The Political History of England – Vol XI

Notice had been given of a resolution to be moved by Peel on March 5, preparing the way for the catholic relief bill, when the king raised fresh obstacles to its progress. As the day drew near, George, encouraged by the Duke of Cumberland, grew very excited. He had violent interviews with his ministers, and finally on March 3 he informed Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel that he could not assent to any alteration in the oath of supremacy. The three ministers accordingly tendered their resignations, which were accepted. But the king soon found that no alternative administration was possible, and on the following day the existing ministers received permission to proceed with the bill.91

PROVISIONS OF THE RELIEF BILL.

Peel's great speech on March 5, in favour of his resolution, contains a comprehensive review of the Irish question, as well as an elaborate defence of his own position, resting solely on grounds of expediency. He advocated the measure itself as the only means of pacifying Ireland, reducing the undue power of the catholics, and securing the protestant religion. It was simple in its main outlines, applying to the whole United Kingdom, and purporting to open all political and civil rights to catholics, with a very few specified exceptions. It contained, however, a number of provisions, in the nature of securities against catholic aggression. By the new oath, to be substituted for the oaths of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration, a member of parliament, or holder of an office, was no longer required to renounce transubstantiation, the invocation of saints, or the sacrifice of the mass. But he was still obliged not only to swear allegiance, but to profess himself resolved to maintain the protestant settlement of the crown, to condemn absolutely all papal jurisdiction within the realm, and to disclaim solemnly any intention of subverting the existing Church establishment or weakening the system of protestant government. Moreover, priests were expressly denied the privilege of sitting in parliament. Catholics were still excluded from the high positions of sovereign, regent, lord chancellor of England or Ireland, and lord-lieutenant of Ireland. They were enabled to become ministers of the crown, but were debarred from the power of advising the crown on presentations to ecclesiastical dignities or benefices, nor were they allowed to exercise such patronage in their personal capacity. They were still to be disabled from holding offices in the ecclesiastical courts, or in the universities, and their bishops were forbidden to assume diocesan titles already appropriated by the establishment. Other clauses were directed against the use of catholic vestments except in their chapels and private houses, and against the importation of Jesuits or members of similar religious orders, with a saving clause for those already resident and duly registered. Two other safeguards, often proposed, were deliberately omitted from the bill. There was no provision for a state endowment of catholic priests, or for a veto of the crown on the appointment of catholic bishops. These omissions, whether justifiable or not, were pregnant with serious consequences.

The debates in both houses on Peel's bill, as it was rightly considered, are chiefly interesting as throwing light on contemporary opinion. The arguments for and against it had been fairly exhausted in previous years, and would carry no great weight in a later age. The constitutional objections to it, which seemed vital to Eldon, and weighty to every statesman of his time, were at a later date put aside, when they were pleaded against the dissolution of the Irish church, directly guaranteed by the act of union. The criticisms on the personal consistency of Wellington and Peel belong to biography rather than to history. But no one can read the speeches of leading men on either side without recognising the superior foresight, at least, of those who opposed the bill, and distrusted the efficacy of the safeguards embodied in it. Two assumptions underlay the whole discussion, and were treated as axioms by nearly all the speakers. The one was that catholic emancipation must be judged by its effect on the future peace of Ireland; the other, that it could not be justified, unless it would strengthen, rather than weaken, protestant ascendency, then regarded as a bulwark of the constitution. Posterity may contemplate it from a different and perhaps higher point of view; but it is certain that, if its consequences had been foreseen by those who voted upon it, the bill would have been rejected. It is no less certain that its adoption was a victory of the educated classes, represented by nomination-boroughs, over the unrepresented masses of the people.

The actual result in the division lists was all that its promoters could have desired. Though the secret had been so well kept by the government that few of its supporters knew what to expect, and though piles of petitions showed the preponderance of protestant sentiment outside parliament, that sentiment was not reflected in the division lists. The first reading of the bill in the house of commons was carried by a majority of 348 to 160; the second reading by a majority of 353 to 180; the third reading by a majority of 320 to 142. The debates were enlivened on the protestant side by a brilliant speech from Michael Sadler, a tory friend of the working classes, returned by the Duke of Newcastle for Newark, and a violent invective from Sir Charles Wetherell, the attorney-general, who was thereupon dismissed from office. Peel, who had borne the brunt of these attacks, replied on March 30, when the bill was sent up to the lords, and on April 2, the second reading of it in the upper house was moved by Wellington. His candid admission that he was driven to concession by the fear of civil war has since become historical, and served as the watchword of many a lawless agitation in Ireland. It was natural that most of the peers, and especially of the spiritual peers, who took part in the discussion should be opponents of the measure, but Lloyd, Bishop of Oxford, severed himself from the rest of his order, and vigorous speeches were made in support of it by Anglesey and Grey, neither of whom could be regarded as friendly to Wellington's government.

