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Russell) of the Lower House. I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared; but I accuse our Minister of honour and diligence; I deny that he is careless or rash; he is nothing more than a man of good understanding and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political Roué."

It would be unfair, however, not to quote the very favourable estimate of a recent writer, who, while admitting that Lord Melbourne cannot claim a place in the first rank of English statesmen; cannot bear comparison with such Ministers as Walpole, or Chatham, or Pitt, or Canning; that he had neither the authority nor the stately eloquence of Earl Grey, nor the parliamentary talents or administrative ability of Sir Robert Peel, asserts that he had qualities more rare and hardly less valuable than oratorical powers or administrative skill:-" With great knowledge of mankind he combined perfect sincerity and singleness of purpose. With high courage and a fine sense of political honour, he knew when to be firm, and when to give way. His tact and good humour carried many a point which a more earnest zeal would have lost. He was frank to a fault; but the bluntness which would have been offensive in a man less happily bred was so blended with wit, humour, and amenity in Lord Melbourne, that none of his sayings, however keen, were known to wound the feelings of any human being. He was a statesman without guile or any taint of official affectation, and he had a shrewd perception of human nature which is rarely found in an office-bred politician. His reading was various, and extended to subjects not often comprehended in literary pursuits. He was one of the best classical scholars of his day, and on one occasion translated off-hand, for Canning's information, a Greek epigram quoted by Lord Wellesley. Habitually indolent, he was supposed to be negligent of business. He was indeed careless of the routine of office; but in dealing with public matters his sagacity seldom failed to discriminate between matters which were important or practicable, and questions which it was premature or dangerous to touch."— Edinburgh Review,' April, 1878, No. 302, p. 557.

VI.

SIR ROBERT PEEL quickly completed the construction of his Cabinet. He himself assumed the office of First Lord of the Treasury; Lord Lyndhurst was made Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Wharncliffe, President of the Council; Earl of Haddington, First Lord of the Admiralty; Duke of Buckingham, Lord Privy Seal ; Sir James Graham, Home Secretary; Earl of Aberdeen, Foreign Secretary; Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary ; Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control; Sir Henry Hardinge, Secretary at War; Earl of Ripon, President of the Board of Trade; Mr. Goulburn, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir E. Knatchbull, Paymaster-General; Lord Eliot, Chief Secretary for Ireland. The Duke of Wellington was a member of the Cabinet, but without office. Among the Ministers and Officials not in the Cabinet were Lord Lowther, Postmaster-General; Lord Granville Somerset, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; Mr. W. E. Gladstone, Vice-President of the Board of Trade; * Sir F. Pollock,

* In the light of Mr. Gladstone's great career as a Minister and Statesman, it is curious to read the following (written in 1849):-"Out of the Cabinet, the most notable man was, perhaps, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, who was Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and Master of the Mint. The character of his mind was not very clearly understood; and the prevalent doubt was whether he understood it himself; but enough was known of

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Attorney-General; Sir W. Follett, Solicitor-General; Earl De Grey, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and Sir E. Sugden, Irish Lord Chancellor. A contemporary supplies a vivid sketch of the circumstances attending the "swearing-in" of the new Ministry. The Court was then staying at Claremont, and the approaches to the palace, on the morning of Friday, September the 3rd, were thronged with excited crowds. It was not like "an ordinary change" of Ministry; it was a change of measures and of policy, as well as of men. The collapse of the Whigs was so absolute, as to be everywhere understood to mark the close of an "old order,"-of a certain period of the national history. A new order, a new period was beginning; and the multitude were watching, on that grey autumnal morning, not only for the passing Ministers and the coming, but for any and every incident which might be construed as an omen. The old Ministers drove up first-in plain clothes were admitted to the royal presence, and delivered up their badges of office. Then, in full court costume, the new Ministers appeared; and it was noticed that "the first sunburst" broke forth as Sir Robert Peel drove in at the gates. He was very warmly cheered, as was also the Duke of Wellington; and both looked well pleased, so people said. When the exMinisters bad departed, Sir Robert Peel had audience of the Queen, to kiss hands on his appointment; and,

his seriousness, his thoughtfulness, and his conscientiousness, to cause him to be regarded with emphatic respect and hope, at a time when earnest men were to be prized above all others."-MARTINEAU, History of England,' ii. 478.

446

THE QUEEN AND THE MINISTRY.

after him, the Duke of Wellington, and two or three of the more prominent members of the new Cabinet. The Queen and Prince Albert repaired to the corridor, and held a Privy Council, at which Lord Wharncliffe was declared President. The swearing-in of the new members was a rapid process; the whole affair, with luncheon, occupying only half an hour. By half-past two, the anxious young Queen was at liberty to make domestic acquaintance with her new household, and to think of the favourite friends who had initiated her into the ways and secrets of Constitutional Government. She was not long in discovering how satisfactory Sir Robert Peel could fill the place which Lord Melbourne had occupied as her private adviser, and how entirely he deserved her confidence. And if, as was generally said, her own political principles were those which are generally identified with Whiggism, she must soon have been conscious of a peculiar pleasure from the knowledge that it was upon these principles Sir Robert based his policy as a Conservative Minister, and that there was not one of his many great measures which Charles James Fox himself might not have initiated or supported.

Parliament re-assembled on the 16th of September. The first care of the Peel Administration was to provide for the existing deficiency, announcing at the same time that, next session, they would submit to the House the measures by which they proposed to restore order to the financial condition of the country, and to place the revenue on an equality with the expenditure. Lord John Russell professed to be indignant at this delay, provoking from the Minister the obvious retort that he

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himself had failed to do in five years what he would not now allow a new Ministry five months to prepare and mature; but, while fully and deeply sensible of the distressed condition of the country, Sir Robert would attempt nothing until he had diligently studied the financial "situation."

On the 3rd of February, 1842, Parliament met again; and met under some excitement, as in the interval, the Duke of Buckingham, an Ultra-Protectionist, had resigned the office of Privy Seal, and it was, therefore, expected that the Premier had determined on a modification of the Corn Laws. This expectation was strengthened by a recommendation in the Speech from the Throne that Parliament should consider "the state of the laws affecting the importation of corn and other articles, the produce of foreign countries." And it was fulfilled on the 9th of February. The avenues to the House were on that day crowded with excited faces; and as soon as the doors were opened, the strangers' gallery was carried with a rush. At four o'clock the front ranks of a remarkable procession appeared on the scene. Six hundred Anti-Corn-Law delegates, whom the League had sent up from all parts of the country, marched down to the House, and when refused admission to the Lobby, lined the way in Palace Yard, and greeted the members as they passed with cries of, "Total Repeal!" "No Sliding Scale!" "Down with the Corn Laws!" This demonstration at an end, they marched back again up Parliament Street, and, at Privy Gardens, met the Premier in his carriage, going to the House. It was observed that he looked very grave;