IT was in Michaelmas term 1808, when he had just
passed his twentieth year, that Peel took his degree at
Oxford. In the following year a seat in Parliament
was procured for him in the Irish borough of Cashel,
and the young man took his seat, as a matter of
course, on the same side of the House as his father.
His whole training had fitted and destined him for
association with the Tory party. Peel could not have
been a Whig; he was not born in the conditions neces
sary for the growth of that peculiar and indigenous
product of English political life. To be a Liberal was
equally impossible for him. Liberalism, as an inde-
pendent factor in politics, was the creation of the
Reform Bill; before 1832 it was merely the left wing
of the Whig party, and those who represented it in-
dependently were the product of training and associa-
tions to which Peel was altogether a stranger. He
became a Tory because his father was a Tory before
him, and because neither his training nor his character
led him to consider independently the grounds on which
his political connection was based.

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