PEEL'S FORLORN HOPE.
[Sidenote: 1834--Retirement of Lord Grey]
Lord Grey was growing tired of the work of that Administration. It had
been incessant work, and its great successes of later years had been
checkered by some disappointments, which, although not deep-reaching,
were irritating and disturbing. Some of his most capable colleagues
had broken away from him, and he probably began to feel that the
reformers all over the country expected more of him than he saw his way
to accomplish. In 1834 he asked to be relieved from the duties of his
office, and the King consented, probably with greater good-will than he
had felt in acceding to some of Lord Grey's previous requests, and
accordingly Lord Grey ceased to be Prime Minister. With his
resignation of office Lord Grey passes out of this history and takes an
abiding place in the Parliamentary history of his country. He can
hardly be called a great statesman, for he had been mainly instrumental
in bringing to success and putting into legislative form the ideas of
greater men, but his must be regarded as a distinguished and noble
figure among England's Parliamentary leaders. He was especially suited
for the work which it was his proud fortune to accomplish at the zenith
of his power, for no one could be better fitted than he for the task of
discountenancing the wild alarms which were felt by so many belonging
to what were called the privileged classes at the thought of any
measures of reform which might disturb the existing order of things,
and lead to red ruin and the breaking-up of laws. On Lord Grey's
retirement he was succeeded as Prime Minister by Lord Melbourne, who
had previously been Home Secretary. Lord Melbourne might have been
thought just the sort of {234} person with whom King William could
easily get on, because such a Prime Minister was not likely to vex his
sovereign's unwilling ear by too many demands for rapid and
far-reaching reform. Melbourne was a thoroughly easy, not to say lazy,
man. He was certainly not wanting in intellect, he had some culture,
he was a great reader of books and a great lover of books, and he was
often only too glad to escape into literary talk and literary gossip
from discussions on political questions and measures to be introduced
into Parliament. He was fond of society, made himself generally
agreeable to women, and was usually well acquainted with the passing
scandals of high social life.
[Sidenote: 1834--Peel to be Premier]
One might, indeed, have thought that such a man was just the minister
in whom King William would find a congenial companion and adviser. But
the truth was that the King had grown tired of the Whig statesmen, and
had long been looking out for an opportunity to get rid of them on easy
terms. Perhaps he did not quite like the idea of telling a man of Lord
Grey's stately demeanor that he wished to dispense with his services
and saw in Lord Melbourne a minister who could be approached on any
subject without much sensation of awe. However that may be, the King
soon found what seemed to him a satisfactory opportunity for ridding
himself of the presence of his Whig advisers. Lord Althorp was
suddenly raised to the House of Lords by the death of his father. Earl
Spencer, and of course some rearrangement of the Ministry became
necessary, as it would not be possible that the Chancellor of the
Exchequer should have a ministerial place anywhere but in the House
which has the levying of the taxes and the spending of the money. When
Lord Melbourne came to advise with his sovereign on the subject the
King informed him, in the most direct and off-hand manner, that he
contemplated a much more complete rearrangement than Lord Melbourne had
suggested, and, in fact, that he had made up his mind to get rid of the
present Government altogether. Lord Melbourne, of course, bowed to the
will of his master, and, indeed, was not the sort of man to take a
{235} dismissal from office greatly to heart, believing it, no doubt,
quite likely that some restoration to office might await him, and
possibly feeling that life had some enjoyments left for him even though
he were never again to be Prime Minister.
The King determined to send for Sir Robert Peel and intrust him with
the task of forming an Administration. William had, as might naturally
be expected of him, consulted in the first instance with the Duke of
Wellington. Wellington, with the practical good sense which was a part
of his character, had told the sovereign that at such a time it was
futile to think of calling upon any one to become Prime Minister who
had not a seat in the House of Commons. As the King was resolved to
have a new Administration, Peel was obviously the man to be intrusted
with the task of forming it, and therefore the King sent for him at
once. But Peel was not in England; he had gone with his wife to Italy,
and, as we know from his own published letters, he had not entered into
any communication, even with the Duke of Wellington, as to the probable
movements of political affairs in his absence, not supposing for a
moment that any emergency could arise at home which might make it
necessary for him to cut short his holiday and return to the working
ground of Westminster. A special messenger had to be sent off at once
to convey to Peel the wishes of his sovereign, and one has to stop and
think over things a little before he can quite realize what it meant in
those days, which seem so near our own, to send a special message from
London to the heart of Italy. Peel was at Rome, and had just returned
with his wife one night from a great ball given by a celebrated Italian
Princess, when he received the letter which urged him to come back and
become for the first time Prime Minister of England. Peel's mind was
at once made up. That sense of duty which always guided his movements
dictated his reply. There was for him no question of personal pride or
ambition to be gratified, or of any graceful effort to affect the ways
of one who modestly shrinks from a task beyond his power. He saw that
his sovereign needed {236} his immediate services, and that was enough
for him. He and his wife were just on the eve of what had promised to
be a delightful visit to Naples, but the visit to Naples was put off
without a second thought to the indefinite future, and the statesman
and his wife set out at once on their journey to London. The
preparations for such a journey at that time were such as might give
pause even to an experienced explorer in our own easy-going and
luxurious age. Sir Robert Peel, of course, had to travel by private
carriage. He had to traverse more than one State in order to reach the
sea at Calais. The roads were dangerous in many places, and Peel had
to take some well-armed servants with him. He had to go well provided
with the most elaborate official passports. He had even to obtain a
special passport for himself, lest, in the event of his wife finding
the constant travel too much for her, she might have to take rest at
some town on the way, and Peel, if he attempted to continue his
journey, might be stopped somewhere until he had satisfactorily
accounted for the disappearance of the lady who was described in the
original passports as his travelling companion and his wife. The
journey was interrupted by unforeseen obstacles in several places. At
one spot the rising of a river relentlessly barricaded the progress of
the travellers for many hours. At another point a bridge was broken
down. In France, Peel and his wife were brought to a stand at the city
of Lyons because that city happened just then to be in a state of
siege, and the travellers had to furnish satisfactory evidence that
they were not emissaries of some revolutionary propaganda. It took
twelve days to cover the distance from Rome to Dover, and, except for
such delays as have just been mentioned, our travellers had gone on
night and day without stopping. Even when they arrived at Dover, Peel
took no thought about rest, but journeyed on all night until he reached
London.
