ld not have carried over to
him the whole of the 112 men who voted for repeal solely because it was
his measure. In the course of this session Sir John Hobhouse met Mr.
Disraeli at an evening party, and expressed a fear lest Peel having
broken up one party would also be the means of breaking up the other.
'That, you may depend upon it, he will,' replied Disraeli, 'or any other
party that he has anything to do with.' It was not long after this, when
all was over, that the Duke of Wellington told Lord John that he
thought Peel was tired of party and was determined to destroy it. After
the repeal of the corn law was safe, the minister was beaten on the
Irish coercion bill by what Wellington called a 'blackguard combination'
between the whigs and the protectionists. He resigned, and Lord John
Russell at the head of the whigs came in.

'Until three or four days before the division on the coercion bill,' Mr.
Gladstone says in a memorandum written at the time, 'I had not the
smallest idea, beyond mere conjecture, of the views and intentions of
Sir R. Peel with respect to himself or to his government. Only we had
been governed in all questions, so far as I knew, by the determination
to carry the corn bill and to let no collateral circumstance interfere
with that main purpose.... He sent round a memorandum some days before
the division arguing for resignation against dissolution. There was also
a correspondence between the Duke of Wellington and him. The duke argued
for holding our ground and dissolving. But when we met in cabinet on
Friday the 26th of June, not an opposing voice was raised. It was the
shortest cabinet I ever knew. Peel himself uttered two or three
introductory sentences. He then said that he was convinced that the
formation of a conservative party was impossible while he continued in
office. That he had made up his mind to resign. That he strongly advised
the resignation of the entire government. Some declared their assent.
None objected; and when he asked whether it was unanimous, there was no
voice in the negative.' 'This was simply,' as Mr. Gladstone added in
later notes, 'because he had very distinctly and positively stated his
own resolution to resign. It amounted therefore to this,--no one
proposed to go on without him.' One other note of Mr. Gladstone's on
this grave decision is worth quoting:--

I must put into words the opinion which I silently formed in my
room at the colonial office in Jun