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⁸ Bagehot, Works, III, 253.

⁹ Symons, J. C., Sir Robert Peel, as a type of statesmanship (London, 1856), p. 195Google Scholar. See Bulwer, H. L. E., Dalling, Lord, Sir Robert Peel: An historical sketch (London, 1874), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁶ Parker, C. S., Sir Robert Peel (London, 1891–1899)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Ramsay, A. A. W., Sir Robert Peel (London, 1928), p. 370Google Scholar. Ramsay wrote elsewhere that Peel's fall in 1846 marked a transition ‘from the age of facts, to the age of ideas; from the rule of opportunism in politics, to the rule of principle… [from] men who are guided by the necessities of the hour…[to] men guided by abstract ideas of the Right and the Best’. Ramsay, A. A. W., Idealism and foreign policy (London, 1925), p. 2Google Scholar.

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²¹ McDowell, R. B. in The Guardian (12 05 1961)Google Scholar.

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²⁶ Gash, N., Sir Robert Peel: The life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830 (London, 1972), p. 712Google Scholar.

²⁷ Bagehot, Works, III, 245.

²⁸ Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck, p. 305.

²⁹ Lewis to Head, 11 July 1850, Letters of Sir George Cornewall Lewis to various friends, ed. Lewis, G. F. (London, 1870), p. 226Google Scholar.

³⁰ Montague, Life of Peel, pp. 209–10.

³¹ Morley, J., The life of William Ewart Gladstone (London, 1903), III, 465Google Scholar.

³² Kitson Clark, Peel, p. 139; Young, G. M., ‘No servile tenure’, in Daylight and champaign (London, 1837), p. 48Google Scholar.

³³ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp. 709, 714.

³⁴ Ibid. p. 707.

³⁵ Rosebery, Lord, Sir Robert Peel (London, 1899), p. 69Google Scholar. Kebbel, R. E., A history of toryism (London, 1886), p. 292Google Scholar, cites 1834–41 as ‘the brightest and most honourable period of his chequered and eventful life’.

³⁶ Guizot, Sir Robert Peel, p. 2.

³⁷ Reminiscences by Goldwin Smith, ed. Haultain, A. (New York, 1910), pp. 253–4Google Scholar, citing Peel's application of ‘the principle of free competition’ to ‘national works like railways’.

³⁸ Gash, N., ‘Peel and the party system 1820–50’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., I (1951), 56Google Scholar.

³⁹ The Rev. R. Bridge, who had coached Peel in mathematics in preparation for Oxford.

⁴⁰ Peel papers, British Museum, Add. MSS 40342, fos. 26–7, quoted in Parker, Sir Robert Peel, 1, 293–4. Incredibly, Parker cites this letter as proof of ‘how little [Peel] put his trust in abstract theories unsustained by facts’ (ibid, 1, 290), thereby contributing to the myth of Peel's pragmatism. Peel's preference for theories is shown in another letter to Lloyd in 1819, Peel papers, 40342, fos. 34–5: ‘Now if the fall [in export prices] arises from reduced circulating medium there ought to have been according to the theory a corresponding improvement in the Exchanges…Read Ricardo's answer to Bosanquet. It shows at least this – how difficult it is to argue from the apparent state of the Exchange’ [my italics].

⁴¹ Huskisson to his wife, 22 Jan. 1819, Huskisson papers, British Museum, Add. MSS 39949. fos. 33–6.

⁴² Peel to his wife, 16 Dec. 1845, The private letters of Sir Robert Peel, ed. Peel, George (London, 1870), p. 273Google Scholar.

⁴³ Peel to his wife, 22 Aug. 1843, quoted in Lever, T., The life and times of Sir Robert Peel (London, 1942), p. 305Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Smith, Goldwin, ‘Peel’, Macmillan's Magazine, XIX (1868–9), 98Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 711.

⁴⁶ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXVI, 675 [Disraeli, 15 05 1846]Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Gash, Mr Secretary Peel, p. 282.

