1845.] AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS-MR. COBDEN'S MOTION. 527 extent of this alleged agricultural distress, and into "the effects of legislative protection upon the interests of land-owners, tenant-farmers, and farm labourers." His motion was rejected by a majority of ninety-two. But his speech produced a great impression upon the country; and it has been said. that upon the prime minister himself it had a marked influence. On this occasion Mr. Cobden came forth with a spirit-stirring and impassioned eloquence which few had considered within the range of his oratorical powers. To the Country party he said "You live in a mercantile age, when the whole wealth of the world is poured into your lap. You cannot have the advantages of commercial rents and feudal privileges, but you may be what you always have been, if you will identify yourselves with the spirit of the age. The English people look to the gentry and the aristocracy of this country as their leaders. I, who am not one of you, have no hesitation in telling you, that there is a deep-rooted, an hereditary prejudice, if I may so call it, in your favour in this country. But you never got it, and you will not keep it, by obstructing the spirit of the age. If you are indifferent to enlightened means of finding employment for your own peasantry; if you are found obstructing that advance which is calculated to knit nations more together in the bonds of peace, by means of commercial intercourse; if you are found fighting against the discoveries which have almost given breath and life to material nature, and setting up yourselves as obstructives of that which destiny has decreed shall go on-why, then, you will be the gentry of England no longer, and others will be found to take your place." The speech of Mr. Cobden on his motion for a Committee was replied to by Mr. Sidney Herbert; but that reply was more damaging to the cause of agricultural protection than the arguments of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, or the agitation of the League. It was the incaution of a young man of remarkable candour, and somewhat inexperienced in parliamentary tactics, when he said, as the representative of an agricultural constituency, that it would be distasteful to the agriculturists to come whining to parliament at every period of temporary distress. Parliament had awarded to the agriculturists a certain amount of protection; with that they were content; and in adverse circumstances, such as failure of crop, they would meet them manfully and put their shoulders to the wheel.* Agriculturists were indignant at being represented as content with the protection they enjoyed; the assumption (which was meant for advice) that they would put their shoulders to the wheel, instead of crying out for help to Hercules, was something different from the zealous friendship upon which they had calculated so long and reposed so confidingly. The rejection of Mr. Cobden's motion did not calm their anger. On the 17th of March, Mr. W. Miles moved, that in the reduction of taxation "due regard should be had to the necessity of affording relief to the agricultural interest." It was then that Mr. Disraeli pronounced unmistakeably that sentence of open war against sir Robert Peel, which, whether in its skirmishes or pitched battles, for a year or two was admired by many as the daring of a noble courage in its insults to the first statesman of his time. Sir Robert Peel sometimes winced at these attacks, but in most cases he shook off the reck Hansard, vol. lxxviii. col. 818. 528 GRANT TO MAYNOOTH COLLEGE. [1845. less words, "like dew-drops from the lion's mane." "I remember," said Mr. Disraeli, “ to have heard the right honourable baronet at the head of the government say, he would sooner be the leader of the gentlemen of England than possess the confidence of sovereigns. They were the right honourable baronet's first love, and though he may not kneel to them now as in the hour of passion, still they can recall the past. He does what he can to keep them quiet; sometimes he takes refuge in arrogant silence, and sometimes he treats them with haughty frigidity; and if they knew anything of human nature, they would take the hint and shut their mouths. But they won't. And what then happens? The right honourable baronet, being compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner, We can have no whining here." Describing sir Robert Peel as one who, by skilful parliamentary manœuvres, had tampered with the generous confidence of a great people, he addressed these words to the Treasury bench-" Dissolve, if you please, the parliament you have betrayed, and appeal to the people who I believe mistrust you; for me there remains this at least the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief, that a Conservative government is an Organized Hypocrisy." In this speech of Mr. Disraeli there was a skilful allusion to that former desertion of the principle of ultra-Toryism which many yet remembered with the bitterness of intolerance: "Protection appears to be in about the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. The country will draw its moral." Protestantism was now to have a new cause of offence. On the 3rd of April sir Robert Peel brought forward the plans of the government respecting the improvement of the College of Maynooth, proposing a grant of 30,000l. a year, to be secured by act of parliament. On the 11th, when the Bill was to be read a second time, the table of the House was covered with petitions. There had been meetings throughout the country, in which Churchmen and Dissenters had been equally conspicuous in denouncing the measure as a renunciation of the Protestantism under which the empire had flourished. An annual vote had been taken for many years for the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. It