Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4

And now, Sir, to pass by many topics to which, but for the lateness of the hour, I would willingly advert, let me remind the House that the question before us is not a positive question, but a question of comparison. No man, though he may disapprove of some part of the conduct of the present Ministers, is justified in voting for the motion which we are considering, unless he believes that a change would, on the whole, be beneficial. No government is perfect: but some government there must be; and if the present government were worse than its enemies think it, it ought to exist until it can be succeeded by a better. Now I take it to be perfectly clear that, in the event of the removal of Her Majesty's present advisers, an administration must be formed of which the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth will be the head. Towards that right honourable Baronet, and towards many of the noblemen and gentlemen who would probably in that event be associated with him, I entertain none but kind and respectful feelings. I am far, I hope, from that narrowness of mind which makes a man unable to see merit in any party but his own. If I may venture to parody the old Venetian proverb, I would be "First an Englishman; and then a Whig." I feel proud of my country when I think how much ability, uprightness, and patriotism may be found on both sides of the House. Among our opponents stands forth, eminently distinguished by parts, eloquence, knowledge, and, I willingly admit, by public spirit, the right honourable Baronet the Member for Tamworth. Having said this, I shall offer no apology for the remarks which, in the discharge of my public duty, I shall make, without, I hope, any personal discourtesy, on his past conduct, and his present position.

It has been, Sir, I will not say his fault, but his misfortune, his fate, to be the leader of a party with which he has no sympathy. To go back to what is now matter of history, the right honourable Baronet bore a chief part in the restoration of the currency. By a very large proportion of his followers the restoration of the currency is considered as the chief cause of the distresses of the country. The right honourable Baronet cordially supported the commercial policy of Mr Huskisson. But there was no name more odious than that of Mr Huskisson to the rank and file of the Tory party. The right honourable Baronet assented to the Act which removed the disabilities of the Protestant Dissenters. But, a very short time ago, a noble Duke, one of the highest in power and rank of the right honourable Baronet's adherents, positively refused to lend his aid to the executing of that Act. The right honourable Baronet brought in the bill which removed the disabilities of the Roman Catholics: but his supporters make it a chief article of charge against us that we have given practical effect to the law which is his best title to public esteem. The right honourable Baronet has declared himself decidedly favourable to the new Poor Law. Yet, if a voice is raised against the Whig Bastilles and the Kings of Somerset House, it is almost certain to be the voice of some zealous retainer of the right honourable Baronet. On the great question of privilege, the right honourable Baronet has taken a part which entitles him to the gratitude of all who are solicitous for the honour and the usefulness of the popular branch of the legislature. But if any person calls us tyrants, and calls those whom we have imprisoned martyrs, that person is certain to be a partisan of the right honourable Baronet. Even when the right honourable Baronet does happen to agree with his followers as to a conclusion, he seldom arrives at that conclusion by the same process of reasoning which satisfies them. Many great questions which they consider as questions of right and wrong, as questions of moral and religious principle, as questions which must, for no earthly object, and on no emergency, be compromised, are treated by him merely as questions of expediency, of place, and of time. He has opposed many bills introduced by the present Government; but he has opposed them on such grounds that he is at perfect liberty to bring in the same bills himself next year, with perhaps some slight variation. I listened to him as I always listen to him, with pleasure, when he spoke last session on the subject of education. I could not but be amused by the skill with which he performed the hard task of translating the gibberish of bigots into language which might not misbecome the mouth of a man of sense. I felt certain that he despised the prejudices of which he condescended to make use, and that his opinion about the Normal Schools and the Douai Version entirely agreed with my own. I therefore do not think that, in times like these, the right honourable Baronet can conduct the administration with honour to himself or with satisfaction to those who are impatient to see him in office. I will not affect to feel apprehensions from which I am entirely free. I do not fear, and I will not pretend to fear, that the right honourable Baronet will be a tyrant and a persecutor. I do not believe that he will give up Ireland to the tender mercies of those zealots who form, I am afraid, the strongest, and I am sure the loudest, part of his retinue. I do not believe that he will strike the names of Roman Catholics from the Privy Council book, and from the Commissions of the Peace. I do not believe that he will lay on our table a bill for the repeal of that great Act which was introduced by himself in 1829. What I do anticipate is this, that he will attempt to keep his party together by means which will excite grave discontents, and yet that he will not succeed in keeping his party together; that he will lose the support of the Tories without obtaining the support of the nation; and that his government will fall from causes purely internal.

