consulting Peel undertaken a foolish prosecution of O'Connell for a
not very dangerous speech, received a heavy rebuff, for the Grand
Jury threw out the Bill, and the prosecution of an Orange leader was
equally unsuccessful. A Bill was about the same time brought in and
carried, suppressing the new association; but it could not suppress
the spirit which it had aroused. O'Connell, however, was thoroughly
alarmed at the state of the country, and as far as possible from
desiring a rebellion, and he was at this time in a very conciliatory
mood. He was perfectly ready to accept an endowment for the
priesthood, which would attach them to the Government, and also a
considerable raising of the Irish franchise. This was the last
occasion on which his party and the Catholic gentry very cordially
concurred, and it was the last occasion on which the Catholic question
could have been settled on a basis that would have given real strength
to the Empire. A Relief Bill passed through all its stages in the
Commons by considerable majorities, and it was followed by a Bill for
raising the qualifications of Irish electors, and by a resolution for
endowing the priesthood. O'Connell fully believed that Catholic
emancipation would definitely pass in this session,[38] and he
appeared to have excellent reasons for his belief. In Ireland it
generally prevailed, and it exercised an immediate pacifying
influence. Lord Fingall and other Catholic noblemen, in presenting an
address at this time to the King, were able to say 'the whole of
Ireland reposes in profound tranquillity, and the law, without the aid
of any extraordinary power, everywhere receives voluntary obedience.'
It was afterwards stated by Lord George Bentinck that Peel had changed
his opinions about Catholic emancipation in 1825, and had communicated
this change to Lord Liverpool. The letters before us, however,
conclusively prove that if Peel was shaken, it was not about the
merits of emancipation, but about the practicability of resisting it.
Having been four times defeated in the Commons on the Catholic
question, he tendered his resignation, and Lord Liverpool at once
declared that without his assistance he could not continue the
struggle. Peel was the only Minister in the House of Commons opposed
to the Catholic cause, differing on the question from all his
colleagues in the House. If he had resigned, and if Lord Liverpool had
followed his example, there is good reason to believe that a
Government might have been formed which would have carried the measure
safely and speedily with the securities that had been accepted. Most
unfortunately for the Empire, the 'Protestant' party persuaded Peel to
withdraw his resignation in order to avert this surrender. In the
House of Lords the Duke of York, who was the heir-presumptive to the
throne, stood up and declared his unalterable opposition to the
Catholic claims, 'whatever might be his situation in life, so help him
God,' and the Lords rejected the Bill by a majority of 48.
The conscientious views of George III. obtained some measure of
respect even from those who believed them to be most unfounded; but no
halo of sanctity dignified the scruples of George IV. or of the Duke
of York. The Irish Catholics, exasperated at the present
disappointment of their hopes, and at the prospect of another hostile
King, flung themselves into a furious agitation, and in a few months
all the progress which had been made towards pacifying the country was
undone, while in England Peel had to meet a terrible commercial
crisis. Seventy county banks stopped in less than a week. In dealing
with questions of commerce and currency Peel was always in his
element, and his measures appear to have been wise and skilful. A
general election took place, and he was again returned by the
University of Oxford as the uncompromising opponent of Catholic
emancipation. In England the anti-Catholic party gained some seats,
and the increasing violence in Ireland had produced some reaction. In
Ireland it was soon apparent that what Grattan had feared had come to
pass, and that the tie which had hitherto attached the people to their
landlords was completely broken. The priests everywhere appeared at
the head of their people, and it was at once seen that a new and
terrible power was dominating Irish politics. In Waterford, where the
Beresfords had long been omnipotent, they were totally defeated, and
Leslie Foster sent Peel a vivid description of his own defeat in the
Louth election. At the outset of the contest, upwards of five-sixths
of the votes were promised to him; but the whole priesthood turned
themselves into electioneering agents against him. In every chapel
there were political sermons; the priests menaced all who voted for
him with eternal damnation; they were present at every polling-booth
to overawe their parishioners; and their efforts were seconded by
savage mobs who waylaid and beat all opponents, and forced multitudes
of Protestants, by threats of assassination or of the burning of their
houses, to vote against their promises and their convictions. 'In the
county town the studied violence and intimidation were such that it
was only by locking up my voters in enclosed yards that their lives
were preserved.' By these means the election was won. What, asked
Foster, will be the end of this? 'The landlords are exasperated to the
utmost, the priests swaggering in their triumph, the tenantry sullen
and insolent. Men who, a month ago, were all civility and submission
now hardly suppress their curses when a gentleman passes by. The text
of every village orator is, "Boys, you have put down three lords;
stick to your priests, and you will carry all before you."'
