CHAPTER V. MORE dissensions in the Cabinet! There had been rumors about hidden troubles there as early as March; and Dissensions in when the Corn Bill was brought forward, on the 31st the Cabinet. of that month, it became clear that there had been difficulties among its framers. It could hardly be otherwise when Mr. Huskisson was necessarily the chief authority in the matter, and the Duke of Wellington, who had thrown out the Bill of the preceding year, was the head of the government. His principle of prohibition was disavowed by the government in regard to the present Bill. The measure was declared to be in principle exactly that of last session; but the duties proposed were higher. It was generally understood, that the Premier had met with a firmer adherence to Mr. Canning's measure than he expected among his colleagues; and he yielded, as he had now become practised in doing. He had yielded to the expediency of taking the premiership, after openly declaring that he should be mad if he ever did such a thing. He had yielded to the necessity of forming a mixed Cabinet, when the King had hoped to have a united one by placing him at the head. He had yielded the emancipation of the Dissenters, and he now yielded his own particular objection to the Corn Bill. Truly, it was now evidently too late to look for the old-fashioned "consistency" which had been formerly the first requisite in statesmanship. If it was not to be found in the honest, resolute, imperious Wellington, it need not be looked for anywhere; or, rather, it must be admitted, that consistency meant now something different from what it used to mean. Duke went, with a good grace, through the process of bringing forward the government Corn Bill, destitute of the provision which he had thought indispensable a year before, and of any substitute for it; and his liberal colleagues did not pretend to approve of the higher rate of duties. It was a compromise throughout. The agricultural interest complained of the absence of all prohibitory provisions; and other interests complained of the duties, and of the point at which they were fixed, the pivot-point from which ascent and descent of duties began; which they conceived to be virtually raised from 60s. to 64s. by the increased duties The charged on the intervening prices. But the Bill passed on the 26th of June.1 Mr. Huskisson made no secret of his opinions on the corn-laws. He condemned them in themselves, but thought they could not be abolished in the existing state of affairs. "However expedient to prevent other evils, in the present state of the country," he said, "they are in themselves a burden and a restraint upon its manufacturing and commercial industry." The Cabinet compromise appearing to be successful as far as this Bill was concerned, it was supposed that the disagreements in the government were surmounted, and that all might now go on smoothly. But it was not to be. There had been in February a serious call for explanations from the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Huskisson, about some expressions of the latter, uttered to his constituents at Liverpool on his late re-election; and both made these explanations in Parliament. Mr. Huskisson was reported to have said on the hustings, that he did not enter upon office under the Duke, without having obtained from him guarantees that Mr. Canning's policy would be followed out. The Duke, of course, rejected with scorn the idea that any gentleman would propose to him any guarantee of the sort; or that he could for an instant listen to such a proposal.3 "Is it to be supposed," said the Duke, "that the right honorable gentleman to whom I suppose the noble earl to allude, could have used the expressions ascribed to him at the Liverpool election? If my right honorable friend had entered into any such corrupt bargain as he was represented to describe, he would have tarnished his own fame, as much as I should have disgraced mine. It is much more probable, though I have not thought it worth my while to ask for any explanation on the subject, that my right honorable friend stated, not that he had concluded any wholesale bargain with me, but that the men of whom the government is now composed are in themselves a guarantee to the public, that their measures will be such as will be conducive to His Majesty's honor and interests, and to the happiness of the people." And Mr. Huskisson, supported by abundance of needless testimony, declared that this was nearly what he did mean and say; namely, that in the composition of the Cabinet would be found a sufficient guarantee for the carrying out of a liberal policy. Still, though this matter was cleared up, affairs did not work easily; and a disruption of the Cabinet took place in May, — the immediate occasion being a misunderstanding between the same two members of the government. 4 Mr. Huskisson's popularity was somewhat declining. He had lost some of the sympathy of the country by re-entering office 1 Hansard, xix. p. 1524. 3 Hansard, xviii. p. 286. 2 Memoir of Huskisson, p. 167. 4 Hansard, xviii. p. 481. with Mr. Canning's enemies; and when it was seen with what different ministries he could sit in Cabinet, and how, among many changes, he, the bosom friend of Canning, could abide in office, the old sneer of his being a "political adventurer" was re vived, with perhaps greater effect than in a more aristocratic time. The events of this month of May damaged his reputation seriously; and he never, during the short remainder of his life, got over it. Those who knew him well, and those who, not knowing him, were duly sensible of the compass and value of his policy, understood his feelings so as to acquit him of every thing morally wrong, of every thing in the least questionable about personal honor, of every thing but uncertainty and error of judgment; but they could not complain of the world in general for forming a somewhat severer judgment. Those who knew the man understood his sensitiveness about responsibility, his timidity about breaking up the government of the country on account of difficulties of his own. And those who appreciated the importance of his free-trade policy— the charge of which he could not depute to any one till some were educated up to his point could well understand that he would bear with much, and hesitate long, before he would vacate a position in which alone he could effectually promote that policy. He seems indeed to have lingered too long; and to have mismanaged his method of retiring, so as to have made his secession look too much like an expulsion from the Cabinet: but those who knew his state of health, his need and desire of rest and travel, and his suffering in public life since the death of his