Survey of the Reign of George III.—The Cato Street Conspiracy.—The Queen's Return to England, and the Proceedings against her.—The King Visits Ireland and Scotland.—Reform of the Criminal Code.—Freedom of Trade.—Death of Lord Liverpool.—The Duke of Wellington becomes Prime-minister.—Repeal of the Test and Corporation Act.—O'Connell is Elected for Clare.—Peel Resigns his Seat for Oxford.—Catholic Emancipation.—Question of the Endowment of the Roman Catholic Clergy.—Constitutional Character of the Emancipation.—The Propriety of Mr. Peel's Resignation of his Seat for Oxford Questioned.

In the first month of 1820 George III. died. His had been an eventful reign, strangely checkered with disaster and glory; but, if we compare its close with its commencement, it was still more remarkably distinguished by a development of the resources and an increase in the wealth and power of the nation, to which the history of no other country in the same space of time affords any parallel.

Regarded from the first point of view, our successes greatly outweighed our disasters. The loss of our North American Colonies, the only event which can be so described, was far more than counterbalanced by our vast acquisitions in India, at the Cape of Good Hope, and Malta; while to our maritime supremacy, in the complete establishment of which Rodney and Nelson had crowned the work of Anson and Hawke, was now added a splendor of military renown far surpassing that achieved by any other of the nations which had borne their share in the overthrow of Napoleon.

The increase of our resources is sufficiently shown by a single fact. At his accession George III. found the kingdom engaged in the great seven years' war; one British army employed beyond the Rhine, another in India; fleets traversing the seas in every direction, capturing the Havana, in the West Indies; Manilla, in the East; and routing French squadrons in sight of their own harbors. While, to maintain these varied armaments, supplies were voted by Parliament in 1761 to what Lord Stanhope calls "the unprecedented amount of almost twenty millions." In 1813 the supplies reached nearly six times that amount,[182] and that prodigious sum was raised with greater ease than the revenue of 1761, the interest on the necessary loans being also lower than it had been on the former occasion.

The philosophical man of science will point with at least equal exultation to the great discoveries in art and science; to the achievements of the mechanic, the engineer, and the chemist; to the labors of Brindley and Arkwright and Watts, to which, indeed, this great expansion of the resources and growth of the wealth of the country is principally owing.

While, as the preceding chapters of this work have been designed to show, our political progress and advancement had been no less steady or valuable; yet, important from a constitutional point of view as were many of the labors of our legislators in these sixty years, they are surpassed in their influence on the future history of the nation, as well as in the reality and greatness of the changes which were produced by them in the constitution, by the transactions of the reigns of the next two sovereigns, though the two united scarcely equalled in their duration a quarter of that of their venerable father.

It has been seen how Pitt was baffled in his efforts to remodel the House of Commons, and to remove the disabilities under which the Roman Catholics labored, the reasons for which, even granting that they had been sufficient to justify their original imposition, had, in his judgment, long passed away. His pursuit of the other great object of his domestic policy, the emancipation of trade from the shackles which impeded its universal development, was rudely interrupted by the pressure of the war forced upon him by that very nation which he had desired to make the first partner, if one may use such an expression, in the prosperity which he hoped to diffuse by his commercial treaty with her. But, as in the case of other men in advance of their age, the principles which he had asserted were destined to bear fruit at a later period. And the mere fact of a change in the person of the sovereign seemed to make a change in the policy hitherto pursued less unnatural.

Yet, memorable as the reforms which it witnessed were destined to make it, no reign ever commenced with more sinister omens than that at which we have now arrived. The new King had not been on the throne a month, when a conspiracy was discovered, surpassing in its treasonable atrocity any that had been heard of in the kingdom since the days of the Gunpowder Plot; and, even before those concerned in that foul crime had been brought to punishment, the public mind was yet more generally and profoundly agitated by a scandal which, in one point of view, was still more painful, as in some degree involving the whole kingdom in its disgrace.

The marriage of the present sovereign to Mrs. Fitzherbert has already been mentioned. A few years afterward, in the year 1795, regarding that marriage as illegal, he had contracted a second with his cousin, the Princess Caroline of Brunswick. But, even in royal families, a more unfortunate alliance had never taken place. They had never met till she arrived in England for the wedding; and, as he had never professed any other motive for consenting to the match than a desire to obtain the payment of his debts, he did not think it necessary to disguise his feelings, or to change his habits, or even to treat her with decency for a single day. On his very first introduction to her he behaved to her with marked discourtesy.[183] Shortly after the marriage he formally separated himself from her, and, both before and after the separation, lived in undisguised licentiousness. She, on her part, indignant at his neglect and infidelity, and exasperated at the restrictions which he presently placed on her intercourse with their only child, made no secret of her feelings, and on many occasions displayed such disregard of the ordinary rules of prudence and propriety, that he had some color for charges of infidelity to her marriage vows which, after a few years, he brought against her. The King, her uncle, could not refuse to appoint a commission to investigate the truth of the accusation; but the commissioners unanimously acquitted her of any graver fault than imprudence. She was again received at court, from which she had been excluded while the inquiry was pending; but her husband's animosity toward her was not appeased. As time wore on, and as the King's derangement deprived her of her only protector, it even seemed as if he desired to give it all the notoriety possible, till at last, wearied out by his implacable persecution, she sought and obtained his permission to quit the country and take up her abode abroad. It was a most unfortunate resolution on her part. She fixed her residence in Italy, where she gradually learned to neglect the caution which she had observed in England, till, after a year or two, reports arose of her intimacy with a servant whom she had raised from a menial situation to that of the chief officer of her household, and whom she admitted to a familiarity of intercourse which others besides her husband thought quite incompatible with innocence. He sent agents into Italy to inquire into the truth of those rumors; and their report so greatly confirmed them that, even before the King's death, he laid it before the Prime-minister, with a demand that he should at once take steps to procure him a divorce, in which he professed to believe that the Princess herself would willingly acquiesce. He was so far correct, that her legal advisers were willing to advise her to consent to "a formal separation, to be ratified by an act of Parliament." But such an arrangement fell far short of the Prince's wishes. The Princess Charlotte, the heiress to his throne, had died in childbirth two years before, and he was anxious to be set free to marry again. The ministers were placed in a situation of painful embarrassment. There was an obvious difficulty in pointing out to one who already stood toward them in the character of their sovereign, and who must inevitably soon become so, that his own conduct made the prospect of obtaining a divorce from the Ecclesiastical Courts hopeless; and the only other expedients calculated to attain his end, "a direct application to Parliament for relief, founded upon the special circumstances of the case," or "a proceeding against the Princess for high-treason," were but little more promising. Indeed, it was afterward ascertained to be the unanimous opinion of the judges that the charge of high-treason could not be legally sustained, since the individual who was alleged to be the partner in the criminality imputed to her was a foreigner, and therefore, "owing no allegiance to the crown," could not be said to have violated it.[184]

He chafed under their resistance to his wish, and would have deprived them of their offices, could he have relied on any successors whom he might give them proving more complaisant; but, before he could make up his mind, the death of George III. forced upon both him and them the consideration of his and his wife's position, since it made it necessary to remodel the prayer for the royal family, and instantly to decide whether her name and title as Queen were to be inserted in it. He was determined that they should not be mentioned; and, as the practice of praying for a Queen Consort by name appeared not to have been invariable, they were willing to gratify him on this point, though it was evidently highly probable that she would consider this as a fresh insult, sufficient to justify her in carrying out a threat, which she had recently held out, of returning to England. Her ablest advisers did not, indeed, regard it in this light, since the prayer as now framed implored the Divine protection for "all the royal family" in general terms, in which she might be supposed to be included, and made no separate mention of any member of the family.[185] But, unfortunately, she was much more under the influence of counsellors who were neither lawyers nor statesmen, but who only desired to use her as a tool to obtain notoriety for themselves. A long negotiation ensued. It was inevitable that some application should be made to Parliament in connection with her affairs, since the annuity which had been settled upon her by Parliament in 1814, on the occasion of her departure from England, had expired with the life of the late King. And the ministers proposed that that annuity should now be raised from £35,000 to £50,000, on condition of her remaining abroad, having, by their positive refusal to concur in any proceedings against her while she remained abroad, extorted the King's acquiescence in this proposal, though he called it a "great and painful sacrifice of his personal feelings." They sought to conciliate her acceptance of it by mentioning her in it by her title of "Queen," and by coupling with it a sanction to her appointment of her law-officers, an Attorney and Solicitor General, an act which could only be exercised by a Queen. And, though a part of the condition of her residence abroad required that she should do so under some other title, that seemed only a conforming to an ordinary practice of royal princes on their travels. At the same time, the ministers stated frankly to Mr. Brougham, a lawyer of the highest reputation as an advocate, whom she had appointed her Attorney-general, that, if she should reject the offer, and come to England, as she had already announced her intention of doing, such a course would leave them no alternative, but would compel them to institute proceedings against her.

