Robert Peel

“ We have heard him speak in the House of Commons in his palmier days, before he was as decrepit in mind as he is in body. He had great fluency, some power of invective, and a vast stock of assurance. We listened to him upon one occasion, when, without the slightest provocation, he used the most undignified personalities to the late Sir Robert Peel,—to which Sir Robert, very wisely, never replied.
We cannot say that we feel any profound interest as to his future. He has compared himself to a dog,—but, on behalf of that faithful and valued companion of man, we protest against the similitude. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel had the talents for giving a prosperous issue to a popular cause, Mr. Canning the genius that makes a cause popular. The one had the courage to advocate an opinion before it was ripe for realization. The other, the fortitude when the advantage and the possibility of a measure became apparent, to make unhesitatingly every personal sacrifice for the public welfare. If we praise the one for his prescience as a statesman, we bend with admiration before the other as a patriot. ”

“ I have not had the heart to look at the newspapers, but hear that Sir Robert Peel has provided liberally for the present necessities of the poor Haydons. And do you know, the more I think the more I am inclined to conclude that the money-distress was merely an additional irritation, and that the despair leading to the revolt against life, had its root in disappointed ambition. The world did not recognize his genius, and he punished the world by withdrawing the light. If he had not that thought in him, I am wrong. ”

“ One of the most illustrious of such workers in modern times was unquestionably the late Sir Robert Peel. He possessed in an extraordinary degree the power of continuous intellectual labour, nor did he spare himself. His career, indeed, presented a remarkable example of how much a man of comparatively moderate powers can accomplish by means of assiduous application and indefatigable industry. During the forty years that he held a seat in Parliament, his labours were prodigious. ”

“ Nevertheless, we will hazard the opinion, that Sir Robert Peel is no child of light. We suspect that there are very few principles, for which he would suffer himself to be burnt,—even in effigy. With no high ideal by which to guide his conduct, with no generous or exalted views, he has ventured on a career beyond his powers. Fitted by Nature to make an excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer, he has not known how to content himself with his proper post. A narrow egotist, he has attempted to guide the destinies of a great nation. ”

“ And, cold as he was in public, few men could be more bright and genial in private than Sir Robert Peel.
In 1821 Peel consented to strengthen the enfeebled ministry of Lord Liverpool by becoming home secretary; and in that capacity he had again to undertake the office of coercing the growing discontent in Ireland, of which he remained the real administrator, and had again to lead in the House of Commons the opposition to the rising cause of Roman Catholic emancipation. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel was in the 63d year of his age, having been born near Bury, in Lancashire, on the 5th of February, 1788. His father was a manufacturer on a grand scale, and a man of much natural ability, and of almost unequaled opulence. Full of a desire to render his son and probable successor worthy of the influence and the vast wealth which he had to bestow, the first Sir Robert Peel took the utmost pains personally with the early training of the future prime minister. He retained his son under his own immediate superintendence until he arrived at a sufficient age to be sent to Harrow. ”

“ Among the great prime ministers of England Sir Robert Peel is to be classed. He ranks with Pitt, Canning, and Gladstone for his intellectual force, his services, and his patriotism. He was to England what Guizot and Thiers were to France,--a pre-eminent statesman, identified with great movements, learned, eloquent, and wise. He was a man of unsullied character, commanding the respect and veneration of superior minds,--reserved and cold, perhaps; not a popular idol like Fox and O'Connell, but a leader of men.
There was no man in his cabinet more gifted or influential than he. ”

“ The Young Englanders disliked him because he had hoisted the flag of Conservatism instead of Toryism on the morrow of the Reform Bill. The strong philanthropists and Tory Chartists disliked him because he was a strict economist and an upholder of the new poor law. But the fatal question was protection. That question was being fast brought to a crisis by public opinion and the Anti-Corn-Law League. Sir Robert Peel had been recognized in 1841 by Cobden as a Free Trader, and after experience in office he had become in principle more and more so. ”

“ Such a man under any circumstances and in any sphere of life would probably have become remarkable. Ordained from his youth to be busied with the affairs of a great empire, such a man, after long years of observation, practice, and perpetual discipline, would have become what Sir Robert Peel was in the latter portion of his life—a transcendent administrator of public business and a matchless master of debate in a popular assembly. ”

“ It is curious to observe how completely blind Sir Robert Peel seems to be, to the point on which his conduct is really blamable. He insists much on his perfect integrity in proposing the measure, seeing that he thought it highly beneficial to his country. Surely so self-evident a truism can scarcely need so much parade: surely it is an acknowledged fact that a statesman is not to blame for proposing measures which he deems to be highly beneficial. Sir Robert was doubtless most perfectly right in proposing his measure ”

“ If ever the day should come, when protection, by common consent, were to be withdrawn, truth compels us to declare, that there is no one by whose hand we should desire to see that painful and dangerous operation performed so much as Sir Robert Peel;—not because we should be insensible to all the awkward and painful embarrassments of such a change of course; but simply, because we are bound to say, that there is no other man of whose knowledge, skill, and sagacity we have the same opinion. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel seizes the opportunity to repair some of the errors of his former life, and to establish his name for ever in the grateful recollection of his countrymen.” The man who wrote these words never could have had any trafficking with the Protectionists; he must have abhorred them throughout; and yet the curious thing is, that he knows, or pretends to know, a great deal more about them than an enemy could possibly have done. ”

