NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Times, at this critical juncture, sustains its reputation for being the first to announce " great facts ": it assures the public that Sir Robert Peel, with the concurrence of his Cabinet, is to call Parliament early in January, in order to repeal the Corn- laws. The Leading Journal deserves to have the satisfaction of making this announcement, since no journal has, of late, so effec- tively advocated the cause of free trade. The fact to which it refers cannot of course be authoritatively known ; but if there can be no positive confirmation, there is no clear contradiction, and we may assume the statement to be in the main something like what has been contemplated. Better news never broke upon the country ; for the measure promised involves far more than corn, or even relief under the pressure of impending dearth. With many, Lord John Russell's letter will obtain the credit of having brought the Minister to the critical point. It may have con- tributed to that result, but we think not solely. It undoubtedly removes one troublesome obstacle from the path of the Tariff- reformer—the fixed-duty figment ; a shadow in itself, but one which kept up a semblance of Conservatism on the Whig leader's part that would have deterred many a timid Conservative, even of Sir Robert Peel's own section, from going beyond, in sheer repugnance to be called "Whig and something more." It was a thing never to be realized, but of influence to hinder the real- izing of something better. On the other hand, if the Minister were a dishonest or still doubting Free-trader, such a lettc.e. might have done positive harm. It was, in spite of its disclaim= ors, a distinctly party move : its factious retrospective allusions were internal evidence of that fact ; and it was at once hailed as a party manceuvre—the Ultra-Whig Metropolitan journal called it "a shot betwixt wind and water" at the tottering Ministry. It might naturally, therefore, have provoked a counter-movement of an equally factious character : and so it would have done if Sir Robert Peel were a mere party man,—which he is not, what- ever may have been the deeply-instilled habits of his early official life. If he were favourable to the measure, but timid, such a sally might have alarmed him as a party leader' and have induced him to abandon his enterprise in order to fall back upon his threatened standard. Again, were he really adverse to repeal, it would have served him in rallying his party, consolidated by fear, to resist aggression ; and the repeal would have been thrown over for another session, if not, after a desperate struggle in the constituencies, for another Parliament. Or, if none of those motives weighed with the Premier himself, it might have broken up his Cabinet ; and the man most capable of giving effect to the measure would be driven from power.
In such case there must have been another Government ; and two changes of that kind will occur to every one.
Sir Robert Peel and his immediate supporters in the mea- sure might retire, leaving- the dissidents of the Cabinet, if there be such, in power. Rumours of such dissent have floated abroad, and -have even reached Vienna. However worthless they may be men will speculate on rumours when there is nothing else 4o argue from. Suppose, then, that the Duke of Wellington bias essayed to form a Cabinet, adverse to the Pre- mier's policy, perhaps not in Corn-law repeal alone,—that there had been revived a veritable Tory Government, such as would delight the Ultra-Protectionists of England and the Orangemen of Irèend. Such a Cabinet must of course not merely suffer but assert a protective policy in trade, a coercive policy in Ireland : that is to say, it would rekindle all Reform agitation, political as well as commercial, in England ; and drive Ireland into a rebellion enjoying a large sympathy in England. Imagine the tumult out of doors, the violent and inflammatory debates in Parliament, disturbing all the functions of government, distracting all coin- Mercial enterprise, and implicating the Crown itself, by its Mi-
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nisters—for of course the Crown for a time at least would support its Ministers—in a troublous if not hazardous civil contest. How could such a Cabinet, so engaged, conduct the difficult foreign questions of the day,—doubly difficult for every Government known to be embarrassed ? But that is not all : the Government would have to act not only in the teeth of the moderate Conserva- tives, not only without Sir Robert Peel, but with his sanction manifestly refused—under his protest. It would not be the old Tory party returned to power, but the Tory party mutilated by the defection, more or less marked, of the new Conservatives. Never would the Tory party have shown itself so shrunken and helpless as in this kind of brief post mortent revisitation of the world. It would, moreover, have had to act without a leader of the House of Commons : subtract from the Commoners of the Right-hand party the one chief statesman, and there is not a man among them, however able as an official, that could stand against the Whig leaders in the warfare of the House. Some reminiscences of past power, some inward sense of still surviving personal energies, might possibly embolden the rash spirits among the present Ministerialists ; but the shrewd practical common sense of the aged Duke belies the rumours as applied to him—as a man of the world, he must know better. It is in fact an idle dream. There is then the alternative choice. The Queen might have "sent for"—not Lord Melbourne, who, to judge from his speedh at Fishmongers' Hall, would hardly accept office—but Lord John Russell; and we should have exchanged from the statesman who performs to the statesman who promises—from the man who agrees with Cobden "in the abstract," yet delays in practice from linger- ing habits of party (which do not prevail) and some over-caution, to the man who neglects to prove his sincerity by doing things when be can, but only offers at the deed to be in the fashion, and drops his task rather than soil his gloves in a manful struggle at the last. The best comment on Lord John Russell's fitness for office as a Free-trader is afforded by the Whig Mr. Cayley, in his honest petition for mercy to the condemned Corn-laws : he wishes his "dear Lord John" back in office, in order that Corn-law repeal, as proposed by him, may be frustrated by Opposi- tion. That is it : Lord John is an excellent Minister to intro- duce "good measures" "for