ThePeelites were a breakawaypolitical faction of the BritishConservative Party from 1846 to 1859. Initially led byRobert Peel, the formerPrime Minister and Conservative Party leader in 1846, the Peelites supportedfree trade whilst the bulk of the Conservative Party remainedprotectionist. The Peelites later merged with theWhigs andRadicals to form theLiberal Party in 1859.

The Peelites were characterised by commitment tofree trade and a managerial, almost technocratic, approach to government. Though they sought to maintain the principles of the Conservative Party, Peelites disagreed with the major wing of that party (the landed interest) on issues of trade, in particular the issue of whether agricultural prices should be artificially kept high by tariffs. The Peelites were often called the Liberal Conservatives in contrast to Protectionist Conservatives led byBenjamin Disraeli andEdward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby.

Facing aserious famine in Ireland in 1845, the Peelites sought to lowerfood prices by repealing theCorn Laws. Peel was able to carry the repeal vote in theHouse of Commons, but only at the price of splitting the Conservative Party, a split which led to the fall of Peel's government in June 1846 and its replacement by a Whig government led byJohn Russell, 1st Earl Russell.

The leading members of the Peelite faction that developed after the 1846 split of the Conservative Party were the following:

• 
  Sir Robert Peel
• 
  Sir James Graham
• 
  The Earl of Aberdeen
• 
  William Gladstone
• 
  Sidney Herbert
• 
  Edward Cardwell
• 
  Lord Lincoln
  (later Duke of Newcastle)
• 
  Sir John Young

The Peelites numbered about a third of the old Conservative party in theHouse of Commons following the1847 general election. Their main political positions at that time were closer to the Protectionist Conservatives than to the Whigs and Radicals in parliament, except on the issue of free trade. The split had been so bitter on a personal level, with attacks on Peel by Protectionist Conservatives such asLord George Bentinck andBenjamin Disraeli, that the Conservative Party was unable to reconcile the Peelites even after the Conservatives officially abandonedprotection in 1852. The Peelites also had their own newspaperThe Morning Chronicle to highlight their political position.

After Peel's death in 1850, the Peelite faction was led by Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen. In the1852 general election, the number of Peelite MPs was estimated at 40. In that same year,George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen was invited byQueen Victoria to form a coalition government with the Whigs and the Radicals. This government fell in 1855 as a result of the unpopularity of its hesitant attitude during theCrimean War.^[2]

After the fall of the Aberdeen government, the Peelite faction took most of the blame for their management of the war in the Crimea. The group further lost cohesion with some members includingWilliam Ewart Gladstone,Sir James Graham andSidney Herbert accepting cabinet posts in the new government led byViscount Palmerston only to resign a few weeks later when the government agreed to hold a commission on the conduct of the recent war. Others stayed, includingGeorge Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll andStratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe after which the Peelites with now no agreed overall leader appeared to be a band ofindependents rather than a putative political party. In the1857 general election, their numbers in the House of Commons further decreased to around 26, or maybe less than 20 as identifying who was and who was not a Peelite became increasingly difficult.

The Peelites finally disappeared as a distinctive political entity after the1859 general election. On 6 June 1859 a meeting was held at the Willis's Rooms, St James Street with most of the remaining Peelites agreed to combine with the Whigs, the Radicals and theIndependent Irish Party members of the United Kingdom Parliament to bring down the Conservative government ofEdward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby in a vote of no confidence. The vote was won by the opposition by 323 votes to 310 on 10 June.^[3]

The subsequent creation of Palmerston's ministry out of this combination was the birth of the British Liberal Party. Several leading Peelites (including Gladstone, Herbert, Cardwell, and Newcastle, but notably not Graham, who was one of the driving forces behind the coalition) accepted cabinet posts in this ministry, though some Peelites became independents or returned to the Conservatives.

• Jones, Wilbur Devereux; and Arvel B. Erickson (1972).The Peelites 1846-1857. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University.

• 1846 establishments in the United Kingdom
• 1859 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
• Political parties established in 1846
• Political parties disestablished in 1859
• Conservative Party (UK) factions
• Centrist political parties in the United Kingdom
• Conservative Party (UK) breakaway groups
• Liberal parties in the United Kingdom
• Liberal conservative parties
• Centre-right politics
• Robert Peel
• George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata