Debate on

lishment Question.

opinion, and this opinion, to be valid, cannot be artificially created but must grow up in great measure of itself. A wise statesman will always take care to have this force on his side. It was idle to remedy the grievances of Ireland, unless Englishmen and Scotsmen felt they had a real existence. This explains why Gladstone came to the conclusion that the Fenian outbreak, the Manchester rescue, the Clerkenwell explosion gave an opportunity for the introduction of the beneficent legislation he had long pondered in his mind.

On March 16th, 1868, Mr. John Francis Maguire, an Irish the Disestab- Member of Parliament, trusted by British and Irish alike, brought forward in the House of Commons some resolutions on the condition of Ireland. In the course of his speech he laid great stress upon the mischief produced in Ireland by the existence of an alien Church. The debate lasted a considerable time, and on the first night Gladstone expressed the opinion that the Irish Church must cease to exist as a State institution. In consequence of this avowal Maguire withdrew his resolutions. He knew that the Protestant garrison in Ireland was doomed, and that the fall of the Irish State Church was merely a question of time.

A few days later Gladstone gave notice of three resolutions on the subject. The first declared that the Established Church of Ireland must cease to exist as an establishment, respect being had to personal interests and to individual rights of property; the second declared that it was inexpedient to create new personal interests by any public patronage; and the third prayed the Sovereign to place at the disposal of Parliament the interests of the Crown in the temporalities of the Irish Church. Gladstone proposed his resolutions on March 30th, 1868. Lord Stanley met them by declaring that any proposition tending to the disestablishment or dismemberment of the Irish Church ought to be reserved for the decision of the new Parliament. The amendment only pleaded for delay; it did not ask that the Irish Church should not perish, but only that its end should come to-morrow instead of to-day. Robert Lowe attacked the Irish Church with remarkable Irish Church. bitterness. He compared it to an exotic brought from a far country, tended with infinite pains and useless trouble, and kept alive with great difficulty and expense in an ungenial climate and an ungrateful soil. He said: "The curse of barrenness is upon it. It has no leaves, puts forth no blossoms and yields no fruit. Cut it down. Why cumbereth it the ground?" In the division there were 270 votes for the amendment and 331 against it, so that the Irish Church was condemned by a majority of 61.

Lowe on the

GLADSTONE'S FIRST PREMIERSHIP

Government.

Such was the fate of the amendment, but Gladstone's resolu- Defeat of tions had still to be voted upon, and the first resolution was carried the Tory by a majority of 65, the numbers for and against it being 330 and 265. Disraeli determined to dissolve Parliament. This took place at the end of July, and the new elections were held in November. It was probably the most important election since the days of the Reform Bill. Gladstone was defeated in South Lancashire, but found a seat at Greenwich; Lord Hartington was defeated in North Lancashire, and was out of Parliament for a short time; John Stuart Mill was not re-elected for Westminster ; and Lowe was chosen as the first Member for the University of London. The polls, however, gave the Liberals a majority of 112. Disraeli thought it useless to meet the new Parliament as Prime Minister, and resigned office. Gladstone's opportunity had come, and on the afternoon of December 1st he received at Hawarden an intimation from Windsor that placed him in power. Evelyn Ashley has described the homely incident when the message arrived.

Summoned

"I was standing by him, holding his coat on my arm, while How Gladhe in his shirt-sleeves was wielding an axe to cut down a tree, stone was when up came a telegraph messenger. He opened the telegram to Windsor. and read it, then handed it to me, speaking only two words : 'Very significant,' and at once resumed his work. The message merely stated that General Grey would arrive that evening from Windsor. This, of course, implied that a mandate was coming from the Queen, charging Mr. Gladstone with the formation of his first Government. After a few minutes the blows ceased and Mr. Gladstone, resting upon the handle of his axe, looked up, and with deep earnestness in his voice and great intensity in his face, exclaimed, 'My mission is to pacify Ireland.' He then resumed his task and never spoke another word till the tree was down."

"Mr. Disraeli," said the Royal missive," has tendered his resignation to the Queen. The result of the appeal to the country is too evident to require its being pressed by a vote in Parliament, and the Queen entirely agrees with Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues that the most dignified course for them to pursue, as also the best for the public interests, is immediate resignation. Under these circumstances, the Queen must ask Mr. Gladstone, as the acknowledged head of the Liberal Party, to undertake the formation of a new Administration. With one or two exceptions, which she has requested General Grey, the bearer of this letter, to explain, the Queen would impose no restrictions on Mr. Gladstone with regard to the arrangements of the various offices in the manner which he believes to be best for the public service, and she trusts

December's

for

that he will find no difficulty in filling them up, or at least the greater part of them, so that the Council may be held before the 13th. Mr. Gladstone will understand why the Queen would wish to be free from making any arrangements for the next few days after the 13th.* The Queen echoes what she said two and a half years ago to Lord Derby, that she will not have any time for seeing Mr. Gladstone, who may wish to have an opportunity of consulting some of his friends before he sees her, but that, as soon as he shall have done so, and expresses a desire to see the Queen, she will receive him."

