Had Mr. Secretary Canning remained leader of the House of Commons under the Duke of Wellington, all that he would have gained by the death of Lord Liverpool was a master. Had the Duke of Wellington become Secretary of State under Mr. Canning he would have materially advanced his political position, not only by holding the seals of a high department in which he was calculated to excel, but by becoming leader of the House of Lords. But his Grace was induced by certain court intriguers to believe that the King would send for him, and he was also aware that Mr. Peel would no longer serve under any ministry in the House of Commons. Under any circumstances it would have been impossible to keep the Liverpool Cabinet together. The struggle, therefore, between the Duke of Wellington and ‘my dear Mr. Canning’ was internecine, and ended somewhat unexpectedly.
And here we must stop to do justice to our friend Mr. Rigby, whose conduct on this occasion was distinguished by a bustling dexterity which was quite charming. He had, as we have before intimated, on the credit of some clever lampoons written during the Queen’s trial, which were, in fact, the effusions of Lucian Gay, wriggled himself into a sort of occasional unworthy favour at the palace, where he was half butt and half buffoon. Here, during the interregnum occasioned by the death, or rather inevitable retirement, of Lord Liverpool, Mr. Rigby contrived to scrape up a conviction that the Duke was the winning horse, and in consequence there appeared a series of leading articles in a notorious evening newspaper, in which it was, as Tadpole and Taper declared, most ‘slashingly’ shown, that the son of an actress could never be tolerated as a Prime Minister of England. Not content with this, and never doubting for a moment the authentic basis of his persuasion, Mr. Rigby poured forth his coarse volubility on the subject at several of the new clubs which he was getting up in order to revenge himself for having been black-balled at White’s.
What with arrangements about Lord Monmouth’s boroughs, and the lucky bottling of some claret which the Duke had imported on Mr. Rigby’s recommendation, this distinguished gentleman contrived to pay almost hourly visits at Apsley House, and so bullied Tadpole and Taper that they scarcely dared address him. About four-and-twenty hours before the result, and when it was generally supposed that the Duke was in, Mr. Rigby, who had gone down to Windsor to ask his Majesty the date of some obscure historical incident, which Rigby, of course, very well knew, found that audiences were impossible, that Majesty was agitated, and learned, from an humble but secure authority, that in spite of all his slashing articles, and Lucian Gay’s parodies of the Irish melodies, Canning was to be Prime Minister.
This would seem something of a predicament! To common minds; there are no such things as scrapes for gentlemen with Mr. Rigby’s talents for action. He had indeed, in the world, the credit of being an adept in machinations, and was supposed ever to be involved in profound and complicated contrivances. This was quite a mistake. There was nothing profound about Mr. Rigby; and his intellect was totally incapable of devising or sustaining an intricate or continuous scheme. He was, in short, a man who neither felt nor thought; but who possessed, in a very remarkable degree, a restless instinct for adroit baseness. On the present occasion he got into his carriage, and drove at the utmost speed from Windsor to the Foreign Office. The Secretary of State was engaged when he arrived; but Mr. Rigby would listen to no difficulties. He rushed upstairs, flung open the door, and with agitated countenance, and eyes suffused with tears, threw himself into the arms of the astonished Mr. Canning.
‘All is right,’ exclaimed the devoted Rigby, in broken tones; ‘I have convinced the King that the First Minister must be in the House of Commons. No one knows it but myself; but it is certain.’
