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On the Queen's birthday the Ministers entertained, as is usual, their political friends with what are called grand parliamentary dinners. On that day Sir Robert Peel gave also-as the heads of parties have always, and none others but the heads of parties have ever done a grand parliamentary dinner to thirty of those whom the world calls his party-but Sir Robert Peel declares that he has no party- And Brutus is an honourable man.'

Lastly, a gentleman evidently connected with Sir Robert Peel in politics—a clever and expert gentleman, we very readily admit -publishes an Apology, every line and word of which is a direct and, indeed, avowed attempt to reconcile and rally round Sir Robert Peel what in twenty places is distinctly called a party; while, on the other hand, Sir Robert himself declares that he belongs to no party- And Brutus is an honourable man.'

We fairly confess that we cannot reconcile these apparent contradictions; but of this we are sure, that they call for additional vigilance from the Conservative party, which has been so often, so recently, and so shamefully deceived.

Forewarned-fore-armed. Recommending, as we have presumed to do, a large amnesty for the events of 1846, we most earnestly urge the utmost jealousy and activity against all those who have been or shall be pleased to identify themselves with what Sir Robert Peel may on his own side disclaim as a party, but which, it is evident, they on their side, as well as all the rest of the world, consider as such in all the strength of the term.

There is, however, one plain and easily applied test which will settle at once both questions-whether there is a Peelite party, and who belongs to it. Let any suspected candidate be asked whether he adopts the principles of Sir Robert Peel's farewell Speech of the 29th of June, 1846, and his Letter to the people of Elbing of the subsequent August! It is a most remarkable fact that this professed apology and defence of Sir Robert Peel, which is so superfluously diligent in repelling accusations that never were made, and imputations that never were thought of, does not allude, in the most distant way, to the celebrated panegyric on Richard Cobden-and what deserves to be equally celebrated, the Elbing letter. The Apologist, who has honoured us with so much of his notice, and observes on so many expressions of our opinion, has, with a more convenient inattention, wholly overlooked those which we considered as infinitely the gravest of all the charges against Sir Robert Peel-the ultra revolutionary principles advanced in that speech and that letter. Of the former we had said, in our Number of last September

"Of that speech-its topics, its language, and its spirit-we are bound to record our strong disapprobation. It seems to us pregnant with the most mischievous principles and consequences, and to require that every

means

means-even those so humble as ours-should be exerted to counteract its most dangerous tendencies.'-Quart. Rev., vol. lxxviii. p. 553. And we proceeded to expose in detail the sophistries, the absurdities, the bad faith, the tendencies to fatal and irreparable mischiefs contained in that speech, as well as in the Elbing Letter, in which Sir Robert Peel made to the inhabitants of a little Prussian town the astonishing confession of having induced his party in England to submit to the income-tax, on an assurance that it was to last only three or at most five years, when in fact he had proposed it with the secret design of not only making it perpetual, but increasing it to the absorption of all other taxation. When the Apologist professed an intention of defending Sir Robert Peel from the imputation of being a deserter and a renegade,' and of conduct treacherous and dishonourable,' is it not surprising that he should have taken no notice of either that speech or that letter? His silence on this latter point is in every way ominous and important. It may be said to confess the substantial authenticity of that letter, which undoubtedly no one who has any regard for Sir Robert Peel's character would have omitted to deny indignantly, if he could have done so truly; and it also seems to admit that it is incapable of apology. The inconsistencies and errors-be they great or small, defensible or otherwise of Sir Robert Peel's conduct from 1829 to 1845, it is now, for any practical purpose, useless to examine; and we-as his friends and supporters during that period-would have been much gratified if the Apologist could have made a better case for him than he has done. But what concerns the present and prospective welfare of the country is the effect of those---we repeat the term advisedly-ultra revolutionary doctrines which Sir Robert Peel broached at the close of the last Session, and from which we most earnestly call upon the constituencies to protect themselves.

We tell our manufacturing as well as our agricultural population, that they can never make head against Sir Robert Peel's general discouragement of native industry, and his scheme-the very scheme once so justly censured by him-for making us dependent on foreigners for our daily bread.

We tell the fund-holder, that the interest on 800,000,0001. of debt cannot be paid by a country reduced to a competition with those that have no such burthen.

We tell the landowner, that no rights, whether of landlord or tenant, could survive the application of the agrarian doctrines promulgated in the Cobden panegyric.

