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About this time M. Drouyn de Lhuys resigned his portfolio as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and was succeeded by the Marquis de Moustier. It was generally believed that M. Drouyn de Lhuys did not approve of the tone of indifference assumed by the Emperor with regard to the Prussian annexations; and also that he felt no confidence that, under the Convention of September, the Pope and the Papal territory would long be secure from attack.

That convention, however, was gradually carried into effect. The Italian, capital was transferred to Florence about the end of 1865, and the French troops began to be withdrawn from Rome in the early months of 1866. Meantime what was called the Antibes Legion was organised—a body of men, 1,200 strong, under the command of a French general, enlisted in France for the service and protection of the Pope. This force embarked at Antibes for Civita Vecchia on the 13th September; the men being distinctly informed before they went that, although serving under the Pope's colours, they would not cease to be French soldiers. When, in December, 1866, the last troops of the French garrison were taking their departure, their commander, General Montebello, addressed His Holiness in a short farewell speech, the point of which lay in the expression, that the Emperor, though withdrawing his troops, "left at Rome the protection of France." The Pope made a remarkable reply, from which it was evident that he augured no good from the new arrangement. "Revolution may come," he said; “I am weak; I have no resource on earth. But I tranquillise myself by confiding in a power which will give me the strength I need. That power is God. It is He who sustains me. Go, my children, depart with my benediction, with my love. If you see the Emperor, tell him that I pray for him every day... But, if I pray for him, he on his side should do something, since he bears the title of Most Christian, and since France is the eldest daughter of the Church." On the 11th December, the French flag was hauled down at the Castle of St. Angelo, and the Pontifical standard hoisted in its place.

The tranquillity of Spain during this year was only disturbed by an unimportant military rising, headed by General Don Juan Prim. In January, Marshal O'Donnell was in power, having, as the representative of the Liberal Union party, succeeded Narvarz at the head of the Administration in the summer of 1865. On the 2nd January, Prim raised the standard of insurrection at Aranjuez and Ocaña. It is not easy to determine his precise motives; but, so far as appears, he wished to terminate the long exclusion from power of the Progresista party to which he belonged, by simply substituting himself for O'Donnell as the chief of the Government. But O'Donnell was vigilant. Prim could only induce a few squadrons of cavalry to follow him; and, after keeping the field for fifteen days, he gave up the enterprise and took refuge in Portugal.

A revolution, resulting in the subversion of the Government, occurred this year in the Danubian principalities. Prince Couza, who had been elected Hospodar

of the Sultan, had, in the seven years which followed, by gross mismanagement and arbitrary measures, estranged the whole Rouman population from his government. In February, 1866, the whole country rose against him; not even the army would support him; he was compelled to abdicate, and surrender himself a prisoner. Soon afterwards he was released, and allowed to depart unharmed. The Chambers, after a vain attempt to induce the Count of Flanders, brother of the King of the Belgians, to accept the post of Hospodar, offered it to Prince Charles of Hohenzollern, a cousin of the King of Prussia. The Prince appearing to be not adverse, the question of his election was submitted to the votes of the population. The result was that Prince Charles was unanimously chosen Hospodar, and the election was afterwards recognised by the Porte, and by all the European Powers.

In America the South lay prostrate and exhausted; but while the aversion to the Federal Government and to the North remained in undiminished strength, the decision of the war had been so conclusive that no one dreamed of renewing the contest. A difference of opinion arose between the President and the Congress as to the manner in which the central government should deal with the states lately in revolt. The President, who was a native of Tennessee, and therefore more disposed to feel for the humbled South than the stern, unsympathising men of New England could be, deemed that when the people of the Southern States expressed, through their legislatures, their conviction that secession was no longer an open question, when they accepted their defeat, and petitioned to be readmitted into the Union on the same terms as before, it was the duty of Congress to admit them without hesitation. But the Republican majority in the Congress viewed the matter in a very different light. They held the Southern people to have been guilty of a great crime, and were resolved that their past behaviour should not be lightly condoned. The prodigal son was not to be taken back until he had been sufficiently humiliated and punished. Having this aim in view, they framed with great skill a series of measures calculated to keep the Southern, late slave-holding, aristocracy in a condition of political feebleness for many years. The state governments of the South continued to be elected, and to manage the non-Federal affairs of their respective states, as before the war. But Congress, in spite of the urgent and impassioned remonstrances of the President, refused to admit to seats within its walls representatives from any state lately in revolt, until such state should have been formally and statutably re-admitted into the Union. So long as this exclusion lasted, the Southern States were despotically governed from Washington in regard to all those matters which the Constitution exempted from state control-such as the army and navy, representation in foreign countries, the post-office, the tariff, &c. From this state of vassalage any Southern state would naturally desire to be relieved with the least possible delay; but when it applied to Congress for re-admission into the Union, it found that re-admission would only be granted upon certain conditions. In the first place, it was re

