The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I, No. 7 | Page 8

in opposing for a few months
the ministries of Mr. Canning and Lord Goderich, it may be stated that
from 1810 to 1830 he formed part of the government, and presided over
it as a first minister in 1834-5, as well as from 1841 to 1846 inclusive.
During the time that he held the office of home secretary under Lord

Liverpool he effected many important changes in the administration of
domestic affairs, and many legislative improvements of a practical and
comprehensive character. But his fame as member of parliament was
principally sustained at this period of his life by the extensive and
admirable alterations which he effected in the criminal law. Romilly
and Mackintosh had preceded him in the great work of reforming and
humanizing the code of England. For his hand, however, was reserved
the introduction of ameliorations which they had long toiled and
struggled for in vain. The ministry through whose influence he was
enabled to carry these reforms lost its chief in Lord Liverpool during
the early part of the year 1827. When Mr. Canning undertook to form a
government, Mr. Peel, the late Lord Eldon, the Duke of Wellington,
and other eminent tories of that day, threw up office, and are said to
have persecuted Mr. Canning with a degree of rancor far outstripping
the legitimate bounds of political hostility. Lord George Bentinck said
"they hounded to the death my illustrious relative"; and the ardor of his
subsequent opposition to Sir Robert Peel evidently derived its intensity
from a long cherished sense of the injuries supposed to have been
inflicted upon Mr. Canning. It is the opinion of men not ill informed
respecting the sentiments of Canning, that he considered Peel as his
true political successor--as a statesman competent to the task of
working out that large and liberal policy which he fondly hoped the
tories might, however tardily, be induced to sanction. At all events, he
is believed not to have entertained toward Mr. Peel any personal
hostility, and to have stated during his short-lived tenure of office that
that gentleman was the only member of his party who had not treated
him with ingratitude and unkindness.
In January, 1828, the Wellington ministry took office and held it till
November, 1830. Mr. Peel's reputation suffered during this period very
rude shocks. He gave up, as already stated, his anti-Catholic principles,
lost the force of twenty years' consistency, and under unheard-of
disadvantages introduced the very measure he had spent so many years
in opposing. The debates on Catholic emancipation, which preceded
the great reform question, constitute a period in his life, which, twenty
years ago, every one would have considered its chief and prominent
feature. There can be no doubt that the course he then adopted
demanded greater moral courage than at any previous period of his life

he had been called upon to exercise. He believed himself incontestibly
in the right; he believed, with the Duke of Wellington, that the danger
of civil war was imminent, and that such an event was immeasurably a
greater evil than surrendering the constitution of 1688. But he was
called upon to snap asunder a parliamentary connection of twelve years
with a great university, in which the most interesting period of his
youth had been passed; to encounter the reproaches of adherents whom
he had often led in well-fought contests against the advocates of what
was termed "civil and religious liberty;" to tell the world that the
character of public men for consistency, however precious, is not to be
directly opposed to the common weal; and to communicate to many the
novel as well as unpalatable truth that what they deemed "principle"
must give way to what he called "expediency."
When he ceased to be a minister of the crown, that general movement
throughout Europe which succeeded the deposition of the elder branch
of the Bourbons rendered parliamentary reform as unavoidable as two
years previously Catholic emancipation had been. He opposed this
change, no doubt with increased knowledge and matured talents, but
with impaired influence and few parliamentary followers. The history
of the reform debates will show that Sir Robert Peel made many
admirable speeches, which served to raise his reputation, but never for
a moment turned the tide of fortune against his adversaries, and in the
first session of the first reformed parliament he found himself at the
head of a party that in numbers little exceeded one hundred. As soon as
it was practicable he rallied his broken forces; either he or some of his
political friends gave them the name of "Conservatives," and it required
but a short interval of reflection and observation to prove to his
sagacious intellect that the period of reaction was at hand. Every engine
of party organization was put into vigorous activity, and