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Rh contested Coventry in 1863; in 1865 he was elected in the liberal interest for Warwick, for which he sat until his elevation to the peerage. In December 1868 he was appointed parliamentary secretary to the poor law board. This office he filled until 1871, when he became secretary to the board of trade, an appointment which he held for two years. In 1873–1874 he was patronage secretary to the treasury, and in 1880 he became under-secretary for the home department. On the retirement of Mr Brand (afterwards Viscount Hampden) in 1884, Peel was elected Speaker. He was thrice re-elected to the post, twice in 1886, and again in 1892. Throughout his career as Speaker he exhibited conspicuous impartiality, combined with a perfect knowledge of the traditions, usages and forms of the house, soundness of judgment, and readiness of decision upon all occasions; and he will always rank as one of the greatest holders of this important office. On the 8th of April 1895 he announced that for reasons of health he was compelled to retire. The farewell ceremony was of a most impressive character, and warm tributes were paid from all parts of the house. He was created a viscount and granted a pension of £4000 for life. He was presented with the freedom of the City of London in July 1895. The public interest in the ex-Speaker’s later life centred entirely in his somewhat controversial connexion with the drink traffic. A royal commission was appointed in April 1896 to inquire into the operation and administration of the licensing laws, and Viscount Peel was appointed chairman. In July 1898 Lord Peel drew up a draft report for discussion, in five parts. Some differences of opinion arose in connexion with the report, and at a meeting of the commissioners on the 12th of April 1899, when part 5 of the draft report was to be considered, a proposal was made to substitute an alternative draft for Lord Peel’s, and also a series of alternative drafts for the four sections already discussed. Lord Peel declined to put these proposals, and left the room. Sir Algernon West was elected to the chair, and ultimately two main reports were presented, one section agreeing with Lord Peel, and the other—including the majority of the commissioners—presenting a report which differed from his in several important respects. The Peel report recommended that a large reduction in the number of licensed houses should be immediately effected, and that no compensation should be paid from the public rates or taxes, the money for this purpose being raised by an annual licence-rental levied on the rateable value of the licensed premises; it at once became a valuable weapon in the hands of advanced reformers.

Lord Peel married in 1862, and had four sons and two daughters (married to Mr J. Rochfort Maguire and to Mr C. S. Goldman). His eldest son, William Robert Wellesley Peel (b. 1866), married the daughter of Lord Ashton; he was Unionist M.P. for South Manchester from 1900 to 1905, and later for Taunton, and also acted as Municipal Reform leader on the London County Council.

PEEL, SIR ROBERT,. (1788–1850), English statesman, was born on the 5th of February 1788 at Chamber Hall, in the neighbourhood of Bury, Lancashire, or, less probably, at a cottage near the Hall. He was a scion of that new aristocracy of wealth which sprang from the rapid progress of mechanical discovery and manufactures in the latter part of the 18th century. His ancestors were Yorkshire yeomen in the district of Craven, whence they migrated to Blackburn in Lancashire. His grandfather, Robert Peel, first of Peelfold, and afterwards of Brookside, near Blackburn, was a calico-printer, who, appreciating the discovery of his townsman Hargreaves, took to cotton-spinning with the spinning-jenny and grew a wealthy man. His father, Robert Peel (1750–1830), third son of the last-named, carried on the same business at Bury with still greater success, in partnership with his uncle, Mr Haworth, and Mr Yates, whose daughter, Ellen, he married. He made a princely fortune, became the owner of Drayton Manor and member of parliament for the neighbouring borough of Tamworth, was a trusted and honoured, as well as ardent, supporter of Pitt, contributed munificently towards the support of that leader’s war policy, and was rewarded with a baronetcy (1800).

At Harrow, according to the accounts of his contemporaries, Peel was a steady industrious boy, the best scholar in the school, fonder of country walks with a friend than of school games, but reputed one of the best football players. At Christ Church, where he entered as a gentleman commoner, he was the first who, under the new examination statutes, took a first class both in classics and in mathematics. His examination for his B.A. degree in 1808 was an academical ovation in presence of a numerous audience, who came to hear the first man of the day. From his classical studies Robert Peel derived not only the classical, though somewhat pompous, character of his speeches and the Latin quotations with which they were often happily interspersed but something of his lofty ideal of political ambition. To his mathematical training, which was then not common among public men, he no doubt owed in part his method, his clearness, his great power of grasping steadily and working out difficult and complicated questions. His speeches show that, in addition to his academical knowledge, he was well versed in English literature, in history, and in the principles of law, in order to study which he entered at Lincoln’s Inn. But while reading hard he did not neglect to develop his tall and vigorous frame, and. though he lost his life partly through his bad riding, he was always a good shot and an untiring walker after game. His Oxford education confirmed his attachment to the Church of England. His practical mind remained satisfied With the doctrines of his youth, and he never showed that he had studied the great religious controversies of his day.

In 1809, being then in his twenty-second year, he was brought into parliament for the close borough of Cashel, which he afterwards exchanged for Chippenham, and commenced his parliamentary career under the eye of his father, then member for Tamworth, who fondly saw in him the future leader of the Tory party. In that House of Commons sat Wilberforce, Windham, Tierney, Grattan, Perceval, Castlereagh, Plunkett, Romilly, Mackintosh, Burdett, Whitbread, Horner, Brougham, Parnell, Huskisson, and, above all, George Canning. Lord Palmerston entered the house two years earlier, and Lord John Russell three years later. Among these men young Peel had to rise. And he rose, not by splendid eloquence, by profound political philosophy or by great originality of thought, but by the closest attention to all his parliamentary duties, by a study of all the business of parliament, and by a style of speaking which owed its force not to high flights of oratory, but to knowledge of the subject in hand, clearness of exposition, close reasoning, and tact in dealing with a parliamentary audience. With the close of the struggle against revolutionary France, political progress in England was soon to resume the march which that struggle had arrested. Young Peel’s lot, however, was cast, through his father, with the Tory party. In his maiden speech in 1810, seconding the address, he defended the Walcheren expedition, which he again vindicated soon afterwards against the report of Lord Porchester’s committee. It is said that even then his father had discerned in him a tendency to think for himself, and told Lord Liverpool that to make sure of his support it would be well to place him early in harness. At all events he began official life in 1810 as Lord Liverpool’s under-secretary for war and the colonies under the administration of Perceval. In 1812 he was transferred by Lord Liverpool to the more important but unhappy post of secretary for Ireland. There he was engaged till 1818 in maintaining English ascendancy over a country heaving with discontent, teeming with conspiracy, and ever ready to burst into rebellion. A middle course between Irish parties was impossible, and Peel plied the established engines of coercion and patronage with a vigorous hand. At the same time, it was his frequent duty to combat Grattan, Plunkett, Canning and the other movers and advocates of Roman Catholic emancipation in the House of Commons. He, however, always spoke on this question with a command of temper wonderful in hot youth, with the utmost courtesy towards his opponents, and with warm expressions of sympathy and even of admiration for the Irish people. He also, thus early, did his best to advocate and promote joint education in Ireland as a means of reconciling