Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel (February 5, 1788)-(July 2, 1850) was British Prime Minister from December 1834 to April 1835, and again from June 1841 to June 29, 1846.

Born in Bury, England to an industrialist and British MP also named Robert Peel, the younger Peel entered politics at the young age of 21 as MP for the Irish rotten borough of Cashel City, Tipperary. With a scant twenty-four voters on the rolls, he was elected unopposed. More importantly, his sponsor for the election -- as well as his father -- was Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, with whom Peel's political career would be entwined for the next twenty-five years. His maiden speech in the Commons was a sensation, and famously described by the Speaker of the House of Commons as "the best first speech since that of William Pitt."

For the next decade he occupied a series of relatively minor positions in the Tory governments of the time (Undersecretary for War, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and chairman of the Bullion Committee charged with stabilizing British finances after the end of the Napoleonic Wars). He also changed seats twice, first picking up another rotten borough, Chippenham, then becoming MP for Oxford University in 1817.

He was considered one of the rising lights of the Tory party, and was first made a cabinet minister in 1822. His position was that of Home Secretary, and from there he made a number of important reforms of criminal law in Britain.

He resigned from this position after the prime minister Lord Liverpool was incapacitated, leading to his replacement with George Canning; Canning favoured Catholic Emancipation, and Peel had been one of its most outspoken opponents. However, when Canning himself died less than four months later (and was briefly followed by the non-entity Viscount Goderich) he was replaced by the Duke of Wellington. Peel returned to the post of Home Secretary in support of his long-time ally. During this time he was widely perceived as the number two man in the Tory Party after Wellington himself.

However, the forces being exerted on the new ministry by those in favour of Catholic Emancipation were too great, and a bill to that effect was passed the next year. Peel felt compelled to resign his seat at Oxford, as what had made him attractive to that constituency in the first place was his opposition to it (in 1815 he had, in fact, challenged to a duel the man most associated with emancipation, Daniel O'Connell). He instead moved to another rotten borough, Westbury, and retained his cabinet position.

It was at this point that he arranged for his most-remembered act: the organization of a metropolitan police force for London based out of Scotland Yard. As a result the colloquial term for police in Britain, "bobbies", is taken from Peel's name, as is the older slang term "peelers". Though at first unpopular they proved very successful in cutting crime in London, and by 1835 all cities in the UK were being directed to form their own police forces.

The lower classes in England at that time, however, were in a passion for reform, and Catholic Emancipation was only one of the ideas in the air. As the conservative Tory ministry refused to bend on other issues, they were swept out of office in 1830 in favour of the Whigs. The following few years were extremely turbulent, but eventually enough reforms were passed that George IV felt confident enough to try and select the Tories again to form a ministry at the end of Earl Grey's and Viscount Melbourne's terms in 1834. Peel was selected as Prime Minister.

This new Tory ministry was a minority government, however, and depended on Whig goodwill for its continued existence. After winning his seat at Tamworth, Peel issued the Tamworth Manifesto, the document which is considered the point at which the Tories became the Conservative Party. In it, he pledged that the Conservatives would endorse modest reform, but the Whigs instead formed a compact with Daniel O'Connell's Irish Radical members to repeatedly defeat the government on various bills. Eventually Peel's ministry resigned out of frustration, and the Whigs under Lord Melbourne returned to power.

In 1839, he was offered another chance to form a government, this time by the new monarch, Queen Victoria. However, this too would have been a minority government and Peel felt he needed a further sign of confidence from his queen. Lord Melbourne had been Victoria's confidant for several years, and many of the higher posts in Victoria's household were held by the female relatives of Whigs; there was some feeling that Victoria had stepped over the line and actively supported the Whig Party. Peel therefore asked that some of this coterie be dismissed and replaced with their Conservative counterparts. The so-called Bedchamber Crisis then ensued. Victoria refused to change her household, and despite pleadings from the Duke of Wellington, relied on assurances from her Whig government to continue to do so. Peel then refused to form a government, and the Whigs returned to power.

However, he finally had a chance to head a majority government following the election of 1841. His promise of modest reform was held, and in fact his second most famous bill of this ministry, while "reforming" in 21st century eyes, was in fact aimed at the reformers themselves. "New England", as it was called, was based on the new industrial rich, the factory owners and so on. The 1844 Factory Act acted more against them than the traditional stronghold of the Conservatives, the landed gentry, in that it restricted the number of hours that children and women could work in a factory, and rudimentary safety standards were set for machinery. Interestingly, this was a continuation of his own father's work as an MP, as the elder Robert Peel was most noted for reform of working conditions during the first past of the 19th century.

The most notable act of Peel's ministry, however, was the one that brought it down. This time Peel moved against the landholders in repealing the Corn Laws, which threatened the financial strength of that class. The provocation, however, was the appalling Irish Potato Famine.

At first skeptical of the extent of the problem, Peel reacted shamefully slowly. As realization dawned however, he hoped that ending the Corn Laws would free up more food for the Irish. Though he knew repealing the laws would mean the end of his ministry, Peel decided to do so out of humanity. His own party failed to support the bill, but it passed with Whig and Radical support on June 29, 1846. A following bill was defeated as a direct consequence, however, and Peel resigned. Unfortunately, repeal did little to alleviate the suffering, but in the end Peel was willing to sacrifice himself in an attempt to help.

He did retain a hard core of supporters however, and at one point in 1849 was actively courted by the Whig/Radical coalition. He continued to stand on his conservative principles, however, and refused. Nevertheless, he was influential in several important issues, including the beginning of British free trade with the repeal of the Navigation Acts.

On June 29, 1850 he was thrown from his horse while riding up Constitution Hill, and passed away three days later at the age of 62.