and gloom. The serious losses which the war entailed, the
heavy expenses which it involved, and the large force which
it absorbed, filled thoughtful men with anxiety.
No one felt more sincerely for the sufferings of her soldiers, and no one regretted more truly the useless prolongation of the struggle, than the venerable lady who occupied the throne. She had herself lost a grandson (Prince Christian Victor) in South Africa; and sorrow and The death of the queen. anxiety perhaps told even on a constitution so unusually strong as hers. About the middle of January 1901 it was known that she was seriously ill; on the 22nd she died. The death of the queen thus occurred immediately after the close of the century over so long a period of which her reign had extended.
The queen’s own life is dealt with elsewhere (see Victoria, Queen), but the Victorian era is deeply marked in English history. During her reign the people of Great Britain doubled their number; but the accumulated wealth of the country increased at least threefold, and its trade sixfold. All classes shared the prevalent prosperity. Notwithstanding the increase of population, the roll of paupers at the end of the reign, compared with the same roll at the beginning, stood as 2 stands to 3; the criminals as 1 to 2. The expansion abroad was still more remarkable. There were not 200,000 white persons in Australasia when the queen came to the throne; there were nearly 5,000,000 when she died. The great Australian colonies were almost created in her reign; two of them—Victoria and Queensland—owe their name to her; they all received those autonomous institutions, under which their prosperity has been built up, during its continuance. Expansion and progress were not confined to Australasia. The opening months of the queen’s reign were marked by rebellion in Canada. The close of it saw Canada one of the most loyal portions of the Empire. In Africa, the advance of the red line which marks the bounds of British dominion was even more rapid; while in India the Punjab, Sind, Oudh and Burma were some of the acquisitions added to the British empire while the queen was on the throne. When she died one square mile in four of the land in the world was under the British flag, and at least one person out of every five persons alive was a subject of the queen.
Material progress was largely facilitated by industry and invention. The first railways had been made, the first steamship had been built, before the queen came to the throne. But, so far as railways are concerned, none of the great trunk lines had been constructed in 1837; the whole capital authorized to be spent on railway construction did not exceed £55,000,000; and, five years after the reign had begun, there were only 18,000,000 passengers. The paid-up capital of British railways in 1901 exceeded £1,100,000,000; the passengers, not including season ticket-holders, also numbered 1,100,000,000; and the sum annually spent in working the lines considerably exceeded the whole capital authorized to be spent on their construction in 1837. The progress of the commercial marine was still more noteworthy. In 1837 the entire commercial navy comprised 2,800,000 tons, of which less than 100,000 tons were moved by steam. At the end of the reign the tonnage of British merchant vessels had reached 13,700,000 tons, of which more than 11,000,000 tons were moved by steam. At the beginning of the reign it was supposed to be impossible to build a steamer which could either cross the Atlantic, or face the monsoon in the Red Sea. The development of steam navigation since then had made Australia much more accessible than America was in 1837, and had brought New York, for all practical purposes, nearer to London than Aberdeen was at the commencement of the reign. Electricity had even a greater effect on communication than steam on locomotion; and electricity, as a practical invention, had its origin in the reign. The first experimental telegraph line was only erected in the year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne. Submarine telegraphy, which had done so much to knit the empire together, was not perfected for many years afterwards; and long ocean cables were almost entirely constructed in the last half of the reign. (S. W.)
On the death of Queen Victoria, the prince of Wales succeeded to the throne, with the title of Edward VII. (q.v.). The coronation fixed for June in the following year was at the last moment stopped by the king’s illness with appendicitis, but he recovered marvellously from the operation Reign of Edward VII. and the ceremony took place in August. His excellent health and activity in succeeding years struck every one with astonishment. The Boer War had at last been brought to an end in May 1902 (see Transvaal), and the king had the satisfaction of seeing South Africa settle down and eventually receive self-government. The political history of his reign, which ended with his death in May 1910, is dealt with in detail in separate biographical and other articles in this work (see especially those on Lord Salisbury, Mr A. J. Balfour, Mr J. Chamberlain, Lord Rosebery, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, Mr H. H. Asquith, Mr D. Lloyd George, and on the history of the various portions of the British Empire); and in this place only a summary need be given. The king himself (see Edward VII.), who nobly earned the title of Edward the Peacemaker, played no small part in the domestic and international politics of these years; and contemporary publicists, who had become accustomed to Victorian traditions, gradually realized that, within the limits of the constitutional monarchy, there was much more scope for the initiative of a masculine sovereign in public life than had been supposed by the generation which grew up after the death of his father in 1862. Edward VII. made the Crown throughout all classes of society a popular power which it had not been in England for long ages. And while the growing rivalry between England and Germany, in international relations, was continually threatening danger, his influence in cementing British friendship on all other sides was of the most marked description. His sudden death was felt, not only throughout the empire but throughout the world, with even more poignant emotion than that of Queen Victoria herself, for his personality had been much more in the forefront.
The end of his reign coincided with a domestic constitutional
crisis, to which party politics had been working up more and
more acutely for several years. The Tariff Reform
propaganda of Mr Chamberlain (q.v.) in 1903 convulsed
the Conservative party, and the long period of Unionist
The Crisis
of 1910.
domination came to an end in November 1905. Mr
Balfour (q.v.), who became prime minister in 1902 on Lord
Salisbury’s retirement, resigned, and was succeeded by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman
(q.v.), as head of the Liberal party; and
the general election of January 1906 resulted in an overwhelming
victory for the Liberals and their allies, the Labour party (now
a powerful force in politics) and the Irish Nationalists. Just
before Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s death in April 1908 he
was succeeded as prime minister by Mr Asquith, a leader of far
higher personal ability though with less hold on the affections of
his party. The Liberals had long arrears to make up in their
political programme, and their supremacy in the House of
Commons was an encouragement to assert their views in legislation.
In several directions, and notably in administration, they
carried their policy into effect; but the House of Lords (see
Parliament) was an obvious stumbling-block to some of their
more important Bills, and the Unionist control of that House
speedily made itself felt, first in wrecking the Education Bill of
1906, then in throwing out the Licensing Bill of 1908, and finally
(see Lloyd George, D.) in forcing a dissolution by the rejection
of the budget of 1909, with its novel proposals for the increased
taxation of land and licensed houses. The Unionist party in
the country had, meanwhile, been recovering from the Tariff
Reform divisions of 1903, and was once more solid under Mr
Balfour in favour of its new and imperial policy; but the campaign
against the House of Lords started by Mr Lloyd George
and the Liberal leaders, who put in the forefront the necessity
of obtaining statutory guarantees for the passing into law of
measures deliberately adopted by the elected Chamber, resulted
in the return of Mr Asquith’s government to office at the election
of January 1910. The Unionists came back equal in numbers to
the Liberals, but the latter could also count on the Labour party
and the Irish Nationalists; and the battle was fully arrayed for
