TRIUMPH OF POLICY AND FALL OF THE MINISTER
(_1846_)
Change of opinion, in those to whose judgment the public looks more
or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a
much smaller evil than their persistence in a course which they
know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always
to be watched with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon
its trial.--GLADSTONE.
Not lingering for the moment on Mr. Gladstone's varied pre-occupations
during 1845, and not telling over again the well-known story of the
circumstances that led to the repeal of the corn law, I pass rapidly to
Mr. Gladstone's part--it was a secondary part--in the closing act of the
exciting political drama on which the curtain had risen in 1841. The end
of the session of 1845 had left the government in appearance even
stronger than it was in the beginning of 1842. Two of the most sagacious
actors knew better what this was worth. Disraeli was aware how the ties
had been loosened between the minister and his supporters, and Cobden
was aware that, in words used at the time, 'three weeks of rain when the
wheat was ripening would rain away the corn law.'[172]
AN EXCITING DECEMBER
Everybody knows how the rain came, and alarming signs of a dreadful
famine in Ireland came; how Peel advised his cabinet to open the ports
for a limited period, but without promising them that if the corn duties
were ever taken off, they could ever be put on again; how Lord John
seized the moment, wrote an Edinburgh letter, and declared for total and
immediate repeal; how the minister once more called his cabinet
together, invited them to support him in settling the question, and as
they would not all assent, resigned; how Lord John tried to form a
government and failed; and how Sir Robert again became first minister of
the crown, but not bringing all his colleagues back with him. 'I think,'
said Mr. Gladstone in later days, 'he expected to carry the repeal of
the corn law without breaking up his party, but meant at all hazard to
carry it.'
Peel's conduct in 1846, Lord Aberdeen said to a friend ten years
later, was very noble. With the exception of Graham and myself, his
whole cabinet was against him. Lyndhurst, Goulburn, and Stanley
were almost violent in their resistance. Still more opposed to him,
if it were possible, was the Duke of Wellington. To break up the
cabinet was an act of great courage. To resume office when Lord
John had failed in constructing one, was still more courageous. He
said to the Queen: 'I am ready to kiss hands as your minister
to-night. I believe I can collect a ministry which will last long
enough to carry free trade, and I am ready to make the attempt.'
When he said this there were only two men on whom he could rely.
One of the first to join him was Wellington. 'The Queen's
government,' he said, 'must be carried on. We have done all that we
could for the landed interest. Now we must do all that we can for
the Queen.'[173]
On one of the days of this startling December, Mr. Gladstone writes to
his father: 'If Peel determines to form a government, and if he sends
for me (a compound uncertainty), I cannot judge what to do until I know
much more than at present of the Irish case. It is there if anywhere
that he must find his justification; there if anywhere that one returned
to parliament as I am, can honestly find reason for departing at this
time from the present corn law.' Two other letters of Mr. Gladstone's
show us more fully why he followed Peel instead of joining the
dissentients, of whom the most important was Lord Stanley. The first of
these was written to his father four and a half years later:--
_6 Carlton Gardens, June 30, 1849._--As respects my 'having made
Peel a free trader,' I have never seen that idea expressed
anywhere, and I think it is one that does great injustice to the
character and power of his mind. In every case, however, the head
of a government may be influenced more or less in the affairs of
each department of state by the person in charge of that
department. If, then, there was any influence at all upon Peel's
mind proceeding from me between 1841 and 1845, I have no doubt it
may have tended on the whole towards free trade.... But all this
ceased with the measures of 1845, when I left office. It was during
the alarm of a potato famine in the autumn of that year that the
movement in the government about the corn laws began. I was then on
the continent, looking after Helen [his sister], and not dreaming
of office or public affairs.... I myself had invariably, during
Peel's government, spoken of protection not as a thing good in
principle, but to be dealt with as tenderly and cautiously as might
be according to circumstances, always moving in the direction of
free trade. It _then_ appeared to me that the case was materially
altered by events; it was no longer open to me to pursue that
cautious course. A great struggle was imminent, in which it was
plain that two parties only could really find place, on the one
side for repeal, on the other side for _permanent_ maintenance of a
corn law and a protective system generally and on principle. It
would have been more inconsistent in me, even if consistency had
been the rule, to join the latter party than the former. But
independently of that, I thought, and still think, that the
circumstances of the case justified and required the change. So far
as relates to the final change in the corn law, you will see that
no influence proceeded from me, but rather that events over which I
had no control, and steps taken by Sir R. Peel while I was out of
the government, had an influence upon me in inducing me to take
office. I noticed some days ago that you had made an observation on
this subject, but I did not recollect that it was a question. Had I
adverted to this I should have answered it at once. If I had any
motive for avoiding the subject, it was, I think, this--that it is
not easy to discuss such a question as that of an influence of mine
over a mind so immeasurably superior, without something of egotism
and vanity.
