While visiting Tamworth, my wife saw this statue beside the town hall. It must have inspired her, as she photographed it. Last month, I was going through the photos stored on my computer, and in deciding whether or not to delete it, took a closer look at the inscription on the base.
The inscription reads:
The
Right Honorable
Sir Robert Peel, Bar.
Born Feb. 5th, 1788.
Elected in the year 1830.
Member of Parliament for
Tamworth.
Which town he continued
To represent until his death
July 2, 1850.
Given my focus this year on celebrating authors' birthdays, you now know why I shared those photographs of Tamworth with you yesterday. Of course, Robert Peel wasn't an author, at least not an author of fiction, but while standing for election in late 1834 and early 1835, he wrote the Tamworth Manifesto. He presented it to his constituency in Tamworth, but the document garnered a momentum all its own, and was reproduced widely throughout Britain. It may not have proved as historically important as England's Magna Carta, or the United States' Declaration of Independence, but today, one hundred-and-eighty years later, the document is regarded as the foundation for the United Kingdom's present Conservative party.
Talk about the power of the pen!
Dragon Dave
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