But the admission of Catholics to Parliament did not heal the disorders of Ireland as had been hoped.  The Irish clamored for still greater privileges.  The cry for repeal of the Union succeeded that for the removal of disabilities.  Their poverty and miseries remained, while their monster meetings continued to shake the kingdom to its centre.

The historical importance of Catholic emancipation consists in this,—­that it was the first great victory over the aristocratic powers of the empire, and was an entrance wedge to the reform of Parliament effected in the next reign.  It threw forty or fifty members of the House of Commons into the ranks of opposition to the Tory side, which with a few brief intervals had governed England for a century.  “The reform movement was the child of Catholic agitation; the anti-corn law league that of the triumph of reform.”  Brougham was the legitimate successor of O’Connell.  A foresight of such consequences was the real cause of the movement being so bitterly opposed by the king and Lord Eldon.  It was not jealousy of the Catholics that moved them,—­that was only the pretence; it was really fear of the blow aimed against Toryism.  They had sagacity enough to see the inevitable result,—­the advancing power of the Liberal party, and the impossibility of longer ruling the country without ceding privileges to the people.  The repeal of the Test Act by the previous administration, which removed the disabilities of Dissenters from the Established Church to hold public office, was only another act in the great drama of national development which was to give ascendency to the middle class in matters of legislation, rather than to the favored classes who had hitherto ruled.  The movement was political and not religious, whatever might be the hatred of the Tories for both Catholics and Dissenters.

Nothing further of political importance marked the administration of the Duke of Wellington except the increasing agitations for parliamentary reform, which will be hereafter considered.  Wellington was elevated to his exalted post from the influence and popularity which followed his military achievements.  His fame, like that of General Grant, rests on his military and not on his civil services, although his great experience as a diplomatist and general made him far from contemptible as a statesman.  It was his misfortune to hold the helm of state in stormy times, amid riots, agitations, insurrections, and party dissensions, amid famines and public distresses of every kind; when England was going through a transition state, when there was every shade of opinion among political leaders.  The duke, like Canning before him, was isolated, and felt the need of a friend.  He was not like a commander-in-chief surrounded with a band of devoted generals, but with ministers held together by a rope of sand.  He had no real colleagues in his cabinet, and no party in the House of Commons.  The chief troubles in England were financial rather than political, and he had no head for finance like Huskisson and Sir Robert Peel.