Robert Peel Research Articles

T. A. Jenkins. Sir Robert Peel. (British History in Perspective.) New York: Longman. 1999. Pp. vi, 179. $49.95. ISBN 0-312-21639-4.

T. A. Jenkins. Sir Robert Peel. (British History in Perspective.) New York: Longman. 1999. Pp. vi, 179. $49.95. ISBN 0-312-21639-4.

Novel Possibilities: Fiction and the Formation of Early Victorian Culture

Joseph Childers contends that novels such as Benjamin Disraeli's Coningsby, Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke were in direct competition with other forms of public discourse for interpretive dominance of their age. Childers examines the interactions between the novel and a set of texts generated by parliamentary and radical politics, the sanitation reform movement, and religion. Reversing the position of earlier studies of this period, he argues that the novel was in fact constitutive of-and often provided the model for-texts as diverse as the political agendas of Robert Peel and T. B. Macaulay or Edwin Chadwick's enormously important Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, with its seemingly encyclopedic description of the conditions of poverty.

Thatcher and the Victorians: A Suitable Case for Comparison?

One of the prevailing lines of commentary upon Thatcherism is that it possessed essentially Victorian attributes. Personally, similarities were posited between Margaret Thatcher and Sir Robert Peel, W. E. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. Politically, Thatcherism was quintessentially Victorian because its mind‐set was cast in the nineteenth century. The word ‘Victorian’ was also used as a term of abuse by those, within and without the Conservative Party, who wished to deride Thatcher and all she stood for. On balance, the critical usage has the most to commend it. Personally, character contrasts as well as comparisons have to be borne in mind when dealing with Thatcher, Peel, Gladstone and Salisbury. Politically, the selectivity of Thatcher's Victorian vision and its innate ambiguities, the character of the 1980s and the limited success of her attempt to go back to the future must be noted. Further, Thatcherism might actually have a Georgian paternity. It was in the inter‐war years that the lifeblood of Thatcherism, anti‐socialism, began to circulate around the Conservative body politic. From this perspective there were presentiments of Thatcherite statecraft in 1930s Conservative Party practice.

THE PARADOX OF PEEL AS CARLYLEAN HERO

Thomas Carlyle's promotion of Sir Robert Peel as a heroic statesman capable of presiding over a strongly interventionist state is paradoxical in light of the latter's rejection of paternalistic government. This paradox is heightened by Carlyle's hostility to the whigs: some members of this party identified an active role for the state and struggled against tendencies in whiggism which were connected to the ‘liberal toryism’ of Peel and his followers. An examination of Carlyle's knowledge of, and attitude towards, Peel shows that he was aware of his attraction to liberal economic ideas. However, Carlyle believed that Peel's sense of moral purpose and his cool view of conventional parliamentarianism were indicative of heroic potentials that were not possessed by whig politicians. The popularity which Peel enjoyed in the late 1840s was attributed by Carlyle to a widespread appreciation of his distinctive qualities; this provided the grounds for a generalized heroism which could be focused in an active state that was freed from the trammels of both economic liberalism and parliamentarianism.

Asleep in Italy: Byron and Shelley in 1819

It is an oddity that the two English poets who responded most directly to the politics of England in 1819 wrote from abroad. By the autumn of 1819, Shelley had been resident in Italy for eighteen months. Byron had been absent from England for almost half his adult life, and had not set foot on English soil since the spring of 1816. It is a fact that he muses on frequently in his letters, and almost always it prompts in him a mixed emotion. There is a proud consciousness that his residence abroad has equipped him with a wisdom unavailable to his less mobile English friends: ‘L’univers est une espece de livre, dont on n’a lu que le remiere page quand on n’a vu que son pays.’1 But there is also a sad sense that England and its ways have themselves become foreign to him. In the year from 1819 to 1820 both emotions were unusually intense. Byron was actively involved with his Italian friends in the attempt to orchestrate a revolt against the Austrian occupation. His guarded references to his activities in his letters home are inflected by a eady sense of the difference between a nationalist uprising and the ‘miserable squabbles’2 that dominated English politics: ‘Here you may believe there will be cutting of thrapples and something like a civil buffeting’ (7, 76). But in England his friends and school contemporaries were making their mark in the public world. Robert Peel was already a power in the land.

