1846-1848 had compelled his predecessor in 1845 to abandon Protection. In Russell proposed to meet the evil of the relations of landlord The year 1848 was a year of European revolution, in France, in Italy, and in Germany. The demand for constitutional government was everywhere put forth. In France it was associated with T 1848-1843 Socialism. In central Europe and in Italy, on the other hand. dissatisfaction with existing frontiers was the prominent feature. In Ireland, a number of young men imagined that they could play the part in which O'Connell had failed, and raise up armed resistance against England. One of these, Smith O'Brien, tried to put in practice their teaching by attacking a police station, but he was easily captured, and no attempt was made to follow his example. In England the Chartists thought the time had come to gain that supremacy for the mass of the nation which had been gained in France. Their leader, Feargus O'Connor, a half-mad member of Parliament, called on enormous numbers of them to meet on April 10 on Kensington Common, and to carry to the House of Commons a monster petition for the charter, said to be signed by 5,700,000 persons. The government declared the design to be illegal, as crowds are forbidden by law to present petitions, and called on all who would to serve as special constables—that is to say, to act as policemen for the day. No less than 200,000 enrolled themselves, whereas, when the appointed day came, no more than 25,000 persons assembled on Kensington Common, many of whom were not Chartists. Those who were Chartists formed a procession intending to cross Westminster Bridge. The Duke of Wellington had posted soldiers in the houses on the Middlesex side of the bridge, to be used in case of necessity, but he left the special constables to stop the procession. This they did without difficulty. There was, however, no attempt to stop the presentation of the petition, which was carried in a cab to the House of Commons, and found to bear 2,000 signatures. Many columns of these were, however, in the same handwriting, and some who actually signed it wrote false names. For all this there was a large number of Chartists in England; but, on the other hand, there was a still larger number of persons who were resolved that, whatever changes might be made in the constitution, they should not be brought about by the exertion of physical force. The attempt to change existing European order failed as completely on the continent as it did in England. By the end of 1848 reaction prevailed over the whole continent. In England the ministry was supported, not merely as the representative of order against turbulence, but also as the representative of free trade against protection. In 1849 the Navigation 1849-1852 Act was repealed, and foreign shipping admitted to compete with English. Yet the Government only maintained itself by depending on the votes of the Peelites, and in 1850 Peel unfortunately, died in consequence of a fall from his horse. Later in the year the Pope appointed Roman Catholic bishops to English sees, and an excited public opinion saw in this an attack on the queen's authority. In 1851 Russell introduced an Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, declaring all acts done by the Roman Catholic bishops, and all deeds bestowing property to them under the new titles, to be null and void. This bill alienated the Peelites and advanced Liberals like Bright and Cobden. In February the ministry resisted a proposal to lower the county franchise, and resigned. Lord Stanley, however, declined to form a ministry, and Russell and his followers returned to office. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was passed in a modified form, but it was never in a single instance put in execution and was ultimately repealed. In 1851 people thought less of politics than of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, where the produce of the world was to be seen in the enormous glass house known as the Crystal Palaceafterwards removed to Penge Hill. The exhibition was a useful undertaking suggested by Prince Albert, and it served its purpose in teaching English manufacturers that they might improve their own work by studying the work of foreigners. On December 2, 1851, Louis Napoleon dissolved the Assembly in France, and was named President for ten years, with institutions which made him practically the master of the state. In England Lord Palmerston not only approved of the proceeding, but expressed his approval to the French ambassador, though the Cabinet was for absolute neutrality; whereupon he was dismissed from office. Early in 1852 he took his revenge by declaring against the ministry on a detail in a Militia Bill. The ministers, finding themselves in a minority, resigned office. Lord Stanley, who had recently become Earl of Derby by his father's death, now formed a ministry out of the Protectionist party, and declared that the question whether free trade or protection should prevail was one to be settled by a new Parliament to be elected in the summer of 1852. The real master of the Government was Disraeli, who had succeeded to the nominal as well as to the actual leadership of his party in the House of Commons upon the death of Lord George Bentinck in 1848, and who now became 1862 Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli knew well that the feeling of the country was in favor of free trade, and he astonished his colleagues and supporters by declaring his admiration of its blessings. The elections, when they took place, left the Government in a minority. On the meeting of the new Parliament, the first ques tion needing solution was whether the dissensions between Russel and Palmerston, and between the Whigs and Peelites, could be made up so as to form a united opposition, and the second, whether the Government could contrive to renounce Protection without complete loss of dignity. The Duke of Wellington had died before Parliament met, and his death served to remind people how he had again and again abandoned political positions with credit, by stating with perfect frankness that his opinions were unchanged, but that circumstances made it no longer possible or desirable to give effect to them. Soon after the meeting of Parliament, Villiers, the old champion of free trade, brought forward a resolution, declaring a repeal of the Corn Laws to have been "wise, just, and beneficial." Those who had once been Protectionists shrank from condemning so distinctly a policy which they had formerly defended; but when Pal merston came to their help by proposing in a less offensive form a resolution which meant much the same as that of Villiers, he was supported by the greater number of them, and his motion was car ried with only fifty-three dissentients. Disraeli then brought for ward an ingenious budget, which was rejected by the House, upon which the Derby Ministry resigned. If Disraeli had not succeeded in maintaining his party in power, at least he had freed it from the unpopular burden of attachment to protection, and had made it capable of rising to power in the future. Before he left office Louis Napoleon became, by popular vote, Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. Chapter LIX THE CRIMEAN WAR AND THE END OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. LEADING DATES 1852-1858 THE ABERDEEN MINISTRY, 1852-WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND TURKEY, INCE the accession to power of Lord Grey's ministry, in 1830, the opinions of Bentham had gained the upper hand, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number had become the inspiring thought of statesmen. Free trade was regarded, not merely as desirable because it averted starvation, but as uniting nations together in commercial bonds. Nothing was more common in 1851 and 1852 than to hear sensible men predict that the era of wars was past, and that nations trafficking with one another would have no motive for engaging in strife. The fierce passions evoked by the struggles for nationality in 1848 were forgotten, and a time of peace and prosperity regarded as permanently established. There had, indeed, been signs that it was impossible to bring all men to forsake the pursuit of ideal truth. In 1827 Keble published the first edition of the Christian Year, and in the following years a body of writers at Oxford, of whom the most prominent were Newman and Pusey, did their best to inspire the rising generation with the belief that the Church of England had a life of its own independent of the state or of society, and that its true doctrines were those which had been taught in the earlier centuries of the Church's existence. Their teaching was not unlike that of Laud, though without Laud's leaning upon the state, and with a reverence for the great medieval ecclesiastics and their teachings which Laud had not possessed. In Scotland, reaction against state interference took another turn. Large numbers of |