Page:Life of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel.pdf/19

Rh and inscrutable dispensation of Providence. He has left in the other House of Parliament—he has left among his compeers—he has left in this country—a great void, a great blank. We are deprived of the services of that great, powerful, laborious intellect—of that unflinching diligence—of that unsparing application of all his best talents, his strength, his health, and all his great powers to the interests of his country. This is a moment at which all political considerations have ceased—in which the most solemn feeling is a fixed impression of the vanity of all human hopes and ambition, and of the instability of those things on which the destinies of nations depend, and in which we are bound to recollect that we are in the hands of Him who rules the destiny of men for ever and ever.

"In the feeling which I have just expressed I know that I shall be joined by your lordships and the country at large. I am sure that I shall be joined by universal Europe in the regret which I express for the sudden bereavement which has befallen his family, for the great loss sustained by his country, and for the sudden removal from the world of one who in private life was universally admitted to be in the possession of every virtue, and to be strictly unimpeachable. No one will deny to my lamented friend the praise of having been an able, an assiduous, and a conscientious servant of his country."

Lord Brougham then addressed their lordships, to the following effect:—"For forty years I had the fortune of being generally opposed to Sir Robert Peel on most political questions. I live to acknowledge cheerfully and conscientiously the splendid merits of that eminent individual, and to be convinced that upon the subjects on which we differed from each other, he acted from the most pure and conscientious motives. At the last stage of his public career, chequered as it was—and I told him in private that