From Napoleon to the Second International, Essays on Nineteenth Century Europe

Accident Prone, or What Happened Next The Historian as a Biographer Fiction in History Tory History The Thing British Pamphleteers Napoleon - On Himself, The Verdict of History Charles James Fox Talleyrand's Cut Metternich Metternich and His System for Europe Cobbett - Voice of the Many, The People's Champion Castlereagh Wellington - Silly Soldier Man? Sir Robert Peel - Orange Peel, The Cotton Spinner's Son Macaulay - The Man Who was Always Right, Leviathan of History Carlyle - Trevelyan's Carlyle, Carlyle Warts and All Lord John Russell - The Last Great Whig Genocide 1848 - Year of Revolution, The French Revolution, Vienna and Berlin, The Slav Congress 1848 - Opening of an Era The Last of Old Europe Crimea - The War That Would Not Boil John Bright and the Crimean War John Bright - Hero or Humbug? Ranke - The Dedicated Historian Cavour and Garibaldi Men of 1862 - Napoleon III, Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, Lord Palmerston, Alexander I1, Tsar of Russia, Karl Marx, Bismarck Bismarck and Europe Marx's Better Half The Paris Commune Dizzy The G 0 M Parnell - The Uncrowned King Lord Salisbury - Last Tory and First Unionist John Morley - Intellectual in Politics Keir Hardie - Labour's Moses The Second International The Vienna of Schnitzler York Manchester Edge of Britain - A Lancashire Journey - A Southport Childhood, The Boarding House Culture, Across the Morecambe Sands, Preston Revisited.

Solving Peel's Puzzle: Repeal of the Corn Laws and Institutional Preservation

Although extensively analyzed, Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws remains an enduring puzzle within comparative political economy. Indeed, while many existing explanations turn on international-systemic considerations, economic factors, or pressure group politics, none accounts for Sir Robert Peel's seemingly irrational decision to sacrifice his government for the sake of a policy he long had opposed.' In seeking to explain his decision, it is crucial to recognize that repeal was not a first-order preference for Peel. Rather, it was a by-product of Peel's larger objective: to preserve fundamental tenets of the British constitution, namely, aristocratic government and a limited franchise, in the face of threat. Put differently, the repeal of the Corn Laws must be understood in the context of split-level rationality, as a policy game nested within a game of institutional preservation.2 The paper proceeds in five sections. First, a model emphasizing the role of political entrepreneurship and institutional design is presented. The next section assesses the application of the model to the British case in the context of existing explanations of repeal of the Corn Laws. The third section outlines Peel's constitutional philosophy and debunks the myth that the real reason for repeal was the Irish potato famine. The fourth section describes Peel's skilful construction of a facilitating coalition designed to repeal the Corn Laws and preserve the constitution in the face of perceived threat. Finally, the model's applicability to the present case, as well as to a broader range of events, is assessed.

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Foundations of a Textile Community: Sir Robert Peel at Fazeley

The Lancashire “Rising” of 1826

In early April 1826, William Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, wrote to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, a gloomy picture of the state of essential foodstuffs in the domestic market: “there is a very serious deficiency in every article of produce even in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that deficiency is most alarming in those crops which are the food of the lowest classes—potatoes and oats. It is further unfortunate that the falling off is likely to be greatest in the parts where the lowest classes most abound…my opinion, founded on these and other considerations, is that some immediate measures ought to be taken.” In the industrial north west this dearth of essential foodstuffs coincided with one of the sharpest downturns in the trade cycle seen thus far in the nineteenth century. What Huskisson sought was some lessening in the application of the Corn Laws “immediately,” and that the question be given priority in Cabinet discussions. But his warning was ignored, the government failed to act, and the result was one of the most serious industrial disturbances of the early nineteenth century.This article recounts the details of the disturbances themselves, but it also attempts to locate the context of the disputes in a wider historical framework than a traditional one offered by historians, namely, the imposition of new machinery. Although scholars have noted the deteriorating conditions facing industrial workers at this time their narratives have focused on the destruction of machinery. John Stevenson, for example, concedes that the disturbances were not the “blind violence they have been painted,” however, it is implicit in his approach that he views the machines as the weavers' sole target, for he ends by saying that the riots were “ineffective” as the manufacturers quickly brought in new looms. It is important to show that this episode was not mere mindless violence; it was linked to a wider set of circumstances that affected the lives of working people. Although the power looms were the physical representation of the plight of the weavers, and thus rife for attack, their targets were not only the employers and governors of their locality.

