Peel saw that the Duke of Wellington's Government had lost some of its most influential members. Other events, too, had been turning his attention towards the growth of the agitation in Ireland. The Marquis of Wellesley, elder brother of the Duke of Wellington, had been Viceroy of Ireland. Wellesley had been a distinguished statesman, and as Viceroy of India had conducted to a successful issue, with the help of his younger brother, the great Mahratta war. When he became Viceroy of Ireland he had gone over to that country as a strong opponent of the Catholic claims, but his experience there soon convinced him that it would be impossible to resist those claims much longer, and at the same time {73} to keep Ireland in tranquillity. Therefore, when the Duke of Wellington, on coming into office as Prime Minister, refused to recognize the Catholic claims, Lord Wellesley resigned his place. He was succeeded by the Marquis of Anglesey, a soldier who had done brilliant service in the wars against Napoleon, and was well known as a determined opponent of the demands made by the advocates of Catholic emancipation. Lord Anglesey, too, became satisfied during his time of office in Ireland that there was no alternative between emancipation and an armed rebellion among the Irish Catholics, a large number of whom were actually serving in the ranks of the army. His opinions were again and again impressed on the Government, and the course he took only led to his recall from the Viceroyalty.
In the House of Commons an event took place which had a great effect on the mind of Peel. Early in 1828 Sir Francis Burdett, who held a very prominent place among the more advanced reformers of the time, and who represented Westminster in the House of Commons, brought forward a resolution inviting the House to consider the state of the laws affecting the Roman Catholics of the two islands, "with a view to such a final and conciliatory settlement as may be conducive to the peace and strength of the United Kingdom, to the stability of the Protestant Establishment, and to the general satisfaction and concord of all classes of his Majesty's subjects." The resolution was supported by a powerful speech from Brougham, in which he dwelt on the fact that not one of those who opposed the motion had expressed any conviction that the existing state of things could long continue, and that it was impossible to overlook or deny the great advance which the movement for Catholic Emancipation had been making in and out of Parliament. Peel was greatly impressed by this argument, and also by the fact that the men who supported Burdett and Brougham in the House of Commons represented the best part of the intellect and statesmanship of that House. The resolution was carried by 272 votes against 266 on the other side, a small majority, {74} indeed, but a majority that at such a time was large enough to show a man of Peel's intellect the practical progress which the demand for Catholic Emancipation had already made.
[Sidenote: 1828—Peel and Catholic emancipation]
We find in Peel's own correspondence the most interesting evidences of the influence which all these events were making on his clear and thoughtful mind. The man whom O'Connell had defeated in Clare, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, had represented the constituency for many years, had always supported by speeches and votes the claims of the Catholics, and was the son of one who had stood by the side of Grattan and Sir John Parnell in resisting the Act of Union. No one could have been more popular up to that time among Irishmen, and the election of O'Connell was obviously due to the fact that O'Connell had made himself the leader of a movement which had for its object to bring about a great crisis, and to compel the Parliament and the Government to surrender at once or encounter a civil war. Peel asked himself—we quote his own words—"whether it may not be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole Catholic population—which had inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and the energy of a free man—which had in the twinkling of an eye made all considerations of personal gratitude, ancient family connections, local preferences, the fear of worldly injury, the hope of worldly advantage subordinate to the one absorbing sense of religious obligation and public duty—whether, I say, it might not be possible that the contagion of that feverish excitement might spread beyond the barriers which under ordinary circumstances the habits of military obedience and the strictness of military discipline opposed to all such external influences?"
Peel became gradually convinced that the Marquis of Anglesey was right in his views, and that there was no choice between a recognition of the Catholic claims and the outbreak of a civil war in Ireland. The more he thought over the question, the more he became convinced that it would not be possible to rely on the loyalty of all {75} the Catholic soldiers in the ranks of the army in Ireland if they were called upon to join in shooting down their own brothers and friends because these had risen in rebellion against the oppressive laws which excluded a Catholic from the full rights of citizenship. Peel was not a philosopher or a dreamer, but above all things a practical statesman, and when he had to choose between civil war and the concession of a claim which was admitted to be right and just by some of the most enlightened Englishmen and Scotchmen who sat near him on the benches of the House of Commons, and by some of the most enlightened Englishmen and Scotchmen outside the House, he could not bring himself to believe that claims thus advocated could be so essentially unjust or unreasonable as to make their continued refusal worth the cost of so terrible a struggle.
Peel made up his mind to the fact that Catholic Emancipation must, as soon as possible, become the work of Parliament. But he did not yet believe that he was the right man to undertake the task. It seemed to him that one who had always been regarded as the determined opponent of Emancipation would not be likely to win over many supporters among his Tory friends for such a sudden change of policy. He did not think himself well suited, and he was not inclined, to conduct the negotiations which would be necessary between any Government attempting such a task and the Irish advocates of Emancipation. His idea was that Lord Grey, as the head of the reforming party, would be the statesman best qualified to undertake such an enterprise and most likely to carry it to an early success. His first business, however, would clearly be to convince the Duke of Wellington that Catholic Emancipation was inevitable, and this work he at once set himself to accomplish. He had some trouble in bringing the Duke over to his own opinions, but the Duke became convinced in the end, and, indeed, both at that time and after, the Duke was always inclined to follow Peel's guidance, on the plain, practical, soldierly principle that Peel understood political affairs much better than he did, {76} and that Peel's advice was always sure to be sound and safe. So the Duke, too, became convinced that Catholic Emancipation must be accepted as inevitable, and that the sooner it was carried through the better. But Wellington was strongly opposed to the idea of handing over the work to Lord Grey. He showed that it would be hardly possible to induce King George to accept the services of Lord Grey for such a purpose. The King was known to dislike Lord Grey, whose stern, unbending manners could not be welcome to a sovereign unaccustomed to the dictation of so uncourtierlike an adviser as the leader of the Whig party.
[Sidenote: 1828—The Oath of Supremacy]
Wellington's idea was that, as the thing had to be done, it had better be done by Peel and himself, and he almost implored Peel not to desert him at such a crisis. Peel could not resist the personal and brotherly appeal thus made to him by one for whom he had so profound a respect, and the result was that the two agreed to work together as they had been doing, and to make Catholic Emancipation the business of their Government. But then the King had to be won over, and nobody knew better than Wellington did how difficult this task must be. Yet he did not despair. He had had some experience of the King's resistance and the only means by which it could be got over. Again and again he had had occasion to urge on the sovereign the adoption of some course to which George, at first, was obstinately opposed, and he knew that quiet persistence was the only way of carrying his point. His plan was to avoid argument as much as possible, to state his case concisely to the King, and allow the King to take his full time in pouring forth his protestations that he never could and never would consent to such a policy. The King was very fond of hearing himself talk, and loved on such occasions to display all that eloquence which he fully believed himself to possess, and which he had no opportunity of letting out on any Parliamentary or public platform. Then, when the King had exhausted himself in repeating over and over again his reasons for refusing the demands made upon him, Wellington would quietly return to the fact that there was no practical way out of the difficulty but to assent to {77} the proposition. The King usually gave way, and the interview had a satisfactory close. The King was appeased by the sound of his own eloquence, and the taciturn minister had his way.
