class above his own. His sons resembled him, and a strong likeness pervaded the whole family. They were, without one exception, hard-working, industrious, plain, frugal, unostentatious men of business; reserved and shy; nourishing a sort of defensive pride, and hating all parade; shrinking perhaps too much from public service and public notice, and, it may be, too much devoted to the calm joy of a private station. They were loyal men, Tories in politics-a party on which their opponents have since dexterously affixed the un-English name of aristocracy; a kind of moral retribution certainly, since it was first applied by the Tories to the heads of the Whig party-a party whose strength nevertheless has commonly been derived from the best supports of a party, the middle ranks of the people. Tories, however, as the Peels generally were, they were at all times rare samples of the English national spirit of self-reliance and sturdy independence."

The third son of this Robert Peel, who afterwards became the first baronet in the family, was the father of the subject of our present sketch. He gave early indication of that strength of character which rarely fails of raising such as possess it to eminence. Impressed with the conviction that he was destined to acquire vast wealth, and to found a family, he seems never to have lost sight of the object for which he believed that he had been called into existence. When yet only eighteen years of age, he proposed, if his father would give him £500, to go out into the world, and work his own way through it single-handed. The proposal was not then acceded to; but no great while elapsed ere his uncle, Mr Hayworth, struck with his steady business habits, selected him from among all the sons of his brother-in-law to be a junior partner in the house. From that hour, the ball was at the young man's foot, and he never permitted it to lie still. He gave his whole soul to the management of the concern. His life became one continued strain of hard labour. He would get out of bed, if the weather seemed to threaten, and visit the bleaching- grounds at all hours; and one whole night in every week he devoted to the study of such patterns as were brought down to

him from London by the coach. Nor was he content to imitate. He became an inventor as well as a copyist, and was ever on the alert to observe and to apply the inventions of others to the machinery which drove his mills. A mind so vigorous, and at the same time so fertile in resources, soon caused its influence to be acknowledged by all who came in contact with it. The junior partner in the house of Hayworth, Yates, and Peel, became almost from the first the pole-star of the firm; and when Mr Hayworth retired, its authority was frankly acknowledged. To every remonstrance which the innovations of young Robert Peel excited amongst the older hands, Mr Yates-now the senior partner-used to give invariably this answer, "The will of our Robert is law here."

Miss

That Mr Peel should marry the daughter of the head of the house, seems to have been a sort of conventional arrangement. The marriage did not take place, however, till the bridegroom had reached the mature age of thirty-six; the bride was only eighteen. Yet, notwithstanding this disparity in their years, and the still more striking lack of similarity in their tastes, the marriage proved to be an extremely happy one. Yates no sooner became Mrs Peel than she abandoned all her devotion to society, and, obeying the impulses of great good sense and of a most affectionate temper, she became to her husband exactly the sort of wife of which such a man had need. For Mr Peel was ambitious in no common degree. Sober, grave, and averse to gaiety, he loved money not so much for its own sake, as because it was an instrument for attaining to power; and money seemed to accumulate in his hands as if by magic. Whatever he undertook to do, he did successfully; and it is but fair to add that, in following up his purposes, he seems never to have deviated from the strictest line of integrity. Poor Compton, the wayward but not wellused inventor of the mule, charged him indeed with pirating his invention; and, as men of Compton's temperament are apt to do, attributed Peel's success to that act of plagiarism. But Compton's statement is

little to be trusted. The fact we believe to be, that Peel, having heard of the invention, made Compton two proposals, both of which were rejected-first, that he should become the superintendent of the works at Oldham, with a large salary; next, that he should join the firm as a partner. And by-and-by, when Compton's secret ceased to be a secret, he availed himself of improvements, of which the monopoly was not secured by patent. The consequence was that he grew rich, while the improver ended his days a pensioner on the bounty of strangers.

Mr Peel had become a millionaire, and was the father of two daughters, when his eldest son was born. The event occurred on the 5th February 1788, in Chamber Hall, a house near Bury, which he had purchased and fitted up for himself. He happened to be in his little business-room when the consummation of a long-cherished desire was announced to him. He fell at once upon his knees, and, returning thanks to Almighty God, made a vow that he would give his son to the country. Never, under the old Law, was child more solemnly dedicated to the service of the Temple; and never was the act of dedication more rigidly carried into effect. From his infancy the late Sir Robert Peel was trained to become a statesman, the fact being constantly dinned into his ears that great things were expected of him, and that failure would be attended by indelible disgrace.

