rtainly laid himself open to the charge of
giving way before a breach of the law, and the charge was pressed by the
angry Tories. But his judgement was clearly based on a complete survey
of all the facts. A single event was the candle which lit up the scene,
but by the light of it he surveyed the whole room. He still held to his
view about the dangers of Disestablishment ahead, but he maintained that
a crisis had arisen involving graver dangers at the moment, and that the
statesman must choose the lesser of two evils. There is no doubt that
the situation was critical. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Anglesey (a
Waterloo veteran, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) both had fears of
mutiny in the army; and civil war was to be expected, if O'Connell was
not admitted to the House of Commons. Peel's personal consistency was
one matter; the public welfare was another and a weightier. His first
idea was to retire from office and to lend unofficial support to a
measure which he could not advocate in principle. But the only hope of
breaking down the old Tory opposition lay in the influence of the Tory
ministers; no Whig Government could prevail in the temper of that time;
and Wellington appealed in the strongest terms to Peel to remain in
office and to lead the House. Peel yielded from motives of public policy
and made himself responsible for a measure of Catholic Emancipation,
which he had been pledged to resist.

It was a surrender--an undisguised surrender--and Peel did not, as on
the Bullion Committee, profess to have changed his mind. But it was an
honest surrender carried out in the light of day; and, before Parliament
met, Peel announced his decision to resign his seat at Oxford and to
give his constituents the chance of expressing their opinion of his
conduct. The verdict was not long in doubt: the University, which in
1865 rejected another of its brilliant sons, gave a majority of one
hundred and forty-six against him, and his political connexion with
Oxford was severed. The verdict of posterity has been more liberal. The
chief fault laid to Peel's charge is that he should for so many years
have ignored all signs of the danger which was approaching, and not have
made up his mind in time. He could see the crisis clearly, when it came,
and could put the national interest above everything else: he could not
look far enough ahead.

It was a similar want of foresight that led to the fall of the Tory
Government in 1830. The