rejection." His reputation on that head, indeed, is too recent : his party have no hope, almost no wash, to retunkto Downing Street merely to go out again. They rare not so fond of offering themselves, good men as they axe, "for rejection." And that would be inevinslile. The Whigs; at a party of candidates for place, have no hol4 on the country. In office they frittered away the confidence bestowed upon them in the heat of the Reform excitement ; and since their extrusion, what- ever they have talked about, they have done nothing to regain that lost confidence. But without the country at their back, how could they overcome the passive resistance of the House of Lords They would merely break up in the attempt. Lord John Russell has the advantage of an apparent start in de- claring for repeal of the Corn-laws. He has not of late enjoyed such an advantage, even apparently. When we have seen the course of the two men, practically, Sir Robert Peel has had the start. At present, be it observed, Lord John, out of office, irresponsible, un- trammelled by etiquette, was in a position to make a declaration : the other, whatever his views, was not so. But the same things that brought Lord John to the level of the Premier on the subject of a fixed duty must have told also on Sir Robert's mind. He is not the one of all men in the country to be least aware of the singular combination of circumstances which make this impera- tively the fittest of all times for effecting the change : he cannot be the one alone to ignore the doubt (at least) respecting the supply of food for the interval between the next harvest—the rapidly-spreading dislike to the Corn-laws—the dubiety which has sapped the agricultural confidence in them. Our correspond- ent in Surrey, who knows so much and writes so well on farming, tells us that he finds the farmers growing reconciled to free treacle in corn, and only demanding in return free trade in everything else and release from special burdens. We see at the Taunton agricultural dinner how even the farmers who cheered Mr. William Miles, and hissed the trimmers between Protection and Free Trade, cheered the outspoken Mr. Bickham Escott. Certainty is what they want. Town and country are all agog with expectancy. Sir Robert Peel alone cannot be shut out from knowing these things ; nor from knowing that he is pointed at as the man who can effect the change with most facility and with least disturbance to alarmed "interests." It needed no ghost, even of a Whig Cabinet, to tell him those things. Does any sincere Free-trader believe that if the Minister give free scope to his convictions, he will, when it comes to the point, be unable to reconcile, with scarcely an exception, all parties to the measure? If it will disappoint some hopes, it will more signally
dispel many fears. "Cheap bread," either in the puffing sense of the term in the mouth of canting Free-traders, or in the alarm- ist sense, it will not give. It cannot let in a sudden flood of corn to gorge the stomachs of paupers or swamp the home market ; simply because the grain to do this does not exist—is ungrown. Some help, however, it will give; and also, for the future, some of that hope which is the most potent cordial in tribulation. Meanwhile, the question unsettled keeps commerce in a fever ; and it is all charged against the Corn-laws and cognate restric- tions: are traders in trouble, they expect all they need from Corn- law repeal, as the afflicted always expect perfect cure from any un- tried nostrum ; they do not put forth their proper energies, to cope with present difficulty, because they trust in the windfall of free trade : even grave merchants neglect their legitimate business to gamble in Associations and Leagues, hoping to recover the pro- fits of trade through popular agitation! A more unnatural state of things cannot be imagined.
Deficient crops and railway gambling begin to fructify in their inevitable consequences. The "short time," not of volun- tary- ease, but of embarrassed trade, has begun here and there in the factory districts ; and the " gloom " of a troublous winter sets in. Such a state of things is sure to be imputed more or less to the Minister ; and what statesman would encounter the respon- sibility of that crisis, while resisting the only means of relief in which the public place any faith?
The exclusive commercial policy of which the Corn-laws are the crowning sign, is the opprobrium of our foreign relations. It hampers us with America, now at this instant time. See what Mr. Webster says of it : it makes him, our friend, advocate a "hostile tariff." We feel it in the Oregon dispute : repeal the Corn-laws, and we become customers to our chief antagonists in that quarter, the Western States : and when did a dealer ever fight with his customer ? At home, it keeps our political world in a needless ferment, all about a thing that is as good as settled and might be brushed aside ; while real work to be done, such as the pacification of Ireland, in what way soever, cannot be attended to : those who should be agreeing upon plans to vindicate the law and strengthen the dawning spirit of improvement in that wretched land, are chaffer- ing over the empty question whether they shall lay the ghost of the Corn-laws and pay the funeral expenses, or not ; while a dis- tracted country is left to the government of mercenary Repeal officers and honester Ribanclinen.
Thus the incidents of the question, more important than the question itself, are peace or war at home and abroad. If the Premier really has determined upon the step ascribed to him, these and many other cogent reasons lie ready to his hand. Used by him, they would acquire double force : the very boldness of his advance would disarm much opposition ; his success would be its own readiest justification with the many ; and he would be written down in history as the Free Trade Minister. History would also record another trait of his administration : his present policy, carped at as "inconsistent" by those who limit their view to party etiquettes, is really a thorough nullification of party—faction was never so completely placed in abeyance as it IS now ; and faction has been the greatest of all impediments national progress, because it has perverted to the uses of the few that machinery, the Executive Government, which professes to have been instituted for the service of the many. In the lull of party strife, we might hope to enjoy some foretaste of the patriot's dream—harmonious national councils.
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