t universal disaffection of the lower
orders, fostered by a seditious press; of the growing spirit of
animosity in the north of Ireland between the lower orders of
Protestants and Catholics, which was breaking out in constant riots,
and had already cost many lives. This last evil, it might be truly
said, was very largely due to the policy of his own party, who had
protracted through so many years the Catholic question, which ought
to have been settled at the Union. There was extreme and chronic
ignorance, poverty, and anarchy; the payment of tithes was constantly
resisted; and a failure of the potato crop, and a sudden and terrible
fall in the price of agricultural products after the peace, added
enormously to the difficulties of the situation. It is remarkable,
indeed, that there appears to have been in 1816 and 1817 less
disturbance of the public peace in Ireland than in England; Peel found
it even possible to reduce the military establishments, and in Dublin
extreme distress was borne with remarkable patience; but in many parts
of the country crimes of combination were frequent, and almost
incredibly savage. Peel mentions one case of a family of eight persons
who were deliberately burnt in their house by a party of armed men,
because the owner of the house had prosecuted to conviction three men,
on a capital charge, at the Louth assizes. In another case a farmer,
who had shot two men who attacked his house, was himself shot dead on
a Sunday morning, after Mass, at the chapel door, in the presence of
hundreds of men, not one of whom attempted to arrest the culprit.

These things filled Peel with a not unnatural horror, and his letters
showed clearly his intense dislike both of the Irish character and of
the Irish religion.[30] By far the most valuable contribution he made
to the improvement of Ireland during his Chief Secretaryship was the
formation, in 1814, of an efficient police force, which has ever since
been popularly associated with his name, and which was the nucleus
from which the present admirable constabulary force was developed in
1822 and in 1835. 'We ought to be crucified,' he wrote, 'if we make
the measure a job, and select our constables from the servants of our
parliamentary friends.' He attempted also, though without much
success, to institute a system of popular education on a perfectly
unsectarian basis, and with Catholics among the commissioners.[31] He
appears to have met with little encouragemen