he time of discussing
the question. That is not the case.... There are certain anomalies in
the system which I would wish to remove, but the main principles of it
I would retain untouched.... At no time, and under no circumstances,
so long as the Catholic admits the supremacy in spirituals of a
foreign earthly potentate, and will not tell us what supremacy in
spirituals means--so long as he will not give us voluntarily the
security which every despotic Sovereign in Europe has by the
concession of the Pope himself--will I consent to admit them.'[18]

The letters before us show clearly that his political sympathy was
with Saurin, with Duigenan, with Lord Eldon, and even with Lord
Norbury. O'Connell early perceived in Peel his most dangerous
opponent, and a strong personal enmity, which was as much due to
profound differences of character as to differences of policy, grew up
between them. A scurrilous attack of O'Connell on Peel in 1815 was
followed by a challenge, and a duel was prevented only by the arrest
of O'Connell. The antipathy between the two men was never mitigated.
O'Connell said of Peel that 'his smile was like the silver plate on a
coffin.' Peel, in his confidential letters, expressed the utmost
dislike and contempt for the character of O'Connell, and when he was
at length compelled by the Clare election to concede Catholic
emancipation, his feeling towards him was significantly and
characteristically shown. He enumerated in a brilliant passage the men
to whom the triumph of Catholic emancipation was really due. He spoke
of Fox and Grattan, of Plunket and of Canning, but he made no mention
of O'Connell.

The administrative side of Peel's Chief Secretaryship is much more
creditable to him than the political side. The vivid picture which his
letters present of the manner in which Ireland was governed more than
fifteen years after the Union will probably strike the reader with
some surprise, when he remembers that the Union had extinguished about
seventy small boroughs, and had at the same time greatly diminished
the importance of the Irish representatives, and therefore the
necessities for corruption. Peel noticed that while 'the pension list
of Great Britain was limited to 90,000_l._ per annum, the pension list
of Ireland may amount to 80,000_l._ a year; and he found almost all
Irish patronage still employed for political purposes, and almost
every office honeycombed with abuses and peculations. A few extract