ROYAL ASSENT TO THE BILL.

Anglesey, who had been recently dismissed from the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, went beyond the duke in the use of purely military arguments; Grey ventured to prophesy not only a future reign of peace in Ireland, but an extension of protestantism, as the consequence of catholic emancipation. The hopeless attempt of Lyndhurst to vindicate his own consistency, and a forensic duel between Eldon and Plunket, who had been raised to the peerage in 1827, relieved the monotony of the debate, but probably did not influence a single vote. The old guard of the anti-catholic party remained firm, but the mass of tory peers followed their leader in his new policy, as they had followed him in his old, and the relief bill was read a third time in the house of lords on the 10th, by a majority of 104. Three days later it received the royal assent. Lord Eldon had virtually encouraged the king to refuse this, at the last moment, though he was too honest to accept the assurance of George IV. that the bill was introduced without his authority. But the son of George III. had not inherited his father's resolute character. After a few childish threats of retiring to Hanover and leaving the Duke of Clarence to make terms with the ministry, he abandoned further resistance and capitulated to Wellington, as Wellington had capitulated to O'Connell.

The disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders and the substitution of a ten-pound suffrage was the price to be paid for catholic emancipation, and no time was lost in completing the bargain. In days when it is assumed that every change in the electoral franchise must needs be in a downward direction, it may well appear amazing that so wholesale a destruction of privileges enjoyed for thirty-six years should have provoked so feeble an opposition. It is still more amazing that it should have passed without a protest from O'Connell himself, who had solemnly vowed to perish on the field or on the scaffold rather than submit to it. Yet so it was. These ignorant voters, it is true, had never ventured to call their souls their own, and had only ceased to be the servile creatures of their landlords in order to become the servile creatures of their priests. Still, it was they who, by their action in the Waterford and Clare elections, had forced the hand of the government, and achieved catholic emancipation. It may safely be said that after the reform act of 1832 it would have been politically impossible to disfranchise them; and even in the unreformed parliament it would have been scarcely possible if gratitude were a trustworthy motive in politics. On the other hand, the government could never have secured a majority for catholic emancipation, unless it had been distinctly understood to carry with it the extinction of democracy in Ireland. This, rather than declarations and restrictions of doubtful efficacy, was the real "security" on which the legislature relied for disarming the disloyalty of Irish catholics. For some time it answered its purpose so far as to keep the representation of that disloyalty within safe limits in the house of commons. But it naturally produced a contrary effect in Ireland itself, and was destined to be swept away before a fresh wave of agitation.

A few days before the relief bill passed the house of commons an episode occurred which is chiefly interesting for the light which it throws on the ideas then prevalent in the highest society. In 1828 Wellington had presided at a meeting for the establishment of King's College, London, an institution which was to be entirely under the influence of the established church, and which was intended as a counterpoise to the purely secular institution which had been recently founded under the title of the "London University". The Earl of Winchilsea, a peer of no personal importance, but a stalwart upholder of Church and State, published in the Standard newspaper of March 16, 1829, a virulent letter, describing the whole transaction "as a blind to the protestant and high church party," and accusing the prime minister of insidious designs for the introduction of popery in every department of the state. The duke at once sent Hardinge with a note couched in moderate language, demanding an apology. Winchilsea made no apology, but offered to express regret for having mistaken the duke's motives, if the duke would declare that when he presided at the meeting in question he was not contemplating any measure of catholic relief. Whereupon the duke demanded "that satisfaction which a gentleman has a right to require, and which a gentleman never refuses to give". A hostile meeting took place on March 21 in Battersea fields. The duke intentionally fired wide, and Winchilsea, after discharging his weapon in the air, tendered a written apology, in conformity with the so-called rules of honour. The duke was conscious that his conduct must have "shocked many good men," but he always maintained that it was the only way, and proved an effectual way, of dispelling the atmosphere of calumny in which he was surrounded. It is probable that he judged rightly of his contemporaries, and that he gained rather than lost in reputation by an act which, apart from its moral aspect, risked the success of a great measure largely depending on the continuance of his own life. It may be noticed that he afterwards became not only the personal friend of his antagonist, but the most influential member of the Anti-Duelling Association.92

EXCLUSION OF O'CONNELL.

Another episode, or rather sequel, of the great contest on catholic relief had more serious political consequences. Though O'Connell was the undoubted leader of the movement, and might almost have claimed to be the father of the act, he was most unwisely but deliberately excluded from its benefits. His exclusion was effected by a clause which rendered its operation strictly prospective, for the very purpose of shutting out the one catholic who had been elected under the old law. It had been decided by a committee of the house of commons that he was duly returned, the only question being whether he could take his seat without subscribing the oath now abolished. This question was brought to a test by the appearance of O'Connell in person in the house itself. The speaker, Charles Manners-Sutton, declared that he could not properly be admitted to be sworn under the new law, upon which O'Connell claimed a hearing. A long and futile discussion followed as to whether he should be heard at the table or at the bar. In the end he was heard at the bar, and produced a very favourable impression upon his opponents as well as his friends by the ingenuity of his arguments and the studied moderation of his tone. His case, however, was manifestly untenable from a legal point of view, and a new writ was ordered to be issued for the county of Clare.

