THE QUEEN AND PEEL.
From the time of the Queen’s accession, the power of the Whig
Government under Lord Melbourne had been steadily going down. It sank
to zero when they resumed office, in 1839, after Peel had failed to
form a Government in consequence of the dispute over the Ladies of the
Bedchamber. They had been beaten in the Commons and were in a permanent
minority in the Lords; and it was said with justice that they were
holding on, in office but not in power, simply to please the Queen.
It would have been a discreditable position for any Government, but
it was particularly damaging to a Whig Government from the fact that
their party was specially identified with the principle of ministerial
responsibility and a resistance to personal government.
The result of their position was that they were powerless to pass
their measures. They knew they had lost the confidence of the country,
and that the House of Lords could therefore veto the Government Bills
with a light heart. Perhaps this was not altogether painful to Lord
Melbourne. The saying by which he is chiefly remembered by the present
generation, “Why can’t you let it alone?” is not indicative of the
ardent spirit of the reformer. He may have found consolation in the
assistance given by the House of Lords to letting things alone.
Given his position and all its difficulties, Melbourne behaved loyally
and generously to the Queen and to his successors. He knew the days of
his own Government were numbered, and that Peel would succeed him,
and he did his best to bring about a more cordial personal feeling
between the Queen and Peel and the Tory party. The Queen tells us that
to her his word constantly was, “Hold out the olive-branch to them a
little;” with Peel, he tried to induce the shy, proud man to put on a
little of the courtier and the man of the world. At a Court ball in
1840, “Melbourne went up to Peel and whispered to him with the greatest
earnestness, ‘For God’s sake, go and speak to the Queen;’ Peel did not
go, but the entreaty and the refusal were both characteristic.”
When the long-anticipated fall of the Melbourne Administration came,
and the election of 1841 resulted in the return of the Tories to power
with a majority of over 80, Melbourne, who had worked unceasingly to
reconcile the Queen to the impending change, did not desist from his
good offices with her new Ministers.[17] He could not approach them
directly, but he took the opportunity after Peel’s Government had been
formed of giving them a few hints, through Greville. He met Greville
at a dinner-party and took him on one side and said: “‘Have you any
means of speaking to _these chaps_?’ I said, ‘Yes, I can say anything
to them.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think there are one or two things Peel
ought to be told, and I wish you would tell him. Don’t let him suffer
any appointment he is going to make to be talked about, and don’t
let her hear it through anybody but himself; and whenever he does
anything, or has anything to propose, let him explain to her clearly
his reasons. The Queen is not conceited; she is aware there are many
things she cannot understand, and she likes to have them explained
to her elementarily, not at length and in detail, but shortly and
clearly; neither does she like long audiences, and I never stayed with
her a long time. These things he should attend to, and they will make
matters go on more smoothly.’” Greville conveyed the message, which
was taken in exceedingly good part, and from 1841 onwards till his
death the relations between Sir Robert Peel and the Queen were all
that could be desired. Her former antipathy was changed into cordial
respect and admiration; when he lost his shyness and reserve, and was
able to show himself in his real character, she soon appreciated the
very fine qualities of the man, far transcending in real worth those
of the Minister whom in the beginning of her reign she had so strongly
preferred. When Peel’s Ministry had been in office a few months,
Greville asked Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, how they were
going on with the Queen. He said, “Very well. They sought for no favor,
and were better without it. She was very civil, very gracious, and
even on two or three little occasions, she had granted favors in a way
indicative of good will.” He said that they treated her with profound
respect and the greatest attention. He made it a rule to address her
as he would a _sensible man_, laying all matters before her, with
the reasons for the advice he tendered, and he thought this was the
most legitimate as well as judicious flattery that could be offered
to her, and such as must gratify her, and the more because there was
no appearance of flattery in it, and nothing but what was right and
proper--so right and proper that it is not easy to see where the
flattery comes in. The way of explaining business to a sensible woman
must be much the same, one would imagine, as the way of explaining it
to a sensible man; but this simple view of the facts was by no means
perceived intuitively in 1841, but was only arrived at by demonstration
from actual experiment. However this may be, when Peel and his
colleagues learned their lesson, they learned it thoroughly. In this
second series of interviews between the Queen and the leaders of the
Tory Party, when a new Ministry was being formed in 1841, all passed
off most satisfactorily. Peel said the Queen behaved perfectly to him;
he was more than satisfied with her bearing towards him. To the Duke of
Wellington she was equally gracious. She reproached him for not taking
office himself, and he assured her that his one object was to serve her
and the country in every way he could, and that he thought he could
do this more effectually by making way for some of the younger men.
It is true that there was still some talk about Peel’s shyness making
the Queen shy; and Greville has a little hit about Peel, after dinner
at Windsor, talking to the Queen in the attitude of a dancing-master
giving a lesson, and says that the Queen would like him better if he
would keep his legs still; but this gossip probably reflects Greville’s
sentiments rather than the Queen’s. Her respect for Peel and attachment
to him grew with her growing knowledge of his character and powers. In
1843 the Queen wrote of him to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, as
“undoubtedly a great statesman, a man who thinks but little of party,
and never of himself.” In February, 1846, Lady Canning, who was then
in Waiting on the Queen, notes in her journal, “The Queen is very keen
about politics, and has an immense admiration for Sir Robert Peel.”
Before the end of his Administration, she not only loyally supported
him in the face of his growing unpopularity with his own party, but
showered every honor upon him that a Sovereign could bestow upon a
Minister. She and the Prince visited him at his house at Drayton.
She became godmother to his grandchild, and would have given him the
Order of the Garter, but that Peel, with the characteristic pride of
humility, intimated his desire that it should not be offered him. He
said that if his acceptance of the honor would increase his power of
serving the Queen he would not hesitate to accept it; but he could not
believe this was the case. Personally, he would prefer not to accept
it; he was a man of the people, and the decoration in his case would
be misapplied. “His heart was not set upon titles of honor or social
distinctions. His reward lay in Her Majesty’s confidence, of which by
many indications she had given him the fullest assurance; and when he
left her service the only distinction he coveted was that she should
say to him, ‘You have been a faithful servant, and have done your duty
to your country and to me.’”
When Peel’s Ministry came to an end in 1846, both the Queen and the
Prince expressed the hope that his leaving office would not interrupt
the cordial relations that had been established between them. His
tragic death, from a fall from his horse, in 1850, was bitterly mourned
in the Palace. The Queen wrote at the time: “Peel is to be buried
to-day. The sorrow and grief at his death are most touching. Every one
seems to have lost a personal friend.” The Prince on the same day wrote
to the same correspondent: “Sir Robert Peel is to be buried to-day. The
feeling in the country is absolutely not to be described. We have lost
our truest friend and trustiest counsellor, the throne its most valiant
defender, the country its most open-minded and greatest statesman.”
The Queen offered a peerage to Lady Peel after her husband’s death,
but she declined the honor, acting in accordance with what she knew
had been his wishes. The Duke of Wellington, in the tribute he paid to
Peel in the House of Lords, spoke with tears streaming down his face;
the chief part of his panegyric on his friend and leader was based on
his unswerving love of truth. It was this quality, together with his
political sagacity, caution, and courage, that had endeared him to
the Queen. No Prime Minister has ever had a more remarkable history.
The election of 1841 was fought on the Corn Laws, and resulted in
the return of Peel with a majority of eighty pledged to Protection.
In four years from that time, after a career of brilliant success as
a Minister, he repealed the Corn Laws which he had been returned to
support, amid the execration of the great bulk of his own party and
even that of a considerable number of his former opponents;[18] and yet
those who knew him best loved him chiefly for his absolute integrity
and love of truth. The explanation lies in the hard logic of facts.
Peel and his immediate followers became convinced they were wrong in
their protective policy; in ordinary times the only right thing for
them to have done would have been to declare their change and its
grounds, resign office and appeal to the country. Some of the Peelites,
as they were called, took this course, so far as was possible, as
private individuals; they declared their change and resigned their
seats. Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was one of these.
He had been returned as a Protectionist and became a Free Trader,
and therefore, quite rightly, resigned his seat, appealing to his
constituents unsuccessfully for re-election. He notes in his diary, “I
shall resign my seat and throw up all my beloved projects for which I
have sacrificed everything that a public man values, all that I had
begun and all that I have designed. Nearly my whole means of doing good
will cease with my membership of Parliament.” He refused an offer of
£2,000 from the then Whip to enable him to fight his seat, because he
would not jeopardize his independence. He was very poor, and he fought
and lost. But to lose like that is to win. Why could not Peel have
done the same? The answer is: The Irish Famine. Just as the Emperor
Nicholas during the Crimean War said that he relied most of all on his
Generals January and February, so Peel’s scruples were conquered by
the Famine. In Ireland in 1845-6 there were millions of people within
measurable distance of death from starvation; the measures of relief
could, under the best of circumstances, only be partially successful;
they would have been terribly hampered by the continuance, even for
another few months, of the import duties on corn. The aim of the Corn
Laws was to make bread dear; the pressing necessity of the moment was
to make it cheap, and pour in food supplies to starving Ireland. Peel’s
feeling may have been, “Better endure the charge of dishonesty rather
than add to the fearful total of those who will die of starvation
in Kerry and Connemara.” As the alarming accounts from Ireland came
pouring in, his first desire was to deal with the matter by opening
the ports by an Order in Council (November, 1845). This would have
been by far the best course; it would have secured a supply of cheap
bread without delay, and the war of words over it in Parliament could
