been arranged, the yacht Victoria and Albert was sent over, and received the bride and her suite on board at Antwerp. An escorting squadron, among the ships of which was the then formidable iron-clad the Warrior, attended and welcomed her to the shores of her new country. The Princess, after a singularly fine passage, landed at Gravesend on the 7th March, and then travelled straight to Windsor. It need scarcely be said that demonstrations of loyal and affectionate interest were not wanting along any part of the line of route. "In one of the rooms of the castle, looking out upon the entrance drive, the Queen anxiously awaited the coming of her royal daughter, for

Dhuleep Singh, and a crowd of petty German princes not yet Bismarckised, set out an hour before the time fixed for the wedding. The second cortége, in eleven carriages, conveyed the royal family and the Queen's household. The third cortége was the procession of the bridegroom, and the fourth the procession of the bride. The marriage was performed in St. George's Chapel, where, we are told, "the altar was richly decorated with massive golden sacramental plate, golden candlesticks, superb almsdishes, costly flagons, and several quaint and highlywrought chalices and patens." The Archbishop of Canterbury, of course, officiated, and the Eton boys

an hour or more before dark, with the young Princesses Louise and Beatrice, and it was not until it became too dark to note what was going on below that the group on which all eyes were fixed retired. In the evening, spite of the rain which still descended in torrents, the town was illuminated; and conspicuous to all the country for twenty miles round was the castle on the hill, for every window was a blaze of light, in brilliant welcome of the young Princess who had just arrived within its walls."*

The marriage took place on the 10th March, and the ceremonial employed on the occasion, having been royally conceived, and adjusted with careful forethought in every part, was brilliant and effective to a degree which public pageants in England seldom reach. Four processions or cortéges left the castle in succession. The first, that of the royal guests, among whom were the Maharajah

"Annual Register" for 1863.

cheered lustily as the happy pair drove away, en route for Osborne. On the same night, London and all the principal towns in England were illuminated. An immense and thoroughly good-humoured crowd filled all the streets, and admired the coloured transparencies, the Prince of Wales' feathers, the true love-knots, the A A's, and fifty other devices, which the inventive affection of the people towards a throne and a royal house the most ancient in Europe had rapidly improvised. At Birmingham, the outline and the chief structural lines of the tower and cupola of St. Philip's Church stood out in flame against a dark and starless sky. The city of Edinburgh was strikingly illuminated. The noble castle was lined with small paraffine lamps, which clearly defined its contour, and fireworks blazed till a late hour from the Salisbury Craigs and Arthur's Seat. In London the illuminations were characterised by the utmost splendour, but untoward events cast a shadow over the popular

rejoicing. Though nothing could be more orderly and well-disposed than the behaviour of the crowd, yet the pressure of the enormous multitudes that filled the City thoroughfares up to a late hour of the night was fatal to six women, crushed or trodden to death between the Mansion House and the foot of Ludgate Hill, and was the cause of more or less severe injuries to not less than a hundred persons. The Prince of Wales addressed a feeling letter to the Lord Mayor on the subject of these sad accidents, expressing his deep regret that what was meant for rejoicing should have become an occasion of mourning.

The House of Commons, on the motion of Lord Palmerston, cheerfully granted to the Prince and Princess of Wales, in addition to and augmentation of the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, amounting to about £60,000 per annum, a revenue of £50,000 a year from the Consolidated Fund, of which sum £10,000 was separately settled on the Princess. It was further proposed by the Premier, and assented to, that a jointure of £30,000 a year should be secured to the Princess in the event of her surviving her husband.

