to resist and defeat their political antagonists.
With the majority against him unbroken in the Commons, but
without an option as to taking or refusing office if tendered to
him (because he would have himself compelled the Government to
resign), Peel must dissolve, and he would encounter the election
with the whole antagonist force united against him, aided by the
anti-slavery feeling together with all the jealousy that could be
excited against the predominance of the House of Lords. Suppose
the general election were to give him a very large majority, even
then the great opportunity of separating the Whigs and Radicals
would have been lost, and there is every reason to believe that
when there is to be a fair fight for power, the Whigs will not be
nice as to the banners that are displayed in their front, and
that the majority of them will agree to many things of which they
do not approve, rather than mar combinations instrumental to the
overthrow of the Tory party, and their own restoration to power.

[15] [On the 6th May, Lord John Russell proposed in the
House of Commons to suspend the Constitution of Jamaica
for five years, because the Assembly of that Island had
refused to adopt the Prisons Act passed by the Imperial
Legislature. A division was taken on the question, that
'the Speaker do now leave the Chair,' and the
Government had a majority of five in a House of 583.
Upon this grave consequences ensued. Mr. Henry Taylor
argued, in the paper he submitted to the Cabinet on
this question, that in the existing state of society in
the West Indies, the forms of Constitutional Government
could only lead to the oppression of the blacks by the
whites, or of the whites by the blacks, and that the
inveterate feelings by which the Colonists were divided
would lead to measures of oppression, and in the end
would break out into acts of violence. He therefore
proposed the abolition of the Assemblies and the
substitution of Legislatures based on the model of
those existing in the Crown Colonies. This scheme was
approved by Lord Melbourne and by Lord Howick, but it
was feebly supported by Lord Glenelg and rejected by
the Cabinet. Lord John Russell then brought forward the
half-measure on which the division w