Historical Characters

I have said that when he undertook to form a new Conservative party he was obliged to use the old Conservative materials, and that these were the Irish Protestants and the English country gentry. In his endeavour to give to these two bodies a more national character, he had already lost his prestige with the one, and damaged it with the other. Another crisis, however, had yet to arrive, before the career he had entered upon was closed. I approach the repeal of the Corn Laws.

A most rapid change had taken place in public opinion within but a few years about the laws concerning corn. From the earliest period of my public life I had considered them untenable and dangerous to the class which fancied itself interested in their maintenance. Thus, I voted for their total repeal as early as 1832, but only two persons (Mr. Hume and Mr. Cobbett) voted with me.

Almost every statesman, in fact, up to 1840, had considered, as a matter of course, that home-grown was to be protected by a duty on foreign corn. They might differ as to the manner in which that duty should be imposed, as to what should be its amount, but no one doubted that there should be a duty sufficient to procure a remunerative price to the English grower. Mr. Charles Pelham Villiers has the credit of first bringing this subject before the serious attention of politicians. Ere long the Corn Law League was formed, and produced, no doubt, a great effect on the public mind; but this was in consequence of the fact that when the Corn Law League commenced its labours, people’s thoughts had been subjected to an influence different from that which had formerly governed them.

Previous to the Reform Bill and the Municipality Bills everybody in England looked up: the ambitious young man looked up to the great nobleman for a seat in Parliament; the ambitious townsman to the chief men of his borough for a place in the corporation. Subsequently to these measures, men desirous to elevate their position looked down. The aristocratic tendency of other days had thus become almost suddenly a democratic one. This democratic tendency, which has gone on increasing, had made itself already visible at the period when the Corn Law agitation began. It had been natural until then to consider this subject in relation to the interests of the upper classes; it was now becoming natural to consider it in relation to the interests of the lower classes. The question presented itself in a perfectly different point of view, and politicians found, somewhat to their surprise, that all former arguments had lost their force. It was this change in the spirit of the times which had occasioned within such a very few years a total change in the manner of looking at matters affected by the Legislature. We must, whether we wish to do so or not, breathe the atmosphere that is around us. Directly it was shown them that low wages did not necessarily follow a low price of corn, and that the labourer did not earn more because his living was dearer, the only argument that was still listened to against foreign competition disappeared. Statesman after statesman felt himself gliding into the conviction that all attempts to maintain the existing state of things, because it was thought favourable to the country gentry, was impracticable.

Lord John Russell and other leading members of the Whig party, who had been supporters of a Corn Law, underwent year by year a modification in their former opinions, and were arriving in 1845 at the determination of abandoning them. Sir Robert Peel had been undergoing precisely the same influences, and was arriving precisely at the same conclusions. The country gentlemen amongst the Whigs had quite as much cause to reproach their leader for an alteration in his views as the country gentlemen of the Tories had a right to reproach theirs. But neither the one statesman nor the other had as yet gone so far as to make common cause with Mr. Villiers and Mr. Cobden. An important and alarming incident hastened the decision of both. That incident was the failure of the potato-crop. Unless some measure was taken for bringing food from foreign countries into England, and especially into Ireland, there was legitimate cause for apprehending a famine. An apprehension of this kind involves no ordinary responsibility. Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel felt this almost at the same moment. But whilst the responsibility of the one was far greater than that of the other, his course was far more embarrassed. Lord John did not rely chiefly on those persons who fancied that their income depended on upholding the value of home produce. Sir Robert Peel did. The first might gain office by declaring that the moment was come for putting Protection altogether on one side; the other could only lose it.

Such a consideration might in many cases fairly weigh with a public man. A change of administration, a dislocation of parties, may affect a variety of questions, as well as the one which at the moment may be most prominent. But when the matter which presents itself before you is the death by starvation of hundreds or thousands of your fellow-creatures, and you think, whether rightly or wrongly, that your decision can save or condemn so many existences, is there any one who could counsel you for any reason whatever to sanction wholesale murder by suppressing your convictions? There were persons who did not think famine imminent. To them, of course, the question presented itself in a different point of view. But Sir Robert Peel seems to have been finally convinced that nothing short of a suspension of the Corn Laws, and the proposal of measures tending to their ultimate abolition, would meet the urgency of the case. He had already lost his confidence in the policy of protecting corn under ordinary circumstances; and now came circumstances which, even if his general opinions had been the same as formerly, would have created an especial reason for putting them on one side.

