Nigh Tory By BRIAN INGLIS AVING fulfilled during their lives
the duties of administration, they were frightened because they were called upon for the first time to perform the 'unctions of government. Like all weak men, they had recourse to what they called strong measures. They deter- mined to put down the multitude. They thought they were Ymitating Mr. Pitt, because they mistook disorganisation for sedition.'
Disraeli's verdict on the Liverpool ministry, once generally accepted, has in recent years been challenged, notably by Mr. Keith Feiling. Could a man (the argument runs) who was Prime Minister for fifteen turbulent years—controlling lieutenants of like turbulence, Castlereagh, Canning, Eldon, Palmerston and Peel—have been the `arch-mediocrity' of meagre diligence' whom Disraeli pictured ? Sir Charles Petrie* is confident that the notion is absurd. He aims, there- fore, at a rehabilitation of Liverpool, to show that he was not outshone by his illustrious colleagues. On the contrary, they treated him with deference and respect: in general capacity and debating power Liverpool was inferior to few of them: In temper, judgement and experience, he was superior to all.' The task Sir Charles has undertaken is on the face of it formidable. Robert Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool, came from undistinguished stock. His father was eminent only in the art of trimming: Robert was devoted to him. "After main- taining an anonymous mediocrity throughout school and College, Robert was despatched on a minor Grand Tour; the fact that he arrived in Paris in 1789, and witnessed the storm- ing of the Bastille (if his own account years later is to be trusted), made little impression; his correspondence is almost miraculously insipid. Dullness had set in. Returning to' a convenient seat in the Commons, Robert achieved the reputation for administrative ability that goes with unimaginative competence in the transaction of routine. On a higher level he proved a resounding failure; not even his biographer can condone the part he played in the ministry which concluded the Treaty of Amiens. Nevertheless he sur- vived the ignominy of his association, with Addington. Lack- ing sufficient personality to provoke jealousy, or sufficient skill in intrigue to arouse mistrust, he was to become the inevitable choice for Prime Minister, as the only man who had kept the confidence of all the mutually antagonistic individuals and factions required to form an administration.
After Waterloo, Sir Charles admits that things went wrong for Liverpool. The Six Acts were a poor advertisement for ,his government; and the Queen's trial was bungled. In its closing years, admittedly, the ministry gave Britain a measure of stability; events were quickly to show, however, that this had been achieved not by solving problems but by shelving them. Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform were bursting out of the cupboard, all the more fractious for their long confinement.
It could, of course, be argued—and although Sir Charles tends to avoid abstractions, this in essence is his thesis—that Liverpool's shrewd judgement had steered Britain safely :through the revolutionary tornadoes of Cato Street and Peterloo, ,to leave her safe in harbour for a refit under his successors. Liverpool himself would indignantly have denied the implica- tion. He hated refits. That the French revolution at first made little impression on him was only because he was unimpressionable; his instinct was to regard reform as the thin • Lord Liverpool and His Times. By Sir Charles Petrie. (James Barrie. 25s.) end of the revolutionary wedge. The Terror confirmed him in this opinion; to him and his colleagues it was the final justification for repressive policies.
But other conservative interpretations of the course of events in France were possible. To Burke, for example, reform was not the thin end of a wedge, but the stitch in time. Realising that society is not static, he was prepared assiduously to revise, to alter, to modify institutions, the better to preserve them. It was only when Louis by his incompetence allowed power to slip out of reforming hands into the grasp of revolutionaries that Burke denounced the system which by its essence is inimical to all other governments; and which makes peace or war as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with armed doctrine that we are at war.'
Burke had nothing in common with Liverpool; only Terror threw them together. Later conservative historians have some- times failed to prise them apart. The characteristic of the Liverpool brand of conservatism was that, 'as Disraeli saw, it bred the revolutionaries it wished to destroy. Liverpool's policy was to let sleeping dogs lie, to chain them if they awoke, and to muzzle them when they howled. But animals treated as brutes become brutish. They tried to bite—and their savagery was thereupon used as a justification for the repres- sion that had created it. The normal human animal, Disraeli judged, responds better to civil treatment. Sir Charles protests that Disraeli never had to face Liverpool's problems. Pre- cisely I Owing to his foresight, such problems never arose. Dishing the whigs had its constitutional as well as its party political benefits.
The weakness of the Liverpool method is best illustrated by the story of Catholic emancipation. Pitt had realised before the turn of the century that the Catholic vote was potentially conservative. With a high property qualification Catholics represented as little danger to the constitution as university graduates. But the high Tories and the king blocked his way. As a result, when Catholic emancipation eventually passed it was under duress—the threat of rebellion in Ireland. Not only did O'Connell's campaign help to destroy, for ever the remote prospect of a contented Ireland within the Union; it also provided the training ground for the men who were to be the leaders of the militant Chartist movement.
Not that Liverpool was a high Tory on the Eldon elevation. He lacked the necessary obstinacy. Even on Catholic emancipation, which he had strenuously opposed on principle so long as, opposition to it was politically expedient, he was prepared in the end to concede freedom of opinion within his ministry, when it became clear that the ministry could not survive unless he did. Nevertheless Liverpool was nearer to the Eldon than to the Peel, let alone to the Canning, wing. And by helping to commit the Tories to principles that were really disguised prejudices he was to make things difficult for the more flexible Peel, and to drive the Canningites out of the party, in the years that followed.
It would be possible to disagree with Sir Charles's thesis, and still to be grateful for his book, if it helped to remove some of the obscurities that have hampered a just assessment of his subject. Jinfortunately it does not. There is no bibliography, but internal evidence suggests that Sir Charles has relied mainly on published work. Where mysteries have existed—for example, why Jenkinson, when Lord Hawkes- bury, should have been pushed into the Lords at a time when he was to all appearances more needed in the Commons— they are still mysteries. Liverpool's personality, too, remains blurred; long and often irrelevant extracts from his corres- pondence do little to fill in the outlines. And the book is oddly weighted, relatively more space being given, to the early uninformative years than to the more important later stages in office. It almost seems as if Sir Charles grew bored with his subject. Nobody would blame him.
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