We have seen that at an early period of his career, Mr. Peel withdrew from official life. His course had been one of unbroken prosperity; the hero of the University had become the favourite of the House of Commons. His retreat, therefore, was not prompted by chagrin. Nor need it have been suggested by a calculating ambition, for the ordinary course of events was fast bearing to him all to which man could aspire. One might rather suppose, that he had already gained sufficient experience, perhaps in his Irish Secretaryship, to make him pause in that career of superficial success which education and custom had hitherto chalked out for him, rather than the creative energies of his own mind. A thoughtful intellect may have already detected elements in our social system which required a finer observation, and a more unbroken study, than the gyves and trammels of office would permit. He may have discovered that the representation of the University, looked upon in those days as the blue ribbon of the House of Commons, was a sufficient fetter without unnecessarily adding to its restraint. He may have wished to reserve himself for a happier occasion, and a more progressive period. He may have felt the strong necessity of arresting himself in his rapid career of felicitous routine, to survey his position in calmness, and to comprehend the stirring age that was approaching.
For that, he could not but be conscious that the education which he had consummated, however ornate and refined, was not sufficient. That age of economical statesmanship which Lord Shelburne had predicted in 1787, when he demolished, in the House of Lords, Bishop Watson and the Balance of Trade, which Mr. Pitt had comprehended; and for which he was preparing the nation when the French Revolution diverted the public mind into a stronger and more turbulent current, was again impending, while the intervening history of the country had been prolific in events which had aggravated the necessity of investigating the sources of the wealth of nations. The time had arrived when parliamentary preeminence could no longer be achieved or maintained by gorgeous abstractions borrowed from Burke, or shallow systems purloined from De Lolme, adorned with Horatian points, or varied with Virgilian passages. It was to be an age of abstruse disquisition, that required a compact and sinewy intellect, nurtured in a class of learning not yet honoured in colleges, and which might arrive at conclusions conflicting with predominant prejudices.
Adopting this view of the position of Mr. Peel, strengthened as it is by his early withdrawal for a while from the direction of public affairs, it may not only be a charitable but a true estimate of the motives which influenced him in his conduct towards Mr. Canning, to conclude that he was not guided in that transaction by the disingenuous rivalry usually imputed to him. His statement in Parliament of the determining circumstances of his conduct, coupled with his subsequent and almost immediate policy, may perhaps always leave this a painful and ambiguous passage in his career; but in passing judgment on public men, it behoves us ever to take large and extended views of their conduct; and previous incidents will often satisfactorily explain subsequent events, which, without their illustrating aid, are involved in misapprehension or mystery.
It would seem, therefore, that Sir Robert Peel, from an early period, meditated his emancipation from the political confederacy in which he was implicated, and that he has been continually baffled in this project. He broke loose from Lord Liverpool; he retired from Mr. Canning. Forced again into becoming the subordinate leader of the weakest government in parliamentary annals, he believed he had at length achieved his emancipation, when he declared to his late colleagues, after the overthrow of 1830, that he would never again accept a secondary position in office. But the Duke of Wellington was too old a tactician to lose so valuable an ally. So his Grace declared after the Reform Bill was passed, as its inevitable result, that thenceforth the Prime Minister must be a member of the House of Commons; and this aphorism, cited as usual by the Duke’s parasites as demonstration of his supreme sagacity, was a graceful mode of resigning the preeminence which had been productive of such great party disasters. It is remarkable that the party who devised and passed the Reform Bill, and who, in consequence, governed the nation for ten years, never once had their Prime Minister in the House of Commons: but that does not signify; the Duke’s maxim is still quoted as an oracle almost equal in prescience to his famous query, ‘How is the King’s government to be carried on?’ a question to which his Grace by this time has contrived to give a tolerably practical answer.
Sir Robert Peel, who had escaped from Lord Liverpool, escaped from Mr. Canning, escaped even from the Duke of Wellington in 1832, was at length caught in 1834; the victim of ceaseless intriguers, who neither comprehended his position, nor that of their country.
CHAPTER II
Beaumanoir was one of those Palladian palaces, vast and ornate, such as the genius of Kent and Campbell delighted in at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Placed on a noble elevation, yet screened from the northern blast, its sumptuous front, connected with its far-spreading wings by Corinthian colonnades, was the boast and pride of the midland counties. The surrounding gardens, equalling in extent the size of ordinary parks, were crowded with temples dedicated to abstract virtues and to departed friends. Occasionally a triumphal arch celebrated a general whom the family still esteemed a hero; and sometimes a votive column commemorated the great statesman who had advanced the family a step in the peerage. Beyond the limits of this pleasance the hart and hind wandered in a wilderness abounding in ferny coverts and green and stately trees.