The letters of Goulburn, the Chief Secretary, show that the picture
was not overcharged.
'Never,' he wrote, 'were Roman Catholic and Protestant so decidedly
opposed. Never did the former act with so general a concert, or place
themselves so completely under the command of the priesthood.' 'The
priests exercise on all matters a dominion perfectly uncontrolled and
uncontrollable. In many parts of the country their sermons are purely
political, and the altars in the several chapels are the rostra from
which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort
to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in
a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp
of the law. In several towns no Roman Catholic will now deal with a
Protestant shop-keeper, in consequence of the priest's interdiction,
and this species of interference, stirring up enmity on one hand and
feelings of resentment on the other, is mainly conducive to outrage
and disorder.... The first vacancy on the Roman Catholic bench is to
be supplied by Dr. England from America, a man of all others most
decidedly hostile to British interests and the most active in
fomenting the discord of this country.... With such leaders it is
reasonable to anticipate the worst. It is impossible to detail in a
letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now
interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the
mob, the gentry, and the magistracy, and how they impede the
administration of justice.' Their power is greater than any other in
the State, 'and they love to display it, and omit no opportunity of
taunting their adversaries.' 'The state of society here is so
disorganised, and the Government has so inferior an authority to other
powers acting on the people, that the opinion formed to-day may be
quite changed to-morrow.'[39]
The election of 1826 virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it
reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist
it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy
of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making
impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his
generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in
kindling religious hatreds as intense as in the darkest period of the
eighteenth century, in breaking down that healthy relation and
subordination of classes on which beyond all other things the future
well-being of Ireland depended. Peel was not wholly blind to what was
happening. 'A darker cloud than ever,' he wrote, 'seems to me to
impend over Ireland, that is if one of the remaining bonds of society,
the friendly connection between landlord and tenant, is
dissolved.'[40] He still persuaded himself, however, that the
political power of the priests was transient, and that a reaction
would set in that might destroy it. The defeat of the Catholic
question in the new Parliament by a majority of four encouraged him in
his resistance. In January 1827 the death of the Duke of York removed
one serious obstacle to the Catholic cause, and six weeks later Lord
Liverpool, who had so long held together the divided Ministry, was
struck down by apoplexy. Peel would gladly have continued in his
present position if a peer of real weight who held his opinions on the
Catholic question was appointed to the vacant place. But there was no
such peer, except Wellington, to be found, and under Wellington
Canning refused to serve. Canning had, indeed, now fully resolved to
be at the head of the Administration, and Peel refused to serve under
him.
With his opinions on the Catholic question it is impossible to blame
him, and the letters which passed between the two statesmen are very
honourable to both, and show clearly that in spite of great divergence
of opinion, character, and interests, each could recognise the good
faith of the other. In a letter written to one of his brothers Peel
describes his position with complete frankness:
'I am content with my position in the Government, and willing to
retain it--willing to see Mr. Canning leader of the House of Commons,
as he has been. But giving him credit for honesty and sincerity, if he
is at the head of the Government, and has all the patronage of the
Government, he must exert himself as an honest man to carry the
Catholic question; and to the carrying of that question, to the
preparation for its being carried, I never can be a party. Still less
can I be a party to it for the sake of office.'