⁴⁸ Hilton, B., Corn, cash, commerce: The economic policies of the tory governments 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 233–9Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Peel, to Goulburn, , ?1830, in Parker, , Sir Robert Peel, I, 170Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Croker to Hertford, 25 Mar. 1833, in The Croker papers, edited by Jennings, L. J. (London, 1885), 11, 205Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Memorandum by Gladstone, 3 June 1897, Historical Manuscripts Commission. The prime ministers' papers: W. E. Gladstone, ed. Brooke, J. and Sorensen, M. (London, 1971–2), 1, 55Google Scholar.

⁵² Peel to Brougham, 7 May 1844, Peel papers, 40482, fo. 42.

⁵³ Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce, pp. 210–20.

⁵⁴ Mill, J. S., Principles of political economy (6th edn, London, 1865), II, 209 [Bk. Ill, ch. xxiv, sec. I]Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 433.

⁵⁶ Select committee on banks of issue (Parl. Papers, 1841 [Sess. 1], V), QQ. 959–64, 967–9Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Peel to Charles Lloyd, 25 Feb. 1819, Peel papers, 40343, fo. 19. Gilbart's view was that ‘the cross-examination of some of the witnesses partook more of a legal than of a philosophic character’. [Gilbart, J. W.], ‘The currency and banking’, The Westminster Review, xxxv (1841), 116Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Viner, J., Studies in the theory of international trade (London, 1937), pp. 223–4 and nGoogle Scholar. Peel might reasonably have argued that the ‘Banking school's’ proposals, if implemented, would unintentionally jeopardize convertibility.

⁵⁹ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXVI, 721–2 [12 07 1844]Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ McLeod, H. D., The theory and practice of banking (3rd edn, London, 1879), II, 147–58Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Gregory, T. E., Select statutes documents and reports relating to British banking, 1832–1928 (London, 1929), I, xviiGoogle Scholar. Gregory's phrase is quoted approvingly in Horsefield, J. K., ‘The origins of the Bank Charter Act, 1844’, in Papers in English monetary history, ed. Ashton, T. S. and Sayers, R. S. (Oxford, 1953), p. 125Google Scholar.

⁶² Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXIV, 733 [6 05 1844]Google Scholar. Loyd's dogmatism on this point exceeded even Peel's: ‘If the distinction which I clearly draw [between notes and deposits] is not recognized by any other mind, then that mind and my mind are so differently constituted, that we are incapable of reasoning upon any common datum, and therefore cannot hope to come to any mutual understanding.’ Select committee on banks of issue (Parl. Papers, 1840, IV), Q. 3132Google Scholar.

⁶³ Peel to Charles Wood, 31 Aug. 1847, Peel papers, 40445, fo. 411.

⁶⁴ Fetter, F. W., Development of British monetary orthodoxy, 1797–1875 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). p. 184Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Peel to Rush, n.d.[?1844], Peel papers, 40548, fo. 209.

⁶⁶ Hansard, 3rd ser., xcv, 627 [Herries, 3 Dec. 1847]; Monteagle, to Wood, , 28 04 1847, Hickleton papers, A. 4120Google Scholar. See Hansard. 3rd ser., xcvi, 803–17 [Herries, 17 Feb. 1848].

⁶⁷ Peel, to Graham, , 24 08 1848, Graham papers (Netherby), General series, Bundle 105Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Hansard, 3rd ser., ci, 418–19 [23 Aug. 1848]. See Wood to Peel, 11 Oct. 1847, Peel papers, 40599, fos. 293–8.

⁶⁹ Torrens, R., An inquiry into the practical workings of the proposed arrangements for the renewal of the charter of the Bank of England and the regulation of the currency, &c. (London, 1844), 53–4Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 713. Gash rebuts modern charges of callousness with the warning that Peel should be judged according to the conventions of his own day, but he also dismisses contemporary critics like Ashley with an appeal (such as this one) to what he (Gash) regards as conventional twentieth-century wisdom.

⁷¹ Peel had not ‘fully understood’ what Dalhousie and Gladstone were trying to do with regard to regulating railway construction. Parris, H., ‘Railway policy in Peel's administration, 1841–1846’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxiii (1960), 194Google Scholar.

