immediate. Writing to Mrs. Cobden on the 28th of January,
Cobden says:—“Peel is at last delivered, but I hardly know whether to call
it a boy or a girl. Something between the two, I believe. His Corn measure
makes an end of all Corn laws in 1849, and in the meantime it is virtually a
fixed duty of 4s. He has done more than was expected of him, and all but
the right thing.” As a matter of fact, there was to be a sliding scale till 1849,
the maximum duty being 10s. when wheat was under 48s. a quarter, and the
minimum duty being 4s. when wheat was 54s. a quarter. On the 2nd of
March, when the House went into Committee on the resolution, Mr.
Villiers’ amendment, insisting on immediate, as well as total, Repeal, was
lost by a large majority, and on the 11th of May the Corn Bill reached the
third reading. The debate lasted three nights, and at 4 a.m. on the 16th it
was passed by a majority of 98 in a House of 516.
Before tracing the subsequent stages of this controversy, it may not be
amiss to allude to one of the most curious incidents that marked its
progress. On the 27th of January, when Sir Robert Peel’s resolutions
embodying his financial policy came before the House of Commons, the
presence of Prince Albert in the gallery, as a spectator of the scene, roused
the jealousy and wrath of the Tories. Lord George Bentinck, in the course of
the debate, waved his hand excitedly towards his Royal Highness, and
accused him of being “seduced by the First Minister of the Crown to come
down to this House to usher in, to give éclat, and, as it were, by reflection
from the Queen, to give the semblance of a personal sanction of her
Majesty to a measure which, be it for good or evil, a great majority at least
of the landed, aristocracy of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, imagine
fraught with deep injury, if not ruin, to them.” This was an insinuation at
once ridiculous and unjust. The truth is that the Queen, from her girlhood,
has had a somewhat exaggerated idea of the instructive value of
Parliamentary debates. She is to this day an ardent student of all
Parliamentary reports. She has the true Parliamentary instinct peculiar to
England and English-speaking communities which leads them to take a
strange but genuine delight in Parliamentary discussion. Indeed, she has
been known to tell her Ministers not only what she thought of a particular
debate, but how she herself would have handled the subject-matter of it had
she been a member of the House of Commons; in fact, it was in replying to
a communication of this kind that Lord Palmerston once observed, in the
felicitous vein of a courtier, that it was a lucky thing for Ministers who had
the misfortune to differ from her Majesty, that they had not to answer her
arguments in Parliament. Under the influence of these ideas, the Queen
naturally induced Prince Albert to attend the great historic debate of the
14th of January—“to hear a fine debate,” as she herself has said, “being so
useful to all princes.”[38] Party feeling, however, ran so high in 1846, that
Lord George Bentinck and the Tory Protectionists put the worst
construction on a perfectly innocent act. The Prince Consort simply went to
listen to the discussion, just as the Prince of Wales and his son went to hear
Mr. Gladstone introduce his Government of Ireland Bill in the House of
Commons on the 8th of April, 1886; and it is a mark of the sweetened
temper of political life in these latter days that not only did no Tory
complain of the Prince’s presence on that occasion, but nobody even
resented the kid-glove plaudits with which the young Prince Albert Victor,
with the generous but irrepressible enthusiasm of youth, greeted Mr.
Gladstone’s stately and impressive peroration.[39] Lord George Bentinck’s
attack on the Prince Consort was deficient alike in tact and taste; but it is
only fair to say that there was the shadow of an excuse for it. It had been
whispered that the Court had become Peelite—and the rumour was not
without foundation in fact. The Prince Consort reflected its sympathies
quite accurately when he wrote to Baron Stockmar, on the 16th of February,
that Peel was “abused like the most disgraceful criminal,” adding not only
that factions would combine to crush him—as they did—but that this
“would be a great misfortune.”
In the House of Lords the course of the Corn Bill was comparatively
smooth. Lord Stanley took the leadership of the Protectionists, but the
disintegration of parties was complete. Nothing illustrates this better than a
caustic remark which Lord Stanley threw out at a great political dinner-
party at his house, two days after the Bill had been passed by the Commons.
