International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 7, August 12, 1850. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ altogether differed from his son as to the tendency of his measure. It was roundly asserted at the time, and very faintly denied, that it rendered that gentleman a more wealthy man, by something like half a million sterling, than he had previously been. The deceased statesman, however, must, in common justice, be acquitted of any sinister purpose.

      This narrative now reaches the year 1820, when we have to relate the only domestic event in the history of Sir Robert Peel which requires notice. On the 8th of June, being then in the 33d year of his age, he married Julia, daughter of General Sir John Floyd, who had then attained the age of 25.

      Two years afterward there was a lull in public affairs, which gave somewhat the appearance of tranquillity. Lord Sidmouth was growing old, he thought that his system was successful, and that at length he might find repose. He considered it then consistent with his public duty to consign to younger and stronger hands the seals of the home department. He accepted a seat in the cabinet without office, and continued to give his support to Lord Liverpool, his ancient political chief. In permitting his mantle to fall upon Mr. Peel, he thought he was assisting to invest with authority one whose views and policy were as narrow as his own, and whose practise in carrying them out would be not less rigid and uncompromising. But, like many others, he lived long enough to be grievously disappointed by the subsequent career of him whom the liberal party have since called "the great minister of progress," and whom their opponents have not scrupled to designate by appellations not to be repeated in these hours of sorrow and bereavement. On the 17th of January, 1822, Mr. Peel was installed at the head of the home department, where he remained undisturbed till the political demise of Lord Liverpool in the spring of 1827. The most distinguished man that has filled the chair of the House of Commons in the present century was Charles Abbott, afterward Lord Colchester. In the summer of 1817 he had completed sixteen years of hard service in that eminent office, and he had represented the University for eleven years. His valuable labors having been rewarded with a pension and a peerage, he took his seat, full of years and honors, among the hereditary legislators of the land, and left a vacancy in the representation of his alma mater, which Mr. Peel above all living men was deemed the most fitting person to occupy. At that time he was an intense tory—or as the Irish called him, an Orange Protestant of the deepest dye—one prepared to make any sacrifice for the maintenance of church and state as established by the revolution of 1688. Who, therefore, so fit as he to represent the loyalty, learning, and orthodoxy of Oxford? To have done so had been the object of Mr. Canning's young ambition: but in 1817 he could not be so ungrateful to Liverpool as to reject its representation even for the early object of his parliamentary affections. Mr. Peel, therefore, was returned without opposition, for that constituency which many consider the most important in the land—with which he remained on the best possible terms for twelve years. The question of the repeal of the penal laws affecting the Roman Catholics, which severed so many political connections, was, however, destined to separate Mr. Peel from Oxford. In 1828 rumors of the coming change were rife, and many expedients were devised to extract his opinions on the Catholic question. But with the reserve which ever marked his character, left all curiosity at fault. At last, the necessities of the government rendered further concealment impossible, and out came the truth that he was no longer an Orangeman. The ardent friends who had frequently supported his Oxford elections, and the hot partisans who shouted "Peel and Protestantism," at the Brunswick Clubs, reviled him for his defection in no measured terms. On the 4th of February, 1829, he addressed a letter to the vice-chancellor of Oxford, stating, in many well-turned phrases, that the Catholic question must forthwith be adjusted, under advice in which he concurred; and that, therefore, he considered himself bound to resign that trust which the University had during so many years confided to his hands. His resignation was accepted; but as the avowed purpose of that important step was to give his constituents an opportunity of pronouncing an opinion upon a change of policy, he merely accepted the Chiltern Hundreds with the intention of immediately becoming a candidate for that seat in parliament which he had just vacated. At this election Mr. Peel was opposed by Sir Robert Inglis, who was elected by 755 to 609. Mr. Peel was, therefore, obliged to cast himself on the favor of Sir Manasseh Lopez, who returned him for Westbury, in Wiltshire, which constituency he continued to represent two years, until at the general election in 1830 he was chosen for Tamworth, in the representation for which he continued for twenty years.

      The main features of his official life still remain to be noticed. With the exception of Lord Palmerston, no statesman of modern times has spent so many years in the civil service of the crown. If no account be taken of the short time he was engaged upon the bullion committee in effecting the change in the currency, and in opposing for a few months the ministries of Mr. Canning and Lord Goderich, it may be stated that from 1810 to 1830 he formed part of the government, and presided over it as a first minister in 1834-5, as well as from 1841 to 1846 inclusive. During the time that he held the office of home secretary under Lord Liverpool he effected many important changes in the administration of domestic affairs, and many legislative improvements of a practical and comprehensive character. But his fame as member of parliament was principally sustained at this period of his life by the extensive and admirable alterations which he effected in the criminal law. Romilly and Mackintosh had preceded him in the great work of reforming and humanizing the code of England. For his hand, however, was reserved the introduction of ameliorations which they had long toiled and struggled for in vain. The ministry through whose influence he was enabled to carry these reforms lost its chief in Lord Liverpool during the early part of the year 1827. When Mr. Canning undertook to form a government, Mr. Peel, the late Lord Eldon, the Duke of Wellington, and other eminent tories of that day, threw up office, and are said to have persecuted Mr. Canning with a degree of rancor far outstripping the legitimate bounds of political hostility. Lord George Bentinck said "they hounded to the death my illustrious relative"; and the ardor of his subsequent opposition to Sir Robert Peel evidently derived its intensity from a long cherished sense of the injuries supposed to have been inflicted upon Mr. Canning. It is the opinion of men not ill informed respecting the sentiments of Canning, that he considered Peel as his true political successor—as a statesman competent to the task of working out that large and liberal policy which he fondly hoped the tories might, however tardily, be induced to sanction. At all events, he is believed not to have entertained toward Mr. Peel any personal hostility, and to have stated during his short-lived tenure of office that that gentleman was the only member of his party who had not treated him with ingratitude and unkindness.

      In January, 1828, the Wellington ministry took office and held it till November, 1830. Mr. Peel's reputation suffered during this period very rude shocks. He gave up, as already stated, his anti-Catholic principles, lost the force of twenty years' consistency, and under unheard-of disadvantages introduced the very measure he had spent so many years in opposing. The debates on Catholic emancipation, which preceded the great reform question, constitute a period in his life, which, twenty years ago, every one would have considered its chief and prominent feature. There can be no doubt that the course he then adopted demanded greater moral courage than at any previous period of his life he had been called upon to exercise. He believed himself incontestibly in the right; he believed, with the Duke of Wellington, that the danger of civil war was imminent, and that such an event was immeasurably a greater evil than surrendering the constitution of 1688. But he was called upon to snap asunder a parliamentary connection of twelve years with a great university, in which the most interesting period of his youth had been passed; to encounter the reproaches of adherents whom he had often led in well-fought contests against the advocates of what was termed "civil and religious liberty;" to tell the world that the character of public men for consistency, however precious, is not to be directly opposed to the common weal; and to communicate to many the novel as well as unpalatable truth that what they deemed "principle" must give way to what he called "expediency."

      When he ceased to be a minister of the crown, that general movement throughout Europe which succeeded the deposition of the elder branch of the Bourbons rendered parliamentary reform as unavoidable as two years previously Catholic emancipation had been. He opposed this change, no doubt with increased knowledge and matured talents, but with impaired influence and few parliamentary followers. The history of the reform debates will show that Sir Robert Peel made many admirable speeches, which served to raise his reputation, but never for a moment СКАЧАТЬ