One of the desperate conditions was, that he could not form the Cabinet which his intentions and the necessities of the times required. He arrived in London early on Tuesday, the 9th of December, and went at once to the King; yet, on the next Saturday, nothing was known but that he would himself be Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as First Lord of the Treasury. Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham had declined being of his corps; and he did not accept the ultra-Tory adherents of the Duke whom he found hanging about on his return. In his ministry are found, naturally, but unfortunately for its chances, four men whose political steadiness could never again be counted upon, - Lords Lyndhurst and Rosslyn; Sir James Scarlett, now made Lord Abinger; and Mr. Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton. The rest were of such politics as to discredit at once all professions of the Duke and his friends, in Sir Robert Peel's absence, of the desire of the government to promote all rational reforms. The Duke himself went to the foreign office; Mr. Goulburn, to the home; Mr. Herries, to the war; and Lord Aberdeen, to the colonial office. Sir Henry Hardinge was Irish Secretary; Lord Wharncliffe, Lord Privy Seal; and Lord Rosslyn, President of the Council. Lord Lyndhurst was on the woolsack, and Lord Abinger became Chief Baron. Some of the King's sons-in-law, who were Whigs, resigned their offices in the household, and were succeeded by Conservatives of a very pure water.

New Cabinet.

Another of the desperate conditions was the state of parties in the Commons. From the moment there was a rumor of a difficulty between the King and Lord Melbourne, the Whigs and Radicals in the House began to incline towards each other, lest the reformers of England should lose any of the ground they had so hardly gained. From the moment it became known that Lord Melbourne had declined the earldom and the garter, which the poor King had the bad taste to offer as a compensation for unreasonable treatment, all differences were sunk for the season, and the two parties united as one; so that it was believed, on every hand, that little more than a fourth- certainly less than a third of the existing House of Commons would support the new Ministry. Though the people might not, at that juncture, return a much more favorable House, the experiment must be tried. Parliament was prorogued on the 18th of De- Dissolution of cember; and on the 30th it was dissolved by proclamation, and a new one was convoked, to meet on the 19th of February.1

1

Parliament.

Before taking the sense of the country, it was necessary for the Minister to put forth some declaration of what the country

1 Annual Register, 1834, p. 337.

Tamworth

had to expect from him; and this he did in the form of an address to his Tamworth constituents, avowing that he manifesto. was at the same time addressing the whole middle classes of the nation. It is observable, that, while he speaks undoubtingly of his obligation to take office, and heartily of his intention to toil and persevere, there is scarcely an expression in the address which indicates hope of permanence and success. Its tone is cheerful, but no one could call it sanguine: and, in indicating the principles on which he means to act, he speaks for himself alone, and makes no reference to a Cabinet policy, or to administrative co-operation in any way; merely declaring, in a parenthetical manner, that the sentiments of his colleagues are in entire concurrence with his own.

First, he declares himself a reformer of abuses, and points to his own great measures in regard to the currency, to criminal law, to jury trial, and other matters, in proof of his disposition to remove abuses and facilitate improvements. In the same spirit, he would accept and make operative any reform actually accomplished, whether he originally approved of it or not; and he would therefore accept the Reform Bill, considering it a "final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question;' and he would carry out its intentions, supposing those to imply a careful review of old institutions, undertaken in a friendly spirit, and with a purpose of improvement. Coming down to particulars, he would not interfere with the inquiry of the corporation commissioners, of which he had shown his approbation by being voluntarily a member of the parliamentary committee upon it. He had voted with government on Lord Althorp's church-rate measure, and was still willing to relieve the Dissenters from the grievance of paying church-rates, and of a celebration of marriage in terms to which they conscientiously objected. He would not admit the right of Dissenters to admission to the universities ; but he would recommend an alteration of the regulations which prevented any of the King's subjects from being on a perfect equality with others in respect to any civil privilege. He would not countenance any retrospective inquiry into the pension-list, filled, as it had been, under circumstances that had passed away; but he would advocate more care in future in the conferring of pensions. About church-reform in Ireland, again, his mind was not changed: he was in favor of the best distribution, be it ever so new, of ecclesiastical property for ecclesiastical purposes; but he could not sanction its application to any other than strictly ecclesiastical objects. He wished to see a commutation of tithe in England; and, with regard to deeper matters, the laws which govern the Church, he desired time for further thought, and opportunity for new light. The somewhat deprecatory tone

of the conclusion of this address is striking now, and must have been strongly felt by all the many classes of readers who thronged to get a sight of it on the morning of its appearance. “I enter upon the arduous duties assigned to me with the deepest sense of the responsibility they involve, with great distrust of my own qualifications for their adequate discharge; but, at the same time, with a resolution to persevere, which nothing could inspire but the strong impulse of public duty, the consciousness of upright motives, and the firm belief that the people of this country will so far maintain the prerogative of the King as to give to the ministers of his choice, not an implicit confidence, but a fair trial."

Such was the text on which the popular comment of the elections was to proceed. It was much more liberal than the Liberals had expected; but, when they looked at the group of colleagues behind, they distrusted the Minister and his manifesto, and set vigorously to work to elect a House which should bring all his counsels to nought, and frustrate all his efforts. He could not have said that they, as Liberals, were wrong; and neither he nor they could anticipate how their opposition would rouse his faculties and exalt his fame. This address appeared in one paper as a mere advertisement, in small type. In another, it was conspicuous as the leading article. It was immediately reprinted, throughout the country; and it is strange now to see it standing under the heading of "the Tory Manifesto." If this was its true title, Toryism had indeed changed its character, much and rapidly.

