Sir Robert Peel

Front matter

Hli.

JuSTI

H M^ Carthy

Chapter I

Peek Fold— The Peeles and Peels— The first Sir Robert Peel- Birth of the great Robert Peel — His Harrow days — His schoolfellows— Lord Byron — His training for Parliament — He becomes member for Cashel -His early success in debate .

Chapter II In Office

The Perceval ministry — Peel Under-Secretary for the Colonies — Perceval killed — Lord Liverpool Prime Minister — Peel Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant — The Catholic question — Peel's quarrel with O'Connell . . . . . -13

Chapter III

Peel resigns office and becomes known as a great financier — Supports Lord Liverpool's repressive policy— Death of George in. — Succession of George lY. — The Reform movement — The proceedings against Queen Caroline . . . , ,26

VX SIR ROBERT PEEL

Chapter IV Peel — Russell — Canning Page

Lord John Russell's early career — Peel returns to office as Home Secretary — Suicide of Lord Castlereagh — Canning becomes Foreign Secretary, and, on Lord Liverpool's retirement, Prime Minister — Wellington, Eldon, and Peel resign — Death of Canning — Wellington administration— Peel Home Secretary again . . 35

Chapter VIII Reform

Peel labours at Reform of the Criminal Code, following to some length the ideas of Romilly and Mackintosh ; brings in and

CONTENTS Vll

PAGE

carries the Metropolitan Police Act — Death of George IV. — The Revolution of July in France — William IV. believed to be in favour of Reform — Defeat of Wellington Administration on Sir Henry Parnell's motion for inquiry into Civil List . 88

Chapter IX The First Reform B.\ttle

Lord Grey has to be sent for — The Reform Administration — The first Reform Bill introduced by Lord John Russell— Peel opposes it — Defeat of the Government, and dissolution . . -98

Chapter X The Battle Over

The General Elections strengthen the Reformers —The new Bill — Peel leads obstruction — The House of Lords throw out the Bill — Great popular excitement — The Lords at last have to give way and the Bill passes 108

Chapter XI

The Irish Church Question — Lord Stanley leaves the Whigs — Lord Grey retires from public life — Lord Melbourne Prime Minister — The King dismisses Melbourne, and Peel is called back from Rome — Again Prime Minister, and again defeated . 115

Chapter XII

Lord Melbourne Prime Minister— Death of William IV. and ac= cession of Queen Victoria— The Jamaica Act— The ladies of the bedchamber— The Whigs fall, and Peel comes in again — The Corn Law question comes up— The Irish famine . • ijl

Vlii SIR ROBERT PEEL

Chapter XIII Triumph And Fall

PAGE

The Anti-Corn Law League — Peel announces his change of policy — He carries F"ree Trade at last, but falls in his hour of triumph .......... 145

Chapter XIV

Peel's vindication of his policy — His position in the country — His seeming prospects, and his sudden death .... 162

Index 173

Chapter I

Pcele Fold— The Pedes and Peels— The first Sir Robert Peel— Birth of the great Robert Peel — His Harrow days — His schoolfellows — Lord Byron — His training for Parliament — He becomes member for Cashel — His early success in debate.

Sir Rorert Peel stands high in the line of succession to Sir Robert Walpole ; that hne of succession in which William Pitt the younger stood, and in which Mr. Gladstone now stands. These men have nothing to do with the statesmanship which comes in the line of succession to Bolingbroke. A statesman of the Walpole line must be a sound financier; he must be always in earnest, and he must concern himself more readily and naturally with domestic interests than with foreign affiiirs. Some English politicians of great ability and great patriotic sincerity have always held that the business of English statesmanship was, properly, more in foreign affairs than in domestic work, seeing that England has dominions scattered over all parts of the world. One of our modern Prime Ministers — Lord Beaconsfield — argued gravely that England must be regarded as an Oriental

B power. It is not necessary to discuss any of these questions now. The fact has only to be noted that a statesman of such opinions, whether they be right or wrong, could not belong to what may be called the Walpole order, and that to the Walpole order Sir Robert Peel distinctly belongs.

Sir Robert Peel was born near Bury, in Lancashire, on February 5, 178S. He came into the world just after the triumphant American colonists had finally adopted the Constitution of the United States ; just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. He came of a family of English yeomanry ' the members of which have been described as happy in a golden mean — too high for the office of constable, and too low for that of sheriff.' These words are quoted from the interesting ' Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel,' published in i860 by his cousin. Sir Lawrence Peel. This book is described by its author as written by one ' near in blood to the deceased ; but not too near, as he trusts, for impartiality.' It seems to be written in a spirit of thorough impartiality, and here and there in a temper of almost severe criticism. The family history of the elder generations of the Peels — and, indeed, of all the generations down to Peel's own time — appears exactly what one might have expected for the purpose of bringing forth just such a man. Any one familiar with the career and the personal character of Sir Robert Peel, but ignorant — if we can suppose such a person possible — of all the story of his ancestors, might easily have constructed for himself a description of the Peels of the past from a study of their greatest descendant. Simplicity, energy, patience, a constant struggle between humour and shyness, a tendency to bashful silence, with, at the same time, great power of speech, an utter absence of all affectation or ostentation — such were peel's I'AMILV ANt) EARLY CAREER 3

the family characteristics which were glorified in the career and the personal peculiarities of Sir Robert Peel. There was thus, as his relative says, 'a mixture in his origin and fortunes of two conditions of life — a Tory and a democrat.' The history of the Peel family is traced back to Craven, in Yorkshire, in the year 1600, there or thereabouts; but not very long afterwards they removed to the neighbourhood of Blackburn, in Lancashire. The family name was spelt Peele during many generations. There was a Robert Peel, a manufacturer of woollen cloth, in Blackburn, about 1640, who is said to have been the first really prosperous man of the family. One of his sons, Robert — the name of Robert is everywhere in the Peel family — bought a small estate near Blackburn, to which he gave the name of Peele Fold, and which still bears the name, and is in the possession of the family. His son, William, was the father of another Robert Peele, who was the grandfather of the great Prime Minister. This Robert Peele dropped the final letter of the name which the family were then bearing, for the very characteristic reason that it was a waste of a letter, as the ' e ' affected in no wise the sound of the word. He, and a brother-in-law, and one or two other partners, formed a company, and set up a calico-printing factory, and established a warehouse in Manchester. His sons, we read, were, like himself, hard-working, industrious, plain, frugal, reserved, and shy, ' nourishing,' says Sir Lawrence Peel, ' a sort of defensive pride.' The expression, defensive pride, is very happy. Sir Lawrence Peel, perhaps, did not remember that Samuel Johnson used it once on a memorable occasion. He and some of his friends were talking over the story of his quarrel with Lord Chesterfield. Johnson declared that Chesterfield was the proudest man then existing.

E 2

Some one said, ' I think, from your own account, you were the prouder man of the two.' ' But mine,' rephed Johnson, instantly, ' was defensive pride.' The Hsteners thought this a very happy description and justification of his feehng. So it was. The phrase is also used very happily in regard to the Peels. The pride of Sir Robert Peel was altogether a defensive pride. It never had anything aggressive in it. It was the defensive pride of a shy and sensitive man, conscious of his weakness.

Of Robert Peel, the economist of letters, another Robert, the first baronet of the family, and the father of the Prime Minister, was the son. This Robert Peel followed the ways of his father and his other relatives in sticking close to his business, and paying strict attention to all new developments in mechanism and industrial art which had any bearing on its operation. He did not invent any improvements of his own, but he took early advantage of every fresh and genuine discovery or application ; and he made a great fortune, and went into Parliament. He sat in the House of Commons for several years as a Tory, and he was by no means an undistinguished member of the House. He made a speech, in 1799, in favour of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, which seems to have created some impression. He sat for the borough of Tamworth during seven successive Parliaments, and gave a constant support to the Tory leaders. In 1800 he was made a baronet, and he remained in the House of Commons until 1820. Then he fell back into private life. He lived for ten years — lived to see the rise of his son's renown. In the coming of that renown he had long believed. The story of Sir Robert Peel, the statesman, is one of those rarest of all in real life — the story of a young man elected to greatness in far anticipation by his family, and afterwards actually ratifying the election by his career.

The elder Robert Peel determined that no effort should be spared to educate his son up to the level of the career to which he believed him destined. Young Robert himself was a studious boy, anxious to cultivate his own mind and his own faculties to their very utmost; rather inclined, perhaps, to over-cultivation. He was sent to Harrow, where he became a schoolfellow of Lord Byron. Byron wrote of him long after : ' Peel, the orator and statesman — that was, or is, or is to be — was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove. We were on good terms ; but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar, he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal ; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never ; and in school he always knew his lesson, and I rarely ; but when I knew it well, I knew it nearly as well ; and in general information, history, &c., I think I was his superior.' Byron's comparison or contrast of himself and Peel seems to be candid and fair. It is a curious fact, however, that Byron rates himself above Peel as a declaimer, and that Peel turned out to be one of the most perfect masters of the art of Parliamentary declamation, while Byron failed as an orator in the House of Lords, mainly because it was thought that his declamation was stilted, artificial, and of the school of the suburban melodrama. It has to be observed that Peel began with the priceless possession of a noble voice, sweet, strong, capable of the freest expansion. Byron was Peel's senior only by a few days. Byron left Harrow in 1805, and the two schoolfellows went their widely different ways. Each remained, however, at the top of his own remove. Byron walked, as Carlyle says of Danton, ' his own wild road, whither that led him.' Peel moved steadily, patiently, soberly along his road, which certainly was not wild, and it led him to a lofty place.

