in which he did not show the strongest attachment to
truth; and I never saw in the whole course of my life
the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated any-
thing which he did not firmly believe to be the fact.
I could not, my Lords, let this conversation come
to a close, without stating that which I believe to
have been the strongest characteristic feature of his
character.'

There is another testimony which, I think, fully
confirms the Duke of Wellington's opinion: it is the
testimony of Sir Robert Peel himself. At the end of
the Memoir which he wrote to explain and justify his
concurrence in Catholic emancipation in 1829, he says:
'If it had been alleged against me, that the sudden
adoption of a different policy had proved the want of
early sagacity and foresight on my part -- if the charge
had been that I had adhered with too much pertinacity
to a hopeless cause -- that I had permitted for too long
a period the engagements of party, or undue deference
to the wishes of constituents, to outweigh the accu-
mulating evidence of an approaching necessity -- if this
had been the accusation against me, I might find it
more difficult to give it a complete and decisive refuta-
tion. But the charge preferred by those whose favour
and good-will I had forfeited was the opposite of this;
it was that I had without any sufficient reason, nay
that I had from pusillanimous and unworthy motives,
counselled the abandonment of resistance which it
would have been easy as Well as wise to continue
unabated. . . . . . I can with truth affirm, as I do
solemnly affirm in the presence of Almighty God, "to

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