We tell all possessors of all classes of property, that the principle of exclusively direct taxation, advanced in the Elbing Letter, would

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be nothing else than the first step to confiscation. And, finally. we tell the whole British public, that life, property, morals, religion, and the very frame of social order and national existence, cannot be maintained on the pusillanimous principle of bending to every pressure, and cowering under every passing cloud of popular discontent or delusion.

It is for these reasons that we press on the Conservatives the duty of testing the principles of every candidate by a peremptory demand whether he does or does not adopt Sir Robert Peel's revolutionary speech, and his still, if possible, more reprehensible Elbing letter, and if any of those gentlemen-pupils of a slippery school should affect not to know what is meant, let him be asked -whether he is prepared to sacrifice British industry to the foreign artisan or agriculturist, without any proportionate consideration of the greater burden imposed upon the English? Let him be asked whether he is ready to give up the Navigation Laws, and with them our colonial empire and maritime security and glory? Let him be asked, whether he is willing to make the Income Tax perpetual-to double, triple, or quadruplicate it, by the absorption of indirect taxation, and as a necessary consequence extend it (as the advocates for this system admit must happen) by a poll-tax, or some other inquisitorial process, to every class, however humble, of society? These are the prominent points that seem to us to emerge from Sir Robert Peel's expositions of his policy in June and August, 1846-and which by-and-bye we shall have to meet when pushed forward by men of steadier views and bolder hands. Our present and preliminary, but still most important duty, is to avert the danger by discountenancing the principles and rejecting their abettors. It is true that our party is disorganized, dispirited, scattered; but they have still one honourable rallying-point-a sober but fixed indignation at the 'treachery' by which they have been sacrificed, and a temperate but steady resolution to be duped no more. The horizon is now dark, uncertain, and unpromising; but if we prosecute the elections with even ordinary zeal, we shall find in the new Parliament better hopes, and at all events higher duties:—

'Durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis.'

The landed interest of England is the representative and guardian, as indeed it is the parent, of all the other national interests, and can never be overcome but by a revolution; nor can there ever be a revolution while-however betrayed' by individua. terror or treachery'-the landed interest shall be, as a body, true to itself. It behoves us all, in a word, to recollect that the approaching elections are to influence a period of years-during

which

which who can guess what may become of Peel or Russell, or any individual? We ought to be prepared for witnessing many strange ups and downs and ins and outs. But if we do our duties, we can send to Parliament a body of really Conservative gentlemen, whose weight, power, and character will, with the assistance of the House of Lords and the good sense of the country, place us beyond any serious risk from the rivalry of persons or the intrigues of factions. The time will come when, from arbiters, they must become masters of the field. Meanwhile let them remember

'They also serve who only stand and wait.'

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. History of the Conquest of Peru. By Wm. H. Prescott. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1847.

2. Travels in Peru. By Dr. Tschudi. Translated from the German by Thomasina Ross. 8vo. London, 1847.

SPANISH

PANISH AMERICA is fortunate in her historian, and Mr. Prescott is fortunate in being the historian of Spanish America. The successive invasions of the two great empires in the New World-that of Montezuma in Mexico, and that of the Incas in Peru-by a few daring Europeans, offered each a subject, combining, with singular felicity, all that gives interest, life, grandeur, variety, and more than that, its proper bounds and unity, to an historical composition. Each is a distinct and a separate chapter in the history of man-each has something of that commanding insulation from the other affairs of the world which makes the histories of Greece, and still more of Rome, at the same time vast and majestic, yet simple and comprehensible. The whole of such history lies within a certain geographical sphere; its events are self-developed from manifest and proximate causes; it unfolds in gradual progression; even its episodes are part of the main design: the mind grasps it from its beginning to its end without effort, with the consciousness that it is commanding the theatre to its utmost extent. It has not, like modern history, to make a world-wide inquiry which spreads like the horizon without limit as it advances-to seek in the most remote ages, and in the most distant countries, the first impulses of the great movements which it describes-to unravel the interwoven policy of all the great nations of Europe; while it cannot be sure that it may not find in the archives of an obscure cabinet the secret of some vast political combination; and knows not therefore at what period it has exhausted the labour which ought to be imposed upon himself by a high-minded and conscientious historian.

These subjects are worthy, too, of a writer possessed of the true genius for historic composition, as in a certain sense unoccupied, and open at least to any one who may be disposed to fix the English standard upon the soil. Masterly as is the rapid view of Robertson, the general design and the limits of his work precluded him from that fulness of detail, that distinctness of de

VOL. LXXXI. NO. CLXII.

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