1852] DISRAELI'S BUDGET 221 tax and the remission of the farmer's income-tax were distinctly intended as compensation to the landed interest. The deficit caused was to be filled by a direct house-tax, falling almost entirely upon the inhabitants of towns. Though the brilliancy of the speech in which it was introduced, and the cleverness and variety of the scheme itself, attracted opposition to for the time considerable admiration, it soon became the Budget. apparent that the Budget would meet with determined opposition upon all sides. In the first place, the estimated surplus was not sufficient to call for a remission of taxes. It was merely a readjustment which was suggested. The remission of indirect taxation is, generally speaking, only advisable when the increased consumption of the taxed article will make up for the decrease of the duty. As far as tea was concerned this was probably the case. But with regard to the malt-tax, not only was it very questionable whether increased opportunities of purchasing beer were in themselves desirable, but also in the existing state of the brewing trade, which is a virtual monopoly, it seemed pretty clear that there would be no great extension of consumption, no great diminution in the price of beer, no great advantage to the malt-grower, but a very considerable advantage to the brewer, for whose interest £2,500,000 of revenue, easily collected and generally approved, would be sacrificed. Again, the house-tax, extended as it was to be, laid a heavy pressure on the lower middle-class, which could not fail to render it a most objectionable form of revenue. The modifications of the income-tax, although in accordance with the views of some of the best economists, were joined with an extension of its action, which was now to affect incomes arising from property of £50 a year, and excited the opposition therefore of those financiers-at the head of whom was Mr. Gladstone-who regarded as impossible any attempt to distinguish the sources from which income came, and those also who, like Mr. Cobden, disapproved of any further pressure upon small incomes. At the same time the free-trade party as a whole could scarcely avoid seeing in the arrangements suggested a clever use of their own principles as a means of retaliation upon themselves. A general assault was therefore made upon the Budget. For four nights the debate was continued. On the 16th of December the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to reply. Feeling probably that the result of the division could not be in his favour, he threw aside all restraint, retorted upon his adversaries in bitter language and with a licence to which Parliament was at that time unaccustomed, and closed his speech by a declaration that he was the victim of a coalition, that England did not love coalitions, and that any Ministry formed on such a principle was certain to be short-lived. His speech called forth a severe and dignified rebuke from Mr. Gladstone; and in this characteristic manner the sharp hostility between those statesmen, which was subsequently to be the The Derby Ministry resign. Dec. 16, 1852. very groundwork of English party politics, took its rise. The division showed a majority of 19 against Government. Lord Derby at once resigned, and the Coalition Ministry which Disraeli had foreseen came into power, the Cabinet being composed nearly equally of Whigs and Peelites, under the premiership of Lord Aberdeen. Death of the During the brief Ministry of the Conservatives two events had happened, one seeming to mark the close of a chapter of past history, the other full of significance for the future. On the 14th of September the Duke of Wellington breathed his last Sept. 14, 1852. at Walmer Castle. He had reached the great age of eighty-three, but still retained almost unimpaired his mental powers, and was able to execute the duties of his office as Commander-inChief. It is unreasonable to speak of the death of a statesman at so ripe an age as a great national loss. Yet the position held by the Duke was one which no other man could fill, and was not without its value to the State. The greatness of his services, his well-known honesty and single-hearted patriotism, and his large experience, had raised him above the sphere of party contest; and the Sovereign had found in him a calm and trustworthy adviser in all matters of difficulty, and a friend on whose loyalty to herself and to the constitution she could implicitly rely. His death naturally called to mind the greatness of his career, and all parties and all classes vied with one another in their expressions of admiration for his life and regret at his loss. It was determined to honour him with a public funeral, and to lay the remains of her greatest military leader beside those of the favourite naval hero of England under the dome of St. Paul's. The ceremony was carried out with striking completeness. Detachments from every regiment in the army formed a funeral procession more than a mile in length, which preceded and followed the magnificent car on which the body was borne, and the more pathetic emblem of the riderless charger and the empty boots of the great Duke, through a densely packed crowd estimated at more than a million and a half of orderly sympathisers. The solemnity of the scene in the Cathedral as hour by hour the great multitude waited in silence, broken only by 1852] DEATH OF WELLINGTON 223 the sad blare of the military trumpets playing the "Dead March in Saul," was unrivalled as a State ceremony, and in this instance the ceremony was a true expression of the national regret. proclaimed Emperor. Dec. 1, 1852. amount of Through Of a very different character was the second event. On the 1st of December Lord Malmesbury notified to the House of Lords the recognition by England of the newly established French Napoleon III. Empire. That the Prince-President intended from the first to adopt this title had appeared certain. But it was necessary that he should feel his way and discover the support on which he could rely in France before he did so. out the year it had been becoming more and more obvious that however blameworthy the execution of the coup d'état may have been, the principle involved in it had been accepted with joy by the great bulk of the French nation. It appealed to the selfish interests or sentimental desires of nearly every class. While the army looked for glory at the hands of a Napoleon, the mercantile class hoped for increase of material wealth under the strong government which was promised, the Church saw in the "saviour of society," as they did not scruple to say, a man of God appointed to remove the evils of sixty years' revolution; and even the workmen were flattered by the fictitious importance which universal suffrage and the use of the plébiscite seemed to give them. Thus, when in the autumn the Prince undertook a progress to feel the national pulse, he was everywhere hailed with indications that the change from the present incongruous form of government to the better understood and more clearly defined character implied by the Empire would be accepted with enthusiasm. In accordance with this experience he obtained, as was necessary under the constitution he had established, a "senatus consultum "making him Emperor, and intrusting to him the power of settling the succession in the House of Bonaparte, should his own direct descendants, legitimate or adopted, fail. The "senatus consultum" was referred to the people, and by them accepted by an enormous majority. Upwards of 7,000,000 supported the Empire, less than 300,000 voted against it. There was no reason why England, in accordance with its habitual policy, should not accept the new Government, with the Effect on exception perhaps of the title assumed, which was that of England. Napoleon III.; as this implied hereditary succession from a sovereign whom England had never acknowledged, it was thought necessary to explain that no claim to hereditary right was intended-that it was merely the assertion of a fact, and that the Emperor based his right unconditionally on popular choice. The explanations were attended with the strongest assertions of friendship for England, of the peaceful character of the Empire, and the desire to maintain in all its fulness the existing alliance with the country. No doubt the assertions of friendship were real, for the great empires of the east of Europe were not likely to accept so easily the claims of the upstart monarch, and the support of England was of the last necessity to him. The uses to which he put it, and the somewhat disastrous effects which it exercised upon England were not long in showing themselves. Already the necessities of his position had driven the Emperor into a course of policy in the East which was fated to involve England in all the difficulties and disasters of the Crimean war. Aberdeen's Dec. 27, 1852. THE HE construction of the new Ministry was a matter of very considerable difficulty. The late Government had been defeated by Whigs and Peelites combined; it was Ministry. not evident to which party the leadership of the new Cabinet by right belonged. Besides this there was much hostility between Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, the acknowledged leaders of the Whigs; while Lord Aberdeen, the leader of the Peelites, had always been Lord Palmerston's chief opponent in foreign affairs. The Queen, well advised, sent for the chiefs of both parties, Aberdeen to represent the Peelites, and Lansdowne, whose position and authority was above question, to represent the Whigs. On Lord Lansdowne's absolute refusal to undertake the duty, the formation of VICT. P |