Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/683

PEE "With good features," his cousin says of the Mr. Peel of this period, "a sweet smile, a well-formed head, high and ample forehead, and a countenance which when animated was not wanting in expression or fire, he was generally thought a very good-looking young man." The father was delighted with the son, who in principles as in practice was all that could be wished; and when he came of age, the treasury borough of Cashel was procured for him. A handsome income was settled on him by his father; and, heralded by his college successes, Mr. Peel entered parliament with everything in his favour. Mr. Perceval was prime minister when, as member for Cashel, he took his seat in the house of commons in 1809, an avowed supporter of the government. It was the year of the disastrous Walcheren expedition, of the battle of Wagram, and the French occupation of Vienna, but also of Sir Arthur Wellesley's entry into Spain, bringing with it the victory of Talavera. The promising son of the wealthy tory manufacturer was commissioned to second the address to the throne, and this, which may be considered his maiden speech, was delivered with fair success on the 23rd of January, 1810. His second speech was volunteered in the debate on the Walcheren expedition, the policy of which he defended with a zeal very pleasing to the ministers who had planned that unfortunate enterprise; but still more notable was his speech of the 18th of March in the following year on the employment of Portuguese troops by England, and which contained a warm and animated defence of his future colleague, Wellington. In this year, 1811, his ability and tact, enhanced no doubt by his connection with the great manufacturing interest, were recognized by his appointment to the under-secretaryship of the colonies. In the May of 1812 Mr. Perceval was assassinated, and Lord Liverpool became premier. Alone of his biographers. Sir Lawrence Peel affirms that Peel had begun his official career as private secretary to Lord Liverpool. However this may be, he was at once appointed chief secretary for Ireland in the new administration, and at the early age of twenty-four was launched on the stormy sea of Irish politics. It was a trying position for so young a man; but his eminently practical nature did not fail him. Opposing a firm resistance to the catholic claims, he was nicknamed "Orange Peel," and fiercely assailed, on the one side by O'Connell—once so recklessly that in 1815 they were on the point of fighting a duel—on the other side, he was regarded suspiciously by the Orangemen in his administrative capacity as a temporizer, and not at all a zealous champion of protestant ascendancy. Peel endeavoured to remove the causes of Irish lawlessness by promoting education, which he even thought might become a neutral ground for catholic and protestant to co-operate on, and for the repression of Irish crime he organized with great ability the new police, which took its name from him. It was in 1817 that, on Mr. Grattan's motion for a committee to inquire into the Roman catholic claims, he delivered the ablest of his earlier speeches against them. He was rewarded by being elected in the following year one of the members for the university of Oxford. The election was a significant one, for the more brilliant and showy Canning was ambitious of representing Oxford. But Canning was friendly to the catholic claims, while Peel was hostile to them, and in this rivalry the support of the high tory party was thrown into the scale in favour of the Irish secretary. For the representative of Oxford university, as it then was, only one Irish policy was possible. It was a policy repugnant to Peel the administrator, always a different person from Peel the party politician, and soon after he became the parliamentary representative of his Alma Mater he resigned the Irish secretaryship, remaining out of office for more than three years. His position during the interval was that of an independent supporter of the Liverpool ministry. Such repressive measures as the Six acts, directed against so-called "sedition," he supported, and he even went out of his way to defend the conduct of the local magistrates in the "Peterloo" affair of August, 1819. To catholic emancipation he was still an opponent, but his opposition was evidently growing milder, and he carefully forbore giving his support to the proceedings of the ministry against Queen Caroline. He himself, it may be added, married on the 8th of June, 1820, Julia, the youngest daughter of General Sir John Floyd, Bart.—a marriage which to the close of his life is understood to have been an eminently happy one. Meanwhile, just after the termination of his first official connection with the Liverpool ministry, the high tory representative of Oxford university had adopted the policy and secured the admiration of a small but important section of his political opponents, the knot of men devoted to the principles of Adam Smith, and who had been led in the house of commons by Francis Horner. Peel had voted with his father against the resolutions moved by Horner in 1811, embodying the report of the bullion committee of 1809 (of which Horner was chairman), and which recommended the resumption of cash payments by the bank of England after the expiration of two years. But the lapse of time had taught him to modify the views which his father still pertinaciously adhered to. Francis Horner died early in 1817, and the bank committee of February, 1819, appointed as its chairman Mr. Peel, known as an able debater and administrator. On the 24th of May in the same year Peel moved, in an exhaustive speech of great ability, the resolutions embodying the recommendations of the committee upon which, if carried, a bill for the resumption of cash payments was to be founded. Before his statement his father rose to present a petition against the measure. "Tonight," he said, "I shall have to oppose a very near and dear relation. . . . I well remember when the near and dear relation I have alluded to was a child. I observed to some friends that the man who discharged his duty to his country in the manner Mr. Pitt had done, was the man in all the world the most to be admired and the most to be emulated; and I thought at that moment that if my life and that of my dear relative were spared, I would one day present him to his country to follow in the same path. It is very natural that such should be my wish, and I will only say further of him that though he is deviating from the right path in this instance, his head and heart are in the right place, and I think they will soon recall him to the right way." Towards the close of his speech, in which he had succeeded in making even the currency question interesting. Peel acknowledged his father's reference to him thus—"Many other difficulties," he said, "presented themselves to me in discussing this question. Among them is one which it pains me to observe—I mean the necessity I am under of opposing myself to an authority to which I have always bowed from my youth up, and to which I hope I shall always continue to bow with deference. My excuse now is that I have a great public duty imposed on me, and that whatever may be my private feelings, from that duty I must not shrink." The resolutions provided for a resumption of cash payments on a graduated scale, which terminated by fixing the price of gold at the ancient rate of £3 17s. 10½d. per ounce; they were passed without a division. The measure founded on them, and known as "Peel's bill," was carried in the same year. This was his first successful adoption of principles formerly advocated by political opponents and opposed by himself. Some landed proprietors who had borrowed during the period of depreciation, and some merchants and manufacturers of his father's way of thinking, grumbled loudly; but the political economists began to see a future leader in the representative of high church and high tory Oxford. Peel had planted his foot in both camps. He was at once the trusted of Lord Eldon, and the admired of Mr. Ricardo.

In 1822 the Liverpool ministry received two important accessions from the two sections into which the tory party was dividing itself. Peel became secretary for the home department, and Canning for foreign affairs. "His (Canning's) neighbourhood," says Guizot, in a pertinent and pointed passage, "cost Mr. Peel dear. Though far more influential with his party than Mr. Canning, and held in higher general estimation, he had neither that splendour and fascination as an orator, nor, as a man, that charm, that seductiveness of character and success, which had gained for his rival public admiration and enthusiastic friends. Justice was done to Mr. Peel, to his zealous and laborious ability, to his solid knowledge of questions and facts, to his sound and practical knowledge: he was regarded as an excellent home secretary; but he was no longer spoken of as a necessary and speedy head of the government. He did not descend, but Mr. Canning rose rapidly above him. Some persons went so far as to believe that Mr. Peel himself admitted the fact, and was resigned to occupy the second rank. And this might fairly be said, for nothing in his conduct or in his speeches betrayed the least jealousy or ill-humour on his part. In addition to the natural rectitude and equity of his mind, which would not permit him to underrate the merits and successes even of a rival, he was a man of reserved and susceptible pride, and had no notion of engaging in doubtful conflicts for mere self-love, or of