the impression which he made on the world that constitutes the great
interest of his career. The explanation is not difficult to discover.
It is the common story of extraordinary qualities balanced by
striking defects. He was not a great statesman, but he was a
supremely great administrator, a supremely great master of
parliamentary management and of parliamentary legislation. He had
little prescience; he often grossly misread the signs of the times, or
only recognised them when it was too late; but when he was once
convinced, he acted on his conviction with frankness and courage, and
when a thing had to be done, no one could do it like him. As Disraeli
said: 'In the course of time the method which was natural to Sir
Robert Peel matured into a habit of such expertness that no one in the
despatch of affairs ever adapted the means more fitly to the end.'[10]
In the words of Sir Cornewall Lewis: 'For concocting, producing,
explaining, and defending measures, he had no equal, or anything like
an equal.'[11]
In the interesting volumes which were published by Lord Mahon and Mr.
Cardwell in 1856 we have Peel's own explanation of his conduct
relating to the removal of the Catholic disabilities in 1829, and to
the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; but the publication of his
confidential correspondence has been long delayed, and the volume
before us only carries the work down to 1827. It has been edited by
Mr. Parker with great care and accuracy, and with undeviating good
sense and good taste, and it throws much curious light upon a corner
of history which has been but little explored.
Peel started in life with great advantages. The eldest son of a very
wealthy manufacturer who had long occupied a respectable place in
Parliament, and who was closely attached to the dominant party in the
State, he was from his earliest youth destined by his father to be a
statesman. Under such circumstances he was certain in the pre-Reform
period to have not only all the advantages which the best school and
university education could give, but also the still greater advantages
of an early introduction into both parliamentary and official life;
provided always that no aberration of character, or taste, or
imagination, or opinion drew him aside from the plain path that lay
before him. He grew up in an atmosphere of the best middle-class
virtues. Decorum, good sense, industry, strict morality; a sober
religious orthodoxy; much simplicity of life, preserved in the midst
of great wealth; ideals which, if not very lofty, were at least
eminently practical and perfectly honourable, prevailed around him,
and their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the
destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring
industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his
character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat
self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very
faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a
schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with
stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually
developed into a strong passion for shooting. He was quiet,
good-natured, studious, scarcely ever in scrapes, and it was not until
the last year of his school life that he threw himself with any
keenness into the amusements of his comrades. He had good natural
abilities; but probably the one point in which he greatly exceeded the
average of intelligent boys was his memory, which was of extraordinary
retentiveness, and which he carefully cultivated. During a few months
which elapsed between leaving Harrow and going to Oxford he constantly
attended the House of Commons, under the Gallery; and he also
attended some natural history lectures at the Royal Institution. His
Oxford career was very successful. He is said to have worked before
his degree examination for no less than eighteen hours, through the
day and night. He gained a double-first, and in the first class of
mathematics he stood alone. Such a success at once stamped him as a
youth of extraordinary promise, and the impression it made was
especially great because, the examination system having been very
recently reorganised, he was the first Oxford man who had attained it.
He was brought into Parliament in April 1809, almost immediately after
he came of age, for the borough of Cashel. No special significance
attaches to the fact of his having entered Parliament for an Irish
constituency, for his father had simply bought the seat, and the young
member appears to have never gone over to his constituents or held any
communication with them.
'When I sat for Cashel,' he afterwards wrote, 'and was not in office,
having made those sacrifices which could then legally be made, but now
cannot, I did not consider myself at all pledged to the support of
Government.'[12] Perceval, who represented in its extreme form the
Tory reaction that followed the Revolution, was then Prime Minister,
and Peel at once took his place among his followers. He first spoke in
seconding the Address in 1810, and in the partial judgment of his
father his speech was considered, 'by men the best qualified to form a
correct opinion of public speaking, the best first speech since that
of Mr. Pitt.'[13]
It was not, perhaps, an unmixed advantage to Peel that while he was
still a mere boy his father had somewhat ostentatiously destined him
to be one day a Tory statesman. Such an education could hardly fail to
strengthen the self-consciousness which was never wanting in Peel's
character, and to give a decided bias to his judgment. At the same
time, the distinctive merits of his career would have probably never
been fully developed without the early administrative training which
his opinions made possible for him, and there is nothing in his early
history to give the least countenance to the belief that his adherence
to the extreme type of Tory politics imposed the slightest strain upon
his judgment. His immediate interests and his sentiments appear at
this time to have perfectly concurred. He came into Parliament with
the party which was dominant, and with the section of the party which
was most poor in able men. Had he adopted on the Catholic question the
liberal opinions of Canning and Castlereagh, he must have held a
position altogether subordinate to them; and the same causes that in
the preceding Ministry had raised Perceval to be leader of the House
of Commons over the heads of Castlereagh and Canning, marked out for
Peel the future leadership of the party of resistance to concession.
