VI
Have we not seen that every word I have been quoting is practically true? Are we not beginning to acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining a Protestant Church establishment in Ireland in the face of a large majority of Irish Catholic representatives? Are we not beginning to question the possibility of upholding an exclusive church belonging to a minority, without a government in which that minority dominates? Do we not now acknowledge the glaring sophistry of those who contended that the Catholics having once obtained their civil equality would submit with gratitude to religious inferiority? Mr. Peel saw and stated the case pretty clearly as it stood; the whole condition of Ireland, as between Catholic and Protestant, was involved in the question of Catholic emancipation, and as the avowed champion of Protestant ascendancy, he said, “do not resign your outworks as long as you can maintain them, if you have any serious design to keep your citadel.” But the very nature of his argument showed in the clearest manner that we were ruling against the wishes and interests of the large majority of the Irish people; that we were endeavouring to maintain an artificial state of things in Ireland which was not the natural growth of Irish society;—a state of things only to be maintained by force, and which, the day that we were unable or unwilling to use that force, tumbled naturally to pieces. It is well to bear this in mind.
The anti-Catholic party, however, accepted Mr. Peel’s argument; they did not pretend to say that they governed by justice; and they applauded their orator for showing that, whenever there was an attempt to govern justly, as between man and man, and not unjustly, as between Protestant and Catholic, their cause would be lost.
His reward was the one he most valued. Mr. Abbott, then Speaker, represented the University of Oxford. Mr. Abbott was made a peer, and Mr. Peel, through the interest of Lord Eldon and of the party that Sir James Mackintosh calls the intolerant one, was elected in his place, in spite of the well-known and favourite ambition of Mr. Canning.
With this result of his Irish administration Mr. Peel was satisfied. All the duties attached to his place he had regularly and punctually fulfilled. His life had been steady and decorous in a country where steadiness and decorum were peculiarly meritorious because they were not especially demanded. In all matters where administrative talents were requisite he had displayed them: the police, still called “Peelers,” were his invention. He protected all plans for education, except those which, by removing religious inequalities and animosities, and infusing peace into a discordant society, would have furnished the best; and with a reputation increasing yearly in weight and consideration, resigned his post, and escaped from a scene, the irrational and outrageous contentions of which were out of harmony with his character.