Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.

by Various

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

All the ordinary incidents of the past week have been thrown into temporary oblivion, by the lamentable occurrence that has deprived the country of one of its most eminent statesmen; the House of Commons, of one of its chiefs; the family of the right honorable baronet of its most amiable and distinguished head; and many of the public institutions, those of the fine arts especially, of an enlightened and generous patron.

The late member for Tamworth was the eldest son of the first Sir R. Peel, formerly of the house of Peel and Yates, which, in 1803, employed about 15,000 persons at Bury, and which paid at that time £40,000 a year duty on their printed cotton fabrics. In 1787, Mr. Peel married his partner's daughter, Miss Yates, who bore the subject of this memoir—5th February, 1788—in a little cottage, near Chamber Hall. The husband of Miss Yates was very successful in his cotton speculations, and in 1798, when the English Government appealed to the country for pecuniary aid to carry on the French war, subscribed himself £10,000. Some notion may be formed of the extent of the wealth of the first Sir R. Peel, from the fact that when, in 1830, his will was proved, the personal property was sworn at £1,200,000. The much-lamented baronet received the rudiments of his education under parental superintendence, near Bury. He was removed to Harrow, when he became a form-fellow of the more brilliant, but less amiable, Lord Byron, who has left several commendatory notices of his youthful friend, and whose eminence he very sagaciously predicted.

From Harrow, Mr. Peel became a Gentleman Commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, where, in 1808, he was the first who took the honors of double first-class. In the following year, having attained his majority, he entered the House of Commons for Cashel, as the nominee of Mr. Richard Pennefather. Mr. Peel continued to represent the twelve electors of Cashel and their lord till 1812, when he represented the close borough of Chippenham, with a constituency of 135. The prodigious wealth of the first baronet of Drayton Manor gave his son great advantages in the House of Commons, where, in 1810, he was selected to second the Address, in reply to the Royal Speech. Shortly after, he became the Under-Secretary of State in the Perceval Cabinet, and, upon the fall of his chief, though only twenty-six years of age, he was made principal Secretary for Ireland—an office, at that time, of the greatest difficulty and importance—and held that post with as much address as his ultra-Toryism, and his extreme unpopularity in Ireland, admitted, under the Viceroyships of the Duke of Richmond, Earl Whitworth, and Earl Talbot. The most permanent and beneficial measure which Ireland owes to its former Secretary, Peel, is its constabulary force, introduced in 1817, which was the wedge to the introduction of the English body of police.

The masterly tactics of the still youthful statesman, in part, but his "thorough and throughout" Toryism, chiefly recommended him to the electors of Oxford University, which he represented twelve years, till 1828; when, upon an obvious change in his opinions on the question of Catholic emancipation, he was rejected.

In 1820, Mr. Peel, then in his thirty-third year, had married Julia, the daughter of General Sir John Floyd, who was only twenty-five, and who survives her illustrious husband. The issue of this marriage is five sons and two daughters. One of his sons has already entered diplomatic employment in Switzerland; a second has recently entered, as our readers will remember, the House of Commons; a third is in the army, and one in the navy. One of Sir Robert's daughters was married to Viscount Villiers in 1840.

In 1819, the monetary affairs of the country had become so alarming, that the House of Commons appointed a secret committee to inquire into the state of the Bank of England, of which committee Mr. Peel was appointed chairman. He had hitherto been one of the most strenuous opponents of Mr. Horner's celebrated propositions of 1811, from which period he had strongly defended the currency policy of Mr. Vansittart. But the evidence produced to the secret committee effected a complete change in Mr. Peel's opinions, and it was chiefly through his agency that the currency was settled on its present metallic basis. In the conflict, a touching incident of antagonism, between the subject of this memoir and his father, occurred in the House of Commons. Mr. Peel was, in 1822, promoted to the head of the Home-office, which he occupied till the overthrow of Lord Liverpool, in 1827, when he retired, in consequence, as it is alleged, of the elevation of Mr. Canning, whose opinions were in favor of the abolition of the Roman Catholic disabilities. Upon the accession of the Duke of Wellington to power, in 1828, Mr. Peel returned to the Home-office, and, in conjunction with his noble friend, repealed the disabilities of the Roman Catholics; which not only cost him Ireland, and brought upon him a hurricane of abuse from his party, but shook the general confidence in either the soundness or the integrity of his opinions.

The skirts of the Gallic storm of 1830, that crushed the Bourbonic throne, destroyed the Wellington Administration, and made the Reform Bill no longer deferable, which the Whigs entered office to carry. Meantime, the deceased had succeeded to an enormous estate and the baronetcy, by the demise of his father, Sir R. Peel. But he was, in opposition, fiercely assailed with the maledictions of Ireland; the censures of the High Tory party—whom he was alleged to have betrayed—the clamors of the advocates of a paper currency; and what, perhaps, was the most difficult to bear, his party imputed to him the real authorship of the Reform Bill and its consequences, by his vacillation in reference to the emancipation of the Catholics. But, nothing dismayed by the angry elements surrounding him, and the new political vista of England and the Continent, Sir R. Peel now displayed all the resources of his statesmanship in concentrating the new Conservative party. He so far succeeded—chiefly through the want of more courage and honesty in the Whigs—that he was again called to office in 1834, during his brief tenancy of which, no one can withhold praise for his command of temper, his Liberal tendencies, and his spirit of general conciliation. In 1841, Sir R. Peel again entered office; and—though he undeniably was enabled to do so by the Protectionist party, by the force of circumstances, the stagnation of commerce, the failure of the crops, and the famine in Ireland—he opened the ports, and repealed the Corn-laws forever, to the consternation of the world, and in opposition to all the opinions of his life; this was in 1845. Since that period Sir R. Peel has been in Opposition, indeed, but not its leader so much as a distinguished debater, an accomplished financier, and the expositor of opinions which neither the Whigs nor Tories heartily espouse.

During forty years servitude in the House of Commons—though not generally in favor of popular sentiments, and, in religious matters, rather liberal than generous—Sir R. Peel has undoubtedly rendered, in addition to his three great measures—the Bullion-law, Catholic Emancipation, and the repeal of the Corn-law—many minor political benefits to the country. Of this class of services, that which reflects on him the most honor, is his amelioration of the Criminal Law. As to the measures to which we have just alluded, there will still continue to be a large diversity of opinion. Thousands of the wealthy classes will regard them all as steps in the declination of the national power; while the more popular mind, that rarely troubles itself with large or profound views, has already registered its approval of them.

It is a singular fact, that he spent eleven years in Parliamentary opposition to the Bullion doctrine that he adopted in 1822; that he waged strenuous war against the repeal of the Roman Catholic disabilities for eighteen years, and at last carried them in spite of his own party; and that for thirty years in the House of Commons, he maintained that the prosperity of Great Britain depended on the retention of her Corn-laws, which he repealed in 1845. It is, therefore, clear that his final measures, in reference to these three great departments of his political life, were rather concessions to the force of events, than the voluntary policy of his own mind. His wisdom lay in the concession. Many of his chief colleagues, in each of these instances, would have blindly rushed upon destruction. His greater sagacity foresaw the gulf and turned away, choosing to win the courage of relinquishing his life's opinions, than that of courting the dangers of resistance. And in these three famous instances of Sir R. Peel's life, we have the true elaboration of his own character. He was by education and preference a Tory; by necessity he became a Progressionist.