say, on this occasion, that during the whole of our administration, our motives never received a fair construction, nor did our measures ever receive an impartial consideration from those who were our political opponents."

This is a grave charge, applying as it does to a very eventful period of nearly seven years, for such was the considerable duration of the Melbourne government. Was the charge well-founded? In reluctantly admitting its authenticity, there are however in justice to the conservative ministry, and especially in justice to the conservative party, several important considerations to be indicated.

The unfairness with which the last Melbourne administration was treated was the consequence of the irregular and somewhat scandalous conduct of the whig party during the preceding administration, and especially during the latter months of Lord Grey's government. This conduct had

created a great mass of public prejudice against them. Notwithstanding the reform of parliament and the august renown of its apparent author, the whigs had contrived in a very brief space to lose the opinion of a country which at the termination. of 1830, it was supposed by many, they might have ruled for half a century. A series of strange incidents, of startling changes, and almost inexplicable intrigues, had perplexed, alarmed, and disgusted the

middle class. The champions of popular opinion seemed involved in cabals, and eventually as it appeared against their own venerable chief, while the ministers upheld by national sympathies were in dark but baffled confederation with an Irish section, not viewed without distrust even by the great body of the liberal party.

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Unquestionably the main cause of this strange and unexpected state of affairs was the unfitness of the respectable Lord Spencer for the leading office which he occupied. Private integrity and public honour are qualities, it is to be hoped, which will never be underrated in our free, parliamentary life; but they are qualities which are not sufficient in the revolutionary hour to control cabinets and His resignation, and immediate resumption of power, followed by the retirement of Lord Grey, have never been explained, though it is charitable to suppose they were the movements of a man distracted by good intentions and difficult circumstances. The impatience of the court, by hurrying the catastrophe, secured to the whigs, after a brief but not inglorious interval for the tories, a lengthened renewal of that power which they had so wantonly abused, and Lord Melbourne with his new cabinet had to encounter all that prejudice which was the consequence of the misconduct of his old one.

The leader of the house of commons in Lord

Melbourne's new cabinet was Lord John Russell, who had, hitherto, taking into consideration his parliamentary experience, his eminent services, and his name, filled comparatively speaking only a subordinate position in the government. When the cabinet of Lord Grey was formed he was not appointed a member of it, and he even, as paymaster of the forces, brought forward the great measure of parliamentary reform as the member of the government most competent to explain and to defend its provisions, without the responsibility of being an adviser of his majesty. The whigs could hardly have treated Mr. Burke worse, and probably, in some degree, from the same cause. Lord John Russell was a man of letters, and it is a common opinion that a man cannot at the same time be successful both in meditation and in action. But in life it is wisest to judge men individually, and not decide upon them by general rules. The common opinion in this instance may be very often correct; but where it fails to apply its influence may involve us in fatal mistakes. A literary man who is a man of action is a two-edged weapon; nor should it be forgotten that Caius Julius and Frederick the Great were both eminently literary characters, and yet were perhaps the two most distinguished men of action of ancient and modern times.

The whigs were SO circumstanced after the dissolution of '34 that they could only regain power by a still more intimate alliance with that ultramontane Irish party, their previous negotiation with which had been the principal cause of their overthrow. Lord John Russell therefore was obliged to commence his career as a principal minister by not only reviving but aggravating the prejudice which already attached to his party in this particular. He obtained power by the assertion of a principle which as a minister he was unable to enforce, and the resumption of office by the whigs was thus secured by a process which, while it was condemned by public opinion, became an enduring evidence of the essential weakness of their administration. Thus the second government of Lord Melbourne was from the first both unpopular and feeble; and this too in the face of a very powerful opposition in parliament and the country, who could not resist the conclusion that the ministry had obtained their seats under a false pretence; means scarcely within the pale of parliamentary tactics.

Laying aside for a moment this original sin which however tainted all their course, the measures of the Melbourne government were generally moderate, well-matured, and statesmanlike schemes. The conduct of the government until '39 was highly reputable, and well would it have been for the

honour of both parties, if the impending and inevitable change of administration had not then been postponed. During all this period however it must be acknowledged that the whigs encountered "an opposition which never gave a fair construction to, an impartial consideration of, their measures;" the whigs certainly during this period did not receive fair play; but it was because both parliament and the country from the scandalous transactions of '34 and the reckless manœuvres of '35 thought that they did not deserve it.

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But the position of Lord John Russell under these circumstances was different from that of the other principal members of the whig party. Although at this period leader of the house of commons, he had not been even a member of the first reform cabinet, and though tardily preferred to that eminence, can scarcely be held in any degree responsible for that management of the lower house and that guidance of the ministerial councils which, in the space of little more than three years, had succeeded in dissipating a great parliamentary force and in scattering a powerful cabinet. Forced, for the resuscitation of the whig government, to the manœuvre of the appropriation clause, he could scarcely have refrained from deploring the infirm policy which had rendered necessary for a proud and successful party such an abasement: he could

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