In 1841 the Tories under Peel came into office. The Toryism
of this short administration was very different from that of Pitt, of Castlereagh, and of Liverpool. The Prime Minister was not in the least aggressive in foreign policy, and was far more Liberal in abstaining from interference with other nations than was a Whig like Palmerston. At home he was influenced by the spirit, if not by the direct teaching of Bentham, and the Peelite school of Ministers was a group which for efficiency and economy has never been surpassed in England. Peel's most conspicuous virtue was perhaps his incapacity to make permanent resistance to sound argument. Men like Liverpool would hold to a bad principle at any cost. Peel was always open to conversion. In 1829 he had, by one of these wise surrenders, saved the country from the maintenance of the Catholic disabilities, and he was now in a similar way to abandon Protection. But the real credit for this Liberal triumph belonged to the Manchester School. In other matters he moved in the same line without outside pressure. The most conspicuous exhibition of Liberalism which was made by Peel of his own initiative was his treatment of Ireland, and his most useful project was frustrated by his own party. He applied himself with his usual disinterested ambition to the government of Ireland. He saw that that country must be treated according to its own nature, and not according to that of England, if it was ever to be prosperous and contented. Its principal grievances were the subjection of Catholicism to Protestantism, and the distortion of a peculiarly Irish system of landholding to the peculiarly English rules of law. Both problems were attacked by Peel in the right spirit, if not in the right way,
One of the worst consequences of the religious inequality was the ignorance of the Catholic clergy and population. No honest Catholic would set foot in the Irish Universities, which were exclusively Protestant in temper. A small annual grant of £9,000 had been made to the Catholic College for priests at Maynooth since the beginning of the century. This was all that had been done to carry out the conciliatory policy of Pitt. Peel in 1845 proposed to increase the grant to £26,000. This was not a purely Liberal way of dealing with the difficulty. No
system of endowment can establish equality between sects, because no Government is capable either of endowing all sects or of deciding what sects should be selected in preference to the others. Endowment can only create inequalities. The only levelling process is disendowment. But the Maynooth grant was a practical measure, however little it squared with logic. The Whigs supported it, and in the face of a clamour which recalled the days of the Puritan Revolution, Peel had his way.[[232]] A second Bill established three colleges for laymen, which offered education to all comers irrespective of creed.
The second line of advance was towards the establishment of the tenant's right to compensation for improvements. The Irish land question had at last attracted the earnest attention of an English Government. The particular difficulty with which Peel now endeavoured to grapple was the result of the English legal theory that everything put into the soil was the property of the landlord, and the Irish custom which allowed the tenant to make all the improvements in the holding. A tenant who spent his own money on building, fencing, and ditching found his rent raised on the ground that the land had thereby been made more valuable, and in default of payment, was mercilessly evicted. In England, where the landlord paid for most permanent improvements, this rule was not unjust. In Ireland, where the landlord paid for none of them, it was little better than robbery. Bills entitling the tenant to compensation for his improvements had been introduced in 1835, 1836, and in 1843. A Royal Commission appointed by Peel presented a favourable report in 1845, and a fourth Bill was brought forward in the Lords. That Assembly, by one of its most fatal displays of Tory spirit, killed the Bill, and it was not introduced again for thirty-six years.
The debate in the Lords presented the Tory theory of Irish government in its crudest form. It was nothing that the history and the economic structure of Irish society were entirely different from those of English society. If Ireland appeared different, it
was a reason, not for trying to understand her, but for trying to coerce her. If she would not behave like England, she must be forced. If she would not swallow of her own free will those provisions which formed the ordinary diet of England, they must be rammed down her throat. Thirty-six Peers, owning Irish land, presented a petition against the Bill. Lord Clanricarde stated the case with precision. "What," he asked, "had of late years been the drift of their Irish legislation? Had it not been, as far as they could, to assimilate the laws of that country to those of Britain? And if they meant to preserve tranquillity—to support the Union—they must persevere steadily in that course of legislation."[[233]] To this disastrous policy Lord Stanley, for the Government, Lord Devon, the chairman of the Commission, and one or two other Peers, offered a vain resistance. Nobleman after nobleman rose to denounce this interference with the rights of property. The Bill was thrown out, and Parliament returned to its dull application of armed force to the management of the affairs of Ireland.