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enfranchise Manchester, but to extend the borough of East Retford to the hundred of Bassetlaw. The House of Commons, which frequently prefers compromise to principle, tacitly accepted this arrangement. Lord John's Bill for disfranchising Penryn and enfranchising Manchester was passed, and the East Retford Bill was reserved to await the decision of the Lords on Penryn. The Peers in 1828 were less favourably disposed to compromise than the Commons. They declined to adopt so great an innovation as the enfranchisement of the largest unrepresented town in the kingdom, and they amended the Bill by extending the right of voting at Penryn to the adjacent hundred. The House of Lords has made many mistakes in the present century, but it has never committed a blunder attended with consequences more fatal to its own views. It sacrificed by its vote Lord John's measure, but it secured by it the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics and the passage of Parliamentary Reform.

The first consequence of the vote of the Lords was felt in the Cabinet. The party in the Administration which had desired the disfranchisement of both boroughs naturally declared that the compromise was over, and that it was free to vote for the total disfranchisement of East Retford. Mr. Huskisson, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Lamb actually did so; and, though Mr. Peel succeeded in defeating them, he did not attempt to conceal his annoyance at their conduct. Mr. Huskisson accordingly thought it right to offer to resign, and the Duke of Wellington, weary of differences which he could not heal, insisted on regarding an offer to resign as the same thing as a resignation, and accepted it. Mr. Huskisson was followed in his resignation by four of his colleagues-Lord Palmerston, Lord Dudley, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Lamb-and the Duke of Wellington was thenceforward at the head of a purely Tory Administration. The vote of the Lords had effected its first consequence-Mr. Canning's friends had been removed from his Majesty's counsels.

It is one thing, however, to accept the resignation of a colleague, it is another to secure the services of a competent

successor.

In Mr. Huskisson's place the Duke of Wellington selected Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald for the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Mr. Fitzgerald had no particular commercial reputation to justify his appointment. He had one disqualification which ought perhaps to have stopped it. He was member for Clare; and Mr. O'Connell, who had obtained an indisputable power in Ireland, determined on ousting him from his seat. To the dismay of the Tory party, Mr. O'Connell was returned. The Roman Catholic question had obviously entered on a new phase. Parliament still insisted on saying that a Roman Catholic should not cross its threshold, and the Roman Catholic electors of Clare were challenging this decision by sending the ablest Roman Catholic alive as their representative to Westminster.

It was at this moment that Lord John again came forward, and gave notice of an address to the King for the settlement of the question. But the notice produced general remonstrance, and Lord John withdrew it, giving 'way to his friends' opinion without changing his own.' He thus described the reason for his conduct to his friend Mr. Moore :

:

Never was such a clamour as was made in the London world against my motion. Ministers, Opposition, Huskisson, and all were frightened at the threats of a few stupid letters. And after all, the whole of my meaning was to say strongly that Government could no longer leave Ireland to go by herself, for it is not, as one of the Popes said of France, 'La buona macchina che anda sola.' What our Ministry will do heaven only knows, but I cannot blame O'Connell for being a little impatient after twenty-seven years of just expectation disappointed. The Duke of Wellington has hitherto thought that a touch of his would make all the world go right,

Credere fortunæ ;

Multumque priori

but I expect he has now found a task that makes his cheeks pale and his nights uneasy; although, at the same time, such a message as Fox brought down in 1782 would settle it all at least for twenty years more. You never do justice to that great man.

1 Lord Ellenborough's Diary, i. 162.

I am going to take the Carlsbad waters, but hope to be at Bowood for a couple of days in the course of August. Say all you can for me to Mrs. Moore.—Yours ever,

J. R.

The visits both to Carlsbad and Bowood were duly paid; and Lord John subsequently addressed himself with ardour to the cause of Roman Catholic Emancipation.

The events of the session, in which he had himself borne so large a part, the schism in the Administration, and the election of Mr. O'Connell, had filled Tories and Protestants with alarm. Identifying themselves both in Ireland and England with the ruling dynasty, and recognising that the House. of Hanover had been the constant opponent of concession, they enrolled themselves in Brunswick Clubs, pledged to resist the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. It was Lord John's desire to meet agitation with agitation, and to form a central association for the purpose of organising the country, and of petitioning Parliament in favour of religious liberty. Lord Grenville warmly favoured the proposal; Mr. Stanley and Lord John's immediate friends, Lords Lansdowne and Holland, were also in favour of it. Lord Grey, on the contrary, disliked it, and Lord Althorp shared Lord Grey's opinion. Lord Grey wrote on October 28

