on their proposal with regard to sugar duties. The Government resolved to dissolve Parliament. Sir Robert Peel, who was not aware of the intention of the Cabinet, then brought forward a vote of want of confidence, which he carried, after a long debate, by a majority of one. The general election, decided by the constituent bodies of freeholders in the counties, and 107. householders in boroughs, gave to Sir Robert Peel a majority of ninety-one over the existing Ministry. The Whig Ministers, however, thought it due to themselves and fair to the country to place on record their intention, had they been successful in the general election, to pursue the path of Free Trade, with regard to corn, sugar, and timber, by making some immediate reductions, thus opening the way to further changes which would save the people at a future period from monopoly prices on behalf of the West Indian planters, the Canadian producers of timber, and the landowners and farmers of England, who insisted upon prices of sugar, timber, and corn sufficient to protect their own interests.

It was thus that, as the patrons and favourers of Protection, in reference to sugar, timber, and corn, the Tory Ministry accepted office in September 1841.

CHAPTER III.

1846.

FAULTS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL'S POLICY.-HIS RESIGNATION IN 1846. TRIUMPH OF FREE TRADE.

THE faults which led to the fall of the Whig Ministry in 1841, and the causes which led to the election of a great majority ready to support Sir Robert Peel as a Minister a majority of not less than ninety-one-are sufficiently known. Lord Melbourne's Government had committed the error of conferring a benefit on the people by lowering the duty on letters to one penny, without at the same time making adequate provision to supply the temporary deficiency in the public income. Sir Robert Peel was not slow to perceive and to take advantage of this error, but in laying down the principles by which his Government was to be guided he neglected the demands which were sure to be made upon him for a repeal or reduction of the duties on corn, sugar, and timber. When, in the course of the following Session, a great number of manufacturers and tradesmen came to me to complain of the abolition of Protection, I remember that, among others, a boot

maker said, 'I work very hard all the week, but only on one day of the week can I afford for my wife and myself a dish of meat for dinner. It is very hard that I should be deprived of protection for my trade, while the great owners of land have the fullest protection for the corn which their tenants produce.' I could only say that I could not give him hope of immediate relief, but that the protection given to corn was a grievance so palpable and so enormous that the House of Commons could not long leave him without a remedy.

This defect made, in fact, the weakness of Sir Robert Peel's position, a defect of which one of his colleagues, Lord Aberdeen, was fully sensible.

On the part of the Whigs, I had declared my intention of proposing a fixed duty on corn. This was likewise an error. Cobden and Bright proposed the only natural course, that of a total repeal of the duties on corn. But the Whig country gentlemen were not prepared for so bold a measure.

I have already remarked that the Tory party made a great mistake, when, in 1815, the war being over, and the power of Napoleon, for a time at least, extinguished, they did not entirely change their policy, and, instead of keeping up the defence and promotion of measures which war alone could justify, and which the influence of Pitt caused to prevail in the House of Commons, they did not consider wisely, liberally, and maturely what was the policy which

in days of peace might be expected to prevail in Parliament and in the nation.

Pitt himself from 1784 to 1792 had espoused large and popular principles; he had in 1782, and even so late as 1786, proposed Parliamentary Reform. In 1786 he gave his sanction, by a treaty of commerce with France, to those principles of Free Trade which he had imbibed from Adam Smith. Even during the war, by combining the admission of Roman Catholics to office and to Parliament with the measures rendered necessary for the Union, he gave his solemn and deliberate sanction to the principle of religious liberty.

A statesman who could approve of Parliamentary Reform, however mitigated, of Free Trade, however modified, and of religious liberty, however guarded, cannot be esteemed other than a Liberal politician. But, as Canning truly said, the great bulk of the Tory party, professing to worship Pitt, adored him as the pagans of the East adore the sun-only in his eclipse.

In 1817 Lord Castlereagh advised Parliament to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. But, as Sir Samuel Romilly well remarked, the measure that was wellfitted to defeat a few secret conspirators was entirely out of place as a weapon with which to contend against the discontented mass of a nation.

The Tory policy from 1819 to 1829 was in confor mity with inspirations of Tory prejudice. In 1829 the

Roman Catholic claims were conceded, but they were conceded rather to avert the danger of civil war than as a homage to the great principle of religious liberty. The Tory party still clung to the maintenance of the exclusive and intolerant Protestant Church of Ireland; to the exclusion, by heavy duties, of foreign corn; to the refusal of Parliamentary Reform; to the refusal of admission of even the highest of the working classes to the privilege of giving votes for the choice of representatives in Parliament.

It is true that by fits and starts, when public opinion has been too strong for them, the Tory party, in the disguise of Conservatives, have made large concessions. In 1829 Sir Robert Peel, after a long and fruitless battle, in the course of which he contended that those who held the doctrine of transubstantiation were unfit to sit in Parliament, admitted the Roman Catholics to legislative and ministerial power. In 1846 the same Sir Robert Peel ceased to defend the Corn Laws, which he had upheld from the time of his entrance into Parliament. In 1865 Mr. Disraeli, who had succeeded to the lead of the Tory party, and had applauded the House of Commons for having refused to degrade the suffrage, seemed prepared still to defend the entrenchments of 1831. But in the following year he gave up the whole question and lowered the franchise, not, as his predecessors had proposed, by a gradual widening of the gate of admission, but by a