!
The engrain'd instinct of old reverence,
The holy habit of obediency,
Must I pluck live asunder from thy name?
Oh, do it not!--I pray thee do it not!--
Thou wilt not--
Thou canst not end in this! It would reduce
All human creatures to disloyalty
Against the nobleness of their own nature.
'Twill justify the vulgar misbelief
Which holdeth nothing noble in free-will,
And trusts itself to impotence alone,
Made powerful only in an unknown power!

These quotations may look strangely in such an article as this; but
there are many within the walls of St Stephens's who must acknowledge
the force of the allusion, and the truth of the sentiments they convey.
The language we intend to use is less that of reproach than sorrow: for
whatever may be the practical result of this measure--however it may
affect the great industrial interest of the country, it is impossible
not to see that, from the mere manner of its proposal, it has
disorganized the great Conservative party, and substituted mistrust and
confusion for the feeling of entire confidence which formerly was
reposed in its leaders.

The change, however has been proposed, and we shall not shrink from
considering it. The scheme of Sir Robert Peel is reducible to a few
points, which we shall now proceed to review _seriatim_. First--let us
regard it with a view to its _nature_; secondly, as to its _necessity_
under existing circumstances.

The Premier states, that this is a great _change_. We admit that fully.
A measure which contains within itself a provision, that at the end of
three years agricultural industry within this country shall be left
without any protection at all, and that, in the interim, the mode of
protection shall not only be altered but reduced, is necessarily a
prodigious _change_. It is one which is calculated to affect agriculture
directly, and home consumption of manufactures indirectly; to reduce the
price of bread in this country--otherwise it is a useless change--by the
introduction of foreign grain, and therefore to lower the profits of one
at least of three classes, the landlord, the tenant, or the labourer,
which classes consume the greater part of our manufactures. So far it is
distinctly adverse to the agricultural interest, for we cannot exactly
understand how a measure can be at once favourable and unfavourable to a
particular party--how the producer of corn can be benefited by the
depreciation of the article which h