The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-22 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 22, 1856. Yitcraturt. Sir Robert Peel, as a Type of Statesmanship. By Jelinger Symons, Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London : Longmans. THAT " Party " is a necessary consequence of Parliamentary Government, and that personal honour should guide the conduct of leaders of great political connections, are obvious truisms. It is scarcely less obvious that without confi dence iu statesmen Parliamentary Government cannot be practically administered with success; and, unhappily, " the declining efficiency of " Parliament " contains those patent common places, or " first principles," as pedants would call them. The question has often been raised in political circles of all sides, "whether Sir " Robert Peel acted in a manner consistent " with personal and political honour?" Various and irreconcileable have been the answers given to that inquiry. The subject is so environed with invidious considerations that it is difficult to discuss it over a recent grave ; and we are opposed to any virulent criticism on an eminent person lately passed from the scene. Mr. Jelinger Symons, a staunch Whig-Radical, and an old member of the Reform Club, challenges public notice to his severe and damaging dissection of the public character of Sir Robert Peel. He has especially discussed " the Canning episode " with galling impartiality of tone ; and he has, with great effect, availed himself of Sir Roberts posthumous papers, so as to exhibit an extraordinary tissue of Sir It Peel's unparalleled contradictions. The volume is written as a critical essay ; its rhetoric is not brilliant, nor is its knowledge far sought or profound ; but it damages without dazzling, and it is fatally effective, without either fancy or eloquence. Indeed, its ponderous prose is perfectly suitable to the matter-of- fact cha racter under discussion ; and politicians will do well to place it on their shelves 1t is the most damaging judicial attack on Sir R. Peel that we ever read. The friends of that states man will probably challenge the pretensions of Mr. Symons ; but the author has a literary right to discuss any historical reputation, and the temper in which the volume is composed is unexceptionable. It has neither personal virus nor simulated candour. In order to illustrate how unfavorable this essay is to the moral reputation of Sir Robert Peel, we shall cite the conclusion of the first chapter, and we shall italicise some of the words : To afford—not a history of Sir F. Peel's life—but a cri- tical analysis of it ; to exhibit the chief phases of his policy, doing justice to his motives without veiling hi. love of power —accredtting the usefulness of his acts, without defending the example of his apostacies—aud thus distinguishing between what expediency justified in the minkter and integrity de• manded in the man—are the objects of this portrait of one of the chief idols of our time, and types of our political worship. Let our readers mark these attributes. Here we have the Whig-Radical essayist accusing Sir It. Peel of " love of power," " apostacies," and fastening attention upon " what integrity " demanded in the man." These are signifi cant words to come from one of the Reform Club writers. And, as some of our readers may not peruse this work, we shall take some passages indica. tive of its severity towards the fame of Sir Robert Peel. We shall refer to what Mr Symons calls " the Canning episode." Much as we have read on this subject, we have never seen the case stated with more damaging force against Sir Robert Peel; and we surmise that his personal friends and executors will be compelled to take serious notice of that part of the volume before us Our readers are aware of the charges brought forward by Lord George Bentinck against Sir Robert Peel in connection with his conduct to Mr. Canning. Mr. Symons thus commences that division of his essay : It affects the character of Mr. Peel not only whether he did entertain a change of views on the Catholic question in 113'25, but whether he avowed this in 18 . 29, according to the italicised paviages in Mr. Barrow's report of his speech, and it does so for these reasons. First, Mr. Peel, when charged by Lord George lientinck in June, 1846, with the change in 1815 and with this avowal of it in 1829, denied emphatically both the one and the other. Secondly, Mr. THE PRESS. Peel—and this was the grievance of Lord George Bentinck's attack—had in 1827 ( two years after his alleged change of opinion) declined acting with Mr. Canning, inasmuch as he was a Minister favourable to such settlement; and (as Sir Edward Rnatchbull had at the time of Sir R. Peel's speech in 1829 taunted him with doing) had thereby ob tained for himself, and weaned from Mr. Canning, the support of many members who differed from Mr. Canning only on that point. Thirdly, if the change in 1825 were true, Sir Robert must have systematically opposed a measure for four years which be all that time knew ought to be conceded, and on a question which he always av3wed to be one of primary importance to the great interests of religion and order. He then proceeds, and we must