occasion on which he addressed the House of Commons,
on the 28th of June, 1850, the day before the accident
occurred which caused his death, Sir Robert Peel,
alluding to the miserable quarrel which had arisen,
seven years before, between France and England in
reference to the affairs of Tahiti, did me the honour to
speak of me in terms by which I could not but be, and
was, too much affected for my sympathy to appear
altogether disinterested. I therefore postponed the
accomplishment of my desire. I revert to it now
without scruple. Sir Robert Peel has taken his
place in history, and nowhere has his memory greater
claims than in this ball. ¹. That which is the study of
your lives, gentlemen, was the practice of his. Of
the truths which you labour to disseminate, he made
laws for his country. You aim at establishing the
political sciences; he introduced them into govern-
ment.

Not that Sir Robert Peel was a theorist, a philo-
sopher governed by general ideas and abstract prin-
ciples. He was, on the contrary, a man of essentially
practical mind, consulting facts at every step just as the
mariner consults the face of heaven, seeking success
above all things, and prudent even to circumspectness.
But if he was not the servant of principles, neither
was he their detractor; be respected political philo-
sophy without adoring it, believing it to be neither
sovereign nor futile, and equally a stranger to the
insane confidence of those who pretend to regulate all

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