The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; Vol. 2 of 4

COLONIAL HOME RULE AND FINANCIAL REFORM.

Mr. Roebuck and Emigration--Self-Government and the Colonies--Unsympathetic Whig Policy--Radicals and the Colonial Office--The Peelites and Hudson’s Bay Company--Financial Reform--Mr. Cobden at Variance with Mr. Bright--Combined Agitators--The Demand for Retrenchment--Trade and the Flag--Tories and Taxes--A _reductio ad absurdum_--A Raid on a Surplus--International Arbitration--Parliamentary Reform--Parliament and the Jews--The Tories oppose the Alteration of the Parliamentary Oath--Episcopal Prejudice--Tory Obstructionists--An Ordnance Department Scandal--Mr. Delane’s Attacks on Lord Palmerston in the _Times_--The Queen Remonstrates against Lord Palmerston’s Recklessness--An Anti-Palmerstonian Cabal--Lady Palmerston’s Intrigues--Lord Brougham Betrays the Cabal--Palmerston’s Victory--Rome and France--The Second War--The Disaster of Chillianwalla--Indignation of the Country--Lord Gough’s Recall--Napier to the Rescue--The East India Directors Oppose Napier’s Appointment--The Convict War at the Cape--Boycotting the Governor.

Another notable event in the Colonial history of 1849 was the introduction by Mr. Roebuck, on the 14th of May, of a Bill for the better government of the Colonies. The debate on this measure brought vividly before the minds of thoughtful men the folly upon which our step-motherly treatment of the Colonies was based. “Emigration by itself,” exclaimed Mr. Roebuck, “is misery;” and yet the idea of colonisation which prevailed at the Colonial Office was simply to transport as many people as possible to distant wilds, utterly regardless of their ultimate fate. Why should we not introduce something like system, asked Mr. Roebuck, into our Colonial policy, and recognise the fact that it was now not tribute, but trade that we might expect to get from them? His proposal was to have one plan for settling a colony, another for organising it when settled, and a third for groups of colonies in confederation or union. His panacea for all Colonial ills was to get rid of “red tape” at the Colonial Office and to give the Colonies Home Rule. The difficulties, said Mr. Hawes, as representing Lord Grey and the Colonial Office, in the way of granting Home Rule to North-American Colonies would be insuperable; besides, England had far too many Colonies already, so that it was of little use to bring forward schemes for settling new ones! Whigs like Lord John Russell condemned a policy which tended to substitute a fixed Parliamentary rule for the discretion of a responsible Minister, and contended that physical impediments rendered the union of Canada into one Dominion impossible. Mr. Gladstone, however, warmly supported Mr. Roebuck’s policy. Even then the leaven of the Home Ruler was working in his mind. Mr. Roebuck was beaten by 116 to 73. But this did not put a stop to these Colonial debates.

