Peel’s ‘Hundred Days’: December 1834-April 1835

King William IV dismissed Melbourne’s[1] government in November 1834. It had only been in power since July when Earl Grey retired but the king did not like the direction of its policy towards the Irish Church. Initially he turned to Wellington. Wellington was reluctant to form a government, largely because he believed that prime ministers must carry authority in the House of Commons and recommended that the King turned to Peel. Peel became Prime Minister on 9^th December 1834 on his return from a family holiday in Italy.

Peel had little choice but to accept the royal summons though he privately regretted the King’s hasty action. Peel’s strategy of waiting and allowing the Whigs to discredit themselves had been thrown into disarray by what was, in effect, a royal coup. This was designed perfectly to stimulate the Whigs’ historical antagonism towards the monarchy and draw hem closer together. The result of this was that the King had forestalled the process of ministerial disintegration and deprived Peel of his best hope of constructing a viable alternative government. The King’s action hampered Peel in other ways since it quickly became clear that Lord Stanley and the other former Whig ministers were not prepared to join a government still seen in the public eye as ‘reactionary’ in character. This meant that he had to rely on the existing Conservative MPs to establish his ministerial team and a number of posts were given to Ultras. One Whig diarist, not without justification, characterised Peel’s ministry as ‘undiluted Toryism’.

Peel’s authority, as leader of the Tories was the result of his appointment as Prime Minister by the King. He did not become Prime Minister because he was leader of a party in the Commons. This reinforced his view of the executive nature of government. He was the ‘King’s minister’ first, leader of the Tory party second. This was an important distinction and was to prove central to his decisions during the ‘Bedchamber crisis’ in 1839 and the crisis over the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1845-6.Peel’s minority administration lasted just a hundred days ending in April 1835. He could not guarantee to pass legislation, especially after the agreement between the Whigs and O’Connell’s Irish MPs[2] (the ‘Lichfield House compact’), and believed that failure to do so would weaken the executive authority of government. The Conservatives returned to opposition.

The Tamworth Manifesto

Peel’s achievement in the 1830s was to make the Tory party more relevant to the needs of society without significantly broadening the parliamentary party. To do this he had to link the interests of property, whether landed, industrial or commercial, firmly to the maintenance of the Constitution. The minority administration of 1834-5 gave him the opportunity in his direct appeal to the new electorate in the Tamworth Manifesto of December 1834. It was Peel’s intention to start to convince the country and the electorate that there was a difference between his brand of conservatism and that of his predecessor, the Duke of Wellington. Norman Gash saw this as ‘an unprecedented action on the part of a government’. Published election addresses were not uncommon but the originality of the Tamworth Manifesto lay in its appeal to the nation.

‘I gladly avail myself also of this, a legitimate opportunity, of making a more public appeal -- of addressing, through you [his own electorate in Tamworth], to that great and intelligent class of society of which you are a portion, and a fair and unexceptionable representative -- to that class which is much less interested in the contentions of party, than in the maintenance of order and the cause of good government....’

This was a direct bid for the uncommitted middle class voter to broaden Tory appeal. Peel accepted that the Reform Act was ‘a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question’. He promised that the Conservatives would undertake a ‘careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical’. Where there was a case for change, he promised ‘the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances’.

‘With respect to the Reform Bill itself, I will repeat now the declaration which I made when I entered the House of Commons as a Member of the Reformed Parliament, that I consider the Reform Bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great Constitutional question -- a settlement which no friend of the peace and welfare of this country would attempt to disturb, either by direct or insidious means.....if, by adopting the spirit of the Reform Bill, it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual vortex of agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public estimation by adopting every popular impression of the day -- by promising the instant redress of anything which anybody may call an abuse, -- by abandoning altogether that great aid of government -- more powerful than either law or reason -- the respect for ancient rights and the deference to prescriptive authority; if this be the spirit of the Reform Bill, I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merely a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances -- in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions....’