direct parti cular attention to the following passage:— Passing in silence the natural acrimony with which Lord George lientinck characterised this alleged treat ment of his deceased relative, Mr. Canning, let Its test the truth of these several allegations as they affect Mr. Peel by a calmer analysis of the evidence by which they are sup. ported on the one side, and the asseverations by which they are denied on the other. There is an admitted fact which, though it has escaped notice by those who have hitherto canvassed this subject, seems to have much weight as a presumption in deciding it. If Mr. Peel is 1825 entertained no change of opinion as to the necessity of resisting emancipation, why did he then seek to retire from office? The only reason he alleges in his revised speech is that the Government of which he was a member had experienced one defeat in a single motion in one House of Parliament by a very narrow majority. But in the first place the right honourable gentleman was not at the head of the Administration, and was scarcely, therefore, the member of the Cabinet to take the initiative in surrender. He was not even leader of the House of Commons, nor was he as Home Secretary one jot more responsible for the government of Ireland than the Premier. Besides, why had he not felt a similar susceptibility of obligation when the party and cause he upheld were defeated by successive majorities in 1821, headed by Mr. Plunket ? The emergency was not ade quate to the result: and the threatened resignation on the threshold of a promised dissolution of Parliament, the very moment he found himself in a single minority, was, to say the least of it, if there were no other cause, an act of personal desertion and political feebleness inconsistent with the honour and discreditable to the courage of an ex perienced Minister: and one moreover wholly irrecon cileable with his conduct on similar occasions. But if in addition to the fact of defeat he felt also the consciousness of deserving it, and that the policy be was beaten in main taining was one which it was perilous to prolong, the case assumed indeed a widely-different aspect. The resigna tion, instead of au act of precipitous pusillanimity, became one of political necessity and consistency of principle ; whilst the declaration to Lord Liverpool based ou such grounds did indeed involve "the same course" as that which the same Ministry pursued for the same reasons openly avowed in 1829. But if these reasons—the only ones which could justify the step taken in either case—did not exist in 1825, how can it be truly said that "the course " taken in the latter juncture was the same with that in the former? There seems to he at least tl•at diffe rence between these cot.r'tes which subsists between right and wrong—and between taking an important step with reason and without reason. No one can deny the force of this argument, and the severity of its incrimination. But, it will at once be asked, what evidence is there to prove the charge ? Mr. Symons replies, with formidable particularity : It being obvious that if Sir Robert Peel really admitted in 18'29 his change of opinion in 1R2.5, it was a fact, and not a delusion, let us see what evidence there is of such a statement. It does not rest on the high reputation only of the Mirror of Parliament for the accuracy of its reports. In the first place the Timee gave the same statement! hut far more cogent was the fact that Sir Edward Knatchbull thus commented on the statement in the same debate on a subsequent day and in the following elaborate manner. And he then quotes the famous passage from Sir Edward Knatchbull's speech (Mirror of Parliament, vol. iv., p. 32), in which Sir Ed ward alluded in 18 . 20 to the identical charge brought forward afterwards by Lord George Bentinck We have not space for that pas sage, but let us see how Mr. Symons com ments upon it : It is hardly conceivable that a long passage and a home thrust like this could have been aimed at a suppositious admission which never was made, and had no other exist ence than in the brain of the speaker! Now, there can be no question that Sir Edward Koatchbull thus com mented upon it; for, though much less in detail, Hansard gives the same report. But even if the alleged statement of Mr. Peel in 18!1:1 were a chimera of the Kentish baronet, it was not the less a grave charge against the cha racter of the man, and a damaging blow at the policy of the Minister, which could by no possibility have escaped his notice, and, if unfounded, his prompt and emphatic denial. What was the result? On the following night he rose to reply. Does he meet the charge ; or, adopting the only alternative consistent with innocence, treat charge and speaker with indifference? Neither one nor the other ! So far from availing himself of the latter resource, he devotes no inconsiderable portion of his long speech to that of Sir Edward Knatchbull ; he not only grapples with what he terms the honourable baronet's " concocted sarcasms," but he refers in the very outset of his defence to the attack made on the part he took "in the debates of 'the house in 1828 and 1827," thus approaching to the • ... • +.41111.K. 1119 very threshold of the charge, and