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had a battle to fight; but when the victory was won, and the excitement of triumph had subsided, they remembered that they were not all agreed upon the direction of their future march. They remembered that each division clung to its own banner and raised its own rallying cry. Thus, there were the New Whigs, or Liberals, who had been returned chiefly by the great towns, and who, being without political experience though not wanting in political enthusiasm, desired to make short work of everything which seemed to them anomalous or effete. They wanted every grievance redressed, every abuse rooted up; and took no heed of the difficulties which a practical legislator is bound to consider. It is only in Utopia that reforms can be effected without any regard to vested interests. Those sanguine politicians, however, were less ambitious, and, consequently, more amenable to discipline, than the Radicals; a group of some forty or fifty members, who seldom agreed with one another, or with anybody else, except in opposing the Government,-who entertained the wildest theories of democracy, though having only the vaguest idea of what might be their consequences. Then there were the old aristocratic Whigs, represented by the Premier himself, who had done yeoman's service in their day, but did not recognize the fact that their day was over; that in carrying the Reform Bill, they had done their work; and that the monument they had laboriously crowned was their own sepulchre. "They had perfected the Constitution," says Sir Erskine May, "according to their own conceptions they looked back with trembling upon the

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perils through which it had recently passed; and dreaded the rough spirit of their restless allies, who,without veneration for the past, or misgivings as to the future, were already clamouring for further changes in Church and State." The Ministry, however, was not wholly composed of these satisfied veterans. The younger members believed in the vitality of the Constitution, in its power of development and growth, in its capacity of adaptation to the constantly changing conditions of an active and generous people. They were prepared to place themselves at the head of the onward movement, with the view and in the hope of directing it aright, of moderating its speed, and of conducting it safely to the desired goal, in harmony with the wishes and opinions of the country.

The Ministry was seriously divided on the Irish Church question: one section being in favour of a reduction of the Establishment, and the appropriation of its surplus revenues to general State purposes; the other stigmatizing such appropriation as a sacrilegious confiscation. It was hoped to prevent an open rupture by removing Lord Stanley, the head of the latter section, from the Irish Secretaryship to the Colonial Office, in which he would no longer come in contact with the Irish members and their chronic grievance. But, as ill-fortune would have it, Mr. Ward, M.P. for St. Albans, on the 22nd of May brought in a motion for the reduction of the Irish Church; and as the Ministry would not undertake to meet it with a direct negative, Lord (then Mr.) Stanley, Sir James Graham, Lord Ripon, and the Duke of Richmond resigned. Their places were filled by

THE

THE IRISH SECRETARY'S BLUNDER.

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Mr. Spring Rice, Lord Auckland, Lord Carlisle, and the Marquis of Conyngham; and the reconstructed Cabinet, conciliating the great body of their supporters by the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry, were able to shelve Mr. Ward's motion by moving the previous question, which was carried by a large majority. Reconstructions, however, seldom add to the strength or stability of a Government; and the Grey Ministry was not yet in smooth waters. The time had come for renewing the Coercion Act. All the Ministers agreed that its renewal was a necessity; but while Earl Grey wished it continued with its original severity, Lord Althorp was anxious that the clauses against public meetings should be dropped. Mr. Littleton, the Irish Secretary, an amiable but inefficient Minister, revealed Lord Althorp's opinion under the seal of secrecy, to Mr. O'Connell, who, however, took care that it should soon be publicly known. In this unpleasant conjuncture, as Earl Grey persisted in pushing forward the Coercion Bill, no course seemed open to Lord Althorp but to resign (July 7th, 1834); whereupon the Premier, broken with years, and conscious of his inability to carry the Coercion Bill in the face of Lord Althorp's opposition, also resigned. It was time; for his Ministry was sorely humiliated. Its later legislation, though well-intentioned, had been feeble in conception and execution. In administrative business it had egregiously failed; and its different elements had never been fused into a compact and homogeneous mass, for want of sufficient fusing power in its chief. As for Earl Grey himself, his consistency could not be questioned; his honour was 25

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LORD MELBOURNE AS PREMIER.

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unimpeachable; his courage had been proved by his steady pilotage of the vessel of the State through the storms of the Reform agitation; and he was not without considerable abilities. But he was sorely deficient in pathy, in foresight, in in consequences; grasp of word, he was not a statesman. It would have been well for his fame had he retired from office as soon as the Reform Act was enrolled among the statutes of the land.

Earl Grey's resignation was received by the country with indifference; and probably the formation of a Conservative government would have excited no surprise. According to Lord Campbell, this was prevented only by Lord Brougham's vigour, promptitude, and resolution. He persuaded the other members of the Cabinet that there was no occasion for them to retire; that if Althorp would return, they could dispense with Grey; that Althorp in his zeal for the public welfare would return if the Cabinet conceded to him an amendment of the Coercion Bill; that they were not justified in sending in their resignations; and that the King, whatever his secret wish, could not dismiss them and bring in the borough-mongers, while they had still so large a majority in the Commons. His arguments prevailed. The Ministers agreed to hold by their offices; and Premier was found in Lord Melbourne, a statesman who, throughout his life, seemed to do his best to hide from the country the full measure of his capacity. Lord Althorp, who hated office, and was fond of saying that men would insist on making him a statesman when Nature intended him to be a grazier, was induced, very

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reluctantly, to resume the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and the lead of the House of Commons.*

The remainder of the session was chiefly occupied with the Irish Coercion Bill and the Irish Tithe Bill. The latter considerably damaged the Government, as they allowed Mr. O'Connell to introduce into it an important alteration. The alteration was an improvement, but it subjected the Ministry to a charge of subserviency to the great Irish agitator. However, the session was nearly over; the path of the Government seemed clear before them; and the recess was close at hand, in which they would have time to look around them, and discuss at leisure their plans for next year's campaign. It came, and proved to be big with events. First, there was a violent public quarrel between Lord Durham and Lord Brougham; which was followed closely by the death of

* An acute observer says of this nobleman:-"His popularity in the House of Commons is very great, and even surprising; it is a proof of the influence which personal character may obtain when unadorned with great abilities and shining parts; his remarkable bonhomie, unalterable good nature and good temper, the conviction of his honesty and sincerity, and of his want of ambition, his single-mindedness, his unfeigned desire to get out of the trammels and cares of office, have all combined to procure for him greater personal regard, and to a certain degree greater influence, than any Minister ever possessed in my recollection. There is no such feeling as animosity against Althorp. Some detest his principles, some despise his talents, but none detest or despise the man; and he is said by those who are judges of such matters to have one talent, and that is a thorough knowledge of the House of Commons, and great quickness and tact in discovering the bias and disposition of the House."- The Greville Memoirs,' iii. 105, 106. Lord Jeffrey, in a letter to Lord Cockburn, expresses his warm feeling towards Althorp:-"There is something to me quite delightful in his calm, clumsy, courageous, immutable probity and well-meaning, and it seems to have a charm for everybody."-LORD COCKBURN, Life of Lord Jeffrey, p. 317.