DISCUSSIONS AND EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE DISSOLUTION OF THE GODERICH
MINISTRY, ETC.
As the dissolution of the late ministry had been unexpected, and little had been said of the causes which produced it, and as the conduct of those members who had passed into the new government appeared suspicious, some explanation of these matters was looked for in both houses of parliament. The disclosures began by Messrs. Hemes, Huskisson, and others who had accepted office under the new government. They commenced with Lord Goderich, on whom it was especially incumbent to explain the civil dissensions which had broken in pieces a cabinet of his own framing, and had induced him to throw up the government in a manner neither understood by his older friends or more recent allies. His statement in reply attributed the dissolution of the ministry to an irreconcilable difference between Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Herries, regarding the proposed chairman of the finance committee; and since that difference had caused the resignation of the minister, it implied an admission that his cabinet was so constructed that the removal of either of these gentlemen naturally dissolved it. It remained for Messrs. Huskisson and Herries to state the grounds, therefore, of an obstinacy which had been so fatal to the cabinet; but both remained silent, until Lord Normandy called directly upon them to explain their conduct in the matter. Mr. Huskisson, in his version of the events which had led to the dissolution of the ministry, agreed in general with the statement made by Lord Goderich, simply supplying some deficiencies which his lordship had been unable to fill up. On the contrary, Mr. Herries averred broadly that the difference concerning the appointment of Lord Althorp as chairman of the committee was not the cause of the dissolution of Lord Goderich’s administration. He remarked:—“There is no truth whatever in the allegation that that difference caused the dissolution of the late cabinet. In all the rumours which have been propagated about design, and artifice, and stratagem, there is not one word of truth. I deny them all most unequivocally. They are false and unfounded in every particular, and have not even the slightest shadow of a foundation.” Mr. Tierney and Lord Althorp followed; but they threw no new light on the subject; and all parties ended where they had begun: the public had to believe which of the statements made they chose, according to this or that man’s political bias. In a discussion which followed, the attention of the house was directed to the character of the new government, and the conduct of those members of the former government who had joined it. Mr. T. Duncombe remarked, that the house had still to learn how the difference between Messrs. Huskisson and Herries had been made up, and how these members continued to sit in the same cabinet. The colonial secretary, he said, had still to explain “how their pulses, which formerly were so irregular, could beat so soon in unison; by what means the quietus had been produced, and the direful wrath appeased.” He was inclined to impute all that had happened to a secret and powerful agency which had not yet been unmasked, and which was exercised, according to the statement of the honourable member, by a Jew stock-broker, and a Christian physician. He had, indeed, “been credibly informed that there is a mysterious personage behind the scene, who concerts, regulates, and influences every arrangement.” He continued, “There is, deny it who can? a secret influence behind the throne, whose form is never seen, who name is never breathed who has access to all the secrets of the state, and who manages all the sudden springs of ministerial arrangement,
‘At whose soft nod the streams of honour flow, Whose smiles all place and patronage bestow.’
“Closely connected with this invisible, this incorporeal person, stands a more solid and substantial form, a new and formidable power, till these days unknown in Europe. Master of unbounded wealth, he boasts that he is the arbiter of peace and war, and that the credit of nations depends upon his nod. His correspondents are innumerable; his couriers outrun those of sovereign princes and absolute sovereigns; ministers of state are in his pay. Paramount to the cabinets of continental Europe, he aspires to the domination of our own. Even the great Don Miguel himself, of whom we have lately heard and seen so much, was obliged to have recourse to the purse of this individual, before he could take possession of his throne. Sir, that such secret influences do exist is a matter of notoriety: they are known to have been but too busy in the underplot of the revolution. I believe their object to be as impure as the means by which their power has been acquired; and I denounce them and their agents as unknown to the British constitution, and derogatory to the honour of the crown.” Mr. Buncombe’s denunciation of the secret influence behind the throne was followed by the explanations of Messrs. Stanley and Peel, and Lords Morpeth, Milton, and Palmerston, as to their reasons for joining or not joining the present government. But after the house, as Mr. Brougham remarked, had heard a great deal, it was still left nearly as much in the dark as ever, regarding the substantial facts of the case which it was desirable should be known. The whole transaction, he said was another illustration of Odenstien’s remark to his son;—“You see with how little wisdom the world can be governed.” It appeared that two members of the cabinet had been walking about in uncertainty whether they belonged to the government or not; and the head of that government was chiefly distinguished for carrying the resignations of two of his colleagues in his pocket, and for an alarm, when they should leave him, as to what he should do to provide himself with new ones. As for the quarrel of the two resigning members, it was endless, hopeless. Walls of brass were raised to divide the contending parties for ever: to communicate with each other was impossible. Communications were only to be held with a third person, and that third person was not to repeat what either party communicated to him. Every possible course had been resorted to to avoid an explanation, although it would have put an end to the difficulty altogether, is to the explanations of Mr. Herries, said Mr. Brougham, they give me no satisfaction. That gentleman’s shining of his ground, first assenting or not objecting to the appointment of Lord Althorp, afterwards protesting against it, and then attributing the dissolution of the ministry to a preconcerted plan on the part of others—all this left doubts remaining in the public mind. There was still something untold which would have explained the matter at once. The most important thing spoken in the debate, he said, was the assertion of Mr. Huskisson, that he never intended to say that he had got a guarantee for office in the new administration before the old one was dissolved. No man had ever meant, or supposed that he had stipulated for and obtained a guarantee, in the legal sense of the words, set down in a formal writing, and on a proper stamp. But, he asked, if a man spoke to an audience of having had conversations, explanations, and understandings, would they not apply those conversations, explanations, and understandings to that subject just as much as if it were written? Would it not be said that explanation was the result, of that conversation; and that the result of that explanation, in the case before the house, was the acceptation of office by the right honourable gentleman? In alluding to the unusual circumstance of a military man being at the head of the government, Mr. Brougham used very emphatic language. He remarked:—“No man values more highly than I do the services and genius of the noble duke as a soldier; but I do not like to see him at the head of the financial department of this country, with the full confidence of his sovereign, enjoying all the patronage of the church, the army, and the state; while he is also entrusted with the delicate function of conveying constant and confidential advice to his royal master. This state of things strikes me as being very unconstitutional. I am, indeed, told that the noble duke is a person of very great vigour in council, and that his talents are not confined to the art of war. It may be so. But that does not remove my objections to his possession of so immense a mass of civil and military patronage. It is said that the noble duke is incapable of speaking in public as a first minister or the crown ought to speak. Now I consider that there is no validity in that objection; for I happened to be present when the noble duke last year had the modesty and candour to declare, in another place, his unfitness for the situation of first minister; and I really thought I had never heard a better speech in my life, or observed less want of capacity in any one who might be called on to take part in a debate. This therefore is not a reason with me for objecting to the appointment. My objection rests on the unconstitutional grounds which I have before stated, and on the experience of the noble duke being wholly military. Let it not, however, be supposed that I am inclined to exaggerate. I have no fear of slavery being introduced into this country by the power of the sword. It would demand a stronger man even than the Duke of Wellington to effect that object. The noble duke might take the army and the navy, the mitre and the great seal—I will make him a present of them all; let him come on with his whole force, sword in hand, against the constitution, the people will not only beat him by their energies, but laugh at his efforts. There have, indeed, been periods when the country heard with dismay that the soldier was abroad; but such is not the case now. Let the soldier be never so much abroad in the present age, he can do nothing. Another person, less important, nay, even insignificant in the eyes or some persons, has produced this state of things. ‘The schoolmaster is abroad,’ and I trust more to the schoolmaster, armed with his primer, for upholding the liberties of this country than I fear lest the soldier, in full military array, should destroy them.” Mr. Brougham had no occasion to fear the effects of a military premier, even though the schoolmaster had not been abroad; for no prime minister that ever presided over the councils of the British nation has ever shown himself to be more alive to the interests of the country, and the preservation of its constitutional rights, than the Duke of Wellington.