On that occasion he said, scoffingly, that it was most diverting to see a
Liberal like Lord Bessborough whipping up the Bishops to support the
Duke of Wellington on a Free Trade question.[40] In the Upper House the
opposition to the Bill virtually collapsed. Lord Stanley, when
argumentative, was tame, and, when personal, vituperative. The ablest of
the Bishops, in the name of the Church, repudiated the idea that the
Protectionist policy had benefited the rural poor; and Wilberforce
distinguished himself, especially, by his graphic picture of the sufferings
which the agricultural labourers were enduring. The Duke of Wellington,
however, decided the matter by telling the Peers that they would be wise to
bow to public opinion with a good grace, and not commit themselves to a
struggle between the Crown and the people. But he was hardly candid in
pretending that the Crown in this matter was opposed to the people. This
idea can be disproved by an extract from that remarkable letter in which the
Queen, in speaking of Peel’s resumption of office, eulogises his chivalrous
behaviour towards herself, and adds, with unaffected sincerity, “I have
never seen him so excited and determined, and such a good cause must
succeed.”[41] The Lords, however, acting on the Duke’s advice, only
engaged in a sham fight, and the final stage of the Bill passed without
debate or division. The night on which Peel’s triumph in the Lords was
announced was the night on which, however, his Ministry fell in the
Commons. It was the night on which a combination of factions, as the
Prince Consort had predicted, rejected what was called the Coercion Bill for
Ireland, and wrecked the most popular Cabinet that ever governed England.
It has already been said that the unruly state of Ireland had been

SIR JAMES GRAHAM.

aggravated by famine, and that evictions, following refusal of rent, had
been avenged by outrages. In the Queen’s Speech it had been indicated that
measures to restore order in Ireland would be framed; but it was not till the
end of June that a Coercion Bill was brought forward in the House of
Commons for second reading. This was the Bill which was fatal to the
Ministry. According to an old legend of the Moslems, a good angel and a
bad angel walk on either side of a man all through life, and Lord Balling
has very justly observed that, whilst Free Trade was the good angel of
Peel’s Administration, its bad angel was Coercion for Ireland. The
introduction of a Coercion Bill for Ireland, after the safety of the Corn Law
Bill was assured, was taken as a plausible pretext for dissolving the alliance
between the Whigs and the Government. It was regarded by the
Protectionists as an excellent opportunity for punishing the Ministers for
deserting them. Perhaps, if the truth were known, it was regarded by Sir
Robert Peel himself as a good field in which to meet a defeat that was

VIEW IN OREGON: THE COLUMBIA RIVER AND MOUNT

HOOD.
inevitable, and which would send him into the retirement for which latterly
he had begun to crave. A great deal has been said and written as to the
reasons which induced the various parties to form combinations against the
Administration that had done the State such noble service. The motives of
its enemies, however, were simple enough. The Protectionists had what they
called their “betrayal” to avenge; the Whigs considered that Peel had
behaved most ungenerously to the Melbourne Ministry, whose conciliatory
Irish policy, as worked out by Lord Normanby and Mr. Drummond, had
promised well for that country. They firmly believed that if they were in
power they could control Ireland by kindness, but that in applying such a
policy, they did not dare to trust as a colleague the Minister who had so
unscrupulously overthrown Lord Melbourne. A union between Peel and
Lord John Russell, such as the Queen desired to bring about, was also
impossible for another reason—Peel would not part company with Sir
James Graham. Lord John Russell, on the other hand, would not consent to
act with Sir James, whom the Whigs detested as an unforgivable renegade.
The Coercion Bill for Ireland was therefore doomed from the outset, not on
its merits, but by party passion. This was so strong, that the Whigs in the
House of Lords, as if to give Peel warning of his fate, actually combined
with the Protectionists to defeat Lord Lyndhurst’s Charitable Trusts Bill,
although it was directed against abuses which every Whig was pledged to
attack. “We, alas,” Lord Campbell confesses, “with shame,” had “not
enough virtue to withstand the temptation of snatching a vote against the
Government”[42]—a vote, by the way, which kept alive heinous abuses for
eight years longer.
