After a desperate tenacity in retaining office exhibited by the late Government, which was utterly unexampled, and most degrading to the character and position of public men engaged in carrying on the Queen's Government, Sir Robert Peel was called to the head of affairs by her Majesty, in accordance with the declared wishes of a triumphant majority of her subjects--of a perfectly overwhelming majority of the educated, the thinking, and the monied classes of society. When he first placed his foot upon the commanding eminence of the premiership, the sight which presented itself to his quick and comprehensive glance, must have been, indeed, one calculated to make
--"the boldest hold his breath For a time."
What appalling evidence in every direction of the ignorance and madness of his predecessors! An exchequer empty, exactly at the moment when it ought to have been fullest, in order to support our tremendous operations in the East and elsewhere: in fact, a prospect of immediate national insolvency; all resources, ordinary and extraordinary, exhausted; all income anticipated: an average deficiency of revenue, actual and estimated, in the six years next preceding the 5th of January 1843, of L.10,072,000! Symptoms of social disorganization visible on the very surface of society: ruin bestriding our mercantile interests, palsied every where by the long pressure of financial misrule: credit vanishing rapidly: the working-classes plunged daily deeper and deeper into misery and starvation, ready to listen to the most desperate suggestions: and a Government bewildered with a consciousness of incompetency, and of the swiftly approaching consequences of their misrule, at the eleventh hour--on the eve of a general election-- suddenly resolving (in the language of their own leader) to stir society to its foundations, by proposing a wild and ruinous alteration in the Corn-Laws, declaring that it, and it only, would bring cheap bread to the doors of the very poorest in the land:--after the manner of giving out ardent spirits to an already infuriated mob. In Ireland, crime and sedition fearfully in the ascendant; treasonable efforts made to separate her from us; threats even held out of her entering into a foreign alliance against us. So much for our domestic--now for our foreign condition and prospects. He would see Europe exhibiting serious symptoms of distrust and hostility: France, irritated and trifled with, on the verge of actual war with us: our criminally neglected differences with America, fast ripening into the fatal bloom of war: the very existence of the Canadas at stake. In India, the tenure by which we hold it in the very act of being loosened; our troops shedding their blood in vain, in the prosecution of as mad and wicked an enterprise as ever was undertaken by a civilized nation; the glory of our hitherto invincible arms tarnished; the finances of India deranged and wasted away in securing only fresh accessions of disgraceful defeat. In China, we were engaged, in spite of the whisper of our guardian angel, Wellington, in a _little war_, and experiencing all its degrading and ruinous consequences to our commerce, our military and naval reputation, our statesmanship, our honour. Did ever this great empire exhibit such a spectacle before as that which it thus presented to the anxious eye of the new Premier? Having concluded the disheartening and alarming survey, he must have descended to his cabinet oppressed and desponding, enquiring who is sufficient for these things? With no disposition to bestow an undue encomium on any one, we cannot but say, happy was Queen Victoria in having, at such a moment, such a man to call to the head of her distracted affairs, as Sir Robert Peel. He was a man preeminently distinguished by caution, sobriety, and firmness of character--by remarkable clear-sightedness and strength of intellect--thoroughly practical in all things--of immense knowledge, entirely at his command--of consummate tact and judgment in the conduct of public affairs--of indefatigable patience and perseverance--of imperturbable self-possession. He seemed formed by nature and habit to be the leader of a great deliberative assembly. Add to all this--a personal character of unsullied purity, and a fortune so large as to place him beyond the reach of suspicion or temptation. Such was the man called upon by his sovereign and his country, in a most serious crisis of her affairs. He was originally fortunate in being surrounded by political friends eminently qualified for office; from among whom he made, with due deliberation, a selection, which satisfied the country the instant that their names were laid before it.