I.

The great practical question at issue, on Mr. Peel’s return from Ireland, was the currency.

The Bank, in 1797, declared, with the consent of the Government, that its notes would not be converted, on presentation, into gold.

At the time this was, perhaps, a necessary measure. It enabled the Bank to make large advances to the State, which it could not have made otherwise, and without which the Government would have found it difficult to maintain the struggle of life and death it was engaged in. We did, in fact, in our foreign war, what the United States lately did in their domestic war; but the commercial consequences of such a measure were inevitable.

If the Bank gave a note convertible into gold on presentation it gave gold: if it gave paper, which simply specified the obligation to pay gold for it some day or other, the value of the note depended on the credit attached to the promise. The promise to do a thing is never entirely equivalent to doing it; consequently, it was utterly impossible that a bank-note, not immediately convertible into gold, could have precisely the same value as gold. Gold, therefore, would have a value of its own, and a bank-note a value of its own. Moreover, as the value of the bank-note depended on the faith placed in it, if it had been merely required for home trade, the decrease in value would have been small; because the English people had confidence in the Bank of England and in the Government which sustained it; but in all foreign transactions the case was different. If an English merchant had to purchase goods on the Continent and he sent out bank-notes, the merchant at St. Petersburg would have less confidence in the English bank-note than the Manchester merchant, and he would therefore say, “No, pay me in gold; or if you want to pay me in bank-notes, I will only take them at the value I place on them.” In proportion, therefore, to the extent of purchases abroad was the natural abasement of paper money at home, and the increase in the value of gold as compared with paper. Besides, paper money, resting on credit, partook of the nature of the public funds, depending also on credit. As the one fell naturally, in a long and critical war, so the other fell from the same cause, though not in the same degree; all our dealings were thus carried on in a money which had one real value and one nominal one; and the real value depending, in a great measure, on matters beyond our control. Efforts on the part of our legislature to sustain it were useless. We forbade persons giving more for a guinea than twenty-one shillings in paper money, and we forbade persons exchanging a twenty-shilling bank-note for less than twenty shillings. We tried, in short, to prevent gold and silver getting the same price in England that they could get out of it.

The inevitable consequence was, that the precious metals, in spite of stupid prohibitions against their exportation, went to those countries in which it could obtain its real value. In this manner there was, first, the transmission of coin for the maintenance of our armies; secondly, its exportation for the purposes of our commerce; and, lastly, its escape from the laws which deteriorated its value, all operating to drain England of its gold and silver; and in proportion as they became scarcer, their comparative value with paper increased, insomuch that fifteen shillings in coin became at last equivalent to twenty shillings in paper bank-notes.

Much was said as to the over-issue of bank-notes. It may always be taken for granted that where there is an inconvertible paper, there is an over-issue of bank-notes; because the over facility of having or making money will naturally tend to the over-advance of it. But we must remember, that a currency must be in proportion to the transactions which require it; that our trade increased almost, if not quite, in proportion to the increased issue from the Bank; that the absence of coin necessitated a large employ of paper, and that there did not appear to be that multitude of bubble schemes which are the usual concomitants of a superabundant circulation. There were, in fact, quite sufficient reasons, without attributing indiscretion to the Bank, to account for the difference between its paper and the coin it was said to represent; nor is there any possibility of keeping paper money on an equality with metallic money, except by making the one immediately exchangeable for the other.

The inequality, then, between paper money and metallic money could only be remedied by re-establishing that immediate exchange. But this was not an easy matter.

II.

For many years in England every transaction had been carried on in paper. Individuals had borrowed money in it, and had received this money in bank-notes. If they were called upon to repay it in gold, they paid twenty-five per cent. beyond the capital they had received. On the other hand, if individuals had purchased annuities, the seller, whether the Government or an individual, had to pay them twenty-five per cent. more than they had purchased.

The resumption of cash payments, therefore, could not take place without great individual hardship and great public loss. There can be no doubt, also, that paper money afforded great facilities for trade; and that the sudden withdrawal of these facilities might be felt throughout every class of the population.

Thus, although Mr. Horner brought the subject before the House of Commons with great ability in 1811, it was not till 1819, when the war had ceased, and the public mind in general had been gradually prepared for terminating a situation which could not be indefinitely prolonged, that the ministers intimated their intention to deal with it by the appointment of a select committee, of which Mr. Peel was named the chairman.

Up to this period, it is to be observed, the resumption of cash payments could not have been carried; and up to this period Mr. Peel and his father, who both voted against Mr. Horner, had opposed the resumption. But the question was probably now ripe, so to speak, for being dealt with. It was a matter, therefore, of practical consideration, and Mr. Peel reconsidered it; and on the 20th of May it was curious to see the venerable Sir Robert representing the ideas of his time, and coming forward with a petition in favour of paper money; and his son, the offspring of another epoch, rising, after the father had sat down, to propose a measure by which paper money (I speak of paper money not immediately convertible into gold) was to be abolished; and avowing, as he said, “without shame and remorse,” a thorough change of opinion.

His proposals compelled the Government to repay the sums which it owed to the Bank, and compelled the Bank to resume cash payments at a date which the Bank anticipated by resuming them in 1821.

Of the necessity of these measures there can be no doubt; at the same time they were calculated, as I have said, to produce momentary discontent and distress, and already much discontent and distress existed.

There was, indeed, a dark period in our history to which I have already alluded in these biographical sketches, but Peel (luckily for him) was out of office during the greater portion of that gloomy time, and never made himself prominent in it except once, when called upon as a neighbour to defend the character of the magistrates on that day still memorable, in spite of all excuses and palliations, as the day of the “Manchester massacre.” He undertook and performed his very delicate task on this occasion with tact and discretion. No one, indeed, ever spoke in a less unpopular manner on an unpopular subject. Far superior to Mr. Canning, in this respect, from that calm, steady, and considerate tone which never gives offence, and which, laying aside the orator, marks the statesman, he neither attempted to excite anger, nor ridicule, nor admiration; but left his audience under the impression that he had been performing a painful duty, in the fulfilment of which he neither expected nor sought a personal triumph.

III.

From the proceedings against the Queen, which shortly followed (the old King dying in 1820), he kept as much as possible aloof. On one occasion, it is true, he defended the legal course which the Ministry had adopted for settling the question of the Queen’s guilt or innocence; but he blamed the exclusion of her Majesty’s name from the litany; the refusal of a ship of war to bring her to England, and of a royal residence on British soil; in short, he separated himself distinctly from any scheme of persecution, manifesting that he would not sacrifice justice to Royal favour.

The Government at this time was so weak, having suffered, even previous to the Queen’s unfortunate business, which had not strengthened it, several defeats, that Lord Liverpool saw the necessity of a reinforcement, and, faithful to the system of a double-mouthed Cabinet, took in Mr. Wynn (the representative of the Grenvilles), to speak in favour of the Catholics, and Mr. Peel (as successor to Lord Sidmouth, who gave up the Home Office, but remained in the ministry), to speak against them.

The change, nevertheless, considerably affected the administration, both as to its spirit and its capacity. The Grenvillites were liberal, intelligent men generally, as well as with respect to the Catholics, and Peel was generally liberal, though hostile to the claims of the Catholic body.

Lord Sidmouth, at the Home Office, had moreover been a barrier against all improvement. His career, one much superior to his merits, had been owing to his having all George III.’s prejudices without George III.’s acuteness. He was, therefore, George III.’s ideal of a minister, and on this account had been stuck into every ministry, during George III.’s lifetime, as a kind of “King’s send,” representing the Royal mind. Uniting with Lord Eldon against every popular concession, and supporting in a dry, disagreeable manner every unpopular measure, he was as much hated as a man can be who is despised. Peel, at all events, wished to gain the public esteem. His abilities were unquestioned. He was much looked up to by his own party, much respected by the opposing one; and, as it was known that Mr. Canning had at this time engaged himself to accept the Governor-Generalship of India, every one deemed that, if the Tories should remain in power, Peel would be Lord Liverpool’s inevitable successor.

The moderate and elevated tone of his language, his indefatigable attention to business, a certain singleness and individuality which belonged to him, foreshadowed the premiership. Even the fact that his father had, undisguisedly, intended him for this position, though the idea was quizzed at Peel’s entry into public life, tended eventually to predispose persons to accept it; for people become accustomed to a notion that has been put boldly and steadily before them, and it is rare that a man of energy and ability does not eventually obtain a distinction for which it is known, during a certain number of years, that he is an aspirant.

But one of those accidents which often cross the ordinary course of human life—the sudden death of Lord Castlereagh and the appointment of Mr. Canning as his successor—retained the Home Secretary in a second-rate position, over which the great and marvellous success of the new foreign secretary threw a certain comparative obscurity. He was obliged, therefore, to be satisfied with continuing to pursue a subordinate, but useful career, which might place him eventually in men’s minds, side by side with his more brilliant competitor.

IV.

The subject to which he now particularly devoted himself was the most useful that he could have chosen. We had at the time he entered office a police that was notoriously inefficient; prisons, which by their discipline and condition were calculated rather to increase crime than to act as a corrective to it; and laws which rendered society more criminal than the criminals it punished. One can scarcely, in fact, believe that such men as Lord Eldon and Lord Ellenborough did not think it safe to abolish the punishment of death in the case of privately stealing six shillings in a shop; and it is with a shudder that one reads of fourteen persons being hanged in London in one week in 1820, and of thirty-three executions in the year 1822.

No one reflected whether the punishment was proportionate to the offence; no one considered that the alleged criminal himself was a member of the community, and had as much right to be justly dealt with and protected against wrong as the community itself. Satisfied with the last resort of hanging, the State neglected to take suitable precautions against the committal of those acts which led to hanging; nor did it seem a matter of moment to make places of confinement places of reformation, as well as places of atonement. To Bentham, Romilly, Mackintosh, Basil Montagu, and others, we owe that improvement in the public mind which led finally to an improvement in our laws. Mr. Peel had marked and felt this gradual change of opinion; and almost immediately after he became invested with the functions of the Home Department, he promised to give his most earnest attention to the state of the police, the prisons, and the penal laws; a promise that, in the four or five succeeding years, he honourably fulfilled; thus giving to philanthropic ideas that practical sanction with men of the world, which theories acquire by being taken up by men in power.

