were swept from the statute-book, and justice was extended to
the Roman Catholic Church in Canada and Malta. In the same
spirit acts were passed for clearing from doubt Irish Presbyterian
marriages, for settling the titles of a large number of dissenters
chapels in England, and removing the municipal disabilities of
the Jews. The grant for national education was trebled, and
an attempt was made, though in vain, to introduce effective
education clauses into the factory bills. To the alienation of any
part of the revenues of the Established Church Sir Robert Peel
never would consent; but he had issued the ecclesiastical commission,
and he now made better provision for a number of
populous parishes by a redistribution of part of the revenues of
the Church. The weakest part of the conduct of this great
government, perhaps, was its failure to control the railway
mania by promptly laying down the lines on a government plan.
It passed an act in 1844 which gave the government a right of
purchase, and it had prepared a palliative measure in 1846, but
was compelled to sacrifice this, like all other secondary measures,
to the repeal of the corn laws. It failed also, though not without
an effort, tn avert the great schism in the Church of Scotland.
Abroad it was as prosperous as at home. It had found disaster
and disgrace in Afghanistan. It speedily ended the war there,
and in India the invading Sikhs were destroyed upon the Sutlej.
The sore and dangerous questions with France, touching the
right of search, the war in Morocco, and the Tahiti affair, and
with the United States touching the Maine boundary and the
Oregon territory, were settled by negotiation.
Yet there were malcontents in Sir Robert Peel’s party. 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. Since his accession to power he had lowered the duties of the sliding scale, and thereby caused the secession from the cabinet of the duke of Buckingham. He had alarmed the farmers by admitting foreign cattle and meat under his new tariff, and by admitting Canadian corn He had done his best in his speeches to put the maintenance of the corn laws on low ground, and to wean the landed interest from their reliance on protection. The approach of the Irish famine in 1845 turned decisively the wavering balance. When at first Sir Robert proposed to his cabinet the revision of the corn laws, Lord Stanley and the duke of Buccleuch dissented, and Sir Robert resigned. But Lord John Russell failed to form a new government. Sir Robert again came into office; and now, with the consent of all the cabinet but Lord Stanley, who retired, he, in a great speech on the 27th of January 1846, brought the repeal of the corn laws before the House of Commons. In the long and fierce debate that ensued he was assailed, both by political and personal enemies, with the most virulent invective, which he bore with his wonted calmness, and to which he made no retorts. His measure was carried; but immediately afterwards the offended protectionists, led by Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, coalesced with the Whigs, and threw him out on the Irish Coercion Bill. He went home from his defeat, escorted by a great crowd, who uncovered as he passed, and he immediately resigned. So fell a Conservative government which would otherwise have probably ended only with the life of its chief.
Though out of office he was not out of power. He had “lost a party, but won a nation.” The Whig ministry which succeeded him leant much on his support, with which he never taxed them. He joined them in carrying forward free-trade principles by the repeal of the navigation laws. He helped them to promote the principle of religious liberty by the bill for the emancipation of the Jews. One important measure was his own. While in office he had probed, by the Devon commission of inquiry, the sores of Ireland connected with the ownership and occupation of land. In 1849, in a speech on the Irish Poor Laws, he first suggested, and in the next year he aided in establishing, a commission to facilitate the sale of estates in a hopeless state of encumbrance. The Encumbered Estates Act made no attempt, like later legislation, to secure by law the uncertain customary rights of Irish tenants, but it transferred the land from ruined landlords to solvent owners capable of performing the duties of property towards the people. On the 28th of June 1850 Sir Robert Peel made a great speech on the Greek question against Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy of interference. This speech was thought to show that if necessary he would return to office. It was his last. On the following day he was thrown from his horse on Constitution Hill, and mortally injured by the fall. Three days he lingered and on the fourth (July 2, 1850) he died. All the tributes which respect and gratitude could pay were paid to him by the sovereign, by parliament, by public men of all parties, by the country, by the press, and, above all, by the great towns and the masses of the people to whom he had given “bread unleavened with injustice.” He would have been buried among the great men of England in Westminster Abbey, but his will desired that he might be laid in Drayton church. It also renounced a peerage for his family, as he had before declined the garter for himself when it was offered him by the queen through Lord Aberdeen.
Those who judge Sir Robert Peel will remember that he was bred a Tory in days when party was a religion; that he entered parliament a youth, was in office at twenty-four and secretary for Ireland at twenty-five; that his public life extended over a long period rife with change; and that his own changes were all forward and with the advancing intellect of the time. They will enumerate the great practical improvements and the great acts of legislative justice of those days, and note how large a share Sir Robert Peel had, if not in originating, in giving thorough practical effect to all. They will reflect that as a parliamentary statesman he could not govern without a party, and that it is difficult to govern at once for a party and for the whole people. They will think of his ardent love of his country, of his abstinence from intrigue, violence and faction, of his boundless labour through a long life devoted to the public service. Whether he was a model of statesmanship may be doubted. Models of statesmanship are rare, if by a model of statesmanship is meant a great administrator and party leader, a great political philosopher and a great independent orator, all in one. But if the question is whether he was a ruler loved and trusted by the English people there is no arguing against the tears of a nation.
Those who wish to know more of him will consult his own posthumous Memoirs (1856), edited by his literary executors Earl Stanhope and Viscount Cardwell; his private correspondence, edited by C. S. Parker (1891–1899); the four volumes of his speeches; a sketch of his life and character by Sir Lawrence Peel (1860); an historical sketch by Lord Dalling (1874); Guizot’s Sir Robert Peel (1857); Kunzel’s Leben und Reden Sir Robert Peel’s (1851); Disraeli’s Life of Lord George Bentinck (1858); Morley’s Life of Cobden; monographs by F. C. Montague (1888), J. R. Thursfeld (1891), and the earl of Rosebery (1899); Peel and O’Connell, by Lord Eversley; the Life of Sir J. Graham (1907), by C. S. Parker; Lord Stanmore’s Life of Lord Aberdeen (1893); and the general histories of the time. (C. S. P.)
Four of Sir Robert’s five sons attained distinction. The eldest, Sir Robert Peel (1822–1895), who became the 3rd baronet on his father’s death, was educated at Harrow and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was in the diplomatic service from 1844 to 1850, when he succeeded his father as member of parliament for Tamworth, and he was chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland from 1861 to 1865. He represented Tamworth until the general election of 1880; in 1884 he became member for Huntingdon and in 1885 for Blackburn, but after 1886 he ceased to sit in the House of Commons. Sir Robert described himself as a Liberal-Conservative, but in his later years he opposed the policy of Gladstone, although after 1886 he championed the cause of home rule for Ireland. In 1871 he sold his father’s collection of pictures to the National Gallery for £75,000, and in his later life he was troubled by financial difficulties. Sir Robert was interested in racing, and was known on the
