“I have proved to you, I hope, that no false delicacy, no fear of the imputation of inconsistency, will prevent me from taking that part which present dangers and a new position of affairs may require. I am ready at any sacrifice to maintain the opinion which I now deliberately give, that there is upon the whole less of evil in making a decided effort to settle the Catholic question, than in leaving it as it has been left—an open question.
“Whenever it is once determined that an attempt should be made by the Government to settle the Catholic question, there can be, I think, but one opinion—the settlement should, if possible, be a complete one.”[131]
The Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst, without difficulty, adopted these views. The rest of the Cabinet accepted them.
Sir Robert, however, whilst expressing himself thus clearly as to the necessity of dealing without delay with the Catholic question, and offering, in the most unequivocal way, his personal support to the Government in doing so, desired to retire from the Administration, and it was at first settled he should do so, but finally, at the Duke of Wellington’s particular and earnest solicitation, he remained.
The King’s speech at the opening of Parliament spoke of the necessity of putting down the Catholic Association, and of reviewing the laws which imposed disabilities on his Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects. The authority of the Government was to be vindicated, the constitution was to be amended. Mr. Peel did not say he had altered his opinions: he did not deny the possibility of future dangers from the changes which the Government meant to propose; but he added that those distant dangers had become in his opinion less pressing and less in themselves than the dangers which, under present circumstances, would result from leaving matters as they were.
He takes as his defence upon the charge of inconsistency “the right, the duty, of a public man to act according to circumstances;” this defence is the simple, and almost the only one he uses throughout the various discussions now commencing. To Mr. Bankes, on one occasion, he replies pertinently by an extract from a former speech made by that gentleman himself:
“Mr. Bankes hoped it would never be a point of honour with any Government to persevere in measures after they were convinced of their impropriety. Political expediency was not at all times the same. What at one time might be considered consistent with sound policy, might at another be completely impolitic. Thus it was with respect to the Roman Catholics.”
On another occasion he quotes that beautiful passage from Cicero, which was the Roman orator’s vindication of his own conduct: