Wellington after Waterloo by Neville Thompson

Author:Neville Thompson [Thompson, Neville]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain
ISBN: 9781317268710
Google: QUFACwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-12-22T01:26:22+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

HOLDING THE LINE

AS SOON as the formalities of resignation were over, Wellington hurried out of the capital as he had in 1830, ‘out of spirits and annoyed at all that had passed’, to attend to business at Dover and Stratfield Saye. Despite the succession of defeats in the Commons, he thought that the ministry had given up too soon, ‘but Peel would not stay, there was no persuading him.’1 The immediate loss of three by-elections in widely scattered counties by the Whigs when Lord John Russell took office and two MPs went to the House of Lords supported his view that the country was coming around to the Conservatives against the Whigs, Radicals and Repealers; but it took an act of greater faith to believe that the Conservative government could have hung on until this was reflected in the numbers in the House of Commons. It would be more difficult to achieve a majority out of office, but the prospects were infinitely brighter than three years before. The problem in the House of Lords was to avoid provoking the temporarily strengthened Whigs into a direct attack on it; but the Conservative peers could at least afford to take a bolder line in the defence of traditional institutions and privilege than the Duke had considered safe after 1832.

Wellington’s task was to prevent this defence from getting out of hand. Once again the Ultras dreamed impatiently of destroying the Whig government in the House of Lords and establishing a real Tory ministry. The Duke of Buckingham, reflecting on the course of modern history, insisted that the Lords should stand by their principles and not give way to the Commons: ‘By not acting upon these principles the Country was exposed to the Miseries of the Great Rebellion, & her Sovereign lost his Crown & Life. By similar blindness the French Revolution was brought on & convulsed all Europe.’ He insisted that as the Conservatives were hourly increasing in strength, it would be weakness not to fight for their principles where they could be brought to bear: ‘By not following this line we should crush the reviving hopes & feelings of the Country & materially strengthen the power of the Enemy.’2 But unhappy as the Duke of Wellington was with Peel’s conduct, he had to point out once again that he was the key to Conservative fortunes and that to defeat the government in the Lords without some assurance of a majority in the Commons would be absurd. As he told Lyndhurst: ‘Can we or can the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Buckingham and the Marquess of Londonderry form a Govt. for the King?’3

Despite this initial testiness on both sides, Wellington and the Ultras were soon working together in remarkable harmony. As the year was well advanced by the time Melbourne’s government settled into office, the cabinet announced at the end of May that it would proceed with only two major items of legislation, municipal reform for England and Wales and reform of the tithe for Ireland.

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