t
field--Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the charming author of delightful
verses, the founder of that English school of minstrelsy which sings
for the drawing-room and the club-room, the feasts and the fashions,
the joys and the well-ordered troubles of the West-End. Sidney Herbert
and Praed were made joint Secretaries to the Board of Control, the
department established by Pitt for directing the Government of India.

{240}

The new Prime Minister believed that it would be in every way more
suitable to the convenience of the country that he and his colleagues
should submit their political claims and purposes to the judgment of
the constituencies by means of a general election. A dissolution
accordingly took place, and Peel issued an address to the electors of
Tamworth, which will always be regarded as an important political
document. Although Peel had been an opponent of the principles
embodied in the Reform Bill, no reformer in the country understood
better than he did the impossibility, at such a time, of carrying on
the work of the Government without a thorough understanding between the
Ministry and the Parliament, between the Parliament and the public
out-of-doors. No one knew better than Peel that the time had gone by,
never to return, when an English minister could rule as an English
minister even so lately as in the days of Pitt had done, merely by the
approval and the support of a monarch without the approval and support
of a majority of the electors. When, therefore, Peel prepared his
address to his Tamworth constituents he knew perfectly well that his
words were meant, not merely for the friendly ears of the little
constituency, but for the consideration of the whole country. The same
feeling actuated the great statesman during the entire course of his
subsequent career, and the constituency of Tamworth had therefore the
advantage of being favored from time to time with election addresses
which form chapters of the highest interest and importance in the
historical literature of the country. The address which he issued to
his constituents before the general election in December, 1834,
proclaimed, in fact, the opening of a new political era in England.

[Sidenote: 1834-34--Peel's Tamworth address]

Peel made frank announcement that, so far as he and his friends were
concerned, the controversy about Parliamentary reform had come to an
end. By him and by them the decision of Parliament, which sanctioned
the