Late Modern

Nationalism in France: Class and Nation since 1789. By Brian Jenkins The Oakes Diaries, Volume II: Business, Politics and the Family in Bury St Edmunds,1801–1827. Edited by Jane Fiske A New History of Ireland: Volume V, Ireland under the Union: Volume I,1801–1870. Edited by W.E.Vaughan New Gill History of Ireland. Volume V, Nineteenth‐century Ireland: The Search for Stability. By D. George Boyce Feeding the Victorian City: The Food Supply of Manchester,1770–1870. By Roger Scola Victoria: The Young Queen. By Monica Chariot Gladstone: The Making of a Christian Politician. The Personal Religious Life and Development of William Ewart Gladstone,1809–1832. By Peter J. Jagger Sir Robert Peel: Statesmanship, Power and Party. By Eric J. Evans Disraeli. By John K. Walton Gladstone and the Liberal Party. By Michael J. Winstanley Class, Party and the Political System in Britain,1867–1914. By John Belchem Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth‐century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society. By Leslie Howsam ‘Shattered Nerves’: Doctors, Patients and Depression in Victorian England. By Janet Oppenheim Political Stability in Later Victorian England: A Sociological Analysis and Interpretation. By Alice Russell Lady Inspectors: The Campaign for a Better Workplace,1893–1921. By Mary Drake McFeely The Rise of the Labour Party,1893–1931. By Gordon Phillips Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working‐class Culture in Salford and Manchester,1900–1939. By Andrew Davies German Industry and German Industrialization: Essays in German Economic and Business History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Edited by W.R. Lee A Brief History of the German Trade Unions. By Michael Schneider European Labour Politics from 1900 to the Depression. By Dick Geary Wilhelm II and the Germans: A Study in Leadership. By T. A. Kohut La Politico Estera Italiana:1860–1985. Edited by Richard J.B. Bosworth and Sergio Romano The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in Twentieth‐century Britain. By James E. Cronin Simon: A Political Biography of Sir John Simon. By David Dutton The Culture of Labourism: The East End between the Wars. By John Marriott In Hitler's Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich. By Bernt Engelmann Churchill: the Great Game and Total War. By David Jablonsky Churchill: Strategy and History. By Tuvia Ben‐Moshe John Bull and the Bear: British Public Opinion, Foreign Policy and the Soviet Union,1941–1945. By P.M.H. Bell The Bank of England and Public Policy,1941–1958. By John Fforde The Attlee Years. Edited by Nick Tiratsoo Northern Ireland since 1945. By Sabine Wichert Britain since 1945. Edited by Terry Gourvish and Alan O'Day Refugees in the Cold War: Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Post‐war Era. By Kim Salomon Britain and European Cooperation since 1945. By Sean Greenwood

