Survey of the Reign of George III.--The Cato Street Conspiracy.--The
Queen's Return to England, and the Proceedings against her.--The King
Visits Ireland and Scotland.--Reform of the Criminal Code.--Freedom of
Trade.--Death of Lord Liverpool.--The Duke of Wellington becomes
Prime-minister.--Repeal of the Test and Corporation Act.--O'Connell is
Elected for Clare.--Peel Resigns his Seat for Oxford.--Catholic
Emancipation.--Question of the Endowment of the Roman Catholic
Clergy.--Constitutional Character of the Emancipation.--The Propriety of
Mr. Peel's Resignation of his Seat for Oxford Questioned.
In the first month of 1820 George III. died. His had been an eventful
reign, strangely checkered with disaster and glory; but, if we compare
its close with its commencement, it was still more remarkably
distinguished by a development of the resources and an increase in the
wealth and power of the nation, to which the history of no other country
in the same space of time affords any parallel.
Regarded from the first point of view, our successes greatly outweighed
our disasters. The loss of our North American Colonies, the only event
which can be so described, was far more than counterbalanced by our vast
acquisitions in India, at the Cape of Good Hope, and Malta; while to our
maritime supremacy, in the complete establishment of which Rodney and
Nelson had crowned the work of Anson and Hawke, was now added a splendor
of military renown far surpassing that achieved by any other of the
nations which had borne their share in the overthrow of Napoleon.
The increase of our resources is sufficiently shown by a single fact. At
his accession George III. found the kingdom engaged in the great seven
years' war; one British army employed beyond the Rhine, another in
India; fleets traversing the seas in every direction, capturing the
Havana, in the West Indies; Manilla, in the East; and routing French
squadrons in sight of their own harbors. While, to maintain these varied
armaments, supplies were voted by Parliament in 1761 to what Lord
Stanhope calls "the unprecedented amount of almost twenty millions." In
1813 the supplies reached nearly six times that amount,[182] and that
prodigious sum was raised with greater ease than the revenue of 1761,
the interest on the necessary loans being also lower than it had been on
the former occasion.
The philosophical man of science will point with at least equal
exultation to the great discoveries in art and science; to the
achievements of the mechanic, the engineer, and the chemist; to the
labors of Brindley and Arkwright and Watts, to which, indeed, this great
expansion of the resources and growth of the wealth of the country is
principally owing.
While, as the preceding chapters of this work have been designed to
show, our political progress and advancement had been no less steady or
valuable; yet, important from a constitutional point of view as were
many of the labors of our legislators in these sixty years, they are
surpassed in their influence on the future history of the nation, as
well as in the reality and greatness of the changes which were produced
by them in the constitution, by the transactions of the reigns of the
next two sovereigns, though the two united scarcely equalled in their
duration a quarter of that of their venerable father.
It has been seen how Pitt was baffled in his efforts to remodel the
House of Commons, and to remove the disabilities under which the Roman
Catholics labored, the reasons for which, even granting that they had
been sufficient to justify their original imposition, had, in his
judgment, long passed away. His pursuit of the other great object of his
domestic policy, the emancipation of trade from the shackles which
impeded its universal development, was rudely interrupted by the
pressure of the war forced upon him by that very nation which he had
desired to make the first partner, if one may use such an expression, in
the prosperity which he hoped to diffuse by his commercial treaty with
her. But, as in the case of other men in advance of their age, the
principles which he had asserted were destined to bear fruit at a later
period. And the mere fact of a change in the person of the sovereign
seemed to make a change in the policy hitherto pursued less unnatural.
Yet, memorable as the reforms which it witnessed were destined to make
it, no reign ever commenced with more sinister omens than that at which
we have now arrived. The new King had not been on the throne a month,
when a conspiracy was discovered, surpassing in its treasonable atrocity
any that had been heard of in the kingdom since the days of the
Gunpowder Plot; and, even before those concerned in that foul crime had
been brought to punishment, the public mind was yet more generally and
profoundly agitated by a scandal which, in one point of view, was still
more painful, as in some degree involving the whole kingdom in its
disgrace.
The marriage of the present sovereign to Mrs. Fitzherbert has already
been mentioned. A few years afterward, in the year 1795, regarding that
marriage as illegal, he had contracted a second with his cousin, the
Princess Caroline of Brunswick. But, even in royal families, a more
unfortunate alliance had never taken place. They had never met till she
arrived in England for the wedding; and, as he had never professed any
other motive for consenting to the match than a desire to obtain the
payment of his debts, he did not think it necessary to disguise his
feelings, or to change his habits, or even to treat her with decency for
a single day. On his very first introduction to her he behaved to her
with marked discourtesy.[183] Shortly after the marriage he formally
separated himself from her, and, both before and after the separation,
lived in undisguised licentiousness. She, on her part, indignant at his
neglect and infidelity, and exasperated at the restrictions which he
presently placed on her intercourse with their only child, made no
secret of her feelings, and on many occasions displayed such disregard
of the ordinary rules of prudence and propriety, that he had some color
for charges of infidelity to her marriage vows which, after a few years,
he brought against her. The King, her uncle, could not refuse to appoint
a commission to investigate the truth of the accusation; but the
commissioners unanimously acquitted her of any graver fault than
imprudence. She was again received at court, from which she had been
excluded while the inquiry was pending; but her husband's animosity
toward her was not appeased. As time wore on, and as the King's
derangement deprived her of her only protector, it even seemed as if he
desired to give it all the notoriety possible, till at last, wearied out
by his implacable persecution, she sought and obtained his permission to
quit the country and take up her abode abroad. It was a most unfortunate
resolution on her part. She fixed her residence in Italy, where she
gradually learned to neglect the caution which she had observed in
England, till, after a year or two, reports arose of her intimacy with a
servant whom she had raised from a menial situation to that of the chief
officer of her household, and whom she admitted to a familiarity of
intercourse which others besides her husband thought quite incompatible
with innocence. He sent agents into Italy to inquire into the truth of
those rumors; and their report so greatly confirmed them that, even
before the King's death, he laid it before the Prime-minister, with a
demand that he should at once take steps to procure him a divorce, in
which he professed to believe that the Princess herself would willingly
acquiesce. He was so far correct, that her legal advisers were willing
to advise her to consent to "a formal separation, to be ratified by an
act of Parliament." But such an arrangement fell far short of the
Prince's wishes. The Princess Charlotte, the heiress to his throne, had
died in childbirth two years before, and he was anxious to be set free
to marry again. The ministers were placed in a situation of painful
embarrassment. There was an obvious difficulty in pointing out to one
who already stood toward them in the character of their sovereign, and
who must inevitably soon become so, that his own conduct made the
prospect of obtaining a divorce from the Ecclesiastical Courts hopeless;
and the only other expedients calculated to attain his end, "a direct
application to Parliament for relief, founded upon the special
circumstances of the case," or "a proceeding against the Princess for
high-treason," were but little more promising. Indeed, it was afterward
ascertained to be the unanimous opinion of the judges that the charge of
high-treason could not be legally sustained, since the individual who
was alleged to be the partner in the criminality imputed to her was a
foreigner, and therefore, "owing no allegiance to the crown," could not
be said to have violated it.[184]
He chafed under their resistance to his wish, and would have deprived
them of their offices, could he have relied on any successors whom he
might give them proving more complaisant; but, before he could make up
his mind, the death of George III. forced upon both him and them the
consideration of his and his wife's position, since it made it necessary
to remodel the prayer for the royal family, and instantly to decide
whether her name and title as Queen were to be inserted in it. He was
determined that they should not be mentioned; and, as the practice of
praying for a Queen Consort by name appeared not to have been
invariable, they were willing to gratify him on this point, though it
was evidently highly probable that she would consider this as a fresh
insult, sufficient to justify her in carrying out a threat, which she
had recently held out, of returning to England. Her ablest advisers did
not, indeed, regard it in this light, since the prayer as now framed
implored the Divine protection for "all the royal family" in general
terms, in which she might be supposed to be included, and made no
separate mention of any member of the family.[185] But, unfortunately,
she was much more under the influence of counsellors who were neither
lawyers nor statesmen, but who only desired to use her as a tool to
obtain notoriety for themselves. A long negotiation ensued. It was
inevitable that some application should be made to Parliament in
connection with her affairs, since the annuity which had been settled
upon her by Parliament in 1814, on the occasion of her departure from
England, had expired with the life of the late King. And the ministers
proposed that that annuity should now be raised from £35,000 to £50,000,
on condition of her remaining abroad, having, by their positive refusal
to concur in any proceedings against her while she remained abroad,
extorted the King's acquiescence in this proposal, though he called it a
"great and painful sacrifice of his personal feelings." They sought to
conciliate her acceptance of it by mentioning her in it by her title of
"Queen," and by coupling with it a sanction to her appointment of her
law-officers, an Attorney and Solicitor General, an act which could only
be exercised by a Queen. And, though a part of the condition of her
residence abroad required that she should do so under some other title,
that seemed only a conforming to an ordinary practice of royal princes
on their travels. At the same time, the ministers stated frankly to Mr.
Brougham, a lawyer of the highest reputation as an advocate, whom she
had appointed her Attorney-general, that, if she should reject the
offer, and come to England, as she had already announced her intention
of doing, such a course would leave them no alternative, but would
compel them to institute proceedings against her.
Eventually she preferred the advice of others to that of Mr. Brougham,
or, as it may, perhaps, be more consistent with the real fact to say,
she yielded to her own feelings of hatred of her husband, which, it must
be confessed, were far from unnatural. She believed, or professed to
believe, that he had more to dread from an exposure of his conduct than
she had from any revelations of her actions; and, under this impression,
in the spring she crossed the Channel and took up her residence in
London. It was a step which seemed to Lord Liverpool to leave him no
alternative, and, in consequence, he at once took the course which he
had from the beginning conceived her arrival would render indispensable.
