When George III died in January 1820 Peel, ‘a remarkably good-looking man’, tall, red-haired and fastidiously dressed, was a week short of his 32nd birthday.
A week before his unopposed return at the general election of 1820, Peel became engaged to the beautiful Julia Floyd. From his sister Mary’s home at Bognor, 23 Mar., he wrote to his friend John Croker*, secretary to the admiralty, about the unsettled state of public affairs:
Do not you think that the tone of ... public opinion is more liberal than the policy of the government? ... that there is a feeling ... in favour of some undefined change in the mode of governing the country? ... Can we resist for seven years reform in Parliament ... And if reform cannot be resisted, is it not more probable that Whigs and Tories will unite, and carry through moderate reform, than remain opposed to each other?
Croker Pprs. i. 170.
He married Julia in early June and had impregnated her by the beginning of August. He largely ‘kept aloof from Parliament’ in the 1820 session, but was present on 12 July to criticize the Irish chancery bill. On 28 June Edward Littleton* noted an apparent attempt by James Daly* and ‘the Peel faction’ to persuade Charles Grant, Peel’s successor as Irish secretary, to renew the Insurrection Act, with the aim of increasing ‘the weakness of the government at this moment of vacillation in their councils’.
It is perfectly true that his irritability, and a certain arrogance which the want of family and connection renders less tolerable, have during the last two years rendered the House (particularly the ministerial men) less favourably disposed to him, but still he combines advantages of general character in the country, of talents and habits of business which place him higher than any man in the House.
In response to his leader Lord Buckingham’s denigration of Peel, Williams Wynn wrote:
He cannot supply the effect of one of Canning’s glittering speeches ... [but] he combines greater advantages ... than any other man in the House. Talent, independent fortune, official habits and reputation, and, above all, general character ... have ... disposed more men to follow and more to unite with him than any person ... I do not deny the objections arising from want of family and connection, the irritability he has shown of late ... but ... you can name no one who has not greater difficulties to encounter, and fewer advantages to assist him.
NLW, Coedymaen mss, Wynn to Lord Grenville, 26 Dec. 1820; Buckingham, i. 102.
Peel left the House before the division on Hamilton’s motion condemning the omission of the queen’s name from the liturgy, 26 Jan. 1821, when his brother William voted with opposition.
Peel, in reply, was bad and weak, evidently labouring under the weakness of his case, and showing an inclination to back out as soon as he could: no spirit or zeal, and very different in tone, sentiment and manner from what he exhibited last time ... His speech was good as to diction, choice of words and clearness of exposition, but very poor in knowledge, and exhibiting no power of thought or strength of mind.
Buckingham, i. 102; Grey Bennet diary, 28.
Peel voted in the minority and opposed the subsequent relief bill, though in the prevailing mood of ‘great forebearance’, 16 Mar., he conceded that the exclusion of Catholics from power was ‘an evil’ and said that if the measure became law he would strive to reconcile Protestants to it.
The Grenvillite Joseph Phillimore* thought that Peel’s line on the Catholic relief bill indicated that he was ‘paving the way for a junction with government’, but he believed that he had not ‘gained ground by his conduct’ and had ‘lost rather in the estimation of the House’.
expressed himself well-disposed towards the government, but stated that, from the state of his health, office was not a matter of much anxiety or importance to him ... He said his eyes were so bad that he could not read at all at night and very little in the day time, and that consequently he was much incapacitated for business. He said, however, as he was going away, that he should like to know what changes were to be made and what office offered to him before he made a more decisive answer.
Ibid. i. 97; Croker Pprs. i. 187.
To a letter from Lord Bathurst, the colonial secretary, pressing him to join the government, Peel replied, 1 June, that ‘many considerations induce me to prefer ... idleness to the occupations of public life’, but that hostility to the ministry was not one of them: ‘I shall never persuade myself to exchange Cannon Row [the location of the East India office] for Lulworth [his rented holiday home in Dorset] as a summer residence’. Bathurst interpreted this as a rejection of ‘the particular office’, while Wellington thought Peel would accept something ‘if his friends endeavour to prevail upon him or are neutral’.
playing a game, and ... not quite a fair one. When Peel said he came to decline the India board, Lord L. said hastily, ‘And anything else I should offer?’ Peel begged to say that, when anything else should be offered, it would be time enough to decide on it ... He thought Lord L. was peevish and embarrassed.
Croker Pprs. i. 187-90.
Croker, who reckoned that Peel would not settle for less than the exchequer or the home office, and the Speaker Manners Sutton, an adherent of Peel, agreed that while they would have liked him to take the board of control, they could not blame him for turning it down ‘upon his own view of the awkwardness in which he thinks an office without parliamentary business would place him’.
The king’s reluctance to see Lord Sidmouth removed from the home office and refusal to accept Canning’s return to the cabinet continued to block Peel’s way during the summer.
is a young man of many accomplishments, clever and learned, a good orator and full of ambition. He has consistently refused second-rate places, knowing very well that they would be obliged to turn to him on account of his oratorical gifts ... It is not impossible that one day ... [he] will be first lord of the treasury.
Von Neumann Diary, i. 90.
Mackintosh considered Peel’s ‘accession ... as a step to a higher Toryism and consequently to a more undistinguishing resistance to all novelties’ and was unsure whether or not to press on with his parliamentary campaign for reform of the criminal law.
In fact Peel showed willingness to co-operate cautiously in some of this work. When unsuccessfully opposing on a technicality Mackintosh’s motion for early consideration of reform of the criminal law, 4 June 1822, he explained that he was planning or hoping to bring in measures to establish a ‘vigorous preventive police’, improve prison discipline and regulate transportation; but he assured Mackintosh of his support for the principle of his motion. He had on 14 Mar. 1822 secured the appointment of a select committee to investigate the policing of the metropolis, where crime was increasing. Although he himself chaired it, its report, presented on 17 June 1822, was a disappointment, declaring against ‘improvements in police, or facilities in detection of crime’.
As home secretary, Peel’s days were filled with a demanding plethora of business, including the maintenance of law and order: there were serious outbreaks of unrest in various manufacturing districts in 1822, and strikes by textile workers and colliers in the west of Scotland, Lancashire and the Midlands, and London and north- east shipwrights in late 1824. In 1825 Peel, who used troops where necessary, brought in a bill to repeal parts of Hume’s half-baked 1824 Combinations Act in order to prevent the abuse of power by unions and protect individual employers and workers.
Peel’s well-intentioned attempt to bring forward his brother William by offering him the home office under-secretaryship backfired, and he appointed George Dawson*, his brother-in-law.
Peel shows ... more spirit and good judgement ... than any man in the cabinet ... He has lately taken a much bolder and more decided tone both in Parliament and cabinet, and I have little doubt means to run for the lead of the ... Commons. It appears to me very probable that his object is to break up the government, in the expectation that it will be impossible for the opposition to substitute anything which can stand three months, and that he may then mould and form it at his pleasure. He has ... spoken to me of the advantage which would result from our retiring, and the certainty that we must return to power within three months. Does he think that period would be sufficient for opposition to pass the Catholic question?
Add. 75937, Lady to Lord Spencer, 13 May 1822; Buckingham, i. 325-6; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 162.
Peel said that the Greenhoe reform petition was couched in ‘insulting’ language and must therefore be rejected, 3 June, and on the 14th alleged that the Kent reform meeting had been dominated by William Cobbett† ‘because he had not been manfully resisted’ by the Whigs and said that Burdett and Grey Bennet were undermining public credit with their demands for a reduction of the interest on the national debt. Hobhouse considered his speech proposing renewal of the Aliens Act, 5 June,’very wretched’, and remarked that ‘he has been lately very flippant, and particularly to Burdett’.
In mid-July 1822 Williams Wynn reported to Buckingham that Peel and Bathurst were ‘strongly’ of opinion that the government would be well rid of Canning, if, as seemed likely, he went as governor-general to India. He had also heard that Peel had vouchsafed the view that ‘things would not go on well until they had got rid of the Grenvilles’; but he did not believe this, ‘as he is far too cautious to commit himself by such a speech’, though ‘the coldness and reserve of his manner to me make me think that the opinion ... is not unlikely to be entertained by him’. Buckingham’s acolyte William Fremantle* observed that Canning was wanted by ‘no part of the government’, for they ‘find the strength and power of Peel have completely answered their purpose, and with more popularity and feeling of the House than the other would have done’.
In January 1823 Liverpool countenanced a proposal from Canning that he should be allowed to occupy the house in Downing Street customarily used by the chancellor of the exchequer, if the prime minister did not want it. According to Henry Hobhouse, the premier failed to realize how much this was ‘calculated to excite ... Peel’s jealousy’, as it would imply that Liverpool regarded Canning as his natural successor. When this was pointed out to him, the idea was abandoned.
Peel was obliged to go to London from Lulworth, where Julia, expecting their third child, was unwell, on departmental business in mid-August 1823, when he inspected the progress of his new town house, building in Whitehall Gardens, and hid from his prospective neighbour ‘Chin’ Grant*, a great bore. He was reassured, Arbuthnot told Bathurst, to find that Canning ‘was not making way with the king’, but Arbuthnot saw that he ‘has great suspicions of Canning, and it annoys him not a little that Lord Liverpool should be under such subjection to him’.
I am quite alone in town, for every one of my colleagues, with the exception of Peel, is absent, and you know that he hath no particular pleasure in communicating with me more than is necessary to avoid any public rupture, besides which he is at present otherwise engaged, as his wife is just brought to bed ... Since writing the above I have seen Peel, who gives me a very encouraging account of the success of the tithes bill.
Buckingham, ii. 11-14.
At this time, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot, Peel ‘talked very confidentially’ to her husband ‘about Canning’: ‘He appeared to have the worst possible opinion of him, said he had no objection to do business in cabinet with him and that they were civil together in the ... Commons, but that he was the sort of person he should be very sorry to have a tete a tete with’.
On the address, 6 Feb. 1824, Canning, goaded by Brougham, affirmed his undiminished support for Catholic relief, which prompted Peel to declare his unabated hostility, ‘with some display of bad temper’, as Fremantle thought.
he took the opportunity of letting out his discontent with the state of affairs, particularly in Ireland, of declaring his repentance that he had ever accepted the ... [home office] and that it would be much better if the four persons concerned in the Irish government were of the Catholic opinion rather than that they should be divided ... I think his feeling is more one of disgust at what passes in Parliament and at his being obliged to be silent when he hears Papists praised and Orangemen abused than it is with anything serious. I ... endeavoured to convince him that if he was out of office his own prudence and sense of duty would induce him to be silent upon such occasions ... I ... urged him to put himself as he ought manfully at the head of Irish affairs and to suggest the measures which his own good sense might suggest to get the better of the evil which is now an impending Roman Catholic rebellion, and to confide in the support of his colleagues; and that as to his inferiors, he must remove them ... if they don’t implicitly obey his directions. I fairly scolded him, but I don’t think I made much impression or did much good, excepting that I hope he will not take any important step without first consulting me.
Arbuthnot mss; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 321.
Peel was not in the best of mental and physical condition at this time, as Plumer Ward told Buckingham, 4 July:
Lord Maryborough ... thought that ... [Peel] would not be long an object of speculation ... It is certain that he is a very shadow, and there are great fears of his lasting. His looks at present are those of a scarecrow, but this is owing partly to an operation ... upon his eye, the small veins of which he was persuaded to have cut in order to remove a tumour, instead of which the blood has extravasated, and he looks as if he had been in a row in St. Giles’s. People, however, say he is only too fond of his wife ... Many ... agree with Lord Maryborough, and place him hors de combat as to futurity.
Two weeks later Ward wrote of Peel’s supposed jealousy of Robinson’s success as chancellor: he ‘is, they say, evidently moody and ungracious with his colleagues; in fact in ill health ... The subalterns have noticed a sort of indifference of manners, by no means concealed, on the part of Peel towards Canning’. Yet when he related Canning’s complaint in September of `personal impropriety and unkindness’ towards him in cabinet from the Protestants, he stressed that Canning ‘always excepts Peel, who, he says, though he has opposed him, has always done it in a fair, open, manly manner’.
considers a revolution at no great distance - not a bloody one and perhaps not one leading to a republic, but one utterly subversive of the aristocracy and of the present system of carrying on the government. He thinks we may get on quite well after this change as before, but he considers it inevitable.
Three Diaries, 118.
On 19 Nov. 1824 the king, agitated by the growing influence of the Catholic Association and thinking that his own stance on emancipation was being misrepresented, warned Peel that if things continued as they were he would no longer tolerate leaving the question open in cabinet. As commanded, Peel showed this potentially destructive letter to Wellington, who favoured ignoring it, whereas Peel felt that they must either show it to Liverpool or return it to the king. Arbuthnot persuaded the duke that it was vital to inform the premier, and, after Wellington had contacted Knighton, the king instructed Peel to put the letter into Liverpool’s hands. When he did so, Liverpool agreed with him that it was best to take no notice of it; but to ensure that the situation was kept under control Peel secured an audience with the king and successfully asked him not to say anything which would upset the existing state of affairs when he saw Liverpool. There the matter rested.
On the address, 4 Feb. 1825, Peel asserted that the continued existence of the Association was ‘not consistent with the popular principles and liberties’ of parliamentary government. He spoke in support of the bill to suppress it, 10 Feb., when he drew a distinction between the Catholic and Constitutional Associations. Fremantle thought he ‘did very well’, as did Bankes, and Nicholl reckoned that his low-key speech was ‘excellent, varied in manner, good in matter’.
Never did minister get such a whipping ... Peel looked so red and so silly ... and we so ... cheered ... [Brougham], that a bystander would have thought the opposition certain of a majority; yet when ministers came to divide, after the exposure of their secretary, they had a majority of 222 ... to 89.
Hobhouse recorded that at the end of the debate ‘Peel actually came up to Brougham and told him he was much gratified by his speech’ and that Burdett explained this ‘scarcely credible’ act by surmising that Peel ‘was so stunned and stupefied by the blow, that he scarcely knew what he said or did’. Wilson, who ‘never saw a being, a thing so prostrated as Peel’, attributed it to ‘false taste’. Subsequent enquiries by Peel revealed that Rowan had not been made a magistrate, and he threw this information back in Brougham’s face on the third reading of the bill, 25 Feb.
On other issues in the 1825 session, Peel defended the grant for the Irish linen board, 18 Mar., secured an increase in London police magistrates’ salaries, 21 Mar., agreed to go into committee on William Smith’s Dissenters’ marriages bill, 25 Mar., and persuaded Peter Moore to drop his measure to repeal the Bubble Act, 29 Mar. He acquiesced, as prearranged, in Hobhouse’s motion for leave to introduce a bill to shorten children’s hours of cotton factory labour, 5 May, but on 16 and 31 May voiced doubts about it and recommended Hobhouse to confine it to ‘making his [Peel] father’s bill operative’.
During the financial crash of late 1825, Peel discussed the currency problem with Thomas Attwood†, who was recommended to him by Sir Robert, and, although he had no faith in the small note circulation which they advocated, he took Attwood to see Liverpool and Robinson. Keen to seize the opportunity of rationalizing the banking system, he played a leading part in the cabinet deliberations of January 1826 which produced bills banning the issue of new notes under £5 and authorizing the establishment of joint-stock banks beyond 65 miles from London and of branches of the Bank of England.
We carried our [banking] measure through the ... Commons very triumphantly ... Great surprise was very generally felt ... for it was supposed that the country bankers had a great influence in the House and would exert it. The opposition supported the measures very fairly, with the exception of Baring and one or two of the commercial Whigs. Hume will give as much trouble as he can on the estimates, but I think we have every prospect of an easy session. It is quite clear that the Catholic question will not be brought on ... I trust we shall hear less than usual about Ireland ... The House seemed quite satisfied with the assurances which we gave about the measures recommended in the two reports of last year. The opposition in the ... Commons seems particularly slack.
Wellington mss WP1/850/9.
He supported of the promissory notes bill, 20, 27 Feb., 7 Mar. He successfully opposed Hume’s attempt to abolish the volunteer corps, 3 Mar. That day he informed Wellington that Canning and Huskisson had spoken effectively on the silk trade, but that ministers had been ‘placed in a very unpleasant predicament’ on the question of an issue of exchequer bills, for which there was a clamour in commercial circles, and had been rescued by the Bank’s offer to lend money on deposit of goods. He also explained that, alarmed by Liverpool’s apparent threat, echoed by Canning in the House, to resign if the government was defeated on this, he had gone to the premier and ‘told him I thought him very wrong in using such language, that if he resigned when the country was in a crisis of financial difficulty ... he would lose all the credit he had gained’ and that ‘the country would right itself in two or three months, that the man who succeeded him would get all the credit, and he personally all the blame’. He had added that if Liverpool went, he would follow suit. He remained convinced that ministers had been ‘right in refusing’ to issue bills ‘and that had we had consented, we should have defeated our other measures, and not impossibly have had to answer for another bank restriction’.