[Sidenote: 1834--The difficulties that beset Peel]
Peel himself tells us in his memoirs that the long travel had at least
the advantage of giving him time enough to think out his course of
action and the best way of serving his sovereign and his country. The
journey, he says, {237} allowed him to do this coolly and without
interruption. He certainly had time enough for the purpose, but it
must have needed all Peel's strength of character to enable him to give
his mind up to such considerations during a course so toilsome, so
rugged, so dangerous, and often so rudely interrupted. He arrived in
London at an early hour on the morning of December 9, 1834, and he set
off at once to present himself to the King, by whom, it need hardly be
said, he was very cordially welcomed. The welcome became all the more
warm because he was willing to accept the important task which the King
desired to intrust to him, and would enter without delay on the work of
endeavoring to form a Ministry. Now, in order to do justice to Peel's
patriotic purpose in undertaking this difficult task, we have to bear
in mind that he did not personally approve of the King's action in
breaking up the Melbourne Administration, or even of the manner in
which it had been broken up. He knew well enough that the King had
grown tired of the Whig Ministry, but he did not think the King's
personal feelings were a complete justification for William's dismissal
of a set of men whom he had consented to place in power. Peel did not
regard the mere necessity for a rearrangement consequent on Lord
Althorp's removal to the House of Lords as anything like a fitting
excuse for the break-up of the whole Government. More than that, Peel
had no confidence in the chances of a new Conservative Administration
just then. It was not encouraging to a statesman about to form his
first Cabinet to have to believe, as Peel did, that such a Government
would be left very much at the mercy of the Opposition, and in more
than one important or even impending question might at any time be
outvoted in the House of Commons. None the less, however, was Peel
resolved to stand by his sovereign, who appeared to be in a difficulty.
The same sense of public duty, according to his conception of public
duty, which guided him at every great crisis of his political career
decided his action in this instance. He set himself to the work of
forming an Administration in which he proposed to take under his own
charge the functions of {238} Prime Minister and the office of
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He knew that he could count on the
support of the Duke of Wellington, and to Wellington he offered the
post of Secretary for Foreign Affairs, which was at once accepted.
Then he wrote to Sir James Graham and to Lord Stanley. Both refused.
Sir James Graham, although he declined to accept office, promised Peel
all the support he could give consistently with his own judgment and
his own political views. Lord Stanley wrote a letter to Peel which has
even still both historical and personal interest. Its historical
interest consists in the clear exposition it contains of the various
questions which then divided the two great parties in the State. Its
personal interest is found in the fact that it shows Lord Stanley as
the convinced reformer, who sees no possibility of his joining an
Administration about to be created by a statesman whose whole career
has been antagonistic to political reform. Those of us who remember
the brilliant orator Lord Derby, by whom the office of Prime Minister
was three times held, find it hard to think of him as anything but a
steady-going Conservative at heart, and may be excused a shock of
surprise when they are bidden to remember that in 1834 the same man,
then Lord Stanley, declared that he could not serve under Peel because
Peel was not reformer enough all round to secure his co-operation.
Lord Stanley pointed out, in his letter, that between Peel and himself
there had been a complete difference of opinion on almost every great
public question except that which concerned the State Church, and he
reminded Peel that so lately as on the occasion of Lord Grey's
retirement from office the Duke of Wellington had seized the
opportunity of publicly condemning the whole policy of the Whig
Administration. Under these circumstances Lord Stanley declared that,
in his opinion, it would be injurious to his own character and
injurious to the new Government as well if he were to accept the offer
of a place in such an Administration. He had left Lord Grey's
Government because he differed with Lord Grey on one question alone,
which then had to be dealt with, and he could not join a Government of
which {239} Peel and Wellington were to be the leaders, from whom he
had differed on almost every great political question that had engaged
the attention of the country during his time.
[Sidenote: 1834--Peel forms his Ministry]
Peel had nothing for it but to go on with his task and form the best
Administration he could. Lord Lyndhurst was once again to be Lord
Chancellor, and in such a man Peel certainly found a colleague who had
no superior either as a lawyer or a debater in the House of Lords.
Some of us who can still remember having heard Lord Lyndhurst deliver
long and powerful speeches in the House of Lords, compelling the
attention and the admiration of every listener when the orator himself
had long left his eightieth year behind him, will feel sure that Sir
Robert Peel's first Administration was adequately represented in the
hereditary chamber. It is not necessary to introduce here a full list
of the new Ministry, but there are three names which call for special
mention. These are the names of three young men who then entered
ministerial office for the first time, and with whom the world
afterwards became well acquainted, each according to his different way.
One was William Ewart Gladstone, who became Junior Lord of the
Treasury, and whom the world has long since recognized as the greatest
statesman and the greatest master of the House of Commons known to the
reign of Queen Victoria. The second was Sidney Herbert, who was for
many years one of the most ready, accomplished, and brilliant debaters
in that House, and whose premature death cut short a career that had
seemed to be steadily rising from day to day. The third was a man
whose political life has long since been forgotten, but whose name is
well remembered because of his success in quite a different
field--Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the charming author of delightful
verses, the founder of that English school of minstrelsy which sings
for the drawing-room and the club-room, the feasts and the fashions,
the joys and the well-ordered troubles of the West-End. Sidney Herbert
and Praed were made joint Secretaries to the Board of Control, the
department established by Pitt for directing the Government of India.
