DEBATE ON THE CORN LAWS.
February 14th.—I saw Aberdeen yesterday. He told me Peel was full of spirits and determination; he (Aberdeen) thought they could not go on long, though he believed they would not be beaten on the Sugar Duties, and he did not know on what question they would be defeated; and then they would have to decide whether they should try a dissolution, for which the Queen would press vehemently, for (he said) she was quite as anxious to keep Peel as ever she had been to keep Melbourne. I told him I hoped they would never think of dissolving unless pretty sure of success; that the Whigs had disgraced themselves and lost everything by this measure in 1841, and nothing but success could justify such an appeal. He said he quite agreed with me; and though he evidently wishes to stay in, he is prepared to go out, and would prefer doing so with credit rather than sticking to place dangerously and disreputably.
February 16th.—The debate in the House of Commons (the dullest on record) lasted all last week, and will probably last all this. Meanwhile affairs grow daily more uncomfortable and perplexed. The Government measure will certainly pass the House of Commons by a majority under one hundred, and most people think it will pass the House of Lords. Then will come the dissolution of the Government and the advent of John Russell; but how he is to get on, or what is to happen afterwards, nobody has an idea. Though the Tories have made up their minds to be defeated, they show no symptom of mitigated feelings towards Peel and the Government, but the contrary. The debate presents hardly any argument on their side, but bitter lamentations and reproaches, and quotations from former speeches or addresses of the Ministers who are now abandoning them. On the other hand, the Liberals, while they support Peel, encourage and confirm the Tories in their indignation and resentment, and they abuse the Government quite as lustily, not for what they are doing now, but for all they have been saying and doing for the last four years. The whole of the press takes the same line, the Tory and Whig papers naturally; and the 'Times' chuckles and sneers, and alternately attacks and ridicules Whigs, Protectionists, and Peelites.
There was a comment on my pamphlet in defence of Peel in Ward's paper, the 'Weekly Chronicle,' yesterday; very well done, with much truth in it. The real fact is that Peel is not obnoxious to blame for what he has done; it is very fair for party men to attack him on this score, but he is easily defensible on it. But nothing can excuse all that he and his colleagues have said. When the best excuse their conduct admits of is made for them, it will be found that their language, the opinions and the arguments they have put forth do not correspond with the excuse. This is the first point against them, and the second is that they have made out no adequate case for doing now what they have done. The case which Graham put forth really is no case at all. All this does unquestionably give their friends and supporters a just cause of complaint; and though as a Free Trader I rejoice at the repeal of the Corn Laws, I must own that if I belonged to Peel's party I should feel the same disgust and indignation they all do. Then there is no denying the immensity of the moral mischief that has been done. It is very remarkable that I am the only person who has defended Peel and made any apology for him whatever. It is impossible that hundreds of people, members of both Houses of Parliament, and the whole press should go on day after day crying out against treachery and deceit and a violation of public honour, and not produce a deep and strong impression. When one hears the apologies the Ministers make for themselves, one cannot but feel how insufficient they are. There is no getting over the speeches that are flung in their faces; they are unquestionably now conscientious in what they are doing; but what were they before? If they were sincere before, if they did not anticipate the changes they are now (as they think) compelled to make, they were blind and unsafe guides, deficient in sagacity and foresight. I must say that, on calm reflexion, I think Peel has shown throughout this matter a considerable want of skill and wisdom. His scheme of gradual alteration and step by step Reform was wise, and probably was the only one practicable; but by his speeches he has counteracted his own object. He was so afraid of saying too much at first, and of prematurely frightening his friends, that he ran into the opposite danger of confirming them in the convictions and expectations which it was his object to loosen; and at all events, if he did say enough to alarm them with a vague alarm, he said so little as to give them the right they are now exercising of reproaching him for the deceit he practised. He would have done much better to have proclaimed boldly at first that the principle of Free Trade was sound, but that its application was difficult, and could only be made safely by being made gradually and slowly. In this way he might have availed himself of what he calls his three years' experiment; but when he puts it forward as the ground of his conversion, everybody laughs at it and knows he is not speaking the truth. For my part, I earnestly wish to see this question settled, and the Government out; they cannot remain in either advantageously or creditably. If they can redeem their credit, it must be out of office, and through the success of their measure. To have sacrificed themselves to it is the only atonement that can be accepted for their former disingenuous professions. Their position is now very mortifying and embarrassing; their people who vacate can none of them be re-elected.
