sometimes remembered with expressions of good will, in the abodes of those whose lot is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by 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 with a sense of injustice."[99] Although Sir Robert Peel lived four years after this defeat, he never returned to the treasury benches. In opposition, however, he was almost as powerful as when minister; giving to Lord John Russell's Government an independent and most valuable support, without which it could not have continued to exist. On the 28th of June, 1850, he spoke in the House on the celebrated Don Pacifico's claims against the Greek Government, and refused his support to Mr. Roebuck's motion approving of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy. He rode out next day--SS. Peter and Paul's day--his horse shied and became restive, whilst he was saluting a lady on Constitution Hill; he was thrown heavily; on being taken up, partly insensible, he was conveyed to his house, where, having suffered much pain, he died three days afterwards. Sir Robert Peel's father, a very wealthy cotton spinner, and also a Member of Parliament, had early made up his mind that his son should become a public man. As soon as he was of age he was returned by the borough of Cashel to the House of Commons, where he soon began to display those qualities for which his family was distinguished--prudence, industry, discreet reserve, with a remarkable ability for utilizing the brains of others. His father, who was made a baronet by Mr. Perceval, became a millionaire by cotton spinning, yet in a generation remarkable for invention, neither he nor one belonging to him originated any of the improvements for preparing or spinning cotton; when one was made, however, its utility soon became apparent to the practical good sense of the Peels; they secured it, and thus founded a house and built up a princely fortune to sustain it; while, too often, the man whose original genius discovered the improvement, lived and died in comparative poverty.[100] Sir Robert Peel carried this second-rate, but most valuable quality, into statesmanship. He was not the originator of any great political amelioration; he was invariably found, at first, in opposition to every measure of the kind; but he did not refuse to examine it; on the contrary, he studied it carefully, weighed the reasons put forward in support of it, watched with nervous anxiety the tide of public opinion, and when that could no longer be resisted with safety, he took the question up and sustained it by the arguments he had been combating before--remodelled, to be sure, occasionally, but still the same; threw the weight of his high character into the scale, and thus not only contributed to its success, but secured it. Such is the history of Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Hence