ourage than at any previous period
of his life he had been called upon to exercise. He believed himself
incontestibly in the right; he believed, with the Duke of Wellington,
that the danger of civil war was imminent, and that such an event
was immeasurably a greater evil than surrendering the constitution
of 1688. But he was called upon to snap asunder a parliamentary
connection of twelve years with a great university, in which the most
interesting period of his youth had been passed; to encounter the
reproaches of adherents whom he had often led in well-fought contests
against the advocates of what was termed "civil and religious
liberty;" to tell the world that the character of public men for
consistency, however precious, is not to be directly opposed to
the common weal; and to communicate to many the novel as well as
unpalatable truth that what they deemed "principle" must give way to
what he called "expediency."

When he ceased to be a minister of the crown, that general movement
throughout Europe which succeeded the deposition of the elder branch
of the Bourbons rendered parliamentary reform as unavoidable as two
years previously Catholic emancipation had been. He opposed this
change, no doubt with increased knowledge and matured talents, but
with impaired influence and few parliamentary followers. The history
of the reform debates will show that Sir Robert Peel made many
admirable speeches, which served to raise his reputation, but never
for a moment turned the tide of fortune against his adversaries, and
in the first session of the first reformed parliament he found himself
at the head of a party that in numbers little exceeded one hundred. As
soon as it was practicable he rallied his broken forces; either he or
some of his political friends gave them the name of "Conservatives,"
and it required but a short interval of reflection and observation
to prove to his sagacious intellect that the period of reaction was
at hand. Every engine of party organization was put into vigorous
activity, and before the summer of 1834 reached its close he was at
the head of a compact, powerful, and well-disciplined opposition. Such
a high impression of their vigor and efficiency had King William IV
received, that when, in November, Lord Althorp became a peer, and the
whigs therefore lost their leader to the House of Commons, his Majesty
sent in Italy to summon Sir Robert Peel to his councils, with a view
to the immediate formatio