Chapter XIII: Conclusion (3)

"Here I must claim all the attention of my readers. Many of the
profession will, I have no doubt, be surprised that I should dwell
upon a subject, which appears of so little importance, saying that,
from the plain cook to the most professed, all know how to roast or
boil a piece of meat; but there I must beg their pardon. I will
instance myself, for, previously to my forming any intention of
writing the present work, I had not devoted the time necessary to
become professionally acquainted with it, always depending upon my
roasting cook, who had constant practice, myself only having the
knowledge of whether or not properly done. I have since not only
studied it closely, but have made in many respects improvements upon
the old system, and many discoveries in that branch which I am sure
is the most beneficial to all classes of society, (remembering, as I
have before stated, that three parts of the animal food of this
country is served either plain-roasted or boiled) My first study was
the fire, which I soon perceived as too deep, consumed too much coal,
and required poking every half hour, thus sending dust and dirt all
over the joints, which were immediately basted to wash it off; seeing
plainly this inconvenience, I immediately remedied it by inventing my
new roasting fire-place, by which means I saved two hundred-weight of
coals per day, besides the advantage of never requiring to be poked,
being narrow and perpendicular; the fire is lighted with the greatest
facility, and the front of the fire being placed a foot back in the
chimney-piece, throws the heat of the fire direct upon the meat, and
not out at the sides, as many persons know, from the old roasting
ranges. I have many times placed ladies or gentlemen, visiting the
club, within two feet of the fire when six large joints have been
roasting, and they have been in perfect ignorance that it was near
them, until, upon opening the wing of the screen by surprise, they
have appeared quite terrified to think they were so near such an
immense furnace. My next idea was to discontinue basting, perhaps a
bold attempt to change and upset at once the custom of almost all
nations and ages, but being so confident of its evil effects and
tediousness, I at once did away with it, and derived the greatest
benefit (for explanation, see remarks at the commencement of the
roasts in the Kitchen of the Wealthy,) for the quality of meat in
England is, I may say, superior to any other nation; its moist soil
producing fine grass almost all the year round, which is the best
food for every description of cattle; whilst in some countries not so
favoured by nature they are obliged to have recourse to artificial
food, which fattens the animals but decreases the flavour of the
meat: and, again, we, must take into consideration the care and
attention paid by the farmers and graziers to improve the stock of
those unfortunate benefactors of the human family."

How full of milky kindness is his language, still breathing the spirit of that predominant idea--the tranquillisation of the universe by "Copious Dinners!" He has given up "basting" with success. Men may as well give up basting one another. Nobody will envy the Regenerator the bloodless fillets worthily encircling his forehead, should the aspirations of his benevolent soul in his lifetime assume any tangible shape. But if a more distant futurity is destined to witness the lofty triumph, he may yet depart in the confidence of its occurrence. The most precious fruits ripen the most slowly. The sun itself does not burst at once into meridian splendour. Gradually breaks the morning; and the mellow light glides noiselessly along, tinging mountain, forest, and city spire, till a stealthy possession seems to be taken of the whole upper surface of creation, and the mighty monarch at last uprises on a world prepared to expect, to hail, and to reverence his perfect and unclouded majesty.

THE LATE AND THE PRESENT MINISTRY.

Our sentiments with regard to the change of policy on the part of Sir Robert Peel and his coadjutors, were early, and we hope forcibly, expressed. We advocated then, as ever, the principle of protection to native industry and agriculture, not as a class-benefit, but on far deeper and more important considerations. We deprecated the rash experiment of departing from a system under which we had flourished so long--of yielding to the clamours of a grasping and interested faction, whose object in raising the cry of cheap bread, was less the welfare of the working man, than the depression of his wages, and a corresponding additional profit to themselves. The decline of agricultural prosperity--inevitable if the anticipations of the free traders should be fulfilled--seems to us an evil of the greatest possible magnitude, and the more dangerous because the operation must be necessarily slow. And in particular, we protested against the introduction of free-trade measures, at a period when their consideration was not called for by the pressure of any exigency, when the demand for labour was almost without parallel, and before the merits of the sliding-scale of duty, introduced by Sir Robert Peel himself in the present Parliament, had been sufficiently tested or observed. Those who make extravagant boast of the soundness and sagacity of their leader cannot deny, that the facts upon which he based his plan of financial reform, were in reality not facts, but fallacies. The political Churchill enunciated his _Prophecy of Famine_, not hesitatingly nor doubtfully, but in the broadest and the strongest language. Month after month glided away, and still the famine came not; until men, marvelling at the unaccountable delay, looked for it as the ignorant do for the coming of a predicted eclipse, and were informed by the great astrologer of the day that it was put off for an indefinite period! Now, when another and a more beautiful harvest is just beginning, we find that in reality the prophecy was a mere delusion; that there were no grounds whatever to justify any such anticipation, and that the pseudo-famine was a mere stalking-horse, erected for the purpose of concealing the stealthy advance of free-trade.

