Chapter XXXI, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 4

In 1834, the government of Lord Grey was much weakened, even before the memorable secession of which we are about to speak. The clamour of Radicals and root and branch " reformers increased in proportion as their wishes were gratified; the English Church was now in its turn assailed; and the Ministry were reproached with tergiversation, cowardice, inconsistency, and every political sin that has a name, because they did not proceed with the demolition and reconstruction of all the institutions of the country as fast as the "advanced thinkers" of the party desired. On the other hand, a great Conservative reaction was silently pre paring throughout the land. A majority in the Cabinet was in favour of pursuing the policy of conciliation to Ireland by appropriating the surplus revenues of the Irish Church, obtained by the suppression of bishoprics lately effected, to the purposes of general education. To this measure Stanley was resolutely opposed. He had no objection to suppressing sees that were not wanted, and transferring church funds that were in excess in one place to another quarter where they were deficient; but to secularise those funds altogether, or any considerable portion of them, was what he could not bring himself to consent to. He therefore, along with Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Ripon, seceded from the Ministry in May, 1834. That he was perfectly sincere in his opposition, and that this was the true cause of his secession, there is no reason to doubt. Though a Whig, Stanley was conscientiously and warmly devoted to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, as the tenor of his whole life proved; and when he had convinced himself that a particular measure was hostile to that Church and to the Protestant religion, his " non possumus " was as decided as any that ever came from the Vatican. No testimony can be more positive than that which O'Connell, a magnanimous opponent if there ever was one, rendered at the time to the bona fides of Stanley's secession. "I think," he said, "his policy most erroneous; I think he has pursued a course of measures most pernicious to my country. I think he has swamped the Government on its commencement; but I see in him an inflexible integrity of purpose; I behold him faithful and true to his principles, bold and manly in the avowal of his opinions, able and eloquent in the vindication of them, high in his sense of honour, and firm and disinterested in the assertion of that which he thinks to be the sacred duty of conscience."

In 1835, Sir Robert Peel, upon coming into power, made overtures to Lord Stanley - his grandfather had died in the previous October - with the view of obtaining his powerful aid as a member of the Tory Administration. But Lord Stanley declared that he was still a Whig, differing only in respect of one important question from his former colleagues, and that he could not join the Tory party. Six years passed; Peel was again Prime Minister, and again he made overtures to Lord Stanley, and this time successfully. The feeble leadership of Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell during those six years appears to have finally disgusted Lord Stanley with Whiggism. He became Secretary for the Colonies, and in the strong Administration of 1841 was one of the main elements of strength. But at the end of 1845 Peel declared to his colleagues that he could no longer resist the movement for the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and from that time Stanley broke with him. He had none of Peel's intellectual docility; having once for all made up his mind that the retention of the Corn Laws was necessary to the welfare of the agricultural interest, and believing that what was good for that interest was good for the nation, he suffered no arguments, no tumults, no panic fears, no popular pressure, to shake him in his conviction. Peel carried the Repeal of the Corn Laws by the aid of the Liberals; and from this time Lord Stanley was the recognised chief of the Tory party. Owing to dissensions among the Liberal chiefs, Lord Derby - he had come to the title on his father's death in 1851 - came into power for a short time in 1852, but soon had to make way for the Coalition Ministry of Lord Aberdeen. In 1858 he again was at the head of affairs, in conjunction with Mr. Disraeli; and the important measure of that year, for abolishing the Board of Control and the political power of the East India Company, was the work of his short administration. Falling before a vote of want of confidence, he was for some years in Opposition, till unexpectedly restored to power in June, 1866, as has been related in this history. He appears to have felt no reluctance in joining Mr. Disraeli to bring in the Reform Bill of 1867. Parliamentary Reform and extension of the suffrage were the watchwords, the rallying cries, of his joyous and stirring youth; no wonder if they still possessed some charm for him even in old age. He retired from office, as we have seen, in February, 1868. The last occasion on which he spoke in the House of Lords was during the debate on the Irish Church Bill. With a solemn earnestness he protested against the measure. " My lords," he said, " I am an old man, and, like many of your lordships, past the allotted span of three score years and ten. My official life is at an end, my political life is nearly closed, and in the course of nature my natural life cannot be long.... If it be for the last time that I have the honour of addressing your lordships, I declare that it will be to my dying day a satisfaction that I have been able to lift up my voice against the adoption of a measure, the political impolicy of which is equalled only by its moral iniquity." This speech was made in June; in the October following Lord Derby died.

