Parliamentary
Reform, he unfurled the banner of 'Peace, retrenchment, and reform',
and that sentiment was received in every part of the United Kingdom,
by every man who was or had been in favour of Liberal principles, as
predicting the advent of a new era which should save his country from
many of the calamities of the past.

Come down still nearer, and to a time that seems but the other day,
and you find another Minister, second to none of those whom I have
mentioned--the late Sir Robert Peel. I had the opportunity of
observing the conduct of Sir Robert Peel from the time when he took
office in 1841. I watched his proceedings particularly from the year
1843, when I entered Parliament, up to the time of his lamented death;
and during the whole of that period, I venture to say, his principles,
if they were to be discovered from his conduct and his speeches, were
precisely those which I have held, and which I have always endeavoured
to press upon the attention of my countrymen. If you have any doubt
upon that point I would refer you to that last, that beautiful, that
most solemn speech which he delivered with an earnestness and a sense
of responsibility as if he had known he was leaving a legacy to his
country. If you refer to that speech, delivered on the morning of the
very day on which occurred the accident which terminated his life, you
will find that its whole tenor is in conformity with all the doctrines
that I have urged upon my countrymen for years past with respect to
our policy in foreign affairs. When Sir Robert Peel went home, just
before the dawn of day, upon the last occasion that he passed from the
House of Commons, the scene of so many of his triumphs, I have heard,
from what I think a good authority, that after he entered his own
house, he expressed the exceeding relief which he experienced at
having delivered himself of a speech which he had been reluctantly
obliged to make against a Ministry which he was anxious to support,
and he added, if I am not mistaken, 'I have made a speech of peace.'

Well, if this be so, if I can give you four names like these--if there
were time I could make a longer list of still eminent if inferior
men--I should like to know why I, as one of a small party, am to be
set down as teaching some new doctrine which it is not fit for my
countrymen to hear, and why I am to be assailed in every form of
language, as if there was one great department of governmental affairs
in which