The " Bourgeois Aristocrat "
Sir Robert Peel. By A. A. W. Ramsay. (Makers of the Nineteenth Century Series. Edited by Basil Williams. Constable. 14s.) Miss RAMSAY has written a new biography on that fascinating subject, Sir Robert Peel. We call the subject faseinating, for so it must be to all who have anything of the historical sense. Without it we may see in Peel only the stiff and borne figure of a nineteenth-century politician, moving amidst the unexciting events of that great and peaceful century. But the essential thing to remember is that the last. century of English history was great and peaceful only because Peel, and _ the other rulers of Britain, were something considerably more than mere conventional politicians. Why was it that England largely escaped the turmoils of revolution and war which beset the nations of Europe between 1780 and 1900 ? Cer- tainly it was not that history posed less difficult questions for the rulers of England- to solve than those raised in Europe. The industrial revolution took place earliest, with greatest violence and the greatest intensity, in this country. We might expect, then, that the new political problems, the strains and stresses set up between the various classes of the community, would be more severe, more difficult to solve, in this country than elsewhere. But one has only to read the history of how each crisis was handled to be driven to the conclusion that somehow or other in England leaders were found who were big enough for the task of coping with the onrush of the expansion consequent on the industrial age. One cannot read, in Miss Ramsay's lucid pages, the story either of Peel's part in the passage of the great Reform Bill or of his conversion to Free Trade without marvelling at the man's profound instincts for the necessities of his own his- torical period. It is indeed a marvel that the English Tories, the party of the eighteenth-century landed interest, the party Which in every other country in the world was bitterly, and if necessary by force, resisting the oncoming manufacturing classes, should at the critical moment in England have found such a leader as Peel. Peel was that peculiar blend of bourgeois and aristocrat for which we alone know the recipe. In the last resort perhaps his instincts were those of the middle-class manufacturer. But how tremendously greater: was the service which he rendered to those manufacturers by- leading, not their own political party, but the political party of their opponents ! It was as if a besieging army had by some stratagem managed to appoint a man, secretly in league with them, to be the commander-in-chief of the defending forces. In the two great crises of the siege, in 1832 and in 1846, Peel played his role and,- in the first instance by refusing to fight, and in theSecond by actually changing sides and leading the attacking forces, decided-the issue of the struggle.
And yet to call Peel a traitor, after the manner of Mr. Charles Whibley, is wrong: Peel was not a traitor even to the landed aristocracy, whom, it is true, he hoodwinked. He genuinely, and rightly, believed that their future lay in a coalition with the rising manufacturing classes, not in opposi- tion to them. But they were too stupid to follow the vision of their leader, and- it was only by the eurious shifts which he adopted that he was mile to achie-Ye a reconciliation.
Miss Ramsay has some interesting pages on Peel's relations to the working-classes, which, as she well says, " he so grieved for and so distrusted." Naturally, his hostility was intense. She quotes a most interesting letter from Peel to Mr. Foster, written in 1830, in which he toys with the creation of a kind of Fascist organization for putting down the insurgent Lanea• shire workers :----
" Whether you think any steps can now be taken, or could be taken on the instant in case of necessity, for organising some sort of volunteer force in aid of the military 1 The upper classes possessed of property must be willing to exert. themselves for the defence of property in case it should be seriously threatened ; but the upper classes alone could not exhibit numbers sufficient to overawe and overpower the populace. Their organisation alone might establish a marked line between property *and physical force ranged on opposite sides, and might serve as a pretext for the organisation and ate_ of these_oppesed to prOperty. Are there among the workmen, servants, and adherents of the masters, and among the lower classes of shop-keepers and householders a sufficient number of persons entirely to be depended upon, who would unite with the upper classes, and form themselves into volunteer asso- ciations for the defence of property in case it should be threatened ? If you are of the opinion that the civil power, the military, and the aid that can be derived from the well-affected, would . prevail practically over the combined efforts of the union, would either compel the men to submit for want of means of subsistence, or would suppress and effectually put down any open attempt at violence, I think there calif be. little doubt that the true policy 01Meit. Ot ectlriOties._aucl. the. _ImetArs, ptorily- and decidedly. to refuse. concessions, which they relentio be unjustly demanded. But this step once taken, there ought to be no retreating, and, therefore, it is of importance to consider the probable result of it, and the means of successfully
maintaining reSistance." .
Miss RamsaY's biography is most competent. It is one of a series, edited- by Mr. Basil Williams, entitled " Makers of the Nineteenth Century " ; but, curiously enough, it is just in his capacity as a maker of the nineteenth century, as a leader of the dominant class of his particular epoch, that Miss RamsaY appears to us to underrate her subject. It is amusing, also; to notice her strong anti-Whig bias in her description of thd Reform Bill period. But it is refreshing to find an author who can feel the party controversy of a hundred years ago so keenly.
Previous page
