Queen Victoria (13 page)

In 1855 the stamp duty on newspapers was abolished. In these days of cheap halfpenny papers with immense circulations it is difficult to realize that at a date not very far distant from us, the poor scarcely, if ever, saw a newspaper at all. Friends used to club together to reduce the great expense of buying a single copy, and agents hired out copies for the sum of one penny per hour. The only effect of the stamp duty had been to cut off the poorer classes from all sources of trustworthy information.

In 1834 not a single town in the kingdom with the exception of London possessed a daily paper. The invention of steam printing, and the introduction of shorthand reporting and the use of telegraph and railways, revolutionized the whole world of journalism.

Charles Dickens, on the occasion of his presiding, in May 1865, at the second annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund, gave his hearers an idea of what newspaper reporters were and what they suffered in the early days. “I have pursued the calling of a reporter under circumstances of which many of my brethren here can form no adequate conception. I have often transcribed for the printer, from my shorthand notes, important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . . I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep - kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew.”

During these later years England came to look upon her duties and responsibilities toward her colonial possessions in quite a different light. Imperialism became a factor in the political life of the nation.

The builders of Empire in the time of Queen Elizabeth took a very narrow view of their responsibilities; they were not in the least degree concerned about the well-being of a colony or possession for its own sake. The state of Ireland in those days spoke for itself. The horrors of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 was the first lesson which opened England’s eyes to the fact that an Empire, if it is to be anything more than a name, must be a united whole under wise and sympathetic guidance.

The rebellion proved to be the end of the old East Indian Company. England took over the administration of Indian affairs into her own hands. An “Act for the better Government of India” was passed in 1858, which provided that all the territories previously under the government of the Company were to be vested in Her Majesty, and all the Company’s powers to be exercised in her name. The Viceroy, with the assistance of a Council, was to be supreme in India.

In 1867 a great colonial reform was carried out, the Confederation of the North American Provinces of the British Empire. By this Act the names of Upper and Lower Canada were changed respectively to Ontario and Quebec. The first Dominion Parliament met in the autumn of the same year, and lost no time in passing an Act to construct an Inter-Colonial Railway affording proper means of communication between the maritime and central provinces.

In 1869 the Hudson Bay territory was acquired from the Company which held it, and after the Red River Insurrection, headed by a half-breed, Louis Riel, had been successfully crushed by the Wolseley Expedition, the territory was made part of the Federation. In 1871 British Columbia became part of the Dominion, on condition that a railway was constructed within the following ten years which should extend from the Pacific to the Rocky Mountains and connect with the existing railway system.

The great Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, opening out the West to all-comers.

The rise and growth of the Imperialistic spirit has been greatly influenced by the literature on the subject, which dated its commencement from Professor Seeley’s
 
Expansion of England
 
in 1883. This was followed by an immense number of works by various writers, the chief of whom, Rudyard Kipling, has popularized the conception of Imperialism and extended its meaning:

Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.

The Empire was not, however, to be consolidated without war and bloodshed, for relations with the two Boer Republics, the Transvaal and the Orange River, became more and more strained as years went on. The last years of the Queen’s life were destined to be saddened by the outbreak of war in South Africa.

The facts which led to the outbreak were briefly these, though it is but fair to state that there are, even now, various theories current as to the causes. The discovery and opening up of the gold mines of the Transvaal had brought a stream of adventurous emigrants into the country, and it was these ‘Outlanders’ of whom the Dutch were suspicious. The Transvaal Government refused to admit them to equal political rights with the Dutch inhabitants. It was certain, however, that the Outlanders would never submit to be dependent on the policy of President Kruger, although the Dutch declared that they had only accepted the suzerainty of Great Britain under compulsion.

Negotiations between the two Governments led to nothing, as neither side would give way, and at last, in 1899, following upon an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of British troops from the borders of the Republic, war broke out. It had undoubtedly been hastened by the ill-fated and ill-advised raid in 1896 of Dr Jameson, the administrator of Rhodesia.

It is scarcely necessary to review the details of this war at any length. It proved conclusively that the Government of this country had vastly underrated the resisting powers of the Boers. For three years the British army was forced to wage a guerilla warfare, and adapt itself to entirely new methods of campaigning.

On May 28, 1900, the Orange Free State was annexed under the name of the Orange River Colony. In June Lord Roberts entered Pretoria, but the war dragged on until 1902, when a Peace Conference was held and the Boer Republics became part of the British Empire. Very liberal terms were offered to and accepted by the conquered Dutch. But long before this event took place Queen Victoria had passed away. She had followed the whole course of the war with the deepest interest and anxiety, and when Lord Roberts returned to this country, leaving Lord Kitchener in command in South Africa, the Queen was desirous of hearing from his own lips the story of the campaign.