This course of policy Wellington resolved to adopt with regard to the question of Catholic Emancipation. He listened to all the talk about the coronation oath and the declaration that George would rather retire to his kingdom of Hanover, abdicate the throne of England, and leave the English people to find a Catholic—that is, a pro-Catholic—king in the Duke of Clarence, and then merely pointed out to the sovereign that something had to be done, and that his Majesty's advisers could think of nothing else but the course which they proposed for his acceptance. The King gave way to a certain extent, but he put his foot down, as the modern phrase goes, on the maintenance of the Oath of Supremacy in its existing form.
There is an interesting account given of the final interview which the Duke of Wellington, Lord Lyndhurst, and Robert Peel had with their royal master on this subject. Without an alteration in the terms of the Oath of Supremacy it was absolutely impossible that Roman Catholics could enter the House of Commons, for the oath contained the very words no Catholic could possibly consent to utter or subscribe. The King absolutely and vehemently refused to give his consent to any alteration of the oath, and he then asked his three ministers what, under the circumstances, they proposed to do. The ministers informed the sovereign that they proposed to ask his permission for them to make announcement in the two Houses of Parliament that they had ceased to hold office and were no longer responsible for the work of administration. George took the announcement at first with gracious composure, and told them he supposed he could not find any fault with them for their act of resignation. He carried his kindness even further, for, as we learn on the authority of one of the three ministers, "the King took leave of us with great composure and great kindness, gave to each of us a salute on each cheek, and accepted our resignation of office."
{78} Thackeray, in his lecture on George the Fourth, turned this record to most amusing account, and delighted his audience by a comical description of the King's paternal benediction imprinted in kisses on the cheeks of Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel. But when the kissing was over and the three statesmen had departed, the King began to find that he was left practically without a Government. What was to be done? It would be impossible to form a Government after his own heart without such men as Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, and even if he could have got over his own personal dislike to Lord Grey, it was impossible to suppose that Lord Grey would become the head of any Government which did not undertake Catholic Emancipation. The King found himself in the awkward position of having either to announce to his subjects that he intended to govern without any ministers, and to direct the affairs of the State entirely out of his own head, or to call back to office the men whom he had kissed and sent away. Even George the Fourth could not hesitate when such a choice was forced upon him. He wrote to the Duke of Wellington, telling him that he must once more put himself in the hands of the Duke and his colleagues, and let them deal as they thought best with Catholic Emancipation.
[Sidenote: 1829—The Forty-shilling Freeholders]
The Catholic Relief Bill was at once brought in, and consisted in substance of the enactment of a new oath, which admitted Roman Catholics to Parliament and to all political and civil offices excepting merely those of Regent, Lord Chancellor, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The Bill was passed rapidly through both Houses of Parliament. The third reading was carried in the House of Commons by 320 votes to 142, and in the House of Lords by 213 to 109, and the great controversy was happily at an end. The settlement, however, was not effected with as complete and liberal a spirit as Peel would certainly have infused into it if he could have had his way.
O'Connell, who had been twice elected for Clare, was not allowed to take his seat under the new measure until he had returned to his constituents and submitted himself for {79} re-election—a ceremonial absolutely unnecessary, and only impressing the civilized world as an evidence of the ungenerous and ungracious manner in which the inevitable had been accepted. Then, again, an Act of Parliament was passed disfranchising the class of voters in Ireland who were called the Forty-shilling Freeholders, who formed a large proportion of O'Connell's constituents. This was done no doubt to put some obstacles, at all events, in the way of the Irish Catholic population if they should hope ever again to make the representation of any national claims as effective as they had done in the Clare election. It may be taken for granted that Peel would not have marred the effect of an act of mere justice by niggardly qualifications of any kind, but he knew he had to deal with a Tory House of Lords, and was content to accept some compromise as long as he could carry the main object of his policy. The first great chapter in the modern history of political reform had come to a thrilling close.
{80}
CHAPTER LXVIII.
THE LAST OF THE GEORGES.
[Sidenote: 1829—Wellington fights Lord Winchilsea]
One incident connected more or less directly with the Catholic Emancipation question deserves historical record, if only for the curious light it throws upon the contrast between the manners of that day and the manners of more recent times. Shortly before the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill, the Earl of Winchilsea wrote a letter which was published in one of the newspapers strongly denouncing the conduct of the Duke of Wellington, and declaring him guilty of having joined in a conspiracy to overthrow the Church and the Constitution of England under false pretences. This letter was addressed to the secretary of a committee formed for the establishment of King's College in London, and Lord Winchilsea had apparently assumed that the subject under consideration warranted him in expressing his views with regard to the conduct of the Prime Minister on the Catholic relief question. In more recent times, of course, such a letter might have been written by anybody, whether peer or commoner, and published in all the newspapers of the country without calling for the slightest notice on the part of a Prime Minister. The Duke of Wellington, however, lived at a time when a different code of honor and etiquette prevailed. He wrote to Lord Winchilsea a letter, the principal passage of which is worth quoting to illustrate the peculiar sense of duty which could, at the time, direct the conduct of a man like the Duke of Wellington. "The question for me now to decide is this: Is a gentleman who happens to be the King's Minister to submit to be insulted by any gentleman who thinks proper to attribute to him disgraceful or criminal motives for his conduct as an individual? I cannot {81} doubt of the decision which I ought to make on this question. Your Lordship is alone responsible for the consequences." This was, of course, a challenge to Lord Winchilsea to withdraw his accusation or to fight a duel forthwith.
Now, to the cool, philosophic mind, at least in later times, it might well seem obvious that whether Lord Winchilsea's charge against the Duke of Wellington was just or unjust, its justice or injustice could not in any way be made clear by the discharge of bullets from the pistols of the challenger and the challenged. The cool, philosophic observer of a later time might wonder also how the Duke's sense of public responsibility could allow him to peril a life which he must have known to be of the highest value to his country, for the sake of taking part in a combat with an antagonist whose personal opinion of the Duke and of the Duke's conduct could not be of the slightest importance to the vast majority of the Duke's countrymen. But the Duke of Wellington was not in any case a cool, philosophic observer, and he lived at a time when the established or tolerated code of what was called personal honor seemed to have nothing to do either with Christian morals, with political expediency, or with ordinary common-sense. Wellington accepted without question the dictates of the supposed code of honor, and he sent his challenge. Lord Winchilsea, it will be seen, did not intend to stand by his gross and preposterous charge against the Duke, but he did not think that the code of honor allowed him to say so like a man, and tender an apology like what we should now call a gentleman, without first subjecting himself to the fire of his wrongfully accused antagonist. So the Duke and the Earl went out with their seconds and met at Wimbledon. The victor of Waterloo was not destined to kill or be killed in this absurd contest. When the parties to the duel were placed on the ground and the word was given. Lord Winchilsea reserved his fire, the bullet from the Duke's pistol passed him without doing any harm, and Lord Winchilsea then discharged his pistol in the air, and authorized his second to make known his retraction of his {82} charge against the Duke, and his apology for having made such a charge. The retraction and the apology were published in the newspapers, and there, to use a form of words which was very common at the time after such an incident, the affair ended with equal honor to both parties.
