een a principal and
deputies, still continued; but Peel did his utmost to eradicate them.
If it were permitted in one case, he said, 'every officer in every
department who purchased on corrupt terms and is now living may claim
a right to sell the office so purchased.'

'With respect to a payment out of the salary to R., I can have no
scruple in giving you my opinion that it would not be right. I have
never been, and cannot conscientiously be, a party to an arrangement
of that kind, because I think this is quite clear, that if the salary
of the office is disproportionate to the labour of it, and can bear to
be taxed to the amount of 200_l._, the public should benefit, and the
emoluments of the office be reduced.'[22]

One of Peel's first tasks was to conduct a general election, and he
had ample opportunities of judging how these things were managed in
Ireland. A law known as Curwen's Act had been recently passed,
condemning to a heavy fine in the event of failure, and to the loss of
his seat in the event of success, any person giving, or promising to
give, or consenting to give either money or office for a seat in
Parliament. The law was not a little embarrassing to Peel, as his own
seat of Cashel had been purchased, and he thought it safer to transfer
himself to the English seat of Chippenham, where his return was
managed by his father without any intervention on his own part. At the
same time, the elections in Ireland went on much as if Curwen's Act
had never passed.

'I am placed in a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his
friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible,
from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the
mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits
with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent
those strongholds, Cashel, Mallow, and Tralee, from surrendering to
the enemies who besiege them.'

Croker himself furnished an admirable illustration of the manner in
which these principles were carried out. 'I find the borough' [Down],
he writes, 'extremely well disposed to me. Of the respectable and
steady people I have a decided majority, not less than twenty; but
there are sixty-two persons who are extremely doubtful.... I have the
greatest repugnance to bribery, ... but my agent informs me that many
voters will require money.... The return absolutely depends upon
pounds sterling. The best computation which