The only friends that Canning and Huskisson have are a few of the Whigs. The Tories hate what they vote for, and their embarrassment is greatly increased by Peel being pledged to Huskisson’s measures ... I always expect that the Tories will trip up any ministry who attempt to act upon liberal policy, and yet it is very difficult to do it, unless the king should die and the duke of York ... reign. Then it would turn upon Peel, who I hear does not feel at ease, although it is quite in his character, being pledged, to go through with it. The greatest proof he gives of his sense is in showing that he is perfectly aware that he has not talents to play a difficult or doubtful game, and that he can only win by steadiness and show of principle that confidence which he has not the genius or the talents to command.
Add. 51574, Abercromby to Holland, 7 Mar. [1826].
Williams Wynn observed that many of the government’s supporters were disgruntled with ‘our liberal and conciliatory measures’, but that they were made powerless by ‘the knowledge that ... [they] have not in their ranks a singe individual of weight and ability to stand forward’ in the Commons, and that ‘the person whose opinions on the Catholic question would naturally point him out for that purpose, is upon every other subject ... disposed to participate to the fullest extent in the line of policy adopted by his colleagues’.
He is generally dissatisfied with the state of affairs, but then he is generally a great frondeur. He does not care for office, and every other word with him is always, ‘If they want my office, let them take it. I don’t want it’. In this he is sincere, but he is now more than usually irritated. Having refused to enter into intrigues with the king and Knighton, the king has quite cut him and never sees him; Lord Liverpool never sees him because he never sees anybody when he can possibly help it; so ... Peel is left entirely to the duties of his department.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 21.
On 1 May he explained how he had sent troops to restore order in the distressed manufacturing areas, but at the same time expressed sympathy and admiration for those who were suffering patiently and urged the wealthy to reach into their pockets. He fully endorsed the government’s emergency proposals to open the ports to bonded and foreign corn, 5, 12 May. Creevey commented:
If a good Ultra Tory government could be made, Canning and Huskisson must inevitably be ruined by this daring step. You never heard such language as the old sticklers apply to them; and, unhappily for Toryism, that prig Peel seems as deeply bitten by ‘liberality’, in every way but on the Catholic question, as any of his fellows.
Creevey Pprs. ii. 100.
He replied to Williams’s motion on chancery administration and praised Eldon, 18 May. On 26 May 1826 he advocated the postponement of Russell’s resolutions condemning electoral bribery until next session, but they were carried by the Speaker’s casting vote. He also brought up and defended the report of the select committee on the Scottish and Irish banking systems, which he had chaired, and which he had brought to recommend no significant change.
He told Arbuthnot ... that he quite felt for the state of degradation into which Lord Liverpool was fallen ... but that he had no words to express his contempt and abhorrence of ... Canning ... [whose] conduct this session in staying away whenever unpleasant subjects ... were to be discussed was quite pitiable, and that his dirty intrigues with the king and Knighton were disgusting ... Peel almost said he would not remain in a government of which ... Canning was the head, but he said he made it a rule never to make up his mind until the time came. The king wanted to make ... Peel believe that he had attended to his interests, meaning the Protestant cause, in these ... peerages; but ... Peel turned off the conversation and would not discuss the subject with him.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 28-29.
He politely declined a fanciful invitation to allow himself to be nominated for Westminster as the champion of the Protestant cause, and was again returned unopposed for the University.
He told Lord Liverpool, 9 July 1826, that while he was ‘well aware of the immense importance of making every possible reduction in the estimates next year’, he considered it ‘absolutely necessary to maintain a very strong military force in the manufacturing districts’, where continued unemployment was breeding discontent.
I am very much struck with the industry and good sense of Peel ... On all the topics, whether it be emigration, machinery or corn laws, he is always ready to take his part with promptitude, decision and good knowledge of what has been said or written ... He bids fairly to be the minister of England, more so than any of his competitors, the Catholic question once got over; and then I think his tone and principles will be on a level with the age.
On 13 Dec. 1826 Abercromby reported the striking ‘cordiality’ with which Peel had the previous night ‘cheered’ Brougham’s reply to Canning’s exposition of the Portuguese issue.
he would undertake it for the very reasons that made Mr. R. decline it, namely that there were difficulties, which he should not the least mind; that otherwise he should certainly prefer his present office ... Peel told Arbuthnot he was quite certain the king did not care a farthing for Canning ... and only valued him as the greatest and best jobber to do his dirty work. He said that a short time ago he was with the king, who said to him, ‘Ah, Peel, what a misfortune it was that I had not a private conversation with you and misunderstood your sentiments before you left Edinburgh [in August 1822]. All the misfortunes that have happened since would have been avoided’.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 69-70.
After the death of the duke of York, 5 Jan. 1827, Peel was ‘heart and soul’ for the successful effort to have Wellington appointed his successor as commander-in-chief, despite the king’s ‘monstrous’ attempt to renege on a promise.
In mid-April 1827 Goulburn urged Peel to ‘take some opportunity of having it distinctly known why you declined continuing in office’, as ‘the activity of Canning’s friends has created a general opinion even among some of the country gentlemen that your decision was part of a cabal against Canning and the king’. Mrs. Arbuthnot also noted this development.
Peel is feeding his forces, consisting of no matter what complexion, provided they differ with the government. While he is professing neutrality in the House, he is doing all he can covertly to organize an opposition. But I really do not see what he will find to quarrel about, he is so pledged by his past conduct.
Broughton, iii. 193; Hatherton mss.
Peel did not oppose the introduction of the Coventry magistracy bill, 22 May, but on 18 June he spoke and voted in the minority against its third reading. He presented but dissented from the prayer of petitions from Norwich weavers and manufacturers for legislation to fix local wages, 31 May, when he endorsed the attorney-general Sir James Scarlett’s refusal to repeal the Newspaper Stamp Duty Act, but remarked on the absence of some ministerial Whigs who had opposed it in 1819. On 18 June he opposed Western’s protectionist resolutions on the corn laws and supported Canning’s proposal to admit warehoused corn as a temporary expedient, but, as Mackintosh saw it, on the anniversary of Waterloo ‘worked himself into a paroxysm of enthusiasm for Wellington’, whose amendment in the Lords had forced Canning to abandon the original bill, reproving Alexander Baring for his attack on the duke.
Peel was shocked by Canning’s premature death, 8 Aug. 1827, but, anxious to avoid ‘the appearance even of being in the way’, he brought forward by a day his departure with his family to Maresfield in Sussex (rented from the Shelleys). Kept informed by Arbuthnot, Sir Henry Hardinge* and others of the negotiations for the formation of a patched-up coalition ministry under the hapless Lord Goderich, he wrote to Arbuthnot, 17 Aug.:
I have long foreseen that the Catholic question must place me in the position in which I am at present. If Lord Liverpool had lived, the great probability is that he and I would have been out of office at this time. I do not at all regret either that the king did not send for me after Canning’s death; still less ... that I have received no communication from Lord Goderich. It would not have been an easy matter for the duke of Wellington and for me to form under existing circumstances a strong government in the ... Commons ... I should think it not improbable that the king had made my exclusion from office a sine qua non on the appointment of ... Goderich. It is very natural in a man, and particularly when that man is a king, to hate another who declines to trust him.
He thought that as a soldier Wellington could not ‘with propriety’ have refused the king’s offer to resume the command of the army, and insisted that ‘I view all that passes with very great complacency ... quite satisfied that no course of action would either be justifiable or successful that was not founded on public principle’.
On the collapse of the Goderich administration in early January 1828, the king turned to Wellington, who on the 9th summoned Peel to London. In the ensuing discussions he insisted on placing the new ministry on as broad a basis as possible, convinced that an exclusively Protestant government could not stand and also anxious to secure some able backing in the Commons, which he was designated to lead as home secretary: ‘I cannot undertake the business of the ... Commons without more assistance than the mere Tory party ... would afford me’, he told Julia, to whom he confided that ‘my heart is set upon home and not upon ambition’. He made clear to close friends his contempt for the ‘blockhead’ Tory extremists: ‘I care not for the dissatisfaction of the Ultra Tories. This country ought not, and cannot, be governed on any other principles than those of firmness ... combined with moderation.’ After the successful termination of painful negotiations with Huskisson and the leading Canningites, who agreed to join the ministry, Peel asked the former Irish under-secretary Gregory:
What must have been the inevitable fate of a government composed of Goulburn, Sir John Beckett, Wetherell, and myself? Supported by very warm friends, no doubt, but no [more] than warm friends, being prosperous country gentlemen, fox-hunters ... most excellent men, who will attend one night, but who will not leave their favourite pursuits to sit up till two or three o’clock fighting questions of detail on which ... a government must have a majority. We could not have stood creditably a fortnight.
