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WEL
WEL

ance of the Church Establishment in Ireland should be held sacred. (17th May,) He supported the new Irish Poor-law. On account of his opposition to liberal measures he became very unpopular during his tenure of office, and was even pelted with stones in the streets of London, and had the windows of his mansion, Apsley House, broken. He guarded against a recurrence of such an event by fixing permanent iron shutters outside the windows—taking a grim pleasure in the disgrace which the appearance of his house brought on the people of London. His measures for the introduction of a new police-force in England, and the precautions he took to garrison London against any possible emeute on the part of the Reformers, brought his Ministry to a disastrous termination, and the seals of office were confided to Lord Grey. He was again Prime Minister for a short time in 1834: and in 1843, on the death of Lord Hill, he resumed the post of Commander-in-chief. If no man ever contributed more to the military greatness of the United Kingdom, no man was ever more richly repaid, whether in material wealth, or in public consideration. The emoluments of his different offices, added to the interests of his several Parliamentary grants, brought up his income to about £43,000 per annum in money, besides his permanent estates in land. Amongst the many foreign honours and presents conferred on him was a service of plate from Portugal, valued at £100,000. Brialmont, his biographer, says: "The greatest leading principle of his moral being was duty. In private life he was truth itself. As a public man he had but one object in view, viz., to benefit, to the utmost of his ability and skill, the state whose servant he was. Of personal ambition, in the vulgar acceptation of that term, the Duke knew nothing. The desire of winning applause, or of advancing himself to places of honour and power, seems never, from first to last, to have moved him. … Justice requires that we should say unreservedly, that, with less of boldness and genius, Wellington possessed a greater amount of moral consideration as to the selection of his means, that he was a more scrupulous observer of his engagements, in short, a more honest man, than the unmatched victor of Austerlitz. He was gifted, moreover, with a larger share of patience and tenacity, his judgment was more calm, and sometimes clearer. Throughout the Peninsular war he gave proof, in a remarkable degree, of an amount of sagacity and foresight such as occurs only here and there in the letters of the Emperor," 343 His coolness under all circumstances was one of his most striking characteristics: whether in defeat and humiliation or in his moments of highest exaltation, he was much the same outwardly—when informed of the failure of his first attack on Badajos, as when witnessing the flight of Napoleon at Waterloo; when the stones of a London mob were rattling about his head and smashing the windows of his mansion, as when on so many occasions he received the thanks of Parliament, It may be that a certain scorn of human nature and human weakness underlay all—a conception of events, not alone in their present aspect, but in all their bearings. He had little sympathy with the masses—with their aspirations and weaknesses, and perhaps little belief in the possibility of their elevation and enlightenment. There could be no accord between him and a people fully alive to their rights and responsibilities. Essentially an aristocrat and a conservative, all the changes he was instrumental in forwarding, he accepted rather as disagreeable necessities to the sustainment of the state, than as concessions demanded by truth and justice. He opposed Catholic Emancipation as long as it was possible; he opposed a free press; he discountenanced, if he did not oppose, regimental schools; he avoided railways so long as post horses were to be had on the roads he ordinarily travelled. For his native island he had no sympathy; and he is said to have more than once declared himself an Englishman who had had the misfortune to be born in Ireland. If cold in his manners, he was more careful of the lives of his men and more solicitous for their comfort than many leaders who were able to attach their troops to them by feelings of deep personal devotion such as he could never inspire, and which perhaps he did not covet. According to conventional standards, he was a religious man. The Bible, the Prayer-Book, and Taylor's Holy Living and Dying were always within reach of his iron camp bedstead. The Duke of Wellington's talents as a general and military administrator were of the highest order; but he was deficient in those prescient statesmanlike qualities and that moral intuition which combine to make a really great man. He had no sympathy with any philanthropic aim that looked beyond the ordinarily recognized limits assigned by respectability and conventionality. He despised the press; he despised free thought; he disbelieved in popular government; he opposed all concessions to

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