Academics From The United Kingdom

"[F]or God's sake, be sure, if the King is driven to the wall, of Peel. An appeal to him and his countrymen could not be disregarded. Unless you have Peel, the House of Commons cannot be managed."

"[T]he people at large did care and enthusiastically care for the Conservative statesman who had sacrificed power to give the millions cheap bread; and there was scarcely a schoolboy who had not got by heart Sir Robert Peel's pathetic expression of his hopes that his name might live in the homes of those whose lot it was to labour, when at the end of their day's toil they recruited their exhausted strength by “abundant and untaxed food, no longer leavened by a sense of injustice.”"

"Lord Robert Cecil while at Oxford occasionally joined in the debates of the Union Society, taking the strong Tory side, and speaking sometimes with a young man's vehemence. I recollect his declaiming that Sir Robert Peel, for breaking up the Conservative party, should be left to lie in the grave of infamy which his tergiversation had dug."

"Whether he was a model of statesmanship may be doubted. Models of statesmanship are rare, if by a model of statesmanship is meant a great administrator and party leader, a great political philosopher and a great independent orator, all in one. But if the question is whether he was a ruler loved and trusted by the English people there is no arguing against the tears of a nation."

"For a quarter of a century, at least, he was without question the first public servant of England; not the first in position only, but in knowledge of the public business, and in capacity for transacting it throughout all its departments; the man to whom all good public servants looked up as their model and their worthy chief. He must be credited with all the industry, the self-control, the patience, the judgment which such a part required. His integrity was as great as his other qualities; no jobbery, no connivance at abuses stains his name. Setting party questions aside, he was the man who would have been chosen as the chief ruler of England by the almost unanimous voice of the English people, and a heavy price was paid for party when he was excluded from the administration during ten of the best years of his life, and banished from power at the moment when the national confidence in him was at its height."

"[T]he right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government is a man of considerable capabilities as a legislator: he possesses great talents for debate, for the management of this House, and for the transaction of official business. He has great knowledge, and I doubt not is actuated by a sincere desire to promote the interests of the country; but it is impossible for me with truth to deny that there is too much ground for the reproaches of those who having, in spite of bitter experience, a second time trusted him and raised him to power, have found themselves a second time deluded. It is impossible for me not to say that it has been too much the habit of the right hon. Baronet to make use of, when in opposition (as he has done in reference to the present question), passions with which he has not the slightest sympathy, and prejudices which he regards with profound contempt. As soon as he reaches power, a change—a salutary change for the country—takes place. The instruments are flung aside—the ladder by which he climbed is kicked down. This is not a solitary instance, and I am forced to say that this sort of conduct is pursued by the right hon. Baronet on something like a system."

"The Whig opposition in the house appears spiritless and several of the Radicals, Roebuck, Raikes, Curry etc., laud Peel to the skies and contrast his vigour and liberality with the feebleness and irresolution of the late Ministry."

"The Protection Parliament has voted and passed, by a great majority, the total repeal of the Corn-laws! No living soul could have done this but Peel, and I am not surprised at the increasing rage of the Protectionists. They appear more angry than ever."

"Sir Robert Peel, perhaps the greatest peacetime prime minister in British history... Probably no one man has ever possessed such a comprehensive and detailed grasp of the whole machinery of government... As he saw it, the problem facing the ruling class, during a period when Britain was undergoing a revolution in population and in rising expectations, was how to preserve a fundamentally sound system from violent overthrow by making it more acceptable and efficient. In his view acceptability and efficiency were inseparable. To work, Conservatism thus demanded well-judged and carefully timed but none the less fundamental reforms. The entire operations of government had to be improved and so popularized by applying sensible commercial principles. That is the pragmatic and, if you like, materialistic approach which Mrs Thatcher so clearly shares."

"What struck me above all in the conversation of Sir Robert Peel was his constant and passionate preoccupation with the state of the working classes in England."

"His very name seems a synonym for all that is safe, judicious, business-like, sound, and practical. In spite of the two great schisms of 1829 and 1846, we cannot help looking back upon him as a man whom any party would have been wise to follow. We cannot help it. Nor can I doubt that if he had been spared, his old followers would again have fallen under the spell, and again have mustered under his banner."

"I believe it to be impossible that anything can prevent Peel's speedy return to office; he has raised his reputation to such a height during this session, he has established such a conviction of his great capacity and of his liberal, enlarged, and at the same time safe views and opinions, that even the Radicals, such as Hume, join in the general chorus of admiration which is raised to his merits; he stands so proudly eminent, and there is such a general lack of talent, that he must be recalled by the voice of the nation and by the universal admission that he is indispensable to the country."