[Sidenote: 1829—Comments upon Wellington's duel]
It seems hard now to understand how any man, in the position and with the responsibilities of the Duke of Wellington, could bring himself to think that he was called upon to risk his life for the mere sake of resenting an imputation which no rational man in his senses could possibly have regarded as of any consequence to the Duke's public or private character. The whole incident seems to us now one more properly belonging to comic opera than to serious political life. We can hardly conceive the possibility of the Marquis of Salisbury insisting on fighting a duel with some hot-headed member of the House of Lords who had chosen to describe him as a conspirator against the Constitution and the Church of England. The Duke of Wellington, however, must be judged according to the ways of his own time, and the code of political and personal honor in which he had been nurtured. There has not been in modern political history a more conscientious and high-minded statesman than Robert Peel, and yet not very long before the Winchilsea business Robert Peel had only been prevented by the interference of the law from going out to fight a duel with Daniel O'Connell, and O'Connell himself had killed his man in another affair of honor, as it was called. We who live in these islands at the present time may be excused if we indulge in a certain feeling of self-complacency when we contemplate the advance towards a better code of personal honor and a better recognition of the teachings of Christianity which has been made here since the days when the Duke of Wellington thought that for him, as a gentleman, there was no other course to take than to risk his life because an insignificant person had made a ridiculous charge against him.
Still, it is something to know that there were cool observers even at the time who thought the Duke of Wellington had done wrong. Charles Greville, in commenting on {83} the duel, says that "everybody, of course, sees the matter in a different light; all blame Lord Winchilsea, but they are divided as to whether the Duke ought to have fought or not." "Lord Winchilsea is such a maniac, and has so lost his head, that everybody imagined the Duke would treat what he said with silent contempt." Greville utterly condemns Lord Winchilsea for having made the attack on the Duke, and for not having sent an apology when it was first required of him, but he adds: "I think, having committed the folly of writing so outrageous a letter, he did the only thing a man of honor could do in going out and receiving a shot and then making an apology, which he was all this time prepared to do, for he had it ready written in his pocket." Most of us at this time of day would be inclined to think that if Lord Winchilsea was willing to make the apology and had it ready written in his pocket, he might have acted according to a better code of honor by not exposing the Duke to the chance of killing him. However, we must not expect too much from Greville, and it is well to know, as his final verdict on the whole affair, that "I think the Duke ought not to have challenged him; it was very juvenile, and he stands in far too high a position, and his life is so much publica cura that he should have treated him and his letter with the contempt they merited." The King, it seems, approved of the Duke of Wellington's conduct in making the letter the subject of a challenge and meeting his opponent in a duel. Greville goes on to remark that somebody said "the King would be wanting to fight a duel himself," whereupon some one else observed, "He will be sure to think that he has fought one."
The Duke of Wellington had a great deal to trouble him after the passing of the Catholic Relief Bill. There was great distress all over the country, and the discontent was naturally in proportion to the distress. Wellington had lost much of his popularity with the more extreme members of his own party, who could not lift their minds to an understanding of the reasons which had compelled him to change his old opinions on the Catholic question. It cannot be doubted, too, that he sometimes felt disappointed {84} with the results which were following from his policy towards Ireland. Members of his own party were continually dinning into his ears their declaration that the measure passed in favor of the Roman Catholics had not put a stop to agitation in Ireland, and that, on the contrary, O'Connell was now beginning to agitate for a repeal of the Act of Union. At that time, as at all times, the opponents of any great act of justice were eager to make out that its concession must have been an utter failure, because instead of satisfying everybody forever it had only led other people to demand that other acts of justice should also be done. Some members of Wellington's own party were now inclined for the first time to become advocates of Parliamentary reform, on the ground that nothing but a reduced franchise in England could save the State Church from being overthrown by the emancipated Roman Catholics. Those who had trembled before at the possibility of revolutionary sentiments leading to the subversion of the throne, now declared themselves in terror lest the spread of Roman Catholic doctrine should lead to the subversion of the Protestant altar. The truth is, and it is a truth of which governments have to be reminded even in our own times, that the long delay of justice was alone answerable for any alarm which might have been caused by its sudden concession. The arguments in favor of Catholic Emancipation were just as strong, and ought to have been just as clear, to all rational men before it became evident to Wellington and Peel that there was no choice but between emancipation and civil war. The plain duty of a civilized government is to redress injustice at the earliest possible moment, and not to wait idly or ignorantly until the danger of a popular uprising makes instant redress inevitable.
[Sidenote: 1829—Need for radical reforms]
The great distress in many parts of the country was in the mean time leading to new forms of crime. The burning of corn-ricks and farm-houses was becoming in many districts the terrible form in which hunger and want of work made wild war against property. The Game Laws, which were then at their highest pitch of severity, led to {85} ferocious and frequent struggles between the patrons and the enemies of legalized monopoly. Poachers were killed by game preservers, and game preservers were killed by poachers. Every assize court told this same story. An entirely new form of crime broke out in the murders which were committed for the sake of obtaining bodies to be sold for the purposes of dissection. The price of food was often made enormously high by the purely artificial restrictions imposed upon its importation, and even in some cases on its mere production, and in ordinary human society increase of poverty always means increase of crime. A large proportion of the population was sunk in absolute ignorance, and as yet no systematic attempt whatever was made to establish any form of national education. The luxury and the extravagance of the rich were enormous, and were greatly stimulated by the example of the sovereign and the Court. Under the influence of the spasmodic and unreal impulse given to commercial activity by the late wars the rich seemed to be growing richer, while by the increased taxation which was the result of these wars the poor were certainly made to grow poorer. The demand for Parliamentary reform was beginning to express itself in systematic movements. Lord John Russell and Henry Brougham made their voices heard in the House of Commons and throughout the country. Daniel O'Connell went so far as to declare that nothing would satisfy him short of universal suffrage—manhood suffrage, that is to say—vote by ballot, and triennial Parliaments. This was thought at the time by most people to be the mere raving of a madman or the wild outcry of a revolutionary demagogue. We are not very far from the full accomplishment of the programme just now. The agitation against slavery and the slave trade was becoming an important movement. The time, in fact, was one of storm and high pressure. The shapes of great coming changes were daily seen upon the horizon, and part of the community regarded as the portents of coming national destruction what others welcomed as the bright signs of approaching prosperity, education, and peace.
{86}
[Sidenote: 1830—Death of George the Fourth]
One coming change all men looked forward to with the conviction that it was near. The end of the reign was close at hand. The King's health and strength had wholly given way of late years, and it was beyond the reach of medical science to do much for the prolongation of his life, even if George had been the sort of man to give medical science any chance of doing much for him. Preparations, however, were still being made for his birthday celebration in April, and nothing was done by any official announcement to give strength to the general prevailing impression that the end was near at hand. When, on April 15, a bulletin was at last issued, it merely announced that the King was suffering from a bilious attack accompanied by a slight difficulty in breathing, but nothing was said to intimate that the King's physicians were in any alarm for the result. The royal physicians still kept issuing bulletins, but they were so vague in their terms that it is impossible to believe they were not made purposely deceptive. It would appear that King George, like many braver and better men, had a nervous objection to any admission by himself or on his behalf that there was the slightest reason for alarm as to the state of his health. Greville, who was then in Rome, notes on May 12 that: "Everybody here is in great alarm about the King, who I have no doubt is very ill." Then Greville adds, in characteristic fashion: "I am afraid he will die before I get home, and I should like to be in at the death, and see all the proceedings of a new reign." But he makes up his mind that he must not hurry his departure on the ground that "I shall probably never see Rome again, and I have a good chance of seeing at least one king more leave us."