{240}
The new Prime Minister believed that it would be in every way more
suitable to the convenience of the country that he and his colleagues
should submit their political claims and purposes to the judgment of
the constituencies by means of a general election. A dissolution
accordingly took place, and Peel issued an address to the electors of
Tamworth, which will always be regarded as an important political
document. Although Peel had been an opponent of the principles
embodied in the Reform Bill, no reformer in the country understood
better than he did the impossibility, at such a time, of carrying on
the work of the Government without a thorough understanding between the
Ministry and the Parliament, between the Parliament and the public
out-of-doors. No one knew better than Peel that the time had gone by,
never to return, when an English minister could rule as an English
minister even so lately as in the days of Pitt had done, merely by the
approval and the support of a monarch without the approval and support
of a majority of the electors. When, therefore, Peel prepared his
address to his Tamworth constituents he knew perfectly well that his
words were meant, not merely for the friendly ears of the little
constituency, but for the consideration of the whole country. The same
feeling actuated the great statesman during the entire course of his
subsequent career, and the constituency of Tamworth had therefore the
advantage of being favored from time to time with election addresses
which form chapters of the highest interest and importance in the
historical literature of the country. The address which he issued to
his constituents before the general election in December, 1834,
proclaimed, in fact, the opening of a new political era in England.
[Sidenote: 1834-34--Peel's Tamworth address]
Peel made frank announcement that, so far as he and his friends were
concerned, the controversy about Parliamentary reform had come to an
end. By him and by them the decision of Parliament, which sanctioned
the introduction of the Reform Bill of 1832, was accepted as a final
settlement of the question. Peel declared that he regarded it as "a
settlement which no friend to the peace {241} of the country would
attempt to disturb, either by direct or by insidious means." Of course
it was not to be understood that Peel had any intention of describing
the Reform Act of 1832 as the last word of the Reformers' creed, and
the close of all possible controversy with regard to the construction
of the whole Parliamentary system. Peel no more meant to convey any
idea of this kind than did Lord John Russell, when he used the word
finality in connection with the Reform Act, mean to convey the idea
that, according to his conviction, Parliament was never again to be
invited to extend the electoral franchise or to modify the conditions
under which the votes of the electors were to be given. The
announcement which Peel made to the electors of Tamworth, and to the
world in general, was that he and his friends recognized the
establishment of the representative principle in English political
life, accepted the new order of things as a result of a lawful decree,
and separated themselves altogether from the antiquated Toryism which
enshrined the old ideas of government as a religious faith, and revered
the memory of the nomination boroughs, as the Jacobites revered the
memory of the Stuarts. With the issue of Peel's Tamworth address in
the December of 1834, the antique Tory, the Tory who made Toryism of
the ante-reform days a creed and a cult, may be said to disappear
altogether from the ranks of practical English politicians. The Tory
of the old school appears, no doubt, here and there through all
Parliamentary days down to our own time. We saw him in both Houses of
Parliament as a heroic, unteachable opponent of Peel himself, of Bright
and Cobden, of Gladstone, and sometimes even of Lord Derby and of Lord
Salisbury, but he was merely a living protest against the succession of
new ideas, and was no longer to be counted as a practical politician.
Sir Robert Peel soon saw that he had not gained much by his appeal to
the constituencies. The results of the general election showed that
the Conservatives had made a considerable addition to their numbers in
the House of Commons, but showed also that they were still in a
disheartening minority. The return of the first Reform {242}
Parliament had, indeed, exhibited them for the time as completely down
in the dust, for there was a majority of more than three hundred
against them, and now the Liberal majority was hardly more than one
hundred. A very hopeful Conservative, or a Conservative who had a
profound faith in the principles of antique Toryism, might fill himself
with the fond belief that this increase in the Conservative vote
foretold a gradual return to the good old days. But Peel was too
practical a statesman to be touched for a moment by any such illusion.
He had fully expected some increase in the Tory vote. He knew, as well
as anybody could know, that there had been some disappointment among
the more advanced and impatient reformers all over the country with the
achievements of the first reformed Parliament, and, indeed, with the
Act of Reform itself. After victory in a long-contested political
battle there comes, almost as a matter of course, a season of relaxed
effort among the ranks of the victors, for which allowance would have
to be made in the mind of such a statesman as Peel, and, in this
instance, allowance also had to be made for a falling off in the
enthusiasm of those who had helped to carry the Reform movement to
success, and found themselves in the end left out of all its direct
advantages.
[Sidenote: 1835--The Office of Speaker]
Peel saw at once that his Government must be absolutely at the mercy of
the Opposition when any question arose on which it suited the purposes
of the Opposition leaders to rally their whole forces around them and
take a party division. So far as the ordinary business of the session
was concerned, the Ministry might get on well enough, for there must
have been a considerable amount of routine work which would not provoke
the Opposition to a trial of strength; but if chance or hostile
strategy should bring about at any moment a controversy which called
for a strictly party division, then the Government must go down.
Nothing can be more trying to a proud-spirited statesman in office than
the knowledge that he can only maintain his Government, from day to
day, because, for one reason or another, it does not suit the
convenience of the Opposition to press some vote which must leave him
and his colleagues {243} in a distinct minority. Peel had not long to
wait before he found substantial evidence to justify his most gloomy
forebodings.