It is true that the country was, as I have observed, becoming desirous for the changes that Mr. Peel introduced, and that he never advocated them until, owing to the efforts of others, they had won their way with the good and the thoughtful; but it is likewise true that, so soon as they became practically possible, he took them up with zeal, and carried them against a considerable and, as it was then deemed, respectable opposition, which held foetid dungeons, decrepid watchmen, and a well-fed gallows to be essential appendages to the British constitution.

During this time also he supported, though not conspicuously, the liberal foreign policy of Mr. Canning, and the liberal commercial policy of Mr. Huskisson. He kept, nevertheless, at the head of his own section in the Ministry, as well by his consistent opposition to the Catholic claims as by his defence of Lord Eldon, whose slowness in the administration of justice and obstinate adherence to antiquated doctrines were frequently the subject of attack. This remarkable man, one of the many emanations of the Johnsonian mind which contrived to make the most narrow-minded prejudices palatable to the most comprehensive intellect, exercised great influence over the King, over the older peers and members of the House of Commons, and over that large mass of uncertains that rallies round a man who entertains no scruples and doubts. Mr. Peel took care, however, not to pass for a mere follower of Lord Eldon, nor a mere bigot of the ultra-Protestant party. In defending and lauding the great judge and lawyer, he said expressly: “The House will remember I have nothing to do on this occasion with the political character of the Lord Chancellor:” and again, in discussing the question of proselytism and education, he not only ridiculed the idea that some extravagant people entertained of making Catholic Ireland Protestant, but stated in so many words, “that he was for educating Catholics and Protestants together under one common system, from which proselytism should be honestly and studiously excluded.” His conduct on this occasion merited particular attention. The great difficulty which he foresaw in passing Catholic emancipation was the hostile feeling between Catholics and Protestants. If that feeling was removed, and a common education secured—the best mode of modifying or removing it—the practical and political objections to Catholic emancipation ceased.

V.

The fact is that even as early as 1821, when he answered a speech from Mr. Plunkett, which he once told me was the finest he ever heard, Mr. Peel felt that the ground on which he had hitherto stood was shifting from under him; that just as it had been impracticable to carry what was called “Catholic emancipation” when he entered public life, so it was becoming more and more impracticable to resist its being carried as time advanced.

Such an impression naturally became stronger and stronger as he saw distinguished converts, from Mr. Wellesley Pole, in 1812, down to Mr. Brownlow, in 1825, going over to his opponents, whereas not a single convert was made to the views he advocated. He might still think that the hope of those who imagined that the Irish Catholics, once admitted to Parliament, would rest satisfied with that triumph, was chimerical: he might still think that the Irish Catholics would, as a matter of course, insist upon equality in all respects with the Protestants: he might still foresee that this equality, the Catholics being the majority, would lead to superiority over the Protestants: he might still believe that the Protestants, accustomed to domination, and supported by property and rank, would not submit tranquilly to numbers: he might contemplate the impossibility of maintaining a Protestant Church establishment, absorbing all the revenue accorded to religious purposes, with a Catholic representation which would feel galled and humiliated by such a preference; and he might also recognise the probability that the English Protestant clergy would take part with the Irish Protestant clergy, and denounce as an atrocious robbery what might be demanded as a simple act of justice: and yet, retaining all his former convictions against the measure he was called upon to agree to, he might feel that prolonged opposition would only serve to protract a useless struggle, and be more likely to increase the evils he foresaw than to prevent them. Such a consideration could not but deeply affect his mind, and breathe over his conduct an air of hesitation and doubt.

It is not surprising, therefore, that any one who reviews his conduct attentively during the five or six years that preceded Lord Liverpool’s retirement should find evident traces of this state of thought. On one occasion he says: “No result of this debate can give me unqualified satisfaction.” On another: “If I were perfectly satisfied that concession would lead to perfect peace and harmony, if I thought it would put an end to animosities, the existence of which all must lament, I would not oppose the measure on a mere theory of the constitution.” Just previous to the Duke of York’s celebrated declaration that, “whatever might be his situation in life, so help him God he should oppose the grant of political power to Roman Catholics,” Peel says, on the third reading of the Catholic Relief Bill, which had been carried in the House of Commons by a majority of twenty-one, that he should record, perhaps for the last time, his vote against the concessions that it granted.

This phrase, “for the last time,” much commented on at the time, might have alluded to the possibility of the measure then under discussion being carried; and it was generally believed that Mr. Peel meditated at this time quitting office, and even Parliament, in order not to prevent Lord Liverpool from dealing with a matter on which his own opinions differed from those to which he thought it likely that the Government would have to listen.

When, however, after the death of the Duke of York, and the illness of Lord Liverpool, the question was whether he should desert or hold fast to a cause which had lost its most powerful supporters; whether he should abandon those with whom he had hitherto acted at the moment when victory seemed almost certain to crown their opponents, or still range himself under their banner, there was hardly a choice for an honourable man, and he spoke as follows:

“The influence of some great names has been recently lost to the cause which I support, but I have never adopted my opinions either from deference to high station, or that which might more fairly be expected to impress me—high ability. Keen as the feelings of regret must be with which the loss of those associates in feeling is recollected, it is still a matter of consolation to me that I have now the opportunity of showing my attachment to those tenets which I formerly espoused, and of showing that if my opinions are unpopular I stand by them still, when the influence and authority which might have given them currency is gone, and when I believe it is impossible that in the mind of any human being I can be suspected of pursuing my principles with any view to favour or personal aggrandizement.”

VI.

This speech had a double bearing. It said, as clearly as possible, that the Catholic disabilities could not be maintained; but that the speaker could not separate himself from those with whom he had hitherto acted in opposing their removal.

The struggle was, in fact, then commencing between the Duke of Wellington, backed by Lord Eldon on the one side, and Mr. Canning, backed by the opponents of Lord Eldon on the other. The ground taken for this struggle was the Catholic question; but I doubt whether it could have been avoided if there had not been a Catholic question.

Mr. Canning had, especially of late, adopted a tone and manner of superiority which Mr. Peel and Lord Eldon chafed at, and which the Duke of Wellington could no longer brook. The constant interposition of Lord Liverpool, who, by flattering alternately the great warrior and the great orator, prevented an outbreak from either, had kept up apparent harmony. But Lord Liverpool withdrawn, it was felt, both by the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Canning, that the one or the other must be master. As to Mr. Peel, he naturally saw that under Mr. Canning, both being in the House of Commons, he would be comparatively insignificant, whereas, as first lieutenant of the Duke of Wellington, the duke being in the House of Lords, he was a person of considerable importance.

The determination of the Duke of Wellington not to serve under Mr. Canning, and of Mr. Canning not to serve under the Duke of Wellington, left no alternative but to act with one or the other.

Mr. Peel has been attacked for siding with the Duke of Wellington. But was it to be expected that he should leave that section of the Ministry where he was a chief to join another where he would be a subordinate? What part could he play amidst Mr. Canning and his friends, joined by a certain portion of the Whigs with whom he was a perfect stranger? and for what public object was he called upon to make this private sacrifice?

The settlement of the great question which agitated the Empire? No; that was to be left in its actual state. The point at issue was not whether an united Cabinet should be formed to settle the Catholic question; but whether a mixed Cabinet should be formed, with the Duke of Wellington or Mr. Canning at its head, leaving the Catholic question unsettled. Let us suppose that some progress towards the settlement of this question would have been made by the choice of Mr. Canning—which is doubtful—this was a progress that would rather have kept up agitation and not have stilled it.

There is, indeed, an immense difference between concurring with the people with whom you have previously been acting in order to terminate an affair, and an alliance which does not terminate the affair, with persons whom you have previously been opposing. It would, I think, have been easier for Mr. Peel to join Mr. Canning in an attempt to form a Cabinet which should bring forward a Catholic Relief Bill, than to join him in forming a cabinet on the same principles as those on which the Duke of Wellington would have formed one.

I know that I do not give to these transactions the precise colour given to them by Mr. Peel himself, and that he says, in a letter of the 19th April to Lord Eldon, that if he had thought as Mr. Canning did on the Catholic question, or if Mr. Canning had thought as he did, he would have served under Mr. Canning; but this is creating an imaginary case in order to put a particular interpretation on a real one.

I believe, notwithstanding the pains taken to make a personal question appear a public one, that the dispute as to the premiership was in reality a personal one; but at the same time based on motives which if personal were not dishonourable. At all events, Mr. Canning deemed Mr. Peel’s conduct under all circumstances so natural that he was neither surprised nor offended by it. Their partisans, as it always in such cases happens, were bitter; and Mr. Peel has been much blamed for the violence of his brother-in-law, Mr. Dawson. Every one, however, knows the proverb, “Save me from my friends, and I will save myself from my enemies!” and I have little doubt that so profound an axiom originated in the wisdom of an experienced statesman. But Mr. Pitt had not been able to temper Mr. Canning’s criticisms against Mr. Addington, and Mr. Peel would have found it a still harder task to moderate the anger of his protÉgÉs against Mr. Canning.

It is useless dwelling longer on this epoch. Mr. Canning came into power at the head of a Government composed of heterogeneous materials, and closed his brilliant life without any solid advantages having attended his momentary triumph. The attempt to continue his administration without him was like that which had previously been made to continue Mr. Fox’s ministry after the death of that great statesman. In both cases the Government was the man.

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Part III.

I.

