office. I intimated my fixed intention in this respect to the Duke of Wellington; but I felt it my duty to accompany that intimation with the declaration, not only that I would not, in a private capacity, any longer obstruct a settlement which appeared to me ultimately inevitable, but that I would advise and promote it. Circumstances occurred, as I have already explained, under which I was appealed to to remain in office; under which I was told, that my retirement from office must prevent the adoption of the course which I was disposed to recommend. I resolved, therefore, and without doubt or hesitation, not to abandon my post, but to take all the personal consequences of originating and enforcing, as a Minister, the very measure which I had heretofore opposed."

In the other House, the explanations were as characteristic, The Duke of and almost as interesting, as in the Commons. The Wellington. Duke of Wellington apologized at the outset for being about to make a longer speech than their lordships were accustomed to hear from him; but he made shorter work of it than any other man would have done. It was in the course of this speech that he uttered the declaration which is, and will continue to be, more remembered than any thing else he ever said. "I am one of those," said the great Captain, "who have probably passed a longer period of my life engaged in war than most men, and principally, I may say, in civil war; and I must say this, that if I could avoid, by any sacrifice whatever, even one month of civil war in the country to which I am attached, I would sacrifice my life in order to do it.”1 In order to do this now, in his absolute conviction that Ireland was on the verge of civil war, the hero of a hundred fights laid down what he cared for much more than his life. Having made up his mind to it, he did it well. His measure was thorough: the grace it gave was almost free; so nearly so, that the opposition made a great laugh out of the securities and restrictions proposed. He said little in the way of personal excuse; and he got the thing done quickly. He would not listen to any plea for a dissolution of Parliament, to any remonstrance about not taking the sense of the country once more. The mass of anti-Catholic petitions showed him what might be the state of turmoil into which the country would be thrown by the question being referred to it; and the existing state of Ireland rendered the times too critical for such an experiment. The will of the Commons was plainly enough declared, and that was constitutional warrant sufficient for him to proceed upon; and, being resolved to carry the matter through, he granted no delay. The opposition in the Commons was swamped by the union of the liberal and the ministerial members,

1 Hansard, xxvi. p. 46.

and the majority on the first division was 188 in a House of 508 members. This was on the motion for going into committee on the 5th of March. On the 10th, the Bill was brought in by Mr. Peel, and read a first time. The debate took place on the second reading, which was fixed for the 17th; and the majority the next night was 180 in favor of the Bill. It issued from the committee on the 27th, not one of the many amendments proposed having been carried. There was more debating on the 30th, on occasion of the third reading, when the House did not adjourn till near four o'clock in the morning. The majority was 178 in a House of 462.2

On the same evening, the Premier brought forward the Bill in the Lords, had it read the first time, and fixed the second reading for two days afterwards, in the midst of great clamor about his precipitation. The debate lasted three nights, and issued in a majority of 105 in favor of the Bill; the numbers being 217 for the second reading, and 112 against it. It was but nine months since this same House had decided by a majority of 45 against entertaining the question at all, a proof how rapid and threatening had been the march of events in the meantime. As in the Commons, all the amendments proposed were rejected; and on the 10th of April the Bill passed, by a majority of 213 to 109.4

CatholicRelief Bill

passed.

It was not yet law, however; and there were some who did not even now give up all hope that the Bill and the Administration would perish together. Of those who had struggled against the measure, Lord Eldon perhaps had toiled the hardest; and he had worked with a stout heart, because he believed that he had private reasons for hoping that the King would overthrow the policy of his ministers at the very last. "What a consistent career has Lord Eldon's been!" wrote a contemporary at this date; "the ever-active principle of evil in our political world! In the history of the universe, no man has the praise of having effected so much good for his fellow-creatures as Lord Eldon has thwarted.” 5 As he thought this "the most dangerous measure that was ever brought before Parliament," and as he believed that it would inevitably occasion the destruction of the Church, the aristocracy, and the monarchy, it was natural that he should use every art of procrastination, and all possible emphasis of warning, while the measure was in progress; and that he should record his protest, comprehending ten grounds of dissent, on the journals, when all other means of opposition were exhausted: but those who observed him were

1 Hansard, xx. p. 1290.

3 Hansard, xxi. p. 394.

2 Hansard, xx. p. 1638.

4 Hansard, xxi. p. 694.

5 England under Seven Administrations, vol. i. p. 219.

vacillation.

surprised that he appeared to forget his misery at the last. He looked cheerful, and indulged in jocularity; insomuch that Lord Holland, taking up a proverb just quoted by Lord Eldon, said, that, in opposition, he had "come in like a lion, and gone out like The King's a lamb." The secret of this was, that Lord Eldon had been admitted by the King, and, after two very long conversations, was not without hope that the sovereign would, as he called it, do his duty at last, stand by the constitution, and disappoint the Catholics. We have learned, by the bringing to light of Lord Eldon's private papers, much of what passed in these two interviews; and it is well, for the truth of history, that we know thus much of what the ministers had to struggle with, in their dealings with a sovereign who, according to this record, was as unscrupulous with regard to truth, as he was weak and passionate.