The new Parliament met on February 19, 1835. The first trial of
strength was on the election of a new Speaker. The former occupant of
the office having been put forward for re-election, the Government were
beaten by a majority of ten. Now this was a very damaging event for
the ministers, and also an event somewhat unusual in the House of
Commons. There is generally a sort of understanding, more or less
distinctly expressed, that the candidate put forward by the Government
for the office of Speaker is to be a man on whom both sides of the
House can agree. It is obviously undesirable that there should be a
party struggle over the appointment of the official who is assumed to
hold an absolutely impartial position and is not supposed to be the
mere favorite of either side of the House. In later years there has
often been a distinct arrangement, or, at all events, a clear
understanding, between the Government and the Opposition on this
subject, and a candidate is not put forward unless there is good reason
to assume that he will be acceptable to the two great political
parties. In this instance no such understanding existed, or had been
sought for. The Opposition set up a candidate of their own, and the
nominee of the Government was defeated. There was, however, one
condition in this defeat which, although it did not take away from the
ominous character of the event, might, to a certain extent, have
relieved Peel from the necessity of regarding it as an absolute party
defeat. The majority had been obtained for the Opposition by the
support of the Irish members who followed the leadership of Daniel
O'Connell, and thus Sir Robert Peel saw himself outvoted by a
combination of two parties, one of them regarded with peculiar disfavor
by the majority of the English public on both sides of the political
field. It was something for the followers of the Government to be able
to say that their Liberal opponents had only been able to score a
success by the help of the unpopular Irish vote, and it became, in
fact, a new accusation against the {244} Liberals that they had traded
on the favor of O'Connell and his Irish followers. From about this
time the Irish vote has always played an important part in all the
struggles of parties in the House of Commons; and it will be observed
that the English Party, whether Liberal or Tory, against which that
vote is directed is always ready with epithets of scorn and anger for
the English Party for whom that vote has been given.
[Sidenote: 1835--Peel and the Opposition]
Several other humiliations awaited Peel as the session went on.
Sometimes he was saved from defeat on a question of finance by the help
of the more advanced Liberals, who came to his assistance when certain
of his own Tory followers were prepared to desert him because his views
on some question of taxation were much too new-fashioned for their own
old-fashioned notions. Every one who has paid any attention to
Parliamentary history can understand how distressing is the position of
a minister who has no absolute majority at his command, and how more
distressing still is the position of a minister who can only look to
chance disruptions and combinations of parties for any possible
majority. Peel bore himself throughout all the trials of that most
trying time with indomitable courage and with unfailing skill. Never
during his whole career did he prove himself more brilliant and more
full of resource than as the leader of what might be called an utterly
hopeless struggle. The highest tribute has been paid to his
never-failing tact and temper during that trying ordeal by his
principal opponent in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell. Russell
was now the leader of the Liberal Opposition in the House of Commons,
and the struggle of parties was once again illustrated by a sort of
continuous Parliamentary duel between two rival leaders. The same
phenomenon had been seen, from time to time, in the days of Queen Anne
and in the days of the Georges; and it was seen again, at intervals,
during some of the most vivid and fascinating passages of Parliamentary
history in the reign of Queen Victoria.
The crisis, however, came soon to this first Ministry of Sir Robert
Peel. Peel had announced, in a reasonable and {245} manful spirit,
considering how the task of holding together a Ministry had been
imposed on him and the temptation which it afforded for the attacks of
irresponsible enemies, that he would not resign office on any side
issue or question of purely factitious importance, and that he would
hold his place unless defeated by a vote of want of confidence or a
vote of censure. He challenged the leader of the Opposition to test
the feeling of the House by a division on a question of that nature.
Lord John Russell refused to take any such course, declaring that he
believed it his duty to wait and see what might be the nature of the
measures of reform which the Government had promised to introduce
before inviting the House to say whether the Government deserved or did
not deserve its confidence. Some of the measures announced by the
Government had to do with the reform of the ecclesiastical courts and
the maintenance of Church discipline, and Sir Robert Peel had himself
given notice of a measure to deal with the Irish tithe system, the
principal object of which was understood to be the transfer of the
liability of the payment of tithes from the shoulders of the tenant to
the shoulders of the landlord. It was not unreasonable that the
Opposition should proclaim it their policy to wait and see what the
Tory ministers really proposed to do before assailing them with a
direct and general vote of want of confidence. Even, however, if the
Opposition had been inclined to linger before inviting a real trial of
strength, there was a feeling growing up all over the country which
seemed impatient of mere episodical encounters leading to nothing in
particular. The leaders of the Opposition had a very distinct policy
in their minds, and on March 30, 1835, it found its formal expression.
Lord John Russell moved a resolution which called upon the House to
resolve itself into a committee "in order to consider the present state
of the Church established in Ireland, with the view of applying any
surplus of revenues not required for the spiritual care of its members
to the general education of all classes of the people without
distinction of religious persuasion." Now here, it will be seen, {246}
was the battle-ground distinctly marked out on which the two political
parties must come, sooner or later, to a decisive struggle. About the
collection of tithes, about the imposition of tithes, about the class
of the community on whom the direct responsibility for the payment of
tithes ought to fall, there might possibly be a basis of agreement
found between Tories and Whigs. But when there arose a question as to
the appropriation of the Church revenues, there the old doctrines and
the new, the old Tories and the new Reformers, came into irreconcilable
antagonism. The creed of the Tories was that the revenues of the
Church belonged to the Church itself, and that if the Church had a
surplus of funds here or there for any one particular purpose that
surplus could be applied by it to some of its other purposes, but that
no legislature had any right to say to the Church, "You have more money
here than is needed for your own rights, and we have a right to take
part of it away from you and apply it for the uses of the general
public." The Government, therefore, accepted Lord John Russell's
resolution as a distinct challenge to a trial of strength on an
essential question of policy.
[Sidenote: 1835--William Ewart Gladstone]
The debate which followed lasted through four days, and all the members
of the House on both sides took part in it. The reports of that
momentous debate may be read with the deepest interest even at this
day, when some of the prophecies intended as terrible warnings by some
of the Conservative orators have long since been verified as facts, and
are calmly accepted by all parties as the inevitable results of
rational legislation. Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham,
and most others who spoke on the Ministerial side spoke with one voice,
in warning the House of Commons that if it claimed a right to touch any
of the revenues of the Irish State Church in order to appropriate them
for the general education of the Irish people, the result must be that
the time would come when the Irish Church itself would no longer be
held sacred against the desecrating hand of the modern reformer, would
be treated as no longer necessary to the welfare of the Irish people,
and would be severed from the State and left upon a level {247} with
the Roman Catholic Church and the various dissenting denominations.