The Upper House, however, was not quite so factious over the Irish
Coercion Bill. It was introduced by the Earl of St. Germains, who explained
that it enabled the Government not only to proclaim any district in Ireland
in which crime prevailed, but to quarter extra police on it at the expense of
the ratepayers. Stringent clauses prohibiting the possession of arms, and
preventing people from quitting their houses between sunset and sunrise,
were added. These were, in fact, the clauses which whetted the wit of the
younger Radicals against what they derisively termed, not an Irish
Coercion, but an “Irish Curfew Bill.” The Lords were also told that outrages
in Ireland had risen from 1,496 in 1844, to 3,642 in 1845, and the Bill
passed through the Upper House with very trifling opposition. It was in the
Commons that it was destined to be made the battle-ground of factions. The
Protectionists pretended that Peel was not in earnest in introducing it; for,
though the Bill was announced in January, it was not till the 30th of March
that Sir James Graham moved the first reading, and not till late in June that
the second reading was taken. The Whigs and Radicals objected to the Bill
because they held that conciliation, and not repression, was wanted in
Ireland. The Irish members taunted Peel with having created the
disturbances in Ireland by changing the tolerant policy of Melbourne,
Normanby, and Drummond, and by giving Irish judicial appointments to the
most violent Orange partisans. Others, like Mr. Roche, asked “Why don’t
you feed the Irish peasantry, if, as is clear, hunger is making them
discontented?” The position of men like Mr. Cobden was most
embarrassing. As Liberals, they were bound to vote against the Bill. But
then they did not wish to expel Peel from office—and Peel had said that by
the Bill he would stand or fall. They decided at last to vote against the
measure, and rightly, for it was impossible to carry on the Queen’s
Government with three parties in the House—Peelites, Protectionists, and
Whig Tree Traders. A single vote, moreover, could not save the Ministry,
for Peel’s enemies would soon have organised another combination against
him on another question. The Bill was accordingly defeated by a vote of
219 to 292, and the great Ministry which effected a peaceful revolution, and
created a new era of government in England, fell before a majority of 73.
Though 106 Protectionists returned to their old allegiance, and voted with
Peel, 70 voted against him, and they, combined with all the Whigs and
Radicals, rendered the defeat of the Government so complete that even
Peel’s antagonists forbore to cheer. Writing on the 4th of July to Lord
Hardwicke in India, the fallen Minister said he had every reason to forgive
his enemies for “having conferred upon him the blessing of the loss of
power.”[43]
Just before the fatal verdict was given, the Queen had the consolation of
knowing that, thanks to the adroit diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, who was
justly a persona grata at Court, a dispute with the United States as to the
settlement of the Oregon territory had ended. This was some slight solace to
her Majesty for the vexation of losing a Ministry which she felt convinced
was in full touch with national sympathies at a most perilous time, and
which she trusted, she says in one of her letters, because she never once
knew them recommend anything “that was not for the country’s good, and
never for the Party’s advantage only.”[44] This controversy with the United
States had in 1822 brought us to the verge of war, for, by a Convention in
1818, American and English settlers were to have the privilege of
colonising the no-man’s land in Oregon indiscriminately for ten years, a
term again renewed in 1827. Quarrels from clashing jurisdictions and
conflicting allegiances naturally arose out of this confused state of things,
and it was clear that the territory ought to be divided fairly and finally
between the two Governments. In March, President Polk had sent a
Message to Congress, pointing out that though England was at peace with
all the world, she was making unusual warlike preparations “both at home
and in her North American possessions.” This, the President broadly hinted,
was due to the continuance of the Oregon dispute, and, alluding in an
alarmist fashion to the contingency of war between the two nations, he
suggested the propriety of also increasing the military and naval forces of
the Republic. On the 13th of April, Mr. Reverdy Johnson proposed to the
Senate a Resolution, which was carried, giving notice to England that the
existing loose arrangement with regard to Oregon should, so far as America
was concerned, determine at the end of twelve months, and urging on the
Governments of both countries the necessity for taking steps to arrive at an
amicable settlement. It was on the 9th of June that Lord Brougham asked
Lord Aberdeen if it were true that the Oregon question had really been
settled, and Lord Aberdeen answered in the affirmative. He seems to have
managed the whole affair very skilfully. Finding that President Polk would
not submit the dispute to arbitration, and that he sent a Message to the
Senate recommending it to give notice of ending the joint occupation of
Oregon, Lord Aberdeen waited to see what the Senate would do. When it
passed Mr. Reverdy Johnson’s friendly and suggestive

THE BRITISH ARMY CROSSING THE SUTLEJ.

