KING WILLIAM THE FOURTH.
[Sidenote: 1830--The career of William the Fourth]
William the Fourth, as the Duke of Clarence had now become, was nearing
the completion of his sixty-fifth year when the death of his brother
raised him to the throne. He had surely had full time in which to
prepare himself for the business of a monarch, for during a long period
it was well known that nothing was likely to stand between him and the
succession except the life of his elder brother, the Duke of York. But
William's tastes did not allure him to any study of the duties which
belonged to a throne. The Navy was assigned to him as a profession,
and he actually saw some service in America and in the West Indies, but
he obtained his promotion as a matter of course until he reached the
position of Lord High Admiral, which may be described as the main-top
of his naval career. The story is told of him, and will probably,
whether it be accurate or not, be told as long as his history comes
under public recollection, that he had something to do with the
promotion of the great naval battle of Navarino, which led to the
emancipation of Greece. The combined fleets of England, France, and
Russia, under command of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, were watching
the Turkish and Egyptian fleets, in order to protect Greece against
them. But the actual course to be taken by the allies was supposed to
depend upon many serious political considerations. The British
Admiralty issued a solemn official despatch to Sir Edward Codrington,
enjoining on him the necessity of great care and caution in any action
he might take. This {97} document was forwarded in due course by the
Lord High Admiral, and the story goes that the Duke of Clarence
scribbled at the end of it in his own hand the encouraging words, "Go
it, Ned." Whether it was fought under this inspiration or not, it is
certain that the battle was fought, that the Turkish and Egyptian
fleets were destroyed, and that the independence of Greece was won.
The English public generally would have been none the less inclined to
welcome the accession of the Duke of Clarence as William the Fourth
even although it had been part of authentic history that the new King
had lately borne an important, if an underhand, part in the rescue of
Greece from Ottoman oppression. But there was little else in the
career of the Duke of Clarence to command popular respect or affection.
He had lived openly, or almost openly, for many years with the
celebrated actress Mrs. Jordan, who had borne him ten children, and
this connection had been made the subject of free and frank allusion in
some of the verses of Robert Burns. The British public, however, were
inclined, as Robert Burns was, to look forgivingly on the doings of the
Prince, for he was still a young man when his acquaintance with Mrs.
Jordan began. The British public liked him because he was a sailor, if
for nothing else, and men's eyes turned hopefully to him when it became
apparent that not much good was any longer to be looked for from George
the Fourth. In 1818 William married the eldest daughter of the Duke of
Saxe-Meiningen, and had two daughters, both of whom died in their
infancy. The Duke of Clarence had been noted, during the greater part
of his career, for his roughness of manner, and many anecdotes of him
were spread about which might have suited well the fun of some
historian belonging to the school of Brantôme, or some compiler of
memoirs after the fashion of Saint-Simon. Still he was the Sailor
King, and England had always, and naturally, loved sailors; and "go to
then," as might have been said in the days of Shakespeare, what further
explanation could be needed of the fact that William the Fourth opened
his career of royalty under favoring {98} auspices? It might seem to
the mind of some philosophical observer rather hard to get into
transports of enthusiasm about a new monarch aged sixty-five who during
all his previous career had done nothing of which to be particularly
proud, and had done many things of which a respectable person in
private life would have felt heartily ashamed. Still, the Duke of
Clarence had become William the Fourth, and was on the throne, and
great things might possibly be expected from him even yet, although he
was pretty well stricken in years. At all events, he was not George
the Fourth. So the public of these countries was in the mood to make
the best of him, and give him a loyal welcome, and wait for events with
the comfortable faith that even at sixty-five a man may begin a new
life, and find time and heart and intellect to do things of which no
promise whatever had been given during all his earlier years.
