Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet (February 5, 1788 – July 2, 1850) was the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from December 10, 1834 to April 8, 1835, and again from August 30, 1841 to June 29, 1846. He helped create the modern concept of the police force while Home Secretary, oversaw the formation of the Conservative Party out of the shattered Tory Party, and repealed the Corn Laws.

Sourced

• I feel and know that the Repeal [of the Act of Union 1801] must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire; must make Great Britain a fourth-rate power in Europe, and Ireland a savage wilderness.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (April 1834).

• If the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merely, a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses, and the redress of real grievances,—in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (18 December, 1834).

• I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (15 March, 1839).

• I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist...but it may be...sometimes remembered with expressions of goodwill in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour and to earn their daily bread in the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice.
  • Resignation speech in the House of Commons after the repeal of the Corn Laws (29 June, 1846).

About

• The Right Honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes.
  • Benjamin Disraeli in the House of Commons (28 February, 1845).

• His smile was like the silver plate on a coffin.
  • Daniel O'Connell.