The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I, No. 7 | Page 9

before the
summer of 1834 reached its close he was at the head of a compact,
powerful, and well-disciplined opposition. Such a high impression of
their vigor and efficiency had King William IV received, that when, in
November, Lord Althorp became a peer, and the whigs therefore lost
their leader to the House of Commons, his Majesty sent in Italy to
summon Sir Robert Peel to his councils, with a view to the immediate
formation of a conservative ministry. He accepted this responsibility,
though he thought the King had mistaken the condition of the country

and the chances of success which had awaited his political friends. A
new House of Commons was instantly called, and for nearly three
months Sir Robert Peel maintained a struggle against the most
formidable opposition that for nearly a century any minister had been
called to encounter. At no time did his command of temper, his almost
exhaustless resources of information, his vigorous and comprehensive
intellect appear to create such astonishment or draw forth such
unbounded admiration as in the early part of 1835. But, after a
well-fought contest he retired once more into the opposition till the
close of the second Melbourne Administration in 1841. It was in April,
1835, that Lord Melbourne was restored to power, but the continued
enjoyment of office did not much promote the political interests of his
party, and from various causes the power of the whigs began to decline.
The commencement of a new reign gave them some popularity, but in
the new House of Commons, elected in consequence of that event, the
conservative party were evidently gaining strength; still, after the
failure of 1834-5, it was no easy task to dislodge an existing ministry,
and at the same time to be prepared with a cabinet and a party
competent to succeed them. Sir Robert Peel, therefore, with
characteristic caution, "bided his time", conducting the business of
opposition throughout the whole of this period with an ability and
success of which history affords few examples. He had accepted the
Reform Bill as the established law of England, and as the system upon
which the country was thenceforward to be governed. He was willing
to carry it out in its true spirit, but he would proceed no further. He
marshaled his opposition upon the principle of resistance to any further
organic changes, and he enlisted the majority of the peers and nearly
the whole of the country gentlemen of England in support of the great
principle of protection to British industry. The little maneuvres and
small political intrigues of the period are almost forgotten, and the
remembrance of them is scarcely worthy of revival. It may, however,
be mentioned, that in 1839 ministers, being left in a minority, resigned,
and Sir Robert Peel, when sent for by the Queen, demanded that certain
ladies in the household of her majesty,--the near relatives of eminent
whig politicians,--should be removed from the personal service of the
sovereign. As this was refused, he abandoned for the time any attempt
to form a government, and his opponents remained in office till

September, 1841. It was then Sir Robert Peel became the first lord of
the treasury, and the Duke of Wellington, without office, accepted a
seat in the cabinet, taking the management of the House of Lords. His
ministry was formed on protectionist principles, but the close of its
career was marked by the adoption of free trade doctrines differing in
the widest and most liberal sense. Sir Robert Peel's sense of public duty
impelled him once more to incur the odium and obliquy which attended
a fundamental change of policy, and a repudiation of the political
partizans by whose ardent support a minister may have attained office
and authority. It was his fate to encounter more than any man ever did,
that hostility which such conduct, however necessary, never fails to
produce. This great change in our commercial policy, however
unavoidable, must be regarded as the proximate cause of his final
expulsion from office in July, 1846. His administration, however, had
been signalized by several measures of great political importance.
Among the earliest and most prominent of these were his financial
plans, the striking feature of which was an income-tax; greatly extolled
for the exemption it afforded from other burdens pressing more
severely on industry, but loudly condemned for its irregular and
unequal operation, a vice which has since rendered its contemplated
increase impossible.
Of the ministerial life of Sir Robert Peel little more remains to be
related except that which properly belongs rather to the history of the
country than to his individual biography. But it would be unjust to the
memory of one of the most sagacious statesman that England ever
produced to deny that his latest renunciation of political principles
required but