It was thus through the absolute necessity of the moment that he repealed the Corn Laws which he had been elected to support. In the House of Commons he confessed the error of his former opinions, and maintained the duty and dignity of owning one’s self to have been wrong rather than pretending by casuistical hair-splitting that there had been no change of opinion when there was so striking a change in conduct; he bore with magnanimity the reproaches of those who still shared the error which he had abandoned, and finally appealed to the facts of the situation, the national calamity of impending famine in Ireland; he claimed that as the Government were responsible for the lives of millions of the Queen’s subjects in the sister country, they felt it impossible to take any other course than that of repeal. The great bulk of the Tories accused him of dishonesty, but he took with him the flower of his party, both in regard to intellect and character, while he earned the enthusiastic gratitude and respect of the great bulk of the nation, and of the men led by Cobden and Bright and the Hon. Charles Villiers, who had devoted themselves to the cause of repeal. Their favorable verdict has been confirmed by posterity. Peel’s change was an honest change, and he was forced to give effect to it when he did by the inexorable necessities of famine. He did not make a _volte face_ for the sake of place and power. But notwithstanding all that can be urged in his justification, he shattered his party. The Tories had a majority of eighty in the general election of 1841; they never secured a similar victory till 1874. They had short tenures of office in 1852, and again in 1858-9, and in 1866-8; but on each occasion they had to govern as best they could with a minority in the House of Commons. They were in the wilderness thirty-three years, and never regained the Canaan of politicians, except by the aid of the new electorate called into existence by the Reform Bill of 1867. When Peel went out of office he requested the Queen, as a personal favor to himself, never to ask him to form a Government again. He was not defeated in his great measure; his majority was ninety-seven in the House of Commons, and forty-seven in the House of Lords. But the day on which the Corn Bill passed its third reading in the Lords, the Ministry were defeated in the Commons on a Protection of Life in Ireland Bill, introduced on account of an outbreak of midnight murders and murderous attacks, such as are now known by the name of “moonlighting.” For modesty, dignity, simplicity, and sincerity, Peel’s figure stands out conspicuous for greatness among the statesmen of this century. Cobden said of him that he had lost office and saved his country.