The fatal consequences are that Peel, by betraying the precise and specific principle upon which he was brought into office, has ruined the character… - John Wilson Croker

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The fatal consequences are that Peel, by betraying the precise and specific principle upon which he was brought into office, has ruined the character of public men, and dissolved, by dividing, the great landed interest—the only solid foundation on which any Government can be formed in this country. I care comparatively little about his actual corn law experiment; it will fail, and England will right herself from this fraudulent humbug; but while that process is going on, we shall be running all the risks, if not suffering the actual infliction, of a revolution. On the principle on which we have truckled to the League, how are we to resist the attack on the Irish Church—the Irish Union—both much worse cases (in that view) than the Corn Laws. How to maintain primogeniture, the Bishops, the House of Lords, the Crown? Sir Robert Peel has put these into more peril than Cobbett, or Cobden, or O'Connell, or they altogether could have done, and his personal influence has carried away individuals; he has broken up the old interests, divided the great families, and commenced just such a revolution as the Noailles and Montmorencies did in 1789. Look at father and son, and brother and brother, and uncle and nephew—thrown into personal hostility in half the counties of England, and all for what?—to propitiate Richard Cobden.