If this measure of free-trade was in itself right and proper, it required no such paltry accessories and stage tricks to make it palatable to the nation at large. Nay, we go further, and say, that under no circumstances ought the distress of a single year to be assigned as a sufficient reason for a great fiscal change which must derange the whole internal economy and foreign relations of the country, and which must be permanent in its effects. There is, and can be, no such thing as a permanent provision for exigencies. Were it so, the art of government might be reduced to principles as unerring in their operation as the tables of an assurance company--every evil would be provided for before it occurred, and fluctuations become as unknown among us as the recurrence of an earthquake. A famine, had it really occurred, would have been no apology for a total repeal of the corn-laws, though it might have been a good reason for their suspension. As, however, no famine took place, we take the prophecy at its proper value, and dismiss it at once to the limbo of popular delusions; at the same time, we trust that future historians, when they write this chapter of our chronicles, will not altogether overlook the nature of the foundation upon which this change has been placed.

It requires no great penetration to discover how the repeal of the corn-laws has been carried. The leaders of a powerful party who for ten years misgoverned the country, were naturally desirous, after an exile of half that period, to retaste the sweets of office--and were urged thereunto, not only by their own appetites, but by the clamour of a ravenous crew behind them, who cared nothing for principle. While in power, they had remained most dogmatically opposed to the repeal of the corn-laws. Lord Melbourne denounced the idea as maniacal--he was supported in that view by almost every one of his colleagues; nor was it until they found themselves upon the eve of ejectment, that any new light ever dawned upon the minds of the steadfast myrmidons of Whiggery. The election of 1841, which turned them out of office made matters worse instead of better. They now saw no prospect of a restoration to power, unless they could adopt some blatant cry similar to that which formerly brought them in. Such a cry was rather difficult to be found. Their ignorance of finance, their mismanagement abroad, their gross bungling of almost every measure which they touched, had made them so unpopular that the nation at large regarded their return to office much as a sufferer from nightmare contemplates the arrival of his nocturnal visitant. Undeterred by scruple or by conscience, they would with the greatest readiness have handed over the national churches to the tender mercies of the Dissenters, if such a measure could have facilitated their recall to the pleasant Goshen of Downing Street. It was not however, either advisable or necessary to carry matters quite so far. Midway between them and revolution lay the corn-law question once despised but now very valuable as a workable engine. The original advocates of abolition were not prime favourites with the Whigs. The leaders of that party have always been painfully and even ludicrously particular abut their associates. Liberal in appearance they yet bind themselves together with a thin belt of aristocratic prejudice and though insatiable in their lust for public applause, they obstinately refuse to strengthen their coterie by any more popular addition. They found the corn-law question in the hands of Messrs Cobden, Bright and Wilson--men of the people--who by their own untiring energy and the efforts of the subsidiary League, had brought the question prominently forward, and were fighting independent of party, a sort of guerilla battle in support of their favourite principle. Our regard for these gentlemen is not of the highest order, but we should do them great injustice if we did not bear testimony to the zeal and perseverance they have exhibited throughout. These are qualities which may be displayed alike in a good and in an evil cause; and yet earnestness of purpose is at all times a high attribute of manhood, and enforces the respect of an enemy. With the constitution of the League we have at present nothing to do. The organization and existence of such a body, for the purposes of avowed agitation, was a fact thoroughly within the cognisance of ministers--it was checked, and is now triumphant, and may therefore prove the precursor of greater democratic movements.

