1839]

RESIGNATION OF MINISTRY

31

agent there, hampered by party influences at home and misled by his own impulsive character, had committed grave errors, the wisdom of establishing a temporary despotism, under the shadow of which a new constitution might be established, was scarcely to be questioned. If it was wise in Canada, it was surely wiser in Jamaica, where the whole framework of society was undergoing a violent change. The Government accordingly introduced a Bill, the principle of which was that the constitution of Jamaica should be suspended for five years, and the government placed in the hands of the Governor and a council of three commissioners charged with the duty of making such laws as the state of the Colony required. At the expiration of that time the constitution was to be restored. But as usual in English politics, the wisdom of the principle went for little in the heat of party strife. Questionable points in the detail of the Bill, and the management on the part of the Government of the circumstances which had rendered the Bill necessary, were fixed upon with avidity by the Opposition. The grounds set forth in the preamble for the action taken were declared to be inadequate. The promulgation of the Prisons Act without its accompanying despatch was regarded as a needless aggravation of its severity. The Government was charged with hastily snatching at an opportunity for abrogating the constitution. Sir Robert Peel, who led the attack, declared his wish that efforts at compromise should be made, and an opportunity given to the Assembly to withdraw from its false position. On this ground he opposed the Bill as it was going into committee after the second reading, and a division taken at this point showed a majority in favour of the Ministry of five only. A Government in a perpetual minority in the Lords, and able to rely upon a superiority of little more than twenty votes in the Commons, could not bear up against such a diminution of its narrow majority. of Ministry. May 7th, 1839. Least of all, as Lord John Russell urged, could a Government thus slightly supported carry out with advantage to the public interest a struggle between the mother country and a contumacious Colony. The Ministry of Lord Melbourne thought it right to resign. There could be little doubt that their position was not a dignified The vehemence with which every now and then they declared that they would not exist on sufferance shows how fully they recognised that they really did so exist, and the soreness which the position caused them. Probably they would all have been glad enough to have seen their opponents surrounded by the difficulties under which they had been

one.

Resignation

Peel declines

the Ministry Queen's ladies

unless the

are changed.

themselves labouring. But it was not to be. A curious episode forced them back to their unenviable position of power. According to the forms of the Constitution, the Premier advised the Queen to send for the Duke of Wellington, who in his turn advised her to intrust the formation of the new Ministry to Sir Robert Peel. Peel undertook the duty; found adherents willing to serve with him; and laid the list before the Queen. But at the same time he told her that he thought it would be necessary to change some of the chief ladies of her household. The young Queen probably misunderstood the amount of the change intended. She had grown attached to those who had surrounded her since her accession to the Throne, and on whose friendship she could rely. She took fright at the idea of being left alone in the midst of strange surroundings, and consulted the outgoing Ministry as to the constitutional necessity of the change. They advised her that it was not necessary. She therefore wrote to Sir Robert Peel that, "having considered the proposal made by him to remove the ladies of her bedchamber, she could not consent to adopt a course which she considered to be contrary to usage, and which was repugnant to her feelings." Sir Robert Peel immediately wrote in answer that his sense of public duty compelled him to adhere to the opinion he had expressed, and that on this condition only would he accept office. The Queen again sought advice of her late Ministers on the subject; a Cabinet council was held, and their opinion was thrown into the shape of a formal minute, in which, after saying that "it was reasonable that the great offices in the Court and situations in the household held by members of Parliament should be included in political arrangements," they went on to state that they were "not of opinion that a similar principle should be extended to offices held by ladies in Her Majesty's household." So strange an incident, so sudden a disappearance of the hopes of office felt by the Tories, naturally caused great party excitement. The matter was discussed from all points of view. To some it seemed a question of grave constitutional importance that the personal wish of the sovereign should override great party combinations; to some the position taken by the outgoing Ministry of acting as a united Cabinet after their resignation, and while the Queen was in correspondence with the leader of their opponents, seemed most questionable. And there was no lack among the disappointed Conservatives, outside the circle of the immediate leaders, of those who regarded the whole matter as a preconcerted trick of the Liberals to retain office. The very simple and straight

Discussion of the question.

1839]

MELBOURNE'S MINISTRY RETURNS

33

forward assertion of Lord Melbourne that this was not so disposes of this suspicion. The action of the outgoing Ministers was defended on the ground that, on the receipt of Peel's answer, negotiations with him had in fact ceased, and that they were the only advisers left to the Crown. The reasonableness of the Queen's opposition to the suggested changes is generally allowed; and the correctness of the constitutional principle upheld by Melbourne appears to be proved by its subsequent general acceptance, and by the fact that from this time onwards the Ladies of the Household (with the exception of the Mistress of the Robes) have been exempted from the alternations of political party.