On the 26th of June Sir William Molesworth moved an Address to the Queen begging for a Commission to inquire into the Administration of the Colonies, more especially with a view to lessen the cost of their government, and to give free scope to individual enterprise in colonising. He startled the House by quoting figures which showed that, in fifteen years, “a series of remarkable events in the Colonies” had cost England the modest sum of eighty millions sterling. It could not have cost more to settle 4,000,000 able and energetic emigrants in Australia alone; and yet in the whole Colonial Empire in 1849, it appears there were not more than 1,000,000 persons of British or Irish descent. Charles Buller some years before had condemned the Colonial Office for its arbitrary character, its indifference to local feeling, and its ignorance of local wants, its procrastination and vacillation, its secrecy and irresponsibility, its servitude to parties and cliques, its injustice, and its disorder. In this debate Lord Grey’s Administration was held to aptly illustrate all these vices; and yet Lord Grey had become Colonial Minister because he stood pledged to cure them. Lord Grey’s idea of Colonial government seemed to be either to rule the Colony with a high hand from London, or, if it had some semblance of representative institutions, to govern it by means of a violent Party minority in the popular Chamber, co-operating with a majority of the Council nominated by the Crown. Self-government for Colonies that were fit for it, and intelligent government for those that were not, were Sir William Molesworth’s remedies. A strong plea for reducing the extravagant outlay on official salaries and useless military expenditure was pressed; and protests against convict emigration, which, together with our misgovernment, drove honest English Colonists to the United States, were entered. Mr. Hume and Mr. Gladstone, on behalf of the Radicals and Peelites, gave a general support to the motion; but the indefatigable Mr. Hawes came smilingly to the defence of Lord Grey with his stereotyped “_Non possumus_,” and Lord John Russell declared that the scope of the reference to the Commission was too vast and wide for practical purposes. His novel argument was that to attempt to define the limits of Imperial and local questions must end in bitter disputes between the Colonies and the mother country. Undeterred by the failure of the Radicals to force a rational Colonial policy on the Whigs, the Peelites next took up the matter, and on the 19th of June Lord Lincoln moved an Address to the Crown expressing the opinion that the Hudson’s Bay Company, to which Vancouver Island had been granted by Royal Charter, was ill-adapted for ruling or developing the resources of a colony founded on principles of political and commercial freedom, and generally challenging the validity of the grant. One would have thought that it needed little argument to demonstrate the unwisdom of founding a colony to be ruled by an absentee proprietary, earning its revenues by a trading monopoly. The history of the United States was full of examples of this species of folly, and both Lord Lincoln and Mr. Hume argued their case with the greatest ability. But they spoke to no purpose, for just as Mr. Hume was warming to his work the House was counted out! In these days, when the air is full of schemes for Imperial Federation, and Home Rule, it is interesting to note how, in 1849, the battle of Colonial Reform was fought by a combination of Conservative Peelites and “stalwart” Radicals, against the Whigs, who were jealously opposed to all extensions of Colonial autonomy.

After Colonial policy, and not long after it in point of interest, came Finance. The erratic schemes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the preceding year, together with the distress which afflicted the country, had made everybody dissatisfied with the financial policy of the Government. The Protectionists were always at hand to suggest that the pressure of taxation was due to Free Trade. The Free Traders were never weary of retorting that it was due to extravagant expenditure, and could be remedied by retrenchment. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright thus felt that their mission in life did not end with the Repeal of the Corn Laws. If they were to keep the ground they had taken, it seemed to them they must start an agitation to reduce public expenditure. Mr. Bright rather favoured the notion of agitating for an extension of the Franchise, on the supposition that, if more taxpayers had votes, Government, in deference to their prejudices, would be chary of augmenting public burdens. Ultimately, however, they agreed to combine the two agitations,[1] and work with each other as before. The popular feeling in favour of economy was first manifested by the formation of Financial Reform Associations in the large towns--that of Liverpool being especially energetic--and they were soon busy discussing a practical plan, which emanated from the fertile brain of Cobden, for the remission of the Malt Tax and other public burdens. Cobden’s scheme was simply to effect retrenchment by going back to the scale of expenditure that was deemed adequate in 1835, and in this way he proposed to reduce taxation by about £10,000,000 sterling. Quite a flutter of excitement ran through the

House of Commons when, on the 26th of February, he brought his plan under its notice. He contended that military expenditure had caused the increase of £10,000,000, which he desired to reduce. Therefore he moved that the expenditure under this head be diminished with all practicable speed. The insular position of England was itself a sure defence against her enemies.

Provided she did not interfere recklessly with foreign nations, she had less to fear in 1849 than in 1835. Why, then, should the military and naval expenditure of 1835 be exceeded? Vast sums of money, too, were spent on the Colonies. Here also a reduction might be effected, for the English taxpayer got no more food from the Colonies than the foreign one did. At this period it was evident that Mr. Cobden had not put to the test the sound maxim that “trade follows the flag.” The answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that in 1835, to the expenditure of which Mr. Cobden wanted to revert, no adequate provision had been made for the true wants of the country; and that, since then, many things had happened to increase expenditure unavoidably. The introduction of steam into the Navy was an illustration of these changes. Moreover, the Government had reduced expenditure by about a million and a half sterling--and that was surely a pledge of their earnestness as financial reformers.