Resolution, Lord Aberdeen, discarding diplomatic forms, immediately
acted on it, and submitted a draft of a new Oregon Convention, formulating
his idea of an amicable settlement for the consideration of the United States.
Mr. Pakenham, the American Secretary of State, promptly accepted it as the
basis of the Treaty, which was ratified on 17th of June, 1846—a Treaty
which made the 49th parallel of North latitude the boundary line between
the two countries. All land to the north of that line went to Canada; and all
land to the south of it, to the United States.
Another cause of anxiety had virtually disappeared before Peel resigned;
office. The war cloud that loomed over our Indian frontier had vanished,
 THE BATTLE OF FEROZESHAH.
though not till a brilliant and decisive campaign had been fought against the
Sikhs in the Punjab.
The power of the Sikh nation was consolidated by Ranjit Sing—an
adventurer who, in 1799, obtained a grant of Lahore from Zaman Shah. He
gradually conquered the Punjab, and, in 1809, attacked the small Sikh
States east of the Sutlej. Those Cis-Sutlej principalities accordingly sought
and obtained British protection. In 1818, Ranjit stormed Multan, and carried
the Khalsa banner from the extreme south of the Punjab, far away into the
valley of Kashmir. In 1839, his son, Kharak Sing, succeeded to his throne,
but was supposed to have been poisoned in 1840. After that, the Sikh
dominion fell into anarchy, and frequent violations of British territory led to
the first Sikh war of 1845.
On the 17th of November, 1845, the Sikhs declared war on the English,
and on the 11th of December the first Sikh soldier crossed the Sutlej. On the
18th, the battle of Moodkee was fought by Sir Hugh Gough, afterwards
Lord Gough, who was in command of an army of 11,000 men. Moodkee is
a village in the Ferozepore district, lying in a plain twenty-six miles south
of the Sutlej. Two days before the battle the Sikhs crossed the river at
Ferozepore with 4,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, and 22 guns. At Moodkee
they were driven from their position after a hard struggle, in which Gough
had 215 killed and 657 wounded. The battle may be said to have gone on
till the 22nd, when our troops stormed and took the entrenched camp of the
enemy at Ferozeshah, twelve miles from the left bank of the Sutlej. The
Sikhs attributed their defeat at that place not so much to the skill of our
generals, as to the treachery of their own leader. They lost 2,000 men, and
the British 694 killed and 1,721 wounded ere the earthworks were carried.
Sir Robert Sale and General McCaskell were killed. Many of our losses
were due to the blowing-up of the enemy’s camp after we had entered it;
many of our men were killed whilst burying the dead, a misfortune
attributed to our lack of a strong enough force of cavalry to clear the
ground. Sir Henry Hardinge, the Governor-General, was present at both
engagements. He had generously offered to serve in a military capacity
under Gough, who put him in command of a Division. It was for this reason
that Sir Henry wrote to Gough a despatch describing the battle, which had
afterwards to be sent by Gough to Sir Henry himself in his capacity as
Viceroy. It is interesting to note that our troops, for six days previous to the
battle of Moodkee, had marched a distance of 150 miles, and that on the
very day on which they fought that battle, they had made a forced march of
thirty miles. Yet, though faint with fatigue, hunger, and thirst, when ordered
to attack fresh troops, they went into action without a murmur and with the
desperate valour that repulsed the enemy. During the night they bivouacked
on the stricken field, and next day entrenched themselves, waiting for the
onset of the Sikhs. But unexpectedly they were reinforced by two
regiments, and then they pressed on to help Sir J. Littler, who was
manœuvring at Ferozeshah. It was after joining him that they made the
night attack on the enemy’s camp, which crowned their standards with
victory. On the 26th of March, London was greatly excited by the tidings of
another great victory, which had been won on the 28th of January. This is
known as the victory of Aliwal, the battle having been fought at a village of
that name about nine miles west of Loodiana, on the left bank of the Sutlej.
