--but it may claim to have offered an easy way
into Parliament for some men of brilliant talents. Peel's family
connexions and his own training marked out the path for him. It was
difficult for the young Oxford prizeman not to follow Lord Chancellor
Eldon, that stout survival of the high old Tories: it was impossible for
his father's son not to sit behind the successors of Pitt. We shall see
how far his own reasoning powers and clear vision led him from this
path; but the early influences were never quite effaced. His first
patron was Lord Liverpool, to whom he became private secretary in the
following year. This nobleman, described by Disraeli in a famous passage
as an 'arch-mediocrity' was Prime Minister for fifteen years. He owed
his long tenure of office largely to the tolerance with which he allowed
his abler lieutenants to usurp his power: perhaps he owed it still more
to the victories which Wellington was then winning abroad and which
secured the confidence of the country; but at least he seems to have
been a good judge of men. In 1811 he promoted Peel to be
Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and in 1812 to be Chief Secretary for
Ireland. His abilities must have made a great impression to win him such
promotion: he must have had plenty of self-confidence to undertake such
duties, for he was only twenty-four years old. We are accustomed to-day
to under-secretaries of forty or forty-five; but we must remember that
the younger Pitt led the House of Commons at twenty-four and was Prime
Minister at twenty-five.

At Dublin Castle Peel was not expected to deal with the great political
questions which convulsed Parliament at different periods of the
century. He had to administer the law. It was routine work of a tedious
and difficult kind; it involved the close study of facts--not in order
to make a showy speech or to win a case for the moment, but in order to
frame practical measures which would stand the test of time. Peel
eschewed the usual recreations of Dublin society, and flung himself into
his work whole-heartedly. In Roman history we see how Caesar was trained
in the details of administration as quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul,
while Pompeius passed in a lordly progress from one high command to
another; how Caesar voluntarily exiled himself from Rome for ten years
to conquer and develop Gaul, while Cicero bewailed himself over a few
months' absence from the Forum. Of these three famous men only one
proved himsel