Lord Goderich soon perished as premier because, though a clever and accomplished man in a secondary place, he had not the indescribable something which fits a man for a superior one: that which Mr. Peel might fairly have anticipated, even had Mr. Canning lived, took place. The section of the Tory party to which he belonged was recalled to office. It is evident from the private correspondence which has since been published that two plans were then discussed. One of these was to form an administration excluding Lord Eldon, and excluding any but those who had declared against Mr. Canning; the other was for an administration which, excluding Lord Eldon, should comprise as many of Mr. Canning’s partisans as would accept office. It is, moreover, clear that Mr. Peel not only concurred in, but recommended the latter course, notwithstanding the connection which had hitherto existed between him and the Chancellor, a man whom it would be difficult to comprehend if one did not remember that he was born under the sceptre of Johnson, whose genius generated a class of men with minds like his own, exhibiting the compatibility of the strongest prejudices with an excellent understanding. Such a man is not to be spoken of with contempt. He represented with force the epoch to which he belonged, but that epoch was worn out. Loyalty to the House of Hanover and fidelity to the Protestant Constitution had ceased to be the war cries of the day; and even that spirit of firmness, energy, and consistency, which characterised a large part of George III.’s reign, were beginning to be replaced by a tone partly of indifference, partly of moderation, partly of liberality, that to Lord Eldon was treachery and weakness. He was, therefore, left out of the new Cabinet.

On the other hand, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Huskisson, Lord Dudley, Palmerston, the Grants, were sought as associates. “What,” says Mr. Peel, “must have been the fate of a Government composed of Goulburn, Sir J. Beckett, Wetherall, and myself?… We could not have stood creditably a fortnight.” Again: “I care not for the dissatisfaction of ultra-Tories.”

The Duke of Wellington, in recounting his interview with the King, when the offer to form an administration was made to him, said: “The Catholic question was not to be a Cabinet question; there was to be a Protestant Lord Lieutenant, a Protestant[129] Lord Chancellor, and a Protestant Chancellor in Ireland.” The Irish Government, however, with Lord Anglesea as Lord Lieutenant, and Mr. Stanley as Secretary, was neither in spirit nor in letter according to this programme; and the change was attributable to Mr. Peel.

This was one of his most prosperous moments. His career had gone on up to this time, gradually collecting round it those materials out of which the character of a leading statesman is formed. There was a quiet, firm regularity in the course he had followed that had not won for him the cheers that wait on brilliant success, but had secured for him a constant murmur of continued approbation. He had never disappointed; whatever had been expected from him he had always done. His devotion to public affairs was unremitting and unaffected; they furnished not only his sole employment, but constituted his sole amusement; his execution of the law, where he had to see to its administration, was thoroughly upright and impartial. The changes which had taken place in his opinions were towards a more liberal and, as it was then beginning to be thought, a more practical policy in commerce, a sounder system of banking, a milder code of penal legislation.

These changes had taken place in such a manner that they seemed natural, and the result of a mind that did not submit itself to any bias but that of reason. He had no longer to contend against his brilliant and lamented rival; he was no longer burthened by a patron who had been useful but had become inconvenient and out of date. He was universally looked upon as a man of liberal tendencies, one subject alone excepted. On that subject he shewed obstinacy or firmness, but not bigotry. Would he now deal with it? Could he? Was it possible, with the King and the Duke of Wellington against the Catholics, to satisfy their hopes? Or was it possible, with a House of Commons almost equally divided, to adopt such measures as would crush their expectations?

II.

There are situations which impose a policy on ministers who wish to remain ministers—this was one. It was now necessary to “mark time,” if I may use a military figure of speech, making as little dust as possible. Mr. Peel tried to do so; dropping the Act against the Catholic Association, which had been found wholly inefficient, and endeavouring not to provoke agitation, though he could not quiet it.

In the meantime, the tendency of opinion against religious disqualifications manifested itself on a motion of Lord John Russell, introduced in a speech of remarkable power and ability, for removing the Test and Corporation Acts. Mr. Peel had stated with emphasis, during the administration of Mr. Canning, that he would always oppose the repeal of these Acts, and he now did oppose it; but evidently with the feeling that his opposition, which was weak, would be ineffectual. A majority, indeed, of forty-four in the House of Commons declared against him; and the Government then took up the measure and carried it through both Houses. Mr. Peel, in his memoirs, gives as his reason for this course, that if he had gone out of office he would have caused great embarrassment in the conduct of affairs in general, and not altered the disposition of Parliament as to the particular question at issue; and that if he remained in office he was obliged to place himself in conformity with the feeling of the House of Commons. Almost immediately afterwards, that House pledged itself, by a majority of six, to take the state of Ireland into consideration; and, though this majority was overruled by an adverse one in the House of Lords, the language of the Duke of Wellington and of Lord Lyndhurst, who both admitted that things could not remain as they were, left little doubt that a decided system of repression or concession was about to be attempted, and that the latter system was the more likely one.

III.

Two events had occurred between the vote in the House of Commons in favour of the resolution respecting the Catholics, and the vote in the House of Lords against it, which events had, no doubt, exercised great influence on the debate in the latter assembly. First, Mr. Canning’s friends had somewhat abruptly quitted the Government under the following circumstances:

East Retford had been disfranchised for corrupt practices. The question was, what should be done with the two seats for that borough? All the other members of the Government voted for leaving the seats to the district in which East Retford was situated.

Mr. Huskisson alone gave his vote for transferring the right of election to Birmingham; and on the very night of this vote (May 20th, 1828) tendered his resignation, which the Duke of Wellington accepted. When the other members of the Canning party heard of Mr. Huskisson’s hasty resignation, provoked, as he said, by the cross looks of some of his colleagues on the Treasury Bench, they remonstrated with him on his conduct, which rendered theirs very difficult, since they had not voted as he had done. Mr. Huskisson tried to explain and retract his resignation. But the Premier had a particular dislike to Mr. Huskisson, who had shown too much desire for office, and gave himself too many airs after getting it. He would not accept Mr. Huskisson’s excuses or explanations; and his manner was thought altogether so unfriendly and overbearing that Mr. Lamb, Mr. Charles Grant, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Dudley quitted the Government with Mr. Huskisson. The second event to which I have alluded was the consequence of the first.

IV.

The secession of the Canningites had rendered it necessary to fill their places. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald was selected to fill the place at the Board of Trade vacated by Mr. Grant. This rendered necessary a new election for Clare.

No axiom can be more true than that if you do not mean to have a door forced open you should not allow the wedge to be inserted. It is difficult to understand how George III. could permit the measure in 1798 which made Catholics electors, whilst he resolved never to grant Catholics the right to be elected. At first the Catholic voters merely chose Protestants, who promised to extend Catholic privileges when they could do this without great injury to their own interests.

Mr. O’Connell determined on straining the power of Catholic votes to the utmost. He first tried it in 1826, in Waterford, by combining an opposition against the Protestant family of the Beresfords, who had hitherto, from their large possessions, been all-powerful in the county. But property availed nothing. The word was given, and almost every tenant voted against his landlord. The Beresfords were ignominiously defeated. The next trial was a more audacious one.

There was nothing in law to prevent a Catholic from being elected to serve in Parliament; it was only on taking his seat in Parliament that he was stopped by the parliamentary oath. Of all Protestants in Ireland none were more popular, or had been more consistently favourable to the Catholic cause, than Mr. Fitzgerald. His name, his fortune, his principles, gave him every claim on an Irish Catholic constituency that a Protestant could have. He felt himself so sure of being confirmed in the seat he occupied that he prepared to meet his constituents without the slightest fear of opposition.

But it was determined that a Catholic should be his opponent; and, in order to prevent all doubt or hesitation amongst his followers, the great agitator took the field himself. He was successful; and after Mr. Fitzgerald’s defeat it was to be expected that a similar defeat awaited sooner or later every other Protestant. This was a serious state of things.

The Government was much weakened by the loss of the able men who had left it, and at the same time the dangers that menaced it were greater than they had ever been before.

Lord Anglesea, who was then, as I have stated, the Irish Viceroy, a gallant soldier, and a man whose judgment was good, though his language was indiscreet, declared loudly that there was no way of dealing with the Catholic organization but by satisfying the Catholics.

The considerations which these various circumstances inspired decided the mind, which as I have shown had been long wavering, of Mr. Peel; and avowing it was no longer possible to resist the Catholic claims, he thus speaks of his conduct at this juncture:

“In the interval between the discussion (he speaks of the interval between the discussion in the Lower and Upper Houses of Parliament) I had personal communication with the Duke of Wellington; I expressed great reluctance to withdraw from him such aid as I could lend him in the carrying on of the Government, particularly after the recent schism; but I reminded him that the reasons which had induced me to contemplate retirement from office in 1825, were still more powerful in 1828, from the lapse of time, from the increasing difficulties in administering the government in Ireland, and from the more prominent situation which I held in the House of Commons.

“I told him that, being in a minority in the House of Commons on the question that of all others most deeply affected the condition and prospects of Ireland, I could not, with any satisfaction to my own feelings or advantage to the public interests, perform the double functions of leading the House of Commons and presiding over the Home Department; that at an early period, therefore, my retirement must take place. I expressed at the same time an earnest hope that in the approaching discussion in the Lords, the Duke of Wellington might deem it consistent with his sense of duty to take a course in debate which should not preclude him, who was less deeply committed on the question than myself, from taking the whole state of Ireland into consideration during the recess, with the view of adjusting the Catholic question.”

After the prorogation of Parliament, the course to be adopted was maturely considered.

Sir Robert Peel’s opinion was already made up. He argued thus:

“The time for half measures and mixed cabinets is gone by. We must yield or resist. Can we resist? Is it practicable? I don’t mean so as to keep things for a short time as they are. Can we resist effectually by at once putting down the disturbers of the public peace, who connect themselves with the Catholic cause? Can we get a ministry divided on the Catholic question to put down efficiently an agitation in favour of that question?

“If we go to a Parliament in which there is a majority in favour of the Catholic claims, and ask for its support for the purpose of coercion, will it not say it is cheaper to conciliate than coerce?

“It is of no use to consider what it would be best to do if it were possible. Coercion is impossible.

“Well, then, we must concede what we can no longer refuse.”

His letters to the Duke of Wellington, given in his memoirs, speak clearly in this sense:

“I have uniformly opposed what is called Catholic Emancipation, and have rested my opinion on broad and uncompromising grounds. I wish I could say that my views were materially changed, and that I now believed that full concessions could be made either exempt from the dangers I have apprehended from them, or productive of the full advantages which their advocates anticipate from the grant of them.

