THE ELECTIONS. Ill 



are not destroyed with a magician's wand. The edifices of corrup- 

 tion are more substantial than the visions of a dream. Reform, 

 though not achieved in all the strong-holds of abuse, was still 

 in progress- The party of Lord Grey, though shorn of his im- 

 mediate co-operation, inherited and acted on the vital principles of 

 his magnanimous and saving policy. Lord Melbourne had the 

 monarch's confidence. Where, then, was the paramount necessity 

 of an administration headed by Sir Robert Peel? a ministry that 

 feared to meet a parliament the first-born offspring of reform, and 

 which must calculate for its precarious and sickly being, more upon 

 the toleration of its adversaries than on the bold and certain ardour of 

 its friends. Sir Robert Peel is called on to account to public 

 curiosity for this astonishing experiment on public patience. What 

 are the grounds on which he formerly received the offerings of 

 premature and profligate applause ? The question is not What he 

 will do ? The question is What has he done ? The hireling decla- 

 mation of a retinue of placemen, of the sorry remnant of the Liver- 

 pool and Castlereagh diplomacy, may feign a thousand attributes of 

 general desert. But the times are past when such evasive flippancy 

 could satisfy or lull the languor of fatigued inquiry. The duteous 

 affirmations of the Dawsons and the Goulburns would be looked on, 

 in the present aera of intelligence, as something more absurd than 

 grateful as something far more servile than apocryphal. We have 

 little here to do with the peculiar merits of the private man. The 

 qualities with which Sir Robert Peel adorns the intercourse of 

 private life, are fully felt within the sphere of their extensive opera- 

 tion. They may, notwithstanding, add, among the class of public 

 partisans, the strength of individual attachment to the duties of 

 political respect. To judge Sir Robert Peel with retrospective 

 justice, he appears a man of staid and level mediocrity ; of clear, but 

 limited perception, the produce of a trim and chilling discipline : a 

 good a very good debater, and, until fanciful ambition overturned 

 his judgment, a safe and cautious colleague. In the latter character, 

 he neutralized the acrimonious petulence of the officious zealots of his 

 party. His unimpassioned and impassive mind exemplified a cold 

 precision, which genius might provokingly assail with all the warmth 

 of inspiration, but rarely could seduce from its intrenchments to the 

 perilous adventure of a bold and open conflict. His prejudices were 



