A single word of earnest admonition in conclusion. The next few months
or weeks must decide one important practical question, which we think
has been unfolding itself silently before the minds of considerate men
for the last few years, and which, whether they will or no, men of all
opinions must weigh well, with the deliberation due to their own safety
and self-interest, and with that freedom from personal pique or party
spirit which the emergency demands. We are far from pinning our faith to
individual characters, or thinking that the welfare of the state can be
wrapped up in the fortunes or progress of a single mind. But still the
question will recur, whether, in the existing state of the country, and
when all circumstances are balanced together, Sir Robert Peel is not the
statesman of the day, as being at once the _most Conservative_ and the
_most Liberal_ minister whom the opposite and conflicting forces in
operation in this great country are likely to suffer or submit to. He
may not be so tenacious of certain points as some would wish, or so
lavish of concession as may be wished by others. But we speak of him on
the one hand as witnesses to the fact, that his past measures, though
calculated to excite apprehension, have been found, _by experience_, to
carry with them no detriment to agriculture, or to any other great
interest in the country; and, on the other hand, in the confident
anticipation that nothing has recently occurred in his proposed course,
that will not, in due time, be fully and satisfactorily explained. With
these views of Sir Robert Peel's conduct, we cannot avoid asking,
whether when we take him all in all, and appeal to the standard of
practical good sense and prudence which wisdom will alone employ in such
a momentous discussion, there is any other man now in the field, or
likely to appear, to whom all parties can look so confidently, as an
equitable and safe arbitrator of our national differences? If there is
such a man, let him be pointed out. Sure we are that it is _not_ Lord
John Russell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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