carry off, as a solatium, some dozens of College port. Cambridge, it is only fair to say, never fell quite so low as Oxford, and began to reform itself earlier. The Mathematical and Classical Triposes were both founded before Queen Victoria’s accession. But public opinion thought that the University authorities needed some stimulation from outside, and in 1850 a Royal Commission was appointed for Oxford, and two years later another for Cambridge. The Reports of these two Commissions are very amusing, especially that of the Oxford Board, which lets itself go in a refreshing style. Its members had received provocation. The Governing Bodies generally refused to answer their questions. Some of the Colleges had exacted an oath from new Fellows to reveal nothing about the affairs of the College. The Dean of Christ Church declined to answer letters from the Royal Commission; the President of Magdalen replied that he was not aware that he had misused his revenues, and begged to close the correspondence. These dignified potentates are not spared in the Report. The Cambridge Report, which is much more polite, did good service by recommending the foundation of a medical school. Changes later, such as the abolition of all Anglican privileges, and the permission of Fellows to marry, came later. In the case of the Universities, as in that of the Law, the improvements between 1837 and the first Jubilee were enormous.

The Civil Service, it is almost needless to say, was a sanctuary of aristocratic jobbery. The Clerks were languid gentlemen with long whiskers, who arrived late and departed early from their Offices.

The Army in 1837 consisted, in actual strength, of about 100,000 men, of whom 19,000 were in India and 20,000 in Ireland. There had been a strong movement after the peace to abolish the army altogether, on the ground that another war was almost unthinkable. The Duke of Wellington was only able to keep up this small force by hiding it away in distant parts of the empire; the total number of troops in Great Britain was only 26,000. Officers were ordered to efface themselves by never wearing uniform except on parade. A Royal Duke could not be given a military funeral, because ‘there were not troops enough to bury a Field Marshal.’ As to the quality of the troops, the Duke frequently called them ‘the scum of the earth,’ and the brutal discipline of the time did everything to justify this description, for the soldier was supposed to have surrendered all his rights as a man and a citizen. The privates enlisted for life or for twenty-one years, and it was so difficult to get recruits that they were frequently caught while drunk, or frankly kidnapped. They were dressed, for campaigning in the tropics, in high leather stocks and buttoned up jackets, so that hundreds died of heat apoplexy. Lord Wolseley thinks that in 1837 50,000 Frenchmen could have easily taken London. Nor was the danger of a French invasion at all remote. The Volunteer movement, the social effects of which were excellent, was mainly due to the Prince Consort, a far wiser man than was recognised during his lifetime.

The Crimean War revealed in glaring colours the incompetence of the military authorities and of the Cabinet at home. If we had been fighting against any European power except Russia, with whom utter mismanagement is a tradition, there can be no doubt that our army would have been destroyed, as it ought to have been at Inkerman. The military credit of the nation was only partially restored by the prompt suppression of the Indian Mutiny. Yet here again the age of hope and progress made good its professions. The mistakes in the Boer War seem not to have been nearly so bad as those in the Crimea.

It would be easy to go through the other departments of national life—the Navy, Finance, Colonial and Indian Policy, the growth and distribution of Wealth, Locomotion and Transport, Education, Science, Medicine and Surgery, and to prove that the progress during the reign of Queen Victoria was quite unprecedented. The creed of optimism was natural and inevitable at such a time, though cool heads might remember the line of Publilius Syrus,

Ubi nil timetur, quod timeatur nascitur.

Lecky, a historian with some practical experience of politics, deliberately stated his opinion that no country was ever better governed than England between 1832 and 1867, the dates of the first Reform Bill and of Disraeli’s scheme to dish the Whigs. As far as internal affairs go, it would not be easy to prove him wrong. The one prime necessity for good government was present; those who paid the taxes were also those who imposed them. If there was some false economy, as there was in the Crimean War, sound finance benefited the whole population by keeping credit high, interest low, and taxation light. Political life was purer than it had been, and purer probably than it is now. The House of Commons enjoyed that immense prestige which has been completely lost since the old Queen’s death. The debates were read with semi-religious fervour by every good citizen over his breakfast, and a prominent politician was treated with even more exaggerated reverence than our worthy grandfathers paid to bishops. The debates were good because they were real debates and conducted by men who all spoke the same language. The rhetorical methods of the working man are quite different from those of the gentry, and mutual annoyance is generated by the mixture of styles in debate. Above all, the House of Commons was still a rather independent body. The history of England shows that as soon as the Commons freed themselves from the control of the king, they began to try to free themselves from the control of the constituencies. They debated in secret; they made their persons legally sacrosanct; and on several occasions they turned out a member who had been duly elected by his constituents, and admitted a member who had been duly rejected. These encroachments could not last long. The Bradlaugh case was the last attempt to repeat the tactics by which Wilkes was kept out of Parliament; but until the poisonous delegate theory obtained currency, the member of Parliament was a real legislator, with a right to think, speak and vote for himself. During the middle part of the reign, the dramatic duel between Gladstone and Disraeli gave a heroic aspect to party politics, and kept up the public interest.

In foreign politics it is not so easy to share Lecky’s opinion. The opium war against China, and the Crimean War, were blunders which hardly anyone now defends; and Palmerston’s habit of bullying weak foreign powers did not really raise our prestige. For a long time we could not make up our minds whether France or Russia was the potential enemy; a vacillation which proved that the balance of power, which we thought so necessary for our safety, already existed. Our statesmen were blind to the menace from Germany, down to the end of the reign and later. The Crimean War only increased the friction between France and England. The French fortified Cherbourg, and talked openly of invasion. In 1860 Flahault, the French ambassador in London, said bluntly that ‘his great object was to prevent war between the two countries.’

This prolonged jealousy and suspicion between the two western powers made it impossible for England to exercise much influence on the Continent. The settlement after 1815 handed over central and eastern Europe to governments of the type which it is the fashion to call reactionary. Russia, Prussia, and Austria, acting together, were not to be resisted. And so the