This, Sir, is not mere conjecture. The drama is not a new one. It was performed a few years ago on the same stage and by most of the same actors. In 1827 the right honourable Baronet was, as now, the head of a powerful Tory opposition. He had, as now, the support of a strong minority in this House. He had, as now, a majority in the other House. He was, as now, the favourite of the Church and of the Universities. All who dreaded political change, all who hated religious liberty, rallied round him then, as they rally round him now. Their cry was then, as now, that a government unfriendly to the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm was kept in power by intrigue and court favour, and that the right honourable Baronet was the man to whom the nation must look to defend its laws against revolutionists, and its religion against idolaters. At length that cry became irresistible. Tory animosity had pursued the most accomplished of Tory statesmen and orators to a resting place in Westminster Abbey. The arrangement which was made after his death lasted but a very few months: a Tory government was formed; and the right honourable Baronet became the leading minister of the Crown in the House of Commons. His adherents hailed his elevation with clamorous delight, and confidently expected many years of triumph and dominion. Is it necessary to say in what disappointment, in what sorrow, in what fury, those expectations ended? The right honourable Baronet had been raised to power by prejudices and passions in which he had no share. His followers were bigots. He was a statesman. He was coolly weighing conveniences against inconveniences, while they were ready to resort to a proscription and to hazard a civil war rather than depart from what they called their principles. For a time he tried to take a middle course. He imagined that it might be possible for him to stand well with his old friends, and yet to perform some part of his duty to the state. But those were not times in which he could long continue to halt between two opinions. His elevation, as it had excited the hopes of the oppressors, had excited also the terror and the rage of the oppressed. Agitation, which had, during more than a year, slumbered in Ireland, awoke with renewed vigour, and soon became more formidable than ever. The Roman Catholic Association began to exercise authority such as the Irish Parliament, in the days of its independence, had never possessed. An agitator became more powerful than the Lord Lieutenant. Violence engendered violence. Every explosion of feeling on one side of St George's Channel was answered by a louder explosion on the other. The Clare election, the Penenden Heath meeting showed that the time for evasion and delay was past. A crisis had arrived which made it absolutely necessary for the Government to take one side or the other. A simple issue was proposed to the right honourable Baronet, concession or civil war; to disgust his party, or to ruin his country. He chose the good part. He performed a duty, deeply painful, in some sense humiliating, yet in truth highly honourable to him. He came down to this House and proposed the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Among his adherents were some who, like himself, had opposed the Roman Catholic claims merely on the ground of political expediency; and these persons readily consented to support his new policy. But not so the great body of his followers. Their zeal for Protestant ascendency was a ruling passion, a passion, too, which they thought it a virtue to indulge. They had exerted themselves to raise to power the man whom they regarded as the ablest and most trusty champion of that ascendency; and he had not only abandoned the good cause, but had become its adversary. Who can forget in what a roar of obloquy their anger burst forth? Never before was such a flood of calumny and invective poured on a single head. All history, all fiction were ransacked by the old friends of the right honourable Baronet, for nicknames and allusions. One right honourable gentleman, who I am sorry not to see in his place opposite, found English prose too weak to express his indignation, and pursued his perfidious chief with reproaches borrowed from the ravings of the deserted Dido. Another Tory explored Holy Writ for parallels, and could find no parallel but Judas Iscariot. The great university which had been proud to confer on the right honourable Baronet the highest marks of favour, was foremost in affixing the brand of infamy. From Cornwall, from Northumberland, clergymen came up by hundreds to Oxford, in order to vote against him whose presence, a few days before, would have set the bells of their parish churches jingling. Nay, such was the violence of this new enmity that the old enmity of the Tories to Whigs, Radicals, Dissenters, Papists, seemed to be forgotten. That Ministry which, when it came into power at the close of 1828, was one of the strongest that the country ever saw, was, at the close of 1829, one of the weakest. It lingered another year, staggering between two parties, leaning now on one, now on the other, reeling sometimes under a blow from the right, sometimes under a blow from the left, and certain to fall as soon as the Tory opposition and the Whig opposition could find a question on which to unite. Such a question was found: and that Ministry fell without a struggle.

