ABSTRACT
The words of Sir Robert Peel in the Commons immediately after the 1841 election which would shortly bring him to power. It was the clearest possible declaration on his view of the relationship between political parties and the exercise of power. For Peel, in 1841 as it was to be in 1846, party had an entirely subordinate function. His conception was that the prime minister should do his public duty on behalf of the sovereign and in the interests of the nation. It was the duty of the party to submit to these higher imperatives. Peel, therefore, felt entirely justified in his lofty pronouncement that, if agricultural protection were proved to be at the root of the country’s current financial troubles, he would ask the landowners to make a ‘sacrifice’ by earnestly advising ‘a relaxation, an alteration, nay, if necessary a repeal, of the corn laws’.