“ The majority, nevertheless, voted for Lord John Russell’s proposition, partly because it established a public right, partly because it answered a party purpose. Thus Parliament decided against the inviolability of Church property—a decision certain to affect the future; which did affect the present; and Sir Robert Peel was forced to resign the seals of the Treasury.
But let us be just. Never did a statesman enter office more triumphantly than Sir Robert Peel left it. His self-confidence, his tact, his general knowledge, his temper, filled even his opponents with admiration! ”

“ Song by Sir Robert Peel.
Notwithstanding the length of time that has now elapsed since the breaking up of the Tory Administration, there is scarcely a member of it who does not still look back with a feeling of the most melancholy regret to the days when he once fingered the public money within the walls of the Treasury. On Sir Robert Peel the effect that has been produced is as vivid as it seemed the first hour after his resignation, and the unhappy baronet is often heard to give vent to his sensations, after the debate of the night, in the following exquisitely touching stanzas ”

“ For four years after this struggle Sir Robert Peel remained at the head of the powerful opposition he had gradually collected around him; the Whig Government having in the meantime to perform the very difficult and ungrateful task of carrying out changes which it deemed necessary, against Conservatives, and opposing innovations which it deemed dangerous, against Reformers. The friends of Liberal institutions and of religious toleration, and even of administrative improvement, owe it a debt of gratitude which they have never fully paid. ”

“ But at the time when Peel was making his speech against the Reform project the patronage system still prevailed in politics, if no longer in letters, and the unendowed child of genius would have little chance indeed if he were to try to get into Parliament on his own mere merits. On the whole, it must be owned that Sir Robert Peel made as good a case against the Bill as could have been made from the Conservative point of view, and it may be added that an equally ingenious case might have been made out by a man of his capacity against any change whatever in any system. ”

“ Of Sir Robert Peel he always spoke with a special respect, and it was, I think, a matter of peculiar pleasure to him that in his old age his family was closely connected by marriage with that of his illustrious rival. His friendship with Lord Derby, which began when they were colleagues, was unbroken by many contests. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel was no satirist or epigrammatist: he was only a statesman in public life: only a virtuous and friendly man in private. Par negotiis, nee supra. Walpole alone possessed his talents for business. But neither Peel nor his family was enriched from the spoils of his country; Walpole spent in building and pictures more than double the value of his hereditary estate, and left the quadruple to his descendants. ”

“ But the duke of Wellington's emphatic eulogy on him was, “Of all the men I ever knew, he had the greatest regard for truth.” The duke might have added that his own question, “How is the king’s government to be carried on in a reformed parliament ?” was mainly solved by the temperate and constitutional policy of Sir Robert Peel, and by his personal influence on the debates and proceedings of the House of Commons during the years which followed the Reform Act. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel, the forlorn hope of rulers who have come into the world a century too late, and who obstinately continue to oppose the advancing stream, by which they will assuredly be swept away, has done you the questionable honour of alluding to you, as on his side, in opposition to the people’s friends. ”

“ He was persuaded to agree to the measure by Sir Robert Peel, the life long opponent of Roman Catholic emancipation. Whatever were the religious convictions and feelings of Sir Robert Peel, he was a statesman of a high class. ”

“ Hence the references to his own views and feelings which recur in his speeches, and which his enemies affected to ascribe to egoism, are more rightly attributable to an opposite cause—the open terms on which he stood with the House of Commons. Not that there was no trace of the art whereby an orator invests the dry details of business with the attraction of personal feeling, for no one was a more refined master of persuasion than Sir Robert Peel. ”

“ Count Cavour had been taunted with having expressed himself in very high terms of Sir Robert’s commercial and financial policy, while he at the same time refused, in many respects, to accept him as an exemplar. He, consequently, addressed to the senate the following remarkable speech:—“I entertain the highest admiration for that statesman; I believe that few men have rendered greater services to mankind than he has. Yet I do not believe that Sir Robert Peel was always infallible in his political career. ”

“ What is the use of lodging our honour four thousand leagues away in the box of a sentry insulted by a savage and a madman? Upon the whole there is something laughable about it. When all is said and done it is a small matter and nothing big will come of it. Sir Robert Peel has spoken thoughtlessly. He has acted with schoolboy foolishness. He has diminished his consideration in Europe. He is a serious man, but capable of committing thoughtless acts. Then he does not know any languages. Unless he be a genius there are perforce gaps in the ideas of a man who is not a linguist. ”

“ Jameson in her catalogue of the Peel Collection, "are finished with inexpressible delicacy; the animals are painted with characteristic truth; the foliage of the trees seems stirred by the breeze;—in short, it is a most rare piece of work in every part, and full of pastoral sentiment, though there is certainly nothing Arcadian in the [Pg 450] personages introduced." Sir Robert Peel bought the picture in 1840 for 760 gs. ”

“ A comparison which suggests itself naturally to those who study the history of their times, is one between the practical statesman, the sketch of whose career I am concluding, and his more brilliant contemporary, of whom I have previously spoken. Though for a long period rivals, they both entered political life under the Tory banner, and gained their reputation by adopting Whig principles. In canvassing their separate merits, it is just to say that Sir Robert Peel’s great acts were the development of Mr. Canning’s principles. ”

“ In civil life a great general is frequently and strangely the creature of impulse; influenced in his political movements by the last snatch of information; and often the creature of the last aide-de-camp who has his ear.
We shall endeavour to trace in another chapter the reasons which on this as on previous and subsequent occasions, induced Sir Robert Peel to stand aloof, if possible, from official life, and made him reluctant to re-enter the service of his Sovereign. In the present instance, even temporary success could only have been secured by the utmost decision, promptness, and energy. ”