Eventually she preferred the advice of others to that of Mr. Brougham, or, as it may, perhaps, be more consistent with the real fact to say, she yielded to her own feelings of hatred of her husband, which, it must be confessed, were far from unnatural. She believed, or professed to believe, that he had more to dread from an exposure of his conduct than she had from any revelations of her actions; and, under this impression, in the spring she crossed the Channel and took up her residence in London. It was a step which seemed to Lord Liverpool to leave him no alternative, and, in consequence, he at once took the course which he had from the beginning conceived her arrival would render indispensable. He brought down to Parliament a royal message from the King, announcing that her return to England had made it necessary to communicate to the Houses documents relating to her conduct since her departure from the kingdom, which he recommended to their immediate and serious attention. He proposed the appointment by ballot of a committee of the House of Lords to examine those documents; and when the committee had reported that the documents containing "allegations deeply affecting the honor of the Queen, etc., ... appeared to the committee calculated to affect not only the honor of the Queen, but also the dignity of the crown and the moral feelings and honor of the country, so that in their opinion, they should become the subject of a solemn inquiry, which might be best effected in the course of a legislative proceeding," he introduced a "Bill of Pains and Penalties" to deprive her of her title of Queen, and to annul her marriage.

No one would willingly dwell on so melancholy and disgraceful a subject. As far as the Queen was concerned, a protracted investigation, during which a number of witnesses, favorable and unfavorable, were examined, left no doubt on the mind of almost all dispassionate people that the misconduct alleged against her had been abundantly proved. At the same time there was a feeling equally general that the King's treatment of her from the very beginning of their married life had disentitled him to any kind of relief; and this sentiment was so strongly shown by the gradual diminution of the majority in favor of the bill, as it proceeded through its several stages, that Lord Liverpool, who had already abandoned the clause annulling the marriage, eventually withdrew the whole bill, perceiving the impossibility of inducing the House of Commons to pass it when it should go down to that House.

No act of Lord Liverpool's ministry has been attacked with greater bitterness than that of allowing any proceedings whatever to be taken against the Queen, partly on the ground that, however profligate her conduct had been, it had certainly not been more gross than that of her husband, which had provoked and given opportunity for her errors; partly because a great scandal was thus published to the world, and a shock was given to the national decency and morality which the ministers, above all men, were bound to avoid; partly, also, because the mode of proceeding adopted was alleged to be wholly unprecedented; and because, as was contended, the power of Parliament ought not to be invoked to inflict penalties which, if deserved, should have been left to the courts of law. It cannot be denied that there is weight in these objections; but, in estimating their force, it must be considered that every part of the conduct of the ministers showed that their motive was not the gratification of the King's private feelings, whether directed to the object of indulging his enmity against his wife or to that of obtaining freedom to contract a second marriage; on the contrary, so long as the Queen remained abroad, no language could be more distinct, consistently with the respect due to his royal dignity, than that in which they expressed to him their insurmountable objection to every mode of proceeding against her which he had suggested, founded almost equally on considerations of "the interests of his Majesty and of the monarchy,"[186] and "the painful obligation" under which they conceived themselves to lie "of postponing their regard for his Majesty's feelings to great public interests."

But when the Queen came to England the case was greatly altered. The question now forced on the consideration of the cabinet was, not the mode of avoiding an intolerable scandal, but the choice between two scandals, both of the gravest character. The scandal to be dreaded from the revelations of the conduct of both King and Queen, that could not fail to result from the investigation which, in justice, must precede any attempt to legislate on the subject, was, indeed, as great as ever; but it had now to be compared with the alternative scandal of allowing a woman lying under such grievous imputations to preside over the British court, as, if resident in England, and in undisturbed possession of her royal rank, she of necessity must preside. The consequence would evidently have been that the court would have been deserted by all who could give lustre and dignity to it by their position and character; and, in the slights thus offered to her, royalty and the monarchy themselves would seem to be brought into contempt. The latter scandal, too, would be the more permanent. Grievous and shameful as might be the disclosures which must be anticipated from an investigation in which the person accused must be permitted the employment of every means of defence, including recrimination, the scandal was yet one which would, to a certain extent, pass away with the close of the inquiry. But, if she were left undisturbed in the enjoyment of her royal rank, and of privileges which could not be separated from it, that scandal would last as long as her life—longer, in all probability, than the reign. It is hardly too much to say that the monarchy itself might have been endangered by the spectacle of such a King and such a Queen; and the ministers might fairly contend that, of two great dangers and evils, they had, on the whole, chosen the least.

Lastly, if the Queen's conduct was to be investigated, though the mode adopted was denounced as unconstitutional by the Opposition (for, not greatly to their credit, the leading Whigs made her guilt or innocence a party question), it does not seem to deserve the epithet, though it may be confessed to have been unsupported by any direct precedent. Isabella, the faithless wife of Edward II., had, indeed, been condemned by "the Lords" to the forfeiture of many of the estates which she had illegally appropriated; but it does not appear that her violation of her marriage vows, or even her probable share or acquiescence in her husband's murder, formed any portion of the grounds of her deprivation. And the Parliament which attainted Catherine Howard proceeded solely on her confession of ante-nuptial licentiousness, without giving her any opportunity of answering or disproving the other charges which were brought against her. Unprecedented, therefore, the course now adopted may be admitted to have been. But it was the only practicable one. The different minutes of the cabinet, which the Prime-minister laid before the King, established most conclusively the correctness of their opinion that no impeachment for high-treason could lie against her. She could not be an accomplice in such an offence of one who, being a foreigner, could not have committed it. It was equally impossible for the King to sue for a divorce, as one of his subjects might have done; because it was the established practice of Parliament not to entertain a bill of divorce without the judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court being previously obtained and produced. And, under the circumstances, to obtain from the Ecclesiastical Court such a sentence as could alone lay the foundation for a bill of divorce was clearly out of the question.

The case was a new and extraordinary one, and, being such, could only be dealt with in some new and extraordinary manner. And in all such cases an appeal to Parliament seems the most, if not the only, constitutional mode of solving the difficulty. Where the existing laws are silent or inapplicable, the most natural resource clearly is, to go back to the fountain of all law; that is, to the Parliament, which alone is competent to make a new law. In one point of view the question may seem unimportant, since we may well hope that no similar case will ever arise to require the precedent now set to be appealed to; but not unimportant, if it in any way or degree contributes to establish the great principle, that the solution of all matters of moment to the state belongs to the Parliament alone: a principle which, in its legitimate completeness, carries with it a condemnation of many a modern association whose object, whether avowed or disguised, is clearly to supersede where it fails to intimidate the sole constitutional Legislature.

The abandonment of the bill was naturally hailed as a triumph by the Queen and her partisans; but with the excitement of the struggle against the government the interest taken in her case died away. The next year, when she demanded to be crowned with her husband, his refusal to admit her claim elicited scarcely any sympathy for her under this renewed grievance; in truth, it was one as to which precedent was unfavorable to her demand. And the mortification at finding herself already almost forgotten contributed to bring on an illness of which she died in less than a year after the termination of what was called her trial; and in a short time both she and it were forgotten.

For the next few years the history of the kingdom is one of progressive correction of abuses or defects. The King paid visits to Ireland and Scotland, parts of his dominions which his father had never once visited, and in both was received with the most exultant and apparently sincere acclamations. And, though one great calamity fell on the ministry in the loss of Lord Castlereagh—who, in a fit of derangement, brought on by the excitement of overwork, unhappily laid violent hands on himself—his death, sad as it was, could not be said to weaken or to affect the general policy of the cabinet. Indeed, as he was replaced at the Foreign Office by his old colleague and rival, Mr. Canning, in one point of view the administration may be said to have been strengthened by the change, since, as an orator, Canning had confessedly no equal in either House of Parliament. Another change was productive of still more practical advantage. Lord Sidmouth retired from the Home Office, and was succeeded by Mr. Peel, previously Secretary for Ireland; and the transfer of that statesman to an English office facilitated reforms, some of which were as yet little anticipated even by the new Secretary himself. The earliest of them, and one not the least important in its bearing on the well-doing of society, the mitigation of the severity of our Criminal Code, was, indeed, but the following up of a series of measures in the same direction which had been commenced in the time of the Duke of Portland's second administration, and, it must be added, in spite of its resistance. The influence of various trades, and of the owners of different kinds of property, pressing in turns upon our legislators, had rendered our code the most sanguinary that had, probably, ever existed in Christendom. Each class of proprietor regarded only the preservation of his own property, and had no belief in the efficacy of any kind of protection for it, except such as arose from the fear of death; nor any doubt that he was justified in procuring the infliction of that penalty to avert the slightest loss to himself. The consequence was that, at the beginning of the present century, there were above two hundred offences the perpetrators of which were liable to capital punishment, some of a very trivial character, such as cutting down a hop-vine in a Kentish hop-garden, robbing a rabbit-warren or a fish-pond, personating an out-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital, or even being found on a high-road with a blackened face, the intention to commit a crime being inferred from the disguise, even though no overt act had been committed. An act of Elizabeth made picking a pocket a capital offence; another, passed as late as the reign of William III., affixed the same penalty to shop-lifting, even when the article stolen might not exceed the value of five shillings. And the fault of these enactments was not confined to their unreasonable cruelty; they were as mischievous even to those whom they were designed to protect as they were absurd, as some owners began to perceive. In the list of capital offences was that of stealing linen from a bleaching-ground. And a large body of bleachers presented a petition to Parliament entreating the repeal of the statute which made it such on the ground that, practically, it had been found not to strike terror into the thieves, but almost to secure them impunity from the reluctance of juries to find a verdict which would sentence a fellow-creature to the gallows for such an offence.

