XLI. 1841. CHAP. Disraeli the felicitous expression, that his mind was a "huge appropriation clause"-a phrase which so perfectly expressed the truth that it became a household word in every part of Great Britain. But this very absence of a creative mind, or original thought, only rendered him more powerful and successful as a statesman, whose influence and success in a constitutional monarchy must always be built upon his measures falling in with the opinions of the majority. These opinions are generally formed upon the great of a former generation, not the present; and therefore nothing is, in a popular community, so fatal to the present power of a statesman, whatever it may be to his future fame, as conceiving or acting upon original ideas. But though not gifted with a creative mind, he was second to none in the readiness with which he embraced, the force with which he worked out, and the ability with which he enforced, the arguments of others. His industry was indefatigable, his powers of research vast, and his faculty of bringing an immense mass of facts to bear upon a particular view, unrivalled even in the days of Huskisson. He had a prodigious acquaintance with all the principal branches of our trade and manufactures, and was often able to correct the statements or inform the ignorance of the very persons practically engaged in them. Like all men of a capacious and powerful mind, he was gifted with a singularly retentive memory, and could bring out at will figures and details on subjects which for long had not been under discussion, to the no small annoyance of his opponents, who were rarely endowed with the same power of commanding details, and bringing them forth on the proper occasion. Hansard's Debates were familiar to him, and great was the success with which he often turned against his opponents that provoking record of the past. These, if not the highest qualities in a debater, were perhaps the most serviceable in the reformed House of Commons, composed for the most part of practical men who had worked their way to the lead XLI. 1841. in the large constituencies, and who were less liable to be CHAP. influenced by bursts of eloquence or the flowers of rhetoric than by a simple business-like statement of facts connected with, or material to, the leading interests which their constituencies expected them to support. 6. oratory. His style of eloquence was of a high, but not of the highest kind. His speeches were always full of matter, His style of his command of figures immense, and the correctness of his statements of facts such that his most inveterate opponent was never able to detect him in an error. He was more successful, however, in stating his own case than in refuting that of his opponents: he seldom met an argument fairly: he rarely tried to refute, often to ridicule his opponent. It was well said of him by an accomplished parliamentary antagonist, that he drove an excellent pair, but rarely put on four horses. He was an accomplished scholar, and was first brought into notice by taking the highest degrees at Oxford both in classics and mathematics. But though he retained through life a strong partiality for the studies of his youth, and often made a happy use of classical allusions and quotations in Parliament, his mind was not sufficiently ardent, his genius not sufficiently glowing, to inspire him with the vehement feelings which are the soul of the highest style of eloquence. Thoughts that breathe and words that burn" seldom occurred to his calm and practical mind. He was an admirable debater; and, from his thorough command of every subject to which he applied his powers, he never failed to rouse the attention of his hearers, and acquired at length the command, to an extraordinary extent, of the House of Commons. But though always sagacious and weighty in the arguments he adduced, he had none of the earnestness which springs from strong internal conviction, and still less of that, the highest of all, which flows from originality or fire of conception. His name is so indissolubly connected with the two great changes which he was mainly instrumental in effecting, that his merits in an inferior department of the public XLI. 1841. 7. nistrative powers. CHAP. service are in a great measure forgotten. But in the domestic administration of the empire his merits were of the very highest kind. As Home Secretary, during the His admi- many years he held that important office, his conduct was in the truest sense upright and meritorious. Patient and laborious, conscientious in the conception of duty, and unwearied in its discharge, he was always at his post, and devoted the powers of an active and vigorous mind to the investigation of the numerous matters of public and private interest which were then submitted to his consideration. He took upon himself the duty of both counsel and judge in the melancholy cases then unhappily so frequent, when the life of a criminal was referred to the mercy of the Crown and the decision of the Home Secretary. The improvements he introduced into the Irish police were so great that he may be said to have been its founder; and it was under his direction that it became what it now is, one of the finest bodies of men, and beyond all question the finest civil force that exists in the