⁷² Peel to Goulburn, 22 July 1826, Goulburn papers, Surrey Record Office, 11/16.

⁷³ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 299.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 305.

⁷⁶ Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce, pp. 257–8.

⁷⁷ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 329.

⁷⁸ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 711 [10 Feb. 1846].

⁷⁹ Gladstone's, memorandum, ‘Party as it was and as it is’, 1855Google Scholar, Gladstone papers, British Museum, Add. MSS 44745, fos. 175–9.

⁸⁰ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 239 [27 Jan. 1846].

⁸¹ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 1003 [16 Feb. 1846].

⁸² Memoirs by Sir Robert Peel, ed. Stanhope, Earl and Cardwell, E. (London, 1857), 11, 155Google Scholar.

⁸³ ‘Party as it was and as it is’, Gladstone papers, 44745, fo. 179.

⁸⁴ Goulburn, to Peel, , 30. 11 1845, in Peel's, 'Memoirs 11, 202Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXVII, 1055 [29 June 1846].

⁸⁶ Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 273 [27 Jan. 1846].

⁸⁷ Peel, to Aberdeen, , 19 08 1847, in Peel's, Memoirs, 11, 322Google Scholar. Sometimes, in defending the timing of the legislation, Peel, so far from blaming the famine, would argue that it was ‘better to make the inevitable change in a time of comparative calm and quiet than to be compelled to make it in a season of commercial and manufacturing distress; and amid the clamour of a starving population’. Peel to Charles Harding, Feb. 1846, Peel papers, 40584, fo. 159.

⁸⁸ ‘To the electors of Tamworth, July 1847’, in Peel's Memoirs, 11, 102. See Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 72 [Peel, 22 Jan, 1846]: ‘Wages do not vary with the price of provisions. They do vary with the increase of capital, with the prosperity of the country, with the increased power to employ labour; but there is no immediate relation between wages and provisions – or if there be a relation it is in an inverse ratio.’

⁸⁹ Above, p. 589.

⁹⁰ Ramsay, Sir Robert Peel, p. 314. Admittedly, this is how Peel himself described his approach, which he contrasted with that of a priori free traders. Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 70–2 [22 Jan. 1846].

⁹¹ ‘Party as it was and as it is’, Gladstone papers, 44745, fo. 176.

⁹² Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXVIH, 785–810 [Cobden, 13 Mar. 1845]. Moore, D. C., The politics of deference: a study of the mid-nineteenth century English political system (Hassocks, 1976), pp. 327–8Google Scholar, suggests that this rare inability on Peel's part to respond in debate refers, not to 1 the market theory of wages, but to Cobden's other argument, that free trade in corn would benefit agriculturists as much as manufacturers. As the evidence is scanty, the point must: remain open. Meanwhile, the fact that Peel was equivocal on the question of what repeal would do to prices makes it difficult to place great weight on the market theory of wages as a catalyst in his thinking.

⁹³ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 329.

⁹⁴ Ibid. pp. 361, 328–9, 554.

⁹⁵ Ibid. p. 307.

⁹⁶ Hansard, 3rd ser., XLVI, 757 [15 Mar. 1839].

⁹⁷ Ibid., LIX, 421–2 [27 Aug. 1841].

⁹⁸ Peel papers, 40497, fos. 193, in Peel's Memoirs, II, 327–57.

⁹⁹ For Huskisson's views, see Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce, pp. 269 ff.

¹⁰⁰ Graham to Peel, 12 Dec. 1841, Peel papers, 40446, fos. 181–2.

¹⁰¹ He could point to the recent dramatic increase in the importations of wheat and wheaten flour (6,680,000 qrs. in 1838–40 compared with only 869,000 qrs. in 1835–7). However, to confuse matters, Peel was talking quite differently in public a few months later: ‘Now, I am not prepared to admit that this country is unable, in ordinary years, to supply its own population’ Hansard, 3rd ser., LX, 214 [9 Feb. 1842]).