Days and days went on and the public were still kept in doubt, until on May 24 a message was sent in the King's name to both Houses of Parliament to say that the King no longer found it convenient to sign State papers with his own hand, and hoped some means might be found for relieving him from the necessity of making any attempt to discharge the painful duty. This announcement made it clear enough to everybody that the King was in a very {87} weak condition, but there was naturally some difficulty about devising an entirely satisfactory method of dispensing him from the duty of appending his sign-manual to important documents. Not a very long time had passed away since the throne of England was nominally occupied by an insane sovereign. It was thought quite possible that insanity might show itself in the present King, and it was absolutely necessary that the utmost care should be taken to provide against any chance of the royal authority being misused by those who surrounded the sovereign. It was arranged, therefore, that the sign-manual should be affixed in the King's presence, and in obedience to his order given by word of mouth, and that the document thus stamped must be endorsed by three members of the Privy Council. All this was to be provided for by an Act of Parliament, and the Act was only to be in operation during the session then going on, in order that if the King's malady should last the renewal of the regular authority must be formally sought from the Legislature. The Bill for this purpose became law on May 28, and it remained in operation but for a very short time. On June 26, about three in the morning, the reign of George the Fourth came to an end. The death was sudden, even when we consider that there had been for some time no hope left of the King's recovery. George was sitting up in bed, and to all outward appearance was not any worse than he had been for some days before, when suddenly a startled expression came over his face, he leaned his head on the shoulder of one of his attendants, was heard to say, "O God, this is death," and then all was over.
The rupture of a blood-vessel proved to have been the immediate cause of death, but ossification of some of the vessels near the heart had begun years before and a complication of disorders had been gradually setting in. The King's mode of life was not one which gave him any chance of rallying against such disorders. He was reckless in his food and drink, and had long been in the way of cheering and stimulating himself by glasses of cherry-brandy taken at any moment of the day when the impulse came upon {88} him. Shortly before his death George made an earnest request to the Duke of Wellington, who was in constant attendance, that he should be buried in the night-shirt which he was wearing at the time. The Duke was somewhat surprised at this request, for one reason among others that the garment in question did not seem likely to commend itself as a shroud even to a sovereign less particular as to costume than George the Fourth had been. During his later years, however, as we learn from the testimony of Wellington himself, the King, who used to be the very prince of dandies where his outer garments were concerned, had got into the way of sleeping in uncleanly nightshirts and particularly dirty night-caps. When the King was dead, Wellington noticed that there was a red silk ribbon round his neck beneath the shirt. The ribbon was found to have attached to it a locket containing a tiny portrait of Mrs. Fitzherbert, perhaps the one only woman he had ever loved, perhaps, too, the woman he had most deeply wronged. It seemed that at one period of their love story the King and Mrs. Fitzherbert had exchanged small portraits, each covered by half a cut diamond, and no doubt there was an understanding that each should rest forever on the breast of its wearer.
[Sidenote: 1830—The character of George the Fourth]
Nothing in the story of George the Fourth's worthless and erring life is more discreditable and dishonorable to him than the manner in which he behaved to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the utter falsehood of the denial which he had given to the reports that a marriage ceremony had taken place between them—a falsehood which, be it remembered, he had declared to Charles Fox upon his honor to be a truthful statement. The moralist may be a little puzzled how to make up his mind as to the bearing of this incident upon the character of George the Fourth. Does it relieve the murky gloom of George's life by one streak of light if we find that, after all, he did love Mrs. Fitzherbert to the last, and that in his dying moments he wished her portrait to go with him to the tomb? Or does it darken the stain upon the man's life to know that he really did love the woman whom nevertheless he could deliberately consign {89} to an infamous imputation? We do not know whether any writer of romance has ventured to introduce into his pages an incident and a problem such as those which are thus associated with the death-bed of George the Fourth. It is something to know that the King's brother, the Duke of Clarence, whom that death-bed had made King of England, was kind and generous to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and did all in his power to atone to her for the trials which her love and her royal lover had brought upon her life.
George was in his sixty-eighth year when he died. It would not be easy to find anywhere the story of a life which left so little of good to be remembered. George seems to have had some generous impulses now and then, and he probably did some kindly acts which could be set off against his many errors, imperfections, ignoble selfishnesses, and grave offences. But the record of his career as history gives it to us is that of a life almost absolutely surrendered to self-indulgence. It is only fair to remember when we consider all the unworthy acts of his manhood that the unwise and harsh restraints imposed upon him in his early years are accountable, at least to a certain extent, for the follies and the vices to which he yielded himself up when he became, as Byron says of one of his characters, "Lord of himself, that heritage of woe." Heritage of woe it certainly was in the case of George the Fourth. In his early manhood he appears to have had the gift of forming close friendships with men of genius and of noble impulse, but their example never told upon him, and as one cause or other removed them from his side his career bore with it no trace of their influence or their inspiration. No one ever seems to have loved him except Mrs. Fitzherbert alone, and we have seen how that love was repaid. Even those who were most devoted to him in his later years, because of their devotion to the royal house and to the State of which he was the representative, found themselves compelled to bear the heaviest testimony against his levity, his selfishness, his lack of conscience, his utter indifference to all the higher objects and purposes of life.
George must have had some natural talents and some {90} gifts of intellect, for he would otherwise not have chosen such friends as those whom in his better days he chose out and brought around him. We are told that he had marvellous powers of conversation, that he had a ready wit, and a keen insight into the humors and the weaknesses of those with whom he was compelled to associate. We are told that he could compete in repartee with the recognized wits of his time, and that he could shine as a talker even among men whose names still live in history because of their reputations as talkers. Of course it will naturally occur to the mind that the guests of the Prince Regent might be easily inclined to discover genuine wit in any repartee which came from the Prince Regent, but it is certain that some at least of the men who surrounded him were not likely to have been betrayed into admiration merely because of the rank of their royal entertainer. Burke was held to have spoken disparagingly of George when he described him as "brilliant but superficial." To one of Burke's deep thought and wide information a man might well have seemed superficial in whom others nevertheless believed that they saw evidences of intellect and understanding, but if Burke thought a man brilliant it is only reasonable to assume that that man's conversation must have had frequent flashes of brilliancy.
