Abstract
There is a paradox surrounding the latter phase of Lord Liverpool’s administration: that in its years of greatest outward strength, and of constructive achievement in domestic politics, alarming symptoms were also manifested of acute internal stress. Peel’s appointment as Home Secretary was part of a general revitalisation of the government front-bench in the House of Commons, in 1822–3, which included Canning’s accession to the Foreign Office, the promotions of Frederick Robinson and William Huskisson to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and President of the Board of Trade respectively, and the sidelining of the politically redundant Sidmouth connection.1 These changes certainly augmented the government’s debating power in the lower House, although the main reason why ministers appeared in an increasingly favourable public light was that the economy had finally recovered from the appalling depression of the immediate post-war years. The 1820s, taken as a whole, were a period of economic growth and comparative social calm, which saw a dramatic decline in popular agitation for radical parliamentary reform. In these auspicious conditions, most of the earlier repressive legislation was allowed to lapse, and it seemed permissible for ministers to adopt a more relaxed approach to policy than would previously have been considered safe.
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Notes
Norman Gash, Mr Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830 (London, 1961), pp. 439–40,473,639–40.
Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 218–31, for this paragraph.
Boyd Hilton, ‘Peel: A Reappraisal’, Historical Journal, XXII (1979), pp. 607–8.
W. H. Fremantle to Buckingham, 4 and 29 February 1824, in Memoirs of Court of George IV vol. 2, pp. 42–3, 50. Cf. Wynn to Buckingham, 21 July 1823, ibid., vol. 1, pp. 478–9: ‘Peel continues very glum and sulky.’
Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Diary of Henry Hobhouse, 1820–1827 (London, 1947), pp. 101–2 (22 January 1823).
Eldon to Lady E J. Bankes, April 1827, ibid., vol. 2, p. 588. For a detailed documentary account of this period, see Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Formation of Canning’s Ministry February to August 1827, Royal Historical Society, Camden 3rd Series, LIX (1937).
Lord Colchester (ed.), A Political Diary, 1828–1830: By Edward Law Lord Ellenborough (London, 1881), vol. 1, p. 64 (19 March 1828). Cf. Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot vol. 2, pp. 174–5 (24 March 1828).
Henry Reeve (ed.), The Greville Memoirs (London, 1899 edn), vol. 1, pp. 187–8 (6 March 1829).
Peel to Gregory, 1 February 1829, Peel to Colonel Yates, 18 February 1829, in Peel Correspondence, vol. 2, pp. 86–8, 94–5.
Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Three Early-Nineteenth Century Diaries (London, 1952), pp. xxi—xxii.
John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds), The Prime Minister’s Papers: W. E. Gladstone (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1971–82), vol. 3, pp. 78–9 (October 1851).
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© 1999 T. A. Jenkins
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Jenkins, T.A. (1999). The Crisis in Church and State. In: Sir Robert Peel. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27008-8_3
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