SECRETARY OF STATE
So much for the general situation. The second letter is to Mrs.
Gladstone, and contributes some personal details:--
_13 Carlton House Terrace, Dec. 22, 6 P.M., 1845._--It is offensive
to begin about myself, but I must. Within the last two hours I have
accepted the office of secretary for the colonies, succeeding Lord
Stanley, who resigns. The last twenty-four have been very anxious
hours. Yesterday afternoon (two hours after Holy Communion) Lincoln
came to make an appointment on Peel's part. I went to meet him in
Lincoln's house at five o'clock. He detailed to me the
circumstances connected with the late political changes, asked me
for no reply, and gave me quantities of papers to read, including
letters of his own, the Queen's, and Lord J. Russell's, during the
crisis. This morning I had a conversation with Bonham [the party
whipper-in] upon the general merits, but without telling him
precisely what the proposal made to me was. Upon the whole my mind,
though I felt the weight of the question, was clear. I had to
decide what was best to be done _now_. I arrived speedily at the
conviction that _now_, at any rate, it is best that the question
should be finally settled; that Peel ought and is bound now to try
it; that I ought to support it in parliament; that if, in deciding
the mode, he endeavours to include the most favourable terms for
the agricultural body that it is in his power to obtain, I ought
not only to support it, by which I mean vote for it in parliament,
but likewise not to refuse to be a party to the proposal. I found
from him that he entirely recognised this view, and did feel
himself bound to make the best terms that he believed attainable,
while, on the other hand, I am convinced that we are now in a
position that requires provision to be made for the final abolition
of the corn law. Such being the state of matters, with a clear
conscience, but with a heavy heart, I accepted office. He was
exceedingly warm and kind. But it _was_ with a heavy heart.... I
have seen Lord Stanley. 'I am extremely glad to hear you have taken
office,' said he. We go to Windsor to-morrow to a council--he to
resign the seals, and I to receive them.
In the diary he enters:--
Saw Sir R. Peel at 3, and accepted office--in opposition, as I have
the consolation of feeling, to my leanings and desires, and with
the most precarious prospects. Peel was most kind, nay fatherly. We
_held_ hands instinctively, and I could not but reciprocate with
emphasis his 'God bless you.'
I well remember, Mr. Gladstone wrote in a memorandum of Oct. 4,
1851, Peel's using language to me in the Duke of Newcastle's house
on Sunday, Dec. 21, 1845, which, as I conceive, distinctly
intimated his belief that he would be able to carry his measure,
and at the same time hold his party together. He spoke with a kind
of glee and complacency in his tone when he said, making up his
meaning by signs, 'I have not lived near forty years in public life
to find myself wholly without the power of foreseeing the course of
events in the House of Commons'--in reference to the very point of
the success of his government.
One thing is worth noting as we pass. The exact proceedings of the
memorable cabinets of November and the opening days of December are
still obscure. It has generally been held that Disraeli planted a rather
awkward stroke when he taunted Peel with his inconsistency in declaring
that he was not the proper minister to propose repeal, and yet in trying
to persuade his colleagues to make the attempt before giving the whigs a
chance. The following note of Mr. Gladstone's (written in 1851 after
reading Sir R. Peel's original memoir on the Corn Act of 1846) throws
some light on the question:--
When Sir R. Peel invited me to take office in December 1845 he did
not make me aware of the offer he had made to the cabinet in his
memorandum, I think of Dec. 2, to propose a new corn law with a
lowered sliding duty, which should diminish annually by a shilling
until in some eight or ten years the trade would be free. No doubt
he felt that after Lord John Russell had made his attempt to form a
government, and after, by Lord Stanley's resignation, he had lost
the advantages of unanimity, he could not be justified in a
proposal involving so considerable an element of protection. It has
become matter of history. But as matter of history it is important
to show how honestly and perseveringly he strove to hold the
balance fairly between contending claims, and how far he was from
being the mere puppet of abstract theories.
That is to say, what he proposed to his cabinet early in December was
not the total and immediate repeal to which he was led by events before
the end of the month.
II
OUT OF PARLIAMENT
The acceptance of office vacated the seat at Newark, and Mr. Gladstone
declined to offer himself again as a candidate. He had been member for
Newark for thirteen years, and had been five times elected. So ended his
connection with the first of the five constituencies that in his course
he represented. 'I part from my constituents,' he tells his father,
'with deep regret. Though I took office under circumstances which might
reasonably arouse the jealousy of my friends, an agricultural
constituency, the _great_ majority of my committee were prepared to
support me, and took action and strong measures in my favour.' 'My deep
obligation,' he says, 'to the Duke of Newcastle for the great benefit he
conferred upon me, not only by his unbroken support, but, far above all,
by his original introduction of me to the constituency, made it my duty
at once to decline some overtures made to me for the support of my
re-election, so it only remained to seek a seat elsewhere.' Some faint
hopes were entertained by Mr. Gladstone's friends that the duke might
allow him to sit for the rest of the parliament, but the duke was not
the man to make concessions to a betrayer of the territorial interest.