[Sidenote: 1830—The Third and Fourth Georges contrasted]
Undoubtedly George was capable sometimes of appreciating thoroughly the qualities of greatness in other men, but the appreciation never left any abiding influence upon his character or his career. He certainly did not make himself the cause of so much injury to the best interests of the State as George the Third had done, but it has also to be observed that when George the Third went wrong and obstinately maintained a wrongful course he was acting in dogged obedience to what he believed to be his conscience and the teachings of his creed. George the Fourth had absolutely no conscience and no law of life, and when he talked most vehemently and loudly about his coronation oath those who were accustomed to deal with him knew quite well from experience that when he had exhausted his humor by a {91} sufficient outpouring of eloquence he would be sure to take the advice given to him and to trouble himself no more about the question of conscience. In this way, of course, George the Fourth did less harm to the State than his father had done, but when we come to compare the moral character of the two men we must admit that the obstinacy of the father deserves the recognition which we cannot give to the spasmodic and ephemeral self-assertion of the son. Nobody for a moment believed that George the Fourth had the slightest idea of actually abdicating his royal position in England and betaking himself to perpetual boredom in Hanover rather than consent to the passing of Catholic Emancipation. But at times of trial those who were around George the Third had good reason to believe that if he were driven to choose between his throne and his conscience he would have come down deliberately from the throne and followed his conscience whithersoever it might lead him. With George the Fourth the only question was how long he would stand the wear and tear of having to defend his position, and how soon he would begin to feel that the inconvenience of giving in would be less troublesome than the inconvenience of holding out. Even the most courtly historian would be hard put to it if he were set to find out any passage in the whole of George the Fourth's matured life which compels admiration.
George seems to have been an absolutely self-centred man. He was to all appearance constitutionally unable to import into his mind any considerations but those which affected his own personal comforts and likings and indulgences and occasional love of display. There were times when he evidently thought he was acting a great part, and when it filled him with joy to believe that he was thus making himself an object of public admiration; but no higher consideration, no thought beyond him and the applause he believed himself to be winning, appear to have entered his mind even at such moments of exaltation. We read in history of princes who believed themselves qualified by nature to be great actors or great singers, and who made absurd exhibitions of themselves accordingly and accepted {92} the courtly and venal applause as genuine tributes to artistic genius. In the same way, and only in the same way, George the Fourth sometimes believed himself to be playing a great part, and it gratified his vanity to act the part out until it became tiresome to him and he found it a relief to go back to the ordinary delights of his easy, lazy, and sensuous nature. Perhaps the best that can be said of him is that he had possibly some gifts which under other conditions might have been turned to better account. Perhaps if he had had to work for a living, to make a career in life for himself, to depend for his success entirely on the steady use of his own best qualities, and to avoid the idleness and self-indulgence which would have condemned him to perpetual stint and poverty, he might have made a respectable name in some career where intelligence and application count for much. But a hard fortune had condemned him to be a king, and to begin by being the son of a king, and thus to find as the years went on increasing opportunity of gratifying all his meanest tastes and finding always around him the ready homage which accords its applause to the most ignoble caprices and the most wanton self-indulgence. The reign of George the Fourth saw great deeds and great men; it could have seen few men in all his realm less deserving a word of praise than George the Fourth.
[Sidenote: 1830—Events in the reign of George the Fourth]
The reign saw the beginning of many great enterprises in practical science, the uprising of many philanthropic combinations, and the first movements of political and social reform. It saw the earliest attempts made in a systematic way towards the spread of education among the multitude, and the close of many a bright career in literature and the arts. Bishop Heber died in 1826. The death of Byron has already been recorded in these pages, and at even an earlier period of the reign two other stars of the first magnitude in the firmament of literature ceased to shine upon the earth in bodily presence with the deaths of Keats and Shelley. John Kemble, probably the greatest English tragic actor from the days of Garrick to the uprising of Edmund Kean, died while George the Fourth was {93} King. Sir Thomas Lawrence, Flaxman, Fuseli, and Nollekens ceased to work for art. Sir Humphry Davy, Dugald Stewart, and Pestalozzi were lost to science. The reign saw the foundation of the Royal Society of Literature, which, to do him justice, George the Fourth helped to establish; the beginning of Mechanics' Institute, and the opening of some new parks and the Zoological Gardens. It is doubtful if the Thames Tunnel can be described as a really valuable addition to the triumphs of engineering, and it will perhaps be generally admitted that Buckingham Palace was not an artistic addition to the architectural ornaments of the metropolis. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was set on foot owing chiefly to the energy and the instincts of Henry Brougham.
We have seen how the foreign policy of Canning opened a distinctly new chapter in English history, and it may be observed that owing to the influence of that policy the principle of neutrality was maintained under difficult conditions, and even where the general sympathy of England went distinctly with one of the parties to a foreign dispute. This policy might well have been followed with credit and advantage to England on more than one critical occasion at a much later time. The reign saw the beginning of the movement towards free trade as a distinct international policy, and saw the removal of some of the most cramping and antiquated restrictions on the commerce of the kingdom and the colonies. The crusade against slavery and the slave-trade may be said to have begun its march in anything like organized form during this reign. The political principles which we now describe as Liberal became a new force in the State during the same time. The idea that even beneficent despotism can be counted on as an enduring or an endurable form of government began to die out, and the principle came to be more and more distinctly and loudly proclaimed that the best form of government must be not only for, but by, the people.
These things are in themselves enough to show that in the sphere of political and social reform as well as in that {94} of practical science the reign of George the Fourth was at least a reign of great beginnings. The student of history may perhaps draw an instructive and a moral lesson from the knowledge forced upon him of the fact which seems lamentable in itself that to the ruler of the State little or nothing was due for the achievements which give the reign its best claim to be honored in history. The reign of George the Fourth teaches us that in a country like modern England, while a good sovereign may do much to forward the intellectual, political, and social progress of the people, even the worst sovereign could no longer do much to retard it.
[Sidenote: 1830: The Georges and the Stuarts]
The Four Georges had come and gone. A famous epoch in English history had ended. Four princes of the same race, of the same name, had ruled in succession over the English people. Practically, the reigns of the four namesakes may be said to coincide with, to comprehend, and to represent the history of the eighteenth century in England. The reign of George the Fourth may be regarded as a survival from the eighteenth into the nineteenth century, as the reign of Anne was a survival from the seventeenth into the eighteenth century. In all the changes of that long and eventful age one change is very memorable and significant. The position of the dynasty was very different when George the Fourth died from what it was when his great-great-grandfather came over unwillingly from Germany to grasp the sceptre. When the Elector of Hanover became King of England, the Stuart party was still a power in political life and the Stuart cause the dearest hope of a very large number of devoted Englishmen. It might well be hard for men to realize in the days of George the Fourth that in the reign of the first George and in the reign of the second George the throne reeled beneath the blows which the armed adherents of the exiled Stuart princes struck at the supremacy of the sovereigns of the House of Brunswick. Even when the third George came to the throne there were still desperate dreamers who hoped against hope that something, anything, might happen which would allow the King—the King over the {95} water—to enjoy his own again. When the last of the Georges passed away, the Stuart cause had been buried for nearly half a century in that grave in Rome which encloses the remains of the last and perhaps the most unhappy of the Stuart princes.
{96}
WILLIAM THE FOURTH.
CHAPTER LXIX.
KING WILLIAM THE FOURTH.
