BOOKS.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.*

[FIRST NOTICE.] AFTER many chances and changes the gigantic mass of the Peel Papers, over a hundred thousand in number, came under the control of Mr. Charles Parker, who published in 1891 such extracts as he thought fit, from those which be- longed to the period before the death of Mr. Canning. He has now finished his work by giving to the world large por- tions of those which belonged to the twenty-three years following that event.

The editor was singularly well suited for his task. Edu- cated at Eton and Oxford, he was almost as distinguished at school and at the University as the eminent man who is the subject of his labours, and went through exactly the same training. He came into the London world under the auspices of Mr. Cardwell, one of Peel's most trusted lieutenants ; he was for years very intimate with Mr. Gladstone, and an ex- perience of many Sessions in the House of Commons made him well acquainted with the inside of English politics. It was to be expected, accordingly, that he would perform well the difficult duty intrusted to him, and that expectation has not been disappointed.

The long delay which has occurred in the publication of this work, very likely unavoidable, has had the bad effect of rendering much of its contents of little value to the present generation. Who can care for such details as we have in the first chapter, for example, about the stupid little intrigues which clustered round the appointment of Mr. Herries to be Chancellor of the Exchequer P The only fact that can be called of historical importance which is brought out is the self-willed folly and violence of George IV., a folly so great that even those most closely connected with him were thoroughly cowed by it. The editor of a statesman's papers has, however, no choice. He must put on record a great many things which few will care to read, in order that out of great masses of gravel the historian may wash a few grains of gold.

The third and fourth chapters deal with questions of great historical moment, but do not add very much to what was already familiarly known. No reasonable man doubted that Peel had behaved, through all the painful transactions which immediately preceded Catholic emancipa- tion, with perfect honour and great abnegation of self ; when, however, all this has been most fully admitted, the fact remains that he and those who thought with him had, by a long perseverance in an utterly unjustifiable system of government, brought Ireland to the very verge of civil war. Peel had long resided in that country. He had had the fullest opportunity of understanding the forces which were at work there, and, in spite of it, he had misread all the signs of the times. There is a remarkable letter to him at p. 97 from so stout a Tory as Sir Walter Scott, in which occurs the following passage :—" When I went to Ireland three years since I was a pretty stiff anti-Catholic. But as I made a long tour there and saw all sorts of people, I came to think concessions essential to the peace and prosperity of the country, without which a rankling source of civil dis- cord was like to prevail for ever." How was it that, after

• Sir Robert Peel : from his Private Papers. Edited for his Trustees by Charles Stuart Parker. S voir. London: John Murray. [328.,)

having been behind the scenes for years and years, Peel could not see what was clear at a glance to his political co-religionist, who, however great, was not a statesman by profession.

Here is a striking passage from Peel's reply to his corre- spondent :—

"I wish you had been present at the Clare election, for no pen but yours could have done justice to that fearful exhibition of sobered and desperate enthusiasm. Be true' was the watchword which, uttered by a priest or an agitator, calmed in an instant ' the stormy wave of the multitude,' and seduced the freeholder from his allegiance to his Protestant landlord. We were watching the movements of tens of thousands of disciplined fanatics, abstaining from every excess and every indulgence, and con- centrating every passion and feeling on one single object ; with hundreds of police and soldiers, half of whom were Roman Catholics,—that half, faithful and prepared, I have no doubt, to do their duty. But is it consistent with common prudence and common sense to repeat such scenes, and to incur such risks of contagion ? "

After the great measure for Catholic relief had become law,

Peel was able to turn his attention to the general state of Ireland, improving the constabulary as he had improved, or rather created, a real police in London. That was the kind of work for which he was best fitted, most precious, indis- pensable, requiring admirable business capacity, but not necessitating the application of the very highest powers of statesmanship. It is well when we hear of the sorrows of

Irish landlords to remember what miserable creatures many of them have been all through their history. At p. 137, in a letter from Peel to Lord Francis Gower, occurs the following :— " But, good God! where is the heroism of the gentlemen of Queen's County, where is their sense of self-interest when they can leave the charge of rewarding and protecting Brennan and his maid to the Castle ? It was right for the Lord-Lieutenant in any event to mark his approbation of their conduct ; but if the gentlemen of that county had a proper spirit, they would be jealous of any one claiming to share with them the honour and duty of providing both recompense and security for these persons, who have set an example by which their superiors might profit."