The question of the corn-laws was, however, emphatically theirs. A body of men, consisting almost entirely of master manufacturers, had conceived the project of getting rid of a law which interfered materially, according to their views, with the profit and interests of their class. Their arguments were specious, their enthusiasm in the cause unbounded. They spared no exertions, grudged no expense, to obtain converts; they set up gratuitous newspapers, hired orators, held meetings, established bazars--in short erected such a complicated machine of agitation as had never before entered into the minds of democrats to conceive. With all this however, their success, save for political accident, was doubtful. The leaders of the League were not popular even with their own workmen. Some of the simpler rules of political economy are tolerably well known among the operative classes, and of these none is better understood than the relationship betwixt the prices of labour and of food. Cheap bread, if accompanied at the same time by a reduction of wages, was at best but a questionable blessing; nor were these doubts at all dispelled by the determined resistance of the master manufacturers to every scheme proposed for shortening the hours of labour, and ameliorating the social as well as the moral condition of the poor. All that the taskmaster cared for was the completion of the daily tale. The truck system--that most infamous species of cruel and tyrannical robbery--gave sad testimony of the extent, as well as the meanness, of the avarice which could wring profit even from the most degraded source, and which absolutely sought to establish, here, within the heart of Britain, a slavery as complete and more odious than that which is the disgrace of the American republic. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if the great mass of the working population regarded the proceedings of the Anti-Corn-law League with apathy and indifference. For, be it remarked, that the original Leaguers were by no means thorough-paced free-traders. Their motive was to deal most summarily with every restriction which stood in the way of their business, both as regarded export and import, and the establishment of a lower rate of wages. For such purposes they were ready to sacrifice every interest in the commonwealth except their own; but they showed no symptoms whatever of anxiety to discard restriction wherever it was felt to be advantageous to themselves. They were, in fact, the aspiring monopolists of the country. In their disordered imagination, the future position of Britain was to be that of one mighty workshop, from which the whole world was to be supplied--a commonalty of cotton, calico, and iron, with a Birmingham and Manchester aristocracy.

Such was the position of the League at the moment when the Whigs, eager for a gathering-cry, came forward as auxiliaries; and yet we have some doubt as to the propriety of that latter term. They did not come as helpers--as men who, devoted in singleness of heart to the welfare of their country, were anxious to assist in the promotion of a measure which the sagacity of others had discovered--but claiming a sort of divine right of opposition, similar to that which the lion exercises when the jackal has run down the prey. Accordingly, upon the corn-laws did the magnanimous Whig lion place its paw, and wheeze out a note of defiance against all interlopers whatsoever. Henceforward that question was to be a Whig one. English agriculture was not to receive its death from the ignoble hands of Cobden and Co.

Such was the move of the Whigs in the month of November last. A paltrier one, in every sense of the word, was never yet attempted nor did the simultaneous conversion of the whole party, with scarcely more than one or two honourable exceptions, present a very creditable specimen of the integrity of her Majesty's Opposition. They had become convinced--why or wherefore was not stated--that "the time had now arrived" for a total repeal of the corn-laws, and there was an end of the matter. They were prepared to vote for it in Parliament--to go to the country with it as their rallying-cry--to adopt it, in short, as their readiest stepping-stone into office. The old champions of repeal--the Leaguers--might go about their business. The conduct of the question was now transferred into the same hands which had become imbecile and paralysed in 1841, but which had since been renovated and invigorated by a wholesome course of five years' banishment from office.

It is somewhat remarkable, but rather instructive, that the Whigs do not seem to have contemplated any other financial alteration beyond the repeal of the corn-laws. Of an equitable adjustment of clashing interests, they appear to have had no idea. It is quite true that they had been of old well accustomed to a deep defalcation of the public revenue, and the probability of the recurrence of _that_ fact, may have been viewed by them as a mere bagatelle. From vague and general protestations of economy, we can form no proper estimate of the real nature of their plans. Economy, or that paltry system of paring, which passes with the Whigs for such, is, after all, a political virtue of minor import. What we require from every administration is the adoption of such measures only as shall tend to promote the general wealth and prosperity of the country; and, in consequence, render more easy the payment of the national burdens. Any fiscal change which affects the revenue, must, as a matter of course, affect some particular class of the community. A certain yearly sum has to be made up--no matter how--and every million which is remitted from one source of the revenue must be supplied by another. It is this necessity which renders the administration of our finances so difficult. Great Britain, when she obtained her place in the foremost rank of nations, had to pay a fancy price for that supremacy. Our system of taxation is not the growth of a few years, but of a large tract of time, embracing periods of enormous expenditure and of intense excitement. It is of the most complex and artificial nature; for the reservoir of the state is filled from a thousand separate sources, and not one of these can be cut off without occasioning a greater drain upon the rest.