It had been held by Ranjur Sing, who had crossed the river in force and
menaced Loodiana. On the 28th, Sir Harry Smith—determined to clear the
left bank of the stream, i.e., the British bank—attacked the Sikhs in great
force, and, after a desperate effort, put them to flight. It was, however, a
troopers’ battle, being gained by the stubborn valour of the British cavalry,
which was hurled in masses, three times, against the Sikhs, each time
piercing their lines. The last charge decided the day. The enemy were
pushed into the river, where large numbers were drowned, and 67 guns
were ultimately taken by the victors. The effect of this battle was
immediate. The Khalsa banner vanished, as if by magic, from all the forts
on our side of the Sutlej, and the territory east of the river submitted to the
Indian Government.
All doubt as to the fortune of war ended on the 10th of February, 1846,
when Gough fought the terrible battle of Sobraon. The Sikhs had chosen a
strong position on the east side of the Sutlej, protecting the Hariki ford, and
their rear rested on the village of Sobraon. It was on the Ferozepore side
that the fight took place, the Sikhs holding their earthworks defiantly, till
cut down almost to the last man. They lost 5,000 men, and but few lived to
recross the Sutlej. This crowning victory, in which our losses were 320
killed and 2,083 wounded, cleared the left bank of the river. After news of
the victory of Sobraon came to Lahore, the Ranee and her Durbar sent a
chief—the Rajah Golab Sing, who had always been on good terms with the
British Government—as an envoy, to sue for peace. The Rajah agreed to
concede our demands, which were the surrender in full sovereignty of the
territory between the Sutlej and Beas rivers; an indemnity of one and a half
crore of rupees; the disbandment of the Sikh army, and its reorganisation on
the system adopted by the celebrated Maharajah Ranjit Sing, the limitations
on its employment to be determined in communication with the Indian
Government; the surrender of all guns which had been pointed against us;
and the control of both banks of the Sutlej. It was further agreed that Golab
Sing and the young Maharajah Duleep Sing should repair to the camp of the
Governor-General of India, which they did on the 18th of February, when
his Highness the Maharajah formally made his submission. After this, it was
arranged he should return to Lahore with the Governor-General and the
conquering army, who occupied the city on the 22nd. In the actual Treaty it
was further stipulated that no European or American was to be employed by
the Maharajah Duleep Sing without the consent of the British Government,
and that Golab Sing was to be made Maharajah of the territory lying
between the Ravee and the Indus, including the valley of Kashmir, paying
every year to our Government, in acknowledgment of British supremacy, a
horse, twelve shawl goats, and three pairs of shawls. Subsequently, the
conquering army marched in triumph to Delhi, escorting
 SIR HENRY HARDINGE.
the trophies and spoils of the sixty days’ war, and displaying them proudly
in every city and military station en route, as symbols of British prowess
and prestige.
Sir H. Hardinge and Sir H. Gough were thanked in Parliament for their
services, and raised to the peerage with munificent pensions. There were
some who thought that the State was too lavish in its rewards on this
occasion, and the country was reminded that it had done no more for
Rodney than it was doing for Gough. Nor was this view altogether
indefensible. Good luck rather than good guidance rescued us from a
perilous situation in the Punjab, for it is certain that the Indian Government
sent our troops to the field in a condition that would have rendered failure
certain, had we been contending with European armies. The Sikhs, it is true,
were a small nation, but they were a nation of warriors, and therefore
formidable. They put into the field a splendidly
 THE RIVAL PAGES. (Reduced Fac-simile after
Punch.)
“I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place,
John.”
THE RIVAL PAGES. (Reduced Fac-simile after
Punch.)
