Historical Characters

Part III

Fall of the Goderich ministry. – Formation of the Cabinet under the Duke of Wellington. – Policy of that Cabinet. – Its junction with Mr. Canning’s friends. – The secession of these, and the defeat of Mr. Fitzgerald in the Clare election. – Majority in the House of Commons in favour of Catholic claims. – The Language of the House of Lords. – The conviction now brought about in the mind of Mr. Peel, that there was less danger in settling the Catholic claims than in leaving them unsettled. – The effect produced by this conviction on the administration. – The propositions brought forward in consequence in Parliament. – Carrying of these propositions through the two Houses. – Sir Robert Peel’s conduct and sentiments throughout the discussion of the measure he had advocated.

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

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

The Duke of Wellington, in recounting his interview with the King, when the offer to form an administration was made to him, said: “The Catholic question was not to be a Cabinet question; there was to be a Protestant Lord Lieutenant, a Protestant129 Lord Chancellor, and a Protestant Chancellor in Ireland.” The Irish Government, however, with Lord Anglesea as Lord Lieutenant, and Mr. Stanley as Secretary, was neither in spirit nor in letter according to this programme; and the change was attributable to Mr. Peel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hæc didici, hæc vidi, hæc scripta legi, hæc sapientissimis et clarissimis viris, et in hâc republicâ et in aliis civitatibus, monumenta nobis, literæ prodiderunt, non semper easdem sententias ab iisdem, sed, quascumque reipublicæ status, inclinatio temporum, ratio concordiæ postularent, esse defendendas.” —Orat. pro Cn. Plaucio, xxxix.

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

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

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

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

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