BOOKS.
DOUBLEDA.Y'S POLITICAL LIFE OF PEEL.* THERE is an opinion now entertained by many, that every history should be pervaded by what is called an "idea,"—that is, some principle from which all motives should seem to spring and which all persons and actions should seem to illustrate. If such a unity exists in nature, no doubt; it should appear in art; but as social circumstances and the motives of men are of a mixed kind, so are the conditions which build up a national history ; and perhaps this " idea " is more useful to the writer, who is thus able to create a unity of interest without much trouble, than instructive to the studious reader, who is led to get a narrow if not a false view of things. Mr. Doubleday has got fast hold of an " idea " in his Political Life of Sir Robert Peel. According to him, not only the career and character of Peel, but the whole history of 'England since the peace of 1815 turns upon the depreciation of the currency during the war by the over-issues of the Bank of England and the country bankers and the return to cash payments in 1819 on the old standard, instead of adjusting all outstanding debts to meet the depreciation. As this is not the occasion to raise a currency discussion, it may suffice to remark in passing, that depreciation varied greatly in different years, and that those who conceive the depreciation to be measured by the price of gold as bought with Bank paper would not agree with Mr. Doubleday's notions that it is to be tested by such, an uncertain thing as general prices ; that much of the debts both public and private was not contracted in a depreciated currency at all ; that the large reductions of taxation and of the Five and Four per Cents, following the war, must soon have removed any unfair pressure so far as regards public debt or salaries ; that public opinion, and indeed the law, compelled the Bank to prepare for resuming cash payments after the peace, which the Directors did so effectually that the difference between a bank-note and a golden sovereign in 1819 was not above three or four percent; and lastly, that Peel was merely the organ of the public and the Legislature in passing the act, upon which general opinion was determined. This last fact, indeed, Mr. Doubleday admits ; and he does not give Peel credit for much real knowledge of currency, but considers him to a great extent an in- strument in the hands of the Economists,—who did not, by the 1 y, understand the question so well as Mr. Doubleday. For, ac- cording to him, it was in reality the economical pressure and de- rangement consequent upon the return to cash payments without lowering the standard that hung upon England during the whole life of Sir Robert Peel, and if surmounted now, it is only by means of the gold-discoveries. The anticipation by Mr. Western of a fall in prices upon the resumption of cash payments, induced the passing of the Corn-laws as a sop to the agriculturists he led ; and it was the distress consequent upon the preparations for this return that really gave rise to the political violence, whose most conspicuous event was the Manchester massacre. When the French Bourbons and the Holy Affiance insulted this country by the invasion of Spain in 1823, the Ministry felt the event keenly ; the Opposition and the country were for bold measures ; but the French knew and the British Government knew that our hands were tied in the matter of money. To pass over purely financial questions and small affairs, it was the Currency Bill that really com- pelled Catholic Emancipation; for there were not the sinews of war to put down the Irish Catholics. The same cause compelled the Duke of Wellington, not only to permit the invasion of Turkey by Russia in 1828-'29, but, according to Mr. Urquhart's Portfolto' to submit to the insolence of Lieven and Matuscewich. The instant acknowledgment of Louis Philippe's accession was a proper thing ; but it was also a necessity.. The various encroachments of Russia in the Black Sea by its blockade of the Circassian coast, the seizure of the Vixen and similar matters, as well as the ex- tinction of Cracow by the Despotic Powers at a later day, had to be submitted to. Nay, Parliamentary Reform itself originated in "Peel's Bill." The economical pressure was felt by those who did not understand its cause, which they were induced to ascribe to a Boroughmongering Parliament. The Duke of Wellington's retrenchments when Premier, rendered necessary by this pressure upon the people, made his supporters lukewarm ; and so with the schism consequent on Catholic Emancipation, we had the Reform Bill.
When the complaints and official admissions of " distress " from 1815 to 1841 are brought together, it certainly shows what a long period of financial and commercial difficulty the country underwent. Some may ascribe less influence to the return to cash payments, than
The Political Life of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, Sort.: an Ana- lytical Biography. .By 2'homas Doubleday, Author of "The True Law of Popula- tiOt1;. Anonym 1 History of England," itc. In two volumes. Published by Smith and Elder.
to the enormous amount of capital sunk during five-and-twenty years, of which five or six hundred millions remained in the form of a perpetual debt—to the great derangement which such wars and expenditure caused in every channel of industry—to the fet- tered state of commerce—and to the violent political struggles that took place up to the passing of the Reform Bill, or indeed till Peel's first Tariff-reform.
