Part I.
Family.—Birth.—Formation of character.—Education at Harrow and Oxford.—Entry into Parliament.—Line adopted there.—Style of speaking.—Becomes Secretary of Colonies.—Secretary for Ireland.—Language on the Catholic question.—Returned as member for the University of Oxford.—Resigned his post in Ireland.
I.
The family of the Peels belonged to the class of yeomanry, which in England, from the earliest times, was well known and reputed, forming a sort of intermediate link between the gentry and the commonalty, as the gentry formed an intermediate link between the great barons and the burghers or wealthy traders. The yeoman was proud of belonging to the yeomanry, and if you traced back the descent of a yeoman’s family, you found it frequently the issue of the younger branch of some noble or gentle house. For some generations this family of Peel had at its head men of industry and energy, who were respected by their own class, and appeared to be gradually rising into another. The grandfather of the great Sir Robert inherited a small estate of about one hundred pounds a year, called Peel’s Fold, which is still in the family. He received a fair education at a grammar-school, and married (1747) into a gentleman’s family (Haworth, of Lower Darwen).
Beginning life as a farmer of his little property, he undertook, at the time that the cotton manufacture began to develop itself in Lancashire, the business of trader and printer.
The original practice had been to send up the fabricated article to Paris, where it was printed and sent back into this country for sale. Mr. Peel started a calico printing manufactory, first in Lancashire and afterwards in Staffordshire, and his success was the result of the conviction—that “a man could always succeed if he only put his will into the endeavour,” a maxim which he often repeated in his later days, when as a stately old gentleman he walked with a long gold-headed cane, and wore the clothes fashionable for moderate people in the days of Dr. Johnson.
The first Sir Robert Peel was a third son. Enterprising and ambitious, he left his father’s establishment, and became a junior partner in a manufactory carried on at Bury by a relation, Mr. Haworth, and his future father-in-law, Mr. Yates. His industry, his genius, soon gave him the lead in the management of this business, and made it prosperous. By perseverance, talent, economy, and marrying a wealthy heiress—Miss Yates, the daughter of his senior partner—he had amassed a considerable fortune at the age of forty.
He then began to turn his mind to politics, published a pamphlet on the National Debt, made the acquaintance of Mr. Pitt, and got returned to Parliament (1790) for Tamworth, where he had acquired a landed property, which the rest of his life was passed in increasing. He was a Church and King politician in that excitable time, and his firm contributed no less than ten thousand pounds in 1797 to the voluntary subscriptions for the support of the war. So wealthy and loyal a personage was readily created a baronet in 1800.
His celebrated son was born in 1788, two years before he himself entered public life, and on this son he at once fixed his hopes of giving an historical lustre to the name which he had already invested with credit and respectability.
II.
It was the age of great political passions, and of violent personal political antipathies and partialities. The early elevation of Mr. Pitt from the position of a briefless barrister to that of prime minister had given a general idea to the fathers of young men of promise and ability that their sons might become prime ministers too. The wealthy and ambitious manufacturer soon determined, then, that his boy, who was thought to give precocious proofs of talent, should become First Lord of the Treasury. He did not merely bring him up to take a distinguished part in politics, which might happen to be a high position in opposition or office, he brought him up especially for a high official position. It was to office, it was to power, that the boy who was to be the politician was taught to aspire; and as the impressions we acquire in early life settle so deeply and imperceptibly into our minds as to become akin to instincts, so politics became instinctively connected from childhood in the mind of the future statesman with office; and he got into the habit of looking at all questions in the point of view in which they are seen from an official position; a circumstance which it is necessary to remember.
To say nothing of the anecdotes which are told in his family of the early manifestations which Mr. Peel gave of more than ordinary ability, he was not less distinguished at Harrow as a student for his classical studies, than he was as a boy for the regularity of his conduct. I remember that my tutor, Mark Drury, who, some years previous to my becoming his pupil, had Peel in the same position, preserved many of his exercises; and on one occasion brought some of them down from a shelf, in order to show me with what terseness and clearness my predecessor expressed himself, both in Latin and English.
Lord Byron says: “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, in public school phrase. 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—he never.” This character as a lad developed itself, without altering in after life.
At the University of Oxford the young man was the simple growth of the Harrow boy. He read hard, and took a double first-class, indicating the highest university proficiency both in classics and mathematics. But it is remarkable that he studiously avoided appearing the mere scholar: he shot, he boated, he dressed carefully, and, without affecting the man of fashion, wished evidently to be considered the man of the world.
As soon as he became of age, his father resolved to bring him into Parliament, and did so, in 1809, by purchasing a seat for him at Cashel.
