The last remnants of the penal laws against Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland were swept from the statute-book, and justice was extended to the Roman Catholic Church in Canada and Malta. In the same spirit acts were passed for clearing from doubt Irish Presbyterian marriages, for settling the titles of a large number of dissenters' chapels in England, and removing the municipal disabilities of the Jews. The grant for national educa tion was trebled, and an attempt was made, though in vain, to introduce effective education clauses into the factory bills. To the alienation of any part of the revenues of the Church of England, Peel never would consent ; but he had issued the ecclesiastical commission, and he now made better provision for a number of populous parishes by a redistribution of part of the revenues of the Church. The weakest part of the conduct of Peel's govern ment, perhaps, was its failure to control the railway mania by promptly laying down the lines on a government plan. It passed an act in 1844 which gave the government a right of purchase, and it had prepared a palliative measure in 1846, but was com pelled to sacrifice this, like all other secondary measures, to the repeal of the Corn Laws. It failed also to avert the great schism in the Church of Scotland. Abroad it was as prosperous as at home. It had found disaster and disgrace in Afghanistan. It speedily ended the war there, and in India the invading Sikhs were destroyed upon the Sutlej. The sore and dangerous questions with France, touching the right of search, the war in Morocco, and the Tahiti affair, and with the United States touching the Maine boundary and the Oregon territory, were settled by negotia tion.
Yet there were malcontents in Peel's party. The Young Eng landers disliked him because he had hoisted the flag of Conser vatism instead of Toryism on the morrow of the Reform Bill. The strong philanthropists and Tory Chartists disliked him be cause he was a strict economist and an upholder of the new poor law. But the fatal question was protection. That question was being fast brought to a crisis by public opinion and the Anti Corn-Law League. Peel had been recognized in 1841 by Cobden as a Free Trader, and after experience in office he had become in principle more and more so. Since his accession to power he had lowered the duties of the sliding scale. He had alarmed the farmers by admitting foreign cattle and meat under his new tariff, and by admitting Canadian corn. He had done his best in his speeches to put the maintenance of the Corn Laws on low ground, and to wean the landed interest from their reliance on protection. The approach of the Irish famine in 1845 turned decisively the wavering balance. When at first Peel proposed to his cabinet the revision of the Corn Laws, Lord Stanley and the duke of Buccleuch dissented, and Peel resigned. But Lord John Russell failed to form a new government. Peel returned to office; and now, with the consent of all the cabinet but Lord Stanley, who retired, he, in a great speech on Jan. 27, 1846, brought the repeal of the Corn Laws before the House of Corn mons. In the long and fierce debate that ensued he was assailed, both by political and personal enemies, with the most virulent invective, which he ignored. His measure was carried; but im mediately afterwards the protectionists, led by Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, coalesced with the Whigs, and threw him out on the Irish Coercion Bill. He immediately resigned.
Though out of office he was not out of power. He had "lost a party, but won a nation." The Whig ministry which succeeded him leant much on his support. He joined them in carrying forward free-trade principles by the repeal of the navigation laws. He supported their bill for the emancipation of the Jews. One
important measure was his own. While in office he had probed, by the Devon commission of inquiry, the sores of Ireland con nected with the ownership and occupation of land. In 1849, in a speech on the Irish Poor Laws, he first suggested, and in the next year he aided in establishing, a commission to facilitate the sale of estates in a hopeless state of encumbrance. The En cumbered Estates Act transferred the land from ruined landlords to solvent owners capable of performing the duties of property towards the people. On June 28, 185o, Peel made a great speech on the Greek question against Palmerston's foreign policy of interference. This speech was thought to show that if necessary he would return to office. It was his last. On the following day he was thrown from his horse on Constitution Hill, and mortally injured by the fall. On July 2, 185o, he died. All the tributes which respect and gratitude could pay were paid to him by the sovereign, by parliament, by public men of all parties, by the country, by the press, and, above all, by the great towns and the masses of the people to whom he had given "bread un leavened with injustice." Peel was bred a Tory in days when party was a religion ; he entered parliament a youth, was in office at twenty-four and secretary for Ireland at twenty-five; his public life extended over a long period rife with change ; and his own changes were all forward and with the advancing intellect of the time. He was undoubtedly one of the hardest workers and greatest ad ministrators England has ever had, and the young men trained in his school, Gladstone, Graham, Sidney Herbert, Cardwell, with others who bore the name of Peelites, inherited a great tradition of hard work and disinterestedness in the public service. Peel had a great share in giving practical effect to the great legal and administrative reforms of his day. Of the three great issues with which Peel was confronted, parliamentary reform, Catholic emancipation, and protection, the controversies on the first two are dead ; the third is still a matter on which there is a violent conflict of opinon. Nevertheless it was by the repeal of the Corn Laws that he won the masses of the people. If the question is, not whether he was a far-sighted statesman but whether he was a ruler loved and trusted by the English people, there is no arguing against the tears of a nation.