Showing posts with label Sir Robert Peel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sir Robert Peel. Show all posts

Unlike Edmund Burke, Sir Robert Peel was most definitely a Conservative, one of the most important leaders of the party. Today is the anniversary of his death. He was thrown from his horse on June 29, 1850 and died after a good deal of suffering on July 2. Though he had lost a great deal of popularity towards the end of his premiership, such is the fickle nature of the crowd that his funeral became the centre of huge national mourning.

The picture above, in the National Portrait Gallery, shows him in a slightly unusual mode, as an art collector.

Here, on the other hand, is an article from History Today about the politician and his end.

Today is the anniversary of the Tamworth Manifesto, issued by Sir Robert Peel on December 18, 1834. It remains one of the most important documents in the history of the Conservative Party.

This is actually a quotation within the book. Richard A. Gaunt in his Sir Robert Peel - The Life and Legacy quotes an obituary from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of September 1850:

The death of Sir Robert Peel was an event so sudden, so unexpected, and so distressing that it excited a universal feeling of sympathy in the British heart, and stilled for a season every voice but that of melancholy among the immense multitudes to whom his public career had made him known. It stifled, during the first paroxysm of grief, even the loud wail of national distress: it obliterated the deep lines of party distinction: it caused to be forgotten the most painful feelings of extinguished confidence. All classes hastened to pay tribute to the eminent statesman who lay extended on the bed of premature death ... But there is a time for all things. There is a time for sorrow, and there is a time for justice. There is a season for sympathy with the agonised hearts of mourning relaties, and there is a season for calm reflection on the acts of public men. Death at once renders them the province of history.
As to how long the gap between the sympathy and the calm reflection ought to be is hard to judge. Indeed, we have no clear views on it and never have had. Much depends on the attitude one takes to the particular public figure.

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