It is hard to judge of men's motives. Sir Lawrence Peel, with excusable partiality, attributes this proceeding on his uncle's part to pure love of country. 66 He knew," it is observed, "to how hard a life he was destining his son. Labour, perhaps, he accounted, and wisely accounted, a gain; but he knew the trials, the sufferings, the anguish which such a life involves, the thorns which are planted with the laurel leaf." With every respect for the recorder of these opinions, we must crave permission to dissent from the opinions themselves. It appears to us that Mr Peel was scarcely in a position to judge in any degree of the harassments which wait upon a political career;

we do not believe that, in making up his mind to throw his eldest son into the arena of politics, he thought about them at all. It is much more probable, as it seems to us, that, seeing farther into a millstone than most men, he determined to attempt directly what other novi homines endeavour to accomplish indirectly. Instead of purchasing a cornetcy in a heavy-dragoon regiment, and trusting to the accidents of military service for gaining admission within the aristocratic circle to his descendants of the second or third generation, he adopted the wiser and readier course of making his son a politician. For it was as well known to Robert Peel the elder as to Lord Byron, that politics, and politics only, level the distinctions of social life in this country. Do we blame him for this? By no means. He was working out in the most legitimate manner the problem of his own existence. He had set a purpose before him when life began, and now he made his grand move towards achieving it. The wealth which was necessary to build up the house of Peel he had acquired; there remained only the task of securing for the holders of it a place of eminence in the body politic. He was fortunate in the selection which he made of the instrument wherewith this great object was to be attained, and the results have more than realised his most sanguine anticipations.

Mr Peel, the cotton-spinner, appears to have been one of those men who never do things by halves. Having made up his mind to educate his eldest son for the senate, he believed that he could not too soon begin the course of training which embryo senators require. Young Robert can scarcely be said ever to have been treated as a child. Before he was breeched, he had heard more of the sources of his country's greatness than most persons hear in the course of a long life; and as years increased upon him, he learned to accept no statement as true, even from his father, without first considering it in all its bearings. We have spoken of the elder Peel as a Tory. He was a Tory of the school of Pitt, and Pitt he held up continually to his son as the

true model of an English statesman. In particular, he used often to interest the boy with accounts of the manner in which that great man was in the habit of receiving such deputations as waited upon him. Pitt, he observed, seemed always to know better than they what such persons wanted. Whether prepared to accede to their requests or to refuse them, he never failed to do them justice. "He would state over our case for us better than we could have stated it for ourselves, and then he would give his answer." But it was the spirit of Pitt's commercial policy which mainly chimed in with the opinions of the successful manufacturer; and this he did his best to implant deeply in the mind of his son. Without all doubt, the seed thus early sown never lost its vitality. For many years after his entrance into public life, Peel seemed to be carried away by the tide, which had set in strong in favour of a protective system. But if ever the real history of the man comes to be written, it will doubtless appear that even then he distrusted the wisdom of the course which he was pursuing.

It will not do to institute a comparison between William Pitt and Robert Peel. Their abstract principles might accord, but the two men were as unlike, in all the circumstances both of public and private life, as any two men could well be. Pitt, born into the governing class, and breathing from the outset an atmosphere of politics, became of his own accord a politician; there was no forcing in his case. The genius with which nature had gifted him, took the direction into which all the associations by which he was surrounded turned it. The questions daily and hourly discussed before him, were economical questions. He would lay down his Herodotus to talk of the rights of nations; and while reading one of Cicero's Philippics, would imagine that he listened to his father declaiming in the senate. Peel's situation was very different. The objects presented to his observation out of the schoolroom were important doubtless, but they were mean. The mill, the bleachingground, the ledger, the prices in

home and foreign markets, were calculated rather to dwarf than to enlarge his views of things; and in order to counteract their influence, he was kept as much as possible in a state of severe pupilage. Had he been naturally more gifted than he was, such a discipline could have hardly failed to affect him almost as much for evil as for good. He had not a spark of genius about him, but he possessed excellent abilities ; and his memory, perhaps because it was constantly exercised, became extremely tenacious. On the other hand, the constant self-restraint to which he was subjected, rendered him reserved, shy, and sensitive. He became so much of a casuist also, that even as a boy he could never arrive at a conclusion till he had passed in array before his mind's eye all the reasons against as well as for the object proposed to him. Lord Byron's description of his former schoolfellow cannot but be familiar to all our readers. "Peel, the orator and statesman," says he, was my form-fellow; we were on good terms; but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel among us, masters and scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor I was reckoned at least his equal. As a schoolboy out of school I was always in scrapes, and he never. In school he always knew his lesson, and I rarely; but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c., I think I was his superior."

