other changes of a liberal kind. But when he had risen into Lord Grey's seat at the head of the Treasury, and when, in November of the same year, the leader of the House of Commons, Lord Althorp, became Earl Spencer, the premier was much puzzled to find one who should succeed him in that capacity.

*

It was necessary to go to Brighton, and to talk over with the King the arrangements which he proposed. To his surprise, William IV. was anything but compliant, and spoke so plainly about consulting the Duke of Wellington, that Lord Melbourne, always a cool and graceful courtier, undertook to be the bearer to the Duke of the King's letter instructing him to form a cabinet. The Times ascribed it all to Queen Adelaide, who was a zealous Tory. The Duke was summoned to Brighton, and gave signal proofs of his modesty and also of his power. "It is not to me," he said, "that your Majesty must look for a premier, but to Sir Robert Peel. The head of the government should be in the House of Commons. I will serve under him in any capacity your Majesty may think fit, and until he returns from Italy, I will take upon myself the responsibility of the entire administration." He did so, with unexampled diligence, for three weeks, in concert with Lord Lyndhurst, and then, on the 9th of December, 1834, remitted the task of choosing a ministry into the hands of the ablest and the most distinguished of his friends.

*November, 1834.

Since Walpole and Pitt there is no English premier who has directed the course of public affairs by the force of his own mind so largely as Sir Robert Peel. Inferior statesmen are borne along by strong currents, which they seem to guide; but great statesmen, like Peel, are always making broad and deep channels in which the stream may flow. He sprang, as Canning sprang, from the middle. class of society, being the son of a cotton-spinner who, with the help of Sir Richard Arkwright's invention, and of Compton's mule, became a millionaire and a baronet. He was a seriously-minded man, and when Robert was born, in a cottage near Chamber Hall (the family residence), on the 5th of February, 1788, he fell on his knees, returned thanks to God, and vowed that he would give his son to the service of his country.

The boy was never allowed to lose sight of his ultimate destination. When his father entered parliament as member for Tamworth he was just two years old, and he soon began to understand that he must one day speak in that House of Commons where his father sat, and that his hands must help to build up the family honour. Constantly on Sundays, when church was over, Mr. Peel would place Robert on a table or lead him to the study + to repeat the

t

sermon, and with his earliest accents he was made to lisp the revered name of Pitt. Before he was breeched he had learned to regard that minister as the model of

"Life of Sir R. Peel," by Sir Lawrence Peel, p. 40. † Ibid., p. 45.

English statesmen; and when he sat on the same form with Byron at Harrow, and rivalled the poet as a declaimer and actor, and surpassed him greatly (as Byron himself allowed) in scholarship, ambition equally noble and loyal already fired his breast. At Oxford he figured in the first class list in classics and mathematics, and was the first Oxonian who had been thus distinguished.*

Not a day was to be lost after this success. A borough must be found for him immediately. His father's hopes were even now half realised, and were too bright and precious to be retarded. The vacant seat of Cashel was secured for him, and in 1809, at the age of twenty-one, he entered the field of his future triumphs. The income which his father placed at his disposal was equal to that of many a nobleman. The Pitt traditions were sacred in his eyes, yet not so sacred but that he submitted them daily to the severest tests in the crucible of his secret thoughts. It was some time before he passed in the House for a star of the first magnitude. He was painstaking rather than brilliant, and was more highly appreciated by cabinet ministers than by his colleagues in parliament. The old race of orators had died away, but it required no mean debater to shine beside Grattan and Tierney, Sheridan, Romilly, Windham, and Canning. But Perceval made him Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies

* Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1860, p. 258. "Life of Peel" (Routledge, 1850), p. 29.

in 1811; and Lord Liverpool having proved his ability Chief Secretary for Ireland, promoted him to the Secretaryship of State for the Home Department, in place of Lord Sidmouth, in 1821.

During seventeen years he served actively and loyally under Tory governments-under Tories, like Lord Castlereagh and Lord Eldon, whose Toryism was Russian and Ottoman compared with Pitt's. Of this intolerant party he was the spokesman-the foremost foe of O'Connell and of Catholic Emancipation—yet resisting this measure not on principle, but on grounds of national expediency. Hence, in 1817, he bore away the palm from Canning in a contested election for the University of Oxford. In pleading for Roman Catholics Mr. Canning had committed the unpardonable sin, and converted the heads of Houses into so many Gorgons.

As Secretary for Ireland Peel earned for himself a good reputation. He extended the police system through the provinces, and did all in his power to mitigate the severity of a harsh rule. But though respected, he was not beloved. He was cold and uncommunicative. The nickname which they gave him in Ireland was OrangePeel. O'Connell never ceased to arraign him and sneer at him, while Lady Morgan quizzed him in one of her novels. "They have sent us," said the Liberator, "a raw youth, squeezed out of the workings of I know not what factory, and not past the foppery of perfumed handkerchiefs and thin shoes, to govern us."

Yet the raw youth rose steadily.* Extreme diligence and attention to detail supplied in him the defect of genius, and enabled him in the end to outdo other men who were possessed of more showy talents. Though long and closely connected with the executive government, his mind never contracted to the measure of his masters; though he supported their measures, he did not adopt their prejudices, but, as subsequent events proved, sat loose to the doctrine of exclusive establishments, Paper Currency, and Protection in trade. His "unexpansiveness," indeed, prevented others from seeing what was going on in his mind, and Croker used to complain of him, "Il ne se déboutonne pas."

There is an amusing story told apropos to his reticence. A party of his friends, among whom was Mr. Croker, met one day at Drayton. After their morning's sport they assembled at dinner, and Sir Robert Peel, then prime minister, told them how his little nephew had swallowed a button. They had been obliged to send for the doctor, who at last, as Sir Robert said, "got everything out of the child." 66 William," exclaimed Croker across the table to the boy's father, "I wish that somebody would give Sir Robert a button."

In February, 1813, Peel opposed Grattan's motion for a committee to consider the Roman Catholic claims, and he resisted Sir Henry Parnell's motion again on the same

* Sir Lawrence Peel, p. 112, et seq.; Lord Cloncurry's "Personal Reminiscences," p. 198.