Then was shown both the folly of stirring up so needlessly the inflammable materials of Irish sedition and the futility of imagining that catholic emancipation, right or wrong, would prove a healing measure. Having exhibited the better side of his character in his speech before the house of commons, O'Connell exhibited its worst side without stint or shame in his addresses to the Irish peasantry. Skilfully avoiding the language of sheer treason, he set no bounds to his coarse and outrageous vituperation of the nation which had sacrificed even its conscience to appease Ireland; nor did he shrink from denouncing Wellington and Peel as "those men who, false to their own party, can never be true to us". The note which he struck has never ceased to vibrate in the hearts of the excitable people which he might have educated into loyal citizenship, and the spirit which he evoked has been the evil genius of Ireland from his day to our own. He openly unfurled the standard of repeal, but the repeal he demanded did not involve the creation of an Irish republic. Ireland was still to be connected with Great Britain by "the golden link of the crown," and though agitation was carried to the verge of rebellion, the great agitator never actually advised his dupes to rise in arms for a war of independence. Short of this he did all in his power, and with too much success, to inflame them with a malignant hatred of the sister country. If the promoters of catholic emancipation had ever looked for any reward beyond the inward satisfaction of having done a righteous act, they were speedily and wofully undeceived.

CHAPTER XII.

PORTUGAL AND GREECE

It is now time to turn to the general course of foreign policy during the closing years of the reign of George IV. The only foreign problems which gave serious trouble during this period were the Eastern and Portuguese questions. The influence which the former exercised on domestic policy has rendered it necessary to trace its course as far as the battle of Navarino in the last chapter. We must now take up the other question where we left it, at the recognition of the independence of Brazil and the expulsion of the Spanish troops from the mainland of America.

Peter I., Emperor of Brazil, though an independent sovereign, was still heir-apparent to the throne of Portugal, and the ultra-royalists hoped that, in spite of the provisions of the Brazilian constitution, his succession to his ancestral crown would restore the unity of the Portuguese dominions. The death of King John VI. on March 10, 1826, brought the matter to a crisis. Four days before his death he had appointed a council of regency which was to be presided over by his daughter, Isabella Maria, but from which the queen and Dom Miguel, then twenty-three, were both excluded. By this act the absolutist party were deprived of power until they should be restored to it by the action of the new king, or by a revolution. The regency wished the new king to make a speedy choice between the two crowns; and it was anticipated that he would abdicate the Portuguese crown in favour of his seven-year-old daughter, Maria da Gloria. The absolutists on the other hand hoped that the king might by procrastination avoid the separation of the crowns.

What was their surprise when they discovered that the king had indeed determined to procrastinate, but in such a way as to displease the absolutists as much as the friends of constitutional government? No sooner had the news of his father's death reached Peter at Rio Janeiro, than he issued a charter of 145 clauses, conferring a constitution on Portugal. This constitution which was destined to alternate for nearly a generation with absolute monarchy or with the revolutionary constitution of 1821, had the advantage of being the voluntary gift of the king. It was, however, composed in great haste, and, except that it retained the hereditary nobility as a first chamber in the cortes, was almost identical with the constitution established in Brazil in the previous December. Among other provisions it subjected the nobility to taxation and asserted the principle of religious toleration. A few days later, on the 2nd of May, King Peter executed an act of abdication in favour of his daughter Maria, providing, however, that the abdication should not come into effect until the necessary oaths had been taken to the new constitution and until the new queen should have been married to her uncle, Dom Miguel.

CIVIL WAR IN PORTUGAL.

