104 COLLAPSE OF CHARTISM. 1848 when the leading conspirators were met for deliberation at their various haunts, the police made a descent upon them so sudden, that they found themselves without the power of resistance. Most of them were armed to the teeth, some with iron breastplates; and large quantities of weapons, ammunition, and tow-balls, for use in setting fire to the public buildings, were found in the houses where they were arrested. The men themselves were beyond conception contemptible, and their plans, although wildly mischievous, were absolutely childish. It was, therefore, hard to believe that the public safety had ever been in actual danger from them. But although the names of their leaders, Cuffey, Lacy, Jay, and Mullins, became a laughing-stock in the country, it was well both for the country and for themselves, that through the treachery of their confederates they were brought to justice without even the opportunity of attempting the measures of rapine and spoliation, which were the only intelligible part of their programme. In the concluding paragraph of the following letter to Baron Stockmar the Prince makes a remark on the tendency of people to underrate a public danger when it is past, which it is well to bear in mind, for it admits of being applied to much that is said and done in reference to matters of public policy, both domestic and foreign : 'We intend to sail, the day Parliament rises, on a visit for fourteen days to Balmoral, my new property in Aberdeenshire, to which we are strongly urged by Clark, and, as far as I am concerned, by some little curiosity also. Besides the two elder children, we take with us Affie [Prince Alfred], who is still not quite well. Clark promises that Scotland will set everything to rights. . . . In politics things are still somewhat hazy. Our Irish would-be rebellion is suppressed, and the ringleaders 1848 CLOSE OF SESSION. 105 will certainly be convicted and transported. In London and all the great English towns, on the very night that a general rising of the Chartists was to have taken place, the leaders of the conspiracy, to a man, were seized and imprisoned neatly and simultaneously. The plan was imitated from the Parisian ouvriers, and shells with nails in them had been prepared after the Parisian model; but these gentry have not the same elements to work upon here as in Paris. . . The affair will do good, as the dislike of the well-to-do to being compelled to pay for an increase of the police force had already become great, and the very people who force the Government in the moment of danger into extreme measures, as soon as the danger is past, abuse the Government for having adopted them. . . 'Osborne, 20th August, 1818. The sitting of Parliament, which had been protracted through no less than ten months, came to a close on the 5th of September, when it was prorogued by the Queen in person. On this occasion the new House of Lords was used for the first time, and its splendour was heightened by the unusual brilliancy of the assemblage which received the Sovereign within its walls. The day was bright, and immense crowds along the route from Buckingham Palace had been at pains to show, that, amid the crash of thrones, their devotion to the Queen and to the Constitution had suffered no abatement. "I acknowledge,' said Her Majesty with marked emphasis on this part of the Royal Speech, with grateful feelings the many marks of loyalty and attachment which I have received from all classes of my people.' Not less noticeable was the expression given to the words, in which Her Majesty referred with justifiable pride to the reciprocal faith in monarch and in people which had borne them triumphantly through the trials of the past, and was 106 QUEEN'S SPEECH. 1848 the best guarantee for strength and tranquillity in the future. 'The strength of our institutions has been tried, and has not been found wanting. I have studied to preserve the people committed to my charge in the enjoyment of that temperate freedom which they so justly value. My people, on their side, feel too sensibly the advantages of order and security to allow the promoters of pillage and confusion any chance of success in their wicked designs.' CHAPTER XXIX. IMMEDIATELY after proroguing Parliament, the Queen and Prince proceeded to Woolwich, where the Royal squadron was waiting to convey them to Aberdeen on their way to Balmoral. About eight o'clock on the morning of the 7th of September, Aberdeen harbour was reached; and although this was nearly twenty-four hours earlier than was expected, the municipal authorities were on the alert to give the Royal visitors an appropriate welcome to the fair city of Bon Accord. The Prince was presented before landing with the freedom of the city, and subsequently visited the two Universities, the Museum, and the great granite quarries in the neighbourhood. Next day the Royal party drove to Balmoral, full of eager anticipation as to their future Highland home. Neither were they disappointed. The attention of the Royal physician, Sir James Clark, had been called by his son, now Sir John Clark, to the fine air and other attractions of this part of Deeside as a summer and autumn residence. Having satisfied himself on these points, he had urged the Queen and Prince to acquire the lease of the Balmoral estate from the Earl of Aberdeen, into whose hands it had come upon the death of Sir Robert Gordon in 1847. The lease was only for thirty-eight years from the year 1836; but the property was found to possess so completely the good qualities which had led to its being selected, that the Prince purchased 108 FIRST VISIT TO BALMORAL. 1848 the fee simple of it in 1852 from the trustees of the Earl of Fife. Apart from the beauty of the surrounding scenery, the dry bracing character of the air was precisely what, in Sir James Clark's opinion, was most essential for the peculiar constitutions of the Queen and Prince. The whole of Deeside, from Charleston of Aboyne to Castleton of Braemar, he held to be one of the driest districts of Scotland, and especially of the Highlands, and no spot along the valley to be more favoured in this respect than Balmoral. The causes of this were twofold: first, the sandy gravelly nature both of the lowlands and of the greater part of the surrounding hills; and next, the fact that the rain-clouds from the sea break and discharge themselves upon the range of mountains which lies between Braemar and the Atlantic, before they reach Deeside. On the 15th of September Sir James Clark writes: 'We have been here a week-the weather beautiful, and the place as regards healthiness of site and beauty of scenery, exceeding my expectations, great as they were.' The first impressions made by the place upon the Queen and Prince have been graphically described in the Leaves from Her Majesty's Journal. Looking down from the hill which overhangs the house,' Her Majesty writes (8th September), the view is charming. To the left you look to the beautiful hills surrounding Loch-na-Gar, and to the right towards Ballater, to the glen (or valley) along which the Dee winds, with beautiful wooded hills, which reminded us very much of the Thüringer Wald. It was so calm and so solitary, it did one good as one gazed around, and the pure mountain air was most refreshing. All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils. The scenery is wild and yet not desolate; and everything looks much more prosperous and cultivated than at Laggan. Then the soil is delightfully dry. We walked beside the Dee, a beautiful rapid stream, which is |