The peculiar "idea" on which Mr. Doubleday bases his bio- Kat iTiasrenctersetchtlwo: raethveern aahisto" pormf the. :vents th which ' for
and perhaps O'Connell, so long as they live, occupy nearly as prominent a place, and many persons are as conspicuous in par- ticular debates as the hero himself. Nor does the biographer make the most of the idea on which he founds his work. In the outset, Peel is a blind instrument, like the public and Parliament, in the hands of the Economists. When his eyes get partially opened, he is compelled to go on ; for Mr. Doubleday admits that to return was difficult if not impossible ; nor does he make it very clear how adjustment could have been brought about before 1819.
Considered as a life, or even as a political history, the work is greatly overlaid, especially by quotations from debates ; but it possesses a good deal of interest. The reader is enabled to retrace the leading events of the best part of fifty years with many of which he may have been contemporary, and according to his position per- haps been engaged as an actor ; at all events, they are still so near and so important that they are continual topics of discussion. Va- rious characters are exhibited more or less fully, whose mere names appeal to memory or curiosity. The author has a good deal of Cobbett-like power ; he is plain, shrewd, homely, and when not biased by his views on depreciation and adjustment, generally sound in his opinions and judgments. His estimate of Peel as a practical statesman and a patriot is very high. He doubts whether the Minister had any originality, or a very comprehensive mind, or the faculty of mastering the principles of large and compli- cated questions,—meaning thereby. the currency and political economy in general. The political inconsistency with which Peel is charged was in reality less than it appears to be ; for it was his nature to be cautious and foreseeing, and he had a sort of instinct of impending change, which induced him, perhaps un- consciously, never to rest on immutable principles : the seeming inconsistency arose from the power with which he opposed mea- sures till the time came when they could be opposed no longer. In a speech against the Catholic claims, delivered so early as 1813, Mr. Doubleday thinks he traces a notion that the time might come when the claims would have to be conceded.
"The speech of the Irish Secretary himself, putting aside its great talent both logical and sarcastic' is curious in the extreme, as being the earliest exhibition of the rare and peculiar character of his mind. In the apprehen- sion of men, Mr. Peel was at this period a high Tory and Orangeman after Lord Eldon's own heart. Perhaps m his own apprehension he was so. That he then, and long after that, deemed it, in the abstract, advisable to deprive the Catholics, especially the Irish Catholics, of power for as long a period as possible, cannot be doubted. But it is impossible to contemplate narrowly the address delivered by him on this occasion without suspecting that, even at this early period, he had obtained intuitive glimpses of the remote possi- bility of a tune when the privileges now asked in vain could be no longer withheld. An analysis of the speech of 1813 clearly shows that the objec- tions to Mr. Grattan's motion then assigned, are all, without exception in their own nature conditional, and dependent on circumstances in themselves changeable and liable to every conceivable kind of modifica- tion. He nowhere takes the broad ground taken by some of the more un- compromising of its opponents, that the religion of Papists is in its own nature a thing not to be treated with by those who defy its power - and that the pretended tolerance of religionists who still hold that no religion is tolerable in the sight of God except their own, is no more to be trusted now than in the days of John Russ. This broad ground Mr. Peel, without deny- ing it, ignores." At the close of the life, the biographer delivers a well-weighed estimate of Peel's character, in the usual way ; but we think him happier in the critical remarks which he inserts as the occasion arises. This is a good judgment on Peel's eloquence, in the form of a comment on the speech in which he proposed Emancipation. "It seems admitted on all sides that the impression produced by this speech upon the House and the country was very decisive. It occupied four hours in the delivery, was listened to with an eager attention that never flagged for a moment, and was concluded amidst cheers so loud and re- doubled, that their echoes were distinctly heard in Westminster Hall. Without embodying, or attempting to embody much of that quality pro- perly calledeloquence ' it yet contains more than one fine illustration. When Mr. Peel, dwelling upon the insanity of the idea of any reenactment of penal laws on account of religious notions, and upon the consequent im- possibility of long retaining the remains that were left, said—' We cannot replace the Roman Catholics in the position in which we found them when the system of relaxation and indulgence began. We have given them the opportunities of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have re- moved with our hand, the seal from the vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed ; but it will not, like the genius in the fable, return within its narrow confines to gratify our curiosity, and to enable us to east it back into the obscurity from which we evoked it '—he unquestionably gave utterance to one of the most beautiful and complete as well as one of the most original illustrations ever employed. This, however, was a solitary and accidental
flash, and not one of a series of corruscations, such as those which Burke used to exhibit.