These words were written little more than a year before Peel
undertook, as Minister of the Crown, to introduce a measure of
Catholic emancipation. But if they do little credit to his prescience,
no one can mistake the accent of sincerity in what follows:
'I do not choose to see new lights on the Catholic question precisely
at that conjuncture when the Duke of York has been laid in his grave
and Lord Liverpool struck dumb by the palsy. Would any man, woman, or
child believe that after nineteen years' stubborn unbelief I was
converted, at the very moment Mr. Canning was Prime Minister, out of
pure conscience and the force of truth?'[41]
With the resignation of Peel and the other anti-Catholic members of
Lord Liverpool's Government, and the formation of the short Canning
Ministry, this instalment of Peel's letters comes to an end.[42] We
rejoice that the publication of this very interesting correspondence
has been entrusted to an editor who is at once so competent and so
judicious.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] _Life of Lord George Bentinck_, p. 304.
[11] Lewis's _Letters_, p. 226.
[12] _Private Correspondence of Sir R. Peel, 1788-1827_. Ed. by C.S.
Parker, M.P., 1891, p. 24.
[13] _Ibid._ p. 27.
[14] _Hansard_, First Ser. xxi. 663.
[15] Butler's _Hist. Memoirs_, ii. 177.
[16] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 80.
[17] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 83.
[18] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 76.
[19] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 217, 218.
[20] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 222-224.
[21] _Ibid._ p. 212.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 284.
[23] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 282.
[24] _Ibid._ pp. 114-116, 211, 218.
[25] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 60.
[26] _Ibid._ p. 275.
[27] _Ibid._ p. 96.
[28] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 211.
[29] _Ibid._ pp. 215, 219, 220.
[30] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 207, 231, 235, 236.
[31] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 87-92.
[32] _Ibid._ pp. 244, 265.
[33] _Ibid._ pp. 167, 233.
[34] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 348.
[35] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 349, 358, 359, 370-371.
[36] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 358.
[37] _Ibid._ pp. 315-317.
[38] Fitzpatrick's _Correspondence of O'Connell_, i. p. 108.
[39] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 416, 418, 419, 422.
[40] _Ibid._ pp. 413, 420.
[41] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 485.
[42] Two more volumes have been published since this Essay was
written.--ED.
EDWARD HENRY, FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY
The time has not yet arrived for the publication of a full life of the
late Lord Derby, but in submitting to the public a collection of his
more important speeches outside Parliament, a short sketch of the
chief features of his life and character may not be out of place.
Edward Henry, fifteenth Earl of Derby, was born July 21, 1826, and was
educated at Rugby, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a
First Class in classics. In March 1848 he unsuccessfully contested
Lancaster, and soon after started for a long and instructive journey
in America and the West Indies. During his absence from England he was
elected Member for Lynn Regis upon the death of Lord George Bentinck
in September 1848, and he held this seat without interruption till his
accession to the earldom in October 1869. His first speech in the
House of Commons was delivered on May 31, 1850, on the sugar duties.
The effect on the West Indies of the abolition of the preferential
duty on sugar was a subject which he had specially studied during his
journey, and he had published a pamphlet upon it. Sir Robert Peel
greatly praised his maiden speech, and Greville describes the great
impression which it made--an impression which a further knowledge of
the speaker speedily confirmed.
The appearance in Parliament of the eldest son of one of the most
brilliant party leaders of the age could scarcely fail to be a
considerable political event, and it was soon found that the new
member was not only a man of rare ability, but was also in nearly all
respects very unlike his illustrious father. Never was there a more
striking instance of that strange freak of heredity by which an able
son is sometimes much less the continuation than the complement of an
able father, exhibiting in strongly contrasted lights both opposite
qualities and opposite defects. The fourteenth Earl was a great
orator. He was one of the greatest debaters who have ever lived. He
was a party leader of extraordinary power, delighting in political
conflict; throwing into it much of the fire and passion which he
displayed in his sporting contests; little fitted to conciliate
opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his
followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His
keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid
English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and
repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity
of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If
there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party
leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered that he has
identified his name with several important measures, and that during
most of his career he was in a hopeless minority. His enemies accused
him of rashness, arrogance, and some superficiality, both of thought
and knowledge. They alleged that he carried too much of the sporting
spirit into politics; that his naturally excellent judgment was often
deflected by the passions of the fray; that he was accustomed to
judge measures more by their party advantages than by their intrinsic
merits, and to care more for an immediate triumph than for ultimate
results.
