LITMIR.BIZ

      THE HORSEGUARDS, FROM THE PARADE GROUND.

      Queen, the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Cobden, and firmly refused to dissolve Parliament.

      The next question that disturbed the Court was what would the Duke of Wellington do? The Queen was personally most anxious that he should remain at the head of the army as Commander-in-Chief, in spite of any change of Ministry. She had, on the occasion of Sir Robert Peel’s interview with her in December, when he first resigned, expressed this wish. But she knew that if the Duke consented he would unwittingly give great strength to Lord John Russell’s Government, and with characteristic shrewdness she judged that Sir Robert Peel might possibly regard with little favour a proposal which was rather like asking him to lend his rival one of his strongest colleagues. But her Majesty mooted the matter with such grace and tact, that Sir Robert Peel was not only eager to give his assent, but assured her that he would do everything in his power to remove any difficulty that might arise on the part of the Duke.49 At the same time, he also undertook to convey to Lord Liverpool, for whom the Queen had a very high regard, the letter in which she earnestly urged him to retain the appointment of Lord Steward. The Duke of Wellington was well aware of Sir Robert’s views, and concurred with him fully in sacrificing all considerations of party tactics to the wishes expressed by the Sovereign, whose popular sympathies interpreted national feeling with so much accuracy and precision. Thus it came to pass that when Lord John Russell’s Ministry took office in July, his Grace was quite prepared to receive from the Prime Minister a personal request from her Majesty, inviting him to retain his post as Commander-in-Chief of the army. But the grim warrior felt it his duty to explain definitely, in writing, to Lord John the exact significance that was to be attached to his consent. In a letter to Lord Lyndhurst,50 dated the 23rd of July, his Grace says:—“I told you that in consequence of her Majesty having conveyed to me her commands that I should continue to fill the office of Commander-in-Chief of her Majesty’s Land Forces, through her Minister, Lord John Russell, I had given my consent; but that I had explained myself to Lord John nearly in the very words of, and had referred to, a letter which I had written to her Majesty in December last, when her Majesty had herself in writing intimated the same command to me, on the occasion of the retirement of Sir Robert Peel from her Majesty’s service, and Lord John Russell having received her commands to form a Government. Here follow the very terms used:—‘It is impossible for F.M. the Duke of Wellington to form a political connection with Lord John Russell, or to have any relations with the political course of the Government over which he will preside. Such arrangement would not conciliate public confidence, be creditable to either party, or be useful to the service of her Majesty; nor, indeed, would the performance of the duties of the Commander-in-Chief require that it should exist. On the other hand, the performance of these duties would require that the person filling the office should avoid to belong to or act in concert with any political party opposed to the Government.’ Her Majesty was thus made aware of the position in which I was about to place myself in case her Majesty should communicate to me her official command that I should resume the command of her army.”

      These matters are of some little interest to the new generation, which has been taught that in England the personality of the Sovereign counts for very little in public affairs, and who are only too ready to run away with the idea that, under a discreet and taciturn Queen, the Crown, as Mr. Disraeli once said, has become a cipher, and the Sovereign a serf. Even in her inexperienced youth we see the greatest Minister and the greatest Captain of the age paying chivalrous deference to her Majesty’s personal wishes. It may be said that the incident cited is a trivial one. In our delicate and complex system of party Government no incident affecting the personal relations of a Minister of State, either to the Crown or to a Cabinet, is ever trivial. In this particular case let us ask what followed almost directly from the diplomatic success which the Queen won in persuading Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington to yield to her desire, that even under a Whig Government his Grace should still serve as Commander-in-Chief? Why, this. When Lord Lyndhurst—who, according to the ill-natured insinuations of Lord Campbell, was hankering once more after the Lord Chancellorship—began to intrigue for the purpose of reuniting the broken ranks of the old Conservative Party, he naturally turned to the Duke of Wellington after Peel received his suggestions with marked coldness. Had he won over the Duke to his project, he might have succeeded. But this very letter, which has been quoted, was written by the Duke to explain that, though most anxious to see the Party reconstructed, yet he had, at the request of the Queen, accepted the office of Commander-in-Chief, and was therefore no longer free to act in concert with “any political party not connected with the existing Administration.” It cost Mr. Disraeli the unwearying labour of a quarter of a century to do the work that might have been done in a few sessions, if Lord Lyndhurst had secured the cordial and active co-operation of the Duke of Wellington in his bold enterprise.

      But reconstruction at this time was not to be. Peel had no desire to serve again as a partisan leader, or to reorganise the Party he had felt it his duty to shatter, though his career was buried in its ruins. He and his followers joined neither the Protectionists nor the Whigs. They came to be known as the Peelites, and so bitter was the feeling among their old associates that petty objections were raised against their sitting on the Conservative benches after they had quitted office. In a pamphlet privately printed at Edinburgh Sir Robert Peel was derisively recommended to solve the problem of his seat in the House of Commons by taking “another hint from Aristophanes. As we have seen him before adopt from the ‘Knights,’ the admirable trick of the sausage seller, so now he seems to have borrowed a suggestion from the ‘Clouds.’ We are given to understand that in next Parliament he will soar above parties, for he has determined to suspend himself in a basket from the roof.”51