What was he to do? Some of his colleagues dissented altogether from his views. They did not see the crisis he foresaw so clearly as he did, and therefore were not for meeting it by a temporary suspension of a permanent duty. They did not recognise the necessity for eventually repealing that duty, and therefore were not for proposing measures that would lead to its ultimate abolition. The Premier might have attempted the policy he had in view with the remainder of the ministry, but he wisely resolved on not making such an attempt; and tendering his resignation to her Majesty, and indicating the causes, he stated his readiness to support Lord John Russell if he were willing, and able, to form a Cabinet that would undertake to carry out the views which he believed Lord John and himself entertained in common. The Whig leader failed in executing the commission with which, after this communication, the Queen intrusted him; and Lord Stanley, now at the head of the Protectionist party, considering it was not in his power to form a Government, Sir Robert Peel had as a matter of duty and necessity to resume his post.

It appears to me that the fact that he had resigned office on changing his policy, and that he did not return to it until every other ministerial combination had failed, rendered his course on this occasion more clear than on the Catholic question. To accuse him under such circumstances of changing his views in order to retain his office is as absurd as unjust. He is not even subject to the charge of retaining power after changing the opinions that he entertained on receiving it. His conduct appears to me to have been dictated by the purest patriotism, and the most complete sacrifice of personal ambition to public motives. Nor was his ability ever more conspicuous than during the ordeal he had now to undergo.

It is not, however, my intention to follow him through the Parliamentary contest in which he was soon engaged, and out of which he came triumphant, though not without, for the second time in his life, having been submitted to the severest obloquy, and having exposed his friends, which must have been his most painful trial, to accusations as bitter as those which he had himself to support.

The event which he must have anticipated was now at hand.

We know that, according to Mahomedan superstition, a man walks through life with his good and his bad angel by his side. Sir Robert Peel had at this moment his good and his bad angel accompanying his political fortunes with equal pace.

“During the progress of the Corn Law Bill,” he says in his Memoirs, “through the two Houses of Parliament, another bill, entitled a Bill for the Protection of Life in Ireland, which at an early period of the Session had received the assent of the House of Lords, was brought under discussion in the House of Commons, and encountered every species of opposition.”

On the 21st of January, 1846, the two bills, the Corn Law Repeal Bill, and the Bill for Protection of Life in Ireland, were in such a position in the two Houses respectively, that there appeared every reason to calculate on the double event, – the passing of the first bill unmutilated by the House of Lords, and the rejection of the second by the House of Commons. These two bills were indeed his guardian and destroying angels. The one crowned him with imperishable fame – the other ejected him for the last time from power.

On the 19th of May, 1846, the Corn Law Repeal Bill was carried by a majority of 98. On the 25th of June, by a concerted union between the Protectionists and Whig parties, the Irish Life Protection Bill was rejected by a majority of 75, and the Premier retired, the shouts of congratulation at his victory mingling with the condolence at his defeat. One farther triumph, however, yet remained to him, that of supporting the Whig Government, when, but a short time afterwards, it deemed itself obliged to bring forward a bill almost similar to the one which when proposed by an opposite party it had denounced. The most triumphant portion of Sir Robert Peel’s political career was indeed that which followed his exclusion from official life. I know of no statesman who ever occupied so proud a position as that in which a greater commoner than even the first William Pitt stood from 1846 to July, 1850, when an unhappy accident filled with patriotic sorrow every heart in England. Above all parties, himself a party, – he had trained his own mind into a disinterested sympathy with the intelligence of his country. He never during this period gave a vote to court democratic influence or to win aristocratic favour. Conscientiously and firmly attached to the religion of the State, he flattered none of its prejudices, and repudiated boldly its exclusive pretensions; and his speech on the Jewish Disabilities Bill, considering that it was delivered towards the close of a career which had begun under the intolerant patronage of Lord Eldon, is perhaps the most notable and the most instructive that he ever delivered, as marking the progress of opinion during forty years in the history of England.

If it could be said of any man, indeed, it could be said of this statesman, that time in its progress turned him inside out. But the process was a gradual one, and it was only when you put the Peel of 1810 by the side of the Peel of 1850, that the totality of the change appears distinct. And yet, though the end of Sir Robert Peel’s career was at such variance with the commencement, there is a certain consistency that may be traced throughout it. Formed on those official habits which incline a minister to postpone or oppose the consideration of all questions which cannot be successfully dealt with, he never exposed a theory until it could be realized, nor brought forward a measure which he did not think he could carry. At the same time his tendencies were liberal whenever the object brought under his consideration became practical. It must also be said that in the matter on which these tendencies came most strikingly into view his objects were Conservative.

