The most remarkable circumstance is the intense interest and curiosity which are felt about Peel's opinions and intentions. Everybody asks with anxiety what he says, what he thinks, what he will do. His vanity may well be gratified by the immense importance which is attached to his opinions and to the course he may take and recommend; his power seems to be as great out of office as it ever was in office; nothing was ever so strange or anomalous as his position. Half the commercial world attributes the distress and danger to his Bill; he is liked by nobody. The Conservatives detest him with unquenched hatred, and abuse him with unmitigated virulence. The Whigs regard him with a mixture of fear, suspicion, and dislike, but treat him with great deference and respect. There is a party which is called by others and by itself, but not (publicly at least) acknowledged by him as his party; it is far from numerous, and too weak for substantive power. He has never opened his lips on the great questions of the day, and is an oracle shrouded in mystery. It would seem as if a man thus abandoned by the majority of his former political friends and adherents, without personal attachments and following, an object of hatred to one party and of suspicion to the other, the country at large or a great proportion of it attributing to his financial measures the distress by which all are afflicted or endangered, could by no possibility occupy any great and important position in the country: nevertheless he does. All eyes are turned upon him as if by a sort of fascination. If the country could be polled to decide who should be Minister, he would be elected by an immense majority. There is a prevalent opinion that he _must_ return to power; nobody knows when or how, but the notion is that the present men are weak, that the public necessities and perils are great, and if a crisis of difficulty and danger should arrive, that Peel is the only man capable of extricating the country from it. The consequence of all this is that his _prestige_ and his influence are enormous. [Sidenote: THE BANK CHARTER ACT SUSPENDED.]