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 like
England. Not for lofty sentiments, such as Burke uttered on the eve of
the French Revolution, are the highest rewards given in a material
country like that of our ancestors, but for the skill a man shows in
expounding the way in which a nation may become prosperous and rich. It
was Sir Robert Peel's mission to make England commercially prosperous,
even as it was that of Brougham and Russell to give it liberty and
political privileges, that of Pitt and Castlereagh to save it from
foreign conquest, and that of Wilberforce to rescue it from the disgrace
and infamy of negro slavery.