dissatisfied with the share which it possessed. It is
growing too large for the channels that it has been
accustomed to run through. God knows it is very
difficult to widen them exactly in proportion to the size
and force of the current which they have to convey, but
the engineers that made them never dreamt of various
streams that are now struggling for a vent. Will the
Government act on the principles on which, without
being very certain, I suppose they have hitherto professed
to act? Or will they carry into action moderate Whig
measures of reform? Or will they give up the Govern-
ment to the Whigs, and let them carry those measures
into effect? Or will they coalesce with the Whigs, and
oppose the united phalanx to the Hobhouses and
Burdetts of radicalism? I should not be surprised to
see such an union." A man who wrote thus in 1820,
after ten years of parliamentary experience, might well
be supposed by his father, a Tory trained in the later
school of Pitt, to be harbouring Whig proclivities; and
this impression would be strengthened by the fact that
only a year previously Peel had given a great shock to
his father by openly adopting and successfully recom-
mending to Parliament the financial heresies, as the
elder Sir Robert always regarded them, of Horner and
the Bullion Committee of 1810. But that the young
Peel, on entering public life in 1809, should have caused
his father misgiving as to the orthodoxy of his political
opinions and the fidelity of his political connections is a
legend repugnant to all probability.

In point of fact few young men, however promising
in talents and character, and however carefully trained
for a public career, have donned the official harness and

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