The author of the sketch of his life given in the Times thus eloquently sums up the enumeration of his eminent qualities: "We have spoken of Lord Derby chiefly as a statesman. But, after all, it was the man - ever brilliant and impulsive - that most won the admiration of his countrymen. He was a splendid specimen of an Englishman; and whether he was engaged in furious debate with demagogues, or in lowly conversation on religion with little children, or in parley with jockeys, while training Toxophilite, or rendering 'Homer' into English verse, or in stately Latin discourse as the Chancellor of his University, or in joyous talk in a drawing- room among ladies, whom he delighted to chaff, or in caring for the needs of Lancashire operatives - there were a force and a fire about him that acted like a spell. Of all his public acts none did him more honour, and none made a deeper impression on the minds of his countrymen, than his conduct on the occasion of the cotton famine in Lancashire. No man in the kingdom sympathised more truly than he with the distress of the poor Lancashire spinners, and perhaps no man did so much as he for their relief. It was not simply that he gave them a princely donation: he worked hard for them in the committee which was established in their aid; he was indeed the life and soul of the committee; and for months at that bitter time he went about doing good by precept and example, so that myriads in Lancashire now bless his name. He will long live in memory as one of the most remarkable, and indeed irresistible, men of our time - a man privately beloved and publicly admired; who showed extraordinary cleverness in many ways; was the greatest orator of his day, and the most brilliant, though not the most successful, parliamentary leader of the last half-century."

The death of the gallant Irishman, Lord Gough, recalled the thoughts of many to the tumultuous scenes in which the earlier portion of the veteran's life was passed. Born in 1779, he bore a part in the operations which terminated in the cession by the Dutch of the Cape colony in 1795. He served through the Peninsular War, under Wellington, in command of the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers, sharing in the glory of the stubborn defence of Tarifa, and being severely wounded both at Talavera and at the Nivelle. In the crowning success at Vittoria, the bâton of the French commander, Marshal Jourdan, came into the possession of his regiment. To Sir Hugh Gough was entrusted the command of the land forces in the opium war with China in 1842, when he took Canton, Amoy, Ning-po, and Chin-Kiang- Foo, forced his way, in conjunction with Admiral Sir W. Parker, for a hundred and seventy miles up the Yang-tse-Kiang, and dictated peace to the Emperor of China at Nankin. After this he was appointed Commander-in- Chief in India, and held that office during the Sikh War in 1845, though to the tactics of Sir Henry Hardinge, the Governor-General, who consented to serve under Gough, the decisive victories of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon are usually ascribed. When the Sikhs rebelled at the beginning of 1849, Gough marched against them, and, though he met with a severe check at Chilianwallah, inflicted such a crushing blow on the enemy at Goojerat, a few weeks later, that the war was practically brought to an end. A grateful country did not fail to recognise and reward his military achievements. He was created a Viscount, received a pension both from the Crown and from the East India Company, and was raised, in 1862, to the dignity of a Field Marshal.

All through the year 1869 France remained at peace with all her neighbours, and the Emperor and his ministers vied with each other in making pacific declarations on every suitable occasion. Yet there was a different ring about a speech which he made to the soldiers at the camp at Chalons. He told them always to keep alive in their hearts the remembrance of the battles fought by their fathers, and those in which they had been themselves engaged, " since the history of our wars is the history of the progress of civilisation." According to this doctrine, though all things now wore a peaceful appearance, yet if France were to go to war for whatever cause (for the justice of a war was superbly ignored by the speaker), the interests of civilisation would necessarily be advanced., But for the present the French Government was content to live quietly. In Italy, according to an announcement made by the Foreign Minister, Marquis de Lavalette, though the Pope's Government was making progress in the organisation of its forces, the time had not yet arrived for France to return purely and simply to the September Convention, and to evacuate the Pontifical territory. With regard to Prussia, the language of the Emperor and of the French Foreign Office was uniformly friendly.

