mainder being taken out of the balances in the 1867. Exchequer, or in plain English borrowed. There was some difference of opinion, though not so much as there ought to have been, upon the shabby proposal to burden the people of India with the payment of the Indian troops and shipping employed against the Abyssinians. Mr. Gladstone indeed argued, with technical accuracy, that the resolution would not make India one shilling the poorer, and that to reject it would not make her one shilling the richer, since the men would have to be paid in any case. But his reasoning was transparently fallacious. If India wanted the troops they ought not to be taken away from her; and if she did not want them she ought not to pay for them. Although Mr. Fawcett had very little support in resisting the demand, it was by this and similar efforts, not founded on special knowledge of the country, but on general principles of justice, that he acquired the honourable title of the Member for India. A speech from Sir Henry Rawlinson, eminent as a soldier and as an Oriental scholar, who alleged that India was interested in the maintenance of British "prestige," drew an emphatic protest from Lord Cranborne. If this war, said Lord Cranborne, was undertaken to procure the liberation of a British Envoy, it was justifiable. If its object was the maintenance of "prestige" it was a wicked war; and he wished that they could banish from their political vocabulary a word which had so unpleasant an etymological connection with deceit. His wish was not destined to be fulfilled. But no one would have joined in it more heartily than the Leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons.

It was not till the beginning of January 1868 1868. that Sir Robert Napier arrived in Abyssinia, and Magdala could not be attacked before the middle

1868.

Capture of
Magdala.

Suicide

of King Theodore.

July 2.

of April. During the march no resistance was
offered to the invaders; and provisions, being
punctually paid for, were readily supplied. The
real obstacles were the unhealthiness of the climate
and the steepness of the tracks. It was only after
the expedition had crossed the river Bashilo and
ascended the Arogee Pass, which leads to Magdala,
that King Theodore's men fired upon a mountain
battery under Colonel Milward. But they did not
kill a single member of Napier's force, and only
wounded nineteen; whereas the Snider rifles and
the mountain guns, directed by Sir Charles Staveley,
killed about five hundred of them, and wounded
some fifteen hundred more. Already the King had
set his prisoners free, nor
free, nor had he, in spite of
gloomy prognostications, touched a hair of their
heads. But he waited till the last moment, and
he waited too long. Magdala was carried by
storm, and as the British soldiers entered it he
blew out his brains. Sir Robert Napier, in the
picturesque language of Mr. Disraeli, hoisted the
standard of St. George upon the mountains of
Rasselas. In ordinary prose he burned the city,
destroyed the guns, removed the small European
population, and left Abyssinia to itself. Seldom

has a general been so completely successful with
so little bloodshed; and Sir Robert Napier came
home to receive the thanks of Parliament, with
the title Lord Napier of Magdala. It was natural
that Mr. Disraeli should exaggerate the importance,
as he underrated the cost, of the first military
expedition for which he had been responsible in
Cabinet. But efficiency may be shown in small
things as well as in great, and in this instance, if
considered apart from economy, it could not be too
highly praised.

CHAPTER III

THE IRISH CHURCH

THE education of the Conservative party in 1867 1868. did not extend to Ireland. Yet the arch-educator knew very well, no man better, the conditions of the Irish problem. Almost a quarter of a century earlier, on the 16th of February 1844, when he was organising the Young Englanders, and writing those political novels which have never in their own kind been surpassed, he told the House of Commons what the Irish policy of an English Minister should be. With epigrammatic terseness and pungency he described the causes of Irish discontent as a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church. Ireland had also the weakest Executive in the world. What would any intelligent and unprejudiced observer propose as the remedy for such a state of things? Revolution. But England prevented revolution. "What, Disraeli's then, was the duty of an English Minister? To rish effect by his policy all those changes which a revolution would accomplish by force. That was the Irish question in its integrity." Wise words, if only they had been followed by deeds. Memorable words in any case, not to be omitted in any record or estimate of the speaker's career. The time had now come when the capacity of Lord Derby's Government was to be tested, not by the mere suppression of Fenianism, an easy task

view of the

question.

1868.

Jan. 22.

Lord
Stanley's
Irish

enough, but by their power or impotence to cure the deeply rooted malady of which Fenianism was the outward manifestation.

A formal recognition of their duty Ministers were willing enough to make. Before the adjourned meeting of Parliament in February Lord Stanley attended a public dinner at Bristol. He desympathies. clared on that occasion that the painful, dangerous, and discreditable state of Ireland was hardly ever absent from the mind of any person who took part in public affairs. "I suppose," he said, "there never was a time when Englishmen of all parties and all classes were more anxious to give all reasonable satisfaction to Irish demands, and even, as far as can be done without national injury, to humour the feelings and prejudices of the Irish people." Ireland, he added, was the question of the hour, though a dying Parliament could not save it. So far, therefore, as the Foreign Secretary was concerned, the crimes of a few reckless men would not be allowed to stand between the Irish people and the concession of their just claims. Yet when the Houses met again for business on the 13th of February, what was the measure proposed for Ireland? Another suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the fourth in two years, to last till the 1st of March 1869. Of course the Bill passed without serious opposition. Even the Irish Members would not vote against it. But, strange to say, the House of Lords displayed a more critical spirit than the House of Commons. Lord Russell plainly and boldly denounced the Irish Church as a badge of conquest, and Lord Grey, the least sympathetic of men, referred to Irish sympathy with the "Manchester Martyrs" as a proof that remedial as well as coercive legislation was required. It was obvious that things could not go on as they were.

More coercion.

Feb. 24.

At this

moment the great Churchman who 1868.

Derby's

Prime

presided over the councils of the Ministry was Lord compelled to abandon his post. Although Lord resignation. Derby had not yet completed his seventieth year, his constitution had been shattered by constant attacks of gout, and for a few days in February his friends despaired of his life. The immediate danger passed away. But on the 24th of February his resignation was announced in the House of Peers by Lord Malmesbury, and in the House of Commons by his own son. Throughout his life he had been faithful to one institution only, and that was the very institution now so vigorously assailed. His son cared nothing for Churches, and to his official successor they were cards in the game of politics. Mr. Disraeli became Prime Min- Mr. Disraeli ister by the choice of the Queen, and with the Minister. acquiescence rather than the approval of his party. That he should have reached such a position at all is one of the greatest personal achievements in the history of England. Pitt, indeed, was younger by some forty years when he rose to the highest office under the Crown. But Pitt was the son of the greatest Minister in the eighteenth century, and he was educated for statesmanship from his mother's knee. Disraeli, though not without early friends, and even patrons, had to contend against the prejudice of race, the belief that he was unscrupulous, and the mass of indefinite reprobation which is summed up in the word "adventurer." He puzzled, He puzzled, he dazzled, he interested, he amused. He led the House of Commons with wonderful skill, and in the county of Buckingham no opponent had a chance against him. But serious people did not take him seriously, nor had he succeeded in acquiring the confidence of any one except a very few friends, such as Lord Stanley, Lord John Manners, and