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 must take no decision before their completed plans were before her. One of the new government's first domestic measures the burials bill at once caused her disquietude. The bill was designed to authorise the conduct of funerals by nonconformist ministers in parish churchyards, and the queen anxiously sought the opinion of Lord Selborne, like herself & devoted adherent of the Anglican establishment, respecting the forms of religious service in churchyards that were to be sanctioned. She was more seriously perturbed by the government's plans for the further reorganisation of the army> the control of which, despite the last liberal government's legislation, she persisted in treating as the crown's peculiar province. In May she stoutly protested against the proposal for the complete abolition of flogging in the army, to which she saw no possible alternative 'in extreme cases of cowardice, treachery, plundering, or neglect of duty on sentry.' She objected to the suspension of the practice of giving honorary colonelcies with incomes as rewards for distinguished officers; any abuse in the method of distribution could be easily remedied. When Childers, the secretary of war, in the winter of 1880 sketched out a scheme for linking battalions and giving regiments territorial designations, she warmly condemned changes which were likely, in her opinion, to weaken the regimental esprit de corps. Childers, though he respectfully considered the queen's suggestions, rarely adopted them, and in a speech at Pontefract on 19 Jan. 1882 he felt himself under the necessity of openly contesting the view that the crown still governed the army.

During the first months of Gladstone's second administration the queen's main energies were devoted to urging on the ministers the duty of spirited and sustained action in bringing to an end the wars in Afghanistan and South Africa, which their predecessors had left on their hands. The Afghan campaign of 1880 she watched with the closest attention. After the defeat of the English troops at Maiwand (27 July 1880) she wrote to Childers of her dread lest the government should not adequately endeavour to retrieve the disaster. She had heard rumours she said, of an intended reduction of the army by the government. She thought there was need of increasing it. On 22 Aug. she proved her anxiety by inspecting the troopship Jumna which was taking reinforcements to India. But, to her intense satisfaction and gratitude, Sir Frederick (now Earl) Roberts, by a prompt march on Kandahar, reduced the Afghans to submission. The new amir, Abdur-Rahman, was securely installed on the Afghan throne, and to the queen's relief he maintained to the end of her reign friendly relations with her and her government, frequently speaking to his family and court in praise of her character and rule (, Autobiography, 1900). In like manner, after the outbreak of the Boer war in December 1880, and the defeat and death of General Colley on 27 Feb. 1881 at Majuba Hill, the queen was unremitting in her admonitions to the government to bestir themselves. She recommended Sir Frederick Roberts for the vacant chief command in the Transvaal—a recommendation which the government made independently at the same moment. Her ministers however, decided to carry to a conclusion the peace negotiations which had previously been opened with the Boers, and before General Roberts landed in South Africa the war was ended by the apparent capitulation of the queen's advisers to the enemy. The ministerial action conflicted with the queen's views and wishes, and served to increase her distrust of ministerial policy.

But, whatever her opinion of her government's diplomacy, she was not sparing in signs of sympathy with the sufferings of her troops in the recent hostilities. By her desire the colours of the 24th regiment, which had been temporarily lost during the Zulu war at the battle of Isandhlwana, but were afterwards recovered, were brought to Osborne, and while speaking to the officers in charge of the bravery of the regiment and its trials in South Africa, she decorated the colours with a wreath (28 July 1880). During 1882, she once more held a review at Aldershot (16 May), and she presented at Parkhurst, Isle of Wight, new colours to the second battalion of the Berkshire regiment (66th), which had lost their old colours at Maiwand in Afghanistan (17 Aug.)

Discontent with her present advisers intensified the grief with which she learned of the death of Lord Beaconsfield,—her 'dear great friend' she called him—on 19 April 1881. She and all members of her family treated his loss as a personal bereavement. Two days after his death she wrote from Osborne to Dean Stanley : 'His devotion and kindness to me, his wise counsels, his great gentleness combined with firmness, his one thought of the honour and glory of the country, and his unswerving loyalty to the throne make the death of my dear Lord Beaconsfield a na-