the position
occupied by those who concur in our principles to offer a blind or
bigoted resistance to any discussion of a practical matter, which must
always depend greatly on surrounding circumstances and complex
calculations. Far less shall we here enquire whether the time is soon or
is ever to arrive when all protection is to cease. In politics, as in
other things, the absolute words of "always" or "never" are rarely to be
spoken. It is sufficient for us to say, that the period when such a
revolution ought to take place has not as yet been presented to our
minds as an object of present and practical contemplation.

Let us unite, then, in support of these national principles with a calm,
candid, and temperate firmness, demanding a just and fair protection,
_so far_ and _so long_ as it is needed to keep our soil in cultivation,
and to foster those improvements, which cannot be carried on without the
prospect of a due return, and by means of which alone, _if ever_, the
necessity of protection may be superseded, or its amount diminished. Let
us oppose any rash or undue alteration, from whatever quarter it may
come; but, above all, let us resist to the uttermost the attempts of
selfish Leaguers and the more reckless portion of the Whigs, whose
interested or unprincipled policy would overlook all those large and
deep-seated considerations, which in every view require so much
management, and such nice computation, before any thing can be done in
so momentous a matter as the _providing permanently for a nation's
food_, and the development of a nation's resources with a due regard to
those various interests which seem often to be conflicting, but which,
in a just point of perspective, are ultimately identical.

Our pain in contemplating the loss of one ministry, is not alleviated by
our anticipation of the ministry that is expected to succeed. The rash
and presumptuous man who has been called to take office, does not
possess, and his character, so far as hitherto known, is not calculated
to command, the confidence of the British nation. We could not look back
upon the crude projects and unscrupulous practices by which the last
Whig ministry disgraced their office and endangered their country,
without a feeling of the deepest alarm--if we believed it possible that
a repetition of them would now be tolerated. What is to be the character
and course of our new rulers? Independently of the corn-laws, what is
to be their policy a