Most heartily, therefore, do we regret that these great changes, which have free-trade for their ultimate object, were commenced in the present Parliament. Sir Robert Peel cannot but have foreseen--indeed he acknowledged it--that the corn-bill could not be carried without a complete disorganization of the Conservative party. In his eyes this may seem a small matter, but we view it very differently. It has shaken, and that to a great degree, the confidence which the people of the country were proud to place in the declarations and sincerity of the government. It has generated a belief, now very common, that the plain course of open and manly dealing has been abandoned for a system of finesse; and that for the last few months--it may be longer--the leaders of the two great political parties have been playing a match at chess, with less regard to the safety of the instruments they were using, than to the exhibition of their own adroitness. Perhaps no minister of this country ever owed more to party than Sir Robert Peel; and yet, without the excuse of strong necessity, he has not only abandoned that party, but placed it in a false position. The majority of the Conservatives were sent to Parliament under clear and distinct pledges, which honour forbade them to violate. This of the corn-laws was so far from being a discretionary question, that the continuance or discontinuance of agricultural protection was the great theme of the hustings at last general election, and their opinions upon that point became the touchstone on which the merits of the respective candidates were tried. It is worse than vain to talk of Parliamentary freedom, and the right of honourable members to act irrespective of the opinion of their constituents. They are neither more nor less than the embodied representatives of that opinion; and no man of uprightness or honour--we say it deliberately--ought to retain his seat in the House of Commons after the confidence of his supporters is withdrawn. It is neither fair nor honourable to taunt members with having been too free and liberal with their pledges before they knew the policy of their leaders. All men do not possess that happy ambiguity of phrase which can bear a double construction, and convey one meaning to the ear of the listener, whilst another served for the purposes of future explanation. It is not pleasant to believe that we are moving in an atmosphere of perpetual deceit. It is not wholesome to be forced to construe sentences against their obvious and open meaning, or to suspect every public speaker of wrapping up equivoques in his statement. At the last general election there was no misunderstanding. The Conservative candidates believed that their leaders were resolved to uphold protection; the people believed so likewise, and in consequence they gave them a majority. Situated as the protectionists were, they had no alternative but to act in accordance with their first