In such a state of things, it is quite natural that each particular interest should be desirous to shift the burden from itself. This may not be right nor proper, but it is natural; and the desire is greatly fostered by the frequent changes which have of late been made in the financial department, and by the alteration and adjustment of duties. The attack of the League upon the agriculturists is a specimen of this, though upon the largest scale; and the Whigs were quite ready to have lent it their support, without any further consideration. That they were really and sincerely converts to the new doctrine, we do not believe--but, if so, it is little creditable to their understanding. The repeal of the corn-laws, as a solitary and isolated measure, is, we maintain, an act of gross injustice and impolicy--as part of a great financial reform, or rather remodelment of our whole system, it may bear a different character. The Whigs, however, in adopting it, gave no promise of an altered system. The creed and articles of the League were ready made, and sufficient for them, nor did they think it necessary to enlarge the sphere of their financial relief; and so, towards the end of last year, they presented themselves in the quality of aspirants for office.

It is to us matter of great and lasting regret, that this move was not met by Sir Robert Peel and his cabinet with a front of determined resistance. Whatever may be the opinions of the late premier, of Lords Aberdeen and Lincoln, or any other members of that cabinet, on the abstract advantages of free-trade, we still hold that they were bound, in justice to the great body of gentlemen whose suffrages in the House of Commons had carried them into power, to have pursued a very different course. It is in vain for them to take shelter under their privileges or their duties as ministers of the crown. Their official dignity by no means relieved them from the pledges, direct or implied, in virtue of which alone they were elevated to that position. The understanding of the country at large was broad and clear upon the point, that the agricultural interest should not suffer from the acts of the late administration; and it was their duty, as well as their true interest, to have kept that confidence inviolate.

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.

Our surmises are, of course, conjectural; for hitherto Sir Robert Peel has chosen to wear the mask of mystery, and has enunciated nothing clearly, beyond a single statement, to the effect that the late bills for the regulations of corn and the customs formed only a part of a larger measure. It is to this reserve that Sir Robert owes his defeat; and we cannot but deeply regret that he should have thought fit to persevere in it at so serious a cost as the dismemberment of his party. We have a strong and rooted objection to this kind of piecemeal legislation. It is, we think, foreign to the genius of this country, which requires the existence between the minister and his supporters of a certain degree of confidence and reciprocity which in this case has certainly not been accorded to the latter. The premier of Britain is not, and cannot be, independent of the people. It is their confidence and opinion which does practically make or mar him; and in the House of Commons, no measure whatever ought to be proposed by a minister without a full and candid admission of its real object, an exposition of its tendencies, and, at least, an honest opinion of its results.

There were, we think two courses open to Sir Robert Peel and his cabinet, either of which might have been adopted, after the issue of the Russell manifesto, with perfect consistency. The first of these, and the manlier one, was a steady adherence, during the existence of the present Parliament, to the established commercial regulations. They had already done quite enough to free them from any charge of bigotry--they had modified the corn-duties, with the consent even of the agricultural body, who were induced to yield to that change on the ground that thereby a permanent settlement of the question would be effected, and a baneful agitation discontinued. It is quite true that neither of these results followed. The settlement was not held to be permanent; and the agitation, as is always the case after partial concession, was rather increased than diminished. This, however, was a cogent reason why the ministry should not have proceeded further. Under their guidance, and at their persuasion, the agriculturists had already made a large concession, and that easiness of temper on their part ought not to have been seized on as a ground for further innovation. Within the walls of Parliament the Conservative party possessed a large majority; without, if we except the manifestations of the League, there was no popular cry whatever against the operation of the sliding-scale. Even with the prospect of a bad winter--an auxiliary circumstance not unlooked for by the Whigs--Lord John Russell and his colleagues would have had no chance whatever of unseating their political rivals, supported as these were by the votes of the country party. Had distress absolutely occurred, the means of remedying the more immediate pressure of the evil were in the hands of ministers, who, moreover, would have been cordially assisted by every one in any scheme calculated to ward away famine from the door of the industrious and the poor. In short, there was no political necessity for any such precipitate change.

