ABSTRACT
On Saturday 12 May 1838, Conservative MPs gave a dinner in Peel’s honour at the Merchant Tailor’s Hall in London. The dinner was chaired by the Marquess of Chandos and was notable for the prominent participation of Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, the leading members of the ‘Derby Dilly’.
Peel’s speech contained his most explicit declaration yet about the origins and principles of the Conservative Party. He declared that his ‘great object … for some years past’ had been ‘to lay the foundations of a great party’ which would ‘diminish the risk and deaden the shock of a collision between the two deliberative branches of the legislature’ and help to resist ‘hasty and precipitate changes in the constitution and laws of the country’. Peel claimed to have been ‘deeply impressed with a conviction of the necessity of forming such a party’ at the time of the Reform Act and acknowledged that it represented ‘a fearful experiment’. It had been necessary to proceed ‘by prudence, by patience, by assuming a new position, by the rejection of the old tactics of party’ and this had resulted in the party’s current strength in the House of Commons.
Peel noted that Conservative votes had been fundamental in defeating recent motions to expel bishops from the House of Lords, to repeal the corn laws, and to legislate for the secret ballot. He vindicated the policy of supporting the government in order to save it from its radical allies. ‘I will ask our friends, who are impatient for what they consider more decisive action, to remember the steps by which our power was gained’, Peel observed, ‘Let them remember that it was by moderation and an adherence to principle’. In his peroration, Peel defined what he meant by ‘Conservative principles’ – reiterating his belief in the maintenance of the peerage, the monarchy, and the balanced constitution and ‘settled institutions of church and state’.
