Chapter IX.: The Duke of Wellington and the Tories.

The irruption of the Duke and his pandours, like the invasion of the French people by the duke of Brunswick, has united all classes of reformers. Differences of opinion may have subsisted among us, but there can be none as to the claims of a reforming and totally unreforming ministry. The Whigs may have been slow and niggardly in their concessions; but they were pledged to do something, and would have done something; whereas the Duke comes before us in no ‘questionable shape,’ but as an open, avowed, an out-and-out champion of abuse—an incarnation of the principle of evil—a foe to the freedom of his own and every European community.

Insidious attempts have been made to bring in the Duke, like sir George Murray and the Lord Mayor, under false pledges and representations. So silly a device scarcely merits notice. Reynard is Reynard still though he put on a surplice. But his Highness himself is not a man to counterfeit any more than change sentiments; nor is any man who has attained the age of the Duke prone to alter his political creed, especially from a love of despotism to liberty.

But supposing such a miracle, as a conversion from Toryism to liberality, then why bring him forward at all? It cannot be imagined that the Duke or sir R. Peel is prepared to go farther in reform even than Spring Rice, or lords Melbourne and Lansdowne, and if not, why turn them out—why agitate the whole country for a change without an amendment? Never since Britain became an isle was it in a more hopeful state, so well-disposed to wait for salutary but efficient ameliorations, and so little in need of a coercive government. A spirit of watchfulness is abroad, but there is no political excitement, no plots nor revolutionary designs. Intelligence and moderation are spreading, and all the great branches of industry are rapidly extending Why then should the cheering prospect be blighted—be broken in upon for the mere purpose of an experiment, to try whether an old soldier has repented him of his errors?

But it is no experiment—nobody thinks it is—every one knows that the Duke is and ever must be hostile to popular reforms. For this he is brought forward—the Tories have resolved to make a stand, and the old battering ram is again brought forth in defence of the church and corporations. It is a hopeless struggle. The Whigs were doing their best for the Tories, and much better than they will be able to do for themselves, and their true policy was to remain quiet. We thought the hated faction had been disposed of now and for ever, but as it is has once more taken the field, we trust the next onset will be final—that its discomfiture and overthrow will be such that it will never again venture to show itself in hostile array. There can be no doubt of the result. Scotland will rise almost to a man. That country, by the amendment of her representation, her burghs and police institutions, has been almost created under the Reform Acts, and she will never see the benefits she has derived endangered by Tory misrule. The vast mass of English Dissenters is with us, and in Ireland there are seven millions.

Were not great national reforms in jeopardy, the Duke is not qualified for the civil government of the country in ordinary times. He is great in war, but mediocre in peace. He is shrewd certainly, and a selfish man, but his endowments are not various. In tact and judgment, as a minister, he has often shewn himself as defective as the late chancellor. With the mind and great social interests of the empire he is not conversant. We could cite examples of want of information of which a Lancashire weaver would be ashamed. It is not long since (April 20th) he classed ‘Atheists’ in the number of English Dissenters. In political economy he is barely so far learnt as to see the superiority of machinery to manual labour. Notwithstanding the schooling he received from Mr. Huskisson, he does not fully appreciate the policy of free trade, and is disposed to increase the duty on foreign silks, to give, as he says, a ‘change to the home market.’ His external policy is notorious; it is that of Don Miguel, of Nicholas, and Metternich. The old pragmatical Dutch king is the duke’s beau ideal of a monarch. But it is unnecessary to proceed—the reader will find in the Addenda extracts from the speeches of his highness, illustrative of his sentiments on nearly all public questions.

It is said that the influence of the Duke with his party is such that he will be able to carry measures that nobody else could, that the peers will follow him when they would not follow earl Grey or lord Melbourne. The hereditaries are a queer set certainly, and it is impossible to say who they will follow. Gibbon relates that the Crusaders had the emblem of a goose at their head, and they always followed that in full confidence of victory. We do not mean that his highness is a goose, or any thing like it; he is something very different. But we know that the liberal and enlightened portion of the British community will not follow him, nor will that portion which is the reverse of liberal and enlightened—for it is notorious that there is a section of the Tories for whom even the duke is too expansive in his views, and there is another section who think him a very good Ajax, but no Nestor, in politics:—so that between them his party is far from multitudinous. There is one faithful band we dare say will follow him to the world’s end, provided he has any thing to give them;—we mean that corps of attaches, male and female, whom his highness, to save his own pocket, threw on the pension list at the close of his last administration. The Grevilles and William Holmes will come forth again no doubt, as well as John Wilson Croker, Peregrine Courtenay, Joseph Planta, and other survivors of that plundering phalanx who abetted Castlereagh and Sidmouth in all their atrocities. Besides these, the duke will have other adjuncts even after death—namely, the glories of the Malpurba, and of the death of the brave marshal Ney!