was the object of the government, to use the words of sir Robert Peel, "to adopt in a friendly and generous spirit the institution provided for the education of the Roman Catholic priesthood-to extend the parliamentary provision for that purpose, and to attempt, not by interference with the doctrine or discipline of the Roman Catholic Church, but by a more liberal provision, to improve the system of education, and to elevate the tone and character of that institution." During six nights of debate in the Commons there was not a shaft in the quiver of bigotry, still replenished however scantily, which was not then. discharged against the government, and especially against sir Robert Peel. Sir Robert Inglis, the most moderate and rational of his theological opponents, declared that although shattered and torn the flag of Protestantism still remained at the mast-head, and he would fight for it as unflinchingly as when in better days it waved untorn and unbent over our empire. Mr. Plumptre would not say that the religion of Rome was exclusively that of Antichrist, but he believed that it was so, completely and prominently; and he was further of opinion that it would be a fearful and national sin to endow such a religion. Mr. Ferrand solemnly believed that if the government 1845.] QUEEN'S COLLEGES IN IRELAND-PROROGATION. 529 In could induce her Majesty to attach her signature to this bill she would sign away her title to the British crown. Colonel Sibthorp was the loudest in the chorus, "Really, if I had not seen the First Lord of the Treasury take the oaths at the table of this House, I should have doubted whether he were a Protestant, a Roman Catholic, or a Mahometan; nor should I be surprised if the time should yet come when we shall see him sitting cross-legged as a Mahometan, or embracing a Pope. I must say that I have lost all confidence in that man." Leaving the question of Maynooth untouched, Mr. Disraeli embraced the occasion for another personal assault upon the Prime Minister: "There is now no longer any constitutional opposition, because there is no government formed on definite principles. Something has risen. up in this country as fatal in the political world as it has been in the landed world in Ireland; we have a great parliamentary middleman. It is well known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other, till, having obtained a position to which he is not entitled, he cries out, 'Let us have no party questions, but fixity of tenure.'” spite of the unmitigated opposition in both Houses the Maynooth Bill was carried by considerable majorities. So also was the ministerial measure introduced by sir James Graham for establishing three purely secular colleges in Ireland, wholly independent of religious tests or creeds, for the education of the middle classes. On the first debate on the measure sir Robert Inglis termed it a great scheme "of godless education." The measure was carried by a large majority in the Commons upon the third reading, and was passed without a division in the Lords. But the faint cry of "godless education" raised by sir Robert Inglis was echoed with far greater vehemence by the Roman Catholic clergy, whose prelates declared, through Mr. O'Connell, in the House of Commons, that this was a bad scheme of education, and the Bill a penal and revolting measure. The "godless colleges" of Cork, Galway, and Belfast, nevertheless have flourished, unharmed under the constant attempts of a bigoted priesthood to oppose in this case, as well as in the National Schools of Ireland, that system of instruction without religious teaching which the soundest statesmen have constantly regarded as one of the best means of softening the religious animosities and abating the injurious jealousies between Catholic and Protestant. There was another measure carried this session in the spirit of religious liberality-that of the admission of Jews to municipal offices. The Session of Parliament was terminated by the prorogation by the Queen on the 9th of August. In the usual Address to her Majesty the Speaker, in addition to his notice of the great financial measures of the session; the endowment of Maynooth; and the provision of the means of academical instruction in Ireland; adverted to two other labours in which the Commons had been engaged. The Session had been rendered unusually laborious by the rapid development of private enterprise in extending the railway communications of the kingdom; anticipating the most beneficial results from the facilities thus afforded to the internal trade of the country, they had devoted much time and labour to the legislation requisite for the construction and regulation of those important works. The condition of the destitute poor of Scotland was the other subject of general legislation which the Speaker recapitulated: "Assisted by the information which your Majesty has directed to VOL. VIII. MM 530 APPREHENDED FAILURE OF THE POTATO CROP. [1845, be laid before us, we have made such amendments in the law as will provide for the more effectual relief of the poor, and for a better system of parochial management, under the control of a general Board of Supervision.' Parliamentary warfare was for a season at an end. The Queen and Prince Albert, on the day of prorogation, embarked at Woolwich on a visit to Germany. The prime minister gladly sought the retreat of Drayton-Manor, where the murmurs of his once devoted partizans could scarcely reach him. An observer of London fashionable life at this time has written-"The language of the Tory party is more bitter and violent against him [sir R. Peel] than ever I heard in society of the olden time from disappointed Whigs against Mr. Pitt, But I do not imagine this to be traced to a no-popery cry. If sir Robert had left the Corn-Laws untouched, he would have carried the Maynooth question by a