“But whatever may be my opinion upon these points, I cannot deny that the state of Ireland, under existing circumstances, is most unsatisfactory; that it becomes necessary to make your choice between different kinds and different degrees of evil—to compare the actual danger resulting from the union and organization of the Roman Catholic body, and the incessant agitation in Ireland, with prospective and apprehended dangers to the constitution or religion of the country; and maturely to consider whether it may not be better to encounter every eventual risk of concession than to submit to the certain continuance, or rather, perhaps, the certain aggravation of existing evils.”[130]

“I have proved to you, I hope, that no false delicacy, no fear of the imputation of inconsistency, will prevent me from taking that part which present dangers and a new position of affairs may require. I am ready at any sacrifice to maintain the opinion which I now deliberately give, that there is upon the whole less of evil in making a decided effort to settle the Catholic question, than in leaving it as it has been left—an open question.

“Whenever it is once determined that an attempt should be made by the Government to settle the Catholic question, there can be, I think, but one opinion—the settlement should, if possible, be a complete one.”[131]

The Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst, without difficulty, adopted these views. The rest of the Cabinet accepted them.

Sir Robert, however, whilst expressing himself thus clearly as to the necessity of dealing without delay with the Catholic question, and offering, in the most unequivocal way, his personal support to the Government in doing so, desired to retire from the Administration, and it was at first settled he should do so, but finally, at the Duke of Wellington’s particular and earnest solicitation, he remained.

The King’s speech at the opening of Parliament spoke of the necessity of putting down the Catholic Association, and of reviewing the laws which imposed disabilities on his Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects. The authority of the Government was to be vindicated, the constitution was to be amended. Mr. Peel did not say he had altered his opinions: he did not deny the possibility of future dangers from the changes which the Government meant to propose; but he added that those distant dangers had become in his opinion less pressing and less in themselves than the dangers which, under present circumstances, would result from leaving matters as they were.

He takes as his defence upon the charge of inconsistency “the right, the duty, of a public man to act according to circumstances;” this defence is the simple, and almost the only one he uses throughout the various discussions now commencing. To Mr. Bankes, on one occasion, he replies pertinently by an extract from a former speech made by that gentleman himself:

“Mr. Bankes hoped it would never be a point of honour with any Government to persevere in measures after they were convinced of their impropriety. Political expediency was not at all times the same. What at one time might be considered consistent with sound policy, might at another be completely impolitic. Thus it was with respect to the Roman Catholics.”

On another occasion he quotes that beautiful passage from Cicero, which was the Roman orator’s vindication of his own conduct:

“HÆc didici, hÆc vidi, hÆc scripta legi, hÆc sapientissimis et clarissimis viris, et in hÂc republic et in aliis civitatibus, monumenta nobis, literÆ prodiderunt, non semper easdem sententias ab iisdem, sed, quascumque reipublicÆ status, inclinatio temporum, ratio concordiÆ postularent, esse defendendas.”—Orat. pro Cn. Plaucio, xxxix.

It had been arranged that a bill for suppressing the Catholic Association should be passed, before the bill for removing Catholic disabilities should be brought forward.

On the 5th of March, the Catholic Association Bill passed the House of Lords, and on the same day the Catholic Disabilities Bill was introduced into the House of Commons—admitting Catholics to Parliament, and to the highest military and civil offices, save those connected with church patronage and with the administration of the Ecclesiastical law, on taking an oath described in the Act; and Mr. Peel, in opening the debate, repeats with earnestness and solemnity his previous declaration:

“On my honour and conscience, I believe that the time is come when less danger is to be apprehended to the general interests of the Empire, and to the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Protestant establishment in attempts to adjust the Catholic question than in allowing it to remain in its present state. I have already stated that such was my deliberate opinion; such the conclusion to which I felt myself forced to come by the irresistible force of circumstances; and I will adhere to it: ay, and I will act on it, unchanged by the scurrility of abuse, by the expression of opposite opinions, however vehement or general; unchanged by the deprivation of political confidence, or by the heavier sacrifice of private friendships and affections.”

He shows the difficulties that had existed since the time of Mr. Pitt, in forming a cabinet united in its views with respect to the Catholics; the state of things that experience had proved to be the consequence of a divided one; the final necessity of some decided course. The authority which those who were hostile to English rule had acquired, and were acquiring amidst the distracted councils of the English Government; the power already granted by previous concessions; and the dangers which could not but follow the exercise of this power for the purpose of counteracting the law, or procuring a change in it.

It had been argued that the elective franchise already gave parliamentary influence to the Catholics. In reply to this it had been suggested that we could withdraw that source of influence. “No; we cannot,” replies Mr. Peel, with some eloquence, “replace the Roman Catholics in the condition in which we found them, when the system of relaxation and indulgence began. We have given them the means of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have removed with our own hands the seal from a vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed; but it will not, like the Genius in the fable, return to its narrow confines and enable us to cast it back to the obscurity from which we evoked it.”

He does not say who is to blame for the state of things he thus describes. He does not seem to care. He describes a situation which it is necessary to deal with, and never stopping to burthen the argument with his own faults or merits, thus continues:

“Perhaps I am not so sanguine as others in my expectations of the future; but I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that I fully believe that the adjustment of this question in the manner proposed will give better and stronger securities to the Protestant interest and the Protestant establishment than any that the present state of things admits of, and will avert dangers impending and immediate. What motive, I ask, can I have for the expression of these opinions but an honest conviction of their truth?”

It was this general impression that he was honest, and that he was making great personal sacrifices, which, no doubt, rendered his task easier; and when, after opening the way to a new election by the resignation of his seat, he was defeated in a contest for the University of Oxford, the eulogy of Sir James Graham spoke the public sentiment:

“I cannot boast of any acquaintance with that right honourable gentleman (Mr. Peel) in private life. I have been opposed to him on almost all occasions since I entered into public life. I have not voted with him on five occasions, I believe, since I entered into Parliament. I think him, however, a really honest and conscientious man; and considering the sacrifices which he has recently made—the connections from which he has torn himself—the public attachments which he has broke asunder—the dangers which he might have created by an opposite course—the difficulties which he might have created by adhering to an opposite system—the civil war which he has avoided by departing from it,—and the great service which he has rendered to the State by the manly avowal of a change of opinion:—considering all these circumstances, I think the right honourable gentleman entitled to the highest praise, and to the honest respect of every friend of the Catholics.”

One hostile feeling, however, still rankled in the heart of the Liberal ranks;—the party whose opposition had wearied out the generous and excitable spirit of Mr. Canning, was about to enjoy the triumph of Mr. Canning’s opinions.

The dart, envenomed with this accusation, had more than once been directed at Mr. Peel’s reputation. He felt it necessary to show that it made a wound which he did not consider that he deserved. He had been praised by many for having settled the long-pending differences which his propositions were to compose.

In answering Sir Charles Wetherell, he says: “The credit of settling this question belongs to others, not to me. It belongs, in spite of my opposition, to Mr. Fox, to Mr. Grattan, to Mr. Plunkett, to the gentlemen opposite, and to an illustrious and Right Honourable friend of mine who is now no more. I will not conceal from the House that, in the course of this debate, allusions have been made to the memory of that Right Honourable friend, which have been most painful to my feelings. An honourable baronet has spoken of the cruel manner in which my Right Honourable friend was hunted down. Whether the honourable baronet was one of those who hunted him down I know not. But this I do know—that whoever joined in an inhuman cry against my Right Honourable friend, I did not. I was on terms of the most friendly intimacy with him up to the very day of his death; and I say, with as much sincerity as the heart of man can speak, that I wish he was now alive to reap the harvest which he sowed.”

It was a consummate touch of art on the part of the orator thus to place himself in the position of the conquered, when others proclaimed him the conqueror; in this way smothering envy, and quieting reproach.

The Bill passed through the House of Commons on the 30th of March; by a majority of 320 to 142; and was carried in the House of Lords on the 10th of April, 1829, by a majority of 213 to 109. On the 19th of April this great measure received the Royal assent.

It is useless to protract the narrative of this memorable period; but I will not close it without observing that there was one still living to whom the end of the battle, which had begun so long ago, was as glorious and as gratifying as it could have been to the illustrious statesman who was no more. Justifying, more, perhaps, than any statesman recorded in our annals, the classical description of the just and firm man, Lord Grey had, through a long series of disappointing years—with an unaffected scorn for the frowns of the monarch, and the shouts of the mob—proclaimed the principles of civil equality of which his bitterest opponents were at last tardily willing to admit the necessity.

But the feelings of the great peer were in bitter contrast with those of the humiliated sovereign.

The change of George IV. from the friend to the enemy of the Catholic cause had been sudden; up to the formation of the Liverpool ministry, he was supposed to be favourable to it—ever afterwards he was most hostile. It is not to be supposed that he had not understood at an early period of life the value of the coronation oath, and all that in the later period of his life he drivelled over, as to the Protestant Constitution and the Protestant Succession. But the fact is, that the haughty bearing of Lord Grey, during those various questions which arose as to the formation of a new Government, shortly after the Regency, had deeply wounded and irritated the Regent. Out of his animosity to Lord Grey had grown up his animosity to the Catholics. The politician and his policy were mixed up together in the royal mind. He had kept the politician out of his cabinet; but that politician’s policy now stormed it.

The mortification was severe.

From the summer of 1828 till the beginning of 1829 it was impossible to get from his Majesty a clear adoption of the principle that the Government should treat the Catholic question with the same freedom as any other. When this was granted, another battle was fought over the opening speech, and finally, on the 3rd of March, when the great ministerial propositions were to be brought before Parliament, he refused his assent to them, and the Wellington ministry was for some hours out of office.

The struggle continued throughout the Parliamentary discussions, the King’s aversion to Mr. Peel became uncontrollable, and he did not attempt to disguise it.

But the leader of the House of Commons bore the sulky looks of the Sovereign with as much composure—a composure that was by no means indifference—as he bore the scurrility of the press, and the taunts of the Tory Opposition.