Nor was this by any means the only instance in which the barbarity of the law defeated its object. And its combined impolicy and inhumanity had some years before attracted the notice of Sir Samuel Romilly, who had been Solicitor-general in the administration of 1806, and who, shortly after its dissolution, began to apply himself to the benevolent object of procuring the repeal of many of the statutes in question, and in the course of a few years did succeed in obtaining the substitution of milder penalties for several of the less flagitious offences. He died in 1818; but the work which he had began was continued by Sir James Mackintosh, a man of even more conspicuous ability, and one who could adduce his own experience in favor of the changes which he recommended to the Parliament, since he had filled the office of Recorder of Bombay for eight years, and had discharged his duties with a most diligent and consistent avoidance of capital punishment, which he had never inflicted except for murder; his lenity, previously unexampled in that land, having been attended with a marked diminution of crime. He procured the substitution of milder penalties in several additional cases; and at last, in 1822, he carried a resolution engaging the House of Commons "the next session to take into its serious consideration the means of increasing the efficacy of the criminal law by abating its undue rigor." And this success had the effect of inducing the new minister to take the question into his own hands. Peel saw that it was one which, if it were to be dealt with at all, ought to be regulated by the government itself, and not be left to independent members, who could not settle it with satisfactory completeness; and therefore, in 1823, he introduced a series of bills to carry out the principle implied in Mackintosh's resolution of the preceding year, not only simplifying the law, but abolishing the infliction of capital punishment in above a hundred cases. He was unable to carry out his principle as fully as he could have desired. The prejudice in favor of still retaining death as a punishment for forgery was too strong for even his resolution as yet to overbear, though many private bankers supplied him with the same arguments against it in their case which had formerly been alleged by the bleachers. But the example which he now set, enforced as it was with all the authority of the government, was followed in many subsequent sessions, till at last our code, instead of the most severe, has become the most humane in Europe, and death is now never inflicted except for murder, or crimes intended or calculated to lead to murder. It is worth remarking, however, that neither Romilly, Mackintosh, nor Peel ever entertained the slightest doubt of the right of a government to inflict capital punishment. In the last address which Mackintosh delivered to the grand-jury at Bombay he had said: "I have no doubt of the right of society to inflict the punishment of death on enormous crimes, wherever an inferior punishment is not sufficient. I consider it as a mere modification of the right of self-defence, which may as justly be exercised in deterring from attack as in repelling it."[187] And in his diary, when speaking of a death-warrant which he had just signed, he says: "I never signed a paper with more perfect tranquillity of mind. I felt agitation in pronouncing the sentence, but none in subscribing the warrant; I had no scruple of conscience on either occasion."

And it seems that his position is unassailable. The party whose interest is to be kept in view by the Legislature in imposing punishments on offences is society, the people at large, not the offender. The main object of punishment is to deter rather than to reform; to prevent crime, not to take vengeance on the criminal. And, if crime be more effectually prevented by moderate than by severe punishments, society has a right to demand, for its own security (as a matter of policy, not of justice), that the moderate punishment shall, on that ground, be preferred. That punishments disproportioned in their severity to the magnitude of the offence often defeated their object was certain. Not only had jurymen been known to confess that they had preferred violating their oaths to doing still greater violence to their consciences, by sending a man to the gallows for a deed which, in their opinion, did not deserve it, but the very persons who had been injured by thefts or forgeries were often deterred from prosecution of the guilty by the knowledge that the forfeiture of their lives must follow their conviction. It was almost equally certain that criminals calculated beforehand on the chance of impunity which the known prevalence of these feelings afforded them. Wherever the sympathy of the public does not go along with the law, it must, to a great extent, fail; and that the terrible frequency of sanguinary punishment had failed in all its objects, was proved by the fact that, in spite of the numerous executions which took place, crimes increased in a still greater proportion than the population. Under the reformed system, now first inaugurated on an extensive scale, crimes have become rarer, detection and punishment more certain—a combination of results which must be the object equally of the law-giver and the philanthropist.

It is not quite foreign to this subject to relate that, a year or two before, a mode of trial had been abolished which, though long disused, by some curious oversight had still been allowed to remain on the statute-book. In the feudal times either the prosecutor or the prisoner, in cases of felony, had a right to claim that the cause should be decided by "wager of battle;" but it was an ordeal which, with one exception in the reign of George II., had not been mentioned for centuries. In 1817, however, the relatives of a woman who had been murdered, being dissatisfied with the acquittal of a man who had been indicted as her murderer, sued out "an appeal of murder" against him, on which he claimed to have the appeal decided by "wager of battle," and threw down a glove on the floor of the court to make good his challenge. The claim was protested against by the prosecutor; but Lord Ellenborough, the Chief-justice, pronounced judgment that, "trial by battle having been demanded, it was the legal and constitutional mode of trial, and must be awarded. It was the duty of the judges to pronounce the law as it was, and not as they might wish it to be."[188] He gave sentence accordingly; and, had the two parties been of equal stature and strength, the Judges of the Common Pleas might have been seen, in their robes, presiding from sunrise till sunset over a combat to be fought, as the law prescribed, with stout staves and leathern shields, till one should cry "Craven," and yield up the field. Fortunately for them, the alleged murderer was so superior in bodily strength to his adversary, that the latter declined the contest. But the public advancement of the claim for such a mode of decision was fatal to any subsequent exercise of it; and, in spite of the Common Council of London, who, confiding, perhaps, in the formidable appearance presented by some of the City Champions on Lord Mayor's Day, petitioned Parliament to preserve it, the next year the Attorney-general brought in a bill to abolish it, and the judges were no longer compelled to pronounce an absurd sentence in obedience to an obsolete law, framed at a time when personal prowess was a virtue to cover a multitude of sins, and might was the only right generally acknowledged.

The foundation, too, was laid for other reforms. Lord Liverpool was more thoroughly versed than any of his predecessors, except Pitt, in the soundest principles of political economy; and in one of the first speeches which he made in the new reign he expressed a decided condemnation, not only of any regulations which were designed to favor one trade or one interest at the expense of another, but generally of the whole system and theory of protection; and one of his last measures made an alteration in the manner of taxing corn imported from foreign countries, which was greatly to the advantage of the consumer. It was known as the "sliding-scale," the tax on imported corn varying with the price in the market, rising when the price fell, and falling when it rose; the design with which it was framed being to keep the price to the consumer at all times as nearly equal as possible. At first, however, it was vehemently denounced by the bulk of the agriculturists, who were re-enforced on this occasion by a large party from among the Whigs, and especially by some of those connected with Ireland. But a more suitable period for discussing the establishment of Free-trade as the ruling principle of our financial policy will occur hereafter.

The introduction of the sliding-scale was almost the last act of Lord Liverpool's ministry. At the beginning of 1827 he was preparing a fresh measure on the same subject, the effect of which was intended to diminish still farther the protection which the former act had given, and which was in consequence denounced by many landholders of great wealth and influence, led, on this subject, by the King's favorite brother, the Duke of York.[189] But, a few days after the meeting of Parliament, he was struck down by an attack of paralysis, from which he never recovered.

In his post as Prime-minister he was succeeded by Canning, not without great reluctance on the part of the King; not, probably, so much because he feared to find in him any desire to depart from the policy of Lord Liverpool, except on the Catholic question (for even on matters of foreign policy, on which Canning had always been supposed most to fix his attention, he had adopted the line which Lord Liverpool had laid down for the cabinet with evident sincerity),[190] as because his Majesty had never wholly forgiven him for the attitude which he had taken, differing on one or two points from that of his colleagues on the Queen's case. And, as has been mentioned in a former chapter, he even, with the object of evading the necessity of appointing him, suggested to the Duke of Wellington the singular scheme of allowing the remaining members of Lord Liverpool's cabinet to select their own chief,[191] which the Duke, though coinciding with him in his dislike of Canning, of whom he entertained a very causeless suspicion, rejected without hesitation, as an abandonment of the royal prerogative in one of its most essential duties or privileges. Another of his Majesty's notions, if it had been carried out, would have been one of the strangest violations of constitutional principle and practice which it is possible to conceive. The Duke of York, who had for many years been Commander-in-chief, died in January of the same year, and on his death the King actually proposed to take that office on himself. For the moment Lord Liverpool was able to induce him to abandon the idea, and to confer the post on the Duke of Wellington. But it had taken such possession of his mind that he recurred to it again when, on Canning becoming Prime-minister, the Duke resigned the office; and he pressed it on the Cabinet with singular pertinacity till, on Canning's death, the Duke was prevailed on to resume the command. It is evident that no arrangement could possibly be more inconsistent with every principle of the constitution. The very foundation of parliamentary government is, that every officer of every department is responsible to Parliament for the proper discharge of his duties. But the investiture of the sovereign with ministerial office of any kind must involve either the entire withdrawal of that department from parliamentary control, or the exposure of the sovereign to constant criticism, which, however essential to the efficiency of the department, and consequently to the public service, would be wholly inconsistent with the respect due to the crown. The first alternative it is certain that no Parliament would endure for a moment; the second, by impairing the dignity of the monarch, could scarcely fail in some degree to threaten the stability of the monarchy itself.

