The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-03 00:00:00

DEATH

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

Sir (From the Times.)
Robert eel more. th ds of
excessive sufferPing,is at ano few minutes After pastree eleven last
night, the greatest statesman of his time quitted the,
scene in which he had performed so conspicuous a
part. Even the anxiety and the rumours whiehl
have penetrated every household since the first alarm•
ing intelligence will have failed to prepare the coun-
try for the deplorable result. Except, indeed, in
the field of battle, never was the transition
from life to death so marked and so touching.
On Friday the House of Commons, which for%
More than forty years has witnessed the triumph
and reverses of the great Conservative chief, wa!
filled with an extraordinary assemblage anxicae
for the result of a great political crisis. Sit
Robert addressed them with an ability and a spirit
which recalled his more youthful efforts and mon
Powerful days. It was the first occasion for foul
Years that elicited any serious or direct opposition tc
toe policy
re of her Majesty's present advisers, and, not
open a debate full of mistakes and cross-pur
Poses, it must be allowed that the speech was at least
an admirable defence of the principles on which Sir
Robert and his colleagues had ever proceeded. He
sat down, as our report says, amid " loud and long-
continued cheering." Within a few hours the states-
Tan who had commanded the applause of that listen-
ing senate was a wreck of life and strength, shattered,
feeble, restless, and agonized. The feverish interval,
is Past. That heart has ceased to beat ; that tongue,
is ever still. That ardent spirit and capacious Intel
-
are are now in another and an unknown world.
Strange that on the bloodless field of states-
araansbiP death should so often come with the sud-
denness, the violence, and the anguish of war!
Chatham fell fighting. His still greater son sank
under the news of Austerlitz. Perceval was assassi-
nated on the threshold of the House, his hand filled
with papers, and a speech on his tongue. Castle-
i
hagh's end was still more awful. Romilly, too, was
a statesman as well as a lawyer. Lord Liverpool
Was struck down in the midst of his duties. Canning
fell suddenly while soaring in the pride of his might.
Huiltisson perished terribly in the midst of his former
colleagues. Bentinck aspired to be a statesman, and
died in full health, without a moment's warning.
But who would have thought that Peel would one
day be added to the list ? The hero of a hundred
fights still survives. All around us we see octoge-,'
genarian generals and admirals, surviving countless)
accidents of battle and flood, and dying at last of slow
decay. Sir Robert Peel falls by a sudden casualty,
before his strength has begun to fail, or his
mind to decline. Did not the thought sug-
gest a murmur at the dispensations of
t!mnipotence, one might call it a waste of pre-
cious power, a mighty soul lost to the world, by the
merest if the silly panic or momentary im-
patience of a brute. How much bad such a man
still to do ! How many noble thoughts and splendid
anticipations to deliver! How many large views
ccarefully elaborated ! What treasures of observe-
ion, and acquisitions of political lore ; nay, what a
mighty part he might still have played, had opportu-
nay again invited, or necessity demanded his potent
intervention ! But in a moment all this is beyond
the grave, and speculations which but yesterday were
real and probable are now become the theme of the
schoolboy. The intense anxiety displayed by all parties and classes leaves no doubt that
every differ- v
enee of opinion will merge, and has, indeed, already
merged, in one feeling of the profoundest regret for,.
e1"8
of a great man. We express no cursory
thought
or affected sentiment, when we venture to.
predict that all parties, in their turn, will one day
miss the departed statesman ; but his worth will be felt
ion before it can be estimated, and even his opponents
Will cherish the memory of his customary presence
and constant Parliamentary labours. Sir Robert had
de.i,:tsited himself to the service of the Legislature.
myself," he said, on resigning office in April,
P 35, " the whole of my political life has been spent
1.4 the House of Commons—the remainder of it shall
be spent there; and,whatever may be the conflict of par-
ties, I, for one, would wish to stand well with the
•7!`t
Rouse, whether in a majority or in a minority." So".
assiduous a devotion will leave numberless memorials
of itself. Already, on Monday night Sir Charles • Wood had to remind the House that Sir Robert had
been in the habit of annually bringing forward the -
R:ote for the new buildings of the British Museum,
adon entering into a systematic and detailed expla-
d all that related to its management. He
.eok couldround s
hte.eaenwtoholpplsyome time before he found a trus-
Sir Robert's place. Such inci-
ts will repeatedly occur • and, if we know the heart 1.
of an Englishman, they Will occur with increasing
force. Heaven grant that we may not soon have still ;;
snore serious reasons to deplore our great loss ! A
r of the state is withdrawn, and the gap may
neverno be repaired. We feel assured that, whatever v.
aniostudrs the nation has heretofore awarded to its .-
the 'stinguished statesmen, it will also award to • Ji.,11 who entered the service
ere of his Sovereign
pean ellington turned the fortunes of the Euro-
ar, and
labourws whose legislative and administrative
empire hfraovme so materially contributed to raise this
since tints p con
the cition it was in forty years;.:.
grande. resent greater happiness, security, and