The conviction that he was acting rightly in a great cause made him a great man: and he faced the storm of abuse that assailed him with a proud complacency.

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Part IV.

I.

I have said that Sir Robert Peel was proud of having made great sacrifices for a great cause. There can be little doubt that he had prevented a civil war in which many of the most eminent statesmen in England and all the eminent statesmen of foreign countries would have considered that the Irish Catholics were in the right. At the same time he did not derive from the course he had taken the hope which many entertained that all Irish feuds would henceforth cease, and that it would become easy to establish in Ireland the satisfaction and tranquillity that were found in other parts of our empire. He did, however, deem that if the great and crying cause of grievance, which had so long agitated and divided the public mind were once removed, there would be no powerful rallying cry for the disaffected, and that in any dangerous crisis the Government would find all reasonable men in Ireland and all men in England by its side.

He saw, however, more clearly than most people, and in fact it was this foresight that had made him so long the opponent of the measure which he had recently advocated, that to bring the Irish Catholics into Parliament was the eventual transfer of power from the Protestant to the Catholic.

The great policy would, no doubt, have been to accept at once this consequence in its full extent, and to have conciliated the Catholic majority, and the Catholic priesthood, by abandoning everything which under a Protestant ascendancy had been established. But no one was prepared for this. The Whigs would have opposed it as well as the Tories. The English Protestant Church would have made common cause with the Irish Protestant Church,—the English Protestants in general with the Irish Protestants. In short, it was not practicable at the moment on which our attention had been hitherto concentrated to do more for the Irish Catholics than had been done; and this was not likely, as Mr. Peel himself had said in 1817, to satisfy them: “We entered, therefore, inadvertently on a period of transition, in which a series of new difficulties were certain to be the result of the removal of the one great difficulty.” Under such circumstances, Mr. Peel conceived he had only to watch events; it was not in accordance with the natural tendency of his character to anticipate them, and to act in the different situations that might arise as a practical view of each particular situation might suggest.

He was right, no doubt, in considering that the Catholic Belief Bill would not realize the expectations of its most ardent supporters, and it must be added that the state of things amidst which it was passed was alone sufficient to destroy many of those expectations. Agitation had evidently obtained for Ireland what loyalty and forbearance had never procured; and though the fear to which our statesmen had yielded might be what Lord Palmerston asserted, “the provident mother of safety,” a concession to it, however wise or timely, gave a very redoutable force to the menacing spirit by which concession had been gained. That force remained with all its elements perfectly organized, and in the hands of a man whom it was equally difficult to have for a friend or an enemy. His violence shocked your more timid friends if he supported you, and encouraged your more timid enemies if he attacked you.

The Government, which had in reality yielded to him, did not wish to appear to have done so. It consequently provoked an altercation which it might as well have avoided. Mr. O’Connell had been returned for Clare, when by law he could not sit in Parliament, but when by law he could be elected. It was not unfair to say his election should not give him a seat in Parliament, because when he was elected he could not have a seat. But, on the other hand, it might be contended that, having been elected legally, he was entitled to take his seat when no legal impediment prevented it. The better policy would doubtless have been, not to fight a personal battle after having yielded in the public contest.

The Government, however, compelled Mr. O’Connell to undergo a new election; and considering this a declaration of war, he adopted a tone of hostility to the Ministry, far too extravagant to do them harm in England, but which added greatly to their difficulties in Ireland—where a thorough social disorganization rendered the Government impotent for the protection of property and life against robbery and murder, unless it could count amongst its allies patriotism and popularity themselves.

But besides the weakness of the Government in Ireland, it was generally weak, for it had lost by the change in its Irish policy much of its previous support, and could hardly hope to maintain itself any length of time without getting back former partisans, or drawing closer to new allies.

To regain friends whom you have once lost, owing to a violent difference on a great political principle, is an affair neither easily nor rapidly managed. It requires agreement on some question as important as that which created disagreement.

On the other hand, for the Tories, under the Duke of Wellington, to have coalesced with the Whigs, under Lord Grey, called for sacrifices on both sides too great to be accepted by either with honour or even propriety.

The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel tried, therefore, a moderate course. Detaching able men from the Whig ranks where they could secure them, carrying out administrative reforms, opposing constitutional changes, doing, in short, all which could be done to conciliate one party without further alienating another, and carrying on affairs, as in quiet times a despotic Government can do, even with credit and popularity. But a free Government rarely admits, for any lengthened period, of this even and tranquil course; it generates energies and passions that must be employed, and which concentrate in an opposition to the rulers who do not know how to employ them.

Some administrative improvements were nevertheless worthy of notice. The watchman’s staff was broken in the metropolis. The criminal code was still further improved, and punishment by death in cases of forgery partially abolished and generally discountenanced.

Taxes also were repealed, and savings boasted of. But the nation had become used to strong political excitement, and had a sort of instinct that the passing of the Roman Catholic Bill should be followed by some marked and general policy, analogous to the liberal spirit which had dictated that measure.

Nor was this all. Mr. Canning, when he said that he would not serve under a military premier, had expressed an English feeling. The Duke of Wellington’s treatment of Mr. Huskisson was too much like that of a general who expects implicit obedience from his inferior officers. The very determination he had displayed in disregarding and overruling George IV.’s anti-Catholic prejudices, evinced a resolve to be obeyed that seemed to many dangerous. His strong innate sense of superiority, the language, calm and decided, in which it was displayed, were not to the taste of our public in a soldier at the head of affairs, though they might have pleased in a civilian. At the same time, this undisguised and unaffected superiority lowered his colleagues in the public estimation, whilst the general tendency of many minds is to refuse one order of ability where they admit another.

An act of foreign policy, moreover, did the administration at this time an immense injury. We had cordially, though indirectly, placed Donna Maria on the throne of Portugal, and endowed that country with a constitution. Don Miguel, Donna Maria’s uncle, afterwards dispossessed her of that throne and ruled despotically. We had not, however, as yet recognized him as the Portuguese Sovereign. We still honoured the niece residing in England with that title, when accident occurred which led to grave doubts as to whether the great commander was also a great minister.

The Island of Terceira still acknowledged Donna Maria’s sway; and an expedition, consisting chiefly of her own subjects, had embarked from Portsmouth for that Island, when it was stopped and prevented from landing there by a British naval force, the pretext being that the expedition, though first bound to Terceira, was going to be sent to Portugal, and to be employed against Don Miguel.

But no sufficient proof was given of this intention; the force arrested in its passage was a Portuguese force, proceeding to a place bon fide in the Queen of Portugal’s possession. If it were eventually to be landed on the territory held by the usurper, it had not yet made manifest that such was its destination. Its object might be merely to defend Terceira, which had lately been attacked. Arguments might be drawn from international law both for and against our conduct. But the public did not go into these arguments; what it saw was, that Mr. Canning had favoured the constitutional cause, that the Duke of Wellington was favouring the absolute one. “He did not do this,” said people, “to please his own nation; no one suspected him of doing it to gratify a petty tyrant. He did it then to satisfy the great potentates of the Continent who were adverse to freedom.” This suspicion, not founded on fact, but justified by appearances, weighed upon the Cabinet as to its whole foreign policy, and reacted upon its policy at home.

So strong were its effects, that when Charles X. called Prince Polignac to the head of his counsels, it was said, “Oh, this is the Duke of Wellington’s doing!” and even when the ordinances of July were published, it was supposed that they had been advised by our military premier. Feelings of this sort have no limit. They spread like a mist over opinion.

At this time occurred the death of George IV. (June 26th, 1830), and a new era opened in our history.

William IV., who succeeded, had not the same talents or accomplishments as the deceased monarch, his brother, nor perhaps the same powers of mind. But he was more honest and straightforward; took a greater interest in the welfare of the nation, and was very desirous to be beloved by his people. He retained the same Ministry, but a new reign added to the impression that there must ere long be a new Cabinet, and the circumstances under which the forthcoming elections took place confirmed this impression. Parliament was dissolved on the 23rd of July, and on the 30th was proclaimed the triumph of a revolution in Paris; whilst immediately after the fall of the throne of Charles X. came that general crash of dynasties which shook the nerves of every prince in Europe.

The roar of revolution abroad did not resound in England and obscure the lustre of the brightest reputations; nevertheless, it was echoed in a general cry, for constitutional change, and accompanying this cry, there was, as winter approached, an almost general alarm from the demoralization that prevailed in the rural districts and the excitement that existed in the great towns.

The country wanted to be reassured and calmed.

The King’s speech (Nov. 2, 1830) was not calculated to supply this want. With respect to home affairs, it spoke of the dangerous state of Ireland, and said nothing of the one question which began to occupy men’s minds in England—the question of Reform. Abroad, our policy had been weak against Russia when on her road to Constantinople; timid and uncertain towards Greece, when the time was come for her recognition; and now we announced the intention of opening diplomatic relations with Don Miguel, in Portugal, and made the insurrection in Belgium popular by taking the King of the Netherlands under our protection.

In short, there was hardly one word our new Sovereign was made to say which did not add to the unpopularity of his ministers. These ministers, indeed, were in a critical position.

Some plan of Parliamentary Reform had of necessity to be proposed. The true Conservative policy would have been to propose a moderate plan before increased disquietude suggested a violent one. Nor was this task a difficult one at that moment; for if a Parliamentary Reform was proclaimed necessary, there was no definite idea as to what that Reform should be. Many of the Tories were willing to give Representatives to a few of the great towns, and to diminish in some degree the number of close boroughs; a large portion of the Whigs would have been satisfied with Reform on this basis.

It is probable that Sir Robert Peel (Mr. Peel had succeeded to his father’s title in March of this year) would have inclined, had he been completely his own master, towards some course of this kind.

But, whilst a general incertitude prevailed as to what would be the best course for the Government to pursue, the Duke of Wellington, who felt convinced that we should be led step by step to revolution if we did not at once and decidedly declare against all change, determined to check any contrary disposition in his followers before it was expressed, and surprised all persons by the declaration that the Constitution as it stood was perfect, and that no alteration in it would be proposed as long as he was Prime Minister.