His son was made in a very different mould. Though like most able and
clear-headed men he acquired by much practice a respectable facility
in purely extemporaneous argument, he was never a great debater. His
speeches were very carefully prepared, and they possessed conspicuous
merits of form as well as of matter, but they were not the speeches of
a brilliant orator. No one could reason more clearly, more powerfully,
or more persuasively. He was a supreme master of terse, luminous,
weighty, and accurate English. He had much skill in bringing into
vivid relief the salient points of an obscure and complicated subject,
condensing an argument into a phrase, and illustrating it by graphic
felicities of language that clung to the memory. But he hated
rhetoric. His enunciation was faulty and unimpressive. He appealed
solely to the reason, and never to passion or to prejudice, and he had
nothing of the fire and temperament of a party orator. Very few
politicians mastered so thoroughly the subjects with which they dealt.
No politician of his time retained so remarkably, amid party
conflicts, the power of judging questions from all their sides; of
balancing judicially opposing considerations; of looking beyond the
passions and interests of the hour; of realising the points of view of
those to whom he was opposed. Declamation, clap-trap, evasion,
ambiguities of thought and expression, empty plausibilities, unfair,
partial, and exaggerated statements, were all essentially repugnant to
that clear and sceptical intellect, to that sound, cautious, practical
judgment. His business talents were very great, and they were
assiduously cultivated. His appetite for work was insatiable. No one
knew better how to administer a great department or preside over a
Parliamentary Committee, or arbitrate in a difficult controversy, or
give wise and timely advice to an inexperienced organisation. It was
in these fields that his influence was, perhaps, most deeply felt. His
success in them did not depend merely on his unflagging industry and
his excellent judgment, it was also largely due to his eminently
conciliatory character. The uniform courtesy which he displayed to men
of all ranks and opinions is happily no rare thing among his class,
but everyone who was brought in contact with Lord Derby soon felt that
he was in the presence of one who tried to understand his position, to
estimate his arguments at their full worth, to find some common ground
of agreement. If it were possible in a bitter controversy to arrive at
reasonable compromise, Lord Derby was most likely to effect it. He had
a curious talent of making speeches with which everyone must agree,
and which at the same time were never commonplace. Their secret lay in
the habit of mind that led him always to seek out the common grounds
of principle or fact that underlie every controversy, and which in the
heat of the conflict the disputants had often failed to recognise.
It was not difficult to forecast the place which a statesman of this
kind was likely to fill in English politics. He was plainly wanting in
many of the qualities of a party leader, and in most of the qualities
of a parliamentary gladiator, and he was not likely to succeed in all
forms of statesmanship. He would certainly not prove
A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high.
His clear perception of the objections to any course, combined with a
very deep sense of responsibility, not unfrequently enfeebled his will
in moments when bold and decisive action was required, and there were
times when the love of compromise which was so useful an element in
his character seemed to his best friends too closely allied to
weakness. But he probably saved every party with which he acted from
many mistakes. He brought to every Government which he joined a very
eminent administrative capacity. He defended every policy that he
espoused with a persuasive reasoning that few men could equal. He was
a supremely skilful detector of false weights and of false measures.
Every fad, every new-born enthusiasm, every crude ill-digested theory,
found in him the calmest and most penetrating of critics, and he
inspired the great body of moderate men of all parties with a deep
confidence in his patriotism and in his judgment.
His political position was marked out by the fact that his father had
recently broken away from the Whig connection which had hitherto been
that of his family, and was now the leader of the Conservative party.
