Peel, reform and opposition

 

The Tory party, decimated in the general election in late 1832, was in a demoralised state. It had been marked as the party that opposed reform. The reality was less stark. Unquestionably there were die-hard opponents of reform among the Tories. The ultras-Tories in Lords and Commons, outraged by Catholic emancipation in 1829, opposed parliamentary reform, municipal reform, church reform, factory reform and poor law reform. They lost on every issue.

Peel’s attitude to reform

Peel was not amongst them though he did oppose reform on principle as a significant challenge to constitutional order. However, he did not condemn the principle of reform entirely but believed the Whigs had gone too far. In March 1831 he said in the debates in the House of Commons  “I do not hesitate to avow, that there might have been proposed certain alterations in our representative system, based on safe principles, abjuring all confiscation and limited in their degree, to which I would have assented.”  Later in December 1831, he stated “I am satisfied with the constitution under which I have lived hitherto, which I believe is adapted to the wants and habits of the people.... On this ground I take my stand, not opposed to a well-considered reform of any of our institutions which need reform, but opposed to this reform.”

The clearest statement of Peel’s attitude to reform, however, came in his response to the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament in early 1833: “He was for reforming every institution that really required reform; but he was for doing it gradually, dispassionately and deliberately, in order that reform might be lasting....” This was a bold statement: the strategy of reforming to conserve. Change, if it could be shown to be necessary, was justifiable but must reinforce not undermine the Constitution and Britain’s governing elite. He accepted the reform of Parliament in 1832 as a fact of life but committed himself and his party to protect the institutions of the country such as the Crown, the Established Church and the Union with Ireland. This position was not designed to pacify the ultra right in the party. Opposition for its own sake, Peel recognised, would not restore the fortunes of the Tories. He needed to dismiss the widely held view that the Tory party was reactionary and supported by only a small, unrepresentative part of the population. In Parliament, Peel adopted the tactic of ‘constructive opposition’ to Grey’s and later Melbourne’s government. Instead of voting against each measure, he decided that the best tactic was to judge each issue against his principles and vote accordingly. In the 1833 Parliament, Peel only voted three times against the government. This distanced him from the ultra-Tories who wanted to see the end of the Whig government at any price. However, Peel believed that for the Tories to regain office, they had to be seen in a more positive light than the ultra-Tories’ tactics demonstrated. Opposition for opposition’s sake did not show this; principled and constructive opposition did.

Peel was dedicated to good government by men of efficiency and integrity. His was an executive view of power where authority lay in the hands of the elite with the education and expertise acting in the national interest. Government was there to govern. Public opinion had its place but Peel was concerned to reassert the proper balance between executive authority and extra-parliamentary influence that he believed had been altered by the crisis over reform. Like most of his contemporaries, Peel was not a democrat. The ‘people’, he believed, did not have the necessary education or judgement to make critical decisions. If Parliament surrendered to outside pressure, the quality of its judgements would be weakened and the interests of the nation jeopardised.

1832

Electoral disaster for the Tories in the December General election.

1833

Peel made a statement that he would support the Whig government when it acted in defence of law, order and property.

1834

Stanley and Graham left the Whig government over the Irish Church question. William IV dismissed Melbourne’s government [November] and Peel became Prime Minister of a minority Tory government; the Tamworth Manifesto.

1835

Ecclesiastical Commission set up. Tories gained seats in the General election but Peel is defeated by an alliance of Whigs, Irish MPs and Radicals; return to opposition.

1836

Peel worked for greater co-operation between Tories in the two Houses of Parliament.

1837

Peel, Stanley and Graham co-operated enhancing Peel’s position as Conservative leader; further gains in the General election.

1838

Merchant Taylor’s Hall speech emphasised Conservative support for preserving existing institutions in State and Church.

1839

Bedchamber Crisis

1840

Disagreements between Peel and Wellington over various issues; Wellington persuaded to abandon opposition to Whig Canada legislation. Conservative unity maintained.

1841

Whigs defeated on vote of no confidence [June] leading to a General Election [July]. Conservatives win and Peel became Prime Minister of a majority government.

