Every expectation of the authors of these measures has been accomplished, and every prediction of their opponents discredited by the results, so far as they are yet developed. The Corn Bill and the Canada Corn Bill, have made bread cheaper and have not ruined the British growers of wheat and barley, or thrown British land out of cultivation. No complaints are preparing to be laid before Parliament of the effect of what has been done. When meetings of land-owners and farmers are held, it is either for the purpose of stimulating each other to new and better directed efforts to improve the cultivation and augment the produce of the British soil, or to make head against the struggles and machinations of a league of manufacturers, which seeks the entire abolition of duty for the protection of British agriculture, an object to which the government of Sir Robert Peel is as resolutely opposed as any assembly of land-owners and farmers that can be gathered together in the United Kingdom. But their meetings are remarkable for the utter absence of every thing like denunciation of the measures already adopted; and the probability is, that Parliament will meet, while not a single petition from any agricultural body is ready to be laid upon the table of Lords or Commons, for higher or other protection than that which the Corn Laws introduced by the present government practically afford.

Neither has the Bill, permitting the Importation.

of Foreign Cattle, ruined, as was foretold, the British grazier. It has made the price of butchers' meat somewhat more moderate than it was, and has afforded a guarantee to our increasing population, that fresh animal food shall not become a luxury accessible only to the rich; but the pastures of England are not overrun, nor the shambles of England overloaded with Foreign Oxen or Sheep. The fact I believe to be, that the import of live cattle and sheep, during the past year, exhibits a considerable falling off as compared with the experimental imports of 1842.

Neither have the Mining interests of Great Britain, their tender solicitude for which, threatened at one moment to alienate some very able and influential Tories from Sir Robert Peel's administration, suffered, as they expected, under the operation of the new scale of duties. Every Mining interest, on the contrary, is at this moment in a far more flourishing condition than it had been for some time previous to the accession of the present government to power. No voice from Cornwall, or Wales, or Staffordshire, is heard to re-echo, under the pressure of experience, the anticipatory wailings of Sir Richard Vyvyan.

Neither has the Shoe Making interest of England been crushed, as some advocates of protection foretold, by the invigorated competition of its foreign rivals. The sons of St. Crispin, if they have suffered at all, have at least suffered with a silent

calmness which could little have been expected from them.

It were tedious to do so, or I might go through Sir Robert Peel's reduced Tariff of Import Duties, article by article, and at every step repeat the same observation. The plain truth is, and the state of the revenue abundantly attests it, that the condition of the people generally, in respect to the power of obtaining the necessaries and comforts of life, is sensibly improved; and it is already manifest, that during the approaching Session of Parliament, fewer complaints will be heard of the physical sufferings of the people than have necessarily been forced upon the attention of the Legislature, in each of a long series of preceding Sessions.

Nor is there any better foundation for the censures upon the present government, which have been hazarded by certain Conservatives, on account of its presumed failures or omissions. These omissions, in every instance that has been advanced with the least show of plausibility, are the effect, not of negligence or weakness, but of calm deliberation, and of conscious power. The cry that nothing was done to repress a dangerous agitation in Ireland, having for its object the dismemberment of the Empire, has been answered in due season,-by a vigorous manifestation of the strength of government, so well-timed, that it at once prostrated the agitators, and exposed all the loud words of vapour and menace, in which they

had so freely indulged, to just and general derision;and by a temperate appeal to the law, which must, at least, have the effect of deciding the important question, whether the laws and the means of administering them, which actually exist in Ireland, can any longer be relied upon, with prudence and safety, for the suppression and punishment of disloyal conspiracy and turbulent sedition.

The

But, we have been asked, why did not Sir Robert Peel's administration reproduce after their accession to power that Registration of Voters Bill for Ireland, which, under the able and eloquent guidance of Lord Stanley, had so materially damaged their predecessors? The answers to this unfriendly imputation of inconsistency are manifold, obvious, and conclusive. government of Sir Robert Peel was early enabled to perceive that work was preparing for it in Ireland, of more urgent importance than an amendment of the Law of Elections, work with which any immediate attempt to accomplish the latter object would have interfered. It anticipated, that from other social ameliorations in progress or in contemplation, a more satisfactory or better defined basis of the Parliamentary franchise might emerge, than could be found at the present moment. And, above all, it could not fail to comprehend, (or expect such failure on the part of any of its friends) how much the question of correcting and purifying the Registration of Irish Voters had lost in importance and in urgency, since the constituencies of Great Britain

had, once and for ever, taken out of the hands of a section of Irish Members of the House of Commons, the revolting and unnatural power it had recently possessed and exercised, of making and unmaking, of intimidating, coercing, and enslaving, the Cabinet Council of the British Sovereign.

The

Again, we are told that Sir Robert Peel's government manifested censurable weakness in not forcing through Parliament, as it certainly might have done, the Educational clauses of its Factory Bill. question that arises here I admit to be a doubtful one. It is, whether an important measure, once introduced to Parliament by the Ministers of the Crown, ought thenceforward to be regarded by them exclusively in its relation to the public advantage, or to be cherished independently of this primary inducement, with a mere view to the dignity of government, and as a manifestation of its firmness and power? I will not attempt to depreciate the importance of the latter of these considerations. I believe that no other than a very strong government, strong alike in the strength and confidence of its supporters, and in the conscious rectitude of its own purposes, could have afforded to withdraw such enactments after having once submitted them to Parliament. But I also believe that the present was and is such a government as I have described; and, believing this, I am compelled also to believe that after the measure had been found to encounter such an opposition, and to excite such feelings and

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