The first reformed Parliament had not satisfied its constituents: it had done some wrong things, and omitted many right ones; but it had had the great virtue of being in advance of the ill-compacted, desultory, unbusiness-like Whig Cabinet. It would have done more and better but for the drag of the Administration, which was always put on when there was up-hill work to be attempted. If the same Parliament had been allowed to remain, its great reform party no longer impeded by the Whigs, but aided by them, great things might be hoped. As it was not to remain, it was parted with more respectfully and good-humoredly than could have been supposed possible three months before, under a prevailing sense that much allowance must be made for the disadvantage of the reform Ministry having so soon fallen so far below all rational expectation. Every thing might The new be hoped from the next House of Commons. The Parliament. first object of every class of reformers was clear enough, depose the Conservatives, and reinstate a reforming Ministry; and it would be perfectly easy to do this by union between the Whig and Radical parties, though, as every one knew, there

to

the time.

would be more Conservatives returned under a Peel than under a Grey Ministry. More Conservatives were returned, but the Reformers had still an overwhelming majority; and from the hour when the members assembled, it was only a question of time a consideration of sense and temper― when and how Sir Robert Peel should be compelled to retire. The popular power being thus clearly able to do what it would, it now appears strange that the virulence of the time was what it was. The Minister seems to have been almost the only man who preserved temper and cheerfulness, though his position was incomparably the hardest, placed, as he was, in that hopeless position, without Temper of any choice of his own. It is not necessary to record the ill-humor of the time by anecdotes which would now convey more disgrace than the parties deserved; but it may be said, that the kingdom was covered with altercation, from the House of Lords, where the late ministers spoke with extreme bitterness of late events, down to the street-corners and policecourts, where fretful men complained of each other, and of the police, and the bill-stickers, and all officers concerned in all elections. The Conservatives quarrelled among themselves quite as virulently as either party with the other. The old Tories put out a caricature of the search of Diogenes, who lights upon Lord Eldon as the only honest man. The "Times" lectured the party on its slowness and apathy; and other Conservative papers denounced all compromise with reform, now that the opportunity was present of putting down the Papists and the Radicals by the powers of government, under the countenance of the King. As soon as it was clear that the Reformers had a very large majority, and when the "Times" retreated so far as to discuss the possibility of a coalition between the Grey and Peel parties, the other leading paper, the "Standard," intimated that the new Parliament would be immediately dissolved, in order to afford the people an opportunity of reconsidering their duty, and returning a House more agreeable to the other ruling powers. This intimation caused such an outcry about a return of the time of the Stuarts, that the paper softened its menace immediately; but it could not recall the hint it had given to the constituencies to keep up their organization, in readiness for a new election, at any hour. Accusations of bribery all round were profuse, and, on the whole, too well deserved; for the occasion was indeed a most critical one, when the corrupt, as well as the honorable, felt called on to put forth all their resources. Then, there was incessant quarrelling about the waverers, or doubtful men, who were just sufficient to make it difficult to calculate, and easy to dispute, what the Conservative minority would in reality be. Then, again, it was certain, that, from the losses to the Reform party

in the English boroughs, where corporation-reform was most wanted, the two parties were run so close that any effectual parliamentary majority must be yielded by Scotland and Ireland; and this gave occasion for a fierce renewed cry about Papist supremacy. When the last election-returns came in, it appeared to the most careful calculators that the Reformers were secure of a majority of above 130; and, if all the doubtfuls were given to the ministerial party, the Conservatives would still be in a minority of 82. Thus the fate of the new Ministry was decided, and known to be so, before the Premier met Parliament, - known at least by the Liberals, though the Premier himself appears to have gained confidence as time went on, from finding how much reform it was practicable for him to effect. At a dinner at Tamworth, he intimated that the ominous predictions of his being unable to carry on the government might not, perhaps, be necessarily true: Parliament might give him a fair trial, and he could not but think that many who were classed as Reformers held views very like his own.

The Reformers, however, felt that this was no time for a comparison of views on any particular subjects, but rather an occasion for deciding between opposite principles of government in the large. In this there can now be no question that they were right; and the more the late Whig Government had fallen short of fidelity to reform principles, the more important it was now to re-assert them, and to put aside any Minister, be his personal merits what they might and his policy ever so promising, who stood forth as the representative of the Tory party, with a group of Tories at his back. "Public principle" however the words might be ridiculed by the newspapers of the day as meaning private interests and jealous tempers did require that the distinction of parties should at that crisis be made as conspicuous as possible; and, if anger and disappointment and jealousy among ministerial men on the Whig side did make sad havoc with temper and manners, such incidents did not alter the duty of the time. Those Reformers who were much of Sir Robert Peel's mind about many things, and might have supported him in a tranquil organic season, were now bound to set him aside if they could; because the first duty of the critical period was to choose decidedly between an unregenerate and a regenerate system of There was not, therefore, necessarily any spirit government. of faction in the determination of the Reformers to begin the campaign by requiring a speaker of their own party. Election of Whether or not they had been right hitherto in main- the speaker. taining Sir Charles Manners Sutton in the chair, it was clear that it would not be right now. Times were altered; and the man was visibly altered by the change in the times. He had