II
There are situations which impose a policy on ministers who wish to remain ministers—this was one. It was now necessary to “mark time,” if I may use a military figure of speech, making as little dust as possible. Mr. Peel tried to do so; dropping the Act against the Catholic Association, which had been found wholly inefficient, and endeavouring not to provoke agitation, though he could not quiet it.
In the meantime, the tendency of opinion against religious disqualifications manifested itself on a motion of Lord John Russell, introduced in a speech of remarkable power and ability, for removing the Test and Corporation Acts. Mr. Peel had stated with emphasis, during the administration of Mr. Canning, that he would always oppose the repeal of these Acts, and he now did oppose it; but evidently with the feeling that his opposition, which was weak, would be ineffectual. A majority, indeed, of forty-four in the House of Commons declared against him; and the Government then took up the measure and carried it through both Houses. Mr. Peel, in his memoirs, gives as his reason for this course, that if he had gone out of office he would have caused great embarrassment in the conduct of affairs in general, and not altered the disposition of Parliament as to the particular question at issue; and that if he remained in office he was obliged to place himself in conformity with the feeling of the House of Commons. Almost immediately afterwards, that House pledged itself, by a majority of six, to take the state of Ireland into consideration; and, though this majority was overruled by an adverse one in the House of Lords, the language of the Duke of Wellington and of Lord Lyndhurst, who both admitted that things could not remain as they were, left little doubt that a decided system of repression or concession was about to be attempted, and that the latter system was the more likely one.