THE

CHAPTER XX.

THE AGE OF PEEL.

HE General Election of 1832 was regarded with very different feelings by the two parties. The Conservatives were anxious and fearful, wondering whether the sun of their political power had set for ever. The Reformers awaited with considerable anxiety the result of the changes which they had effected. No man could foretell the event, and it surprised them all. The disturbances at the elections were not by any means greater than usual, though no doubt this was in no small measure due to the law which closed the poll in two days, instead of keeping it open for a fortnight. The new assembly did not differ so very materally from the old ones, and though the Tories were now in a small minority, most of the old faces were there. Peel was re-elected for Tamworth, Goulburn for the University of Cambridge, Herries for Harwich; Hardinge found a seat at Launceston, Charles Wynn was returned again for Montgomeryshire; Mr. Baring and Sir R. Vyvyan, both among the most uncompromising opponents of the bill, were chosen respectively by Essex and Bristol. These triumphs, however, were balanced by important losses. Sir Charles Wetherell, Sir E. Sugden, and Mr. Murray were rejected by the constituencies, and Mr. Croker withdrew altogether from public life, vowing that he would never sit in a reformed Parliament. The Radicals were disappointed in their hopes of large gains; the real triumphs lay with the Whigs.

The new constituencies had on the whole acted with considerable sense and discrimination. The representatives of the new boroughs were above all creditable to their electors. Manchester chose Poulett Thomson, the Vice-President of the Board of Trade; Leeds, Macaulay, who had made his mark as an orator during the Reform struggle; Birmingham, Attwood, the founder

of the Birmingham Political Union, which had played such an important part in the Reform agitation. London selected Grote, the historian of Greece; Westminster chose its old member, Sir Francis Burdett, and Sir J. Cam Hobhouse, the Secretary at War: Marylebone returned Sir William Horne, the Attorney-General; Southwark gave a seat to Brougham, the Chancellor's brother. On the other hand, there were five O'Connells chosen by five Irish constituencies, and Pontefract rejected a highly respectable Irish peer in favour of Gully, a retired prize-fighter. Noticeable among the new men was Joseph Pease, the Quaker, whose election was rendered memorable by his claim at the opening of Parliament to be allowed to substitute a solemn affirmation for the parliamentary oaths, in accordance with the provisions of the Toleration Act, and his claim was allowed; but in order to remove all doubt for the future, a relieving statute was passed in the same year. Of the Whig leaders, Lord Althorp was re-elected for Northamptonshire, Sir James Graham for Cumberland, Charles Grant for Inverness-shire, Lord John Russell for Devonshire, Lord Palmerston for Hampshire; Mr. Stanley, in company with Mr. Wilson Patten was returned for the northern division of Lancashire. On the whole, the result of the election was to make the Government one of the strongest that had ever existed in England, to disappoint all extreme views, and to render it necessary for the Tories to abandon for ever their old unreasoning hostility to all reform, and take up an entirely new position.

A change, in fact, was inevitably coming over the character of parties, which was directly due to the bill. Lord Eldon and Sir C. Wetherell may be taken as the type of the old bigoted Tories; but Lord Eldon's influence was now on the wane, and Wetherell was excluded from Parliament. The man who had succeeded them in the leadership of the Tory party, was Sir Robert Peel, and Peel took the very earliest opportunity of explaining that his position was altered. He declared that he accepted the reform of the representative system as an accomplished fact, and that, far from being opposed to all reform, as had been falsely stated concerning him, "he was for reforming every institution that really required reform, but he was for doing it gradually, dispassionately, and deliberately, in order that the reform might be lasting." It may

be imagined that this speech was likely to be very unwelcome to a large body of his followers.

Just as a division had arisen in the ranks of the Tories in consequence of the Reform Bill, so the Reformers were splitting up into two bodies. There were the old Whigs, timidly clinging to traditions of the pre-Reform period; and a more advanced body of Radicals, Reformers, and Repealers, who regarded the Reform simply as a repair of the old, almost useless, parliamentary machinery, and were anxious to employ it in its restored state with the most untiring energy. The extremists among them were ready to begin at once the reform of everything, and it must be added that most of their propositions of reform, violent and impossible as they were considered at the time, have been accepted by the maturer wisdom of later generations. Such men were not likely to be content with the apathetic Whiggism of the Ministry, the limitations imposed on further action by the rash promises of "Finality Jack" (') or the truly ministerial principle that everything must be sacrificed to the grand duty of keeping the existing Government in power. So irritated did they become at last, that the boldest of them crossed the floor of the House and took up their position on the front Opposition benches. In consequence, Peel, the leader of the recognised Opposition, found himself pushed from his usual place and forced to go up nearer to the Speaker. Mr. Disraeli, then beginning to be known as a clever young man, even imagined that it would be possible to unite the two divergent sections of the Opposition for the purpose of destroying the Whig Government-a project which was really as feasible as an attempt to mix oil and water, and met with unqualified failure when carried into practical application at the Wycombe elections of 1831-2. The Radicals themselves, however, were by no means an united band. They were mostly men possessed with a fixed idea, which they brought forward again and again, and endeavoured but with little success to thrust down the throat of an unwilling House. There was very little esprit de corps among them, and a total lack of organization. On many topics they would find themselves in the same lobby as the Whigs. On

(1) A nick-name given to Lord John Russell, v. p. 268.

other occasions, sheer disgust at the inadequate shilly-shally policy proposed by the Government would drive them into the same lobby with their natural enemies, the Tories.

The natural consequence of these changes was a further change of party names. The advanced section of the Tory party disclaimed entirely the name of Tories, and the undesirable association with which it was connected. They preferred to describe themselves as the party of conservation rather than reaction in Church and State, and the new name of Conservatives was in process of time invented. Natural development had similarly rendered it necessary to provide some new designation to include all sections of the Whigs, for the Radicals and Reformers entirely rejected the name of Whig, and covered it with as much opprobrium as that of Tory. The singularly suitable name of the Liberal Party was borrowed from continental politics, and was used indifferently to include the timid and old-fashioned views of the true Whigs, and the advanced views of the most extreme politicians, as well as the great mass of the party of Reformers.

The hostility between the Radicals and the Whigs was displayed at the opening of the Parliament of 1833, when the House of Commons met to elect a Speaker. Mr. Manners Sutton had filled this important post since 1817, and in spite of his decidedly Tory views the Ministry determined to avail themselves of his experience again, for they imagined that an inexperienced Speaker might find it extremely difficult to acquire the necessary control over a Parliament elected under such different conditions. The Radicals were annoyed at this determination of the Ministry, for they considered that a Tory Speaker was by no means suited to the changed condition of Parliament. Mr. Hume, who may be regarded as the leader of the Radicals, therefore, without waiting for the ministerial nomination, proposed Mr. Littleton in spite of the latter's objections. The Ministry, however, persisted in their original plan, and in the contest which ensued the ministerial candidate triumphed by a large majoritythe Radicals only numbering 31 votes. Thus war was declared between the Ministry and the Radicals, but at the same time it was made conclusively evident that there could be no settled course of united action between the Tories and the Radicals.

Τ

Among the leading men of this Parliament may be mentioned Lord Althorp, the eldest son of Earl Spencer, who presented the singular spectacle of a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was possessed of little oratorical and smaller financial power, whose budgets appeared to be brought forward solely that they might be amended. His efficiency as a leader was not due to his capacity but his honesty. He was trusted by the country and the House of Commons as no minister ever had been before, or in all human probability will ever be again. He said himself that nature had intended him for a grazier, but that men insisted on his being a statesman. There was so much truth in the latter part of the remark, so really popular and influential was he in the House of Commons, that when he resigned in 1834 all possible pressure was brought to bear on him to induce him to reconsider his determination; and on his elevation to the House of Lords by the death of his father, William IV. gladly assumed that the Ministry could not carry on without him as an excuse for dismissing them abruptly. The Prime Minister, Earl Grey, was now almost at the close of his public career; he had accomplished the great end and aim of his life, and the results so alarmed him that he was glad to escape their unwelcome presence. He found himself in the trying position of a man of a bygone age who has outlived the manners of his youth, and is terrified by much that seems so easy and familiar to the later generations. His timely withdrawal in 1834 enabled him to avoid the unpopularity which must infallibly have fallen to his lot, had he remained to become identified with the vacillating apathy which gradually took the place of policy in the once triumphant and energetic Reform Ministry. Lord Palmerston's time had not yet come, though he was already winning golden opinions at the Foreign Office. Wilberforce died in 1833, just as the great work of his life-the emancipation of the slaves-was at its completion.

The most prominent man on the Whig side in the House of Commons after the withdrawal of Lord Althorp, was Lord John Russell, the pilot of the Reform Bill in the Lower House. He was even suggested for the leadership, and though the claims of Lord Melbourne were most unaccountably preferred to