was carried by 263 votes against 247-a majority of 16.

Mr. Disraeli, in the course of a clever and defiant speech made towards the close of the long debate, had challenged Lord Palmerston to take the opinion of the country on the policy of the Government. 'I should like,' he exclaimed, 'to see the programme of the proud leaders of the Liberal party-no reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Pekin invaded.' Lord Palmerston's answer was virtually that of Brutus : 'Why, I will see thee at Philippi then.' He announced two or three days after that the Government had resolved on a dissolution and an appeal to the country. Lord Palmerston knew his Pappenheimers. He understood his countrymen. He knew that a popular Minister makes himself more popular by appealing to the country on the ground that he has been condemned by the House of Commons for upholding the honour of England and coercing some foreign power somewhere. His address to the electors of Tiverton differed curiously in its plan of appeal from that of Lord John Russell to the electors of the City, or that of Mr. Disraeli to those of Buckinghamshire. Lord John Russell coolly and wisely argued out the controversy between him and Lord Palmerston, and gave very satisfactory reasons to prove that there was no sufficient justification for the bombardment of Canton. Mr. Disraeli described Lord Palmerston as the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet, and declared that with no domestic policy, he is obliged to divert the attention of the people from the consideration of their own

6

1857.

THE 'INSOLENT BARBARIAN.'

19

'His

affairs to the distractions of foreign politics.' external system is turbulent and aggressive, that his rule at home may be tranquil and unassailed.' In later days a charge not altogether unlike that was made against an English Prime Minister who was not Lord Palmerston. Lord Palmerston understood the temper of the country too well to trouble himself about arguments of any kind. He came to the point at once. In his address to the electors of Tiverton he declared that an insolent barbarian, wielding authority at Canton, violated the British flag, broke the engagements of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects in that part of China, and planned their destruction by murder, assassination, and poison.' That of course was all-sufficient. The insolent bar

6

barian' was in itself almost enough. Governor Yeh certainly was not a barbarian. His argument on the subject of International Law obtained the endorsement of Lord Lyndhurst. His way of arguing the political and commercial case compelled the admiration of Lord Derby. His letters form a curious contrast to the documents contributed to the controversy by the representatives of British authority in China. However, he became for electioneering purposes an insolent barbarian; and the story of a Chinese baker who was said to have tried to poison Sir John Bowring became transfigured into an attempt at the wholesale poisoning of Englishmen in China by the express orders of the Chinese Governor. Lord Palmerston further intimated that he and his Government had been censured

c 2

by a combination of factious persons who, if they into power and were prepared to be consistent, n apologise to the Chinese Government and offer c pensation to the Chinese Commissioner. 'Will British nation,' he asked, ' give their support to who have thus endeavoured to make the humilia and degradation of their country the stepping-s to power?'

No, to be sure; the British nation would nothing of the kind. Lord Derby, Lord Lyndhu Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Disraeli, Sir E Lytton, Lord Grey, Lord. Robert Cecil-these the craven Englishmen, devoid of all patrioti manly feeling, who were trying to make the hum tion and degradation of their country a stepp stone to power. They were likewise the friends allies of the insolent barbarian. There were

music-halls of the modern type in those days. there been such, the denunciations of the inso barbarian, and of his still baser British friends, w no doubt have been shouted forth night after n in the metropolis, to the accompaniment of ratt glasses and clattering pint-pots. Even without alliance of the music-halls, however, Lord Palmer swept the field of his enemies. His victory was plete. The defeat of the men of peace, in espe was what Mr. Ruskin once called, not a fall b catastrophe. Cobden, Bright, Milner Gibson, W Fox, Layard, and many other leading opponent the Chinese policy, were left without seats. T was something peculiarly painful in the circumsta

1857.

MR. BRIGHT'S DEFEAT.

21

of Mr. Bright's defeat at Manchester. Mr. Bright was suffering from severe illness. In the opinion of many of his friends his health was thoroughly broken. He had worked in public life with a generous disregard of his physical resources; and he was compelled to leave the country, and seek rest first in Italy and afterwards in Algeria. It was not a time when even political enmity could with a good grace have ventured to visit on him the supposed offences of his party. But the 'insolent barbarian' phrase overthrew him too. He sent home from Florence a farewell address to the electors of Manchester, which was full of quiet dignity. 'I have esteemed it a high honour, thus ran one passage of the address, 'to be one of your representatives, and have given more of mental and physical labour to your service than is just to myself. I feel it scarcely less an honour to suffer in the cause of peace, and on behalf of what I believe to be the true interests of my country, though I could have wished that the blow had come from other hands, at a time when I could have met face to face those who dealt it.'

Not long after, Mr. Cobden, one of the least sentimental and the most unaffected of men, speaking in the Manchester Free-trade Hall of the circumstances of Mr. Bright's rejection from Manchester, and the leave-taking address which so many regarded as the last public word of a great career, found himself unable to go on with that part of his speech. An emotion more honourable to the speaker and his subject than the most elaborate triumph of eloquence, checked

the flow of the orator's words, and for the moment made him inarticulate.

Lord Palmerston came back to power with renewed and redoubled strength. The little war with Persia, which will be mentioned afterwards, came to an end in time to give him another claim as a conqueror on the sympathies of the constituencies. His appointments of bishops had given great satisfaction to the Evangelical party, and he had become for the time quite a sort of Church hero, much to the amusement of Lord Derby, who made great sport of 'Palmerston, the true Protestant;' 'Palmerston, the only Christian Prime Minister.' In the Royal Speech at the opening of Parliament it was announced that the differences between this country and China still remained unadjusted, and that therefore Her Majesty has sent to China a Plenipotentiary fully entrusted to deal with all matters of difference; and that Plenipotentiary will be supported by an adequate naval and military force in the event of such assistance becoming necessary.' It would be almost superfluous to say that the assistance of the naval and military force thus suggested was found to be necessary. The Government, however, had more serious business with which to occupy themselves before they were at liberty to turn to the easy work of coercing the Chinese.

The new Parliament was engaged for some time in passing the Act for the establishment of a Court of Divorce-that is to say, abolishing the ancient jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts respecting