This doctrine has been justified in the case of rulers whose system of government all schools of political opinion, in this country at least, concur in condemning. There was no danger of revolution under Louis XV., though his court, his nobility, and his people, were tainted with every vice that can debase a nation. It was not till the strength of the Government had been paralysed by the amiable concessions of the vacillating Louis XVI., that the catastrophe came. The same lesson is being taught us by the events of our own day. The large freedom that prevailed under Louis Philippe, the philanthropy and liberal tendencies of Frederic William, did not avail to save Paris and Berlin from the horrors of revolution in 1848. They lacked the strong hand, without which every other virtue a ruler may possess may only contribute to his fall. On the other hand, the present systems of government in those two cities do not furnish very abundant topics of eulogy, either to the lover of freedom or to the moralist. But, whatever else is wanting, the strong hand is there; and therefore the Governments stand. We have no intention of comparing the Government of this country before the Reform Bill to the Government either of M. de Bismarck or of the Emperor Napoleon III. Nor, on the other side, do we desire to maintain that the exclusion of the great manufacturing wealth of the country from its due share of the Government was other than a great mistake. It drove into the ranks of democracy a most powerful class, whose natural sympathies were on the side of property; and the consequence of the mistake has unhappily endured even till our time. But the judgment which must be passed on such an error depends greatly on the right which the then holders of power had to believe that they could continue to uphold such an exclusion. In any case, the course which they took was not the wisest that could have been selected. But it was not only unwise, but suicidal, if they had the slightest ground for expecting their resistance to break down as it did. The causes, therefore, which led to the collapse of the Tory power in 1830, are important elements in judging of the forecast of the leaders who committed their party so closely to the then existing system of representation. Those causes are well known; they are summed up by the mention of the name of Sir Robert Peel. The Reform Bill was in effect that statesman's work, as much as it was Lord Grey's; because if the strong fortress of Toryism had not been carried, the Reform party would have achieved a less overwhelming and less destructive victory, and would have done the work they had to do in a less democratic spirit. spirit. It is true that Sir Robert Peel did not lead the assault; but he made the breach. And the worst of the case was that he made it from the inside. Any notice, therefore, of the Reform Bill, and other of the extreme or one-sided Liberal measures which have been carried during the last five-and-thirty years, would be imperfect without a notice of the acts of that statesman through whose strange career alone such measures became possible. To this subject, accordingly, Lord Russell devotes a few pages. He treats Sir Robert Peel's abandonment of his party in 1829 and in 1846, as people generally treat the desertions of men from the other side to their own. He thinks it a sufficient answer to say that the claims of country are superior to those of party : 'To give effect to his convictions he forfeited the confidence of that party which had matured his talents and adopted him as its chosen child and champion. In this sense 'Fuit in parentem 'Splendide mendax. But he had another parent of stronger affinity and paramount claims. His country, her welfare, her safety, had a right to his filial duty, and for her sake he twice made a sacrifice for which he deserves her perpetual and grateful commendation.' Such is Lord Russell's present judgment upon the 'sacrifices' made by Sir Robert Peel. He is kind enough to add that they deserved the perpetual and grateful commendation of his country.' The acknowledgment, at all events, comes a little late. He apparently forgets that the commendation which he at least bestowed upon Sir Robert Peel was anything but perpetual. On the contrary, he utilized the sacrifice of 1846, with characteristic promptitude, to turn the statesman who made it out of office, and to make himself Prime Minister in his place. We certainly cannot approve of the factious use which Lord John Russell then, for his own advantage, made of the quarrel between Sir Robert Peel and his followers; but still less can we concur in the eulogy which he now thinks it for his credit to pass upon the two great blemishes in his rival's fame. With respect to the conduct of both these statesmen in the year 1846, we are inclined to adhere now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, to the judgment that we passed upon it at the time : 'Lord John Russell's Free-Trade scheme was merely a manœuvre to outgeneral Sir Robert. Sir Robert is acting on the graver, and we are willing to believe more conscientious but assuredly more dangerous principle of absolving himself from the obligations of party-a prin ciple ciple absolutely inconsistent with the Constitutional Administration of such a Government as ours.' * It is with great reluctance that we follow Lord Russell in reverting to this bygone controversy. We would have gladly remembered Sir Robert Peel, not by the errors which he made, but by the qualities which will secure for his name a place in history-his clear intellect, his ready eloquence, his unrivalled Parliamentary talents, and his devoted public services. But Lord Russell has, apparently with deliberation, again raised a controversy which cannot be passed by. The conduct of Sir Robert Peel upon these occasions is not now a mere personal question between those who agreed and those who differed from him. Apart wholly from the merits of the questions he was handling, his behaviour involves great questions of public ethics, upon which it is of the highest importance, not only to this, but to every age, that a right judgment should be formed. Sir Robert Peel, when he looked back himself upon these transactions, was not insensible to the grave public interest of the moral considerations which his conduct to his party raised. In a letter which has been quoted upon the question, the following language is used by him to indicate the character of the transactions in which he was on those occasions concerned, and to defend them against such censures as those which we felt ourselves bound to pass : 'It appeared to me,' writes Sir Robert Peel, 'that all these considerations-the betrayal of party attachments-the maintenance of the honour of public men- -the real interests of the cause of constitutional Government, must all be determined by the answer which the heart and conscience of a responsible minister might give to the question, What is that course which the public interests really demand? 