TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MORALE OF PEEL.
SIR ROBERT PEEL has propounded what is really a minor mea- sure a matter of detail in carrying out the Irish policy which he evidently contemplated from the first on reentering office in 1841, though that policy was for a time disguised by the ineptitude of his Lord-Lieutenant until Lord Heytesbury was sent over. But from discussing this measure, politicians, in and out of Parlia- ment, have flown to discussing the statesman, Peel himself, with all the eagerness, the nice curiosity and cruel anatomizing, of naturalists over a newly-discovered creature. The question before Parliament is Maynooth, but the subject of investigation is Peel ; and a sudden furor has bitten divers persons to hunt him down. The measure is one desiderated by many ; but even of those, some are seized with a new scruple, and like the hungry Squire that took the bread of Lazarillo de Tonnes, they fastidiously ask if the hands are clean that give it. Peel, they say, has no right to offer this measure, because he never offered it before, and be- cause it is inconsistent with various things that he has said in past years. In proof, Mr. Disraeli has raked up Hansard; and Mr. Macaulay has made a searching historical retrospect, and shown how the statesman has avowed opinions in Opposition which pee.. elude him from endowing Maynooth without forfeiting " consis- tency." His defenders scarcely mend his case, though they have severally a double or alternative,line of defence. They say, which is true, that he has always shown himself liberally disposed to the Catholics, even before 1829. Sir Robert is much too decorous a gentleman to have been a harsh or illiberal Minister, whatever may have been his theoretical opinions for the time. But then his defenders say that he has alwayS upheld, at any sacrifice, the Established Church ; as when he went out of office in 1835. These two lines of defence answer each other, mutually: destruo- tive, like two negatives : resistance of Catholic Emancipation in 1828 is answered by acceptance of Catholic Emancipation in 1829; flight from the Appropriation-clause in 1835, by the em- bracing of Maynooth in 1845. As to this measure, it is asked._ whether, if he had now been in Opposition, Sir Robert would not have opposed the very bill he proposes ? The affirmative rises' to every man's lips. What right, then, has he to propound it in office ? That is the question which is thrown in his teeth, and on which his stay in office hinges threateningly. Sir Robert Peel is not a man of principles. He is a man of honesty in motive and deed ; a man of ccinduct. But when any great Option lies before him for judgment, he does not "bottom it—he does not trace it to its elements and deduce the first principles. In politics he is a manufacturing not an experi- mental chemist. This condition of his mind may be learned from any of his great speeches. His views and measures never have taken their rise in principles : they have been sug- gested to him by circumstances ; and if he has used principles at all, it has been at second hand, from the received authorities by way of illustration or apology- to weigh with other people. had he been a man of principles, he would have foreseen in 1829 the Maynooth Bill of 1845, and would have enunciated the latent fact. But he looked no further than 1829. He does not view any course of action from the a priori station, and therefore does not see the ulterior consequences in perspective. He looks across the vista, "taking things as he finds them," and seeing only what must be done at the time. In discussion on the measure of the moment, he uses, with excellent practical effect, the current ar- guments, the reasons that are uppermost in his mind. But he does this in a journeyman style, not with scientific generalize- tions ; so that if you analyze Peel's speeches at any one time, it is easy enough to find passages which are on the surface inconsistent with what he says at other times. And for lack of the " bottom- ing " and generalizing faculty, he cannot explain away the dis- sonance. If it is to be done at all, somebody else must do it for him. He knows the flaw well enough, and has said so more than once ; but he simply acknowledges, and cannot remedy it. That is not in his department. Thus, in all probability, had he been in Opposition, he would have resisted this Maynooth Bill ; be- cause in Opposition he is reduced to mere reasoning upon a mat- ter: he would have come to it with an adverse bias ; and as he does not generalize, the objections evident to his ingenious and workmanlike scrutiny would not have been counteracted by looking at it in "the long run." As his mind does not sponta- neously take a perennial view of passing affairs1 but merely jots down a tally of work done by the job, and is satisfied if it is well done, so he does not very strongly feel the reproach of some " inconsistency " between remote acts. The careless way in which he has alluded to such lapses proves his want of acute perception on that score. But it 18 less a fault in moral feeling than a defect in a particular faculty of intellect.