Canning's ministry was too brief to give time for any transaction of internal importance. That of Lord Goderich, who succeeded him, though longer by the almanac, was practically briefer still, since it never met Parliament at all, but was formed and fell to pieces between the prorogation and the next meeting of the Houses. But that which followed, under the presidency of the Duke of Wellington, though after a few months its composition became entirely Tory, is memorable for the first great departure from those maxims of the constitution which had been reckoned among its most essential principles ever since the Revolution. Of the measures which bear that character, one was carried against the resistance of the ministry, the other by the ministers themselves. And it may at first sight appear singular that the larger measure of the two was proposed by the Duke after those members of his cabinet who had originally been supposed to give it something of a Liberal complexion had quitted it. The Reform Bill of 1832—to which we shall come in the next chapter—has been often called a peaceful revolution. The Toleration Acts, as we may call the bills of 1828 and 1829, are scarcely less deserving of that character.

The constitution, as it had existed for the last hundred and forty years, had been not only a Protestant but a Church of England constitution. Not only all Roman Catholics, but all members of Protestant Non-conforming sects, all who refused to sign a declaration against the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and also to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the one Established Church, were disqualified for any appointment of trust. That the object with which the Test Act had been framed and supported was rather political than religious is notorious; indeed, it was supported by the Protestant Dissenters, though they themselves were to suffer by its operation, so greatly at that time did the dread of Popery and the French King overpower every other consideration.[192] On the Roman Catholics, after the reign of James II. had increased that apprehension, the restrictions were tightened. But those which inflicted disabilities on the Protestant Non-conformists had been gradually relaxed. The repeal of two, the Five Mile and the Conventicle Acts, had, as we have seen in the last chapter, been recent measures of Lord Liverpool. But the Test Act still remained, though it had long been practically a dead letter. The Union with Scotland, where the majority of the population was Presbyterian, had rendered it almost impossible to maintain the exclusion of Englishmen resembling the Scotch in their religious tenets from preferments, and even from seats in the House of Commons, to which Scotchmen were admissible. And though one Prime-minister (Stanhope) failed in his attempt to induce Parliament to repeal the Test Act, and his successor (Walpole) refused his countenance to any repetition of the proposal, even he did not reject such a compromise as was devised to evade it; and in the first year of George II.'s reign (by which time it was notorious that many Protestant Non-conformists had obtained seats in municipal corporations, and even in the House of Commons, who yet had never qualified themselves by compliance with the act of 1673) a bill of indemnity was introduced by the minister, with at least the tacit consent of the English bishops, to protect all such persons from the penalties which they had incurred. And the bill, which was only annual in its operation, was renewed almost every year, till, in respect of all such places or dignities (if a seat in the House of Commons can be described by either of those names), no one thought of inquiring whether a man, so long as he were a Protestant, adhered to the Established Church or not; members of the House of Commons even openly avowing their nonconformity, and at times founding arguments on the fact.

The practical nullification of the Test Act by these periodical bills of indemnity had been for some time used by two opposite parties—both that which regarded the maintenance of the exclusive connection of the constitution with the Church of England as of vital importance to both Church and constitution, and that which was opposed to all restrictions or disqualiflcations on religious grounds—as an argument in their favor. The one contended that there could be no sufficient reason for repealing a law from which no one suffered; the other, that it was a needless provocation of ill-feeling to retain a law which no one ever dreamed of enforcing. Hitherto the latter had been the weaker party. One or two motions for the repeal of the Test Act, which had been made in former years,[193] had been defeated without attracting any great notice; but in the spring of 1828 Lord John Russel, then a comparatively young member, but rapidly rising into influence with his party, carried a motion in the House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the act, so far as it concerned the Protestant Non-conformists, by a very decisive majority,[194] in spite of all the efforts of Peel and his colleagues.

The ministry was placed in a difficult position by his success, since the usual practice for a cabinet defeated on a question of principle was to resign; and it is probable that they would not have departed from that rule now, had not this defeat occurred so early in their official life. But on this occasion it seemed to them that other questions had to be considered besides the constitutional doctrine of submission on the part of a ministry to the judgment of the Parliament.[195] Theirs was now the fourth administration that had held office within twelve months; and their resignation, which would compel the construction of a fifth, could hardly fail not only to embarrass the sovereign, but to shake public confidence in government generally. It was also certain that they could rely on a division in the House of Lords being favorable to them, if they chose to appeal from one House to the other. Under these circumstances, they had to consider what their line of conduct should be, and there never were two ministers better suited to deal with an embarrassment of that kind than the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel. The Duke's doctrine of government was that "the country was never governed in practice according to the extreme principles of any party whatever;"[196] while Peel's disposition at all times inclined him to compromise. He was quite aware that on this and similar questions public feeling had undergone great alteration since the beginning of the century. There was a large and increasing party, numbering in its ranks many men of deep religious feeling, and many firm supporters of the principle of an Established Church, being also sincere believers in the pre-eminent excellence of the Church of England, who had a conscientious repugnance to the employment of the most solemn ordinance of a religion as a mere political test of a person's qualifications for the discharge of civil duties. In the opinion of the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Lloyd), this was the feeling of "a very large majority of the Church itself," and of the University.[197] Peel, therefore, came to the conclusion—to which he had no difficulty in bringing his colleague, the Prime-minister—that "it might be more for the real interests of the Church and of religion to consent to an alteration in the law" than to trust to the result of the debate in the House of Lords to maintain the existing state of things. Accordingly, after several conferences with the most influential members of the Episcopal Bench, he framed a declaration to be substituted for the Sacramental test, binding all who should be required to subscribe it—a description which included all who should be appointed to a civil or corporate office—never to exert any power or influence which they might thus acquire to subvert, or to endeavor to subvert, the Protestant Church of England, Scotland, or Ireland, as by law established. The declaration was amended in the House of Lords by the addition of the statement, that this declaration was subscribed "on the true faith of a Christian," introduced at the instigation of Lord Eldon, who had not held the Great Seal since the dissolution of Lord Liverpool's administration, but who was still looked up to by a numerous party as the foremost champion of sound Protestantism in either House.

Not that the addition of these words at all diminished the dissatisfaction with which the great lawyer regarded the bill. On the contrary, he believed it to be not only a weapon wilfully put into the hands of the enemies of the Established Church, but a violation of the constitution, of which, as he regarded it "the existing securities were a part." He pointed out that "the King himself was obliged to take the sacrament at his coronation;" and he argued from this and other grounds that "the Church of England, combined with the state, formed together the constitution of Great Britain; and that the acts now to be repealed were necessary to the preservation of that constitution."

With every respect for that great lawyer, his argument on this point does not appear sustainable. For the bill in question did not sweep away securities for the Established Church, but merely substituted, for one which long disuse and indemnity had rendered wholly inoperative, a fresh security, which, as it would be steadily put in force, might fairly be expected to prove far more efficacious. And it can hardly be contended that it was not within the province of the Legislature to modify an existing law in this spirit and with this object, however important might be the purpose for which that law had originally been framed. Nay, it might fairly be argued that the more important that object was, the more were they who strengthened the means of attaining that object entitled to be regarded as faithful servants and supporters of the principle of the constitution.

The measure, however, relieved the Protestant Dissenters alone. Not only did Lord Eldon's amendment preserve the Christian character of the Legislature, but the requirement to sign the declaration against Transubstantiation, which was unrepealed, left the Roman Catholics still under the same disqualifications as before. But the days of those disqualifications were manifestly numbered. Indeed, many of those who had followed the ministers in their original resistance to the repeal of the Test Act had been avowedly influenced by the conviction that it could not fail to draw after it the removal of the disabilities affecting the Roman Catholics. As has been said before, the disabilities in question had originally been imposed on the Roman Catholics on political rather than on religious grounds. And the political reasons for them had been greatly weakened, if not wholly swept away, by the extinction of the Stuart line of princes. Their retention or removal had, therefore, now become almost wholly a religious question; and the late bill had clearly established as a principle that, though the state had a right to require of members of other religious sects that they should not abuse the power which might arise from any positions or employments to which they might be admitted, to the subversion or injury of the Established Church of England, yet, when security for their innocuousness in this respect was provided, it was not justified in inquiring into the details of their faith. And if this were to be the rule of government for the future, the conclusion was irresistible that a similar security was all that the state was justified in demanding from Roman Catholics, and that it could have no warrant for investigating their opinion on Transubstantiation, or any other purely theological tenet. There could be no doubt that the feelings of the public had been gradually and steadily coming round to this view of the question. The last House of Commons had not only passed a bill to remove Roman Catholic disabilities (which was afterward thrown out in the House of Lords), but had also passed, by a still larger majority, a resolution, moved by Lord Francis Leveson Gower (who was now the Secretary for Ireland), in favor of endowing the Roman Catholic priests in Ireland. And at the late general election the opinions of the candidates on what was commonly called Catholic Emancipation had been the great cardinal question with a great number, probably a majority, of the constituencies.

