scarcely have withstood contemplating what might perhaps have been his own position and that of the great whig connexion, had he been deemed worthy to fill in '31 the post which he occupied in '35.

In or out of power therefore the position of Lord John Russell since the reform act had been more splendid than satisfactory; and when the whig party, as was inevitable from their antecedents, but apparently, to his mortification, in consequence of his guidance, was again overthrown, and had lost all credit and confidence with the country, it was to be expected that a man of his thoughtful ambition would seek when the occasion offered to rebuild his power and renew the lustre of his reputation with no superstitious deference to that party of which he was the victim as much as the idol, and with no very punctilious consideration for the feelings of that conservative government which had certainly extended to him an opposition neither distinguished by its generosity nor its candour.

Such was the man; such his fortunes, such perhaps his feelings; who was watching in a distant city in the autumn of '45 "four cabinet councils held in a week." To one so experienced in political life, and especially to one so intimately acquainted with the personal character of the chief actors, it was not difficult to form some conclusion as to

the nature of these momentous deliberations. When the cabinet dispersed and parliament was again prorogued, it was evident, to use the subsequent expression of Lord John Russell, that the policy decided on was a policy of inaction. It is in the season of perplexity, of hesitation, of timidity, of doubt, that leading minds advance to decide and to direct. Now was the moment to strike. And without consulting his party which for the first time he really led and with no false delicacy for a conservative cabinet in convulsions, he expressed his opinions on public affairs in that celebrated Edinburgh epistle, which was addressed on the 28th of November, to his constituents, the citizens of London.

CHAPTER II.

THE proceedings of those four councils in a week, which in November 45 agitated England, perplexed the sagacious Tuileries, and disturbed even the serene intelligence of the profound Metternich, are no longer a secret.

The prime minister of England, in bringing before the consideration of his colleagues the temporary measures which in his judgment a menaced exigency required, intimated to them at the same time his change of opinion as to the principles on which our commercial system ought to be established, entirely rejecting those conclusions, the maintenance of which only four years before had raised him, after an official ostracism of ten years, to the

pinnacle of power by a national demonstration scarcely inferior to the triumph of Mr. Pitt in 1783. This momentous conversion had for some time been known to more than one of his principal colleagues who sympathized with his mutability, and had perhaps been suspected by most, who however were not anxious to press for any definite disclosures, so long as his defection was limited to the domain of speculation. Sir Edward Knatchbull however, who seceded in silence both from the cabinet and parliament in the previous year, when pressed for the cause of his retirement by an anxious friend confidentially replied that he could not remain with satisfaction and felt that he could not long remain with honour, and that at his time of life he shrank from again mixing in the bitter strife which attended the break-up of a great party from the defection of its leaders. It was the wish and perhaps the hope of Sir Robert Peel to have postponed the public announcement of his recantation until the opinion of the country might at a general election have been again constitutionally taken on the subject of protection. The present parliament was fast waning, and had low prices and abundant harvests continued to prevail, Sir Robert Peel was prepared until the dissolution, still to occupy the ostensible post of a protectionist minister. Perhaps he was sanguine that during the interval the national judgment

which had been so unequivocally expressed in '41 might be greatly modified, and that it was not impossible he might ultimately be established as a triumphant minister to revoke the very policy which he had previously been selected to defend and confirm.

But he was tr precluded from taking a course which would have been most agreeable to his personal feelings." The menaced occurrence of a great calamity rendered it necessary in his opinion that the government should take some steps to secure the provision of the people. "There appeared to be a great and pressing danger." The cabinet was summoned on the 1st of November to consider what steps should be taken for the relief of the distress in Ireland. That was the avowed object of their assembling and the announced subject for their discussion. Papers were laid before the ministers representing the failure of the potato crop and the general anxiety that consequently prevailed; and then the chief minister, after dilating much upon the perilous position of Ireland and the necessity of adopting immediate steps for her succour, entered into a lengthened detail of the result of the harvest in foreign countries which he represented to be generally deficient. It appeared that several European governments had already taken steps to prevent the export of supplies, and to permit and encourage