[Sidenote: 1830--The pocket boroughs]
William had been supposed up to the time of his accession to lean
towards the Whig, or what we should now call the Liberal party. His
manners were frank, familiar, and even rough. He cared little for
Court ceremonial of any kind, and was in the habit of walking about the
streets with his umbrella tucked under his arm, like any ordinary
Londoner. All this told rather in his favor, so far as the outer
public were concerned. There was supposed to be something rather
English, something rather typical of John Bull in the easy-going
manners of the new sovereign, which gave people an additional reason
for welcoming him. The new sovereign, however, had come in for times
of popular excitement, and even of trouble. There came a new
revolution in France--only a dynastic revolution, to be sure, and not a
national upheaval, but still it was a change which dethroned the newly
restored legitimate line of sovereigns. The elder branch of the
Bourbons was torn away and flung aside. There were to be no more kings
of France, but only kings of the French. Charles the Tenth was
deposed, and Louis Philippe, son of Philippe Egalité, was placed on the
throne. Charles the Tenth was the last of the legitimate kings of
France so far, and there does not {99} seem much chance in the
immediate future for any restoration of the fallen dynasty.
The overthrow of legitimacy in France had a strong effect on popular
opinion in England. It was plain that Charles the Tenth and his system
had come to ruin because the sovereign and his ministers would not move
with the common movement of the times over the greater part of the
European continent, and popular reformers in England took care that the
lesson should not be thrown away over here. Great changes had been
accomplished by popular movements even during the enfeebling and
disheartening reign of George the Fourth. Great progress had been made
towards the establishment of religious equality, or at all events
towards the removal of religious disqualifications among the Dissenters
and the Roman Catholics. There was a loud cry almost everywhere for
some measure of political reform. The conditions of the country had
been gradually undergoing a great change. England had been becoming
less and less dependent for her prosperity on her mere agricultural
resources, and had been growing more and more into a great
manufacturing community. Huge towns like Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds,
Birmingham, and Sheffield were arising in the Northern and Midland
regions. Liverpool was superseding Bristol as the great seaport of
commercial traffic. Yet in most cases the old-fashioned principle
still prevailed which in practice confined the Parliamentary
representation of the country to the members who sat for the counties,
and for what were called the pocket boroughs. The theory of the
Constitution, as it was understood, held that the sovereign summoned at
his own discretion and pleasure the persons whom he thought best
qualified to form a House of Commons, to consult with him as to the
government of the empire. The sovereign for this purpose conferred the
right of representation on this or that town, or district, or county,
according as he thought fit, and this arrangement had gone on from
generation to generation. Now it sometimes happened that a place that
had been comparatively popular and prosperous at the period when it
obtained the {100} right of representation had seen its prosperity and
its population gradually ebb away from it, and leave it little better
than a bare hill-side, and yet the bare hill-side retained the right of
representation, and its owner could send any one he pleased into the
House of Commons. There were numberless illustrations of this curious
anomaly all over the country. The great families of landed proprietors
naturally monopolized among them the representation of the counties,
and many of them enjoyed also the ownership of the small decaying or
totally decayed boroughs which still retained the right of returning
members to Parliament. On the other hand, the development of
manufacturing energy had caused the growth of great and populous towns
and cities, and most of these towns and cities were actually without
representation or the right of representation in the House of Commons.
Thus a condition of things had arisen which was certain to prove itself
incompatible with the spread of education and the growth of public
interest in all great questions of domestic reform.
[Sidenote: 1830--The Princess Victoria]
We have already seen in this history how the Whig party in Parliament,
and the popular agitators out of Parliament, had long been rousing the
national intelligence and the national conscience to a sense of the
growing necessity for some complete change in all that concerned the
representation of the people. The Duke of Wellington was at the head
of the Administration when George the Fourth died and William came to
the throne. The new King, as has been said, was supposed to have
Liberal inclinations as regarded political questions, and there was a
common expectation that he might begin his reign by summoning a new set
of ministers. The King, however, did nothing of the kind. He sent
messages to the Duke of Wellington telling him, in his usual familiar
and uncouth way, that he had always liked the Duke uncommonly well, and
did not see any reason why he should not keep him on as his Prime
Minister. This was, to begin with, a disappointment to the majority of
the public. The first royal speech from the throne contained other
matter of disappointment. There was great distress all over the {101}
country. The enormous expense of the long wars was still making itself
felt in huge taxation. The condition of agriculture was low, and many
districts were threatened with something like famine. Trade was
suffering from the reaction which always follows a long and exhausting
war. It was confidently expected that the royal speech would take some
account of the widespread national distress and would foreshadow some
measures to deal with it. The speech, however, said nothing on the
subject. Then there was another omission which created much
dissatisfaction and even some alarm. The speech made no mention of any
measures to be taken for the establishment of a regency in the event of
the King's death. The King was sixty-five years old, and had led a
life which even the most loyal and hopeful of his subjects could not
regard with confidence as likely to give promise of a long reign. Now
the heir-presumptive to the throne was the Princess Alexandrina
Victoria, a child then only eleven years old. The Princess Victoria,
as she was commonly called, was the daughter of the Duke of Kent, the
fourth son of George the Third. Any attack of illness, any serious
accident, might bring the life of King William to a sudden close, and
then if no previous arrangement had been made for a regency Parliament
and the country might be involved in some confusion.