One appeal which may be said to run through the whole of the speeches
on the side of the Government is familiar to the readers and the
audiences of all political debates, whore any manner of Reform is under
discussion. "You are asked"--so runs the argument--"to adopt this sort
of policy in order to satisfy the demands of a certain class of the
population; but how do you know, what guarantee can you give us, that
when we have granted these demands they will be content and will not
immediately begin to ask for more? We granted Catholic Emancipation in
order to satisfy Ireland, and now is Ireland satisfied? It was only
the other day we granted Catholic Emancipation, and now already Ireland
declares, through her representatives, that she ought to have part of
the revenues of the Irish State Church taken away from that Church and
applied to the common uses of the Irish people. If she gets even that,
will Ireland be contented? Will she not go on to demand repeal of the
Union?" We turn with peculiar interest to the speech of a young Tory
member which was listened to with great attention during the debate,
and was believed to contain unmistakable promise of an important
political career. So indeed it did, although the promise that career
actually realized was not altogether of the kind which most of its
audience were led to anticipate. It was the speech of Mr. William
Ewart Gladstone. "The present motion," said Mr. Gladstone, "opens a
boundless road--it will lead to measure after measure, to expedient
after expedient, till we come to the recognition of the Roman Catholic
religion as the national one. In principle, we propose to give up the
Protestant Establishment. If so, why not abandon the political
government of Ireland and concede the repeal of the legislative union."
"There is no principle," he went on to say, "on which the Protestant
Church can be permanently upheld, but that it is the Church which
teaches the truth." That, he insisted, was the position which the
House ought to maintain without allowing its decision to be affected by
the mere {248} assertion, even if the assertion were capable of proof,
that the revenues of the State Church in Ireland were entirely out of
proportion to the spiritual needs of the Protestant population. Mr.
Gladstone, however, had the mind of the financier even in those early
days of his career, and he was at some pains to argue that the
disproportion between the numbers of the Protestant and the Catholic
populations in Ireland was not so great as Lord John Russell had
asserted. He made out this part of his case ingeniously enough by
including in the Protestant population in Ireland all the various
members of the dissenting denominations, many or most of whom were as
little likely to attend the administrations of the Established Church
as the Roman Catholics themselves.
[Sidenote: 1835--Defeat of Peel's Ministry]
Gladstone's speech was thoroughly consistent in its opposition to Lord
John Russell's resolution on the ground that that resolution, if
pressed to its legitimate conclusion, assailed the whole principle on
which the State Church in Ireland was founded. "I hope," he said, "I
shall never live to see the day when such a system shall be adopted in
this country, for the consequences of it to public men will be
lamentable beyond all description. If those individuals who are called
on to fulfil the high function of administering public affairs should
be compelled to exclude from their consideration the elements of true
religion, and to view various strange and conflicting doctrines in the
same light, instead of administering those noble functions, they will
become helots and slaves." The weakness of Mr. Gladstone's case was
found in the fact that he insisted on regarding the State Church in
Ireland as resting on precisely the same foundations as those which
upheld the State Church in England. The truth was afterwards brought
home to him that every argument which could be fairly used to justify
the maintenance of the State Church in England was but another argument
for the abolition of the State Church in Ireland--a work which it
became at last his duty to accomplish. "I shall content myself," said
Daniel O'Connell in his speech in the debate, "with laying down the
broad principle that the {249} emoluments of a Church ought not to be
raised from a people who do not belong to it. Ireland does not ask for
a Catholic Establishment. The Irish desire political equality in every
respect, except that they would not accept a single shilling for their
Church."
Sir Robert Peel made a speech which was at once very powerful and very
plausible. It was not, perhaps, pitched in a very exalted key, but it
was full of argument, at once subtle and telling. He challenged the
accuracy of Lord John Russell's figures, and declaimed against the
injustice of inviting the House to pass a resolution founded on
statistics which it had as yet no possible opportunity of verifying or
even of examining. He pointed out that the Government had already
given notice of their intention to bring in measures to deal with the
very question concerned in Lord John Russell's resolution; and he asked
what sincerity there could be in the purposes of men who professed a
desire to amend as quickly as possible the tithe system in Ireland, and
who yet were eager to deprive the Government of any chance of bringing
forward the measures which they had prepared in order to accomplish
that very object. The main argument of the speech was directed not so
much against the policy embodied in the resolution of Lord John
Russell, as against the manner in which it was proposed to carry out
that policy. Sir Robert Peel declared that the object of the
Opposition was not to effect any improvement in the relations of the
State Church of Ireland and the people of Ireland, but simply and
solely to turn out the Government. Why not, he asked, come to the
point boldly and at once? Why not bring forward a vote of censure on
the Government, or a vote of want of confidence in the Government, and
thus compel them, if defeated, to go out of office, instead of
endeavoring to enforce on them the adoption of a resolution dealing
with questions which the Government had already promised to make the
subject of legislation, and without waiting to hear what manner of
legislation they were prepared to introduce?
There was an eloquent defiance in the closing words of Peel's speech.
The great minister knew that defeat was {250} awaiting him, and he
showed himself resolved to meet it half way. At three o'clock on the
morning of April 3 the division on the resolution of Lord John Russell
took place. There were 322 votes for the resolution and 289 against
it. The resolution was therefore carried by a majority of 33. The
student of history will observe with interest that the abolition of the
Irish State Church was the result of a series of resolutions carried by
Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons in 1868, and afterwards embodied
in an act of legislation.
