Victorian Worthies: Sixteen Biographies. George Henry Blore
SIR ROBERT PEEL
Statesman
In the years that lay between the Treaty of Utrecht and the close of the Napoleonic wars British politics were largely dominated by Walpole and the two Pitts: their great figures only stand out in stronger relief because their place was filled for a time by such weak ministers as Newcastle and Bute, as Grafton and North. In the nineteenth century there were many gifted statesmen who held the position of first minister of the Crown. Disraeli and Palmerston by shrewdness and force of character, Canning and Derby by brilliant oratorical gifts, Russell and Aberdeen by earnest devotion to public service, were all commanding figures in their day, whose claims to the chieftainship of a party and of a government were generally admitted. Gladstone, the most versatile genius of them all, had abilities second to none; but his place in history will for long be a subject of acute controversy. He stands too close to our own time to be fairly judged. Of the others no one had the same combination of gifts as Sir Robert Peel, no one had in the same measure that particular knowledge, judgement, and ability which characterize the statesman. His career was the most fruitful, his work the most enduring: he has left his mark in English history to a degree which no one of his rivals can equal.
The Peel family can be traced back to the misty days of Danish inroads. Its original home in England is disputed between Yorkshire and Lancashire; but as early as the days of Elizabeth the branch from which our statesman was descended is certainly to be found at Blackburn, and its members lived for generations as sturdy yeomen of that district. The first of them known to strike out an independent line was his grandfather, Robert Peel, who with his brother-in-law, Mr. Haworth, started the first firm for calico-printing in Lancashire about the year 1760, ceasing the practice of sending the material to be printed in France. This grandfather was a type of the men who were making the new England, leading the way in the creation of industries that were to transform the North and Midlands. The business prospered and he moved from Blackburn to Burton-on-Trent, where he built three new mills. His third son, named Robert, was also gifted with resource. Beginning as a member of the family firm, he soon came to be its chief director, and added another branch at Tamworth, where later he built the house of Drayton Manor, the family seat in the nineteenth century. He was a Tory and a staunch follower of the younger Pitt, who rewarded his services with a baronetcy in 1800. He too was a typical man of his age and class, an age of material progress and expansion, a class full of self-confidence and animated by a spirit of stubborn resistance to so-called un-English ideas. His eldest son, the third Robert and the second baronet, is our subject. It is impossible to grasp the springs of his conduct unless we know what traditions he inherited from his forbears.
Peel's education was begun at home with a specific purpose. Though his father had every reason to be satisfied with his own success, for his son he cherished a yet higher ambition and one which he did not conceal. He said openly that he intended him to be Prime Minister of his country. The knowledge of this provoked many jests among the boy's friends and caused him no slight embarrassment. It conspired with the shyness and reserve, which were innate in him, to win him from the outset a reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse. Both at school and college he did 'attend to his book': at Harrow he roused the greatest hopes. His brilliant schoolfellow, Lord Byron, while claiming to excel him in general information and history, admits that Peel was greatly his superior as a scholar. The working of their minds, now and afterwards, was curiously different. Bagehot[6] illustrates the contrast by a striking metaphor: Byron's mind, he says, worked by momentary eruptions of volcanic force from within and then relapsed into inactivity. Peel on the other hand steadily accumulated knowledge and opinions, his mind receiving impressions from outward experience like the alluvial soil deposited by a river in its course. But this is to anticipate. At Oxford Peel was the first man to win a 'Double First' (i.e. a first class both in classics and mathematics), in which distinction Gladstone alone, among our Prime Ministers, equalled him. But he also found time during the term to indulge in cricket, in rowing, and in riding, while in the vacation he developed a more marked taste for shooting, and thus freed himself from the charge of being a mere bookworm. He was good-looking, rather a dandy in his dress, stiff in his manner, regular in his habits, conforming to the Oxford standards of excellence and as yet showing few signs of independence of character.
Peel went into Parliament early, after the fashion of the day. He was twenty-one when, in 1809, a seat was offered him at Cashel in Ireland. The system of 'rotten boroughs' had many faults—our text-books of history do not spare it—but it may claim to have offered an easy way into Parliament for some men of brilliant talents. Peel's family connexions and his own training marked out the path for him. It was difficult for the young Oxford prizeman not to follow Lord Chancellor Eldon, that stout survival of the high old Tories: it was impossible for his father's son not to sit behind the successors of Pitt. We shall see how far his own reasoning powers and clear vision led him from this path; but the early influences were never quite effaced. His first patron was Lord Liverpool, to whom he became private secretary in the following year. This nobleman, described by Disraeli in a famous passage as an 'arch-mediocrity' was Prime Minister for fifteen years. He owed his long tenure of office largely to the tolerance with which he allowed his abler lieutenants to usurp his power: perhaps he owed it still more to the victories which Wellington was then winning abroad and which secured the confidence of the country; but at least he seems to have been a good judge of men. In 1811 he promoted Peel to be Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and in 1812 to be Chief Secretary for Ireland. His abilities must have made a great impression to win him such promotion: he must have had plenty of self-confidence to undertake such duties, for he was only twenty-four years old. We are accustomed to-day to under-secretaries of forty or forty-five; but we must remember that the younger Pitt led the House of Commons at twenty-four and was Prime Minister at twenty-five.
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