ABSTRACT
The ‘Tamworth Letter’ provoked a range of responses from Peel’s critics. This pamphlet by ‘Britannicus’ argued that Peel had been a ‘Dictator’ who had attempted to bend the will of the Conservative Party to his ends until the Repeal of the Corn Laws forced them to resist him.
Much of the early part of the discussion was concerned with attacking Peel’s religious policy and the government’s approach to Ireland. It revived the charge that Peel had betrayed his principles over Catholic Emancipation: ‘He granted Roman Catholic immunities at the expense of Protestant rights’. It proceeded to attack Peel’s Irish policy during 1841–1846 for having granted ‘to the professors of [Catholicism] increased support and renewed facilities for enlarging their sphere of action’. In this respect, the ‘Tamworth Letter’ was ‘full of words, without one single argument that can prove satisfactory to the reason of the humblest Elector of the kingdom’.
The remainder of the discussion was reserved for Peel’s financial and commercial policy. It highlighted the deleterious effects of Free Trade ‘to our native labour and native production, and the opening of our home market to the overwhelming force of foreign competition’. The writer attacked the success of Free Trade principles as a ‘mean concession to a mean faction’ and predicted that no good would come of it.
