foreign condition and prospects. He would see Europe exhibiting serious
symptoms of distrust and hostility: France, irritated and trifled with,
on the verge of actual war with us: our criminally neglected differences
with America, fast ripening into the fatal bloom of war: the very
existence of the Canadas at stake. In India, the tenure by which we hold
it in the very act of being loosened; our troops shedding their blood in
vain, in the prosecution of as mad and wicked an enterprise as ever was
undertaken by a civilized nation; the glory of our hitherto invincible
arms tarnished; the finances of India deranged and wasted away in
securing only fresh accessions of disgraceful defeat. In China, we were
engaged, in spite of the whisper of our guardian angel, Wellington, in a
_little war_, and experiencing all its degrading and ruinous
consequences to our commerce, our military and naval reputation, our
statesmanship, our honour. Did ever this great empire exhibit such a
spectacle before as that which it thus presented to the anxious eye of
the new Premier? Having concluded the disheartening and alarming survey,
he must have descended to his cabinet oppressed and desponding,
enquiring who is sufficient for these things? With no disposition to
bestow an undue encomium on any one, we cannot but say, happy was Queen
Victoria in having, at such a moment, such a man to call to the head of
her distracted affairs, as Sir Robert Peel. He was a man preeminently
distinguished by caution, sobriety, and firmness of character--by
remarkable clear-sightedness and strength of intellect--thoroughly
practical in all things--of immense knowledge, entirely at his
command--of consummate tact and judgment in the conduct of public
affairs--of indefatigable patience and perseverance--of imperturbable
self-possession. He seemed formed by nature and habit to be the leader
of a great deliberative assembly. Add to all this--a personal character
of unsullied purity, and a fortune so large as to place him beyond the
reach of suspicion or temptation. Such was the man called upon by his