[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and Brougham]
The debate on Lord John Russell's resolution was carried on for a few
days longer, but it was chiefly concerned with mere questions as to the
form in which the Ministry were called upon to give effect to the wish
of the majority, and submit the resolution to the King. There was no
heart or practical purpose in these debates, for everybody already knew
what the end must be. On April 8 Sir Robert Peel announced to the
House that he could not take any part in giving effect to the
resolution, and that, therefore, he and his colleagues had determined
on resigning their offices. The course taken by Peel was thoroughly
honest, consistent, and upright, and Lord John Russell bore prompt and
willing testimony to the constitutional propriety of the retiring Prime
Minister's resolve. The Peel Ministry had come to its end. The
country had been put to the trouble and expense of a general election,
valuable time had been wasted, legislative preparations had been thrown
away, and everything was now back again in just the same condition as
when the King made up his mind to dismiss the Melbourne Administration.
The whole blame for the muddle rested on the King, who now found
himself compelled to take up again with Lord Melbourne just as if
nothing had happened. The King, indeed, made an attempt to induce Lord
Grey to come out of his retirement and form another Ministry; but Lord
Grey was not to be prevailed upon to accept such an invitation, and
William had to gulp down his personal objections and invite Lord
Melbourne to come back once more and take charge of the Government of
the country.
{251}
Lord Melbourne had no difficulty in forming an Administration, and it
was on the whole very much the same in its composition as that which
King William had so rudely dismissed only a few months before. But
there were some new names in the list, and there was one very
remarkable omission. Lord Brougham was not one of the members of the
new Government. Lord Melbourne had made up his mind that if, perhaps,
there could be no living without such a colleague, there certainly
could be no living with him, and he preferred the chance to the
certainty. The greatest sensation was produced all over the country
when it was found that Lord Brougham was to have nothing to do with the
new Administration. In and out of Parliament the question became a
subject of keen and vehement discussion. The energy and the eloquence
of Brougham had held a commanding place among the forces by which
Parliamentary reform had been effected, and the wonder was how any
Reform Ministry could venture to carry on the work of government, not
merely without the co-operation of such a man, but with every
likelihood of his active and bitter hostility. At one time the report
went abroad, and found many ready believers, that there were periods in
Brougham's life when his great intellect became clouded, as Chatham's
had been at one time, and that the Liberal Ministry found it therefore
impossible to avail themselves of his fitful services. Lord Melbourne
himself once made an emphatic appeal to his audience in the House of
Lords, after Lord Brougham had delivered a speech there of
characteristic power and eloquence. Melbourne invited the House to
consider calmly how overmastering must have been the reasons which
compelled any body of rational statesmen to deprive themselves of such
a man's co-operation. It would appear, however, that the reasons which
influenced Melbourne and his colleagues were given by Brougham's own
passionate and ungovernable temper, his impatience of all discipline,
his sudden changes of mood and purpose, his overmastering egotism, and
his frequent impulse to strike out for himself and to disregard all
considerations of convenience or compromise, all {252} calculations as
to the effect of an individual movement on the policy of an
Administration.
[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and the Irish Members]
From that time Brougham had nothing more to do with ministerial work.
He became merely an independent, a very independent, member of the
House of Lords. To the close of his long career he was a commanding
figure in the House and in the country, but it was an individual
figure, an eccentric figure, whose movements must always excite
interest, must often excite admiration, but from whom guidance and
inspiration were never to be expected. Even on some of the great
questions with which the brightest part of his career had been
especially associated he often failed to exercise the influence which
might have been expected from a man of such gifts and such
achievements. Through the remainder of his life he could always arouse
the attention of the country, and indeed of the civilized world, when
he so willed, but his work as a political leader was done.
The office of Lord Chancellor was left for a while vacant, or, to
describe the fact in more technical language, was put into commission.
The commission was made up of the Master of the Rolls, the
Vice-Chancellor, and one of the Judges. After a time Lord Cottenham
was made Lord Chancellor. Lord John Russell became Home Secretary, and
Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary. Among the new names on the list
of the Administration was that of Sir Henry Parnell, who became
Paymaster-General and Paymaster of the Navy, and that of Sir George
Grey, who was Under-Secretary of the Colonies, and afterwards rose to
hold high office in many a Government, and had at one time the somewhat
undesirable reputation of being the rapidest speaker in the House of
Commons.
King William must have put a strong constraint upon himself when he
found that he had to receive, on terms at least of civility, so many of
the men, as ministers, whom he had abruptly dismissed from his service
not long before. For a considerable time he put up with them rather
than received them, and maintained a merely official relationship with
them so far even as not to invite them to dinner. {253} After a time,
however, his Majesty somewhat softened in temper; the relations between
him and his advisers became less strained; and he even went so far as
to invite the members of the Cabinet to dinner, and expressed in his
invitation the characteristic wish that each guest would drink at least
two bottles of wine. When the construction of the new Ministry had
been completed, Parliament reassembled on April 18; but that meeting
was little more than of formal character, as the Houses had again to
adjourn in order to enable the new members who were members of the
House of Commons to resign and seek, according to constitutional usage,
for re-election at the hands of their constituents. The only public
interest attaching to the meeting of Parliament on April 18 was found
in an attempt, made by two Tory peers, to extract from Lord Melbourne
some public explanation as to his dealings with O'Connell and the Irish
party. Lord Melbourne was quite equal to the occasion, and nothing
could be drawn from him further than the declaration that he had
entered into no arrangements whatever with O'Connell; that if the Irish
members should, on any occasion, give him their support, he should be
happy to receive it, but that he had not taken and did not mean to take
any steps to secure it. The incident is worth noting because it serves
to illustrate, once again, the effect of the new condition which had
been introduced into the struggles of the two great political parties
by the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act, and the consequent
admission of Irish Catholic members into the House of Commons.