There was one very grave and even ominous condition which had to be
taken into account. If the King were to die suddenly, and with no
provision made for a regency, the girl, perhaps the child, who
succeeded him would in the ordinary course of things be left under the
guardianship of her eldest uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Now it is
only stating a simple fact to say that the Duke of Cumberland was then
the most unpopular man in England. He was not merely unpopular, he was
an object of common dread and detestation. He was regarded as a
reckless profligate and an unprincipled schemer. There must have been
much exaggeration about some of the tales that were told and accepted
concerning him, for it is hard to believe that at a time so near to our
own a prince of {102} the Royal House of England could have lived a
life the story of which might seem to have belonged to the worst days
of the Lower Empire. But, whatever allowance be made for exaggeration,
it is certain that the Duke of Cumberland was almost universally hated,
and that many people seriously considered him quite capable of any plot
or any crime which might secure his own advancement to the throne.
Sanguine persons, indeed, saw a gleam of hope in the fact that the Duke
of Cumberland was in any case the heir to the crown of Hanover. In the
House of Hanover the succession is confined to the male line, and the
Princess Victoria had nothing to do with it. The hope, therefore, was
that the Duke of Cumberland would be content with the prospect of his
succession to the throne of Hanover, and that when the time arrived for
him to become King of Hanover he would betake himself to his new
kingdom and trouble England no more. Still the fact remained that just
as yet he was not King of Hanover, and that if no proper provisions
were made against a contingency he might become the guardian of the
girl, or the child, who was to succeed William the Fourth on the
English throne.
[Sidenote: 1830--The death of Huskisson]
King William, however, did not trouble himself much about all these
considerations. He did not see any reason why people should expect him
to die all of a sudden, and he could hardly be got to give any serious
attention to the question of a regency. It was then part of the
constitutional practice of the monarchy that a dissolution of
Parliament should take place when a new sovereign had come to the
throne. The practice has since ceased to be a part of our
constitutional usages, but in the days when William the Fourth came to
the throne it was a matter of course. The King, for some reason or
other, was anxious that a dissolution should take place as soon as
possible. It may be that he was merely desirous to find out how far
the existing Ministry had the support of the country, although it does
not seem quite likely that William's intelligence could have carried
him so near to the level of statesmanship as to make this elementary
question a {103} matter of consideration in his mind. The King's
principal ministers were the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel.
The most powerful among the leaders of Opposition were Charles, Earl
Grey, in the House of Lords and Henry Brougham and Lord John Russell in
the House of Commons. There was some doubt as to the position which
might be taken up by Canning and Huskisson and their friends. Some of
the Tories believed that they might be won over to support the Duke of
Wellington, in order to assist him in counteracting the efforts of the
more ardent and liberal reformers, like Grey and Brougham and Russell.
Fate soon settled the question so far at least as Huskisson was
concerned. The opening of the line of railway from Liverpool to
Manchester, the first line of any considerable length completed in
England, took place on September 15, 1830. The Duke of Wellington, Sir
Robert Peel, and Huskisson were among the distinguished visitors who
were present at the opening of the railway. The friends alike of the
Prime Minister and of the great expert in finance were anxious that the
two should come together on this occasion, and make a personal if not a
political reconciliation. The train stopped at a station; the Duke and
Huskisson both got out, and were approaching to meet each other, the
Duke holding out his hand, when an alarm was raised about the approach
of a locomotive. A rush was made for the carriages, and in the
confusion Huskisson was struck down by an open door in the moving
train, and suffered such injuries that his death almost immediately
followed. Huskisson was, beyond doubt, one of the most enlightened
statesmen of his time in all that concerned the financial arrangements
of the country. He might have been called a Liberal, just as we might
call Canning a Liberal, when we think of the general direction taken by
the policy of either man.
