The Press.
London, England, 1857-09-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 26, 1857.

the Tory party. Sooner than succumb to the
Duke of WELLINGTON, Lord ELnON, and Mr.
PEEL, Mr. CANNING made a coalition with a
portion of the Whigs. In the meanwhile, the
Duke of YORK (the next heir to the Throne
died, and prodigious consequences hung upon
that event. OltonoE IV. was then in serious
ill health, and the next heir was the Duke
of CLARENCE, who espoused the Canning views
of Catholic nuancipation. Then CANNING
died, and left a feeble Ministry behind him.
The Whigs, also, had been weakened by the
fact that they had split amongst themselves
on th,, question of the support to be given to
Mr. CANNING. The Duke of WELLINGTON and
Mr. PEEL succeeded the Canningites as Pro-
testant and anti-Catholic Minister in 1828, and
in 1829, acting no doubt on most honourable
motives, and making personal sacrifices, those
great personages carried the " Catholic Ques-
tion," and a great blow was given to the
claims and honour of the Tory party by the
mode in which that measure was passed.

It was not because Romanists were admitted
to the Legislature that the Tory party suffered
in 1829, but because party considerations and
natural political feelings were apparently con-
temned and held cheap by the. Ministers of
the day. As we said before, we sincerely re-
spect the political memories of the Duke of
WELLINGTON and Sir R. PEEL, but we think
there can be no doubt but that they greatly
weakened the Conservative connection by their
peculiar mode of dealing with the " Catholic
Question" in 1829 It would have been far
better that it should have been carried by a
Whig Cabinet than that a Protestant Ministry
should have conceded it without securities.
Above all, the spectacle of the victor of %Va..
terloo and the then Member for the Univer-
sity of Oxford, whose fame ha,l been chiefly
founded on anti Catholic politics, being com-
pelled to succumb to an organised league of
the Irish agitators, had the worst effect.
Hence the English political unions ; hence,
also, the organised professional agitations of
subsequent years.
But why do we retrace those causes now?
Simply Lecause we desire to point plainly to
the real reasons why the Conservatice party was
able to offer so little effectual resistance to the
measures of 1831 and 1832. The death of the
Duke of YORE, the Canning schism, the un-
popularity of GEORGE IV., and, above all, the
way in which " Emancipation" was resisted in
1828, and rapidly conceded in 1829, had in-
jured the power and prestige of the Tory
party. The Duke of WELLINGTON carried things
with a high hand in 1829, and it is not the
least reflection on the memory of that illus-
trious personage to say that at that time his
Grace did not understand " Government by
Party " as well as he did in subsequent years,
when at many a crisis the Sovereign in diffi-
culties " sent for the Duke of WELLINGTON."
The Duke of RICHMOND, and many members of
the high Protestant aristocracy, felt that the
Government of England could not be carried
on by a system savouring of military abso-
lutism ; and the result was that the Grey
Ministry was formed, just after the Duke of
WELLINGTON had delivered an intense pane-
gyric upon the then existing system of Par-
liamentary representation.
The celebrated speech of the'Duke of WEL-
LINGTON against Reform, in 1830, was not BO
much illtinied as incautioasly expressed.
There were many waverers then upon the
subject of Reform, even in Ministerial circles;
the larger body of the Canningites were then
detached frpm the Ministerial Tories, and it
is within our own knowledge that there were
then many thorough-going Church and State
Tories who believed that PITT, if he were then
living, would have given England a Reform
Bill. It cannot be concealed that the mode
in which the Catholic question was conceded
was in itself a Parliamentary Reform. The
forty shilling freeholders of Ireland were dis-
franchised, as a quasi security for Protestant
interests in Ireland; a new Parliamentary
franchise was enacted, and the Reformers of
England were thereby furnished with a pre•
eedent which they knew how to apply. Sir
ROBERT PEEL had kept himself uncommitted
upon " Reform." He had taken little part in
its debates, and of all questions that could
be agitated, it was that least suited to the