Mr. Gladstone, too, we must not forget, was still and for many years to
come, a tory. When it was suggested that he might stand for North Notts,
he wrote to Lord Lincoln:--'It is not for one of my political opinions
without an extreme necessity to stand upon the basis of democratic or
popular feeling against the local proprietary: for you who are placed in
the soil the case is very different.'
Soon after the session of 1846 began, it became known that the
protectionist petition against the Peelite or liberal sitting member for
Wigan was likely to succeed in unseating him. 'Proposals were made to me
to succeed him, which were held to be eligible. I even wrote my address;
on a certain day, I was going down by the mail train. But it was an
object for our opponents to keep a secretary of state out of parliament
during the corn law crisis, and their petition was suddenly withdrawn.
The consequence was that I remained until the resignation of the
government in July a minister of the crown without a seat in parliament.
This was a state of things not agreeable to the spirit of parliamentary
government; and some objection was taken, but rather slightly, in the
House of Commons. Sir R. Peel stood fire.' There can be little doubt
that in our own day a cabinet minister without a seat in either House of
parliament would be regarded, in Mr. Gladstone's words, as a public
inconvenience and a political anomaly, too _dark_ to be tolerated; and
he naturally felt it his absolute duty to peep in at every chink and
cranny where a seat in parliament could be had. A Peelite, however, had
not a good chance at a by-election, and Mr. Gladstone remained out of
the House until the general election in the year following.[174] Lord
Lincoln, also a member of the cabinet, vacated his seat, but, unlike his
friend, found a seat in the course of the session.
Mr. Gladstone's brother-in-law, Lyttelton, was invited to represent the
colonial office in the Lords, but had qualms of conscience about the
eternal question of the two Welsh bishoprics. 'How could the government
of this wonderful empire,' Peel wrote to Mr. Gladstone, 'be ever
constructed, if a difference on such a point were to be an obstruction
to union? Might not any one now say with perfect honour and, what is of
more importance (if they are not identical), perfect satisfaction to his
own conscience, "I will not so far set up my own judgment on one
isolated measure against that of a whole administration, to such an
extent as to preclude me from co-operation with them at a critical
period." This, of course, assumes general accordance of sentiment on the
great outlines of public policy.' Wise words and sound, that might
prevent some of the worst mistakes of some of the best men.
III
THE SESSION OF 1846
This memorable session of 1846 was not a session of argument, but of
lobby computations. The case had been argued to the dregs, the
conclusion was fixed, and all interest was centred in the play of
forces, the working of high motives and low, the balance of parties, the
secret ambitions and antagonism of persons. Mr. Gladstone therefore was
not in the shaping of the parliamentary result seriously missed, as he
had been missed in 1845. 'It soon became evident,' says a leading whig
in his journal of the time, 'that Peel had very much over-rated his
strength. Even the expectation of December that he could have carried
with him enough of his own followers to enable Lord John, if that
statesman had contrived to form a government, to pass the repeal of the
corn law, was perceived to have been groundless, when the formidable
number of the protectionist dissentients appeared. So many even of those
who remained with Peel avowed that they disapproved of the measure, and
only voted in its favour for the purpose of supporting Peel's
government.'[175] The tyranny of the accomplished fact obscures one's
sense of the danger that Peel's high courage averted. It is not certain
that Lord John as head of a government could have carried the whole body
of whigs for total and immediate repeal, Lord Lansdowne and Palmerston
openly stating their preference for a fixed duty, and not a few of the
smaller men cursing the precipitancy of the Edinburgh letter. It is
certain, as is intimated above, that Peel could not have carried over to
him the whole of the 112 men who voted for repeal solely because it was
his measure. In the course of this session Sir John Hobhouse met Mr.
Disraeli at an evening party, and expressed a fear lest Peel having
broken up one party would also be the means of breaking up the other.
'That, you may depend upon it, he will,' replied Disraeli, 'or any other
party that he has anything to do with.' It was not long after this, when
all was over, that the Duke of Wellington told Lord John that he
thought Peel was tired of party and was determined to destroy it. After
the repeal of the corn law was safe, the minister was beaten on the
Irish coercion bill by what Wellington called a 'blackguard combination'
between the whigs and the protectionists. He resigned, and Lord John
Russell at the head of the whigs came in.
'Until three or four days before the division on the coercion bill,' Mr.