The noble proprietor of this demesne had many of the virtues of his class; a few of their failings. He had that public spirit which became his station. He was not one of those who avoided the exertions and the sacrifices which should be inseparable from high position, by the hollow pretext of a taste for privacy, and a devotion to domestic joys. He was munificent, tender, and bounteous to the poor, and loved a flowing hospitality. A keen sportsman, he was not untinctured by letters, and had indeed a cultivated taste for the fine arts. Though an ardent politician, he was tolerant to adverse opinions, and full of amenity to his opponents. A firm supporter of the corn-laws, he never refused a lease. Notwithstanding there ran through his whole demeanour and the habit of his mind, a vein of native simplicity that was full of charm, his manner was finished. He never offended any one’s self-love. His good breeding, indeed, sprang from the only sure source of gentle manners, a kind heart. To have pained others would have pained himself. Perhaps, too, this noble sympathy may have been in some degree prompted by the ancient blood in his veins, an accident of lineage rather rare with the English nobility. One could hardly praise him for the strong affections that bound him to his hearth, for fortune had given him the most pleasing family in the world; but, above all, a peerless wife.
The Duchess was one of those women who are the delight of existence. She was sprung from a house not inferior to that with which she had blended, and was gifted with that rare beauty which time ever spares, so that she seemed now only the elder sister of her own beautiful daughters. She, too, was distinguished by that perfect good breeding which is the result of nature and not of education: for it may be found in a cottage, and may be missed in a palace. ‘Tis a genial regard for the feelings of others that springs from an absence of selfishness. The Duchess, indeed, was in every sense a fine lady; her manners were refined and full of dignity; but nothing in the world could have induced her to appear bored when another was addressing or attempting to amuse her. She was not one of those vulgar fine ladies who meet you one day with a vacant stare, as if unconscious of your existence, and address you on another in a tone of impertinent familiarity. Her temper, perhaps, was somewhat quick, which made this consideration for the feelings of others still more admirable, for it was the result of a strict moral discipline acting on a good heart. Although the best of wives and mothers, she had some charity for her neighbours. Needing herself no indulgence, she could be indulgent; and would by no means favour that strait-laced morality that would constrain the innocent play of the social body. She was accomplished, well read, and had a lively fancy. Add to this that sunbeam of a happy home, a gay and cheerful spirit in its mistress, and one might form some faint idea of this gracious personage.
The eldest son of this house was now on the continent; of his two younger brothers, one was with his regiment and the other was Coningsby’s friend at Eton, our Henry Sydney. The two eldest daughters had just married, on the same day, and at the same altar; and the remaining one, Theresa, was still a child.
The Duke had occupied a chief post in the Household under the late administration, and his present guests chiefly consisted of his former colleagues in office. There were several members of the late cabinet, several members for his Grace’s late boroughs, looking very much like martyrs, full of suffering and of hope. Mr. Tadpole and Mr. Taper were also there; they too had lost their seats since 1832; but being men of business, and accustomed from early life to look about them, they had already commenced the combinations which on a future occasion were to bear them back to the assembly where they were so missed.
Taper had his eye on a small constituency which had escaped the fatal schedules, and where he had what they called a ‘connection;’ that is to say, a section of the suffrages who had a lively remembrance of Treasury favours once bestowed by Mr. Taper, and who had not been so liberally dealt with by the existing powers. This connection of Taper was in time to leaven the whole mass of the constituent body, and make it rise in full rebellion against its present liberal representative, who being one of a majority of three hundred, could get nothing when he called at Whitehall or Downing Street.
