In our opinion, the country has answered these questions decidedly in the affirmative, and thereby placed firmly in power an able, united, Protestant Conservative Government. It is easy for newspapers, day after day, and week after week, to repeat the cuckoo cry that Ministers are impostors, and that their policy is, in the vulgar phraseology of the hour, “_a sham_.” The progress and the result of the general election of 1852 demonstrate that these paper pellets cannot batter down the rock of national firmness and good sense. Had it been otherwise, Ministers must have fallen ignominiously within the first week of their presuming to take office; for the wordy batteries of the “Liberal” press have been blazing upon them, double-shotted, from morning to night ever since. Yet the Funds have never gone down, and Ministers remain in their places, not with downcast looks and desponding hearts, but with cheerful confidence and resolution, satisfied that the voice of the nation has pronounced in their favour, and has also declared that it will regard their acts with indulgence and forbearance, and will not tolerate faction or intrigue. There is now a fair prospect that a united and powerful Government may do incalculable good to the country and the Sovereign which has called that Government into existence. Its mission is to act, where its predecessor could only talk; to consolidate and strengthen, where that predecessor could only disturb and unsettle; to terminate the wretched strife of classes, by a just, cautious, firm, and comprehensive policy. Its mission is, further, to repel the insolent advances of Democracy and Popery, which will now find that the day of vacillation and vicious concession has passed away. We say it with pain, that we believe the interests of Protestantism are no longer safe in the keeping of Lord John Russell, though individually he may be true at heart in his abhorrence of the wicked and tyrannical spirit of Popery; but his political exigencies have fettered his will, and chilled his spirit. His fondness of power inclines him to compromises and sacrifices, which very often look only too like sacrifice of principle and conviction. In like manner we fear him in his dalliance with Democracy. In tampering with the great political adjustment of 1832, he is seen standing irresolutely with his foot upon the steep inclined plane which leads to confusion and anarchy, surrounded by those who are incessantly goading and jogging him into commencing the descent. We believe that in his heart he despises the clique of Cobden, Bright, &c.; he has in fact contemptuously told them so to their very faces;[20] yet are we grievously apprehensive that he is now prepared to join them, faintly protesting, but suffering them to impel him infinitely further than he himself thinks it safe or wise to go. That he has lost the confidence of the country, few will question; and is that confidence now