the bold and chivalrous feelings of the English people. In words there might be plausibility and evasiveness, in eloquence there might be mediocrity, in the architecture of his policy there might seem to be fragility and patchwork, but in the mode of proposing his plans to the people there was a lofty indifference to personal consequences, and even to conventional practice, that raised him as a minister above his rivals. These impressions were fresh in the public mind; and such was their force that he, who but a few months before had been openly taunted with being only the foremost man in an age of mediocrity, was now expected, as a matter of course, to propose something that should be grand and comprehensive in itself, while at the same time it should effectually settle the question. Into the political merits or demerits of that plan we need not again enter. Of its boldness and magnitude there cannot be two opinions. Whatever opprobrium fell on its author, no man found it profitable to attempt to throw ridicule on the plan itself. The mind recoils from contemplating the awful position in which Sir Robert Peel placed himself at that time. He had been charged with having been the insidious enemy of the aristocracy, whom he had so long led: he was now about to tear from them one of their most cherished, though dangerous, privileges. The previous four years had been spent in bringing about, gradually, by the slow and piecemeal introduction of new measures, a disorganisation of old party ties and arrangements, which might the better prepare the House of Commons for the reception of the broad end of the wedge. He had thus incurred a double responsibility of the most serious kind: he had pulled down what existed, and must replace it with a new edifice. Perhaps, too, he looked at the measure he was about to propose, not as a mere matter of figures, not as a merely commercial question, but as one of a most serious constitutional importance. If it be true that Sir Robert Peel believed that the passing of the Reformbill was but the precursor of a withdrawal of all exclusive privileges from the aristocracy, he might consider that the step which he was about to

take was, in fact, giving its first full significance to that great revolutionary measure. He might feel that if those privileges must be sacrificed, it was better that the landed aristocracy should appear to yield them by voluntary concession, than that they should be wrung from them by external influence, acting through popular agitation. But he knew that in taking the lead in thus saving them from defeat and degradation, he was exposing himself to the certainty of the most injurious imputations; though, perhaps, even he never anticipated that party animosity would be allowed to go the length of such acrimonious personality. Here were difficulties enough to stagger the strong-minded man. But Sir Robert Peel had added to them others of his own creation. He had constructed a scheme of pretexts for Corn-law repeal, which were transparent to all the world, while they sealed the mouths of different objectors; but which had to be treated by him, throughout the debates, as if they were serious and solemn truths, although at every step he ran the hazard of refutation and exposure. In the boldness of his course, the skill shewn in the means employed was overlooked. Yet how well was the coming potato disease used as a stimulus to popular feeling, and, at the same time, as a check to class-selfishness! And the three years' grace to the agriculturists, coupled with the pretended measures of compensationwhat could be more skilfully devised to evade substantial concessions while

stopping complaints? The whole of the accessories of the actual plan were ingeniously calculated to supply pretexts to hide a hard political necessity, the existence of which it would not have been either politic or dignified to avow. The more complicated and fictitious the pretences, the greater the personal responsibility of the minister who resorted to them rather than tell the nation an unpalatable fact. Looked at with these views, the speech which ushered in this plan was one of the most remarkable ever delivered in parliament. The more mediocrity can be discovered in it, the more striking, by contrast, is its artful coherency, as a network of pretexts to catch the sympathies or entangle the

arguments of members of all parties. On the hypothesis that Sir Robert Peel was quite sincere in adopting the course he did-that he was uninfluenced by ambitious motives on the one hand, or on the other by revenge towards those who had openly threatened to eject him from office if he attempted to repeal the Corn-laws-still the whole plan, the speech which introduced, and the policy by which it was carried out, must be admitted to have been admirably adapted to the peculiar circumstances of the times. Whichever

