1845

To a friend: 'Since then [the 1844 civil service experiment] I have been stuck here unmarried, very lonely, twenty-nine years old, physically healthy again but mentally rather unresponsive, running my business conscientiously but with no particular interest, seeking to make my subordinates' lives cosy according to their lights, and contemplating without irritation the way in which they cheat me for my pains. In the mornings I am peevish, after lunch amenable to every mild emotion. My company consists of dogs, horses and country squires and among the latter I enjoy a certain esteem because I am able to read written matter with ease, I dress properly at all times, and yet I can still skin my game with the precision of a butcher, ride quietly and boldly, smoke great big cigars, and cordially and cold-bloodedly drink my guests under the table.' According to Gall at this time he read widely including Heine, Spinoza and a lot of history.

Spring Peel had become convinced that he could not defend the Corn Laws but he knew that his Party thought he and they were pledged to uphold them so he resolved to wait until the 1846 session to make his view public and argue for it in an 1847 election. He kept his conversion secret from all but two in Cabinet. In March when Cobden launched an attack on the Corn Laws, Peel said to Sidney Herbert 'You must answer this for I cannot.' After bitter debate, Disraeli said (17/3), 'Dissolve if you please the Parliament you have betrayed and appeal to the people who, I believe, mistrust you. For me there remains this at least - the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an Organized Hypocrisy.' For Disraeli, Pitt was the last great Tory statesman but had been forced by world crisis to 'relinquish Toryism' and Disraeli portrayed the Tory Party from Waterloo to 1832 as not 'true' Toryism or bearers of 'the English system'. In Sybil, Disraeli suggested the old Toryism could return: 'Even now it is not dead but sleepeth; and in an age of political materialism, of confused purposes and perplexed intelligence, that aspires only to wealth, because it has faith in no other accomplishment, as men rifle cargoes on the verge of shipwreck, toryism will yet rise from the tomb over which Bolingbroke shed his last tear, to bring back strength to the Crown, liberty to the Subject, and to announce that power has only one duty: to secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE.' (Blake, p186ff)

To sister: 'Only with difficulty can I resist the urge to fill an entire letter with agricultural complaints: night frosts, sick cow, bad rapeseed and bad roads, dead lambs, hungry sheep, lack of straw, fodder, money, potatoes, and dung... I must — the Devil take me — marry. That has become absolutely clear to me. Now that father has gone away, I feel lonely and abandoned, and mild, damp weather makes me melancholy, full of yearning, and love-sick.'

Marie to a friend: 'Otto has become much closer to me in these days than for weeks. We have reached out our hands to each other, and I think, that it is not a temporary contact. You have never understood that I see so much behind his often cold elegance so it may appear laughable to you that I have reached out for such a friendship, but it occupies me too much these last days for me to pass over it in silence. Perhaps it is the expression of a personal freedom, which makes so attractive this friendship with a Pomeranian phoenix, who is a prodigy of wildness and arrogance.'

His father taken ill, could not swallow, Bismarck stayed with him as he died (November). The potato crisis hit. Peel lowered duty on grain but even so bread was too expensive for most Irish peasants. He imported maize from America. He could have suspended the Corn Laws by Order in Council as an emergency measure but didn't. (Why?)

After a number of Cabinet meetings, Peel resigned, unable to persuade the Duke of Buccleuch and Stanley to agree repeal of the Corn Laws. The Queen sent for Russell, who took six days to make up his mind, accepted, then within forty-eight hours resigned because of the division in his own ranks. Peel returned with the support of all his old Cabinet, except Buccleuch and Stanley. (Cf. Blake, p222ff).