BOOKS.

THE WELLINGTON CORRESPONDENCE ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.* [FIRST NOTICE.]

THESE are for many reasons the most interesting volumes of the civil correspondence of the Duke of Wellington that have as yet appeared. In January, 1828, the Duke acceded to office as Prime Minister, Mr. Peel leading the House of Commons. Only eight months previously (May, 1827,) he had declined to take office in conjunction with Mr. Canning, on the declared ground that Mr. -Canning was in favour of further concession to the Catholics. Shortly afterwards he expressed in a letter to the Duke of Cum- berland his opinion that the only hope for the preservation of the country was in the King's having firmness enough to refuse his assent to a Bill for the removal of the Catholic disabilities, which he then foresaw, he said, Mr. Canning would certainly carry through both Houses of Parliament. When, in consequence of Mr. 'Canning's death, he unexpectedly attained supreme power,—Lord LT'oderich's impotent four-months' Ministry can hardly be called a Government,—while the memory of such declarations, uttered by lips which seldom spoke in vain, were yet as of yesterday, it seemed that the sword sheathed at Waterloo was fated to be drawn for another battle of the Boyne. For a time the Duke confronted his native country as if firmly bent on dragooning it into submission. The -appointment of Lord Anglesey as Viceroy gave a new aspect to the policy of the Castle, when the beau sabreur of the British Cavalry thus became Lieutenant of his old General, and received more ample military powers (the power of summoning troops from England without reference to the Horse Guards, for example,) -than had since 1798 been conferred on any Lord-Lieutenant. Great was the tension of the situation. The King obstinately opposed to the Catholics, and absolutely in the hands of his Ministers ; the government of the Empire controlled by the most powerful and the most popular military chief England had known since Crom- well; Ireland in the custody of a hussar ; the Ministry united as to general policy, and agreed not to hold council on the Catholic ques- tion; and Parliament rather afraid of a Ministry which might dis- solve at any moment, and which, if it chose the right moment, would go to the country with a great claim to the support of the people,— -such were some of the circumstances which the Irish Catholics had to consider and encounter. Only a poet's eye had foreseen the marvellous and happy conclusion of a situation in which all the .eletnents of the ghastliest tragedy were lavishly prepared, for it may be simply said that a civil war in Ireland in 1828 would have been a mere massacre all round. Moore, about the time of the 'battle of Waterloo, had prefigured the way in which the Duke ulti-

acnately did his duty. Addressing him, in one of the Irish Melodies, the wrote :—

" Yet still the last crown of thy toils is remaining,

The grandest, the purest even thou hast yet known; Though proud was thy task other nations unchaining, Far prouder to heal the deep wounds of thy own. At the foot of that Throne for whose weal thou hest stood, Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame ; And bright o'er the flood Of her tears and her blood, Let the rainbow of hope be her Wellington's name !"

But the Duke did not seem to see in Catholic Emancipation by -any means an appropriate crown to his Spanish and Belgian wars ; and at the last submitted to it as a cross very hard to be borne, or, as perhaps he would have preferred saying, a capitula- tion on terms far from honourable. Before the Wellington Administration was six months in office, it was evident to the .Prime Minister that he must exert to the utmost all his influence -with the King, the Peers, and his colleagues, to carry a measure of Catholic Relief ; and as soon as he proceeded to frame such a measure, he found that he could not pass it as promptly as public policy required, without discarding those safeguards and restraints upon the action of the See of Rome in Ireland, and of the Irish Derpatehm, Correspondrnee, and Memoranda of Field-Afar:hal Arthur, Duke of 'Wellington, H.Q. Edited by his Son, the Duke of Wellington, B.G. (In continuation .ot the Former Series.) Vols. IV. and V. (May, 1827, to June, 1829.) London: John Murray_

priesthood, which had always previously been contemplated by the statesmen of both sides as the necessary qualifications of such a measure. At the Congress of Verona, the Duke said to a friend that, given a good Concordat with Rome, he would not fear to propose Catholic Emancipation ; but in 1829, neither Catholics nor Protestants would listen to the very name of a Concordat.

Sir Robert Peel's Memoirs had clearly enough indicated, but the evidence supplied by the Duke's correspondence makes it absolutely certain, that the Clare election was the efficient cause of Catholic Emancipation. From the accession of the Ministry to office in January until that date (July), the Catholic question does

not appear to have been even casually considered. Indeed it was stipulated by the King when the Government was formed that the Roman Catholic question was "not to be brought forward by the Cabinet." In May, the Duke had without hesitation weakened the Liberal, or as it was then called, the Catholic side of his Government by accepting the resignation of Mr. Huskisson, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne), then Irish Secretary. The consequent appointment of Mr. Vesey Fitz- gerald to the Board of Trade occasioned O'Connell's brilliant and daring conception, and produced the great trial of force between the Catholic Association and the Government at Clare. Mean- time, what Mr. Froude calls "the subtle spell of the Irish mind" had fallen on the Lord-Lieutenant. To the Duke's amazement, the voice of the Castle was for the first time for an age in favour of concession. As soon as the result of the Clare election became known to him, Lord Anglesey wrote to his Chief Secretary, who was then attending Parliament,—

" I believe their success is inevitable,—that no power under Heaven can arrest its progress. There may be rebellion. You may put to death thousands. You may suppress it. But it will only be to put off the day of compromise, and in the meantime the country is still more im- poverished, and the minds of the people are, if possible, still more alienated, and ruinous expense is entailed upon the Empire. Sup- posing the whole evil was concentred in the Association, and that, if that was suppressed, all would go smoothly, where is the man who can tell me how to suppress it ?"

