It was unfortunate that
one who, if any, should have occupied the proud and national
position of the leader of the tory party, the chief of the
people and the champion of the throne, should have commenced
his career as minister under Victoria by an unseemly
contrariety to the personal wishes of the Queen. The reaction
of public opinion, disgusted with years of parliamentary
tumult and the incoherence of party legislation, the balanced
state in the kingdom of political parties themselves, the
personal character of the sovereign--these were all causes
which intimated that a movement in favour of prerogative was
at hand. The leader of the tory party should have vindicated
his natural position, and availed himself of the gracious
occasion: he missed it; and as the occasion was inevitable,
the whigs enjoyed its occurrence. And thus England witnessed
for the first time the portentous anomaly of the oligarchical
or Venetian party, which had in the old days destroyed the
free monarchy of England, retaining power merely by the favour
of the Court.
But we forget, Sir Robert Peel is not the leader of the Tory
party: the party that resisted the ruinous mystification that
metamorphosed direct taxation by the Crown into indirect
taxation by the Commons; that denounced the system that
mortgaged industry to protect property; the party that ruled
Ireland by a scheme which reconciled both churches, and by a
series of parliaments which counted among them lords and
commons of both religions; that has maintained at all times
the territorial constitution of England as the only basis and
security for local government, and which nevertheless once
laid on the table of the House of Commons a commercial tariff
negociated at Utrecht, which is the most rational that was
ever devised by statesmen; a party that has prevented the
Church from being the salaried agent of the state, and has
supported through many struggles the parochial polity of the
country which secures to every labourer a home.
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