270 RESIGNATION OF PEEL MINISTRY. 1846 mainly instrumental in bringing about this result. With the picturesque strokes of a master of imaginative description, he has shown us the Minister, as the Protectionists passed before him into the lobby-the men to gain whose hearts and the hearts of their fathers had been the aim and exultation of his life.' We see him, grave and motionless, 'with his chin extended, as was his habit when he was annoyed and cared not to speak,' as the result of the division was conveyed to him, and by it he knew that his reign of power was for ever at an end. But the sympathies of the reader of our own days are not with the men who had their brief hour of triumph in what they regarded as a just retribution for falsehood to the ties of party, but rather with the statesman who, at the sacrifice of his most cherished feelings, had done his duty to his country and his conscience, and by the measure which provoked his defeat had established a lasting claim upon the gratitude of the nation. Six days later (4th July) we find Sir Robert Peel writing to Lord Hardinge in India from Drayton Manor:-'Lady Peel and I are here quite alone, in the loveliest weather, feasting on solitude and repose; and I have every disposition to forgive my enemies for having conferred upon me the blessing of the loss of power.' (Peel's Memoirs, ii. 310.) The Minister had adopted the only course open to him after the vote on the Irish Coercion Bill. On the 29th of June he announced that his government only held office until the appointment of their successors. The great measures of commercial policy were secure, for which alone he would have consented to encounter the odium and torture of the last six months. In the general disorganization of parties, an appeal to the country by a dissolution would only have prolonged the state of suspense from which the industry of the nation had already suffered. Many of the counties were alienated from him, and Ireland, incensed at his Coercion Bill, would have returned a compact phalanx of Members pledged to oppose him. In such circumstances a dissolution would certainly not give him a working majority with which to face a new Parliament. 'Anything,' said the Minister, 'is preferable to maintaining ourselves in office without a full measure of the confidence of this House.' While Sir Robert Peel might well turn with a sigh of relief from the cares of office, noble though they were, to the not ignoble ease of a 'statesman out of place,' it would have 1846 LETTER BY THE QUEEN. 271 been strange, had not the necessity for parting with a Ministry, who had served their Sovereign with such signal ability and devotion, awakened in the Queen and Prince a feeling of profound regret. The pain, which to natures such as theirs could never be otherwise than considerable, of separating from those with whom they had grown familiar not merely in the anxious counsels of State, but in the intimacies of friendship, was augmented by the feeling that for a time at least one of the great parties in the State was broken up. That it would come together again sooner or later was certain, but that it should do so under the same leaders was not to be expected. When the time came for the Queen to receive the Ministers on their taking formal leave, the trial on both sides was severe. 'Yesterday,' Her Majesty writes (7th July) to King Leopold, was a very hard day for me. I had to part with Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable losses to us and to the country. They were both so much overcome that it quite upset me, and we have in them two devoted friends. We felt so safe with them. Never during the five years that they were with me did they ever recommend a person or a thing that was not for my or the country's best, and never for the party's advantage only. . . . I cannot tell you how sad I am to lose Aberdeen. You cannot think what a delightful companion he was. The breaking up of all this intercourse during our journeys, &c., is deplorable. . . . 9 'Albert's use to me, and I may say to the country, by his firmness and sagacity in these moments of trial is beyond all belief.' • The feeling was reciprocal. In writing to the Prince Consort from Haddo House on 14th September, 1846, Lord Aberdeen says: 'I rejoice to learn that the marine excursion to Cornwall and Jersey was prosperous and agreeable. Although living contented in this remote district, I confess that in reading of Her Majesty's progress, I have sometimes wished to find myself on the Royal yacht, and even off the race of Portland!' CHAPTER XVI. Settlement of Oregon Question--The New Ministry--Birth of Princess Helena--Prince's Visit to Liverpool--Distress in Ireland--Remedial Measures--New House at Osborne. 'TWO HOURS,' Sir Robert Peel writes to Lord Hardinge in the letter already quoted, after the intelligence arrived that the Lords had passed the Corn and Customs Bills, we were ejected from power; and by another coincidence as marvellous, on the day on which I had to announce in the House of Commons the dissolution of the Government, the news arrived that we had settled the Oregon question, and that our proposals had been accepted by the United States without the alteration of a word.' The tidings awaited the Minister on his return from placing his resignation in Her Majesty's hands at Osborne. They might well be accepted as no slight consolation in the crisis of defeat, for they assured to his country the quiet possession of a magnificent tract of territory, and closed up a question which had more than once brought us to the verge of hostilities with America. Involving as the question did the disposal of the vast district lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, the omission to deal with it in the treaty between the two countries in 1783 had necessarily been productive of claims on both sides, which the pressure of emigration and the value of the country itself made every day more difficult to reconcile. By holding up a finger, war could at any time be produced about it,' Lord Castelreagh had said to Mr. Rush, the American Minister, in 1822. Four years previously (October 20th, 1818) the two Governments had concluded a Convention, which left the territory open to settlers from both countries for ten years, and this Convention had been renewed for a further limited term on August 6th, 1827. But as the number of settlers increased this state of promiscuous occupation became fraught with danger, to avert which some definite arrangement for the partition of the disputed territory had become indispensable. The first step towards this was taken by the American legisla 1846 SETTLEMENT OF OREGON QUESTION. 