These Acts, debarring Protestant Dissenters from public office, were now more symbolic than real; in the past ten years there had been three dissenting Lord Mayors of London. But the fact that they were on the statute book was a grievance to a Nonconformist community that was growing in power and influence. A mass of petitions were sent up from the dissenting congregations. Only 28 petitions were registered against the repeal of the Acts.
But it was far more controversial to end the discrimination against Catholics. Emancipation was welcomed by Unitarians who argued that the principle of religious toleration was indivisible. But many Nonconformists, such as rank and file Methodists, were deeply hostile. This feeling was shared by many Anglicans - especially Evangelicals. The Colchester clergyman William Marsh saw Rome as ‘the mystic Babylon of the Book of Revelation’ and believed that it would be a national sin to ‘give power unto it’. Missionary concern for Ireland stimulated anti-Catholicism. In 1822 Archbishop Magee of Dublin had delivered a Charge in which he spoke of Catholics as
‘blindly enslaved to a supposed infallible ecclesiastical authority’.But the tide seemed to be turning.
The County Clare election
In the summer of 1828 the government faced a major crisis. In a by-election in County Clare, the Protestant landlord, William Vesey Fitzgerald, was challenged by O’Connell who, as a Roman Catholic could legally stand for election but could not take his seat. This posed the government with a huge dilemma. If Catholic emancipation were refused, it would provoke disorder in Ireland. On the other hand, if granted it would tear the Tory party in two and provoke outrage throughout mainland Britain.
The Ultras, as the opponents of Catholic emancipation were called, were already distrustful of Wellington over the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, but Catholic emancipation was seen as the first step on the road to Catholic expropriation of Protestant land and privileges in Ireland and to the ending of the Protestant character of the British state.
In July 1828, in a carnival atmosphere, O’Connell won the election by an overwhelming majority (2,057/982), presiding over a well disciplined electorate. It was now clear that the Catholic Association was set to achieve similar victories in other Irish counties at the next general election. Britain’s ability to maintain order in Ireland was thus in grave doubt. Fitzgerald wrote to Peel:
‘The organisation exhibited is so complete and so formidable that no man can contemplate without alarm what is to follow in this wretched country’.The election showed that the Irish landowners were losing political power to the priests.’
The Catholic Relief Act
Wellington and Peel reluctantly accepted that O’Connell had to be allowed to take his seat. During the summer and autumn the Catholic Association continued to hold meetings for the peasantry organized in semi-military fashion with banners, music, green sashes and cockades. In Ulster the response was to multiply the formation of Brunswick clubs, financed by small subscriptions in imitation of the Catholic rent and led by prominent members of the gentry and aristocracy. In November, Wellington told the king,
‘No-one can answer for the consequences of delay’.The essential point as far as the duke was concerned, was not to resist emancipation at all costs, but to ensure that there were adequate provisions to safeguard the interests of the Irish Protestants. In January 1829 Peel crossed his personal Rubicon when he told Wellington that he would be prepared to stay in office even if Catholic emancipation became law. The whole cabinet was now unblocked.
In February Peel resigned his seat at Oxford University (the most Anglican seat in the country!) and offered himself for re-election. He was defeated (755/609) in the by-election by the Ultra Tory, Sir Robert Inglis and had to find a pocket borough instead. It was a great personal humiliation for him. It branded the former ‘Orange Peel’ as a turncoat, and he never fully regained the trust of the Tories. The damage to his reputation was permanent. His shrewder critics argued that either he had been insincere or that he had lacked sagacity and foresight.
On 4 March the king wrote to Wellington that
‘as I find the country would be left without an administration, I have decided to yield my opinion that that which is considered by the Cabinet to be for the immediate interest of the Country’.This was an important moment in the history of the monarchy.
On 5 March Peel, now back in Parliament, introduced the bill to the Commons in a speech of four and a half hours’ length:
'Sir, I will hope for the best. … But if these expectations are to be disappointed, if unhappily civil strife and contention shall survive the restoration of political privilege; if there be something inherent in the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion which disdains equality and will be satisfied with nothing but ascendancy; still I am content to run the hazard of the change.'142 members voted against it. It passed the Lords on 10 April and received the reluctant royal assent on 13 April. The Act admitted Catholics to all offices except those of Lord Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor. As an anti-democratic safeguard, the Irish freehold qualification was raised from 40s to £10.
To the end the Protestant party fought a passionate rearguard action. They saw themselves as fighting to prevent the overthrow of the 1688 settlement. They were quite right to regard this as a hugely significant change. It was a great shock to many Protestant Tories that the iron duke should ‘betray’ the country in this way. The dowager duchess of Richmond filled her drawing room with stuffed rats; George IV complained that
‘everything was so revolutionary ... and the peers and the aristocracy were giving way to it’.The press turned on Wellington. Petitions were sent to Parliament and mass meetings held throughout the country. At a monster anti-Catholic meeting in Kent, 60,000 people gathered on Penenden Heath - as many as had been present at Peterloo.
The first Catholic to take his seat in Parliament was the earl of Surrey, heir of the duke of Norfolk, elected for the family pocket borough of Horsham. (The government refused to make the act retrospective, so O’Connell had to fight his seat again. This time he was elected unopposed.)
The opponents of Catholic emancipation were quite right to say that it marked a fundamental change in the constitution. Many of them never forgave Wellington and Peel for betraying the principles of the Glorious Revolution.
Paradoxically, Catholic emancipation could only have been carried by an unreformed Parliament. A Parliament more alive to public opinion would not have been able to pass it.
