In 1820 Peel married Julia, daughter of General Sir John Floyd, who bore him five sons and two daughters. His domestic life was singularly happy, and he had many fast friends among the ablest men of his time. Cold as he was in public, few men could be more genial in private than Peel.
In 1821 Peel rejoined Liverpool's ministry as home secretary; and in that capacity he had again to undertake the office of coerc ing the growing discontent in Ireland, of which he remained the real administrator, and had again to lead in the House of Corn mons the opposition to the rising cause of Roman Catholic emanci pation. In 1825, being defeated on the Roman Catholic question in the House of Commons, he wished to resign office, but Lord Liverpool pleaded that his resignation would break up the govern ment. He found a congenial task in reforming and humanizing the criminal law, especially those parts of it which related to offences against property and offences punishable by death. The five acts in which Peel accomplished this great work, as well as the great speech of March 9, 1826, in which he opened the subject to the house, form one of the most solid and enduring monuments of his fame. Criminal law reform was the reform of Romilly and Mac kintosh, from the hands of the latter of whom Peel received it. But the bills in which it was embodied were the bills of Peel.
In 1827 the Liverpool ministry was broken up by the fatal illness of its chief, and under the new premier, George Canning, Peel, like the duke of Wellington and other high Tory members of Lord Liverpool's cabinet, refused to serve. Canning and Peel were rivals; but we need not interpret as mere personal rivalry that which was certainly, in part at least, a real difference of con nection and opinion. Canning took a Liberal line, and was sup ported by many of the Whigs ; the seceders were Tories, and it is difficult to see how their position in Canning's cabinet could have been otherwise than a false one. Separation led to public coolness and occasional approaches to bitterness on both sides in debate. Their private intercourse remained uninterrupted to the end ; and Canning's son afterwards entered public life under the auspices of Peel. The charge of having urged Roman Catholic emancipation on Lord Liverpool in 1825, and opposed Canning for being a friend to it in 1827, made against Sir Robert Peel in the fierce Corn Law debates of 1846, was withdrawn by those who made it.
In January 1828, after Canning's death, the duke of Wellington formed a Tory government, in which Peel was home secretary and leader of the House of Commons. This cabinet, Tory as it was, did not include the impracticable Lord Eldon, and did include Huskisson and three more friends of Canning. Its policy was to
endeavour to stave off the growing demand for organic change by administrative reform, and by lightening the burdens of the people. The civil list was retrenched with an unsparing hand, the public expenditure was reduced lower than it had been since the Revolutionary war, and the import of corn was permitted under a sliding scale of duties. Peel also introduced into London the improved system of police which he had previously established with so much success in Ireland. But the tide ran too strong to be thus headed. First the government were compelled, after a defeat in the House of Commons, to acquiesce in the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Peel bringing over their High Church sup porters, as far as he could. Immediately afterwards the question of Roman Catholic emancipation was brought to a crisis by the election of O'Connell for the county of Clare. In August Peel expressed to the duke of Wellington his conviction that the ques tion must be settled. He wrote that out of office he would co-operate in the settlement but in his judgment it should be committed to other hands than his. To this the duke assented, but in January 1829, owing to the declared opinions of the king, of the House of Lords, and of the Church against a change of policy, Wellington came to the conclusion that without Peel's aid in office there was no prospect of success. Under that pressure Peel consented to remain, and all the cabinet approved. The consent of the king, which could scarcely have been obtained except by the duke and Peel, was extorted, withdrawn (the minis ters being out for a few hours), and again extorted; and on March 5, 1829, Peel proposed Roman Catholic emancipation in a speech of more than four hours. The apostate was overwhelmed with obloquy. Having been elected for the university of Oxford as a leading opponent of the Roman Catholics, he had thought it right to resign his seat on being converted to emancipation. His friends put him again in nomination, but he was defeated by Sir R. H. Inglis. He took refuge in the close borough of Westbury, whence he afterwards removed to Tamworth, for which he sat till his death. Catholic emancipation was forced on Peel by cir cumstances; but it was mainly owing to him that the measure was complete, and based upon equality of civil rights. This great con cession, however, did not save the Tory government. It fell on November 1830, but not before Peel had accomplished further important reforms in the administration of justice.