Some of the members of the new Administration were not successful when
they made their appeal to their old constituencies. Lord John Russell,
for instance, was beaten in South Devonshire by a Tory antagonist, and
a vacancy had to be made for him in the little borough of Stroud, the
representative of which withdrew in order to oblige the leaders of his
party, and obtained, in return for his act of self-sacrifice, an office
under Government. Lord Palmerston was placed in a difficulty of the
same kind, and a vacancy was made for him in the borough of {254}
Tiverton by the good-nature and the public spirit of its sitting
representative, and from that time to the end of his long career Lord
Palmerston continued to be the member for Tiverton, which indeed won,
by that fact alone, a conspicuous place in Parliamentary history.
There were other disturbances of the same kind in the relations of the
members of the new Government and their former constituents, and it was
clear enough that a certain reaction was still working against the
political impulse which had carried the Reform measures to success.
Still, it was clear that the new Government had come into power as a
Government of reformers, and Lord Melbourne found himself compelled to
go on with the work of reform. Nothing could be less in keeping with
his habits and the inclinations of his easy-going nature. It used to
be said of him that whenever he was urged to set about any work of the
kind his instinctive impulse always was to meet the suggestion with the
question: "Why can't you let it alone?" Now, however, he had in his
Cabinet some men, like Lord John Russell, whose earnestness in the
cause of Reform was genuine and unconquerable; and if Lord Melbourne
was too indolent to press forward reforms on his own account, he was
also too indolent to resist such a pressure when put on him by others.
[Sidenote: 1835--Foundation of municipal bodies]
There was one great pressing and obvious reform which remained to be
accomplished and ought naturally to follow on the reorganization of the
Parliamentary system. That was the reorganization of the municipal
system. The municipal work of the country, the management of all the
various and complicated relations which concerned the local affairs of
the whole community, had become a mere chaos of anomalies,
anachronisms, and, in too many instances, of reckless mismanagement and
downright corruption. If the sort of so-called representation which
prevailed in the Parliamentary constituencies was, up to 1832, an
absurdity and a fraud, it was not perhaps on the whole quite so absurd
or altogether so fraudulent as that which set itself up for a
representative system in the arrangements of the municipal
corporations. As in the case of the {255} Parliamentary system, so in
the case of the municipal system, the organization had begun with an
intelligible principle to guide it; but, during the lapse of years and
even of centuries, the original purpose had been swamped by the gradual
and always increasing growth of confusion and corruption. The
municipal arrangements of England had begun as a practical protest
against the feudal system. While the feudal laws or customs still
prevailed, the greater proportion of the working-classes were really
little better than serfs at the absolute control of their feudal lords
and masters. The comparatively small proportion of men who formed the
trading class of the community found themselves compelled to devise
some kind of arrangement for the security of themselves, their traffic,
and their property against the dominion of the ruling class. It was
practically impossible that a mere serf could devote his energies to a
craft or trade with any hope of independence for himself or any chance
of contributing to the prosperity of his working and trading neighbors.
The trading, manufacturing, and commercial classes in each locality
began to form themselves into groups, or what might be called guilds,
of their own, with the object of common protection, in order to secure
an opening for their traffic and their industry, and for the
preservation of the earnings and the profits which came of their skill
and energy. These trading groups asserted for themselves their right
to free action in all that regarded the regulation of their work and
the secure disposal of their profits, and thus they became what might
be called governing bodies in each separate locality. One common
principle of these governing bodies was that no one should be allowed
to become a craftsman or trader in any district if he were a serf, and
they claimed, and gradually came to maintain, the right to invest
others with the title and privileges of freemen. This right of
freemanship soon became hereditary, and the male children of a freeman
were to be freemen themselves. In many communities the man who married
a freeman's daughter acquired, if he had not been free before, the
right of freemanship. No qualification of residence was necessary to
{256} enable a man thus to become free. The self-organized community,
whatever it might be, had the right of creating any stranger a freeman
according as it thought fit.
[Sidenote: 1835--Reform of municipal corporations]
We find this ancient system still in harmless and graceful illustration
when a public man who has distinguished himself in the service of the
country is honored by admission to the freedom of some ancient city.
But in the far-off days, when the system was in practical operation,
the unlimited right of creating freemen came to mean that in many
cities, towns, and localities of all descriptions a number of outsiders
who had no connection by residence, property, or local interest of any
kind with the district, and who were wholly irresponsible to the public
opinion of the local community, had the right to interfere in the
management of its affairs and to become members of its municipal body.
For the local traders soon began to form themselves into councils or
committees for the management of the local affairs, and, in fact,
became what might be described as self-elected municipal corporations;
trustees who had assumed the trust for themselves; local law-makers
whose term of office was lifelong, and against whose decision there was
no available court of appeal. In some cases these local bodies
actually arrogated to themselves the right of passing penal laws, and
trying cases and awarding punishments. The local municipalities
sometimes exercised the power of appointing Recorders to preside over
their courts of law, and it happened in many instances that the
municipal body made no condition as to the Recorder being a member of
any branch of the legal profession. It is hardly necessary to point
out some of the inevitable consequences of such a system. The
municipal bodies voted what salaries they pleased out of the local
funds, and named according to their pleasure the persons to receive the
salaries. They disposed of the corporate revenues in any way they
thought fit--and, indeed, in many cases they claimed and annexed as
corporate property possessions that had always, up to the time of the
annexation, been supposed to belong to the public at large. They
usurped for themselves all manner of privileges and {257} so-called
rights, and, if they thought fit, offered them for purchase to the
highest bidder. The whole governing body often consisted of a very
small number of residents who had elected themselves to office, and as
they had the power of making themselves very disagreeable to disputants
they did not often find individuals public spirited enough to challenge
their right of local control. It happened much more frequently that if
any man were strong enough to make his opposition inconvenient or
uncomfortable for the local rulers, they got over the trouble by
prevailing on him to become one of themselves, to share their
privileges and profits, and to strengthen their authority. A local
magnate, the head of some great family, a peer of old descent, was
often thus "nobbled"--to use a modern colloquialism--and was allowed to
make as many freemen as he pleased and to take whatever part he would
in the control of municipal affairs.
It would be superfluous to say that the municipalities became a
constantly working instrument in the hands of this or that political
party. Wherever the Whigs or the Tories were strong, there the
constituencies, such as they were, could always be placed at the
absolute disposal of some local magnate. Even in the districts where
there was but little actual corruption there was often the most
extravagant waste of the public funds and public property, and the most
utter neglect of all the ordinary ways of business and of economy. For
a long time the increasing evils of the system had been attracting the
attention and arousing the alarm of enlightened and public-spirited men
all over the country, and of course when the great measure of reform
had dealt with the political system, it was obvious that the reforming
hand must before long touch the municipal system as well. Shortly
after the passing of the Reform Bill Lord Althorp had appointed a
commission to inquire into the whole history, growth, and working of
the municipal corporations, and the report had brought out an immense
amount of systematized information on which the Liberal statesmen, now
once again in office, were determined to act. Lord Melbourne intrusted
the task of {258} preparing and conducting through the House of Commons
a measure for this purpose to the capable hands of Lord John Russell,
who was now the leader of the Government in that House. Lord John
Russell's measure was, in fact, the foundation of the whole municipal
system which we see spread over the country in our times. It proposed
to begin by abolishing altogether the freeman system and placing the
election of local governing bodies in the hands of residents who paid a
certain amount of taxation. In fact, it made the municipal bodies
representative in just the same sense as the Parliamentary
constituencies had been made representative by the Reform Act. It
remodelled altogether the local law courts and legal arrangements of
the municipalities, and ordered that the appointment of Recorders
should be in the hands of the Crown, that each Recorder was to be a
barrister of a certain standing, and that a Recorder should be
nominated for every borough which undertook to provide a suitable
salary for the occupant of the office. Provision was also made for the
proper management of charitable trusts and funds.
[Sidenote: 1835--The Municipal Reform Bill]
The measure was to apply to 183 boroughs, not including the metropolis,
with an average of 11,000 persons to each borough. Some of the larger
boroughs were to be divided into wards, and in most cases the intention
of the measure was that the boundaries of the Parliamentary borough
should be the boundaries of the municipal borough as well. The
governing body of each municipality was to consist of a Mayor and
Councillors, the Councillors to be elected by resident ratepayers. It
was proposed that the rights of living freemen were to be maintained,
but as each life lapsed the right was to be extinguished, and thus the
whole freeman system was to die out and all exclusive trading
privileges were to be abolished. The Bill, as introduced by Lord John
Russell, only applied to England and Wales; but O'Connell demanded that
Ireland should also be included in the reform, and it was finally
agreed that a Bill of the same nature should be brought in for Ireland,
and that arrangements should be made with the Scottish representatives
to have the provisions of the {259} measure applied also to Scotland so
far as might be consistent with the usages and the desire of the
Scottish people.
Sir Robert Peel did not offer any direct opposition to the measure,
although he criticised it severely enough in some of its provisions.
His speech, however, was distinctly a declaration in favor of some
comprehensive scheme of municipal reform, and might fairly have been
regarded rather as a help than as a hinderance to the purposes of the
Government. The example set by Sir Robert Peel had naturally much
influence over the greater number of the Conservative party, and only
some very old-fashioned Conservatives seemed inclined to make a stand
against the measure. Mr. Grote seized the opportunity to introduce a
motion for the adoption of the ballot in municipal elections, but it is
hardly necessary to say that he did not secure support enough on either
side of the House to win success for his proposition. The Bill passed
through the House of Commons without any important change in its
character, but it met with very serious maltreatment in the House of
Lords. The majority of the peers did not see their way to compass the
actual rejection of the Bill, especially after the liberal and
statesmanlike spirit in which Sir Robert Peel had dealt with it; but
they set themselves to work with the object of rendering it as nearly
useless as they could for the purposes which its promoters had in view.
Lord Lyndhurst led the opposition to the Bill, and he could, when he so
pleased, become the very narrowest of Tories, while he had ability and
plausibility not included in the intellectual stock of any other Tory
then in the House of Lords. Under this leadership the Tory peers so
disfigured and mangled the Bill that before long its own authors could
hardly have recognized it as the work of their hands. The peers not
only restored all, or nearly all, the abuses and anomalies which the
measure as it left the House of Commons had marked for utter abolition,
but they even went so far as to introduce into their version of the
Bill some entirely new and original suggestions for the creation of
abuses up to that time unknown to the existing municipal system.
{260}
The Bill thus diversified had, of course, to go back to the House of
Commons, and it is hardly necessary to say that the House of Commons
could not, as the Parliamentary phrase goes, agree with the Lords'
amendments. Peel once again took a statesmanlike course, and strongly
advised the House of Lords not to press their absurd and objectionable
alterations. In the House of Lords itself the Duke of Wellington,
acting as he almost always did under the influence of Peel, recommended
the Tory peers not to carry their opposition too far, and before long
Lord Lyndhurst, who was by temperament and intellect a very shrewd and
practical man, with little of the visionary or the fanatic about him,
thought it well to accept Wellington's advice, and to urge its
acceptance on his brother Conservatives. Lord John Russell recommended
the House of Commons to accept a compromise on a few insignificant
details in no wise affecting the general purposes of the measure, in
order to soothe the wounded feelings of the peers and enable them to
yield with the comforting belief that after all their resistance had
not been wholly in vain. The struggle was over, and on September 7,
1835, the measure became law in the same shape, to all practical
purposes, as that which it wore when it left the House of Commons after
its third reading there, and thus secured for Great Britain and Ireland
the system of municipal government which has been working to this day.
{261}