Note 1 — IRELAND.

Footnote 1:

(return)

The reader may suppose that Lord John Russell had no motive for wishing his motion to fail, because (as he was truly admonished by Sir Robert Peel) that motion pledged him to nothing, and was "an exercise in political fluxions on the problem of combining the maximum of damage to his opponents with the minimum of prospective engagement to himself." True: but for all that Lord John would have cursed the hour in which he resolved on such a motion, had it succeeded. What would have followed? Ministers would have gone out: Sir Robert Peel has repeatedly said they would in the event of parliament condemning their Irish policy. This would bring in Lord John, and then would be revealed the distraction of his party, the chicanery of his late motion, and the mere incapacity of moving at all upon Irish questions, either to the right or to the left, for any government which at this moment the Whig-radicals could form. Doubtless, Lord John cherishes hopes of future power; but not at present. "Wait a little," is his secret caution to friends: let us see Ireland settled; let the turn be taken; let the policy of Sir Robert Peel (at length able to operate through the last assertion of the law) have once taken root; and then, having the benefit of measures which past declarations would not permit him personally to initiate, nor his party even to propose, Lord John might return to power securely—saying of the Peel policy, "Fieri non debuit, factum valet."