way the case is looked at, Sir Robert comes out of it with no ordinary claims on the attention of his countrymen. If we award him praise on the moral grounds involved, by admitting his sincerity, we must recognise the singular courage displayed in so hazardous a disruption of party ties; if we censure him on the moral grounds, and assume deliberate treachery, as some of his more violent detractors have done, we cannot refuse to bear testimony to the statesman-like skill which marked his whole proceedings. Such were the views with which the speech in question was received by the House, with the exception of a few disappointed Whigs, who were not so magnanimous as their leader, and of the chief members of the agricultural party, who saw, in the conduct of the premier, only a repetition of that policy which, on the question of Emancipation, had shivered the Tory party into fragments but a few years before. The hot and eager resentment of these gentlemen, indignant at what they conceived to be a deliberate breach of the contract by which they had engaged to serve the Conservative leaders, would not brook one hour's delay. In vain did Sir Robert Peel ask, as a favour due to the importance of the plan, that all discussion should be postponed for a week. It was refused; and the anger of the betrayed Protectionists found vent in speeches from Lord Ingestre, Mr. Liddell, Mr. Scott, Mr. Wodehouse, Mr. Grogan, Mr. Benett, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Stafford O'Brien, Mr. George Bankes, and others, wherein they peremptorily withdrew their support from the government. In the Upper House, the Dukes of Richmond and Buck

ingham, and other peers, had spoken out in language not to be mistaken; and, during the week of parliamentary interregnum which immediately followed, a host of resignations of offices under government and places about the court, the retirement from parliament of Sir Thomas Fremantle and Lord Ashley, and several county members, still more significantly shewed the fearful ravages which the new policy of the cabinet had made in the Conservative ranks. The premier was told, by means even more intelligible than words, that he must prepare for a desperate and deadly struggle.

We are not about to hazard a tedious detail of the debates which ensued, or of the other proceedings of the session, but only to recall a few of the most striking points and the considerations to which they give rise.

On Monday, the 9th of February, the premier's week of grace expired, and the debate on the plan was renewed. In the interval it had been canvassed throughout the country, and the Whigs were obliged to affect a satisfaction with it which they were far from feeling. The League gave it a frank and generous support, as well indeed they might, for they had no right to expect such a concession for many months, perhaps years, to come; but the agricultural body, almost to a man, resented the measure as an encroachment on their rights and just privileges, rendered more odious by the treachery which had accompanied it. The first symptom of the strong feelings that afterwards ran riot in the debates, shewed itself during a speech of Mr. Sidney Herbert's in favour of the plan on this very evening, a speech singularly weak and inadequate to the occasion. A strong disapprobation was felt towards this young gentleman: from his former protestations, it was con sidered that he of all men ought not to have been guilty of tergiversation. Accordingly, when, in the course of his speech, he incidentally spoke of the honour" of those who were engaged in supporting the measure, a burst of derision, such as is seldom heard, even in the House of Commons, was directed against him, and he must at once have seen in it the exposure of all the sophisms by

which he had endeavoured to reconcile himself to his sudden abandonment of principle. Up to this time, the Protectionists had been so staggered by the defection of all their recognised leaders, that they had not had the courage to choose others. There appeared a singular dearth, not so much of talent as of tactique, in their ranks. It was at this moment that Mr. Stafford O'Brien agreeably surprised the House by making a singularly able speech against the policy of Sir Robert Peel, a sort of protest by agriculture and its time-honoured associations against the new ideas and new system now first adopted in deference to the growing power of the manufacturing interest. But of all the speeches made in this, the second week of the great debate, that of Sir James Graham excited the most astonishment. People were curious to know how the statesman who wrote in early life the most furious attacks on agricultural privileges, and had answered them in his later years by the most solemn arguments in support of those rights, would justify his return to the old, deserted ways. The dilemma was raised by Lord Worsley, who quoted, amidst the merriment of a convulsed House, the right honourable secretary's former pro-Corn-law speeches. Sir James Graham took the only course that was really open to him. He at once flung all consistency overboard, by avowing, that as he had changed his opinions all his former speeches went for nothing. The naïveté of this declaration convulsed the House. Strange to say, it rather repaired the damaged character of the right honourable baronet; for it was felt that at last he had in his public life, in however unworthy a cause, taken a straightforward course. Sir Robert Peel, true to his character, exhibited much more respect for the parliamentary decencies. Although, in reality, violat ing consistency and political honour as much as Sir James Graham, he did not make the avowal. After a fortnight's protracted debating, the premier made a second speech, in which, with singular skill and art, he went over the ground and summed up the advances made on either side. In tones significant of a somewhat tardy com