As the Duke’s chance of success has become dubious, a new candidate has been started in the person of sir Robert Peel, and posterity will scarcely believe that the government of this vast empire has been suspended—laid on the shelf we may say—to wait the return of this great personage from a tour of pleasure in Italy.

Sir Robert is a respectable man—he is a scholar and a gentleman, and that is saying much for any one in private life, but they are not the qualities to constitute a great public character. He is a good debater—the best, perhaps, in the House, save Stanley; and though inferior to Stanley in energy, he is superior to him in the arrangement of his matter, and a discreet and balanced mind. But after all he is only a second or third-rate statesman, well enough in ordinary times, but not fit for the existing crisis, and in a country that contains as many sects, parties, and divisions, as the Roman empire contained tribes and nations. A long speech on an important subject will mostly set forth the grasp of a person’s mind, and if any one wishes to appreciate sir Robert’s, let them read his oration of December 20th, 1830:—it comprises what may be termed his general views at that critical period; but a more brainless exhibition of common-place, conceit, Joseph Surface candour, and dowager politics we never before witnessed. Sir Robert is a timid and accomplished man, and would grace a peerage much better than the premiership. Moreover, he is—saving a slight and recent amendment—a regular university Tory, therefore quite out of season; and, besides, has always been a slow learner: he only discovered the policy of Catholic emancipation when too late—when the concession could only be made without grace, and was received as no favour. Of the two we prefer the bold, blunt, blundering, Duke; but our fervent prayer is for neither, and this we are confident is the prayer of the united British people.

From some cause the country has been convulsed by anticipation, and most unexpectedly; for it is plain even the Tories did not anticipate the sudden turn in their favour, otherwise they would not have been to collect from all parts of the continent. In the course of the ensuing session, a change of ministry or rather of ministers may have become necessary, but it was yet premature. The people might have their misgivings about a portion of the cabinet; indications may have got abroad of the secession of a squad of alarmists like that of the Portland clan in 1793; but as a body the Melbourne ministry was untried, and the people were not so unreasonable as to wish its dismissal before being subjected to that ordeal. That it possessed energy we have shown, and that the larger part of it was of a sterling kind, we have the cheering testimony of its opponents. According to the Quarterly Review,—“There were two parties in the cabinet: one—the majority, we fear—thought that they could not meet Parliament without announcing some strong measures of what they called church reform, or to speak more truly and plainly church spoliation; the other (to which lord Melbourne himself is said to have inclined) were reluctant to pledge themselves to this extent, and declared that they must resign if such measures were proposed.”—Postcript, Nov. 19, 1834. Very well, they could have resigned; if they were so very opinionated that they could not agree with a majority of their colleagues, supported by a Reform Parliament, their best course was to take up their bag and walk, as the Stanleyites had done before them. Perhaps their places might have been supplied when the time came without a break-up of the ministry, and why not wait and see? Our opinion of the intelligence of the Lansdowne party and its notions of civil government is such, that if it found the mind and strength of the community, expressed through constitutional organs, were really bent on searching ecclesiastical reforms, it would have succumbed and not withdrawn. But if it had, successors might have been found, and then we should have had a ministry in harmony with the Reform Parliament, and together, backed by the people, they would have been in a state to speak to their high mightinesses of the upper chamber.

This in truth is the real dilemma of the British constitution. A liberal or illiberal ministry is only prefatory matter. Take which you will, there is a ‘lion in the way.’ With a reforming ministry the question is—What shall be done with the Lords? With an unreforming one—What shall be done with the Commons? But is it possible—can it be believed that this great empire, more lofty than ever in its elevation, and looking forward to a still better futurity—bursting with energy at every pore—and enlightened by the immortal Black Book on the causes of past misrule and present difficulties;—can it be believed, we repeat, that this empire will go backwards? Never! Up, then, Britons! one victory more and you have done. You fight not for Whigs nor for Tories, but for yourselves. The hated faction which has again reared its head, and which for a century plundered, duped, and misled you, will be for ever exterminated. By your noble efforts in 1831 you reformed the lower house, and by another such struggle—if the Duke vouchsafe the opportunity—you will reform the upper—and then rest in peace!

A portion of the public press has adopted a very silly, not to say insidious course. The Times and Morning Herald never made a weaker point than to attempt to write up the Duke—to induce the people quietly to let his Highness get into the saddle to see how he would go; just as if he had not been there before.

It is easier to keep the devil out than to turn him out,—so the people thought, and with their characteristic good sense, they were not to be misled even by the ‘leading journal’—the changeling Times, which, not long since, was called ‘Brougham’s Gazette,’ then the anti-Brougham, and now it is the Duke’s or Peel’s Gazette as it may best turn up!