HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

The forma

tion of Peel's Ad

ministration.

THE General Election of the summer of 1841 marked the termination of an important chapter of British history. The country, wearied with Whig rule, preferred Conservative candidates; and the Whigs, defeated on the Address, had no alternative but retirement from power. Their resignation paved the way for the return of Peel to office. But the Conservatives under Peel in 1841 formed a very different body from the Conservatives under Peel in 1834. In 1834 Stanley had refused to join the ministry. In 1841 he readily consented to accept office; his accession was followed by that of Graham and Ripon; and the Conservative party was thus strengthened by its junction. with three out of the four statesmen who had seceded from the Whigs in 1834.

The construction of the new Government was facilitated by this circumstance. Peel himself became First Lord of the Treasury; Wellington consented to serve in the Cabinet without office; Lyndhurst resumed his seat on the woolsack; Goulburn was made Chancellor of the Exchequer; Graham, Aberdeen, and Stanley respectively received the seals of the Home, Foreign, and Colonial Departments. Five other peers, Buckingham, Haddington, Ripon, Wharncliffe, and Ellenborough, and two other commoners, Hardinge and Knatchbull, were given appointments in the Cabinet. The Cabinet

VOL. V.

A

thus comprised fourteen members, eight of whom were peers, and six of whom were commoners. It was far larger than Peel himself would have probably desired. He had long before acknowledged that a council of nine members did business more effectually than one of thirteen.' The necessities of the situation, however, compelled him to sacrifice his own views. Anxious to secure the co-operation of the moderate Conservatives, of the old Tories, and of the Whig seceders, he was forced to admit the representatives of the three parties into the council chamber.

Large as the Cabinet was, the majority of its members exercised little influence on its counsels. Buckingham, Haddington, Ripon, Wharncliffe, Goulburn, and Knatchbull had neither the ability nor the status which would have enabled them to have spoken with very great weight in the closet. Six of the other members of the Cabinet were of a different calibre. The reputation of Wellington, the genius of Lyndhurst, the prudence of Aberdeen, the eloquence of Stanley, the capacity of Graham, raised these five men to a high rank.

The superiority of Peel.

None of the five, however, had the experience, the information, and the judgment which made Peel the superior of them all. In an unreformed Parliament Wellington, Lyndhurst, and he had composed the triumvirate which had regulated the business of the State; in a reformed Parliament Peel alone shaped the destinies of his ministry.

His diffi

culties.

Never before had British minister a more serious task before him. Abroad the heavens were black with clouds. The East, notwithstanding Palmerston and Napier, was still ruffled by action; France had neither forgotten nor forgiven the policy of 1840; Canada was still brooding over her wrongs; the United States were preparing for war; China was actually struggling with the British Empire; and disaster was already prepared for British arms in Afghanistan. At home the prolonged depression of trade had produced severe distress; distress in its turn had led to riot; and

1 Hansard, vol. xxix. p. 369.

the ministry had to deal with two formidable organisations: one prepared by the working classes to secure their own political supremacy; the other inspired by the manufacturing classes to promote free trade in corn. The people, moreover, were demanding the immediate repeal of the new Poor Law. An increasing expenditure and a contracted revenue were perplexing statesmen. The haste with which the preceding Parliament had been dissolved had even interfered with the necessary financial arrangements for the year.

1

Yet there were circumstances in the situation which diminished these embarrassments. The majority over which Peel presided was loyal in its support of him; a few months after the dissolution, the birth of a Prince of Wales gave the people a new interest in the monarchy; and a slight revival of trade induced the hope that the nation might ultimately recover some portion of its previous prosperity. The period of the year, moreover, at which Peel took office was of advantage to him. Members of Parliament, anxious to return to their country seats and their country amusements, were desirous to help the ministry to transact the necessary business of the autumn, and to leave it leisure to prepare undisturbed its measures for the succeeding year.