have been protracted to any extent without practical mischief; but
his Cabinet would not agree to it. Then he resigned office (December,
1845), and left with the Queen a paper, to be given to his successor,
stating that he would give every support to the new Minister to effect
a settlement of the question of the Corn Laws. The Queen sent for Lord
John Russell, who, however, failed to form a Government, because Lord
Grey refused to take office if Lord Palmerston were at the Foreign
Office, and Lord Palmerston refused to take any other place. Peel was
therefore recalled. It was thus through the absolute necessity of the
moment that he repealed the Corn Laws which he had been elected to
support. In the House of Commons he confessed the error of his former
opinions, and maintained the duty and dignity of owning one’s self to
have been wrong rather than pretending by casuistical hair-splitting
that there had been no change of opinion when there was so striking a
change in conduct; he bore with magnanimity the reproaches of those who
still shared the error which he had abandoned, and finally appealed to
the facts of the situation, the national calamity of impending famine
in Ireland; he claimed that as the Government were responsible for the
lives of millions of the Queen’s subjects in the sister country, they
felt it impossible to take any other course than that of repeal. The
great bulk of the Tories accused him of dishonesty, but he took with
him the flower of his party, both in regard to intellect and character,
while he earned the enthusiastic gratitude and respect of the great
bulk of the nation, and of the men led by Cobden and Bright and the
Hon. Charles Villiers, who had devoted themselves to the cause of
repeal. Their favorable verdict has been confirmed by posterity. Peel’s
change was an honest change, and he was forced to give effect to it
when he did by the inexorable necessities of famine. He did not make
a _volte face_ for the sake of place and power. But notwithstanding
all that can be urged in his justification, he shattered his party.
The Tories had a majority of eighty in the general election of 1841;
they never secured a similar victory till 1874. They had short tenures
of office in 1852, and again in 1858-9, and in 1866-8; but on each
occasion they had to govern as best they could with a minority in the
House of Commons. They were in the wilderness thirty-three years, and
never regained the Canaan of politicians, except by the aid of the new
electorate called into existence by the Reform Bill of 1867.
When Peel went out of office he requested the Queen, as a personal
favor to himself, never to ask him to form a Government again. He was
not defeated in his great measure; his majority was ninety-seven in the
House of Commons, and forty-seven in the House of Lords. But the day on
which the Corn Bill passed its third reading in the Lords, the Ministry
were defeated in the Commons on a Protection of Life in Ireland Bill,
introduced on account of an outbreak of midnight murders and murderous
attacks, such as are now known by the name of “moonlighting.”
For modesty, dignity, simplicity, and sincerity, Peel’s figure stands
out conspicuous for greatness among the statesmen of this century.
Cobden said of him that he had lost office and saved his country.
His other great achievement was that of reorganizing and simplifying
the fiscal arrangements of the country. It was this that first so
highly recommended him to the Queen and Prince. They were good
economists in their own private affairs, and wished for good order in
national revenue and expenditure also. When Peel succeeded Melbourne,
huge deficits were of constant occurrence; the revenue was falling, and
the expenditure was increasing. Peel evolved order out of this chaos.
He inaugurated the era of financial reform. In 1845 import duties were
levied on no fewer than 1,142 separate articles. Peel and his pupil
and successor, Mr. Gladstone, reduced the number to about five, and
Peel was the first to discover the productiveness and utility of the
income tax, as a means of raising revenue. The Queen most cordially
supported him in his financial reforms, and authorized him to announce
in the House of Commons that she did not wish to be exempted from the
operation of the income tax. We owe to him more than to any other
of the Queen’s Prime Ministers that the national accounts almost
invariably show a balance on the right side. Peel was a man of whom it
was said that it was necessary to know him intimately to know him at
all; and this intimate friendship existed between him and the Queen and
her husband from the time he became Prime Minister, in 1841. It was an
inestimable advantage for the Royal couple that their political tutor
(if one may use the expression) in the early years of the reign was
changed from the kindly but frivolous and complaisant Melbourne to the
earnest and strenuous Peel, a man gifted beyond most with what Matthew
Arnold has called “high seriousness,” a quality without some portion of
which no character has any solid foundation. Peel’s Premiership was a
national blessing from his political and economical achievements while
he held the reins of power; and it was also a blessing from its effect
on the Queen’s political education.
[17] This generosity was thoroughly in keeping with his character.
After Melbourne’s death, Greville tells how he occupied his room at
Brocket, and, “poking about” to see what he could find, came upon
several MS. books of the late Prime Minister. In one of these was
recorded Melbourne’s settled determination “always to stand by his
friend,” and his conviction that it was more necessary to do so “when
they were in the wrong than when they were in the right.”
[18] Lord Melbourne, to whom in 1839 Repeal of the Corn Laws had been
“the maddest of all mad projects,” and who became a Free Trader, for
party purposes, in 1841, spoke of Peel’s change of view at a dinner
party at the Palace with vehemence which even the presence of a lady,
and that lady his Sovereign, could not restrain. “Ma’am, it’s a damned
dishonest act” (Greville, vol. v. p. 359).