The Tories put Mr. Herries forward to attack both parties. He blamed Ministers for encouraging the financial reformers, and denounced Mr. Cobden for the violence of his speeches out of doors on the subject. The policy of the Tories was to demand that expenditure should not be lessened, whilst there was ground for anxiety as to foreign affairs. One of their arguments was an odd one. It was that, as the revenue was still maintained in spite of the repeal of vast sums of taxation, there was no ground for pretending that retrenchment was necessary because the people felt that taxation was pressing hard on them. They did not seem to see that this was either an argument in favour of raising revenue without imposing any taxes at all--which was a _reductio ad absurdum_--or an argument to show that reductions of taxation still left Government with enough money in hand to defend the interests of the country, which was virtually an admission that Mr. Cobden’s plan, if tried, could do no harm. The Free Traders made a bid for the rural vote by arguing that, if the landed interest wanted the relief which the Protectionists promised them, they ought to vote for the reduction in expenditure, which would enable Parliament to grant that relief. Mr. Cobden’s first scheme of Financial Reform was rejected by a vote of 275 to 78. But this did not allay the uneasiness of the public, who began to fret over the extraordinary delay that took place in the production of the Budget. It was not till the 29th of June that Sir Charles Wood made his financial statement to the House. It was not a cheering one. The expenditure, which was £53,287,110, had exceeded the Ministerial estimate by £1,219,379, and it exceeded the revenue of the year by £269,378. Of course, by excluding unexpected outlays on Irish distress, Canadian emigration, &c., a more favourable state of accounts could be shown; but, as the excluded money had been spent, there was really no reason for ignoring it. For the coming year his estimated expenditure, he said, would be £52,157,696, and his estimated receipts would yield, he hoped, a surplus over that of £94,304. Sir Charles Wood’s strongest points were that every effort would be made to keep current expenditure within current income, and that instead of using small surpluses to remit small sums of taxation, they would be kept as the nucleus of large surpluses, for the reduction of large amounts of taxation. The Radicals and Financial Reformers were not satisfied with Sir Charles Wood’s long list of objectionable taxes that had been removed. In spite of all that, expenditure increased--and what was worse, there was a steady increase in permanent burdens on the revenue, in the shape of charges for the Public Debt. Mr. Hume demanded that Excise be done away with, and that the example of Sir James Graham, who reduced the expenses of the Admiralty by £1,200,000, be followed. Mr. Milner Gibson attacked the paper duty, the newspaper stamp duty, and the tax on advertisements, as taxes on knowledge; and he cited the petition of the Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh, who declared that the paper duty had stopped the continuance of a work for the humbler classes which they were bringing out, and of which there had been a sale of 80,000 copies. Everybody wanted some special duty repealed, either that on hops, bricks, soap, beer, malt, tea, or timber. The Budget was felt to be unsatisfactory, for, as Mr. Cobden said, it made the two ends barely meet. At the close of the Session (20th of July) Mr. Herries supplemented this discussion by starting another question--that of raising some portion of the supplies of the State by a fixed duty on corn. The Protectionists argued that Sir Charles Wood’s estimates were too sanguine, and that more taxes must be imposed on the people, unless a small duty were put on foreign corn. This was not to be a protective duty, but one merely for revenue purposes, and as such surely it was justifiable. It would be only a tax on food in name; in fact, the defence of the proposal was like the Irish vagrant’s apology for the existence of her baby--“Please, sir, it’s only a very little one.” Of course the Free Traders sprang upon Mr. Herries with great glee. The Tories were going round the country promising the farmers Protection. But when they came to the House of Commons all they ventured to ask for was a small fixed duty on corn, which was to be levied not for protective but for revenue purposes. The position was an awkward one for Mr. Herries. Either his small fixed duty did or did not raise the price of corn. If it did, he was deceiving the House of Commons. If it did not, he was deceiving his clients among the farmers. His move was obviously one for putting heart into a desponding faction.