Holding the Line

As soon as the formalities of resignation were over, Wellington hurried out of the capital as he had in 1830, ‘out of spirits and annoyed at all that had passed’, to attend to business at Dover and Stratfield Saye. Despite the succession of defeats in the Commons, he thought that the ministry had given up too soon, ‘but Peel would not stay, there was no persuading him.’ ¹ The immediate loss of three by-elections in widely scattered counties by the Whigs when Lord John Russell took office and two MPs went to the House of Lords supported his view that the country was coming around to the Conservatives against the Whigs, Radicals and Repealers; but it took an act of greater faith to believe that the Conservative government could have hung on until this was reflected in the numbers in the House of Commons. It would be more difficult to achieve a majority out of office, but the prospects were infinitely brighter than three years before. The problem in the House of Lords was to avoid provoking the temporarily strengthened Whigs into a direct attack on it; but the Conservative peers could at least afford to take a bolder line in the defence of traditional institutions and privilege than the Duke had considered safe after 1832.