It has been said, on the authority of Sir Lawrence Peel, that his
first appointment was that of private secretary to Lord Liverpool, but
Mr. Parker has found no trace of this in the papers either of Peel or
of Lord Liverpool. In 1810, however, when he was but just twenty-two,
he entered administrative life as Under-Secretary of State for War and
the Colonies, and he held that place till August 1812, when he
obtained the far more important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,
and became for the next six years virtual governor of that country.
It was a post requiring not only great administrative skill, but also
great gifts of original statesmanship. During the last five years of
the eighteenth century, and especially during the rebellion of 1798,
religious passions in Ireland, which had for more than a generation
been steadily subsiding, had been kindled into a flame, and the urgent
necessity of settling the Catholic question had begun to press with
irresistible force on the minds of the more intelligent statesmen.
Pitt had intended to complete the Union by measures for admitting
Catholics into Parliament, for commuting tithes, and for paying the
Catholic clergy. Through the instrumentality of Lord Castlereagh
assurances of the disposition of the Cabinet had been conveyed to the
Catholic bishops and the leading Catholic laymen in 1799, which were
sufficient to secure their active support for the Union and to prevent
any serious opposition among the Catholic laity. The bishops met the
wishes of the English Government by drawing up a series of
resolutions, in which they declared their readiness to accept with
gratitude an endowment for the priesthood, to confer upon the English
Government a power of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops
which would prevent the introduction into that body of any disloyal
men, and to certify to the Government the nomination of all Catholic
parish priests, as well as the fact that they had taken the oath of
allegiance. But the King had not been informed of the negotiations
that had taken place, and it is well known how his uncompromising
opposition produced the resignation of Pitt in 1801, how the agitation
caused by the question threw the King into a temporary fit of
insanity, and how Pitt at once promised that he would not move the
question again during the reign. In the spring of 1804 Pitt resumed
office, on the express understanding that he would not permit Catholic
Emancipation; when the question was introduced in 1805 by Lord
Grenville in the Lords, and by Fox in the Commons, it was defeated in
both Houses by immense majorities, and Pitt declared that though he
was still of opinion that there was no danger in the concession, yet,
as long as the circumstances which prevented him from bringing it
forward continued, he would be no party to agitating the question.
In 1806 Pitt died, and Fox and Grenville were themselves in power, but
the Catholics were again disappointed. The prejudice of the King, the
feeling of the country, the recent vote of the House of Commons, the
presence of Lord Sidmouth in the Ministry, proved insuperable
obstacles, and Fox could only urge the Catholic leaders to postpone
the question. Fox died in September 1806, and the Government presided
over by Lord Grenville met a new Parliament in the following December.
Grenville had been Pitt's colleague during the negotiations with the
Catholics that preceded the Union; he had strongly urged upon Pitt the
necessity of resigning in 1801, and he never forgave him for having so
lightly abandoned the cause. Grenville did not attempt to carry
emancipation, but he resolved to take at least one serious step in the
direction of concession, by throwing open to the Catholics all the
posts in the army and navy. An Irish Act of 1793 had enabled them to
hold in Ireland commissions in the army, and to attain any rank except
commander-in-chief, master-general of the ordnance, and general of the
staff; but if the regiments in which they served were sent to England,
they were disqualified by law from remaining in the service. The
original Bill of Grenville's Government was intended to remove this
anomaly, and assimilate the law in the two countries; but in the
course of the discussions it was agreed that the Catholics should be
freed from the exceptions to which they were subjected by the Irish
Act, that all posts in the army and navy should be thrown open to men
of all religious persuasions, subject only to the obligation of taking
an oath which was prescribed, and that Catholic soldiers should be
guaranteed by law the free exercise of their religion. The King had
been informed of this, and was understood to have given a distinct,
though a reluctant, assent; but a strong Protestant party, headed by
Perceval, fiercely opposed it. The King withdrew his assent from the
added clauses, and expressed his disapprobation of the whole measure.
At last, after much discussion, the Ministers agreed for the present
to withdraw their Bill, reserving to themselves by a Cabinet minute,
which was submitted to the King, the right to renew it, or to propose
any other measure on the subject which they desired. But the King was
determined to push his victory to the end. He demanded from his
Ministers a promise in writing that they would never again propose to
him any measure connected with Catholic emancipation, and as the
Ministers refused to give this unconstitutional pledge, the King
dismissed them from office, and called the Duke of Portland to the
head of affairs.
