very reform which Canning for many years had slowly bled to death for.

In spite of these blemishes, however, Peel had great political courage curiously allied with a horror of physical pain; for when he fell from his horse in 1850 and fractured two of his ribs, he refused to allow the doctor to examine the seat of the mischief, the thought of any additional discomfort being too much for him, and so he perished. His manner was haughty, and his demeanour cold and almost forbidding, and the ordinary observer never dreamt how painfully sensitive to criticism he really was, or how highly strung. As a speaker he was weighty, and in debate unequalled in his time. He knew the House of Commons as a huntsman knows his hounds, but the feeling for him of his followers was less like the devotion of a dog for its master, than the respect of a tyro for the expert in a game. They heard the crack of his whip and came to heel, and he retained an absolute mastery over his party until at length they found he had betrayed them. But a less magnetic personality has rarely ruled in Downing Street. The man had hardly a flaw, and possessed therefore scarcely any charm. Frigid, austere, incorruptible, priggish, painstaking, and unassailably reserved, his virtues failed to preserve for him the allegiance of his friends, and merely served as a mark for the rancour of his enemies. We cannot picture him regaling a lady of easy virtue with a well-turned compliment or begging his creditors for an extra day, nor even giving vent to bad language or talking at random in his cups. Sir Robert Peel could have no more done these things than the Archangel Gabriel. But neither can we imagine him making an original observation or saying or doing anything without previously calculating its consequences with a foot-rule. An erring fellowcreature had no chance of sympathy from him, for his standard of morality did not acknowledge the inevitableness of vice, and therefore made no allowances for the frailties of humanity. There was no kinship between him and the sinner, and when he caught sight of a backslider he passed by on the other side. In fact, nothing would have convinced him that spiritual unworthiness and worldly respectability are quite compatible, and that charitableness is not only more important than the cast-iron code of egoistic prudery, but a necessary ingredient in the composition of a good man.

Peel will go down to posterity as a consummate Parliamentarian, who worked himself to the bone in the service of his country for the good reason that he had an absorbing passion for power, and honestly believed that no one had the character or the ability to manage the affairs of the nation so efficiently as himself. With a tincture of imagination, with a wider

sympathy for his fellow-creatures, and a more embracing philosophy, he would have transacted as much business and done it better.

The Catholic Relief Bill was read a first time on March 10, 1829, and passed the Commons by a majority of 178. It then proceeded to the Lords. During the debate in the Upper House, Wellington said

"I am one of those, who have probably passed a longer period of my life engaged in war than most men, and principally, I may say, in civil war; and I must say this, that if I could avoid, by any sacrifice whatever, even one month of civil war in the country to which I am attached, I would sacrifice my life in order to do it."

He believed Ireland was on the verge of civil war, and so after having for years strenuously resisted every step in the direction of reform, himself led a measure for the purpose and passed it. He thus laid himself very naturally open to the charge of inconsistency, which resulted in the celebrated duel between himself and Lord Winchelsea. Winchelsea had written a letter to the Secretary to the University of London in which occurred the following sentence-"Late political events have convinced me that the whole transaction was intended as a blind to the Protestant and High Church Party; that the noble Duke who had, for some time previous to that period, determined upon breaking in upon the Constitution of 1688, might the more effectually, under the cloak of some outward show of zeal for the Protestant religion, carry on his insidious designs for the infringement of our liberties and the introduction of Popery into every department of the State." Hereupon, Wellington demanded that satisfaction "which a gentleman has a right to require, and which a gentleman never refuses to give." The Prime Minister and the Earl met early in the morning in Battersea Fields, and were posted fifteen paces apart. The Duke fired first but without effect, and Winchelsea fired in the air. The latter then drew from his pocket a paper containing an apology; whereupon the Duke touched his hat, mounted his horse, and rode away, and the childish incident was closed.

The result in the Commons was 320 for the Bill, against 142, or a majority of 178. In the Lords, who at that time could vote by proxy, there were 226 present, and for the second reading 147 voted for and 79 against the Bill. The proxies were 70 for and 33 against-a majority of 105 for the measure. The division in the Lords on the third reading took place on Friday, the 10th of April, 1829, the majority for the Bill being The Royal Assent was given on April 13, and the Act came into operation the following day. Roman Catholics had

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previously been disqualified, not expressly as Roman Catholics, but by reason of a passage in the oath of supremacy denying the spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope, and a declaration against transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, and the sacrifice of the mass, administered to members in addition to the oath of allegiance before they were permitted to take their seats. Under the Bill, the old declaration against transubstantiation and other Catholic doctrines were abolished, and an oath of allegiance and supremacy substituted, testifying allegiance to the Crown; promising to maintain the Hanoverian settlement and succession; declaring that it is no article of the Catholic faith "that Princes excommunicated by the Pope may be deposed or murdered by their subjects; that neither the Pope nor any other foreign prince has any temporal or civil jurisdiction within the realm; promising to defend the settlement of property as established by law; solemnly disclaiming, disavowing, and abjuring any intent to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law; and engaging never to exercise any privilege conferred by that Act to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or Protestant Government." On taking this oath Catholics were permitted to become members of Parliament, or of any lay body-corporate, to do corporate acts, and vote at corporate elections. They were admitted to the enjoyment of all municipal advantages and to the administration of civil and criminal justice. The army and navy had been open to them before. The only offices from which they were excluded were those of Regent, Lord Chancellor of England and Ireland, Viceroy of Ireland, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, as well as all those connected with the Church, its universities and schools, and they were also precluded from all disposal of Church patronage. The insignia of office were forbidden to be displayed in any place of worship but those of the Established Church. Priests were prohibited from wearing their robes or vestments outside their places of worship; the introduction of further Jesuits was forbidden; other religious orders were rendered ineligible to receive property by bequest, and Catholic ecclesiastics were denied the right to assume the titles of archbishop, bishop and dean within the United Kingdom.1 The extension of monachism within the Empire was likewise prohibited. Thus the long-delayed reform was accomplished and the doors of the Legislature were at last thrown open to Roman Catholics. Peel had turned his coat, and Wellington had followed the example, not out of remorse for the long obstinacy of their opposition to a just cause, or sudden awakening to the truth that the Catholics had a right to