Croker Pprs. i. 402, 404; Peel Letters, 103-7; Add. 38754, f. 80; 40334, f. 197; Parker, ii. 26-36; Peel Mems. i. 11-18; Gash, Secretary Peel, 451-7.
Mrs. Arbuthnot blamed Peel, ‘whose fault is not being courageous in the ... Commons [and] wishes to surround himself with all the speakers’, for the inclusion of the hated Huskissonites, and thought Wellington at bottom shared her repugnance to the arrangement; but Croker told Hertford that the duke had admitted that ‘what Peel said is perfectly true - that those who are for forming an exclusive ministry, expect that I am to go into the House of Commons with half a party to fight a party and a half’.
At the home office, Peel continued his work of legal reform. His bill of 1828 for the recovery of small debts ran into problems over the compensation of holders of patent officers in the higher courts, and he abandoned it for the session, 23 June. He referred the question to the common law commission set up on Brougham’s initiative in 1828, and on 18 Feb. 1830, in a review of the direction which legal reform might take, he got leave for a measure to regulate the fees of patent office-holders. He subsequently supported Brougham’s plan to reform local jurisdictions. In May 1828 he brought in two bills, inherited from his predecessor Lord Lansdowne, to change the method of receiving evidence (allowing Quakers and Moravians to give evidence on affirmation and other relaxations) and to consolidate the laws governing offences against the person. They became law as 9 Geo. IV, cc. 31 and 32. By his consolidating Acts, 1825-8, 278 statues were repealed and their surviving provisions enshrined in eight Acts.
In the House, 12 Feb. 1828, Peel warned against divesting the lord chancellor of ‘political consequence’ when Taylor moved for information on chancery administration. He opposed and secured the withdrawal of Hobhouse and Burdett’s motion for a vote of thanks to Admiral Codrington for Navarino, 14 Feb. In cabinet the previous day he had spoken ‘of the absolute necessity of reducing expenditure, as we have no surplus and cannot impose taxes’, and got Melville to concede that there might be scope for reductions in the number of seamen. In moving the appointment of the finance committee (on which he did not himself sit), 15 Feb., he reviewed the state of the finances ‘as they really are’, as his cabinet colleague Ellenborough noted, and gave an assurance of ministers’ desire to promote economy in public expenditure. He had persuaded Sir Henry Parnell, a Whig, to chair the committee, and Littleton, who was also a member (and on 17 Feb. witnessed Peel being seized with an alarming ‘fit of the whooping cough’ at Sir Thomas Lawrence’s house in Bedford Square, where ‘his countenance was full of disappointment’ at the portrait of Huskisson) ‘thought it "a fair one"’.
Peel said that Irish Catholics had no claim on Parliament by the Treaty of Limerick, 6 Mar. 1828. He opposed as ‘impracticable’ Sykes’s motion for inquiry into the franchise in boroughs with a county jurisdiction, 11 Mar., and persuaded him to bring in bills to deal with individual towns, such as Kingston-upon-Hull. That day he observed that unless the existing system of Irish education could be improved, it was best not to tinker with it. On Greene’s tithes commutation bill, ‘pregnant with injustice to the Church of England’, he moved and carried by 81-29 an instruction to the committee to consider limiting the duration of agreements to tax stipends. On 15 Mar. Mrs. Arbuthnot recorded the first in a litany of criticisms of Peel as leader of the House and the Tory party:
There never was such folly as ... [his] anxiety to have speakers on the treasury bench, and he enjoys now the full consequence of his sacrifices; not one of the Canning party have said five words since the session began ... The same cowardice and want of confidence in himself makes him court the liberals, and in point of fact he is more liberal than any of them. He is for giving up everything, and as the duke is anything but a liberal or a coward, he is for fighting everything, and it produces very unpleasant discussions in the cabinet and, what is still worse, Mr. Peel is daily losing ground in the opinion of the public.
Two days later she commented that ‘the Tory party find him ill tempered and cowardly’ and ‘we hear from everyone that he offends everybody by his arrogance’.
He was very sulky when they first went in, and at last began talking of the House ... and his own position there, which he said was painful and distressing to him ... He said he was anxious to take a high tone and to fight the liberal principles, but that, all the time a debate was going on, his colleagues on the treasury bench were urging him to give up every point that was at all contested by the liberals ... In the meantime not one of them will say a word ... Holmes was on the same story, bitterly complaining of ... Peel’s conduct which, he says, disgusts the Tories in the House to such a degree that they will not stay and vote ... He ended yesterday with Mr. A. and Ld. Bathurst by having talked himself into good humour; and one cannot but feel that his position must be very painful with such colleagues, but then why would he have them? ... Already the Tories are beginning to suspect ... Peel of acting unfairly by the duke, and of adopting this low tone out of jealousy. This is very unjust, for ... Peel is an honest, honourable, upright man; all his faults proceed from a want of political courage.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. Ii. 173-7.
From a Whig perspective, Holland was sure that Peel, ‘if he in some degree disarms hostility by an appearance of moderation, loses ... authority and influence in the House’; and Bedford agreed that he had ‘not the calibre necessary to lead the ... Commons in such times as these’, but praised him as ‘an honest man’ who was ‘hardly dealt by, by the disciples of Canning. If he acts ill, you say he is intolerant; if he acts well, he is hypocritical!’.
Peel’s peevishness owed something to the tensions within the cabinet. There was a potentially destructive wrangle over the proposed corn bill, with Wellington, Aberdeen, Bathurst and Ellenborough wishing to incorporate the duke’s successful amendment of 1827 or increase duties and Huskisson and his associates, but also Peel, Goulburn and Melville, favouring the adoption of a modified version of Canning’s original measure of relaxation. Peel worked for compromise and, after an initial stalemate, persuaded Wellington to drop his warehousing proposal and Huskisson to accept a higher rate of duties than in the 1827 measure. The continued intransigence of Charles Grant*, president of the board of trade, threatened to destroy the coalition, but Peel continued to promote conciliation and, after many frustrations, succeeded at the last minute in preventing the resignations of Huskisson and Grant. Their colleague Palmerston, secretary at war, commented in private that ‘Peel is so right-headed and liberal, and so up to the opinions and feelings of the times, that he smoothes difficulties which might otherwise be insurmountable’.
On 12 Mar. 1828 Peel raised in cabinet the problem of what to do about the proven corrupt boroughs of Penryn and East Retford. They settled on the line that provided there were two boroughs to be dealt with, one should have its seats given to a large unrepresented manufacturing town and the other be thrown into the neighbouring hundreds. He put this arrangement to the House, 21 Mar., indicating his preference for giving Penryn’s seats to a large town and sluicing East Retford. Huskisson stated his wish to transfer the representation even if only one borough was available. When the opposition in the Lords to the transfer of Penryn’s seats to Manchester forced Lord Carnarvon, who was handling the bill, to give notice that he would drop the proposal, considerable confusion arose in the cabinet and the Commons. Following inconclusive discussions on 17 and 18 May, it was decided on the 19th, the day of the resumed debate on the East Retford bill, that the government would stick to the original plan until the Lords reached a final decision on Penryn. Peel went to the House under the impression that Huskisson and his associates agreed with this. In the debate, both he and Huskisson were charged with inconsistency in advocating the sluicing of East Retford rather than the transfer of its seats to Birmingham, even though the Penryn to Manchester proposal was known to be a dead letter. While Peel stuck to his guns, despite a mauling from Edward Smith Stanley, Huskisson became increasingly uncomfortable and perplexed. Peel refused his request for an adjournment, and when the division was called Huskisson stayed in the chamber with Palmerston to be counted among the minority for transfer to Birmingham. Peel was taken aback, but said nothing. In the early hours of 20 May Huskisson wrote a letter of resignation to Wellington, which was clearly only meant as a step towards apologizing and patching things up. But Wellington, sick of the Huskissonites’ intransigence, took it at face value, showed it to Peel, who agreed with him, and laid it before the king. In the exchanges and interviews which ensued, as Palmerston and Lord Dudley tried to persuade the duke that Huskisson had not meant to resign, but merely to place his office at Wellington’s disposal, Peel made no serious effort to mediate and prevent the entirely avoidable breach. He was out of patience with Huskisson and his associates, though he remained on good personal terms with Palmerston, who, with Dudley, Grant, William Lamb* and a few others joined Huskisson in resigning about a week after the East Retford fiasco.