He was converted with respect to the Catholic question, and was converted to Liberal views, but when he professed this conversion, it was to save the country from civil war. He was converted with respect to the Corn Law, and was converted to Liberal convictions; but when he professed this conversion, it was to save the country from famine.

Those who have asserted that his natural bent was towards a change in established institutions and ancient customs, were, I think, decidedly wrong. His natural disposition was rather to maintain what he found existing, but he sacrificed old things without scruple when he considered them decidedly incompatible with new ideas. He had not that order of mind which creates and forces its creations on the minds of others. His mind was, on the contrary, a recipient which opened gradually to growing opinions, and became another mind as these opinions got by degrees possession of it. His changes were thus more sudden in appearance than in reality, because they always went on for a certain time, silently, and to a certain degree unconsciously to himself as well as to the world before they were fully felt; nor were they ever publicly announced till, having passed through a stage of doubt, they arrived at the stage of conviction. His convictions, moreover, were generally simultaneous with those of the public, when the public formed its convictions gradually. But any sudden and unexpected leap of opinion, as in the case of the Whig Reform Bill of 1872, took him unprepared. His manner in personal intercourse, however intimate your relations might be, were nearly always formal, though not cold; but in correspondence he was easy, natural, and remarkable for the simplicity and frankness of his letters.

I speak at least from the result of my own experience. In all matters of home policy he was thoroughly master of every subject that could interest an English statesman. In foreign matters he had general notions, but not much knowledge of particulars, nor any special plan or theory of policy; but a high idea of the power of England and the expediency of maintaining her dignity and prestige.

In the early part of his life I have no doubt that ambition, and the personal motives of ambition, had a certain influence over his actions. At a later period, in his last administration, and after quitting office, I believe he had no personal view that separated him in the slightest degree from an entire and disinterested devotion to the interests of his country. He was a scholar in the highest sense of the term; nor did the attention he could give to the driest details of business damp his sympathy for the elegancies of literature, or his appreciation of what was beautiful, whether in painting or sculpture. He had no hatred – no inveterate prejudices against persons or things. His domestic virtues are too well known to make it necessary to allude to them.

In short, without pretending to raise him above the defects and littlenesses of human nature, I do not know where to point to any one who united such talents for public business with such qualities in private life.

A comparison which suggests itself naturally to those who study the history of their times, is one between the practical statesman, the sketch of whose career I am concluding, and his more brilliant contemporary, of whom I have previously spoken. Though for a long period rivals, they both entered political life under the Tory banner, and gained their reputation by adopting Whig principles. In canvassing their separate merits, it is just to say that Sir Robert Peel’s great acts were the development of Mr. Canning’s principles. The former hatched the latter’s ideas, and for one triumph especially, which Sir Robert tardily but nobly achieved, the Catholics of the British empire must feel even more grateful to their early champion than to their subsequent benefactor.

Sir Robert Peel had the talents for giving a prosperous issue to a popular cause, Mr. Canning the genius that makes a cause popular. The one had the courage to advocate an opinion before it was ripe for realization. The other, the fortitude when the advantage and the possibility of a measure became apparent, to make unhesitatingly every personal sacrifice for the public welfare. If we praise the one for his prescience as a statesman, we bend with admiration before the other as a patriot.

The brilliant talents, the genial and generous spirit of Mr. Canning procured him partisans who served him with their heart, and animating his country by a sympathy with his spirit, inspired a sort of affectionate interest in his fortunes. The calm and steady prudence, the sober and moderate language, the punctilious devotion to business, the constant attention to practical and useful improvements, the comprehensive acquirements, the gradual abandonment of early prejudices, won by degrees for Sir Robert Peel a sort of judicial pre-eminence which made men obey his decisions who were displeased with his manners, and who even differed from his opinions. Thus was he finally elevated to a height in the general esteem which was the more remarkable from its being gained by qualities which neither charmed individuals nor dazzled the public.

Each left a school. In the one we may learn how to sustain our renown and our power abroad; in the other how to advance our prosperity at home. Both were the citizens of a free state, but if I might venture to distinguish the peculiarities of these two illustrious Englishmen by a reference to classical examples, I would say that the one resembled a Greek in the most glorious times of Athens, the other reminded you of a Roman in the noblest epoch of the city of Romulus.