a position before
the country as to make it all but irresistible. Neither did he wish the
incoming Russell-Whig party to get credit for it; he therefore turned
aside, in a rather unusual manner, and gave the merit of it to Mr.
Cobden. "I said before, and I said truly," Sir Robert begins his eulogy
on that distinguished man, "that in proposing our measures of commercial
policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them. I
must say with reference to honorable gentlemen opposite, as I say with
reference to ourselves, that neither of us is the party which is justly
entitled to the credit of them. There has been a combination of parties
generally opposed to each other, and that combination and the influence
of Government, have led to their success. But the name which ought to be
associated with the success of those measures is not the name of the
noble lord, the organ of the party of which he is the leader, nor is it
mine. The name which ought to be, and will be associated with the
success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe,
from pure and disinterested motives, has with untiring energy, made
appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence
the more to be admired, because it was unaffected and unadorned: it is
the name of Richard Cobden." Sir Robert's peroration to this speech was
an elaborate one, and consisted in praises of himself. Here are his
closing words: "I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who
from less honorable motives clamours for protection, because it conduces
to his own individual benefit; but it may be, that I shall leave a name
sometimes remembered with expressions of good will, in the abodes of
those whose lot is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat
of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with
abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened
with a sense of injustice."[99]

Although Sir Robert Peel lived four years after this defeat, he never
returned to the treasury benches. In opposition, however, he was almost
as powerful as when minister; giving to Lord John Russell's Government
an independent and most valuable support, without which it could not
have continued to exist. On the 28th of June, 1850, he spoke in the
House on the celebrated Don Pacifico's claims against the Greek
Government, and refused his support to Mr. Roebuck's motion approving of
Lord Palme