Sir Robert's most loving care was lavished upon the training of his eldest son and namesake, who from the day of his birth, February 5, 1788, the patriotic father had prayerfully consecrated to the service of his country. Many stories are told of the pains which the great calico-printer bestowed on the lad's training for a public career. We see the little lad standing on a table to declaim or recite to his parental mentor, and read of the rigor of cross-examination to which this lad of twelve was subjected after hearing a sermon or public address. A current anecdote represents the doting father as saying, " Bob, you dog, if you're not prime minister, I'll disinherit you." At Harrow, as a schoolboy he reflected credit upon his father's training, and at Christ Church, Oxford, he achieved the unusual honor of a double first class (classics and mathematics). When he left the university at the age of twenty-one his father provided him with a seat in Parliament, and so, with every favoring circumstance of youth, health, education, friends, and wealth, he began his eventful career in the House of Commons which was to be the scene of his best labors until the day of his death. Old Sir Robert and his son sat on the same side of the House, but the alert and active mind of the young man could not accept untested his father's political creed of hide-bound Toryism. The first question upon which the son and father parted company was on the subject of the resumption of specie payments, which had been discontinued in 1797 under the financial stress of the war with France. In 1811 the two Peels voted together against a resolution looking toward resumption, but the younger man's mind was fascinated with the economic aspects of the problem, and half a dozen years later, when the subject again pressed for settlement, he brought forward the act which placed England on a gold basis. The father openly bewailed the son's misguided course, but Peel's act became the law (1819).