[Sidenote: 1830—The career of William the Fourth]
William the Fourth, as the Duke of Clarence had now become, was nearing the completion of his sixty-fifth year when the death of his brother raised him to the throne. He had surely had full time in which to prepare himself for the business of a monarch, for during a long period it was well known that nothing was likely to stand between him and the succession except the life of his elder brother, the Duke of York. But William's tastes did not allure him to any study of the duties which belonged to a throne. The Navy was assigned to him as a profession, and he actually saw some service in America and in the West Indies, but he obtained his promotion as a matter of course until he reached the position of Lord High Admiral, which may be described as the main-top of his naval career. The story is told of him, and will probably, whether it be accurate or not, be told as long as his history comes under public recollection, that he had something to do with the promotion of the great naval battle of Navarino, which led to the emancipation of Greece. The combined fleets of England, France, and Russia, under command of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, were watching the Turkish and Egyptian fleets, in order to protect Greece against them. But the actual course to be taken by the allies was supposed to depend upon many serious political considerations. The British Admiralty issued a solemn official despatch to Sir Edward Codrington, enjoining on him the necessity of great care and caution in any action he might take. This {97} document was forwarded in due course by the Lord High Admiral, and the story goes that the Duke of Clarence scribbled at the end of it in his own hand the encouraging words, "Go it, Ned." Whether it was fought under this inspiration or not, it is certain that the battle was fought, that the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were destroyed, and that the independence of Greece was won.
The English public generally would have been none the less inclined to welcome the accession of the Duke of Clarence as William the Fourth even although it had been part of authentic history that the new King had lately borne an important, if an underhand, part in the rescue of Greece from Ottoman oppression. But there was little else in the career of the Duke of Clarence to command popular respect or affection. He had lived openly, or almost openly, for many years with the celebrated actress Mrs. Jordan, who had borne him ten children, and this connection had been made the subject of free and frank allusion in some of the verses of Robert Burns. The British public, however, were inclined, as Robert Burns was, to look forgivingly on the doings of the Prince, for he was still a young man when his acquaintance with Mrs. Jordan began. The British public liked him because he was a sailor, if for nothing else, and men's eyes turned hopefully to him when it became apparent that not much good was any longer to be looked for from George the Fourth. In 1818 William married the eldest daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and had two daughters, both of whom died in their infancy. The Duke of Clarence had been noted, during the greater part of his career, for his roughness of manner, and many anecdotes of him were spread about which might have suited well the fun of some historian belonging to the school of Brantôme, or some compiler of memoirs after the fashion of Saint-Simon. Still he was the Sailor King, and England had always, and naturally, loved sailors; and "go to then," as might have been said in the days of Shakespeare, what further explanation could be needed of the fact that William the Fourth opened his career of royalty under favoring {98} auspices? It might seem to the mind of some philosophical observer rather hard to get into transports of enthusiasm about a new monarch aged sixty-five who during all his previous career had done nothing of which to be particularly proud, and had done many things of which a respectable person in private life would have felt heartily ashamed. Still, the Duke of Clarence had become William the Fourth, and was on the throne, and great things might possibly be expected from him even yet, although he was pretty well stricken in years. At all events, he was not George the Fourth. So the public of these countries was in the mood to make the best of him, and give him a loyal welcome, and wait for events with the comfortable faith that even at sixty-five a man may begin a new life, and find time and heart and intellect to do things of which no promise whatever had been given during all his earlier years.
[Sidenote: 1830—The pocket boroughs]
William had been supposed up to the time of his accession to lean towards the Whig, or what we should now call the Liberal party. His manners were frank, familiar, and even rough. He cared little for Court ceremonial of any kind, and was in the habit of walking about the streets with his umbrella tucked under his arm, like any ordinary Londoner. All this told rather in his favor, so far as the outer public were concerned. There was supposed to be something rather English, something rather typical of John Bull in the easy-going manners of the new sovereign, which gave people an additional reason for welcoming him. The new sovereign, however, had come in for times of popular excitement, and even of trouble. There came a new revolution in France—only a dynastic revolution, to be sure, and not a national upheaval, but still it was a change which dethroned the newly restored legitimate line of sovereigns. The elder branch of the Bourbons was torn away and flung aside. There were to be no more kings of France, but only kings of the French. Charles the Tenth was deposed, and Louis Philippe, son of Philippe Egalité, was placed on the throne. Charles the Tenth was the last of the legitimate kings of France so far, and there does not {99} seem much chance in the immediate future for any restoration of the fallen dynasty.
The overthrow of legitimacy in France had a strong effect on popular opinion in England. It was plain that Charles the Tenth and his system had come to ruin because the sovereign and his ministers would not move with the common movement of the times over the greater part of the European continent, and popular reformers in England took care that the lesson should not be thrown away over here. Great changes had been accomplished by popular movements even during the enfeebling and disheartening reign of George the Fourth. Great progress had been made towards the establishment of religious equality, or at all events towards the removal of religious disqualifications among the Dissenters and the Roman Catholics. There was a loud cry almost everywhere for some measure of political reform. The conditions of the country had been gradually undergoing a great change. England had been becoming less and less dependent for her prosperity on her mere agricultural resources, and had been growing more and more into a great manufacturing community. Huge towns like Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, and Sheffield were arising in the Northern and Midland regions. Liverpool was superseding Bristol as the great seaport of commercial traffic. Yet in most cases the old-fashioned principle still prevailed which in practice confined the Parliamentary representation of the country to the members who sat for the counties, and for what were called the pocket boroughs. The theory of the Constitution, as it was understood, held that the sovereign summoned at his own discretion and pleasure the persons whom he thought best qualified to form a House of Commons, to consult with him as to the government of the empire. The sovereign for this purpose conferred the right of representation on this or that town, or district, or county, according as he thought fit, and this arrangement had gone on from generation to generation. Now it sometimes happened that a place that had been comparatively popular and prosperous at the period when it obtained the {100} right of representation had seen its prosperity and its population gradually ebb away from it, and leave it little better than a bare hill-side, and yet the bare hill-side retained the right of representation, and its owner could send any one he pleased into the House of Commons. There were numberless illustrations of this curious anomaly all over the country. The great families of landed proprietors naturally monopolized among them the representation of the counties, and many of them enjoyed also the ownership of the small decaying or totally decayed boroughs which still retained the right of returning members to Parliament. On the other hand, the development of manufacturing energy had caused the growth of great and populous towns and cities, and most of these towns and cities were actually without representation or the right of representation in the House of Commons. Thus a condition of things had arisen which was certain to prove itself incompatible with the spread of education and the growth of public interest in all great questions of domestic reform.