Peel in the 1830s was not a leader of the opposition in its modern sense. He did not see his role as providing ‘loyal opposition’ to Whig measures and made it clear that he was prepared to support legislation aimed at maintaining law and order and property in 1833. Neither was he the official leader of the Tories, at least before the end of 1834. The Ultras were a problem for Peel. They distrusted each other. The Ultras feared that Peel would ‘rat’ again as he had in 1829 over emancipation. Peel did not trust the Ultras to act responsibly rejecting their view that politics should be determined largely by the interests of English landowners.

Peel and his notion of ‘constructive’ opposition 1832-34

Though he opposed reform in 1832, Peel was quick to recognise that there was no going back. Reform was here to stay. As early as January 1833, Peel wrote that ‘I presume the chief object of that party which is called Conservative…will be to resist Radicalism, to prevent those further encroachments of democratic influence which will be attempted…as the natural consequence of the triumph already achieved’. The move from the use of Tory to Conservative as the party label was crucial. In the popular mind, ‘Tory’ was associated with a bigoted and selfish opposition to all proposals for improvement and an uncompromising defence of the privileges and monopolies enjoyed by institutions connected to the Anglican, landed elite. For Peel, the term ‘Conservative’ allowed for the possibility of cautious change designed to reconcile those institutions with the prevailing attitudes of the modern world. To argue that this represented at attempt to ‘modernise’ the party neglects the extent to which the ‘Conservatives’ of the 1830s were an extension of the ‘liberal’ Tories with their reformist agenda of the 1820s.

However, in two important respects, Peel’s analysis of the consequences of reform in 1832 proved accurate. First, Peel predicted that reform would generate further demands for change. For many Radicals, the Reform Act did not go far enough and they called for an extension of the franchise, the secret ballot and triennial parliaments. This posed a real threat to the aristocratic and landed elite and given that radical sentiment was strong opposed to the power of this group, Peel believed that there would be calls for the reform or abolition of the House of Lords and the repeal of the Corn Laws. In addition, he expected a broad assault on the position of the Church of England from Protestant nonconformists who already had considerable electoral influence. Secondly, he rightly identified a fundamental weakness within the Whig government and argued that it would quickly come to rely for its continued existence on the support of a diverse alliance of interests in parliament and outside. In fact, from 1835, the Whigs governed only because they had the support of the Irish MPs led by O’Connell and a ragbag of backbench Radical MPs.

It is therefore surprising that Peel preferred to support rather than oppose Whig ministers in parliament. In March 1833, he defended the government’s Coercion Bill to combat agrarian unrest in Ireland and in July efforts were made to ‘whip’ Conservative MPs in order to save the Whigs from defeat on a radical motion for triennial parliaments. Peel only voted against the Whigs in three of the forty-three parliamentary divisions in the 1833 session. The following year saw the Conservatives come to the rescue of the government on two occasions. On the biggest questions, such as poor law reform in 1834 and reform of the municipal corporations the following year, Peel either actively supported the government or did not interfere. Peel was determined to resist the temptation of entering into opportunistic alliances with the radical or Irish MPs simply to embarrass the government. Choosing to shield ministers from the attacks launched by his own nominal supporters.

It suited Peel’s purpose to see ministers coming under attack from their own backbenchers. His underlying strategy is explained in letters written to his friend Henry Goulburn in 1833 and 1834 respectively: ‘Our policy ought to be rather to conciliate the goodwill of the sober-minded and well-disposed portion of the community and thus lay the foundation of future strength’ and ‘My opinion is decidedly against all manoeuvring and coquetting with the Radicals, for the mere purpose of a temporary triumph over the Government…If it [the government[ breaks up…in consequence of a union between Radicals and Conservatives, in my opinion, the Government which succeeds it will have a very short-lived triumph.’

However, he recognised that nothing could be more suicidal for the Conservatives than opposition for opposition’s sake since it simply drove the Whigs closer into the arms of the radicals and this did not suit Conservative interests. Peel’s policy of supporting the government was designed to perpetuate divisions between Whigs and radicals and thus prevent radical ideas from gaining ground among Whig ministers. Peel’s long term aim was to subtly promote the gradual disintegration and ultimate collapse of the government’s substantial parliamentary majority. Some Whig MPs were already, by the beginning of the 1833 session alarmed at the sight of their leaders coming under pressure from radicals and Irish MPs. Peel reckoned that these moderate Whigs could well move across to become Conservative supporters.

Although Peel may have had a clear idea of what ‘constructive opposition’ meant, it arguably shows the difficulties he faced in the period between the Reform Act and the minority Conservative administration of 1834-5. Peel was undoubtedly the dominant figure on the opposition front-bench but he was not in any official sense ‘leader of the opposition’. It was not until he was asked to form a government in December 1834 that he truly became the leader of the Conservative Party. Peel could not command the loyalty of opposition MPs: in March 1833 more than half of the Conservative MPs voted for a radical motion on currency reform to which Peel was strongly opposed. He also faced the continuing antagonism of the Ultras, estranged since Peel abandoned the Protestant cause in 1829 by introducing Catholic Emancipation. Peel made no attempt to gain their support and rejected the suggestion of a rapprochement in 1831 since he had no intention of building up an opposition party reliant on ultra support.

His efforts to establish a broad, central coalition by wooing moderate Whigs was partly designed to neutralise the ultra. By early 1834, there were signs that this strategy was about to pay dividends. Internal Cabinet disputes over Irish policy culminated in May with the resignations of four ministers (Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, Lord Ripon and the Duke of Richmond) raising expectations of an imminent ministerial collapse. This appeared to vindicate his constructive opposition to the government and his unwillingness to enter into alliances of convenience with radical and Irish MPs. He believed that moderate Whigs would be drawn into Conservative ranks only if his party acted responsibly in opposition.

Peel adopted a non-partisan approach to opposition politics. It represented a realistic response to the fact that, in the immediate aftermath of the Reform Act, the Conservatives were only a small minority in the House of Commons. It gave him the opportunity to establish his leadership on terms acceptable to himself and to stamp his personal authority on the Commons.

Was there a two party system in the 1830s?

Although the 1830s saw increasingly clear party divisions between Whigs and Conservatives, some important riders must be made.  Voting records in the Commons suggest that most MPs now voted consistently according to the wishes of their party leaders. However, a substantial number did not and some, though reducing in number continued to reject party labels. In this sense, Britain in the 1830s did not have a ‘two party system’ in the modern sense. The powers of the monarchy, though significantly diminished, had not disappeared completely. Peel became prime minister in 1834 because William IV dismissed the previous government, the last occasion, though this was not known at the time that the monarch would dismiss a government with a majority in the Commons. The monarch in the 1830s was more than a titular position and the notion of the ‘King’s minister’ was not an empty one. Peel’s perception was that he did not become prime minister because he was a leader of a party in the Commons but because he was appointed by the King. This may be a subtle constitutional distinction but it was central to Peel’s view of the role of ministers and did not alter between then and the end of his career. He saw himself as an executive servant of the Crown first and the leader of a party second.

In the 1830s, both major political parties were a fairly loose coalition of interests. Historians sometimes talk about the ‘Whig-Radical’ party in the 1830s. No such party existed. The ‘Radicals’ were a group of politicians who supported a wide range of political causes including nationalism or separatism for Ireland and further political reform; some were democrats, others were not. What they had in common was a belief in the importance of extra-parliamentary pressure and agitation to achieve their objectives. What they were not, in any meaningful sense was a ‘political party’.

Peel to 1832

In 1856, six years after Sir Robert Peel’s death, the journalist Walter Bagehot, wrote that[1]

“No man [Sir Robert Peel] has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman -- the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man.... Of almost all the great measures with which his name is associated, he attained great eminence as an opponent before he attained even greater eminence as their advocate. On the corn-law, on the currency, on the amelioration of the criminal code, on Catholic emancipation....He was not one of the earliest labourers or quickest converts.... His intellect, admirable in administrative routine, endlessly fertile in suggestions of detail, was not of the class which creates, or which readily even believes an absolutely new idea...”

Peel is generally recognised as the founder of modern Conservatism. He saw the need for the Tory party to adapt itself to the post-reform system after its disastrous showing in the 1832 general election. In successive elections in the 1830s the Conservatives increased their representation in the House of Commons soundly defeating Melbourne’s Whig government in 1841. Peel was prepared to put nation above party and on two occasions introduced policies that attacked the basic tenets of Toryism. In 1829 he ‘ratted’ on its spiritual core by pushing through Catholic Emancipation. Seventeen years later he confronted its belief in the need for protection for agriculture by repealing the Corn Laws[2].

Peel to 1832

1788

Born in Bury, 5^th February, first son of a cotton manufacturer Robert Peel

1800

To Harrow School

1805

Undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford; academically gifted

1809

MP for the Irish seat of Cashel City, County Tipperary, a borough with only twenty-four voters

1810

Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies in the Tory government of Spencer Perceval

1812

In May 1812, Liverpool became prime minister and invited Peel to join the Irish administration as Chief Secretary. Peel held the post for six years, the longest in the nineteenth century and served three lord lieutenants. Nothing in Peel’s upbringing gave him the historical imagination to question the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland, and he cheerfully joined a regime that was locked into reliance upon penal laws and the Protestant ascendancy. As chief secretary he was required to attend to business upon both sides of the water. In Ireland he stage-managed the election of sound Protestants to parliament in 1812 and 1818, and persuaded Whitworth to dissolve the principal organisation representing Catholics, the ‘Catholic board’, in 1814. In London, politicians were, in the eyes of the administration in Dublin, embarrassingly soft about Catholic claims for political rights and Peel opposed every proposal for relief. He delivered an outspoken expression of the case against the Catholics in 1817[3]. Catholics owed allegiance to a foreign power, he was not prepared to erect the influence of the pope into ‘a fourth estate’, and he tied his belief in the future of the Union to his faith in the exclusive principle. What religion suggested was confirmed by political economy. Ireland was, in Peel’s opinion, a primitive and backward land, and at this stage in his career Peel appears to have felt that in the long run the best hope for the country was that popery was something which a more prosperous people would grow out of. In the meantime, Peel had to cope with the secret societies, the intimidation, and the crimes that resulted from the alienation of seven-eighths of the population. Like other chief secretaries he called for troop reinforcements and renewed an Insurrection Act in 1814, 1815, 1816, and 1817. More promisingly, he declared that he would always prefer an army of police to an army of soldiers, and established a new Peace Preservation Force, controlled by the government in Dublin. In 1817, he responded to a famine by the procurement of food and the distribution of money.  As chief secretary Peel proved his capacity to serve the lord lieutenant as ‘his friend, his adviser, [and] his representative in parliament’. But the office had also begun to shape his life in other ways. His conduct in Ireland brought him the sobriquet ‘Orange’, bestowed by Daniel O’Connell, and led, in 1815, to a challenge to a duel, which did not take place, in Ostend. Peel was to carry with him for ever after a settled dislike for the great Irish patriot and all his ways. Peel’s antagonism to Catholic claims for relief secured him the invitation, brought by Charles Lloyd, to stand, in preference to George Canning, for one of the two Oxford University seats in 1818. Peel was elected, but he had, perhaps, allowed himself to be miscast. His Protestantism ran deep. But he acknowledged that Ireland had been misruled in the past. He had found the jobbing aristocracy with a ‘vortex of local patronage’, and loyalist associations distasteful, and he had spoken out in favour of the Protestant ascendancy because he had been called upon to govern Ireland ‘circumstanced as Ireland now is’.

1817

Speaks in Parliament against Catholic Emancipation; becomes MP for Oxford University

1818

Resigns as Chief Secretary as he was ‘tired’ with the post. Peel left Ireland in August 1818 and did not rejoin Lord Liverpool’s administration until January 1822.

1819

In the meantime he chaired a committee considering the expediency of requiring the Bank of England to resume paying gold, on demand, for its notes, and in due course he drafted the report and introduced the bill embodying the committee’s proposals. The evidence taken before the bullion committee in 1811 had shown that the over-issue of paper currency since the suspension of cash payments in 1797 had resulted in a depreciation of the pound and a rise in the price of gold. The question was, did this matter? In 1811, the house had decided that the answer was yes, but not while there was a war on, and Peel himself had voted against resumption. Post-war experience persuaded him that over-issue also led to speculation, crises, unemployment, and political unrest. Now Peel thought the committee’s first responsibility was to protect the public creditor, who was morally entitled to be repaid in the coin which he had lent and not in a depreciated one. The committee moved swiftly into a consideration of the when and how the accumulation of a reserve of gold, and the successive steps by which, starting with the larger notes, paper was to be made convertible into gold bullion, a process completed by May 1823. In grappling with the theoretical complexities of an issue and effecting a solution, Peel was to have no equal

1822

Returns to government as Home Secretary. Contemporaries gave Peel credit for reducing the number of offences that carried the death penalty. But there was no fall in the number of execution, and the most striking achievement of his period at the Home Office, and perhaps of his whole career, was the consolidation of the criminal law. He began in 1823 where his predecessor, Lord Sidmouth, had left off, with the law relating to prisons. The following year he attended to the laws relating to transportation, and began to coax the Scottish judges towards a reform of Scottish criminal law. In 1825 he consolidated eighty-five laws relating to juries into a single act. In 1826 he proposed to consolidate the laws relating to theft. Out of 14,437 persons in England and Wales charged with various crimes in the course of the previous year, 12,500 (at least) had been accused of theft, which was the most important category of crime. Consolidation was needed because, year by year throughout the eighteenth century, specific acts (he cited the stealing of hollies, thorns, and quicksets) had been made into crimes instead of species of acts. There were now ninety-two statutes relating to theft, dating from the reign of Henry III, and Peel sought to unite them in a single statute of thirty pages. Upon this occasion his attempt to reduce the law to a single act proved to be too ambitious, and the bill emerged, finally, as four separate acts in 1827.

Peel’s talents were never more apparent than during this process of consolidation. In 1824, a select committee had recommended that consolidation and amendment should be kept distinct. Peel decided that they were not separable. He interpreted consolidation to mean the collection ‘of dispersed statutes under one head’ followed by the rejection of what was ‘superfluous’, the clearing up of what was ‘obscure’, the weighing of ‘the precise force of each expression’, and ‘ascertaining the doubts that have arisen in practice and the solution which may have been given to those doubts by decisions of the courts of law’[4]. Where he found any gap ‘through which notorious guilt escapes’ (he instanced the theft of stock certificates in the funds which was not at that time an offence), he would remedy it[5] . In Peel’s hands, then, a consolidating act was a reforming act which incorporated case law and supplied omissions. As he turned from one aspect of the law to another, Peel circulated drafts of his consolidating bills among the judges, and took pains to win their support, flattering Lord Eldon with a bag of game (which perhaps he had shot himself). He succeeded because nine-tenths of criminal law was statute law, which judges loved to criticise, and one-tenth, only, common law, the anomalies of which judges might seek to preserve.

On 9^th March 1826, Peel’s method of presenting a case came to maturity in his great speech on theft[6]. There was an apology (a preference really) for a topic which could ‘borrow no excitement from political feelings’ and might appear ‘barren and uninviting’. There was a reference to a hypothetical fresh start (‘if we were legislating de novo, without reference to previous customs and formed habits’). There was a glance at more radical proposals for ‘rapid progress, which is inconsistent with mature deliberation’, and a promise that, if he was allowed to have his way, there would be ‘no rash subversion of ancient institutions’ and ‘no relinquishment of what is practically good, for the chance of speculative and uncertain improvement’. His own proposals were then presented as a middle way ‘between the redundancy of our own legal enactments and the conciseness of the French code’. Finally he avowed his ambition to leave behind him ‘some record of the trust I have held’, and to connect his name with ‘permanent improvements’ to the institutions of the country.

1827

Liverpool resigned because of ill health. Peel refused to serve in a government led by Canning who favoured Catholic emancipation

1828

Death of Canning in August 1827 and failure of the Goderich government results in Wellington becoming prime minister; Peel returned as Home Secretary. At the Home Office, Peel resumed consolidating where he had left off. In 1828, he dealt with the law of offences against the person, reducing it from fifty-seven acts to one, and in 1830 he turned the twenty-seven acts relating to forgeries punishable with death into a single statute. Even more important in his eyes, he began at last to make progress with the police. In 1822, a committee had refused to recommend any reform. In 1828, Peel secured a new inquiry into the police of the metropolis, and the following year he was able to legislate. He had already given an indication of the way his mind was working when he praised the small force of full-time professional magistrates and constables established in London in 1793. But this efficient superstructure rested upon a complex of autonomous parochial and district watches. Peel resolved to create a unified body under the control of the home secretary and paid for out of a general rate. The new force started patrolling the streets on 29^th September 1829. They were not there to carry out sophisticated criminal detective work, but to restrain the thousands of vagrants, thieves, prostitutes, and drunks who tried to beg, steal or earn a living upon the streets of the capital, and to keep order. Peel’s ‘vigorous preventive police’ carried truncheons but not firearms and their secret (or innovatory) weapon was their military discipline. This ‘unconstitutional’ police force, as it was called in the Chartist petition, was bitterly resented, and there were many assaults upon policemen at first. But a force of just over 3000 men won control of the streets. Like so many of Peel’s reforms this one lasted. Fears of the police developing into a secret police on the continental model proved to have been exaggerated, and hostility to the very idea of an efficient police force ebbed away. By the mid-century, the policeman’s image was becoming a friendly, neighbourly one and constables were being called ‘bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’ after Peel.

1829

As leader of the House of Commons, Peel was obliged to grapple with the Catholic question. In 1827, the Protestants had won the annual vote in the House of Commons. The following year, when the protestant dissenters and the Roman Catholics, in effect, came to terms, the government was heavily defeated on a motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and it was defeated again on a motion for Catholic emancipation. The first defeat was easy to deal with: Wellington and Peel gave way and brought in a bill of their own. The second was compounded by the rise of the Catholic Association and the defeat of Vesey Fitzgerald, a popular Protestant landlord and government minister, by O’Connell, who was not eligible to take his seat, at a by-election in County Clare. The protestant ascendancy had collapsed, and emancipation was now imperative. The only question was whether it should be undertaken by the king’s present ministers or by a new political combination. Once again Peel offered to resign and once again he was persuaded to stay. That decision taken, he offered to vacate his seat for Oxford University. His friends re-nominated him, but at the end of February he was defeated in a poll by Sir Robert Inglis by 609 votes to 755, and the government had to ask Sir Manasseh Lopes to vacate his pocket borough at Westbury in Peel’s favour. Peel was aware, then, when he rose on 5^th March 1829 to introduce the cabinet’s bill to emancipate the Catholics, that he would be asked why he saw ‘a necessity for concession now, which was not evident before’. He answered that it was the condition of Ireland. ‘[The protestant] Reformation in Ireland’ had hitherto ‘made no advance’, and after twenty years he was convinced that ‘the evil’ was ‘not casual and temporary, but permanent and inveterate’. The time had come when less danger was to be apprehended from ‘attempting to adjust the Catholic Question, than in allowing it to remain any longer in its present state’. ‘I yield…unwilling to push resistance to a point which might endanger the Establishments that I wish to defend’[7]. He ignored O’Connell, and saved face by announcing that the details of the measure had not been discussed with the Roman Catholics themselves. Catholics were to be allowed to enter both houses of parliament and to hold any office other than monarch, Lord Chancellor, and (more strangely) lord lieutenant of Ireland. In return, Peel asked the Irish to accept the disfranchisement of the 40s freeholders and a reduction of the electorate. The government did not ask for any control over the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops, because no British government, Peel said, could enter into negotiation with the Papacy

1830

Peel lost office with defeat and resignation of Wellington’s government

1831

Peel opposed Whig proposals for parliamentary reform

1832

After the resignation of Whigs, Peel refused to serve in a Tory government pledged to reform [May]; Tories lost many seats in the first post-reform general election [December]

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[1] W. Bagehot ‘The Character of Sir Robert Peel’, 1856, in Norman St. John-Stevas (ed.) Bagehot’s Historical Essays, 1971, page185.