I have reason to believe that his more wary colleague was by no means pleased with this hasty and decided announcement; and, although he could not directly contradict the speech of his chief, he in a certain degree mitigated its effect by saying: “That he did not at present see any prospect of such a measure of safe, moderate Reform as His Majesty’s Government might be inclined to sanction” which, in fact, said that if a moderate, safe Reform were found, it would be sanctioned. But the party in office, after the significant words of the Premier, were compromised; and the line they had to follow practically traced.

Those words were hazardous and bold; but in times of doubt and peril, boldness has sometimes its advantages. One must not, however, be bold with any appearance of timidity. But the Government was about to show that it wanted that resolution which was its only remaining protection.

The King had been invited to dine with the Lord Mayor on the 9th of November. There are always a great many busy people on such occasions who think of making themselves important by giving information, and the Lord Mayor is precisely the person who is most brought into contact with these people. It is not in the least surprising, therefore, that his Lordship was told there was a plot for attacking the Duke of Wellington on his way to the city, and that he had better be well guarded. On this somewhat trumpery story, and not very awful warning, the Government put off the Royal dinner, saying, they feared a tumult.

It is evident that a set of Ministers so unpopular that they thought they could not safely accompany the sovereign through the City of London to the Mansion House, were not the men to remain in office in a time of trouble and agitation. Thus, the days of the Government were now numbered; and being on the 15th of November in a minority of 29, on a motion respecting the arrangements of the civil list, they resigned.

Lord Grey succeeded the Duke of Wellington, and announced his intention of bringing forward a measure of Reform.

I had been elected for that Parliament, and returned from abroad but a few days after the change of Government.

I then saw Sir Robert Peel for the first time, and it was impossible, after attending three or four sittings of the House of Commons, not to have one’s attention peculiarly attracted to him.

He was tall and powerfully built. His body somewhat bulky for his limbs, his head small and well-formed, his features regular. His countenance was not what would be generally called expressive, but it was capable of taking the expression he wished to give it, humour, sarcasm, persuasion, and command, being its alternate characteristics. The character of the man was seen more, however, in the whole person than in the face. He did not stoop, but he bent rather forwards; his mode of walking was peculiar, and rather like that of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness, and, as he quietly walked from the bar to his seat, he looked round him, as if scanning the assembly, and when anything particular was expected, sat down with an air of preparation for the coming contest.

The oftener you heard him speak the more his speaking gained upon you. Addressing the House several times in the night on various subjects, he always seemed to know more than any one else knew about each of them, and to convey to you the idea that he thought he did so. His language was not usually striking, but it was always singularly correct, and gathered force with the development of his argument. He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, but that he was right. When the subject suited it, he would be witty, and with a look and a few words he could most effectively convey contempt; he could reply also with great spirit to an attack, but he was rarely aggressive. He seemed rather to aim at gaining the doubtful, than mortifying or crushing the hostile. His great rivals, Canning and Brougham, being removed, he no doubt felt more at his ease than formerly; and though there was nothing like assumption or pretension in his manner, there was a tone of superiority, which he justified by a great store of knowledge, a clear and impressive style, and a constant readiness to discuss any question that arose.

Lord John Russell had not then the talents for debate which he subsequently displayed. Lord Palmerston had only made one or two great speeches. Sir James Graham was chiefly remarkable for a weighty statement. Mr. Charles Grant had lost his once great oratorical powers. Mr. Macaulay was only beginning to deliver his marvellous orations. O’Connell, mighty to a mob, was not in his place when addressing a refined and supercilious audience. Mr. Stanley, the late Lord Derby, surpassed Sir R. Peel and every one else in vivacity, wit, lucidity, and energy. But he struck you more as a first-rate cavalry officer than as a commander-in-chief. Sir Robert, cool and self-collected, gave you, on the contrary, the idea of a great, prudent, wary leader who was fighting after a plan, and keeping his eye during the whole of the battle directed to the result. You felt, at least I felt, that without being superior to many of his competitors as a man, he was far superior to all as a Member of Parliament; and his ascendancy was the more visible as the whole strength of his party was in him.

He profited, no doubt, by the fact that the Whigs had been (with the exception of a short interval) out of office for nearly half a century, and showed at every step the self-sufficiency of men of talent, and the incapacity of men without experience. Every one felt, indeed, that in the ordinary course of things their official career would be short, and none were more convinced of this than their leaders. They acted accordingly. Under any circumstances they were pledged to bring forward a Reform Bill; but under actual circumstances their policy was to bring forward a Reform Bill that would render it almost impossible for their probable successors to deal with that question. Such a Bill they introduced, destroying at one swoop sixty small boroughs, and taking one member from forty-seven more.

Mr. John Smith, an ardent Reformer, said that the Government measure went so far beyond his expectations, that it took away his breath. I myself happened to meet Mr. Hunt, the famous Radical of those days, in the tea-room of the House of Commons, just before Lord John Russell rose. We had some conversation on the project about to be proposed, no one out of a small circle having any conception as to what it would be. Mr. Hunt said, if it gave members to a few of the great towns, and disfranchised with compensation a few close boroughs, the public would rest contented for the moment with this concession. In fact, the Government plan was received with profound astonishment. Lord John continued his explanations of it amidst cheers and laughter. It almost appeared a joke; and had Sir Robert Peel risen when Lord John sat down, and said that “he had been prepared to consider any reasonable or practical plan, but that the plan of the Government was a mockery repugnant to the good sense of the House, and that he could not therefore allow the time of Parliament to be lost by discussing it; moving at the same time the order of the day, and pledging himself to bring the question in a practical form under the attention of the House of Commons at an early opportunity,” he would have had a majority of at least a hundred in his favour.

It was a great occasion for a less prudent man. But Sir Robert Peel was not an improvisatore in action, though he was in words. He required time to prepare a decision. He was moreover fettered by his relations with the late premier. Could he reject at once a project of Reform, however absurd, without taking up the question of Reform? Could he pledge his party to take up that question without being certain of his party’s pretty general acquiescence?

He persuaded himself, not unnaturally, that the Government measure had no chance of success; that nothing would be lost by an appearance of moderation, and that time would thus be gained for the Opposition to combine its plans.

Nine men out of ten would have judged the matter as he did, and been wrong as he was. But the magnitude of the Whig measure, which appeared at the moment its weakness, was in reality its strength. It roused the whole country.

Much, also, in a crisis like the one through which the country had now to pass, depends on the action of individuals whose names are not always found in history. There happened, at the moment of which I am speaking, to be a man connected with the Whig Government who, by his frank, good-natured manner, his knowledge of human nature, his habits of business, his general acquaintance with all classes of persons, and his untiring activity, gave an intensity and a direction to the general sentiment which it would not otherwise have attained.

I allude to Mr. Edward Ellice, Secretary of the Treasury. He was emphatically a man of the world, having lived with all classes of it. His intellect was clear, and adapted to business; and he liked that sort of business which brought him into contact with men. Naturally kind-hearted and good-natured, with frank and easy manners, he entered into other people’s plans and feelings, and left every one with the conviction that he had been speaking to a friend who at the proper time would do him a service. He took upon himself the management of the Press, and was entrusted shortly afterwards (when Lord Grey, finding his ministry in a minority in the House of Commons, obtained the King’s permission to dissolve Parliament) with the management of the elections. He knew that the great danger to a Reform party is almost always division, and bound the Reform party on that occasion together by the cry of “The bill! the whole bill, and nothing but the bill!”

All argument, all discussion, all objection, were absorbed by this overwhelming cry, which, repeated from one end of the country to another, drowned the voice of criticism, and obliged every one to take his place either as an advocate of the Government measure, or an opponent of the popular will.

The general feeling, when, after the elections in 1831, the shattered forces of the Tory party gathered in scanty array around their distinguished leader, was that that party was no more, or at least had perished, as far as the possession of political power was concerned, for the next twenty years. People did not sufficiently recognize the changeful vibration of opinion; neither did they take sufficiently into account the fact that there will always, in a state like ours, be a set of men who wish to make the institutions more democratic, and a set of men who do not wish this; though at different epochs the battle for or against democracy will be fought on different grounds. The Reform Bill now proposed having been once agreed to, it was certain that there would again be persons for further changes, and persons against them. Sir Robert’s great care, therefore, when our old institutions sunk, was not to cling to them so fast as to sink with them. He defended, then, the opinions he had heretofore asserted, but he defended them rather as things that had been good, and were gone by, than as things that were good and which could be maintained. The Tories in the House of Lords were in a more difficult position than the Tories in the House of Commons. They were called upon to express their opinions, and to do so conscientiously. They were in a majority in the upper assembly, as the Whigs were in a majority in the lower one. According to the theory of the Constitution the vote of one branch of the Legislature was as valid as that of the other. Were they to desert their duties, and declare they were incompetent to discharge them? They considered they were not. They, therefore, threw out the Government bill when it was brought before them for decision, and thus it had again to be introduced into the House of Commons. Again it arrived at the House of Lords, which displayed a disposition to reject it once more.

Lord Grey, in this condition of things, asked the King for the power of making peers, or for the permission to retire from his Majesty’s service. His resignation was accepted, and the Duke of Wellington was charged with forming a new Government, which was to propose a new Reform Bill. He applied to Sir Robert Peel for assistance, but Sir Robert saw that the moment for him to deal with the question of Reform was passed, and declined to give that assistance, saying that he was not the proper person to represent a compromise. That any Reform Bill that would now satisfy the momentary excitement must comprehend changes that he believed would be permanently injurious. He felt, indeed, that it would be better to let the reformers carry their own bill than to bring forward another bill which could not greatly differ from the one which the House of Commons had already sanctioned, and which, nevertheless, would not satisfy, because it would be considered the bill of the House of Lords. The Duke of Wellington consequently was obliged to retire, the Lords to give way. Lord Grey’s Reform Bill was carried, and Sir Robert Peel took his seat in a new Parliament formed by his opponents, who thought they had secured thereby the permanence of their own power.

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Part V.

I.