High Politicians: Palmerston, Peel, Gladstone

REVIEW ARTICLES HIGH POLITICIANS: PALMERSTON, PEEL, GLADSTONE E. D. Steele. Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855 - 1865. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. xvi + 467. $69.50 US (cloth). Eric J. Evans. Sir Robert Peel: Statesmanship, Power, and Party. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. xii + 82. $9.95 US (paper). Michael Winstanley. Gladstone and the liberal Party. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. xü + 77. $9.95 US (paper). Peter J. Jagger. Gladstone, The Making ofa Christian Politician. Allison Park, P.A.: Pickwick PubUcations, 1991. xx + 326. $24.00 US (paper). Ann Pottinger Saab. Reluctant Icon. Gladstone, Bulgaria, and the Working Classes. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1991. xii + 257. $39.95 US (cloth). In late June of 1850 Lord Palmerston deUvered his famous "Civus Romanus sum" speech in the House of Commons debate on the Don Pacifico affair, a speech that markedly elevated his poUtical stature in the House and, more especiaUy, in thecountry. Among those attacking Palmerston's foreign poUcy on this occasion were Sir Robert Peel and William Gladstone. Neither Peel nor his audience knew at the time that his paUid performance in the Don Pacifico debate would be the last speech the House would hear from him. The next afternoon he was thrown from his horse, the resultant injuries ending his Ufe three days later. In the decade foUowing Peel's death his most formidable protégé experienced a notable degree of poUtical frustration. Inhospitable to Gladstone's aspirations, the poUtical environment of these years generally had good things in store for Palmerston, whose triumph in the Don Pacifico debate presaged the coming of the Palmerstonian ascendancy. One can of course argue with success, but this is not exactly what historians have done in the case of Palmerston. In truth, we have not much noticed him. The literature on Gladstone is voluminous; that on Peel ample; comparatively scanty is the coverage that Palmerston has elicited. And there Review Articles65 is not much to be puzzled at here. Whereas both Peel and Gladstone had a conspicuous personal identification with a number of the great questions of nineteenth-century British political history, Palmerston had not. There has also been a tendency among historians to take Peel and Gladstone almost as seriously as they took themselves. For Gladstone and his mentor a political career worth having enjoined "statesmanship." By way of contrast, Palmerston's jocularity and disposition for catch-as-catch-can, be it fun or political advantage (better yet a combination of the two), scarcely seems the stuff of which statesmen are made. If we want our work to convey seriousness of purpose (a matter to which few academics can afford to be indifferent), it helps to have a subject with a measure ofgravitas greater than Palmerston evidently possessed. Of the five books listed at the head of this essay, one is on Peel, a second on Palmerston, and the remaining three on Gladstone. This distribution is roughly what would be expected, but a mere count of this sort is rather misleading. Three of the five are monographs, the works by Evans and Winstanley, on Peel and Gladstone respectively, forming part of the Lancaster Pamphlets Series. Although these latter do more than summarize the existing literature on their subjects, they are nonetheless "pamphlets," and the level ofgenerality inherent in the genre makes of them something different in kind from the intensive explorations and analyses engaged in by Steele, Jagger, and Saab. Precedence here will be given to Steele's Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855 - 1865. I think it imprudent to separate the two pamphlets, and therefore propose to ignore the fact that Palmerston's premierships came after Peel's. (WiU those who insist on making a fetish of chronology be mollified by the recoUection that Palmerston was Peel's senior by four years and that the former entered upon ministerial office one year before Peel, in 1809?) Moreover, of the three monographs Steele's alone is a work of pure political history, and my own bias is one that requires those by Jagger and Saab to defer to it. What is largely at issue in Palmerston and Liberalism is the brand of politics practiced by the protagonist during his years of...

Emergency legislation and agrarian disorder in Ireland, 1821–41

The repeated use of special legislation to suppress popular disorder in Ireland and the failure to provide any permanent remedy has been a recurrent theme of Irish history. Introducing the Catholic relief bill in 1829, Robert Peel stressed the ‘melancholy fact’ that ‘for scarcely one year, during the period that has elapsed since the Union, has Ireland been governed by the ordinary course of the law’. Catholic emancipation proved no more of a panacea than the Union before it. Ireland, as J.L. Hammond once observed, was ruled under the ordinary law for only five years of the first half of the nineteenth century. Approaching the subject from a slightly different angle, Samuel Clark tells us that governments passed or renewed thirty-five coercion acts between the Union and the Famine. But although this state of affairs has occasioned much comment from historians it has been subjected to little systematic analysis. There has, for example, been no attempt to emulate for the earlier part of the century Townshend’s examination of British policy in response to political violence after 1848. Such a project cannot be attempted in a single article but it is hoped that a brief survey of repressive legislation in the years from 1821 to 1841, and a more detailed look at that aimed at agrarian disturbances will help to fill this historical lacuna.

Influence of Paclobutrazol on Growth and Flowering of Rhododendron `Sir Robert Peel'

Shoot extension of Rhododendron `Sir Robert Peel' was reduced, but flowering was more precocious after treatment of plants with paclobutrazol. All of the drench rates tested (0.05 to 0.4 g a.i./pot) proved excessive and resulted in prolonged shoot growth reduction but greatly increased the number of flowers. However, flowers produced at the higher drench rates were grossly malformed and unacceptable. Foliar spray treatments (250 to 2000 mg a.i./liter) were less inhibitory than drenches, and a single spray of 500 mg·liter-1 was considered an appropriate commercial application rate. Paclobutrazol application could thus prove to be a useful technique in producing compact flowering plants of Rhododendron hybrids for improved retail sales. Chemical name used: β-[(4∼chlorophenyl) methyl] (1,1-dimethylethl)-1H-l,2,4-triazole-l-ethano1 (paclobutrazol, ICI-PP333).