273 ture in the form of a resolution come to by the Senate, and also by the House of Representatives, on April 23rd, 1846, that notice should be given to determine the existing Convention at the end of twelve months, on the ground that it had become 'necessary to release the territory from the evil consequences of the divided allegiance of its American and British population, and of the confusion and conflict of national jurisdictions, dangerous to the cherished peace and good understanding of the two countries.' The resolutions urged upon the Governments of both countries the 'adoption of all proper measures for the speedy and amicable adjustment' of the existing difficulties and disputes. Seizing the opportunity afforded by the friendly spirit which had prevailed in the American legislature in coming to this resolution, Lord Aberdeen lost no time in transmitting to Washington a proposition which was at once adopted, and became the basis of the treaty (dated June 15th, ratified July 17th, 1846) which now regulates the rights of the two countries, and under which the boundary line between the English and American territory became the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, continued westwards to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of that channel and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific Ocean. While one great cause of uneasiness was thus laid to rest by the prompt and temperate action of Lord Aberdeen, another, which had menaced our Indian Empire, had only a few months before been removed by the disciplined valour of British troops. Never had this made itself more signally felt than in the brilliant campaign on the Sutlej, which had been terminated by the decisive victories of Meanee, Aliwal, Sobraon, and Chillianwallah. 'We have received glorious news from India,' says Prince Albert, writing to his stepmother on April 2nd; 'great victories, and what is still better, the prospect of a solid peace! But they have cost us much blood, and the lives of many meritorious and distinguished men.' The new Ministry, under the leadership of Lord John Russell, was quickly formed. The difficulties which had proved fatal at the end of 1845 had been cleared away, and Lords Palmerston and Grey appeared in the Cabinet, the former as Foreign, the latter as Colonial Secretary. The Marquis of Lansdowne, as President of the Council, represented the Government in the House of Lords, Sir George 274 BIRTH OF THE PRINCESS HELENA. 1846 Grey went to the Home Office, where an anxious future awaited him, and the Cabinet was further strengthened by the presence of the Earl of Minto (Lord Privy Seal), Mr. C. Wood (Chancellor of the Exchequer), Mr. Macaulay (Paymaster-General), Earl of Clarendon (Board of Trade), Lord Morpeth (Woods and Forests), Sir John Hobhouse (Board of Control), and the Earl of Auckland (Admiralty). The Earl of Bessborough went to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, with Mr. Labouchere as Chief Secretary. Seats in the Cabinet were offered to three distinguished members of Sir R. Peel's administration, James, Earl (afterwards Marquis) of Dalhousie, Lord Lincoln, and Mr. Sidney Herbert, but declined. The interval required for the re-election of such of the members of Government as were in the Commons was seized by the Queen and the Prince for a short holiday at Osborne. On May 25th, in the midst of the anxieties of this stormy session, another Princess had been born, and the agitation of the last few weeks, with the certainty that many causes of serious disquietude, both at home and abroad, were actively at work, made this brief respite especially welcome. 'I long for you to be here,' Her Majesty writes to King Leopold on July 14th. 'It has quite restored my spirits, which were much shaken by the sad leave-takings in London of Sir R. Peel, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Liverpool, &c.' In the same letter the Queen urges her uncle to fulfil his promise of visiting England with his Queen in time for our christening on the 25th. I am so very anxious that Louise [the Queen of the Belgians should be present, as the child is Hélène's [Duchess of Orleans godchild, and Louise has never been present at any of our christenings.' This wish was not, however, to be realised. Political events detained the King and Queen of the Belgians at Brussels until some days after the baptism of the Princess, who was christened at Buckingham Palace by the name of Helena Augusta Victoria, the Duchess of Kent acting as Sponsor for the Duchess of Orleans, while the other Sponsors, the Hereditary Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and H.R.H the Duchess of Cambridge, were present in person. A few days afterwards the Prince officiated at two important ceremonies, of the kind at which his presence had now come to be universally desired. Whenever any new institution was to be founded for the advancement of the comfort, intelligence, or welfare of the people, whenever any new work of |