The dissatisfaction with which the speech from the throne was received
found its expression in no severer form, so far at least as Parliament
was concerned, than a motion by Lord Grey in the one House, and Lord
Althorp in the other, for a short delay to enable both Houses to {104}
consider the address in reply to the royal speech. It was made evident
that the delay sought for had to do with the question of a regency,
concerning which, as has been said, the King had not troubled himself
to make any announcement. Now the constitutional system of England had
taken no account, except through the provision of a regency, of the
fact that a child might become sovereign of the realm. Therefore, if
Parliament did not establish a regency during the lifetime of King
William, and if the King were soon to die through any accident or
malady, the child Princess would come to the throne under no further
constitutional restraints than those which belonged to the position of
a full-grown sovereign. There was another trouble, however, and one of
still graver political importance, awaiting the Ministry of the Duke of
Wellington.
[Sidenote: 1830--Brougham and Reform]
Henry Brougham gave notice in the House of Commons that on an early day
he would bring forward a motion to raise the whole question of reform
in the representative system of the country. Brougham, at this time,
was regarded as the most strenuous and powerful champion of reform in
the House of Commons. Lord John Russell had not yet had an opportunity
of proving how steadfast were his principles as a reformer, and how
great were the Parliamentary gifts which he had brought to the main
purpose of his life. Moreover, Lord John Russell never had any of the
kind of eloquence which made Brougham so powerful in and out of
Parliament. Brougham on a popular platform could outdo the most stormy
mob orator of the time. He was impassioned, boisterous, overwhelming
to a degree of which we can find no adequate illustration even in the
most tumultuous Trafalgar Square demonstrations of our later days.
Even in the House of Commons, and afterwards in what might be regarded
as the deadening atmosphere of the House of Lords, Brougham was
accustomed to shout and storm and gesticulate, to shake his fist and
stamp, after a fashion which was startling even in those days, and of
which now we have no living illustration. Brougham was at this time
almost at the very zenith of his popularity among the reformers all
over the country, {105} and more especially in the North of England.
When, therefore, Brougham announced that he was determined at the
earliest opportunity to raise the whole question of reform in the House
of Commons it became evident that the new reign was destined to open
with a momentous and long constitutional struggle, a struggle that
might be counted upon to mark an epoch in the history of England. The
news that the French legitimate monarchy had fallen and that Louis
Philippe reigned as King of the French--King of the barricades he was
commonly called--came in time to quicken men's hopes and animate their
passions for the approaching trial of strength between the old forms
and the new spirit.
The Government refused to agree to the one day's delay which was asked
for by the leaders of Opposition. On a division being taken there was
a majority for Ministers in both Houses, and the Duke of Wellington had
scored thus far. He had shown that he was personally determined not to
concede any point to the Opposition, and he had secured a victory.
Parliament was dissolved within a few days and the country was plunged
into a general election. At that time, it should be remembered, an
election was a very different sort of event from that which bears the
same name at the present day. An election contest could then,
according to the extent and nature of the constituency, run on for a
time not exceeding fifteen days, and it was accompanied by a practice
of bribery, lavish, open, shameless, and profligate, such as is totally
unknown to our more modern times, and such as our habits and feelings,
no more than our laws, would tolerate. Intimidation and violence were
also parts of every fiercely contested election, and those whom the law
excluded from any part in the struggle as electors were apt to find, in
that very exclusion, only another reason for taking part in it by the
use of physical force. Just at the time which we are now describing
there are many conditions which made a general election likely to be
especially stormy and turbulent.
