When his ministry came to an end the Prince wrote to him, begging
that their relations should not on that account cease. Sir Robert
replied, thanking him for "the considerate kindness and indulgence"
he had received at their hands, and regretting that he should no
longer be able to correspond so frequently as before. The Prince and
he were in the fullest sympathy in matters of politics, art, and
literature, and Peel had supported the Prince loyally through all
the anxieties connected with the arrangements for the Great
Exhibition.
His death in 1850 was a calamity. Prince Albert, in a letter, speaks
of Peel as "the best of men, our truest friend, the strongest bulwark
of the throne, the greatest statesman of his time."
The Duke of Wellington said in the Upper House: "In all the course
of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel I never knew a man in whose
truth and justice I had a more lively confidence, or in whom I saw
a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole
course of my communications with him I never knew an instance in which
he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw
in the whole course of my life the slightest reason for suspecting
that he stated anything which he did not believe to be the fact."
The Queen writing to her uncle said that "Albert . . . felt and feels
Sir Robert's loss dreadfully. He feels he has lost a second father.
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