Peel committed himself to moderate reform. He offered to look at the question of church reform in order to preserve the ‘true interests of the Established religion’.

‘Then, as to the great question of Church reform. On that head I have no new professions to make. I cannot give my consent to the alienating of Church property, in any part of the United Kingdom, from strictly Ecclesiastical purposes...With regard to alterations in the law which govern our Ecclesiastical Establishment.... It is a subject which must undergo the fullest deliberation and into that deliberation the Government will enter, and with the sincerest desire to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the Establishment, to extend the sphere of its usefulness and to strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people.’

This was designed to convince the Ultras that Peel was a committed member of the Church of England. His minority administration achieved nothing in legislative terms except setting up the Ecclesiastical Commission. Peel’s basic message was that the Conservatives would reform to conserve or preserve but this did not convince all his opponents. The Manifesto was seen as too liberal by some but the majority of the Ultras were prepared to go along with Peel albeit warily. They had little alternative. It sought to broaden Tory support in the country and convince dissidents within the party that Peel had taken account of their interests. This was accompanied by the gradual introduction of the term ‘Conservative’ in place of ‘Tory’. The Conservative MP for Sudbury, Sir John Benn Walsh, wrote in his Chapters of Contemporary History in 1836 that

‘A Conservative is a man attached upon the principles of the English Constitution, to the Established Church, to our mixed institutions.... The Conservative party, therefore, includes all those shades of political opinion, from the disciple of moderate Whig principles to the most devoted champion of ancient usages who agree in these two points -- attachment to King, Lords, Commons, Church and State, and a belief that there is a pressing danger of these institutions being overborne by the weight of the Democracy.’

The 1835 election

At the end of December, the dissolution of Parliament was announced and the general election followed in January 1835. If William IV had hoped that he might be able to use the royal prerogative, as his father George III had done in 1784 and 1807 to consolidate the position of his chosen minister, he was to be disappointed. The result of the 1835 election was a serious blow to William’s authority.

The 1835 election saw considerable gains for the Conservatives. The party won over two-third of the seats it had contested though it only stood in 60 per cent of the country’s seats. However, it failed to obtain an overall majority. The Conservatives won all 29 county seats and were the largest single party in the Commons with 273 seats. This success might be partly attributed to the reorganisation of the Conservative Party undertaken by F.R. Bonham[3]. Peel’s hopes of attracting support from disaffected Whigs were dashed when the Whigs made a post-electoral agreement, known as the Lichfield House Pact, with Irish and Radical MPs. Peel’s government fell over its proposals for Irish church reform and the Whigs, under Lord Melbourne, formed a new ministry.

 

The Ecclesiastical Commission

Peel was not in power long enough to implement any substantial legislation though his government did announce plans to legalise nonconformist marriages and commute English tithes (measures passed by the Whigs in 1836-7). Of particular importance was the establishment of the Ecclesiastical Commission that produced valuable results after the fall of the ministry and exemplified the spirit of his ‘Conservatism’. The Ecclesiastical Commission consisted of senior churchmen and Anglican politicians, including Peel, whose task was to prepare bills ready to present to Parliament to tackle the abuses that had been shown to be widespread in the Church of England.

The Church of England had been an easy attack for radicals for some years and publications such as John Wade’s Black Book had exposed some of the worse examples of personal greed and nepotism.  At one extreme, especially in the upper levels of the Anglican hierarchy some individuals were amassing fortunes through holding several lucrative appointments. At the other, many Church livings did not provide an adequate income to support Anglican clergymen. This was one reason why pluralism was so common with clergymen holding more than one Church living that inevitably led to the problem of non-residence. In 1815, over 40 per cent of parishes in England and Wales did not have a resident vicar and in a quarter of these there was not even a curate to act as caretaker.  The feeble Anglican presence in many of the expanding industrial towns, Peel believed accounted for the remarkable progress of Nonconformity in recent decades.