[Sidenote: 1830—The Princess Victoria]
We have already seen in this history how the Whig party in Parliament, and the popular agitators out of Parliament, had long been rousing the national intelligence and the national conscience to a sense of the growing necessity for some complete change in all that concerned the representation of the people. The Duke of Wellington was at the head of the Administration when George the Fourth died and William came to the throne. The new King, as has been said, was supposed to have Liberal inclinations as regarded political questions, and there was a common expectation that he might begin his reign by summoning a new set of ministers. The King, however, did nothing of the kind. He sent messages to the Duke of Wellington telling him, in his usual familiar and uncouth way, that he had always liked the Duke uncommonly well, and did not see any reason why he should not keep him on as his Prime Minister. This was, to begin with, a disappointment to the majority of the public. The first royal speech from the throne contained other matter of disappointment. There was great distress all over the {101} country. The enormous expense of the long wars was still making itself felt in huge taxation. The condition of agriculture was low, and many districts were threatened with something like famine. Trade was suffering from the reaction which always follows a long and exhausting war. It was confidently expected that the royal speech would take some account of the widespread national distress and would foreshadow some measures to deal with it. The speech, however, said nothing on the subject. Then there was another omission which created much dissatisfaction and even some alarm. The speech made no mention of any measures to be taken for the establishment of a regency in the event of the King's death. The King was sixty-five years old, and had led a life which even the most loyal and hopeful of his subjects could not regard with confidence as likely to give promise of a long reign. Now the heir-presumptive to the throne was the Princess Alexandrina Victoria, a child then only eleven years old. The Princess Victoria, as she was commonly called, was the daughter of the Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third. Any attack of illness, any serious accident, might bring the life of King William to a sudden close, and then if no previous arrangement had been made for a regency Parliament and the country might be involved in some confusion.
There was one very grave and even ominous condition which had to be taken into account. If the King were to die suddenly, and with no provision made for a regency, the girl, perhaps the child, who succeeded him would in the ordinary course of things be left under the guardianship of her eldest uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Now it is only stating a simple fact to say that the Duke of Cumberland was then the most unpopular man in England. He was not merely unpopular, he was an object of common dread and detestation. He was regarded as a reckless profligate and an unprincipled schemer. There must have been much exaggeration about some of the tales that were told and accepted concerning him, for it is hard to believe that at a time so near to our own a prince of {102} the Royal House of England could have lived a life the story of which might seem to have belonged to the worst days of the Lower Empire. But, whatever allowance be made for exaggeration, it is certain that the Duke of Cumberland was almost universally hated, and that many people seriously considered him quite capable of any plot or any crime which might secure his own advancement to the throne. Sanguine persons, indeed, saw a gleam of hope in the fact that the Duke of Cumberland was in any case the heir to the crown of Hanover. In the House of Hanover the succession is confined to the male line, and the Princess Victoria had nothing to do with it. The hope, therefore, was that the Duke of Cumberland would be content with the prospect of his succession to the throne of Hanover, and that when the time arrived for him to become King of Hanover he would betake himself to his new kingdom and trouble England no more. Still the fact remained that just as yet he was not King of Hanover, and that if no proper provisions were made against a contingency he might become the guardian of the girl, or the child, who was to succeed William the Fourth on the English throne.
[Sidenote: 1830—The death of Huskisson]
King William, however, did not trouble himself much about all these considerations. He did not see any reason why people should expect him to die all of a sudden, and he could hardly be got to give any serious attention to the question of a regency. It was then part of the constitutional practice of the monarchy that a dissolution of Parliament should take place when a new sovereign had come to the throne. The practice has since ceased to be a part of our constitutional usages, but in the days when William the Fourth came to the throne it was a matter of course. The King, for some reason or other, was anxious that a dissolution should take place as soon as possible. It may be that he was merely desirous to find out how far the existing Ministry had the support of the country, although it does not seem quite likely that William's intelligence could have carried him so near to the level of statesmanship as to make this elementary question a {103} matter of consideration in his mind. The King's principal ministers were the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. The most powerful among the leaders of Opposition were Charles, Earl Grey, in the House of Lords and Henry Brougham and Lord John Russell in the House of Commons. There was some doubt as to the position which might be taken up by Canning and Huskisson and their friends. Some of the Tories believed that they might be won over to support the Duke of Wellington, in order to assist him in counteracting the efforts of the more ardent and liberal reformers, like Grey and Brougham and Russell. Fate soon settled the question so far at least as Huskisson was concerned. The opening of the line of railway from Liverpool to Manchester, the first line of any considerable length completed in England, took place on September 15, 1830. The Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Huskisson were among the distinguished visitors who were present at the opening of the railway. The friends alike of the Prime Minister and of the great expert in finance were anxious that the two should come together on this occasion, and make a personal if not a political reconciliation. The train stopped at a station; the Duke and Huskisson both got out, and were approaching to meet each other, the Duke holding out his hand, when an alarm was raised about the approach of a locomotive. A rush was made for the carriages, and in the confusion Huskisson was struck down by an open door in the moving train, and suffered such injuries that his death almost immediately followed. Huskisson was, beyond doubt, one of the most enlightened statesmen of his time in all that concerned the financial arrangements of the country. He might have been called a Liberal, just as we might call Canning a Liberal, when we think of the general direction taken by the policy of either man.
The dissatisfaction with which the speech from the throne was received found its expression in no severer form, so far at least as Parliament was concerned, than a motion by Lord Grey in the one House, and Lord Althorp in the other, for a short delay to enable both Houses to {104} consider the address in reply to the royal speech. It was made evident that the delay sought for had to do with the question of a regency, concerning which, as has been said, the King had not troubled himself to make any announcement. Now the constitutional system of England had taken no account, except through the provision of a regency, of the fact that a child might become sovereign of the realm. Therefore, if Parliament did not establish a regency during the lifetime of King William, and if the King were soon to die through any accident or malady, the child Princess would come to the throne under no further constitutional restraints than those which belonged to the position of a full-grown sovereign. There was another trouble, however, and one of still graver political importance, awaiting the Ministry of the Duke of Wellington.
[Sidenote: 1830—Brougham and Reform]
Henry Brougham gave notice in the House of Commons that on an early day he would bring forward a motion to raise the whole question of reform in the representative system of the country. Brougham, at this time, was regarded as the most strenuous and powerful champion of reform in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell had not yet had an opportunity of proving how steadfast were his principles as a reformer, and how great were the Parliamentary gifts which he had brought to the main purpose of his life. Moreover, Lord John Russell never had any of the kind of eloquence which made Brougham so powerful in and out of Parliament. Brougham on a popular platform could outdo the most stormy mob orator of the time. He was impassioned, boisterous, overwhelming to a degree of which we can find no adequate illustration even in the most tumultuous Trafalgar Square demonstrations of our later days. Even in the House of Commons, and afterwards in what might be regarded as the deadening atmosphere of the House of Lords, Brougham was accustomed to shout and storm and gesticulate, to shake his fist and stamp, after a fashion which was startling even in those days, and of which now we have no living illustration. Brougham was at this time almost at the very zenith of his popularity among the reformers all over the country, {105} and more especially in the North of England. When, therefore, Brougham announced that he was determined at the earliest opportunity to raise the whole question of reform in the House of Commons it became evident that the new reign was destined to open with a momentous and long constitutional struggle, a struggle that might be counted upon to mark an epoch in the history of England. The news that the French legitimate monarchy had fallen and that Louis Philippe reigned as King of the French—King of the barricades he was commonly called—came in time to quicken men's hopes and animate their passions for the approaching trial of strength between the old forms and the new spirit.
