ABSTRACT
The Whigs tested their strength in the new House of Commons and were defeated on an amendment to the Loyal Address by 91 votes. Melbourne resigned and Peel was invited to form an administration on 30 August 1841. The following month, Blackwood’s reflected on these events and considered the prospects for a majority Conservative government.
The magazine analysed the Whigs’ proposals for a fixed duty on corn, highlighting the danger of becoming reliant on foreign (potentially enemy) powers for the supply of basic foodstuffs. It went on to praise Peel for his ‘manliness’, his ‘soundness’ and ‘moderation’ of principles, his ‘intellectual accomplishments’, and his ‘princely fortune’. These it regarded as proofs of character and safeguards against the temptations of patronage. It also declared the wish of Conservatives to prevent the ‘object of our veneration – in the wise institutions which we possess – perishing insensibly by internal decay, as perishing avowedly by external assaults’. It went on to consider the current difficulties of foreign affairs in Europe and the Ottoman Empire, concluding that Peel was the minister who ‘if we must have war … is exactly that minister who will the soonest restore peace’.
