inciple of Reform, and to the demands of the people--_the
people_, as contra-distinguished from those great interests on
whose support he has depended, and whose wishes or prejudices he
has consulted? For assuredly, neither the King, nor the Church,
nor the aristocracy, seriously and sincerely desire these or any
other reforms, and only agree to them from necessity. Peel is, I
think, right; he has no other alternative. Such is the force and
power of public opinion, that no Government can resist it; and if
Peel can succeed in restraining and directing it, if he can
convert it from a destructive into a conservative element, he will
render such a great service as will cancel all the former mischief
he has done; but he enters with disadvantage upon a course which
implies at the outset the surrender of much of the governing
principle of his political life, and in which neither friend nor
foe can doubt that the conduct he adopts, however justifiable,
necessary, indispensable, is compulsory and unpalatable. A man who
is called to the head of affairs must undoubtedly act, not
according to any impracticable obstinate theories of his own, but
according to the state in which he finds affairs, no matter how
produced or by whom; but it is a very different thing to adopt a
system reluctantly and under necessity, because somebody else by
his incapacity or his misfortune has rendered it indispensable,
and to do so after you yourself have brought about this state of
things: and such is the false position of Peel with all his Tory
associates. This, however, is begging the question in dispute
between the two great antagonistic parties. Peel would say that
the imprudent concessions and reckless changes of the Whigs have
made the difficulty; the Whigs would say that the resistance of
the Tories to all moderate and gradual reforms produced the
sweeping measure of '31, and the excitement that was partly its
cause and partly its consequence.

February 17th, 1835 {p.209}

Yesterday I read Burke's appeal from the new to the old Whigs,
which contains astonishing coincidences with the present times.
His definition of the people is somewhat tumid and obscure, and
involved in a splendid confusion of generalities and abstruse
doctrine; but it is a wonderful monument of his genius, and
exhibits that extent of knowledge and accuracy of insight into the
nature of parties and the workings of political ambition which
make him an authority for all ti