The son naturally took his place under his father's banner, but I much
question whether he would have done so if no family influence had
interfered. It was not that he at any time changed considerably his
views. As Macaulay has truly said--while the extremes of the two
English parties are separated by a wide chasm, there is a frontier
line where they almost blend; and Lord Derby when a Conservative
always represented the Liberal, and when a Liberal the Conservative
wing of his party. But his mind had much of the Whig character; his
judgment was very independent; and on Church questions especially he
was never fully in harmony with his party. He was appointed
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his father's first
short Ministry in March 1852, at a time when he was travelling in
India, and he left office with his father in December of the same
year. In 1853 he made a remarkable speech on Indian affairs, in some
degree foreshadowing the Indian policy which he was afterwards
destined to take such a large part in carrying into effect. During the
next few years he spoke frequently on Indian and Colonial questions,
on questions connected with education, factories, and other
working-class interests, and he supported--often in opposition to the
majority of his party--a large number of reforms which have since been
accomplished. He advocated the introduction of competitive
examinations, first of all into the Diplomatic, and then into most
branches of the Civil Service. He spoke against the system of purchase
in the army, and served on a Royal Commission on the subject. He
supported a motion for securing to married women their property and
earnings. He took a decided part in opposition to Church rates. He
voted for the emancipation of the Jews. He voted and spoke in favour
of the Maynooth grant. He was an early advocate of the opening of
museums on Sundays, and of a conscience clause to be enforced in all
schools receiving State assistance. He supported the establishment of
the Divorce Court, and clearly showed that preference for social as
distinguished from political questions which he retained through his
whole life. He delighted in placing himself in touch with working men.
Mechanics' institutes, free libraries, almost every movement for the
education and improvement of the working class, found in him a steady
friend. He once wrote to Lord Shaftesbury: 'We are both public men
deeply interested in the condition of the working class, and for my
own part I would rather look back on services such as you have
performed for that class than receive the highest honours in the
employment of the State.' On working-class questions he was often
accused of Radicalism, but it was Radicalism of the old school, which
relied mainly for reform on spontaneous effort, on moral improvement,
and extended education, and was very jealous of State interference,
compulsion, and control. He had a great admiration for Mill's
writings, and especially for his treatise on Liberty, which he
described as 'one of the wisest books of our time.' Mill fully
reciprocated the feeling. He once spoke of Lord Stanley as 'one of the
very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
ought to be founded on principles.'
'Our party,' wrote Lord Malmesbury in 1853, 'are angry with Disraeli,
which is constantly the case, and they are also displeased with Lord
Stanley, suspecting him to be coquetting with the Manchester party.'
Greville, nearly at the same time, expressed his belief that Lord
Stanley was taking 'a wise and liberal line,' and that he was 'pretty
sure to act a conspicuous part.' In November 1855 there was a critical
moment in his career, when Lord Palmerston, on the death of Sir
William Molesworth, offered Lord Stanley the post of Secretary of
State for the Colonies. He at once went down to Knowsley to consult
his father, who put a strong veto on the proposal, and the offer was
refused, but in terms which showed that it had been far from
unacceptable. It is probable that the refusal was a wise one, for
although on many home questions Lord Stanley would have found himself
more in harmony with moderate Liberals than with his own party, he
would certainly have dissented from Lord Palmerston's foreign policy.
During the Crimean war he seems to have sympathised with the views of
Bright and Cobden. He took an active part in an able but now nearly
forgotten Tory paper called 'The Press,' which was opposed to the war,
and his extreme horror of war and of every policy which could possibly
lead to war was one of his strongest characteristics. Responsibility
in office never weighed lightly upon him, but responsibility for
measures which led or might lead to bloodshed was more than he could
bear.
At the time when this offer of Lord Palmerston was made, Lord Stanley
was little more than twenty-nine. Greville considered that he had
acted wisely in refusing, and he has given us an interesting account
of the light in which the young statesman then appeared to experienced
political judges. 'His position and abilities,' he said, 'are certain
before long to make him conspicuous, and to enable him to play a very
considerable part. He is exceedingly ambitious, of an independent turn
of mind, very industrious, and has acquired a vast amount of
information. Not long ago Disraeli gave me an account of him and of
his curious opinions--exceedingly curious in a man in his condition of
life and with his prospects. Last night Lord Strangford (George
Smythe) talked to me about him, expressed the highest opinion of his
capacity and acquirements, and confirmed what Disraeli had told me of
his notions and views even more, for he says that he is a real and
sincere democrat, and that he would like if he could to prove his
sincerity by divesting himself of his aristocratic character, and even
of the wealth he is heir to. How far this may be true I know not....
Nothing appears to me certain but that he will play a considerable
part for good or for evil, but I cannot pretend to guess what it will
be. At present he seems to be more allied with Bright than with any
other public man, and as his disposition about the war and its
continuance is very much that of Bright it would have been difficult
for him to take office with Palmerston.'