For Peel, it was essential for there to be ‘judicious reform’ to give ‘real stability to the Church in its spiritual character…I believe enlarged political interests will be best promoted by strengthening the hold of the Church of England upon the love and veneration of the community’.  Peel recognised that unless something was done quickly church reform might fall into the hands of politicians less sympathetic to the Anglican cause and possibly jeopardise the position of the Church as an Established body. By establishing a permanent body that involved the Church of England in initiating its own reform, Peel sought to encourage a greater sense of responsibility among Anglican leaders and hopefully shield the Church against further damaging attacks.  The Ecclesiastical Commission survived the change in government in April 1835 and over the next few years put forward a series of measures to reorganise Church dioceses and revenues, abolish many sinecures and combat the twin evils of pluralism and non-residence.

The end of the ministry

The new House of Commons assembled to 19^th February 1835. The Conservatives accounted for some 290 of the 658 seats compared to 150 in 1832 thanks to by-election gains in 1833-1834, some defections from the Whig benches and the advances made in the January general election. This was clearly insufficient to keep the government in power unless it could attract additional support from wavering members of the Whig opposition or from the few remaining independent MPs.

The meeting of Whigs, radical and O’Connellites at Lichfield House the day before parliament met resolved to join in a concerted opposition to turn out the Conservative government. It was clear from this point that Peel could not remain Prime Minister for long. First, the Whigs and their allies succeeded in replacing the Conservative incumbent as Speaker with their own nominee. Secondly, the opposition carried an amendment to the Address, after the King’s Speech outlining ministerial plans by 309 to 302 votes. This showed that the majority of MPs were not prepared to give Peel and his ministers the opportunity to govern that they had requested. Further defeats followed confirming the inability of ministers to conduct even routine business in parliament. Finally, on 7^th April 1835, Lord John Russell carried a resolution in favour of lay appropriation of Irish Church revenues by 27 votes. Peel resigned the following day.

Some leading Conservatives, including Wellington argued that the Conservatives were under an obligation to hold on to office as long as possible because they had the King’s confidence. Peel took a different view concluding that there was no prospect of converting the Commons minority into a majority and that his government’s position was untenable. Peel recognised that the succession of adverse votes posed a grave threat to the royal prerogative as the weakness of the executive meant that the Commons was being allowed to usurp many of the functions properly performed by the King’s ministers. He believed that by clinging to office the Conservatives would have given the Whigs the opportunity of building themselves into a disciplined party in order to deprive the King of his freedom of choice and compel him to appoint ministers he did not want. This was untenable to Peel who saw himself as an ‘executive’ politician who, when in office, served the King who had appointed him, not the House of Commons or a political party.

Peel’s problem in 1835 was he had not wanted the King to dismiss the Whigs in the first place. Once installed in office, he found himself saddled with a narrowly conceived ministry with which he was far from comfortable. Many of the old-fashioned Tories in his ministry were increasingly angered by the ‘Liberal principle’ and ‘Liberal measures’ of their leader. According to the diarist Charles Greville, an individual who did not particularly like Peel, he realised he was ‘not the Minister for them and they no longer the party for him’.

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[1] L.G. Mitchell Lord Melbourne 1779-1848, Oxford University Press, 1997, pages 142-210 covers his government in the 1830s.

[2] Angus Macintyre The Liberator: Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847, Macmillan, 1965 remains the essential study though it should be supplemented with Oliver MacDonagh’s two volume biography, The Hereditary Bondsman, Weidenfeld, 1988, and The Emancipist, Weidenfeld, 1989, reissued together as O’Connell, Weidenfeld, 1991.

[3] F.R. Bonham was the highly successful agent of the Conservative Party. Outside Parliament, Bonham skilfully reorganised the party’s electoral machine. Based at the Carlton Club, Bonham was crucial to Peel’s success in the elections in 1837 and 1841.

