man, always open to reason and truth, learning wisdom from experience,
and growing more liberal as he advanced in years. He brought the Duke of
Wellington to his views in spite of that minister's inveterate
prejudices, and the Catholics of Ireland were emancipated as an act of
expediency and state necessity. 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