ABSTRACT
From 1815 to 1820 or so, Liverpool's government was concerned primarily with retrenchment and only secondarily with reform. In the post-war period Vansittart had fudged the finances by continuing to borrow in the London money markets to pay off old debts. The radical newspapers were not alone in their condemnation of 'tax eaters' and 'fund holders' whose rapacious self-interest held the nation in thrall. In the event, Liverpool's government persuaded the Bank of England to buy exchequer bills with a value of about £30m. The first important modification of the 1815 Corn Law was not made until 1828, a year after Liverpool's resignation. Economic Peel's reforms at the Home Office were for the most part uncontroversial. Like so much else in his long career, Peel succeeded by making other people's ideas work rather than by creating them himself. Peel's cool, administrative brain can also be discerned behind the first serious attempt to rationalise unregulated, insanitary and not infrequently corrupt prisons.