“I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place,
John.”
equipped and disciplined army of 100,000 men, who, as soldiers, were
“bravest of the brave.” This was surely a powerful instrument of warfare,
strong enough, in able hands, to change the destinies of an empire, and yet
we were quite unprepared to meet such a dangerous enemy. Nothing, in
fact, but the personal pluck of our troops at this great crisis saved our Indian
dominion on our frontier. The Sikhs, however, it must be also stated, failed
where they should have succeeded, because they had no general who was a
master of strategy. They divided their army into two large corps. Each
moved against our chief forts, Ferozepore and Loodiana, without intending
to attack them, and it happened that the distance between these two forts
was greater round by the Sikh side of the Sutlej than by ours. The Sikhs,
therefore, had to manœuvre in the circumference of a circle, whilst we at
the centre could move along its arc. The two Sikh armies were not mutually
supporting. Had they both crossed the Sutlej in such fashion that they could
have supported each other, we could hardly have attacked them at
Ferozeshah, or fought for twenty-four hours against an army 70,000 strong,
in an entrenched position, when another Sikh force, 40,000 strong, was
within sound of our guns.
Hardly had the Queen and the country ceased to rejoice over political,
diplomatic, and military triumphs, than another painful Ministerial crisis
had to be faced. Sovereign and subject were alike touched by the strange
and dramatic coincidence of their trusted Minister, at the supreme moment
of victory, falling, like Tarpeia, crushed, as if in requital for a great service
to the people. On the 26th of June there was a Cabinet meeting to consider
the hostile vote on the Irish Coercion Bill, and the Prime Minister went
down to Osborne to confer with the Queen. He returned to inform
Parliament, on the 29th, that Ministers had tendered their resignations, and
only held office till their successors could relieve them of their posts. He
also said that he would support Lord John Russell in all his Free Trade
measures, and paid an eloquent tribute to Mr. Cobden, to whom he
generously gave credit for organising the victory of the Free Traders. When
he left the House he was followed home by a cheering crowd.
The resignation of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues was a mournful
incident in the Queen’s life. She had learned to respect and trust the Prime
Minister and his colleagues, one of whom, Lord Aberdeen, had, by his
gentle manners and cultured companionship, won the hearts of the Queen
and the Prince Consort. The country, in the opinion of the Queen, was in a
critical condition. One of the great political parties was shattered as a
governing organisation, and her Majesty and her husband both knew how
safe and valuable was the pilotage of those with whom, says Sir Theodore
Martin, “they had grown familiar, not merely in the anxious counsels of
State, but in the intimacies of friendship.”
There can be no doubt that the feeling of the Queen and of the country
alike ran in favour of retaining Sir Robert Peel at the head of affairs. After
he resigned, and the Whig Administration, headed by Lord John Russell,
took his place, the sentiments of the Sovereign were, curiously enough,
reproduced unconsciously by Mr. Wakley in the House of Commons.
Referring to the change of Government, he said, “I am utterly at a loss to
understand why it was that Sir Robert Peel left his place in the Cabinet, and
gave up his situation to others who are scarcely prepared to carry out the
Liberal principles which the Right Honourable Baronet professed in the last
speech that he delivered to this House.... At this moment Sir Robert Peel is
the most popular man in the kingdom. He is believed in, he is almost adored
by the masses, who believe that no Minister before him ever made such
sacrifices as he has made in their behalf.” Punch had, however, anticipated
Mr. Wakley as an exponent of popular feeling when Sir Robert Peel
tendered his resignation in December, 1845. The great comic journal then
gave its readers a picture, showing Peel and Lord John Russell as rival
candidates for the office of page to the Queen, and her Majesty settling the
claims of one by saying, “I’m afraid you’re not strong enough for the place,
John.” This was also the feeling even of the Whig gentry, who thought Lord
John needlessly bold in forcing on such a disagreeable question as the
Repeal of the Corn Laws in his letter to the electors of London. “I hear,”
wrote Lord Clarendon, to Lord Lyndhurst, on the 17th of December, 1845,
“Lord John has gone down to Windsor to-night; and I can assure you that
the most acceptable news he can bring back to his whole party would be
that he had not considered himself justified in undertaking the task
proposed to him by the Queen.”[45] That the Queen was still desirous of
retaining her Ministers in office after they again resigned in June, 1846, is
expressly taken for granted in a letter addressed by the Duke of Wellington
to Peel on the 21st of June.[46] It is put beyond all doubt by a letter dated
the 7th of July from her Majesty to the King of the Belgians, in which she
says:—“Yesterday (6th of July) was a very hard day for me. I had to part
from Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable losses to us
and to the country. They were both so much overcome that it quite upset
me, and we have in them two devoted friends. We felt so safe with them.”
