PEEL, Sir Robert (1788-1850). Series of approximately six hundred and seventeen autograph letters, most signed ('Robert Peel', 'R. Peel' and 'Robert') to John Wilson Croker, mostly Dublin, Whitehall and Drayton Manor, 27 July 1810 - 15 January 1847 and n.d. (several letters incomplete, lacking first or last pages); an autograph memorandum [1839]; twenty-five letters by Lady (Julia) Peel, one by Peel's father, and one by his daughter, Eliza; a few letters by members of Peel's and Croker's circles and retained copies of letters by Croker; the collection comprising altogether approximately 1,880 pages, 8vo and 4to; address leaves, covers, blanks (occasional light spotting); laid (letter of 15.1.1847 loosely inserted) in three albums, early 20th-century half brown crushed morocco gilt by Wallis; the spine gilt in compartments, lettered in two, the others decorated with floral motifs, gilt edges. Provenance. John Wilson Croker -- Sir Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray (1856-1927, armorial bookplates) -- Sotheby's sale, 16-17 February 1948 -- private collection. THE IMPORTANT AND ALMOST ENTIRELY UNPUBLISHED SERIES OF LETTERS ADDRESSED BY SIR ROBERT PEEL TO HIS CLOSE FRIEND, JOHN WILSON CROKER, COVERING VERY NEARLY THE WHOLE PERIOD OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER. Only approximately 50 of the letters are published or part-published in L. Jenning's edition of The Croker Correspondence (1884). His voluminous correspondence with Croker encompasses Irish affairs, Roman Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, the vexed issue of the Ladies of Queen Victoria's Bedchamber, the Royal Marriage, the reform of the Police, Peel's conversion to free trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws, foreign affairs, George III's 'splendid donation' of his Topographical and Geographical collections to the British Museum, foreign affairs, patronage and day-to-day parliamentary life, as well as his family and social life, and interest in painting, sculpture and architecture and sporting activities. 'If you knew the thousands and tens of thousands who for themselves, their relations or their friends, peers, parliament men and aldermen, some with promises, some with claims, who are at this moment hovering over every office of £200 a year in which the remotest prospect of a vacancy can be discerned by the quickest eye - if you knew, or perhaps you do, that there are not three such vacancies in a year, you would admit that difficulties exist. If I can overcome them I will. I can say no more' (2.8.1813). 'I do not know a finer subject for speculation than one which now presents itself, namely, given a kick upon the posterior of Mr [Daniel] O'Connell by a brother Counsel at Limerick (x) and an acquiescence in the said kick on the part of O'Connell, (y), to determine the effect which will be produced in the Catholic Board. This fellow O'Connell was the life of it and the stage manager in all the buffooneries which have lately been exhibited. I should not be surprised if the remote operation of this wound upon the seat of honour of O'Connell was to give courage to the moderates and when they find their breach, breech I should say, to induce them to make a desperate effort to subdue their successful antagonist' (n.d. [1814]). 'I am thinking of anything but office, and am just as anxious to be emancipated from office as the Papists are to be emancipated into it. I am for the abolition of slavery and no men have a right to condemn another to worse than Egyptian bondage, to require him not to make bricks without straw, which a man of straw might have some chance of doing (as Lord Rosebery would certainly say), but to pay money and abolish taxes in the same breath. "Night cometh when no man can work" said one who could not have foreseen the fate of a man in office and the House of Commons. A fortnight hence I shall be free from the thousand engagements which I cannot fulfil' (before 22.7.1819). 'I have refused to employ Gentlemen Commissioned Officers for instance, as Superintendents and Inspectors [of Police], because I am certain they would be above this work. They would refuse to associate with other persons holding the same offices who were not of equal rank and they would therefore degrade the latter in the eyes of the men. A Sergeant of the Guards at £200 a year is a better man for my purpose than a Captain of high military reputation if he would serve for nothing' (10.10.1827). 'In consequence of unreserved communications with you, you were in possession of my opinions and fixed intentions in certain contingencies ... Mr Canning declared to more than one person that there was no one to whom he was so much indebted for suggestions as to the course which he should pursue as he was to you. Such an avowal by him - or indeed the fact of your being in confidential communication with him at the period in question - was a sufficient reason for my declining to hold any intercourse with you on matters of public interest' (3.10.1829). 'I can assure you that the difficulty will be to prove that we have gone far enough in concession - that is relaxation of prohibitions and protections - not that we have gone too far. Something must be done to revive permanently the languishing commerce and languishing manufacturing industry of this country ... Your apprehensions about fat pigs and fat cattle from Hamburgh are absurd. There will be no reduction in the price of meat or cattle which need terrify you' (27.4.1842). In 1846 the Protectionists accused Peel of using the Irish potato famine as a pretext for the repeal of the Corn Laws which, they argued, was unnecessary. Croker's savage attacks on Peel in The Quarterly brought their friendship to a precipitate and chilly conclusion with Peel's final letter in which he writes that 'personal goodwill cannot coexist with the spririt in which those articles are written, or with the feelings they must naturally have excited. I trust there is nothing inconsistent with perfect civility in the expression of an earnest wish that the same principle which suggests to you the propriety of closing a written correspondence of seven and thirty years may be extended to every other species of intercourse' (15.1.1847). John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) was Member of Parliament for Downpatrick and briefly Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1808. One of Peel's closest friends, he retired from Parliament on the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, and supported Peel until 1845. As a friend of Canning, he contributed to The Quarterly Review. He has been credited with having introduced the term 'Conservatives' into the political establishment. (3)