Robert Peel
historical figure · 1 work · 5 mentions · 11 anchored passages
Peel · Sir Robert Peel · Mr. Peel · this pitiful, shuffling fellow
in the texts
Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England
Statesman named as a defender of the unreformed system of representation.
As long as the power of the State was centred in the south and west of England, a system which denied representatives to Birmingham or Manchester or Sheffield, whilst it showered representatives on petty Cornish boroughs, might be defended on grounds of expediency by ingenious thinkers such as Paley, or by practical statesmen such as Lord Liverpool or Peel;
by the Act of 1825 sincere individualists, among whom Peel may assuredly be numbered, limited the right of trade combination in order to preserve the contractual freedom of workmen and of masters.
The efforts of obstructionists or reactionists come to nothing, the toryism of Eldon, the military rigidity of the Duke of Wellington, the intelligent conservatism of Peel, at a later period the far less intelligent conservatism of Lord Palmerston, all appear, though the appearance is in some respects delusive, not in reality to delay for more than periods which are mere moments in the life of nat …