Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/111

 could have been protracted to any extent without practical mischief; but his Cabinet would not agree to it. Then he resigned office (December, 1845), and left with the Queen a paper, to be given to his successor, stating that he would give every support to the new Minister to effect a settlement of the question of the Corn Laws. The Queen sent for Lord John Russell, who, however, failed to form a Government, because Lord Grey refused to take office if Lord Palmerston were at the Foreign Office, and Lord Palmerston refused to take any other place. Peel was therefore recalled. It was thus through the absolute necessity of the moment that he repealed the Corn Laws which he had been elected to support. In the House of Commons he confessed the error of his former opinions, and maintained the duty and dignity of owning one's self to have been wrong rather than pretending by casuistical hair-splitting that there had been no change of opinion when there was so striking a change in conduct; he bore with magnanimity the reproaches of those who still shared the error which he had abandoned, and finally appealed to the facts of the situation, the national calamity of impending famine in Ireland; he claimed that as the Government were responsible for the lives of millions of the Queen's subjects in the sister country, they felt it impossible to take any other course than that of repeal. The great bulk of the Tories accused him of dishonesty, but he took with him the flower of his party, both in regard to intellect and character, while he earned the enthusiastic gratitude and respect of the great bulk of the nation, and of the men led by Cobden and Bright and the Hon. Charles Villiers, who had devoted themselves to the cause of repeal. Their favorable verdict has been confirmed by posterity. Peel's change was an honest change, and he was