It was a tranquil Session, during which hardly one party division was challenged in the Lower House. Though Lord John (now Earl) Russell had virtually abandoned his Reform Bill, the artisans in some of the large towns still kept alive the agitation for Parliamentary Reform. The country, however, seemed apathetic on the subject. How to give the best of the working men votes without at the same time enfranchising those who were unworthy, seemed to most people an insoluble problem. The American Civil War and the triumph of the Protectionists in Australia also rendered Englishmen somewhat sceptical as to the beneficial results of a democratic franchise. A Bankruptcy Bill was carried. It was not a party measure, and it was the only Ministerial Bill bearing on domestic affairs the passing of which in 1861 calls for record. When Parliament was prorogued on the 6th of August, the only shadow on the horizon of the future discernible by the Queen was the prospect of a cotton famine in Lancashire. Her Majesty’s anxiety on this subject was also apparently shared by Lord Palmerston. Writing to Mr. Milner Gibson about the matter in June, Lord Palmerston wistfully asked if the Board of Trade or any other department had any means of helping the country to make good the deficiency in the cotton supply which the Civil War in America was sure to cause. “As to our manufacturers,” he writes, “they will do nothing unless directed and pushed on. They are some of the most helpless and shortsighted of men. They are like the people who held out their dishes and prayed that it might rain plum-puddings. They think it is enough to open their mill-gates, and that cotton will come of its own accord. They say they have for years been looking to India as a source of supply; but their looks seem to have had only the effect of the eyes of the rattlesnake, namely, to paralyse the object looked at, and as yet it has shown no signs of falling into their jaws.”[103] On the 16th of August the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia and their children left Osborne for Germany. Next day her Majesty, the Prince Consort, and the Princess Alice visited the grave of the Duchess of Kent at Frogmore, celebrating there in sorrow a birthday anniversary which had hitherto brought joy every year to the Royal circle. They placed wreaths on the tomb, and felt, writes the Queen to King Leopold, “that it was only the earthly robe of her we loved so much that was there--the pure, tender, loving spirit is above, and free from all suffering and woe.... The first birthday in another world, must have been a far brighter one than any birthday in the poor world below.”[104]