THE TORY EX-PREMIER AT TAMWORTH.

SIR ROBERT PEEL has not raised his reputation for political sa- gacity by his late speech at Tamworth. Little more than half a

year has elapsed since lie addressed his friends and constituents in the same place, as Prime Minister. He then assured them, that he felt confidence in his power to conduct the Government of the country. This was after the results of the General Election

were known. We hesitate not to say that Sir ROBERT found a larger number of Members favourably inclined towards him— more Fair-trial men—than he had any right to calculate on. Some

who had been elected as true Reformers got into " the Derby

Dilly." Others openly ratted, and have voted with him ever sinee,—the wise Mr. RICHARD% for instance. Yet, with all this aid, Sir ROBERT, after floundering on amidst repeated defeats. found himself obliged to abandon his post within a few weeks of the time of his ignorant and presumptuous assertion at Tamworth, that he had obtained the requisite Parliamentary support. He had to account for this blunder to his Tamworth friends and retainers; and how does he accomplish the feat? Why, by con- fessing that he had actually expected O'CONNELL to have revived his quarrel with the Whigs, and that he had presumed the breach between them was irreparable. He quotes the mischievous pas- sage in the Speech of the King at the opening of the session of 1834, as proof of the hostility of the Whigs to O'CONNE LL ; and the letter of that gentleman to Lord DUNCANNON, as evidence of O'CONNELL'S undiminished hatred of the Whigs in January last —" one month before the Whigs came into office." This we find in the report of Sir ROBERT'S speech, but there must have been some mistake in the orator or the reporter ; as O'CONNELL in January was an active and powerful ally of the Whigs, and the letter to Lord DUNCANNON was written two or three months before the date assigned to it by Sir ROBERT, and while Lord MELBOURNE WAS in power.

The excuse cannot avail Sir ROBERT PEEL. At the time he assured his party that he had the requisite support to keep his place as Premier, the differences between O'Cosisram. and the Whigs had been laid aside; O'CoNsiELL had organized the Anti- Tory Association ; sixty Liberals, stanch opponents of the then Ministry, had been returned, mainly through his influence; it was quite impossible that even Sir ROBERT PEEL could have sup- posed that O'Consizo. would have remained neuter in the House of Commons, and he must have been an enormous fool if he had fancied for a moment that "the Member for Ireland" would have supported him. And yet Sir ROBERT PEEL has now the assurance to pretend that it was the unexpected and unprincipled junction of the Irish Radicals with the Whigs that upset all his calcula- tions. We give the Ex-Premier the choice of being considered the most perfect simpleton that ever meddled with politics, or as one who, in a formal statement to his constituents, does not scruple to assert what is palpably untrue. On one or the other horn of this dilemma he must stick.

In addition to the non-existent split between O'CONNELL and the Whigs, Sir ROBERT relied on the wisdom and popularity of the measures he intended to submit to Parliament. He enume- rates some of these. He was about to propose a Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales. Now of this it may be said, that a Minister may make numerous enemies by attempting to settle the Tithe question in England ; but that he can gain popularity or give satisfaction generally by any equitable measure for that purpose, is not to be supposed. We have always considered it one of those perplexing and difficult matters on which every Minister is entitled to the forbearance of friend and foe, and one which he may be pardoned for postponing until others of more urgency are disposed of. We cannot believe that Sir ROBERT PEEL expected to gain support to his Ministry by any plan for the Commutation of English Tithes. He also was prepared to abolish Church-rates. True, but how? Sir ROBERT'S plan was the same as that which, in the popular Lord ALTHORP s hands, was hooted out of the House of Commons.

It was a plan for compelling the Irish Catholics and the Scotch Presbyterians as well as the English Dissenters, to repair the churches of the wealthiest Ecclesiastical Establishment in exist-

ence. It was not the amount, but the principle of the Church-

rates, which Nonconformists mainly objected to: yet Sir ROBER1 proposed to lessen the burden, which was scarcely felt, and to extend the operation of the odious principle. Very statesmanlike this, in the thirty-fifth year of the nineteenth century ! —a plan certain to make its author popular in and out of Parliament, and to gain converts from the party hostile to the Minister !

The Ex-Premier declares, that his expenditure of the public money wouiti Lave been less than that of any former year; but be admits that the amount of reduction would only have been 400,0001.,

and that the Estimates were generally those of his predecessors. Had they been his own, the Country would have laughed at the notion of taking the amount of saving as the price of a Tory Ministry.

He admits that he refused to say any thing decisive respecting Corporation Reform; in other words, the head of the Government had not made up his mind how to act on one of the two great ques- tions of the day. He would not have been called upon to pledge himself to details—that he knew full well—but he dared not offend the Corporations, upon whose aid in the boroughs he had chiefly relied for the return of his friends, by avowing himself favourable to the principle of placing the municipal institutions of the country under a system of vigilant popular control. It was plain to all, that the contents of the Report of the Commissioners could not affect this principle. Sir ROBERT could not believe that the self-elective system had generally worked well. The real motive for his shirking the question of Municipal Reform was, his dread of offending the corrupt Aldermen, Town-Clerks, and their tools. It indicates a great deficiency in statesmanlike quali- ties in a Minister to imagine, as Sir ROBERT PEEL imagined, that the question of Corporate Reform, then known to be ripe for settle- ment, could be postponed for another year.