It was the second time that the King had broken up a Ministry on the
Catholic question, and his conduct was especially significant, as his
refusal to grant military promotion to Catholics was announced in the
midst of a great war, and at a time when thousands of Catholics were
fighting in his armies. It at once appeared that there were two
entirely distinct schools of Tories. Pitt, to the very close of his
life, had declared that his opinions on the Catholic question were
unchanged, though he would not force them against the inclination of
the King; and his views were adopted by Canning, Castlereagh, and
Wellesley. Perceval, on the other hand, emphatically declared that he
'could not conceive a time or any change of circumstances which could
render further concession to the Catholics consistent with the safety
of the State.'[14] With the exception of Eldon, scarcely any man of
real ability adopted this view until Peel entered Parliament as the
follower of Perceval. It is sufficiently evident from this fact how
little truth there is in the theory that attributes Peel's early
Toryism to a blind admiration for Pitt.
The party of the King triumphed. Parliament was dissolved on the 'No
Popery' cry, and on the first great party division that followed the
election the Ministers in the House of Commons had a majority of 195.
Canning and Castlereagh, though they had no sympathy with that cry,
availed themselves of the current that ran so strongly against the
Whigs. In the Ministry of the Duke of Portland they held the seals for
the Foreign and War Departments, but the leadership of the Commons and
the virtual leadership of the Ministry was given to Perceval, who,
though entirely without brilliant parts, exhibited unexpected talents,
both as a practical debater and as a manager of men, and who had the
advantage of representing fully the dominant party. Several
circumstances, however, other than a conviction of the danger of the
Catholic claims, contributed to the triumph of the anti-Catholic
party. The Whigs, already broken by their policy towards France in the
first stages of the Revolution and of the war, had become still more
unpopular through their opposition to the seizure of the Danish fleet
and to the Peninsular War. They were divided among themselves, for
there was little sympathy between the more aristocratic Whigs, who
were represented by Grenville and Lord Howick, and the more Radical
party of Sir F. Burdett and Whitbread. A strong personal as well as
political dislike already existed between Howick and Canning, and
prevented their hearty co-operation on the one great question on which
they were agreed. Above all, there was a general conviction among
statesmen that the King's mind was trembling on the verge of insanity,
and that a renewal of the Catholic complications of 1801 would produce
a catastrophe.
The question was debated in both the Lords and Commons in 1808. In the
former it was lost by a majority of 87, and in the latter by a
majority of 153. Grattan on this occasion introduced the Catholic
petition in a speech of consummate power; but both Castlereagh and
Canning opposed the reception of the petition, on the ground that the
time was unsuited for the agitation of the question; and the spirit of
the ruling part of the Ministry was sufficiently shown by the
reduction of the Maynooth grant from 13,000_l._ to 9,250_l._ When the
Portland Government was broken up in September 1809 by the quarrel,
duel, and resignation of Canning and Castlereagh, Perceval became the
head of the new Ministry, Lord Wellesley occupying the place of
Canning, and Lord Hawkesbury that of Castlereagh; and an intensely
anti-Catholic ministry continued to the death of Perceval. In 1809 the
Catholic question was not introduced into Parliament. In the spring of
1810 it was introduced into both Houses, but was defeated by
majorities of 86 and 104; but in October 1810 an event occurred which
profoundly changed the aspect of affairs. The King's insanity broke
out anew in a form which gave little hope of recovery, and the Prince
of Wales was appointed Regent. For a year the regency was subject to
restrictions similar to those which had been adopted in 1788, but on
February 1, 1812, these restrictions were to cease, and the Regent was
to enter into full fruition of the royal power.