"Peel brought forward his financial plans in a speech of three hours and forty minutes, acknowledged by everybody to have been a masterpiece of financial statement. The success was complete; he took the House by storm; and his opponents, though of course differing and objecting on particular points, did him ample justice... It is really remarkable to see the attitude Peel has taken in this Parliament, his complete mastery over both his friends and his foes. His own party, nolentes aut volentes, have surrendered at discretion, and he has got them as well disciplined and as obedient as the crew of a man-of-war. This just measure, so lofty in conception, right in direction, and able in execution, places him at once on a pinnacle of power, and establishes his Government on such a foundation as accident alone can shake. Political predictions are always rash, but certainly there is every probability of Peel's being Minister for as many years as his health and vigour may endure. Only a few weeks ago I heard from my Whig friends of nothing but his weakness and embarrassments, and of all the difficulties his own supporters would cause him, what a poor figure he cut, &c.; but now they have not a word to say, and one of them who had been loudest in that strain brought to the Travellers’, where I was dining, an account of Peel's speech, and said, ‘One felt, all the time he was speaking, “Thank God, Peel is Minister!”’ There can be no doubt that he is now a very great man, and it depends on himself to establish a lasting reputation."

"I never in my time saw a minister who possessed more absolute power in the House of Commons than Peel. His influence and power are most extraordinary. In the House he is everything—but there his power ceases. If he was the same in Council, and in all his intercourse with mankind, he would exceed anything this country, or perhaps any other, ever saw, but I fear he is not equal to the situation he fills, and to the times in which he lives. By his power in the House of Commons alone does he keep his party together. Out of the House his conduct is well calculated to destroy it. Cold and uncourteous to every one—even to his colleagues in office, who appear to me to be afraid to differ from him—at times in manner he is almost insolent. It will be found when he dies that no minister ever possessed fewer friends, or would be personally less lamented. In his policy he is deficient in vigour and in courage. He rather looks too much to popularity, and if any great emergency were to arise ... I feel that Peel would be found wanting."

"I appeal to the contemptible speech made lately by Sir Robert Peel to an applauding House of Commons. "Orders of merit," said he, "were the proper rewards of the military" (the desolators of the world in all ages). "Men of science are better left to the applause of their own hearts." Most learned legislator! Most liberal cotton-spinner! Was your title the proper reward of military prowess? Pity, you hold not the dungeon-keys of an English Inquisition! Perhaps Science, like Creeds, would flourish best under a little persecution."

"Peel was decidedly for a property tax. He wished to reach such men as Baring, his father, Rothschild, and others, as well as absentees and Ireland. He thought too it was expedient to reconcile the lower with the higher classes, and to diminish the burthen of taxation on the poor man."

"There were two things especially conspicuous about him. One was his over-mastering sense of public duty; this never deserted him. The other thing was his sense of measure. He had generally an exact sense of the proportion between one Bill, and the general policy of the Government; also of the proportion between the different parts of the same Bill; and of the relation in which the leaders of his party stood to their followers."

"Sir Robert had studied the change which has been progressively taking place in the public mind and, from very close observation, I am thoroughly convinced that one of his greatest objects was, if possible, to encourage a kind and sympathetic feeling between the different classes and ranks in society, so that each might have adapted itself to a change which is inevitable. This belief is so firmly fixed in my mind, that I have always regarded it as the key by which much of his conduct that has exposed him to obloquy, was to be explained."

"The great virtue of Peel was that he had such an enormous conscience. Conscience, they say, is a very expensive thing to keep. Peel certainly kept one."

"Taken all round, Peel was the greatest man I ever knew."

"For concocting, producing, explaining, and defending measures he had no equal, or anything like an equal. There was nothing simile aut secundum. When a thing was to be done, he did it better than anybody."

"The Right Honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes."

"The statesman who more than any other had the instinct of the necessity of the moment"

"Peel was the most admirable and high-principled of contemporary politicians."

"I decidedly liked Peel; and could not but hope some real good might yet lie in him for the country... Incomparably better furnished both with talent and disposition than any other we have at present."

"Now, the whole interest centres in yourself. You represent the IDEA of the age, and it has no other representative amongst statesmen."

