1844
Alp. AS

396

LIFE OF OOBDEN.

[cHAP

Whig leaders more favourable than yourself to institutional
changes of any kind? Practical reforms are the order of
the day, and you are by common consent the practice!
reformer. The Condition of England Question—there
your mission |
“ As respects Ireland, That has become essentially 5
practical question too. If you are prepared to deal with
Irish landlords as you have done with English, there will be
the means of satisfying the people. You are not personally
anpopular, but the reverse, with Irish members.
“ Lastly, as respects your health. God only knows how
you have endured, without sinking, the weight of publi
duties and the harassings of private remonstrances and
importunities during the last six months. But I am of
opinion that a dissolution, judiciously brought on, would
place you comparatively on velvet for five years. It would
lay in the dust your tormentors. It would explode the
phantom of a Whig Opposition, and render impossible such
& combination as is now, I fear, covertly harassing yO
But it is on the subject of your health alone that I feel !
may be altogether at fault, and urging you to what may be
impossible. In my public views of your position and power
I am not mistaken. Whatever may be the difficulties
your Cabinet, whether one or half-a-score of your colleagt®®
may secede, you have in your own individual will the powe®
backed by the country, to accomplish all that the lofties®
ambition or the truest patriotism ever aspired to identify
with the name and fame of one individual,
“I hardly know how to conclude without apologising for
this most extraordinary liberty. If you credit me, as I belie¥®
you will, when I say that I have no object on earth but 8 il
sire to advance the interests of the nation and of humanity
in writing to you, any apology will be unnecessary. If past
experience do not indicate my motives, time, I hope, Wilk