the House of Commons not being able to string six sentences together, was superadded to the Whig Reform Bill, in itself undoubtedly a great fact, a great remarkable fallacy which has taken its ultimate form and colour in the premiership of Lord John Russell. It is impossible for any one who compares past events with those which were then still future, to doubt that, had not contingencies which it was difficult to forecast turned out the Wellington Cabinet, Sir Robert Peel would have proved true to his normal policy of holding on too long, and then making a sudden and dangerous turn, like a reckless coachman galloping along a tortuous road. We can as little doubt that Sir Robert Peel's Reform Bill would have been a more clever performance than that of Lord Grey. But it was not to be so, and thus the late Premier purchased an instalment of unfortunate consistency, at the price of what might have been a crowning deed of statecraft, and might have modified for all future ages the colour of British politics. Before we pass on to the next Act, we must by way of parenthesis notice the unobtrusive way in which the great tradition of Tory royalty, the moving cause of the famous European war, was quietly dropped by the immediate recognition of the King of the French, (a precedent since followed when Lamartine and Ledru Rollin supplanted that same king,) on the part of that Wellington Cabinet, which built its Capitol among the potwallopers of East Retford. We have now come to the most extraordinary epoch of Sir Robert's history. The general election of 1832-3 left the Tory party a shattered ruin-disorganized by internal division, out of credit with the country, untrue to the dogmas upon which it had lived, unprovided with any to replace them, violently deprived of those material engines of influence on which it had so long relied, and which had proved powerless in the last desperate struggle on the floor of an unreformed Lower House, and an Upper House afraid to vindicate its own belief. And yet, amid all this chaos, this dislocation of men and principles, that outworn fragment of a Tory party which in the Parliament of Gully and Silk Buckingham could only muster 150 members against an exulting band of 500, was in the eyes of all thinking and unbiassed lovers of order the only hope of England's future safety-a very dim beacon, scarce gleaming through the sulphurous clouds and the driving spray, but still a beacon. The elements of stability in no way showed themselves attaching to the movement party-the Whigs, in the hour of triumph, proved themselves wanting. In this emergency Sir Robert Peel's peculiar talent displayed itself most conspicuously; the general voice of the respectability of England having pronounced, he very dexterously systematized it, andthe more marvellous portion of the achievement-he had sufficient influence to mould the old Tory will into conformity with his plans. The new Conservative party, the party of moderate and progressive reform, came forth the birth of the panic, Sir Robert Peel the midwife. The new machinery had hardly been set at work when it was put to a very severe and unexpected test in that freakish dismissal of Lord Melbourne's government by William IV. in the autumn of 1834, by which that most wellintentioned and unregal monarch endeavoured, now that he began to tire of citizen-kingship, to pay off all the insults which his Whig advisers had made him incur for four years. Parliament was dissolved; all the engines of the Carlton were set at work; officials discussed whom they might send to bleed at Sudbury; and the 150 became 250. This was undoubtedly in its way a success, and Sir Robert, so committed to his king and to the country, had no alternative but that of facing Parliament. The first vote was a discomfiture of the most cutting kind, the rejection of that long-tried and able speaker Mr. Manners Sutton, for an individual who proved the worst that had since the memory of man filled the chair. The inevitable result, a resig nation before Easter, followed. Short as had been this administration, creditable as had in many respects been its conduct, yet the solitary memorial of its existence which it left behind was a proof of the inadequacy of the new Conservative formulary when applied to matters beyond the immediate ken of Downing Strect. We refer to that hastily-devised and illarranged Ecclesiastical Commission, with which, under various forms, we have been saddled ever since-a body founded in disregard or ignorance of the simplest principles of ecclesiastical polity, and one which has more than can be described conduced to the stultification of any comprehensive system of real, sound Church reform. In April Lord Melbourne was again Premier, and then began a parliamentary struggle unexampled in its character,-no contest of high principle, but a perpetual strategy, a long unintermitted sapping and mining and scaling and circumventing-a struggle in which the zealous partisan had to be repressed no less than the determined opponent. Month after month witnessed the slow irresistible advance of Peel and his Conservatives, nearing and nearing upon the Whigs, as in the story the diminishing chamber of iron was said to close around the incarcerated and helpless victim. The issues of life and death seemed to favour the long enduring statesman's policy, for the demise of William IV. in 1837 effected what nothing else could do, a self-acting change of Parliament, which left the falling government and the rising opposition in possession of their two sides of the House, but with a considerable alteration of the balance of numbersand yet not too great a balance-one which might be strong enough to turn out a ministry upon, but not too strong to make a speedy dissolution a just subject of complaint even to those whose pockets might be the most heavily mulcted. Then began again the old game-tramp, tramp, advanced the opposition; skilful in dodges, unparalleled in shirking as they were, Lord Melbourne in the Lords and Lord John Russell in the Commons, fenced with a desperate ingenuity. That semi-ludicrous interlude known in history as the Bedchamber Plot helped to strengthen the moral prestige of the Conservatives. At length the crisis came, when all the Whig strength was mustered, when a dying man was wheeled into the House to expire in an unconscious vote, and the Speaker-no longer Mr. Abercromby but Mr. Lefevre-had to announce with his sonorous voice that the first Parliament of Queen Victoria had by one vote declared the Whigs incapable of governing, and a fixed duty on corn a fallacy. Loud were the cheers of the Conservatives at this triumph of principle; for amongst all the concessions and changes which made old Tory into new