quired to accept the constitutional amendment passed in the previous year (1865), abolishing slavery throughout the Union. This, however, was not a provision that would cause any difficulty; the impossibility of continuing the system of slavery after the war was as clearly seen in the South as in the North. Secondly, the state must accept another constitutional amendment, the Act for which passed Congress in the session of 1866, which had the effect of altering the basis of representation in the Southern States, and reducing the number of their representatives in the Lower House of Congress, by providing that "whenever the elective franchise should be denied or abridged in any state on account of race or colour, all persons of such race or colour should be excluded from the basis of representation." While slavery existed, the slaves had been allowed to count, in reckoning the basis of representation, as 5 to 3 relatively to white men; thus, in computing the number of members that South Carolina was entitled, in respect of her population, to send to the House of Representatives, 100,000 slaves were regarded as equivalent to 60,000 white men. The effect of the adoption of this amendment was, that whereas, according to the old basis of representation, fourteen slave-holding states sent seventy-six members to Congress, they would hereafter (unless they extended the elective franchise to the negroes) send only fifty-two members.

Still the object of the Republicans was not attained; the amendment just described, to say nothing of the irresistible march of events, did indeed transfer the political centre of gravity in the Union from the states south to the states north of Washington; but the Republicans could not think the cause of the Union safe unless the centre of gravity were correspondingly disturbed in the political system of each separate state. Two measures seemed to them to be especially adapted to accomplish their purpose-the extension of the suffrage to the blacks, and an unsparing exclusion from place and power of those who had been the leaders of the Southern people in the late civil war. Whatever vindictive feeling was nourished in the breasts of Northern men against the aristocracy of the South, must have received an exquisite gratification in the framing and passing of a measure, the effect of which was to make the proud gentlemen of the Carolinas politically subject to their own quondam slaves. Such a measure was the Civil Rights Bill, vetoed by President Johnson, but passed over his veto by more than the requisite two-thirds majority in both branches of the Legislature in April, 1866. The Civil Rights Bill placed the newly-emancipated slaves on the same footing as the white population in regard to all civil rights, among which rights that of voting was, of course, included. President Johnson might well ask, in a message sent down to Congress, whether it could “reasonably be supposed that four millions of negroes who had just emerged from slavery possessed the necessary qualifications entitling them to all the privileges of citizenship, while intelligent foreigners undergo five years' probation before becoming citizens ?" The Republicans knew as well as the President that the negroes were not fit to exercise the franchise, and that to give it to them was to ensure that the Southern States

should be badly and corruptly governed for many years But such considerations appear to have troubled to come. them little in comparison with the two political objects which the bill was meant to secure-one, that Northern men, brought into office by the negro vote, should exclude the natural leaders of society at the South from all share in the government of their own states; the other, that military occupation of the states lately in revolt, with the heavy cost and scandal to the democratic principle therein involved, might be rendered unnecessary, the friends and creatures of the North being placed in power by the negro vote, while a show of democratic government still remained. Where the negro vote was not strong enough to produce this result, direct exclusion from power of those who had been lately "rebels "-that is, of the whole white population in most cases, with the exception of a few spies and cowards-was resorted to. Thus, when Tennessee was re-admitted into the Union, in the course of this year, it was on the following conditions. She was to maintain her existing constitution, exclude rebels from suffrage and office for a certain time, ignore the rebel debt, and make no payment for emancipated slaves.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Parliamentary Reform-Mr. Disraeli's Resolutions: The Government Explanation of them-The Secret History of the Proceedings of the Government-Sir John Pakington's Revelations-Secession of three Cabinet Ministers-Ministerial change of front-Meeting of Conservatives-Mr. Disraeli's Speech in the House "Per sonal Rating"-Mr. Gladstone's exposure of the Ministerial Statistics-Attitude of the Liberals-The Second ReadingMeeting at Mr. Gladstone's House-Mr. Coleridge's "Instruc tion "-The "Tea Room Cabal"-The Bill in Committee-Mr. Gladstone's Defeat-Concessions of the Government-The Dual Vote, &c.-The Compound Householder-Continued Debates and Divisions- Mr. Hodgkinson's Amendment: Accepted by the Government-The Third Reading-Violent Attacks by Lord Cranborne and Mr. Lowe-The Bill in the House of Lords-The Lords' Amendments: Their Reception by the Commons-Final Passing of the Bill-Triumphant Position of Mr. Disraeli.