On December 29th Gladstone entered in his diary: "This Fatefulness birthday opens my sixtieth year. I descend the path of life; Gladstone. it would be true to say I ascend a steep path with a burden ever gathering weight. The Almighty seems to sustain and spare me for some purpose of His own, deeply unworthy as I know myself to be. Glory be to His name." And in the last hours of the year he wrote further: "This month of December has been notable in my life as follows-Dec., 1809, born; 1827, left Eton; 1831, Classics at Oxford; 1832, elected to Parliament; 1838, work on Church and State published; 1852, Chancellor of the Exchequer; 1868, First Lord. Rather a frivolous enumeration, yet it would not be so if the love of symmetry were carried with a well-proportioned earnestness and firmness into the higher parts of life. I feel like a man with a burden under which he must fall and be crushed if he look to the right or the left, and fail from any cause to concentrate mind and muscle upon his progress step by step. This absorption, this excess, this constant jar is the fate of political life with its insatiable demands, which do not leave the smallest spark of moral energy unexhausted and available for the surgeons. Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds, and I probably know little of these years through which I busily work and live." * December 14th was the anniversary of the death of the Prince Consort.

CHAPTER VI

FRANCE: DECAY OF THE SECOND EMPIRE

THE close of the war of 1866 left the Emperor Napoleon in a Europe and worse condition than that which he had before occupied; but Mexico. the disaster which eventually overwhelmed him was brought about largely by his policy in Mexico. Benito Juarez, President of that country, in 1860 expelled Pacheco, the Spanish envoy, and a few months later suspended the interest on the foreign debt for two years. The Governments principally concerned remonstrated without effect, and in October a Convention, signed in London between Great Britain, France and Spain, decided on a joint expedition, but disclaimed any intention of territorial aggrandisement, or of interfering with the inherent right of the Mexican people to choose their own form of government, their sole object being to obtain material guarantees for the redress of wrongs which had been done to their subjects, and for which remedies had been asked in vain. Great Britain was sincere in this declaration, but France and Spain both wished to substitute a monarchy for a republic, while the Emperor Napoleon desired to establish Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the throne, and Queen Isabella pressed the claims of the Montpensiers, the duchess being her sister. In November Prim was appointed to the command of the Spanish contingent of the allied forces, and was ordered to adhere strictly to the principles of the Convention. Napoleon's views became known to the Spanish Government at the beginning of 1862, but Prim warned the Emperor that if he proclaimed Maximilian Emperor of Mexico his power could only last so long as he was supported by French troops. But trouble was soon a-brewing. One of the first acts of Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln as President of the United States, was to assure Napoleon that America would not allow a foreign and monarchical government to be established on her soil. The triumphant close of the war brought even stronger counsels. The Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed the principle of "America for the Americans," was enforced. On December 12th, 1865, both Houses of Congress passed a resolution that an attempt to destroy an American republic and to build upon its ruins a

Mexico's
First

President.

Treaty of
La Soledad.

monarchy, supported by European bayonets, was opposed to the declared policy of the United States, repulsive in the highest degree to the American people, and an attack upon the political system of the United States.

Mexico, otherwise called New Spain, originally a vice-royalty of the Spanish monarchy, revolted against the Mother Country in 1820, and obtained her independence in 1821. After forty years of civil war, she eventually fell into the hands of Benito Pablo Juarez, a lawyer and statesman, who was elected president by the free choice of the Mexican people. Born of poor parents in the year 1809, he suffered in his youth from the tyranny of the Spaniards, who treated the aboriginal inhabitants, to whom he belonged, with contempt and insult. His early manhood was spent in the struggle for freedom, and in the attempt to wrest the territory of his country from the dead hand of the Church. Elected president in 1858, under the new new Constitution of 1857, he defeated the champions of the Clerical party in 1860, and entered the city of Mexico in triumph on January 12th, 1861.

We have said that the new Government of Mexico repudiated its debt, but there was some reason for this. The debt had been contracted by the Clerical party to assist them against their national adversaries, and it was so heavy that nearly one-half the revenues of the country went to England and one-fifth to France and Spain, leaving the Republic almost without resources to defray its expenses. In these circumstances suspension of payment was inevitable, and it was met by the Convention of London and the military intervention of the three Powers to which we have already referred. Spain signed, on February 19th, 1862, an arrangement with General Doblado, called the Treaty of La Soledad, acknowledging the sovereignty of the Republic, and Great Britain had no difficulty in adhering to an understanding which was in accord with the Convention of London.

But the French representatives hesitated to concur, because they knew that the policy of France was different from that of the two other allies. By the Second Article of the provisional treaty, the foreign allied troops were allowed to occupy the towns on the edge of the plateau on which Puebla and Mexico were situated, Cordova, Orizaba and La Tehuacan, but by the Third Article they were compelled to retire to Vera Cruz in case preliminaries should not be ratified. On the strength of the Second Article, Saligny, the representative of France, signed the treaty with the intention. of breaking the First and the Third Articles.