A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria; Vol. IV

by François Guizot

Party passion was at this time too violent and party animosity too intense, for the newly elected house to lend an ear to this wise and patriotic language. O'Connell had sold the support of the Irish Catholics to the Whigs, and his price was the "Repeal of the Union." "I belong to the Repeal," said he to the electors, "dead or alive, saved or lost, I belong to the Repeal; and I make a solemn engagement with those who are the most opposed to me, to serve them in all things, in a way to render the transition not only without danger, but perfectly easy."

The deputies of the counties were for the most part Conservatives, but the towns and boroughs gave a majority for the Whigs. Sir Robert Peel accepted many checks without recoiling before the danger, presenting day after day to Parliament the measures which he believed to be useful to the public service; determined to defy the opposition as long as it did not touch upon points that he regarded as vital questions. Lord John Russell was not tardy in responding to this defiance. On the 30th of March, 1835, he renewed the attack but lately directed against the Irish Church: "Missionary Church," he said, "instituted with a view of leading the Irish population to the Protestant faith, adapted to future wants that had been foreseen but had never yet manifested themselves." He proposed then to revise the ecclesiastical establishment by applying to public instruction the sums and endowments which were now found necessary for the religious maintenance of the curates and their flocks. With Sir Robert Peel it was now a question of conscience as well as of absolute conviction. Seconded by Lord Stanley, he maintained that the ecclesiastical property proceeded from endowments made to the Church, and properly belonged to it, and that no one had the right to divert the same from its primitive and religious destination. The motion of Lord John Russell was carried, however, by a vote of three hundred and twenty-two against two hundred and eighty-nine. The majority was in the hands of the Irish Catholics.

Sir Robert Peel and his friends resolved to retire. They had risen in the contest which they had so courageously sustained for four months; their adversaries, as well as the entire country, felt this, and they hastened to seize again the reins of power.

"No indifference for public life, no distaste for the fatigues and weariness that it imposes, no consideration of personal comfort, no grief of private life, would authorize a public man, in my estimation, to desert without imperative reason the post to which his sovereign has called him," said Sir Robert Peel, in the House of Commons, on the 8th of April, 1835. "But at the same time, it is a great misfortune to present to the country the spectacle of a government which does not find in the House of Commons the support necessary to safely conduct the affairs of the country, nor exercise upon the acts of that House an influence which confidence alone can give; to such a spectacle of feebleness there are limits, which one ought not to pass."

During six years of alternate languor and energy, the cabinet of Lord Melbourne governed England; master of the House of Commons, and for a long time powerful in the country, losing however little by little its popularity as well as its resources, and slowly conquered by that adversary which had but recently predicted its fall. "You will have no other alternative than to invoke our aid and replace the government in the hands from which you wish to wrest it to-day," said Sir Robert Peel, in the month of December, 1834, "or have recourse to that pressure from without, to those methods of compulsion and of violence which will render your reforms vain, and will seal the death warrant of the British Constitution."

Lord Grey had never renounced power; "susceptible and proud, with a mind more elevated than discerning, he was unskilful in defending himself from small intrigues that he was incapable of plotting." Worn out by a long life devoted to politics, he was sad in his noble retirement, notwithstanding the affection of his wife and numerous children, and the profound respect always shown him by those who had served under his banners. Lord Althorpe, now become Earl Spencer, as well as Lord Brougham, took no part in the new cabinet. Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, sagacious in different degrees, undertook to continue the work of reform, but lately victoriously begun, and more difficult to accomplish, with prudent moderation, than its ardent defenders had at first foreseen. Many changes, but recently loudly demanded, were silently abandoned; they compromised upon the Irish Church question, agreeing to the conditions proposed by Sir Robert Peel; only the reform of the municipal corporations was accomplished slowly and with difficulty in Ireland, useful nevertheless and everywhere accepted. The struggle was severe, and bold hands were raised against the foundations of the English Constitution, and against the hereditary rights of the House of Lords. But at the same time that the audacity of the Reformers increased and developed a spirit of resistance, a reaction, sober and moderate, firmly resolved to defend those ancient institutions which have been the grandeur as well as the security of England. It was in support of these principles that Sir Robert Peel, on the 11th of January, 1836, addressed his friends and adherents assembled at Glasgow to elect a rector for the university. A great number of the persons present had but recently been warm supporters of the reform movement. "If you adhere to the principles which you professed in 1830, it is here you ought to come," said Sir Robert Peel. "You consented to a reform, invited by a speech from the throne, expressly on the condition that it should be according to the acknowledged principles of the Constitution. I see the necessity of widening the foundations on which the defence of our Constitution and religious establishment must rest, but I do not wish to conciliate your confidence by hoisting false colors. My object is to support our national establishments which connect Protestantism with the State, in the three realms. I avow to you that I mean to support in its full integrity the House of Lords, as an essential, indispensable condition for maintaining the Constitution under which we live. If you assent to this opinion, the hour is arrived when we must all be prepared to act on the declaration of it. The disturbing force of foreign example has diminished; the dazzling illusions of the glorious days have passed away, and the affections of the people are visibly gravitating again to their old centre, full of a respect for property, a love for national freedom, and an attachment to long established institutions."

"From these walls I trust a spirit will go forth to animate the desponding and encourage the timid. I look to the moral influence of that opinion, which constitutes the chief defence of nations. I look to it for the maintenance of that system of government which protects the rich from spoliation, and the poor from oppression. I look to that spirit which will range itself under no tawdry banner of revolution, but will unfurl and rally round the flag which has braved for a thousand years the battle and the breeze. I do not doubt that it will continue to float triumphantly, and that our Constitution, tried as it has been in the storms of adversity, will come forth purified and fortified in the rooted convictions, feelings and affections of a religious, moral and patriotic people."

It was against his personal inclinations, but in conformity to constitutional principles sincerely accepted and practised, that King William IV. had successively sanctioned the important reforms which were accomplished under his reign. His royal task was soon to terminate; from day to day his health became more feeble, and on the 20th of June, 1837, he expired at Windsor. The supreme power fell into the hands of his young niece, the Princess Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Kent, who, on the same day, was proclaimed Queen, at Kensington. The new sovereign of the three kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland, whose laws extend over so many distant colonies and diverse peoples, was only eighteen years of age.