He brought down to Parliament a royal message from the King, announcing
that her return to England had made it necessary to communicate to the
Houses documents relating to her conduct since her departure from the
kingdom, which he recommended to their immediate and serious attention.
He proposed the appointment by ballot of a committee of the House of
Lords to examine those documents; and when the committee had reported
that the documents containing "allegations deeply affecting the honor of
the Queen, etc., ... appeared to the committee calculated to affect not
only the honor of the Queen, but also the dignity of the crown and the
moral feelings and honor of the country, so that in their opinion, they
should become the subject of a solemn inquiry, which might be best
effected in the course of a legislative proceeding," he introduced a
"Bill of Pains and Penalties" to deprive her of her title of Queen, and
to annul her marriage.
No one would willingly dwell on so melancholy and disgraceful a subject.
As far as the Queen was concerned, a protracted investigation, during
which a number of witnesses, favorable and unfavorable, were examined,
left no doubt on the mind of almost all dispassionate people that the
misconduct alleged against her had been abundantly proved. At the same
time there was a feeling equally general that the King's treatment of
her from the very beginning of their married life had disentitled him to
any kind of relief; and this sentiment was so strongly shown by the
gradual diminution of the majority in favor of the bill, as it proceeded
through its several stages, that Lord Liverpool, who had already
abandoned the clause annulling the marriage, eventually withdrew the
whole bill, perceiving the impossibility of inducing the House of
Commons to pass it when it should go down to that House.
No act of Lord Liverpool's ministry has been attacked with greater
bitterness than that of allowing any proceedings whatever to be taken
against the Queen, partly on the ground that, however profligate her
conduct had been, it had certainly not been more gross than that of her
husband, which had provoked and given opportunity for her errors; partly
because a great scandal was thus published to the world, and a shock was
given to the national decency and morality which the ministers, above
all men, were bound to avoid; partly, also, because the mode of
proceeding adopted was alleged to be wholly unprecedented; and because,
as was contended, the power of Parliament ought not to be invoked to
inflict penalties which, if deserved, should have been left to the
courts of law. It cannot be denied that there is weight in these
objections; but, in estimating their force, it must be considered that
every part of the conduct of the ministers showed that their motive was
not the gratification of the King's private feelings, whether directed
to the object of indulging his enmity against his wife or to that of
obtaining freedom to contract a second marriage; on the contrary, so
long as the Queen remained abroad, no language could be more distinct,
consistently with the respect due to his royal dignity, than that in
which they expressed to him their insurmountable objection to every mode
of proceeding against her which he had suggested, founded almost equally
on considerations of "the interests of his Majesty and of the
monarchy,"[186] and "the painful obligation" under which they conceived
themselves to lie "of postponing their regard for his Majesty's feelings
to great public interests."
But when the Queen came to England the case was greatly altered. The
question now forced on the consideration of the cabinet was, not the
mode of avoiding an intolerable scandal, but the choice between two
scandals, both of the gravest character. The scandal to be dreaded from
the revelations of the conduct of both King and Queen, that could not
fail to result from the investigation which, in justice, must precede
any attempt to legislate on the subject, was, indeed, as great as ever;
but it had now to be compared with the alternative scandal of allowing a
woman lying under such grievous imputations to preside over the British
court, as, if resident in England, and in undisturbed possession of her
royal rank, she of necessity must preside. The consequence would
evidently have been that the court would have been deserted by all who
could give lustre and dignity to it by their position and character;
and, in the slights thus offered to her, royalty and the monarchy
themselves would seem to be brought into contempt. The latter scandal,
too, would be the more permanent. Grievous and shameful as might be the
disclosures which must be anticipated from an investigation in which the
person accused must be permitted the employment of every means of
defence, including recrimination, the scandal was yet one which would,
to a certain extent, pass away with the close of the inquiry. But, if
she were left undisturbed in the enjoyment of her royal rank, and of
privileges which could not be separated from it, that scandal would last
as long as her life--longer, in all probability, than the reign. It is
hardly too much to say that the monarchy itself might have been
endangered by the spectacle of such a King and such a Queen; and the
ministers might fairly contend that, of two great dangers and evils,
they had, on the whole, chosen the least.
Lastly, if the Queen's conduct was to be investigated, though the mode
adopted was denounced as unconstitutional by the Opposition (for, not
greatly to their credit, the leading Whigs made her guilt or innocence a
party question), it does not seem to deserve the epithet, though it may
be confessed to have been unsupported by any direct precedent. Isabella,
the faithless wife of Edward II., had, indeed, been condemned by "the
Lords" to the forfeiture of many of the estates which she had illegally
appropriated; but it does not appear that her violation of her marriage
vows, or even her probable share or acquiescence in her husband's
murder, formed any portion of the grounds of her deprivation. And the
Parliament which attainted Catherine Howard proceeded solely on her
confession of ante-nuptial licentiousness, without giving her any
opportunity of answering or disproving the other charges which were
brought against her. Unprecedented, therefore, the course now adopted
may be admitted to have been. But it was the only practicable one. The
different minutes of the cabinet, which the Prime-minister laid before
the King, established most conclusively the correctness of their opinion
that no impeachment for high-treason could lie against her. She could
not be an accomplice in such an offence of one who, being a foreigner,
could not have committed it. It was equally impossible for the King to
sue for a divorce, as one of his subjects might have done; because it
was the established practice of Parliament not to entertain a bill of
divorce without the judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court being
previously obtained and produced. And, under the circumstances, to
obtain from the Ecclesiastical Court such a sentence as could alone lay
the foundation for a bill of divorce was clearly out of the question.
The case was a new and extraordinary one, and, being such, could only be
dealt with in some new and extraordinary manner. And in all such cases
an appeal to Parliament seems the most, if not the only, constitutional
mode of solving the difficulty. Where the existing laws are silent or
inapplicable, the most natural resource clearly is, to go back to the
fountain of all law; that is, to the Parliament, which alone is
competent to make a new law. In one point of view the question may seem
unimportant, since we may well hope that no similar case will ever arise
to require the precedent now set to be appealed to; but not unimportant,
if it in any way or degree contributes to establish the great principle,
that the solution of all matters of moment to the state belongs to the
Parliament alone: a principle which, in its legitimate completeness,
carries with it a condemnation of many a modern association whose
object, whether avowed or disguised, is clearly to supersede where it
fails to intimidate the sole constitutional Legislature.
The abandonment of the bill was naturally hailed as a triumph by the
Queen and her partisans; but with the excitement of the struggle against
the government the interest taken in her case died away. The next year,
when she demanded to be crowned with her husband, his refusal to admit
her claim elicited scarcely any sympathy for her under this renewed
grievance; in truth, it was one as to which precedent was unfavorable to
her demand. And the mortification at finding herself already almost
forgotten contributed to bring on an illness of which she died in less
than a year after the termination of what was called her trial; and in a
short time both she and it were forgotten.
For the next few years the history of the kingdom is one of progressive
correction of abuses or defects. The King paid visits to Ireland and
Scotland, parts of his dominions which his father had never once
visited, and in both was received with the most exultant and apparently
sincere acclamations. And, though one great calamity fell on the
ministry in the loss of Lord Castlereagh--who, in a fit of derangement,
brought on by the excitement of overwork, unhappily laid violent hands
on himself--his death, sad as it was, could not be said to weaken or to
affect the general policy of the cabinet. Indeed, as he was replaced at
the Foreign Office by his old colleague and rival, Mr. Canning, in one
point of view the administration may be said to have been strengthened
by the change, since, as an orator, Canning had confessedly no equal in
either House of Parliament. Another change was productive of still more
practical advantage. Lord Sidmouth retired from the Home Office, and was
succeeded by Mr. Peel, previously Secretary for Ireland; and the
transfer of that statesman to an English office facilitated reforms,
some of which were as yet little anticipated even by the new Secretary
himself. The earliest of them, and one not the least important in its
bearing on the well-doing of society, the mitigation of the severity of
our Criminal Code, was, indeed, but the following up of a series of
measures in the same direction which had been commenced in the time of
the Duke of Portland's second administration, and, it must be added, in
spite of its resistance. The influence of various trades, and of the
owners of different kinds of property, pressing in turns upon our
legislators, had rendered our code the most sanguinary that had,
probably, ever existed in Christendom. Each class of proprietor regarded
only the preservation of his own property, and had no belief in the
efficacy of any kind of protection for it, except such as arose from the
fear of death; nor any doubt that he was justified in procuring the
infliction of that penalty to avert the slightest loss to himself. The
consequence was that, at the beginning of the present century, there
were above two hundred offences the perpetrators of which were liable to
capital punishment, some of a very trivial character, such as cutting
down a hop-vine in a Kentish hop-garden, robbing a rabbit-warren or a
fish-pond, personating an out-pensioner of Greenwich Hospital, or even
being found on a high-road with a blackened face, the intention to
commit a crime being inferred from the disguise, even though no overt
act had been committed. An act of Elizabeth made picking a pocket a
capital offence; another, passed as late as the reign of William III.,
affixed the same penalty to shop-lifting, even when the article stolen
might not exceed the value of five shillings. And the fault of these
enactments was not confined to their unreasonable cruelty; they were as
mischievous even to those whom they were designed to protect as they
were absurd, as some owners began to perceive. In the list of capital
offences was that of stealing linen from a bleaching-ground. And a large
body of bleachers presented a petition to Parliament entreating the
repeal of the statute which made it such on the ground that,
practically, it had been found not to strike terror into the thieves,
but almost to secure them impunity from the reluctance of juries to find
a verdict which would sentence a fellow-creature to the gallows for such
an offence.
