Page:Life of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel.pdf/6

6 nal gratitude of his country. We may here record a domestic event in the life of Mr. Peel. On the 8th of June, 1820, he was married, at Upper Seymour Street, London, to Julia, youngest daughter of General Sir John Floyd. The bride was in her twenty fifth, and the bridegroom in the thirty-third year of his age.

In January, 1822, Mr. Peel was installed at the head of the Home Department, where he remained till the spring of 1827, when the illness of Lord Liverpool broke up the administration, and Mr. Peel threw up office. His reason for doing so was, that, from the first moment of his public life, he had constantly resisted the extension of political privileges to the Roman Catholics. His opposition was founded on principle, and he could not hold connection with an administration likely to forward the claims of the Catholics. In January, 1828, Mr. Peel again became Home Secretary, under the Duke of Wellington as premier, and in the following year he proposed the great measure of Catholic emancipation, to which he had previously been strongly opposed. The charge of apostacy was loudly brought against him, but he defended himself with spirit and ability. He mainly rested his defence upon the repeated divisions in the House of Commons, in favour of the disputed claims. "Such," said Mr. Peel in his speech, "is the conclusion to which I found myself compelled by the irresistible force of circumstances: and I will adhere to it, aye, and I will act upon it, unchanged by the scurrility of abuse—by the expression of opposite opinions, however vehement or however general—unchanged by the deprivation of political confidence, or by the far heavier sacrifice of private friendships and affections. Looking back upon the past, surveying the present, and fore-judging the prospects of the future, again I declare that the time is come when this question must be settled. I shall follow the example