Not enviable, in our apprehension, at the present crisis, is the position of a young man whose political education has been framed upon Conservative principles, and whose personal experience and recollections go little further back than the triumph of those principles over others which he has been early taught to condemn. His range of facts may be limited, but at the same time it is very significant. He has seen his party--for a season excluded from power--again re-assume the reigns of government at the call of a vast majority of the nation. He remembers that that call was founded upon the general desire that a period of tranquil stability should succeed to an interval of harassing vacillation; and that the only general pledge demanded from the representatives of the people was an adherence to certain principles of industrial protection, well understood in the main, if not thoroughly and accurately defined. We shall suppose a young man of this stamp introduced into the House of Commons, deeply impressed with the full import and extent of his responsibilities--fortified in his own opinions by the coinciding votes and arguments of older statesmen, on whose experience he is fairly entitled to rely--regarding the leader of his party with feelings of pride and exultation, because he is the champion of a cause identified with the welfare of the nation--and unsuspicious of any change in those around him, and above. Such was, we firmly believe, the position of many members of the present Parliament, shortly before the opening of this session, when, on a sudden, rumours of some intended change began to spread themselves abroad. An era of conversion had commenced. In one and the same night, some portentous dream descended upon the pillows of the Whig leaders, and whispered that the hour was come. By miraculous coincidence--co-operation being studiously disclaimed--Lord John Russell, Lord Morpeth,
"And other worthy fellows that were _out_,"
gave in their adhesion, nearly on the same day, to the League--thereby, as we are told, anticipating the unanimous wish of their followers. Then came, on the part of Ministers, a mysterious resignation--an episodical and futile attempt to re-construct a Whig government--and the return of Sir Robert Peel to power. Still there was no explanation. Men were left to guess, as they best might, at the Eleusinian drama performing behind the veil of Isis--to speculate for themselves, or announce to others at random the causes of this huge mystification. "The oracles were dumb." This only was certain, that Lord Stanley was no longer in the Cabinet.