trivial matters from time to time, furnished fuel to maintain the heats which contending parties engender, though oftentimes separated by a narrow space.

Nevertheless, with the symptoms which we have just noted, near observers did not fail to mark others, that seemed to give prognostics of greater change, and more permanent co-operation. The Ministry were known to be much divided among themselves. One class supported the claims of the Catholics, as essentially just in themselves, and maintained the expediency of complying with them, as necessary for the safety of the empire. Another refused upon any account even to consider this great question; they had taken their ground upon it, and from that ground they announced that no lapse of time, no change of circumstances, could move them. There seemed here a sufficient source of disunion to make a disruption of the Ministry not merely a natural, but an unavoidable event. But this was very far from being the only ground. The same parties were divided upon all the great principles of foreign and domestic policy, which having been discountenanced by the late Foreign Minister, both in the Cabinet, in his negotiations, and in Parliament, were now become the favourite maxims of his successor; but on these principles, the individuals who differed with him, were not so inflexible as upon the question, whether Ireland should be saved to the empire; and opposing him on this, on those they only thwarted him, leaving the liberal course, in all or almost all cases but the most important, to be pursued by the State. That their assent was most reluctant; that it often was extorted by the apprehension of breaking up the Ministry; that matters were frequently kept quiet by the common unwillingness of all parties to press them to extremities-not seldom by the controlling influence either of the first person in the Ministry, or the first person in the State-cannot any longer be doubted. But in the course of these altercations two parties had been formed, and differing in all questions, constant dissent had produced frequent dissensions; and, as always happens in such cases, those dissensions were not confined to things, but extended to persons, until as much of animosity, probably, and as little mutual good-will, prevailed between the two parties that divided the Cabinet, as are found to subsist in ordinary times between the parties that divide the senate or the nation.

Another symptom not unconnected with this, was now more and more perceptible. The Opposition became less vehement, less unremitting, in proportion as the breach was supposed to widen in the Ministry; and their support in great part, their courtesies entirely, were now given with a kind of reserve or discrimina

tion it was to the Liberal part of the Government' that they lent their aid; it was to them they looked for the reform of abuses; it was in their sound principles that they reposed confidence for the future. To give them encouragement in their wise and honourable course, became an object of importance for the good of the country; and aware how their opponents in the Cabinet endeavoured to hinder their progress, the Opposition employed all means for comforting and strengthening their hands, and enabling them to overcome the common enemy.

The year 1826 began with the measures rendered necessary by the commercial distress; and the Liberal Parties on both sides of the House agreed fully in the support of them. A Session followed, remarkable for nothing so much as its want of interest; and there had not been within the memory of man, so few points of difference between the contending parties in both Houses of Parliament. The General Election followed, and a marked distinction was everywhere to be traced in the conduct of the Opposition towards the Liberal, and towards the Illiberal portion of his Majesty's Government.' The new Parliament met, and the conduct pursued in Portugal, the grounds upon which it was defended, and the language so worthy of constitutional Ministers, in which that defence was couched, drew forth the most cordial and unqualified approbation from the Opposition Leaders. The period of the Christmas recess arrived, and it is perfectly certain that up to that time no arrangement whatever had been made, or even propounded, or discoursed of between the two great portions of the Liberal Party, those in office, and those in opposition.

Immediately after the recess, the noble Lord at the head of the Government was stricken with a grievous malady, which compelled him in a few weeks to resign his situation. In what way his place should be supplied, was a question calculated to trouble his colleagues at all times; for he had great weight with them; and though, on Irish questions, he adopted the illiberal views of one party to the uttermost extent of impolicy and intolerance, on other matters he leant towards their adversaries, or at any rate, by his personal consideration with all, and his ancient intimacy with the leader of that side, he was enabled to preserve the Government from the violent end it so often seemed near coming to. But if the difficulty would at any time have been great, of finding a successor to that noble person, it was incalculably augmented by the present aspect of affairs abroad, and by the new balance of parties. What had been passing for some time in Parliament, above all, what had passed just before the recess, showed how infallibly the great body of the Opposition,

both in and out of Parliament, that is, the only powerful party in both Houses, and an immense majority of all ranks in the country, would give their cordial support to the liberal part of the Cabinet; and it might be safely predicted, that if Mr Canning were placed at the head of the Government, no remains either of party or of personal animosity would interfere with their desire to give him and his friends, because of the policy they had so wisely adopted and so ably patronised, a cordial, and, if wanted, a systematic support. It was equally clear, that should they be driven out of the Ministry, a cordial and systematic co-operation would be easily established between them and those who had indeed for years been their allies. So that while, on the one hand, the Liberal Part of the Cabinet could stand more triumphantly than before, should the Illiberal resign, these had not the most trifling chance of maintaining their ground, should they, by taking the upper hand, drive their adversaries from office.

