There is a legend, narrated both by Guizot and
Greville, to the effect that the elder Peel warned Lord
Liverpool that if his son were not speedily given office
in the Ministry, he would join the Whigs and be lost
for ever to the Tory party. Greville discredits the story,
which he says was told by Arbuthnot to the Duke of
Bedford, but Guizot evidently believed it. There is
some discrepancy between the two versions, but neither
seems consistent with facts and dates. If there is any
truth whatever in the story, it may be referred with
greater probability to the period between 1818 and
1822, when the elder Peel was still alive, when Arbuth-
not was still a member of the Government and a con-
fidential adviser of its chiefs, and when the younger
Peel had retired from office, was not altogether easy in
his political connections and prospects, and according to
Croker, was more than half inclined to withdraw from
public life altogether. It was during this period,
which will engage our attention in greater detail here-
after, that he wrote to Croker on 23d March 1820 as
follows: "Do you not think that the tone of England--
of that great compound of folly, weakness, prejudice,
wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper
paragraphs, which is called public opinion--is more
liberal, to use an odious but intelligible phrase, than
the policy of the Government? Do not you think that
there is a feeling, becoming daily more general and more
confirmed, that is, independent of the pressure of taxation
or any immediate cause, in favour of some undefined
change in the mode of governing the country? It seems
to me a curious crisis, when public opinion never had
such influence on public measures, and yet never was so

-19-