POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Among the great prime ministers of England Sir Robert Peel is to be classed.  He ranks with Pitt, Canning, and Gladstone for his intellectual force, his services, and his patriotism.  He was to England what Guizot and Thiers were to France,—­a pre-eminent statesman, identified with great movements, learned, eloquent, and wise.  He was a man of unsullied character, commanding the respect and veneration of superior minds,—­reserved and cold, perhaps; not a popular idol like Fox and O’Connell, but a leader of men.

There was no man in his cabinet more gifted or influential than he.  Lord Liverpool, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Aberdeen were placed in their exalted posts, not for remarkable abilities, but by the force of circumstances, for the purpose of uniting greater men than they in a coalition in order to form a strong government.  Thus, Canning really was the master spirit in the cabinet of Lord Liverpool, as Lord Palmerston was in that of Lord Aberdeen.  Peel, however, was himself the controlling intellect of the government of which he was the head, and was doubtless superior in attainments and political genius to Wellington, to Earl Grey, and Lord John Russell,—­premiers like him, and prominent as statesmen.  Lord Goderich, Lord Stanley, Lord Althorp, Sir James Graham, Mr. Goulburn, Lord Wharncliffe, Lord Howick, Earl Ripon, Mr. C. Wood, Mr. Macaulay, Mr. Croker, were all very able ministers, but not to be compared with Sir Robert Peel in shaping the destinies of the country.  His administration was an epoch in English political history, to be long remembered as singularly successful and important.

Sir Robert Peel came from the people, although his father was a baronet and a very wealthy man, proud and aristocratic as he was rich.  His riches were acquired by manufacturing cotton goods, like those of his father before him, whose business he inherited; but the great-grandfather of Sir Robert was a plain and unimportant cotton spinner in Lancashire, of no social rank whatever.  No noble blood flowed in the veins of the great premier, nor was he ever ambitious of aristocratic distinction.  He declined an earldom, though rich enough to maintain its rank.  He accepted no higher social rank than what he inherited, and which came from successful business.

But Peel was educated with great care by an ambitious father.  He was sent to Harrow and Christ Church, and was distinguished as a boy for his classical attainments, as was Canning before him.  At an early age he reached all the honors that Oxford could bestow; and when he was only twenty-one was brought into Parliament for the close borough of Cashel, in Ireland, in the gift of some noble lord.  He entered the House of Commons in 1809, at the same time with Palmerston, and a few years earlier than Lord John Russell, during that memorable period when Napoleon was in the midst of his victories, and when a noble constellation of English statesmen combined their energies for the good