REMINISCENCES OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4354, 4 March 1875, Page 3

REMINISCENCES OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

Sir Robert Reel has almost passed into the twilight between living memory and history, which is the darkest period for a statesman’s fame, and a younger generation may thank both Lord Balling and Mr. Greville for seeing with their eyes, as it were, though in posthumous papers, glimpses of one who was for a quarter of a century the greatest member of the English Parliament, and one of the most eminent public men in Europe, He appears in Lord Balling’s portrait as the representative man of his age, the impersonation of a great political epoch; but as its Minister, not as its moulder—as the exponent, not, the inspirer of its spirit. If Prince Bismarck supplies an instance to those who contend that great men exercise an influence over the course of human affairs which baffles the attempt to construct a science of history, reducing its movements to general laws, Sir Robert Peel affords an example to those who believe in the complete subordination of individual agents,; however remarkable, to social force. In the: literal, if not in the opprobious sense of the' word. Peel was a time-server. He watched the clock, and when it struck the hour he was the man, but not a moment sooner. His wary and almost stealthy movement in politics resembled his bodily movement on the floor of the House of Commons, as Lord 'Balling describes it—“like that.of a cat, but of a cat well acquainted with the ground it was moving over;' the step; showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it ■ glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.” To some of his early adherents his whole political life appeared one long course of hypocrisy and treachery, of the concealment of his real opinions until it served his ambition to avow them, and of sudden changes in policy which were deliberate betrayals of his supporters. A cumulative indictment is brought against him, that from the first to the last act of his public life he was acting a part—-the part of a traitor, ; In 1810 he professed an opinion in favor of the existing currency laws. In 1810 he carried , the Act which restored cash payments. He supported the Test and Corporation Acts one year, and repealed them the next. The trusted leader of the Protestant party, he carried ; Catholic; emancipation. The champion of protection to' agriculture, he suddenly outbid his Whig rivals, and established free trade in corn. His conduct in relation to- the income-tax is generally left out of the indictment, blit here,.top, we find the same contradictions. In 1830 he treated Mr. Huskisson’s suggestions of such a tax as not to be listened to ; in,1833: he commended Lord A 1 thorp for not resorting .to it; in 1835 he spoke of it as..a “scourge,” and, warned the agricultural interest against it; in' 1810 he supported Mr. Baring’s attempt to supply the deficiency in the revenue by indirect instead of direct taxation ;, in 1842 he, himself suddenly brought in an income-tax, but as a temporary expedient, to be limited to three years; in 1845 he renewed it: for three years more, with an intimation that it -might be expedient at the end of that period to continue it. 1 : 1 ■ : ‘

The cumulative charge of political treachery thus looks at first Bight-.exceedingly strong, yet it will not bear investigation in detail.. The cases of which it is made up should be weighed rather than counted. As for his early -change on the currency laws, it is unreasonable to suppose that in 1810, when he was but twentytwo,_he could have.mastered, the question,- or to censure him for displaying an advance in economic science in 1819. Roman Catholic emancipation he accepted as the less of two; evils, and he did.so at the cost of much certain obloquy and enmity, and of his much-; prized seat for ’Oxford. Even his accusers admit that in 1820 he could no longer resist emancipation, but they urge that he had for several years concealed a conviction that it was irresistible. The truth seems to be that he never really- abandoned his. objections to the measure, but they were in the end out-; weighed by other, considerations, and he carried the Emancipation 1 Act reluctantly, as the alternative to civil war, and. as a , remote and contingent danger to, be preferred to a certain and immediate calamity.' -We are inclined to think- that Lord Balling pays an unmerited compliment-to his oratory at~ the'expense of his candor, when' he- calls, it'“a consummate touch of art : on the part of the, orator” for Peel.to have said in reply to Sir Charles Wetherell t “The credit.of settling..the question belongs to others, not to me, lit belongs, in spite of my opposition, to Mr. Eox, to. Mr. Grattan, to. Mr. Plunkett, to the gentlemen opposite, - and to ah illustrious and light honorable 1 friend of mine (Mr, Canning), is now no more.” Oh .the reform question, again, Peel had ah opportunity pf / ; snatching ..the solution'from the hands of his politic!! rivals, but he neglected it,'and opposed, the’measure to the last, - 1 , : ' - . • ■ ; The cumulative case thus breaks down, but: it does hot'follow that every part of it does. Count Cavour predicted years before thc abolitioh of the com laws that Peel would achieve it. On what did he found the prediction ? Was it because, as an Italian politician, he thought the end justified the means, and expected dissimulation from a statesman ? WaS it because he saw through Peel, and saw that he was act-; ing.a part 2 Or was it simply because he him-; self saw the way to free trade on the part of, England, and was convinced, that Peel; too must see it at last 2 Was it that he had watched the working of Peel’s mind, and. found that it was slow but sure, not embracing at once a new policy in its entirety, but sur- , veying it cautiously;Onjatl sides, .and at length, taking it all in ? ft must be remembered that Peel never disputed the policy of free trade as a .general principle, and that ho only resisted its application to the British com trade on the ground of established and vested interests, and particular circumstances.. The Irish famineovercame all such sjsjcial considerations, and ; \i- may he that Peel was leas far-seeing than ' v-Caimur, and had -not contemplated, down to the famine, the opening of the ports in his own day. . Tfc is sometimes urged against him that he went beyond the exigency of the famine, and abolished the com duty, when ho need Only have suspended it. The error he really committed at the last, 1 was an opposite one; ho left a permanent shilling duty on foreign; com, thereby raising the' coat of all, home- 1 "rowu com to consumers for an infinitesimal gain l to the coifers of the State, thus showing “Sir Kobert Teel : An Historical Sketch." By lord bailing and Bulwer. (London; Bentley and Sou, 1874).

