Since the Tamworth speech—­since the scourging of Sir ROBERT by the French press—­PEEL has essayed a small philanthropic oration.  He has endeavoured to paint—­and certainly in the most delicate water-colours—­the horrors of war.  The premier makes his speech to the nations with the palm-branch in his hand—­with the olive around his brow.  He has applied arithmetic to war, and finds it expensive.  He would therefore induce France to disarm, that by reductions at home he may not be compelled to risk what would certainly jerk him out of the premiership—­the imposition of new taxes.  He may then keep his Corn Laws—­he may then securely enjoy his sliding scale.  Such are the hopes that dictate the intimation to disarm.  It is sweet to prevent war; and, oh! far sweeter still to keep out the Wigs!

The Duke of WELLINGTON, who is to be the moral force of the Tory Cabinet, is a great soldier; and by the very greatness of his martial fame, has been enabled to carry certain political questions which, proposed by a lesser genius, had been scouted by the party otherwise irresistibly compelled to admit them. (Imagine, for instance, the Marquis of Londonderry handling Catholic Emancipation.) Nevertheless, should “The follies of the Wise”—­a chronicle much wanted—­be ever collected for the world, his Grace of Wellington will certainly shine as a conspicuous contributor.  In the name of famine, what could have induced his Grace to insult the misery at this moment, eating the hearts of thousands of Englishmen?  For, within these few days, the Victor of Waterloo expressed his conviction that England was the only country in which “the poor man, if only sober and industrious, WAS QUITE CERTAIN of acquiring a competency!” And it is this man, imbued with this opinion, who is to be hailed as the presiding wisdom—­the great moral strength—­the healing humanity of the Tory Cabinet.  If rags and starvation put up their prayer to the present Ministry, what must be the answer delivered by the Duke of Wellington?  “YE ARE DRUNKEN AND LAZY!”

If on the night of the 24th of August—­the memorable night on which this heartless insult was thrown in the idle teeth of famishing thousands—­the ghosts of the victims of the Corn Laws,—­the spectres of the wretches who had been ground out of life by the infamy of Tory taxation, could have been permitted to lift the bed-curtains of Apsley-House,—­his Grace the Duke of Wellington would have been scared by even a greater majority than ultimately awaits his fellowship in the present Cabinet.  Still we can only visit upon the Duke the censure of ignorance.  “He knows not what he says.”  If it be his belief that England suffers only because she is drunken and idle, he knows no more of England than the Icelander in his sledge:  if, on the other hand, he used the libel as a party warfare, he is still one of the “old set,”—­and his “crowning carnage, Waterloo,” with all its greatness, is but a poor set-off against the more lasting iniquities which he would visit upon his fellow-men.  Anyhow, he cannot—­he must not—­escape from his opinion; we will nail him to it, as we would nail a weasel to a barn-door; “if Englishmen want competence, they must be drunken—­they must be idle.”  Gentlemen Tories, shuffle the cards as you will, the Duke of Wellington either lacks principle or brains.