1850 ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL. 355 On the 7th of March the subject of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was resumed, when Sir George Grey formally announced that the more stringent clauses were to be withdrawn, and that it would be confined to a simple declaration. of the illegality of these Titles. In this form it pleased nobody. It disappointed the expectations raised by the Durham Letter, and was viewed as a pitiful outcome of all the indignation and distrust with which press and platform had rung for months against the ambitious arrogance of the Papal hierarchy. It did not remove the objections of the statesmen who deprecated all legislative action on the subject; and it added another topic of grievance and agitation to those of which Ireland already cherished too many. Still the popular sentiment, that something must be done, to show that the country was as strongly Protestant at heart as ever, bore down every opposition. The debate upon the second reading went on for seven nights. Among those who spoke most vigorously against the Bill were Sir J. Graham, Gladstone, Roundell Palmer, Cobden, Bright, Roebuck, Milner Gibson, Hume; but on the division their supporters numbered only 95, while no fewer than 438 voted for the second reading. Notwithstanding this majority, the opposition to the measure in its subsequent stages was so obstinately continued, that it was not till the 6th of July that it was read a third time in the House of Commons. Two nights of debate sufficed for the discussion on the second reading in the House of Lords, where it was carried by 265 votes as against 38. The Bill underwent further discussion on two other nights, but was finally passed without alteration on the 29th of July. It soon afterwards received the Royal assent, and becoming, as its opponents predicted it would become, a dead letter, was repealed in 1871 (34 & 35 Vic. c. 53). In other respects, the session of 1851 was comparatively barren of legislation. Yielding to the objections urged to 356 CLOSE OF SESSION. 1850 his first Budget, Sir Charles Wood withdrew it for another, which he submitted to the House of Commons on the 5th of April. The Window Tax was totally repealed, and in its stead a House Tax substituted, of ninepence in the pound. An attempt by Mr. Herries to cut down the Income Tax, with a view to its total repeal, was defeated by a majority of only 48, but Mr. Hume succeeded in carrying a motion against the Government that the grant of this tax should be limited to one year. An important measure was passed for enabling the Court of Chancery, by the creation of new judicial offices, to perform its functions with more despatch. But the time lost in the discussions on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the distraction caused by the Great Exhibition, led to the postponement of many questions which might otherwise have pressed for a solution. CHAPTER XLII. THE anxiety caused by the prolonged Ministerial crisis had added so greatly to the fatigue of their busy and exhausting life in London, that the Queen and Prince were glad to snatch a few days of rest and pure air at Osborne, to which they went on the 8th of March. One of the extensive alterations devised there by the Prince, the remodelling of the valley which slopes from the lower terrace towards the sea—a piece of bold and most successful landscape-gardening-had just been completed. The Prince records his satisfaction with it in his diary; and the labours of a correspondence, always great, and now infinitely augmented by the preparations for the coming Exhibition, were agreeably relieved by the planting of rhododendrons and other shrubs, to give colour and richness to the new outlines of his landscape pictures. Greedily did he turn to the sweet restoratives which Nature ministered from the spectacle of Europe falling back into the trammels of irresponsible power. How he felt on this subject may be inferred from a few words in a letter at this time to Colonel Phipps :- An outbreak at Paris would be terrible, as giving the Russian reaction all over the Continent still further power and excuse.' The effect of this reaction in Germany touched him in his most sensitive point. Its influence had become paramount at Berlin. In one direction only was Russian policy acceptable to him. The efforts which Austria was now making to introduce her whole Empire into the German Bund-a project most 358 ARRANGEMENTS FOR OPENING 1851 obnoxious to the National German party-was viewed with no less hostility by Russia, to whom the accession of strength which this would have brought to Austria was as unpalatable as the idea of an United Germany. On the 25th of March the Court returned to London, and from this time the attention of the Prince was engaged night and day in the arrangements for opening the Exhibition on the 1st of May. The building had been completed and given over to the Commissioners by the 1st of January. It had risen with a rapidity wholly unexampled, and by its beauty and fitness had surpassed all that had been hoped from the ingenuity of its plan. Goods were now pouring in from all quarters, and the success of the Exhibition as a magnificent spectacle of the industry of all nations was no longer doubtful. It still, however, both at home and abroad, was the subject of attack. During the debate on the Address on the first night of the session, Colonel Sibthorp had prayed that hail or lightning might descend from heaven to defeat the ill-advised project. If others did not invoke doom on the structure itself, they were no less fervent in prophesying doom to property, to morals, nay, even to the State itself, as the inevitable result of bringing into London a concourse of all the bad characters in Europe. These fears, absurd at the best, became ludicrous in the light of the actual facts as they presented themselves in the holiday aspect of London during the next six months. But they cost the Prince and his coadjutors a world of trouble, Thackeray's 'May Day Ode' expressed to a nicety the prevailing feeling on the subject: This beautiful poem, cut from The Times, was preserved by the Prince, as it well deserved to be, among his private records of the Exhibition. 1851 THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 359 as may be seen by the following letter to the Dowager Duchess of Coburg: 'Just at present I am more dead than alive from overwork. The opponents of the Exhibition work with might and main to throw all the old women into panic and to drive myself crazy. The strangers, they give out, are certain to commence a thorough revolution here, to murder Victoria and myself, and to proclaim the Red Republic in England; the plague is certain to ensue from the confluence of such vast multitudes, and to swallow up those whom the increased price of everything has not already swept away. For all this I am to be responsible, and against all this I have to make efficient provision. 'Buckingham Palace, 15th April, 1851.' The project was also looked upon with coldness by several of the great Continental Powers, apparently from an apprehension that contact with English institutions might open dangerous lines of opinion in the minds of their subjects, who were sure to be drawn in considerable numbers to this country by the attractions of such an Exhibition. In the case of Prussia, the Government so alarmed the King with apprehensions of danger from Republican assassins, that, for a time, he prohibited the Prince and Princess of Prussia (now Emperor and Empress of Germany) from accepting the invitation of our Queen that they should be present at the opening. This prohibition, it is stated in Bunsen's Memoirs (vol. ii. p. 262), was finally withdrawn, rather in consideration of the decided wish of the Prince to make the proposed visit, than in consequence of the arguments and the evidence which Bunsen forcibly brought before His Majesty to prove the tales of conspiracy to be wholly fictitious, which in Continental Courts were received as credible.' Notwithstanding the absence of cordiality on the part of |