Peel, reform and opposition

 

The Tory party, decimated in the general election in late 1832, was in a demoralised state. It had been marked as the party that opposed reform. The reality was less stark. Unquestionably there were die-hard opponents of reform among the Tories. The ultras-Tories in Lords and Commons, outraged by Catholic emancipation in 1829, opposed parliamentary reform, municipal reform, church reform, factory reform and poor law reform. They lost on every issue.

Peel’s attitude to reform

Peel was not amongst them though he did oppose reform on principle as a significant challenge to constitutional order. However, he did not condemn the principle of reform entirely but believed the Whigs had gone too far. In March 1831 he said in the debates in the House of Commons  “I do not hesitate to avow, that there might have been proposed certain alterations in our representative system, based on safe principles, abjuring all confiscation and limited in their degree, to which I would have assented.”  Later in December 1831, he stated “I am satisfied with the constitution under which I have lived hitherto, which I believe is adapted to the wants and habits of the people.... On this ground I take my stand, not opposed to a well-considered reform of any of our institutions which need reform, but opposed to this reform.”

The clearest statement of Peel’s attitude to reform, however, came in his response to the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament in early 1833: “He was for reforming every institution that really required reform; but he was for doing it gradually, dispassionately and deliberately, in order that reform might be lasting....” This was a bold statement: the strategy of reforming to conserve. Change, if it could be shown to be necessary, was justifiable but must reinforce not undermine the Constitution and Britain’s governing elite. He accepted the reform of Parliament in 1832 as a fact of life but committed himself and his party to protect the institutions of the country such as the Crown, the Established Church and the Union with Ireland. This position was not designed to pacify the ultra right in the party. Opposition for its own sake, Peel recognised, would not restore the fortunes of the Tories. He needed to dismiss the widely held view that the Tory party was reactionary and supported by only a small, unrepresentative part of the population. In Parliament, Peel adopted the tactic of ‘constructive opposition’ to Grey’s and later Melbourne’s government. Instead of voting against each measure, he decided that the best tactic was to judge each issue against his principles and vote accordingly. In the 1833 Parliament, Peel only voted three times against the government. This distanced him from the ultra-Tories who wanted to see the end of the Whig government at any price. However, Peel believed that for the Tories to regain office, they had to be seen in a more positive light than the ultra-Tories’ tactics demonstrated. Opposition for opposition’s sake did not show this; principled and constructive opposition did.

Peel was dedicated to good government by men of efficiency and integrity. His was an executive view of power where authority lay in the hands of the elite with the education and expertise acting in the national interest. Government was there to govern. Public opinion had its place but Peel was concerned to reassert the proper balance between executive authority and extra-parliamentary influence that he believed had been altered by the crisis over reform. Like most of his contemporaries, Peel was not a democrat. The ‘people’, he believed, did not have the necessary education or judgement to make critical decisions. If Parliament surrendered to outside pressure, the quality of its judgements would be weakened and the interests of the nation jeopardised.

1832

Electoral disaster for the Tories in the December General election.

1833

Peel made a statement that he would support the Whig government when it acted in defence of law, order and property.

1834

Stanley and Graham left the Whig government over the Irish Church question. William IV dismissed Melbourne’s government [November] and Peel became Prime Minister of a minority Tory government; the Tamworth Manifesto.

1835

Ecclesiastical Commission set up. Tories gained seats in the General election but Peel is defeated by an alliance of Whigs, Irish MPs and Radicals; return to opposition.

1836

Peel worked for greater co-operation between Tories in the two Houses of Parliament.

1837

Peel, Stanley and Graham co-operated enhancing Peel’s position as Conservative leader; further gains in the General election.

1838

Merchant Taylor’s Hall speech emphasised Conservative support for preserving existing institutions in State and Church.

1839

Bedchamber Crisis

1840

Disagreements between Peel and Wellington over various issues; Wellington persuaded to abandon opposition to Whig Canada legislation. Conservative unity maintained.