¹⁰² Graham, to Peel, , 30 12 1842, quoted in Parker, Sir Robert Peel, 11, 551Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Gash, sir robert Peel, P. 362.

¹⁰⁴ Ripon to Peel, 16 Nov. 1841, Peel papers, 40464, fos. 67–8.

¹⁰⁵ Peel to Ripon, 22 Nov. 1841, Peel papers, 40464, fos. 77–8.

¹⁰⁶ Ripon to Peel, 24 Nov. 1841, Peel papers, 40464, fos. 91–2.

¹⁰⁷ Peel to Ripon, 28 Nov. 1841, Peel papers, 40464, fo. 105.

¹⁰⁸ Peel's memorandum of December 1841, loc. cit.

¹⁰⁹ Lincoln to Peel, 5 Nov. 1845, Peel papers, 40481, fo. 322. Miss Ramsay, in Sir Robert Peel, pp. 310–48, outlines a similar scenario, though she probably exaggerates the role played by empirical observation or the ‘logic of facts’. Still, the only better account of Peel's corn law policy is the ‘summary’ by his grandson, George Peel, in Parker, Sir Robert Peel, HI, 578–609. The latter recognizes, not only that ‘Peel, on his entry into office in 1841, was a free trader’, but that ‘whatever legislation he undertook was based on scientific and general principles’.

¹¹⁰ Gladstone's memorandum of 9 Mar. 1842, in The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 11, 175

¹¹¹ The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 11, 169–72.

¹¹² Ibid. p. 172.

¹¹³ Prest, J., Politics in the age of Cobden (London, 1977), pp. 72–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamer, D., The politics of electoral pressure: A study in the history of Victorian reform agitations (Hassocks, Sussex, 1977), pp. 58–90Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ See Kemp, Betty, ‘Reflections on the repeal of the corn laws’ Victorian Studies, v, 3 (1961–1962), 201–4Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Gladstone's note of 20 Dec. 1843, in The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 11, 226.

¹¹⁶ peel to Sandon, 18 Mar. 1844, Peel papers, 40541, fo. 292; Peel to the Queen, 19 Mar. 1844, Peel papers, 40438, fo. 156, quoted in Parker, Sir Robert Peel, III, 147–8; Peel to Brougham, 21 Mar. 1844, Peel papers, 40482, fos. 29–30; Peel to Goulburn, 8 Apr. 1844, Peel papers, 40444, fos. 190–3. See also Gladstone's memorandum on the cabinet discussion of 16 March 1844 in The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 11, 250.

¹¹⁷ Stewart, R., ‘The ten hours and sugar crises of 1844: government and the House of Commons in the age of reform’, Historical Journal, xil, 3 (1969), 42Google Scholar.

¹¹⁸ Greville, , A journal of the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837–1852, 11, 236–7 [31 03 1844]Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Graham to Peel, 23 Feb. 1845, Peel papers, 40451, fo. 43. Peel to Graham, 23 Feb. 1845, Graham papers, General series, Bundle 86.

¹²⁰ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 552.

¹²¹ Graham to Hardinge, ?1846, Graham papers.

¹²² Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 553.

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¹²⁴ Graham to Earl Powis, 30 Aug. 1842, in Parker, C. S., Life and letters of Sir James Graham (London, 1907), 1, 328–9Google Scholar. Gladstone thought that ‘the relative increase of foreign trade and of manufacture has been and is likely to be as rapid as our social condition can bear’. Gladstone to Peel, 4 Nov. 1841, Peel papers, 40469, fos. 75–82.

¹²⁵ Graham to Peel, 17 Oct. 1841, Peel papers, 40446, fos. 60–1, in Parker, Life and letters of Graham, 1, 328.

¹²⁶ Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce, pp. 303–14.

¹²⁷ Beales, Derek, ‘Peel, Russell and reform’, Historical Journal, XVII, 4 (1974), 873–82, and especially 879–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹²⁹ Canning to his wife, 3 Apr. 1821, Canning papers, Leeds Public Library, Bundle 26, fos. 167–75.

¹³⁰ See Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. xviii: ‘By temperament bold and creative, by hard experience he was cautious and realistic.’

