13. A Duty to the Crown (6)
It must be confessed that the Duke went very near to provoking the crisis which he dreaded, when in May 1832, after the rejection of the Reform Bill by the House of Lords, he prepared to take office once more as the head of a Tory administration. Fortunately his chosen colleagues would not back him, and the scheme came to nought. But if he had actually assumed the reins of power, as the King’s minister, it is pretty certain that widespread disorder, to which the Bristol Riots would have been a trifle, would have broken out all over the realm. And if such outbreaks had occurred, it is equally certain that Wellington would have thought it his duty to use armed force against them in a ruthless and effective fashion. He would have deplored the necessity, but it would have been his duty to protect the Crown and the Constitution. That on assuming office he intended to bring forward a Reform Bill of his own would have gone for nothing. His public condemnation of any sort of change in the House of Commons had been so violent and so frequent, that it would have been considered a piece of cynical hypocrisy if he had professed his intention to bring in a “modérate” or a “liberal” Reform Bill of his own. His resumption of office would have been ascribed to mere love of power and place; his Bill would inevitably have been called a solemn sham.
Sir Robert Peel was wiser than his chief, when he refused to touch the scheme, declaring that to pass Reform Bills was the proper business of the Whigs, and that it would amount to political immorality for Tories to bring in legislation which they regarded as dangerous and destructive. This Wellington could not, or would not, see. His odd reply was that he should be ashamed to show his face in the streets if he had failed to do his best to serve the King in a moment of emergency. The humour of the situation was that the King was at the moment anything but anxious to be served in this particular way, though he had been forced to apply to Wellington when Lord Grey tendered his resignation.
Wellington’s formal justification for his curious policy was that he was, as he phrased it, “the retained servant of the Sovereign of this Empire”, the sworn and salaried employé of the Crown. As a loyal subordinate it was his duty to do his best for his employer, according to his lights, however distasteful and even humiliating such service might be. “The King’s Government must be carried on somehow” was another of his dicta, and believing as he did that the advent of the Whig party to office would lead to general ruin in the near future, it was his duty to keep them out of power, or to check (so far as he could) their attempts to hack away what he considered essential parts of the Constitution. All his duty was to the Crown—even when the Crown was worn by George IV.
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