The public was already uneasy about the state of her health, and on January 20th it was announced that her condition had become serious. On Tuesday, January 22, she was conscious and recognized the members of her family watching by her bedside, but on the afternoon of the same day she peacefully passed away. One of the last wishes she expressed was that her body should be borne to rest on a gun-carriage, for she had never forgotten that she was a soldier’s daughter.

On the day of the funeral the horses attached to the gun-carriage became restive, and the sailors who formed the guard of honour took their place, and drew the coffin, draped in the Union Jack, to its last resting-place.

Through the streets of London, which had witnessed two great Jubilee processions, festivals of rejoicing and thanksgiving, the funeral cortège passed, and a great reign and a great epoch in history had come to an end.

The keynote of Queen Victoria’s life was simplicity. She was a great ruler, and at the same time a simple-minded, sympathetic woman, the true mother of her people. She seemed by some natural instinct to understand their joys and their sorrows, and this was the more remarkable as for forty years she reigned alone without the invaluable advice and assistance of her husband.

Her qualities were not those which have made other great rulers famous, but they were typical of the age in which she lived.

All her life she was industrious, and never spared herself any time or trouble, however arduous and disagreeable her duties might be. She possessed the keenest sense of duty, and in dealing with men and circumstances she never failed to do or say the right thing. Her daily intercourse with the leading English statesmen of the time gave her an unrivalled knowledge of home and foreign politics. In short, her natural ability and good sense, strengthened by experience, made her what she was, a perfect model of a constitutional monarch.

During her reign the Crown once again took its proper place: no longer was there a gulf between the Ruler and the People, and Patriotism, the love of Queen and Country, became a real and living thing. Pope’s adage, “A patriot is a fool in every age,” could no longer be quoted with any truth.

Queen Victoria was, above all, a great lover of peace, and did all in her power for its promotion. Her personal influence was often the means of smoothing over difficulties both at home and abroad when her Ministers had aggravated instead of lessening them. She formed her own opinions and held to them, though she was always willing to listen to reason.

The Memorandum which she drew up in the year 1850 shows how firm a stand she could take when her country’s peace seemed to be threatened.

Lord Palmerston, though an able Minister in many respects, was a wilful, hot-headed man, who was over-fond of acting on the spur of the moment without consulting his Sovereign. His dispatches, written as they so often were in a moment of feverish enthusiasm, frequently gave offence to foreign monarchs and statesmen, and were more than once nearly the cause of war. It was remarked of him that “the desk was his place of peril, his pen ran away with him. His speech never made an enemy, his writing has left many festering sores. The charm of manner and urbanity which so served him in Parliament and in society was sometimes wanting on paper, and good counsels were dashed with asperity.”

Lord Palmerston, the Queen complained, did not obey instructions, and she declared that before important dispatches were sent abroad the Sovereign should be consulted. Further, alterations were sometimes made by him when they had been neither suggested nor approved by the Crown.

Such proceedings caused England, in the Queen’s own words, to be “generally detested, mistrusted, and treated with indignity by even the smallest Powers.”

In the Memorandum the Queen requires:

“(1) That he will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she has given her royal sanction.

“(2) Having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as a failure in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her Constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the Foreign Ministers, before important decisions are taken, based upon that intercourse; to receive the Foreign dispatches in good time and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off. The Queen thinks it best that Lord John Russell should show this letter to Lord Palmerston.”

More than once the alteration of a dispatch by the Queen prevented what might easily have plunged this country into a disastrous war.

After the Mutiny in India a proclamation was issued to the native races, and the Queen insisted upon alterations which would clearly show that their religious beliefs should in no way be interfered with, thus preventing a fresh mutiny.

On rare occasions her indignation got the better of her - once, notably, when, owing to careless delay on the part of the Ministry, General Gordon perished at Khartoum, a rescue party failing to reach him in time. In a letter to his sisters she spoke of this as “a stain left upon England,” and as a wrong which she felt very keenly.

Her style of writing was as simple as possible, yet she always said the right thing at the right moment, and her letters of sympathy or congratulation were models of their kind and never failed in their effect.

Few, if any, reigns in history have been so blameless as hers, and her domestic life was perfect in its harmony and the devotion of the members of her family to one another. She possessed the ‘eye of the mistress’ for every detail, however small, which concerned housekeeping matters, and though her style of entertaining was naturally often magnificent, everything was paid for punctually.

After the visits of King Louis Philippe and the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, Sir Robert Peel acknowledged that “Her Majesty was able to meet every charge and to give a reception to the Sovereigns which struck every one by its magnificence without adding one tittle to the burdens of the country. I am not required by Her Majesty to press for the extra expenditure of one single shilling on account of these unforeseen causes of increased expenditure. I think that to state this is only due to the personal credit of Her Majesty, who insists upon it that there shall be every magnificence required by her station, but without incurring one single debt.”