So it has ever been. In the midst of the worst of the Par. nellite disorders, a keen observer wrote from an Irish county

that the young barbarians were giving the whole of their minds, or the nerve-force which they mistook for such, to restoring the great institution of fox-hunting ; not satisfied with letting their country be cast to the wolves, they were making it a portion for foxes. Many Irish landlords well de- serve our pity, but not a few of them did much to bring the ruin on their own heads. All through the early thirties the Orange- men, a class not less hateful than the ruffians with whom Mr.

Forster struggled, did all that in them lay to make the work of good government as difficult as possible. One letter from the Duke of Wellington, at p. 118, begins : " I entertain no doubt that the Duke of Cumberland," their Grand Master, " is doing all the mischief in Ireland he can."

The communications which passed between Peel and his friends about the French Revolution of 1830 were rational enough, but they are followed by a long series of letters relating to the successive Reform Bills, which do very little

credit to the sagacity of the writers. Peel was not, like Canning, a thorough opponent of all reform, but he did not see that the time for a very moderate reform such as he would have liked, had passed before the end of 1829, and that the wise course was to get the question settled in a way which would be accepted by the great majority of reformers throughout the country. Unlike the Duke of Wellington, he

never committed himself to resistance ec outrance to the popular will; but there is nothing in the whole story from

beginning to end which can be used to support the thesis that he was a statesman of the first order. It is interesting to observe how genuinely alarmed he was about an attack on Drayton, which was, we presume, not impossible. The details about his little stores of carbines, of ball-cartridges, and so forth, are very curious.

When the great Reform Bill had become law Peel frankl3 and loyally accepted the decision of the country, and became under the new state of circumstances a more important man than he had ever been before. He was, though he did nol know it, the very man for the ten-pound householder. He incarnated all that was beet in the English middle class. He had the soul of a commercial man. He always wished to get his money's worth for his money, but at the same time to give full and just measure. There have been politicians, and eminent politicians, too, who might have said with the Caledonian trader on his deathbed : " Oor faimly were aye ruiddlin' honest; we neither liked to chate nor to be chated, but, o' the twa, reyther to chate." That was not his way ; his defects were of quite another kind. He supported the Whig Government against the extreme section of its followers, and did considerable service to the country by his attitude, though of course in all that concerned the wretched Irish Establish- ment the advanced section was right and its opponents wrong.

The ninth chapter brings out very clearly the grounds of the coohiesa between Peel and Wellington which followed the Reform Act, but gave way eventually to feelings of very strong regard. Its causes were partly some irritation on Peel's part about the Duke's acceptance of the Chancellorship of Oxford without consulting him, and partly the Duke's annoyance at Peel's not having seen his way to join him when, throwing over his old opinions in deference to the views of the King, he had wished that he and Peel together should form a Government to try to pass a Reform Bill in accordance with the Royal wishes. The tenth chapter does not add much that is material to what we know of the King's ineffectual attempt to get rid of his Whig counsellors by summoning Peel from Rome. It is amusing to observe that, travelling day and night, he took twelve days to reach London, although he blamed " the hurried Hudson" for taking so much as nine.

When he had once assumed the government, his energy deserved all praise; but the impatience of the King had led him into a great error, and the result of the Dissolution was that although the Tories very considerably increased their numbers, they did not do so sufficiently to enable their leaders to govern the country.

The days of Peel's Government were few and evil. He fought bravely, but all in vain, and did not add to, though he did not detract from, his great Parliamentary reputation.

Mr. Parker has wisely included a number of letters which he wrote, during his brief period of authority, to men and women of genius, announcing to them various marks of Royal approbation, which were well received and gratefully acknow- ledged. The names of Wordsworth, of Mrs. Somerville, of Mrs. Hemans, and of the Ettrick Shepherd would do honour to the patronage of any Minister. From the time of his going out of office to the end of the reign of William IV., perhaps the most important event in the life of Peel was his election as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, partly because it showed that there was a considerable abatement in the strong Whig feeling which had characterised the West of Scotland only a few years before, and partly because his address to the students was most favourably received alike at home and in some foreign countries. The Emperor Nicholas, for example, had it translated and sent to all the Russian Universities.

