harmonising mind-of any mind which could be truly called that of a statesman-was fatal to all chance of firm and effective rule. Thus it appeared to the most thoughtful people throughout the country, who, remembering how the last Whig administration had disappointed expectation, considered the present prospect to be anything but exhilarating. The king could not have forgotten these facts, either; nor his alarm at the promised passage of political arms between Lords Brougham and Durham in the winter, from which, but for the intervention of the Peel ministry, might have arisen a new struggle between the halting and the advancing reformers. Such a struggle might now probably be expected; for the whole country was aware that the radical reform party must become of importance, both as stimulus and support to the Whigs, who were almost powerless without them. It was believed to be an earnest wish of the king's that such a conflict of liberal parties and leaders should be avoided; and that it was a positive stipulation of his that Lord Brougham should not return to the woolsack. Lord Durham's health did not permit of his taking office at home, though it did not interfere with his filling a diplomatic function abroad. So we soon find him in the honourable post of ambassador to Russia. The great seal was for some time in commission, either from the difficulty of finding a chancellor, or from the danger of making an enemy of Lord Brougham, who was one of the perplexities of the crisis. It had been found impossible to act with him; but it was dangerous and painful to have him for an enemy. If there was any alternative besides these, it was not found. He presently came out broadly in the character of an enemy; and even Lord Melbourne's good-humour and indifference were insufficient to bear up his temper, courage, and spirits, under the hostility of his former colleague-unremitting and bitter as it was, and protracted from session to session-not a little affecting, as we shall see, the political action of the time.

The country was aware of this complication of difficulties; the king felt it keenly-the new ministers alone seemed undismayed by it. It was their way to be confident; and now they were exulting and gay, though the embarrassment of forming themselves into a government was great. It was the 8th of April when Sir R. Peel and the Duke of Wellington announced their relinquishment of office; and it was not till the 18th, after repeated adjournments of the Commons, that the new administration was declared to be completed. Lord Melbourne was the premier; and in his announcement to the Lords, he spoke of the difficulties of the government as 'great and arduous-many, indeed, of a peculiar and severe kind.' Lord Melbourne, however, was understood to be more teased than dismayed by difficulties. He felt them more than he chose to shew; for it was his chief fault to affect a poco-curante character of mind, unworthy of his sound sense, his actual diligence, and his disinterested love of his country. His patriotism took the form of a love of peace and quiet for society; and that love of peace and quiet proceeded, in a great degree, from the speculative character of his

intellect. His views were too comprehensive and too abstract to permit him to perceive the importance of particular questions and particular acts, or to engage his sympathies in temporary occasions, when other men were ardent and resolute. He was not one who would ever stimulate the public mind, or concentrate its energies on prominent ideas or definite enterprises. When occasions arose, he regarded them with philosophy, with sincerity, and with much of the ripe wisdom of the scholar and the gentleman; and if compelled to act, he acted with diligence and decision; but he waited for them to arise, and conceived that it was his business to do so. He was out of his place as the head of a reforming administration, from his inability to originate, and his indisposition to guide. In his function at the home office, he had done extremely well. His benign contempt and philosophical compassion for the ignorant herd had made him a calm and merciful ruler of the restless and untoward; while his good sense and sincerity, with his love of public tranquillity, had made him diligent and watchful in anticipation of disturbance. His conduct at the time of the demonstration of the unions on behalf of the Dorsetshire labourers was admirable; and it is understood that this passage of his political life so recommended and endeared him to the king as to make the present transition of power easier than it could otherwise have been. There had not yet been opportunity for the world to become fully acquainted with his great and fatal fault-fatal at such a crisis of the national mind and fortunes-his affectation of scepticism and poco-curanteism. At a time when earnestness was the first requisite in the chef of a reforming administration, the want of it would have been a deadly sin; and the affectation of the want was a moral offence. Unapt for combination, incapable of effective organisation, as his colleagues were, his assumed indolence and indifference went to increase the evil, and may be considered one of the causes of their failure to govern the country well. He might consider it amusing to perplex and astonish deputations and single applicants by his extraordinary manners during interviews; but his pranks were of more serious consequence than he supposed, at a time when the people were in earnest, and believed that they had a government to which they might refer their cause. It was very well for him to look philosophically from a window of the home office upon the 30,000 unionists who came to intimidate him-and some few, as he was aware, with the idea of taking his life; but it was a different thing to appear absorbed in blowing a feather, or nursing a sofa-cushion, when giving audience about the abolition of the punishment of death, or receiving a report on criminal law reform, in preparation for the debate of the night. It was a serious thing to send for a philosopher, to offer him a pension, and begin the interview with the remark that he thought such pensions a great humbug. And it did not mend the matter that, on one occasion which leaves the deepest blot upon his name one occasion which forms an exception to the general kindliness and philosophy of his temper and demeanour-he shewed that he really could and did