With all his faults and inconsistencies Peel has achieved so much, that when deeds are in question 12:3 is the man to whom all parties look up. The Conservatives chose him for their leader ;
and though they now talk of dismissing him, there is not one among them that would venture to answer the question, "Whom will you have instead?" The Whigs, in the person of John Russell, have addressed him as the man to do the work of Free Trade and Irish Conciliation, if he only avow the will. Nay., he is doing what the Whig writer, Sydney Smith, on his death- bed, exhorted him to do--he has "summoned up all his political courage"; he has ". runsome risk of -shocking public opinion " ; and if he has not proposed payment of the Roman Catholic priests, he has done something like it, and his friends say that that is coming. Radical Mr. Ward cheerfully moves his own dilettante -theoretical legislation out of the way of Peel's solid Practical handicraft. And see how Mr. O'Connell compares Peel's completeness of work with Whig botching. 'Why is it that a man at whom all are ready to carp is sent for" at every emergency ? Because he is a cool able workman — net a crotchety ratiocinator, but a man of action—not a man of principles, but a man of results. He never aims at some "far-seeing" impracticable end ; he does not measure you for a suit of clothes with a quadrant. His attention is not dis- tracted from the job that is set before him ; he thinks of nothing else till that be done ; and he talks for the time, like all journey- men, just as if there were nothing else to be done in the world. On account of this strict and limited range of working, he is sel- dom suspected of meaning more than is professed at the moment. What he does may involve more : something else may ensue, as Tomorrow will come after Today ; but there is no more intent in the case than there is a conscious purpose in the passing Today. Therefore he is trusted to do work which would not be put into other hands. When Catholic Emancipation became inevitable, Peel was allowed to do it, because they knew that he would not get intoxicated over his job and go on to some Maynooth mea- sure. Now we have come to Maynooth, and if any body do that work it will be Peel ; because endowment of the Catholic priest- hood will not be smuggled through along with endowment of the College. Peel is a steady man ; somewhat reserved, and apt to go faster than his gravity implies ; but still he takes one step at ntime; and the Conservatives, once called Obstructives, know it. It is to be noted that all Peel's evil deeds have been done in Opposition, his good works in office. He went into Opposition to resist Emancipation and Appropriation ; in Opposition he re- sisted the Reform Bill, tripped up the Whig Budget, talked big about "rebellious" Canada, abetted Lord Stanley's Irish Regis- tration Bill: in office he has achieved Emancipation, accomplished two new Free-trade-ward tariffs, sanctioned "responsible go- vernment" in Canada, quashed the Registration Bill and made some changes in an opposite sense, appointed Lord Heytesbury vice Earl De Grey, passed the Charitable Bequests Act and the Dissenters' Chapels Acts, and now proposes to endow May- nooth College. He talked foolishly in Opposition, and entered office practically to refute himself. His has been a process of gradual development. Under favourable circumstances that is in action, he has exhibited a steady progress from one class of opinions, among which he emerged into public life, towards ano- ther; so that the Tory subordinate has practically become the Most efficient Liberal leader. It has been less a series of tergiver- sations than a steady process of conversion ; lacking, however, the faculty of generalizing exposition to give coherence and sym- metry to the aspect of the entire process. Lord Worsley makes a merit of saying that "he will not reject the measure because Ministers have not heretofore acted up to their present profes- tdons " ; a strange kind of toleration for improving scholarship ! It is as if a teacher were to say to the top boy in the class, "I will not, because last year your composition was not so good as it is now, send back your thesis." Peel is in fact, the embodied reflex of the public mind of Eng- land. IL is feeble to originate great strokes of statesmanship, Or to recognize on mere reason shown ; he is strong to see what must be done, and to consummate. If he has made a mistake now, and has supposed that a thing must and can be done which must not and cannot, it is because he was deceived, naturally enough, by the opinion among active and demonstrative politi- cians in Parliament, in "society," and the press. By whom is he opposed ? By all extremes—Ultra-Tory and Ultra-Radical, High Church and Dissenters ; each section assailing him because he is not a bigot to either view. The Conservatives, after four years of power, forget how they could never do without him. If he fail, it will be because the conflict of opinion is so complicated and balanced that it cannot decide itself. If it could do so, he would act effectually ; for he is, not the leader of public opinion, but the minister of popular decisions. Meanwhile, the contest itself, whatever its issue, is not one of the least signal events in which Robert Peel has been instru- mental. It has shaken the new Conservative-party to its founda- tions, and a yawning schism is seen to divide it. It has not left the Whig party untouched by the convulsion. Parties are once more "resolved to their elements," to fall into new combinations ; perhaps partly into the old affinities. But in the process, old prejudices have been shaken, the dross of old Toryism has been precipitated, the mixture for daily use has been cleared. Old dogmas have been jostled from their embedded places, and washed sway to lie at least among unsettled doubts• mooted questions have fallen into firm resting-places ; and henceforth opinion ids forward from new starting-points. It is not the first nor the second-time that as much has been done for public opi- nion, perhaps unconsciously, by a man who deals little in mere opinion, It -is, too, a gratifying feature in these changes, that they are not simply triumphs of one party over another, but whole- sale moves forward of entire parties, with a general concurrence. The very converts vaunt the conversion. Mr. Charles Wynn is Wght in saying that " Tory" and "Whir" are names for things ',Mich have gone' and to no one man islhat greatpush.forward so much due as to Rebut Peel. -
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