Maxims and Opinions of Field-Marshal His Grace the Duke of Wellington, Selected From His Writings and Speeches During a Public Life of More Than Half a Century

by Duke of Arthur Wellesley Wellington

Among the discussions to which the prosecutions gave rise, an amusing speech of Sir Charles Wetherell, on the 2nd of March, 1830, in the House of Commons, will repay perusal.

In a debate which took place in the House of Lords on the first night of the session, upon the state of the country, the Duke of Wellington delivered a speech upon the causes of the existing distress, which proved (allowances being made for differences of opinion) that his qualifications to deal with the most intricate questions involved in civil government were very little inferior to his military talents. Passages from that speech will be found in the following pages. At the time many of his views were ridiculed by those political economists who were destined so soon to rise to power under shelter of the reform question; but it will be seen that the improved experience of the country after ten years' undisputed sway of those gentlemen, confirms many of the chief conclusion to which the astute and practical mind of the Duke of Wellington then led him. That speech, however, raised a hornet's nest around him in the House of Commons. Among others, Sir Francis Burdett made a personal attack on the Duke, in which he said that his administration showed how correct was his estimate of his own powers when he said he would be mad to think of being prime minister. That illustrious individual, he said, had been treated with much tenderness, because he had conferred the greatest benefits on his country; but if his services had been great his recompense had been great also. Mr. Brougham, also, made a most personal attack on the Duke on the day before parliament closed.

In the mean while, George the Fourth died (on the 26th of June), and parliament was dissolved. The new parliament, called by William the Fourth, was opened by the king in person on November the 2nd. It was decidedly unfavourable to the ministry, against whom were arrayed a most talented and unscrupulous opposition. They swayed with almost absolute power the great mass of the people, who hoped everything from parliamentary reform, and had not as yet had experience of the extravagance of such hopes. A part of the tactics of the whig leaders was to excite personal animosity against the Duke of Wellington, who was libelled as a sort of would-be military dictator, seeking to introduce in civil affairs the iron discipline of the camp, and to ride rough shod over a free people.

With the clamour for reform out of doors and in the commons, it was not to be supposed that even the impassible Duke of Wellington could avoid referring to the subject in the debate on the address. This he did, with more candour than prudence, by his well-known declaration against reform, and in favour of the existing system. It will be found at length elsewhere. The excitement it produced was enormous: so great, that in three days afterwards ministers advised William the Fourth not to proceed to the City to visit the Lord Mayor, lest there should be tumults.

On the 15th, they were defeated in the House of Commons, upon a motion of Sir Henry Parnell, for a committee to inquire into the civil list; and on the following day the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues resigned; being apprehensive that the same majority would vote for the principle of parliamentary reform in a day or two after, and not wishing to virtually give up that question by going out after being beaten on it in the House of Commons.

During the year 1831, while the discussions on the Reform Bill were going on, the Duke made frequent speeches against the measure, and led the opposition in the House of Lords in a manner quite consistent with his declaration in November. In a speech he made on the 28th March, explanatory of the causes of his resignation, he distinctly denied that the reform fever was owing to that declaration, and asserted that it was to be attributed to the effect on the public mind of the revolutions in France and Belgium.

On the 10th of October, after the Reform Bill had been thrown out in the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington was insulted by a mob on his way to the house. In the evening, the windows of his mansion at Hyde Park-corner were broken. It is to be lamented that any class of Englishmen were to be found so degraded as to be guilty of this ingratitude.

Fortunately, the worst of the evil was averted, by the total indifference of the Duke to all such demonstrations. The greatest men have been despisers of mankind, of the swaying multitude, that is to say, the unthinking, the headstrong, and the violent—not of necessity merely, from that intrinsic superiority and natural antagonism which forbid their commingling; but also, and with a more hearty potency, from the experience which they, alternately the adored or the scorned, have had of the inconstancy of the giddy people. In this light estimation, indeed, of the judgment of their less worthy fellows, lies the secret of their greatness and their strength. They ride towards their goal while the stream tends that way, and when the course of the current is diverted, they are not dismayed. Their scorn of the means leads them to pass on by their own strength, or to rest secure on the foundation-rock of our moral nature—principle, and the consciousness of duty done.

In April, 1832, on the motion for the second reading of the new Reform Bill in the House of Lords, the Duke made a speech, characterised by unqualified opposition to the measure, at a time when many of the conservative peers (called "waverers,") were for giving it a qualified support. But, after a defeat of ministers in committee, on Lord Lyndhursts motion of the 7th of May, followed by their resignation, and when the king, rather than agree to create peers, called on the Duke of Wellington to form an administration, he expressed his readiness to do so upon the principle of moderate reform.

This sudden inconsistency the public could not understand; the Duke's avowed reason was that when called on by his sovereign he could not leave him alone in his difficulty. However, the Duke's efforts were brought to a summary conclusion by the refusal of Sir Robert Peel to join in the attempt.