The Sun.
London, England, 1846-01-24 00:00:00

SIR ROBERT PEEL'S SPEECH.
(From the Chronicle.)
A deliberate reperusal of the singularly powerful speech
in which, on Thursday night, Sir Robert Peel announced the
1 principles of his policy for the present session, has fully con-
armed our first impression of its extraordinary importance.
We reserve for a fitter occasion all allusions to. his public
conduct in former years, and abstain from attempting to
estimate the moral relations in which the free-trade Preemies
of 1846 stands with respect to the ConseiVative agricultural
party of 1841. The present is no time for this sort of criti-
cism. Looking at the recent Ministerial manifesto, in con-
nexion with the all-absorbing'question of thetime, we cannot
but regard the speech in which a First Minister of the
Crown—on an occasion both allowing and requiring the
fullest previous deliberation, and the exacteet choice of
language—explicitly disowns the fundamental principles of a
vast and extensively-ramified system of policy, and formally
announces his conversion to new views of commercial legisla-
tion, as an event of first-class magnitude and most decielive
significance. Of the merits of the speech itself, it were un-
just to Sir Robert Peel not to speak warmly and strongly.
It is a speech remarkably devoid of his characteristic faults.
There is httl tof himself in it. It is an infinitely more na-
tural and earnest speech than we have been accustomed to
hear from Sir Robert Peel's lips. It is much less the speech
of a Parliamentary tactician—and much more that of a
statesman and a man—than he has accustomed us to ex-
pect from him. He speaks less in his own name than as
the organ of great public facts and necessities; as the re-
sponsible representative of the Crown and people of
Great Britain. There is no Hansard in it ; no
attempt at making out a case for his own " con-
sistency." The only consistency for which he
seem! solicitous is the consistency of his present
convictions and policy with present realities. He
takes great pains to show that his course during the late na-
tional crisis, from week to week and from day to day, has
been in consistency with the requisitions of the grave and
terrible emergency in which he has been called to act ; he is
most anxious to satisfy us he is right now—but lie evinces
no desire to prove that he was right one, two, or five years
ago. He has learned wisdom from experience, and he says.
so. He finds himself and his policy in collision with events
and natural laws, and he declares plainly, "he can continue
the contest no longer." He has discovered that Mr. Villiers
is right, after all, and he must make that appear in his next
vote. This time we really have a " frank and explicit "
speech. The Premier disdains even to make the
use which might have been made of the temporary
and casual circumstances of the present season, to
smooth over the transition, and reconcile a nevi,
policy with the old opinions. He does not throw it all on
the potatoes. He was wrong, at any rate. It is not the
potato pestilence, but " an enlarged experience" that has con-
vinced him. He " will not withold the homage due to the
progress of reason and trut li, by denying that his opinions
on the subject of protection have undergone a change." Ilia'
is the true tone. This frank submission to the lessons of
events—this unreserved eurrender- to the dictates of expe-
rience— this abstinence from all attempts to gloss over the
real abruptness of his conversion, by connecting it with pre-
vious indications of opinion, or with unlookeekfor casualties—
is the part both if a wise statesmen and a sincere man. It
is as good in policy as in morality. Such a. course at once
disarms censure, arrests attention, and commands respect.
Sir Robert Peel's beat hope of convincing all thosi of his own
party who at e worth convincing, lies in taking this tone—he
presenting to them, in the broadest and plainest way, the
facts and considerations that have. worked conviction:
in him. He does not so much, assume to teach his
followers, as to assist them in learning rot themselves. He
brings them face to face with the great array of facts by
which he has been humbled and subdued, and asks if they
can defend the position which lie has found untenable ? BA
recounts all that impressive experience of the last six yews,
which public discussion and agitation have rendered familiar
to national intelligence, and which his official position and
responsibilities have compelled him to master; and leaves
the world to say, what else can he do ? In this view, the
speech of Thursday night must tell with immense power.
It is a stateinian's exposition cf national policy, based on a
large view of national experience, and addressed direct to
the national intelligence. With the whole of the commer-
cial public, in particular—with all, of every class, who are
capable of putting two ideas together, and are not blinded
by the influences of an imagined pecuniary interest in
the result—the effect must be irresistible. After reading
the Premier's most lucid and powerful demonstration
of the relations of cheapness and dearth of food, to wage.%
revenue, and public morality and order—and his terrible de-
tails of the potato failure in Ireland, from which we learn
that on " a low estimate," at least "one-half of the actual
potato crop in that country is either destroyed or remains in
a state unfit for the food of man"—all the world will feel
that Sir Robert Peel, in his position, with his means of
knowledge, and his responsibilities, could not have cot ie to
any other than one conclusion. That he has come to this
conclusion, despite every personal and every vulgar political
inducement to the contrary; that, he deliberately sacrifices
his party to the empire, and his consistency with Hansard
to consistency with the facts and responsibilities of his posi-
tion; that he stakes his official existence on obtaining a re-
versal of a once favourite policy of his own, because that
policy turns out to have been a mistake; this is about the
most startling, decisive, and overpowering attestation that
a political truth ever received from the word or deed of
man. We have now only to express our most fervent
and anxious hope, that the measure to be announced
to tke world on Tuesday night may be found, in its breadth
fulness, and simplicity, worthy of the Ministerial declaration
of principle. The superstructure will, we trust, be as wide ,
as the foundation—the conclusion as large as the premises.
We cannot believe, until we see it, that a confession of faith
so broad and true will be narrowed and falsified in the per-
formance. Sir Robert Peel cannot have raised so high the
hopes of the country merely to dash and disappoint them.
He cannot, after rousing the bitter and implacable hostility
of a powerful class, descend to the gratuitous meanness of
seeking to re •purchase their favour by concessions un-
worthy of himself, unjust to the country, utterly futile for
any purpose of conciliation, and fit only for a Minister
holding office on that " servile tenure' which he has
repudiated with so becoming a scorn. Na man knew,'
better than Sir Robert Peel the force of a Minister's words-:-
especially of such words as those of Thursday night, spoken
after months of deliberation, to an eager and. expectant
country. He cannot be ignorant that he has broken the
bridge behind him, and cut off all retreat on, the past, that
only two " courses" are now " open to him' —a great and
splendid success, won with, by, and for the people, or a
shameful defeat at the hands of the " wretched remnant of
an expiring faction." He is now the Free-Trade Minister of
the Queen and the people—or he is nothing. If he have not
the nation for his party, he is without a party—and collapses
into plain Member of the House of Commons for the populous
and influential borough of Tamworth. He has only the
country to look to for support. That support he has man-
fully invoked. He may have it—on conditions, which
he knows.

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