The Liberal party being for a long time the free trade party, and Sir Robert Peel and his friends being only neophytes, he knew, even though they did carry free trade, that they could not claim the merit of doing so, only having taken it up, when it had attained such a position before the country as to make it all but irresistible.  Neither did he wish the incoming Russell-Whig party to get credit for it; he therefore turned aside, in a rather unusual manner, and gave the merit of it to Mr. Cobden.  “I said before, and I said truly,” Sir Robert begins his eulogy on that distinguished man, “that in proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them.  I must say with reference to honorable gentlemen opposite, as I say with reference to ourselves, that neither of us is the party which is justly entitled to the credit of them.  There has been a combination of parties generally opposed to each other, and that combination and the influence of Government, have led to their success.  But the name which ought to be associated with the success of those measures is not the name of the noble lord, the organ of the party of which he is the leader, nor is it mine.  The name which ought to be, and will be associated with the success of those measures, is the name of one who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired, because it was unaffected and unadorned:  it is the name of Richard Cobden.”  Sir Robert’s peroration to this speech was an elaborate one, and consisted in praises of himself.  Here are his closing words:  “I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who from less honorable motives clamours for protection, because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be, that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will, in the abodes of those whose lot is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice."[99]

Although Sir Robert Peel lived four years after this defeat, he never returned to the treasury benches.  In opposition, however, he was almost as powerful as when minister; giving to Lord John Russell’s Government an independent and most valuable support, without which it could not have continued to exist.  On the 28th of June, 1850, he spoke in the House on the celebrated Don Pacifico’s claims against the Greek Government, and refused his support to Mr. Roebuck’s motion approving of Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy.  He rode out next day—­SS.  Peter and Paul’s day—­his horse shied and became restive, whilst he was saluting a lady on Constitution Hill; he was thrown heavily; on being taken up, partly insensible, he was conveyed to his house, where, having suffered much pain, he died three days afterwards.