Far better, therefore, would it have been for the late ministry had they remained uninfluenced by the interested conversion of the Whigs. By doing so they would have saved both character and consistency, without impairing in the least degree the strength of her Majesty's government--an excuse which the experience of a few mouths has shown to be utterly fallacious. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Was it conceivable that a change of policy upon a point on which an immense majority of the supporters were distinctly pledged, could _add_ to the permanent strength of the ministry?--was no allowance to be made for irritated feelings, for broken ties, for inevitable desertion on the part of those who believe themselves to be wantonly betrayed? The Duke of Wellington surrendered his own private opinion in order that her Majesty's government might be carried on! A sentiment which might have been applauded to the echo in ancient times but which, it must be confessed by all, is wholly inapplicable to the notions of the century in which we live. The result has proved it. Her Majesty's government was indeed able by joining with the Whig-Radical faction, or rather by adopting their game to carry the corn-bill by the most incongruous majority ever counted out in the lobby of St Stephens, but at their very next step the day of reckoning arrived. Indeed the presages of their coming fall was so apparent, that the Irish coercion bill--the measure which more than any other if we may believe the tissue of bloody and disgusting facts upon which its introduction was founded demanded attention and despatch--was put off from day to day, lest a hostile division upon it should oust the ministry before the corn-bill could be carried through the House of Lords and receive the royal assent. Had Sir Robert Peel and his supporters been wedded from their infancy upwards to free-trade opinions--had these been the golden dreams of their political life-principles which they had adhered to, and sworn by, through many a long year of adversity and opposition--they could not have manifested a more unseemly haste in seizing upon the favourable moment, and paralysing all the efforts of the agricultural party, at a time when their own official existence was fast drawing to its close. Public opinion, as we are now told from a very high source, ought always to guide a minister in the formation of his measures, irrespective of the considerations of party. The axiom is indeed a true one, but true only when followed out according to the letter of the constitution. Public opinion is to be gathered neither from the voice, however loudly expressed, of a clamant faction like the League--nor from the sentiments enunciated by a changeable press, which shifts oftener, according to the flow of its own proper interests, than the quicksands of the deceitful Solway--nor even from the votes of renegades, who promised one thing upon the hustings and promoted the reverse in Parliament--but from the sentiments of the electors of the country, from _their_ votes and _their_ understanding, which have not been appealed to since 1841, when deliberately and unmistakeably they pronounced in favour of protection.

This brings us to the alternative course, which, without any peril of honesty or of honour, was open to the late ministry. We mean, a clear and unreserved declaration of their future policy, and an appeal to the country for its support. If Sir Robert Peel was convinced in his own mind that the principles of protection which he had hitherto advocated were in themselves objectionable--that the time had arrived for a great experiment whereby the whole taxation of the realm should be remodelled, and the many smaller sources of revenue abolished, in order to make way for a broader and a simpler system--if, furthermore, he believed that the continuance even of such agitation as prevailed upon the subject of the corn-laws, was likely to become more serious and more hurtful to the general interest by the factious declaration of the Whigs--then, he had it in his power at once to test the opinion of the country, by offering to the crown the alternative of his resignation or a dissolution of Parliament; and upon obtaining the latter, to have put forth, in unambiguous language, a statement of the policy which he intended thereafter to pursue, so that the constituencies of the empire might fairly have chosen between adherence to the ancient, or adoption of the novel plan. We can admit of no excuse such as the stoppage of private business, or any other similar impediment. These are reasons which, if just, might apply to every dissolution of Parliament short of the statutory term; nor can they in the present instance be brought forward, since the late government were by their own confession seriously perplexed by the amount of railway and other bills which this session have been crowded before Parliament, and had sought, without discovering, some method which might check at an early stage the flood of untoward speculation. In such a crisis as this, private interests ought to have been as nothing in comparison with the public good. If the choice lay between free-trade in its widest sense, and protection, it was but common justice that the country should have had the opportunity of making its selection. In no other way can public opinion be gathered. At last general election the country declared for protection--ministers since then have manoeuvred that protection away. We were told that certain compensations were to be given; but, alas! the ministry is no more, and compensation has perished with it. The old balance has been disturbed, and the task of adjusting a new one--if that indeed be contemplated--is now left to weak and incompetent hands.