It may be remarked that it was not the Test Act which excluded Roman Catholics from Parliament, but a bill which, fifteen years later, had been passed (probably under the influence of Lord Shaftesbury) at the time when the whole kingdom was excited by the daily expanding revelations of the Popish Plot.[198] And this bill had a loop-hole which was never discovered till now but the discovery of which totally changed the whole aspect of the question. Even before the bill repealing the Test Act had passed through all its stages, Sir Francis Burdett had again induced the House of Commons to pass a resolution condemning the continuance of the Roman Catholic disabilities; to which, however, the peers, by a far larger majority, refused their concurrence.[199] But, within a month of this division, the aspect of the whole question was changed by the shrewdness of an Irish barrister, who had discovered the loop-hole or flaw in the bill of 1678 already alluded to, and by the energy and promptitude with which he availed himself of his discovery. Mr. O'Connell had a professional reputation scarcely surpassed by any member of the Irish Bar. He was also a man of ancient family in the county of Kerry. And, being a Roman Catholic, he had for several years been the spokesman of his brother Roman Catholics on most public occasions. He now, on examination of the bill of 1678, perceived that, though it forbade any Roman Catholic from taking a seat in either House of Parliament, it contained no prohibition to prevent any constituency from electing him its representative. And when, on the occasion of some changes which were made in the cabinet, the representation of the County Clare was vacated by its member, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, accepting the office of President of the Board of Trade, O'Connell instantly offered himself as a candidate in opposition to the new minister, who, of course, sought re-election.

Mr. Fitzgerald was a man who had always supported the demands of the Roman Catholics; he was also personally popular, and had the undivided support of nearly all the gentlemen and principal land-owners of the county, in which he himself had large property. But O'Connell's cause was taken up by the entire Roman Catholic priesthood; addresses in his favor were read at the altars of the different churches; and, after five days' polling, Mr. Fitzgerald withdrew from the contest. The Sheriff, in great perplexity, made a special return, reporting that "Mr. Fitzgerald was proposed, being a Protestant, as a fit person to represent the county in Parliament; that Mr. O'Connell, a Roman Catholic, was also proposed; that he, Mr. O'Connell, had declared before the Sheriff that he was a Roman Catholic, and intended to continue a Roman Catholic; and that a protest had been made by several electors against his return."

It was accepted as a return of O'Connell, who, however, made no attempt to take his seat, though when he first stood he had assured the electors that there was no law to prevent him from doing so; but the importance of his success was not to be measured by his actual presence or absence in the House of Commons for the remainder of a session. It had made it absolutely impossible to continue the maintenance of the disabilities; what one Irish constituency had done, other Irish constituencies might be depended on to do.[200] And it was quite certain that, as opportunity offered, almost every constituency in Munster and Connaught, and many in Leinster, would follow the example of Clare, and return Roman Catholic representatives; while to retain a law which prevented forty or fifty men duly elected by Irish constituencies from taking their seats must have appeared impossible to all but a few, whom respect for the undoubted sincerity of their attachment to their own religion and to the constitution, as they understood it, is the only consideration which can save them from being regarded as dangerous fanatics. At all events, the ministers were not among them. And the Duke of Wellington, though he had previously hoped, by postponing the farther consideration of the question for a year or two, to gain time for a calmer examination of it when the existing excitement had cooled down,[201] at once admitted the conviction that the result of the Clare election had rendered farther delay impossible. In his view, and that of those of his colleagues whose judgment he estimated most highly, the Irish constituencies and their probable action at future elections were not the only parties whose opinions or feelings must be regarded by a responsible statesman; but to them must be added the constituencies of the larger island also, since, while, to quote the language of Mr. Peel, "the general election of 1826 had taken place under circumstances especially calculated to call forth the manifestation of Protestant feeling throughout the country," they had returned a majority of members in favor of concession, as was proved by the recent division on Sir F. Burdett's motion. Moreover, apart from the merits or demerits of concession, taken by itself, there was a manifest danger that the keeping up of the excitement on the subject by a continued adherence to the policy of restriction might, especially among such a people as the Irish, so impulsive, and, in the lower classes, so absolutely under the dominion of the priests, kindle an excitement on other subjects also, still more difficult to deal with. It was even already certain that the Roman Catholic priests were endeavoring to tamper with the loyalty of the soldiers of their persuasion. Nor was it clerical influence alone that the government had to dread. A year or two before a Catholic Association had been formed, which included among its members all the wealthiest and ablest of the Roman Catholic laymen, noblemen, squires, and barristers. Its organization had been so skilfully conducted, and all its measures had been so carefully kept within the requirements of the law, that the crown lawyers, on being consulted, pronounced it impossible to interfere with it; and, by what may be called a peaceful agitation, it had attained such extraordinary power over the minds of the bulk of the Roman Catholics, that the Lord-lieutenant reported that "he was quite certain that they could lead on the people to open rebellion at a moment's notice, and that their organization was such that, in the hands of desperate and intelligent leaders, they would be extremely formidable[202]."

Under all these circumstances, the Duke had no hesitation in deciding that it had become absolutely necessary to concede the demands of the Roman Catholics and their supporters for a removal of their political disabilities. And it was equally obvious that, the more promptly the concession was made, the more gracious it would seem, and the greater was the probability of its having the conciliatory and tranquillizing effect the hope of which made it so desirable. He was not a man to lose time when he had once made up his mind. It was already too late in the session for anything to be done in 1828; but the Parliament had scarcely been prorogued before he put his views on the subject before the King, and began, in concert with the Home-secretary, to frame a bill such as he hoped might settle the long-agitated question, without doing more violence than was necessary to the feelings of those whose opposition or reluctance he was aware he should have to encounter: among whom was the King himself, who, though thirty years before he had, with an ostentation rather unbecoming, considering his position, put himself forward as an advocate of Emancipation, had subsequently changed his opinion, and had recently taken more than one occasion to declare that he had never doubted that, as the head and protector of the Protestant religion, he was bound to refuse his assent to any relaxation of the existing law.[203] The Duke, however, was too well acquainted with his royal master's character to apprehend any real firmness of resistance from him; but he knew that a great majority of the clergy, and no small portion of the country gentlemen, were conscientiously and immovably fixed in opposition to any concession at all, some refusing to regard the question in any but a purely religious light, and objecting to associate in the task of legislation for those whom they regarded as adherents of an idolatrous superstition; while those who mingled political reasoning with that founded on theology dwelt also on the danger to be apprehended to the state, if political power were given to those whose allegiance to the King was divided with another allegiance which they acknowledged to a foreign prelate. And he had presently an unmistakable proof afforded him how great was the strength of this party in the country. Peel was one of the representatives of the University of Oxford; and, as from his earliest enjoyment of a seat in Parliament he had been a prominent opponent of the Roman Catholic claims, he considered that it was to that maintenance of a policy identified in their eyes with that Protestant ascendency which his supporters took to be both the chief bulwark and one of the most essential parts of the constitution that he owed his position as their member. With a conscientiousness which was rather overstrained, and not quite consistent with the legitimate position of a member of the House of Commons as a representative, and not a delegate, he now conceived that his change of view on the subject made it proper for him to give his constituents an opportunity of making choice of some one else who should more faithfully represent them. He accordingly resigned his seat, offering himself at the same time for re-election. But he was defeated by a very large majority, though his competitor was one who could not possibly be put on a level with him either for university distinction or for parliamentary eminence.

Not the less, however, for all their difficulties and discouragements, did the ministers proceed in the course on which they had resolved. They inserted in the speech with which the King opened the session of 1829 a recommendation to the Houses "to take into consideration the whole condition of Ireland, and to review the laws which imposed civil disabilities on his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." And with as little delay as possible they introduced a bill to remove those disabilities. But there was another measure which they felt it to be indispensable should precede it. A previous sentence of the royal speech had described the Catholic Association as one "dangerous to the public peace, and inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, keeping alive discord and ill-will among his Majesty's subjects, and one which must, if permitted to continue, effectually obstruct every effort permanently to improve the condition of Ireland." And the ministers naturally regarded it as their first duty to suppress a body which could deserve to be so described. They felt, too, that the large measure of concession and conciliation which they were about to announce would lose half its grace, and more than half its effect, if it could possibly be represented as a submission to an agitation and intimidation which they had not the power nor the courage to resist. They determined, therefore, to render such an imputation impossible, by previously suppressing the Association. It was evident that it could not be extinguished by any means short of an act of Parliament. And the course pursued, with the discussions which took place respecting it, show in a very clear and instructive manner the view taken by statesmen of the difference between what is loyal or illegal, constitutional or unconstitutional; their apprehension that conduct may be entirely legal, that is to say, within the letter of the law, but at the same time perfectly unconstitutional, outside of and adverse to the whole spirit of the constitution. The royal speech had not ventured to describe the Association as illegal. The Duke of Wellington expressly admitted that "in the original institution and formation of the society there was nothing strictly illegal."[204] And its founder and chief, Mr. O'Connell, had been at all times careful to inculcate on his followers the necessity of avoiding any violation of the law. But the speech had also declared the association to be "inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution." And its acts, as the Duke proceeded to describe them, certainly bore out that declaration. "Those acts consisted principally in levying a tax upon certain of his Majesty's subjects called Catholic rent, and this by means and acts of extreme violence; by appointing persons to collect these rents; and farther by adopting measures to organize the Catholic population; by appointing persons to superintend that organization; and by assuming to themselves the government of the country; and, still more, affecting to assume it. Besides, they expended this rent in a manner contrary to, and utterly inconsistent with, all law and order and the constitution of the country." No member of either House denied the accuracy of this description of the Association's proceedings. And if it were correct, it was incontrovertible that the denunciation of it as an utterly unconstitutional body was not too strong. Indeed, the fact of its "levying a tax" upon a portion of the King's subjects (to say nothing of the intimidation, amounting to compulsion, by which, as was notorious, it was in many instances exacted) was the assumption of one of the most important functions of the Imperial Parliament; it was the erection of an imperium in imperio, which no statesmen intrusted with the government of a country can be justified in tolerating. And this was felt by the Opposition as well as by the ministers; by the Whigs as fully as by the Tories. The most eloquent of the Whig party, Mr. Stanley, was as decided as Mr. Peel himself in affirming that the existence of the Association was "inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution," and that it was "dangerous that the people of a country should look up to any public body distinct from the government, opposed to the government, and monopolizing their attachment and obedience."[205]