The secession worsened Peel’s position in the House. He pressed Wellington to fill as many of the vacancies as possible with Members of the Commons, but the promotion of Sir George Murray, and John Calcraft to the front bench offered little prospect of effective assistance in debate. Ellenborough, who feared that Smith Stanley would ‘terrify him’, thought Peel took this too far, and told him to his face that ‘I thought he had managed ill, that he had united the opposition, and made a weak government’. Mrs. Arbuthnot again bemoaned his ‘arrogance and ill temper’, which discouraged his juniors from speaking for fear that they would incur his displeasure by blundering, and alleged that ‘he is detested by all the young men, and the House is ... under his management, in a more wild, disorderly state than I ever remember’.
Whatever I say against his opinion annoys him. He answers captiously ... Perhaps I did not meet him with enough cordiality, but he does not suit me. I get on better with all the other members of the government than with him. The duke seemed much annoyed at Peel’s indisposition to fight the question.
(A month later Ellenborough showed Peel some pictures at a cabinet dinner at his house and elicited in him ‘a cordiality of manner’, which led him to conjecture that ‘he is only rather a proud, touchy man, and that the least attempt at management would make him very cordial’.) Mrs. Arbuthnot wrote that Peel ‘runs sulky and talks of resignation’, and wished the duke would ‘take him at his word’. Peel eventually agreed to contest the point in the House, but Ellenborough remarked that he ‘certainly has not the character suited to the leader of a party, or to the command of a popular assembly’, and Mrs. Arbuthnot claimed that he was ‘very sullen and cross’ and that ‘the duke abused him to me a good deal and said no man ever had such a confounded temper’.
On 15 Aug. 1828 Bathurst wrote to Arbuthnot that Peel would never
be a good head of a party. He is undoubtedly the first man in the House of Commons, and his influence, backed by a good character and a large fortune, must always be very considerable; but he seems to want that cordiality of manner, and that elevation of mind, one of which wins the affections, and the other commands the respect, of a popular assembly; and without one of these qualities no man can long be a formidable leader in the ... Commons.
Arbuthnot Corresp. 108.
Bathurst was speculating whether Peel would resign and lead an opposition to the concession of Catholic emancipation, which it was accurately rumoured that Wellington had decided could no longer with safety be resisted. Peel was facing the biggest crisis of his career so far, the resolution of which liberated him from his increasingly irksome obligations to the Protestant diehards, though at a painful short- term cost to himself, the Tory party and the government. He shared Wellington’s worries over the implications of O’Connell’s election victory in county Clare in July 1828, which not only defied the authority of the government but confirmed the mounting influence of Catholic voters in Ireland, under the influence of the priests and the Association. In a memoir composed in the last years of his life, Peel described the problem not as a threat of imminent civil and sectarian conflict in Ireland, which could have been met with force, but as a long-term challenge to British power there: ‘the real danger was in the peaceable and legitimate exercise of a franchise [in which] was involved a revolution in the electoral system of Ireland - the transfer of political power ... from one party to another’.
As Peel worked out the details of the relief bill and its accompanying measure to disfranchise the Irish 40s. freeholders and raise the county qualification to £10, he ‘spoke of the thunderclap the announcement in the king’s speech would be, and the very doubtful effect of it on public opinion’. Ellenborough reflected that he ‘must expect to have strong things said against him’, as ‘the high Protestants, misled by the recall of Lord Anglesey [the Irish viceroy], imagine the government is Protestant’.
Peel made a pitiful exhibition. His conduct has naturally created no measured disgust in the minds of his whole party. I think he has more to undergo than his touchy temper and his thin skin can endure. I think him myself a very disagreeable man. He did not attempt to produce one word of argument that did not apply in full force two years ago.
Croker Pprs. ii. 8; Broughton, iii. 302; Greville Mems. i. 249; Hatherton diary, 5 Feb.; Agar Ellis diary, 5 Feb.; Harrowby mss, Denison to Sandon, 6 Feb. 1829.
At the Speaker’s dinner, 7 Feb., according to Croker, Peel
made a joke about old [Ebeneezer John] Collett, who, not knowing Peel’s conversion, had written to him to say he was hastening up to support the good old Protestant cause. This gaiety shows that Peel is sincere and cordially converted, but in a moment he seemed to recollect himself, and looked very grave and almost discomposed at his own mirth, and sat silent and frowning the rest of the evening.
Croker Pprs. ii. 8.
Many of the Tories were outraged by what they considered as a betrayal by Peel, whose brother Jonathan ‘declared himself an anti-Catholic’ on 9 Feb., when Peel, ‘apparently unmoved’, ignored him and said that in time ‘justice’ would be done to the purity of his and Wellington’s motives. (The episode did hurt Peel, but Jonathan assured him that he had not intentionally set out to wound him.)
who, in his miserable lack of genius, has enough of sound sense ... [and] must have perceived that by remaining in place he vacated that stronghold in which he had rested invincible for so long, his ostentatious honesty, his integrity of principle. Now, is it probable he would have thrust himself forward with the poor covering of his own ability into the pelting storm of irritated popular feeling, unless he had believed himself able not only to justify himself to his own heart, but to come forth with good report again before men?
Reid, Monckton Milnes, i. 60-61.
Brougham was not disposed to blame Peel, as some did, ‘for not giving sufficient thanks to the opposition’, but was ‘a little spleened at both him and others giving the chief part of carrying the question to Canning’. He and Wilson agreed that Peel was ‘far more to be trusted’ than Wellington ‘for liberal courses’.
Peel warned Hume that he would resist any renewed motion for ‘the spoliation of church property’ in Ireland, 2 Apr. 1829. He acquiesced in Hobhouse’s motion for an inquiry into select vestries, 28 Apr., as a means of checking wasteful expenditure, but dissented from his other allegations against them and call for their abolition in London. In cabinet he raised the ‘difficulties’ in which Britain might be placed by her ‘moral obligation towards the Greeks’ and argued that a select committee on the East India Company, pending renewal of its charter, should be conceded: Ellenborough, president of the India board, thought he was ‘for free trade, and unreasonable towards the Company’. He was against extending the deadline set for abolition of the Brazilian slave trade by six months, because, as Ellenborough saw it, he ‘does not like awkward questions in the House’.
I have been entirely employed from nine o’clock yesterday morning, and am kept here until three o’clock ... It is too hard upon ... ministers to be thus obstructed by the opposition of one ... Member, and that opposition ... the most vexatious within the memory of the House.
He supported the Maynooth grant next day. When Rae dropped his controversial Scottish gaols bill for the session, 27 May, Peel exhorted Scottish burgh Members to consider its proposals ‘on general principles’ and disregard their constituents’ hostility. Agar Ellis thought his reply to Mackintosh’s motion on Portugal, 1 June, was ‘but a sorry apology for the disgraceful conduct of our government in maltreating the ... refugees’.
In the summer of 1829 Brougham, on the northern circuit, noted the undiminished ‘fury’ of ‘the provincial Ultras’ with Peel; and in parliamentary circles Vyvyan, Knatchbull and the disaffected Ultras were fantasizing about coalition ministries with Whigs and Huskissonites.
The mode he has ... will never do. He is always complaining that nobody speaks and that the whole weight falls upon him and, sure enough, not one man in office uttered a word except a few sentences from ... Goulburn. And why is this? Because ... Peel’s system is to place confidence in no one. He will not let the official men know what the intentions of government are; they therefore cannot speak with safety and, if one does speak and says anything the least indiscreet, instead of backing and encouraging them he leaves them in the lurch to the tender mercies of the opposition and rather takes part against them. The consequence is, those who can speak won’t and those young men who might be inclined to try, dare not.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 331.
Ellenborough thought the tone he adopted when stalling on the question of his embarrassing leaked letter to Sir John Malcolm*, 5 Feb., was ‘too apologetical’, and after discussions with him and the chairs of the East India Company concluded that he ‘did not seem to have looked much into the subject’.
Peel, who has always been shy of committing himself on reform, was remarkably temperate, and said nothing that will make it dishonourable in him to take another line hereafter. My firm belief is that if he were prime minister, you would see a reform carried by him, and grounded on a basis that would disarm, for a century at least, any attempt on the part of the country for more extensive change.
Mrs. Arbuthnot, too, thought he ‘does not oppose reform ... with any sort of energy’.
