Part 7 (1/2)
would be surprised to know that these sobriquets const.i.tute a popular tribute to the name of Robert Peel, the creator of the model force.
These legal and administrative reforms, beneficent as they were, were not great party questions like the two others which the Wellington government had to face, and gained so little credit in the facing. The Whigs, under John Russell, urged the demand for the relief of Protestant dissenters from their political disabilities by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Peel argued against the change, but it was carried, nevertheless, and the Tories accepted the measure with the best grace they could summon. Their resistance to Catholic emanc.i.p.ation cost them more dearly. O'Connell, master of all the arts of agitation, fanned the excitement in Ireland into flame. His Catholic a.s.sociation made itself heard, and felt, and feared. In June, 1828, a member of the government standing for election for County Clare was soundly defeated by O'Connell himself, a man whom the anti- Catholic laws disqualified from sitting in Parliament. The government knew not which way to turn, and O'Connell, perceiving his advantage, lashed his followers to the verge of an insurrection. This was the question on which George III. had broken with William Pitt a generation before, and now it was only by the most vehement arguments, and even by threats of resignation, that the ministers could obtain his son's consent to the inevitable. In a speech of four hours' duration Peel explained the measures to the House of Commons, confessing that the necessity under which he acted ”was the severest blow it had ever been his lot to experience.” The speech was an admission of defeat, and an elaboration of the measures by which the government, in the hour of concession, proposed to limit the ”dangerous power of the Roman Catholics.” The bill became a law, and the Irish Catholic members began to sit in Parliament--with some of the disturbing consequences which no one foresaw better than Peel himself.
The Wellington ministry barely survived the strain of carrying Catholic emanc.i.p.ation. The year 1830 found Sir Robert Peel--the elder baronet having died--the leader of the opposition. In this character he led his party against the Reform Bills of 1831-32.
Their weak points were mercilessly laid bare, and the excellences and past glories of the existing system were effectively displayed. But nothing at that day could stop the progress of reform, as the King and peers soon learned.
The defeat of the Tories in the first general election under the Reform Act was overwhelming. They mustered less than one-fourth of the House of Commons. It seemed to most cool political observers that the Whigs who now a.s.sumed office could not be displaced for a decade at least. The spirit of change was alive in all the nations of western Europe, and in England there seemed to be small need of a political party whose steady resistance to innovation was relieved only by the exceptions in which the party had espoused reform in extremity to save its own existence.
Wellington and the rigid Tories of his stripe saw no hope for their party, and little enough for England in the way along which she was plunging. Peel, however, was supremely suited to the times. Bound to the party of Church and Crown by the traditions of his father, he nevertheless was endowed with a mind which was not quite dominated by prejudice. The study of facts, the examination of conflicting claims, the weighing of argument, had their full effect upon him, and he had the courage of his convictions. At this juncture, when so much was s.h.i.+fting which had anch.o.r.ed England to the past, Sir Robert Peel, with his clear-eyed vision, his trained judgment, his honesty, and his moderation, formed a rallying point for those Tories who had no other leader, and attracted to him moderate and enlightened men of whatever party who feared the unbalanced radicalism of the day, and who were bent on preserving or conserving the best elements which remained of the ancient Const.i.tution of England.
From such accretions grew up a party which gradually dropped the name of Tory and adopted that of Conservative. One of Peel's biographers, writing of this period as Peel's opportunity, says: ”Since Conservatism, like Liberalism, is an imperishable instinct in human nature, every society must contain a Conservative party, and such a party speedily develops, even amid the wildest storm of revolution. The Reform Act of 1832 had made room for a Conservative party suited to the age. The Tories had been weak because their strength was confined to the landed interest.
Possessed by a panic-dread of change, bred by the events of the French Revolution, they had refused to admit any new interests to a share of power. In their despite the Reform Act had transferred the control of politics from the aristocracy to the middle cla.s.s.
