STATE OF PARTIES.
A.D. 1830
At the commencement of this year, government found itself in a new and unsafe position. It had carried the great party question of Catholic emancipation, but in so doing it had lost the confidence of a large body of its most faithful adherents. Ministers had, it is true, on the other hand, gained the seeming support of their old enemies of the opposition; but this could not be depended upon. The Whigs were willing to lend them such assistance as would prevent the necessity of seeking a reconciliation with the offended Tories; but they were not willing to concede even this, except as the means of gradually introducing themselves into an equal share of power. They assented to a coalition in parliament; but the price of this assent was coalition in office. In a word, their policy was to aid the government with their countenance and their votes, so far as it would be sufficient to keep it alive, but by no means to give it the robustness and vigour of perfect health. On the other hand, the Duke of Wellington was willing to use them as supporters; but he was not disposed to extend to them an equal share of power. It was his wish, indeed, to be reconciled to his old friends; and, therefore, he stood aloof from a more intimate connexion with the Whigs, that he might keep open the door of reconciliation to the former. He flattered himself, that as each of the two divisions of his adversaries would be unwilling to drive him for the preservation of the ministry into the arms of the other, he might command the occasional assistance of both, to an extent sufficient to enable him to govern without placing himself in the power of either. But this was chimerical. The Tories showed no inclination to trust men whom they considered as their betrayers, and they resisted them as statesmen who had abused their power, and coalesced with their political antagonists, to force upon the country a measure contrary to its opinions, interests, and institutions. They resisted them, also, as politicians who, to effect their purpose had abandoned their tenets, betrayed and surprised their own confiding adherents, and introduced as a principle into the conduct of government, that everything was to be granted which was demanded by clamorous agitation. Between the Tories and the Whigs, the distance was not greater than between the Tories and the ministry; and perhaps it was not even so great, as the Whigs had not betrayed their opponents. The Duke of Wellington, indeed, seems to have had some fear that the two parties might coalesce, in order to effect his expulsion from power. Nor was this fear without foundation. Neither party was in heart his friends; and his own conduct had at once furnished the motives to such an union, and removed one irreconcileable point of difference between the parties whose union he feared. Moreover, in itself the ministry was without the means of making any commanding figure in the house of commons. With the exception of Mr. Peel, who filled the post of leader in that house, there was no man who could fight their battles of debate with any degree of talent and vigour, no one that held any high place in public opinion, either for oratory or information. Finally, the ministry increased their unpopularity by prosecutions for libel arising out of the Catholic relief bill. While that bill was pending, the press had given birth to much vehement and angry discussion, and some of the papers having gone beyond the bounds of allowable invective, the attorney-general resolved to crush them by ex-officio informations. But these prosecutions were received with an universal dislike by all parties in the country; and the temper in which the Whig attorney-general conducted them, gave a severe blow to his public character, and increased the unpopularity of the government.