receiving it. His conduct appears to me to have been dictated by the purest patriotism, and the most complete sacrifice of personal ambition to public motives. Nor was his ability ever more conspicuous than during the ordeal he had now to undergo.

It is not, however, my intention to follow him through the Parliamentary contest in which he was soon engaged, and out of which he came triumphant, though not without, for the second time in his life, having been submitted to the severest obloquy, and having exposed his friends, which must have been his most painful trial, to accusations as bitter as those which he had himself to support.

The event which he must have anticipated was now at hand.

We know that, according to Mahomedan superstition, a man walks through life with his good and his bad angel by his side. Sir Robert Peel had at this moment his good and his bad angel accompanying his political fortunes with equal pace.

"During the progress of the Corn Law Bill," he says in his Memoirs, "through the two Houses of Parliament, another bill, entitled a Bill for the Protection of Life in Ireland, which at an early period of the Session had received the assent of the House of Lords, was brought under discussion in the House of Commons, and encountered every species of opposition."

On the 21st of January, 1846, the two bills, the Corn Law Repeal Bill, and the Bill for Protection of Life in Ireland, were in such a position in the two Houses respectively, that there appeared every reason to calculate on the double event, the passing of the first bill unmutilated by the House of Lords, and the rejection of the second by the House of Commons. These two bills were indeed his guardian and destroying angels. The one crowned him with imperishable fame-the other ejected him for the last time from power.

On the 19th of May, 1846, the Corn Law Repeal Bill was carried by a majority of 98. On the 25th of June, by a concerted union between the Protectionists and Whig parties, the Irish Life Protection Bill was rejected by a majority of 75, and the Premier retired, the shouts of congratulation at his victory mingling with the condolence at his defeat. One farther triumph, however, yet remained to him, that of supporting the Whig Government, when, but a short time afterwards, it deemed itself obliged to bring forward a bill almost similar to the one which when proposed by an opposite party it had denounced. The most triumphant portion of Sir Robert Peel's political career was indeed that which followed his exclusion from official life. I know of no statesman who ever occupied so proud a position as that in which a greater commoner than even the first William Pitt stood from 1846 to July, 1850, when an unhappy accident filled with patriotic sorrow every heart in England. Above all parties, himself a 'party, -he had trained his own mind into a disinterested sympathy with the intelligence of his country. He never during this period gave a vote to court democratic influence or to win aristocratic favour.

scientiously and firmly attached to the religion of the State, he flattered none of its prejudices, and repudiated boldly its exclusive pretensions; and his speech on the Jewish Disabilities Bill, considering that it was delivered towards the close of a career which had begun under the intolerant patronage of Lord Eldon, is perhaps the most notable and the most instructive that he ever delivered, as marking the progress of opinion during forty years in the history of England.

III.

If it could be said of any man, indeed, it could be said of this statesman, that time in its progress turned him inside out. But the process was a gradual one, and it was only when you put the Peel of 1810 by the side of the Peel of 1850, that the totality of the change

appears distinct. And yet, though the end of Sir Robert Peel's career was at such variance with the commencement, there is a certain consistency that may be traced throughout it. Formed on those official habits which incline a minister to postpone or oppose the consideration of all questions which cannot be successfully dealt with, he never exposed a theory until it could be realized, nor brought forward a measure which he did not think he could carry. At the same time his tendencies were liberal whenever the object brought under his consideration became practical. It must also be said that in the matter on which these tendencies came most strikingly into view his objects were Conservative.

He was converted with respect to the Catholic question, and was converted to Liberal views, but when he professed this conversion, it was to save the country from civil war. He was converted with respect to the Corn Law, and was converted to Liberal convictions; but when he professed this conversion, it was to save the country from famine.

Those who have asserted that his natural bent was towards a change in established institutions and ancient customs, were, I think, decidedly wrong. His natural disposition was rather to maintain what he found existing, but he sacrificed old things without scruple when he considered them decidedly incompatible with new ideas. He had not that order of mind which creates and forces its creations on the minds of others. His mind was, on the contrary, a recipient which opened gradually to growing opinions, and became another mind as these opinions got by degrees possession of it. His changes were thus more sudden in appearance than in reality, because they always went on for a certain time, silently, and to a certain degree unconsciously to himself as well as to the world before they were fully felt; nor were they ever publicly announced till, having passed through a stage of doubt, they arrived at the stage of conviction. His convictions, moreover, were generally simultaneous

with those of the public, when the public formed its convictions gradually. But any sudden and unexpected leap of opinion, as in the case of the Whig Reform Bill of 1872, took him unprepared. His manner in personal intercourse, however intimate your relations might be, were nearly always formal, though not cold; but in correspondenee he was easy, natural, and remarkable for the simplicity and frankness of his letters.

I speak at least from the result of my own experience. In all matters of home policy he was thoroughly master of every subject that could interest an English statesman. In foreign matters he had general notions, but not much knowledge of particulars, nor any special plan or theory of policy; but a high idea of the power of England and the expediency of maintaining her dignity and prestige.

In the early part of his life I have no doubt that ambition, and the personal motives of ambition, had a certain influence over his actions. At a later period, in his last administration, and after quitting office, I believe he had no personal view that separated him in the slightest degree from an entire and disinterested devotion to the interests of his country. He was a scholar in the highest sense of the term; nor did the attention he could give to the driest details of business damp his sympathy for the elegancies of literature, or his appreciation of what was beautiful, whether in painting or sculpture. He had no hatred-no inveterate prejudices against persons or things. His domestic virtues are too well known to make it necessary to allude to them.

In short, without pretending to raise him above the defects and littlenesses of human nature, I do not know where to point to any one who united such talents for public business with such qualities in private life.

IV.

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. The former hatched the latter's ideas, and for one triumph especially, which Sir Robert tardily but nobly achieved, the Catholics of the British empire must feel even more grateful to their early champion than to their subsequent benefactor.

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.

The brilliant talents, the genial and generous spirit of Mr. Canning procured him partisans who served him with their heart, and animating his country by a sympathy with his spirit, inspired a sort of affectionate interest in his fortunes. The calm and steady prudence, the sober and moderate language, the punctilious devotion to business, the constant attention to practical and useful improvements, the comprehensive acquirements, the gradual abandonment of early prejudices, won by degrees for Sir Robert Peel a sort of judicial pre-eminence which made men