The financial plans of Sir Robert Peel have not yet been fully expounded. Over-caution has always been his characteristic and his misfortune. It is beyond dispute, that, in point of tact and business talent, he has no superior; but he either does not possess, or will not exhibit, that frankness which is necessary to make a leader not only respected but beloved; and hence it is that he has again alienated from himself the confidence of a large proportion of his followers. Enough, however, has transpired to convince us that his scheme is of a much more comprehensive nature than any which has been yet submitted. Various acts of his administration have shown a strong tendency towards free-trade. The establishment of the property and income tax, though apparently laid on to retrieve the country from the effects of Whig mismanagement, seemed to us at the time very ominous of a coming fiscal change. It organized a machinery by means of which direct taxation, however graduated, became the simplest method of raising the revenue; and the revision of the tariff was doubtless another step in the same direction. If on these foundations it was intended to rear a perfect system of free-trade--by which we understand an abolition of all restrictions and protections, of all duties and customs on exports and on imports--and the substitution, for revenue purposes, of direct taxation, we think that the country may fairly complain of having been kept most lamentably in the dark. It is a great--nay, a gigantic plan--one which certainly would simplify or remove many of the intricacies of government,--it might possibly put an end, as is most desirable, to all clashing interests at home, and might open up abroad a new and greater field to the operations of British industry. All these are possible, nay, probable results--at the same time we are quite justified in saying, that if so wide and important a change was really contemplated, it was somewhat hazardous, and surely unprecedentedly bold, to keep it all the time concealed from public observation, and to give a different gloss and colour to the measures devised for its advancement. In reality, a more momentous question than this does not exist. The fortunes of every man in this country are more or less bound up with it,--it is one of the deepest import to our colonies, and calculated to affect the whole range of our commercial relations. We say further, that such a measure is not one which ought to be considered in detail--that is, brought about by the gradual abolition of different imposts without reference to the general end--but that, if entertained, it ought to be proclaimed at once, and carried into effect so soon as the nation has been enabled to pronounce an opinion upon it.