“I cannot boast of any acquaintance with that right honourable gentleman (Mr. Peel) in private life. I have been opposed to him on almost all occasions since I entered into public life. I have not voted with him on five occasions, I believe, since I entered into Parliament. I think him, however, a really honest and conscientious man; and considering the sacrifices which he has recently made—the connections from which he has torn himself—the public attachments which he has broke asunder—the dangers which he might have created by an opposite course—the difficulties which he might have created by adhering to an opposite system—the civil war which he has avoided by departing from it,—and the great service which he has rendered to the State by the manly avowal of a change of opinion:—considering all these circumstances, I think the right honourable gentleman entitled to the highest praise, and to the honest respect of every friend of the Catholics.”
One hostile feeling, however, still rankled in the heart of the Liberal ranks;—the party whose opposition had wearied out the generous and excitable spirit of Mr. Canning, was about to enjoy the triumph of Mr. Canning’s opinions.
The dart, envenomed with this accusation, had more than once been directed at Mr. Peel’s reputation. He felt it necessary to show that it made a wound which he did not consider that he deserved. He had been praised by many for having settled the long-pending differences which his propositions were to compose.
In answering Sir Charles Wetherell, he says: “The credit of settling this question belongs to others, not to me. It belongs, in spite of my opposition, to Mr. Fox, to Mr. Grattan, to Mr. Plunkett, to the gentlemen opposite, and to an illustrious and Right Honourable friend of mine who is now no more. I will not conceal from the House that, in the course of this debate, allusions have been made to the memory of that Right Honourable friend, which have been most painful to my feelings. An honourable baronet has spoken of the cruel manner in which my Right Honourable friend was hunted down. Whether the honourable baronet was one of those who hunted him down I know not. But this I do know—that whoever joined in an inhuman cry against my Right Honourable friend, I did not. I was on terms of the most friendly intimacy with him up to the very day of his death; and I say, with as much sincerity as the heart of man can speak, that I wish he was now alive to reap the harvest which he sowed.”
It was a consummate touch of art on the part of the orator thus to place himself in the position of the conquered, when others proclaimed him the conqueror; in this way smothering envy, and quieting reproach.
The Bill passed through the House of Commons on the 30th of March; by a majority of 320 to 142; and was carried in the House of Lords on the 10th of April, 1829, by a majority of 213 to 109. On the 19th of April this great measure received the Royal assent.
It is useless to protract the narrative of this memorable period; but I will not close it without observing that there was one still living to whom the end of the battle, which had begun so long ago, was as glorious and as gratifying as it could have been to the illustrious statesman who was no more. Justifying, more, perhaps, than any statesman recorded in our annals, the classical description of the just and firm man, Lord Grey had, through a long series of disappointing years—with an unaffected scorn for the frowns of the monarch, and the shouts of the mob—proclaimed the principles of civil equality of which his bitterest opponents were at last tardily willing to admit the necessity.
“Justum et tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni