In the usually unexciting annals of diplomacy there sometimes occur episodes which belong almost to the domain of chivalry; and such, surely, is that which forms the subject of this paper. It is hard to over-estimate the difficulties which confronted M. Thiers in the second week of September 1870, when he undertook to appeal to the chief neutral Powers of Europe on behalf of France. On September 2 she had suffered the staggering blow of Sedan. Two days later the Napoleonic Empire collapsed during vehement demonstrations in the streets of Paris, which had their counterpart in the chief provincial centres. The Republic was declared in several parts simultaneously; and the deputies for Paris, with one prominent exception, were acclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville as forming the Provisional Government of the French Republic. It is well known that, if that Government had not been speedily installed in office, a Red Republic would have been proclaimed, as was destined to happen in March 1871. The new Government, then, was a hasty makeshift. It had no mandate from the French nation. It promised, at first, to hold a General Election which should regularise the situation; but, as is now the case in Russia, the holding of a General Election during a furious war proved to be surrounded with very great difficulties, which could not be overcome until February 1871, after the armistice with Germany.

The Right Honourable Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India—generally known as the India Board, or the Board of Control—had an existence of practically three-quarters of a century, namely, from the last year of the Governor-Generalship of Warren Hastings to the assumption in 1858 by the Crown of the direct administration of India. That this long period was filled with important events in the history of both England and India no one will need to be reminded; and a study of the part played by the Board would be of great interest. Obviously, however, the subject is far too big to be dealt with in the time available this afternoon; so I have thought it best to limit myself to what may be termed the domestic side of the Board's history—its constitution, its methods of working, its personnel, the various buildings it occupied, and so forth; using for this purpose chiefly the Board's own records, now preserved among the archives of its successor, the present India Office.

All legislation is to some extent the product of circumstance, and none more so than the numerous Acts which have from time to time augmented or reduced the law governing high treason. The basis of that law has been since 1352 the famous Act of 25 Edward III, stat. 5, c. 2, and this Act itself was moulded by the circumstances under which it was passed. Edward III was at the height of his power and popularity, so that in defining treason it was only necessary to include offences likely to be committed against a popular king reigning by an undisputed title. This accounts both for what the Act contains and what it omits, and is the reason for that sufficiency in quiet times which has preserved it for over five centuries. It accounts also for its inadequacy in crises and disturbances, and the need to supplement it under such kings as Richard II and Henry VIII. New treasons are thus emergency measures to enable the Government to cope with particular situations; when the troublous times are over, they and the offences with which they deal disappear naturally with the circumstances which provoked them, and the Act of 1352 once more reigns supreme. When considering the causes of its long life, it must be remembered that Treason Acts fall into two classes: those augmenting and those diminishing the scope of the offence. The Act of 1352 belongs to the latter class. It was passed to bridle the judges in the creation of constructive treasons—a process which had alarmed Parliament—and, unlike all other Acts of its class, it did not follow a revolution or period of crisis, as the Act of I Henry IV, c. 10, followed the reign of Richard II; 1 Edward VI, c. 12, that of Henry VIII; and 1 Mary, c. I, that of Edward VI.

Derwentdale is the valley through which the Derwent runs on the north-west side of the county of Durham. In this valley one of the first Anabaptist churches was gathered in the time of the Protectorate, and here, in the early years after the Restoration, a dangerous plot was formed, which presently ramified through the length and breadth of England. The object of this design, in the words of the man who discovered it, was

‘to rise in rebellion against the government, and to destroy Parliament, and murder all Bishops, Deans, and Chapters, and all other ministers of the Church; to break all organs, and further to kill all the gentry that should either oppose them, or not join with them, and to destroy the Common Prayer Book, and to pull down all Churches.’

To Canadians, and perhaps to English people as well, it will come as a surprise to learn that in the sixteenth century an Emperor of Germany laid claim not only to Canada, but also to the region now embraced within the borders of the United States. The basis of the claim was a bull issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493.

It is not the object of this paper to suggest that there is any historical foundation for the association of a social or even a national practice of duelling with the more recent political manifestation, which is usually defined according to our individual political beliefs; far less is it my intention to express any opinion of my own on the advantages or evils of a resort to arms as a means of settling the differences that arise between individuals or nations.

When Peter the Great was wearied with London and Londoners, and even receiving visits of ‘the thin gentleman’ in ‘a modest looking coach’ to his lodgings in Norfolk Street, Strand, and returning them through the back door of Kensington House had ceased to amuse, he was induced to make an expedition from Deptford to Lambeth where, we are told, ‘nothing in England astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal library … he declared that he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world.’ One would like to know if they displayed to him among the MSS. that Elizabethan atlas (463) with its wonderful map of the New World and its mariner's compass in the wooden cover—an atlas made, as it shows, in days when Africa was better known than Scotland and Canada included what we now know as the United States; or Sir Henry Maynwaring's treatise on nautical terms (91, cf. 268), parent of many similar works. They form at any rate part of the original collection which the Archbishops hold in trust ‘to ye service of God and his Church, of the Kings and Commonwealth of this Realme, and particularly of the Archbishops of Canterbury,’ in the terms of Archbishop Abbott's will, ‘as they will answere unto me, and my predecessor [Richard Bancroft] in that fearefull day of God.’ Those treasures thus preserved have been added to, under sanctions less tremendous, not only by the munificence of Archbishops such as Sheldon and Tenison, Secker and Manners-Sutton, but also by the gifts of readers: or if Lambeth Library is the only one in London, public or private, of which it can be said that access has been given to students for over three hundred years, it may be allowed to the enthusiasm of one of the youngest as well as the latest of its Keepers to venture the opinion that it has gained thereby not less than it has given. It was a reader, John Selden, who saved it in the days of the Commonwealth: it was yet other readers, William Dugdale, and in the following century Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, who recovered for it valuable MSS. which, owing to the change of the times, could no longer be regained, as had been done in earlier days, by the weapons of the major excommunication and that godly discipline as to which some of my brother librarians probably agree with the Prayer Book that its restoration is much to be wished. And while there are many other readers down to the present time to whom the Library is indebted not only for books but even for MSS., there have been few I believe, who share with King James I the ignominy of having abused their privilege.