[2] L. W. Cowie Sir Robert Peel, 1788–1850: a bibliography, Greenwood, 1996 provides an excellent overview of work on Peel. N. Gash Mr Secretary Peel: the life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830, 1965, 2^nd ed., 1981 and Sir Robert Peel: the life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830, 1972, 2^nd ed., 1986 remains the standard modern biography. Speeches of the late Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Peel, delivered in the House of Commons, 4 volumes, 1853, Memoirs by the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Peel, ed. Lord Mahon [P. Stanhope] and E. Cardwell, 2 volumes, 1856–7, C. S. Parker, ed., Sir Robert Peel: from his private papers, 3 volumes, (1891–9), Life and letters of Sir James Graham, ed. C. S. Parker, 2 volumes, (1907) and The private letters of Sir Robert Peel, ed. G. Peel, 1920 give Peel’s voice. Correspondence and diaries of J. W. Croker, ed. L. J. Jennings, 3 volumes, 1884, The Greville memoirs, 1814–1860, ed. L. Strachey and R. Fulford, 8 volumes, 1938, A. R. Wellesley, second duke of Wellington Despatches, correspondence, and memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur, duke of Wellington, K.G.: in continuation of the former series, 8 volumes, 1867–80, The Creevey papers, ed. H. Maxwell, 3^rd ed., 1905; reprinted, 1923, The letters of Queen Victoria, ed. A. C. Benson, Lord Esher [R. B. Brett], and G. E. Buckle, 9 volumes, 1907–32, T. Martin The life of the prince consort, 5 volumes, 1875–80, volumes 1–2 · B. Disraeli ‘Character of Sir Robert Peel’, Lord George Bentinck: a political biography, 2^nd ed., 1852, pages 302–320, W. Bagehot ‘The character of Sir Robert Peel’, Biographical studies, ed. R. H. Hutton, 2^nd ed., 1889, pages 1–39 and F. P. G. Guizot Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, 1857, translated from the French provide invaluable contemporary comment. G. J. Shaw-Lefevre Peel and O’Connell: a review of the Irish policy of parliament from the Act of Union to the death of Sir Robert Peel, 1887 and S. Buxton Finance and politics: an historical study, 1783–1885, 2 volumes, 1888 look at particular aspects. G. Kitson Clark Peel and the conservative party, 1832–1841, 1929 remains essential Donald Read Peel and the Victorians, 1987 looks at Peel’s reputation. Important papers include: D. E. D. Beales ‘Peel, Russell and reform’, Historical Journal, volume 17 (1974), pages 873–882, D. R. Fisher ‘Peel and the conservative party: the sugar crisis of 1844 reconsidered’, Historical Journal volume 18 (1975), pages 279–302, R. Boyd Hilton ‘Peel: a re-appraisal’, Historical Journal volume 22 (1979), pages 585–614, I. D. C. Newbould ‘Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative party, 1832–1841: a study in failure?’, English Historical Review, volume 98 (1983), page 529–557, F. Herrmann ‘Peel and Solly: two nineteenth-century art collectors and their sources of supply’, Journal of the History of Collections, volume 3 (1991), pages 89–96 and V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Mercy and Mr. Peel’, The hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770–1868, 1994, chapter 21.

[3] Hansard 1, 36.404–23

[4] Hansard 2, 14.1236

[5] Hansard 2, 14.1222–3

[6] Hansard 2, 14.1214–39

[7] Hansard 2^nd series, volume 20, columns 728-80