In whatever way the committee or association may be formed, whether its proceedings be public or private, if its object be to set on foot petitions throughout the country, my firm belief is that it will do much more harm than good to the cause. What has happened in Kent1 is, I fear, much too accurate an example of what may be expected generally in the country. In many counties the moderate Tories, and in some even the violent ones, are, I believe, disposed to be quiet from fear of the opposition which they may meet with, and from the trouble which an active exertion would entail upon them. My advice, therefore, would be to remain strictly on the defensive to resist, as well as we are able, any measures taken on the other side to promote petitions or Brunswick questions; but not to agitate the question ourselves. This opinion is undoubtedly founded on the belief that, in a great majority of the counties, if convened for the

1 A great Brunswick meeting had been held on Pennenden Heath.

purpose of petitioning, the result would be the same as in Kent. I shall be most happy to find that this opinion is an erroneous one; but, at present, from all the means of information that I possess, my conviction is that nothing could be more hopeless than an attempt to carry this vital question, by the force of public opinion, against the Government and the Court.

Lord John was not entirely convinced.

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ALTHORP: Jan. 4, 1829.

DEAR LORD LANSDOWNE,-I am quite ready to agree with any one and act with any one who will make the Catholic question a sine quâ non. But, as to your second principle of not caring who it may raise to office, I see no necessity of laying down any position of the kind. . . For my part I see no medium in politics between not caring at all about public matters, and wishing to see them well conducted, and I consider the principle, on which Huskisson professed to act last year, of stipulating for certain measures without regard to the men who were to carry them into effect, as a most pernicious innovation on old-established rules for the conduct of statesmen in this country. The sum of all this is that I shall be prepared when Parliament meets to join a party, I trust a very large one, to carry the Catholic question. And the further such a party will afterwards engage in the defence of public liberty the better. For yourself, I cannot help saying that I sometimes wish the pure gold of your integrity were mixed with a little more alloy of ambition and self-love, for then you might be stamped with the king's head, and pass current throughout the country.-Yours ever, J. RUSSELL.

No opportunity occurred for testing the comparative worth of Lord John's aggressive proposals and of Lord Grey's cautious abstinence. The refusal of the Tory Peers to accept the proposal for the disfranchisement of Penryn and the enfranchisement of Manchester was producing a fresh consequence. It had already led to the disruption of the Ministry, and the election of Mr. O'Connell for Clare; the last of these events was now compelling the leaders of the Tory party to deal with Catholic Emancipation themselves.

Roman Catholic Emancipation, from the form which it took, and from the manner in which it was carried, has a much closer reference to the life of Sir R. Peel than to that

of Lord John Russell. Lord John, and the friends with whom he acted, were more anxious to further a policy which they approved than to taunt the Ministers with their inconsistency in proposing it. In consequence, the session of 1829, though it was one of triumph for Liberalism, was one of rest for Liberals, and perhaps there is no period of Lord John's political career which requires less notice.

The session, so far as Lord John was concerned, was remarkable not from what he did, but from what he did not do. The extreme Tories were so angry with the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, that one of them actually asked Lord John to reintroduce his Reform Bill for the sake of embarrassing and punishing the leaders of the Tory party. Lord John himself told the story in 1834, and added that, even with the promise of increased Tory support, he declined 'to embarrass the Government of the Duke by seeking the aid of his ultra-Tory opponents.'

Perhaps, too, while the public were regarding Lord John as the champion of religious liberty, and were speculating on the progress of Liberal ideas, he himself was occupied with different and even lighter cares. The period, which is now associated with the victory of religious freedom, was with Lord John one of great literary activity. The second quarto volume of the Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe' was passing through the press in the autumn of 1828, and was published in the spring of 1829. In the Literary Souvenir of that year, an annual which was edited by Mr. Alaric Watts, the brother-inlaw of Mr. Wiffen, the librarian at Woburn, he published anonymously, or rather with the initial 'R,' and with the address Woburn Abbey, a ballad, 'The Captive of Alhama,' which was copied into the columns of the Literary Gazette, whose editor, 'in paying our tribute of distinction to this elegant recreation,' 'rightly attributed it to Lord John.'1

1 Lord John's nearest relatives were of opinion that Lord John never used the initial 'R.,' and thought that the ballad could not be by him. But his authorship is placed beyond dispute by a letter, sold at Messrs. Sotheby's on May 2, 1888, from Lord John to Mr. Watts, in which Lord John says, 'I am

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