‘So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby Dilly, carrying six insides.’]
[5] [Lord Wharncliffe was Lord Privy Seal in Sir Robert Peel’s first Administration.]
March 31st, 1835
It is universally believed that Government will go out after this debate. I think it very doubtful, but the sooner they now go the better; they are well aware they must retire, and the question is, whether they shall do so immediately or wait till they have passed the Mutiny Bill. If the House of Commons refused to pass the Mutiny Bill, I think they would dissolve again. The King is in a dreadful state of mind, as well he may be; however, it is all his own doing, he had the courage, or rather rashness, to dismiss his late Ministers, but I fear he has none of the cool and reflecting resolution, and calm moral courage, which are necessary for this crisis; he will again submit to whatever is dictated to him.
In the meantime, the perplexity of the Opposition increases as the moment of their triumph approaches. There were 260 people at Lord John Russell’s dinner, all prepared to go any lengths, and 20 more who were absent put their names down. O’Connell, who declared ‘it was the most delightful evening he ever passed in his life,’ publicly acknowledged John Russell as his leader, and the Radicals were all present but Hume. Lord Auckland (who called upon me about a house he is thinking of taking through my mediation) said he would not do anything about it till this week was over, as circumstances might render it unnecessary for him to provide himself with a residence, but that he did not see how anything permanent could come out of the present state of things. He expected Ministers would resign, that there would be audiences and negotiations, and that at last they would come back again; that in the present state of parties he saw not how any other Government could go on any better than this; and when I asked him about John Russell’s dinner, he said it went off very well, but the composition of it was frightful (or some such word, but not, I think, quite so strong). John Russell and Melbourne, however, are satisfied they can go on with the Radical assistance, and they have gone too far now to throw these allies over; they must and will make sacrifices to secure them for their own BAD POLICY OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS. protection, and if the House of Lords is swamped in the first instance, they will have things all their own way.
If it were not for the peril to all that is worth preserving, I should not be sorry for anything that happened to the House of Lords, to whose bigoted and senseless obstinacy (upheld and directed I am sorry to say by the Duke and Lyndhurst) the present miserable condition of affairs is mainly attributable. Their rejection of the Tithe Bill last year was their crowning exploit. After all their blunders and impotent struggles against a stronger power, if they had passed that Bill, or restored Stanley’s in committee, and returned it to the House of Commons, I believe everything might have been retrieved. It has been remarked, and certainly with truth, that Peel has never once endeavoured to excuse the House of Lords or to vindicate the peers from the taunts and reproaches which have repeatedly been thrown out against them. In point of fact, I believe that the Lords either did not consult him, or did not care for his opinion. There is no disguising that the Lords liked nothing so well last year as beating the Government, and exhibiting their puny and spiteful power; now they are mightily shocked and disgusted at the majority of the House of Commons taking their revenge, though certainly the latter do it with much more rage and factious violence, but with them it is a system of tactics for a specific and attainable object. The Lords really had no intelligible object but to embarrass a Government they could not demolish, and gratify their own spite. If the most violent Radical had been permitted to chalk out the most suicidal course for the House of Lords to follow, he could have devised nothing more ingenious and well contrived than what they have actually done, taking care to keep up their character in the nation for intolerance, and inculcating a belief in their adherence to the most illiberal maxims of foreign and domestic policy, instead of devoting all their energies to the recovery of the ground they had lost in popular estimation, and strengthening themselves for the contest, which anybody might have seen was not very remote.
April 3rd, 1835
They divided at I know not what hour this morning—321 to 289,[6] a smaller majority than I was led to expect when I heard that 18 or 19 of Stanley’s (so-called) party meant to go against him. Anybody who records from day to day the shifting appearances of the political sky must constantly recant one day the opinion and expectation of the preceding. Stanley’s speech the night before last may very likely make an important difference in the result of this extraordinary contest, for he has, as it seems to me, put a final end to any possibility of junction with the great body of the Whigs now arrayed under John Russell; he attacked Lord John himself—his Whig and Radical alliance and the inconsistency of his present conduct—with the utmost vehemence and scornful reprobation, and he poured forth a torrent of sarcasm and ridicule upon the prospective Government that he concludes they meditate. This is so conclusive that it paves the way to his junction with Peel, or if the latter goes out and John Russell does come in, it is clear that he will have both Peel and Stanley in opposition to him, against whom in the nearly balanced state of parties he could not struggle on for a month. He was miserably feeble in this debate (in his opening speech), and though he may just do to lead an Opposition which wants no leading, and merely sticks him up as a nominal chief, he could no more lead a Government in the House of Commons than he could command an army in the field. [So much for my prediction. Stanley’s followers dropped off and left him alone, the Government had no difficulty, and John Russell proved a very good leader.—January 1837.] Whatever may be the fate of Government for the present, I believe it to be impossible that anything can prevent Peel’s speedy return to office; he has raised his reputation to such a height during this session, he has THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. established such a conviction of his great capacity and of his liberal, enlarged, and at the same time safe views and opinions, that even the Radicals, such as Hume, join in the general chorus of admiration which is raised to his merits; he stands so proudly eminent, and there is such a general lack of talent, that he must be recalled by the voice of the nation and by the universal admission that he is indispensable to the country.
[6] [On the 30th of March Lord John Russell moved the resolution which was carried by this division; the terms of it were, ‘That this House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, in order to consider the present state of the Church Establishment in Ireland, with the view of applying any surplus of the revenues not required for the spiritual care of its members to the general education of all classes of the people, without distinction of religious persuasion.’]
I am much inclined to think that this debate on the Irish Church question will eventually damage the Whigs not a little. Their speeches this year might all have been answered by their speeches last year on the same subject, and nothing can be so glaring as their inconsistency and the factiousness of their motives. The question is not a popular one in the country, where nothing like favour to the Catholics of Ireland or their religion is agreeable to the mass. The arguments in the debate have been triumphantly in favour of the Government upon the resolution as contradistinguished from the principle; for though I am decidedly favourable to the principle, and never had a doubt that it is preposterous to contend that if there is a reform of the Church, and there turns out to be a surplus, such surplus should not be dealt with as Parliament in its wisdom shall deem best for the general interests, under the actual circumstances of the country, at the time the appropriation takes place; still it is perfectly consistent with that opinion to refuse to vote for the appropriation of the surplus which may never exist at all, or only exist at some distant period, when other circumstances may render the proposed appropriation altogether inexpedient.