The great measure just passed into law was not calculated to justify the fears of immediate and violent consequences; but was certain to produce gradual and important changes.

The new constitution breathed, in fact, a perfectly different spirit from the old one. The vitality of our former government was drawn from the higher classes and the lower ones. An election for Westminster was not merely the return of two members to Parliament: it was a manifestation of the feeling prevalent amongst the masses throughout England; and the feeling amongst the masses had a great influence in moments of excitement, and in all matters touching the national dignity and honour. On the other hand, it was by the combinations of powerful families that a majority was formed in Parliament, which, in ordinary times, and when no great question was at issue, ruled the country.

The populace, by its passions—the aristocracy, by its pride—gave energy to the will, and elevation to the character of the nation, disposing it to enterprise and to action. The government we had recently created was, on the contrary, filled with the soul of the middle classes, which is not cast in an heroic mould. Its objects are material, its interests are involved in the accidents of the moment. What may happen in five years to a man in trade, is of comparatively small consequence. What may happen immediately, makes or mars his fortunes. Moreover, the persons likely to replace the young men, distinguished for their general abilities and general instruction, who had formerly represented the smaller boroughs, were now for the most part elderly men with a local reputation, habits already acquired, and without the knowledge, the energy, or the wish to commence a new career as politicians.

A writer on Representative Government has said, that the two important elements to represent are intellect and numbers, because they are the two great elements of force. The new Reform Bill did not affect especially to represent either. But it represented peace, manufactures, expediency, practical acquaintance with particular branches of trade. It established a greater reality. A member of Parliament was more likely to represent a real thing concerning the public than a mere idea concerning it. The details of daily business were more certain to be attended to, useless wars to be put on one side.

On the other hand, that high spirit which insensibly sustains a powerful nation, that devotion to the permanent interests of the country, which leads to temporary sacrifices for its character and prestige, that extensive and comprehensive knowledge of national interests, which forms statesmen, and is the peculiar attribute of an enlightened and patriotic aristocracy, that generous sympathy with what is right, and detestation for what is wrong, which exists nowhere with such intensity as in the working classes, who are swayed more by sentiment, and less by calculation, than any other class—all those qualities, in short, which make one state, without our being able exactly to say why, dominate morally and physically over other states, were somewhat too feebly implanted in our new institutions; and these institutions generated a set of politicians who, with a very limited range of view, denied the existence of principles that were beyond the scope of their observation.

There were also other considerations, probably overlooked by those who imagined they were building up a permanent system by the bill of 1832. The middle class, which is perhaps the most important one for a government to conciliate, is not a class that can itself govern. Its temporary rule nearly always leads to a democracy or to a despotism; it must, therefore, be considered as a mere step, upwards or downwards, in a new order of things. Besides, if you destroy traditional respect, and that kind of instinct of obedience which is created by the habit of obeying spontaneously to-morrow, what you obeyed without inquiry yesterday—if you begin by condemning everything in a constitution which reason does not approve, you must arrive at a constitution which reason will sanction. You cannot destroy anomalies and preserve anomalies. The tide of innovation which you have directed towards the one anomaly as absurd, will, ere long, sweep away, as equally ridiculous, another anomaly. There is no solid resting-place between custom and argument. What is no longer defended by the one, must be made defensible by the other.

It is only by degrees, however, that the full extent of a great change develop es itself; for the peculiarities of a new constitution are always modified when that new constitution is carried out by men who have grown up under the preceding one; and in the meantime the vessel of the State, struggling between old habits and new ideas, must be exposed to the action of changeful and contrary winds.

Thus, the Reform party, temporarily united during the recent combat, split into several sections at its termination.

First, Lord Durham quitted the administration, because he thought it too cautious; secondly, Mr. Stanley and Sir James Graham quitted it, because they each thought it too fast; finally, Lord Grey himself quitted it, because he deemed that his authority was diminishing, as his generation was dying away, and younger men absorbing old influences. In the meantime Mr. O’Connell continued to be a great embarrassment. He represented the majority of the Irish people, who contended for a supremacy over the minority, a contest in which it was natural for the Catholics to engage after they had been declared as good citizens as the Protestants; but in which it was impossible for the British Government to concur, so long as there was a feud between the Protestant and the Catholic, and that the Protestant majority in England were disposed to sustain the Protestant minority in Ireland.

Hence, the reformed Parliament had met amidst cries for the repeal of the Union, and those savage violations of social order which, in the sister kingdom, are the usual attendants on political agitation.

The Ministry first tried coercion, but its effects could only be temporary, and they alienated a portion of its supporters. It then tried conciliation. But it was found impossible to conciliate the Irish Catholics without conciliating their leader. That leader was not irreconcilable, for he was vain: and vain men may always be managed by managing their vanity; but to gratify the vanity of a man who was always defying the power of England, was to mortify the pride of the English people.

Lord Melbourne had succeeded Lord Grey. He united various accomplishments with a manly understanding and a character inclined to moderation. There could not have been selected a statesman better qualified to preside over a Cabinet containing conflicting opinions and antagonistic ambitions. But no body of men, acting together under a system of compromises, can act with vigour or maintain authority. All these circumstances gave an air of feebleness and inferiority to an administration which contained, nevertheless, many men of superior ability. But that, perhaps, which tended most to discredit the ministry, was the credit which Sir Robert Peel was daily gaining as its opponent.

Carefully separating himself from the extreme opinions to be found in his own party, condemning merely the extreme opinions on the opposite one; professing the views and holding the language of a mediator between opinions that found no longer an echo in the public mind, and opinions that had not yet been ripened by public approbation; contrasting by his clear and uniform line of conduct with the apparent variations and vacillations of a Cabinet that was alternately swayed by diverging tendencies; professing no desire for power, he created by degrees a growing opinion that he was the statesman who ought to possess it: and thus, when the Reform Ministry had to add to its former losses that of Lord Althorpe, who by the death of Lord Spencer was withdrawn from the House of Commons, which he had long led with a singular deficiency in the powers of debate, but with the shrewdness and courtesy of a man of the world, the King thought himself justified in removing a Cabinet which he considered deficient in dignity, spirit, and consideration.

The Duke of Wellington, to whom he offered the post of Premier, declined it, and recommended Sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert had not expected, nor perhaps wished for, so sudden a summons. He was, in fact, at Rome when he was offered, for the first time, the highest place in the Cabinet. Returning to England instantly, he accepted the offer. His object now was to organize a new Conservative party on a new basis, and to come forward himself as a new man in a new state of affairs, neither lingering over ancient pledges nor fettered by previous declarations. As the first necessity for a new system, he sought new men, and wishing to obliterate the prejudice against himself as an anti-Reformer by a union with those who had been Reformers, hastened to invite Sir James Graham and Lord Stanley to join him. This invitation being declined, he had to fall back on his former associates; but being unable to change the furniture of the old Conservative Cabinet, he repainted and regilded it. In a letter to the electors of Tamworth, which engrafted many Liberal promises on Conservative principles, he went as far towards gaining new proselytes as was compatible with retaining old adherents. This letter was a preparation for the great struggle on the hustings which was now about to take place. Parliament had been dissolved, and the appeal made to the country was answered by the addition of one hundred members to the new Conservative party. Such an addition was sufficient to justify King William’s belief that a considerable change had taken place in public opinion, but was not sufficient to give a majority in the House of Commons to the ministry he had chosen. It was beaten by ten votes on the choice of a Speaker, Mr. Abercrombie having that majority over Mr. Manners Sutton.

But if Sir Robert Peel had not a sufficient majority to insure his maintenance in office, the Whigs were not so sure of a majority as to risk a direct attempt to turn him out, unless on some specific case which called for a vote to sanction a specific opinion. Sir Robert’s policy was to avoid a case of this kind, knowing that, if he could once by his tact, prudence, and ability, increase his numbers and establish a tendency in his favour, the fluctuating and uncertain would soon join his standard. This policy was contained in the speech with which he opened the campaign:

“With such prospects I feel it to be my duty—my first and paramount duty—to maintain the post which has been confided to me, and to stand by the trust which I did not seek, but which I could not decline. I call upon you not to condemn before you have heard—to receive at least the measures I shall propose—to amend them if they are defective—to extend them if they fall short of your expectations; but at least to give me the opportunity of presenting them, that you yourselves may consider and dispose of them. I make great offers, which should not be lightly rejected! I offer you the prospect of continued peace—the restored confidence of powerful states, that are willing to seize the opportunity of reducing great armies, and thus diminishing the chances of hostile collision. I offer you reduced estimates, improvements in civil jurisprudence, reform of ecclesiastical law, the settlement of the tithe question in Ireland, the commutation of the tithe in England, the removal of any real abuse in the Church, the redress of those grievances of which the Dissenters have any just grounds to complain. I offer you those specific measures, and I offer also to advance, soberly and cautiously, it is true, in the path of progressive improvement. I offer also the best chance that these things can be effected in willing concert with the other authorities of the State; thus restoring harmony, ensuring the maintenance, but not excluding the Reform (where Reform is really requisite) of ancient institutions.”

It was difficult to use more seducing language, but the Opposition would not be seduced. From the 24th of February till the beginning of April, Sir Robert struggled against its unsparing attacks. It was not easy, however, to catch him exposed on any practical question; at last, however, he had to deal with one—he had promised to settle the tithe question in Ireland. How was he to do so? He thought to balk his assailants by bringing forward a measure this year very similar to one which they themselves had brought forward the year before. But once on Irish ground, he was pretty sure of being beaten. The difference between Lord John Russell and Mr. Stanley, which had led to the secession of the latter, was a difference of principle as to the nature of Church property: the former contending that if the revenue possessed by the Protestant Church in Ireland was larger than necessary for the decent maintenance of the Protestant clergy, the State might dispose of it as it thought proper; the latter asserting that the State could not employ it for any purposes that were not ecclesiastical.