In all probability there was a misconception at the bottom of the affair. Peel had not intended to remove any great number of the ladies. Nor was he probably very anxious to accept the difficulties which at that time surrounded the position of the Government. At all events, he was determined that he would not accept office unless he could occupy a commanding position. As a dissolution was regarded as a thing to be avoided, he would have had at once to face a majority in opposition. That majority, though small, had declared very lately its opinion in favour of the policy of two Ministers, Normanby and Morpeth. The wife of one of these and the sister of the other were among the Queen's ladies, and Peel did not think that he could possibly have carried out his government with any success unless he received some open sign of support from the Crown, such as the removal of the ladies would have given him.

returns to

The incident resulted in the restitution of the Whig Government, and its maintenance in office for two years longer, during Melbourne which it dragged on its wearisome and inefficient career. power. Some slight alterations had been made in the ministerial May 11. arrangements. Lord Mulgrave had returned from Ireland in February, and had been called to the Upper House as Lord Normanby. His place was taken by Lord Ebrington, a man of equally liberal views. The retirement of Lord Glenelg, an able though somewhat dilatory statesman, allowed of a change of offices which finally resulted in the appointment of Lord Normanby to the Home Office, while the Colonies were intrusted to Lord John Russell. In the Lower House a change of some importance took place. Abercrombie, the Speaker, had not proved thoroughly efficient. Somewhat too irritable, and prone to take personal offence, he had not succeeded in establishing his authority; and, believing himself ill-used by the Government, he had resigned. Although Mr. Spring Rice, the Chancellor of

VICT.

C

Factious

opposition of Peel to the Second

Jamaica Bill.

the Exchequer, had long coveted the post, the uncertainty of his election induced the Ministry to prefer as their nominee Mr. Shaw Lefevre, a man in every way well fitted for the office, and likely as a popular county gentleman to be accepted by the Opposition. The new Colonial Minister was at once forced into prominence by the introduction under a new form of the Jamaica Bill, which had caused the late crisis. It adopted the principle on which Sir Robert Peel had insisted, and offered a locus penitentia to the Assembly. The crime of that Assembly had been its refusal to pass the necessary Bills. Those Bills were of two classes. The one consisted of Bills rendered necessary by the changed state of the country after the Emancipation-to regulate the unoccupied lands, the vagrant laws, the relations between master and servant, the militia, and the electoral qualification, touching in fact those questions which were brought to the front by the sudden creation, by the Emancipation Act, of a large body of new black citizens. The other class consisted of old Bills, which had always been considered necessary in the Colony, but which, being re-enacted yearly, had come to a natural conclusion, and required to be re-made. The Bill, instead of suspending the Constitution, referred these two classes of Bills under two clauses to the Assembly. If it refused with regard to the first class to make satisfactory arrangements, similar in principle to those made in Crown Colonies after emancipation, the Governor and the Council were to be authorised to enact the required laws. With regard to the second class, if the Assembly refused to renew the expired Acts within a certain limited time, the Governor and his Council might renew them by their own authority. Although the Bill nearly resembled the propositions of Sir Robert Peel, it did not pass without considerable opposition; and in the House of Lords its most important enactment, the first clause, was omitted. Hopeless of carrying out a firmer policy, Lord John Russell recommended the Commons to accept the remainder of the Bill rather than get no Bill at all. It therefore became law almost exactly as Sir Robert Peel had proposed two months previously. Whether the conduct of the Conservatives arose, as Sir Robert Peel asserted, from bona fide objections to the Bill, or whether it was a factious desire to catch for party purposes a few Radical votes which induced them to support the rights of the Jamaica Assembly, there is no doubt that the effect of the rejection of the more stringent clauses of the Bill was to perpetuate for many years the misgovernment of Jamaica.

The Bill mutilated and

passed. July 1839.

1839]

THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE

Desire for a

Ministry.

35

The balance of political parties almost inevitably prevented the completion of any great measure of legislation, and the history of the remaining two years of Whig rule is occu- change of pied chiefly with matters of administration, and with abortive attempts on the part of the Ministers themselves and of their Radical supporters to advance measures which have subsequently been accepted as necessary by all parties. Little fault could be found with their administration; but their difficulties were gradually increasing on all sides, and a general feeling sprang up that they must give place to a more powerful government. The skill of Sir Robert Peel, who (while keeping his party together, and waging a very efficient party war) kept in check the violence of the old Tory element, and took care to declare the liberality of his own views, tended largely to this reaction.

marriage.

It is probable also that the marriage of the Queen rendered a change of Ministry more possible. The Government had Made possible from the first taken up the position of the Queen's Govern- by the Queen's ment, and it was distinctly as the protectors of her personal wishes that they returned to power; and although Lord Melbourne behaved in all respects most honourably in his position of close friend and constant companion of the young Queen, it was undoubtedly true that her affection for him, and her dread of losing his unrestrained and fatherly friendship, was a great obstacle in the way of change. But at the close of the year 1839 she made up her mind to marry Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. He had been invited to Windsor at the suggestion of Melbourne himself and King Leopold of Belgium, who foresaw what was likely to be the result. The Queen became deeply attached to him, and her marriage with him was at once decided upon. It is not the least among the virtues of Melbourne, not the least among the many proofs he gave of his sincere and high-minded affection for the position of Queen, that he thus supplied her with a husband who Prince Albert. might permanently occupy the place of adviser he had himself hitherto held, and give her the support which her sex and years required. With what self-denying devotion Prince Albert effaced himself from political life, and gave himself up to the support and assistance of the Queen, is visible in every page of the future history of his career. The marriage removed the necessity for Melbourne's presence, and allowed the Queen to assume a more truly constitutional position than she had yet held. She could henceforward repose her confidence equally in the leader of either party, who might be the Minister of

Character and