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

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

1120

After the death of Mr. Canning, Lord George
Bentinck did not take an active part in poli-
tics; and the charges which Sir It. Peel (in
1846) taunted the noble lord with not having
made in 1829, were then made by more fluent
and practised speakers. Lord George Ben-
tinck was not in 1829 a prominent member of
Parliament, and on the subject of the Canning
episode his lordship might have (then)
thought that enough had been done in the
ejection of Sir R. Peel from Oxford, and in
the opinions freely vented on his conduct.
Besides, Lord George Bentinck was a sup-
porter of the cause of '• Catholic Emancipa-
tion," which his illustrious kinsman (Mr.
Canning) had so much at helart ; and would it
have been for Lord George Bentinck then
(under such circumstances) to have raised a
purely personal question, when " Emancipa•
tiou " was before the Legislature ?

We are satisfied that all our readers would
answer in the negative; but this consideration
of Lord George Bentinck's position in 1829 is
of great consequence when examining the
artful manner in which Sir R. Peel, in 1816,
tried to escape from the charges brought
against him. The mock candour with which
Sir R. Peel pressed that plea was in the finest
style of that demeanour which gained fin•
him from Whig pens the stereotyped nick-
name of " Joseph Surface."

Mentoires du Due de Raguse.
KNOWING that for some time past very great
interest has been felt in the political and
literary circles of Paris with respect to the
memoirs left for publication by the late
Marshal Marmont, Duke de Raguse, we received
with much curiosity the first volume of them,
which has been brought out within the last
fortnight in that capital. It was said that
from the distinguished part played by the
Marshal in the wars of the first Napoleon, and
subsequently on the political stage--not of
France alone, but of Europe—his memoirs
would constitute the most remarkable addi-
tion made in our times to the inestimable
collection of that class of literature which
France possesses; and this assertion gained
great credit from the fact that in his will he
laid positive injunctions on his heirs to have
the memoirs published exactly as he wrote
them, without any alteration, correction, or
suppression whatsoever. even under the pretext
of improving the style. But we cannot
honestly say that the first volume at all
justifies the fuss that has been made about
the memoirs. It treats principally of the
siege of Toulon, the campaigns in Italy,
and the expedition to Egypt, and of the
part which Bonaparte and other generals, and,
above all, Marmont himself, played therein.
And it gives in extenso the letters which Mar-
mont (who seems to have been in the early
part of his career tin bon jeune homme) wrote
about his exploits, his hardships, and his ne-
cessities, to his admiring father and mother,
together with not a little of his correspondence
with Bonaparte and others, and even—save the
mark !—copies of orders and official despatches
on the principal combats. Nov, with all due
respect to the distinguished author and his ad-
mirers at Paris, we think the Toulon siege, the
Italian campaign, and the Egyptian expedition,
are subjects so thoroughly exhausted, after
the stupendous piles of volumes to which they
have given rise, that it is impossible to say
anything at all about them worth the trouble
of reading; and as to the letters and docu.
ments, which actually fill upwards of one hun-
dred pages out of the 430 of which the volume
consists, we regard them as perfectly unne-
cessary. In saying this we do not, of course,
prejudge the volumes, not fewer than seven
in number, which are yet to appear,—they,
probably, will be as interesting as this is dull ;
especially when they get beyond the downfall
of Napoleon, when Marmont (whose abandon-
ment of the hero caused him perhaps more
pain than that of any other of his companions
in arms) became more of a politician than
a soldier. It would be strange, indeed, if a
man who was more or less behind the
political scenes of the world in an epoch
of stirring events, and of remarkable policy,
has not something to tell the public about
men and things which it will be glad to know.

Paris : Perrotin.

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