Gladstone says in a memorandum written at the time, 'I had not the
smallest idea, beyond mere conjecture, of the views and intentions of
Sir R. Peel with respect to himself or to his government. Only we had
been governed in all questions, so far as I knew, by the determination
to carry the corn bill and to let no collateral circumstance interfere
with that main purpose.... He sent round a memorandum some days before
the division arguing for resignation against dissolution. There was also
a correspondence between the Duke of Wellington and him. The duke argued
for holding our ground and dissolving. But when we met in cabinet on
Friday the 26th of June, not an opposing voice was raised. It was the
shortest cabinet I ever knew. Peel himself uttered two or three
introductory sentences. He then said that he was convinced that the
formation of a conservative party was impossible while he continued in
office. That he had made up his mind to resign. That he strongly advised
the resignation of the entire government. Some declared their assent.
None objected; and when he asked whether it was unanimous, there was no
voice in the negative.' 'This was simply,' as Mr. Gladstone added in
later notes, 'because he had very distinctly and positively stated his
own resolution to resign. It amounted therefore to this,--no one
proposed to go on without him.' One other note of Mr. Gladstone's on
this grave decision is worth quoting:--
I must put into words the opinion which I silently formed in my
room at the colonial office in June 1846, when I got the
circulation box with Peel's own memorandum not only arguing in
favour of resignation but intimating his own intention to resign,
and with the Duke of Wellington's in the opposite sense. The duke,
in my opinion, was right and Peel wrong, but he had borne the brunt
of battle already beyond the measure of human strength, and who can
wonder that his heart and soul as well as his physical organisation
needed rest?[176]
DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT
In announcing his retirement to the House (June 29), Peel passed a
magnanimous and magnificent eulogium on Cobden.[177] Strange to say, the
panegyric gave much offence, and among others to Mr. Gladstone. The next
day he entered in his diary:--
Much comment is made upon Peel's declaration about Cobden last
night. My objection to it is that it did not do full justice. For
if his power of discussion has been great and his end good, his
tone has been most harsh and his imputation of bad and vile motives
to honourable men incessant. I do not think the thing was done in a
manner altogether worthy of Peel's mind. But he, like some smaller
men, is, I think, very sensible of the sweetness of the cheers of
opponents.
He describes himself at the time as 'grieved and hurt' at these closing
sentences; and even a year later, in answer to some inquiry from his
father, who still remained protectionist, he wrote: 'July 1, '47.--I do
not know anything about Peel's having repented of his speech about
Cobden; but I hope that he has seen the great objection to which it is,
as I think, fairly open.' Some of his own men who voted for Peel
declared that after this speech they bitterly repented.
PEEL'S TRIBUTE TO COBDEN
The suspected personal significance of the Cobden panegyric is described
in a memorandum written by Mr. Gladstone a few days later (July 12):--
A day or two afterwards I met Lord Stanley crossing the park, and
we had some conversation, first on colonial matters. Then he said,
'Well, I think our friend Peel went rather far last night about
Cobden, did he not?' I stated to him my very deep regret on reading
that passage (as well as what followed about the monopolists), and
that, not for its impolicy but for its injustice. All that he said
was true, but he did not say the whole truth; and the effect of the
whole, as a whole, was therefore untrue. Mr. Cobden has throughout
argued the corn question on the principle of holding up the
landlords of England to the people, as plunderers and as knaves for
maintaining the corn law to save their rents, and as fools because
it was not necessary for that purpose. This was passed by, while he
was praised for sincerity, eloquence, indefatigable zeal.
On Thursday the 2nd I saw Lord Aberdeen. He agreed in the general
regret at the tone of that part of the speech. He said he feared it
was designed with a view to its effects, for the purpose of making
it impossible that Peel should ever again be placed in connection
with the conservative party as a party. He said that Peel had
absolutely made up his mind never again to lead it, never again to
enter office; that he had indeed made up his mind, at one time, to
quit parliament, but that probably on the Queen's account, and in
deference to her wishes, he had abandoned this part of his
intentions. But that he was fixed in the idea to maintain his
independent and separate position, taking part in public questions
as his views of public interests might from time to time seem to
require. I represented that this for _him_, and in the House of
Commons, was an intention absolutely impossible to fulfil; that
with his greatness he could not remain there overshadowing and
eclipsing all governments, and yet have to do with no governments;
that acts cannot for such a man be isolated, they must be in
series, and his view of public affairs must coincide with one body
of men rather than another, and that the attraction must place him
in relations with them. Lord Aberdeen said that Earl Spencer in his
later days was Sir R. Peel's ideal,--rare appearances for serious
purposes, and without compromise generally to the independence of
his personal habits. I put it that this was possible in the House
of Lords, but only there.... On Saturday I saw him again as he came
from the palace. He represented that the Queen was sorely grieved
at this change; which indeed I had already heard from Catherine
through Lady Lyttelton, but this showed that it continued. And
again on Monday we heard through Lady Lyttelton that the Queen said
it was a comfort to think that the work of that day would soon be
over. It appears too that she spoke of the kindness she had
received from her late ministers; and that the Prince's sentiments
are quite as decided.
