CHAPTER XIII.

LORD PALMERSTON IN OPPOSITION.

THE elections of 1841 startled a good many persons at home, but abroad they excited still greater surprise. Foreign statesmen could not conceive how a Government which had shown such vigour, and met with such success in its dealings with other States, should not have obtained a firmer hold on the enthusiasm of their own countrymen.

Some of the causes have already been stated under the influence of which the Melbourne Ministry had been for some time drifting into discredit. No fault, except his dry and curt manner, could be found with Lord John Russell as a parliamentary leader. He had the two qualities most essential for that position-tact and spirit. În face of the most skilful and accomplished debater that ever sat on the Opposition benches in the House of Commons, he never showed any fear of his antagonist; and men often admired the brevity with which, in his replies, he said the thing that was necessary, and omitted everything that was superfluous. In the same manner, Lord Palmerston had achieved the object for which a British Minister is most esteemed without engaging us in war, and he had raised our character and strengthened our prestige as much as he could have done by any successful contest.

Yet, notwithstanding the abilities of these two eminent men; notwithstanding the distinguished talents of almost every member of the highly intellectual Cabinet to which they belonged; notwithstanding the

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wit, the good humour, the various accomplishments and statesmanlike moderation of the Premier-than whom few men ever brought to his elevated station a more cultivated mind or a more manly understandingthe Administration wanted that quality which in a face is called 'expression,' and neither captivated the affections nor commanded the respect of the public.

On the other hand, the Opposition had the advantage of being personified in a chief who was recognised by a large portion of the nation as the type of enlightened Prudence. Known to be averse to great constitutional changes-of which people were then tired; believed to be favourable to useful administrative reforms-which people then expected; the great man of the House of Commons,' Sir Robert Peel, had grown during the preceding years into the great man of the country,' which wished to see him at the head of its affairs. It was no marvel, then, that an election, made to try the strength of parties, placed him at the head of a majority of ninety.

The first question he had to deal with was a financial one. The late Government had gone on from year to year, and from day to day, scrambling by small means through pressing difficulties; without the courage, and consequently without the capacity, to face the growing evil, and provide an adequate remedy for it.

This was perhaps the great moment in Sir Robert Peel's life. Comprehensive, but practical; bold, and yet cautious, he proposed measures which dealt at once with the present position and the future prosperity of the country. An Income Tax assured public credit and at once checked the deficiency in revenue; and the diminution of duties, where their excess destroyed the security of their collection, or where their collection cost more than their produce, or where they weighed unduly on the comforts or industry of the people,placed our commercial and our financial policy on a basis which did not include the extreme doctrines of E E

VOL. I.

unlimited Free Trade, nor support the unwise restrictions of exaggerated Protection.

But the Conservative statesman, in doing this, moved on treacherous ground; for no position is so safe to maintain under a despotism, or so difficult to maintain under a free government, as one between extremes. It was thus that Protectionists (though at first only in murmurs) accused the Prime Minister of perfidy, whilst the Free Traders charged him with cowardice: the one because he admitted the general principles of Free Trade; the other because he did not carry them, without any limitation, into practice.

But the great impending battle was on a question which, though called commercial, was in fact more political than commercial. There has been at all times, and in all countries, a sort of bitter feeling entertained by men making sudden fortunes by speculation and trade against those who inherit a fortune in land from a well-known ancestry. In the long process of society this feeling disappears in individuals and families, as in time they rise into the caste from which their forefathers were excluded; but, as between class and class, the manufacturer in the town has a species of feeling bordering on antipathy for the squire in the county. The last is certainly not more selfish than the first. Few manufacturers take the same interest in those who work for their mills that the country gentleman takes in those who cultivate his ground. The country gentleman, moreover, whose fortune is already made, and connected inseparably with the fortunes of his country, takes a larger view of the national interest, and is more to be depended upon in any great national crisis, than the manufacturer or tradesman, whose fortune depends on the events of the hour. It may be added that the frank bearing, the manly and athletic habits of our landed gentry, the influence they derived from ancient birth and traditional associations, their independent positions, had in our old society long made them the dominant

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and popular body in the nation. Influenced by this prestige, and the belief that a State should not be dependent on foreign States for a main article of its food, and that, owing to the charges on land, it was impossible for the cultivators of our soil to support unlimited foreign competition, the Legislature had for many years sanctioned restrictions on foreign grain as a matter of course, the only subject at times in dispute being the extent and nature of such restrictions. The great change, however, which had taken place of late in our institutions; the suppression of many seats in Parliament for which peers or country gentlemen returned the members; the calling into political existence of the great manufacturing towns; and above all perhaps, the creation of the ten-pound householders, which gave such overbearing importance to the feelings of the small shopkeeper,-had much weakened the power, and consequently diminished the number of the partisans of the territorial aristocracy. And now there were bold and very eloquent men representing the manufacturers, and gathering round their banner all the partisans of democracy, who, putting themselves in the front of what was called the Anti-Corn-Law Movement,' went about the country denouncing the landed proprietor as 'the grasping tyrant, bloated in his superfluity by the taxes he imposed on the food of a starving population.' The Radicals followed these leaders; but the two great parties contending for office avoided for a while any extreme resolutions.

The Whigs, indeed, had at that time in their ranks many country gentlemen whom they did not wish to offend; and the Tories had so far compromised themselves with respect to Free Trade doctrines in general, that it was impossible for them to be the advocates of high protecting duties on the one article of corn.

The early debates, therefore, were confined to the question as to whether there should be a moderate fixed duty, or a moderate duty regulated by a sliding scale; Lord John Russell contending for the one, Sir Robert

Peel for the other. What delayed a more decided contest was the doubt which prevailed for a time as to what was the real force of the landed party; for the old belief that some tax on corn was necessary still coloured the speeches of leading statesmen and the articles of leading newspapers; and few were fully aware of the change which had quietly taken place since 1832 in public thought beneath the surface of public expression.

Lord Palmerston, who, with other Canningites, had always belonged to the school of Mr. Huskisson a school which recognised the principles of political economy without shutting its eyes to the fact that general political considerations might limit or govern the application of those principles-voted with his party for the fixed duty, but was one of the first to discern clearly that all duty must ere long be removed. His speech, then, on the 9th of February, 1842, is evidently impregnated with this idea, and goes far beyond the arguments in favour of a fixed duty over a variable one:—

Why [says he] is the earth on which we live divided into zones and climates? Why do different countries yield different productions to people experiencing similar wants? Why are they intersected with mighty rivers, the natural highways of nations? Why are lands most distant from each other brought almost into contact by the very means which seems to divide them? Why, Sir, it is in order that man may be dependent upon man: it is that the exchange of commodities may be accompanied by the diffusion of knowledge, by the exchange of mutual benefits, engendering mutual kind feelings, multiplying and confirming friendly relations. It is in order that commerce may freely go forth, leading civilisation with one hand, peace with the other, to render mankind happier, wiser, better. Sir, this is the dispensation of Providence; this is the decree of that power which created and disposed the universe. Away, then, with those who, with arrogant and presumptuous folly, would fetter the inborn energies of man; who would set up their own miserable legislation to oppose the great standing laws of nature.