gentry and the manufacturers exaggerated rather than diminished the old idea of individualism, and neglected or resisted every proposal which tended to restrict competition. In 1841 the Tories under Peel came into office. The Toryism {187} of this short administration was very different from that of Pitt, of Castlereagh, and of Liverpool. The Prime Minister was not in the least aggressive in foreign policy, and was far more Liberal in abstaining from interference with other nations than was a Whig like Palmerston. At home he was influenced by the spirit, if not by the direct teaching of Bentham, and the Peelite school of Ministers was a group which for efficiency and economy has never been surpassed in England. Peel's most conspicuous virtue was perhaps his incapacity to make permanent resistance to sound argument. Men like Liverpool would hold to a bad principle at any cost. Peel was always open to conversion. In 1829 he had, by one of these wise surrenders, saved the country from the maintenance of the Catholic disabilities, and he was now in a similar way to abandon Protection. But the real credit for this Liberal triumph belonged to the Manchester School. In other matters he moved in the same line without outside pressure. The most conspicuous exhibition of Liberalism which was made by Peel of his own initiative was his treatment of Ireland, and his most useful project was frustrated by his own party. He applied himself with his usual disinterested ambition to the government of Ireland. He saw that that country must be treated according to its own nature, and not according to that of England, if it was ever to be prosperous and contented. Its principal grievances were the subjection of Catholicism to Protestantism, and the distortion of a peculiarly Irish system of landholding to the peculiarly English rules of law. Both problems were attacked by Peel in the right spirit, if not in the right way,