It would be fanciful to assume that the Liverpool Cabinet, in their
ameliorating career, was directed by any desire to recur to the primordial
tenets of the Tory party. That was not an epoch when statesmen cared to
prosecute the investigation of principles. It was a period of happy and
enlightened practice. A profounder policy is the offspring of a time like
the present, when the original postulates of institutions are called in
question. The Liverpool Cabinet unconsciously approximated to these
opinions, because from careful experiment they were convinced of their
beneficial tendency, and they thus bore an unintentional and impartial
testimony to their truth. Like many men, who think they are inventors,
they were only reproducing ancient wisdom.

But one must ever deplore that this ministry, with all their talents and
generous ardour, did not advance to principles. It is always perilous to
adopt expediency as a guide; but the choice may be sometimes imperative.
These statesmen, however, took expediency for their director, when
principle would have given them all that expediency ensured, and much
more.

This ministry, strong in the confidence of the sovereign, the parliament,
and the people, might, by the courageous promulgation of great historical
truths, have gradually formed a public opinion, that would have permitted
them to organise the Tory party on a broad, a permanent, and national
basis. They might have nobly effected a complete settlement of Ireland,
which a shattered section of this very cabinet was forced a few years
after to do partially, and in an equivocating and equivocal manner. They
might have concluded a satisfactory reconstruction of the third estate,
without producing that convulsion with which, from its violent
fabrication, our social system still vibrates. Lastly, they might have