Queen CHAPTER VII THE FIRST YEARS OF THE NEW REIGN (1837-1841) THE young Princess who was now called to ascend the throne was a was the only child of her parents. Her father was Edward Duke of Kent (1767-1820), the fourth son of George III.; her mother was Victoria Mary Louisa (1786-1861), daughter of Francis Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and widow of the Prince of Leiningen, by whom she had a son and a daughter. The Duke of Kent man of considerable ability and high character; a keen soldier and, unlike his father and brothers, a robust Liberal. He was genuinely interested in the movement for the abolition of slavery, was zealous for popular education and voted for Catholic emancipation. He died at a comparatively early age, just before his father, in 1820, leaving his widow and infant child1 in circumstances which were almost straitened. The Duchess of Kent was a woman of strong not to say stern character and brought up her daughter both strictly and well. From her earliest years the young Princess was trained in habits of order, punctuality, obedience, and self-sacrifice. Her education was undertaken largely by the Duchess herself, assisted by Miss Lehzen, the Rev. George Davys,2 and a large staff of masters for special subjects. Her political education, up to her accession to the throne, she owed mainly to her maternal uncle, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who, but for the untimely and lamentable death of the Princess Charlotte, would himself have been Prince Consort of England. But though docile and considerate the Princess from her early years "instinctively formed an independent judgment on any question that concerned 1 Born May 24th, 1819. 3 2 Afterwards Dean of Chester and Bishop of Peterborough (1839-1864). 1841] QUEEN VICTORIA 129 her". Prince Leopold she regarded as a second father, and the long series of letters which passed between them proves how well her confidence and affection were justified. In 1827 the death of the Duke of York rendered the ultimate succession of the Princess almost certain. On the accession of the Duke of Clarence (1830) she became heir-presumptive, and in recognition of this fact Parliament voted to the Duchess of Kent an extra £10,000 a year. Seven years later the death of William IV. brought the Princess Victoria to the throne. Just eighteen at the time of her accession, Queen Victoria was The situaconfronted with a difficult not to say a perilous situation. Canada tion was in rebellion, and the language of contemporaries proves that they regarded its separation from Great Britain as a contingency by no means remote; Ireland was not far removed from the state of Canada; while in England the Chartist agitation was just coming to a head. Worst of all: the position of the monarchy was far from secure. Under George III. the throne was popular but not respected; under George IV. it was neither; William IV. "restored its popularity but not its dignity". It was, therefore, the first task of Queen Victoria to re-establish the monarchy in the affections and respect of her people in general, and in particular to conciliate the support of the middle classes who, since 1832, had become the dominant power in the State. Consequently it was supremely fortunate that the Queen by a providential gift of temperament thoroughly understood the middle-class point of view" 3 -a fact demonstrated in a thousand ways during the next halfcentury. bourne The young queen was fortunate in the personality of her first Lord MelMinister. Lord Melbourne cannot be counted among the greatest of English statesmen, but he has one supreme title to our gratitude: he guided Queen Victoria wisely, gently, and firmly in the paths of constitutional monarchy. The Queen was an apt pupil, but from the first hour of her reign the force of her own personality was apparent in all she did. Her Journal, June 20th, 1837, reads thus: "at nine came Lord Melbourne whom I saw in my room and of course quite alone as I shall always do all my Ministers. He kissed my hand and I then acquainted him that it had long 1 A. C. Benson, Letters of Queen Victoria, i. ; hereafter quoted as Q.V.L. The new been my intention to retain him and the rest of the present A short autumn session was devoted to the settlement of the Civil List new Civil List. The result is of historic significance, as marking the climax of the gradual change which had been in progress since the Revolution. Down to that time there had been no discrimination between the revenue of the Crown and that of the nation. The institution of the Civil List under William III. was the first attempt to clear up the confusion. The process then begun was carried further under his successors. The total sum voted to the Crown was gradually diminished, but with each diminution the Crown was relieved of charges which belonged more properly to Parliament. George II. received the hereditary revenues with a parliamentary guarantee that if they fell short of £800,000 a year the deficiency would be made good by Parliament. George III. placed the hereditary revenues for the first time at the disposal of Parliament, and accepted in return the minimum Civil List of his predecessor of £800,000 a year. William IV., on his accession, surrendered to Parliament not only the "hereditary revenues," but also certain miscellaneous