¹³¹ The phrase comes from Keble's anonymous review of Gladstone's, The state in its relations with the church (London, 1839)Google Scholar in The British Critic and Theological Quarterly Review, XXVI (1839), 396Google Scholar. Although Gladstone was to epitomize liberal tory ethics as defined here, he was in this book expressing his earlier managerial and Coleridgean High Toryism. Keble objected to such establishmentarianism because he thought that the church and a secular state must eventually come into manichaean conflict. See also Lindsay, Lord, Progression by antagonism: a theory involving considerations touching the present position, duties and destiny of Great Britain (London, 1846)Google Scholar.

¹³² Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce, pp. 227–31. Some liberal tories extended this argument to include paupers, who were likewise thought to have lived immorally, but Huskisson for one began to have doubts about this towards the end of the 1820s.

¹³³ Peel, to Littleton, E. J., 23 12 1825, in Parker, , Sir Robert Peel, 1, 383Google Scholar.

¹³⁴ Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce, pp. 223–6. ‘Banking school’ theorists like Tooke wished to smooth out fluctuations by monetary management, whereas ‘Currency schoolmen’ like Loyd insisted that periodic crashes beneficially blotted out the economically vicious and inefficient.

¹³⁵ Machin, G. I. T., Politics and the churches in Great Britain 1832 to 1868 (Oxford, 1977), p. 149Google Scholar.

¹³⁶ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. 185.

¹³⁷ Ibid. pp. 186–7.

¹³⁸ Gladstone's, note of 11 09 1897 in The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 1, 57–8Google Scholar.

¹³⁹ The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 1, 44 and 253.

¹⁴⁰ Sir Robert Peel's address on the establishment of a library at Tamworth (London, 1841).

¹⁴¹ Gladstone's, note of 3 08 1841 in The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, II, 218Google Scholar.

¹⁴² Sumner, J. B., A charge delivered to the clergy of the diocese of Chester (London, 1841), pp. 20–6Google Scholar.

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¹⁴⁴ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp. 155–6.

¹⁴⁵ Life, letters, and diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote, first earl of Iddlesleigh, ed. Lang, A. (Edinburgh and London, 1890), 1, 65Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁶ The phrase is Miss Ramsay's in Sir Robert Peel, p. 184.

¹⁴⁷ Southgate, D., The passing of the whigs 1832–1886 (London, 1962), pp. 203–10Google Scholar; for the conventional view see Briggs, A., The age of improvement, 1783–1867 (London, 1959), p. 331Google Scholar. Peel's reputation for efficiency was probably a rebound from whig inefficiency, especially in the sphere of financial policy; even so, it should be remembered that Peel's abhorrence of Spring Rice's ‘pool of bottomless deficiency’ (Hansard, 3rd ser., LVIII, 639) reflected an evangelical moral concern about ‘the shame of constant deficit’ or debt (Peel to Goulburn, 25 Nov. 1839. Parker, Sir Robert Peel, II, 411) as much as a governmental concern with efficiency.

¹⁴⁸ Gladstone's, note of 16 07 1892 in The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 1, 46Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ The Gladstone diaries, ed. Foot, M. R. D. and Matthew, H. C. G., IV (Oxford, 1974), 223 [2 July 1850]Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁰ Hobhouse, J. C., Broughton, Lord, Recollections of a long life, ed. Dorchester, Lady (London, 1909–1911), VI, 197Google Scholar.

¹⁵¹ Dalhousie to Cowper, 24 Aug. 1850, Private letters of the marquess of Dalhousie, ed. Baird, J. G. A. (Edinburgh, 1911), pp. 137–8Google Scholar.