The first interview took place on the 28th of March, two days before the Relief Bill left the Commons; and it lasted about four hours. The King seems to have opened by a statement so manifestly untrue, that Lord Eldon,1 who "refuted this allegation of the King's" in his private memorandum, must have seen how cautiously he ought to receive the complaints of the present ministers which followed. "His Majesty employed a very considerable portion of time in stating all that he represented to have passed when Mr. Canning was made Minister; and expressly stated, that Mr. Canning would never, and that he had engaged that he would never, allow him to be troubled about the Roman-Catholic question. He blamed all the ministers who had retired upon Canning's appointment; represented, in substance, that their retirement, and not he, had made Canning Minister. cepted from this blame, in words, myself." This is as foolish as it is clearly false: but His Majesty was not at this time affirming on the word of a King," but indulging in the fretfulness and helpless anger of a child; in which state men will sometimes, like passionate children, say any thing that their passion suggests. And this helpless being was he who whom his ministers, weighed down by responsibility, had to call master, and to implicate in their work!

66

He ex

"He complained that he had never seen the bills; that the condition of Ireland had not been taken into consideration; that the Association Bill had been passed through both Houses before he had seen it; that it was a very inefficient measure compared to those which he had in vain himself recommended; that the other proposed measures gave him the greatest possible pain and uneasiness; that he was in the state of a person with a pistol presented to his breast; that he had nothing to fall back

2 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 82.

upon; that his ministers had threatened — I think he said twice, at the time of my seeing him to resign, if the measures were not proceeded in; and that he had said to them 'Go on,' when he knew not how to relieve himself from the state in which he was placed; and that, in one of those meetings, when resignation was threatened, he was urged to the sort of consent he gave by what passed in the interview between him and his ministers, till the interview and the talk had brought him into such a state, that he hardly knew what he was about when he, after several hours, said 'Go on.' He then repeatedly expressed himself as in a state of the greatest misery, repeatedly saying, 'What can I do? I have nothing to fall back upon;' and musing for some time, and then again repeating the same expression.” 1

It is clear that the King had given his ministers his formal sanction to proceed, on their presenting the alternative of their resigning. It was mere childishness now to say, that he was in such a state that he did not know what he was about; and it is astonishing that he could for a moment think of drawing back, or suppose that Lord Eldon could suggest or sanction such a retractation. This appears to be what he was aiming at throughout these two interviews; but, well as the old Tory would have liked to see the measure destroyed, he could not assume the responsibility of encouraging the King to withdraw his royal word. The whole demeanor of the King appears to convey the impression, that he thought his ministers were doing something wilful and wanton in proposing relief to the Catholics. Throughout the two interviews, he speaks as if the Premier and Mr. Peel had taken it into their heads to gratify the Catholics, purely for the purpose of teasing their sovereign. He thinks and speaks of no one but himself; dwells only on his own annoyance, never even alluding to the state of the Catholics, or of the kingdom at large.

"After a great deal of time spent," Lord Eldon's 2 account continues, “in which His Majesty was sometimes silent, арраrently uneasy; occasionally stating his distress, the hard usage he had received, his wish to extricate himself; that he knew not what to look to, what to fall back upon; that he was miserable beyond what he could express, I asked him whether His Majesty, so frequently thus expressing himself, meant either to enjoin me, or to forbid me, considering or trying whether any thing could be found or arranged, upon which he could fall back. He said, 'I neither enjoin you to do so, nor forbid you to do so but, for God's sake, take care that I am not exposed to the humiliation of being again placed in such circumstances, that I must submit again to pray of my present ministers that they will 1 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 83.

2 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 84.

remain with me.' He appeared to me to be exceedingly miserable, and intimated that he would see me again.”

Within a fortnight after, on the 9th of April, the day before the Bill passed the Lords, the old earl went again to the King, with more addresses. The interview lasted three hours, the first portion of the time being occupied with complaints and expressions of misery uttered in almost the same words as before. At length Lord Eldon spoke, and courageously. He reports:

"I told him that his late Majesty, when he did not mean that a measure proposed to him should pass, expressed his determination in the most early stage of the business; if it seemed to himself necessary to dissent, he asked no advice about dismissing his ministers. He made that his own act: he trusted to what he had to hope for from his subjects, who . . . could not leave him unsupported; that, on the other hand, there could not but be great difficulties in finding persons willing to embark in office, when matters had proceeded to the extent to which the present measure had been carried, as was supposed, and had been represented, after full explanation of them to His Majesty, and he had so far assented. This led to his mentioning again what he had to say as to his assent. In the former interview it had been represented, that, after much conversation, twice with his ministers, or such as had come down, he had said 'Go on;' and upon the latter of those two occasions, after many hours' fatigue, and exhausted by the fatigue of conversation, he had said Go on.' He now produced two papers, which he represented as copies of what he had written to them, in which he assents to their proceeding and going on with the Bill, adding certainly in each, as he read them, very strong expressions of the pain and misery the proceedings gave him. It struck me at the time, that I should, if I had been in office, have felt considerable difficulty about going on after reading such expressions; but whatever might be fair observation as to giving, or not, effect to those expressions, I told His Majesty it was impossible to maintain that his assent had not been expressed, or to cure the evils which were consequential, after the Bill, in such circumstances, had been read a second time, and in the Lords' House with a majority of 105. This led him to much conversation on that fact, that he had, he said, been deserted by an aristocracy that had supported his father; that, instead of 45 against the measure, there were twice that number of Peers for it; that every thing was revolutionary, every thing was tending to revolution, and the Peers and the aristocracy were giving way to it. They, he said more than once or twice more, supported his father; but see what they had done to him. I took the liberty to say that I agreed that matters were tending rapidly to revolution. But I thought it only just to some