Page:Life of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel.pdf/12

12 party—constitutes a powerful instrument of government. I shall surrender power severely censured also by others, who, from no interested motive, adhere to the principle of protection, considering the maintenance of it to be essential to the welfare and interests of the country. I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist, who, from less honourable motives, elamours for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be, that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with feelings of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with injustice." Loud cheers greeted the delivery of these words, and as he left the House on the evening of his resignation of office, (29th June, 1846,) he was awaited outside, by a multitude of people, whose enthusiastic plaudits accompanied him to his house, in Whitehall Gardens. Sir Robert Peel might now be said to have taken leave of office, but there were many who hoped to see him minister again, for it was pretty generally admitted, that he was the man best qualified to govern the country. He, however, knew that it was his farewell speech.

A writer on this event makes the following observations:—"That which he did not and could not know, was the full nobleness of the position which he would henceforth hold. He had nothing more to attain. His wealth had always been great, and it was not in the power, even of the sovereign, to enoble him. His honours are of a higher order than those of the peerage, and would be rather impaired than enhanced by his removal from among the Commons. In the Commons he has no party, because there is no party there; and if there were, he has withdrawn from party conflict. He speaks as from his own