THE TAMWORTH MANIFESTO.
In anticipation of this event, Peel issued an address to his constituents which became celebrated as the "Tamworth manifesto". It is somewhat cumbrous in style, but it embodies with sufficient clearness the new conservative policy of which Peel was the real author and henceforth the leading exponent. It opens with an appeal to his own previous conduct in parliament, as showing that, while he was no apostate from old constitutional principles, neither was he "a defender of abuses," nor the enemy of "judicious reforms". In proof of this, he cites his action in regard to the currency and various amendments of the law; to which he might have added his adoption of catholic emancipation. He then declares, absolutely and without reserve, that he accepts the reform act as "a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question," which no friend to peace and the welfare of the country would seek, either directly or indirectly, to disturb. He approves of making "a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper," with a view to "the correction of proved abuses, and the redress of real grievances," and that "without mere superstitious reverence for ancient usages". He lays stress on his recorded assent to the principle of corporation reform, the substitution of a treasury grant for Church rates, the relief of dissenters from various civil disabilities (but not from university tests), the restriction of pensions (saving vested interests), the redistribution of Church revenues and the commutation of tithes, but so that no ecclesiastical property be diverted to secular uses. After these specific pledges, the Tamworth manifesto concludes with more general professions of a progressive conservatism equally removed from what are now called "advanced radicalism" and "tory democracy".[129] It was, of course, too liberal for the followers of Eldon, and was ridiculed as colourless by extreme reformers, but its effect on the country was great, and it did much to win popular confidence for the new ministry. If such a policy must be called opportunism, it was opportunism in its best form; and opportunism in its best form, under the conditions of party government, is not far removed from political wisdom.
FOOTNOTES:
[117] If all the bishops present had not merely abstained, but actually voted in favour of the measure, it would have been carried by one vote.
[118] Sir George Nicholls, History of the English Poor Law, vol. ii., see especially pp. 242, 243.
[119] Peel to Goulburn (May 25, 1834), Parker, Sir Robert Peel, ii., 244.
[120] Hatherton, Memoir; Creevey, Memoirs, ii., 285-88.
[121] See Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, viii., 446-57.
[122] Compare Walpole, History of England, iii., 478.
[123] Lord Melbourne's Papers, p. 220.