Now what I wish to know is this. What reason have we to believe that any administration which the right honourable Baronet can now form will have a different fate? Is he changed since 1829? Is his party changed? He is, I believe, still the same, still a statesman, moderate in opinions, cautious in temper, perfectly free from that fanaticism which inflames so many of his supporters. As to his party, I admit that it is not the same; for it is very much worse. It is decidedly fiercer and more unreasonable than it was eleven years ago. I judge by its public meetings; I judge by its journals; I judge by its pulpits, pulpits which every week resound with ribaldry and slander such as would disgrace the hustings. A change has come over the spirit of a part, I hope not the larger part, of the Tory body. It was once the glory of the Tories that, through all changes of fortune, they were animated by a steady and fervent loyalty which made even error respectable, and gave to what might otherwise have been called servility something of the manliness and nobleness of freedom. A great Tory poet, whose eminent services to the cause of monarchy had been ill requited by an ungrateful Court, boasted that

     "Loyalty is still the same,      Whether it win or lose the game;      True as the dial to the sun,      Although it be not shined upon."

Toryism has now changed its character. We have lived to see a monster of a faction made up of the worst parts of the Cavalier and the worst parts of the Roundhead. We have lived to see a race of disloyal Tories. We have lived to see Tories giving themselves the airs of those insolent pikemen who puffed out their tobacco smoke in the face of Charles the First. We have lived to see Tories who, because they are not allowed to grind the people after the fashion of Strafford, turn round and revile the Sovereign in the style of Hugh Peters. I say, therefore, that, while the leader is still what he was eleven years ago, when his moderation alienated his intemperate followers, his followers are more intemperate than ever. It is my firm belief that the majority of them desire the repeal of the Emancipation Act. You say, no. But I will give reasons, and unanswerable reasons, for what I say. How, if you really wish to maintain the Emancipation Act, do you explain that clamour which you have raised, and which has resounded through the whole kingdom, about the three Popish Privy Councillors? You resent, as a calumny, the imputation that you wish to repeal the Emancipation Act; and yet you cry out that Church and State are in danger of ruin whenever the Government carries that Act into effect. If the Emancipation Act is never to be executed, why should it not be repealed? I perfectly understand that an honest man may wish it to be repealed. But I am at a loss to understand how honest men can say, "We wish the Emancipation Act to be maintained: you who accuse us of wishing to repeal it slander us foully: we value it as much as you do. Let it remain among our statutes, provided always that it remains as a dead letter. If you dare to put it in force, indeed, we will agitate against you; for, though we talk against agitation, we too can practice agitation: we will denounce you in our associations; for, though we call associations unconstitutional, we too have our associations: our divines shall preach about Jezebel: our tavern spouters shall give significant hints about James the Second." Yes, Sir, such hints have been given, hints that a sovereign who has merely executed the law, ought to be treated like a sovereign who grossly violated the law. I perfectly understand, as I said, that an honest man may disapprove of the Emancipation Act, and may wish it repealed. But can any man, who is of opinion that Roman Catholics ought to be admitted to office, honestly maintain that they now enjoy more than their fair share of power and emolument? What is the proportion of Roman Catholics to the whole population of the United Kingdom? About one-fourth. What proportion of the Privy Councillors are Roman Catholics? About one-seventieth. And what, after all, is the power of a Privy Councillor, merely as such? Are not the right honourable gentlemen opposite Privy Councillors? If a change should take place, will not the present Ministers still be Privy Councillors? It is notorious that no Privy Councillor goes to Council unless he is specially summoned. He is called Right Honourable, and he walks out of a room before Esquires and Knights. And can we seriously believe that men who think it monstrous that this honorary distinction should be given to three Roman Catholics, do sincerely desire to maintain a law by which a Roman Catholic may be Commander in Chief with all the military patronage, First Lord of the Admiralty with all the naval patronage, or First Lord of the Treasury, with the chief influence in every department of the Government. I must therefore suppose that those who join in the cry against the three Privy Councillors, are either imbecile or hostile to the Emancipation Act.

