Great Britain's Foreign Policy: The Trent Affair and the Alabama Case

Great Britain could not keep entirely free from Continental and American affairs. When the Polish insurrection broke out, in 1863, Lord John Russell, foreign minister in Palmerston's cabinet, upheld the cause of the Poles, but refused to join Napoleon III in a war in their behalf with Russia. Russell also defended the integrity of Denmark, when in 1864 Bismarck made war on that kingdom and compelled the king, Christian IX, to renounce his right over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. After Palmerston's death, in 1865, Great Britain remained absolutely neutral during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871.

Relations with America were more serious. The Civil War stirred the British people deeply, and the opinions and sympathies of statesmen and people alike were much divided. In the main the upper classes and government officials, even Gladstone among the number, upheld the cause of the South,' while the working classes and radical leaders, like John Bright, who hated slavery, were almost to a man in sympathy with the North. Russell refused to join with Napoleon III in recognizing the Southern States, but came very near going to war in what is known as the Trent Affair. In 1861 the Confederate government had sent two Southerners, Mason and Slidell, on an English mail steamer, The Trent, to seek aid abroad. Captain Wilkes of the United States navy stopped the steamer and took off the envoys. Great Britain, on the ground that the right to search neutral vessels in time of war had been given up by the European powers at the Congress of Paris, in 1856, demanded the surrender of the commissioners. The United States had not been represented at the Congress of Paris, and many in the North were inclined to resist Great Britain's demand. But President Lincoln declared that the United States had always opposed the right of search; and the queen and the prince consort threw their influence on the side of peace. The United States surrendered the commissioners and the crisis was safely passed.

Lord John Russell was strangely negligent in allowing the Confederate government to fit out in English ports a number of cruisers, of which the chief was the Alabama, and to send them out to prey on the commerce of the North. For this indiscretion England was compelled to pay $15,500,000 in 1871. The sympathy of the working class with the Northern cause was the more remarkable in that the Northern blockade of Southern ports brought on a cotton famine in Lancashire that caused terrible distress among the employees of the cotton mills, and affected workmen in other trades also. Yet their abhorrence of slavery outweighed their personal discomfort, and their noble self-sacrifice without doubt influenced the government, always susceptible to public opinion, to preserve strict neutrality.

New Parties and New Issues

The working classes were growing in importance and influence. Their material condition was improving; and they had not only begun to band together in trade unions and federations, but were holding congresses to discuss questions relating to themselves and their welfare. They began to agitate for legislation in their own behalf, and continued the work of the Chartists, but by entirely different methods. They saw that their first efforts must be directed to the great task of obtaining the right to vote. As long, however, as Palmerston lived and the old Liberals were in control, little was to be expected. The old Liberals disliked the Radicals, and were satisfied with the results of the reform of 1832, a fact that was proved in 1859 and again in 1860, when reform measures were definitely rejected by the House of Commons.

After Palmerston's death in 1865, new ideas and influences began to prevail, and a new, Liberal party to come to the front. This party, whose leader was Gladstone, adopted in part the doctrines of the Radicals, and, discarding the old idea of laissez faire, began to advocate a wider suffrage and new legislation for the improvement of the masses. The cry was “peace, retrenchment, and reform." Side by side with the new liberalism went a new conservatism, the chief exponent of which was Disraeli. The members of the new Conservative party laid more stress upon legislation for the people than upon the extension of the suffrage; that is, they believed in government for the people rather than by the people.

They believed in a moderate extension of the suffrage, but held that legislative power should be in the hands of educated and wealthy men.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI (Earl ofBeaconsfield).

From a photograph.

Their leading articles of political faith were a firm foreign policy, an extension of British territory in all parts of the world, and a federation of all the colonies in a great British empire. This policy differed from that of the Liberals in that it entailed, not peace, but war; not retrenchment, but heavy expenditures on army and navy; not legislation shaped only for the United Kingdom, but legislation for the greater Britain at home and beyond the seas.

The Second Reform Bill

Now that both parties favored an extension of the franchise, electoral reform could not long be delayed. The high-minded sacrifices of the Lancashire employees, the victory of the North in the Civil War in America, and the manner in which a victorious democratic government had dealt with the conquered South, disbanded its army, and returned to the ways of peace ; meetings of London workingmen in Hyde Park and other meetings held in the great cities of the centre and north, at which the right to vote was demanded, all these events influenced the policy of parties. In 1866 the Russell-Gladstone ministry brought in a reform bill, but it was defeated by a party of old Liberals, known as the Adullamites, who opposed electoral reform. The Derby-Disraeli ministry that followed introduced- another bill, because it desired to show the working classes that, after all, the Conservatives were their best friends. This measure, after many amendments, was passed in August, 1867.

This reform bill of 1867 granted a suffrage that was far from universal. It reduced the property qualification in the boroughs to the payment of taxes; that is, it gave the right to vote to all householders instead of, as formerly, only to those who occupied houses worth £10 a year. It also allowed all lodgers to vote who had resided for a year in the borough and occupied rooms renting for at least £10 a year unfurnished. Thus the boroughs were greatly benefited by the bill. The counties were not so favored. The only change that was made in them was the reduction of the property qualification of the tenant-at-will from £50 to £12. Seats in parliament were redistributed, though in this particular the reform was very incomplete. Eleven boroughs lost their seats and thirty-five more were reduced from two members to one each. Of the fifty-eight seats thus gained, nineteen were given to English boroughs, thirty to English counties, and nine to Scotland. The reform gave the franchise for the first time to the workingmen of the cities, and so destroyed the supremacy of the middle classes, who had been in control since 1832. Though agricultural laborers and miners were still denied the right to vote, England became in large part a democratic state.