Sir Robert Peel returned to the head of the Government in the best of spirits. It was the joy of the "Happy Warrior "Who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Is happy as a lover." : The course before him was now plain, though it was the course of a forlorn hope. "I resume power," he wrote to the Princess Lieven, on December 26th, "with greater means of rendering public service than I should have had if I had not relinquished it.' He was right as regards the Cabinet. The Duke of Wellington was delighted at the prompt, knightly tone of Peel's speech to the Queen; the Duke of Buccleuch, drawn in his own despite to admire Peel's splendid and simple candour, hesitated to resign, and finally agreed to stay. The only resignation was that of Lord Stanley, who went out reluctantly, and with friendly feelings towards the Cabinet. The conversion of this little body of men, almost unanimously opposed to Peel two months before, must be counted as one of the most splendid triumphs of persuasion and personal influence in modern history. If Peel had been a great orator, or even one of those great genial characters with whom familiarity is a gift, he might have extended this triumph to the whole Party. If he had called together the Conservatives, and frankly explained his motives, he might still have saved himself from the tragic doom which now began to shadow his footsteps. But he had not sufficient confidence in himself. Rigidly deterImined to carry out his purpose, he believed that if he took the Party into his confidence, he would only be faced by the fact of their hostility. "I should have appeared to be flying in the face of a whole Party," he wrote afterwards, in defending his course. He forgot that he might have carried the Party with him. Politicians are very human, and Lord George Bentinck used to say afterwards that it was not Free Trade he minded so much as the fact of being "sold." The signs were soon eloquent of the coming storm. A large number of members resigned their seats. Several Free Traders were beaten. A follower2 who hazarded a contest at Westminster was thrown out by a combination of Whigs and Protectionists. The Dukes expelled the Peelites from their seats, and Mr. Gladstone, who had taken Stanley's place as Colonial Secretary, was unseated at Newark by the Duke of Newcastle, who extended his vengeance even to his own son, Lord Lincoln, also a Minister. The fury of the Protectionists knew no bounds. They heap (1) Letter to Lord Aberdeen, Aug. 19th, 1847. (Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 324.) (2) Captain Rous. reproaches on him," says Greville, "in which they exhaust the whole vocabulary of abuse, and accuse him of every sort of baseness, falsehood and treachery." He had secured his Cabinet, but lost his Party. reserve. Peel held steadily on, with a certain splendid magnificence of "I resolved not to fail," he wrote afterwards, from his proud retirement, "and I did not fail." Instead of receding, he went forward. There was now no talk of renewing the duties. He was for total and final repeal. His negotiations with Lord John Russell during the interregnum, made him certain of the Whigs. With their help he could defy his own Party. "It was impossible to reconcile his repeal of the Corn Laws," he wrote afterwards, "with the keeping together of the Conservative Party." Perhaps so; but it is necessary to record that he never made the attempt. The course which he took, indeed, was only calculated to increase the suspicion and resentment of his followers. He instructed Goulburn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to keep the Repeal of the Corn Duties in the second place, and to " cover corn by continued operation on the Customs tariff." He pursued the same course in his own speeches. When he explained his plan to Parliament on January 22nd and January 27th, he kept the Repeal of the Corn Laws in the background, and pushed to the front his proposals for reducing the duties on butter, cheese. hops, and live stock. The manœuvre was unworthy of Peel. It was as transparent as it was insincere, and it roused the Protectionists to redoubled fury, aggravated by the defiant tone which was perhaps a reflection of the cold, solitary resolve in Peel's own heart. There is a certain egoism even in the finest courage. But the Protectionists were for the most part dumb dogsinarticulate country gentlemen-whose rage, when it found expression, was apt to take ridiculous and extravagant shapes. They required a leader and a voice. Both were found. The leader they found in Lord George Bentinck, hitherto an idle patron of racecourses; the voice they found in Mr. Disraeli, hitherto known, if anything, for Free Trade leanings. But Sir Robert Peel had committed the fatal blunder of despising him. The explosion of forces occurred on the very first day of the Session. Peel had made a rather cold, halting speech, lit up by one or two striking, but infelicitous, phrases. "It is no light thing," he said, "to ensure the united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud aristocracy, and a reformed constituency." That reference to a "proud aristocracy" still stands as a phrase perhaps the most unhappy for the moment and the occasion in (1) Letter to Goulburn, Dec. 27th, 1845. (Life, vol. iii., p. 294.) the illimitable expanse of Hansard. It was not redeemed in persuasiveness by his peroration, in which he turned on his revolting followers, and told them that he would hold office on "no servile tenure." He could not have said more plainly that he intended to defy the men who had raised him to power. This may have been magnificent, but it certainly was not war as understood between the parties in the British House of Commons. Peel had finished, and Russell had given a somewhat thin and jejune account of his great failure. There was a pause. No one rose for a minute to voice the fury of the Protectionists.. Such are the chances of Parliament, and such the helplessness of even large parties when, deprived of their spokesman, that the speech of Sir Robert Peel might have "held the field." But suddenly there arose a fantastic figure, whose pale and sardonic face was framed in jet black ringlets, and whose Oriental colouring stood out in dramatic contrast to the fresh, fair faces of the Saxon gentry around him. It was Benjamin Disraeli, fated to be their champion and protector. The Tory Party was to be rescued by a Jew. "I am not one of the converts. I am perhaps a member of a fallen Party." In those two sentences Disraeli summed up the burden of his attack. He was to lead the