I repeat, therefore, that, while the right honourable Baronet is as free from bigotry as he was eleven years ago, his party is more bigoted than it was eleven years ago. The difficulty of governing Ireland in opposition to the feelings of the great body of the Irish people is, I apprehend, as great now as it was eleven years ago. What then must be the fate of a government formed by the right honourable Baronet? Suppose that the event of this debate should make him Prime Minister? Should I be wrong if I were to prophesy that three years hence he will be more hated and vilified by the Tory party than the present advisers of the Crown have been? Should I be wrong if I were to say that all those literary organs which now deafen us with praise of him, will then deafen us with abuse of him? Should I be wrong if I were to say that he will be burned in effigy by those who now drink his health with three times three and one cheer more? Should I be wrong if I were to say that those very gentlemen who have crowded hither to-night in order to vote him into power, will crowd hither to vote Lord Melbourne back? Once already have I seen those very persons go out into the lobby for the purpose of driving the right honourable Baronet from the high situation to which they had themselves exalted him. I went out with them myself; yes, with the whole body of the Tory country gentlemen, with the whole body of high Churchmen. All the four University Members were with us. The effect of that division was to bring Lord Grey, Lord Althorpe, Lord Brougham, Lord Durham into power. You may say that the Tories on that occasion judged ill, that they were blinded by vindictive passion, that if they had foreseen all that followed they might have acted differently. Perhaps so. But what has been once may be again. I cannot think it possible that those who are now supporting the right honourable Baronet will continue from personal attachment to support him if they see that his policy is in essentials the same as Lord Melbourne's. I believe that they have quite as much personal attachment to Lord Melbourne as to the right honourable Baronet. They follow the right honourable Baronet because his abilities, his eloquence, his experience are necessary to them; but they are but half reconciled to him. They never can forget that, in the most important crisis of his public life, he deliberately chose rather to be the victim of their injustice than its instrument. It is idle to suppose that they will be satisfied by seeing a new set of men in power. Their maxim is most truly "Measures, not men." They care not before whom the sword of state is borne at Dublin, or who wears the badge of St Patrick. What they abhor is not Lord Normanby personally or Lord Ebrington personally, but the great principles in conformity with which Ireland has been governed by Lord Normanby and by Lord Ebrington, the principles of justice, humanity, and religious freedom. What they wish to have in Ireland is not my Lord Haddington, or any other viceroy whom the right honourable Baronet may select, but the tyranny of race over race, and of creed over creed. Give them what they want; and you convulse the empire. Refuse them; and you dissolve the Tory party. I believe that the right honourable Baronet himself is by no means without apprehensions that, if he were now called to the head of affairs, he would, very speedily, have the dilemma of 1829 again before him. He certainly was not without such apprehensions when, a few months ago, he was commanded by Her Majesty to submit to her the plan of an administration. The aspect of public affairs was not at that time cheering. The Chartists were stirring in England. There were troubles in Canada. There were great discontents in the West Indies. An expedition, of which the event was still doubtful, had been sent into the heart of Asia. Yet, among many causes of anxiety, the discerning eye of the right honourable Baronet easily discerned the quarter where the great and immediate danger lay. He told the House that his difficulty would be Ireland. Now, Sir, that which would be the difficulty of his administration is the strength of the present administration. Her Majesty's Ministers enjoy the confidence of Ireland; and I believe that what ought to be done for that country will excite less discontent here if done by them than if done by him. He, I am afraid, great as his abilities are, and good as I willingly admit his intentions to be, would find it easy to lose the confidence of his partisans, but hard indeed to win the confidence of the Irish people.

It is indeed principally on account of Ireland that I feel solicitous about the issue of the present debate. I well know how little chance he who speaks on that theme has of obtaining a fair hearing. Would to God that I were addressing an audience which would judge this great controversy as it is judged by foreign nations, and as it will be judged by future ages. The passions which inflame us, the sophisms which delude us, will not last for ever. The paroxysms of faction have their appointed season. Even the madness of fanaticism is but for a day. The time is coming when our conflicts will be to others what the conflicts of our forefathers are to us; when the preachers who now disturb the State, and the politicians who now make a stalking horse of the Church, will be no more than Sacheverel and Harley. Then will be told, in language very different from that which now calls forth applause from the mob of Exeter Hall, the true story of these troubled years.

There was, it will then be said, a part of the kingdom of Queen Victoria which presented a lamentable contrast to the rest; not from the want of natural fruitfulness, for there was no richer soil in Europe; not from want of facilities for trade, for the coasts of this unhappy region were indented by bays and estuaries capable of holding all the navies of the world; not because the people were too dull to improve these advantages or too pusillanimous to defend them; for in natural quickness of wit and gallantry of spirit they ranked high among the nations. But all the bounty of nature had been made unavailing by the crimes and errors of man. In the twelfth century that fair island was a conquered province. The nineteenth century found it a conquered province still. During that long interval many great changes had taken place which had conduced to the general welfare of the empire: but those changes had only aggravated the misery of Ireland. The Reformation came, bringing to England and Scotland divine truth and intellectual liberty. To Ireland it brought only fresh calamities. Two new war cries, Protestant and Catholic, animated the old feud between the Englishry and the Irishry. The Revolution came, bringing to England and Scotland civil and spiritual freedom, to Ireland subjugation, degradation, persecution. The Union came: but though it joined legislatures, it left hearts as widely disjoined as ever. Catholic Emancipation came: but it came too late; it came as a concession made to fear, and, having excited unreasonable hopes, was naturally followed by unreasonable disappointment. Then came violent irritation, and numerous errors on both sides. Agitation produced coercion, and coercion produced fresh agitation. Difficulties and dangers went on increasing, till a government arose which, all other means having failed, determined to employ the only means that had not yet been fairly tried, justice and mercy. The State, long the stepmother of the many, and the mother only of the few, became for the first time the common parent of all the great family. The body of the people began to look on their rulers as friends. Battalion after battalion, squadron after squadron was withdrawn from districts which, as it had till then been thought, could be governed by the sword alone. Yet the security of property and the authority of law became every day more complete. Symptoms of amendment, symptoms such as cannot be either concealed or counterfeited, began to appear; and those who once despaired of the destinies of Ireland began to entertain a confident hope that she would at length take among European nations that high place to which her natural resources and the intelligence of her children entitle her to aspire.

In words such as these, I am confident, will the next generation speak of the events in our time. Relying on the sure justice of history and posterity, I care not, as far as I am personally concerned, whether we stand or fall. That issue it is for the House to decide. Whether the result will be victory or defeat, I know not. But I know that there are defeats not less glorious than any victory; and yet I have shared in some glorious victories. Those were proud and happy days;—some who sit on the benches opposite can well remember, and must, I think, regret them;—those were proud and happy days when, amidst the applauses and blessings of millions, my noble friend led us on in the great struggle for the Reform Bill; when hundreds waited round our doors till sunrise to hear how we had sped; when the great cities of the north poured forth their population on the highways to meet the mails which brought from the capital the tidings whether the battle of the people had been lost or won. Such days my noble friend cannot hope to see again. Two such triumphs would be too much for one life. But perhaps there still awaits him a less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but a not less honourable task, the task of contending against superior numbers, and through years of discomfiture, for those civil and religious liberties which are inseparably associated with the name of his illustrious house. At his side will not be wanting men who against all odds, and through all turns of fortune, in evil days and amidst evil tongues, will defend to the last, with unabated spirit, the noble principles of Milton and of Locke. We may be driven from office. We may be doomed to a life of opposition. We may be made marks for the rancour of sects which, hating each other with a deadly hatred, yet hate toleration still more. We may be exposed to the rage of Laud on one side, and of Praise-God-Barebones on the other. But justice will be done at last: and a portion of the praise which we bestow on the old champions and martyrs of freedom will not be refused by future generations to the men who have in our days endeavoured to bind together in real union races too long estranged, and to efface, by the mild influence of a parental government, the fearful traces which have been left by the misrule of ages.