ABSTRACT
Whatever his residual private feelings, Peel spent the last four years of his life as an MP consistently disclaiming any ambition to return to office. In particular, as he told Goulburn in 1847, when asked whether there might be any basis for reuniting the Conservatives, he was ‘not inclined to undertake the painful and thankless task of reconstructing a party’. In fact, he began to relish the role of elder statesman which circumstances had cast him to play. He willingly confirmed his position as one loftily above the party fray. He could present himself as having put the nation’s interests before his own career in 1846, thus preserving his own integrity.