With respect to the Irish Church, Sir ROBERT PEEL was also compelled to take an unpopular course. This he must have known when he delivered his former speech at Tamworth. He knew that this question had upset, in the House of Commons, the Govern- ment of Earl GREY, supported as it was generally by the most powerful majority ever ranged under Ministerial banners. He knew that the MELBOURNE Ministry had only gained a respite for a few months on the question of Appropriation. On this point, at least, he could not have expected O'CONNELL to have stood aloof from the Liberals of other colours. Yet he imagined that he, with his tottering power, could obtain a vote of a million of money, and compel the Irish to pay tithes, without any settlement of the principal matter in dispute—without any measure for reduc- ing the income of the Protestant Establishment to a scale proper-. tionate to that of the Protestant population. This was absurd; and as every one predicted, if lie were not driven from power on any other question, he was sure to be wrecked on this. All these points Sir ROBERT went over in his speech delivered last week in Tainworth Town-hall. As it appears to us, he proved satisfactorily that his failure as a Minister was inevitable. He relied for support on what was certain to be his ruin. He mistook head-winds for favourable gales. Sir ROBERT derives consolation for the past and hope for the future from the fact that his Government was supported by a ma- jority of the English Representatives. We will tell him how it happened that he did not derive from this circumstance all the advantage he might have expected. The country knew how that majority had been obtained. It was notorious, before the expo- sure in the Parliamentary Committees, that in Bristol, Leicester, Worcester, Ipswich, Norwich, York, Yarmouth, Hull, and other places, the Tories had gained their seats through the purchased votes of the old, venal, pauper freemen ; and that the real worth, respectability, and property, even in those places, was opposed to the Tory Government. Hence the moral influence attached to the votes of the majority of the Representatives of England was not available to Sir ROBERT PEEL.

The fact, however, of the fate of the late Ministry being.de- termined by the votes of the O'CONNELL party, proves how silly as well as unfair it is in Sir ROBERT and his set to reproach the MELBOURNE Administration with relying on the same party for their majorities in the Commons. The Chronicle on Monday stated this point well, and proved that O'CONNELL'S support was as necessary to a Tory as to a Whig Ministry. In the present House of Commons, O'CONNELL holds the balance, and has turned it against the Tories—hence all this blubbering ! The Tories would go down on their knees for O'CoNNELL's aid. But he won't help them—that makes the difference. A considerable part of' Sir ROBERT PEEL'S speech was composed of very musty materials. He was at pains to persuade his audi- ence that it was better to live under the English Constitution than under a Republic, as in America. Few persons, perhaps, will think it necessary to dispute this point with him; but we protest against the outrages perpetrated on the very outskirts of American civilization and sway, or the acts of a mob under strong temporary excitement, being adduced as proofs of the inefficiency of Repub- lican governments to maintain peace and order in society. Mr. WEBSTER or Mr. CLAY might as fairly point to the scenes con- stantly acted in Ireland, or to the Bristol and Wolverhampton riots, as indications of the want of vigour of Monarchical Go- vernments, and the insecurity of life and property sub rege pio." One remark more. Sir ROBERT PEEL avows his approbation of the present tyrannical course of Louis PHILIP in France. If we had not his words before us in black and white we should hardly credit this. But he says—

For my part, I do not complain of the French King; who, I believe, is desirous of promoting the welfare of his people. It is not his fault that he is obliged to have recourse to the present proceedings agitating the Chambers. It is the fault of those few who are teaching the people to employ resistance, that the French Legislature is obliged to adopt severe laws. It is not the fault of the Government that the people of that country are made to submit to a greater tyranny than that to which they were subject under the ancient laws of the country."

The readers of the Spectator know what these measures are,— that they are as savage as impolitic; and as sure to bring about die overthrow of the present dynasty, as they are to rouse the in- dignation and hatred of the gallant nation now trodden under foot by their crafty but short-sighted tyrant. Yet these measures i Sir ROBERT PEEL thinks wise and inevitable; and he maintains that Louis PHILIP is not in fault, but his people,—just as the Yeomanry and Magistrates were not in fault at Manchester, but the foolish people, who would meet to petition for Reform, and whose blood laid the dust on that memorable day. Sir ROBERT PEEL'S principle is of the right Tory sort. The people are mis- governed and become troublesome; tyrannical laws are passed to coerce them ; and then the fault is rot in the original oppressor, but in the resisting people. We call upon the People of England to remember thc.se words of Sir ROBERT PEEL. The Duke of WELLINGTON was the admirer of CHARLES the Tenth and PoLioNac : Sir ROBERT PEEL goes further—he can find no fault in the renegade Louts PHILIP and THIERS.