ght them on the whole desirable. These
results are, that there is an end for the present of any question
of the stability of the Government. Peel has complied with the
wishes of his party, and has demonstrated to them that they
cannot turn the Government out, which will have the effect of
moderating their impatience and induce them for the future to
acquiesce in his managing matters according to his own
discretion. On the other hand, he has exhibited a force of 317
Conservatives[17] in the House of Commons, not only by far the
most numerous Opposition that ever was arrayed against a
Government, but possessing the peculiar advantage of being united
in principle--a compact, cemented body, all animated with one
spirit, and not a mass composed of different elements and merely
allied and conjoined in hostility to the Government. The relative
strength of the two parties has been manifested by this division,
and the Government have a majority of twenty votes, which, as
their people attend better than the others, may be considered
equal to a working majority of thirty.

[17] [The number of Conservatives who took part in the vote
was 287; but thirty members of the party either paired
or were absent.]

This is sufficient to enable them to go on, but the majority
consists of a combination of heterogeneous materials: of
O'Connell and the Irish members, of Radicals and Whigs of various
shades and degrees of opinions, all with a disposition, greater
or less, but with different (and often opposite and inconsistent)
views and objects, to support the present Government, and
containing in itself all the seeds of dissolution from the
variety and incompatibility of its component elements. But while
this division has given present security to the Government, it
has also made a display of Conservative power which will render
it impossible for the Whigs to conduct the Government on any but
Conservative principles; and while, on the one hand, Peel can say
to the violent Tories that they have seen the impotence of their
efforts, and ought to be convinced that by firmness and
moderation they may do anything, but by violence nothing, on the
other, Melbourne and John Russell may equally admonish the
Radicals of the manifest impossibility of carrying out their
principles in the teeth of such a Conservative party, besides the
resistance that would be offered by all the Conservative leaven
which is largely mixed up in th