elf to be irresistible Peel would never encourage a policy of
futile resistance.

Peel's attitude is well described in the admirable life of {57} George
Canning published by Mr. Frank Harrison Hill in 1887. "Peel," says Mr.
Hill, "did not believe in governing against Parliamentary and public
opinion." "To him the art of government was the measurement of social
forces, and the adaptation of policy to their direction and intensity.
When it was clear to him that a thing must be done, and that his help
was essential to the doing of it, his duty was plainly marked out." Up
to this time, however, Peel did not see that the Catholic question had
reached such a stage, and he probably did not believe that it would
ever reach such a stage. He had opposed Catholic claims thus far
whenever the opportunity arose, and he could not undertake to serve
under a Prime Minister who was openly in favor of recognizing those
claims. We shall have to tell, before long, in the course of this
history, how Peel came to see that Canning was right in his policy, and
how he came to be the Prime Minister by whom it was carried to success,
and how he brought the Duke of Wellington along with him. But at the
time which we have now reached Peel still believed his own policy on
the subject of Roman Catholic Emancipation to be the rightful policy
for the guidance of the sovereign and the State, and he therefore found
it impossible to serve in the new Administration. Five other members
of the existing Government, besides Sir Robert Peel, resigned their
places on the same grounds. One was, of course, the Duke of
Wellington, and another was Lord Chancellor Eldon. Some influential
peers who were not members of the Government made it known that they
could not give their support to any Administration which admitted the
possibility of recognizing the Catholic claims.

Canning's heart might well have sunk within him for a time when he
found himself abandoned by such colleagues and thrown over by such
supporters. He actually waited upon the King, and asked his permission
to give up the undertaking for the formation of a new Ministry. The
King, however, probably felt that he had gone too far in his support of
Canning to draw back at such a moment. It is very likely that he was
displeased by the pertinacity of {58} the resistance which men like
Wellington and Peel and Eldon offered to any act of policy approved by
him, and he had undoubtedly by this time