Nor was this by any means the only instance in which the barbarity of
the law defeated its object. And its combined impolicy and inhumanity
had some years before attracted the notice of Sir Samuel Romilly, who
had been Solicitor-general in the administration of 1806, and who,
shortly after its dissolution, began to apply himself to the benevolent
object of procuring the repeal of many of the statutes in question, and
in the course of a few years did succeed in obtaining the substitution
of milder penalties for several of the less flagitious offences. He died
in 1818; but the work which he had began was continued by Sir James
Mackintosh, a man of even more conspicuous ability, and one who could
adduce his own experience in favor of the changes which he recommended
to the Parliament, since he had filled the office of Recorder of Bombay
for eight years, and had discharged his duties with a most diligent and
consistent avoidance of capital punishment, which he had never inflicted
except for murder; his lenity, previously unexampled in that land,
having been attended with a marked diminution of crime. He procured the
substitution of milder penalties in several additional cases; and at
last, in 1822, he carried a resolution engaging the House of Commons
"the next session to take into its serious consideration the means of
increasing the efficacy of the criminal law by abating its undue rigor."
And this success had the effect of inducing the new minister to take the
question into his own hands. Peel saw that it was one which, if it were
to be dealt with at all, ought to be regulated by the government itself,
and not be left to independent members, who could not settle it with
satisfactory completeness; and therefore, in 1823, he introduced a
series of bills to carry out the principle implied in Mackintosh's
resolution of the preceding year, not only simplifying the law, but
abolishing the infliction of capital punishment in above a hundred
cases. He was unable to carry out his principle as fully as he could
have desired. The prejudice in favor of still retaining death as a
punishment for forgery was too strong for even his resolution as yet to
overbear, though many private bankers supplied him with the same
arguments against it in their case which had formerly been alleged by
the bleachers. But the example which he now set, enforced as it was with
all the authority of the government, was followed in many subsequent
sessions, till at last our code, instead of the most severe, has become
the most humane in Europe, and death is now never inflicted except for
murder, or crimes intended or calculated to lead to murder. It is worth
remarking, however, that neither Romilly, Mackintosh, nor Peel ever
entertained the slightest doubt of the right of a government to inflict
capital punishment. In the last address which Mackintosh delivered to
the grand-jury at Bombay he had said: "I have no doubt of the right of
society to inflict the punishment of death on enormous crimes, wherever
an inferior punishment is not sufficient. I consider it as a mere
modification of the right of self-defence, which may as justly be
exercised in deterring from attack as in repelling it."[187] And in his
diary, when speaking of a death-warrant which he had just signed, he
says: "I never signed a paper with more perfect tranquillity of mind. I
felt agitation in pronouncing the sentence, but none in subscribing the
warrant; I had no scruple of conscience on either occasion."
And it seems that his position is unassailable. The party whose interest
is to be kept in view by the Legislature in imposing punishments on
offences is society, the people at large, not the offender. The main
object of punishment is to deter rather than to reform; to prevent
crime, not to take vengeance on the criminal. And, if crime be more
effectually prevented by moderate than by severe punishments, society
has a right to demand, for its own security (as a matter of policy, not
of justice), that the moderate punishment shall, on that ground, be
preferred. That punishments disproportioned in their severity to the
magnitude of the offence often defeated their object was certain. Not
only had jurymen been known to confess that they had preferred violating
their oaths to doing still greater violence to their consciences, by
sending a man to the gallows for a deed which, in their opinion, did not
deserve it, but the very persons who had been injured by thefts or
forgeries were often deterred from prosecution of the guilty by the
knowledge that the forfeiture of their lives must follow their
conviction. It was almost equally certain that criminals calculated
beforehand on the chance of impunity which the known prevalence of these
feelings afforded them. Wherever the sympathy of the public does not go
along with the law, it must, to a great extent, fail; and that the
terrible frequency of sanguinary punishment had failed in all its
objects, was proved by the fact that, in spite of the numerous
executions which took place, crimes increased in a still greater
proportion than the population. Under the reformed system, now first
inaugurated on an extensive scale, crimes have become rarer, detection
and punishment more certain--a combination of results which must be the
object equally of the law-giver and the philanthropist.
It is not quite foreign to this subject to relate that, a year or two
before, a mode of trial had been abolished which, though long disused,
by some curious oversight had still been allowed to remain on the
statute-book. In the feudal times either the prosecutor or the prisoner,
in cases of felony, had a right to claim that the cause should be
decided by "wager of battle;" but it was an ordeal which, with one
exception in the reign of George II., had not been mentioned for
centuries. In 1817, however, the relatives of a woman who had been
murdered, being dissatisfied with the acquittal of a man who had been
indicted as her murderer, sued out "an appeal of murder" against him, on
which he claimed to have the appeal decided by "wager of battle," and
threw down a glove on the floor of the court to make good his challenge.
The claim was protested against by the prosecutor; but Lord
Ellenborough, the Chief-justice, pronounced judgment that, "trial by
battle having been demanded, it was the legal and constitutional mode of
trial, and must be awarded. It was the duty of the judges to pronounce
the law as it was, and not as they might wish it to be."[188] He gave
sentence accordingly; and, had the two parties been of equal stature and
strength, the Judges of the Common Pleas might have been seen, in their
robes, presiding from sunrise till sunset over a combat to be fought, as
the law prescribed, with stout staves and leathern shields, till one
should cry "Craven," and yield up the field. Fortunately for them, the
alleged murderer was so superior in bodily strength to his adversary,
that the latter declined the contest. But the public advancement of the
claim for such a mode of decision was fatal to any subsequent exercise
of it; and, in spite of the Common Council of London, who, confiding,
perhaps, in the formidable appearance presented by some of the City
Champions on Lord Mayor's Day, petitioned Parliament to preserve it, the
next year the Attorney-general brought in a bill to abolish it, and the
judges were no longer compelled to pronounce an absurd sentence in
obedience to an obsolete law, framed at a time when personal prowess was
a virtue to cover a multitude of sins, and might was the only right
generally acknowledged.
The foundation, too, was laid for other reforms. Lord Liverpool was more
thoroughly versed than any of his predecessors, except Pitt, in the
soundest principles of political economy; and in one of the first
speeches which he made in the new reign he expressed a decided
condemnation, not only of any regulations which were designed to favor
one trade or one interest at the expense of another, but generally of
the whole system and theory of protection; and one of his last measures
made an alteration in the manner of taxing corn imported from foreign
countries, which was greatly to the advantage of the consumer. It was
known as the "sliding-scale," the tax on imported corn varying with the
price in the market, rising when the price fell, and falling when it
rose; the design with which it was framed being to keep the price to the
consumer at all times as nearly equal as possible. At first, however, it
was vehemently denounced by the bulk of the agriculturists, who were
re-enforced on this occasion by a large party from among the Whigs, and
especially by some of those connected with Ireland. But a more suitable
period for discussing the establishment of Free-trade as the ruling
principle of our financial policy will occur hereafter.
The introduction of the sliding-scale was almost the last act of Lord
Liverpool's ministry. At the beginning of 1827 he was preparing a fresh
measure on the same subject, the effect of which was intended to
diminish still farther the protection which the former act had given,
and which was in consequence denounced by many landholders of great
wealth and influence, led, on this subject, by the King's favorite
brother, the Duke of York.[189] But, a few days after the meeting of
Parliament, he was struck down by an attack of paralysis, from which he
never recovered.
In his post as Prime-minister he was succeeded by Canning, not without
great reluctance on the part of the King; not, probably, so much because
he feared to find in him any desire to depart from the policy of Lord
Liverpool, except on the Catholic question (for even on matters of
foreign policy, on which Canning had always been supposed most to fix
his attention, he had adopted the line which Lord Liverpool had laid
down for the cabinet with evident sincerity),[190] as because his
Majesty had never wholly forgiven him for the attitude which he had
taken, differing on one or two points from that of his colleagues on the
Queen's case. And, as has been mentioned in a former chapter, he even,
with the object of evading the necessity of appointing him, suggested to
the Duke of Wellington the singular scheme of allowing the remaining
members of Lord Liverpool's cabinet to select their own chief,[191]
which the Duke, though coinciding with him in his dislike of Canning, of
whom he entertained a very causeless suspicion, rejected without
hesitation, as an abandonment of the royal prerogative in one of its
most essential duties or privileges. Another of his Majesty's notions,
if it had been carried out, would have been one of the strangest
violations of constitutional principle and practice which it is possible
to conceive. The Duke of York, who had for many years been
Commander-in-chief, died in January of the same year, and on his death
the King actually proposed to take that office on himself. For the
moment Lord Liverpool was able to induce him to abandon the idea, and to
confer the post on the Duke of Wellington. But it had taken such
possession of his mind that he recurred to it again when, on Canning
becoming Prime-minister, the Duke resigned the office; and he pressed it
on the Cabinet with singular pertinacity till, on Canning's death, the
Duke was prevailed on to resume the command. It is evident that no
arrangement could possibly be more inconsistent with every principle of
the constitution. The very foundation of parliamentary government is,
that every officer of every department is responsible to Parliament for
the proper discharge of his duties. But the investiture of the sovereign
with ministerial office of any kind must involve either the entire
withdrawal of that department from parliamentary control, or the
exposure of the sovereign to constant criticism, which, however
essential to the efficiency of the department, and consequently to the
public service, would be wholly inconsistent with the respect due to the
crown. The first alternative it is certain that no Parliament would
endure for a moment; the second, by impairing the dignity of the
monarch, could scarcely fail in some degree to threaten the stability of
the monarchy itself.
Canning's ministry was too brief to give time for any transaction of
internal importance. That of Lord Goderich, who succeeded him, though
longer by the almanac, was practically briefer still, since it never met
Parliament at all, but was formed and fell to pieces between the
prorogation and the next meeting of the Houses. But that which followed,
under the presidency of the Duke of Wellington, though after a few
months its composition became entirely Tory, is memorable for the first
great departure from those maxims of the constitution which had been
reckoned among its most essential principles ever since the Revolution.
Of the measures which bear that character, one was carried against the
resistance of the ministry, the other by the ministers themselves. And
it may at first sight appear singular that the larger measure of the two
was proposed by the Duke after those members of his cabinet who had
originally been supposed to give it something of a Liberal complexion
had quitted it. The Reform Bill of 1832--to which we shall come in the
next chapter--has been often called a peaceful revolution. The
Toleration Acts, as we may call the bills of 1828 and 1829, are scarcely
less deserving of that character.
The constitution, as it had existed for the last hundred and forty
years, had been not only a Protestant but a Church of England
constitution. Not only all Roman Catholics, but all members of
Protestant Non-conforming sects, all who refused to sign a declaration
against the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and also to take the
Sacrament according to the rites of the one Established Church, were
disqualified for any appointment of trust. That the object with which
the Test Act had been framed and supported was rather political than
religious is notorious; indeed, it was supported by the Protestant
Dissenters, though they themselves were to suffer by its operation, so
greatly at that time did the dread of Popery and the French King
overpower every other consideration.[192] On the Roman Catholics, after
the reign of James II. had increased that apprehension, the restrictions
were tightened. But those which inflicted disabilities on the Protestant
Non-conformists had been gradually relaxed. The repeal of two, the Five
Mile and the Conventicle Acts, had, as we have seen in the last chapter,
been recent measures of Lord Liverpool. But the Test Act still remained,
though it had long been practically a dead letter. The Union with
Scotland, where the majority of the population was Presbyterian, had
rendered it almost impossible to maintain the exclusion of Englishmen
resembling the Scotch in their religious tenets from preferments, and
even from seats in the House of Commons, to which Scotchmen were
admissible. And though one Prime-minister (Stanhope) failed in his
attempt to induce Parliament to repeal the Test Act, and his successor
(Walpole) refused his countenance to any repetition of the proposal,
even he did not reject such a compromise as was devised to evade it; and
in the first year of George II.'s reign (by which time it was notorious
that many Protestant Non-conformists had obtained seats in municipal
corporations, and even in the House of Commons, who yet had never
qualified themselves by compliance with the act of 1673) a bill of
indemnity was introduced by the minister, with at least the tacit
consent of the English bishops, to protect all such persons from the
penalties which they had incurred. And the bill, which was only annual
in its operation, was renewed almost every year, till, in respect of all
such places or dignities (if a seat in the House of Commons can be
described by either of those names), no one thought of inquiring whether
a man, so long as he were a Protestant, adhered to the Established
Church or not; members of the House of Commons even openly avowing their
nonconformity, and at times founding arguments on the fact.
The practical nullification of the Test Act by these periodical bills of
indemnity had been for some time used by two opposite parties--both that
which regarded the maintenance of the exclusive connection of the
constitution with the Church of England as of vital importance to both
Church and constitution, and that which was opposed to all restrictions
or disqualiflcations on religious grounds--as an argument in their
favor. The one contended that there could be no sufficient reason for
repealing a law from which no one suffered; the other, that it was a
needless provocation of ill-feeling to retain a law which no one ever
dreamed of enforcing. Hitherto the latter had been the weaker party. One
or two motions for the repeal of the Test Act, which had been made in
former years,[193] had been defeated without attracting any great
notice; but in the spring of 1828 Lord John Russel, then a
comparatively young member, but rapidly rising into influence with his
party, carried a motion in the House of Commons for leave to bring in a
bill to repeal the act, so far as it concerned the Protestant
Non-conformists, by a very decisive majority,[194] in spite of all the
efforts of Peel and his colleagues.
The ministry was placed in a difficult position by his success, since
the usual practice for a cabinet defeated on a question of principle was
to resign; and it is probable that they would not have departed from
that rule now, had not this defeat occurred so early in their official
life. But on this occasion it seemed to them that other questions had to
be considered besides the constitutional doctrine of submission on the
part of a ministry to the judgment of the Parliament.[195] Theirs was
now the fourth administration that had held office within twelve months;
and their resignation, which would compel the construction of a fifth,
could hardly fail not only to embarrass the sovereign, but to shake
public confidence in government generally. It was also certain that they
could rely on a division in the House of Lords being favorable to them,
if they chose to appeal from one House to the other. Under these
circumstances, they had to consider what their line of conduct should
be, and there never were two ministers better suited to deal with an
embarrassment of that kind than the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel. The
Duke's doctrine of government was that "the country was never governed
in practice according to the extreme principles of any party
whatever;"[196] while Peel's disposition at all times inclined him to
compromise. He was quite aware that on this and similar questions public
feeling had undergone great alteration since the beginning of the
century. There was a large and increasing party, numbering in its ranks
many men of deep religious feeling, and many firm supporters of the
principle of an Established Church, being also sincere believers in the
pre-eminent excellence of the Church of England, who had a conscientious
repugnance to the employment of the most solemn ordinance of a religion
as a mere political test of a person's qualifications for the discharge
of civil duties. In the opinion of the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Lloyd),
this was the feeling of "a very large majority of the Church itself,"
and of the University.[197] Peel, therefore, came to the conclusion--to
which he had no difficulty in bringing his colleague, the
Prime-minister--that "it might be more for the real interests of the
Church and of religion to consent to an alteration in the law" than to
trust to the result of the debate in the House of Lords to maintain the
existing state of things. Accordingly, after several conferences with
the most influential members of the Episcopal Bench, he framed a
declaration to be substituted for the Sacramental test, binding all who
should be required to subscribe it--a description which included all who
should be appointed to a civil or corporate office--never to exert any
power or influence which they might thus acquire to subvert, or to
endeavor to subvert, the Protestant Church of England, Scotland, or
Ireland, as by law established. The declaration was amended in the House
of Lords by the addition of the statement, that this declaration was
subscribed "on the true faith of a Christian," introduced at the
instigation of Lord Eldon, who had not held the Great Seal since the
dissolution of Lord Liverpool's administration, but who was still looked
up to by a numerous party as the foremost champion of sound
Protestantism in either House.
Not that the addition of these words at all diminished the
dissatisfaction with which the great lawyer regarded the bill. On the
contrary, he believed it to be not only a weapon wilfully put into the
hands of the enemies of the Established Church, but a violation of the
constitution, of which, as he regarded it "the existing securities were
a part." He pointed out that "the King himself was obliged to take the
sacrament at his coronation;" and he argued from this and other grounds
that "the Church of England, combined with the state, formed together
the constitution of Great Britain; and that the acts now to be repealed
were necessary to the preservation of that constitution."
With every respect for that great lawyer, his argument on this point
does not appear sustainable. For the bill in question did not sweep away
securities for the Established Church, but merely substituted, for one
which long disuse and indemnity had rendered wholly inoperative, a fresh
security, which, as it would be steadily put in force, might fairly be
expected to prove far more efficacious. And it can hardly be contended
that it was not within the province of the Legislature to modify an
existing law in this spirit and with this object, however important
might be the purpose for which that law had originally been framed. Nay,
it might fairly be argued that the more important that object was, the
more were they who strengthened the means of attaining that object
entitled to be regarded as faithful servants and supporters of the
principle of the constitution.
The measure, however, relieved the Protestant Dissenters alone. Not only
did Lord Eldon's amendment preserve the Christian character of the
Legislature, but the requirement to sign the declaration against
Transubstantiation, which was unrepealed, left the Roman Catholics still
under the same disqualifications as before. But the days of those
disqualifications were manifestly numbered. Indeed, many of those who
had followed the ministers in their original resistance to the repeal of
the Test Act had been avowedly influenced by the conviction that it
could not fail to draw after it the removal of the disabilities
affecting the Roman Catholics. As has been said before, the disabilities
in question had originally been imposed on the Roman Catholics on
political rather than on religious grounds. And the political reasons
for them had been greatly weakened, if not wholly swept away, by the
extinction of the Stuart line of princes. Their retention or removal
had, therefore, now become almost wholly a religious question; and the
late bill had clearly established as a principle that, though the state
had a right to require of members of other religious sects that they
should not abuse the power which might arise from any positions or
employments to which they might be admitted, to the subversion or injury
of the Established Church of England, yet, when security for their
innocuousness in this respect was provided, it was not justified in
inquiring into the details of their faith. And if this were to be the
rule of government for the future, the conclusion was irresistible that
a similar security was all that the state was justified in demanding
from Roman Catholics, and that it could have no warrant for
investigating their opinion on Transubstantiation, or any other purely
theological tenet. There could be no doubt that the feelings of the
public had been gradually and steadily coming round to this view of the
question. The last House of Commons had not only passed a bill to remove
Roman Catholic disabilities (which was afterward thrown out in the House
of Lords), but had also passed, by a still larger majority, a
resolution, moved by Lord Francis Leveson Gower (who was now the
Secretary for Ireland), in favor of endowing the Roman Catholic priests
in Ireland. And at the late general election the opinions of the
candidates on what was commonly called Catholic Emancipation had been
the great cardinal question with a great number, probably a majority, of
the constituencies.
It may be remarked that it was not the Test Act which excluded Roman
Catholics from Parliament, but a bill which, fifteen years later, had
been passed (probably under the influence of Lord Shaftesbury) at the
time when the whole kingdom was excited by the daily expanding
revelations of the Popish Plot.[198] And this bill had a loop-hole which
was never discovered till now but the discovery of which totally changed
the whole aspect of the question. Even before the bill repealing the
Test Act had passed through all its stages, Sir Francis Burdett had
again induced the House of Commons to pass a resolution condemning the
continuance of the Roman Catholic disabilities; to which, however, the
peers, by a far larger majority, refused their concurrence.[199] But,
within a month of this division, the aspect of the whole question was
changed by the shrewdness of an Irish barrister, who had discovered the
loop-hole or flaw in the bill of 1678 already alluded to, and by the
energy and promptitude with which he availed himself of his discovery.
Mr. O'Connell had a professional reputation scarcely surpassed by any
member of the Irish Bar. He was also a man of ancient family in the
county of Kerry. And, being a Roman Catholic, he had for several years
been the spokesman of his brother Roman Catholics on most public
occasions. He now, on examination of the bill of 1678, perceived that,
though it forbade any Roman Catholic from taking a seat in either House
of Parliament, it contained no prohibition to prevent any constituency
from electing him its representative. And when, on the occasion of some
changes which were made in the cabinet, the representation of the County
Clare was vacated by its member, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, accepting the
office of President of the Board of Trade, O'Connell instantly offered
himself as a candidate in opposition to the new minister, who, of
course, sought re-election.
Mr. Fitzgerald was a man who had always supported the demands of the
Roman Catholics; he was also personally popular, and had the undivided
support of nearly all the gentlemen and principal land-owners of the
county, in which he himself had large property. But O'Connell's cause
was taken up by the entire Roman Catholic priesthood; addresses in his
favor were read at the altars of the different churches; and, after five
days' polling, Mr. Fitzgerald withdrew from the contest. The Sheriff, in
great perplexity, made a special return, reporting that "Mr. Fitzgerald
was proposed, being a Protestant, as a fit person to represent the
county in Parliament; that Mr. O'Connell, a Roman Catholic, was also
proposed; that he, Mr. O'Connell, had declared before the Sheriff that
he was a Roman Catholic, and intended to continue a Roman Catholic; and
that a protest had been made by several electors against his return."
It was accepted as a return of O'Connell, who, however, made no attempt
to take his seat, though when he first stood he had assured the electors
that there was no law to prevent him from doing so; but the importance
of his success was not to be measured by his actual presence or absence
in the House of Commons for the remainder of a session. It had made it
absolutely impossible to continue the maintenance of the disabilities;
what one Irish constituency had done, other Irish constituencies might
be depended on to do.[200] And it was quite certain that, as opportunity
offered, almost every constituency in Munster and Connaught, and many in
Leinster, would follow the example of Clare, and return Roman Catholic
representatives; while to retain a law which prevented forty or fifty
men duly elected by Irish constituencies from taking their seats must
have appeared impossible to all but a few, whom respect for the
undoubted sincerity of their attachment to their own religion and to the
constitution, as they understood it, is the only consideration which can
save them from being regarded as dangerous fanatics. At all events, the
ministers were not among them. And the Duke of Wellington, though he had
previously hoped, by postponing the farther consideration of the
question for a year or two, to gain time for a calmer examination of it
when the existing excitement had cooled down,[201] at once admitted the
conviction that the result of the Clare election had rendered farther
delay impossible. In his view, and that of those of his colleagues whose
judgment he estimated most highly, the Irish constituencies and their
probable action at future elections were not the only parties whose
opinions or feelings must be regarded by a responsible statesman; but to
them must be added the constituencies of the larger island also, since,
while, to quote the language of Mr. Peel, "the general election of 1826
had taken place under circumstances especially calculated to call forth
the manifestation of Protestant feeling throughout the country," they
had returned a majority of members in favor of concession, as was proved
by the recent division on Sir F. Burdett's motion. Moreover, apart from
the merits or demerits of concession, taken by itself, there was a
manifest danger that the keeping up of the excitement on the subject by
a continued adherence to the policy of restriction might, especially
among such a people as the Irish, so impulsive, and, in the lower
classes, so absolutely under the dominion of the priests, kindle an
excitement on other subjects also, still more difficult to deal with. It
was even already certain that the Roman Catholic priests were
endeavoring to tamper with the loyalty of the soldiers of their
persuasion. Nor was it clerical influence alone that the government had
to dread. A year or two before a Catholic Association had been formed,
which included among its members all the wealthiest and ablest of the
Roman Catholic laymen, noblemen, squires, and barristers. Its
organization had been so skilfully conducted, and all its measures had
been so carefully kept within the requirements of the law, that the
crown lawyers, on being consulted, pronounced it impossible to interfere
with it; and, by what may be called a peaceful agitation, it had
attained such extraordinary power over the minds of the bulk of the
Roman Catholics, that the Lord-lieutenant reported that "he was quite
certain that they could lead on the people to open rebellion at a
moment's notice, and that their organization was such that, in the hands
of desperate and intelligent leaders, they would be extremely
formidable[202]."
Under all these circumstances, the Duke had no hesitation in deciding
that it had become absolutely necessary to concede the demands of the
Roman Catholics and their supporters for a removal of their political
disabilities. And it was equally obvious that, the more promptly the
concession was made, the more gracious it would seem, and the greater
was the probability of its having the conciliatory and tranquillizing
effect the hope of which made it so desirable. He was not a man to lose
time when he had once made up his mind. It was already too late in the
session for anything to be done in 1828; but the Parliament had scarcely
been prorogued before he put his views on the subject before the King,
and began, in concert with the Home-secretary, to frame a bill such as
he hoped might settle the long-agitated question, without doing more
violence than was necessary to the feelings of those whose opposition or
reluctance he was aware he should have to encounter: among whom was the
King himself, who, though thirty years before he had, with an
ostentation rather unbecoming, considering his position, put himself
forward as an advocate of Emancipation, had subsequently changed his
opinion, and had recently taken more than one occasion to declare that
he had never doubted that, as the head and protector of the Protestant
religion, he was bound to refuse his assent to any relaxation of the
existing law.[203] The Duke, however, was too well acquainted with his
royal master's character to apprehend any real firmness of resistance
from him; but he knew that a great majority of the clergy, and no small
portion of the country gentlemen, were conscientiously and immovably
fixed in opposition to any concession at all, some refusing to regard
the question in any but a purely religious light, and objecting to
associate in the task of legislation for those whom they regarded as
adherents of an idolatrous superstition; while those who mingled
political reasoning with that founded on theology dwelt also on the
danger to be apprehended to the state, if political power were given to
those whose allegiance to the King was divided with another allegiance
which they acknowledged to a foreign prelate. And he had presently an
unmistakable proof afforded him how great was the strength of this party
in the country. Peel was one of the representatives of the University of
Oxford; and, as from his earliest enjoyment of a seat in Parliament he
had been a prominent opponent of the Roman Catholic claims, he
considered that it was to that maintenance of a policy identified in
their eyes with that Protestant ascendency which his supporters took to
be both the chief bulwark and one of the most essential parts of the
constitution that he owed his position as their member. With a
conscientiousness which was rather overstrained, and not quite
consistent with the legitimate position of a member of the House of
Commons as a representative, and not a delegate, he now conceived that
his change of view on the subject made it proper for him to give his
constituents an opportunity of making choice of some one else who should
more faithfully represent them. He accordingly resigned his seat,
offering himself at the same time for re-election. But he was defeated
by a very large majority, though his competitor was one who could not
possibly be put on a level with him either for university distinction or
for parliamentary eminence.
Not the less, however, for all their difficulties and discouragements,
did the ministers proceed in the course on which they had resolved. They
inserted in the speech with which the King opened the session of 1829 a
recommendation to the Houses "to take into consideration the whole
condition of Ireland, and to review the laws which imposed civil
disabilities on his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects." And with as
little delay as possible they introduced a bill to remove those
disabilities. But there was another measure which they felt it to be
indispensable should precede it. A previous sentence of the royal speech
had described the Catholic Association as one "dangerous to the public
peace, and inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, keeping
alive discord and ill-will among his Majesty's subjects, and one which
must, if permitted to continue, effectually obstruct every effort
permanently to improve the condition of Ireland." And the ministers
naturally regarded it as their first duty to suppress a body which could
deserve to be so described. They felt, too, that the large measure of
concession and conciliation which they were about to announce would lose
half its grace, and more than half its effect, if it could possibly be
represented as a submission to an agitation and intimidation which they
had not the power nor the courage to resist. They determined, therefore,
to render such an imputation impossible, by previously suppressing the
Association. It was evident that it could not be extinguished by any
means short of an act of Parliament. And the course pursued, with the
discussions which took place respecting it, show in a very clear and
instructive manner the view taken by statesmen of the difference between
what is loyal or illegal, constitutional or unconstitutional; their
apprehension that conduct may be entirely legal, that is to say, within
the letter of the law, but at the same time perfectly unconstitutional,
outside of and adverse to the whole spirit of the constitution. The
royal speech had not ventured to describe the Association as illegal.
The Duke of Wellington expressly admitted that "in the original
institution and formation of the society there was nothing strictly
illegal."[204] And its founder and chief, Mr. O'Connell, had been at all
times careful to inculcate on his followers the necessity of avoiding
any violation of the law. But the speech had also declared the
association to be "inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution."
And its acts, as the Duke proceeded to describe them, certainly bore out
that declaration. "Those acts consisted principally in levying a tax
upon certain of his Majesty's subjects called Catholic rent, and this by
means and acts of extreme violence; by appointing persons to collect
these rents; and farther by adopting measures to organize the Catholic
population; by appointing persons to superintend that organization; and
by assuming to themselves the government of the country; and, still
more, affecting to assume it. Besides, they expended this rent in a
manner contrary to, and utterly inconsistent with, all law and order and
the constitution of the country." No member of either House denied the
accuracy of this description of the Association's proceedings. And if it
were correct, it was incontrovertible that the denunciation of it as an
utterly unconstitutional body was not too strong. Indeed, the fact of
its "levying a tax" upon a portion of the King's subjects (to say
nothing of the intimidation, amounting to compulsion, by which, as was
notorious, it was in many instances exacted) was the assumption of one
of the most important functions of the Imperial Parliament; it was the
erection of an _imperium in imperio_, which no statesmen intrusted with
the government of a country can be justified in tolerating. And this was
felt by the Opposition as well as by the ministers; by the Whigs as
fully as by the Tories. The most eloquent of the Whig party, Mr.