punction, he alluded to his conduct towards his party, thus so far propitiating public opinion, which had been outraged by the hardihood of his tergiversation; but, after a recapitulation, with all the solemn earnestness of one who really believed in them, of the grounds on which he first had rested the proposed repeal, he wound up with an attack, in detail, on those to whom he had just apologised in the mass, holding them up to ridicule for previous inconsistencies of their own, which he affected to regard as being at least equal to any of which he had been guilty. Up to this time there had been but little personality in the speeches on either side. Hard hitting and sweeping charges had abounded; but all acrimony was tempered by that moderation and regard to decency which the forms of parliament require, and which are as necessary to free discussion as its very freedom. Now, however, the first stone was cast by Mr. Shaw, in a vigorous but violent speech, in which he imputed, in direct terms, political treachery and cowardice to the premier and the Home-Secretary. This attack, with the subsequent retaliations and recriminations it engendered, first gave that coarse and ungentlemanly tone to the discussions for which the past session was painfully remarkable.

By the time the third week of the great debate had nearly closed, the Protectionists seemed to recover suddenly from their paralysis. No longer a scattered, though brave and angry host, they had found a leader in Lord George Bentinck. But they had rallied too late. All the mischief had been done. Half the talent they afterwards shewed, had it been brought earlier into the field, would have made their defeat less inglorious than it proved, when, on a division, they saw arrayed against them a majority of ninety-seven, This, the first act of the great sessional drama, was closed by a final tableau of deep dramatic and personal interest,-the reconciliation of Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cobden. Need we remind our readers of the heartless, theatrical parade with which the premier, closely after the assassination of Mr. Drummond, and while in a paroxysm of exaggerated

fear, had flung at Mr. Cobden the charge of having, by declamatory appeals, sanctioned the idea that his (Sir R. Peel's) life alone stood then between the people and "cheap bread?" or the utter moral paralysis with which the horror-struck leader of the League received the unexpected and unfounded charge, when, pale and powerless, he stammered forth an abrupt but unemphatic denial ? Why did Sir Robert Peel delay until the night when he knew the principle for which Mr. Cobden had struggled would be carried, a retractation which ought to have been instantaneous ? Do politics so blunt the moral sense, even in the best men, that the most sacred duties and obligations of honour are made subservient to them, that Justice herself must be the handmaid of Opportunity? To Mr. Cobden's honour be it said, that this tardy withdrawal, which took him quite as much by surprise as the original charge, was received by him in a hearty English spirit of charity and good-will, and that he gratified the House and the country by a few words of frank and manly forgiveness. The first charge was a blot on Sir R. Peel's fair parliamentary fame: its withdrawal served as an agreeable termination to a protracted and most tedious debate, and diverted attention for a brief period from the more fatal disputes of the hour.

Thus far all had gone triumphantly for the minister, whose success appeared to be in inverse ratio to his right to expect it. So it was in the discussions on the tariff which followed, and in those on the first and second reading of the Corn-bill, although the Protectionists, headed by Lord George Bentinck, shewed more power of resistance and obstruction than they had had credit for. But soon was to come a check - a new element in the plot-on which, as on a pivot, it all ultimately turned. The Irish Coercion-bill came down from the Lords, and the HomeSecretary stopped the progress of the Corn-bill, to give it a first reading. The obstinate resistance of the Irish members, carried to the very extreme of parliamentary license, gave Lord George Bentinck and his party the opportunity of shewing their magnanimity by voting with the government; while the Whigs, though

pledged to the principle of coercion, gratified their party hatred by opposing them. Still, obstruction prevailed; and the Corn-bill was effectually held in check by the_newcomer. By the end of the Easter recess Sir Robert Peel, for the first time since the commencement of the campaign, began to be spoken of with ridicule. But patience, and the opportune incarceration of Mr. Smith O'Brien, at last overcame the difficulty, and the Corn-bill was allowed to be read a third time and sent up to the Lords, where it received a most fair and temperate discussion. Lord Stanley, in particular, shewed so completely a mastery of temper as entirely to contradict popular prejudices that till then had almost universally prevailed.