We accept this account of young Peel at Harrow as substantially correct. It is in perfect accord with what he afterwards became, and is precisely such a result as his university training might be expected to produce. Nor does he appear to have varied much after he entered the university. At Oxford, as at Harrow, he was still the steady industrious student; and he was more. He took to boating and to cricket, in both of which he held his own, and his dress was in the mode. But at Oxford, as everywhere else, Peel was methodical as clock-work. There were no fits of hard reading and hard

idleness with him. One day exactly resembled another; so many hours devoted to classics, so many to mathematics, so many to exercise. And method and diligence reaped their reward. In a remarkably good year, in which the names of Gilbert, Hampden, and Whateley are registered, he took a double first-class degree. He was the first Oxford man so distinguished. At the preceding examinations, under the system then new, no such honours in mathematics had been earned.

Mr Peel is described, by those who knew him best, to have entered life with all the advantages on his side of a handsome person and an expressive countenance. His father's name also did much for him with the Tory party, which at once took him up; for his father had won his own way into the House of Commons, and was in due time created a baronet. Yet even those who most shut their eyes to Peel's shortcomings, acknowledge that his manners were never generally engaging. In a circle of intimate friends he would sometimes unbend, though even among these his ordinary deportment was cold, perhaps forbidding. As not unfrequently happens with men of his temperament, he was far more agreeable during a brief than a lengthened interview; and he never failed to receive such persons as waited upon him on matters of business with great courtesy. But the shyness which, besides being natural to him, had been confirmed and rendered inveterate by his early training, he never succeeded in conquering. Sir Lawrence Peel, scarcely admitting this to be a fact, nevertheless says: "The late Lord Hardinge, who knew Peel intimately, and loved him with a warm and lasting affection, once lamented to me, in India, Peel's unexpansiveness (for those were his words) as the head of the Conservative party. He said that Croker had complained il ne se déboutonne pas, adding to it the remark, that his reserve impaired his usefulness, and was injurious to the interests of his party. "We trust that Sir Lawrence will not consider that we are dealing lightly with so grave a matter, if we subjoin the following

6

anecdote as an illustration of Croker's words on this subject :

It chanced on a certain occasion that a party of Sir Robert Peel's friends met at Drayton, among whom were Lord Hardinge and Mr Croker. After shooting in the morning, the guests assembled at dinner, when Sir Robert entertained them with an account of an accident which had happened, while they were out, to a young son of his brother William. The child, it appeared, had swallowed a button, and the doctor being called in, there was a desperate attempt to eject the noxious matter, Warming with his story, the Prime Minister, arrived at this climax. "You never saw a child so treated; in fact, we got everything out of him." "William," exclaimed Croker across the the table, to the father of the sufferer, "I wish that somebody would give Sir Robert a button."

Resolute to work out the fulfilment of his own views, Peel, the elder, no sooner received his son home, with all his university honours fresh about him, than he proposed to the Minister of the daythe Duke of Portland-to bring the young man into Parliament as a supporter of the Government. It was to Ireland, in those days, that all Prime Ministers, whether Whig or Tory, looked for the great body of their adherents. The Irish Secretary, Sir Arthur Wellesley, was accordingly written to, to provide a seat; and we find, in the volume of his correspondence lately published by his son, a curious letter referring to this circumstance. How little could either of these great men anticipate what was in store for both of them, when the one sought only to purchase his way into the House of Commons; and the other directed his agent at Castlebar to secure the election of "a Mr Peel."

It may be doubted whether a statesman gains or loses by becoming, at the commencement of his career, connected with the executive Government. The disadvantage is, that nine times out of ten his mind contracts to the measure of those with whom he is associated; and that in learning as a duty to support their measures, he learns also to adopt