PEEL AND SOLLY: Two nineteenth-century art collectors and their sources of supply

Sir Robert Peel was one of the best-known collectors in England; Edward Solly was one of the least-known. Both made seminal contributions to the patterns and understanding of collecting in the countries where they amassed their wealth and their pictures—Sir Robert Peel in England, where his paintings eventually laid the foundations of the Dutch collection of the National Gallery; Edward Solly in Germany, where his collection eventually formed a mighty nucleus of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and many other German museums. Behind every collector there must be an army of advisers, dealers and auctioneers and in this paper the author gives portraits of many of them and their relationships with his chosen collectors.

Erotomania and Queen Victoria: or love among the assassins?

The issue of crime and insanity in Victorian Britain is dominated by the 1843 case of Daniel McNaughton. Hounded by paranoid delusions, about which he was relatively unforthcoming despite detailed questioning, he succeeded in shooting Henry Drummond, private secretary to the Prime Minister, Robert Peel. Thinking that it was Peel himself he had shot, McNaughton is quoted by the arresting policeman as stating “he shall break my peace of mind no longer”. The furore over his trial and non-execution filtered down the century, via the McNaughton rules. Daniel himself mouldered in Bethlem and Broadmoor for the rest of his days (West & Walk, 1977, esp. p. 93). But much more prevalent in the public's eye were the seven (at least) serious assaults on the Queen. Not only did they bring about a new criminal charge (vide infra) – but their recurrence tended to promote pro-royalist sympathies as well as pro-custodial attitudes towards “the insane”.

The police and crime control: Effectiveness, community policing, and legal change

Current research on the level of police resources, patrol and investigation strategies, community policing, and the likely impact of changes in the legal framework confirms the simple truth that the police capacity to influence crime has always been vastly overstated. Unfortunately, the preventive police forces that emerged in Anglo-American jurisdictions in the wake of Sir Robert Peel's “new police” were linked directly and for the first time to the crime rate. While there was little that they could actually do about the crime rate per se, questions of police effectiveness, resource allocation, and the adequacy of police powers have tended to be answered on the basis of such data ever since. The need now is to find different ways of measuring and evaluating police work. It may be that the major contribution of community policing is to highlight precisely this issue by shifting the focus of policing away from the crime rate and by forcing police departments, politicians, and academics to confront the real capabilities of the police and to devise methods of evaluating them and promoting them to an increasingly skeptical world.

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND PEEL'S REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS

The repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain in 1846 has been much debated as to whether interest groups or ideology contributed most to this policy reform. This paper examines a conventional view that Sir Robert Peel, in proposing repeal, converted from protection to free trade under the influence of the ideas of political economy. It is shown that economic ideas had a crucial influence on Peel, but that he remained skeptical of political economy as a doctrine.

The Quarrel Between Gavan Duffy and John Mitchel: Implications for Ireland

In the annals of nineteenth-century Ireland, few disputes between public figures have been more rancorous or more significant than the fight that began in 1848 between two seemingly like-minded journalists, Charles Gavan Duffy and John Mitchel. In the mid-1840s, Duffy and Mitchel were colleagues on the most influential nationalist newspaper in Irish history, the Nation. But in 1847, relations between the two men became strained, and Mitchel resigned to start his own, more radical, paper. The former friends and colleagues soon became the bitterest of enemies. Their public quarrels over the next few years severely damaged each man's personal reputation — and also damaged the Irish nationalist cause in which each so fervently believed.Unlike many running Irish feuds, which merely exacerbate old stereotypes about the Gaels being a fractious race, the Mitchel-Duffy controversy haddirect political fallout at a critical point in the development of political separatism in Ireland. The quarrel erupted just when Irish nationalists had an unusual opportunity to bring enormous pressure to bear on the British House of Commons. The Tory party of the 1840s had been shattered, first by Sir Robert Peel's turnabout on free trade in 1846, and then by Peel's death four years later. The modern idea of nearly automatic, lifelong adhesion to strong central parties was still some years off, and the two major British parties were scrambling for friends.

The presentation of madness in the Victorian novel

The major novelists of the Victorian era enjoyed a large readership amongst the general public. They dealt with the pressing social issues of the day and their work both reflected and shaped society's attitudes to contemporary problems. The 19th century saw fundamental changes in society's response to the mentally ill with the creation of purpose-built asylums throughout the country. The Victorians were ambivalent in their reaction to the mentally disturbed. Whilst they sought to segregate the insane from the rest of the population, they were also terrified by the prospect of the wrongful confinement of sane people. The trial of Daniel McNaughton in 1843 for the assassination of Sir Robert Peel's Private Secretary, and the subsequent legislation, provoked general public debate about the nature of madness.