then passes it withoat reply! And he then proceeds to discuss Sir Robert's attempt at defence : Sir Robert Peel's defence to these charges in 1849 may be thus fairly summed up :—He denied the statement ; and he supported that denial first by inferential improba bilities. Was it likely that friends to whom Mr. Canning's reputation was as dear as to Mr. Huskisson, Lords Dudley, Melbourne, and Anglesey, could have served under the leadership of a Minister who had thus treated that friend in 1827? Doubtless this argument would have weight, were it not fur the fact that it was not until the year following these adhesions to his Cabinet that Mr. Peel divulged, or is alleged to have divulged, the previous change in his views which constituted his wrong to Mr. Canning in 1827. He denied the existence of any letter to Lord Liverpool which had any reference to the subject, forgetting the fact that he had produced one in the debate of 1829. He denied that Sir Edward Knatchbull was present when be made that speech, though his name occurs in a division the same evening. He said Mr. Barrow was dead; and denied that that gentleman wrote shorthand; although on his return from India, six months afterwards, Mr. Barrow, in proprid perAomi, called on Lord George Hemlock, not a little anxious to attest his existence, vindicate his report, and discomfit Sir Robert. It was, however, agreed that the question could not be then properly revived. Just so. "It was then agreed that the matter " could not be properly revived ;" but Mr. Symons does revive the whole question, in such a way that it can scarcely be smothered in retrospective controversy. The fact which Mr. Symons mentions about the subsequent return of Mr. Barrow from India, and that gentleman's positive contradiction of Sir R. Peel, will be new to many readers. But what follows is, perhaps, the most damaging thing that has been ever said or written in connection with this subject : It is manifest that if the statement of Mr. Peel's change of views was made to Lord Liverpool in 1825, and Mr. Barrow's was a correct report of the speech in 1829, in which Mr. Peel said that he held in his band Lord Liverpool's letter begging him not to retire from office—which according to his own showing he wished to be spared the necessity of using—that letter must have referred to the grounds of Mr. Peel's wish to retire. Mr. Barrow, moreover, reports him to have said, " I hold in my hand a proof of the facts I have stated," the chief of those facts being his change of views. When, therefore, the attack was made upon him by Lord George Bentinck, which he took three days to answer (avowedly for the purpose of getting from Drayton Manor the whole of his correspondence with Lord Liverpool), what could have been easter than to have produced this all•important letter ? If it contained no reference to so remarkable and important an announcement by the Secretary of State to the Premier as a change of his views on the Catholic question, it was palpable that no such announcement could have been made in Parliament: and no refutation more complete of Mr. Barrow's report and of Lord George's accusation could have been given. Was it produced ? On the contrary, although Sir Robert Peel himself testified that he had preserved it carefully from 1825 to 1829, the elaborate search made in 1848 resulted only in three pri- vate letters which had no bearingon the subject—the letter paraded hut not read in the house in 1829 nut being either forthcoming or mentioned. Observe the force of the last sentence. And after weighing the facts on both sides with considerable judicial skill, Mr. Symons gives his verdict thus : The inferences which flow from these various facts are too painfully apparent to make it requisite to sum up or pass judgment on the matter; especially in a sketch of which the object is the purely prospective one of drasing a moral which may possibly aid in raising the future standard of statesmanship, and of placing in a somewhat stronger light than prevails at present the policy as well as duty of straightforwardness and unswerving principle in those public men whose ambition extends beyond the tenure of office, to posthumous reputation. By thus acting Mr. Peel would have saved himself from painful perplex;ty, from explanations which explained nothing, and vindica tions fatal to pretensions to principle. In the very first requisite to the hieher order of statesmanship his unfortu nate memoirs prove him to have been deficient—namely, single dealing. This revived controversy is not the work of a Conservative pen ; and we shall, at a fut ire time, have again occasion to refer to it. But in addition to what Mr. Symons has brought forward, we !Lust to-day supply the answer to the most ingenious plea under which Sir R. Peel tried to excuse himself. Nothing told better for his defence than his appeal ad homineni to Lord George Bentinck, and his inquiry, " that if the noble lord enter tained such an opinion of my conduct to " wards his relation (Mr. Canning) in 1825 and " 1827, why di , l he not say so in 1829?" Sir R. Peel played upon this question like a con summate political actor (which he undoubtedly was), but the answer has never been tively given. P°l4llll