1841

Whigs defeated on vote of no confidence [June] leading to a General Election [July]. Conservatives win and Peel became Prime Minister of a majority government.

Peel in the 1830s was not a leader of the opposition in its modern sense. He did not see his role as providing ‘loyal opposition’ to Whig measures and made it clear that he was prepared to support legislation aimed at maintaining law and order and property in 1833. Neither was he the official leader of the Tories, at least before the end of 1834. The Ultras were a problem for Peel. They distrusted each other. The Ultras feared that Peel would ‘rat’ again as he had in 1829 over emancipation. Peel did not trust the Ultras to act responsibly rejecting their view that politics should be determined largely by the interests of English landowners.

Peel and his notion of ‘constructive’ opposition 1832-34

Though he opposed reform in 1832, Peel was quick to recognise that there was no going back. Reform was here to stay. As early as January 1833, Peel wrote that ‘I presume the chief object of that party which is called Conservative…will be to resist Radicalism, to prevent those further encroachments of democratic influence which will be attempted…as the natural consequence of the triumph already achieved’. The move from the use of Tory to Conservative as the party label was crucial. In the popular mind, ‘Tory’ was associated with a bigoted and selfish opposition to all proposals for improvement and an uncompromising defence of the privileges and monopolies enjoyed by institutions connected to the Anglican, landed elite. For Peel, the term ‘Conservative’ allowed for the possibility of cautious change designed to reconcile those institutions with the prevailing attitudes of the modern world. To argue that this represented at attempt to ‘modernise’ the party neglects the extent to which the ‘Conservatives’ of the 1830s were an extension of the ‘liberal’ Tories with their reformist agenda of the 1820s.

However, in two important respects, Peel’s analysis of the consequences of reform in 1832 proved accurate. First, Peel predicted that reform would generate further demands for change. For many Radicals, the Reform Act did not go far enough and they called for an extension of the franchise, the secret ballot and triennial parliaments. This posed a real threat to the aristocratic and landed elite and given that radical sentiment was strong opposed to the power of this group, Peel believed that there would be calls for the reform or abolition of the House of Lords and the repeal of the Corn Laws. In addition, he expected a broad assault on the position of the Church of England from Protestant nonconformists who already had considerable electoral influence. Secondly, he rightly identified a fundamental weakness within the Whig government and argued that it would quickly come to rely for its continued existence on the support of a diverse alliance of interests in parliament and outside. In fact, from 1835, the Whigs governed only because they had the support of the Irish MPs led by O’Connell and a ragbag of backbench Radical MPs.

It is therefore surprising that Peel preferred to support rather than oppose Whig ministers in parliament. In March 1833, he defended the government’s Coercion Bill to combat agrarian unrest in Ireland and in July efforts were made to ‘whip’ Conservative MPs in order to save the Whigs from defeat on a radical motion for triennial parliaments. Peel only voted against the Whigs in three of the forty-three parliamentary divisions in the 1833 session. The following year saw the Conservatives come to the rescue of the government on two occasions. On the biggest questions, such as poor law reform in 1834 and reform of the municipal corporations the following year, Peel either actively supported the government or did not interfere. Peel was determined to resist the temptation of entering into opportunistic alliances with the radical or Irish MPs simply to embarrass the government. Choosing to shield ministers from the attacks launched by his own nominal supporters.

It suited Peel’s purpose to see ministers coming under attack from their own backbenchers. His underlying strategy is explained in letters written to his friend Henry Goulburn in 1833 and 1834 respectively: ‘Our policy ought to be rather to conciliate the goodwill of the sober-minded and well-disposed portion of the community and thus lay the foundation of future strength’ and ‘My opinion is decidedly against all manoeuvring and coquetting with the Radicals, for the mere purpose of a temporary triumph over the Government…If it [the government[ breaks up…in consequence of a union between Radicals and Conservatives, in my opinion, the Government which succeeds it will have a very short-lived triumph.’