The financial statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, was made on the 16th April, and was universally considered to be a masterly and very satisfactory exposé of the monetary and commercial condition of the country. The estimates of revenue and expenditure for the coming financial year showed a large probable surplus; and this surplus Mr. Gladstone applied to the reduction of the tea duty and of the income tax. Certain minor features of the financial programme were not allowed to pass unchallenged. One such consisted in levying a license duty on clubs, on the ground that, as wine and spirituous liquors were sold in them to the members, they ought not to be exempted from the burden which every hotel-keeper and licensed victualler was liable to. But as there were not wanting many to point out the obvious and essential differences between a club and a public-house, this portion of the financial scheme was abandoned. The other feature referred to was Mr. Gladstone's proposal for the taxation of charities. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had conceived the notion that the exemption from income tax enjoyed by charitable institutions was equivalent to a burden of corresponding amount imposed on the general body of tax-payers; and carried away by the ardour of his genius, and that vehement enthusiasm with which he is wont to entertain and follow out the last novel theory which he has embraced, he had worked himself up to the conviction that the founders of charities, far from deserving the eulogies which an undiscerning public innocently lavishes upon them, were in truth little better than a set of selfish hypocrites, gaining credit for doing good, but gaining it at other people's expense. "It is not fair," he said, "that the tax-payers of this country, the fathers of families, men labouring to support their wives and children, should pay taxes augmented in order to encourage gentlemen on their death-beds, when they can no longer enjoy the money themselves, to devise ingenious methods of disposing of their wealth, which shall cause their

names to be written up in enormous capital letters, and create governors of trusts, who shall meet together at sumptuous dinners from year to year, in order to glorify the pious and immortal memory of the man who has devised this ingenious method of disposing of his property." He proceeded to give a number of remarkable details, illustrating the fantastic and almost vexatious character which belongs to a vast number of small bequests which fall under the general head of "charities," establishing thus, beyond all question, a case for administrative or judicial inquiry into the general question of charities, but not in any way strengthening the argumcnt in favour of the particular measure which he was advocating. The sum lost to the revenue through the exemption from income tax of the property of charities was estimated by Mr. Gladstone to amount to at least £250,000.

The great charitable institutions of the metropolis and elsewhere at once took the alarm, and a deputation, formidable in numbers, rank, and respectability, was soon organised to wait on the adventurous financier. It was headed by the Duke of Cambridge, President of the Corporation of Christ's Hospital. The Duke led off by stating that if the revenues of Christ's were subjected to the income tax, the governors would be obliged to reduce by no less than forty the number of boys educated and maintained. He was followed by various noble and right reverend speakers, pleading for hospitals and other charitable institutions, the asefulness of which they showed would be materially curtailed if their exemption from the income tax were withdrawn. The Chancellor of the Exchequer held his ground stoutly, complaining in a serio-comic strain that he was being made rather the butt of a public meeting than the receiver of a respectful deputation. But the opposition to the project in Parliament met it fairly on the merits, and unmasked the singular hallucination by which Mr. Gladstone had allowed his powerful mind to be overspread. The notion that the tax-paying community was burdened more heavily than it ought to be in order that the charities might go scot free, was shown to be utterly unmeaning. Those really pay income tax who profit by the expenditure of the revenues on which the income tax is levied. In the case of a charitable institution, this can be, neither the founder, nor yet the trustees, but simply the objects of the charity-the patients whom the hospital receives, the boys whom the school clothes and educates. To impose income tax on the revenues of such institutions is, therefore, equivalent to taxing pro tanto the class of helpless persons whom they are destined to relieve and educate; and hardships will arise in one of two formseither in the form of the abridgment of the benefits now receivable by each individual, or in the form of the diminution of the number of individuals to whom those benefits can be extended. In any case, the burden of the tax will really fall on a class of persons whom, as matters stand, the Legislature, in consideration of their poverty, justly exempts from income tax. As for the abuses which undeniably existed in connection with the charities themselves, that, it was urged, is a separate

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question altogether, and to subject the charities to income tax will not even remotely tend to the abatement of these abuses. It might be a vindictive protest against them, but it could not be their cure. What," asked Mr. Disraeli, "is the remedy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the enormous imperfections in the old bequests for the evils in those petty charities which he has called forth from their obscure existence-for the abuses connected with those magnificent foundations of hospitals and colleges which have contributed so much to the promotion of education and the development of benevolence in this country? Why, it is the application of the income tax!" In the end it became so evident to the Government that the feeling of the House was opposed to the taxation of charities, that the measure was withdrawn.