Sir Robert Peel expired yesterda
8 past eleven o'clock. In tracinge ve n i
thesen a t nine ,
Prqthant worth we feel as if all that we are about to
atrei ftild
tomch 'more, were already said. They tell
of fereleiwngns le, and overpower the mind with a crowd
which it is impossible for us to embody in
Words. In proceeding to address our readers in
the language of condolence we are well
~
aware that
ous a due
are discharging almost as su-
e
perfluy as in offering our humble tri-
have
bate of pangyric to the great statesman whose'
an twen
loss we this morning to deplore. With-;.
passed fro ty-four hours the announcement will have
ra hand to hand, and from mouth to mouth,:
in every town and hamlet throughout the length and .
breadth of the land, and will have been received '•
everywhere
and unaff with one pervading emotion of serious':ected regret. The politician in his study 4
the banker at his desk, the tradesman in his shop, the';
ai,tudent atnongst his books, the merchant in the
busiest-rclwded Exchange, or mingling in the hum of the -
1
marts of commerce, will pause for a moment :
to
, cast a saddened glance over the past, and will strivef
to realise the greatness of the irreparable blank
this event has left in the catalogue of living statesmen.
which l''
The murmurs of party spirit itself will be silenced,
and
obscure the rancour of political animosity will cease to
those great qualities which are legibly written,
in characters ineffaceable by the hand of time, on the
chequered page of our contemporary annals. The
Memory of Sir R. Peel belongs not to a party but to his
country—not to England alone, but to the world. In the few words we have to say, we desire to interpret,
however faintly and imperfectly, a unanimous feeling ;
and we trust that no word that drops from our pen
may re-open old wounds, or raise, though but for a
moment, passions and prejudices that have died with
the statesman upon whom the grave is about to close.o
Without retiring altogether from the stage of
public life, Sir It. Peel had become an historical
personage for some years before a fatal accidentr,
cut short the placid evening of his long and useful§
career. Four years ago he had bidden farewell
for
b e
orver to place and power. The events in which=-
he e a prominent part, including even that great
and beneficial revolution in our commercial policy.
which closed the aeries, had passed from the
bands of the annalist to those of the historian,
and belonged to a past chapter in the records of our
times. Yet the circumstances are still warm and
fresh ia our reco ection the passions which they
had stirred have not yet subsided. It must be left, a future eoerat*
hi.ou to pronounce a
perhapF, for
verdict on
amerits as a states-
fair and complete
man, and to fix the iche whicha
hnim among the
expect
uei
ems
tt
rpiaunrust
si ahlmj
eund go -f .
states-
meat will assign to
o
England. Our readers will not e
shall not pause to reveireewta
Supply the void.
career, the great Welandmarks of which none of them
can have forgotten. Unequal as we feel ourselves in •
gfern from
me than
attempting guide
other respects to a task which requires a calmer
judgment and a more serene intelligence
the journalist's hasty pen, we shrink it at a moment when the grave has not ye: closed
over his remains, and when the last accents of his
voice still vibrate in our ears.
serve, that the character of his statesmanship,
with a Pel
We shall merelyhoebth-
in its virtues and in its defects, reflected,
time and
culiar fidelity of adaptation, that of the
country in which his lot was cast. He was
.pre-emi-
nently the " representative man " of the nineteenth;
century in its political aspect—the statesman of an age,
when Powerful and enlightened public opinion was;
gradually obtaining a more and more complete swayi
over the mechanism of goverment—was over-
Cong those constitutional barriers to which hel
was attached by habit and instinctive predilectionn
and was moulding our political fabric into a nearerl
and nearer resemblance to the form of an educated
and orderly democracy. Different opinions may be
emertained
about the attitude which a statesman
should maintain towards the people whose affairs he
administers, the defference he should pay to public"
°Pinion, and the extent to which he may lawfully'
e__arrY the practice of-concession. But of tbis there
14e!ti be do doubt, regret it how we may, that a country.
icchurs must inevitably, during the period upon;
heretofore we are now entering, be governed less than
from above, and more from below--iess
- , by individua_me.n, and more by stirring minorities.
working u
eery of hP°.n. the public mind—that the michi-
i, . station will bend with more elastic
141414ty- to extern.'
- - `" 4+l4ll9llCei, whilo time Will'
. .
..