that even in 1816, 'he had not fully mastered the principles of free trade. • The success of free trade has, in fact, been far greater that even its advocates foresaw, and there really did appear reasons beforehand to apprehend that it would temporarily injure the British farmer, and permanently lower the value of land. There were, therefore, some plausible practical objections to it, aiid Peel s mind, cast in a Conservative mould, and cautious to excess, was one especially liable to what Archbishop Whatley has palled the fallacy of objections, which consists in inferring that because there are some objections to a measure they ought to prevail, without considering whether they are not overbalanced by consideration, on the other side. It should not be forgotten, too, that Peel had_ imbibed from the writings of Ricardo the pernicious doctrine that taxes on food cannot fall on the laboring classes, and that but for this dogma the com laws would never have passed, as Cohden himself emphatically admitted. Peel seems, in short, to have been the representative of his age in its processes as in its results, its struggles as well as its achievements, its opposition to reforms as well as its accomplishment of them. He represented a period during which, on .the one hand, the principle of religious freedom and civil equality gained the ascendant, but not without ah arduous contest, and in the midst of prejudices and' fear’s ; and during which, on the other hand, the principle of commercial liberty likewise forced its way to acceptance against fierce opposition. Peel represented in both cases the opposing forces as well as those which were finally victorious. In the depths of his own wary and balancing mind, probably the same battle between opposite views took place that was waged between contending parties in Parliament and in the country. His was not an original, a creative, or a far-seeing intellect; he took his impressions from his epoch in place of stamping his own image upon it. It involves a contradiction to bring, as his traducers have done, the double charge against him of lack of prescience, and of deliberate treachery, but his political morality con only be cleared of dishonor at some cost to his intellectual reputation. It must be added, too, that if he did not lower the standard of political morality, he certainly did not raise it; though in this respect he acted only, not only as his rivals, but also as his successors have done. And if he did not act a false part throughout his political life, it would seem that his own greatness was, though perhaps unconsciously, generally its dominant object. The ability and skill displayed.by Peel in financial administration between 18-12 and 1816 are beyond question, but there is one of his measures during that period which has lost the magnitude which it once assumed. The storms which raged round his Bank Charter Apt of 1811 are laid ; few or none now see in it either all the good or all the evil for which it was then enthusiastically applauded on one. 1 side, and furiously opposed on another. It has not done, and could not do all the good that was expected of it ; it 'has not prevented over-speculation, inflations aud collapses of credit,-great fluctuations of prices, aud disastrous commercial crises ; ho mode of remilating the issue of bank notes could achieve such results, and the arguments of the advocates of the Bank Charter Act only show that they, including Sir Robert Peel himself, had not mastered'the .first principles of currency. This boasted measure could neither prevent nor arrest drains of bullion, and quite a different mode of dealing with them has been resorted to by the Bank. On the hand, the act has not done the mischief which its opponents predicted. It has placed the principle of convertibility beyond dispute ; and the acrimony with which it was once assailed almost passes the comprehension of: the economists of the present day, although they are -by no means remarkable for tolerance. In short, the importance of the Act was immensely overrated. Lord Hailing has not been happy in his comments on Peel’s earlier Currency Act of 1819. Speaking of the inconvertible currency which preceded that measure, he says the value of the note depended on the credit of the bank, and “it was utterly impossible that a bank note not immediately convertible into gold could have precisely the same value, as gold, nor is there any possibility of keeping paper money on an equality with metallic money, except by, making the one exchangeable for the other.” Had Lord Balling studied Mr. Mill’s exposition of the subject he would have known that the value of an incontrovertible currency depends on .its quantity, not on its quality, and that’ it, might be made, by attention to the price of bullion, and regulating the issues accordingly, to conform exactly in all its variations to 1 those of a convertible one. ’

Lord Balling’s sketch hardly does justice to Sir Kobert Peel’s adininistratibn in the Home Office, in 1825 and 1826, or To .the)reforms;of the criminal law which,he then introduced. They were not only important reforms; in criminal law, but also important consolidations of the law, tending to, future consolidations; and they are treated accordingly by Bentham’s interpreter, Bumont, as stepa towards codification. Peel reduced to a single statute all the Acts relating to .bankruptcy, he consolidated the laws relating to theft, and threw the jury laws into the form of a cocle. ■ Had he lived to our time, f he would in all probability have made the consolidation of the law one of his principal subjects. It is one of the cardinal defects in the statesmanship of his great successor, Mr. Gladstone, that he has never .displayed the interest in the reform of our jurisprudence .with which Peel’s . example might have inspired him. ■ Lord Calling s sketch is remarkably deficient, in anecdote, though Lord Brougham's “ Lives of Statesmen” had proved that Sketches .of equal brevity need .hot be devoid of interest and illustration of that kind. The contemporaneous - publication of fhe «GrevilleMemoirs,” however, makes this defect, of less importance, and the -two worics together go far to enable the present generation to reproduce before its mind, the image of a statesman who, in his faults and - infirmities,, as well as in ins virtues and great qualities, was the representative of, his age and country. I. E. Olippb Leslie, in The Academy. ■ . .. .