“I told him that, being in a minority in the House of Commons on the question that of all others most deeply affected the condition and prospects of Ireland, I could not, with any satisfaction to my own feelings or advantage to the public interests, perform the double functions of leading the House of Commons and presiding over the Home Department; that at an early period, therefore, my retirement must take place. I expressed at the same time an earnest hope that in the approaching discussion in the Lords, the Duke of Wellington might deem it consistent with his sense of duty to take a course in debate which should not preclude him, who was less deeply committed on the question than myself, from taking the whole state of Ireland into consideration during the recess, with the view of adjusting the Catholic question.”
After the prorogation of Parliament, the course to be adopted was maturely considered.
Sir Robert Peel’s opinion was already made up. He argued thus:
“The time for half measures and mixed cabinets is gone by. We must yield or resist. Can we resist? Is it practicable? I don’t mean so as to keep things for a short time as they are. Can we resist effectually by at once putting down the disturbers of the public peace, who connect themselves with the Catholic cause? Can we get a ministry divided on the Catholic question to put down efficiently an agitation in favour of that question?
“If we go to a Parliament in which there is a majority in favour of the Catholic claims, and ask for its support for the purpose of coercion, will it not say it is cheaper to conciliate than coerce?
“It is of no use to consider what it would be best to do if it were possible. Coercion is impossible.
“Well, then, we must concede what we can no longer refuse.”
His letters to the Duke of Wellington, given in his memoirs, speak clearly in this sense:
“I have uniformly opposed what is called Catholic Emancipation, and have rested my opinion on broad and uncompromising grounds. I wish I could say that my views were materially changed, and that I now believed that full concessions could be made either exempt from the dangers I have apprehended from them, or productive of the full advantages which their advocates anticipate from the grant of them.
“But whatever may be my opinion upon these points, I cannot deny that the state of Ireland, under existing circumstances, is most unsatisfactory; that it becomes necessary to make your choice between different kinds and different degrees of evil—to compare the actual danger resulting from the union and organization of the Roman Catholic body, and the incessant agitation in Ireland, with prospective and apprehended dangers to the constitution or religion of the country; and maturely to consider whether it may not be better to encounter every eventual risk of concession than to submit to the certain continuance, or rather, perhaps, the certain aggravation of existing evils.”[130]