dominions. A visit of State ceremony, however, would have imposed cost on the public purse, and have occasioned private expenditure which the Irish could not afford. The queen, therefore, decided on dispensing with ceremony, and on making a yachting tour on the coasts of Ireland. Nothing could have been wiser. It may require the panoply of State to set off an old and unpopular sovereign. It required no pageant to commend a young queen, accompanied by her young husband and her little children. No sorrow had at that time clouded the queen's brow. There was nothing but sunshine in her face and happiness in her smile. And, from the moment when on a summer evening she steamed into Cork, and the blaze of rockets and bonfires bid her welcome, to the hour when, on a tempestuous sea, she quitted Belfast, she evoked nothing but enthusiasm. Her short visit promised to do more to restore peace to Ireland than all the legislation of her ministry.

The Relief

Bill.

Encouraged by the results of the queen's visit, the ministry, in 1850, determined on bringing forward three great measures,1 designed to relieve distress, to inspire confidence by Fresh Irish displaying trust, and to destroy the demand for measures. repeal by making the Union real. With the first object, it decided to reduce the burdens on Irish property. From 1839, when money had been lent for the erection of workhouses, advances had been made in rapid succession to distressed Irish unions. But in many cases the local authorities, weighted with debts of their own, were unable to repay these loans as they became due. The ministry consented, by the issue of an additional £300,000 to the most embarrassed unions, to raise the whole debt due from Ireland to £4,783,000, and to extend the period of its repayment to forty years. This proposal was naturally disliked by English Liberals, who detected in it an excuse for making one more advance to Ireland out of Imperial funds. But it was adopted 1 Hansard, cviii. p. 823.

In addition to the measures mentioned in the text, the Government introduced and carried a measure to prohibit party processions. Ibid., vol. cix. p. 126.

The Irish franchise.

by large majorities in a Parliament which had no better The second measure was less policy to offer. successful. It will be recollected that in the closing years of the Melbourne Administration, Morpeth had made. a serious effort to extend the Irish county franchise.1 The history of the bills which he introduced for the purpose was characteristic of a ministry remarkable for the clearness of its intellect and the weakness of its backbone. It proved capable, as usual, of devising a just and politic measure; it proved incapable of carrying it through Parliament. But Russell did not abandon, as Prime Minister, the policy which the Cabinet had devised under Melbourne, and in 1848, as well as in 1849, a bill was introduced extending the franchise in. counties to all £5 freeholders, and in boroughs to all persons paying rates on an £8 rateable value. The measure which had thus been twice before Parliament was again introduced at the commencement of the session of 1850. Like all measures of this character the bill was assailed by two kinds of critics. The Irishmen declared that an £8 rating in Ireland was equivalent to a £30 rating in England, and condemned the bill for not doing more. The Conservatives, alarmed at an extension of the franchise, condemned the bill for doing too much. The Government was able to use each of these critics to enable it to defeat the other. A proposal to raise the franchise to £15 was defeated by 213 votes to 144; a proposal to reduce the franchise from £8 to £5 in boroughs was defeated by 142 votes to 90, and the bill was ultimately sent to the Lords substantially in the shape in which it had been introduced in the Commons.

It was the misfortune of the Whig ministers of 1835 and 1846 that they could not control the Peers by the votes of their supporters, and that they would not control them by the vigour of their conduct. The Lords, bold from experience, at once displayed a determination to recast the bill. The

1 See ante, vol. iv. p 214. et seq.

2 For the bill of 1848, Hansard, vol. xcviii. p. 585; for that of 1849, ibid., vol. cii. p. 669; for that of 1850, ibid., vol. cviii. p. 699.

£8 qualification was struck out, and a £15 qualification substituted for it, while, by a still more important amendment, ratepayers desiring to be placed on the register were compelled to make their own claims for the purpose. These amendments were avowedly introduced into the measure with the object of restricting its operation. It was impossible for any ministry with any sense of dignity to assent to them. Russell offered-if the latter of them were abandoned—to compromise the former by substituting a £12 for a £15 qualification. An £8 qualification, he explained, would give the franchise to 264,000; a £15 qualification to only 144.000; a 12 qualification to 172,000 persons. St. Germans, who, before his accession to the peerage, had been Chief Secretary for Ireland in Peel's administration, had already urged this compromise on the Peers; it was accepted after some discussion by a small majority, and the measure became law.