Exodus. They, the Tories-went on Disraeli, in his staccato passionhad raised Peel to power as a Protectionist, and he had deserted them. "We accepted him as a leader to accomplish the triumph of Protection, and now we are to attend the catastrophe of Protection." Peel despised and menaced his Party, but what was it but that Party which had made him Prime Minister? "It was the long-constrained passion of the House," says Disraeli, modestly, in his own remarkable description of the scene, "that now found a vent, far more than the sallies of the speaker, that changed the frigid silence of this senate into excitement and tumult."1 Greville heard Disraeli's speech, and, like a true Whig, found "much of it tiresome." But he, too, has to record the vehement joy of the Tories at Disraeli's bitter home thrusts. The explanation is simple. Disraeli had said not a word in defence of Protection. But he had voiced the human rage of men who felt that they had been betrayed. It was but the first skirmish in a long warfare, in which the Tories first forged the mighty weapon of Parliamentary obstruction. The fight against Sir Robert Peel's short Tariff Bill lasted six months-from January 22nd to June 25th. There are few more dreary volumes in Hansard than those containing the (1) Life of Lord George Bentinck, p. 56, ch. iii. speeches of the English Protectionist landlords, struggling in their last ditch. But amid these tedious verbosities the speeches of their Jewish leader glitter like rare, Oriental jewels. Aristocrats like Lord George Bentinck may have organised the defence; but it was Disraeli who inspired it, and who skilfully, week by week, searched with his keen and glancing rapier all the weak points in Sir Robert Peel's armour. It was Disraeli who, when victory became impossible, organised revenge. It was Disraeli who, when he had driven Peel from the Tory Party, used him as a stepping-stone to the vacant leadership. All that Peel cared for now was to accomplish his great task. His Party had gone from him; but still he must free food before he stood aside. The winter waned, the spring passed, the summer's pomps came on. Still, day by day, and night by night, the battle rolled to and fro across the benches of the House of Commons. It was not until February 27th that the Corn Law Bill passed its second reading by 97 votes; but when Sir Robert Peel on that night scanned his Party, he found that 231 had left him, and only 112 stood by him. It was not till the 5th May that the Committee stage was carried, and the 15th that the Bill was read a third time by means of his Whig allies. His own following was scarcely a sixth of the House of Commons. "We are still the Government," wrote Peel to his friend, Sir Henry Hardinge. It was about all that he could say. The Corn Law Bill was safe as long as the 200 Whigs and Radicals voted with him. But they would not vote with him on anything else. Hungry for power, the Whigs were already looking out for an opportunity of turning Peel out after the passing of the Bill. As for the Protectionists, they looked for nothing but revenge. The opportunity soon came. It is fated that English Governments should pay a heavy price for the fearful pride of governing Ireland. The Irish peasant has destroyed more English Governments than either the English aristocracy or the middle-class. The Irish peasant at that particular moment was not dying easily. He had an unreasonable objection to a combination of famine and eviction. He was blindly hitting back. He replied to crime with crime. Murder and hunger were marching hand in hand. Enlightened in so many other matters, Peel still held the conventional view about governing Ireland. He had not the patience to wait for the healing effects of open ports. Free land had not been then added to Free Trade. His only idea for quelling the Irish peasant was to pass a Bill sentencing anyone seen out after dark to seven years' transportation.1 (1) A provision in the Coercion Bill of 1846. In ordinary circumstances, Peel's Irish Coercion Bill would have passed as a matter of course. But on this occasion it was not merely a small party of Irishmen who objected to curing hunger by transportation. The Protectionists saw in the Bill a great instrument for obstructing Free Trade. If the Bill was pushed forward, they talked upon it in full detail. If it was postponed, they rebuked Peel for delaying to grapple with an urgent evil. The Government were forced to push the Corn Bill in front of it. But a time came when this could go on no longer. On June 25th, 1846, the Corn Bill was down for the Third Reading in the Lords-its final stage. On the same day the Government proposed to take the Second Reading of the Coercion Bill in the House of Commons. The parties met, and the train was laid for the final explosion. We need not go into the reasons that political parties find for tergiversation in the presence of a great temptation. The object was to turn out Peel-and it was admitted by Lord George Bentinck with the most complete frankness. "We refuse to trust Her Majesty's Ministers." Or, as he put it in the house-" Kick out the Bill and Her Majesty's Ministers with it." As for Lord John Russell, he went into temporary alliance with O'Connell, and swore that the passage of the Bill would be dangerous to life in Ireland. Both parties had voted for the measure in its earlier stage. Peel foresaw his fate, and faced it with absolute calmness. He put his house in order. "We shall not pass the Irish Bill," he wrote on June 21st. "We shall be defeated by concerted delay, if we cannot be defeated by numbers." What then? Should he dissolve? He was strongly urged to do this, both by the Duke of Wellington and by Cobden. But what was he to dissolve on? On Free Trade? But on that both parties were agreed. On the Coercion of Ireland? But to dissolve on Coercion would, in his view, shake the foundations of the Legislative Union. It is to Peel's eternal credit that he refused to make the Coercion of Ireland the substitute for Protection as the battle-cry of his party.1 No, he saw clearly, with "sad lucidity of soul," that his bolt was shot. He had freed the food of the people, but he had destroyed his own party and himself. He was now virtually alone with his little remnant-neither a Tory nor a Whig, but just himself with his own-Peel, with his Peelites. But when the Corn Law Bill passed, even that remnant would have no political basis. He had removed even his own only cause of existence. His very victory had undone him. In slaying his Modred, he had, like (1) Peel's Memorandum of June 21st, 1846. |