The Chambers which had been elected in 1863 were dissolved in April of this year, and new elections were ordered. This was a favourable opportunity for the Emperor's Government to put in practice the aspirations towards greater liberty and a more constitutional system with which the Emperor had declared himself to be animated. If the Government had left the people alone, and allowed them to return the representatives of their choice, it might have been believed that there was some sincerity in those aspirations. But, on the contrary, as will be presently seen, there never were elections at which the system of official candidates was more unsparingly resorted to, nor where the freedom of the electors was more unblushingly interfered with. The elections were going on all through May. Thiers and Jules Favre were returned for Paris, and Gambetta, Picard, Jules Simon, and other Liberals for the department of the Seine; yet so Conservative were the instincts of the general population, and so assiduously did the Government by its action labour to encourage and reward these instincts, that the number of Opposition candidates returned for the Legislative Body did not much exceed thirty. Napoleon seems to have felt that his government was too successful. Though the Imperial system was founded on the crime of the 2nd December, the Emperor, to do him justice, earnestly desired to make its origin for gotten by conforming it to the march of ideas and to the needs of French society. It may be questioned whether, in thus acting, he was really consulting its stability. Perhaps if he had carried on the government silently and resolutely, keeping the army in good humour by bribes and flatteries, and not trying to make compromises either with Liberalism or with the honest patriotism of men like Guizot, he might have given to it a longer duration. But he wished to be two things at the same time - a ruler supported on bayonets, and a ruler supported on ideas; and this was not a feat easy of accomplishment. In the summer he announced his intention of introducing the system of the responsibility of the ministers to the majority in the Chambers, together with various other privileges and liberties which the French Legislature had been deprived of since the coup d'etat; he declared that the system of personal government was distasteful to him, and that he desired to abandon it. A Senatus Consultum embodying these reforms was introduced into and discussed in the Senate with great parade in the month of September. It was received with something of cold ness and reserve by the majority of the Senators, for which they were rebuked by Prince Napoleon, in a speech which, while expressing gratitude to the Emperor for what he had conceded, disgusted by its broad Radicalism the Emperor's best friends and supporters in both Chambers. Several of the ministers - among whom were Rouher, Lavalette, and Baroche - unable to see their way to a practical reconciliation between the Empire and the maxims of constitutional government, resigned their posts on the introduction of the Senatus Consultum. It was, however, carried, and with a good effect, doubt- less, so far as foreign opinion was concerned; in France, the measure and motives of the Emperor's liberalism were so well understood that the new project awakened little interest. The Emperor laboured hard, and his ministers seconded him faithfully, to persuade the country that his most earnest wish was to give it liberty - true liberty. In his speech on opening the new Chambers, in November, he said, " France desires liberty, but liberty united with order. For order I will answer. Assist me, gentlemen, to save liberty; and to attain this object let us keep at an equal distance from reaction and revolutionary theories." The Minister of the Interior, M. Forcade de la Roquette, told the Legislative Body that the Government " intended now to make it its glory to found liberty." This new-born zeal may perhaps be traced to a remarkable letter written by M. Thiers in May to the electors of the second circumscription, in reply to their request that he would appear before them and address them. He declined to comply with their wishes. "What," he said, "is the question at this moment? One sole subject, as you have yourselves recognised in your printed programme - liberty. Freedom is the indispensable instrument of all truth, but at present we are deprived of it, and the object is to achieve it." "I offer you," the Emperor seems to say in the Senatus Consultum, "the liberty which M. Thiers deems so indispensable; only it must be true liberty - that is, it must assume myself and my dynasty as the solid and unquestionable basis on which its structures are to be reared." But those who remembered the coup d'état could not take liberty altogether in this sense. And so the breach between the Emperor and the virtue and statesmanship of France remained as wide as ever.