A history of England

by Charles Oman

The war in Syria was caused by the attempt of Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, to assert his independence, and to tear Syria and Asia Minor from his suzerain the Sultan. Thinking that the maintenance of Turkey was essential to British interests in the East, Lord Palmerston bade the rebel pasha retire within his own borders, and, on his refusal, bombarded and took Acre and Sidon. This brought Mehemet Ali to reason, and he acquiesced in an agreement which left him the position of a quasi-independent ruler in Egypt, but stripped him of his conquests beyond the Syrian desert (January, 1841).

The Prince Consort.

In the year which preceded this last war, England had been rejoiced to see her queen happily married. The young sovereign's choice had been her own first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg, whom the country knew so well first as "Prince Albert," then as the "Prince Consort." He was very young at the time of the marriage, being only in his twenty-first year, but from his earliest days in England showed a remarkable wisdom and power of adapting himself to his new surroundings. While carefully refraining from taking any ostensible part in politics, he was able in many ways to act as a useful counsellor both for his wife and his wife's ministers, for he had a large knowledge of foreign politics, and a sound and cautious judgment. His blameless private life and many amiable qualities endeared him to all who came into personal contact with him; but for many years he was not properly appreciated by the English people, who were vaguely suspicious of a foreign prince placed in such a difficult position as that of husband to a constitutional queen. All their suspicions of him and his influence were ungrounded, but it was not till after his death in 1861 that most men realized what a thoroughly wise and unselfish friend of England he had been.

The Conservatives in office.

The Melbourne ministry went out of power a few months after the queen's marriage. A general election took place in June-July, 1841, and a Conservative majority was returned to the House of Commons, whereupon Sir Robert Peel was called upon to take office in the due course of constitutional etiquette.

Peel as premier.

The Tories, now again in power after an interval of twelve years, were a very different party from what they had been in the old days before 1830. The whole body of them had moved slowly forward, but there were still, as always, a more and a less progressive section among them, as in the days of Canning and Castlereagh. Peel himself had generally been considered to belong to the former body, though he had been one of those who opposed Parliamentary Reform to the last. His own breeding and character account for his position; he was not a member of one of the old aristocratic Tory families, but the son of a wealthy Lancashire millowner, a representative of the Conservatism of the middle classes, not of the old landed interest. He was a firm, able, conscientious man, rather too masterful in dealing with his followers, and prone to command rather than to persuade. But in 1841 his authority over them seemed so firmly established, that men prophesied that he would rule for as many years as the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, his ministry was only to last from September, 1841, to July, 1846, and, instead of establishing the Conservative party firmly in power, he was fated to break it up, and to condemn it to almost continuous exile from office for nearly thirty years. [61]

Peel's finance.—The income tax.

But Peel's early years of power promised well. His first achievement was to restore the national finances, which had been left in a most unsatisfactory condition by the Melbourne ministry. His budget of 1842 was long remembered as being the first important step in the direction of Free Trade that had been taken for many years. He reduced the import duties on nearly 750 articles of consumption, reasoning that the advantage to the consumer far outweighed the loss to the English manufacturer, whose interests were served by the protective duties which he removed. To make up the deficit in the revenue caused by these remissions of import duties, he imposed the income tax, under a pledge that it was to be an exceptional impost; five years, he said, would suffice to restore the revenue to its old amount, and it should then be dropped. Unfortunately for all persons with fixed incomes, Peel was out of office long before the five years were over, and none of his successors has ever redeemed his pledge. The income tax still remains with us, the easy and obvious method by which any impecunious Chancellor of the Exchequer can wring more money from the middle classes, by adding an extra "penny in the pound." It must, however, be granted that at its first imposition it tided England very successfully over a dangerous financial crisis.