The distress which prevailed throughout the country had in many
districts called up a spirit of something like {106} desperation, which
exhibited itself in a crime of almost entire novelty, the burning of
hayricks on farms. This offence became so widespread throughout large
parts of the country that it gave rise to theories about an organized
conspiracy against property which was supposed to be, in some vague
sort of way, an outcome of the socialistic excesses which had taken
place during the French Revolution and had been revived by the more
recent commotions in France. The probability is that the rick-burning
offences were, in the first instance, the outcome of sheer despair
seeking vengeance anywhere and anyhow for its own sufferings, and then
of the mere passion for imitation in crime which finds some manner of
illustration here and there at all periods of history. However that
may be, it is certain that the offences became very common, that they
were punished with merciless severity, and that the gallows was kept in
constant operation.
[Sidenote: 1830--A change in constitutional systems]
Now, it may be taken almost as a political axiom that whenever there is
great distress at the time of a general election it is certain to give
rise to some feeling of hostility against a Ministry, especially if the
Ministry had been for any length of time in power. A considerable
portion of the Tories had been turned against the Duke of Wellington
because, under the advice of Sir Robert Peel, he had yielded at last to
the demand for Catholic Emancipation, even although, as Peel and the
Duke himself declared, the concession had been made merely as a choice
between Catholic Emancipation and civil war. Some influential Tories
all over the country were asking whether Ireland had been pacified or
had shown herself in the least degree grateful because an instalment of
religious freedom had been granted to the Roman Catholics, and they
insisted that the Duke had surrendered the supremacy of the Established
Church to no purpose. It was certain, indeed, that O'Connell had not,
in the slightest degree, slackened the energy of his political movement
because the emancipating Act had been passed. Among the opponents of
reform, at all times, there are some who seem to hold that the granting
of one reform ought to be enough to put a stop to all demands for any
{107} other, and that it is mere ingratitude on the part of a man who
has just obtained permission to follow his own form of worship if he
wants also to be put on an equality with his neighbors as regards the
assertion of his political opinions. Therefore, the Ministry found, as
the elections went on, that they had not merely all the reformers
against them, but that a certain proportion of those who, in the
ordinary condition of things, would have been their supporters were
estranged from them merely because they had, under whatever pressure,
consented to introduce any manner of reform.
When the elections were over it seemed to reasonable observers very
doubtful indeed whether King William, however well inclined, would be
able to retain for any length of time the Duke of Wellington and Sir
Robert Peel as the leading advisers of the Crown. The country just
then may be described as in a state of transition from one
constitutional system to another. It was growing more clear, day by
day, that the time had gone by when the sovereign could hold to any one
particular minister, or set of ministers, in defiance of the majority
in the representative chamber and the strength of public opinion
out-of-doors. On the other hand, the time had not yet arrived when the
system introduced and established by the present reign could be relied
upon as part of the Constitution, and the sovereign could be trusted to
accept, without demur, the judgment of the House of Commons as to the
choice of his ministers. The new Parliament was opened on November 5,
and the Royal Speech gave but little satisfaction to reformers of any
class. It contained no recommendation of constitutional reform, and
indeed congratulated the whole population on having the advantage of
living under so faultless a political system. It concerned itself in
no wise about the distress that existed in the country, except that it
expressed much satisfaction at the manner in which the criminal laws
had been called into severe action for the repression of offences
against property.
The King conceded so much to public opinion as to recommend the
appointment of a regency, in order to {108} make provision for the
possibility of his life being cut short; but even this was only done in
a fashion that seemed to say, "If you really will have it that I am
likely to die soon you may humor yourselves by taking any course that
seems to satisfy your scruples--it is not worth my while to interfere
with your whims." The reformers therefore had clearly nothing to
expect so far as the Royal Speech could deal with expectations. But
they found that they had still less to expect from the intentions of
the Ministry.
[Sidenote: 1830--Wellington as a politician]
In the debate on the address, in reply to the speech from the throne,
Lord Grey took occasion to ask for some exposition of Ministerial
policy with regard to reform of the representative system. Then the
Duke of Wellington delivered a speech which may be described as unique
in its way. It would be impossible to put into words any statement
more frankly opposed to all Parliamentary reform. The greatest orator
that ever lived, the profoundest judge who ever laid down the law to a
jury, could not have prepared a statement more comprehensive and more
exact as a condemnation of all reform than that which the victor of
Waterloo was able to enunciate with all confidence and satisfaction.
