Franchise--Disestablishment of Irish Church-Education Act of 1870--Wars in
China and Abyssinia--Purchase of Suez Canal Shares--Wars in Afghanistan,
Zululand, and Egypt--Home Rule Bill--Growth of the Empire and National
Progress.


We now continue our summary of public affairs. The Crimean War had been
finished, and the mutiny had broken out, whilst Lord Palmerston was
prime-minister. In 1858 he was obliged to resign his post; but he returned
to office next year, and this he held till his death in 1865. Under him
there was quiet both in home and in foreign affairs, and we managed to
keep from being mixed up with the great wars which raged abroad.

Seldom has a premier been better liked than Lord Palmerston. Nominally a
Whig, but at heart an old-fashioned Tory, he was first and foremost an
Englishman, ever jealous for Britain's credit and security. He was not
gifted with burning eloquence or biting sarcasm; but his vigour,
straightforwardness, good sense, and kindliness endeared him even to his
adversaries. Honestly indifferent to domestic reform, but a finished
master of foreign politics, he was of all men the man to guide the nation
through the ten coming years, which at home were a season of calm and
reaction, but troubled and threatening abroad.

Besides the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, we had another war with
China, as unjust as the opium war of sixteen years before, and quite as
successful. In 1856, the Canton authorities seized the crew of a Chinese
pirate which carried a British flag. Under strong pressure from British
officials, Commissioner Yeh surrendered the crew, but refused all apology,
whereupon Canton was bombarded. A twelvemonth later, it was stormed by the
British and French allied forces; Yeh was captured, and sent off to die at