Holmes and ... Hardinge told me it was quite astonishing how much ... Peel improved in speaking and in his management of the House, and ... if he went on in the spirited way he has done ... we should soon have a good stout party. It is a pity he makes himself so unpopular, for he can be very agreeable when he likes it, and he is really very good and amiable, but his manners are quite odious. He asks immense parties of the ... Commons to dinner every week and treats them so de haut en bas and is so haughty and silent that they come away swearing they will never go to his house again, so that his civilities do him harm rather than otherwise.
Broughton, iv. 12; Grey mss, Grey to Howick, 15 Mar. 1830; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 344-5.
Peel, who opposed Hume’s motion for army reductions and forced him to explain his ‘wild and senseless’ encouragement of resistance by force to excessive expenditure, 22 Feb., was very keen on the adoption of a ‘modified property tax’ to enable the government to reduce the burden of taxation ‘on the industry and the comforts of the labouring poor’. He argued his case in cabinet, saying that he wished to ‘reach such men as Baring, his father, Rothschild and others, as well as absentees and Ireland’, but ‘most fairly’, in Ellenborough’s words, accepted his colleagues’ majority opinion against the proposal.
During his absence Croker wrote that the government had been left ‘not only without a general to lead us’ in the Commons, but even without one fighting man; for he is himself our host’:
I am quite aware of the extreme difficulty of going on in the ... Commons without help, but I much doubt whether Peel wishes for any ... I do not think he will change that feeling - for such it is, rather than an opinion - till he shall begin to feel the personal pressure of adverse debate. He has not yet been attacked, and his single speech has every night, supported the whole debate on our side.
Croker Pprs. ii. 58.
A month earlier Hardinge, who complained that Peel was ‘cold and never encourages anyone’ (a refrain later echoed by John Stuart Wortley*), had suggested to Ellenborough that Wellington would not ‘remain in office above a year more, and that Peel will then be minister’. On 9 May Wellington, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot
repeated more positively than ... ever ... his determination to quit office. He said that ... Peel complained that he could not go on in the House of Commons with the government constituted as it is, that not one of the ministers says a word ... and that he must have more assistance. The duke says that ... every office in the ... Commons has been filled by Peel himself, that he says himself he cannot join with Lord Grey and that, if he looks to the Huskisson party, which he suspects, he, the duke, cannot and will not be a party to such a junction ... He said he had not the proper weight and influence that, as head of the government, he ought to have, that the members of the cabinet had no respect or deference for him; that, if he gave an opinion, it was unattended to, whereas anything ... Peel said was immediately considered as law.
She claimed that Wellington ‘was determined to write to Peel in a few days and resign the government into his hands’; she implored him not to do so. The duke did agree not to resign, but he composed a memorandum suggesting that Peel was better equipped and placed than himself to form a strong government. He seems not to have sent it to Peel, who must, however, have been aware of such speculation in Tory circles.
He made his first appearance in the House as a baronet on 17 May 1830, when he said that Birmingham was not, as Davenport would have it, in a ‘state of extreme suffering and depression’ and opposed the second reading of the Jewish disabilities removal bill, which was thrown out by 228-165. Brougham claimed that Peel’s speech was ‘as great a failure as could be’ and was cheered by ‘only a few hacks’.
with much ennui of his position in the Commons ... that it really was not worth any man’s while to be there for so many hours every night. The sacrifice was too great. He said the radicals had brought the House into such a state that no man could do business but themselves. He seemed not well, and thoroughly out of humour.
This was partly a reaction to the success of Mackintosh’s amendment to his forgery punishment bill on 7 June: John Campbell II* reported that ‘Peel declares himself so disgusted with the House of Commons, that it is doubtful whether he will sit there again’.
At the beginning of July Stuart Wortley and Hardinge told Ellenborough that ‘there must be a change’ in the Commons, where Peel was in desperate need of support. Hardinge, who ‘talked again of making Peel first lord of the treasury and chancellor’, had spoken to Wellington on the matter, and the following day Arbuthnot, presumably at Wellington’s behest, wrote to Peel of Wellington’s ‘admiration of the great efforts and display which you have made’ and wish to ‘consult ... your wishes alone in all that relates to the ... Commons’:
You will gratify him ... beyond all measure if you will state to him fully and most openly what your feelings are upon the subject. That strength must be obtained for you in the ... Commons part of the cabinet is necessary, not only for your own comfort and relief, but also to enable you to protect the king ... You have done wonders, but impossibilities cannot be expected of you ... I know very well that the duke is now holding the government with a strong feeling that it should come hereafter into your hands, and that he has a deep sense of what he owes to you for your immense exertions.
Ellenborough Diary, ii. 297-8; Add. 40340, f. 223.
According to Mrs. Arbuthnot, when she and her husband raised the problem with the duke on 14 July, he
put himself into a furious passion, said he would not meet ... Peel about it for that it was all his own fault and his own bad management and that, if he turned these people out and took whoever ... Peel chose, he should have him coming in a fortnight’s time with exactly the same complaints ... I said all that he complained of in ... Peel was perfectly true; but ... that now he positively had cause; that the whole of this session the treasury bench in the ... Commons had been a disgrace ... The duke said he knew it would never do till he retired and Peel had the head. I [said] he was really talking rank nonsense, for ... he knew perfectly well Peel could not go on a day without him. He has no party in the country and, in spite of his talents, is the most unpopular man in it.
Wellington, who had seemingly given up his intention of handing over the reins to Peel, mellowed subsequently, and on 16 July talked to Arbuthnot and Peel about the situation. Mrs. Arbuthnot wrote:
They seem to have settled to do nothing at present. Peel said ... Palmerston, who we have had a sort of intimation would be glad to return, would be too discreditable and unsafe ... It is curious ... considering the sacrifices the duke made to please Peel in forming the government to have men who could speak, to find that literally nobody utters except himself ... but ... if Peel knew how to encourage, the official people would inform them and make them speak ... but he won’t ... I am persuaded that he has a strong feeling of jealousy about anyone approaching him in speaking.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 372-3, 378.
She condemned Peel as ‘a nasty sour-tempered creature’ when he failed to thank Wellington for reinstating Wilson in the army ‘to please him’.
According to Dyott, Peel at Drayton in mid-August said ‘how joyously he looked forward to becoming settled as a country gentleman’. He observed in Brougham’s return for Yorkshire a sign that ‘the lawyers were getting the upper hand in the ... Commons by frightening the country gentlemen, bullying the government, and paid by the commercial and monied interest’. He considered it ‘most unexpected and unaccountable’; but ‘what he thought equally so was the outrageous conduct of the deputation from the Birmingham Political Union in their daring attempt to overawe the nomination ... at Warwick’.
In cabinet, 25 Oct. 1830, Peel read letters from magistrates and manufacturers of Manchester which gave ‘an alarming account’ of the state of the area, where colliers were on strike and mills had been stopped. Anxious to avoid a spread of conflict and unsure of the adequacy of the local military force, he counselled non-resistance by the authorities. The ‘Swing’ disturbances in the southern agricultural districts prompted Peel, who believed that they were ‘in many cases perpetrated for stock-jobbing purposes’, to send police officers and troops to the worst affected area and place General Dalbiac in overall command.
he said he was satisfied that, whatever might be the division on reform, the question was carried ... If the county Members did [vote for it], and it was thrown out by the representatives of Scotch and English boroughs, it was impossible to stand much longer ... I cannot understand his reasoning; if he thinks reform must be carried, surely it is better to vote a general resolution, and to fight the details. By objecting to the general resolution, we shall probably be turned out ... It seems to me that obstinacy, and the fear of being again accused of ratting, lead to this determination to resist when resistance is, in his own opinion, fruitless.
Ibid. ii. 432-3
On 15 Nov. Peel assured Holme Sumner that he was spending at least four hours every day trying to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of the ‘abominable’ rural riots, and had a tetchy exchange with Hume, whom he again accused of inciting disaffection. After the ministerial defeat on the civil list by 233-204 (which Le Marchant believed he had considered ‘absolutely impossible’) he remained silent when Hobhouse asked him if he and his colleagues intended to remain in office.
Peel, ‘completely broke down’, as Mrs. Arbuthnot saw it, ‘by the fatigue and wear of mind consequent upon having no help’ in the Commons for so long, was ‘delighted at having so good an opportunity for resigning’.
it was much better that ... this should happen than that we should continue to administer the government in difficult times without the requisite support. I personally could not have long continued to discharge the rapidly increasing duties of the home office and the business of the ... Commons. Our own party saw no injustice in requiring the same persons who did the effective business of the government should also do the mere drudgery of attendance in the House ... and remain three or four hours every night with a miserable attendance. Four cabinet ministers have sons in the Commons ... But on the night which terminated the official existence of their fathers, not one ... voted ... Can I personally regret the end of such a government?
Add. 40401, f. 292.
Greville perceived that Peel, with his ‘youth (for a public man), experience, and real capacity for business’, could afford to ‘form his own plans and avail himself of circumstances’.
He announced that he meant to retire into private life, to give no opposition and not to lead the party - in short, to be his own unfettered man. We did not much like that ... However, on this reaching the duke, he has announced that he means to keep the party together. This, I hope, will warm the cold caution of Peel into some degree of party heat; but if he won’t lead us, there are others who will ... make the attempt.
In truth, the Tories could not do without Peel; and Ellenborough assured Hardinge that he would ‘be in opposition in a fortnight, as soon as he recovered his health and his spirits’.
great fear was that we should not be able to keep them in. He had little doubt of being able to turn them out. He wished them to disembarrass us from the question of reform. He said he would make no declaration, but his wish was never to be obliged to come into office again. The fear was they should dissolve ... which would bring on the most imminent danger of revolution in England and rebellion in Ireland.
A month later Thomas Gladstone* heard that Peel’s ‘private opinion is that the revolution is not very far distant’.
The conduct of Peel is so judicious and skilful that I am not sure it does not suppose something formidable behind. It is implied if not asserted that his line is distinct from Wellington’s. He does not mean to oppose reform but to propose some more moderate plan of his own and many of his partisans affect to be confident of carrying it and thereby forcing the present ministers to resign or dissolve.
Anglesey mss 27A/90.
The latter speculation was well wide of the mark.
Peel went to Drayton for Christmas and kept out of the activities of the party veterans who sought to organize for opposition and promote the Tory cause in the press. He poured cold water on the second project, prompting Herries to recommend to his coadjutors a suspension of ‘all operations whatever until we have carefully reconsidered the subject’. Croker wished he ‘would lead us with vigour and firmness’.
wish to remain alone, unconnected with others, of his selfishness, etc. He exaggerated a good deal, but still there was a fond of truth. In fact Peel does think chiefly of himself, and has not the manner or the character to become a popular leader of a party.
Croker Pprs. ii. 97, 99, 101; Three Diaries, 43.
Herries, who had ‘made no impression on him with respect to the press’, reported to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 26 Jan. 1831, that Peel was ‘much as usual, extremely circumspect in all that he says and does’, but was ‘acting very imperfectly the character of a country gentleman indifferent to office and politics’. (Peel `made himself very agreeable’ as the host of a party of neighbouring squires five days later.)
much more hearty in the anti-ministerial cause than he acknowledges to others or even avows to himself ... I think he is very well disposed, and will pursue a firm and prudent line in the ensuing session. He is more of an anti-reformer than I expected to find him. But he must cultivate his party with more warmth or he will lose it. The younger Tories will not cling to a cold and over cautious leader; the less so, to one who is suspected, more than he ought to be, of an inclination towards liberalism.
Arbuthnot mss.
Peel’s failure to attend the opening day of the new session, 3 Feb. 1831, put a ‘damp’ on the Tory activists,
Peel would succeed best in the present state of public affairs. Hardinge thinks Peel keeps himself rather aloof from the duke, that he knows no ministry can be formed without him, and feels indignant at the conduct of the Ultra Tories and resolved to make them come on their knees to him.
Three Diaries, 59, 61.
Greville wrote:
The exultation of the opposition is unbounded, and Peel plays with his power in the House, only not putting it forth because it does not suit his convenience; but he does what he likes, and it is evident that the very existence of the government depends upon his pleasure. His game, however, is to display candour and moderation, and rather to protect them than not, so he defends many of their measures and restrains the fierce animosity of his friends, but with a sort of sarcastic civility, which, while it is put forth in their defence, is always done in such a manner as shall best exhibit his own authority and contempt for their persons individually. While he upholds the government, he does all he can to bring each member of it into contempt, and there they are, helpless and confused, writhing under his lash and their own impotence.
Greville Mems. ii. 118.
The tables were about to be turned.
At a meeting of Commons Tories at Peel’s house, 20 Feb. 1831, and of commoners and peers at Apsley House a week later, it was decided not to oppose the introduction of the ministerial reform scheme.
of the bad tactics and want of union of the party, and especially of Peel’s inactivity and backwardness in not having rallied and taken the lead more than he has; he is in fact so cold, phlegmatic, and calculating that he disgusts those who can’t do without him as a leader; he will always have political but never personal influence.
Croker found him ‘sore perplexed’, perhaps because ‘his conscience tells him that he is the primary source of all the mischief’.
Peel feels very strongly that the king, having so far sanctioned the measure ... has rendered it very difficult for any minister to prevent all change in the representation. Our difficulties in opposing reform are, however, all aggravated by Peel’s character ... The Conservative party ... know he will yield some points on reform, and the consequence is they all have their own crotchets, all want to gain popularity with their constituents by advocating at once that which, from Peel’s nature, they feel will be yielded sooner or later ... Peel, saying he does not wish to return to office while he enjoys the discomfiture of ministers ... treats all the Tory party with arrogance and insolence, affects to consider himself as an individual and not the leader of the party, and has hitherto positively rejected all the advances of the Ultra Tories. He told Arbuthnot that he knew ... they wanted to reunite themselves with us, and that he was determined never to consent to; and yesterday, when ... Herries went to him, deputed by Wetherell and Lord Stormont* to express their desire and that of their party to be led and directed by him, all he repeated twenty times over was, ‘These are the fellows who turned us out three months ago’. ‘Very true’ ... Herries said, ‘now they want to get you back, and if we are to save the country, you must take them’. Peel threw his chin in the air, said if a government was to be formed they would expect places and he could not throw over those who were with him before, he did not want to return to office.
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 415-16.
Yet Goulburn found Peel ‘in good heart, determined to resist the bill most manfully and to do all that may be most likely to effect its rejection’, when he returned to London on 12 Apr.
I think we shall beat them on that question ... Give us another month, and there is an end of the bill, positively an end of it. It could never be carried except by the dread of physical force ... One month hence, if the bill is still in suspense, there will be an enforced natural union between aristocracy and disfranchised population, against a vulgar privileged ‘Pedlary’, as in a letter I have ... received, a farmer, trembling for the fate of the corn laws, calls the new voters.
Croker Pprs. ii. 114-15.
On 15 Apr. Peel opposed Fowell Buxton’s motion to commit the House to the immediate abolition of slavery, recommending a cautious approach in accordance with the 1823 resolutions.
completely unmasked him: all his candour, all his moderation, all his trimming, shifty policy disappeared, and he displayed his real vexation, and true feelings of disappointment and rage in a harangue of sound and fury, signifying nothing but his own despair, and hatred of those who had overreached him by calculating on the good sense of the people, and the firmness of the king, with more accuracy than himself ... He was doing harm to himself, and injuring the character of the country ... I was more sorry than angry; I could scarcely have supposed such an incident possible. But Peel was not the only over-excited performer on that day.
He had apparently recovered his equanimity by the time he arrived in the Lords.
Peel was re-elected for Tamworth in ‘perfect tranquillity’.
I detest the thought of office, and am not ready to join O’Connell in effecting my return to it. If the Tory party is gone to pieces, I doubt whether the new Parliament is to blame ... There are two parties among those who call themselves Conservatives: one which views the state of the country with great alarm ... sees a relaxation of all authority, an impatience of all that restraint which is indispensable to the existence ... of all government [and] is ready to support monarchy, property and public faith ... Another party ... by far the most numerous ... has the most presumptuous confidence in its own fitness for administering public affairs ... would unite with O’Connell in resisting the Irish coercion law ... sees great advantage in a deficit of many millions, and thinks the imposition of a property tax on Ireland and the aristocracy a Conservative measure ... and which, never having dreamt ... of the question how they could restore order, prefers chaos to the maintenance of the present government. Now to this latter section I do not, and will not belong. I will not play that game, which, played by the Ultra Tories against us, is the main cause of present evils. A radical and a republican avowed are dangerous characters; but there is nothing half so dangerous as the man who pretends to be a Conservative, but is ready to be anything, provided only he can create confusion.
Croker Pprs. ii. 116-17.