He laid it down that it would be utterly beyond the power of the wisest
political philosopher to devise a Constitution so near to absolute
perfection as that with which Englishmen living in the reign of his
present Majesty, William the Fourth, had been endowed by the wisdom of
their ancestors. He affirmed that he had never heard any suggestion
which contained the slightest promise of an improvement on that
Constitution. He repeated, in various forms of repetition, that
Englishmen already possessed all the freedom that it was good for men
to have, that the rights of all classes were equally maintained, that
the happiness of every one was secured, so far as law could secure it,
and that the only thing for reasonable Englishmen to do was to open
their eyes and recognize the advantages conferred upon them by the
Constitution under which they were happy enough to live.
The Duke of Wellington probably knew nothing of {109} Voltaire's
philosopher who maintained that everything was for the best in this
best of all possible worlds, but he seemed to be pervaded by the same
sentiment of complete satisfaction when he contemplated the British
Constitution. Finally, he declared that, so far from having any
intention to touch with irreverent hand that sacred political structure
for the vain purpose of improvement, he was determined to resist to the
uttermost of his power every effort to interfere with the
constitutional arrangements which had done so much for the prosperity
and the glory of the empire. We do not quote the exact words of the
Duke of Wellington's speech, but we feel sure we are giving a faithful
version of the meaning which he intended to convey and succeeded very
clearly in conveying. The Duke of Wellington was undoubtedly one of
the greatest soldiers the world has ever seen. As a soldier of
conquest he was not indeed to be compared with an Alexander, a Caesar,
or a Napoleon, but as a soldier of defence he has probably never had a
superior. As an administrator, too, he had shown immense capacity both
in India and in Europe, and had more than once brought what seemed
absolute chaos into order and shape. But he had no gift for the
understanding of politics, and it was happy for him, at more than one
crisis of his career, that he was quite aware of his own political
incapacity and was ready to defer to the judgment of other men who
understood such things better than he did. We have already seen how he
accepted the guidance of Peel when it became necessary to yield the
claim for Catholic Emancipation, and he was commonly in the habit of
saying that Peel understood all such matters better than he could
pretend to. He was not, therefore, the minister who would ruin a State
or bring a State into revolution by obstinate adhesion to his own views
in despite of every advice and every warning, and no doubt when he was
delivering his harangue against all possible schemes of reform he felt
still convinced that he was merely expressing the unalterable opinion
of Peel and every other loyal subject whose judgment ought to prevail
with a law-abiding people.
{110}
In the House of Commons Brougham gave notice that on an early day he
would bring forward a motion on the subject of political reform. Thus,
therefore, the trumpet of battle was sounded on both sides. The
struggle must now be fought out to the end. Nothing, however, could be
done until the Ministry had been driven from office, and it was not by
any means certain that in the House of Commons, as it was then
constituted, a direct vote on the question of reform would end in a
defeat of the Duke of Wellington's Government. Something that seemed
almost like an accident brought about a crisis sooner than had been
anticipated. Sir Henry Parnell brought forward a motion for the
appointment of a select committee to inquire into, and report upon, the
estimates and amounts submitted by his Majesty with regard to the civil
service. This motion had the support of the Liberal leaders and was
strongly opposed by the Government. No one could have been surprised
at the opposition offered by the Government, for Sir Henry Parnell's
was just the sort of motion which every Ministry is sure to oppose. A
government prepares its own estimates, and is not apt to be in favor of
the appointment of an outside committee to inquire into their amount
and their appropriation. Still, the whole question was not one to be
regarded as of capital importance in ordinary times, and therefore,
although the debate was one of great interest both inside and outside
the House of Commons, it did not seem likely to lead to any momentous
and immediate consequences.
