We have regretted the loss the Conservative party will suffer
in the singular impartiality, and the calm, clear, sagacious judgment of Sir William Heathcote. We cannot help regretting also their loss of one of the most honest, clever, and sagacious of their party leaders in General Peel, who is retiring from Parliamentary life. In him the Conservatives lose a type,—the type of the good- humoured, pugnacious, sharp-witted, old port-wine Tory, an excellent debater, more jocose than humorous, though not without humour, not at all inclined either to disguise or to be ashamed of old-fashioned prejudices, and yet clear-headed and businesslike in administration. He never assented, we believe, to his brother's policy in the emancipation of the Catholics, and very possibly thinks it a blunder to this day. He was one of the few to be per- fectly impenetrable to Mr. Disraeli's educating genius with regard- to Reform, and as he would soon have needed more education on the Irish Church question, it is well perhaps that he should close a not inglorious political career.
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