a

1 Appendix XXVIII, the oath of supremacy, the declaration, and the new oath of allegiance and supremacy.

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relief, but from political expediency, and a very natural desire to preserve their places and secure their ease. As Macaulay said of this measure in 1844

"But those concessions were made reluctantly, made ungraciously, made under duress, made from the mere dread of civil war. How then was it possible that they should produce contentment and repose? What could be the effect of that sudden and profuse liberality following that long and obstinate resistance to the most reasonable demands, except to teach the Irishman that he could obtain redress only by turbulence? Could he forget that he had been, during eight-andtwenty years, supplicating Parliament for justice, urging those unanswerable arguments which prove that the rights of conscience ought to be held sacred, claiming the performances of promises in vain? Could he forget that two generations of the most profound thinkers, the most brilliant wits, the most eloquent orators, had written and spoken for him in vain? Could he forget that the greatest statesmen who took his part had paid dear for their generosity?"

It was not to be expected that Ireland would be very grateful. Such churlish wooing never won an Irish heart; so she shrank from it with a shudder, leaving the lover to swallow his rejection. But, what did Hippoclides care?

The measure of relief was accompanied by the suppression of the Catholic Association as an illegal and dangerous society, as well as by a Bill, which Peel introduced on the 5th of March, disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland and substituting in their stead ten-pound freeholders. The Irish forty-shilling freeholders were much less well off than the fortyshilling freeholders in England; in fact, they were little better than leaseholders, and entirely dependent on the landlord who created them.1 On some estates the subdivision of lands had been carried to such an extent for the sake of creating this description of voters that they had been known as warrens of freeholders." In view of this immense political power the Government were afraid that, were their votes preserved to them, only Roman Catholics would have any chance of being returned to Parliament, and they consequently determined to

1 Brownlow, an Ulster member, said in 1829—

"The freeholders were not free agents. They were driven by their landlords to the county-town, and locked up there until they gave their votes for their landlord's favourite candidate."

Lord Holland also said on April 6 of the same year in the House of Lords"Look, my lords, at the evidence of Archdeacon French before the Committee of 1825. I have seen,' he says, 'herds of voters driven to the poll like cattle by a man with a large whip, riding on a mule.' I asked him whether he saw the man use the whip in beating the voters. He replied, 'I did not see the man use the whip in that way. I then asked how he knew that the whip was intended for the voters, and not for the mules. To which he replied that the whip was of such a kind, so large and so long, that the mules could not be struck with it, but that the voters might."

obviate the difficulty by simple disfranchisement. What O'Connell had declaimed against was therefore on the point of taking place. He had said in 1828, "Sooner than give up the forty-shilling freeholders, I would rather go back to the Penal Code. They form part of the Constitution; their right is as sacred as that of the King to his throne; and it would be treason to the people to attempt to disfranchise them. . . . I would conceive it just to resist that attempt with force; and in such resistance I would be ready to perish in the field, or on the scaffold." But O'Connell had decided not to push his agitation farther, now that he had obtained the grand object of his ambition. Moreover, the Disfranchisement Bill did the Government considerable harm, for it was notoriously the result of fear that Catholic opinion might become strong enough to obtain a farther redress of grievances. Lord Duncannon, who opposed the second reading on the 19th of March, recognized this when he declared that, "But for the constitutional exercise of their franchise by the forty-shilling freeholders of Louth, Waterford, and Clare, the measure would never have been heard of." Palmerston also arraigned the bad policy of this restrictive clause, and the mean spirit shown by its originators, for in supporting Dancannon he said that he felt "an insurmountable dislike to the Bill, believing it to be unjust and unnecessary, and conceived in a spirit, not of conciliation, but of punishment and vengeance."

How

England, he said, would not tolerate such a measure. ever, the Bill passed the second reading; the third reading was carried by a majority of 200, and the measure, which reduced the county constituency from 200,000 to 27,000 votes, finally became law before the end of March.1

The flaws in this great reform were, that no concurrent provision was made for the Irish Catholic clergy, nor a commutation of the tithe effected at the same time. Moreover, O'Connell was not permitted to retain his seat for Clare, a mischievous prohibition savouring of petty spite, which was ultimately to do the Government infinite harm. He was anxious to be the first to take his seat under the Act, and, to avoid the delay of a county election, offered Sir Henry Denny, the proprietor of the borough of Tralee, £3,000 for its representation during the remainder of

1 The number of Roman Catholics returned for thirty years after the passing of the Act was as follows