"What is this diplomacy? It is a costly engine for maintaining peace. It is a remarkable instrument used by civilised nations for the purpose of preventing war. Unless it be used for that purpose, unless it be used to appease the angry passions of individual men, and check the feelings which arise out of national resentment, unless it be used for that purpose, it is an instrument not only costly but mischievous. If then your application of diplomacy be to fester every wound, to provoke instead of soothing resentments, to place a minister in every court of Europe for the purpose, not of preventing quarrels, or of adjusting quarrels, but for the purpose of continuing an angry correspondence in this place, or of promoting what is supposed to be an English interest by keeping up conflicts with the representatives of other powers, then I say that not only is the expenditure upon this costly instrument thrown away, but this great engine, used by civilised society for the purpose of maintaining peace, is perverted into a cause of hostility and war."

"[T]here is always so much wisdom and prudence in the view he takes of great and difficult affairs, that his opinion cannot but be valuable."

"Practical reforms are the order of the day, and you are by common consent the practical reformer. The Condition of England Question—there is your mission!"

"Peel himself is a much better man than any we can oppose to him. He really is exceedingly dexterous and handy, as well as eloquent and powerful."

"I boldly maintain that the principle of protection to domestic industry, meaning thereby legislative encouragement for purpose of protection—duties on import imposed for that purpose, and not for revenue, is a vicious principle. I contest the hon. Gentleman's assumption, that you cannot fight hostile tariffs by free imports. I so totally dissent from that assumption, that I maintain that the best way to compete with hostile tariffs is to encourage free imports. So far from thinking the principle of protection a salutary principle, I maintain that the more widely you extend it, the greater the injury you will inflict on the national wealth, and the more you will cripple the national industry."

"The principles which should govern the commercial intercourse of nations, do not differ from those which regulate the dealings of private individuals."

"I believe as firmly as any of those who dissent from me with respect to the mode in which the object is to be attained, that it is a vital question for the country—that unless our domestic industry be encouraged, we cannot expect peace, contentment, or prosperity. ... It is a question which affects the happiness of the people, which affects their social progress, their progress in morals, in the enjoyment of life, in refinement of taste and civilisation of manners—it concerns these things at least as much as it concerns the accumulation of wealth."

"Each town and each country will command the amount of currency which it requires for its own purposes, undisturbed in the slightest degree by consulting its manifest interest, namely, by purchasing that which it wants in the cheapest market. [Derisive cheers.] Yes, by purchasing that which it wants in the cheapest market. You consider this a very low and unworthy principle; that it is a doctrine of the Manchester school; that it is a novel doctrine of some speculative political philosophers, and that it may be safely rejected. But this doctrine of purchasing in the cheapest market is not a doctrine of speculative philosophers only. It is not a doctrine introduced by modern economists. It is, no doubt, a doctrine sanctioned expressly and directly by the authority of Adam Smith. It is the doctrine of Say and of Hume. It is opposed to a doctrine which was fashioned some eighty or ninety years since, of which such writers as Montesquieu and Voltaire were the patrons; but Smith, and Say, and Hume, demonstrated the true principles which ought to regulate the commercial policy of a nation."

"[Famine-stricken districts in Ireland] would require some better consolation than the doctrine of Adam Smith on the true Principles of demand and supply and the danger of Government interference."

"My belief is, that a wiser decision than that to which you came—to subject property to direct taxation within certain limits—to remove the prohibition upon foreign cattle—to permit swine and sheep to be imported—to reduce the duty on corn, on sugar, on lard, on butter, and on cheese—you never made. My belief is that you have been amply repaid for any loss you may have sustained by that reduction; that you have gained the confidence and goodwill of the labouring classes in this country, by parting with that which was thought to be directly for the benefit of the landed interest. It was that confidence in the generosity and justice of Parliament which in no small degree enabled you to pass triumphantly through that storm which convulsed other nations during the year 1848."

"I myself am satisfied that he is much nearer to the Radicals than to any other party in the State."

"It was impossible to reconcile the repeal of the Corn Laws by me with the keeping together of the Conservative party, and I had no hesitation in sacrificing the subordinate object, and with it my own political interests."

"Sir, if I look to the prerogative of the Crown—if I look to the position of the Church—if I look to the influence of the aristocracy—I cannot charge myself with having taken any course inconsistent with Conservative principles, calculated to endanger the privileges of any branch of the Legislature, or of any institutions of the country. My earnest wish has been, during my tenure of power, to impress the people of this country with a belief that the Legislature was animated by a sincere desire to frame its legislation upon the principles of equity and justice. I have a strong belief that the greatest object which we or any other Government can contemplate should be to elevate the social condition of that class of the people with whom we are brought into no direct relationship by the exercise of the elective franchise."

"I can say with truth that Her Majesty's Government, in proposing those measures of commercial policy which have disentitled them to the confidence of many who heretofore gave them their support, were influenced by no other motive than the desire to consult the interests of this country. Our object was to avert dangers which we thought were imminent, and to terminate a conflict which, according to our belief, would soon place in hostile collision great and powerful classes in this country. The maintenance of power was not a motive for the proposal of these measures; for, as I said before, I had not a doubt, that whether these measures were accompanied by failure or success, the certain issue must be the termination of the existence of this Government."

"Do you not admit to me that in the social condition of the millions in the manufacturing districts, who earn their subsistence by the sweat of their brow, the price of wheat is of the first importance, and has become an object of the deepest interest? Have you read the Reports on the Health of Towns? Are you not deeply convinced that some effort ought to be made to improve the social condition of the masses of the population, who earn their subsistence in the manufacturing towns? It seems to me that the first foundation of any such improvement is, that there should be abundance of food. You may talk of improving the habits of the working classes, introducing education amongst them, purifying their dwellings, improving their cottages; but believe me the first step towards improvement of their social condition is an abundance of food. That lies at the bottom of all. It is in vain, if the people are suffering under scarcity, or if any apprehension of scarcity prevails; the suffering, or the apprehension of it, so depresses the spirits, that it is vain for you to inculcate lessons of cleanliness, or to improve dwellings, until the people are provided with abundance of food."

"...in proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them. ... The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned: the name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of those measures, is the name of Richard Cobden."

"The agricultural labourers have been better off this winter and last winter than they were before, and rely upon it that when the working-classes feel convinced that their wages do not rise with the price of food, the worst grounds on which we can fight the battle of true Conservatism is food."

"I cannot...think it inconsistent with true Conservative policy, that we should...be engaged in trying to efface the recollections of the exploits of both countries in war, or extracting from those recollections everything which savours of bitterness; that we should be trying to engage in a rivalry, not in exploits on the field of blood, but in an honourable competition for the advancement of commerce and civilization, and the improvement of the social condition of the people. It is not inconsistent with true Conservative policy, that we should increase the trade of the country by removing restrictions; nor is it inconsistent with sound Conservative policy, that we should reduce the taxation of the country whilst we increased its revenue. It is not, in my mind, inconsistent with true Conservative policy, that we have extinguished agitation and discouraged sedition, not by stringent coercive laws, but by encouraging the idea amongst the great body of the people, that we, the rich and powerful, are willing to take a more than ordinary share of the public burdens, and to remove those burdens from the people so far as it is possible. Sir, believe me, to conduct the Government of this country is a most arduous duty; I may say it without irreverence, that these ancient institutions, like our physical frames, are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”"

"In relinquishing power...I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honourable motives, clamours for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice."

"It is no easy task to ensure the united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud aristocracy, and a reformed constituency. I have done everything I could do, and have thought it consistent with true Conservative policy, to reconcile these three branches of the State. I have thought it consistent with true Conservative policy to promote so much of happiness and contentment among the people that the voice of disaffection should be no longer heard, and that thoughts of the dissolution of our institutions should be forgotten in the midst of physical enjoyment. These were my attempts, and I thought them not inconsistent with true and enlarged Conservative policy."

"The accounts from Ireland of the potato crop, confirmed as they are by your high authority, are very alarming. We must consider whether it is possible by legislation, or by the exercise of prerogative, to apply a remedy to the great evil with which we are threatened. The application of such remedy involves considerations of the utmost magnitude. The remedy is the removal of all impediments to the import of all kinds of human food—that is, the total and absolute repeal for ever of all duties on all articles of subsistence."

"I think there is a gentlemanlike policy which nations as well as individuals would do well to adopt."

"If we can place confidence in the Reports which we have received, there is the prospect of a lamentable deficiency of the ordinary food of the people in many parts of Ireland, and in some parts of this country, and of Scotland. ... Can we vote public money for the sustenance of any considerable portion of the people on account of actual or apprehended scarcity, and maintain in full operation the existing restrictions on the free import of grain? I am bound to say my impression is that we cannot."

"Whatever country squires may think, it is not safe to guarantee the continuance of the present Corn Laws."