III.
The great men of the Pittite day were passing away. The leading men at the moment were Grey, Liverpool, Petty, Perceval, Tierney, Whitbread, Romilly, Horner, Castlereagh, Canning: the genius of Sheridan had still its momentary flashes; and Grattan, though rarely heard, at times charmed and startled the House of Commons by his peculiar manner and original eloquence.
Brougham, Palmerston, Robinson, were Peel’s contemporaries. The Duke of Portland was prime minister; Perceval, the leader of the House of Commons; Canning, minister of foreign affairs; and Lord Castlereagh, secretary of war. But this ministry almost immediately disappeared: the Duke of Portland resigning, Lord Castlereagh and Canning quarrelling, and Mr. Perceval, as prime minister, having to meet Parliament in 1810 with the disastrous expedition of Walcheren on his shoulders. Young Peel, not quite twenty-two, was chosen for seconding the address, and did so in a manner that at once drew attention towards him. He was then acting as private secretary to Lord Liverpool, who had become minister of war and the colonies. The condition of the Government was but rickety: Lord Carnarvon carried against it a motion for inquiry into the conduct and policy of the expedition to the Scheldt; and, subsequently, it could only obtain a vote of confidence by a majority of twenty-three, which, in the days of close boroughs, was thought equivalent to a defeat. Peel spoke in two or three debates, not ill, but not marvellously well; there was, in fact, nothing remarkable in his style; and its fluency and correctness were more calculated to strike at first than on repetition. He never failed, however, being always in some degree beyond mediocrity.
In the meantime his business qualities became more and more appreciated; and it was not long before he was appointed to the under-secretaryship of the colonies.
It was no doubt a great advantage to him that the government he had joined wanted ability.
Mr. Perceval’s mediocrity, indeed, was repulsive to men of comprehensive views; but, on the other hand, it was peculiarly attractive to men of narrow-minded prejudices. The dominant prejudice of this last class—always a considerable one—was at this time an anti-Catholic one; some denouncing Romanists as the pupils of the devil, others considering it sufficient to say they were the subjects of the Pope. Mr. Peel joined this party, which had amongst it some statesmen who, sharing neither the bigotry nor the folly of the subalterns in their ranks, thought, nevertheless, that it would be impossible to satisfy the Catholics in Ireland without dissatisfying the Protestants in England, and were therefore against adding to the strength of a body which they did not expect to content.
IV.
Mr. Perceval’s unexpected death was a great blow to the anti-Catholics, and appeared likely to lead to the construction of a new and more liberal Cabinet. The general feeling, indeed, was in favour of a Cabinet in which the eminent men of all parties might be combined; and a vote in favour of an address to the Regent, praying him to take such measures as were most likely to lead to the formation of a strong administration, passed the House of Commons.
But it may almost be said that eminent men are natural enemies, who can rarely be united in the same Cabinet, and are pretty sure to destroy or nullify each other when they are. The attempt at such an union was, at all events, on this occasion a signal failure.
Thus, luckily for the early advancement of Mr. Peel, Lord Liverpool had to construct a government as best he could out of his own adherents, and the under-secretary of the colonies rose at once to the important position of Secretary for Ireland, to which the Duke of Richmond, a man more remarkable for his joviality than his ability, and a strenuous anti-Catholic, was sent as Lord Lieutenant.
V.
The Catholic question was to be considered an open one in the new Cabinet, but the Irish Government, as I have shown, was altogether anti-Catholic. This was in fact the strong bias of the administration, and also of the Prince Regent, who, regardless of former promises and pledges, had now become an avowed opponent of the Catholic claims. These claims, moreover, were strongly opposed by the feelings, at that time greatly excited, of the English clergy, and, speaking generally, of the English people.
Under such circumstances, a Catholic policy was at the moment impracticable; that is, it could not be carried out: for to carry out a policy opposed by the sovereign, opposed by the premier (who had been selected because his most able opponents could not form a Cabinet), opposed by the English clergy, opposed by the general sentiment of the English people, was impracticable, whatever might be said theoretically in its favour.
Mr. Peel then, in taking up the anti-Catholic policy, took up the practical one.
The Catholics themselves, indeed, destroyed for a while all hope in their cause, for when the most considerable of their supporters, in order to dissipate the alarm of their co-religionists, proposed certain guarantees for maintaining the authority of the King and the State over the Catholic priesthood, although the English Catholics and the highest orders of Catholics in Ireland willingly agreed to these guarantees, the more violent of the Irish Catholics, with Mr. O’Connell at their head, joining the most violent anti-Catholics, vehemently opposed them. Moderate people were, therefore, crushed by the extremes. Even Grattan was for a moment put on one side.
