Life and campaigns of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, K.G. ... / by Rev. G.N. Wright.

  • Wright, G. N. (George Newenham), 1790?-1877.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and campaigns of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, K.G. ... / by Rev. G.N. Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    304/452 (page 284)
    The unimportant place which Lord Melbourne then held amongst the aristocracy, attracted less attention to his reason- ing than it deserved; and, of those who did hearken to it, there were not wanting some who viewed it as mere popular declamation. That it deserved a much higher and more laudable estimate, was subsequently, and at no great interval of time, very fully proved; for, the patronage and the power conferred upon Catholics by his lordship, when he became prime minister of England, has left irrefragable testimony of the sincerity of his declarations upon the Catholic question. Other and more eminent men, his lordship’s contemporaries, brought forward popular measures, and received their reward in public votes of thanks, or in frequent returns to the com- mons’ house of parliament; but, when the pretended object of their ambition had been unexpectedly attained, retreated in silence from that field which they had occupied with such long and loud applause. Not so Lord Melbourne, in whose premiership Catholics were found at the Board of Trade, the Admiralty, Greenwich Hospital, in attendance at the palace of royalty, and seated on the judicial bench. This was com- pletely carrying out the first principles of his early policy. As Mr. Peel had maintained an able advocacy of Protestant supremacy for a a lapse of years—as he persevered in stating that his views of the errors of popery were unmitigated; and as he was inexorable on this question, until the Duke of Wellington became premier, the presumption is that he wras brought over to a different line of conduct, from that which he had hitherto pursued, by the influence and the arguments of his co-adjutors. This, however is unproved, and rests, solely, upon the conclusion which may be drawn from the faithful reports of public events made at that period, and which seems both probable and natural. It is to the duke, therefore, the Catholics owe the reluctant assent which Mr. Peel gave to the introduction of the relief-bill; and to the same origin they are indebted for the luminous exposition of that minister, of the grounds on which he recommended the adoption of a measure, to the rejection of which, the best etforts of his genius and his life had hitherto been uniformly directed.