On Monday we delivered up the seals at our several audiences. Her
Majesty said simply but very kindly to me, 'I am very sorry to
receive them from you.' I thanked her for my father's baronetcy,
and apologised for his not coming to court. She had her glove half
off, which made me think I was to kiss hands; but she simply bowed
and retired. Her eyes told tales, but she smiled and put on a
cheerful countenance. It was in fact the 1st of September 1841 over
again as to feelings; but this time with more mature judgment and
longer experience. Lord Aberdeen and Sir J. Graham kissed hands,
but this was by favour.
The same night I saw Sidney Herbert at Lady Pembroke's. He gave me
in great part the same view of Sir R. Peel's speech, himself
holding the same opinion with Lord Aberdeen. But he thought that
Peel's natural temper, which he said is very violent though usually
under thorough discipline, broke out and coloured that part of the
speech, but that the end in view was to cut off all possibility of
reunion. He referred to a late conversation with Peel, in which
Peel had intimated his intention of remaining in parliament and
acting for himself without party, to which Herbert replied that he
knew of no minister who had done so except lord Bute, a bad
precedent. Peel rejoined 'Lord Grenville,' showing that his mind
had been at work upon the subject. He had heard him not long ago
discussing his position with Lord Aberdeen and Sir James Graham,
when he said, putting his hand up to the side of his head, 'Ah! you
do not know what I suffer here.'
Yesterday Lord Lyndhurst called on me.... He proceeded to ask me
what I thought with respect to our political course. He said he
conceived that the quarrel was a bygone quarrel, that the
animosities attending it ought now to be forgotten, and the old
relations of amity and confidence among the members of the
conservative body resumed. I told him, in the first place, that I
felt some difficulty in answering him in my state of total
ignorance, so far as direct communication is concerned, of Sir R.
Peel's knowledge and intentions; that on Tuesday I had seen him on
colonial matters, and had talked on the probable intentions of the
new government as to the sugar duties, but that I did not like to
ask what he did not seem to wish to tell, and that I did not obtain
the smallest inkling of light as to his intentions in respect to
that very matter now immediately pending. He observed it was a pity
Sir R. Peel was so uncommunicative; but that after having been so
long connected with him, he would certainly be very unwilling to do
anything disagreeable to him; still, if I and others thought fit,
he was ready to do what he could towards putting the party together
again. I then replied that I thought, so far as extinguishing the
animosities which had been raised in connection with the corn law
was concerned, I could not doubt its propriety, that I thought we
were bound to give a fair trial to the government, and not to
assume beforehand an air of opposition, and that if so much of
confidence is due to them, much more is it due towards friends from
whom we have differed on the single question of free trade, that
our confidence should be reposed in them. That I thought, however,
that in any case, before acting together as a party, we ought to
consider well the outline of our further course, particularly with
reference to Irish questions and the church there, as I was of
opinion that it was very doubtful whether we had now a
justification for opposing any change with respect to it, meaning
as to the property. He said with his accustomed facility, 'Ah yes,
it will require to be considered what course we shall take.'[178]
CONVERSATIONS WITH COLLEAGUES
I met Lord Aberdeen the same afternoon in Bond Street, and told him
the substance of this conversation. He said, 'It is stated that
Lord G. Bentinck is to resign, and that they are to have you.'
That, I replied, was quite new to me. The (late) chancellor had
simply said, when I pointed out that the difficulties lay in the
House of Commons, that it was true, and that my being there would
make the way more open. I confess I am very doubtful of that, and
much disposed to believe that I am regretted, as things and
persons _absent_ often are, in comparison with the present. At
dinner I sat between Graham and Jocelyn. The latter observed
particularly on the absence from Sir R. Peel's speech of any
acknowledgment towards his supporters and his colleagues. These
last, however, are named. Jocelyn said the new government were much
divided.... Jocelyn believes that Lord Palmerston will not be very
long in union with this cabinet.
With Sir J. Graham I had much interesting conversation. I told him,
I thought it but fair to mention to him the regret and blame which
I found to have been elicited from all persons whom I saw and
conversed with, by the passage relating to Cobden. He said he
believed it was the same on all hands; and that the new government
in particular were most indignant at it. He feared that it was
deliberately preconceived and for the purpose; and went on to
repeat what Lord Aberdeen had told me, that Sir R. Peel had been
within an ace of quitting parliament, and was determined to abjure
party and stand aloof for ever, and never resume office. I replied
as before, that in the House of Commons it was impossible. He went
on to sketch the same kind of future for himself. He was weary of
labour at thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and of the intolerable
abuse to which he was obliged to submit; but his habits were formed
in the House of Commons and for it, and he was desirous to continue
there as an independent gentleman, taking part from time to time in
public business as he might find occasion, and giving his leisure
to his family and to books. I said, 'Are you not building houses of
cards? Do you conceive that men who have played a great part, who
have swayed the great moving forces of the state, who have led the
House of Commons and given the tone to public policy, can at their
will remain there, but renounce the consequences of their
remaining, and refuse to fulfil what must fall to them in some
contingency of public affairs? The country will demand that they
who are the ablest shall not stand by inactive.' He said Sir Robert
Peel had all but given up his seat. I answered that would at any
rate have made his resolution a practicable one.
