But how has this been brought about?—how is it that this Government has
so rapidly lost the favour of the people, and been reduced to the
position of being a Government on sufferance? The reason is to be found
in that general discontent and excitement which from Europe have
infected England. Men are excited at what is passing abroad, and
distrustful of affairs within. The want of union and mutual distrust
which exist in headquarters, is spread throughout the kingdom. Those
feelings of distrust and disagreement existing in the Government become
every day more apparent, and add to the anxiety with which its motions
are regarded. This distrust and anxiety must be prevalent whilst this
state of things continues. It is only by the reascendancy of the
Conservative party that they can be surmounted, and by the advent to
power of men who have confidence in each other, who have unity of
sentiment amongst themselves, and who are backed by united followers;
who have, each and all, the same objects in view—viz., a firm resistance
to Russian aggression and the establishment of a durable peace, the
maintenance of our Protestant religion, and justice to all parties in
the State. Unity of sentiment amongst the members of a government is of
the greatest importance to the happiness and welfare of the people.
There never, probably, was a Cabinet in which there were so many “open
questions” as the present. Since so many of them are Peelites, we may as
well have the opinion of Sir Robert Peel himself on those self-same open
questions. We subjoin an extract of a speech delivered in 1840 by that
eminent statesman, on a motion of want of confidence in Ministers, in
which he refers, without any ambiguity of expression, to the fatality of
open questions:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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