ho held the position of first
minister of the Crown. Disraeli and Palmerston by shrewdness and force
of character, Canning and Derby by brilliant oratorical gifts, Russell
and Aberdeen by earnest devotion to public service, were all commanding
figures in their day, whose claims to the chieftainship of a party and
of a government were generally admitted. Gladstone, the most versatile
genius of them all, had abilities second to none; but his place in
history will for long be a subject of acute controversy. He stands too
close to our own time to be fairly judged. Of the others no one had the
same combination of gifts as Sir Robert Peel, no one had in the same
measure that particular knowledge, judgement, and ability which
characterize the _statesman_. His career was the most fruitful, his work
the most enduring: he has left his mark in English history to a degree
which no one of his rivals can equal.

The Peel family can be traced back to the misty days of Danish inroads.
Its original home in England is disputed between Yorkshire and
Lancashire; but as early as the days of Elizabeth the branch from which
our statesman was descended is certainly to be found at Blackburn, and
its members lived for generations as sturdy yeomen of that district. The
first of them known to strike out an independent line was his
grandfather, Robert Peel, who with his brother-in-law, Mr. Haworth,
started the first firm for calico-printing in Lancashire about the year
1760, ceasing the practice of sending the material to be printed in
France. This grandfather was a type of the men who were making the new
England, leading the way in the creation of industries that were to
transform the North and Midlands. The business prospered and he moved
from Blackburn to Burton-on-Trent, where he built three new mills. His
third son, named Robert, was also gifted with resource. Beginning as a
member of the family firm, he soon came to be its chief director, and
added another branch at Tamworth, where later he built the house of
Drayton Manor, the family seat in the nineteenth century. He was a Tory
and a staunch follower of the younger Pitt, who rewarded his services
with a baronetcy in 1800. He too was a typical man of his age and class,
an age of material progress and expansion, a class full of
self-confidence and animated by a spirit of stubborn resistance to
so-called un-English ideas. His eldest son, the third Robert and the
second baronet, is our subject.