British Prime Ministers: Sir Robert Peel

Bagehot, writing in the 1850s, once declared that the world of the Six Acts (legislation aimed at limiting meetings of radicals) seemed so far removed from his countrymen that they could not comprehend its ever having existed. The statesman most responsible for the general lapse of memory was Sir Robert Peel.

By the time that he died in mid-century, on the eve of the Great Exhibition, England's prospects of progress and order were at last secure. Peel's share in the achievement was generally recognized, for as the Times remarked in his obituary notice, 'under Providence, Peel has been our chief guide from the confusions and darkness that hung round the beginning of this century to the comparatively quiet haven in which we are now embayed'.