709 



PEEL, SIR EGBERT. 



PEEL, SIR ROBERT. 



710 



28th of December 1803, he had six sons and five daughters. It may 

 be remarked that, with the exception of two daughters who died in 

 infancy, he saw all bis children married before his death. Besides his 

 large landed property, which he entailed upon his eldest son, together 

 with, it is supposed, near half a million in money, he left about 

 150,000/. to each of his younger sons, and above 0,0002. to each of 

 his daughters. He had also previously advanced to or settled upon 

 his several children above 240,0002., besides an income of 90002. per 

 annum secured to his eldest son. 



PEEL, SIR ROBERT, the second baronet of the name, was born 

 on the Mil of February 1788, near Bury in Lancashire, the eldest 

 son and third child of the subject of the preceding notice. He was 

 educated first at Harrow school, where he had Lord Byron for his 

 chvsfellow, and afterwards at Christ's Church, Oxford, where he 

 graduated B.A. in 18CS. Both at school and at the university he was 

 distinguished by his talents, his studiousness, and the solid perse- 

 verance of his character; and, on quitting the -university he took 

 what was then (the modern examination system having been but 

 recently introduced) the unprecedented honour of a double first-class 

 i. e. of paramount excellence both in classics and in mathematics. 

 He had scarcely left college when, in 1809, at the age of twenty-one 

 he was returned to the House of Commons as member for Cashel. 

 His father had destined him for a political career, and from his first 

 entrance into Parliament he was placed in a position of absolute 

 independence by an allowance out of his father's income equal in 

 amount to the fortune of many a nobleman. 



I )u entering Parliament Mr. Peel attached himself to the Tory 

 party, to which his father already belonged. Perceval was then 

 prime minister, and Canning and Castlereagh were his most powerful 

 coadjutors; while on the Whig benches sat Sheridan, Tierney, 

 Whitbread, Horner, Brougham, Romilly, and Sir Francis Burdett. 

 The elder Peel had made no secret of the great expectations he 

 entertained of his sou's success in Parliament ; and the young man's 

 first steps in the walk of life for which he had been confessedly 

 trained, were looked at with much interest and with some jealousy. 

 Bat Mr. Peel was prudent, and was in no haste to measure himself 

 against the established orators of the House. His first speech of any 

 length was in January 1810, when he seconded the address at the 

 opening of the session. His subsequent votes and speeches gained 

 him the reputation of a steady and able young man, from whom much 

 might be expected ; and this, coupled with the weight which be pos- 

 sessed as the ion of a man ot so much commercial influence, led to 

 his appointment, in 1S11, to the office of undersecretary for the 

 colonies. It was the time of the Peninsular War, and of the great 

 struggle with Napoleon, of which that war formed a part; and as 

 purely colonial questions were of comparatively small importance in 

 the midst of events of so engrossing a nature, Mr. Peel had not many 

 opportunities of displaying his powers in his first office, whether as 

 an administrator or as a parliamentary speaker. Whatever he did 

 however brought him a ch ar accession of parliamentary reputation. 



The assassination of Mr. Perceval on the llth of May 1812 occasioned 

 the formation of a new Tory ministry. The Earl of Liverpool became 

 premier with Lord Castlereagh as foreign secretary, Lord Sidmouth as 

 home secretary, Lord Eldou as chancellor, and others of the seniors of 

 the same party in other places of the cabinet; while among the 

 ministers out of the cabinet were Viscount Palmerston as secretary at 

 war, the Duke of Richmond as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and Mr. Peel 

 as chief secretary fur Ireland. The pout accepted by Mr. Peel iu this 

 ministry, stationing him as it did in the midst of the tempestuous sea 

 of Irish politics, was no very enviable one. The Irish agitation con- 

 nected with the union of 1800 had not yet subsided ; the agitation for 

 Catholic emancipation was fiercer than ever ; aud Mr. O'Connell had 

 juat become the leader of the Irish people, and was singling out 

 objects against which to direct the full force of the popular wrath. 

 The young secretary for Ireland was identified with the anti-Catholic 

 policy of the existing ministry; he waa nick-named ' Orange- Peel;' 

 and Mr. O'Connell seemed from the first to conceive an implacable 

 hatred to him personally. After various manifestations of this ani- 

 mosity, Mr. O'Conuell in May 1815 attacked him in ouo of his public 

 speeches in terms so directly insulting that a challenge was the 

 consequence. Some delay however having occurred in settling the 

 preliminaries, the duel was prevented by the interference of the police. 

 It became more evident afterwards than it was at that time that, 

 though Mr. Peel opposed the claims of Roman Catholic emancipation, 

 and backed the ministry, with which he was connected in their resist- 

 ance to those claims, his notions with respect to the government of 

 Ireland were by no means those of the extreme orange party. " From 

 his first entrance," says one of his biographers, " upon the tumultuous 

 arena of Irish politics to the end of his life, he would, if he could, 

 have quenched the fiercer polemics that consumed the country amid 

 their fires, in the cooler element of practical and secular education ; 

 but this was far beyond his power. His encouragement of schools, 

 where tbe strife of religious prosi.lytism might be merged in the 

 soberer pursuits of ordinary mental culture, was only attributed to 

 lukewarmness by one party and to infidelity by the other ; and by the 

 diligence alone with which he sought to remedy the multiform abuses 

 and total want of order which existed in the details of his own office, 

 did he gain credit in Ireland with either party. In all else, for his own 



party he was too temporising, for the emancipationists too exacting." 