He said, 'You can have no conception of what the virulence is
against Peel and me.' I said, No; that from having been out of
parliament during these debates my sense of these things was less
lively and my position in some respects different. He replied,
'Your position is quite different. You are free to take any course
you please with perfect honour.' I told him of Lord Lyndhurst's
visit and the purport of his conversation, of the meaning of the
junction on the opposition bench in the Lords, and of what we had
said of the difficulties in the Commons. He said, 'My resentment is
not against the new government, but against the seventy-three
conservative members of parliament who displaced the late
government by a factious vote; nearly all of them believed the bill
to be necessary for Ireland; and they knew that our removal was not
desired by the crown, not desired by the country. I find no fault
with the new ministers, they are fairly in possession of power--but
with those gentlemen I can never unite.' Later, however, in the
evening he relented somewhat, and said he must admit that what they
did was done under great provocation; that it was no wonder they
regarded themselves as betrayed; and that unfortunately it had been
the fate of Sir R. Peel to perform a similar operation twice....
Graham dwelt with fondness and with pain on Lord Stanley; said he
had very great qualities--that his speech on the corn law,
consisting as it did simply of old fallacies though in new dress,
was a magnificent speech, one of his greatest and happiest
efforts--that all his conduct in the public eye had been perfectly
free from exception; that he feared, however, he had been much in
Lord Geo. Bentinck's counsels, and had concurred in much more than
he had himself done, and had aided in marking out the course taken
in the House of Commons. He had called on Lord Stanley several
times but had never been able to see him, he trusted through
accident, but seemed to doubt.
On the Cobden eulogy, though he did not defend it outright by any
means, he said, 'Do you think if Cobden had not existed the repeal
of the corn law would have been carried at this moment?' I said
very probably not, that he had added greatly to the force of the
movement and accelerated its issue, that I admitted the truth of
every word that Peel had uttered, but complained of its omissions,
of its spirit towards his own friends, of its false moral effect,
as well as and much more than of its mere impolicy.[179]
IV
FAREWELL INTERVIEW WITH PEEL
Still more interesting is an interview with the fallen minister himself,
written ten days after it took place:--
_July 24._--On Monday the 13th I visited Sir R. Peel, and found him
in his dressing-room laid up with a cut in one of his feet. My
immediate purpose was to let him know the accounts from New Zealand
which Lord Grey had communicated to me.... However _I_ led on from
subject to subject, for I thought it my duty not to quit town, at
the end possibly of my political connection with Sir R. Peel, that
is if he determined to individualise himself, without giving the
opportunity at least for free communication. Though he opened
nothing, yet he followed unreluctantly. I said the government
appeared to show signs of internal discord or weakness. He said,
Yes; related that Lord John did not mean to include Lord Grey, that
he sent Sir G. Grey and C. Wood to propitiate him, that Lord Grey
was not only not hostile but volunteered his services. At last I
broke the ice and said, 'You have seen Lord Lyndhurst.' He said,
'Yes.' I mentioned the substance of my interview with Lord
Lyndhurst, and also what I had heard from Goulburn of his. He said,
'I am _hors de combat_.' I said to him, 'Is that possible? Whatever
your present intentions may be, can it be done?' He said he had
been twice prime minister, and nothing should induce him again to
take part in the formation of a government; the labour and anxiety
were too great and he repeated more than once emphatically with
regard to the work of his post, 'No one in the least degree knows
what it is. I have told the Queen that I part from her with the
deepest sentiments of gratitude and attachment; but that there is
one thing she must not ask of me, and that is to place myself again
in the same position.' Then he spoke of the immense accumulation.
'There is the whole correspondence with the Queen, several times a
day, and all requiring to be in my own hand, and to be carefully
done; the whole correspondence with peers and members of
parliament, in my own hand, as well as other persons of
consequence; the sitting seven or eight hours a day to listen in
the House of Commons. Then I must, of course, have my mind in the
principal subjects connected with the various departments, such as
the Oregon question for example, and all the reading connected with
them. I can hardly tell you, for instance, what trouble the New
Zealand question gave me. Then there is the difficulty that you
have in conducting such questions on account of your colleague whom
they concern.'