Tadpole, on the contrary, who was of a larger grasp of mind than Taper, with more of imagination and device but not so safe a man, was coquetting with a manufacturing town and a large constituency, where he was to succeed by the aid of the Wesleyans, of which pious body he had suddenly become a fervent admirer. The great Mr. Rigby, too, was a guest out of Parliament, nor caring to be in; but hearing that his friends had some hopes, he thought he would just come down to dash them.
The political grapes were sour for Mr. Rigby; a prophet of evil, he preached only mortification and repentance and despair to his late colleagues. It was the only satisfaction left Mr. Rigby, except assuring the Duke that the finest pictures in his gallery were copies, and recommending him to pull down Beaumanoir, and rebuild it on a design with which Mr. Rigby would furnish him.
The battue and the banquet were over; the ladies had withdrawn; and the butler placed fresh claret on the table.
‘And you really think you could give us a majority, Tadpole?’ said the Duke.
Mr. Tadpole, with some ceremony, took a memorandum-book out of his pocket, amid the smiles and the faint well-bred merriment of his friends.
‘Tadpole is nothing without his book,’ whispered Lord Fitz-Booby.
‘It is here,’ said Mr. Tadpole, emphatically patting his volume, ‘a clear working majority of twenty-two.’
‘Near sailing that!’ cried the Duke.
‘A far better majority than the present Government have,’ said Mr. Tadpole.
‘There is nothing like a good small majority,’ said Mr. Taper, ‘and a good registration.’
‘Ay! register, register, register!’ said the Duke. ‘Those were immortal words.’
‘I can tell your Grace three far better ones,’ said Mr. Tadpole, with a self-complacent air. ‘Object, object, object!’
‘You may register, and you may object,’ said Mr. Rigby, ‘but you will never get rid of Schedule A and Schedule B.’
‘But who could have supposed two years ago that affairs would be in their present position?’ said Mr. Taper, deferentially.
‘I foretold it,’ said Mr. Rigby. ‘Every one knows that no government now can last twelve months.’
‘We may make fresh boroughs,’ said Taper. ‘We have reduced Shabbyton at the last registration under three hundred.’
‘And the Wesleyans!’ said Tadpole. ‘We never counted on the Wesleyans!’
‘I am told these Wesleyans are really a respectable body,’ said Lord Fitz-Booby. ‘I believe there is no material difference between their tenets and those of the Establishment. I never heard of them much till lately. We have too long confounded them with the mass of Dissenters, but their conduct at several of the later elections proves that they are far from being unreasonable and disloyal individuals. When we come in, something should be done for the Wesleyans, eh, Rigby?’
‘All that your Lordship can do for the Wesleyans is what they will very shortly do for themselves, appropriate a portion of the Church Revenues to their own use.’
‘Nay, nay,’ said Mr. Tadpole with a chuckle, ‘I don’t think we shall find the Church attacked again in a hurry. I only wish they would try! A good Church cry before a registration,’ he continued, rubbing his hands; ‘eh, my Lord, I think that would do.’
‘But how are we to turn them out?’ said the Duke.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Taper, ‘that is a great question.’
‘What do you think of a repeal of the Malt Tax?’ said Lord Fitz-Booby. ‘They have been trying it on in –shire, and I am told it goes down very well.’
‘No repeal of any tax,’ said Taper, sincerely shocked, and shaking his head; ‘and the Malt Tax of all others. I am all against that.’
‘It is a very good cry though, if there be no other,’ said Tadpole.
‘I am all for a religious cry,’ said Taper. ‘It means nothing, and, if successful, does not interfere with business when we are in.’
