Sir Robert Peel - 1899 Author:Robert Peel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. 1828. Roman Catholic Relief—Small Majority in Parliament for Concession— Great Majority in Clare for O'Connell—The Lord Lieutenant advises Con... more »cession—Mr. Peel tenders Resignation, but supports Concession— Canning's Friends resign—The Lord High Admiral resigns—The Lord Lieutenant recalled. A Home Secretary has special charge of Ireland, and Ireland this year engaged so large a share of Mr. Peel's thoughts as to demand a separate chapter. On May 12 a motion for considering the state of the laws affecting Roman Catholics was carried by a majority of 272 to 266 ; and on May 20 a division on the proposed transference of a seat in Parliament from East Retford to Birmingham led to the resignations of Mr. Huskisson, Lord Dudley, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Grant, and Mr. Lamh. On the bearing upon his own action of these two events Sir Robert Peel remarks (Memoirs, i. 102): My own retirement at an early period would have been determined on Sir Francis Burdett's motion. I should have taken the course in 1828 which I had wished and intended to take in 1825, and have declined to remain Minister for the Home Department and to lead the House of Commons, being in a minority on the most important of domestic questions. But the threatened danger to the Duke of Wellington's Government from the retirement of Mr. Huskisson and his friends, and the real difficulty of constructing, from 1828 THE CLARE ELECTION 47 any combination of parties, any other Government at that time, so recently after the breaking up of the Administration over which Lord Ripon had presided, induced me not to insist upon retirement, at the very moment when other members of the Government were withdrawing, upon totally distinct grounds, their co-operation. This secession of Canning's followers ...« less