The Conserva

ON the 11th of February, 1867, in pursuance of the pledges given by the new Ministry in their various speeches before the beginning of the session, the House of Commons was once more invited to consider the question of Reform, under the guidance, however, of Mr. Disraeli, instead of Mr. Gladstone. tive party naturally felt somewhat strange to the work; they had turned out the Liberal Government upon various pleas, all of which they were to abandon, more or less completely, before the close of the session of '67; they had no such traditional or inherited policy to guide them in framing a popular Reform Bill as the Liberals had; and they had a dread of the Opposition, which, considering their own conduct towards the defeated Reform Bill of the preceding year, was, perhaps, not unreasonable. Still the fact, that the whole question had been already fully canvassed and discussed,-that the House had become familiarised with the details as well as the general principles of Reform,-and that its members had, one and all, with more or less sincerity, it is true, pledged themselves

induce the Government to declare themselves more plainly. "The Resolutions of the Government," said Mr. Lowe, later on, borrowing a happy illustration from the "Vicar of Wakefield," "have no more to do with the plan of the Government than Squire Thornhill's three famous postulates had to do with the argument he had with Moses Primrose, when, in order to controvert the right of the clergy to tithes, he laid down the principles -that a whole is greater than its part; that whatever is, is; and that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles." However, Mr. Disraeli kept his secret, in

four new franchises-an educational franchise, to include persons who had taken a university degree, ministers of religion, and others; a savings-bank franchise; a franchise dependent upon the possession of £50 in the public funds; and a fourth dependent upon the payment of £1 yearly in direct taxation. By these means the Govern ment calculated that about 82,000 persons would be enfranchised.

In boroughs the occupier's qualification was to be reduced to £6 rateable value, and in counties to £20 rateable value-reductions which it was supposed would

A.D. 1867.]

admit about 220,000 new voters. With regard to the redistribution of seats, four boroughs, convicted of extensive corruption, and returning seven members between them, were to be wholly disfranchised; and in addition to these seven members, Mr. Disraeli appealed "to the patriotism of the smaller boroughs" to provide him with twenty-three more, by means of partial disfranchisement. The thirty seats thus obtained were to be divided as follows:-Fifteen new seats were to be given to

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ment, "one of which," said Lord Derby, was more extensive than the other." When it was seen that the House would have nothing to say to the resolutions, and that a bill must be brought in without delay, it became necessary to choose between these two schemes. At a Cabinet meeting on Saturday, February 23, the more extensive one, based upon household suffrage, guarded by various precautions, was, as it was supposed, unanimously adopted, and Mr. Disraeli was commissioned to explain

counties, fourteen to boroughs (an additional member being given to the Tower Hamlets), and one member to the London University. The points of likeness and unlikeness between this scheme and that of the Liberals in 1866 will be easily perceived by any one who takes the trouble to glance back over the latter.

This meagre and unsatisfactory measure, however, was short-lived; and the secret history of it, as it was afterwards told by various members of the Government, affords an amusing insight into the mysteries of Cabinet Councils. The fact was that before the beginning of the session, and during the time that the thirteen resolutions were lying on the table of the House, two Reform schemes were under the consideration of the GovernNo. 436

it to the House of Commons on the following Monday, the 25th. The rest of the story may be told in Sir John Pakington's words.

"You all know," he said, addressing his constituents at Droitwich, "that, on the 23rd February, a Cabinet Council decided on the Reform Bill which was to be proposed to Parliament. On Monday the 25th, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Lord Derby was to address the whole Conservative party in Downing Street. At halfpast four in the afternoon of that day-I mention the hour because it is important-the Chancellor of the Exchequer was to explain the Reform Bill in the House of Commons. When the Cabinet Council rose on the previous Saturday, it was my belief that we were a unanimous