A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV

by Justin McCarthy; Justin H. McCarthy

[Sidenote: 1830—Ministerial resignations]

Sir Henry Parnell was a man of ability and character, and was regarded in the House as an authority on financial questions. He belonged to the family of Parnell the poet, the friend of Swift and Pope, and he afterwards became the first Lord Congleton, taking his title from that part of Cheshire where the poet and his ancestors had lived. In years, much later years, that belonged to our own times another member of the Parnell family made for himself a conspicuous place in the House of Commons and in Imperial politics, the late Charles Stewart Parnell, the famous leader of the Irish National party. Sir Henry {111} Parnell carried his motion by a majority of twenty-nine in the House of Commons.

Now in the ordinary course of things there was nothing in such an event to compel the resignation of a Ministry. It would have been quite reasonable for any Government to express a willingness to meet the wishes of the House on such a subject, to agree to the appointment of a committee, and then go on as if nothing particular had occurred. But it sometimes happens that a Government is willing, or even anxious, to accept defeat on a side issue, although of minor importance, in order to escape from, or at all events to postpone, a decision on some question of vital import. Sometimes, too, there are reasons, well known to all members of a Government but not yet in the knowledge of the public, which incline a Ministry to find a reason for resigning office in the result of some casual division which cannot be said to amount to a vote of want of confidence. Not many years have passed since a Liberal Government, which might have seemed to ordinary observers to be secure in its position, thought it well to accept a vote on the supply of cordite in the army stores as a vote of want of confidence, and accordingly went out of office. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel appear to have come to the conclusion that the success of Sir Henry Parnell's motion would furnish them with a plausible excuse for withdrawing at a convenient moment from an unpromising position. Henry Brougham, as we have already said, had given formal notice in the House of Commons that he would bring forward a motion for leave to introduce a definite scheme of Parliamentary reform. Now everybody knew that Brougham was at that time thoroughly earnest on the subject of reform, and that he had, during the recent general election, the best possible reasons for knowing that the great majority in the North of England, at all events, was behind him. On the other hand, ministers themselves had had ample opportunities of finding out, during the elections, that a large number of those whom at other times they might have regarded as their own supporters were estranged from them or had actually turned {112} against them. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel probably thought that their wisest course would be to let Lord Grey and Brougham and their friends try what they could do with the monstrous spectre of reform which they had conjured up, and wait till the country had recovered its senses before again undertaking to act as ministers of the Crown.

[Sidenote: 1830—Wellington and Peel resign]

An odd and rather absurd incident, which created much scandal and alarm at the time, and soon passed out of public recollection, had helped no doubt to bring the Duke of Wellington and Peel to their decision. The King and Queen had been invited to dine with the Lord Mayor and the Corporation at the Guildhall on November 9, and had accepted the invitation. The Duke of Wellington and the other ministers were to be among the guests.

Shortly before the appointed day the Duke of Wellington got a letter from the Lord Mayor-elect, telling him that he had received private information about some mysterious organized attempt to be made against the Duke himself on the occasion of his visit to the City, and urging the Duke to have the streets well guarded with soldiers, in order to prevent the success of any such lawless and atrocious enterprise. Now the Duke was not a man to care much, personally, about an alarm of this kind, but he thought it would be rather an unseemly spectacle if the streets of the City had to be guarded by troops when the new sovereign went to be the guest of the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall. The attempt, to be sure, was said to be directed against the Duke himself and not against the King; but still it would hardly do, it would scarcely have a happy effect on public opinion at home and abroad, if the first visit of the Sailor King, the popular William, to the City were to be made the occasion of a murderous attack on the King's Prime Minister. It might get into the public mind that what had happened in Paris was likely to happen in London, and the effect on Europe might be most damaging to the credit of the country. So the banquet was put off; the sovereign and his Prime Minister did not visit the City. A vague panic raged everywhere, {113} and the Funds went alarmingly down. The story which had impressed the Lord Mayor-elect was in all likelihood only a mere scare. But it had, no doubt, some effect in deciding the action of the Ministry. At all events, the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues determined to try what strength the reformers had behind them. They tendered their resignation; the King was prevailed upon to accept it, and it was announced to Parliament and the public that the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel were no longer in office.

{114}

CHAPTER LXX.

LE ROI D'YVETOT.

[Sidenote: 1830-37—Eccentricities of William the Fourth]