At Court it was thought that Sir Robert should dissolve, or coalesce with the
more moderate Whigs. The Duke of Wellington was for dissolution, and, by
a curious coincidence, for the same reason which Mr. Cobden seems to
have given in a private letter which he wrote to the fallen Minister
recommending that step. Peel’s public services, and the confidence which
the industrial classes had in his policy, would, he thought, induce the
country to give him a working majority.[47] On the other hand, Sir Robert
Peel thought that to dissolve on a Coercion Bill for Ireland “would shake
the foundations of the legislative union,” and ensure “a worse return of Irish
Members—rendered more desperate, more determined to obstruct, by every
artifice, the passing of a Coercion Bill in the new Parliament.” In fact, he
was at pains to impress on the Queen the tradition which she is understood
to have handed down to a later generation of statesmen that, with the
exception of “No Popery,” the most dangerous of all election cries is
“Coercion for Ireland.”[48] There was another cogent reason which had
weight with the Queen. Her Majesty has ever regarded the power to
dissolve Parliament as a sacred trust vested in her for the protection of the
country, and the Crown, against factious Parliaments. But it is a power like
the talisman in

LORD CAMPBELL.
Balzac’s story, that loses its virtue by repeated use on trivial occasions.
“The hope of getting a stronger minority,” said Peel, in his Memorandum to
the Duke of Wellington, “is no justification for a Dissolution.” And yet,
with all his popularity, that was his highest hope. The differences between
Lord John Russell and Lord Grey were not acute enough to cause a schism
in the Whig Party. The Free Traders, on whom the Duke of Wellington
relied so much, had given all the glory of Repeal to Cobden. They were
exhausting their energies and enthusiasm in organising a testimonial to him,
and had none to spare for the reconstruction of a new Party of Progressive
Reform, under the leadership of Peel. As for the Radicals and the Irish
Nationalists, they would have declared war to the knife against the Minister
who made Coercion for Ireland his cry. As for the Tory Party, Sir Robert
was to them in the position of the man mentioned in Scripture, who found
his worst foes in his own household. On the whole, it was perhaps wise that
he resisted the temptation to yield to such potent influences as those of the

THE HORSEGUARDS, FROM THE PARADE GROUND.

Queen, the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Cobden, and firmly refused to
dissolve Parliament.
The next question that disturbed the Court was what would the Duke of
Wellington do? The Queen was personally most anxious that he should
remain at the head of the army as Commander-in-Chief, in spite of any
change of Ministry. She had, on the occasion of Sir Robert Peel’s interview
with her in December, when he first resigned, expressed this wish. But she
knew that if the Duke consented he would unwittingly give great strength to
Lord John Russell’s Government, and with characteristic shrewdness she
judged that Sir Robert Peel might possibly regard with little favour a
proposal which was rather like asking him to lend his rival one of his
strongest colleagues. But her Majesty mooted the matter with such grace
and tact, that Sir Robert Peel was not only eager to give his assent, but
assured her that he would do everything in his power to remove any
difficulty that might arise on the part of the Duke.[49] At the same time, he
also undertook to convey to Lord Liverpool, for whom the Queen had a
very high regard, the letter in which she earnestly urged him to retain the
appointment of Lord Steward. The Duke of Wellington was well aware of
Sir Robert’s views, and concurred with him fully in sacrificing all
considerations of party tactics to the wishes expressed by the Sovereign,
whose popular sympathies interpreted national feeling with so much
accuracy and precision. Thus it came to pass that when Lord John Russell’s
Ministry took office in July, his Grace was quite prepared to receive from
the Prime Minister a personal request from her Majesty, inviting him to
retain his post as Commander-in-Chief of the army. But the grim warrior
felt it his duty to explain definitely, in writing, to Lord John the exact
significance that was to be attached to his consent. In a letter to Lord
Lyndhurst,[50] dated the 23rd of July, his Grace says:—“I told you that in
consequence of her Majesty having conveyed to me her commands that I
should continue to fill the office of Commander-in-Chief of her Majesty’s
Land Forces, through her Minister, Lord John Russell, I had given my
consent; but that I had explained myself to Lord John nearly in the very
words of, and had referred to, a letter which I had written to her Majesty in
December last, when her Majesty had herself in writing intimated the same
command to me, on the occasion of the retirement of Sir Robert Peel from
her Majesty’s service, and Lord John Russell having received her
commands to form a Government. Here follow the very terms used:—‘It is
impossible for F.M. the Duke of Wellington to form a political connection
with Lord John Russell, or to have any relations with the political course of
the Government over which he will preside. Such arrangement would not
conciliate public confidence, be creditable to either party, or be useful to the
service of her Majesty; nor, indeed, would the performance of the duties of
the Commander-in-Chief require that it should exist. On the other hand, the
performance of these duties would require that the person filling the office
should avoid to belong to or act in concert with any political party opposed
to the Government.’ Her Majesty was thus made aware of the position in
which I was about to place myself in case her Majesty should communicate
to me her official command that I should resume the command of her
army.”
These matters are of some little interest to the new generation, which has
been taught that in England the personality of the Sovereign counts for very
little in public affairs, and who are only too ready to run away with the idea
that, under a discreet and taciturn Queen, the Crown, as Mr. Disraeli once
said, has become a cipher, and the Sovereign a serf. Even in her
inexperienced youth we see the greatest Minister and the greatest Captain of
the age paying chivalrous deference to her Majesty’s personal wishes. It
may be said that the incident cited is a trivial one. In our delicate and
complex system of party Government no incident affecting the personal
relations of a Minister of State, either to the Crown or to a Cabinet, is ever
trivial. In this particular case let us ask what followed almost directly from
the diplomatic success which the Queen won in persuading Sir Robert Peel
and the Duke of Wellington to yield to her desire, that even under a Whig
Government his Grace should still serve as Commander-in-Chief? Why,
this. When Lord Lyndhurst—who, according to the ill-natured insinuations
of Lord Campbell, was hankering once more after the Lord Chancellorship
—began to intrigue for the purpose of reuniting the broken ranks of the old
Conservative Party, he naturally turned to the Duke of Wellington after Peel
received his suggestions with marked coldness. Had he won over the Duke
to his project, he might have succeeded. But this very letter, which has been
quoted, was written by the Duke to explain that, though most anxious to see
the Party reconstructed, yet he had, at the request of the Queen, accepted
the office of Commander-in-Chief, and was therefore no longer free to act
in concert with “any political party not connected with the existing
Administration.” It cost Mr. Disraeli the unwearying labour of a quarter of a
century to do the work that might have been done in a few sessions, if Lord
Lyndhurst had secured the cordial and active co-operation of the Duke of
Wellington in his bold enterprise.
But reconstruction at this time was not to be. Peel had no desire to serve
again as a partisan leader, or to reorganise the Party he had felt it his duty to
shatter, though his career was buried in its ruins. He and his followers
joined neither the Protectionists nor the Whigs. They came to be known as
the Peelites, and so bitter was the feeling among their old associates that
petty objections were raised against their sitting on the Conservative
benches after they had quitted office. In a pamphlet privately printed at
Edinburgh Sir Robert Peel was derisively recommended to solve the
problem of his seat in the House of Commons by taking “another hint from
Aristophanes. As we have seen him before adopt from the ‘Knights,’ the
admirable trick of the sausage seller, so now he seems to have borrowed a
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