‘You will have religious cries enough in a short time,’ said Mr. Rigby, rather wearied of any one speaking but himself, and thereat he commenced a discourse, which was, in fact, one of his ‘slashing’ articles in petto on Church Reform, and which abounded in parallels between the present affairs and those of the reign of Charles I. Tadpole, who did not pretend to know anything but the state of the registration, and Taper, whose political reading was confined to an intimate acquaintance with the Red Book and Beatson’s Political Index, which he could repeat backwards, were silenced. The Duke, who was well instructed and liked to be talked to, sipped his claret, and was rather amused by Rigby’s lecture, particularly by one or two statements characterised by Rigby’s happy audacity, but which the Duke was too indolent to question. Lord Fitz-Booby listened with his mouth open, but rather bored. At length, when there was a momentary pause, he said:
‘In my time, the regular thing was to move an amendment on the address.’
‘Quite out of the question,’ exclaimed Tadpole, with a scoff.
‘Entirely given up,’ said Taper, with a sneer.
‘If you will drink no more claret, we will go and hear some music,’ said the Duke.
CHAPTER III
A breakfast at Beaumanoir was a meal of some ceremony. Every guest was expected to attend, and at a somewhat early hour. Their host and hostess set them the example of punctuality. ‘Tis an old form rigidly adhered to in some great houses, but, it must be confessed, does not contrast very agreeably with the easier arrangements of establishments of less pretension and of more modern order.
The morning after the dinner to which we have been recently introduced, there was one individual absent from the breakfast-table whose non-appearance could scarcely be passed over without notice; and several inquired with some anxiety, whether their host were indisposed.
‘The Duke has received some letters from London which detain him,’ replied the Duchess. ‘He will join us.’
‘Your Grace will be glad to hear that your son Henry is very well,’ said Mr. Rigby; ‘I heard of him this morning. Harry Coningsby enclosed me a letter for his grandfather, and tells me that he and Henry Sydney had just had a capital run with the King’s hounds.’
‘It is three years since we have seen Mr. Coningsby,’ said the Duchess. ‘Once he was often here. He was a great favourite of mine. I hardly ever knew a more interesting boy.’
‘Yes, I have done a great deal for him,’ said Mr. Rigby. ‘Lord Monmouth is fond of him, and wishes that he should make a figure; but how any one is to distinguish himself now, I am really at a loss to comprehend.’
‘But are affairs so very bad?’ said the Duchess, smiling. ‘I thought that we were all regaining our good sense and good temper.’
‘I believe all the good sense and all the good temper in England are concentrated in your Grace,’ said Mr. Rigby, gallantly.
‘I should be sorry to be such a monopolist. But Lord Fitz-Booby was giving me last night quite a glowing report of Mr. Tadpole’s prospects for the nation. We were all to have our own again; and Percy to carry the county.’
‘My dear Madam, before twelve months are past, there will not be a county in England. Why should there be? If boroughs are to be disfranchised, why should not counties be destroyed?’
At this moment the Duke entered, apparently agitated. He bowed to his guests, and apologised for his unusual absence. ‘The truth is,’ he continued, ‘I have just received a very important despatch. An event has occurred which may materially affect affairs. Lord Spencer is dead.’
A thunderbolt in a summer sky, as Sir William Temple says, could not have produced a greater sensation. The business of the repast ceased in a moment. The knives and forks were suddenly silent. All was still.
‘It is an immense event,’ said Tadpole.
‘I don’t see my way,’ said Taper.
‘When did he die?’ said Lord Fitz-Booby.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr. Rigby.
‘They have got their man ready,’ said Tadpole.
‘It is impossible to say what will happen,’ said Taper.
‘Now is the time for an amendment on the address,’ said Fitz-Booby.
‘There are two reasons which convince me that Lord Spencer is not dead,’ said Mr. Rigby.
‘I fear there is no doubt of it,’ said the Duke, shaking his head.
‘Lord Althorp was the only man who could keep them together,’ said Lord Fitz-Booby.
‘On the contrary,’ said Tadpole. ‘If I be right in my man, and I have no doubt of it, you will have a radical programme, and they will be stronger than ever.’
‘Do you think they can get the steam up again?’ said Taper, musingly.