This was unfortunate for Mr. Peel, who would willingly have been as moderate as his situation would permit him, but could only at such a crisis live with violent people, and thus obtained the nickname of “Orange Peel,” so that after different altercations with Mr. O’Connell—altercations which nearly ended in a duel—he found himself, almost in his own despite, regarded by both Protestants and Catholics as the great Protestant champion.
It was in this position that he made, in 1817 (on an unsuccessful motion of Mr. Grattan’s), a very remarkable speech, the success of which Sir James Mackintosh attributes to its delivery.
“Peel,” he says, “made a speech of little merit, but elegantly and clearly expressed, and so well delivered as to be applauded to excess. He now fills the important place of spokesman to the intolerant faction.”
The speech, however, had other merits than those Sir James acknowledged, and I quote a passage which subsequently formed the groundwork of all Mr. Peel’s anti-Catholic speeches.
“If you give them” (the Catholics) “that fair proportion of national power to which their numbers, wealth, talents, and education will entitle them, can you believe that they will or can remain contented with the limits which you assign to them? Do you think that when they constitute, as they must do, not this year or next, but in the natural, and therefore certain order of things, by far the most powerful body in Ireland—the body most controlling and directing the government of it; do you think, I say, that they will view with satisfaction the state of your church or their own? Do you think that if they are constituted like other men, if they have organs, senses, affections, passions, like ourselves; if they are, as no doubt they are, sincere and zealous professors of that religious faith to which they belong; if they believe your intrusive church to have usurped the temporalities which it possesses; do you think that they will not aspire to the re-establishment of their own church in all its ancient splendour? Is it not natural that they should? If I argue from my own feelings, if I place myself in their situation, I answer that it is. May I not then, without throwing any calumnious imputations upon any Roman Catholics, without proclaiming (and grossly should I injure them if I did) such men as Lord Fingal or Lord Gormanston to be disaffected and disloyal, may I not, arguing from the motives by which men are actuated, from the feeling which nature inspires, may I not question the policy of admitting those who must have views hostile to the religious establishments of the State to the capacity of legislating for the interests of those establishments, and the power of directing the Government, of which those establishments form so essential a part?”
VI.
Have we not seen that every word I have been quoting is practically true? Are we not beginning to acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining a Protestant Church establishment in Ireland in the face of a large majority of Irish Catholic representatives? Are we not beginning to question the possibility of upholding an exclusive church belonging to a minority, without a government in which that minority dominates? Do we not now acknowledge the glaring sophistry of those who contended that the Catholics having once obtained their civil equality would submit with gratitude to religious inferiority? Mr. Peel saw and stated the case pretty clearly as it stood; the whole condition of Ireland, as between Catholic and Protestant, was involved in the question of Catholic emancipation, and as the avowed champion of Protestant ascendancy, he said, “do not resign your outworks as long as you can maintain them, if you have any serious design to keep your citadel.” But the very nature of his argument showed in the clearest manner that we were ruling against the wishes and interests of the large majority of the Irish people; that we were endeavouring to maintain an artificial state of things in Ireland which was not the natural growth of Irish society;—a state of things only to be maintained by force, and which, the day that we were unable or unwilling to use that force, tumbled naturally to pieces. It is well to bear this in mind.
The anti-Catholic party, however, accepted Mr. Peel’s argument; they did not pretend to say that they governed by justice; and they applauded their orator for showing that, whenever there was an attempt to govern justly, as between man and man, and not unjustly, as between Protestant and Catholic, their cause would be lost.
His reward was the one he most valued. Mr. Abbott, then Speaker, represented the University of Oxford. Mr. Abbott was made a peer, and Mr. Peel, through the interest of Lord Eldon and of the party that Sir James Mackintosh calls the intolerant one, was elected in his place, in spite of the well-known and favourite ambition of Mr. Canning.
With this result of his Irish administration Mr. Peel was satisfied. All the duties attached to his place he had regularly and punctually fulfilled. His life had been steady and decorous in a country where steadiness and decorum were peculiarly meritorious because they were not especially demanded. In all matters where administrative talents were requisite he had displayed them: the police, still called “Peelers,” were his invention. He protected all plans for education, except those which, by removing religious inequalities and animosities, and infusing peace into a discordant society, would have furnished the best; and with a reputation increasing yearly in weight and consideration, resigned his post, and escaped from a scene, the irrational and outrageous contentions of which were out of harmony with his character.