and casual sources of revenue. turn he received a Civil List of £510,000 a year, divided into five departments, to each of which a specific annual sum was assigned. At the same time the Civil List was further relieved of various extraneous charges. The process was completed on the accession of Queen Victoria. The Civil List was then fixed at £385,000 a year, In re 1841] THE CANADIAN REBELLION 131 distributed as follows: (1) Privy Purse, £60,000; (2) Household Salaries, etc., £131,260; (3) Royal journeys, etc., £172,500; (4) Royal Bounty, £13,200; (5) Unappropriated, £8,040. The Crown still continued to enjoy the revenues of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, the latter being part of the appanage of the Prince of Wales.1 All other hereditary revenues were surrendered by the Queen to the nation, and the nation made an exceedingly good bargain. In 1837 the hereditary revenues amounted to less than £250,000 a year; in 1900 they were worth £452,000 a year-more than sufficient to pay the whole Civil List. But the arrangement was in reality no less advantageous to the Crown than to the nation. The sum voted to the Queen proved indeed, in the later years of the reign, inadequate to the maintenance of the Royal state, but the Crown had its reward. Increase in national expenditure could no longer be ascribed either to the extravagance of the Court or to its desire to exercise illicit political influence. adian Re After the settlement of the Civil List Parliament was adjourned The Canuntil February, but grave news from Canada led to its reassembling bellion on January 16th. For some time past the condition of Canada had given rise to considerable anxiety. Many causes combined to excite discontent, more particularly in Lower or French Canada, but foremost among them was the constitutional difficulty. To understand this a brief retrospect is necessary. The Canada which passed under the dominion of Great Britain in 1763 was French, Twenty years later there was superadded a British Canada, due largely to the immigration of the "United Empire loyalists," the expelled "Tories," from the Colonies which had cast off the British connection and become the United States. Between French and English, Roman Catholics and Protestants, friction, before long, This Pitt attempted to assuage in his Canada Constitutional Act of 1791, and, for the time being, with success. Under this Act Canada was divided into two Colonies: Upper and Lower, Ottawa and Quebec. In each there was to be a Governor, assisted by an Executive Council and a bi-cameral Legislature: a Council of nominees and an elected House of Representatives. In each land was set apart for the endowment of the dominant Church. For a time things went well, and in the war of 1812 the Canadians de1 The former now (1911) produces about £60,000 a year; the latter about £80,000. arose. Lord mission monstrated their loyalty to Great Britain, as they had in the War of American Independence. But the Constitution of 1791 had one crucial defect: the Executive was in no way responsible to the Legislature. This defect, combined with fiscal and ecclesiastical difficulties, ultimately led to the breakdown of the Constitution. In Lower Canada, in particular, there was a prolonged conflict between the Assembly and the Executive. Having no influence in the choice of any public functionary, no power to procure the removal of such as were obnoxious to it on merely political grounds, and seeing almost every office in the Colony filled by persons in whom it had no confidence, 'the Assembly' had recourse to that ultima ratio of representative power, to which the more prudent forbearance of the Crown has never driven the House of Commons in England, and endeavoured to disable the whole machinery of Government by a general refusal of the supplies." In Upper Canada the same root difficulty existed, but, not being complicated by racial differences, it presented itself in a less accentuated form. Led by a young Frenchman, Louis J. Papineau, a vain and selfseeking rhetorician, the French party in Lower Canada raised the standard of independence (1837). A party in Upper Canada, led by William Lyon Mackenzie, followed suit. In both Colonies the rebellion was ultimately suppressed without difficulty, but not before it had compelled the attention of the Home Government to the menacing condition of affairs in British North America. Hitherto the English Ministry had been disposed to minimize its significance. Early in 1838, however, they decided to suspend the Canadian Constitution and to send out Lord Durham as High Commissioner. From a personal point of view, Durham's mission to Canada was Durham's a fiasco; but the Report in which he embodied his views of the and Re- problem, and prescribed remedies for its solution, is the most port valuable State paper ever penned in reference to the evolution of Colonial self-government. Lord Durham recommended the union of the two Provinces; an increase in the numbers of the Legislative Council; a Civil List for the support of the officials; a reform of municipal government, and, above all, that the Colonial Executive should be made responsible to the Colonial Legislature. "We are not now to consider the policy of establishing representative 1 Lord Durham, Report on Canada, p, 81 (ed, Lucas); cf. also pp. 73, 75, and 77. |