before his career was cut short by the melancholy accident which terminated his life, that his professed abdication of influence as a public leader was not considered altogether obligatory. "Never, since his retirement from office," says M. Guizot, referring to his attitude on the Pacifico debate, "had Sir Robert Peel spoken on foreign policy with so much development and precision." Whither the development would have led him it is vain now to conjecture. But we may infer that he would have remained the same man, that he would never have been indifferent to the realities of power, or to the charms of official position.

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At the close of his apology for similar conduct on the Catholic Relief Bill, he says: 'It may be that he was unconsciously influenced by motives less perfectly pure and disinterested" than those he has particularized; then, why should he not have been influenced by similar motives of " personal ambition " in his treatment of the corn-laws? That he was not a trustworthy judge of his own motives is perfectly evident from many passages of his career. We must not judge him solely by his solemn public litanies, by the asseverations of self-sacrifice sworn upon his white waistcoats, but by the acts with which they corresponded, or rather did not correspond. There is a frequent and very compromising inconsistency in this respect. For example, in moving the repeal of the corn-laws, on the 22nd of January, when such a declaration was appropriate, he protested that "to be relieved from office with perfect honour would be the

greatest favour that could be conferred upon him.” But we must compare with this his declaration to the Princess Lieven, not a month before, on resuming office, that he felt "like a man restored to life after his funeral service had been preached." Again, in his former volume we have a contradiction as patent. When about to lose his seat for Oxford, he speaks as usual of "the painful sacrifice, the forfeiture of that high distinction which he has prized much more than any other object of ambition;" yet seven days later he writes to Bishop Lloyd on the prospect of his re-election and retention of this high distinction-" In very homely phrase I say to you (what I would not say to any one else) I care very little about the matter." When he was thus inconsistent himself as respects his motives, it is not too much for others to say that, at least, they were equivocal.

"If," as we ourselves said, in reviewing the first volume of these Memoirs, "his ambition neither distorted his views nor compromised his principles, he is exempt from blame." But who shall resolve this "if"? It is not for us to affect a knowledge of the secrets to which the most public life is an impenetrable screen. But there is one dark doubt never yet resolved, to which we should not do our duty if we suppressed a reference here. "The Canning Episode," as it has been termed, concluded amid the condoning cheers of the House of Commons, but we agree with Mr. Symons, who has analyzed its incidents, that the evidence for the defence was neither complete nor satisfactory. And we add to his observations the forgotten

passage from the famous article in the Edinburgh Review:

"Mr. Peel is well aware that it is not the year 1829 which he has to explain and justify. It is not when private opinions and public conduct are coincident that a man has anything to repent of, or the country any reason to complain. Could Mr. Canning have answered to his wish, 'Were our honoured Banquo here! that princely and forgiving eye would have beamed with even unusual brightness in welcoming the new convert to his cause. He might have shrunk at the recital of the inward change of 1825, at the thought of the eventful interval and the continued resistance; above all, he must have felt the difficulty of reconciling with these communications, so long and so mysteriously concealed, the disqualification publicly pronounced on him in 1827, by reason of opinions which, it now appears, were held at that very time by at least one of his seceding colleagues."

This imputation was not only notorious at the time it was uttered, but the article which contains it is one of those included in the Selections from the Edinburgh Review, published in 1833. It is all but impossible that it should not have been brought to Peel's notice, yet how can we account for his protracted silence in connection with his late and imperfect vindication?

We refer to this topic as an earlier evidence of the ambiguity of even his motives. As to his conduct, regarded as a whole, his case, in our opinion, is not bettered by the publication of these Memoirs. A statesman may accept the policy of his opponents on rare occasions without impeachment; but this was the course of Sir Robert Peel, not once nor twice only, but at every crisis of his public life. As Mr. Macaulay complained in a memorable speech, this conduct was pursued by him "on something like a system ;" and

such a system deserves neither respect nor tenderness, though it was that of the foremost statesman of our time, and though others appear likely to find his precedent convenient. It is simply a very sorry spectacle to find the most eminent passages of a life made up of long and tedious recantations, and especially of recantations which the author attempts to suppress because he does not abjure his fidelity to his party. It is a spectacle damaging to public morality, and from the consequences of which we have not yet recovered; and it must necessarily cloud the fame of its author when history comes to regard him calmly, unbiassed by the predilections of his friends and contemporaries. Admit all the benefits he was the medium of conferring -admit his talents, virtues, authority, his political life was thus remarkable-he played a great part without those elements of greatness, a comprehensive foresight and a firm. purpose; he was true to no policy or party connection, though he eminently served his country more than once by his supple deference to the will of the majority; while even then he lacked the candour to avow his true position. His course was thus adorned by splendid trophies, but it was covertly strewn with discarded opinions-opinions adopted, perhaps, as in the case of the corn-laws, "without much serious reflection," but defended with remarkable talent and vigour, and always from an obtrusive consciousness of duty, up to the stage at which they involved him in "painful sacrifices" and pitiful shuffles, preparatory to their surrender.

DORAN'S "QUEENS OF THE HOUSE OF

HANOVER."*

re

DR. DORAN has been poaching on the preserves of the ladies. When all the rest of the world had ceded to the impetuous fair a priority of biographical interest in queens and princesses-when, as spects those of England, Mrs. Matthew Hall had appropriated all her queens before the Conquest, Miss Mary Anne E. Green had taken in hand all her princesses, and Miss Agnes Strickland had already held inquest on her queens from the Conquest to the dynasty of Brunswick, in rushes Dr. Doran with uncavalier-like haste, and plumps himself down on the only seat left vacant by the biographical sisterhood. Heedless of the consideration that some Miss M

or Mrs. N might be taking off their bonnets and gloves with the same intention, he squeezes himself on to the vacant edge of the bench and begins filibustering with his steel pens and note-book. But the cause of the ladies is sufficiently avenged if, in his hurry to

* "Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover." By Dr. DORAN. Two vols. Bentley, London, 1855. [From the Times of Oct. 13 and Nov. 7, 1855.]