Stanley, was as decided as Mr. Peel himself in affirming that the
existence of the Association was "inconsistent with the spirit of the
constitution," and that it was "dangerous that the people of a country
should look up to any public body distinct from the government, opposed
to the government, and monopolizing their attachment and
obedience."[205]
It was, therefore, with the almost unanimous approval of both parties
that the bill framed for the suppression of the Association was
received. The framing of such a bill was not unattended by difficulties,
as Peel acknowledged,[206] since "no one wished to declare that every
political meeting was illegal;" while at the same time it was necessary
to guard against "having its enactments evaded, since a more dangerous
precedent than the successful evasion of acts of the Legislature could
scarcely be conceived." But the measure, as it was proposed, skilfully
steered clear of these difficulties. It met them by intrusting "the
enforcement of the law to be enacted to one person alone." The bill
proposed "to give to the Lord-lieutenant, and to him alone, the power of
suppressing any association or meeting which he might think dangerous to
the public peace, or inconsistent with the due administration of the
law; together with power to interdict the assembly of any meeting of
which previous notice should have been given, and which he should think
likely to endanger the public peace, or to prove inconsistent with the
due administration of the law." And farther, "to interdict any meeting
or association which might be interdicted from assembling, or which
might be suppressed under this act, from receiving and placing at their
control any moneys by the name of rent, or any other name." But the act
was not to be one of perpetual duration. It could not be concealed that
such a prohibition or limitation of the general right of public meeting
and public discussion was a suspension of a part of the constitution;
and therefore the ministers were content to limit its operation "to one
year and the end of the then next session of Parliament," feeling
"satisfied that there would be no objection to continue it, if there
should be any necessity for its continuance." And this limitation was a
substantial mitigation of its severity. It made the bill, as Mr. Stanley
correctly described it, "not a permanent infringement on the
constitution, but a temporary deviation from it, giving those powers
which were necessary at the moment," but not maintaining them an hour
longer than they were necessary.
And this seems to be the course most in accordance with the spirit of
the constitution, with former practice, with common-sense. Deeds which
violate the letter of the law can be dealt with by the law. But actions
or courses of action which, even if they may be thought to overstep the
law, transgress it so narrowly as to elude conviction, can only be
reached by enactments which also go in some degree beyond the ordinary
law; and, so going beyond it, are to that extent encroachments on the
ordinary privileges and rights of the subject, and suspensions of the
constitution. But the very term "suspension" shows that the power
conferred is but temporary, otherwise it would be synonymous with
abrogation. And all parties may wisely agree, as they did in this
instance, to a temporary suspension of the people's rights, though there
would be none to whom their permanent abrogation would not be
intolerable.
The bill, then, for the suppression of the Association passed with
universal approval, and it may be regarded as furnishing a model for
dealing with similar associations, if ever they should arise. And as
soon as it was passed Mr. Peel introduced the greater measure, that for
the repeal of the disabilities. In drawing the necessary bill the
ministers had had two questions of special importance to consider:
firstly, whether it should be unlimited concession which should be
granted, such as would throw open to the Roman Catholics every kind of
civil office; and, secondly, whether it should be accompanied by any
other measure, which might render it more palatable to its adversaries,
as diminishing a portion at least of the dangers which those who
regarded the question in a purely political light most apprehended. On
the first point it was determined that, with the exception of three
civil offices, those of the Lord Chancellors of England and Ireland and
the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland,[207] and some of a purely ecclesiastical
character, such as the Judge of the Court of Arches, every kind of
preferment should be opened to the Roman Catholics.[208] The declaration
against Transubstantiation and the oath of supremacy, certain
expressions in which were the obstacles which had hitherto kept the
Roman Catholics out of office and out of Parliament, were to be
repealed, and another to be substituted for them which should merely
bind him who took it to defend the King, to maintain the Protestant
succession, and to declare that "it was not an article of his faith, and
that he renounced, rejected, and abjured the opinion, that princes
excommunicated or deposed by the Pope might be deposed and murdered; and
that he disclaimed, disavowed, and solemnly abjured any intention to
subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law within this
realm, and that he would never exercise any privilege to which he was or
might become entitled to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or
Protestant government in this kingdom."[209]
The second question was, it will probably be confessed, even more
important. Pitt, who had always contemplated, and had encouraged the
Irish Roman Catholics to contemplate, the abolition of their political
disabilities as an indispensable appendage to, or, it may be said, part
of the Union, had designed, farther, not to confine his benefits to the
laymen, but to endow the Roman Catholic clergy with adequate stipends, a
proposal which was received with the greatest thankfulness, not only by
the Irish prelates and clergy themselves, but also by the heads of their
Church at Rome, who were willing, in return, to give the crown a veto on
all the ecclesiastical appointments of their Church in the two
islands.[210] The justice of granting such an endowment could hardly be
contested. The Reformation in Ireland, if what had taken place there
could be called a reformation at all, had been wholly different from the
movement which had almost extinguished Popery in England. The great
majority of the Irish people had never ceased to adhere to the Romish
forms, and the Reformation there had been simply a transfer of the
property of the Romish Church to the Church of England, unaccompanied by
any corresponding change of belief in the people, who had an undeniable
right to claim that the state, while making this transfer, should not
deprive of all provision the clergy to whose ministrations they still
clung with a zeal and steadiness augmented rather than diminished by the
discouragements under which they adhered to them.
The policy of granting such endowment was equally conspicuous. No
measure could so bind the clergy to the government; and no such security
for the loyalty and peaceful, orderly behavior of the poorer classes
could be provided, as might be expected from the attachment to the
government of those who had over them an influence so powerful in its
character and so unbounded in its strength as their priests. And the
Duke of Wellington, who had at one time been himself the Irish
Secretary, and, as an intimate friend of Lord Castlereagh, who held that
office at the time of the Union, had a perfect knowledge of what had
been intended at that time--and who was, of course, aware of the very
decided favor which the House of Commons had so lately shown to the
project--proposed to follow out Pitt's plan in that particular, and to
connect a provision[211] for the Roman Catholic clergy with the removal
of their political disabilities from the laymen. Unluckily, Peel, who,
throughout the whole transaction, was, of all the cabinet, the
counsellor on whose judgment he most relied, took a different view of
the expediency of making such a provision, having, indeed, "no objection
to it in point of principle." But he saw many practical difficulties,
which he pressed on the Duke with great earnestness. He argued that for
the government "to apply a sum of money to the payment of the ministers
of the Church of Rome in Ireland, granting a license for the performance
of their spiritual functions, would be a virtual and complete
supersession, if not repeal, of the laws which prohibit intercourse with
Rome;" and asked, "Could the state affect to be ignorant that the bishop
whom it paid derived his right to be a bishop from the See of Rome?"
Another difficulty he found in the apprehension that "the admission of
the right of the Roman Catholic clergy to an endowment might produce
similar claims on the part of the Dissenters in England, who contribute
in like manner to the support of their own religion and of the
established religion also." He suggested, farther, that, if the Roman
Catholic priest were allowed, in addition to his stipend, "to receive
dues, Easter offerings, etc., from his parishioners, his condition would
then be better than that of the ministers of the Established Church in
many of the parishes in Ireland." And, finally, he urged the practical
objection, that the endowment would greatly strengthen the opposition to
the whole measure, by the reluctance which, "on purely religious
grounds," many would feel to the endowment of the Roman Catholic faith,
who would yet be inclined to acquiesce in the removal of the
disabilities, "on grounds rather political than religious." He was "not
insensible to the importance of establishing some bond of connection
between the Roman Catholic clergy and the state;" but he believed that
the omission of a provision for their endowment "was important to the
ultimate success of the government in proposing the measure before
them."
It is not probable that the Duke was greatly influenced by the first, or
what may be called the constitutional, objection--that any concert with
the Papal Court with respect to the appointments or endowments of its
clergy would be a violation of the act which prohibited any intercourse
with Rome. The removal of the disabilities required the repeal of one
act of Parliament; and, if the holding communications with Rome on the
subject of clerical appointments should be so construed as to require
the repeal of another, it would hardly seem that there could be any
greater violation of or departure from the principles of the
constitution in repealing two acts than in repealing one. As to the
second of Peel's objections, the English Dissenters could not possibly
be said to stand on the same ground as the Irish Roman Catholics, since
their ministers had certainly never been deprived by any act of the
state of any provision which they had previously enjoyed; but their
position as unendowed ministers was clearly one of their own making. The
possible inferiority in point of emolument of some of the Protestant
cures in Ireland to that which might be enjoyed by some of the Roman
Catholic clergy could hardly be regarded as the foundation of any
argument at all, since no law had ever undertaken, or ever could
undertake, to give at all times and under all circumstances equal
remuneration to equal labors. But the consideration last suggested was
exactly the one to influence such a mind as that of the Duke of
Wellington, generally contented to deal with a present difficulty. He
was determined to carry Emancipation, because he saw that the Clare
election had made it impossible to withhold or even to delay it; and,
being so determined, he was desirous to avoid encumbering it with any
addition which might increase the opposition to it. At the same time he
was far from being sanguine of its effect, "with whatever guards or
securities it might be accompanied, to pacify the country or to avert
rebellion,"[212] which, in his apprehension, was undoubtedly impending;
and, under the influence of these combined feelings, he eventually
withdrew that clause from the bill. It was accompanied by another bill,
disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland. They were a
class of voters sunk in the deepest poverty, and such as certainly could
not well be supposed capable of forming, much less of exercising, an
independent judgment on political matters. Yet this bill is remarkable
as having been the only enactment passed since the Revolution to narrow
the franchise. It had no opposition to anticipate from English or Scotch
members, and was accepted by the Irish members as the price of
Emancipation.
No measure that had ever been framed since the Revolution had caused
such excitement in the country; but the preponderance of feeling in its
favor was equally marked in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of
Commons 320 supported it, while only 142 could be marshalled against it.
In the House of Lords 213 divided for it against 109. And in April it
received the royal assent.
The general policy of removing the disabilities it is not necessary to
discuss here. It is quite clear that the Clare election had rendered it
impossible to maintain them. And if some of those who judge of measures
solely by their effects still denounce this act, as one which has failed
in its object of tranquillizing Ireland, many of those who admit the
failure ascribe it to the omission to accompany it by one securing a
state endowment for the Roman Catholic clergy, pronouncing it, without
that appendage, a half measure, such as rarely succeeds, and never
deserves success. However that may be, it is certain that the measure,
coupled with the repeal of the Test Act of the previous year, was one
which made a great and permanent change in the practical working of the
constitution of the kingdom, as it had been interpreted for the last one
hundred and fifty years. Of that constitution one of the leading
features, ever since the Restoration, had been understood to be the
establishment and maintenance of the political as well as the
ecclesiastical ascendency of the Church of England. On that ascendency
the repeal of the Test Act in 1828 had made the first, and that a great,
inroad, and the present statute entirely abolished it as a principle of
government. So far as political privileges went, every Christian sect
was now placed on a footing of complete equality. But so to place them
may fairly be regarded as having been required not only by justice and
expediency, but by reasons drawn from the history of the nation and from
the circumstances under which these disabilities had been imposed.
Before the Rebellion no one was excluded from the English Parliament on
account of his religion, whether he was a Roman Catholic, a
Presbyterian, or a member of any other of the various sects which were
gradually arising in the country. It was not till after the Restoration
that a recollection of the crimes of the Puritans, when they had got the
upper-hand, and the fear of machinations and intrigues, incompatible
with the freedom and independence of the people, which were imputed to
the Roman Catholics, gave birth to the statutes depriving both
Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists of all legislative and
political power. The restrictions thus imposed on the Presbyterians and
other Protestant sects had, as we have seen, been gradually relaxed by a
periodical act of indemnity. Indeed, after the Union with Scotland, it
was impossible with any show of consistency to maintain them, since, as
it has been already pointed out, after Presbyterianism had been
recognized as the established religion of Scotland, it would have seemed
strangely unreasonable to regard it as a disqualification on the
southern side of the Border. But, as long as the Stuart princes were
from time to time disquieting the government by their open invasions or
secret intrigues, no such relaxation could with safety be granted to the
Roman Catholics, since it could hardly be expected that they would
forbear to employ any power which they might acquire for the service of
a prince of their own religion. That danger, however, which ever since
1745 had been a very shadowy one, had wholly passed away with the life
of the last Stuart lay prince, Charles Edward; and his death left the
rulers of the kingdom and advisers of the sovereign free to take a
different and larger view of their duty to the nation as a whole.
It was notorious that the number of Non-conformists was large. In the
middle of the last century it had received a considerable accession
through the institution of the new sect of Wesleyan Methodists; which,
through the supineness of the clergy of the Established Church in that
generation, had gradually increased, till it was estimated that the
various Dissenting sects in England equalled at least half the number of
the members of the Established Church. In Wales they were believed to
form the majority. In Scotland three-fourths of the people were
Presbyterians; and in Ireland the Roman Catholics outnumbered the
Protestants in nearly the same proportion. Taking England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland together, a calculation which reckoned the
different sects of Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists united
at half the entire population would probably not have erred very widely
from the truth.
It must have been the aim of every statesman deserving of the name to
weld these different religious parties into one harmonious whole, as far
as their civil position went. And measures which had that tendency could
not be foreign to the constitution, properly understood. A constitution
which confines its benefits to one-half of a nation hardly merits the
title of a constitution at all. For every constitution ought to extend
its protection and its privileges equally to every portion of the
people, unless there be some peculiarity in the principles or habits of
any one portion which makes its participation in them dangerous to the
rest. It had undoubtedly been the doctrine of Pitt, and of the greater
part of those who since his time had held the reins of government, that
if any portion of the King's subjects did cherish a temper dangerous to
the rest, it was because they were debarred from privileges to which
they conceived themselves to have a just right, and that their
discontent and turbulence were the fruit of the restrictions imposed on
them. In proposing to remove such a grievance Pitt certainly conceived
himself to be acting in accordance with the strictest principles of the
constitution, and not so much innovating upon it as restoring it to its
original comprehensiveness. And so of the measure, as it was now
carried, it will apparently be correct to say that, though it did make
an important change in the practical working of the constitution, it
made it only by reverting to the fundamental principles of civil and
religious liberty, to which every subject had a right; which had only
been temporarily restrained under the apprehension of danger to the
state, and which the cessation of that apprehension made it a duty to
re-establish in all their fulness.
But it is by no means clear that in the conduct of the measure the
constitution was not violated in one very important point, the proper
relation subsisting between a constituency and its representative, by
Mr. Peel's resignation of his seat for the University of Oxford. That he
was sensible that the act stood in need of explanation is proved by the
careful statement of the motives and considerations that determined him
to it, which he drew up twenty years afterward. They were of a twofold
character. To quote his own words: "When I resolved to advise, and to
promote to the utmost of my power, the settlement of that question, I
resolved at the same time to relinquish, not only my official
station,[213] but the representation of the University of Oxford. I
thought that such decisive proofs that I could have no object, political
or personal, in taking a course different from that which I had
previously taken, would add to my influence and authority, so far, at
least, as the adjustment of the particular question at issue was
concerned." "I cannot deny that in vacating my seat I was acting upon
the impulse of private feelings, rather than upon a dispassionate
consideration of the constitutional relations between a representative
and his constituents. I will not seek to defend the resolution to which
I came by arguments drawn from the peculiar character of the academic
body, or from the special nature of the trust confided to its members;
still less will I contend that my example ought to be followed by others
to whom may be offered the same painful alternative of disregarding the
dictates of their own consciences, or of acting in opposition to the
opinions and disappointing the expectations of their constituents. I
will say no more than that my position was a very peculiar one, that I
had many painful sacrifices to make, and that it would have been a great
aggravation of them, if it could have said with truth that I was
exercising an authority derived from the confidence of the University to
promote measures injurious, in her deliberate judgment, either to her
own interests or to those of the Church."
No one would willingly censure too severely an act dictated by a sense
of honor, even if somewhat overstrained and too scrupulously delicate;
but when Mr. Peel speaks of "defending" or not defending his deed, he
clearly admits it to be one open to impeachment. And when he forbears to
"contend that his example ought to be followed," he seems practically to
confess a consciousness that any defence against such impeachment must
fail; while the last sentence quoted above involves an assertion that a
constituency (in this instance one of the two most important
constituencies in the kingdom) could be justified in regarding a measure
required by the safety, or at least by the welfare, of the state, as
injurious to its own interests; and so far admits a possible severance
between the interests of a particular class or body and those of the
whole community, which can have no real existence. That, however, is not
the point to be investigated here. The charge, as it seems, to which Mr.
Peel's deed lays him open is, that by it he lowered the position and
character of a member of Parliament from those of a representative to
those of a delegate. It was an adoption of the principle laid down for
his own guidance by a colleague of Mr. Burke above fifty years before,
and indignantly repudiated by that great political philosopher, as
proceeding from an entire misapprehension of the rights of a
constituency and of a member[214] of Parliament. He told the electors of
Bristol that "when they had chosen their member, he was not a member of
Bristol, but a member of Parliament; and that if the local constituent
should have an interest, or should form an opinion, evidently opposite
to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place
ought to be as far as any other from any endeavor to give it effect;"
that a representative "owes to his constituents, not his industry only,
but his judgment, and betrays instead of serving them, if he sacrifices
it to their opinion." And in so saying he carried with him the
concurrence and approval of all his contemporaries whose sentiments on
such a question were entitled to weight.
In the States-general of France each member was, by the original
constitution of that body, a delegate, and not a representative. He
could not even remonstrate against the most oppressive grievance of
which the previous instructions of the constituent body had not
instructed him to complain; and this limitation of his duties and powers
was, undoubtedly, one very principal cause which led to the
States-general so rapidly falling into utter disrepute. It was no light
thing to take a step which had a tendency to bring down the British
Parliament to the level of the despised and long-disused States-general.
And it is the more necessary to put the case in a clear and true light,
because at the present day there is an evident disposition on the part
of constituencies to avail themselves of Peel's conduct in this instance
as a precedent, in spite of his protest against its being so regarded,
and to fetter their representatives with precise instructions; and a
corresponding willingness on the part of candidates to purchase support
at elections by a submissive giving of pledges on a variety of subjects,
so numerous as to leave themselves no freedom of judgment at all. On the
great majority of subjects which come before Parliament, a member of
Parliament, if he be a sensible and an honest man, has a far better
opportunity of obtaining correct information and forming a sound opinion
than can be within reach of any constituency, whose proneness to
misjudge is usually in exact proportion to the magnitude of its numbers.
Every elector justifiably may, and naturally will, seek to ascertain
that between the candidate whom he supports and himself there is a
general conformity of opinion; an absolute identity he will never find,
and he has no right to ask.[215]
Notes:
[Footnote 182: £118,776,000. Alison, c. lxxvi.]
[Footnote 183: See Lord Malmesbury's account of their first
interview.--_Diaries of Lord Malmesbury_, iii., 218.]
[Footnote 184: "Parliamentary Debates," series 2, ii., 632.]