world. The metropolis owes to him the admirable mounted and foot police to which its tranquillity and safety in recent times have been so much indebted. Nor were his exertions confined merely to administrative ameliorations. In the modification of our criminal code he eagerly adopted, and judiciously carried into practice, the views of Romilly and Mackintosh; and it is owing to his efforts, in a great degree, that the severity of the penal law has been so much modified that, for above ten years, no man has been executed in Great Britain save for wilful and cold-blooded murder. Happy would it have been if his sagacious and practical mind had been turned with equal earnestness to the great questions of secondary punishments, and the removal of the difficulties with which the practical operation of the only effectual one-transportation-has come to be surrounded! One great and lasting benefit has been conferred by Sir Robert Peel on his country, which even the strongest of his opponents will, at this distance of time, be willing to XLI. 1841. 8. of his oppo Reform. admit. This was the glorious stand he made against the CHAP. flood of revolution when the Reform Bill was under discussion, and during the years which immediately followed its adoption. That the Whig leaders were then as much Great merit alarmed as the Conservatives at the strength of the sition to passion which they had evoked in the country, is evident from Lord Brougham's words, that, in dissolving Parliament in April 1831, they felt as if they were spanning a fiery gulf on a rib of steel, and the undoubted fact that Earl Grey was precipitated from power in 1834, because, after the bill was passed, he set himself to oppose the ulterior designs of his extreme supporters. But had it not been for the steadiness, courage, and ability with which, during those critical years, Sir Robert Peel conducted the Opposition, it is more than probable that all Earl Grey's efforts to moderate the storm would have been unavailing, and that 1832 would have been to England what 1789 had been to France. It was owing to the extreme wisdom. and ability of his conduct on that occasion that the most precious of all objects in withstanding a movement,— time, was gained, and that, before irrevocable changes had been made, the nation had in some degree recovered from its delusions, and the passion for organic change had been sobered down into the safer desire for practical ameliorations. And though he failed in retaining power when it was conferred upon him in 1835, yet his administration, short as it was, was attended with the most important effects; for it increased the Opposition in the House of Commons from 100 to 300, again raised the House of Lords from the dust to its legitimate functions, and, after a rude shock, restored the constitution in some degree to its former equilibrium. 9. was not the The anomalies in Sir Robert Peel's political career have been so extraordinary, that many have sought an Ambition explanation of them in the supposition that he was cause of his throughout life actuated by an excessive ambition, nour of principle. ished early in life by his father, who laid out for him versatility XLI. 1841. CHAP. from the first the situation of prime-minister, and increased subsequently by his extraordinary and long-continued sway in the House of Commons. This it was, it is said, which led to his change of principle: he could not endure the monotony of a private station, and when no other means of grasping or retaining power remained, he sought to effect it by a sacrifice of consistency. An attentive consideration of his career, however, must convince every impartial person that this is by no means the true solution of the difficulty. On the contrary, had he been actuated by personal feelings or political ambition, his conduct on the most important occasions of his life would have been the reverse of what it actually was. Had he chosen to bid for popularity, instead of sacrificing it by opposing Reform, he would have been carried forward to power on the shoulders of the people, and attained a position, in 1833, as commanding as the great commoner who, in the middle of the preceding century, supplanted the effete Whig aristocracy. His matchless skill in discerning the signs of the times, and observing the tendencies of the House of Commons, told him, from the first, that he was not paving, but barring the road to power, by his unexpected conversions in 1829 and 1846. said, with truth, in his posthumous memoirs, that if he had been actuated by the love of power, not the love of his country, he would have either retained the permanent lead of one party, by steadily adhering to its principles, or acquired the direction of the other, by frankly adopting its views, and not sacrificed both by a conduct which secured to him the confidence of neither. 10. his conduct. He The truth appears to be, that he was throughout, and Real expla- in all his changes, actuated by a sincere and disinterested nation of desire for the good of his country; but that one unhappy mistake, into which he had been led, in the outset of his career, by his adoption of the views of others, rendered him, on the most momentous occasions, either blind to what that good really was, or timorous in asserting his |