In the course of the session, the subject of the Irish Established Church—which had slept since the old fights about the Appropriation Clause, nearly thirty years before-was reopened by the motion of Mr. Dillwyn, the member for Swansea, for the appointment of a select committee to inquire how far the distribution of endow ments for religious purposes in Ireland might be amended so as to conduce to the greater welfare of all classes of Her Majesty's Irish subjects. The speech of Mr. Bernal Osborne in support of the motion-replete as it was with ironical and humorous sallies, with damaging exposures and ridiculous contrasts-was the great feature of the debate, at least on the attacking side. Mr. Bernal Osborne elaborately argued that the existence of the Irish Establishment was a startling political anomaly, the like of which was not to be found elsewhere in Europ. These views were shared in by a large section of the English people. The motion of Mr. Dillwyn was somewhat feebly resisted by the Government, Sir Robert Peel disputing his and Mr. Bernal Osborne's statistics, and Sir George Grey, though -with the consistency that always distinguished that veteran reformer-he declared the Irish Church to be indefensible in principle, yet arguing that the time for its removal was not yet come. But a remarkably able and business-like speech from Sir Hugh Cairns raised up for the time the falling standard of ascendancy, and almost dissipated the effect of Mr. Bernal Osborne's speech. A politician who overstates his case, and is not careful to ascertain his facts with minute accuracy, will never succeed in overthrowing an institution which, however theoretically open to assault, is yet deeply rooted in the past, and in the memories, traditions, affections, nay, even in the pride and the prejudice, of an energetic and gifted race. That Mr. Bernal Osborne was chargeable with this carelessness, the dissection which his speech received at the hands of Sir Hugh Cairns sufficiently proved. Of course, the essential features of the case could not be altered; all the eloquence of all the Orangemen in the world could no more prove the Irish Establishment to be just than it could make out that black was white. But this sort of thing was done: where Bernal Osborne had made an impression by stating that in such and such a parish the whole ecclesiastical revenues, amounting to

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£650 per annum, were appropriated to the benefit of seven Protestants, the Catholic population of the parish being 1,300, Sir Hugh Cairns, coming after him, proved, by reference to returns of undoubted authority, that the total population of the said parish was but 673, that the ecclesiastical revenues only amounted to the modest sum of £213 6s. 8d., and that the Protestants in the parish attained to the respectable figure of forty-five persons. We are not stating the facts of any real case, but merely giving the general drift and bearing of a speech which the writer heard and admired. The anomaly, even according to the state of facts admitted by Sir Hugh Cairns, really existed; but it was at least not of that startling and ludicrous enormity which Mr. Bernal Osborne would have made his hearers believe: his credit as an assailant was effectually damaged; and when Sir Hugh Cairns left off speaking, the Irish Church was felt on both sides of the House to be safe for the next five years at least.

Various subjects of pressing interest-European, American, and colonial-were debated in the course of the session, but with so little effect on the policy either of our own or foreign Governments, that there is little use in disentombing those monuments of buried and futile eloquence. Neither the House of Commons nor the House of Lords urged upon the Government a firmer tone when remonstrating with Russia against the treatment of Poland, nor was there much use in discussing and deploring the escape of the Alabama, when she had escaped. As for foreign Governments, perceiving how thoroughly acceptable to Parliament, taken as a whole, was the unalterably pacific policy of the Ministry, they learnt to disregard the indignant oratory of individual members, exposing this, that, and the other enormity, and convinced themselves that England, however its ministers might interfere and bluster, would never fight. To what results this conviction led, we shall presently see. The session was brought to a close on the 28th of July.

The desperate effort made this year by the gallant and unfortunate Poles to shake off the despotic yoke of Russia, riveted the gaze and engaged the sympathy of nearly every nation in Europe. We say nearly, for Prussia, as represented by its Government, assisted, on grounds at the time little understood, the Muscovite gaoler to re-manacle his victim. That, among the secret societies of Poland, there were many members infected with the worst revolutionary virus of the times, haters of morality, anti-social, anti-religious, we shall not attempt to deny, for it is notorious that there is no nation in Europe in which the movement party is not to a greater or less degree embarrassed by the presence of an extreme left," animated by the spirit of the International and the Paris Communists. Russia used this plea in extenuation of her cruelties; but with whatever truth it may have been urged, there can be no question that the outbreak in Poland was no spontaneous act, arising out of a revolutionary hatred of all authority, but was the result of a series of oppressive measures, directed by the Russian Government to the extinction of the Polish nationality, and culminating in an edict, the in

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