It was evident from this, as it had been from other signs, that he
did not think Stanley had been happy in his management of the New
Zealand question. I said, however, 'I can quite assent to the
proposition that no one understands the labour of your post; that,
I think, is all I ever felt I could know about it, that there is
nothing else like it. But then you have been prime minister in a
sense in which no other man has been it since Mr. Pitt's time.' He
said, 'But Mr. Pitt got up every day at eleven o'clock, and drank
two bottles of port wine every night.' 'And died of old age at
forty-six,' I replied. 'This all strengthens the case. I grant your
full and perfect claim to retirement in point of justice and
reason; if such a claim can be made good by amount of service, I do
not see how yours could be improved. You have had extraordinary
physical strength to sustain you; and you have performed an
extraordinary task. Your government has not been carried on by a
cabinet, but by the heads of departments each in communication with
you.' He assented, and added it had been what every government
ought to be, a government of confidence in one another. 'I have
felt the utmost confidence as to matters of which I had no
knowledge, and so have the rest. Lord Aberdeen in particular said
that nothing would induce him to hold office on any other
principle, or to be otherwise than perfectly free as to previous
consultations.' And he spoke of the defects of the Melbourne
government as a mere government of departments without a centre of
unity, and of the possibility that the new ministers might
experience difficulty in the same respect. I then went on to say,
'Mr. Perceval, Lord Liverpool, Lord Melbourne were not prime
ministers in this sense; what Mr. Canning might have been, the time
was too short to show. I fully grant that your labours have been
incredible, but, allow me to say, that is not the question. The
question is not whether you are entitled to retire, but whether
after all you have done, and in the position you occupy before the
country, you can remain in the House of Commons as an isolated
person, and hold yourself aloof from the great movements of
political forces which sway to and fro there?' He said, 'I think
events will answer that question better than any reasoning
beforehand.' I replied, 'That is just what I should rely upon, and
should therefore urge how impossible it is for you to lay down with
certainty a foregone conclusion such as that which you have
announced to-day, and which events are not to influence, merely
that you will remain in parliament and yet separate yourself from
the parliamentary system by which our government is carried on.'
Then he said, (If it is necessary I will) 'go out of
parliament'--the first part of the sentence was indistinctly
muttered, but the purport such as I have described. To which I
merely replied that I hoped not, and that the country would have
something to say upon that too....
No man can doubt that he is the strong man of this parliament--of
this political generation. Then it is asked, Is he honest? But this
is a question which I think cannot justly be raised nor treated as
admissible in the smallest degree by those who have known and
worked with him.... He spoke of the immense multiplication of
details in public business and the enormous task imposed upon
available time and strength by the work of attendance in the House
of Commons. He agreed that it was extremely adverse to the growth
of greatness among our public men; and he said the mass of public
business increased so fast that he could not tell what it was to
end in, and did not venture to speculate even for a few years upon
the mode of administering public affairs. He thought the
consequence was already manifest in its being not well done.
It sometimes occurred to him whether it would after all be a good
arrangement to have the prime minister in the House of Lords, which
would get rid of the very encroaching duty of attendance on and
correspondence with the Queen. I asked if in that case it would not
be quite necessary that the leader in the Commons should frequently
take upon himself to make decisions which ought properly to be
made by the head of the government? He said, Certainly, and that
that would constitute a great difficulty. That although Lord
Melbourne might be very well adapted to take his part in such a
plan, there were, he believed, difficulties in it under him when
Lord J. Russell led the House of Commons. That when he led the
House in 1828 under the Duke of Wellington as premier, he had a
very great advantage in the disposition of the duke to follow the
judgments of others in whom he had confidence with respect to all
civil matters. He said it was impossible during the session even to
work the public business through the medium of the cabinet, such is
the pressure upon time.... He told me he had suffered dreadfully in
his head on the left side--that twenty-two or twenty-three years
ago he injured the ear by the use of a detonating tube in shooting.
Since then he had always had a noise on that side, and when he had
the work of office upon him, this and the pain became scarcely
bearable at times, as I understood him. Brodie told him that 'as
some overwork one part and some another, he had overworked his
brain,' but he said that with this exception his health was good.
It was pleasant to me to find and feel by actual contact as it were
(though I had no suspicion of the contrary) his manner as friendly
and as much unhurt as at any former period.
V
Before leaving office Peel wrote to Mr. Gladstone (June 20) requesting
him to ask his father whether it would be acceptable to him to be
proposed to the Queen for a baronetcy. 'I should name him to the Queen,'
he said, 'as the honoured representative of a great class of the
community which has raised itself by its integrity and industry to high
social eminence. I should gratify also my own feeling by a mark of
personal respect for a name truly worthy of such illustration as
hereditary honour can confer.' John Gladstone replied in becoming words,
but honestly mentioned that he had published his strong opinion of the
injurious consequences that he dreaded from 'the stupendous experiment
about to be made' in commercial policy. Peel told him that this made no
difference.[180]
LORD GEORGE BENTINCK
At the close of the session a trivial incident occurred that caused Mr.
Gladstone a disproportionate amount of vexation for several months. Hume
stated in the House that the colonial secretary had countersigned what
was a lie, in a royal patent appointing a certain Indian judge. The
'lie' consisted in reciting that a judge then holding the post had
resigned, whereas he had not resigned, and the correct phrase was that
the Queen had permitted him to retire. Lord George Bentinck, whose rage
was then at its fiercest, pricked up his ears, and a day or two later
declared that Mr. Secretary Gladstone had 'deliberately affirmed, not
through any oversight or inadvertence or thoughtlessness, but designedly
and of his own malice prepense, that which in his heart he knew not to
be true.' Things of this sort may either be passed over in disdain, or
taken with logician's severity. Mr. Gladstone might well have contented
himself with the defence that his signature had been purely formal, and
that every secretary of state is called upon to put his name to recitals
of minute technical fact which he must take on trust from his officials.
As it was, he chose to take Bentinck's reckless aspersion at its
highest, and the combat lasted for weeks and months. Bentinck got up the
case with his usual industrious tenacity; he insisted that the Queen's
name stood at that moment in the degrading position of being prefixed to
a proclamation that all her subjects knew to recite and to be founded
upon falsehood; he declared that the whole business was a job
perpetrated by the outgoing ministers, to fill up a post that was not
vacant; he imputed no corrupt motive to Mr. Gladstone; he admitted that
Mr. Gladstone was free from the betrayal and treachery practised by his
political friends; but he could not acquit him of having been in this
particular affair the tool and the catspaw of two old foxes greedier and
craftier than himself. To all this unmannerly stuff the recipient of it
only replied by holding its author the more tight to the point of the
original offence; the blood of his highland ancestors was up, and the
poet's contest between eagle and serpent was not more dire. The affair
was submitted to Lord Stanley. He reluctantly consented (Oct. 29) to
decide the single question whether Bentinck was justified 'on the
information before him in using the language quoted.' There was a
dispute what information Bentinck had before him, and upon this point,
where Bentinck's course might in his own polite vocabulary be marked as
pure shuffling, Lord Stanley returned the papers (Feb. 8, 1847) and
expressed his deep regret that he could bring about no more satisfactory
result. Even so late as the spring of 1847 Mr. Gladstone was only
dissuaded by the urgent advice of Lord Lincoln and others from pursuing
the fray. It was, so far as I know, the only personal quarrel into which
he ever allowed himself to be drawn.
FOOTNOTES:
[172] Perhaps I may refer to my _Life of Cobden_, which had the great
advantage of being read before publication by Mr. Bright. Chapters xiv.
and xv.
[173] Lord Aberdeen to Senior, Sept. 1856. Mrs. Simpson's _Many
Memories_, p. 233.
[174] Sibthorp asked Peel in the H. of C. when Gladstone and Lincoln
would appear. Peel replied that if S. would take the Chiltern Hundreds,
G. should stand against him. S. retorted that the Chiltern Hundreds is a
place under government, and he would never take place from Peel; but if
P. would dissolve he would welcome Gladstone to Lincoln--or P. himself;
and added privately that he would give P. or G. best bottle of wine in
his cellar if he would come to Lincoln and fight him fairly.--_Lord
Broughton's Diaries_.
[175] _Halifax Papers._
[176] Cobden also wrote to Peel strongly urging him to hold on, and Peel
replied with an effective defence of his own view. _Life of Cobden_, i.
chap. 18.
[177] 'There is a name that ought to be associated with the success of
these measures; it is not the name of Lord John Russell, neither is it
my name. Sir, the name which ought to be, and will be, associated with
these measures is the name of a man who, acting from pure and
disinterested motives, has advocated their cause with untiring energy,
and by appeals to reason expressed by an eloquence the more to be
admired because it was unaffected and unadorned--the name which ought to
be associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard
Cobden. Without scruple, Sir, I attribute the success of these measures
to him.'
[178] See _Life of Lord Lyndhurst_, by Lord Campbell, p. 163.
[179] Six years later (Nov. 26, 1852), Mr. Gladstone in the House of
Commons said of Cobden, with words of characteristic
qualification:--'Agree you may in his general politics, or you may not;
complain you may, if you think you have cause, of the mode and force
with which in the freedom of debate he commonly states his opinions in
this House. But it is impossible for us to deny that those benefits of
which we are now acknowledging the existence are, in no small part at
any rate, due to the labours in which he has borne so prominent a
share.'
[180] Parker, iii. pp. 434-5.