The enthusiasm of progress--Carlyle and Disraeli--Protection and Free Trade--Sir Robert Peel the Protectionist Champion--High Church movement at Oxford--The Church as a Conservative power--Effect of the Reform Bill--Disraeli's personal views--Impossible to realise--Election of 1841--Sir Robert Peel's Ministry--Drifts towards Free Trade--Peel's neglect of Disraeli--Tariff of 1842--Young England--Symptoms of revolts--First skirmish with Peel--Remarkable speech on Ireland. [Sidenote: ENGLISH PROGRESS] The discovery of the steam engine had revolutionised the relations of mankind, and during the decline of the Melbourne Ministry was revolutionising the imagination of the English nation. The railroads were annihilating distances between town and town. Roads were opening across the ocean, bringing the remotest sea-coasts in the world within sure and easy reach. Possibilities of an expansion of commerce practically boundless inflated hopes and stimulated energies. In past generations England had colonised half the new world; she had become sovereign of the sea; she had preserved the liberties of Europe, and had made her name feared and honoured in every part of the globe; but this was nothing compared to the prospect, which was now unfolding itself, of becoming the world's great workshop. She had invented steam; she had coal and iron in a combination and quantity which no other nation could rival; she had a population ingenious and vigorous, and capable, if employment could be found for them, of indefinite multiplication. The enthusiasm of progress seized the popular imagination. No word was tolerated which implied a doubt, and the prophets of evil, like Carlyle, were listened to with pity and amusement. The stars in their courses were fighting for the Free Traders. The gold-discoveries stimulated the circulation in the national veins, and prosperity advanced with leaps and bounds. The tide has slackened now; other nations have rejected our example, have nursed their own industries, and supply their own wants. The volume of English trade continues to roll on, but the profits diminish. The crowds who throng our towns refuse to submit to a lowering of wages, and perplex economists and politicians with uneasy visions: we are thus better able to consider with fairness the objections of a few far-seeing statesmen forty and fifty years ago. [Sidenote: THE CORN LAWS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY]