ration, but to the great
interests they are bound to protect. Occurrences and circumstances
that would have filled former leaders with vexation, and their
followers with dismay, seem to pass over him without ruffling his
serenity or alarming his mind. He acts as if in utter unconsciousness
of a restless spirit of popular aggrandisement, as if the House of
Commons was an innoxious and manageable machine, as if it was
sufficient to mean well, and he lets matters take their chance,
without any of that vigilant and systematic direction which, if
guided by a nice discrimination, might regulate the movements and
check the eccentricities of this vast and unruly body. Since the
opening of this session, all that he has said and done has proved
his utter unfitness for the place he occupies. First, his
imprudent answers to O'Connell, and the turn he gave to that
affair. Then, in bringing forward his financial statement, the
naivete with which he admitted that he had submitted to the
clamour against the House Tax, and withdrawn it contrary to his
own judgment; then the facility with which he gave in to
O'Connell's motion about the Irish Judge, and threw over his
colleagues and his party without an apparent reason or motive. It
produces a feeling allied to despair, all security is at an end,
for that which would be produced by his good intentions is
destroyed by reflecting on his miserable judgment; half republican
in his principles, and incredulous of any danger to be apprehended
from the continual increase of popular influences in the House of
Commons, he does not perceive how much the authority of a leader
is diminished in his hands, and how difficult it will be for any
successor of his to gain that sort of ascendency which is
indispensable for the effective conduct of public business, and
the moral character of the Government. To effect this, besides
great talents, great tact, discretion, sagacity, and temper will
be required; more, I fear, than fall to the share of Stanley, who
is better qualified to be a debater than a leader. Moderate men,
who do not approve of this Government, but who do not desire to
turn them out, if they would only act upon tolerably conservative
principles, are thrown into despair by the behaviour of Althorp,
and regard with consternation the inevitable increase of anarchy
in the House of Commons, and consequent prevalence of Radical
principles, from the sluggish, inert, vacillating, unforeseeing
chara