While in office, Peel succeeded to the baronetcy, Drayton Manor and a great estate by the death of his father (May 3, 183o). The old man had lived to see his fondest hopes fulfilled in the greatness of his son ; but he had also lived to see that a father must not expect to fix his son's opinions.
Peel's resistance to the Reform Bill won back for him the allegiance of his party. His opposition was resolute but temperate, and once only he betrayed the suppressed fire of his temper, in the debate of April 22, 1831, when his speech was broken off by the arrival of the king to dissolve the parliament which had thrown out reform. He refused to join the duke of Wellington in the desperate enterprise of forming a Tory government at the height of the storm, when the Grey ministry had gone out on the refusal of the king to promise them an unlimited creation of peers. By this conduct he secured for his party the full benefit of the reaction which he no doubt knew was sure to ensue. The general election of 1832, after the passing of the Reform Bill, left him with barely 150 followers in the House of Commons; but this handful rapidly swelled under his management into the great Conservative party. He frankly accepted the Reform Act as irrevocable, taught his party to register instead of despairing, appealed to the intelligence of the middle classes, whose new-born power he appreciated, steadily supported the Whig ministers against the Radicals and O'Connell, and gained every advantage which parliamentary tactics could afford. To this policy, and to the great parliamentary powers of its author, it was mainly due that, in the course of a few years, the Conservatives were as strong in the reformed parlia ment as the Tories had been in the unreformed. It is vain to deny the praise of genius to such a leader, though the skill of a pilot who steered for many years over such waters may sometimes have resembled craft. But the duke of Wellington's emphatic eulogy on him was, "Of all the men I ever knew, he had the greatest regard for truth." The duke might have added that his own ques tion, "How is the king's government to be carried on in a reformed parliament?" was mainly solved by the temperate and constitu tional policy of Peel, and by his personal influence on the debates and proceedings of the House of Commons during the years which followed the Reform Act.
In 1834, on the dismissal of the Melbourne ministry, power came to Sir Robert Peel before he expected or desired it. He hurried from Rome at the call of the duke of Wellington, whose sagacious modesty yielded him the first place, and became prime minister, holding the two offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. He vainly sought to include in his cabinet two recent seceders from the Whigs, Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham. A dissolution gave him a great increase of strength in the house, but not enough. He was outvoted on the election of the speaker at the opening of the session of 1835, and, after strug gling on for six weeks longer, resigned on the question of appro priating part of the revenues of the Church in Ireland to national education. His time had not yet come; but the capacity, energy
and resource he displayed in this short tenure of office raised him immensely in the estimation of the house, his party and the country. Of the great budget of practical reforms which he brought forward, the plan for the commutation of tithes, the ecclesiastical commission, and the plan for settling the question of dissenters' marriages bore fruit.
From 1835 to 1840 he pursued the same course of patient and far-sighted opposition. In 1839, the Whigs having resigned on the Jamaica Bill, he was called on to form a government, and sub mitted names for a cabinet, but resigned the commission owing to the young queen's persistent refusal to part with any Whig ladies of her bedchamber. (See VICTORIA, QUEEN.) The elections of 1841 placed the Whigs in a minority of 91; they resigned, and Sir Robert Peel became first lord of the treasury, with a commanding majority in both Houses of Parliament.
The crisis called for a master-hand. The finances were in dis order. For some years there had been a growing deficit, estimated for 1842 at more than two millions, and attempts to supply this by additions to assessed taxes and customs duties had failed. The great financier took till the spring of 1842 to mature his plans. He then boldly supplied the deficit by imposing an income-tax on all incomes above Li so a year. He accompanied this tax with a reform of the tariff, by which prohibitory duties were removed and other duties abated on a vast number of articles of import, especially the raw materials of manufactures and prime articles of food. Increased consumption, as the reformer expected, counter vailed the reduction of duty. The income-tax was renewed and the reform of the tariff carried still farther on the same principle in 1845. The result was, in place of a deficit of upwards of two mil lions, a surplus of five millions in 1845, and the removal of seven millions and a half of taxes up to 1847, not only without loss, but with gain to the ordinary revenue of the country. The prosper ous state of the finances and of public affairs also permitted a reduction of the interest on a portion of the national debt, giving a yearly saving at once of £625,000, and ultimately of a million and a quarter to the public. In 1844 another great financial measure, the Bank Charter Act, was passed and, though severely controverted and thrice suspended at a desperate crisis, has ever since regulated the currency of the country. In Ireland O'Con nell's agitation for the repeal of the Union had now assumed threatening proportions, and verged upon rebellion. The great agitator was prosecuted, with his chief adherents, for conspiracy and sedition ; and, though the conviction was quashed for in formality, repeal was quelled in its chief. At the same time the Charitable Bequest Act, which gave Irish Catholics power to endow their own religion, an increased allowance to Maynooth, and three new "Queen's Colleges" open to Catholics and Protes tants alike, improved the Irish situation.