PEEL was placed in office in 1841 and entrusted with a
powerful and docile majority for the purpose of doing
two things. He was expected to repair the blunders of
the Whigs, especially in finance, and to maintain the
principle of protection as embodied in the tax upon
corn. The two things were really incompatible, and
the mandate issued from sources which had little or
nothing in common. It was the common-sense of the
country which called upon Peel, as the most capable
statesman of his time, to repair the blunders of the
Whigs; it was the mere interest of a class, sincere in
its convictions but blinded in its reasoning by the
passions of a threatened monopoly, which required him
to maintain the corn laws. No man who has ever
governed England was less likely than Peel to allow
the latter influence to get the better of the former; but
none was ever more certain to fight strenuously on the
wrong side until his reason had finally gone over to the
right. This antagonism, which constitutes at once the
secret tragedy of Peel's inner life and the shining moral

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