Historical Characters

Part II

Currency. – Views thereupon. – Chairman in 1859 of Finance Committee. – Conduct as to the Queen’s trial. – Becomes Home Secretary. – Improvement of police, criminal law, prisons, &c. – Defends Lord Eldon, but guards himself against being thought to share his political tendencies, and declares himself in favour in Ireland of a general system of education for all religions, and denounces any attempt to mix up conversion with it. – Begins to doubt about the possibility of resisting the Catholic claims. – The Duke of York dies, and Lord Liverpool soon after follows. – Question of Premiership between the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Canning. – Peel sides with the Duke of Wellington.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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