supported the Whig Government of 1846, and within a
dozen years became finally absorbed into the Liberal
ranks. His whole political life is, to the superficial
observer and to the mere partisan politician, a succession
of paradoxes, inconsistencies, and contradictions. He
was himself the soul of honour, a very pattern of
political integrity, a patriot devoted before all public or
private aims to the peace, welfare, and good govern-
ment of his country. Yet by his contemporaries he
was perpetually assailed as a traitor to his party and
his principles, a slave to expediency and opportunism, a consummate but unscrupulous master of the less
reputable arts of parliamentary management. He sup-
ported the inept finance of Vansittart, and a few years
afterwards he recanted his errors and gave effect to
the sounder principles of Horner and the famous Bullion
Committee of 1810. The inconsistency of his conduct
in the matter of Catholic emancipation in 1829 and of
free trade in 1846 is one of the tritest commonplaces
of modern political history. Yet Peel is now adjudged
by all to have been the ablest statesman of his time,
the one statesman, perhaps, who by his ascendency over
the party of reaction and resistance could have piloted
the State without disaster through the tremendous
organic changes which were brought about by the
restoration of peace, the growth of the industrial spirit,
and the advance of democratic reform.

Sir Robert Peel was born on 5th July 1788, either
at Chamber Hall, near Bury, the residence of his father,
a wealthy manufacturer of the district, or at a small
cottage in the near neighbourhood, the family mansion
having been, according to the legend, under repair at

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