It was, therefore, with the almost unanimous approval of both parties that the bill framed for the suppression of the Association was received. The framing of such a bill was not unattended by difficulties, as Peel acknowledged,[206] since "no one wished to declare that every political meeting was illegal;" while at the same time it was necessary to guard against "having its enactments evaded, since a more dangerous precedent than the successful evasion of acts of the Legislature could scarcely be conceived." But the measure, as it was proposed, skilfully steered clear of these difficulties. It met them by intrusting "the enforcement of the law to be enacted to one person alone." The bill proposed "to give to the Lord-lieutenant, and to him alone, the power of suppressing any association or meeting which he might think dangerous to the public peace, or inconsistent with the due administration of the law; together with power to interdict the assembly of any meeting of which previous notice should have been given, and which he should think likely to endanger the public peace, or to prove inconsistent with the due administration of the law." And farther, "to interdict any meeting or association which might be interdicted from assembling, or which might be suppressed under this act, from receiving and placing at their control any moneys by the name of rent, or any other name." But the act was not to be one of perpetual duration. It could not be concealed that such a prohibition or limitation of the general right of public meeting and public discussion was a suspension of a part of the constitution; and therefore the ministers were content to limit its operation "to one year and the end of the then next session of Parliament," feeling "satisfied that there would be no objection to continue it, if there should be any necessity for its continuance." And this limitation was a substantial mitigation of its severity. It made the bill, as Mr. Stanley correctly described it, "not a permanent infringement on the constitution, but a temporary deviation from it, giving those powers which were necessary at the moment," but not maintaining them an hour longer than they were necessary.

And this seems to be the course most in accordance with the spirit of the constitution, with former practice, with common-sense. Deeds which violate the letter of the law can be dealt with by the law. But actions or courses of action which, even if they may be thought to overstep the law, transgress it so narrowly as to elude conviction, can only be reached by enactments which also go in some degree beyond the ordinary law; and, so going beyond it, are to that extent encroachments on the ordinary privileges and rights of the subject, and suspensions of the constitution. But the very term "suspension" shows that the power conferred is but temporary, otherwise it would be synonymous with abrogation. And all parties may wisely agree, as they did in this instance, to a temporary suspension of the people's rights, though there would be none to whom their permanent abrogation would not be intolerable.

The bill, then, for the suppression of the Association passed with universal approval, and it may be regarded as furnishing a model for dealing with similar associations, if ever they should arise. And as soon as it was passed Mr. Peel introduced the greater measure, that for the repeal of the disabilities. In drawing the necessary bill the ministers had had two questions of special importance to consider: firstly, whether it should be unlimited concession which should be granted, such as would throw open to the Roman Catholics every kind of civil office; and, secondly, whether it should be accompanied by any other measure, which might render it more palatable to its adversaries, as diminishing a portion at least of the dangers which those who regarded the question in a purely political light most apprehended. On the first point it was determined that, with the exception of three civil offices, those of the Lord Chancellors of England and Ireland and the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland,[207] and some of a purely ecclesiastical character, such as the Judge of the Court of Arches, every kind of preferment should be opened to the Roman Catholics.[208] The declaration against Transubstantiation and the oath of supremacy, certain expressions in which were the obstacles which had hitherto kept the Roman Catholics out of office and out of Parliament, were to be repealed, and another to be substituted for them which should merely bind him who took it to defend the King, to maintain the Protestant succession, and to declare that "it was not an article of his faith, and that he renounced, rejected, and abjured the opinion, that princes excommunicated or deposed by the Pope might be deposed and murdered; and that he disclaimed, disavowed, and solemnly abjured any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law within this realm, and that he would never exercise any privilege to which he was or might become entitled to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant government in this kingdom."[209]

The second question was, it will probably be confessed, even more important. Pitt, who had always contemplated, and had encouraged the Irish Roman Catholics to contemplate, the abolition of their political disabilities as an indispensable appendage to, or, it may be said, part of the Union, had designed, farther, not to confine his benefits to the laymen, but to endow the Roman Catholic clergy with adequate stipends, a proposal which was received with the greatest thankfulness, not only by the Irish prelates and clergy themselves, but also by the heads of their Church at Rome, who were willing, in return, to give the crown a veto on all the ecclesiastical appointments of their Church in the two islands.[210] The justice of granting such an endowment could hardly be contested. The Reformation in Ireland, if what had taken place there could be called a reformation at all, had been wholly different from the movement which had almost extinguished Popery in England. The great majority of the Irish people had never ceased to adhere to the Romish forms, and the Reformation there had been simply a transfer of the property of the Romish Church to the Church of England, unaccompanied by any corresponding change of belief in the people, who had an undeniable right to claim that the state, while making this transfer, should not deprive of all provision the clergy to whose ministrations they still clung with a zeal and steadiness augmented rather than diminished by the discouragements under which they adhered to them.

The policy of granting such endowment was equally conspicuous. No measure could so bind the clergy to the government; and no such security for the loyalty and peaceful, orderly behavior of the poorer classes could be provided, as might be expected from the attachment to the government of those who had over them an influence so powerful in its character and so unbounded in its strength as their priests. And the Duke of Wellington, who had at one time been himself the Irish Secretary, and, as an intimate friend of Lord Castlereagh, who held that office at the time of the Union, had a perfect knowledge of what had been intended at that time—and who was, of course, aware of the very decided favor which the House of Commons had so lately shown to the project—proposed to follow out Pitt's plan in that particular, and to connect a provision[211] for the Roman Catholic clergy with the removal of their political disabilities from the laymen. Unluckily, Peel, who, throughout the whole transaction, was, of all the cabinet, the counsellor on whose judgment he most relied, took a different view of the expediency of making such a provision, having, indeed, "no objection to it in point of principle." But he saw many practical difficulties, which he pressed on the Duke with great earnestness. He argued that for the government "to apply a sum of money to the payment of the ministers of the Church of Rome in Ireland, granting a license for the performance of their spiritual functions, would be a virtual and complete supersession, if not repeal, of the laws which prohibit intercourse with Rome;" and asked, "Could the state affect to be ignorant that the bishop whom it paid derived his right to be a bishop from the See of Rome?" Another difficulty he found in the apprehension that "the admission of the right of the Roman Catholic clergy to an endowment might produce similar claims on the part of the Dissenters in England, who contribute in like manner to the support of their own religion and of the established religion also." He suggested, farther, that, if the Roman Catholic priest were allowed, in addition to his stipend, "to receive dues, Easter offerings, etc., from his parishioners, his condition would then be better than that of the ministers of the Established Church in many of the parishes in Ireland." And, finally, he urged the practical objection, that the endowment would greatly strengthen the opposition to the whole measure, by the reluctance which, "on purely religious grounds," many would feel to the endowment of the Roman Catholic faith, who would yet be inclined to acquiesce in the removal of the disabilities, "on grounds rather political than religious." He was "not insensible to the importance of establishing some bond of connection between the Roman Catholic clergy and the state;" but he believed that the omission of a provision for their endowment "was important to the ultimate success of the government in proposing the measure before them."

It is not probable that the Duke was greatly influenced by the first, or what may be called the constitutional, objection—that any concert with the Papal Court with respect to the appointments or endowments of its clergy would be a violation of the act which prohibited any intercourse with Rome. The removal of the disabilities required the repeal of one act of Parliament; and, if the holding communications with Rome on the subject of clerical appointments should be so construed as to require the repeal of another, it would hardly seem that there could be any greater violation of or departure from the principles of the constitution in repealing two acts than in repealing one. As to the second of Peel's objections, the English Dissenters could not possibly be said to stand on the same ground as the Irish Roman Catholics, since their ministers had certainly never been deprived by any act of the state of any provision which they had previously enjoyed; but their position as unendowed ministers was clearly one of their own making. The possible inferiority in point of emolument of some of the Protestant cures in Ireland to that which might be enjoyed by some of the Roman Catholic clergy could hardly be regarded as the foundation of any argument at all, since no law had ever undertaken, or ever could undertake, to give at all times and under all circumstances equal remuneration to equal labors. But the consideration last suggested was exactly the one to influence such a mind as that of the Duke of Wellington, generally contented to deal with a present difficulty. He was determined to carry Emancipation, because he saw that the Clare election had made it impossible to withhold or even to delay it; and, being so determined, he was desirous to avoid encumbering it with any addition which might increase the opposition to it. At the same time he was far from being sanguine of its effect, "with whatever guards or securities it might be accompanied, to pacify the country or to avert rebellion,"[212] which, in his apprehension, was undoubtedly impending; and, under the influence of these combined feelings, he eventually withdrew that clause from the bill. It was accompanied by another bill, disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland. They were a class of voters sunk in the deepest poverty, and such as certainly could not well be supposed capable of forming, much less of exercising, an independent judgment on political matters. Yet this bill is remarkable as having been the only enactment passed since the Revolution to narrow the franchise. It had no opposition to anticipate from English or Scotch members, and was accepted by the Irish members as the price of Emancipation.

