man whose sympathy is active for a few of the 'meanest things that live'
will gush with sensibility towards a countless multitude, fluttering into
rags and gaunt with famine. He will go back to first principles; he will,
with a giant's arm, knock down all the conventionalities built by the
selfishness of man--(and what a labourer is selfishness! there was no such
hard worker at the Pyramids or the wall of China)--between him and his
fellow! Hunger will be fed--nakedness will be clothed--and God's image,
though stricken with age, and broken with disease, be acknowledged; not in
the cut-and-dried Pharisaical phrase of trading Church-goers, as a thing
vested with immortality--as a creature fashioned for everlasting
solemnities--but _practically_ treated as of the great family of man--a
brother, invited with the noblest of the Cæsars, to an immortal banquet!"

Such may be the hopes of a few, innocent of the knowledge of the
stony-heartedness of Toryism. For ourselves, we hope nothing from Sir
ROBERT PEEL. His flourish on the warming and ventilation of the new Houses
of Parliament, taken in connexion with his opinions on the Corn Laws,
reminds us of the benevolence of certain people in the East, who, careless
and ignorant of the claims of their fellow-men, yet take every pains to
erect comfortable hospitals and temples for dogs and vermin. Old
travellers speak of these places, and of men being hired that the sacred
fleas might feed upon their blood. Now, when we consider the history of
legislation--when we look upon many of the statutes emanating from
Parliament--how often might we call the House of Commons the House of
Fleas? To be sure, there is yet this great difference: the poor who give
their blood there, unlike the wretches of the East, give it for nothing!

Sir ROBERT'S speech promises nothing whatever as to his future policy. He
leaves everything open. He will not say that he will not go in precisely
the line chalked out by the Whigs. "Next session," says. Sir ROBERT, "you