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304

ELOQUENCE OF PEEL.

quence. Such passages were rare and brief; but they showed that beneath the dry logic of statistics, there reposed deep feeling and sympathy with the masses of the people. He knew how greatly they had suffered from the exactions of the landed aristocracy, and the starvation prices of breadstuffs and provisions caused by the Corn Laws. It was a sliding scale of distress and misery, causing the death of thousands of the poorer classes, driving thousands more to the dark recesses of the poor-house, and inflicting unspeakable pain upon millions more who barely escaped starvation. During the last four years of his life, in various public speeches, Sir Robert Peel made touching allusions to these events, and rejoiced that, while many of the nobility and landed aristocracy had deserted him, the hard-hand of labor was strengthened in its toil, and that millions remembered him with gratitude. Indeed, during his latter years, he exhibited great sympathy with the working classes; principles clearly allied to true Democracy.

Connected with these sentiments were the kindest expressions of feeling toward America; and had he lived, it may be safely averred that our commerce would never have been pillaged by British Confederate cruisers; nor would the angry message of the late Lord Palmerston, our bitter enemy, have ever crossed the Atlantic in regard to the Trent. Let us hope that Mr. Gladstone, the present Lord-Chancellor of England, a pupil of Sir Robert Peel, and, perhaps, destined to be the Premier of the British Cabinet, will, as regards this country, soon follow in the footsteps of his illustrious master.

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