f the perpetual annuities. He hoped to be able to make these
advances without making any addition whatever to the funded debt, if the
house would leave him a surplus to do so. He proposed, by the payment
of a sum of L250,000 out of the surplus in hand, to extinguish the
equivalent fund, which was a charge on the public funds of L10,000 a
year, since the junction of the debt of Scotland with that of England
at the time of the Union. That would leave him L500,000; and that he
thought the house should leave him as a reserve fund. The right lion,
gentleman concluded by moving a vote of L9,200,000, to be raised by
exchequer bills, for the service of the year.

After some discussion, in which Mr. Hume, Mr. Newdegate, Lord John
Manners, and several other members took part, the motion was agreed to.

DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

A record of this event properly belongs to parliamentary history.
Disraeli justly described the baronet when he called him "a very great
member of parliament." It was as a member of parliament, rather than as
a man or a minister, that Sir Robert Peel was great. Possessing superior
culture and extraordinary talents, he was not a man of genius. His
administrative abilities were of a very high order, perhaps we might
say, of the highest order that this country had ever known in a
minister; but he was indebted for his conceptions sometimes to his
friends, often to his opponents. The great aim of his policy was
conservative--conservative of class privilege and old institutions. He
resisted every measure of civil and religious liberty introduced in his
time, until the overwhelming pressure of public opinion rendered further
resistance hopeless. Thus, he opposed Catholic emancipation, the repeal
of the corporation and test acts, the reform bill, and free trade, until
all these measures were forced by public opinion. It was his gift to
discern more keenly than other men when the moment arrived beyond
which public opinion could be no longer safely opposed, and he was then
generally ready to adopt the very measures which he had before so warmly
denounced, and blamed others so strongly for promoting. He had, by his
timely apostasy on all great questions conciliated the masses, and by
preventing the conflict of parties and classes on these occasions,
he did much to promote the public welfare at the expense of his own
consistency. Measures seemed to be regarded by him, not in the light
of principle, but in tha