If it be clear that such was the posture of affairs, the question was manifestly decided; and it only remained for the opponents of Mr Canning in the Cabinet, either to submit, or to retire, should he be placed by their common Master at the head of the Government. He was plainly in a situation to dictate his own terms, while they had no power over him, either of continuing to govern without his assistance, or of opposing the Ministry he might form. Of the two courses, submission and resignation, they chose the latter, partly upon personal grounds of objection to the individual, partly upon public principles which they held widely differing from his, and which would have been betrayed, by serving under one who openly attached himself to the contrary system. Accordingly, after a short interval spent in fruitless negotiation, and in unavailing attempts to form a purely Tory Ministry-attempts wholly uncountenanced, it is believed, by the Sovereign, and which the most sagacious of themselves knew from the first to be desperate-they resigned in a body, leaving his Majesty without advisers, and the country without a Government.

Far be from us, however, any design of imputing blame to the distinguished persons who suddenly, and, it is said, without any actual concert, took this step. Their feelings of personal honour may have justified it; their differences of opinion upon fundamental points may have required it. We are quite aware of the change in the aspect of the Catholic Question, which the substituting its zealous advocate for its determined opponent, as Prime Minister, was calculated to create. Indeed, we can much more easily comprehend the enemies of that great mea sure feeling the impossibility of acting under Mr Canning as

their leader, both in the Government and the House of Commons, than we can understand their so long allowing him the preponderance he had in the Cabinet, with the ostensible position he occupied in Parliament, before Lord Liverpool's political demise. But there was one resignation not so easily understood upon any of those grounds, and which remains unexplained, either by personal or political disunion; we mean Lord Melville's-whose conduct in his important office had given satisfaction; whose opinions had uniformly been upon the liberal side in all questions, Irish as well as English; and who was not understood to be separated, by any dislike, from those whose principles were his own. His retirement, therefore, while it was regretted, could only be accounted for upon the supposition of some punctilious notions of duty towards his other colleagues, or towards the Ministry, in the abstract, with which he had so long been connected;-notions certainly in nowise calculated to lessen any one's respect for him, though all might desire to see them give way after a season. Mr Peel's retirement was also matter of some regret, because he had of late shown a disposition, worthy of all encouragement in official characters, to probe abuses both in the practice and structure of our judicial system, and had adopted some of the principles, nay, fostered

* The Newspapers have been filled with some very singular effusions during the late progress of the Western Circuit, purporting to be charges to various Grand Juries and Petty Juries, and addresses to prisoners, both before and after conviction, and interlocutory observations during the course of trials. To these, the name of the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas is appended; and the reader is frequently tempted to believe that they must be efforts of pleasantry, as where the learned Judge tells a convict, that we (of course meaning the prisoner as well as the Judge) are much indebted to the salutary change of the law, whereby the punishment is now raised from seven to fourteen years' transportation.' However, be those productions genuine or not, we (and in this plural the learned Judge is certainly included) are not indebted to them in any respect whatever. They are distinguished by a great flow of language, eminently spirited, impressive, and often felicitous; by any one judicial quality they assuredly are not marked. A great magistrate, the second in England, travelling the second of its circuits, to read lectures upon what ought to be the law, which he is only sworn to administer as it is; and making every charge the vehicle of unmeasured praises heaped upon one of the leaders of a well-known political party, is not a spectacle which the friends either of the bench or of the law can take great delight in beholding. The absurd exaggeration of all those eulogies, we are convinced, must be far more painful to the distin

the very measures of amendment so long recommended, with boundless learning and unwearied zeal, by the chiefs of the Liberal Party. But though Mr Peel's conduct in leaving office might be regretted, it could not by any candid man be blamed; neither could the grounds of it be misunderstood; his resignation was widely different from Lord Melville's; he could not with any regard to his character, or with any kind of consistency, have remained in office, at least in the Home Department, under one so pledged to the Catholics as Mr Canning. Until this question should be settled, his retirement from power seemed almost unavoidable, the impossibility of his friends forming a Government being admitted on all hands; and his wish to do so being to our apprehension more than problematical, as we are confident his interest in its being done is anything but doubtful; for upon almost all other questions he has espoused the more liberal policy of those whom he left in office.

We have now given the plain story of the late change, as it appears from facts known to all the world; and we have had no occasion to invoke the aid of secret history for the untying of any knotty passages. Although it has never been pretended among all the silly and the wilful mistatements which have been put forth, that any private understanding subsisted between the Liberal Ministers and the leaders of the Opposition previous to the Easter recess, the most groundless and even ridiculous charges were advanced of perfidy and intrigue during those holidays, sometimes against the Ministers, sometimes against the Opposition. That not an instant was lost in opening a communication with the chiefs of that party, when the former Administration had been broken up, is very certain; and that such a step was as consistent with the purest honour and fair dealing in the one party, as it was with entire consistency in the other, and perfectly natural in both, no one who has honoured the preceding narrative with his attention, can for a moment doubt. Great reluctance was, however, shown in the Opposition to take office. Some of the new Ministry were known to oppose the

guished individual who is their subject than to any other person; if he is bepraised in respect of what he has done, he is also lauded for attempts not quite successful; and he is openly extolled for what others did, and not a little for what has never been done by any one. With reference to his own share of the gain derived from this circuit, he may be tempted to say- Pessimum inimicorum genus laudatores' -but of his panegyrist he may truly say- Satis eloquentiæ, sapientiæ parum,' and may thus explain how he has himself contributed to make of a great Advocate, a very moderate Judge.