In the early part of 1843 a very painful incident occurred, which excited the liveliest sympathy of the Queen and Prince Albert, and which for a time seemed to place the life of Sir Robert Peel in jeopardy. On the 20th of January, a man named Daniel McNaughten shot Mr. Edward Drummond, the private secretary of the Premier, as he was passing along Whitehall between the Admiralty and the Horse Guards. The unfortunate gentleman expired on the 25th of the same month, and some were found to maintain that the fatal issue was due more to the bleeding ordered by his medical attendants than to the effects of the pistol-shot. However this may have been, it is certain that the practice of phlebotomy decreased shortly after this melancholy event, and has never since regained the position it once held in medical practice. McNaughten, on being seized, and conveyed to the nearest police-station, declared that the Tories had been persecuting him for many years, and that that was his justification for committing the act. From this expression, and some others to which he gave utterance, it was inferred that his intention was to shoot Sir Robert Peel, and that he mistook Mr. Drummond for the First Minister, to whom the secretary seems to have borne some slight resemblance. The public mind was much excited by what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to make the head of the Government personally responsible for a supposed, and doubtless an imaginary, wrong. Taken in conjunction with the recent attacks upon the Queen, the crime was thought by many to reveal a widespread conspiracy against the deepest principles of social order, and the alarm in Court circles, and amongst the members of the Administration, was naturally very great. Of course there was exaggeration in this feeling; matters were not really so bad as they appeared. But for some time it was considered necessary that Sir Robert Peel should be guarded by policemen in plain clothes, and measures were taken to protect the Court. Alluding to the assassination in a letter to King Leopold, dated January 31st, the Queen observes:--“Poor Drummond is universally regretted. Indeed, I seldom remember so strong an interest (beginning with ourselves) being taken in, and so much feeling so generally shown towards, a private individual. People can hardly think of anything else. I trust it will have the beneficial effect of making people feel the difference between complete madness, which deprives a man of _all_ sense, and madness which does _not_ prevent a man from knowing right from wrong.” This distinction does not seem to have been present to the minds of the jury before whom McNaughten was tried early in March. They returned a verdict that the prisoner was “Not guilty, on the ground of insanity;” and he was ordered to be kept in confinement during her Majesty’s pleasure. The public, however, were greatly [Illustration: “REBECCA” RIOT IN SOUTH WALES. (_See p. 138_)]