The motives which actuated Wellington and Peel in espousing the cause which they had so persistently opposed admit of no doubt whatever. In the memoir which Peel left as embodying his own defence, no less than in his speech introducing the emancipation bill, he affects no essential change of conviction. He rests his case entirely on the public danger of leaving the question "unsettled" after the disclosures of the Clare election, and argues calmly, as the agitators had been arguing for nearly thirty years, that no settlement was practicable short of complete, though not unconditional, surrender. There is no pretence of consistency. All the constitutional, political, and religious objections to civil equality between protestants and catholics in Ireland remained unanswered and unabated. Indeed the increasing power and defiant tone of the catholic demagogues might well have appeared a crowning reason for refusing them seats in parliament. Peel, however, had adopted, and pressed upon Wellington, the delusive opinion of Anglesey that by "taking them from the Association and placing them in the house of commons" they might be reduced to comparative impotence. He lamented, it is true, the premature announcement of a new policy by Dawson, and he had submitted his own resignation to the duke in the belief, apparently sincere, that he could render better service in an independent position. But he seems not to have felt the least scruple in urging the duke to break all his pledges to his protestant supporters, and conciliate the followers of O'Connell. Nor did his advice fall on unwilling ears. Trained in a vocation where private conscience is subordinate to military duty, where enemies must sometimes be welcomed as allies if it may further the plan of campaign, and where a masterly retreat is as honourable as a victory, Wellington did not shrink from undertaking the part of an opportunist minister. He had always regarded himself as a servant of the crown and the nation, rather than as a party leader, and he saw no personal difficulty in adopting any political measure as the less of two evils. Having once satisfied himself that civil war in Ireland was the only alternative to emancipation, he abandoned resistance to it as he would have abandoned a hopeless siege, and called upon his tory followers to change their front with him.