Historical Characters: Mackintosh, Talleyrand, Canning, Cobbett, Peel

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

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.