With the month of June commenced the third act of this eight months' drama. The principle of the Corn-bill having been affirmed in the House of Lords, the Whigs, by whose aid it had been carried in the Commons, considered themselves at liberty to gratify their party-feelings, and even to make a push for office. They found only too ready an ally in Lord George Bentinck, who had already girded himself up to the final assault by which Sir Robert Peel was to be sacrificed. A signal retribution was already prepared. It could only be attained by the most open and flagrant dereliction of principle, but for that the hungry and angry parties to the coalition cared not in their ambition and their wrath. A fortnight of the most violent personalities, on which we will presently speak, heralded the final catastrophe, and protracted the time, until, on the 25th of June, the Corn-bill was finally adopted as law. The parties by whom the act of retribution on the premier had been planned, had so arranged as to preserve the dramatic unities as regarded the very hour of the sacrifice. Fate was burlesqued in the grand coincidence by which Sir Robert Peel was defeated on the Coercion-bill in the very moment of his triumph on the Corn-bill. But all this was accomplished by an abandonment of principle in the contracting parties which was one of the worst features of the proceedings of the session. Sir Robert Peel, however, in his final speech, announcing his resigna

tion, took full revenge, on the Whigs, for claiming for his own intentions the merit which would attach to their future policy, a policy which he left it to be supposed they had prevented him from carrying out, on the Protectionists, by pledging an overwhelming majority of the House to prospective legislation wholly opposed to their principles.

The rest of the session was a mere hurried clearance of business-a hasty and imperfect discharge of inevitable duties. With the exception of the Sugar-duties repeal, which was carried by a hypocrisy and an abandonment of recorded moral and religious obligations, as shameless as the proceedings on the Corn-laws; and of the Irish measures, to discuss which is not within the scope of this article; the legislation adopted was of the most harmless order of routine, and the two Houses were prorogued with a decent abstinence from self-gratulation, which was but a poor atonement for the many moral and political obliquities, and the personal degradations, to which the session had given birth.

It is difficult, even now, to unravel the tissue of inconsistencies and contradictions which this brief summary of the proceedings of the session discloses. Since the year 1829 there had not been so serious a difference between the Conservatives and their leaders as that which Sir Robert Peel provoked. One solution of the phenomenon lay in the fact that a portion of the aristocracy were more disposed than the rest to advance with the times; another assumed that it was to be ascribed to the most base, personal, and political treachery. But whatever might have been the merit or demerit of the object, the means by which it was to be attained could not be approved of. Sir Robert Peel could only carry his plan by uniting with foes against whom he had protested all his life, against friends and followers, whom he had as often led to victory. Political necessity could scarcely reconcile the nation to such a spectacle of moral degradation; and the prime minister himself, although necessarily popular with the middle and lower classes, obtained that popularity only by the sacrifice of his own integrity. He was more feared than respected. He

had to make his peace with the people of England; but it was at the expense of those claims to respect which the English nation, more than any other, cherish. The gross and sudden inconsistency of Sir Robert Peel and his cabinet, however, was not the only instance in which the degradation of parties and of public men exhibited itself during the past session. The sacrifice of long-cherished principles and opinions to mere party combinations became general. For instance, the Whigs, throughout their political career, however much they might have coquetted with the Irish Liberals, had always expressed their determination to put down murder and outrage in Ireland. For this purpose they had passed so many Coercion-bills, that coercion was almost identified with Whig government of Ireland. But when the first reading of the Peel Coercion-bill was proposed, although it was at a time when murder and outrage were rife in Ireland to an extent almost unprecedented, they utterly sacrificed all principles and protestations to the one sinister object of harassing the minister. Yet at the very time they were doing this they were declaring themselves determined to do nothing that could impede the progress of the Corn-bill, although, in fact, a majority on the Coercion-bill against Sir Robert Peel must have led at least to delay, if not to a dissolution of parliament. From the Whigs we turn to the Protectionists, whose outraged feelings invested them, up to a certain point, with a moral dignity that excited strong sympathy in their behalf throughout the country. When, in a speech remarkable for its lofty tone and manly eloquence, Lord George Bentinck refused to join the Whigs against the Coercion-bill, but declared that however much the agricultural body had been betrayed by the ministers, they would not so far forget their public duty in private revenge as to refuse them powers for the protection of life and the preservation of order;-when this course was taken by the Protectionists, they indeed secured public sympathy. It was felt how their spirited and nobleminded conduct deepened the insult and injury already done them, and in proportion as they rose in public esteem the ministry began to fall.