This compromise pleased nobody. It is true that it seemed to make permanent the separation of Brazil from Portugal, since the former state was destined for Peter's infant son, afterwards Peter II.; but the Brazilian patriots would have preferred a more definite abandonment of the Portuguese throne, and Peter's half-measure of abdication was one of the main causes of the discontent which drove him to resign the Brazilian crown five years later. The Portuguese liberals were alarmed at the prospect of a restoration of Dom Miguel to power, while the absolutists were indignant at the imposition of a constitution. From the very first it encountered opposition. The new constitution was indeed proclaimed on July 13, and the necessary oaths were taken on the 31st. But on the same day a party, consisting mainly of Portuguese deserters in Spanish territory, proclaimed Miguel as king and the queen-mother as regent during his absence. Miguel, however, gave no open support to this party; on October 4 he actually took the oath to the new constitution, and on the 29th he formally betrothed himself at Vienna to the future Queen of Portugal. But the Portuguese insurgents were not deterred by the apparent defection of the prince whose claim to reign they asserted, and they received a thinly disguised encouragement from the Spanish government, which certainly did nothing to interfere with their organisation in Spanish territory. On the 10th the last insurgents had been expelled from Portuguese territory, but in November they were openly joined by some Spanish soldiers, and on the 22nd of that month they invaded the Portuguese province of Traz-os-Montes. Another division made a simultaneous irruption into the province of Alemtejo. This latter body was quickly expelled from the kingdom and marched through Spanish territory to join its more successful comrades in Northern Portugal. The whole province of Traz-os-Montes had fallen into the hands of the absolutists in a few days, and its defection was followed by that of the northern part of Beira, when the arrival of British forces gave the constitutional party the necessary encouragement to enable them to arrest the progress of the insurrection.

As in 1823, the Portuguese government, represented in London by Palmella, applied for British assistance against the ultra-royalists at home. But on the present occasion Portugal was able to appeal to something more than the general friendship of Great Britain. By the treaties of 1661 and 1703, renewed as recently as 1815, Great Britain was bound to defend Portugal against invasion, and Portugal now claimed the fulfilment of these treaties. The formal demand was received by the British ministry on December 3, but it was not till Friday, the 8th, that official intelligence was received of the invasion. Not a moment was lost in despatching 5,000 troops to Portugal. This resolution was formed by the cabinet on the 9th, approved by the king on the 10th, and communicated to parliament on the 11th. On the evening of the 12th Canning was able to inform the house of commons that the troops were already on the march for embarkation.

The debate in the house of commons on the address in answer to the royal message announcing the request of the Portuguese government, was the occasion of two of the most famous speeches that Canning ever delivered. After recounting the treaty obligations of this country to Portugal, and the circumstances of the Portuguese application for assistance, and disclaiming any desire to meddle with the domestic politics of Portugal, he referred to a previous anticipation that the next European war would be one "not so much of armies as of opinions". "Not four years," he proceeded, "have elapsed, and behold my apprehension realised! It is, to be sure, within narrow limits that this war of opinion is at present confined: but it is a war of opinion that Spain (whether as government or as nation) is now waging against Portugal; it is a war which has commenced in hatred of the new institutions of Portugal. How long is it reasonable to expect that Portugal will abstain from retaliation? If into that war this country shall be compelled to enter, we shall enter into it with a sincere and anxious desire to mitigate rather than exasperate, and to mingle only in the conflict of arms, not in the more fatal conflict of opinions. But I much fear that this country (however earnestly she may endeavour to avoid it) could not, in such case, avoid seeing ranked under her banners all the restless and dissatisfied of any nation with which she might come in conflict. It is the contemplation of this new power in any future war which excites my most anxious apprehension. It is one thing to have a giant's strength, but it would be another to use it like a giant. The consciousness of such strength is undoubtedly a source of confidence and security; but in the situation in which this country stands, our business is not to seek opportunities of displaying it, but to content ourselves with letting the professors of violent and exaggerated doctrines on both sides feel that it is not their interests to convert an umpire into an adversary."

In his reply at the close of the debate Canning vindicated his consistency in resisting Spanish aggression upon Portugal, while offering no resistance to the military occupation of Spain by France, which had not yet terminated. He pointed out that the Spain of his day was quite different from "the Spain within the limits of whose empire the sun never set – the Spain 'with the Indies' that excited the jealousies and alarmed the imaginations of our ancestors". He admitted that the entry of the French into Spain was a disparagement to the pride of England, but he thought it had been possible to obtain compensation without offering resistance in Spain itself. Then came the famous passage: "If France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No. I looked another way – I sought materials of compensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should not be Spain 'with the Indies'. I called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old."93

TROOPS SENT TO PORTUGAL.

The two speeches were greeted with applause both in parliament and in the country, but their vanity was excessive. So far from "creating the new world," Canning had merely recognised the existence of states which had already won their own independence, and even so he was only following the example of the United States. It was not only extremely foolish, but altogether disingenuous, to maintain that the recognition of the South American republics had been resolved on as a counterpoise to French influence in Spain. The reasons which prompted this recognition were commercial, not political, and it had been announced to the powers as our ultimate policy before any invasion of Spain had taken place. The king had only consented to the step on condition that it was not to be represented as a measure of retaliation, and Canning himself when he delivered these speeches knew that the French had promised to evacuate Spain in the following April.94 But however little justified by facts, the two speeches made a profound impression throughout Europe. Whatever Canning might desire, it was quite clear that he contemplated the possibility of a military alliance between this country and the revolutionary factions on the continent, and the impression gained ground that he desired to pose as the champion of liberalism against legitimate government.