: observed that some men among the two leading sets went farther in favor of the abstract principle than others but it did not seem to them that that really affected the practical question very much. In 1842 Mr. Disraeli himself was one of those who stood up for the Free-trade principle, and insisted that it had been rather the inherited principle of the Conservatives than of the Whigs. Country gentlemen did not, therefore, greatly concern themselves about the practical work doing in Manchester, or the professions of abstract opinion so often made in Parliament. They did not see that the mind of their leader was avowedly in a progressive condition on the subject of Free-trade. Because they could not bring themselves to question for a moment the principle of protection for home-grown grain, they made up their minds that it was a principle as sacred with him. Against that conviction no evidence could prevail. It was with them a point of conscience and honor; it would have seemed an insult to their leader to believe even his own words, if these seemed to say that it was a mere question of expediency, convenience, and time with him. Perhaps it would have been better if Sir Robert Peel had devoted himself more directly to what Mr. Disraeli afterward called educating his party. Perhaps if he had made it part of his duty as a leader to prepare the minds of his followers for the fact that protection for grain, having ceased to be tenable as an economic principle, would possibly some day have to be given up as a practice, he might have taken his party along with him. He might have been able to show them, as the events have shown them since, that the introduction of free corn would be a blessing to the population of England in general, and would do nothing but good for the landed interest as well. The influence of Peel at that time, and indeed all through his administration up to the introduction of his Free-trade measures, was limitless, so far as his party were concerned. He could have done anything with them. Indeed, we find no evidence so clear to prove that Peel had not in 1842 made up his mind to the introduction of Freetrade as the fact that he did not at once begin to educate his party to it. This is to be regretted. The measure might have been passed by common accord. There is something not altogether without pathetic influence in the thought of that country party whom Peel had led so long, and who adored him so thoroughly, turning away from him and against him, and mournfully seeking another leader. There is something pathetic in the thought that, rightly or wrongly, they should have believed themselves betrayed by their chief. But Peel, to begin with, was a reserved, cold, somewhat awkward man. He was not effusive; he did not pour out his emotions and reveal all his changes of opinion in bursts of confidence even to his habitual associates. He brooded over these things in his own mind; he gave such expression to them in open debate as any passing occasion seemed strictly to call for; and he assumed, perhaps, that the gradual changes operating in his views when thus expressed were understood by his followers. Above all, it is probable that Peel himself did not see until almost the last moment that the time had actually come when the principle of protection must give way to other and more weighty claims. In his speech announcing his intended legislation in 1846, Sir Robert Peel, with a proud frankness which was characteristic of him, denied that his altered course of action was due exclusively to the failure of the potato crop and the dread of famine in Ireland. "I will not," he said "withhold the homage which is due to the progress of reason and of truth by denying that my opinions on the subject of Protection have undergone a change. . . . I will not direct the course of the vessel by observations taken in 1842." But it is probable that if the Irish famine had not threatened, the moment for introducing the new legislation might have been indefinitely postponed. The prospects of the Anti-Corn-law League did not look by any means bright when the session preceding the introduction of the Free-trade legislation came to an end. The number of votes that the League could count on in Parliament did not much exceed that which the advocates of Home Rule have been able to reckon up in our day. Nothing in 1843 or in the earlier part of 1845 pointed to any immediate necessity for Sir Robert Peel's testing the progress of his own convictions by reducing them into the shape of practical action. It is, therefore, not hard to understand how even a far-seeing and conscientious statesman, busy with the practical work of each day, might have put off taking definite counsel with himself as to the introduction of measures for which just then there seemed no special necessity, and which could hardly be introduced without bitter controversy. CHAPTER XV. FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. WE see how the two great parties of the state stood with regard to this question of Free-trade. The Whigs were steadily gravitating toward it. Their leaders did not quite see their way to accept it as a principle of practical statesmanship, but it was evident that their acceptance of it was only a question of time, and of no long time. The leader of the Tory party was being drawn day by day more in the same direction. Both leaders, Russell and Peel, had gone so far as to admit the general principle of Free-trade. Peel had contended that grain was, in England, a necessary exception; Russell was not of opinion that the time had come when it could be treated otherwise than as an exception. The Free-trade party, small, indeed, in its Parliamentary force, but daily growing more and more powerful with the country, would take nothing from either leader but Free-trade sans phrase; and would take that from either leader without regard to partisan considerations. It is evident to any one who knows anything of the working of our system of government by party, that this must soon have ended in one or other of the two great ruling parties forming an alliance with the Free-traders. If unforeseen events had not interposed, it is probable that conviction would first have fastened on the minds of the Whigs, and that they would have had the honor of abolishing the Corn-laws. They were out of office, and did not seem likely to get back soon to it by their own power, and the Free-trade party would have come in time to be a very desirable ally. It would be idle to pretend to doubt that the convictions of political parties are hastened on a good deal under our system by the yearning of those who are out of office to get the better of those who are in. Statesmen in England are converted as Henry of Navarre became Catholic: we do not say that they actually change their opinions for the sake of making themselves eligible for power, but a change which has been growing up imperceptibly, and which might otherwise have taken a long time to declare itself, is stimulated thus to confess itself and come out into the light. But in the case of the Anti-Corn-law agitation, an event over which political parties had no control intervened to spur the intent of the Prime-minister. Mr. Bright, many years after, when pronouncing the eulogy of his dead friend Cobden, described what happened in a fine sentence: "Famine itself, against which we had warred, joined us." In the autumn of 1845 the potato rot began in Ireland. The vast majority of the working population of Ireland were known to depend absolutely on the potato for subsistence. In the northern province, where the population were of Scotch extraction, the oatmeal, the brose of their ancestors, still supplied the staple of their food; but in the southern and western provinces a large proportion of the peasantry actually lived on the potato, and the potato alone. In these districts whole generations grew up, lived, married, and passed away, without having ever tasted flesh meat. It was evident, then, that a failure in the potato crop would be equivalent to famine. Many of the laboring class received little or no money wages. They lived on what was called the "cottier tenant system;" that is to say, a man worked for a land-owner on condition |