Mr. Disraeli, for all his eccentricities, accepted Peel's
leadership without question. Few could then foresee the very different
careers that lay before his two brilliant lieutenants.

By 1841 the power of the Whigs was spent. A vote of want of confidence
was carried by Peel, the King dissolved Parliament, and the Tories came
back with a majority of ninety in the new House of Commons. Now begins
the most famous part of Peel's career, that associated with the Repeal
of the Corn Laws, the third of his so-called 'betrayals' of his party.
No action of his has been so variously criticized, none caused such
bitterness in political circles. There is no space here to discuss the
value of Protection or the wisdom of the Anti-Corn-Law League, still
less the merits or demerits of a fixed duty as opposed to a
'sliding-scale'. We are concerned with Peel's conduct and must try to
answer the questions--What were Peel's earlier views on the subject?
What caused him to change these views? Was this change effected
honestly, or was he guilty of abandoning his party in order to retain
office himself?

The Corn Laws, introduced in 1670, re-enacted in 1815, forbade any one
to import corn into England till the price of home-grown corn had
reached eighty shillings a quarter. It is easy to attack a system based
on rigid figures applied to conditions varying widely in every century;
but the idea was that the English farmer should be given a decisive
advantage over his foreign rivals, and only when the price rose to a
prohibitive point might the interest of the consumer be allowed to
outweigh that of the producer. The revival of the old law in 1815 met
with strong opposition. England had greatly changed; the agricultural
area had not been widely increased, but there were many more millions of
mouths to feed, thanks to the growth of population in the industrial
districts. But while in 1815 the House of Commons represented almost
exclusively the land-owning and corn-growing classes, between 1815 and
1840 opposition to their policy had lately been growing and had been
organized, outside Parliament, by the famous league of which Richard
Cobden was the leading spirit. Peel, though he had been brought up by
his father a strong Protectionist and Tory, had been largely influenced
by Huskisson, the most remarkable President of the Board of Trade that
this country has ever seen, and had shown on many occasions that he
grasped the principle of Free Trade a