NEWS OF THE WEEK.
How much do those words convey It is a cardinal point in the history of the country. The eventful and memorable Admi- ninistration of Sir Robert Peel is over ; a new Whig aera begins. Last week's glimmering hope of "harmonious national councils" is dead, and party reassumes its sway. The change bodes little present good to the country ; how little, may be gathered from the delight that it will occasion to two sets of men,—the agricul- tural Protectionists, their fears for the Corn-laws greatly allayed; and the placehunters and parasites of the Liberal party, eager to make a profit out of the people. At the opening of the week, the public remained in uncertainty ; hopeful expectation in the ascendant, except among the mere agriculturists. The Duke of Wellington, who had been the source of doubt, was understood to have yielded assent to the measure of repeal on which Sir Robert Peel insisted. That as- sent, it was well known, was reluctant ; but the Duke's straight- forward and hearty disposition was regarded as a pledge that his acquiescence was ample and unqualified. With all his faults, the Duke is a thoroughly honest man, and he usually means what he says. The public curiosity and agitation were extreme. The artificial "excitement" at the time of petition-manufacturing about the Factory Bill, of the O'Connell trial, or any event of the last five years, was nothing compared to the genuine anxiety to be discerned in every man's face. Though party-spirit never had been so low, the dormant interest in politics was once more alive. The Free-traders bad become the predominant party in the state— the League had grown to be a national institution. Allowing its leaders every credit for their share in contributing to that pro- mising crisis, it cannot be said that their way of attempting to improve it was the most adroit. The Minister's decided and bold move in their direction was received with slights that certainly had no tendency to support him with his own followers.
On the other hand, the agriculturists were panic-stricken ; and with roused activity they could do no better for their own ends than to make a poor display of weakness. Single meetings were vaunted with a loudness that attested the poverty of their politi- cal resources and their hopes. The titled leaders of the party could devise no better check to the flood of agitation that threat- ened to overwhelm them, than bald assertions that there was no scarcity either of corn or potatoes ; Dukes fell to discoursing on the abundance of the good root, as if the words of assurance would of themselves suffice to feed the multitude ; one discovered a new food for the poor—curry-powder And the Duke of Richmond, the soi-disont maker and unmaker of Prime Ministers, was fain to take shelter from the consciousness of his own help- less state in blank disbelief that the protective policy to which he pinned his faith was threatened. The fate of the country, he said, rested with a small society of theorists in Bond Street,— which was as good as saying that he placed his reliance on nothing. There was every indication that the agriculturists had come to the end of their resources—that the worst to be feared from them was known, and that their forlorn hope was the dead Rassive resistance of votes, in the lobby or in the polling-booth. Their strength at a dead weight, both in Parliament and the con- stituencies is considerable; but the heaviest of dead weights• may be driven aside by the force of a vehement momentum. The combined attack by the League, the Liberal party, the Ministers, and their immediate adherents, had settled the doom of the Corn-laws.
But the onward rush was staid. There was a hanging back, at first unaccountable. Sinister reports arose. Mysterious uounsellings were levelled at some distinguished unknown—unknown, that is, by courtesy. It was obaerved that the Duke of Wellington did not attend the Cabinet Council on Monday. The counsellings were
now levelled at him without disguise. By Tuesday it was re- ported that the Duke, in abstaining from active cooperation with the Corn-law repeaters of the Cabinet, had virtually revoked his assent. The Privy Council of Wednesday was looked for with much solicitude. On Thursday morning it was known that Parliament was further prorogued till the 30th instant, not "then to meet for the despatch of business " : it was surmised that Ministers, the difference in the Cabinet still unhealed, were gain- ing time in order to further communings ; but later in the day it was known that, hopeless of any thorough understanding, they had resigned. All was over. The Duke of Wellington is accused as the sole cause of that untoward issue. It has been alleged in apology, that he held a great number of proxies intrusted to him when he was an up- holder of the Corn-law, and that consciousness of that trust made him hesitate to undertake the measure of repeal in the House of Lords. The excuse will not stand : he might have discontinued to hold the proxies, or have appealed to those who gave them. It was not his votes, but his moral influence over the Peers, which included votes, that was needed. Another excuse volun- teered for the Duke is his advanced years : the world are saying that he is old—that age brings wavering judgment, failing nerves, and peevish humours—that be may have been appalled by the black looks of friends, reproaching him with risk to their land- lord interests and their families. But the Duke himself confesses to no such weaknesses. The most potent reason, no doubt, is that in his heart he disliked the measure : he had not mastered the subject—perhaps had not taken the pains to do so : he had not advanced in that matter beyond 1828, and could not comprehend the actual posture of affairs and its "eventualities." He assented with his lips, because likewise lie could not understand Sir Robert Peel s resigning, and he yielded to the superior intellect : but when he was called upon to act as well as to acquiesce, he then discovered the absence of due motive within himself: he had become a sleeping partner, legally but not morally responsible for the acts of the firm. But it was not a time for any to be inactive : his slumbers were disturbed ; and to evade the trouble, he re- tired. The immediate cause of the present untoward crisis—we do not say it in blame, which were idle, but simply for the un- derstanding of the history—the immediate cause is the personal feeling of the Duke of Wellington. Such is the past. The present is ze nullity—the blank interval between that regretful but irremediable past and a most doubtful future.
The parting Ministers were preceded in their last journey from Osborne House by a despatch summoning Lord John Russell from Edinburgh. That step seems to have been arranged, and taken, during Sir Robert Peel's stay on a visit to the Queen, from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning. The Whigs, it is there- fore assumed, return to office. No other fact is known.
