much doubted whether in
such a case he could bring it on.'

I fear Peel was much annoyed and displeased, for he would not give
me a word of help or of favourable supposition as to my own motives
and belief. He used nothing like an angry or unkind word, but the
negative character of the conversation had a chilling effect on my
mind. I came home sick at heart in the evening and told all to
Catherine, my lips being to every one else, as I said to Sir R.
Peel, absolutely sealed.

'He might have gained me more easily, I think,' Mr. Gladstone wrote
years afterwards, 'by a more open and supple method of
expostulation. But he was not skilful, I think, in the management
of personal or sectional dilemmas, as he showed later on with
respect to two important questions, the Factory acts and the crisis
on the sugar duties in 1844.' This sharp and unnecessary corner
safely turned, Mr. Gladstone learned the lesson how to admire a
great master overcoming a legislator's difficulties.

I have been much struck (he wrote, Feb. 26) throughout the private
discussions connected with, the new project of a corn law, by the
tenacity with which Sir Robert Peel, firstly by adhering in every
point to the old arrangements where it seemed at all possible, and
since the announcement of the plan to parliament, by steadily
resisting changes in any part of the resolutions, has narrowed the
ground and reduced in number the points of attack, and thus made
his measure practicable in the face of popular excitement and a
strong opposition. Until we were actually in the midst of the
struggle, I did not appreciate the extraordinary sagacity of his
parliamentary instinct in this particular. He said yesterday to
Lord Ripon and to me, 'Among ourselves, in this room, I have no
hesitation in saying, that if I had not had to look to other than
abstract considerations, I would have proposed a lower protection.
But it would have done no good to push the matter so far as to
drive Knatchbull out of the cabinet after the Duke of Buckingham,
nor could I hope to pass a measure with greater reductions through
the House of Lords.'

When Lord John Russell proposed an amendment substituting an
eight-shilling duty for a sliding scale, Peel asked Mr. Gladstone to
reply to him. 'This I did (Feb. 14, 1842),' he says,