Wholesale Constitution of the Republic. Duguerry. The principal buildings of Paris were drenched with The work of retaliation and repression was carried on with By the elections which took place on May 1st, the moderate Republicans obtained a majority. But the decrees of banishment against the Houses of Bourbon and Orleans were recalled, and the Duc d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville were actually elected to the Assembly. In October, Aranda was chosen President of the General Council of the Oise, a very influential position. In the supplementary elections of July 28th the Republicans were successful in twenty-five out of thirty-nine Departments, and of twenty-one Deputies returned from Paris sixteen belonging to the Union of the Press, and the followers of Thiers, were elected. The fact that a loan was subscribed many times over showed the inexhaustible wealth of the country and the confidence with which it was regarded by foreign nations. The war indemnity could now be paid and the evacuation of the country by the army of occupation secured. A proclamation of the Comte de Chambord in favour of the white flag weakened the Legitimists and strengthened the hands of the Republic, and gave Thiers the PEACE OF FRANKFORT support of all sensible and practical people. On August 21st an enactment was passed, by 491 votes to 94, providing that the head of the executive should take the title of President of the French Republic, that he should have the power of appointing and dismissing his Ministers, and the right to address the Assembly whenever he pleased; but that the individual Ministers, the Cabinet as a whole, and the President himself should be responsible to the Assembly. This meant the formation of a moderate Republic, equally opposed to Monarchy and to advanced Republicanism. This was a provisional constitution; the final and definite constitution was not formed till 1875. During the very height of these disturbances the Peace of Peace Frankfort was signed on May 10th by Bismarck on behalf of Signed. Germany and by Jules Favre and Pouyer-Quertier on behalf of France. The arrangements with regard to the payment of the indemnity of five milliards and the tracing of the frontier between Belfort and Thionville received the approval of the German Emperor and the French Assembly. The final closing of the war was received with the greatest joy, not only in Germany itself, but in all parts of the world inhabited by Germans. A South German paper wrote: "The dove of peace which was sent out from the German Ark has at length returned with a fresh olive branch. The sound of the cannon and the tocsin no longer summon us to the murderous field of battle; they have become heralds of peace. The flood of war has overwhelmed many of our dear ones, but our land and people stand as if refreshed with morning dew, ready for the work of our hands and for the seed-time of culture. The general feeling of the great majority of our people is thanks and praise to God that, together with peace abroad and at home, we have laid the foundations of a strong Fatherland and of civic freedom. We know that in this battle of giants our people have won spurs of honourable knighthood, an equality of rank with the first nations of the world. But this exalted rank lays heavy duties upon us. Let us first think of our duties towards the dead, who fell in this holy war upon the field of victory." The first German Reichstag, or Parliament, met in Berlin on The First March 21st, 1871, containing representatives from every part of Reichstag. Germany, both north and south of the Main. Their first duty was to consider how the government of Alsace and Lorraine could best be carried out, and then to take care of those wounded and invalided in the war and the families of the dead. 12,000,000 marks was voted as a present to the generals and statesmen who had contributed in a conspicuous manner to the successes of their country, and a similar sum to the governments of the separate States as assistance to the support of the reservists and others who were liable to military service. BOOK IV CHAPTER I GLADSTONE'S MINISTRY, 1868-74 Cabinet. THE British Parliament elected in 1865 was dissolved by pro- Gladstone's clamation in November, 1868. The question before the country 1868 was the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church. Although Gladstone himself was defeated in Lancashire, the voting was favourable to the Liberal Party, the Liberals being returned with an overwhelming majority. This was a surprise to the Conservatives, just as the election of 1874, which closed Gladstone's Ministry, was a still greater surprise to the Liberals. On December 2nd Disraeli sent a letter to his supporters in both Houses of Parliament, announcing his intention of resigning before Parliament met. The Queen at once sent for Gladstone, and he had no difficulty in forming a Government. Lowe became Chancellor of the Exchequer; Childers, First Lord of the Admiralty; Goschen, President of the Poor Law Board; Bright, President of the Board of Trade. The seals of the Foreign Office were given to Lord Clarendon, those of the Colonial Office to Lord Granville, of the War Office to Cardwell, of the India Office to the Duke of Argyll. Lord Justice Page Wood, a man of the highest character, which shone conspicuously on his spiritual face, became Lord Chancellor, with the title of Lord Hatherley. Although a strong Churchman and a man of deep piety, he had no objection to the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Church, Parliament met on December 10th, but the Queen's Speech Disestablishwas not delivered until February 16th, 1869. The Queen did ment of not open Parliament in person, and therefore was not compelled Irish to read a speech which announced legislation on the ecclesiastical affairs of Ireland and heralded a measure to which she had previously been strongly opposed. The Irish Church Bill was brought forward on March 1st. It provided that from and after January 1st, 1871, the Church of Ireland was to be entirely disconnected from the State, and that its government was to be entrusted to a body in the composition of which the clergy and laity of the The Lords and Irish Disestablish ment. Church should be agreed, and that this body should be incorporated by law. For the purpose of disendowment the property of the Church was to be vested in commissioners appointed by Parliament for ten years, private endowments given to the Church of Ireland after 1660 being excepted. The fabrics of churches and parsonages were to be handed over to the governing body already mentioned. Full compensation was given to all vested interests. The State was no longer to subsidise either the Catholic Church through the grant to Maynooth College, or the Presbyterians through the Regium Donum; but compensation for the loss of these sums was to be made from the funds of the disestablished Church. Gladstone estimated the whole value of the existing endowments at £16,000,000. Of this sum £8,500,000 were to be given back to the Church under its new constitution, and the remaining £7,500,000 were to form a compensation fund for the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering not met by the existing poor law. There was little opposition in the Commons to a measure of which the country had expressed its approval: the Bill was read a second time before Easter by a majority of 118, and the third reading was passed by a majority of 114 on June 1st. But the Bill had to pass the ordeal of the House of Lords, where the decisive struggle had to take place. It was determined to contest the second reading in the Upper House. Although the Queen was strongly opposed to the measure, she did not desire to see a violent conflict between the two Houses, and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to remind him that the Bill had been carried by an overwhelming majority through the House of Commons, which had been specially elected to express the feeling of the country in the matter, and that it was not likely that a fresh election would have a different result. Eventually, after a debate of four nights, at 3 o'clock in the morning on June 19th, the second reading of the Bill was carried by 179 votes to 146. By this wise resolve, preferring the welfare of the country to its own predilections, and the will of the nation to its own private opinions, the House of Lords voted in a manner worthy of its best traditions. It should have been evident to the peers that by such behaviour alone could the continued existence of a hereditary chamber be preserved. But having gone so far, they were not prepared to go farther, and so altered the Bill in Committee that the Irish Church remained in possession of £13,000,000 instead of £8,500,000, while other important changes were also made. |