many important changes
in the administration of domestic affairs, and many legislative
improvements of a practical and comprehensive character. But his fame
as member of parliament was principally sustained at this period of
his life by the extensive and admirable alterations which he effected
in the criminal law. Romilly and Mackintosh had preceded him in the
great work of reforming and humanizing the code of England. For his
hand, however, was reserved the introduction of ameliorations which
they had long toiled and struggled for in vain. The ministry through
whose influence he was enabled to carry these reforms lost its chief
in Lord Liverpool during the early part of the year 1827. When Mr.
Canning undertook to form a government, Mr. Peel, the late Lord Eldon,
the Duke of Wellington, and other eminent tories of that day, threw up
office, and are said to have persecuted Mr. Canning with a degree of
rancor far outstripping the legitimate bounds of political hostility.
Lord George Bentinck said "they hounded to the death my illustrious
relative"; and the ardor of his subsequent opposition to Sir Robert
Peel evidently derived its intensity from a long cherished sense of
the injuries supposed to have been inflicted upon Mr. Canning. It
is the opinion of men not ill informed respecting the sentiments of
Canning, that he considered Peel as his true political successor--as a
statesman competent to the task of working out that large and liberal
policy which he fondly hoped the tories might, however tardily,
be induced to sanction. At all events, he is believed not to have
entertained toward Mr. Peel any personal hostility, and to have stated
during his short-lived tenure of office that that gentleman was the
only member of his party who had not treated him with ingratitude and
unkindness.

In January, 1828, the Wellington ministry took office and held it till
November, 1830. Mr. Peel's reputation suffered during this period
very rude shocks. He gave up, as already stated, his anti-Catholic
principles, lost the force of twenty years' consistency, and under
unheard-of disadvantages introduced the very measure he had spent so
many years in opposing. The debates on Catholic emancipation, which
preceded the great reform question, constitute a period in his life,
which, twenty years ago, every one would have considered its chief
and prominent feature. There can be no doubt that the course he then
adopted demanded greater moral c