be induced to sanction. At all events, he is believed not to have
entertained toward Mr. Peel any personal hostility, and to have stated
during his short-lived tenure of office that that gentleman was the
only member of his party who had not treated him with ingratitude and
unkindness.

In January, 1828, the Wellington ministry took office and held it till
November, 1830. Mr. Peel's reputation suffered during this period
very rude shocks. He gave up, as already stated, his anti-Catholic
principles, lost the force of twenty years' consistency, and under
unheard-of disadvantages introduced the very measure he had spent so
many years in opposing. The debates on Catholic emancipation, which
preceded the great reform question, constitute a period in his life,
which, twenty years ago, every one would have considered its chief
and prominent feature. There can be no doubt that the course he then
adopted demanded greater moral courage than at any previous period
of his life he had been called upon to exercise. He believed himself
incontestibly in the right; he believed, with the Duke of Wellington,
that the danger of civil war was imminent, and that such an event
was immeasurably a greater evil than surrendering the constitution
of 1688. But he was called upon to snap asunder a parliamentary
connection of twelve years with a great university, in which the most
interesting period of his youth had been passed; to encounter the
reproaches of adherents whom he had often led in well-fought contests
against the advocates of what was termed "civil and religious
liberty;" to tell the world that the character of public men for
consistency, however precious, is not to be directly opposed to
the common weal; and to communicate to many the novel as well as
unpalatable truth that what they deemed "principle" must give way to
what he called "expediency."