But the Government, though it thus succeeded in passing one of its measures unaltered, and another of them in an amended form, failed to carry the third. When The Irish Scotland was united with England in the eighteenth Viceroyalty. century, the Secretary of State became responsible for the administration of both countries, and the internal affairs of each of them were thenceforward regulated on the same principles by the same machinery. When, however, nearly a hundred years afterwards, a union was accomplished between Great Britain and Ireland, a different system was adopted. The whole organisation of an independent government was preserved in Dublin. A Viceroy, surrounded by a privy council, with a Chief Secretary at his elbow, reminded the Irish by his presence of a period when an Irish executive was at the head of an Irish legislature, and of a system whose loss was everywhere in Ireland regarded with regret, and whose restoration was expected with anxiety.

Something, indeed, could be urged for the anomalous system which was thus established. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, communication between England and Ireland was dependent on the winds and waves; and, in such circum

stances, it may have seemed indispensable to place a high and responsible official in Dublin. But almost every decade of the nineteenth century brought Dublin into closer communication with London. In the second decade Telford made the admirable road through North Wales which still remains the chief monument of his genius. In the third decade he threw the bridge across the Menai Straits which has stamped him as a poet among engineers. Before the fourth decade was over, Stephenson, superseding the work of his predecessor, had joined London and Birmingham, Chester and Crewe, with an iron chain; while, in the closing months of the fifth decade, another Stephenson, rivalling his father's achievement, had carried the Tubular Bridge across the Menai Straits, and united Holyhead with London by a continuous railway. In 1811, when Telford commenced improving the roads of Wales, the fastest traveller could not hope to pass from London to Holyhead in less than forty hours; wind and tide decided the duration of the journey from Holyhead to Dublin. In 1850, any one whose means enabled him to purchase a railway ticket could rely on reaching Holyhead within nine hours after leaving London. An additional six or seven hours would land him by the steam packet in Dublin. The Irish capital therefore, for all practical purposes, was less than one-fourth the distance from London than it had been forty years before.

In the interval, moreover, the conduct of the Government had tended to lessen the authority of the Viceroy. There had been a constant tendency to increase the functions of the Chief Secretary, and to diminish the duties of the Lord-Lieutenant. It was almost impossible to avoid this result. In selecting a Viceroy, custom, and perhaps necessity, compelled the Crown to choose among men of high rank and great wealth, and consequently to select an officer from a narrow body of candidates. But, in choosing a Chief Secretary, the minister was able to command the services of his most competent supporters. An office which was held in one half-century by such men as Wellington, Peel, Stanley, Hardinge, and Morpeth, could not fail to acquire importance. In the Whig

Ministry of Grey, Stanley, as Chief Secretary, was promoted to the Cabinet; in Melbourne's second Administration the same distinction was conferred on Morpeth. The Chief Secretary, in these cases, actually communicated the decisions of the Cabinet to the man who was nominally his master, and the position of Viceroy became more and more like that of a constitutional sovereign, a pageant and a name.

Many reflecting people therefore doubted whether it were wise to retain an office which was a symbol of separation, and which was only ornamental and not useful. The queen's visit to Ireland naturally strengthened this feeling. It was felt that an occasional visit of the sovereign to Dublin would do much more to inspire loyalty than the perpetual presence of a Viceroy in the Phoenix Park; and Russell accordingly decided on introducing a measure for the abolition of the office, and the appointment of a fourth Secretary of State for Ireland, on whom the whole internal administration of the country should fall.

Everything about this suggestion, except the termination of the Lord-Lieutenancy itself, was unfortunate. Those who were most anxious for the abolition of the office desired that every mark of separation should be obliterated, and that Ireland and England should thenceforward be governed by the same men on the same principles. But the creation of a fourth Secretaryship of State tended to reproduce these distinctions in another form. Moreover, though accidental and personal considerations should have no influence in determining the course of legislation, the presence of Clarendon at Dublin, with Somerville as Chief Secretary, weakened the force of the minister's position. It could not be said of the Viceroy that he was a mere pageant, or of the Chief Secretary that he was other than subordinate. Of all the noblemen who had held the Viceroyalty during the preceding half-century, Clarendon had displayed the most statesman-like vigour. Politicians of all parties were ready to admit that, both in the crisis of famine and in the crisis of revolution, he had done

1 The same distinction was subsequently conferred on Lincoln and Labouchere, and since 1851 has been more frequently bestowed on Irish Secretaries, VOL. V.

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