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feel in an intensity of party-feeling. In the next reign, he had mournful occasion to write two letters to the mother of Lady Flora Hastings; and then he was hard and ungentlemanly, even cruel, to a degree which deprived him of that reputation for superiority to emotion for which he strove by the affectation of a life. As yet, when he assumed the premiership in 1835, neither his failings nor his sterling merits were fully known. He was held in general respect and trust, without exciting any high expectation; but it was not long afterwards that the goodhumoured and scarcely burlesque character of him given by Sydney Smith, in his second letter to Archdeacon Singleton, was laughingly recognised as a capital likeness. The subject and the caricaturist are both gone now, and a solemnity is cast over the mirth of the time; but there is enough of truth and of serious appreciation in the sketch to make it valuable as a permanent illustration. 'Viscount Melbourne,' says Sydney Smith, 'declared himself quite satisfied with the Church as it is; but if the public had any desire to alter it, they might do as they pleased. He might have said the same thing of the monarchy, or of any other of our institutions; and there is in the declaration a permissiveness and good-humour which in public men has seldom been exceeded. Carelessness, however, is but a poor imitation of genius; and the formation of a wise and well-reflected plan of reform conduces more to the lasting fame of a minister than that affected contempt of duty which every man sees to be mere vanity, and a vanity of no very high description. But if the truth must be told, our viscount is somewhat of an impostor. Everything about him seems to betoken careless desolation; any one would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuckfarthing with human happiness; that he was always on the heel of pastime; that he would giggle away the great charter, and decide by the method of teetotum whether my lords the bishops should or should not retain their seats in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surprising, and making us believe that he can play with kingdoms as other men can with ninepins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, this miracle of moral and intellectual felicities, he is nothing more than a sensible, honest man, who means to do his duty to the sovereign and to the country. Instead of being the ignorant man he pretends to be, before he meets the deputation of tallow-chandlers in the morning, he sits up half the night talking with Thomas Young about melting and skimming, and then, though he has acquired knowledge enough to work off a whole vat of prime Leicester tallow, he pretends next morning not to know the difference between a dip and a mould. In the same way, when he has been employed in reading acts of parliament, he would persuade you that he has been reading Cleghorn on the Beatitudes, or Pickler on the Nine Difficult Points. Neither can I allow to this minister, however he may be irritated by the denial, the extreme merit of indifference to the consequences of his measures. I believe him to be conscientiously alive to the good or evil that he is doing, and that his caution has more than once arrested the gigantic projects of the Lycurgus of the Lower House. I

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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 honesty 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.'

There was another poco-curante minister in the cabinet, though it might be felt that one was enough. Mr Charles Grant, afterwards Lord Glenelg, was colonial secretary; and events were at hand which made his post as important as any in the cabinet. He was regarded with universal good-will for his quiet steadiness in the advocacy of liberal principles; and he was respected as a man of large information and clear sagacity. But his indolence was extreme; an indolence which was so thoroughly constitutional as to be inveterate; and he naturally failed in an office which requires the powers of more than one man to fulfil its duties, be his energy what it may. To make up for these lovers of ease, there were half-a-dozen men whose activity, in one form or another, nobody could question-Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Mr Spring Rice, Lord Duncannon, and Mr Poulett Thomson. As for Lord Palmerston, 'the world was all before him where to choose' to make England felt and talked about, for good or for evil. 'Perfidious Albion' was sure to be the world's topic while he was in power. Lord John Russell was now to shew-and the nation was truly anxious to learn-whether his activity would now be measured and sustained, under the responsibility of having wrested the government out of the hands of other men, and taken it into the grasp of himself and his friends, instead of requiring, as before, to be kept up by the pressure of deputations, and demands from without. He had to shew whether he could originate as well as persist, and whether his persistence could hold out to the point of success. He had to shew whether he could keep in check his rash courage and self-confidence, learn to abstain from prophecy and pledge, perceive that he could be, and often was mistaken, and leave off making declarations during the parliamentary recess which the next session compelled him to stultify. No one doubted his readiness to undertake: the question was what he could accomplish. No one doubted his courage: the question was of his ultimate efficiency. No one doubted his patriotism: the question was of its scope and enlightenment. No one doubted his cleverness: the question was whether he had enough of philosophy, candour, and sustained energy, to raise his cleverness into statesmanship. No one looked to him for originality-for the genius of statesmanship: if he had had it, it must have appeared before this time; but of the secondary order of statesmanship, the ability which can appropriate, and organise, and vivify the floating wisdom of the political world, and make it a ruling power, he might yet shew himself capable. He had now a fair field; and that his own expectations were sanguine was shewn by his determination to obtain power, and his exultation in having obtained it. Lord Howick went to the war office, with a high reputation for honesty, diligence, and courage, and