But the English middle cla.s.s was naturally Conservative. It was orderly, it was rich, it was sensitive to social influence, it was devout and serious in a stiff, unbending way. Some reforms certainly it required; an effective administration for the great towns where it lived and traded; the amendment of a poor law which shocked all its economic maxims; the abolition of negro slavery which revolted its religion; the abolition of laws which, pressing hardly upon non-conformists, revolted its sense of justice. It had not yet declared for free trade, although it might be expected to do so. The ameliorations which the middle cla.s.s at this time desired, Peel was ready to approve, and these ameliorations once granted, the middle cla.s.s would tend to be Conservative. But theirs would not be the conservatism of squires and rectors. They would incline to a conservatism of their own, and they would want a leader of their own to formulate it and to organize them. They would want a statesman who was bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; a good man of business, cautious, but open to practical suggestions, one who would satisfy their ideal of industry and economy; one who would always be grave and decorous, never puzzle them with epigrams or alarm them with rhetoric; in short, such a great man as they could conceive. Such Sir Robert Peel was. There never breathed a politician more truly congenial to them. He represented their virtues and their failings; he shared their talents and their prejudices; he was always growing in their confidence; and when he died lamented by all his fellow-citizens, he was most deeply lamented by them.”
With such tact and such mastery of the political situation did Peel conduct himself in the years of opposition--now mildly criticising the government's policy, now joining forces with it, and now tearing its policies to pieces--that he constantly grew in the national esteem, and began to be looked upon as the inevitable successor of the Whigs. His turn came sooner than any one expected, in December, 1834. It was too soon, in fact, for the first Peel ministry could maintain itself but a few months, failing to secure a majority of Parliament. Yet in this brief lease of power Peel gave evidence of his fitness to govern. He undertook the reform of the ecclesiastical courts, gratified the Dissenters by proposing to remove the regulations which required all marriages to be celebrated according to the rites of the Established Church. He even addressed himself to the delicate question of settling the temporalities of the Established Church in Ireland, where the collection of church t.i.thes was accompanied with much disorder and distress, arising from the fact that the vast majority of the t.i.the-payers were hostile to the Protestant bishops and clergy whom they were taxed to support. The opposition, led by John Russell, took advantage of the prejudices surrounding this subject and forced a succession of adverse votes, in consequence of which the Peel ministry abandoned office in April, 1835, after one hundred days of power--a period sometimes considered the most brilliant in Peel's whole career.
For six years Sir Robert Peel remained in opposition, conducting himself so sagaciously as to gather about him all disaffected elements of the disintegrating majority. Peel saw to it that whatever popular measures of reform were carried by the Melbourne ministry should be credited largely to Conservative support.
Wellington still survived as a great national figure, but his political influence was gone, and there was no one in the Whig or Liberal camp who could dispute Peel's position as the leading public man of England. Of his course at this time he said himself (1838): ”My object is that by steadily attending to our duty, by censuring the government on all occasions when they deserve it, enforcing our principles by aiding them to carry those measures which we think right, even though by so doing we may be rescuing the government, we may establish new claims upon the approbation of the country.”
The majority of the House of Commons was made up of incongruous elements, whose interests were at variance on many questions.
Peel actually came to the rescue of the ministers not once, but so many times as to give bitterness to the taunt hurled at them by a Radical orator: ”Why! the right honorable member for Tamworth (Peel) governs England. The honorable and learned member for Dublin (O'Connell) governs England. The Whigs govern nothing but Downing Street. The right honorable member for Tamworth is contented with power without place or patronage, and the Whigs are contented with place and patronage without power!”
Hard times came on and the nation faced an annual deficit.
Distress was widespread among the people, nouris.h.i.+ng the Chartist agitation on the one hand, and giving point to the arguments of the Anti-Corn Law orators on the other. There was pressing need for a wise and energetic Prime Minister, and hope of such qualities in Lord Melbourne had long since failed. The general elections of 1841 showed a clear majority for the Conservatives, and in August Sir Robert Peel came back to power, backed by a consolidated party and trusted by the nation.
The most pressing problems were financial. Peel proposed a modification of the Corn Law duties, at the same time defending the system of protection, not in the interests of the agriculturist cla.s.s, but to make England independent of foreign countries for its food supplies. His proposals were enacted into law. His first budget attempted to turn the customary deficit into a surplus by means of an income tax of seven pence in the pound on incomes of one hundred and fifty pounds and upward. His revision of the tariff on imports introduced important changes looking toward increased freedom of trade, especially in the raw materials of manufacture. The times improved; revenue exceeded expenditure; consols were quoted at only a fraction below par, and two hundred and fifty million pounds of the national debt was converted from three and one-half per cent into a loan paying three and one-fourth per cent for ten years and three per cent thereafter. By another far-reaching measure--the Bank Charter Act--Peel placed salutary restrictions upon the issue of paper money, and increased his reputation as a master of financial legislation.
