3t)8 RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 



" I now come to speak of the most distinguished man of the present day, 

 either in this or any other country. I allude to the Duke of Wellington. 

 It will at once be understood, that in characterising his Grace as the most dis- 

 tinguished man of the present day, I speak of him in his capacity of a general, 

 and not in that of a statesman. In this latter respect, however, I am disposed 

 to assign him a much higher rank than he is generally allowed to fill by those 

 who entertain political principles opposite to his. If on some great occasion 

 he has failed in his calculation of the probable effects of circumstances, and 

 the probable course of events, it is not to be disputed by his most implacable 

 foes that he has been, in cases of unusual difficulty, successful in others. The 

 mere fact of his carrying on the government of the country during the eventful 

 period which intervened between the resignation of Lord Goderich and the 

 dissolution of his own administration, is of itself unanswerable proof, — known 

 as it is by every one that that government was almost entirely under his own 

 individual guidance, — that his mental resources must be very far from those 

 of a common-place character. It must not only be recollected, that the period 

 during which his administration existed was one unusually critical as regarded 

 the posture both of home and foreign politics ; but that he had to undertake 

 the helm of government in the face of perhaps the strongest prejudice that ever 

 assailed any Ministry : a prejudice caused partly by the unpopularity of his 

 avowed high Tory principles, and partly by his memorable declaration, made 

 but a short time before his accession to the Premiership — that he would be 

 mad even to dream of filling that office. 



"And yet, not only did the noble Duke conduct his government safely 

 through the storms and tempests of the period referred to, but at the very 

 moment he made his ill-judged declaration against reform, it seemed to be 

 resting more securely than ever. That declaration was not only the most 

 foolish that he ever made — it was infinitely more so than his previous well- 

 known statement, that he regarded county meetings as farces — but it was de- 

 cidedly the most imprudent that ever proceeded from the lips of a Minister of 

 the Crown. It could not fail to prove, in the then existing circumstances of 

 the country the destruction of his government. It had hardly escaped his 

 lips, when he himself saw that such would be its inevitable consequence. 



" But that the Duke of Wellington, notwithstanding defects in his character 

 which prevent his being a statesman of the first class, is more than respectable 

 in that capacity, must be abundantly clear to every mind not blinded by pre- 

 judice. His conduct, first in the case of the claims of the Dissenters, and 

 afterwards in the case of the claims of the Roman Catholics, was such as no 

 mind but that of a statesman could ever have suggested. Though mistakiiig 

 the signs of the times, and ignorant of the state and force of public opinion in 

 other instances, he clearly saw those signs, and correctly estimated the force 

 of that opinion, as regarded the Test and Corporation Acts, and the disabilities 

 under which the Roman Catholics then laboured. I need not here remark, 

 that this conviction was not wrought on his mind by the arguments or repre- 

 sentations of his colleagues in the Cabinet ; for they were, to a man, obsti- 

 nately adverse to concession in either case : it was wholly the result of his 

 own reflections on the matter, and his clear perception of what the exigency 

 of each individual case demanded at his hands. Nor was the fact of his de- 

 termination to attempt the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and to re- 

 dress the grievances of the Roman Catholics, under the peculiar and difficult 

 circumstances in which he was placed by his own previous opinions and con- 

 duct, and the existing state of sentiment on these topics among his colleagues 

 and friends, — less a proof of his possessing some of the leading attributes of 

 a statesman, than was the fact of his perceiving the then state of public opinion 

 as to the expediency of such measures. That he succeeded in carrying them 

 in the face of obstacles which would not only have appalled ordinary minds, 

 but which seemed altogether insuperable, is a still further evidence of his pos- 

 session of those attributes. There was hardly, I believe, a man in the country 