The hopes of the Catholics were now raised to the highest point. With
the confirmed insanity of George III. the most serious of all the
obstacles to their claims was removed. During the year of the
restricted regency, while there was still some chance of the recovery
of the King, the Prince of Wales declined to remove the existing
Ministry from office, though even this decision was not taken without
some hesitation and some negotiations with the Whigs. The Catholics,
however, fully expected that the royal influence would now be exerted
in their favour, and that the Whig Ministry would speedily come. The
Prince of Wales had long been in close connection with the Whigs. As
early as 1797 he had expressed a desire to go over to Ireland as
Lord-Lieutenant, carrying with him a policy of conciliation to the
Catholics. In 1805, when Fox and Grenville had introduced the Catholic
question into the Imperial Parliament, the Prince, while stating that
considerations of obvious delicacy prevented him from taking an
immediate and open part in its favour, had given the Whig leaders the
fullest authority to assure the Catholics of Ireland that he would
never forsake their interests, the 'most distinct and authentic
pledge' of his wish to relieve them from the disabilities of which
they complained, and to exert himself in their favour as soon as he
was constitutionally able to do so. It is easy therefore to imagine
the consternation and the indignation with which, in 1812, the
Catholics found that the Prince Regent had changed his principles and
his policy; that, after a short and perhaps insincere negotiation with
the Whigs, he had resolved to maintain in power a Ministry which was
constructed for the main purpose of maintaining the Catholic
disabilities; and that his own opinions were rapidly verging towards
this policy.
The situation in Ireland was becoming very dangerous. For some years
after the Union a great apathy prevailed, and there is no reasonable
doubt that, if events in England had been favourable, Catholic
emancipation would have met with no serious opposition in Ireland, and
could have been carried with every reasonable limitation and
safeguard. The most competent English officials calculated that at
least sixty-four of the hundred Irish representatives would vote for
it, and that a decided preponderance of Irish Protestant opinion was
in its favour. On the other hand, the Catholic bishops and aristocracy
had fully accepted the policy of an endowment for the priests and a
veto on the appointment of bishops, and the most Conservative elements
in the Catholic body still exercised an ascendancy over their
co-religionists. The question of the veto had been mentioned in the
Commons, by Sir J. Hippisley, in 1805, and in 1808 Grattan and
Ponsonby formally announced, on the authority of the Catholic bishops,
their readiness to accept it. A letter from Bishop Milner was read to
the House, which very clearly stated their position:
'The Catholic prelates of Ireland,' he wrote, 'are willing to give a
direct negative power to his Majesty's Government with respect to the
nomination of their titular bishoprics, in such manner that when they
have among themselves resolved who is the fittest person for the
vacant see, they will transmit his name to his Majesty's Ministers;
and if the latter should object to that name, they will transmit
another and another, until a name is presented to which no objection
is made; and (which is never likely to be the case) should the Pope
refuse to give those essentially necessary spiritual powers, of which
he is the depository, to the person so presented by the Catholic
bishops and so approved by the Government, they will continue to
propose names till one occurs which is agreeable to both
parties--namely, the Crown and Apostolic See.'
The prelates also engaged to nominate no persons who had not
previously taken the oath of allegiance.[15] But a democratic party
had now arisen among the Catholics, which utterly repudiated the
restrictions of the veto, which sought emancipation by violent and
democratic agitation, and which was rapidly drawing the most dangerous
elements in the country into its channel. The bishops, pushed on by
the strong force that was behind them, speedily retraced their steps
and passed resolutions against the restrictions they had accepted, and
there were evident signs that the Catholic body was passing away from
the guidance of Grattan and of the gentry. This was not surprising in
a country where many elements of anarchy subsisted; and the democratic
party had already found in O'Connell a leader of consummate skill, and
of untiring industry, energy, and ambition. But the chief cause of the
great change that was passing over the Irish Catholics was to be
found in the disappointment of their hopes in 1801, in 1804, in 1806,
and 1812; in the desertion of their cause by Pitt; in the proved
impotence of the Whigs; in the failure of 'the securities' even to
mitigate the hostility of Perceval and his followers; in the profound
consternation and exasperation that were produced by the attitude of
the Regent. The formation of the General Committee of Catholic
Delegates was speedily followed by its suppression under the
Convention Act. But the influence of O'Connell was rapidly growing;
there were already ominous signs of a possible agitation for the
repeal of the Union, and the indignation of the Catholics was
significantly shown by the famous 'witchery resolutions,' which were
unanimously carried by the aggregate meeting of the Catholics in the
June of 1812, reflecting on the influence which Lady Hertford was
believed to exercise over the Prince. After calling for the 'total and
unqualified repeal of the penal laws which aggrieve the Catholics,'
they proceeded to use the following language: 'That from authentic
documents now before us we hear, with deep disappointment and anguish,
how cruelly the promised boon of Catholic freedom has been interrupted
by the fatal witchery of an unworthy secret influence.... To this
impure source we trace but too distinctly our baffled hopes and
protracted servitude.' Such language was not calculated to conciliate
the Prince, and he was only confirmed in his hostility to the
Catholics. As early as September 1813 the Duke of Richmond wrote to
Peel: 'I was delighted to find H.R.H. as steady a Protestant as the
Attorney-General.'