" As an address adapted to a great purpose, Mr. Peel's speech on this occasion nevertheless abounds in qualities more valuable, because more practically and permanently efficient, than any eloquence can be. Logical in its conduct, clear in its statements, and comprehensive in its details, it persuades and convinces the reason and not the passions, and effects its pur- pose without the questionable aid of adventitious excitement or meretricious ornament. As a matter of display, it has no rivalship with the more splendid effusions of Burke, Sheridan, or Canning ; but as a matter of business, as a practical means adapted to a practical purpose, it is itself almost unrivalled. From abstraction and generalities it is totally free. Mr. Peel's peculiar position as a statesman, as well as the bent of his opinions and tempera- ment, precluded him froni flights of fancy on the beauty of toleration, or from that affectation of refined philosophy which makes light of theological differences, and would treat the aspirations of sacerdotal ambition as if they were mere casuiatieal polemics—questions for the schools, and unworthy the attention of either the statesman or the legislator. Hence every sentence uttered by the speaker is immediately applicable to the question before him, and tends to promote the object which he has in view. Ornament is given up for the sake of concentration of reasoning ; and if the fancy is left un- touched, the understanding is more surely captivated. It is certain that this masterly piece of special-pleading—for such the right honourable Se- cretary's address undoubtedly is—must always rank as one of his greatest oratorical efforts. As a display of logical art, it is very fine ; and when the torrent of obloquy and ribaldry with which the speaker was constantly as- sailed is remembered, the entire calmness, self-possession, and courtesy which characterize it, are surprising."
Here is another tribute to Peel, but less for his intellectual character than his moral conduct during the contest on the Re- form Bill.
"It is impossible to contemplate the events of the Reform crisis minutely and dispassionately without arriving at the conclusion, that to the good sense, prudence' moderation' and 'foresight of Sir Robert Peel, the country owed more than it ever was disposed to acknowledge. Of all the opponents of the bill, he alone preserved his equanimity, courtesy, and caution, to the very last. Had he, swayed for once by his passions or political feelings, or too much entangled by friendly and official ties, consented to join for ever ao short a period in the councils of the extreme party opposed to the bill, the consequences must inevitably have been disastrous. It was a fortunate thing for all that his sagacity had taught him exactly where resistance ought to end and forbearance to begin ; and it is for those who accuse him of want of constancy, or want of energy, to show how opposition could have been carried further without almost certain ruin to that which it was the end of resistance to guard and to preserve."
Though Peel's merit, as Mr. Doubleday says, was not formally acknowledged, it was widely felt. In fact it was this feeling which carried him into office, spite of the hatred against his party, and gave him power to repeal the Corn-laws. In comparing the fifty years between the early troubles of the French Revolution and the accession of Peel to power as Premier in 1841, with the period which has since elapsed, the difference is strikingly congratulatory in every point of view. Various cir- cumstances have contributed to this : the spread of education ; the material improvements in the arts applied to the uses or en- joyments of life ; a better feeling among the various classes of society, in effecting which, many minds have been engaged, in letters as well as in the more ephemeral matters of lecture and speech. A sounder and more general dissemination of economical science has also compelled Ministers to adopt a better-regulated course of conduct in public finance,—if, indeed, their own con- victions owing to that better information, have not operated, and saved us during the late war from such commercial convul- sions as in 1793 struck down a hundred country-bankers at a blow, and, it is said, shook three hundred. Except in some fac- tions instances, the country has also been spared those violent party struggles that for the better part of half a century convulsed Par- liament and the people at large during Peel's childhood, youth, and early manhood. The causes of all this, as we have said., are various • but so far as the credit is due to any individual states- man, there seems to us no doubt that very much is to be attri- buted to the prudence, patriotism, and mollifying influence of Robert Peel.
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