18
December 1834
To the Electors of the Borough of Tamworth. Analyse
Gentlemen,
Gentlemen, the arduous duties in
which I am engaged have been imposed on me through no act of mine. Whether they
were an object of ambition coveted by me — whether I regard the power and
distinction they confer as of any sufficient compensation for the heavy
sacrifices they involve — are matters of mere personal concern, on which I will
not waste a word. The King, in a crisis of great difficulty, required my
services. The question I had to decide was this — Shall I obey the call? Or
shall I shrink from the responsibility, alleging as the reason, that I consider
myself, in consequence of the Reform Bill, as labouring under a sort of moral
disqualification, which must preclude me, and all who think with me, both now
and for ever, from entering into the official service of the Crown? Would it, I
ask, be becoming in any public man to act upon such a principle? Was it fit
that I should assume that either the object or the effect of the Reform Bill
has been to preclude all hope of a successful appeal to the good sense and calm
judgement of the people, and so fetter the prerogative of the Crown, that the
King has no free choice among his subjects, but must select his Ministers from
one section, and from one section only, of public men?
But the Reform Bill, it is said,
constitutes a new era, and it is the duty of a Minister to declare explicitly —
first, whether he will maintain the Bill itself, secondly whether he will act
on the spirit in which it was conceived.
With respect to the Reform Bill
itself, I will repeat now the declaration I made when I entered the House of
Commons as a member of the Reformed Parliament — that I consider the Reform
Bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question — a
settlement which no friend to the peace and welfare of this country would
attempt to disturb, either by direct or by insidious means.
Then, as to the spirit of the
Reform Bill, and the willingness to adopt and enforce it as a rule of
government: if, by adopting the spirit of the Reform Bill, it be meant that we
are to live in a perpetual vortex of agitation; that public men can only
support themselves in public estimation by adopting every popular impression of
the day, — by promising the instant redress of anything which anybody may call
an abuse — by abandoning altogether that great aid of government — more
powerful than either law or reason — the respect for ancient rights, and the
deference to prescriptive authority; if this be the spirit of the Reform Bill,
I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies
merely a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken
in a friendly temper combining, with the firm maintenance of established
rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, —
in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit
and with such intentions.
I am, Gentlemen,With affectionate regard,
Most faithfully yours,
Robert Peel.
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