conduct of the agricultural interest, with reference to subjects of such
vital importance to them as the Corn-Law Bill and the Tariff, has been
characterized by signal forbearance and fortitude; nor, let them rest
assured, will it be lost upon the Ministry or the country.

The next step in Sir Robert Peel's bold and comprehensive policy, was to
devise some method of recruiting _forthwith_ its languishing vital
energies--to rescue its financial concerns from the desperate condition
in which he found them. With an immediate and perspective increase of
expenditure that was perfectly frightful--in the meditation and actual
prosecution of vast but useless enterprises--of foreign interference and
aggrandizement, to secure a little longer continuance of popular favour,
they deliberately destroyed a principal source of revenue, by the
reduction of the postage duties, in defiance of the repeated protests
and warnings of Sir Robert Peel, when in Opposition. They had, in fact,
brought matters to such a pitch, as to render it almost impossible for
even "a heaven-born minister" to conduct the affairs of the nation, with
safety and honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and
sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any
Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the
day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave
it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of
desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but
provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular
enthusiasm. What cruelty! what profligacy! what madness! And all under
the flag on which were inscribed "_Peace! Retrenchment! Reform!_" Acting
on the salutary maxim, that the knowledge of the disease is half the
cure, Sir Robert Peel resolved to lay before the nation _the whole
truth_, however appalling. Listen to the following pregnant sentences
which he addressed to the House of Commons, within a few moments after