event proved that he had judged rightly of the exigencies of the nations. CHAPTER XIV. A HOPEFUL YEAR. Hopefulness all round--Ministers at the Fishmongers’--The Queen’s Speech--The Legislative Bill of Fare--The Queen and Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Church Policy--Release of Fenians--Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme for Disestablishing the Irish Church--The Debate in the Commons--The Second Reading Carried--The Bill in Committee--Read a Third Time--The Lords and the Bill--Amendments of the Peers--The Lords Bought Off--The Bill becomes Law--Mr. Lowe’s First Budget--The Endowed Schools Bill--The Habitual Criminals Act--The Lords and the Commons’ Legislation--Official Hostility to Reforming Ministers--Weak Members of the Cabinet--Mr. Reverdy Johnson and the _Alabama_ Claims--The Policy of “Masterly Inactivity”--Liberalism in France--Prince Leopold’s Illness--The Queen’s Interview with Mr. Carlyle--Visit of Ismail Pasha to the Queen--The Peabody Statue--Prince Alfred in Australia--The Prince of Wales and Court Dress--Death of Lord Derby--Death of Lady Palmerston--Opening of Blackfriars Bridge and Holborn Viaduct--O’Donovan Rossa, M.P.--Orangemen and Fenians. Hopefulness was the prevailing feeling with which the year 1869 was hailed by everybody. Politically the country was in a state of tranquillity. The democracy had won a great victory at the polls, and a new and brilliant ministry had been called to power to give effect to the will of the people. Trade, it is true, was still suffering from the shock of 1866. The supply of raw cotton was scarce, and high prices lessened the demand for the manufactured article. The policy of the Trades Unions aggravated the uneasiness of the mercantile community. Superficial observers began to declare that the Unionists, by hampering their employers at home, were driving trade abroad, and a demand for Protection, under the guise of Reciprocity, was heard, though as yet but faintly, amid the din of controversy. Some of the leading men in great commercial centres like Manchester were so impressed with the manifest ignorance of economic principles exhibited in these controversies that they started a series of evening lectures for working men on political economy, Professor Stanley Jevons undertaking to deliver the course.[292] On the other hand, the country was free from all difficulties as to foreign affairs--even the dispute with the United States as to the _Alabama_ claims was supposed to be in a fair way of settlement under the flattering unction of the American Minister’s post-prandial rhetoric. The first weeks of the year were enlivened by the trials of election petitions, and the new tribunal of judges appointed to try on the spot cases of corrupt practices, on the whole, gave general satisfaction, It was felt that if the new court was a judge without a jury, the old one--a committee of the House of Commons--was a