government admitted from the radical reform party. He was president of the Board of Trade, for which his knowledge and experience and sound economical principles well fitted him. He entered the cabinet on the stipulation that he should have perfect freedom in advocating the repeal of the corn-laws. Ireland was well treated in the apportionment of office. The good-humoured and accomplished Lord Mulgrave, afterwards Lord Normanby, with his demonstrative character and manners, was just the man to engage the admiration and good-will of the impressible Irish; while the benevolent and chivalrous Lord Morpeth, as secretary, and the no less chivalrous Drummond, as under-secretary, with his wisdom, his highly principled diligence, and excellent habits of business, took care that the hard and serious work of the government of Ireland should be duly

| performed. As the case of Ireland was not yet understood, and the true and permanent principle of her rule had not yet been found, any policy attempted at that time could be but of temporary effect; and it was but a few years before her rulers avowed that their policy-of conciliation-was 'exhausted; but, as a preparation for a higher system of statesmanship, and a means of getting over the transition from a bad old system to an indeterminate new one, it was true, as was said at the time, that Ireland had never been so well governed as during the viceroyalty of Lord Mulgrave. As for the rest-Lord Lansdowne was president of the council; Lord Auckland went to the admiralty; Lord Holland was chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and Sir J. C. Hobhouse was at the head of the India Board.

CHAP. II.]

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of any question of the time, not only because it had broken up two administrations, but because it involved the principle for whose sake the Whigs now possessed themselves of office, and by which, therefore, they were pledged to stand or fall.

On the 26th of June, Lord Morpeth brought forward the ministerial measure. He avowed that if the question now were whether or not to establish the Protestant Church in Ireland, no sane man would dream of such an act. But the Church was there, with all its long prescription, and its implication with the civil polity of the empire; and it was not proposed to touch its foundation, or disturb its framework. If it were to endure, however, it must be made a less exasperating spectacle than it was to the bulk of the people among whom it stood. The measure which he brought forward actually consisted, as was presently pointed out by the opposition, of two parts; though the framers considered the two so intimately connected that it was an act of opposition in itself to separate them. The first provided for the conversion of tithe into a rent

charge, in much the same way as in the last two measures proposed-the other provided for the appropriation of the accruing surplus to the religious and moral instruction of all classes of the community, without distinction of religious persuasions. After two readings, the proposal to go into committee was made on the 21st of July, when Sir R. Peel renewed his opposition to the second part of the measure, on the two grounds-that there would be no surplus; and that, if there were, it would be a breach of faith to the Irish Church to apply its funds out of its own pale, and for any but strictly ecclesiastical purposes. The chancellor of the exchequer stated that the House had decided, after long debates, that the question of appropriation was connected with the concession to the tithe-owners of the £1,000,000 advanced to them in preceding years:

he conceived that this precluded the division of the measure into two parts; and he declared the purpose of this partition to be to get rid of the appropriation clause-which was undoubtedly true. Lord Morpeth warned the legislature of the consequences of drawing back from the resolutions recently passed in that House. The Irish were now aware that parliament knew of the parishes vacant of Protestants-of the churches without flocks-of the incomes paid for no service of the provision for the extension of that Protestantism which was not extending-of the desperate poverty and ignorance of the Catholic peasantry who had hitherto been called upon to pay, instead of to benefit by these funds; and now that these things were admitted-now that the principle of appropriation had been sanctioned by that House-it was too late to recede. On a division, the ministers had a majority of 37-the number being made up, not only by Irish members, but by a majority of 8 among the English and Scotch members. The bill was now safe in the Lower House; and the ministers proceeded to add, in committee, a clause providing for the advance of £50,000, from the consolidated fund, in anticipation of the surplus to accrue, for purposes of general education in Ireland. The reason for this was that there was said to be much exasperation in some Irish parishes, where the new arrangements were not to take effect during the life of the present incumbents; and it was believed that the safety and tranquillity of these clergymen would be promoted by a beginning of the educational expenditure being made at once. The radical reform members opposed the concession of the £1,000,000 advanced as a loan; and the ministers admitted the encroachment on the intentions of the legislature, but pleaded the much more serious evil which would ensue from attempts to recover what was irrecoverable. The bill passed the Commons on the 12th of August, and was read a second time in the Lords on the 20th. In committee, the Lords struck out all the appropriation clauses, by a majority of 97, in a House of 179. The ministers abandoned the whole bill; and thus the matter stood over till the next year. It was a great evil, in the existing state of the Irish Church; but it was felt to be worth enduring for the sake of the essential principle involved in the measure-a principle by which not only the Whig administration, but the connection of England and Ireland, and the religious liberties of a nation, must ultimately stand or fall. If, three years later, the Whig administration drew back from their obligation to stand or fall by this principle, neither they nor any other human power could alter its relation to the political connection of Ireland, and to the religious liberties of a nation.

The struggle was renewed the next spring. On the 25th of April, Lord Morpeth brought forward the tithe measure, about which the two parties in both Houses would have agreed, if it had stood without the appropriation provision. This last was not brought forward in the express and conspicuous manner of preceding years; but Lord Morpeth gave notice that it was involved inextricably in the bill. As yet, ministers were evidently resolved to stand

or fall by it. He was now able to declare that there would certainly be a surplus--he believed of nearly £100,000; but it would not be available for a considerable time. Lord Stanley moved an amendment, consisting of a proposal of the tithe measure, without reference to appropriation. Amidst the general resemblance of the debates in successive years, there are interesting divergences of topic, and changes of views to be noticed. This year, there were three at least that were remarkable. The opposition had certainly advanced considerably in their estimate of the reforms that were essential to the maintenance of the Irish Church. They spoke more freely of the disgrace of the spectacle of an overpaid and an underpaid clergy within the same area; they were more earnest about equalisation of incomes, and more bold about the prosecution of the needful inquiries. Another most pregnant fact was that Lord Stanley complained of the cause of disagreement as not practical. What the government stood out for was a mere abstract principle—' a shadow' which they had better give up for 'the substance' of his plan of details; and he implored them to relinquish the pursuit of what was so ineffectual-such a mere idea-and unite with their opponents in coming to practical business. Often as we are compelled to mourn the moral scepticism, the destitution of faith, which is prevalent in the political world, and which is the just ground of the deep disrepute of legislative assemblies, almost universally, it is not often that we meet in Hansard or elsewhere, with so open an avowal as this-that principles are the shadow,' and arrangements 'the substance that it is not practical for the legislature to resolve, by clear implication, that there is a world of morals above and beyond the law, to which mankind must occasionally resort for the regeneration of their laws. To admit this solemnly and deliberately, in full conclave, with a spectacle of murder and famine before the eyes, and the curses and groans and wailings of a suffering people filling the air, is an unpractical thing for a legislature to do, while they might be busy in ordering a plan of distribution of money-some more here and something less there, the suffering of the multitude remaining untouched. Lord Stanley was so far from understanding that a principle is the most substantial and enduring of realities, that he evidently thought he was speaking loftily and patriotically in making his unphilosophical and degrading appeal. He was sure there would be no surplus; and he supposed that settled the matter of the 'principle' being unpractical.

The third noticeable incident was that the debate turned, for a little while, upon the important point: What is the object of a church establishment-to propagate doctrine, or to enlighten the people by instruction and training? Sir James Graham thought the former; Lord J. Russell, the latter. It was for the former object that the Protestant Church was established in Ireland; and it was to the latter that ministers now desired to overrule it. It was truly a controversy for whose principle any government might be proud to struggle to the death; but, till now, no express discussion of the