Peel continued to be a shy and studious youth. So shy was he, that in his walks he would sometimes make a long circuit to avoid the meeting with noisy and demonstrative groups of village boys. After he had left Harrow he went to Oxford, and studied hard there, and took his B.A. degree there in 1808 ; and by that time he was nearly qualified in years to enter the House of Commons. It was easy for a man of influence and great wealth like the elder Peel, who had long been a devoted follower of the Tory leaders, to find a constituency for his son. A seat was found for Peel in the Irish city of Cashel — the city, now a decayed little town, nestling at the foot of a ruin-crowned rock which can be seen with deep interest and delight even by a traveller who has lately stood on the Acropolis at Athens. Peel, then, entered the House of Commons as member for an Irish constituency. He came into the House of Commons in 1809, the year in which Byron took his seat for the first time in the House of Lords.

Peel followed the conventional way of the period, and did not address the House of Commons during his first session. At that time, and for long after, it was thought rather presumptuous and unbecoming for a very young member to take any part in debate. It was held to be at once modest and cautious to make one's self well acquainted with all the ways of the House ; to get to understand its feelings as well as its rules ; to become acclimatised to its atmosphere before attempting to address Mr. Speaker For one session at least it was recommended that young members should refrain from taking part in discussion. Some wise veterans of the House of Commons even went so far as to recommend three sessions of silent observation. A young member was supposed to keep on gradually qualifying himself for a speech by becoming bolder and more emphatic in his occasional cries of ' hear, hear,' and ' order, order.' Thus he grew accustomed to the sound of his own voice, and no longer shrank back into his seat utterly abashed if, having ventured on a rash ' hear, hear,' he found that his was the sole sound of approval heard in the House. In our days we have changed all that. It is by no means an uncommon thing for a new member to speak the very first day of his Parliamentary career. Nobody, now, who believes he can speak — and most men have this belief about themselves — would think of sitting in silence during a whole session. The man who remains silent for his first session now is, probably, a man who hopes to be allowed to remain silent for his second, third, and fourth session — for all his sessions.

The reason for this change in Parliamentary ways is not to be found altogether in an increasing lack of reverence for the House of Commons, or an increasing amount of self-conceit in the young members of the present day. The truth is, that not many constituencies in our time would like their representative to sit silent during the whole of his first session. The people of Cashel, when Peel represented it, did not care whether the member for Cashel ever opened his mouth in the House. He did not represent the people of Cashel, He had nothing to do with them, nor they with him. The local magnate elected him, or appointed him, and that \^'as all. The public in general took but little interest in the speeches that were made in Parliament ; there were no cheap newspapers to bring the account of what had been done in Westminster under the eyes of the very poorest householder in the land. The condition of things is now quite different. The people are represented ; the constituencies are really constituencies. Every constituent wants to know what sort of a figure his representative is making in the House, and how he is acting with regard to this or that political or social controversy. Constituencies now, as a rule, do not like silent members. A man must be very popular in his constituency, or have rendered some signal service in public, to be allowed to indulge, without remonstrance, in a luxury of discreet silence. That sense of quickened interest among the constituencies in what their representatives are doing is anything but an unhealthy sign of the times, or a thing to be deprecated. It is a very healthy sign. It is a thing, on the whole, to be glad of. But, like other good things, it is not an unqualified blessing, and it brings with it the disadvantage — for a disadvantage, on the whole, it is — that a member of Parliament can hardly wait now to study the ways and master the forms of the House of Commons before rising to address the Speaker.

