116 THE ELECTIONS. 



when the multitudinous variety of her keen calamities, was pal- 

 pably attributable to the vitiated system of parliamentary representa- 

 tion ; what was the benign reply of Toryism to the calm expostula- 

 tions of the people ? Years passed on years away ; the constitutional 

 petitions of all classes of the nation were sneeringly rejected by the 

 wisdom of Sir Robert Peel and his inconvertible associates. The 

 aristocracy embraced the insolence of that unfeeling ministry ; it was 

 reserved to an illustrious duke, the present colleague of Sir Robert 

 Peel, in the meridian hour of self-sufficiency, to tell the sinking and 

 exhausted millions of Great Britain, that he gloried in a vicious sys- 

 tem ; that the flagrant infamy of the East Retford case was placed 

 above the power of penal castigation ; and that the convictions of his 

 conscience would compel him to resist whatever measures were em- 

 ployed to shake the sacred fabric of abuse. It may, perhaps, appear 

 an effort of discrimination to exonerate the Duke of Wellington from 

 the reproaches due to the meek associates of his power. His grace is 

 an impracticable personage, has suffered more in his political capacity, 

 and, perhaps, is destined in that character to more humiliation from 

 the mean subservience of his tools for colleagues they cannot be 

 called than any man who ever trespassed on the work of govern- 

 ment. The Duke of Wellington is far above the shafts of envious 

 imputation Of erroneous policy, of policy at variance with contem- 

 porary spirit, no man is more emphatically, more notoriously con- 

 victed. But the errors of his judgment are not to be rebuked as 

 projects of depravity ; and however meanly we may think of his de- 

 pendent tribe, we must gratefully respect the splendour of his grace's 

 fame, so gloriously established by the service he has done his coun- 

 try and mankind. We hardly can refrain from dwelling on the spec- 

 tacle, which, under auspices more favourable to his fame, the Duke 

 of Wellington might have presented to posterity, had he chosen, on 

 the consummation of the military glory of his country, to have ap- 

 plied his energies to the consolidation of her domestic happiness. 

 With the influence of his resplendent name, enjoying the respect 

 and gratitude of millions, the Duke of Wellington alone might have 

 achieved the civil blessings of the nation. Had his grace rejected, 

 with a wise and worthy pride, the overweening sycophancy of a 

 vicious party, had he turned an ear of deafness to the creeping over- 

 tures of overbearing and exploded fallacies, he might have blended 