¹⁵² Aberdeen to Lady Haddo, Aug. 1850, in The life of the earl of Aberdeen, by Balfour, Lady Frances (London, 1922), 11, 158Google Scholar. See Aberdeen to Princess Lieven, 5 July 1850, The correspondence of Lord Aberdeen and Princess Lieven 1832–1854, ed. Parry, E. Jones (London, 1938–1939), 11, 500Google Scholar. Gladstone felt that the moral scales between Peel and Aberdeen tipped slightly in the latter's favour because ‘now and then Sir Robert Peel would show some degree of conscious regard to the mere flesh and blood, if I may so speak, of Englishmen; Lord Aberdeen was invariably for putting the most liberal construction upon both the conduct and claims of the other negotiating state’ (Morley, J., The life of William Ewart Gladstone(London, 1903), 11, 641Google Scholar). Despite the caveat in favour of Aberdeen, Peel's foreign policy was a large part of his attraction for Gladstone. Gash chooses to regard foreign policy as the field ‘most remote from his main interests’ (Sir Robert Peel, p. 712), presumably because a liberal-pacific foreign policy hardly fits Gash's picture of a hard-headed patriotic statesman. Foreign policy was not in fact remote from Peel's interests, though he did not feel the need to supervise his experienced foreign secretary as closely as he did the more junior members of his cabinet.

¹⁵³ Matthew, H. C. G. in The Gladstone diaries, III (1974), xxix–xxxivGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵⁴ Gladstone first imbibed Butler at Oxford in 1831 but it was not until ‘several years later’ that his Butlerianism became ‘integrated, so to speak’, that he awakened to Butler's ‘teaching in the sermons on our moral nature’. The prime ministers' papers: Gladstone, 1, 38 and 152. Butler eventually became, quite literally, ‘a guide of life’ for Gladstone. Gladstone credited Butler with having, from the first, helped ‘to emancipate him from the narrow evangelicalism of his upbringing’. Letters on church and religion of William Ewart Gladstone, ed. Lathbury, D. C. (London, 1910), II, 164Google Scholar. In another sense, however, Butler enabled Gladstone to return, clandestinely, to his evangelical moral and theological roots, by stressing the importance of God's moral government or providential design.

¹⁵⁵ Gladstone, to Manning, , 9 03 1847, Letters on church and religion of Gladstone, 11, 274–6Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁶ Gladstone's, memorandum of 30 06 1849 in The Gladstone diaries, III, xxxviii–xxxixGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵⁷ Graham to Peel, Jan. 1839, copy in Graham papers, General ser., Bundle 37 A.

¹⁵⁸ Graham to Peel, 18 Oct. 1845, Peel papers, 40451, fos. 400–1. Only the first sentence of this quotation appears in the published version of Peel's Memoirs, 11, 125. After an anguished correspondence, Peel's editors decided that it would be imprudent to publish Graham's ‘reverent humbling…before Almighty God at the apprehension of so dreadful a calamity’. The decline of orthodox evangelical tenets in the mid-entury was so rapid that Peel's generation was one of the last to be able seriously to regard God as a righteous scourge of sinful men. Stanhope to Graham, 13 July and 17 Sept. 1856, Graham papers, General ser., Bundle 130.

¹⁵⁹ The Gladstone diaries, II, 557.

¹⁶⁰ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, p. xvii.

¹⁶¹ Gash, Sir Robert Peel, pp. 589–90, referring to Peel's speech of 15 May 1846.

¹⁶² Hansard, 3rd ser., LXXXIII, 1043 [16 Feb. 1846]. See Graham to Peel, 15 Aug. 1845, Peel papers, 40451, fos. 182–3: ‘What is the legislation which most aggravates or mitigates this dispensation of Providence?’

¹⁶³ The Gladstone diaries, II, 506–7 [22 Dec. 1846].

¹⁶⁴ Peel, to Hardinge, , 4 07 1846, in Peel's, Memoirs, 11, 309–10Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁵ Duke of Newcastle to Peel, Lady, 29 12 1851, in Parker, , Sir Robert Peel, III, 559Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁶ Hardinge, to Peel, Lady, 29 08 1850, quoted in Gash, , Sir Robert Peel, p. 708Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁷ A sketch of the life and character of Sir Robert Peel, by SirPeel, Lawrence (London, 1860), p. 50Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁸ I should like to thank Derek Beales, Colin Matthew, and Robert Robson for their very helpful comments on this paper.