The first speculation is, what effect will the change have upon the question which brought about the crisis! what does Corn- law repeal gain by it ?—We fear that it is more likely to lose than to gain. The majority in the present Parliament are hostile to repeal. They might yield under coercion ; to the influence of Sir Robert Peel, who has been with a large section of the political world the representative and impersonation of what "must be," they might have bowed ; they might succumb to the Whig leaders if backed by "the people" : but the perceptive senses of Parliament are limited—the people have spoken in no authorita- tive way, either by petition or by the poll, and Parliament will not hear any other voice. Indeed, the known hostility of the existing Parliament has already created rumours of a dissolution. There will be all the sooner a general election, with its toil, its turbulence, its debasements, its boundless vice and corruption. And what will the constituencies do? The League boast of having gained four important counties, and say that the rest will iollow, as they have done before. The exertions of the League may not have been fruitless; but Mr. Cobden has at former times made out such an overwhelming preponderance of the landlord in- terest in the constituencies, that a much more evident and sweep- ing change seems to be needed in order to reverse their power. On the other hand, by the present showing, the Protec- tionists are no longer a falling party : they are for the moment triumphant ; they have vanquished the most power- ful man in the political world,—for it is they, through the hold that they had on the sympathies of the Duke of Wellington, that have driven Sir Robert Peel from office. On the subject of the Corn-laws the Ministerial influence of Sir Robert Peel is neutralized, destroyed : he may, and probably will, give a digni- fied and honourable support to the measure as proposed by his rivals ; and he will have his influence ; but it will be the in- fluence of a private gentleman, however distinguished, not the influence of a Prime Minister. The state of parties on the sub- ject is restored to what it was before the intervention of Sir Ro- bert Peel. As advanced by him, the measure would have had the support of the new " Conservatives," the Liberals, and the Free-traders ; the opposition, solely of the residuary Tories and the Worsley Whigs. As advanced by Lord John Russ:ell, it will have the support of the Liberals minus the Worsleys; the resist- ance of all the Tory-Conservative Opposition, except the few whose repute, station, and personal attachment pledge them to take part with their dissentient leader. There is then but a slender hope that the measure could be carried in the present Par- liament ; while we discern no sufficient change in the elements of parties throughout the country—of parties that create the Legis- lature—to promise a very different treatment in the next Parlia- ment. Carried in a few years it will be—"protection" will be swept away, perhaps with other things now as confidently thought to be safe as the Corn-laws were five years ago, for who shall say where roused agitation shall stop ? The defection of the Tories has prevented Peel and the Conservatives, in making a sacrifice of the Corn-laws, from obtaining as a quid pro quo the safety of those "other things "—exemption from those unknown conces- sions which popular impatience, exasperated by delay, may wrest from affrighted statesmanship. It is not only delay of this one measure, not only continuance of the Anti-Corn-law agitation, that is implied in the change. The agitation, managed according to the received science of "Liberalism" grown official, will resemble the Reform Bill agita- tion, but with a difference. Now, as then, when the resistance of the Commons is subdued, the people will be arrayed against the Rouse of Lords : but the Lords will come to the struggle with tainted consciences, amenable to just suspicions of corrupt and selfish motives ; for they are the great landowners, the dealers in rent, for whom the Corn-laws are chiefly maintained. We do not reiterate the cry that the landowners are corrupt and swayed by none except selfish motives ; but we say that when they become the forlorn hope in defence of interests most plainly and palpably their own, they will be without a shadow of appeal from the sus- picion. The future Whig Ministers may ultimately succeed in working up the popular excitement to the pitch needful for victory over the Lords ; but in the process the last remnant of respect for the Peerage will be fearfully shaken. Nor is such a shock to "our institutions" the whole evil to be apprehended. We are entering on a gloomy period. Trade is getting bad ; employment in the factory districts diminishes. The effects of the railway mania have yet to be felt in their real force. Money will be "scarce," When the Whigs last entered office, they found a surplus revenue, and they left a deficiency : they will again find a surplus—they cannot keep it up. The blame will not justly be all theirs, but the odium will. We all remember how, as the naughty boy of the family is scapegoat for the sins of the righteous children, every disaster was charged upon "the Whig Ministers." The national ills are always charged upon the Ministers for the time being. The coming time teems with disasters unprecedentA. The revenue will have to suffer the severest strains. Yet tile' future Ministers will be almost pre- cluded from acting effectually on considerations of revenue. They will be expected to cut further slices from the tariff. To continue the Income-tax would be to incur all the odium without the credit of that measure ; unless the Whig leaders treat the whole subject of taxation with a comprehensive grasp and daring, for which they evinced little aptitude before. At a time when national embarrassment will clamorously demand the utmost fertility in Ministerial resources, financial failure is almost predestined for their Administration.
The prospect of the change, indeed, is not all for the worse. Probably an improvement on the former Whig policy will be ob- served in Ireland ; while a greater popularity of the party will help at once to soothe irritation, and may serve Mr. O'Connell, if he retain some judgment, for an opportunity to back out of his most false positions. In the Colonies, too, it will not be difficult to attain credit by contrast with the recent management. But abroad l—is Lord Palmerston to return to the Foreign Office, eager for the fray with France, America, and all the world ? Neither abroad nor at home is the prospect hopeful for peace or prosperity. Party, a little while ago almost in abeyance, threatens to revive in its bitterest feuds—the contest of progress with institutions ; the vision of measures propounded for nothing but frustration comes over the memory, and seems to mirror the future ; and for token, the Corn-laws, which were never so near being repealed as they were last week, seem about to receive a new lease of their unblessed existence.