Two things required to be done before Parliament was prorogued Baring had made no provision for the estimated deficit of about £2,500,000. On the 27th of Sep- His first tember Goulburn proposed to raise £5,000,000 of duties. new stock, applying one-half of the sum to extinguishing the deficit, the other half to funding a similar amount of Exchequer bills. 2 There was nothing either heroic or offensive in this proposal, and the scheme was approved. With almost equal readiness Parliament agreed to continue the Poor Law till the end of the following July. Every one saw that it was reasonable that the law should be continued till the ministry had

1 There is a curious letter of Dr. Arnold to Bunsen, in which he says: "Trade seems reviving, although I suspect that in many markets you have excluded us irrevocably." See Dean Stanley's Life of Arnold, vol. ii. p. 250. 2 Hansard, vol. lix. p. 83+.

leisure to examine the questions involved in its repeal. The commissioners conciliated their opponents by relaxing some of their regulations, and the ministers succeeded without much difficulty in obtaining the powers which they required.1

Public business being thus facilitated, a few days' work enabled the ministry to get through its labours. Peel only

The session of 1842.

The Corn

took his seat after his re-election on the 16th of September; on the 7th of October, Parliament was prorogued. The second session of the new Parliament commenced on the 3rd of February 1842. The subjects with which it was necessary to deal were clearly indicated in the speech from the throne. The queen recommended "the state of the finances and of the expenditure of the country" to the consideration of the Legislature; and she urged it to consider the laws which affected the import of corn and of other articles the produce of foreign countries.3 The speech naturally excited considerable expectation. Amidst the general expectancy, Peel explained the scheme which he proposed to Laws. substitute for the existing Corn Law. Under the law which had been passed in 1828, the duty varied with the price. When the price of wheat was 59s. to 6os. a quarter, foreign wheat was admissible at a 275. duty; when the price exceeded 735. a quarter, it was admitted at a 1s. duty. Between these two extremes there were numerous variations: when the price of wheat was 64s. a quarter, the duty amounted to 235. 8d.; when the price rose to 66s., the duty fell to 20s. 8d.; when the price rose to 695., the duty fell to 16s. 8d. Up to this point, therefore, every addition to the price of wheat was attended by a corresponding fall in the rate of duty. When the price of wheat, however, exceeded 70s., the duty fell much more rapidly, and every addition of a shilling to the price reduced the duty, on an average, by 4s. The statesmen who devised this singular arrangement imagined that 70s. was a famine price, and that the importation of corn should be facilitated at this point. They failed to notice that their plan had the effect of creating 1 Hansard, vol. lix. pp. 513, 703, 881, 953. 2 Ibid., p. 624.

3 Ibid., vol. lx. p. 3.

the scarcity which they had desired to avoid.

When the price

of wheat once rose to 69s., it was the clear interest of the importer to keep back his corn till the price rose to 735. The slight rise of 45. in the price immediately saved him from 155. Sd. of the duty.1

In altering the Corn Law, Peel decided on removing this obvious objection to it. He adhered to 735. as the price at which the 1s. duty should commence. He suggested a 20s. duty, when the price stood between 50s. and 515. Between these two extremes he proposed a graduated duty, falling as the price rose from 50s. to 52s., from 55s. to 66s., and from 695. to 735., but temporarily resting between 52s. and 55s, and 66s. and 69s. The odd arrangement which was thus suggested would, Peel thought, tend to encourage the importation of corn at each of the proposed resting-places. The proposal was not entirely acceptable either to his friends or his opponents. The former declared that the minister had thrown over the landed interest. The latter denounced the measure as an insult to a suffering people. The League adopted this language; and Russell, reverting to the proposal which he had made in office, asked the House to resolve that "considering the evils which have been caused by the present Corn Laws, and especially by the fluctuations of the graduated or sliding scale," it was not prepared to adopt the measure." +

3

The resolution which Russell thus proposed conveniently raised a distinct issue between the two parties.

Peel had placed before Parliament a graduated scale, dependent on the price of corn; Russell, a fixed duty, having no reference to the price. The issue was in principle similar to that which twenty years before had been raised by Londonderry on one side and

1 This effect of the old Corn Law was clearly explained by Peel in Hansard, vol. lx. p. 223.

2 Ibid., p. 228.

3 Malmesbury's Memoirs of an ex-Minister, p. 103; Quarterly Review, vol. lxxi. p. 267.

Hansard, vol. Ix. pp. 235, 358. 2881 petitions, with 1,540,000 signatures, were presented either for the repeal of the Corn Laws or against Peel's bill. Prentice, History of the Corn Law League, vol. i. p. 328.