However, he recognised that nothing could be more suicidal for the Conservatives than opposition for opposition’s sake since it simply drove the Whigs closer into the arms of the radicals and this did not suit Conservative interests. Peel’s policy of supporting the government was designed to perpetuate divisions between Whigs and radicals and thus prevent radical ideas from gaining ground among Whig ministers. Peel’s long term aim was to subtly promote the gradual disintegration and ultimate collapse of the government’s substantial parliamentary majority. Some Whig MPs were already, by the beginning of the 1833 session alarmed at the sight of their leaders coming under pressure from radicals and Irish MPs. Peel reckoned that these moderate Whigs could well move across to become Conservative supporters.

Although Peel may have had a clear idea of what ‘constructive opposition’ meant, it arguably shows the difficulties he faced in the period between the Reform Act and the minority Conservative administration of 1834-5. Peel was undoubtedly the dominant figure on the opposition front-bench but he was not in any official sense ‘leader of the opposition’. It was not until he was asked to form a government in December 1834 that he truly became the leader of the Conservative Party. Peel could not command the loyalty of opposition MPs: in March 1833 more than half of the Conservative MPs voted for a radical motion on currency reform to which Peel was strongly opposed. He also faced the continuing antagonism of the Ultras, estranged since Peel abandoned the Protestant cause in 1829 by introducing Catholic Emancipation. Peel made no attempt to gain their support and rejected the suggestion of a rapprochement in 1831 since he had no intention of building up an opposition party reliant on ultra support.

His efforts to establish a broad, central coalition by wooing moderate Whigs was partly designed to neutralise the ultra. By early 1834, there were signs that this strategy was about to pay dividends. Internal Cabinet disputes over Irish policy culminated in May with the resignations of four ministers (Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, Lord Ripon and the Duke of Richmond) raising expectations of an imminent ministerial collapse. This appeared to vindicate his constructive opposition to the government and his unwillingness to enter into alliances of convenience with radical and Irish MPs. He believed that moderate Whigs would be drawn into Conservative ranks only if his party acted responsibly in opposition.

Peel adopted a non-partisan approach to opposition politics. It represented a realistic response to the fact that, in the immediate aftermath of the Reform Act, the Conservatives were only a small minority in the House of Commons. It gave him the opportunity to establish his leadership on terms acceptable to himself and to stamp his personal authority on the Commons.

Was there a two party system in the 1830s?

Although the 1830s saw increasingly clear party divisions between Whigs and Conservatives, some important riders must be made.  Voting records in the Commons suggest that most MPs now voted consistently according to the wishes of their party leaders. However, a substantial number did not and some, though reducing in number continued to reject party labels. In this sense, Britain in the 1830s did not have a ‘two party system’ in the modern sense. The powers of the monarchy, though significantly diminished, had not disappeared completely. Peel became prime minister in 1834 because William IV dismissed the previous government, the last occasion, though this was not known at the time that the monarch would dismiss a government with a majority in the Commons. The monarch in the 1830s was more than a titular position and the notion of the ‘King’s minister’ was not an empty one. Peel’s perception was that he did not become prime minister because he was a leader of a party in the Commons but because he was appointed by the King. This may be a subtle constitutional distinction but it was central to Peel’s view of the role of ministers and did not alter between then and the end of his career. He saw himself as an executive servant of the Crown first and the leader of a party second.

In the 1830s, both major political parties were a fairly loose coalition of interests. Historians sometimes talk about the ‘Whig-Radical’ party in the 1830s. No such party existed. The ‘Radicals’ were a group of politicians who supported a wide range of political causes including nationalism or separatism for Ireland and further political reform; some were democrats, others were not. What they had in common was a belief in the importance of extra-parliamentary pressure and agitation to achieve their objectives. What they were not, in any meaningful sense was a ‘political party’.