From year to year, as the surplus revenue increased, the government employed it to cut down the duties upon imports. From wool, cotton, and gla.s.s, and many minor items they were entirely removed, and there were reductions throughout the schedules. The grants in aid of education were trebled in the face of bitter protest from his own party. Education in Ireland was aided by grants to the Catholic College at Maynooth and by the establishment of other ”Queen's colleges” in affiliation with the university at Dublin.
In one way and another Ireland played a great part in the history of this administration. In 1843 the agitation of O'Connell, for the repeal of the union of Ireland with England, culminated in immense and angry meetings which threatened the public peace. The government then took the matter in hand, ”proclaimed” the gatherings and arrested O'Connell. It was the failure of the potato crop of 1845, and the consequent Irish famine which forced Peel to abandon the last stronghold of protection and recommend the total and absolute repeal forever of all duties on all articles of subsistence. The history of the repeal of the Corn Laws, in 1846, has already been given. On the day on which the bill pa.s.sed to its third reading in the House of Lords, all the enemies of the government, led by Tory protectionists who considered themselves betrayed by their own Prime Minister combined to overthrow him. On a bill for the protection of life in Ireland Peel was defeated by seventy-three votes. Four days later, on relinquis.h.i.+ng his place at the head of the government he p.r.o.nounced his memorable valedictory. He should leave a name, he said, severely censured by many who deeply regretted the severance of party ties, censured also by all sincere protectionists. ”I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honorable motives, clamors for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit. But it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice.”
Peel never returned to office. His conversion to free trade had split his party, and the Whigs, under John Russell, succeeded to the direction of affairs. He remained in the House of Commons, and with such personal following as yet remained to him, supported the administration. The protectionists were rallied and led by George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, whose star waxed as Peel's began to wane. Death put a sudden end to his activity. He was thrown from his horse while riding up Const.i.tution Hill in London, and died on the second of July, 1850. In accordance with his expressed wish, his family declined the honors of a public funeral, and he was buried without ostentation in the family tomb at Drayton Ba.s.sett. His statue, voted by the House of Commons, was placed in Westminster Abbey.
The Duke of Wellington, in his simple way, said of his late a.s.sociate: ”I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw in the whole course of my life the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact.” Remarkable testimony this, concerning a great politician.
From Disraeli, who would perhaps be less drawn to this qualification of a statesman, comes this word of praise, with many of detraction: ”Nature had combined in Sir Robert Peel many admirable parts. In him a physical frame incapable of fatigue was united with an understanding equally vigorous and flexible. He was gifted with the faculty of method in the highest degree, and with great powers of application, which were sustained by a prodigious memory, while he could communicate his acquisitions with clear and fluent elocution. Such a man under any circ.u.mstances and in any sphere of life would probably have become remarkable. Ordained from his youth to be busied with the affairs of a great empire, such a man, after long years of observation, practice, and perpetual discipline, would have become what Sir Robert Peel was in the latter portion of his life--a transcendent administrator of public business and a matchless master of debate in a popular a.s.sembly.”
The masterly debater never rose to heights of eloquence. His thorough and practical mind enabled him to study, sift, and give form and substance to the broad political and economic conceptions of more idealistic men. Inheriting the narrow political creed of his father, he can scarcely be blamed if his mind came slowly to advanced positions. Rather shall he not be commended who, with such prepossessions and prejudices, and with such party co-workers, keeps his mind open to conviction? ”The resumption of cash payments, the amendment of the criminal law, the inst.i.tution of the Irish constabulary and the London police, Catholic emanc.i.p.ation and the emanc.i.p.ation of trade, and a host of reforms only less beneficial than these make up a record of useful labor which has seldom been surpa.s.sed.”
QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW
1. What unusual preparation had Peel for his public career?
2. Upon what political question did he and his father separate?
3. Describe his relations to Ireland as Chief Secretary.
4. What services did he render to criminal law?
5. What police reform is due to him?
6. What two famous party questions did he resist, but finally of necessity accept?
7. Why was Peel especially fitted to lead the new Conservative party, formed after 1832?