A week later he wrote confidentially to Goulburn in broadly the same terms, expressing his willingness to ‘co-operate with any persons of any party in resistance to the bill’, in principle or detail, but his refusal to ‘form a party connection with the Ultra Tory party’, adding that ‘I would not abandon any one opinion I entertain in order to conciliate Ultra ... support ... I [also] feel a want of many essential qualifications which are requisite in party leaders, among the rest personal gratification in the game of politics, and patience to listen to the sentiments of individuals whom it is equally imprudent to neglect and an intolerable bore to consult’. He observed that he had ‘no wish to slight the offers of new party adherents, or to offend those who make them’, but would be ‘very cautious in contracting any new party engagements.
At a pre-session meeting Peel ‘recommended moderation very earnestly’ on the address, arguing that there should be no amendment provided it did not imply ‘approval either of the reform bill, or the dissolution’.
We march slowly in the reform bill. All sorts of unfair tricks are practised to clog and defeat it ... Peel affects to dislike it, but never tells his friends privately not to delay it. This is always his way, and gets him the character of a Jesuit. He wishes to defeat the bill and upset the government.
Mackintosh admitted, however, after Peel had robustly questioned Palmerston about the problem of the Belgian frontier forts, 27 July, that ‘Peel has undoubtedly risen and ... has converted more people than will dare to confess it. We are certainly outspoken in daily speaking’.
and told the persons assembled there that I could not continue in town, that in my opinion there is very little use in protracting the debates and that I could not remain here to conduct the battle. I found several people ... dissatisfied with this and prepared to go on interminably in the present system. Others were disposed to agree with me ... We parted not in very good humour. I said I should stay a few days longer, and would then go into the country, and come back for the third reading.
Peel Letters, 130-4.
In the House that day, he ‘went away with many of his followers’ before the division on the motion of censure on the Irish government’s alleged interference in the Dublin election.
There he told Dyott that he thought the reform bill would be rejected by the Lords, but ‘could not answer’ his question as to whether that would ‘throw out the ministry’.
If there are any persons dreaming that either an anti-reform or a moderate reform government could at this time stand one hour in the present House of Commons, the division of ... [the 10th], but far more the feeling manifested in the debate, must ... dissipate the delusion. The greatest misfortune, accompanied with the greatest disgrace, that could befall any of us anti-reformers would be the attempt under present circumstances to originate reform in any shape. I never will. Dissolution would make bad worse ... [and] in the present state of the three kingdoms would be a rapid step in advance towards utter ruin.
Greville Mems. ii. 209; Parker, ii. 189.
There was ‘an absurd report’ in London on 31 Oct. that ‘Peel had killed himself’.
Peel supported the foundation of the Conservative Carlton Club in early 1832.
My great object ... for the last six months has been to vindicate the authority and maintain the character of the House of Lords ... [as] the institution most exposed to danger from the short-sighted folly of the times, and also the institution which, if it remain erect in character, is most likely to serve as a rallying point for the returning good sense and moderation of the country ... Why have we been struggling against the reform bill in the Commons? Not in the hope of resisting its final success ... but because we look beyond the bill ... [and] know the nature of popular concessions, their tendency to propagate the necessity for further and more extensive compliances. We want to ... teach young inexperienced men charged with the trust of government that, though they may be backed by popular clamour, they shall not override on the first springtide of excitement every barrier and breakwater raised against popular impulses; that the carrying of extensive changes in the constitution without previous deliberation shall not be a holiday task; that there shall be just what has happened - the House sick of the question, the ministers repenting they ever brought it forward, the country paying the penalty for the folly and incapacity of its rulers. Mine is a melancholy view, as it excludes the prospect of success. It excludes, however, participation in the crime, and gives to the present House of Lords the honours of determined though fruitless resistance.
Harrowby showed Peel’s letter, which was not well received by his followers, to Greville, who considered it ‘an able production, well expressed and plausibly argued, with temper and moderation’, but, seizing on its essential ‘contradiction’, he deemed it ‘neither statesmanlike nor manly to throw up the game in despair, and surrender every point ... in order to preserve the consistency of himself and his own party’. He suspected that this was ‘not his real feeling, and that he promises himself some personal advantage from the adoption of such a course’.
On 21 Feb. 1832 Croker told Hertford that although Peel shared Wellington’s sense of the potential ‘danger’ after the enactment of reform, he ‘feels, or seems to feel it, infinitely less. It does not affect his spirits, though I think it does his judgement. He is very reluctant to attend the House, and anything like a bold course he entirely rejects’. Two weeks later Croker noted that although Peel ‘seems very stout-hearted, and in good health, and makes every now and then a display against the bill ... he seems ... inclined to consult his own personal ease, and people are not satisfied with his sincerity, but I really believe it is only the weariness of being eternally defeated, and the conviction that no good is to be done’. Princess Lieven confirmed that unlike Wellington, he ‘does not believe that everything is lost, but even thinks that it will be quite possible to have a tolerable government in England’.
After the Lords had given the reform bill a second reading by nine votes, Peel told Croker that ‘I now see nothing left ... but a strenuous concerted effort on the part of all those who deprecate such a reform ... to mitigate the evil of it’. Having kept out of the Conservative peers’ tactical deliberations, ‘thinking the Lords might be jealous, and fearing to differ from the duke’, he ‘approved most cordially’ the plan, disclosed to him by Ellenborough, to seek a reduction in the number of disfranchisements and enfranchisements, restrictions on the £10 franchise and the exclusion of urban voters from the counties.
On 21 May 1832 Peel challenged Denman’s assertion that the sincerity with which libellous opinions were expressed should protect the authors from prosecution. He supported the government’s temporizing amendment to Fowell Buxton’s motion for the abolition of slavery, 24 May, when Howick, accusing him of ratting on the 1823 agreement, threw his recantation on the Catholic question in his face. Peel retorted that ‘to affirm the principle of the extinction of slavery, before we possess the means of carrying our intentions into effect, is fraught with danger’. Opposing the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, he asserted that it would ‘undermine the security of he established church ... diminish the influence of property’ and strengthen the repeal movement. On the Lords’ amendments to the English bill, 5 June, he said that the peers had ‘consented to this bill under a menace’; accused ministers of whipping up popular excitement from the outset and recalled Russell’s ‘whisper of a faction’ comment; said that reform would seal the fate of the corn laws; urged ministers to suppress the unions, who if left unchecked would establish a ‘degrading and oppressive tyranny; reminded Russell of his assertion in 1827 that the people had become so ‘indifferent to reform’ that he would never again propose it, and defended the Wellington government’s attempt to reform Irish tithes. He wanted working men’s unions regulated, 14 June, when he acquiesced in the introduction of the ministerial bill to suppress Irish party processions, provided it was even-handed, and said that if Orange parades were to be outlawed, so too must be the roving gangs, ‘led by priests’, who were impeding the collection of tithes. At this time he dined with Lady Cowper, who told her brother that
he did not seem very desponding at the state of affairs, said nobody could tell how things would turn, they might be better than he expected, or much worse than he feared. He said ... that the present government must stay in, and that if they tried to resist the radicals, they should have his support. One thing he said must be done, without which no government could stand ... was to curb the licence of the press.
Lady Palmerston Letters, 194.
He clashed peevishly with O’Connell and Hume on the Irish reform bill, 18 June, accusing the latter of justifying the use of physical force to overawe Parliament. On 20 June he seconded the address to the king condemning the attack on him at Ascot races, but blamed this and the recent assault on Wellington on the ‘intemperate language of the press and speeches in Parliament’ by the likes of Hume. Hobhouse wrote that he was ‘very bitter, but ... made no figure at all’, and others reckoned that the castigation which he received from Smith Stanley put him in his place.
In November 1831 Horace Twiss* had given the following assessment of Peel to Littleton:
The best man of business and best debater in England, but always thinking of his reputation and his outward character, content to ‘dwell in decencies’, never decided and courageous, thinking more of getting well through a business into which he had been led by circumstance, than bold and decided in his pursuit and assertion of great principles and worthy objects. With great show of affability and condescension (which is always offensive when seen through, especially in a ‘new man’), he was in reality selfish, cold, and unconciliatory ... [Twiss] doubted whether his conduct on the Catholic question, and on ... reform, would not throw him out of office for some years.
Three Diaries, 157.
Yet early in the first reformed Parliament, to which Peel was returned unopposed for Tamworth, Poulett Thomson perceived that his ‘prodigious superiority over everybody in the House was so evident ... that he must draw men’s minds to him’. Greville, no admirer of Peel at this stage of his career, wrote that he had ‘hitherto been encumbered with embarrassing questions and an unmanageable party’, but that ‘if his great experience and talents have a fair field to act upon, he may yet, in spite of his selfish and unamiable character, be a distinguished and successful minister’.