Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/206

 Wellesley  as to the Canada bill. He was opposed to the union of the upper and lower provinces because he thought it was a step towards severing their connection with Great Britain, while Peel had no great repugnance to such a result (, ii. 337, &c., iii. 389; Speeches, 30 June 1840;, pp. 241, 252). The bedchamber question, on which the duke went along with Peel, saved the conservatives from office in 1839; and the Melbourne ministry continued to lose ground till it was brought to an end on 30 Aug. 1841 by a vote of want of confidence carried by a majority of ninety-one in the new parliament.

In 1838 he had received with warmth his old adversary, Marshal Soult, who came to England as ambassador at the coronation of Queen Victoria; at that ceremony, as well as at the queen's wedding, Wellington figured prominently as lord high constable of England.

In Peel's second ministry Wellington, at his own suggestion, had a seat in the cabinet without office, with the leadership in the lords. Since 1837 he had had several epileptic fits, usually brought on by cold or want of food, for he often went twenty-four hours without a meal (, pp. 198-212, &c.;, ii. 358; , ii. 412). As Sir James Graham said, a conservative government without him could not stand a week (, ii. 446); but it was his name, and weight rather than his active participation that was wanted. Peel's was a one-man administration, and when he sought advice it was from Graham or Gladstone. He was 'passionately preoccupied' with the state of the working classes, while Wellington was more concerned for the prosperity of agriculture.

On Hill's death Wellington was reappointed commander-in-chief by patent for life (15 Aug. 1842). He had pointed out, in December 1839, that an increase of the naval and military establishments was required; but the question now began to take more hold of his mind, and he urged it officially in December 1843 (, ii. 418, 572). No one was more anxious for peace; he anticipated the late Lord Derby in the saying that peace is the first of British interests (Speeches, 6 April 1840). But he was not disposed to trust the safety of the country to foreign friendship or alliances, and he held that the progress of steam navigation had aggravated the danger of invasion. The naval preparations of France and differences with her and with the United States made the matter very serious, and Wellington again pressed it upon Peel in December 1844. He owned that 'all the administrations since the peace of 1815 may be more or less to blame for the state in which the defences of the country are found;' and as a member of cabinets bent on 'dishing the whigs' in retrenchment he must bear his share of the blame. Little came of his remonstrances. The subject was distasteful to a ministry intent on financial reforms; Aberdeen, the foreign secretary, feared that France would take umbrage, and the entente cordiale would suffer; and the corn-law question soon absorbed attention (, iii. 197-219, 396-412).

Wellington was far from sharing the conclusions about the corn laws to which Peel came in the autumn of 1845. He was a staunch partisan of the sliding scale, and saw no reason to modify or suspend it on account of the potato disease (, iii. 38, 43). But when Peel, after resigning on 6 Dec., resumed office on the 20th, because the whigs could not form a government, Wellington unhesitatingly supported him. 'The existing corn law is not the only interest of this great nation,' he said, and Peel's downfall 'must be followed by the loss of corn laws and everything else.' The question of questions to him ever since the Reform Bill had been how to maintain a government, as opposed to a set of ministers who were the servants of a parliamentary majority made up of mere delegates from the constituencies. 'All I desire ... all I have desired for some years past—is to see a "government" in the country—to see the country "governed,"' he had said in 1839 (Speeches, 23 Aug.) He hoped at first that Peel would soften the blow to the agricultural interests, and that a schism of the conservatives might be avoided (, iii. 44, 111). He was disappointed; and on the second reading of the corn bill he could say nothing in its favour, but he advised the lords—as his last advice to them—to accept it (Speeches, 28 May 1846).

On 26 June the government, having passed the corn bill, were beaten on their Irish bill. The duke recommended dissolution, but Peel preferred to resign. This ended Wellington's career as a party politician. It would have been well, perhaps, for his reputation if he had stood aloof from party altogether, but that was impossible. His weight and capacity made the politicians turn to him for help; and he was himself a man of strong and definite convictions—what Thiers called narrow, and Stockmar one-sided—not a man of 'cross-bench mind.' At the end of 1846 Palmerston, who was again at the foreign office, brought the 