gn policy is due to the loyalty with which he
was supported by Peel in the Cabinet and at Court.

Space will not permit us to relate at length the history of Peel's
conduct as home Minister. The Catholic question was rapidly advancing
to a crisis, and the system of a divided Ministry in which it was an
open question, and in which the leading Ministers took opposite sides,
was becoming plainly impossible. Ireland was again in a state of
anarchy bordering on civil war, and the foundation, in 1823, of the
Catholic Association by O'Connell and Sheil gave a new impulse to the
agitation. The Duke of Wellington, who knew the country well and was
not liable to panic, predicted that the new association if it
continued would lead to civil war, and declared that the organisation
of the disaffected in Ireland was much more perfect than in 1798.[34]
At the same time the long-protracted and increasing violence of the
conflict had aroused fierce Orange passions both in the North and in
Dublin, while in England the King was embarrassing even his
'anti-Catholic' Ministers by the vehemence of his hostility to
concession. He described Peel as 'the King's Protestant Minister' and
Lord Wellesley as an 'enemy in the camp.' He assured Peel that,
whether the Cabinet wished it or not, he would never consent to give
letters of precedence to a Roman Catholic barrister, and he wrote Peel
a formal letter in which he said, 'the sentiments of the King upon
Catholic emancipation are those of his revered and excellent father;
from those sentiments the King never can and never will deviate.'[35]

Peel, while maintaining his unflinching hostility to important
concessions, tried to moderate all parties. He implored the King to
make no public declaration. He wrote to Ireland strongly discouraging
the violence of the Orangemen and urging that 'in this age of liberal
doctrine, when prescription is no longer even a presumption in favour
of what is established, it will be a work of desperate difficulty to
contend against "emancipation," as they call it, unless we can fight
with the advantage on our side of great discretion, forbearance, and
moderation on the part of the Irish Protestants.' He recurred to his
old idea of establishing a system of unsectarian national education,
and he readily abandoned the corrupt and proselytising charter
schools. He supported a measure of Lord Nugent, which Lord Eldon
succeeded in defeating in the Lords, for extending to the