‘They will bid high,’ replied Tadpole. ‘Nothing could be more unfortunate than this death. Things were going on so well and so quietly! The Wesleyans almost with us!’
‘And Shabbyton too!’ mournfully exclaimed Taper. ‘Another registration and quiet times, and I could have reduced the constituency to two hundred and fifty.’
‘If Lord Spencer had died on the 10th,’ said Rigby, ‘it must have been known to Henry Rivers. And I have a letter from Henry Rivers by this post. Now, Althorp is in Northamptonshire, mark that, and Northampton is a county—’
‘My dear Rigby,’ said the Duke, ‘pardon me for interrupting you. Unhappily, there is no doubt Lord Spencer is dead, for I am one of his executors.’
This announcement silenced even Mr. Rigby, and the conversation now entirely merged in speculations on what would occur. Numerous were the conjectures hazarded, but the prevailing impression was, that this unforeseen event might embarrass those secret expectations of Court succour in which a certain section of the party had for some time reason to indulge.
From the moment, however, of the announcement of Lord Spencer’s death, a change might be visibly observed in the tone of the party at Beaumanoir. They became silent, moody, and restless. There seemed a general, though not avowed, conviction that a crisis of some kind or other was at hand. The post, too, brought letters every day from town teeming with fanciful speculations, and occasionally mysterious hopes.
‘I kept this cover for Peel,’ said the Duke pensively, as he loaded his gun on the morning of the 14th. ‘Do you know, I was always against his going to Rome.’
‘It is very odd,’ said Tadpole, ‘but I was thinking of the very same thing.’
‘It will be fifteen years before England will see a Tory Government,’ said Mr. Rigby, drawing his ramrod, ‘and then it will only last five months.’
‘Melbourne, Althorp, and Durham, all in the Lords,’ said Taper. ‘Three leaders! They must quarrel.’
‘If Durham come in, mark me, he will dissolve on Household Suffrage and the Ballot,’ said Tadpole.
‘Not nearly so good a cry as Church,’ replied Taper.
‘With the Malt Tax,’ said Tadpole. ‘Church, without the Malt Tax, will not do against Household Suffrage and Ballot.’
‘Malt Tax is madness,’ said Taper. ‘A good farmer’s friend cry without Malt Tax would work just as well.’
‘They will never dissolve,’ said the Duke. ‘They are so strong.’
‘They cannot go on with three hundred majority,’ said Taper. ‘Forty is as much as can be managed with open constituencies.’
‘If he had only gone to Paris instead of Rome!’ said the Duke.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Rigby, ‘I could have written to him then by every post, and undeceived him as to his position.’
‘After all he is the only man,’ said the Duke; ‘and I really believe the country thinks so.’
‘Pray, what is the country?’ inquired Mr. Rigby. ‘The country is nothing; it is the constituency you have to deal with.’
‘And to manage them you must have a good cry,’ said Taper. ‘All now depends upon a good cry.’
‘So much for the science of politics,’ said the Duke, bringing down a pheasant. ‘How Peel would have enjoyed this cover!’
‘He will have plenty of time for sport during his life,’ said Mr. Rigby.
On the evening of the 15th of November, a despatch arrived at Beaumanoir, informing his Grace that the King had dismissed the Whig Ministry, and sent for the Duke of Wellington. Thus the first agitating suspense was over; to be succeeded, however, by expectation still more anxious. It was remarkable that every individual suddenly found that he had particular business in London which could not be neglected. The Duke very properly pleaded his executorial duties; but begged his guests on no account to be disturbed by his inevitable absence. Lord Fitz-Booby had just received a letter from his daughter, who was indisposed at Brighton, and he was most anxious to reach her. Tadpole had to receive deputations from Wesleyans, and well-registered boroughs anxious to receive well-principled candidates. Taper was off to get the first job at the contingent Treasury, in favour of the Borough of