108 THE ELECTIONS. 



independence, above the vices of a faction and the follies of a mob. 

 It is one of those very rare and valuable expositions of public prin- 

 ciple, which, despising every selfish motive, manifests a sense of duty 

 a spirit of enlarged and sober patriotism. It is so perspicuous, so 

 guarded, so distinctly declaratory of the noble speaker's sentiments, 

 that it may be wisely taken as a model by all future candidates for 

 public confidence. It is not our purpose here to question the suffi- 

 ciency or insufficiency of reformation, to which Lord Stanley has 

 subscribed. His lordship has declared his guiding principles he 

 has expressly promised his co-operation in the work of advantageous 

 measures, his independence of those paltry influences which beget the 

 faction and embarrassment so frequently and fatally opposed by latent 

 interest to the material ends of public benefit. And more than all, 

 as it regards Lord Stanley individually, and may afterwards avail 

 him, it has established his pretension to that invaluable confidence, 

 which only in a monarchy like that of England, can give direct effect 

 to ministerial wisdom and permanence to the designs of a vigorous 

 and popular administration. Lord Stanley's declarations may be 

 taken as the text of a discriminating policy, combining all the salu- 

 tary principles of order and reform ; specially proposing the amend- 

 ments in our institutions demanded by the state of general intelli- 

 gence, and by which alone the maintenance of separate rights, of 

 rank, of property, and industry can be preserved from quick and ir- 

 retrievable destruction. In the present state of parties, confounded 

 as they are by individual differences, on the one hand, and degraded 

 as they are, upon the other, by selfishness, apostacy, and inconsis- 

 tency, a statesman like Lord Stanley, uniting in his person talents 

 adequate to all the duties of a government, extensive property, an 

 order in the state, and, more than all, the spotless purity of public 

 character, may be regarded as a fact of common hope and consola- 

 tion. It refutes the idle plea, so profligately urged, on which a go- 

 vernment convicted of unworthiness, and hostile to the spirit of the 

 times, is foisted on the popular endurance; it repels the saving sub- 

 terfuge of court cabals, explodes the specious arguments of closet 

 sycophants, and naturally draws the public speculation to a source of 

 purity and promise. But concurring, as we do most fully, in the 

 candour and consummate spirit of Lord Stanley's speech, we most 

 emphatically must dissent from the indifference with which the noble 