Conservative, one badge of the ancient faith was by common consent left, one sacred Palladium was treasured in the temple of consistency-the Sliding Scale. By an unfortunate coincidence, this bequest of the wisdom of our ancestors happened to be a very recent experiment devised since the peace, while Mr. Peel was already in high office. Nevertheless, it came from the old days of unreformed Toryism-so much had happened since, that people forgot their dates; and so it served as a very respectable specimen of premature antiquity. The ministry, with the perverse ingenuity of its party, did Sir Robert's dirty work for him, in dissolving the Parliament. The Carlton and the Reform set every engine to work-through every borough, and over every county were heard the appeal of 'cheap loaf,' and the rejoinder, and no money to buy it with;' the result, as everybody knows, was the election of a Parliament pledged to bring Sir Robert Peel into office, as the symbol of absolute protection. A noble struggle of a few days ensued-the leaders of either side put forth their strength-the battle was won by a large majority; but at the triumph, as in old Rome, the monitor of mortality was present, for this debate witnessed the maiden speech of Richard Cobden. But we are anticipating. August 30th saw Sir Robert again Prime Ministerthe Carlton was in ecstasies-the good old days of Toryism had indeed come back-the British Lion was after all alive-the Re form Bill had not destroyed the Constitution-the Emancipation Act had been a harmless interlude the 'great Commoner' takes the First Office with a bold innovation. Hitherto, when a member of the Lower House had been appointed to the office of First Commissioner of the Treasury, it was thought incumbent upon him to assume likewise the responsibilities of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. To this burden Pitt had submitted; Perceval, Canning, Sir Robert Peel, in 1834, had not refused it. But now the Leader of the House of Commons had his lieutenant by his side-and the Cabinet is gazetted: 'Beneath his curb hot Stanley frets, And, thankful for the place he gets, Walks fetter'd to his car.' The doctrinaires of the new school are satisfied with the Home Department being entrusted to Sir James Graham; the lovers of international peace hail with delight Lord Aberdeen's return to the Foreign Office; while the phalanx of country gentlemen see in Sir Edward Knatchbull's resumption of the Paymastership-General, that there is somewhere tuta fides; and the presence in the Cabinet of the Duke,' without office, gives a dignity to the whole body. We cannot pretend to give the history of that wonderful parliament; we will not venture to depict the unsuspecting docility with which red-hot Protectionists welcomed smooth speeches and liberalising tariffs judiciously doled out to them as bulwarks of their immortal principles. We shall not narrate how in their application the old Tory traditions of petty tactics were proved to be unsuitable to manage gentlemen who had fought popular constituencies at their own risk. We will not detail how the unseasonable brusqueries of the Home Secretary, and the constitutional reserve of the Prime Minister chilled enthusiasm. We shall not touch upon the unpopularity which he, perhaps unjustly, incurred by that conciliatory scheme, the endowment of Maynooth College, and how the government incurred the obloquy of, and paralysed, persons who were well disposed to be their friends, by the unjustifiable attempt to carry by a coup-de-main, and under colour of the supposed principles conceded in the endowment of Maynooth, a scheme of a widely different tendency,-the establishment of the three 'Godless Colleges' of Ireland; a measure which united in opposition, upon an Irish question, Sir Robert Inglis and 1 Sir Edward Knatchbull's fame as a statesman and claim to Cabinet office greatly depended upon a speech made against Emancipation, winding up with that original quotation, nusquam tuta fides. Mr. O'Connell. We shall not record the sulky dissatisfaction with which, under threat of a resignation, the house was compelled to stultify itself upon the Ten Hours' question, and to register the ministerial policy upon West India Sugar. We shall pass over that mistake, (not a thing of which a minister had need to have been ashamed, but still, as things go, an undeniable mistake,) which, by neglecting to confer a subordinate office upon a versatile and able literateur, raised up an adversary, bitter, implacable, and persevering—an adversary, whose present value on the Office 'Change, may yet puzzle future Cabinets. It is sufficient to say that without any great crisis having occurred, without the giant majority having sensibly fallen off, the position of Sir Robert Peel and his followers in 1845 was not what it had been in 1841; the whip was still responded to, and the government still carried what it listed, but the golden dream had faded into a russet hue, the enthusiasm of the first days had died away, the heroes of the good old cause were now but men, canvassed and suspected. Autumn came, and it was the famine year, when the 'Times' frightened us all with the announcement that there was not more than a fortnight's corn in England. The counterpart of the Bedchamber days was played. Parliament met in 1816 like an army in mutiny. The eloquence of Sir Robert was impatiently listened to. Country gentlemen who had sat for years and years mute upon the benches, astonished themselves and wore out the Speaker with their long harangues; one vehement man of noble birth, great readiness, marvellous memory, and utter want of statesmanship, heretofore only known upon the turf, hitherto the unwilling supporter of a minister whom, on the supposition of a long cherished private wrong, he never could endure, sprang forward, in a maiden speech, the selfelected leader of a party, claiming the old Tory pedigree. entire repeal of the corn-laws passed by opposition votes, and that Conservative party which it had taken Sir Robert so long to build up, in three months falls into the same disorganization which it had cost three years of his policy to bring upon the older Tory race. The cause in either case the same,-the desertion, without due notice given to those who had placed their confidence in him, by the same man, of that dogma which had raised him to power. The Then came a night of deep disgrace, when the opponents of the change, willing to throw away their much vaunted principles, if only they could ruin the man, joined with those who had so recently helped him to his last success, to turn Sir Robert out of office, by opposing a measure of his which they had a very short time before allowed to be necessary for the tranquillity of |