This was a great question; it was brought to an issue in a very small manner. Lord John Russell proposed as a resolution that no Irish tithe bill would be satisfactory which did not contain a clause devoting any surplus over and above the requirements of the Church establishment to the purposes of secular education. A committee was then sitting to determine whether there was any such surplus as that alluded to or not, and it would have been, doubtless, more regular first to have got the surplus and then to have determined about its use. Besides, if we were to deal with so great a principle as the alienation of the property of the Protestant Church, it would surely have been worth while to do so for some great practical advantage. The majority, nevertheless, voted for Lord John Russell’s proposition, partly because it established a public right, partly because it answered a party purpose. Thus Parliament decided against the inviolability of Church property—a decision certain to affect the future; which did affect the present; and Sir Robert Peel was forced to resign the seals of the Treasury.

But let us be just. Never did a statesman enter office more triumphantly than Sir Robert Peel left it. His self-confidence, his tact, his general knowledge, his temper, filled even his opponents with admiration!

It was impossible not to acknowledge to oneself that there was a man who seemed shaped expressly for being first minister of England. But, on the other hand, a sense of justice compelled one to consider that Lord Melbourne had done nothing to justify the manner in which he had been dismissed; that the party he represented had but two years since achieved a popular triumph which rendered the reign of William IV. almost as memorable in our annals as that of William III.—that it had added to this triumph in the name of Liberty, a triumph quite as great in the cause of Humanity; and that it would have inflicted a stigma of fickleness on our national character to pass by with indifference and neglect the author of the Reform Bill and the Negro Emancipation Bill—condemning a party still possessed of a majority in the most important branch of the Legislature, on the ground that the late Earl of Spencer was no more, and that it was necessary to replace Lord Althorpe—an honest man of respectable talents—by Lord John Russell—an honest man of very eminent talents.

Sir Robert’s attempt, in fact, though made bravely and sustained with consummate ability, was premature; made a few years later,—when the Stanley party had joined and were conformed with the Peel party, and made in consequence of some parliamentary measure, not as the consequence, which it then appeared to be, of Royal patronage and favour,—the result would have been different.

At the same time, it made an immense change in the condition of the Tory party. That party, after this attempt, was no longer a shattered band of impossible politicians, placed by public opinion without the pale of political power.

It became a compact, numerous, and hopeful party, considered by the country as prudent and practical, and having at its head the man most looked up to in that House of Parliament, which he declared publicly he would never quit.

For four years after this struggle Sir Robert Peel remained at the head of the powerful opposition he had gradually collected around him; the Whig Government having in the meantime to perform the very difficult and ungrateful task of carrying out changes which it deemed necessary, against Conservatives, and opposing innovations which it deemed dangerous, against Reformers. The friends of Liberal institutions and of religious toleration, and even of administrative improvement, owe it a debt of gratitude which they have never fully paid. The introduction of popular suffrage into the system of municipal government; the removal of various grievances that still existed and were mortifying and harassing to the Dissenters; the reduction of newspaper stamps; the commutation of tithes, are the footprints which Lord Melbourne’s administration left on those times. On the other hand, Lord John Russell resisted in its name vote by ballot (a question of which both its advocates and opponents exaggerated the importance); any further extension of the suffrage, and also the re-establishment of triennial Parliaments. His great antagonist aided him in respect to all measures which the public, irrespective of parties, were prepared to adopt, and supported him against all demands which the more democratic portion of his adherents put forward, but depreciated his general authority by showing that, though invested with the functions of Government, he and his colleagues had not the power of governing.

The great battle-field, however, between Whig and Tory, or as the latter now called themselves “Conservatives,” was, as it had long been and seems always destined to be,—Ireland; for there was still to settle that Irish Tithes Bill, into which the Whigs had insisted for some time on inserting the principle of appropriation; and there was also another question at stake, more pressing and more practical,—that of the Irish corporations.

The Whigs were for applying to the municipalities in Ireland the same principles of popular election which had been applied to municipalities in England and Scotland. The Conservatives contended that Irish society was not constituted like English and Scotch society, and would not admit of the same institutions. They urged that the old municipalities had been constituted on the basis most proper to keep up an exclusive Protestant ascendancy; they contended that the new municipalities, according to the Government plan, seemed likely to create an exclusive ascendancy for the Catholics; and they asserted that under such circumstances it would be wise and just to establish an order of things that would preserve some balance between the two great divisions of the Irish community. They entered, in fact, upon that difficult ground, a ground made difficult when the Irish Catholic was placed on an equality with the Irish Protestant, and commenced the transfer of power from a long predominant minority to an ambitious and irritated majority. But it was after carefully weighing immediate peril against contingent difficulties, that Sir Robert Peel had already taken his choice; and he ought now to have accepted its consequences. The worst way of arguing for a legislative union between two countries is surely to question that they will admit of the same laws. The best way of removing religious passions from political affairs, is to forget in political questions religious distinctions.

By not acting on these convictions, he re-opened the sore which he had made such sacrifices to heal, but this error, which was certain to bear its punishment in regard to Ireland at a later season, did not affect his immediate position in the rest of the Empire.

II.

We have said that anything like an alliance with a man who assumed an attitude of defiance towards English power would arouse the instincts of English pride. Besides, nothing at all times injures and lowers a government more than the appearance of being counselled by a private individual who is not publicly responsible for his advice. The mere fact that the Whig policy was more congenial to Mr. O’Connell’s views than the Tory one, would have naturally created a sort of link between this singular man and the Whig Government. To keep his followers together, he wanted the influence of patronage; to obtain the aid of his followers, the Government did not show itself unwilling to bestow patronage upon him. In the meantime the independence of his attitude and language—an independence which the peculiarity of his position obliged him somewhat ostentatiously to display—apparently justified the accusation that the Premier was his protÉgÉ, and not he the protÉgÉ of the Premier. Hence, though the House of Commons still maintained by a small majority the Whig policy in Ireland, there was a growing coolness amongst the English at large towards Irish grievances, and a disposition to accuse Lord Melbourne of a mean desire to retain place, when in reality he was undergoing many personal mortifications from public motives.

The Conservatives in Parliament had, moreover, increased, and were become impatient. A difference between the Colonial Office and the Jamaica Legislature offered the opportunity of adding some votes to that number. A battle was fought, and the ministry only gained a majority of five. Being oppressed by a long catalogue of questions which it had undertaken to settle, and had not the power to deal with, the Ministry not unwillingly resigned; and, by the Duke of Wellington’s advice, Sir Robert Peel had the same commission confided to him by Queen Victoria which he had received previously from William IV.

A difficulty, however, here intervened with respect to certain leaders in the highest position at Court, whom the Premier desired to remove, and from whom the Queen would not consent to part. The question ought not to have arisen, but once having done so, concession could not be made with becoming dignity, either by the sovereign or by the statesman, who had acted too much as a man of business, and too little as a man of the world.

III.

Lord Melbourne resumed for a time the position he had abandoned, but, by doing so, he rather weakened than strengthened his party, and gave his opponents the advantage of maturing their strength by a prolonged contest against a ministry which had confessed its incapacity to master the difficulties which beset it.

These difficulties were not a little increased by combinations which betokened an insurrectionary disposition amongst the working classes, who, in some cases, proceeded to riot, and set forth their general plans and devices on the project of a constitution called “the people’s charter,” a project which was generally considered as subversive of credit, property, and order.

The Conservatives attributed these doctrines, however denounced by the Whigs, as deducible from Whig tendencies, and profited by the mistrust which a weak government and an agitated commonalty naturally suggested. One hostile motion succeeded another, each manifesting an increasing decline in the strength of the Whigs, and an increasing confidence on the part of their opponents, until a new opportunity arose for bringing together the same parties that had, by their union, brought about Lord Melbourne’s previous resignation.

The doctrines of Free Trade had of late made rapid progress; they were principally directed by the Corn Law League, recently established, towards a free trade in corn, and against a free trade in this commodity Sir Robert Peel had emphatically declared himself; but they were also applicable to all articles of commerce, and to the general principles of Free Trade in dealing with the greater number of these articles the Conservative leader gave his assent. As, however, he made an exception with respect to corn, so he made an exception as to sugar; his argument being, that the state of our West Indian colonies merited our special consideration, for we had deprived them of slave labour, and thereby placed them in an unequal condition as to their products with countries which employed slave labour.

For this inequality, he said, it is fair that you should compensate by imposing a heavier duty on sugar produced by slave labour than on the sugar cultivated by free labour. The Government, on the other hand, not daring as yet to declare decidedly in favour of a Free Trade in corn, was disposed to lower and fix the duty, which was then variable, and to abolish the differential duties on timber and sugar. In this state of things, Lord Sandon gave the following notice:—“That, considering the efforts and sacrifices which Parliament and the country have made for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, with the earnest hope that their exertions and example might lead to a mitigation and final extinction of those evils in other countries, this House is not prepared (especially with the present prospect of the supply of sugar from the British possessions) to adopt the measure proposed by her Majesty’s Government, for the reduction of the duty on foreign sugar.”

After a long debate, the opposition had a majority of thirty-six. The ministers did not resign, meaning to dissolve, but intending first to renovate their claims to public sympathy by an exposition of Free Trade policy, which, though it might not go so far as Mr. Cobden and his friends might desire, would still go far enough to place them at the head of the movement which they foresaw would soon agitate the country.

Sir Robert, however, little disposed after his recent victory to afford a respite to his adversaries, declaring that he did not think it for the advantage of the monarchy that the servants of the Crown should be retained, when unable to carry those measures which they felt it their duty to advise, moved, on the 27th of May, a vote of want of confidence, and obtained a majority of one. A dissolution followed, in which the party which still held office was more unsuccessful than could have been expected, and, at the opening of Parliament, ministers were in a minority of ninety-one. This closed their existence, but it might be recorded on their grave that they had finally given Ireland elective municipalities, and conferred on the three kingdoms the benefit of a penny postage.

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Part VI.

Differences in the country.—Sir Robert Peel’s programme.—A new Conservative party.—Peel’s commercial policy.—Catholic education.—The Maynooth grant.—Corn Law agitation.—The Irish distress.—Peel resumes the Government.—The Corn Laws repealed.—Review of Peel’s career.—Character of Peel.—Peel and Canning contrasted.