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

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

Previous to the Reform Bill and the Municipality Bills everybody in England looked up: the ambitious young man looked up to the great nobleman for a seat in Parliament; the ambitious townsman to the chief men of his borough for a place in the corporation. Subsequently to these measures, men desirous to elevate their position looked down. The aristocratic tendency of other days had thus become almost suddenly a democratic one. This democratic tendency, which has gone on increasing, had made itself already visible at the period when the Corn Law agitation began. It had been natural until then to consider this subject in relation to the interests of the upper classes; it was now becoming natural to consider it in relation to the interests of the lower classes. The question presented itself in a perfectly different point of view, and politicians found, somewhat to their surprise, that all former arguments had lost their force. It was this change in the spirit of the times which had occasioned within such a very few years a total change in the manner of looking at matters affected by the Legislature. We must, whether we wish to do so or not, breathe the atmosphere that is around us. Directly it was shown them that low wages did not necessarily follow a low price of corn, and that the labourer did not earn more because his living was dearer, the only argument that was still listened to against foreign competition disappeared. Statesman after statesman felt himself gliding into the conviction that all attempts to maintain the existing state of things, because it was thought favourable to the country gentry, was impracticable.

Lord John Russell and other leading members of the Whig party, who had been supporters of a Corn Law, underwent year by year a modification in their former opinions, and were arriving in 1845 at the determination of abandoning them. Sir Robert Peel had been undergoing precisely the same influences, and was arriving precisely at the same conclusions. The country gentlemen amongst the Whigs had quite as much cause to reproach their leader for an alteration in his views as the country gentlemen of the Tories had a right to reproach theirs. But neither the one statesman nor the other had as yet gone so far as to make common cause with Mr. Villiers and Mr. Cobden. An important and alarming incident hastened the decision of both. That incident was the failure of the potato-crop. Unless some measure was taken for bringing food from foreign countries into England, and especially into Ireland, there was legitimate cause for apprehending a famine. An apprehension of this kind involves no ordinary responsibility. Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel felt this almost at the same moment. But whilst the responsibility of the one was far greater than that of the other, his course was far more embarrassed. Lord John did not rely chiefly on those persons who fancied that their income depended on upholding the value of home produce. Sir Robert Peel did. The first might gain office by declaring that the moment was come for putting Protection altogether on one side; the other could only lose it.

Such a consideration might in many cases fairly weigh with a public man. A change of administration, a dislocation of parties, may affect a variety of questions, as well as the one which at the moment may be most prominent. But when the matter which presents itself before you is the death by starvation of hundreds or thousands of your fellow-creatures, and you think, whether rightly or wrongly, that your decision can save or condemn so many existences, is there any one who could counsel you for any reason whatever to sanction wholesale murder by suppressing your convictions? There were persons who did not think famine imminent. To them, of course, the question presented itself in a different point of view. But Sir Robert Peel seems to have been finally convinced that nothing short of a suspension of the Corn Laws, and the proposal of measures tending to their ultimate abolition, would meet the urgency of the case. He had already lost his confidence in the policy of protecting corn under ordinary circumstances; and now came circumstances which, even if his general opinions had been the same as formerly, would have created an especial reason for putting them on one side.

What was he to do? Some of his colleagues dissented altogether from his views. They did not see the crisis he foresaw so clearly as he did, and therefore were not for meeting it by a temporary suspension of a permanent duty. They did not recognise the necessity for eventually repealing that duty, and therefore were not for proposing measures that would lead to its ultimate abolition. The Premier might have attempted the policy he had in view with the remainder of the ministry, but he wisely resolved on not making such an attempt; and tendering his resignation to her Majesty, and indicating the causes, he stated his readiness to support Lord John Russell if he were willing, and able, to form a Cabinet that would undertake to carry out the views which he believed Lord John and himself entertained in common. The Whig leader failed in executing the commission with which, after this communication, the Queen intrusted him; and Lord Stanley, now at the head of the Protectionist party, considering it was not in his power to form a Government, Sir Robert Peel had as a matter of duty and necessity to resume his post.

It appears to me that the fact that he had resigned office on changing his policy, and that he did not return to it until every other ministerial combination had failed, rendered his course on this occasion more clear than on the Catholic question. To accuse him under such circumstances of changing his views in order to retain his office is as absurd as unjust. He is not even subject to the charge of retaining power after changing the opinions that he entertained on receiving it. His conduct appears to me to have been dictated by the purest patriotism, and the most complete sacrifice of personal ambition to public motives. Nor was his ability ever more conspicuous than during the ordeal he had now to undergo.

It is not, however, my intention to follow him through the Parliamentary contest in which he was soon engaged, and out of which he came triumphant, though not without, for the second time in his life, having been submitted to the severest obloquy, and having exposed his friends, which must have been his most painful trial, to accusations as bitter as those which he had himself to support.

The event which he must have anticipated was now at hand.

We know that, according to Mahomedan superstition, a man walks through life with his good and his bad angel by his side. Sir Robert Peel had at this moment his good and his bad angel accompanying his political fortunes with equal pace.

“During the progress of the Corn Law Bill,” he says in his Memoirs, “through the two Houses of Parliament, another bill, entitled a Bill for the Protection of Life in Ireland, which at an early period of the Session had received the assent of the House of Lords, was brought under discussion in the House of Commons, and encountered every species of opposition.”

On the 21st of January, 1846, the two bills, the Corn Law Repeal Bill, and the Bill for Protection of Life in Ireland, were in such a position in the two Houses respectively, that there appeared every reason to calculate on the double event,—the passing of the first bill unmutilated by the House of Lords, and the rejection of the second by the House of Commons. These two bills were indeed his guardian and destroying angels. The one crowned him with imperishable fame—the other ejected him for the last time from power.