[Sidenote: 1830--Ministerial resignations]
Sir Henry Parnell was a man of ability and character, and was regarded
in the House as an authority on financial questions. He belonged to
the family of Parnell the poet, the friend of Swift and Pope, and he
afterwards became the first Lord Congleton, taking his title from that
part of Cheshire where the poet and his ancestors had lived. In years,
much later years, that belonged to our own times another member of the
Parnell family made for himself a conspicuous place in the House of
Commons and in Imperial politics, the late Charles Stewart Parnell, the
famous leader of the Irish National party. Sir Henry {111} Parnell
carried his motion by a majority of twenty-nine in the House of Commons.
Now in the ordinary course of things there was nothing in such an event
to compel the resignation of a Ministry. It would have been quite
reasonable for any Government to express a willingness to meet the
wishes of the House on such a subject, to agree to the appointment of a
committee, and then go on as if nothing particular had occurred. But
it sometimes happens that a Government is willing, or even anxious, to
accept defeat on a side issue, although of minor importance, in order
to escape from, or at all events to postpone, a decision on some
question of vital import. Sometimes, too, there are reasons, well
known to all members of a Government but not yet in the knowledge of
the public, which incline a Ministry to find a reason for resigning
office in the result of some casual division which cannot be said to
amount to a vote of want of confidence. Not many years have passed
since a Liberal Government, which might have seemed to ordinary
observers to be secure in its position, thought it well to accept a
vote on the supply of cordite in the army stores as a vote of want of
confidence, and accordingly went out of office. The Duke of Wellington
and Sir Robert Peel appear to have come to the conclusion that the
success of Sir Henry Parnell's motion would furnish them with a
plausible excuse for withdrawing at a convenient moment from an
unpromising position. Henry Brougham, as we have already said, had
given formal notice in the House of Commons that he would bring forward
a motion for leave to introduce a definite scheme of Parliamentary
reform. Now everybody knew that Brougham was at that time thoroughly
earnest on the subject of reform, and that he had, during the recent
general election, the best possible reasons for knowing that the great
majority in the North of England, at all events, was behind him. On
the other hand, ministers themselves had had ample opportunities of
finding out, during the elections, that a large number of those whom at
other times they might have regarded as their own supporters were
estranged from them or had actually turned {112} against them. The
Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel probably thought that their
wisest course would be to let Lord Grey and Brougham and their friends
try what they could do with the monstrous spectre of reform which they
had conjured up, and wait till the country had recovered its senses
before again undertaking to act as ministers of the Crown.
[Sidenote: 1830--Wellington and Peel resign]
An odd and rather absurd incident, which created much scandal and alarm
at the time, and soon passed out of public recollection, had helped no
doubt to bring the Duke of Wellington and Peel to their decision. The
King and Queen had been invited to dine with the Lord Mayor and the
Corporation at the Guildhall on November 9, and had accepted the
invitation. The Duke of Wellington and the other ministers were to be
among the guests.
Shortly before the appointed day the Duke of Wellington got a letter
from the Lord Mayor-elect, telling him that he had received private
information about some mysterious organized attempt to be made against
the Duke himself on the occasion of his visit to the City, and urging
the Duke to have the streets well guarded with soldiers, in order to
prevent the success of any such lawless and atrocious enterprise. Now
the Duke was not a man to care much, personally, about an alarm of this
kind, but he thought it would be rather an unseemly spectacle if the
streets of the City had to be guarded by troops when the new sovereign
went to be the guest of the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall. The attempt,
to be sure, was said to be directed against the Duke himself and not
against the King; but still it would hardly do, it would scarcely have
a happy effect on public opinion at home and abroad, if the first visit
of the Sailor King, the popular William, to the City were to be made
the occasion of a murderous attack on the King's Prime Minister. It
might get into the public mind that what had happened in Paris was
likely to happen in London, and the effect on Europe might be most
damaging to the credit of the country. So the banquet was put off; the
sovereign and his Prime Minister did not visit the City. A vague panic
raged everywhere, {113} and the Funds went alarmingly down. The story
which had impressed the Lord Mayor-elect was in all likelihood only a
mere scare. But it had, no doubt, some effect in deciding the action
of the Ministry. At all events, the Duke of Wellington and his
colleagues determined to try what strength the reformers had behind
them. They tendered their resignation; the King was prevailed upon to
accept it, and it was announced to Parliament and the public that the
Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were no longer in office.
{114}