mons; a third is in the army, and one in
the navy. One of Sir Robert's daughters was married to Viscount Villiers
in 1840.

In 1819, the monetary affairs of the country had become so alarming,
that the House of Commons appointed a secret committee to inquire into
the state of the Bank of England, of which committee Mr. Peel was
appointed chairman. He had hitherto been one of the most strenuous
opponents of Mr. Horner's celebrated propositions of 1811, from which
period he had strongly defended the currency policy of Mr. Vansittart.
But the evidence produced to the secret committee effected a complete
change in Mr. Peel's opinions, and it was chiefly through his agency
that the currency was settled on its present metallic basis. In the
conflict, a touching incident of antagonism, between the subject of this
memoir and his father, occurred in the House of Commons. Mr. Peel was,
in 1822, promoted to the head of the Home-office, which he occupied till
the overthrow of Lord Liverpool, in 1827, when he retired, in
consequence, as it is alleged, of the elevation of Mr. Canning, whose
opinions were in favor of the abolition of the Roman Catholic
disabilities. Upon the accession of the Duke of Wellington to power, in
1828, Mr. Peel returned to the Home-office, and, in conjunction with his
noble friend, repealed the disabilities of the Roman Catholics; which
not only cost him Ireland, and brought upon him a hurricane of abuse
from his party, but shook the general confidence in either the soundness
or the integrity of his opinions.

The skirts of the Gallic storm of 1830, that crushed the Bourbonic
throne, destroyed the Wellington Administration, and made the Reform
Bill no longer deferable, which the Whigs entered office to carry.
Meantime, the deceased had succeeded to an enormous estate and the
baronetcy, by the demise of his father, Sir R. Peel. But he was, in
opposition, fiercely assailed with the maledictions of Ireland; the
censures of the High Tory party--whom he was alleged to have
betrayed--the clamors of the advocates of a paper currency; and what,
perhaps, was the most difficult to bear, his party imputed to him the
real authorship of the Reform Bill and its consequences, by his
vacillation in reference to the emancipation of the Catholics. But,
nothing dismayed by the angry elements surrounding him, and the new
political vista of England and the Continent, Sir R. Peel now displayed
all the resources of his statesman