required but two short years to attest the vital necessity of that
unqualified surrender. If the corn laws had been in existence at the
period when the political system of the continent was shaken to its
centre and dynasties crumbled into dust, a question would have been
left in the hands of the democratic party of England, the force of
which neither skill nor influence could then have evaded. Instead
of broken friendships, shattered reputations for consistency, or
diminished rents, the whole realm of England might have borne a
fearful share in that storm of wreck and revolution which had its
crisis in the 10th of April, 1848.

In the course of his long and eventful life many honors were conferred
upon Sir Robert Peel. Wherever he went, and almost at all times,
he attracted universal attention, and was always received with the
highest consideration. At the close of 1836 the University of Glasgow
elected him Lord Rector, and the conservatives of that city, in
January, 1837, invited him to a banquet at which three thousand
gentlemen assembled to do honor to their great political chief. But
this was only one among many occasions on which he was "the great
guest." Perhaps the most remarkable of these banquets was that given
to him in 1835 at Merchant Tailors' Hall by three hundred members of
the House of Commons. Many other circumstances might be related to
illustrate the high position which Sir Robert Peel occupied. Anecdotes
innumerable might be recorded to show the extraordinary influence in
Parliament which made him "the great commoner" of the age; for Sir
Robert Peel was not only a skillful and adroit debater, but by many
degrees the most able and one of the most eloquent men in either house
of parliament. Nothing could be more stately or imposing than the
long array of sounding periods in which he expounded his doctrines,
assailed his political adversaries, or vindicated his own policy. But