'I was not insensible to the evil of acting counter to the will of those majorities, of severing party connections, and of subjecting public men to suspicion and reproach, and the loss of public confidence; but I felt a strong conviction that such evils were light in comparison with those which must be incurred by the sacrifice of national interests to party attachments.' Such was his own deliberate judgment upon the circumstances which caused an angry severance between him and the Conservative party, and lighted between them a flame of animosity, which neither the lapse of time nor his early death have been able wholly to extinguish. We do not concur in that judgment. In our belief, it contains not only a false estimate of the past, but a dangerous rule of morality for the guidance of * 'Quarterly Review,' vol. Ixxvii. p. 606. future future statesmen. Of the motives of the late Sir Robert Peel there can be no question. In fact, his policy at these two junctures was so suicidal, that it is almost a contradiction in terms to impute to him any motives of personal ambition. But his errors are not less liable to the adverse judgment of posterity, because his motives may have been free from blame. Sir Robert Peel never seems rightly to have understood the obligations which the exertions of a party impose upon a party chief. Party has been cynically defined to be the madness of the many for the profit of the few. There is this amount of truth in the description that the labour and the reward are very unequally distributed. The gratification to pride or pocket, whatever its amount may be, which is conferred by office, can only be the lot of a small fraction in the party.. The rest labour, in the main, for their opinions alone. That these may triumph, they take part in an expensive and laborious organisation; spend health and time to little profit and less pleasure in the labours of Parliament; and, often at enormous cost both of money and of ease, fight for the cause they love in their own constituencies. The leaders, on the other hand, spend laborious lives within the walls of Parliament; but it is labour of which every step carries its own reward to those who are actuated by ambition. The result of these conjoint labours is that the leaders obtain place, and what is called in this country power; while the followers obtain the pleasure of seeing their own opinions prevail in the Government and legislation of the country. But the leaders obtain these distinctions, which are evidently of great value inasmuch as men struggle so hardly to secure them, entirely by the help of their followers; and these offer their help at so much cost to themselves distinctly on the understanding that their own opinions are to prevail. The leaders, therefore, in consenting to accept office by the aid of followers who offer it with this aim, pledge themselves that they will use the power so confided to them to promote these opinions. A party struggle is a campaign fought in the main by volunteers, who ask for no pay except the triumph of their cause. leader, who gathers more substantial spoils, and who in reputation at least receives a disproportionate reward, is bound in honour to the scrupulous payment of the solitary recompense demanded by the followers to whom his victory is due. He is bound to it both as a fair return for effective aid, and as the fulfilment of an implied pledge. He would never have been their leader, if they had not believed him true to their principles. It is a belief which every leader diligently encourages; they trust him with power precisely because he has encouraged it The with with success, and induced them to entertain it undoubtingly. The power of a Prime Minister in Parliament is something very different from that which his own abilities would by themselves have attained. The position gives him an influence far beyond what could be commanded by any personal qualities. He has accepted that position, and the influence which attaches to it from his party for the purpose of giving effect to their political opinions. If he does not use it for that purpose, but on the contrary employs it in promoting the opinions to which they are opposed, he commits a clear breach of the understanding upon which it was received. To accept an agency or representative position of any kind upon the understanding that you will use it to promote the views of the person from whom you accept it, and then to use it against him, is in every other sphere of action treated as the gravest crime. In law it is punished as dishonesty. In society it is scouted as dishonour. We are well aware, and gladly concede, that neither of those terms could receive any application, in the slightest degree just, to the upright motives and noble disinterestedness of Sir Robert Peel. But it is no slight calamity that he should have himself devised, and have handed down for the misguidance of others, a perverted conception of duty, which not only relaxes, but reverses, the rule of ordinary morality, and holds up as the ideal of a politician's patriotism, acts that in private life would, by common consent, be shunned as fraud. No one who remembers or has read the history of the years 1828-9 and 1840-46, can entertain any doubt that Sir Robert Peel obtained office in the year 1828, and afterwards in the year 1841, mainly because he was believed to hold Protestant opinions in the one case and protectionist opinions in the other. The latter case was, perhaps, the more strongly marked, because the elections that seated him in power were decided distinctly upon the Protection cry; and, therefore, it furnishes the more forcible illustration of the character of the acts to which, in Liberal eyes, he owed his fame. It is quite unquestioned that if, in 1841, he had proclaimed the opinion which he announced in November, 1845, that majority of ninety which enabled him to oust Lord Melbourne, would never have existed. He must have given way, as Conservative leader, to some other statesman. But he made no such declaration. On the contrary, he declared himself in favour of Protection.* Relying upon his words, the Protectionists worked for him. They brought the whole force of the landed interest to support him; they placed him in power; and when * 'Quarterly Review,' vol. lxxxi. p. 292. he |