Sir Robert Peel’s conduct will serve them in many matters as a useful example, as a solemn warning, as a practical illustration of the homely adage, that “honesty is the best policy.” We have seen enough of the evils entailed by a masked and disingenuous policy, which delights in allowing people to deceive themselves. Let us now contrast with it the advantages of a sincere, open, and consistent course. Let us profit by the late Premier’s career as an example, in which case it will not have been without its use; and let us, by so doing, avoid the disgrace of falling again under his power.
Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dix Ans à la Cour du Roi Louis Philippe, et Souvenirs du Temps de l’Empire et de la Restauration. Par B. Appert, de la Société Royale des Prisons de France. Berlin and Paris, 1846.
[2] According to old usage, each defunct King of France awaited, at the entrance of the vault at St. Denis, the body of his successor, and was not consigned to his final resting-place till its arrival.
[3] Biog. Univ. xiii. 482-491, (Eugene.)
[4] Histoire de mon Tempe par Frederick IV., p. 174.
[5] Viz. Vimiera, the Douro, Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onoro, Salamanca, Vittoria, the Pyrenees, the Bidassoa, the Nive, the Nivelle, Orthes, Toulouse, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo.
[6] Wanderungen eines alten Soldaten. Von Wilhelm, Baron von Rahden. Berlin, 1846.
[7] Even in the House there are some free-traders by no means irreproachable on this head, gentlemen whose speeches are profuse in invectives against the whole body of the landlords, and who, when freed from Parliamentary restraint, denounce them as robbers, and openly express “their desire of levelling the aristocracy to the dust.” However sincere these patriots may be, this ungenerous tone does not betoken that large and comprehensive mind which we look for in a Member of Parliament; and it is the fortunate possessors of minds like these, who, in our days, pleasantly style themselves Liberals! Lucus a non lucendo. Where will this abuse of language stop? An American slave-breeder will be the next claimant of the name, when these Parliamentary Thersitæ set themselves up as Liberals!