[Footnote 185: Mr. Brougham gave his opinion that if the Duke of York,
or any other member of the royal family, had been named, it would have
been offensive to the Queen; but the measure adopted he regarded as of a
neutral character. (Mentioned by Lord Liverpool, "Life of Lord
Liverpool," iii., 55.)]
[Footnote 186: "Minutes of Cabinet," dated 10th and 14th February, 1820,
forwarded the King by Lord Liverpool ("Life of Lord Liverpool," iii.,
35-88).]
[Footnote 187: "Life of Sir J. Mackintosh," by R.J. Mackintosh, ii.,
110, 116.]
[Footnote 188: "Lives of the Chief-justices," iii., 171.]
[Footnote 189: In a letter on the subject to Lord Liverpool, the Duke
goes the length of calling the proposed bill "an experiment which,
should it fail, must entail the dreadful alternative of the entire ruin
of the landed interests of the empire, with which he is decidedly of
opinion that the nation must stand or fall."--_Life of Lord Liverpool_,
iii., 434.]
[Footnote 190: At one time it was the fashion with writers of the
Liberal party to represent Lord Liverpool as led by Lord Castlereagh in
the earlier, and by Canning in the later, part of his administration;
but Lord Liverpool's correspondence with both these ministers shows
clearly that on every subject of foreign as well as of home policy he
was the real guide and ruler of his cabinet. Even the recognition of the
independence of the South American provinces of Spain--which is so often
represented as exclusively the work of Canning--the memorandum on the
subject which Lord Liverpool drew up for the cabinet proves that the
policy adopted was entirely his own, and that as such he adhered to it
resolutely, in spite of the avowed disapproval of the Duke of Wellington
and the known unwillingness of the King to sanction it; and it may be
remarked (as he and Lord Castlereagh have sometime been described as
favoring the Holy Alliance), that the concluding sentence of his letter
to the Duke on the subject expresses his hostility, not only to that
celebrated treaty, but to the policy which dictated and was embodied in
it. (See Lord Liverpool's memorandum for the cabinet and letter to the
Duke of Wellington, December 8, 1824.)--_Life of Lord Liverpool_, iii.,
297-305.]
[Footnote 191: See ante, p. 222.]
[Footnote 192: "With much prudence or laudable disinterestedness," says
Hallam ("Constitutional History," ii., 532).]
[Footnote 193: The last time had been in 1790, when there had been a
majority of 187 against it.--_Peel's Memoirs_, i., 99.]
[Footnote 194: 237 to 193.]
[Footnote 195: "Peel's Memoirs," i., 68.]
[Footnote 196: "Wellington's Civil Despatches," iv., 453.]
[Footnote 197: See his letter to Peel, March 23 ("Peel's Memoirs," i.,
92-100).]
[Footnote 198: The entry of this bill in Cobbett's "Parliamentary
History" is: "The House of Commons testified a very extraordinary zeal
in unravelling the Popish Plot, and, to prevent mischief in the
interval, passed a bill to disable Papists from sitting in either House
of Parliament," to which the Lords, when the bill came up to their
House, added a proviso exempting the Duke of York from its operation.
An. 1678; October 26 to November 21.---_Parliamentary History_, iv.,
1024-1039.]
[Footnote 199: In the House of Commons the majority for Sir F. Burdett's
resolution was six--372 to 266. But, in the House of Lords, Lord
Lansdowne, moving the same resolution, was defeated by forty-five--182
to 137.]
[Footnote 200: See Fitzgerald's letter to Peel ("Peel's Memoirs," i.,
114).]
[Footnote 201: "Peel's Memoirs," i., 121.]
[Footnote 202: See "Lord Anglesey's Letters," _ibid._, pp. 126, 147.]
[Footnote 203: As early as the year 1812, on the negotiations (mentioned
in a former chapter) for the entrance of Lord Grenville and Lord Grey
into the ministry, the Duke of York mentioned to both those noblemen
that the Regent had an insuperable objection to the concession of
Emancipation. And it seems probable that it was the knowledge of his
sentiments on that point that greatly influenced the course which Lord
Liverpool subsequently pursued in regard to that question.--See _Life of
Lord Liverpool_, i, 381.]
[Footnote 204: Speech on moving the second reading of the bill in the
House of Lords, February 19, 1829 ("Hansard," xx., 389).]
[Footnote 205: Speech on the first reading of the bill, February 10
("Hansard," xx., 208).]
[Footnote 206: Speech on the first reading ("Hansard," xx., 198).]
[Footnote 207: An amendment was proposed by Lord Chandos to add the
office of Prime-minister to these three, on the ground that if a Roman
Catholic were Prime-minister "he might have the disposal of all the
patronage of the state and the Church vested in his hands." But Mr. Peel
pointed out that the law of England "never recognized any such office as
that of Prime-minister. In the eyes of the law the ministers were all on
an equality." And the position, such as it was, being a conventional
one, was not necessarily connected with the office of First Lord of the
Treasury. "In a recent instance his late right honorable friend, Mr.
Canning, had determined to hold the office of Prime-minister with that
of Secretary of State. And when Lord Chatham was Prime-minister, he did
not hold the office of First Lord of the Treasury." At the same time he
explained that the impropriety of intrusting a Roman Catholic with
Church patronage was already guarded against in the bill, a clause of
which provided that "it should not be lawful for any person professing
the Roman Catholic religion directly or indirectly to advise the crown
in any appointment to or disposal of any office or preferment, lay or
ecclesiastical, in the united Church of England and Ireland, or of the
Church of Scotland."--_Hansard_, xx., 1425.]
[Footnote 208: Many years afterward the restriction as to the Lord
Chancellorship of Ireland was abolished.]
[Footnote 209: The plan which Pitt had intended to propose was to
substitute in lieu of the Sacramental test a political test, to be
imposed indiscriminately on all persons sitting in Parliament, or
holding state or corporation offices, and also on all ministers of
religion, of whatever description, etc., etc. This test was to disclaim
in express terms the sovereignty of the people, and was to contain an
oath of allegiance and "fidelity to the King's government of the realm,
and to the established constitutions of Church and state."--Letter of
Lord Grenville, given in _Courts and Cabinets of George III._, and
quoted by Lord Stanhope, _Life of Pitt_, iii., 270. This plan seems very
preferable to that now adopted, since it removed every appearance of
making a distinction between the professors of the different creeds,
when the same oath was to be taken by all indifferently.]
[Footnote 210: The question had been discussed with the highest Papal
authorities more than once since the beginning of the century. In 1812
Mgr. Quarantotti, the prelate who, during the detention of the Pope in
France by Napoleon, was invested with the chief authority in
ecclesiastical affairs at Rome, in a letter to the Vicar-apostolic, Dr.
Poynter, formally announced the consent of the Papal See to give the
King a veto on all ecclesiastical appointments within the United
Kingdom; and, after his return to Rome, Pio VII. himself confirmed the
former title by a second addressed, by his instructions, to the same Dr.
Poynter, which letter, in 1816, was read by Mr. Grattan in the House of
Commons, it being throughout understood that this concession of the veto
to the King was conditional on the abolition of the disabilities and the
endowment of the priesthood. And in 1825, after Lord Francis Egerton's
resolution had been carried in the House of Commons, Dr. Doyle, one of
the most eminent of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland, in an
examination before a committee of the House of Lords, expressed the
willingness of the Roman Catholic clergy to accept a state provision, if
it were permanently annexed to each benefice, and accompanied with a
concession of an equality of civil rights to the Roman Catholic
laity.--See _Life of Lord Liverpool_, ii, 145; _Diary of Lord
Colchester, March_ 17, 1835, iii., 373; _Peel's Memoirs_, i., 306, 333
_seq._]
[Footnote 211: The sum to be thus employed seems to have been intended
to be £300,000 a year.--_Peel's Memoirs_, i., 197. On the whole question
of the payment and Peel's objections to it, see _ibid._, pp. 197, 306.]
[Footnote 212: See his "Civil Despatches," iv., 570. In February, 1829,
he said to Lord Sidmouth, "It is a bad business, but we are aground."
"Does your Grace think, then," asked Lord Sidmouth, "that this
concession will tranquillize Ireland?" "I can't tell; I hope it will,"
answered the Duke, who shortly discovered, and had the magnanimity to
admit, his mistake.--_Life of Lord Sidmouth_, iii., 453. It is
remarkable that the question of endowing the Roman Catholic clergy was
again considered by Lord John Russell's ministry in 1848. A letter of
Prince Albert in October of that year says, with reference to it: "The
bishops have protested against Church endowment, being themselves well
off; but the clergy would gratefully accept it if offered, but dare not
avow this."--_Life of the Prince Consort_, ii., 186.]
[Footnote 213: This first extract refers in part to the proposal which
he made to the Duke to resign his office as Secretary of State, and to
support the Emancipation as a private member, a design which he only
relinquished at the Duke's earnest entreaty. The second extract refers
to the seat in Parliament alone.--See _Peel's Memoirs_, i., 310, 312.]
[Footnote 214: Speech to the electors of Bristol on being declared by
the sheriffs duly elected member for that city, November 3,
1774.--_Burke's Works_, iii., 11, ed 1803.]
[Footnote 215: It is worth pointing out, however, that, as if it were
one of the natural fruits of the Reform Bill, the Liberal Committee of
the Livery of London in 1832 passed a series of resolutions asserting
the principle of delegation without the slightest modification; one
resolution affirming "that members chosen to be representatives in
Parliament ought to do such things as their constituents wish and direct
them to do;" another, "that a signed engagement should be exacted from
every member that he would at all times and in all things act
conformably to the wishes of a majority of his constituents, or would at
their request resign the trust with which they had honored
him."--_Annual Register_, 1832, p. 300; _quoted by Alison_, 2d series,
v., 355.]