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 professions, and to maintain their trust inviolate.

We have no pleasure in referring to that tedious and protracted debate. Yet this much we are bound to say, that the country party, under circumstances of unparalleled discouragement, abandoned, nay, opposed by their former chiefs, and deprived of the benefit which they undoubtedly would have received from the great talents and untiring energy of Lord Stanley--a champion too soon removed from the Lower House--did nevertheless acquit themselves manfully and well, and have earned the respect of all who, whatever may be their opinions, place a proper value upon consistency. It was perhaps inevitable that in such a contest there should have been a display of some asperity. We cannot blame those who, believing themselves to have been betrayed, gave vent to their indignation in language less measured than becomes the dignity of the British senate: nor, had these displays been confined to the single question then at issue, should we have alluded even remotely to the subject. But whilst our sympathies are decidedly with the vanquished party--whilst we deplore as strongly as they can the departure of the ministers from their earlier policy at such a time and in such a manner--we cannot join with the more violent of the protectionists in their virulent denunciations of Sir Robert Peel, and we demur as to the policy of their vote upon the Irish coercion bill, which vote was the immediate instrument of recalling the Whigs to power.

Sir Robert Peel has told us that he is contented to be judged by posterity. He is so far wise in his appeal. The opinions of contemporaries are comparatively worthless on a matter like this, and very few of us are really able to form an unprejudiced opinion. But, unless we are greatly mistaken, he does not contemplate the possibility of appearing before that tribunal in his present posture and condition. There is much yet to come upon which he must depend, not only for a posthumous verdict, but for that which we hope he may yet receive, an honourable acquittal from those who are at present alienated from his side. As the foe to agricultural protection, he can look but for sorry praise--as the financial reformer of the whole national system, he may, though at heavy risk, become a public benefactor. Every thing depends upon the future. He has chosen to play a very close and cautious game. His is a style of legislation not palatable to the nation; for he has taken upon himself too boldly the functions and responsibilities of a dictator--he has aspired to govern the freest country of the world without the aid of party--and he has demanded a larger and more implicit confidence, even whilst withholding explanation, than any minister has ever yet exacted from the representatives of the people. The risk, however, is his. But clearly, in our opinion, it was not the policy of the protectionists, after the corn-bill was carried and past control, to take a nominal revenge upon their former leader, and eject him from office by a vote inconsistent with their previous professions. By doing so, they have relieved him of the necessity which must soon have become imperative, of announcing the full nature of his scheme of financial reform; they have contributed to an interregnum, possibly of some endurance, from which we do not augur much advantage to the public welfare; and, finally, they have in some degree relinquished the credit and the strength of their position. From the moment the corn-bill was carried, they should have resolved themselves into a corps of observation. Their numbers were formidable enough to have controlled either party; and in all future measures, whenever explanation was required, they were in a condition to have enforced it.

