IV.
The secession of the Canningites had rendered it necessary to fill their places. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald was selected to fill the place at the Board of Trade vacated by Mr. Grant. This rendered necessary a new election for Clare.
No axiom can be more true than that if you do not mean to have a door forced open you should not allow the wedge to be inserted. It is difficult to understand how George III. could permit the measure in 1798 which made Catholics electors, whilst he resolved never to grant Catholics the right to be elected. At first the Catholic voters merely chose Protestants, who promised to extend Catholic privileges when they could do this without great injury to their own interests.
Mr. O’Connell determined on straining the power of Catholic votes to the utmost. He first tried it in 1826, in Waterford, by combining an opposition against the Protestant family of the Beresfords, who had hitherto, from their large possessions, been all-powerful in the county. But property availed nothing. The word was given, and almost every tenant voted against his landlord. The Beresfords were ignominiously defeated. The next trial was a more audacious one.
There was nothing in law to prevent a Catholic from being elected to serve in Parliament; it was only on taking his seat in Parliament that he was stopped by the parliamentary oath. Of all Protestants in Ireland none were more popular, or had been more consistently favourable to the Catholic cause, than Mr. Fitzgerald. His name, his fortune, his principles, gave him every claim on an Irish Catholic constituency that a Protestant could have. He felt himself so sure of being confirmed in the seat he occupied that he prepared to meet his constituents without the slightest fear of opposition.
But it was determined that a Catholic should be his opponent; and, in order to prevent all doubt or hesitation amongst his followers, the great agitator took the field himself. He was successful; and after Mr. Fitzgerald’s defeat it was to be expected that a similar defeat awaited sooner or later every other Protestant. This was a serious state of things.
The Government was much weakened by the loss of the able men who had left it, and at the same time the dangers that menaced it were greater than they had ever been before.
Lord Anglesea, who was then, as I have stated, the Irish Viceroy, a gallant soldier, and a man whose judgment was good, though his language was indiscreet, declared loudly that there was no way of dealing with the Catholic organization but by satisfying the Catholics.
The considerations which these various circumstances inspired decided the mind, which as I have shown had been long wavering, of Mr. Peel; and avowing it was no longer possible to resist the Catholic claims, he thus speaks of his conduct at this juncture:
“In the interval between the discussion (he speaks of the interval between the discussion in the Lower and Upper Houses of Parliament) I had personal communication with the Duke of Wellington; I expressed great reluctance to withdraw from him such aid as I could lend him in the carrying on of the Government, particularly after the recent schism; but I reminded him that the reasons which had induced me to contemplate retirement from office in 1825, were still more powerful in 1828, from the lapse of time, from the increasing difficulties in administering the government in Ireland, and from the more prominent situation which I held in the House of Commons.