triumphant majority without a schism. His inattention to what the landed interest call their agricultural distress, their apprehensions that he will ultimately repeal those laws, and also his notorious neglect of those who, in good report and ill report, had stuck to his skirts till they had brought him through the battle, and then found that his patronage was lavished on their opponents-all these things have so embittered their minds that they have seized with readiness the first opportunity to stick their teeth in his flanks, and have rallied all the sectarian interests to take part in the curée." On the 31st of October, the Cabinet having been called together by sir Robert Peel, a meeting took place at his house, and on the following day the Cabinet again assembled. The "Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel," which were published by his executors in 1857, enable us now to trace with a distinctness which could not previously be derived from other sources, the beginning of that train of events which led to the repeal of the Corn-Laws. The documents which these Memoirs contain, relate to the information received by sir Robert Peel on the probable failure of the potato crop, and exhibit his correspondence on the subject with other members of the government. With something like an apology for giving these documents at length, he describes them as "the materials from which the future historian will extract that which is worthy of permanent record, and from which, with the aid of other contemporary evidence, he will pronounce his judgment on the motives and conduct of public men."+ There were three members of the government who, from their official station, were chiefly responsible at this time for instituting inquiries into the probability of a sudden and extensive defalcation in the ordinary supply of food, with a view to the adoption of measures calculated to mitigate the evil consequences of such a defalcation. These ministers were, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The correspondence between sir Robert Peel and sir James Graham goes on from the 12th of August to the 15th of October amidst alternations of hope and alarm. On the 15th, the official reports having assumed a very serious aspect, sir Robert writes-" My letter on the awful state of the potato crop in Ireland crossed yours to me. * Raikes's "Diary," vol. iv. pp. 423-424. In 1845.] PROPOSAL OF SIR R. PEEL TO THE CABINET. 531 terference with the due course of the laws respecting the supply of food is so momentous and so lasting in its consequences, that we must not act without the most accurate information. I fear the worst." To obtain the most accurate information the prime minister dispatched to Ireland two men eminent in their respective departments of science-Professor Lindley and Dr. Lyon Playfair. The reports of the Botanist and the Chemist were not calculated to mitigate the apprehensions of official and other observers in Ireland. The secretary of the Irish Agricultural Improvement Society had obtained proofs that the entire potato crop was more or less affected in every part of the country; and he says that a panic had seized all parties to a greater extent than he ever remembered since the cholera. The alarm in Scotland was also great and rapidly increasing. Sir James Graham clearly sees what is at hand. "The Anti-Corn-Law pressure is about to commence, and it will be the most formidable movement in modern times." The Such was the information which sir Robert Peel had to lay before the Cabinet on the 31st of October. He told his colleagues in a Cabinet memorandum that "inaction-the letting things take their own course-seems to me impossible. Inaction and indifference might involve the country in serious danger, and the government in the heaviest responsibility." It is unnecessary here to go through the various suggestions of the memorandum. The prime minister found few inclined to deal boldly with the danger: "It became evident that very serious differences of opinion existed, as to the necessity of adopting any extraordinary measures, and as to the character of the measures which it might be advisable to adopt."* Cabinet separated, fixing another meeting for the 6th of November. The accounts received in the interim were not of a nature to allay the apprehensions of the week before. At that Cabinet sir Robert Peel proposed to issue immediately an Order in Council, remitting the duty on grain in bond to one shilling; opening the ports to the temporary admission of all grain at a smaller rate of duty. He further proposed to call parliament together on the 27th to ask for indemnity, and to declare an intention of submitting immediately after the recess a modification of the existing Corn-Laws. Three only of his colleagues gave their support to the First Lord of the Treasury-the earl of Aberdeen, sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Herbert. On the 2nd of November lord Stanley wrote to sir Robert Peel to express the regret with which he saw how widely he differed in opinion with sir James Graham and himself, as to the necessity of proposing to parliament a repeal of the CornLaws. Sir Robert Peel replied that he had not proposed to the Cabinet that they should recommend to Parliament a repeal of the Corn-Laws; still less that they should offer their advice to the Queen that the Corn-Laws ought to be abandoned. On the 22nd of November lord John Russell addressed a public letter to the electors of the city of London, which began with stating precisely the same truth which sir Robert Peel had endeavoured to impress upon his Cabinet. "The present state of the country in regard to its supply of food cannot be viewed without apprehension. Forethought and bold precautions may avert any serious evils-indecision and procrastination may produce a state of "Memoirs," p. 148. |