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

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

He profited, no doubt, by the fact that the Whigs had been (with the exception of a short interval) out of office for nearly half a century, and showed at every step the self-sufficiency of men of talent, and the incapacity of men without experience. Every one felt, indeed, that in the ordinary course of things their official career would be short, and none were more convinced of this than their leaders. They acted accordingly. Under any circumstances they were pledged to bring forward a Reform Bill; but under actual circumstances their policy was to bring forward a Reform Bill that would render it almost impossible for their probable successors to deal with that question. Such a Bill they introduced, destroying at one swoop sixty small boroughs, and taking one member from forty-seven more.

Mr. John Smith, an ardent Reformer, said that the Government measure went so far beyond his expectations, that it took away his breath. I myself happened to meet Mr. Hunt, the famous Radical of those days, in the tea-room of the House of Commons, just before Lord John Russell rose. We had some conversation on the project about to be proposed, no one out of a small circle having any conception as to what it would be. Mr. Hunt said, if it gave members to a few of the great towns, and disfranchised with compensation a few close boroughs, the public would rest contented for the moment with this concession. In fact, the Government plan was received with profound astonishment. Lord John continued his explanations of it amidst cheers and laughter. It almost appeared a joke; and had Sir Robert Peel risen when Lord John sat down, and said that “he had been prepared to consider any reasonable or practical plan, but that the plan of the Government was a mockery repugnant to the good sense of the House, and that he could not therefore allow the time of Parliament to be lost by discussing it; moving at the same time the order of the day, and pledging himself to bring the question in a practical form under the attention of the House of Commons at an early opportunity,” he would have had a majority of at least a hundred in his favour.

It was a great occasion for a less prudent man. But Sir Robert Peel was not an improvisatore in action, though he was in words. He required time to prepare a decision. He was moreover fettered by his relations with the late premier. Could he reject at once a project of Reform, however absurd, without taking up the question of Reform? Could he pledge his party to take up that question without being certain of his party’s pretty general acquiescence?

He persuaded himself, not unnaturally, that the Government measure had no chance of success; that nothing would be lost by an appearance of moderation, and that time would thus be gained for the Opposition to combine its plans.

Nine men out of ten would have judged the matter as he did, and been wrong as he was. But the magnitude of the Whig measure, which appeared at the moment its weakness, was in reality its strength. It roused the whole country.

Much, also, in a crisis like the one through which the country had now to pass, depends on the action of individuals whose names are not always found in history. There happened, at the moment of which I am speaking, to be a man connected with the Whig Government who, by his frank, good-natured manner, his knowledge of human nature, his habits of business, his general acquaintance with all classes of persons, and his untiring activity, gave an intensity and a direction to the general sentiment which it would not otherwise have attained.

I allude to Mr. Edward Ellice, Secretary of the Treasury. He was emphatically a man of the world, having lived with all classes of it. His intellect was clear, and adapted to business; and he liked that sort of business which brought him into contact with men. Naturally kind-hearted and good-natured, with frank and easy manners, he entered into other people’s plans and feelings, and left every one with the conviction that he had been speaking to a friend who at the proper time would do him a service. He took upon himself the management of the Press, and was entrusted shortly afterwards (when Lord Grey, finding his ministry in a minority in the House of Commons, obtained the King’s permission to dissolve Parliament) with the management of the elections. He knew that the great danger to a Reform party is almost always division, and bound the Reform party on that occasion together by the cry of “The bill! the whole bill, and nothing but the bill!”

All argument, all discussion, all objection, were absorbed by this overwhelming cry, which, repeated from one end of the country to another, drowned the voice of criticism, and obliged every one to take his place either as an advocate of the Government measure, or an opponent of the popular will.

The general feeling, when, after the elections in 1831, the shattered forces of the Tory party gathered in scanty array around their distinguished leader, was that that party was no more, or at least had perished, as far as the possession of political power was concerned, for the next twenty years. People did not sufficiently recognize the changeful vibration of opinion; neither did they take sufficiently into account the fact that there will always, in a state like ours, be a set of men who wish to make the institutions more democratic, and a set of men who do not wish this; though at different epochs the battle for or against democracy will be fought on different grounds. The Reform Bill now proposed having been once agreed to, it was certain that there would again be persons for further changes, and persons against them. Sir Robert’s great care, therefore, when our old institutions sunk, was not to cling to them so fast as to sink with them. He defended, then, the opinions he had heretofore asserted, but he defended them rather as things that had been good, and were gone by, than as things that were good and which could be maintained. The Tories in the House of Lords were in a more difficult position than the Tories in the House of Commons. They were called upon to express their opinions, and to do so conscientiously. They were in a majority in the upper assembly, as the Whigs were in a majority in the lower one. According to the theory of the Constitution the vote of one branch of the Legislature was as valid as that of the other. Were they to desert their duties, and declare they were incompetent to discharge them? They considered they were not. They, therefore, threw out the Government bill when it was brought before them for decision, and thus it had again to be introduced into the House of Commons. Again it arrived at the House of Lords, which displayed a disposition to reject it once more.

Lord Grey, in this condition of things, asked the King for the power of making peers, or for the permission to retire from his Majesty’s service. His resignation was accepted, and the Duke of Wellington was charged with forming a new Government, which was to propose a new Reform Bill. He applied to Sir Robert Peel for assistance, but Sir Robert saw that the moment for him to deal with the question of Reform was passed, and declined to give that assistance, saying that he was not the proper person to represent a compromise. That any Reform Bill that would now satisfy the momentary excitement must comprehend changes that he believed would be permanently injurious. He felt, indeed, that it would be better to let the reformers carry their own bill than to bring forward another bill which could not greatly differ from the one which the House of Commons had already sanctioned, and which, nevertheless, would not satisfy, because it would be considered the bill of the House of Lords. The Duke of Wellington consequently was obliged to retire, the Lords to give way. Lord Grey’s Reform Bill was carried, and Sir Robert Peel took his seat in a new Parliament formed by his opponents, who thought they had secured thereby the permanence of their own power.