 To all intents and purposes however he acted consistently with his 

 position as Irish secretary under the Liverpool administration. Not 

 only did he oppose Mr. Grattan's motion for a committee to consider the 

 Roman Catholic claims in February 1813, and again Sir Henry Parnell's 

 motion on the same subject iu 1315, but his speeches on both these 

 occasions were the ablest that he had yet delivered, and among the 

 most telling on that side of the debate. They scarcely grappled with 

 the question on the ground of essential principle, but strongly and 

 skilfully laid hold of the points of real practical difficulty. The truth 

 is that a mind so thoroughly cool, English, aud moderate as that of 

 Peel, must have felt itself out of its element when charged, in a 

 subordinate capacity, with the management of Irish affairs at a time 

 of such heat and frenzy. Accordingly, as soon as an opportunity 

 offered, he vacated the Irish secretaryship. The war with Napoleon I. 

 was at an end ; Waterloo had brought peace ; Europe had been 

 re-arranged by the Treaty of Vienna ; and the Liverpool-Castlereagh 

 ministry, with gradually-increasing unpopularity, was addressing itself 

 to the home-questions the discussion of which forma the chief part 

 of the history of the Regency. Such was the state of affairs when Mr. 

 Abbott, the Speaker of the House of Commons, having retired into the 

 Upper House as Lord Colchester, and a vacancy having in consequence 

 occurred in the representation of the University of Oxford, Mr. Peel 

 waa elected his successor (1818). Mr. Canning aspired to the honour; 

 but the influence of Lord Eldon, and the conviction entertained by the 

 university of the orthodoxy of Mr. Peel's views on the Roman Catholic 

 question, determined the choice. Mr. Peel then, greatly to the regret 

 and not a little to the damage of the government, already far from 

 firm, resigned his post without accepting another. 



From 1818 till 1822 Mr. Peel had no official connection with the 

 Liverpool-Castlereagh ministry. He continued however to give it his 

 extra-official support in all measures of consequence. It was during 

 this period, too, that by the leading part he took in the pressing 

 currency questions of the day, he laid the foundation of his subse- 

 quent fame as a financier. He bad already shown his sympathy with 

 the views of what was then called the Economist party, of which Mr. 

 Horner during his life had been the head, and to which the House 

 about this time received a powerful accession in Mr. David Ricardo ; 

 and on the appointment of a Bank-Committee in February 1819, to 

 consider the question of a resumption of cash-payments and other allied 

 questions, rendered necessary by the commercial distresses attending 

 the transition from a state of war to one of peace, Mr. Peel, then only 

 thirty-one years of age, was appointed chairman, having among his 

 colleagues Canning, Castlereagh, Vansittart, Tierney, Huskisson, Frede- 

 rick Kobinson, and Sir James Mackintosh. In the proceedings of this 

 committee and the debates which arose out of them, Mr. Peel displayed 

 his ability both as a speaker and as a man of business; and it was iu 

 May 1819 that, in moving resolutions involving a resumption of cash- 

 payments, he constituted himself the champion, to use his owu 

 words, of " the old. the vulgar d_octrine, as some called it, that the 

 true standard of value consisted iu a definite quantity of gold bullion." 

 " Every sound writer on the subject," he said, " came to the same 

 conclusion, that a certain weight of gold bullion, with an impression 

 on it denoting it to be of that certain weight, and of a certain fineness, 

 constituted the only true, intelligible, and adequate standard of value." 

 Though these views were carried into effect by parliament, there were 

 not wanting members who demurred to them ; and among these was 

 Mr. Peel's father, Sir Robert. Besides this currency question, the 

 further history of which we need not trace, Mr. Peel iu the same year 

 took part with the Liverpool government in their opposition to the 

 then revived agitation for Parliamentary Reform. He approved of the 

 famous ' Six Acts ;' and what was long afterwards remembered by 

 the other party to his discredit ho defended, with a vigour all the 

 more remarkable that he was not called upon to exhibit it by any 

 official connection with government, the conduct of the magistracy iu 

 the so-called " Manchester massacre " of August 1819. He kept aloof 

 however, with studious caution, from the ministerial proceedings in 

 the case of Queeu Caroline, which followed the demise of George III. 

 aud the accession of George IV. to the throne (January 29, 1820), and 

 which were terminated by the queen's death in August 1821. It was 

 in the midst of this storm of matrimonial politics that Mr. Peel himself 

 married. His wife was Julia, the youngest daughter of General Sir 

 John Floyd, Bart. The mariiage took place on the 8th of June 1820. 



George IV. having retained the Liverpool ministry in office, Mr. 

 Peel was induced again to become a member of it. In January 1822 

 he took office as secretary of state for the home department. A 

 further modification of the ministry was caused by the suicide, in 

 August, of Lord Castlereagh, whom Mr. Canning succeeded in the 

 foreign secretaryship. Till the fatal illness of Lord Liverpool (April 

 1827) broke up this ministry, Mr. Canning and Mr. Peel continued to 

 be the most prominent and active members of it agreeing sufficiently 

 to co-operate, but having at the same time certain differences. While 

 Mr. Canning was liberalising the foreign policy of the country, Mr. 

 Peel was busy with new forms of the currency-question peculiar to a 

 time of unusual commercial distress and panic. While Mr. Canning 

 waa favourable to a consideration of the Roman Catholic claims, Mr. 

 Peel, as before, opposed them, though with a growing conviction that 

 the opposition could not be long continued. Both remained opposed 