The step, however, has been taken, and it is of course irremediable. All that remains for them and for us is to watch the progress of events during the remainder of the present Parliament--a period which, so far as we can judge from recent disclosures, is likely to pass over without any very marked attempts at innovation. The Whigs are at present too happy in the resumption of office, to be actually dangerous. They are, or they profess to be, in high good-humour. They have thrown aside for a time the besom of Radical reform, and are now extending in place of it the olive-branch of peace to each different section of their antagonists. We look, however, a little below the surface, and we think that we can discover two very cogent reasons for this state of singular placidity. In the first place, the Whigs are in a minority in the House of Commons. Their political walk cannot extend a yard beyond the limits of Sir Robert's sufferance; and as the boundary line, like the Oregon, has not been clearly laid down, they will be most cautious to avoid transgression. In the second place, they are, as is well known, most miserably divided in opinion among themselves. There is no kind of coherency in the councils of the present cabinet. They cannot approach any single great question without the imminent risk of internal discord; and it is only so long as they can remain quiescent that any show of cordiality can be maintained among them. Accordingly, when we look to Lord John Russell's manifestoes, we are quite delighted with their imbecility. As a matter of course, he has put forward, in the first rank of his declarations, the usual vague rhetoric about the social improvement of the people, which is to be effected by the same means which the Whigs have always used towards that desirable end--viz. by doing nothing. Then there is the subject of education, which we must own opens up a vast field for the exertions of government, if they will only seriously undertake it. This, however, cannot be done without the establishment of a new department in the state, which ought to have been created long ago--we mean a board, with a Minister of public instruction at its head; but we hardly expect that Lord John Russell will vigorously proceed to its formation. Then come what are called sanatory measures, by which we understand an improved system of sewerage, and a larger supply of water to the inhabitants of the towns. On this point, we understand, the whole of the cabinet are united, and we certainly rejoice to hear it. It is certainly the first time in our experience, that a ministry has founded its claims to public support on the ground of a promised superintendence of drains and water-carts. Upon this topic, one of the members for Edinburgh was extremely eloquent the other day upon the hustings. We hope sincerely that he is in earnest, and that, for the credit of Whig legislation, since we cannot obtain it from the municipality, our citizens may occasionally be indulged with the sight of a sprinkled street in summer, and that some means will be adopted for irrigating the closes, which at present do stand most sorely in need of the sanatory services of the scavenger. This point, then, of sewerage we freely concede to the Whigs. Let them grapple with it manfully, annihilate all the water-companies in the realm, and give us an unlimited supply of the pure fresh element without restriction or assessment. They cannot be employed more harmlessly--nay, more usefully, than in such a task. Let them also look to the points of adequate endowment for hospitals, and the institution of public baths and washing-houses, and for once in their lives they shall promote measures of real importance and benefit to the poor.

But, unfortunately, sewerage and its concomitants form but a small part of the considerations connected with the government of this country. A ministry may ask some popularity, but it can hardly found a claim for permanency on the fact of its attention to drains. In the first place, Lord John Russell and his colleagues have serious difficulties before them in the state of the public revenue. The late fiscal changes cannot but have the effect of causing a most serious defalcation, which must be immediately and summarily supplied. It will not do to attribute this defalcation to the acts of the late government, since the Whigs were not only the cordial supporters of these measures, but were ready to have taken the initiative. They are as much answerable as Sir Robert Peel, if, at the end of the present year, the accounts of Exchequer shall exhibit a large deficiency, which cannot, consistently with their own policy, be remedied by any new indirect taxation. The moment that free-trade is adopted as a broad principle, there can be no going back upon former steps. There is no resource left except a direct appeal to the purse, which may, indeed, be made by an additional income-tax, if the country are of a temper to submit to it. But we apprehend that a good deal of negotiation will be necessary before any such measure can be carried. The agriculturists are not in a mood to submit to any further burdens. The eyes of the productive classes are by this time a little opened to the effects of foreign importation, and their trade has been already much crippled by the influx of manufactured articles from abroad. Above all, a strong conviction is felt, both in England and in Scotland, of the gross injustice of the system which throws the whole burden of the direct taxation upon the inhabitants of these two countries, whilst Ireland is entirely free. It is a system which admits of no excuse, and which cannot continue long. The immunities which Ireland already enjoyed were any thing but reasons for exempting her from the operation of income-tax. It is not a question of relative poverty, for the scale is so adjusted that no man is taxed except according to his possession; and it does seem utterly inexplicable, and highly unjust to the Scotsman who pays his regular assessments, and a per centage besides upon his income of L150, that the Irishman, in similar circumstances, should be exempt from either charge. It was this feeling, we believe, more than any other, which rendered the increased grant to Maynooth college obnoxious to the greater part of the British nation; and which, setting aside all other considerations, would at once seal the fate of any ministry that might be rash enough to propose the endowment of the Romish clergy out of the consolidated fund. An increased direct taxation, therefore, would, under present circumstances, be a most dangerous experiment for the Whigs; and yet, if they do not attempt it, how are they to make good the almost certain deficiency of the revenue?