No measure that had ever been framed since the Revolution had caused such excitement in the country; but the preponderance of feeling in its favor was equally marked in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Commons 320 supported it, while only 142 could be marshalled against it. In the House of Lords 213 divided for it against 109. And in April it received the royal assent.

The general policy of removing the disabilities it is not necessary to discuss here. It is quite clear that the Clare election had rendered it impossible to maintain them. And if some of those who judge of measures solely by their effects still denounce this act, as one which has failed in its object of tranquillizing Ireland, many of those who admit the failure ascribe it to the omission to accompany it by one securing a state endowment for the Roman Catholic clergy, pronouncing it, without that appendage, a half measure, such as rarely succeeds, and never deserves success. However that may be, it is certain that the measure, coupled with the repeal of the Test Act of the previous year, was one which made a great and permanent change in the practical working of the constitution of the kingdom, as it had been interpreted for the last one hundred and fifty years. Of that constitution one of the leading features, ever since the Restoration, had been understood to be the establishment and maintenance of the political as well as the ecclesiastical ascendency of the Church of England. On that ascendency the repeal of the Test Act in 1828 had made the first, and that a great, inroad, and the present statute entirely abolished it as a principle of government. So far as political privileges went, every Christian sect was now placed on a footing of complete equality. But so to place them may fairly be regarded as having been required not only by justice and expediency, but by reasons drawn from the history of the nation and from the circumstances under which these disabilities had been imposed. Before the Rebellion no one was excluded from the English Parliament on account of his religion, whether he was a Roman Catholic, a Presbyterian, or a member of any other of the various sects which were gradually arising in the country. It was not till after the Restoration that a recollection of the crimes of the Puritans, when they had got the upper-hand, and the fear of machinations and intrigues, incompatible with the freedom and independence of the people, which were imputed to the Roman Catholics, gave birth to the statutes depriving both Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists of all legislative and political power. The restrictions thus imposed on the Presbyterians and other Protestant sects had, as we have seen, been gradually relaxed by a periodical act of indemnity. Indeed, after the Union with Scotland, it was impossible with any show of consistency to maintain them, since, as it has been already pointed out, after Presbyterianism had been recognized as the established religion of Scotland, it would have seemed strangely unreasonable to regard it as a disqualification on the southern side of the Border. But, as long as the Stuart princes were from time to time disquieting the government by their open invasions or secret intrigues, no such relaxation could with safety be granted to the Roman Catholics, since it could hardly be expected that they would forbear to employ any power which they might acquire for the service of a prince of their own religion. That danger, however, which ever since 1745 had been a very shadowy one, had wholly passed away with the life of the last Stuart lay prince, Charles Edward; and his death left the rulers of the kingdom and advisers of the sovereign free to take a different and larger view of their duty to the nation as a whole.

It was notorious that the number of Non-conformists was large. In the middle of the last century it had received a considerable accession through the institution of the new sect of Wesleyan Methodists; which, through the supineness of the clergy of the Established Church in that generation, had gradually increased, till it was estimated that the various Dissenting sects in England equalled at least half the number of the members of the Established Church. In Wales they were believed to form the majority. In Scotland three-fourths of the people were Presbyterians; and in Ireland the Roman Catholics outnumbered the Protestants in nearly the same proportion. Taking England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland together, a calculation which reckoned the different sects of Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists united at half the entire population would probably not have erred very widely from the truth.

It must have been the aim of every statesman deserving of the name to weld these different religious parties into one harmonious whole, as far as their civil position went. And measures which had that tendency could not be foreign to the constitution, properly understood. A constitution which confines its benefits to one-half of a nation hardly merits the title of a constitution at all. For every constitution ought to extend its protection and its privileges equally to every portion of the people, unless there be some peculiarity in the principles or habits of any one portion which makes its participation in them dangerous to the rest. It had undoubtedly been the doctrine of Pitt, and of the greater part of those who since his time had held the reins of government, that if any portion of the King's subjects did cherish a temper dangerous to the rest, it was because they were debarred from privileges to which they conceived themselves to have a just right, and that their discontent and turbulence were the fruit of the restrictions imposed on them. In proposing to remove such a grievance Pitt certainly conceived himself to be acting in accordance with the strictest principles of the constitution, and not so much innovating upon it as restoring it to its original comprehensiveness. And so of the measure, as it was now carried, it will apparently be correct to say that, though it did make an important change in the practical working of the constitution, it made it only by reverting to the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, to which every subject had a right; which had only been temporarily restrained under the apprehension of danger to the state, and which the cessation of that apprehension made it a duty to re-establish in all their fulness.

But it is by no means clear that in the conduct of the measure the constitution was not violated in one very important point, the proper relation subsisting between a constituency and its representative, by Mr. Peel's resignation of his seat for the University of Oxford. That he was sensible that the act stood in need of explanation is proved by the careful statement of the motives and considerations that determined him to it, which he drew up twenty years afterward. They were of a twofold character. To quote his own words: "When I resolved to advise, and to promote to the utmost of my power, the settlement of that question, I resolved at the same time to relinquish, not only my official station,[213] but the representation of the University of Oxford. I thought that such decisive proofs that I could have no object, political or personal, in taking a course different from that which I had previously taken, would add to my influence and authority, so far, at least, as the adjustment of the particular question at issue was concerned." "I cannot deny that in vacating my seat I was acting upon the impulse of private feelings, rather than upon a dispassionate consideration of the constitutional relations between a representative and his constituents. I will not seek to defend the resolution to which I came by arguments drawn from the peculiar character of the academic body, or from the special nature of the trust confided to its members; still less will I contend that my example ought to be followed by others to whom may be offered the same painful alternative of disregarding the dictates of their own consciences, or of acting in opposition to the opinions and disappointing the expectations of their constituents. I will say no more than that my position was a very peculiar one, that I had many painful sacrifices to make, and that it would have been a great aggravation of them, if it could have said with truth that I was exercising an authority derived from the confidence of the University to promote measures injurious, in her deliberate judgment, either to her own interests or to those of the Church."

No one would willingly censure too severely an act dictated by a sense of honor, even if somewhat overstrained and too scrupulously delicate; but when Mr. Peel speaks of "defending" or not defending his deed, he clearly admits it to be one open to impeachment. And when he forbears to "contend that his example ought to be followed," he seems practically to confess a consciousness that any defence against such impeachment must fail; while the last sentence quoted above involves an assertion that a constituency (in this instance one of the two most important constituencies in the kingdom) could be justified in regarding a measure required by the safety, or at least by the welfare, of the state, as injurious to its own interests; and so far admits a possible severance between the interests of a particular class or body and those of the whole community, which can have no real existence. That, however, is not the point to be investigated here. The charge, as it seems, to which Mr. Peel's deed lays him open is, that by it he lowered the position and character of a member of Parliament from those of a representative to those of a delegate. It was an adoption of the principle laid down for his own guidance by a colleague of Mr. Burke above fifty years before, and indignantly repudiated by that great political philosopher, as proceeding from an entire misapprehension of the rights of a constituency and of a member[214] of Parliament. He told the electors of Bristol that "when they had chosen their member, he was not a member of Bristol, but a member of Parliament; and that if the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far as any other from any endeavor to give it effect;" that a representative "owes to his constituents, not his industry only, but his judgment, and betrays instead of serving them, if he sacrifices it to their opinion." And in so saying he carried with him the concurrence and approval of all his contemporaries whose sentiments on such a question were entitled to weight.

In the States-general of France each member was, by the original constitution of that body, a delegate, and not a representative. He could not even remonstrate against the most oppressive grievance of which the previous instructions of the constituent body had not instructed him to complain; and this limitation of his duties and powers was, undoubtedly, one very principal cause which led to the States-general so rapidly falling into utter disrepute. It was no light thing to take a step which had a tendency to bring down the British Parliament to the level of the despised and long-disused States-general. And it is the more necessary to put the case in a clear and true light, because at the present day there is an evident disposition on the part of constituencies to avail themselves of Peel's conduct in this instance as a precedent, in spite of his protest against its being so regarded, and to fetter their representatives with precise instructions; and a corresponding willingness on the part of candidates to purchase support at elections by a submissive giving of pledges on a variety of subjects, so numerous as to leave themselves no freedom of judgment at all. On the great majority of subjects which come before Parliament, a member of Parliament, if he be a sensible and an honest man, has a far better opportunity of obtaining correct information and forming a sound opinion than can be within reach of any constituency, whose proneness to misjudge is usually in exact proportion to the magnitude of its numbers. Every elector justifiably may, and naturally will, seek to ascertain that between the candidate whom he supports and himself there is a general conformity of opinion; an absolute identity he will never find, and he has no right to ask.[215]

Notes:[Footnote 182: £118,776,000. Alison, c. lxxvi.][Footnote 183: See Lord Malmesbury's account of their first interview.—Diaries of Lord Malmesbury, iii., 218.][Footnote 184: "Parliamentary Debates," series 2, ii., 632.][Footnote 185: Mr. Brougham gave his opinion that if the Duke of York, or any other member of the royal family, had been named, it would have been offensive to the Queen; but the measure adopted he regarded as of a neutral character. (Mentioned by Lord Liverpool, "Life of Lord Liverpool," iii., 55.)][Footnote 186: "Minutes of Cabinet," dated 10th and 14th February, 1820, forwarded the King by Lord Liverpool ("Life of Lord Liverpool," iii., 35-88).][Footnote 187: "Life of Sir J. Mackintosh," by R.J. Mackintosh, ii., 110, 116.][Footnote 188: "Lives of the Chief-justices," iii., 171.][Footnote 189: In a letter on the subject to Lord Liverpool, the Duke goes the length of calling the proposed bill "an experiment which, should it fail, must entail the dreadful alternative of the entire ruin of the landed interests of the empire, with which he is decidedly of opinion that the nation must stand or fall."—Life of Lord Liverpool, iii., 434.][Footnote 190: At one time it was the fashion with writers of the Liberal party to represent Lord Liverpool as led by Lord Castlereagh in the earlier, and by Canning in the later, part of his administration; but Lord Liverpool's correspondence with both these ministers shows clearly that on every subject of foreign as well as of home policy he was the real guide and ruler of his cabinet. Even the recognition of the independence of the South American provinces of Spain—which is so often represented as exclusively the work of Canning—the memorandum on the subject which Lord Liverpool drew up for the cabinet proves that the policy adopted was entirely his own, and that as such he adhered to it resolutely, in spite of the avowed disapproval of the Duke of Wellington and the known unwillingness of the King to sanction it; and it may be remarked (as he and Lord Castlereagh have sometime been described as favoring the Holy Alliance), that the concluding sentence of his letter to the Duke on the subject expresses his hostility, not only to that celebrated treaty, but to the policy which dictated and was embodied in it. (See Lord Liverpool's memorandum for the cabinet and letter to the Duke of Wellington, December 8, 1824.)—Life of Lord Liverpool, iii., 297-305.]

[Footnote 191: See ante, p. 222.][Footnote 192: "With much prudence or laudable disinterestedness," says Hallam ("Constitutional History," ii., 532).][Footnote 193: The last time had been in 1790, when there had been a majority of 187 against it.—Peel's Memoirs, i., 99.][Footnote 194: 237 to 193.][Footnote 195: "Peel's Memoirs," i., 68.][Footnote 196: "Wellington's Civil Despatches," iv., 453.][Footnote 197: See his letter to Peel, March 23 ("Peel's Memoirs," i., 92-100).][Footnote 198: The entry of this bill in Cobbett's "Parliamentary History" is: "The House of Commons testified a very extraordinary zeal in unravelling the Popish Plot, and, to prevent mischief in the interval, passed a bill to disable Papists from sitting in either House of Parliament," to which the Lords, when the bill came up to their House, added a proviso exempting the Duke of York from its operation. An. 1678; October 26 to November 21.—-Parliamentary History, iv., 1024-1039.][Footnote 199: In the House of Commons the majority for Sir F. Burdett's resolution was six—372 to 266. But, in the House of Lords, Lord Lansdowne, moving the same resolution, was defeated by forty-five—182 to 137.][Footnote 200: See Fitzgerald's letter to Peel ("Peel's Memoirs," i., 114).][Footnote 201: "Peel's Memoirs," i., 121.][Footnote 202: See "Lord Anglesey's Letters," ibid., pp. 126, 147.][Footnote 203: As early as the year 1812, on the negotiations (mentioned in a former chapter) for the entrance of Lord Grenville and Lord Grey into the ministry, the Duke of York mentioned to both those noblemen that the Regent had an insuperable objection to the concession of Emancipation. And it seems probable that it was the knowledge of his sentiments on that point that greatly influenced the course which Lord Liverpool subsequently pursued in regard to that question.—See Life of Lord Liverpool, i, 381.][Footnote 204: Speech on moving the second reading of the bill in the House of Lords, February 19, 1829 ("Hansard," xx., 389).][Footnote 205: Speech on the first reading of the bill, February 10 ("Hansard," xx., 208).][Footnote 206: Speech on the first reading ("Hansard," xx., 198).][Footnote 207: An amendment was proposed by Lord Chandos to add the office of Prime-minister to these three, on the ground that if a Roman Catholic were Prime-minister "he might have the disposal of all the patronage of the state and the Church vested in his hands." But Mr. Peel pointed out that the law of England "never recognized any such office as that of Prime-minister. In the eyes of the law the ministers were all on an equality." And the position, such as it was, being a conventional one, was not necessarily connected with the office of First Lord of the Treasury. "In a recent instance his late right honorable friend, Mr. Canning, had determined to hold the office of Prime-minister with that of Secretary of State. And when Lord Chatham was Prime-minister, he did not hold the office of First Lord of the Treasury." At the same time he explained that the impropriety of intrusting a Roman Catholic with Church patronage was already guarded against in the bill, a clause of which provided that "it should not be lawful for any person professing the Roman Catholic religion directly or indirectly to advise the crown in any appointment to or disposal of any office or preferment, lay or ecclesiastical, in the united Church of England and Ireland, or of the Church of Scotland."—Hansard, xx., 1425.][Footnote 208: Many years afterward the restriction as to the Lord Chancellorship of Ireland was abolished.][Footnote 209: The plan which Pitt had intended to propose was to substitute in lieu of the Sacramental test a political test, to be imposed indiscriminately on all persons sitting in Parliament, or holding state or corporation offices, and also on all ministers of religion, of whatever description, etc., etc. This test was to disclaim in express terms the sovereignty of the people, and was to contain an oath of allegiance and "fidelity to the King's government of the realm, and to the established constitutions of Church and state."—Letter of Lord Grenville, given in Courts and Cabinets of George III., and quoted by Lord Stanhope, Life of Pitt, iii., 270. This plan seems very preferable to that now adopted, since it removed every appearance of making a distinction between the professors of the different creeds, when the same oath was to be taken by all indifferently.][Footnote 210: The question had been discussed with the highest Papal authorities more than once since the beginning of the century. In 1812 Mgr. Quarantotti, the prelate who, during the detention of the Pope in France by Napoleon, was invested with the chief authority in ecclesiastical affairs at Rome, in a letter to the Vicar-apostolic, Dr. Poynter, formally announced the consent of the Papal See to give the King a veto on all ecclesiastical appointments within the United Kingdom; and, after his return to Rome, Pio VII. himself confirmed the former title by a second addressed, by his instructions, to the same Dr. Poynter, which letter, in 1816, was read by Mr. Grattan in the House of Commons, it being throughout understood that this concession of the veto to the King was conditional on the abolition of the disabilities and the endowment of the priesthood. And in 1825, after Lord Francis Egerton's resolution had been carried in the House of Commons, Dr. Doyle, one of the most eminent of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland, in an examination before a committee of the House of Lords, expressed the willingness of the Roman Catholic clergy to accept a state provision, if it were permanently annexed to each benefice, and accompanied with a concession of an equality of civil rights to the Roman Catholic laity.—See Life of Lord Liverpool, ii, 145; Diary of Lord Colchester, March 17, 1835, iii., 373; Peel's Memoirs, i., 306, 333 seq.][Footnote 211: The sum to be thus employed seems to have been intended to be £300,000 a year.—Peel's Memoirs, i., 197. On the whole question of the payment and Peel's objections to it, see ibid., pp. 197, 306.][Footnote 212: See his "Civil Despatches," iv., 570. In February, 1829, he said to Lord Sidmouth, "It is a bad business, but we are aground." "Does your Grace think, then," asked Lord Sidmouth, "that this concession will tranquillize Ireland?" "I can't tell; I hope it will," answered the Duke, who shortly discovered, and had the magnanimity to admit, his mistake.—Life of Lord Sidmouth, iii., 453. It is remarkable that the question of endowing the Roman Catholic clergy was again considered by Lord John Russell's ministry in 1848. A letter of Prince Albert in October of that year says, with reference to it: "The bishops have protested against Church endowment, being themselves well off; but the clergy would gratefully accept it if offered, but dare not avow this."—Life of the Prince Consort, ii., 186.][Footnote 213: This first extract refers in part to the proposal which he made to the Duke to resign his office as Secretary of State, and to support the Emancipation as a private member, a design which he only relinquished at the Duke's earnest entreaty. The second extract refers to the seat in Parliament alone.—See Peel's Memoirs, i., 310, 312.][Footnote 214: Speech to the electors of Bristol on being declared by the sheriffs duly elected member for that city, November 3, 1774.—Burke's Works, iii., 11, ed 1803.][Footnote 215: It is worth pointing out, however, that, as if it were one of the natural fruits of the Reform Bill, the Liberal Committee of the Livery of London in 1832 passed a series of resolutions asserting the principle of delegation without the slightest modification; one resolution affirming "that members chosen to be representatives in Parliament ought to do such things as their constituents wish and direct them to do;" another, "that a signed engagement should be exacted from every member that he would at all times and in all things act conformably to the wishes of a majority of his constituents, or would at their request resign the trust with which they had honored him."—Annual Register, 1832, p. 300; quoted by Alison, 2d series, v., 355.]