The four years which followed the return of the -Whigs to Downing Street are assuredly not among the most glorious

in English annals. Their Government was never really strong, and, but for the strange imbroglio absurdly known as the Bedchamber Plot, would have died long ere it did. It was well for Peel that he was prevented accepting office by that affair. His party was growing ever stronger and stronger in the country, though in the House of Commons he could do little that was important. Probably his most useful work was to keep his followers from taking premature action. It was not to be expected that the papers of this period should be specially interesting, and they are not so; but among them is a letter to Mr. Arbuthnot which contains sound doctrine for these no less than for those times :—

" The best thing that can happen for Louis Philippe," remarks Peel, "for France, and for the peace of the world, is to convince the mind of France (if that be possible) that other Powers are prepared for her, and that she will be signally punished if she wantonly provokes them. If Louis Philippe could venture to make an honest speech to his Chambers, it should run thus : I rejoice to be enabled to inform you that, while the other Powers of Europe have no hostile views with regard either to the territory or the independence of France, they are at the same time in that state of naval and military preparation which enables them to despise the violence and menaces of the war faction in France, and to preclude the hope of successful aggression on our part. I advise you, therefore, not to make yourselves ridiculous by mere bravado, and, as you cannot succeed by dishonest violence, to set the example to Europe of returning to a peace establishment, and try to establish your character by being quiet." Interesting, too, and touching, now that we know what the end was to be, is the letter on p. 458 to Mr. Goulburn about Peel's naval son, then a midshipman.

All through 1840 and the first half of 1841 the Govern- ment grew weaker and weaker, receiving its coup.de-grace on an amendment to the Address by the crushing majority of ninety-one. It resigned on August 30th, and Peel returned not merely to place, but to substantial and, for the moment, overwhelming power. His first task was, of course, to form a Government, and it was not an easy one, for out of the men who had approved the famous fish-dinner toast—which, beginning with the words, " May they continue their flounders' ; may we get their plaices,'" ended with an aspiration with reference to their " soles "—at least three times as many as could be provided for desired to assist their chief, not as buttresses, but as pillars of his Administration.

The seventeenth chapter, which records the arrangements made, is full of remarkable things. Few, probably, were aware that Lord Stanley and Peel had both of them formed

BO just a judgment of a personage so wildly overrated, first by himself and then by the large unthinking mass, as Sir

Stratford Canning. Lord Stanley wrote to Peel in September, 1841 :—" Nobody can be more convinced than I am of Can- ning's unfitness for Parliamentary office, and I fear his pretensions in any other line are so high as to render their gratification out of the question." Peel replied :—"I have had an interview of three-quarters of an hour with Sir Stratford Canning. How that man tortures himself and every other person with whom be comes in contact !"

The letter from Disraeli to Peel is exciting, and will excite, at least as much attention as it deserves. It was generally known by politicians that Disraeli had asked for office in 1S41, and people, who were acquainted with the man, attached no importance to his having denied the fact. What was less generally known, but is nevertheless quite true, was that Peel had wished to give him office, but had been prevented doing so by Lord Stanley, the same politician who, at a later stage of his career, as Lord Derby, became a mere tool in the bands of the man whose early ambitions he had tried to thwart. Disraeli's conduct in this affair is only to be explained by the undoubted fact that in politics he no more recognised morality than he would have recognised it in a game of chess. He entered public life determined to win; but as to how he won he did not care one brass farthing. This was an open secret to the men who followed him most obediently while he still led in the House of Commons. A story used to be told about the time when he was " educating his party " of a con- versation which took place between some Conservative and Liberal Members with respect to the merits of their respective leaders in the Commons. It was cut short by a remark from a gentleman belonging to the former party with the words, " Well, well, I prefer our scoundrel to your lunatic."

Disraeli's letter, while it really adds little to what those

who had occasion to watch his proceedings with any care knew already, will hardly be of much use to the poor gobe-

mouches who think of " Beaconsfield " as a great and serious statesman, or go to decorate his statue on Primrose Day. They are " given up to strong delusion that they should believe a lie," and are hardly fit for anything better.

If we were not dealing with Disraeli after a mere episodical fashion, we should have to show that be had many merits and attractive qualities which we highly appreciate; but to treat him as a moral being is to do him a gross injustice.

Mr. Disraeli and Sir Stratford Canning were by no means the only aspirants whom Peel disappointed; but at length the negotiations ended and the Government was formed. We must, however, reserve for another article the considera- tion of its fortunes as illustrated by the volumes before us.