ABSTRACT
On 11 and 13 January 1837, Sir Robert Peel delivered two major speeches on his election as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. The University is one of only five institutions with a Rector and, until the late twentieth century, the position was a highly political one. Before Peel’s election in 1837, Rectors included Adam Smith, author The Wealth of Nations (1776), and Edmund Burke, the Whig politician.
Peel was elected to the position with a majority of 100 over his rival, the Attorney General Sir John Campbell. His success was celebrated at a splendid banquet on 13 January, the proceedings of which were recorded in this lavish commemorative publication. The banquet afforded opportunities for speeches, toasts, and the public display of Conservative feeling, and led to the minting of a set of specially commissioned medals which were available in various grades of metal. Peel’s speech included an evocative description of ‘the machine of government’ which he wished to see ‘beating with healthful and regular measure-animating industry, encouraging production, rewarding toil, purifying whatever produces that stagnation that facilitates the production of abuses’.
A leading part in the celebrations was taken by James Cleland (1770–1840), a statistician and civic administrator who had played a prominent part in the affairs of Glasgow for over 30 years. Cleland was superintendent of public works in the city from 1814–1834 and the author of The Annals of Glasgow (1816). His interest in demographics led him to undertake a detailed census of the city which he published in 1820 and which influenced the national censuses of 1821 and 1831. The University honoured Cleland’s contribution to the history and development of Glasgow by awarding him an honorary LLD in 1826.
