Industrial Upbringing
Peel entered politics from an unusual corner of the governing class. His father, Sir Robert Peel, was a hugely successful cotton manufacturer, not an old aristocrat whose wealth came mainly from land. That distinction mattered. The younger Peel inherited money, education and access, but he also grew up near the forces transforming Britain: factories, urban growth, market volatility, worker unrest and the rising importance of commerce. He was no radical. His instincts were conservative, moralistic and orderly. Yet he understood that a state built only to defend old arrangements would become brittle. Peel's later career repeatedly returned to the same problem: how could government preserve authority in a country being remade by industry, population growth and political pressure?