friend, were well aware that his self-regards would have led him into private life long before. We cannot doubt that he often wished that he had followed his inclinations. Many and many a time within the last eight months must he have wished that he had resisted the desire of the King and Lord Goderich, and, seeing more clearly than they, remained abroad; and from this time, this May, 1828, could have had few but bitter thoughts connected with the last stages of his public career. His final ministerial struggle is a strange instance of strong impulse followed by infirmity of purpose. he Bills were brought into Parliament to disfranchise the boroughs of Penryn and East Retford; the movers, Lord John East-Retford Russell and Mr. Tennyson, proposing to transfer the Bill. franchise to Manchester and Birmingham.1 About the disposal of the franchise there were two opinions: one, that it should be given to the neighboring hundreds; the other, that it should be transferred to populous towns. Mr. Peel, whose opinion was the most important in the House, had declared, that, if there were 1 Hansard, xviii. p. 83. two boroughs to dispose of, he should advocate the transference in one case to a town, and in the other to the neighboring hundreds. Mr. Huskisson had declared, that, if there were but one, he should be for giving it to a town. The Penryn case was first sent up to the Lords, and the East-Retford case was discussed in the Commons, on the 19th of May, under a persuasion on the part of the government that the Penryn Bill would be thrown out by the Lords; so that there would be only one borough to deal with. Here arose the ministerial difficulty. The government opposed, through Mr. Peel, the transference of the franchise to Birmingham, while Mr. Huskisson felt himself bound by his previous declaration to vote for that transference. Lord Sandon expressly claimed his vote on this ground; and he did not see how he could refuse it: though some suggested that he might avoid voting against his colleagues, on the pretext that the House of Lords had not yet decided on the Penryn Bill.1 Mr. Huskisson himself earnestly wished for an adjournment of the subject, that Mr. Peel and himself might have an opportunity of coming to some understanding: but he could not carry this point; and he voted against his colleagues. At the moment, he did not see that he could remain in office; or, at least, that he could avoid offering to resign. He went home, at two o'clock in the morning, with the buzz of the excited House in his ears, and the significant countenances of colleagues and opponents before his eyes; exhausted with fatigue after sixteen hours' attention to business; feeble in health and sick at heart; and, instead of waiting for the morrow to consider, when refreshed and composed, what he should do, he sat down, and wrote to the Duke of Wellington a letter which was intended by Mr. Huskisson to be an son's resigna- offer to resign, but understood by the Duke to be an actual and formal resignation. The Duke received the letter before ten the next morning, was surprised, did not think the superscription, "private and confidential," had any bearing on the purport of the letter, and made all haste to lay it before the King as a formal resignation. Friend after friend went to him, on Mr. Huskisson's behalf; but the Duke would acknowledge no mistake or undue haste on his own part. Mr. Huskisson wrote one explanatory letter after another: but still the Duke declared the resignation to have been positive; and if so, and if the Duke wished it to be irrevocable, it was irrevocable. The truth plainly was, that Mr. Huskisson was first mistaken in his estimate of the fatal character of his vote; next, hasty in writing to the Duke under exhaustion and perturbation, though his impulse was worthy and honorable; and, finally, too 2 Hansard, xix. p. 928. Mr. Huskis tion. 1 Hansard, xix, p. 808. 2 slow to accept the consequences of his own act. The Duke was clearly less anxious about a disruption of his Cabinet than pleased at the occurrence of a fair opportunity to dismiss "the Canningites." He offered one option to Mr. Huskisson, -to withdraw his letter; but, as that act would have stultified the writer in regard to all his subsequent explanations, it could not, of course, be thought of. After a miserable series of negotiations, explanations, remonstrances, accidents, and mistakes, so many as to suggest an idea of fatality, Mr. Huskisson's office was filled up on the 25th of May. Painfully as he had shrunk from the risk of disturbing the government, lest the country should lose the benefit of a continuance of Mr. Canning's policy, Mr. Huskisson was now compelled to witness, as a consequence of that little letter of his, the retirement of all "the Canningites."1 Lord Palmerston, Lord Dudley, Mr. Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne), and Mr. Grant resigned; and were succeeded by Sir Henry Hardinge, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Francis Egerton, and Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald. Mr. Huskisson's place was filled by Sir George Murray. At last, here was a Cabinet such as the King desired, and had hoped to have in January,—a Cabinet in which the Changes in affairs of the country could be managed as in old days, the Cabinet. and on good old principles. Were the King and the Duke happy at last? The King could not much enjoy any thing at present. In the preceding year, Lord Eldon had remarked a serious decline in his health; and he did not seem to be rallying. His state of health and nerve, of temper and spirits, enhanced the difficulties of his ministers, which were serious enough without that addition. Lord Eldon 2 declared, a few days after Mr. Huskisson's retirement: "The Minister will have great difficulties to struggle with. The Whigs, the Canningites, and the Huskissonites, will join, and be very strong. With the exception of Lord Lonsdale, the great Tory parliamentary lords are not propitiated by the new arrangements, and many of them will be either neuter or adverse.” But a more serious difficulty was arising than any caused by this phalanx of foes. Question. In the debate on the Dissenters' Bill, the Duke had said, while showing how unconnected he conceived this Bill to be Catholic with the Catholic cause, "There is no person in this House whose feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided than mine are with regard to the subject of the Roman-Catholic claims; and, until I see a great change in that question, I certainly shall oppose it."3 Recently as this had been 1 Annual Register, 1828, Chron. 191. 3 Annual Register, 1828, p. 104. 2 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 48. |