WESTMINSTER ELECTION.
Rous will be beaten for Westminster, which will be a great slap on the face to the Government. This is the result of bad management; he never ought to have resigned without being pretty sure of re-election; neither he nor the Government took any pains to ascertain his chance. He fancied himself secure, told Peel so, and Peel believed him. The tardy and reluctant resignations of seats of some, and the clinging to seats of others, have excited a good deal of derision and disapprobation; in short, there is no shutting one's eyes to the fact, that this measure, so salutary in itself, is making its way through much that is deplorable and injurious to public morals. It matters not that by a very minute analysis it may be proved that the men who are accused are not really so much to blame as they appear, that it is difficult to show clearly what they ought to have done at different periods instead of what they have done; the loud and general clamour produces an effect which cannot be prevented, and they have furnished out of their own mouths materials for any condemnation their enemies, old or new, are disposed to pass on them.
February 18th.—The night before last Peel made a very grand speech, vindicating himself in a very high tone, making out a very good case for his measure at this time, and dealing in details with his usual skill. It was certainly one of his most successful efforts, and Charles Villiers told Clarendon it was one of the finest speeches he ever heard in Parliament. It served, however, to widen the breach between himself and the Tory party. Clarendon told me that he had been very unfair to John Russell in one point, when he said that he thought he would have carried the measure if he had taken office; that he must know this was not the case, for Peel would not have been able to bring twenty people with him when out of office.
While Peel was making this great speech in the House of Commons, Stanley was making a very different sort of speech in the Lords. There he denounced the measure in strong terms, exhibited a bitter feeling, and a disposition to put himself at the head of the Protectionists and throw out the measure. Such was the impression he gave, and his speech was rapturously hailed both there and elsewhere. It filled with alarm all the moderate people, and encouraged the violent. It is, however, quite impossible to conjecture what he will do when it comes to the point. It is difficult to decide whether his object is ambition and power, or only sport and mischief. As to his forming a Government, he is himself quite as unfit as the rest are incompetent. There is probably not a public man in the country who inspires so little confidence. His speech, however, has made the cauldron boil more hotly than ever, and increased the doubt whether the measure will pass.
INCONSISTENCY OF BOTH PARTIES.
I have had a long correspondence with the Duke of Bedford about people and things connected with this affair, and as he was always drawing comparisons between the purity and consistency of Lord John, and the dishonesty and inconsistency of others, I at last resolved to show him what Lord John's own course had been (though without finding fault with him), but letting him see that he was just as obnoxious to the charge of inconsistency or insincerity, if an enemy wished to urge it, as Peel or anybody else. I proved to him that between 1828 when he became (by his own avowal) the advocate of a fixed duty and 1839, during eleven years, he never opened his lips in favour of it; and on every occasion when it was brought forward by anybody else, he voted against it or stayed away. Then he advocated a fixed duty in 1841; and having done so with cogent reasons up to June 1845, in November of the same year he blurted out his famous letter declaring for total Repeal. The only excuse that his conduct admits of is that of expediency, the very same that is demanded, on grounds at least as strong, for Peel; but circumstances place the one man beyond the necessity of an apology, and render the other incapable of making the real and true one. Peel's best excuse for not having done before what he is doing now is afforded by the actual state of affairs. In spite of four or five years of discussion, of the dissemination of sound principles, of the diffusion of knowledge, of numerous and respectable conversions, of the success of his partial experiments in Free Trade, and of his having the potato famine as a base for his operation, he cannot do what he does now without entirely breaking up his party, and he has to encounter difficulties almost insurmountable—si argumentum requiris circumspice.