TWO:The meeting of Parliament was approaching, and it was necessary to come to some final decision. Sir Robert Peel had a thorough conviction that if the Duke of Wellington should fail in overcoming the king's objections, no other man could succeed. It might have been that the high[294] and established character of Earl Grey, his great abilities, and great political experience, would have enabled him to surmount these various difficulties. In addition to these high qualifications, he had the advantage of having been the strenuous and consistent advocate of the Roman Catholic cause; the advantage also of having stood aloof from the Administrations of Mr. Canning and Lord Ripon, and of having strong claims on the esteem and respect of all parties, without being fettered by the trammels of any. Sir Robert Peel had, however, the strongest reasons for the conviction that Lord Grey could not have succeeded in an undertaking which, in the supposed case of his accession to power, would have been abandoned as hopeless by the Duke of Wellington, and abandoned on the ground that the Sovereign would not adopt the advice of his servants. The result of the whole is thus summed up by Sir Robert Peel:"Being convinced that the Catholic question must be settled, and without delay; being resolved that no act of mine should obstruct or retard its settlement; impressed with the strongest feelings of attachment to the Duke of Wellington, of admiration of his upright conduct and intentions as Prime Minister, of deep interest in the success of an undertaking on which he had entered from the purest motives and the highest sense of public duty, I determined not to insist upon retirement from office, but to make to the Duke the voluntary offer of that official co-operation, should he consider it indispensable, which he scrupled, from the influence of kind and considerate feelings, to require from me."Earl Grey had lived to witness the triumphant realisation of all the great objects for which throughout his public life he had contended, sometimes almost without hope. Catholic Emancipation had been yielded by his opponents as a tardy concession to the imperative demand of the nation. In the debates on that question in the House of Lords, Lord Grey was said to have excelled all others, and even himself. The long dormant question of Parliamentary Reform was quickened into life by the electric shock of the French Revolution of 1830, when the Duke of Wellington, with equal honesty and rashness, affirmed that the existing system of representation enjoyed the full and entire confidence of the country. This declaration raised a storm before which he was compelled to retire, in order to make way for a statesman with keener eye and firmer hand, to hold the helm and steer the vessel in that perilous crisis of the nation's destiny. Throughout the whole of that trying time Earl Grey's wisdom, his steadfastness, the moral greatness of his character, and the responsibility of his position, made him the centre of universal interest, and won for him the respect and admiration of all parties in the nation. Baffled again and again in the struggle for Reform, undismayed by the most formidable opposition, not deterred or disheartened by repeated repulses, he renewed his attacks on the citadel of monopoly and corruption, till at last his efforts were crowned with victory. And well did he use the great power for good which the Reform Parliament put into his hands. The emancipation of the slaves, the reform of the Irish Church, and the abolition of the gigantic abuses of the Poor Law system, were among the legislative achievements which he effected. His foreign policy, in the able hands of Lord Palmerston, was in harmony with his own domestic policybold, just, moderate, true to the cause of freedom abroad, while vigilantly guarding the national honour of his own country. By his vigorous diplomacy he had saved Belgium from being overwhelmed by the Dutch, and at the same time kept her independent of France. A capable Sovereign had been provided for her in Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widowed husband of Charlotte of England. Finally, when the Dutch declined to give way to the remonstrances of the Western Powers, a joint Anglo-French expedition was dispatched, which compelled the citadel of Antwerp to capitulate on December 23rd, 1832. Nevertheless, such was the obstinacy of the Dutch that the question remained unsettled on the fall of the Grey Ministry. Lord Palmerston's foreign policy was equally noteworthy in other quarters of the globe. If he could do little for the revolution in Poland, he could at least preserve constitutionalism in the Peninsula, where it was threatened by Dom Miguel in Portugal, and, after the death of Ferdinand in 1833, by Don Carlos in Spain. On the 22nd of April, 1834, Palmerston, in concert with Talleyrand, now French Minister in London, drew up the Quadruple Treaty, by which the two Powers undertook to deliver the Peninsula from the Absolutist pretenders. Its effect for the time being was remarkable; they both fled from the country, and constitutionalism was restored.
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