Peel remained silent, then, during the whole of his first session. When Parliament reassembled, in January 1810, he had the honour of seconding the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. Then he made his maiden speech. 'A little cold,' Guizot declared the maiden speech to be. In the House of Commons it would seem, however, to have been regarded as a distinct success. The voice of the young orator and his whole mode of delivery were decidedly in his favour. The House of Commons ahvays welcomes with fresh dehght any one who has a fine voice and a clear delivery. A man thus endowed starts in the House with as much in his favour as a man who starts in the world with a fortune. The man with the voice may prove to be voice and nothing else ; the man with a fortune may prove to have only the gift of muddling the fortune away. But in either case the advantage is there to begin with. Peel's voice and manner secured him attention, and even admiration. As to the matter of the speech, there was not, and really could not have been, much in it. The man who moves the Address has very little chance of being able to say anything new ; the man who seconds it has no chance at all. One added difficulty was put in Peel's way. It was the wish and the policy of the Government, or, at least, of the Prime Minister, that the Address itself, and the speeches delivered in proposing and seconding it, should convey as little as possible to the mind of Parliament and the public. The Minister was waiting for a policy ; waiting for a wind. So much the more credit, therefore, is due to Peel's maiden speech in the fact that, despite these hampering and harassing conditions, it did seize and hold the attention of the House, and did make members in general believe that they were listening to something which was worth the hearing.

Peel was tall, and at this early period of his career well formed. He was slender, and there was what certain modern writers would probably call a ' willowy ' gracefulness about him. He had good features, a well-formed head, with a large forehead — at that time regarded as an indispensable attribute of intellect — and a singularly sweet smile. He was then what would be called a dressy man. People still used to powder their hair, and the powder, it is said, became Peel very well. A little later on O'Connell scoffed at him as ' a young man not past the foppery of perfumed handkerchiefs and thin shoes.' He was of very active habits, and much given to athletic sports. He was a good walker, was fond of shooting, and was a good shot. He had an immense amount of humour in him, to which he allowed all too rare an expression. He had a keen sense of the ridiculous ; which, however, he only permitted to expand when he was in the company of his closest friends. He appears to have lived in a constant struggle between his keen sense of the ridiculous and his somewhat overwrought and morbid notions as to propriety and decorum. Those who knew him only from the outside thought him merely a cold, stiff, proud young man, pedantically given up to the conventionalities and the proprieties. He was not proud, but only shy ; he was not stiff, but only reserved and habitually silent. He enjoyed wit and humour far more than most men do, even among those who are in no wise restrained by the conventionalities and the proprieties.

He was well versed in literature, classical and modern. His classic reading did not pretend to be scholarship even then, and certainly would not be considered scholarship now ; but he was unquestionably a very well-read man in the classics, and would be considered so even in our days. He had a genuine relish for art of every kind. He had a singularly happy gift of quotation. Later on, he was accused by Mr. Disraeli of never using a quotation the success of which with the House of Commons was not already guaranteed by its often having been successful there before. But Mr. Disraeli did not much care at that time what he said about an opponent so long as he disparaged him. No man ever peel's family and early career II

indulged less in hackneyed quotations than Peel ; and he had very often a peculiarly felicitous freshness in the manner in which he brightened a debate by some appropriate citation. He had studied closely and worked hard for the business of debate. His father was in the habit of taking him to the House of Commons to hear the discussions. Peel had listened to Fox and to Pitt ; he had heard the last utterances of that splendid school of Parliamentary orators whose triumphs are but a tradition to us. It is a proof of that originality of mind which his opponents were accustomed to deny to him, that he did not allow his eloquence to be formed on the model of a school which was passing away. The House of Commons was becoming every year more and more an assembly of business-men. The eloquence which in the future would command that House must have a good deal of business-precision and practicality about it. The House of Commons of later days — even of Peel's earliest days — would, probably, not listen to speeches in such a style of eloquence as those of the elder, or even the younger, Pitt. It is a well-known and well-authenticated Parliamentary anecdote, that when Canning ventured on his famous antithesis about calling in the New World to redress the balance of the Old, it was a mere case of touch and go whether the House would break into applause or burst into laughter. Canning's courage was rewarded ; the House broke into applause, and posterity has consented to echo the plaudits every now and then. But Peel understood the growing change in the taste and temper of the House of Commons, and he adapted his eloquence to the new conditions. It is hard to say whether we have gained or lost by the gradual disuse of the higher forms of eloquence in Parliament. The speeches are as long now as speeches ever were, and in the House of Commons there are not half a dozen really eloquent men.

The first really eloquent speech which Peel delivered in the House of Commons was a panegyric on Wellington, whom, curiously enough, he had never seen up to that time, and did not see for a long time after. The whole character of Wellington as a soldier and a man was calculated to impress a nature like Peel's most profoundly. But the fairness and the logic of Peel's mind were shown by the fact that, at a time when almost everyone in England was furiously denouncing Napoleon Bonaparte, and trying to make him out an incapable pretender, and even a coward. Peel more than once, in private, ])roke into an impassioned panegyric of Napoleon's genius as a soldier and a statesman. He deplored what he justly considered as the low moral nature of the great conqueror, but he could not restrain himself from almost unqualified admiration of his genius, both in war and government. It may seem but poor praise to a public man to show that he could be candid enough to admit genius in an enemy of his country ; one must see genius, it may be said, as one must see the sun, unless he be blind. But those who will read anything of English journalism and English gossip about the time when Napoleon's career was drawing to its close, will do justice to Peel's clearness and candour. It was an article of faith with most Englishmen then, that Napoleon was not merely a monster of wickedness, and of deliberate wickedness, but that he was a military impostor, a ruler of the order of Bombastes Furioso, a liar, a glutton, a bully, and a coward.

u

CHAPTER 11

The Perceval ministry — Peel Under-Secretary for the Colonies — Perceval killed — Lord Liverpool Prime Minister — Peel Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant — The Catholic question — Peel's quarrel with O'Connell.

When Peel entered Parliament the long struggle against Napoleon was still going on — had not, indeed, reached its highest pitch of intensity. The fortunes of England were not as yet showing very brightly. The year 1809 was the period of Corunna, of the disastrous Walcheren Expedition, and of the charges of maladministration in the Army brought against the Duke of York. There was much discontent in many parts of England ; there were loud demands for Parliamentary reform, and meetings were held, which here and there ended in riots. The Catholic question was making itself heard. The short lucid interval enjoyed by the poor old King, George III., was soon about to come to a close, never to return. The tendencies in political life — that is, among the men who were qualified to lead political life — were towards electoral reform, towards Catholic Emancipation, and towards Free Trade, this latter tendency showing itself only in a groping sort of way. The foremost statesman of the day. Canning, was now in favour of Catholic Emancipation, and, indeed, had probably been always, at heart, in favour of it. He was moving decidedly in the direction of Free Trade. He was not in favour of Parliamentary reform, or of a general removal of religious disability ; but his was a mind that could move quickly towards the right end. The extreme of Toryism was represented by Lord Eldon, a man for whom at first Peel felt a very strong admiration. Lord Liverpool was only a shade less deeply dyed in old-fashioned Toryism than Lord Eldon. Of Peel himself, Guizot says that he was born a Tory.

So he was, if we do not take the saying too literally. But he was also born an intellectual creature, and it was the peculiar characteristic of his mind as he grew up that he must always take account of realities. He very soon began to find his sympathies drawn more and more away from Lord Eldon and towards Mr. Canning. By tradition, by teaching, by the conditions of his family, by his bringing-up, and by deep religious feelings, he was made at first a resolute opponent of the demand for Catholic Emancipation. He believed that it would be morally wrong to admit the Catholics to religious equality with those who professed the doctrines of the State Church established by law. He did not believe it would be possible to admit the Catholics of Ireland to religious equality and still maintain the Irish Established Church, or even the Act of Union itself. On the State Church question time has proved that Peel was right. When the Irish Catholics were allowed to vote, the Irish State Church was foredoomed. When the great majority of the people were enfranchised, there could be no hope that the Church of a very small minority would be allowed to remain endowed and established. Most persons now would, very properly, say that this fact, even if generally anticipated, ought to have been only one other reason for emancipating the Catholics. The State Church in

England, whatever may be thought of the principle of establishment, rests on a foundation totally unlike that of the Irish State Church. The two institutions represented diametrically opposite principles. The Enghsh Church claimed to be the State Church because it was the Church within whose fold the great majority of the English people was sheltered ; the Irish Church could only rest its claims on the right of conquest. The vast majority of the people whose Church it professed to be could not be induced by any penal threats or terrors to cross, even once, its threshold. It is necessary to bear these facts in mind in o-rd-er that we may be able afterwards to understand the meaning of Peel's change of action on the great question of Catholic Emancipation.

The Duke of Portland was at the head of the Government when Peel came into the House of Commons. The Duke of Portland was an amiable and upright man, of only moderate ability. He had been trained by long practice into the business-work of routine statesmanship, and in the House of Lords he made as good a figure for a Ministry as another. He had been for a short time at the head of the famous Coalition Ministry, of which Fox was the soul and the brain. He had acted with the Whigs until, like Burke, he took fright at the early excesses of the French Revolution. Canning was Foreign Secretary ; Perceval lent his mediocre intelligence to the business of Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Hawkesbury, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, was Home Secretary; Huskisson, a man of genuine capacity and promise, was Secretary to the Treasury ; Lord Castlereagh, Secretary for War and the Colonies ; and Eldon was Lord Chancellor. Peel's first connection with office of any kind was when he became private secretary to Lord Liverpool. The leading men in the House of Commons at that time, and for some l6 SIR ROBERT PEEL