The Government refused to agree to the one day's delay which was asked for by the leaders of Opposition. On a division being taken there was a majority for Ministers in both Houses, and the Duke of Wellington had scored thus far. He had shown that he was personally determined not to concede any point to the Opposition, and he had secured a victory. Parliament was dissolved within a few days and the country was plunged into a general election. At that time, it should be remembered, an election was a very different sort of event from that which bears the same name at the present day. An election contest could then, according to the extent and nature of the constituency, run on for a time not exceeding fifteen days, and it was accompanied by a practice of bribery, lavish, open, shameless, and profligate, such as is totally unknown to our more modern times, and such as our habits and feelings, no more than our laws, would tolerate. Intimidation and violence were also parts of every fiercely contested election, and those whom the law excluded from any part in the struggle as electors were apt to find, in that very exclusion, only another reason for taking part in it by the use of physical force. Just at the time which we are now describing there are many conditions which made a general election likely to be especially stormy and turbulent.
The distress which prevailed throughout the country had in many districts called up a spirit of something like {106} desperation, which exhibited itself in a crime of almost entire novelty, the burning of hayricks on farms. This offence became so widespread throughout large parts of the country that it gave rise to theories about an organized conspiracy against property which was supposed to be, in some vague sort of way, an outcome of the socialistic excesses which had taken place during the French Revolution and had been revived by the more recent commotions in France. The probability is that the rick-burning offences were, in the first instance, the outcome of sheer despair seeking vengeance anywhere and anyhow for its own sufferings, and then of the mere passion for imitation in crime which finds some manner of illustration here and there at all periods of history. However that may be, it is certain that the offences became very common, that they were punished with merciless severity, and that the gallows was kept in constant operation.
[Sidenote: 1830—A change in constitutional systems]
Now, it may be taken almost as a political axiom that whenever there is great distress at the time of a general election it is certain to give rise to some feeling of hostility against a Ministry, especially if the Ministry had been for any length of time in power. A considerable portion of the Tories had been turned against the Duke of Wellington because, under the advice of Sir Robert Peel, he had yielded at last to the demand for Catholic Emancipation, even although, as Peel and the Duke himself declared, the concession had been made merely as a choice between Catholic Emancipation and civil war. Some influential Tories all over the country were asking whether Ireland had been pacified or had shown herself in the least degree grateful because an instalment of religious freedom had been granted to the Roman Catholics, and they insisted that the Duke had surrendered the supremacy of the Established Church to no purpose. It was certain, indeed, that O'Connell had not, in the slightest degree, slackened the energy of his political movement because the emancipating Act had been passed. Among the opponents of reform, at all times, there are some who seem to hold that the granting of one reform ought to be enough to put a stop to all demands for any {107} other, and that it is mere ingratitude on the part of a man who has just obtained permission to follow his own form of worship if he wants also to be put on an equality with his neighbors as regards the assertion of his political opinions. Therefore, the Ministry found, as the elections went on, that they had not merely all the reformers against them, but that a certain proportion of those who, in the ordinary condition of things, would have been their supporters were estranged from them merely because they had, under whatever pressure, consented to introduce any manner of reform.
When the elections were over it seemed to reasonable observers very doubtful indeed whether King William, however well inclined, would be able to retain for any length of time the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel as the leading advisers of the Crown. The country just then may be described as in a state of transition from one constitutional system to another. It was growing more clear, day by day, that the time had gone by when the sovereign could hold to any one particular minister, or set of ministers, in defiance of the majority in the representative chamber and the strength of public opinion out-of-doors. On the other hand, the time had not yet arrived when the system introduced and established by the present reign could be relied upon as part of the Constitution, and the sovereign could be trusted to accept, without demur, the judgment of the House of Commons as to the choice of his ministers. The new Parliament was opened on November 5, and the Royal Speech gave but little satisfaction to reformers of any class. It contained no recommendation of constitutional reform, and indeed congratulated the whole population on having the advantage of living under so faultless a political system. It concerned itself in no wise about the distress that existed in the country, except that it expressed much satisfaction at the manner in which the criminal laws had been called into severe action for the repression of offences against property.
The King conceded so much to public opinion as to recommend the appointment of a regency, in order to {108} make provision for the possibility of his life being cut short; but even this was only done in a fashion that seemed to say, "If you really will have it that I am likely to die soon you may humor yourselves by taking any course that seems to satisfy your scruples—it is not worth my while to interfere with your whims." The reformers therefore had clearly nothing to expect so far as the Royal Speech could deal with expectations. But they found that they had still less to expect from the intentions of the Ministry.
[Sidenote: 1830—Wellington as a politician]
In the debate on the address, in reply to the speech from the throne, Lord Grey took occasion to ask for some exposition of Ministerial policy with regard to reform of the representative system. Then the Duke of Wellington delivered a speech which may be described as unique in its way. It would be impossible to put into words any statement more frankly opposed to all Parliamentary reform. The greatest orator that ever lived, the profoundest judge who ever laid down the law to a jury, could not have prepared a statement more comprehensive and more exact as a condemnation of all reform than that which the victor of Waterloo was able to enunciate with all confidence and satisfaction. He laid it down that it would be utterly beyond the power of the wisest political philosopher to devise a Constitution so near to absolute perfection as that with which Englishmen living in the reign of his present Majesty, William the Fourth, had been endowed by the wisdom of their ancestors. He affirmed that he had never heard any suggestion which contained the slightest promise of an improvement on that Constitution. He repeated, in various forms of repetition, that Englishmen already possessed all the freedom that it was good for men to have, that the rights of all classes were equally maintained, that the happiness of every one was secured, so far as law could secure it, and that the only thing for reasonable Englishmen to do was to open their eyes and recognize the advantages conferred upon them by the Constitution under which they were happy enough to live.
The Duke of Wellington probably knew nothing of {109} Voltaire's philosopher who maintained that everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, but he seemed to be pervaded by the same sentiment of complete satisfaction when he contemplated the British Constitution. Finally, he declared that, so far from having any intention to touch with irreverent hand that sacred political structure for the vain purpose of improvement, he was determined to resist to the uttermost of his power every effort to interfere with the constitutional arrangements which had done so much for the prosperity and the glory of the empire. We do not quote the exact words of the Duke of Wellington's speech, but we feel sure we are giving a faithful version of the meaning which he intended to convey and succeeded very clearly in conveying. The Duke of Wellington was undoubtedly one of the greatest soldiers the world has ever seen. As a soldier of conquest he was not indeed to be compared with an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon, but as a soldier of defence he has probably never had a superior. As an administrator, too, he had shown immense capacity both in India and in Europe, and had more than once brought what seemed absolute chaos into order and shape. But he had no gift for the understanding of politics, and it was happy for him, at more than one crisis of his career, that he was quite aware of his own political incapacity and was ready to defer to the judgment of other men who understood such things better than he did. We have already seen how he accepted the guidance of Peel when it became necessary to yield the claim for Catholic Emancipation, and he was commonly in the habit of saying that Peel understood all such matters better than he could pretend to. He was not, therefore, the minister who would ruin a State or bring a State into revolution by obstinate adhesion to his own views in despite of every advice and every warning, and no doubt when he was delivering his harangue against all possible schemes of reform he felt still convinced that he was merely expressing the unalterable opinion of Peel and every other loyal subject whose judgment ought to prevail with a law-abiding people.