NEWS OF THE WEEK.
,IN our last number we had to report Sir Robert Peel as bearing the most important part in the most important debate of the ses- sion; one :short week is over, and we have to report him dead I- -killed by a sudden accident, in the midst of his political activity, llke Huskisson. On Saturday afternoon, Sir Robert Peel was 'riding for exercise, up Constitution Bill; suddenly his horse swerved ; the rider fen headlong ; and when he was raised from the ground; insensible by persons who ran to his assistance, his lace had undergone such a change as to be hardly recognized.. -He was carried .home, t,ohafile all the resources of medical abet, and to-endure three days of agony, Until death released hhn, on Tuesday night. The suddenness, the shock, the deep sense of privation, struck with -violence on the feelings of all—his family, his attached friends, the town, the whole country. The Legislature is dismayed at the Sudden' evnlsion of its most powerful statesman. Privi- lege of Parliament was no bar to the summons of a messenger more peremptory than the -Usher of the Black Rod. Coupled with the last appearance of the great statesman in the House of Commons, %he rebuke of Fate to the pettiness of party should tell deeply. To The last, factiouS ranconrs had aimed their unavsiling shafts at one who had risen above retaliation. Dreading some turn in his eon- yictions unfavourable to the party over whom he had often thrown the eleemosynary iegis of his protection, an eager and hard-mouthed Ministerial advocate had been set on to drive him from the dreaded spot with the bark of calumnious insinuation ; and Ministers them- selves did not blush to abet the assailant of the man whose aid had been the frequent proof of his disinterested independence: nay, the official leader but faintly corrected Mr. Cockburn'sNweeping charges of conspiracy even after Sir Robert Peel had called to mind his long and not ostentatious support of Ministers—and they knew how effective that support had been, how little understood in its full extent by the public that was to read the graceless inculpation. His very -last speech, adverse as it was, evinced the same spirit of forbearance. On the specific question—the dangerous character of Lord Palmerston's policy—Sir Robert Peel's antecedents and his unaltered conclusions forced him to pronounce a judgment against the Goveriutient - Indeed, had the approval of Lord Palmerston been possible in itself, it was presented in the impossible shape of an implied censure on Sir Robert's steadfast companion Lord Aberdeen. But, with the irresistible and temperately stated reasons of his adverse decision, with his own steady sup- Port of Ministers on other grounds, Sir Robert recalled the reasons that he had for approving of their general policy. He spoke with the most evident reluctance; the censure was mani- festly extorted from him ; and the effect of his speech was rather to discourage than to invite followers from his side who might not be under the moral compulsion to which he submitted. The force of this Manner may perhaps be descried in the Ministerial votes of some stanch but liberal members of the Peel party. For the support which he gave from the impulse of a generous sagacity and the sense of public duty, little gratitude was felt by a -feeble party absorbed in the pettier instinct of self-preservation; and, by a singular-misery in their fate, the contrast was exhibited at the latest meeting, when the Commons took an unconscious farewell of their great chief.
Formal eulogistic speeches have been delivered in Parliament, with many traits, on all sides, of the feeling natural to the occasion. The active statesman being gone, the object of party detraction had ceased ; and those motives forgotten, nothing remained to say of him but good. Lord John Russell has intimated that the Crown and Cabinet would gladly cooperate with the friends of Sir Robert Peel in affording an opportunity to the public of testifying its respect by a public funeral : but Mr. Coulburn, as executor to Sir Robert, adduced a wish expressed by the testator to be buried beside his father and mother at the parish-church of Drayton Bas- sett. .
The sudden removal of Peel is an element of party calculations which had not been taken into account, and the first conse- quence is undisguised confusion. The indiscipline which attends the decline of a ministry, like the insubordination on the retreat of an army, had already set in; but the event brings it to a crisis. The great support and shield of Ministers is gone, and they must do the best they can without him—they who already foretasted the bitterness of political death. Peel was the great moderator of parties : although his policy had divided his own retinue into the two sections of progressive Conservatives and stationary Tories, the force of his character retained no small influence over both sections' and kept them from extremes. Ministers avowedly deferred to him, and the Radicals also. The weight of his mo- deration overlaid party strife, and deadened its struggles. It is removed, and already men are looking forward to a renewal of hot contest—preparing for it. The two sections of the old Conserva- tive party will probably reunite. The claims of faction are as- serted with equal vehemence -by the' Ministerial journal which hands over too conscientious Liberal Members to the wrath partisan constituents, and by the Oppositionist which, pillories the names of Conservatives who voted with Ministers, and holds them up to the castigation of the Carlton Club' f—bor- rowing a hint from the dub tyranny of the Paris revolutionists. It is true that as yet neither side appears to have determined upon real or intelligible casus ; both agree to take the ()contest on a false issue : the Tories hoist the banner of Protection, in which their own leaders have lost faith as a standard of the future ; and the Liberals sleet a necessity for defending Free Trade against "reaction," which they make their battle-crybelioVing it all the time about as idle a dream as the restoration of the Stuarts. But when war is to be, a pretext is easily found ;. and perhaps one may turn up with more verisimilitude. 'Meanwhile the Tories are bent on reorganization, which would restore to them the most efficient leaders in the House of Commons ; and the lineation of specific pur-
pose is postponed. 'When Peel undertook the task of reo *- zing after the Reform Bill rout,,it was with more scientifio he saw that he must begin by laying down a purpose suited to the day, and he Selected Liberal Conservatism ; he reorganized party as the instrument of purpose : the Tories are reorganizing party for party alone. Yet the Ministers read their own fate in the revived process; and in the very heat of the Palmerston debate they suffered their worst fear to come out—the reunion of the di- vided Conservative party under the lead of Mr. Gladstone. The abrupt removal of Peel extinguishes the great impediment to that reunion and to the renewal of party conflict. Farewell thou 'to the truce of parties and legislative tranquillity.
