course of a Session, and even then he is remarkably economical of his observations. When he does address a few observations to the House, he acquits himself very creditably in so far as the mere mechanism of speaking is concerned. His voice is fine, and his language is easy and correct; but he has no energy in his manner, and no stamina in his matter.

In his personal appearance he is quite a dandy : I question if he has any equal in this respect in the House. You always see him dressed in the extreme of fashion; were an American to see the noble Marquis, he would "guess" that he spends as much time at his toilet as do the generality of the fair sex. He is vain of the handsomeness of his person, and it must be admitted that in this respect he is perhaps equalled by few noble Lords. He is indeed one of the most handsome men one is in the habit of meeting with. No one can see him without admiring the regularity of his features and the symmetry of his fine tall person. His complexion is dark, and his hair of a hue approaching to jet black; the latter is always most carefully curled and dressed, after a fashion which none but a friseur could properly describe.

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CHAPTER XIII.

LIBERAL PARTY.-EARLS.

EARL GREY-EARL OF DURHAM-EARL OF RADNOR

THE name of Earl GREY is one which has not only of late years occupied a most prominent, perhaps the most prominent, place among his contemporaries, but it is, without question, destined to be better known by posterity than of any other statesman of the present day. The zeal and energy with which, in early life, when a member of the Lower House, he espoused those liberal principles of Reform which he afterwards not only lived to see triumphant, but whose triumph was chiefly brought about by his own instrumentality, brought his name familiarly before the public upwards of forty years ago; and the undeviating steadiness with which he adhered, through the whole of his after life, to the principles with

which in the outset he identified himself, notwithstanding the various political vicissitudes of that long and eventful period,-would have procured for him no ordinary reputation in the estimation of unborn generations, though his name had been in nowise associated with the Reform Bill. But it is the circumstance of his having been the author of that great measure, and the Minister under whose auspices it was triumphantly carried through both Houses of Parliament, in defiance of a most decided and powerful Opposition, that gives him that commanding station which he now occupies in the eyes of the country, and which his memory will inevitably occupy in the eyes of future ages.

I doubt if there be a statesman of the present day, no matter of what party, whose public career has been of any length, who has been equally consistent in his opinions and conduct. I am satisfied the history of the country does not afford an instance of a public man having adhered, with such undeviating consistency through an equally protracted and eventful life, to the principles he embraced in his earlier years. The truth was, that Earl Grey, before he appeared in public life, maturely examined the great question of politics in all its branches and bearings; and being a man of sterling integrity of character-as all his

opponents, from the commencement to the close of his public life, have on all occasions been forward to admit he adopted those opinions which he conceived to be founded in truth and justice, and which he regarded as most adapted to promote the prosperity and glory of his own country, and the happiness of the world at large. And these principles once embraced, no considerations of individual interest could prevail on him in any measure to abandon or compromise them.

It is not to be denied that Lord Grey, on several occasions during the period of his Administration, brought measures into Parliament which did not come quite up to his own individual views, and that on some others he allowed measures to pass after they had been to some extent mutilated by the adverse party. But it must be remembered that the reason, in the first case, was either the impossibility of getting the Members of his Ministry unanimously to concur in his views, or the certainty that, if they did, it would be impracticable to carry the measures, which he might have wished to pass, through both Houses of Parliament. In the other case, he, on several occasions, accepted measures which had been stripped by the Tories of some of what he regarded as their best provisions, because he considered that if, in so doing, he

only procured their concurrence in their principle, he thereby strengthened his own hands, and increased the chances of carrying, at no distant day, perhaps in a Session or two, the very measures, or others as liberal, which had been mutilated. In neither case was there any dereliction of his own principles; no compromise of what he conceived the people's interests. The question with him always was, how far it was practicable, under existing circumstances, to carry out his own individual principles; and whether the concessions which his opponents were willing to make to him were of sufficient extent and importance to justify him in departing, in some measure, from what he conceived the just demands of the people,-especially when the evils of agitation and indefinite delay, in the event of rejecting those concessions, -were taken into the account.

But it was only in reference to questions of secondary importance that he would make even this apparent compromise. In measures involving first principles he would not depart from one iota of what he conceived the abstract right or justice of the case demanded. The Reform Bill is an instance in point. On that great question he took his stand on certain broad principles, from which, neither the threats of the Tory Peers, nor the