Probably that point may be postponed for future consideration. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and the sugar-duties are more immediately pressing. Whether the West Indian proprietors are to receive the _coup-de-grace_ during the present year, or whether they are to be allowed a further respite, seems at the present a matter of absolute uncertainty. It is, however, merely a question of time. Free-trade cares not for the colonies; and, indeed, whilst the work of protective abolition is going on so rapidly both at home and abroad, no isolated interest has reason to expect that it will be exempted from the common rule. Ireland, it seems, is to have an extension of the franchise; and with respect to her social grievances, Lord John Russell is hopeful that his ministry will be enabled "to afford, not a complete and immediate remedy, _but some remedy--some kind of improvement; so that some kind of hope may be entertained that_, SOME TEN OR TWELVE YEARS HENCE, the country will, by the measures we undertake, be in a far better state with respect to the frightful destitution and misery which now prevail in that country." Here is a precious enunciation of principles and grammar!--A complete remedy for the Irish social grievances is avowedly out of the power of the most intrepid of Whig politicians--a confession of which we presume Mr O'Connell will not be slow to avail himself. But then he expects--or, to use his own phraseology thinks--"it is _most likely_ to be in our power to afford" _some_ remedy, _some_ kind of improvement, the nature of which is still in embryo, but which shall be so matured that _some_ kind of hope may be entertained, that in _some_ ten or twelve years hence the country may be in a far better state with regard to the destitution which now prevails in the country! Was there ever, we ask, in the whole history of oracles, any thing more utterly devoid of meaning, more thoroughly and helplessly vague, than the above declaration? Why, the whole hopes of the noble scion of the house of Russell are filtered away to nothing before he has achieved the limits of his sentence. There are four or five different stages of trust through which we decline to follow him, being perfectly convinced that the hope of his being likely to introduce any such measure, is quite as improbable as the implied hope conveyed a little further on, to the effect that he and his party may be allowed to remain for some ten or twelve years in office, until these exceedingly musty ideas all have resolved themselves into a tangible form.

In the mean time it is some gratification to know that the Churches are to be spared for the present. Not that Lord John Russell has any abstract love for these institutions--for he has no objection to Romish endowment out of the funds of the Irish Protestant Church--but then he is quite aware that any such move on his part would lead to his instant and ignominious expulsion from power. Earl Grey is of a different opinion; but the construction of the present cabinet is such, that it admits of every possible diversity of opinion, and was, in fact, so planned by the new premier, that the lion and the lamb might lie down together, and Radical Ward be installed in peace by the side of Conservative Lord Lincoln and of Sidney Herbert, about a year ago the pride of the protectionists!

There is something painfully ludicrous in Lord John's exposition of the theories of cabinet construction. It was, as he experienced last winter, quite impossible to bring the chiefs of his party to any thing like a common understanding. The revelations of Mr Macaulay to his correspondent in Edinburgh, gave any thing but a flattering picture of the unity which then pervaded the councils of Chesham Place. It is gratifying to know, that individuals who at that time expressed so exalted an opinion of the intellects and temper of each other, should have met and consented to act together in a spirit of mutual forgiveness. And we are now asked to receive from the lips of Lord John this profound political axiom, that it is not at all necessary that members of the same cabinet should agree in their individual opinions. We have all heard of cabinets breaking up through their own internal dissensions. Such a disruption, in the eyes of Lord John, was an act of egregious folly. What was to have prevented each man from voting according to his own opinions? On urgent questions, he admits, they should maintain some show of unanimity; but, with all respect for such an authority, we think he is unnecessarily scrupulous. Why quarrel or dissolve upon any single point? Let every man vote according to his own mind--let every question be considered an open one--and we shall answer for the stability of the ministry. In fact, Lord John Russell has at last discovered the political _elixir vitae_. No disunion can break up his administration, because disunion is the very principle upon which it has been formed. He has sought support from all classes of men. He is so far from disapproving of Conservative doctrines, that he absolutely has solicited three members of the late government to hold office under him. He asks no recantation of their former opinions, and binds them down to no pledges for the future. Their associates, it is true, are to be men of liberal opinions, some of them verging upon Chartism, and others avowed ecclesiastical destructionists; but that need not deter them from accepting and retaining office. We once knew a worthy Highland chief--a more hospitable being never breathed--who towards the conclusion of his third bottle, invariably lapsed into an affectionate polemical mood, and with tears in his eyes used to put this question to his friends--"Why can't a man be a Christian and a good fellow at the same time?" This is just the theory of Lord John Russell. He can see no objection to diversity of opinions, so long as the whole body of the cabinet are agreed upon one essential point--that of holding fast by office; and surrendering it upon no account whatever.