The Duke was very angry with Lord Anglesey for presuming to form such an opinion, but nevertheless he took his advice.

A month afterwards he addressed an elaborate Memorandum to the King, stating that it was impossible to allow Ministers to separate for the recess without taking into consideration the state of Ireland. He declared that the influence of the Govern- ment in that country was no longer in the hands of the Executive, but had been usurped by the leaders of the Association, who acting through the Catholic clergy, "direct the country as they think proper." In his own dexterously balanced style, he then estimated the particular effects of the Clare election :—

"It is useless to enter into the detail of that transaction, but it is certain that the whole of the lower orders of the population (with the exception of a few Protestants) moved in regular military order, those of each parish under the direction of their priest, to the election town; that they there remained under the same influence and direction till it came to the turn of those qualified to vote, bivouacked in an open space near the town or cantoned in the houses in the neighbourhood on rainy nights and paid for their lodgings ; that no violence, disorder, or even insult was committed ; and they returned after the triumph of the successful election was over in the same order as that in which they had come to Ennis; that the political influence of the priests over the lower orders was in every instance superior to that of the landlords and gantry; and that by this influence Mr. O'Connell was returned instead of Mr. Fitzgerald ; the latter, being a gentleman of property in, and well known to, the county, supported unanimously by the gentry, who had represented the county in many Parliaments, and who had, moreover, always voted for what is called Roman Catholic Emancipation ; the former being a stranger in the county of Clare, and not possessing an acre of property within it."

Repeating and amplifying his statement that the control of the country had passed from the power of the Executive into that of the Association, he proceeded to argue that so long as the Association preserved the public peace and did not commit overt acts of a clearly illegal nature, it would be impossible to obtain arbitrary powers for the government of Ireland from Parliament, the House of Commons being, by a small majority (8), on the last division in favour of concession to the Catholics, and a disso- lution being very likely to lead throughout not merely Ireland, but Great Britain, to an increase in the majority favourable to Catholics. In Ireland, at that moment, the Association could pro- bably have commanded 80 seats, and followed the precedent of Clare by electing Catholics to half the number, and still more Catholic (in the political sense) Protestants to the remainder. Thus, he concludes,

we have a state of rebellion in Ireland, and yet no way of coping with it ; and in England a Parliament which cannot be dissolvedi "the majority of which is of opinion, with many wise and able

men, that the remedy is to be found in Roman Catholic Emanci- pation." It is the first time, we believe, that the somewhat

ungainly phrase occurs in a State paper. it was still doubtful to the Duke, however, and he did not hesitate to say so, whether "Roman Catholic Emancipation" would pacify the country or prevent a civil contest. Still, whatever might come of it, the Clare election had changed the whole situation. It was impossible to conduct the King's Government any longer on the understanding on which the Duke had composed his Cabinet, that the subject of concession to the Catholics should not be considered by them. Ile felt that the difficulty- must be fairly faced. He who in June, 1827, had advised that the King should be prepared to exercise his veto if both Houses passed a Bill of Catholic Relief, in August, 1828, found himself constrained to invite His Majesty to allow his servants to consider whether those "many wise and able men" were not well advised who considered that the remedy was, after all, to be found in Roman Catholic Emancipation.

It is somewhat surprising to find so much evidence as these volumes present of the amount of influence which such a Sovereign as George IV. in his dotage was able to exercise over such a Minister as the Duke of Wellington, then at his greatest in point of political experience and influence. "Between the King and his brothers," he wrote to Peel in the same month in which he submitted the Memorandum just cited, "the Government of this country has become a most heart-breaking concern. Nobody can know where he stands on any subject." In the letter of Peel to which he thus replies there is a sentence which, remembering the considerable solemnity of their joint and several declarations on the Catholic question, rather suggests the smile of the Roman augurs. The King "has a deeper tinge of Protestantism than when you last saw him," writes Mr. Peel. "As for his Protestantism, I don't so much mind it," replies the Duke. It must be admitted that he snubbed the King's brothers with exemplary asperity. He forced the Duke of Clarence to resign the office of Lord High Admiral. "it is Captain Spencer, or rather Lady Spencer, who does all the mis- chief, and my poor brother is the victim," said the King. "He is quite right," added the Duke, writing to Lord Bathurst ; but for all that his Royal Highness had to strike his flag. The Duke of Cumberland tried to figure as the Protestant Prince par excel- lance in 1829, and once wrote intimating that he should feel him- self compromised if he were to call upon Wellington, unless he was to be at liberty to relate what passed to Lord Eldon and a few other friends. The Duke's reply came like a shot. "I assure your Royal Highness that I have nothing to talk to your Royal Highness upon respecting which I care whether it is stated to the whole world. I have no business to transact excepting his Majesty's, and I do not care who knows what I sayer do in the transaction of that business." This was rather hard, perhaps, on the Prince, whom he had confiden- tially urged a year before to advise the King to veto any measure of Catholic Relief, should such pass Parliament. But the inter- vening circumstances had been, even for a brain so vivid and dogged as the Duke's, to say the least of them, distracting. When the King had to decide whether he would give or refuse his consent to the Cabinet's considering the Catholic question, he answered with majestic ambiguity, "You have my full permission to go into the question of Ireland with the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Peel, and we have the settled understanding that I pledge myself to nothing, with respect to the Cabinet, or any future pro- ceeding, until I am in possession of your plan." The British monarchy will probably last for ever, since it survived George III. and George IV.