Peel, although only home secretary under Wellington, was the prominent member of the administration, and was practically the leader of the House of Commons, in which character he himself introduced the bill for Catholic relief.  This great service was, however, regarded by the ultra Tories as an act of apostasy, and Peel incurred so much reproach from his former friends that he resigned his seat as member for Oxford University, and accepted the constituency of Westbury.  During this administration, too, Sir Robert, as home secretary, reorganized the police force of London (whence their popular nicknames of “Peelers” and “Bobbies"), and performed other important services.

In 1830 the Whigs came into power under Lord Grey, and for ten years, with the brief interval of his first administration, Sir Robert Peel was the most able leader of the opposition.  In 1833 he accepted the parliamentary membership for Tamworth, which he retained to the end of his great career.  He persistently opposed the Reform Bill in all its stages; but when it was finally passed, he accepted it as unmistakably the will of the nation, and even advocated many of the reforms which grew out of it.  In 1841 he again became prime minister, in an alarming financial crisis; and it was his ability in extricating the nation from financial difficulties that won for him general admiration.

Thus for thirty years he served in Parliament before he reached the summit of political ambition,—­half of which period he was a member of the ministry, learning experience from successive administrations, and forging the weapons by which he controlled the conservative party, until his conversion to the doctrines of Cobden again exposed him to the bitter wrath of the protectionists; but not until he had triumphantly carried the repeal of the corn laws,—­the most important and beneficent act of legislation since the passage of the Reform Bill itself.

It was this great public service on which the fame of Sir Robert Peel chiefly rests; but before we can present it according to its Historical importance, we must briefly glance at the financial measures by which he extricated his country from great embarrassments, and won public confidence and esteem.  He did for England what Alexander Hamilton did for the United States in matters of finance, although as inferior to Hamilton in original genius as he was superior to him in general knowledge and purity of moral character.  No one man can be everything, even if the object of unbounded admiration.  To every great man a peculiar mission is given,—­to one as lawgiver, to another as conqueror, to a third as teacher, to a fourth as organizer and administrator; and these missions, in their immense variety, constitute the life and soul of history.  Sir Robert Peel’s mission was that of a financier and political economist, which, next to that of warrior, brings the greatest influence and fame in a commercial and manufacturing country