tured to predict and denounce the impending defection of the minister, there was no member of the conservative party who more violently condemned the unfounded attack, or more readily impugned the motives of the assailant.

He was not a very frequent attendant of the house. He might be counted on for a party division, and when, towards the termination of the Melbourne ministry, the forces were very nearly balanced and the struggle became very close, he might have been observed on more than one occasion entering the house at a late hour, clad in a white great-coat which softened, but did not conceal, the scarlet hunting coat.

Although he took no part in debate, and attended the house rather as a club than a senate, he possessed a great and peculiar influence in it. He was viewed with interest and often with extraordinary regard by every sporting man in the house. With almost all of these he was acquainted; some of them, on either side, were his intimate companions and confederates.

His eager and energetic disposition; his quick perception, clear judgment, and prompt decision; the tenacity with which he clung to his opinions; his frankness and love of truth; his daring and speculative spirit; his lofty bearing, blended as it was with a simplicity of manner very remarkable; the ardour of his friendships, even the fierceness of his hates and pre

judices; all combined to form one of those strong characters who whatever may be their pursuit must always direct and lead.

Nature had clothed this vehement spirit with a material form which was in perfect harmony with its noble and commanding character. He was tall, and remarkable for his presence; his countenance almost a model of manly beauty; the face oval, the complexion clear and mantling; the forehead lofty and white; the nose aquiline and delicately moulded; the upper lip short. But it was in the dark-brown eye that flashed with piercing scrutiny that all the character of the man came forth: a brilliant glance, not soft, but ardent, acute, imperious, incapable of deception or of being deceived.

Although he had not much sustained his literary culture, and of late years at any rate had not given his mind to political study, he had in the course of his life seen and heard a great deal, and with profit. Nothing escaped his observation; he forgot nothing and always thought. So it was that on all the great political questions of the day he had arrived at conclusions which guided him. He always took large views and had no prejudices about things whatever he might indulge in as to persons. He was always singularly anxious to acquire the truth and would spare no pains for that purpose; but when once his

mind was made up, it was impossible to influence him.

In politics, he was a whig of 1688, which became him, modified however by all the experience of the present age. He wished to see our society founded on a broad basis of civil and religious liberty. He retained much of the old jealousy of the court, but had none of popular franchises. He was for the established church, but for nothing more, and very repugnant to priestly domination. As for the industrial question, he was sincerely opposed to the Manchester scheme, because he thought that its full development would impair and might subvert our territorial constitution, which he held to be the real security of our freedom, and because he believed that it would greatly injure Ireland, and certainly dissolve our colonial empire.

He had a great respect for merchants, though he looked with some degree of jealousy on the development of our merely foreign trade. His knowledge of character qualified him in a great degree to govern men, and if some drawbacks from this influence might be experienced in his too rigid tenacity of opinion, and in some quickness of temper, which however always sprang from a too sensitive heart, great compensation might be found in the fact that there probably never was a human being so entirely

devoid of conceit and so completely exempt from selfishness. Nothing delighted him more than to assist and advance others. All the fruits of his laborious investigations were always at the service of his friends without reserve or self-consideration. He encouraged them by making occasions for their exertions, and would relinquish his own opportunity without a moment's hesitation, if he thought the abandonment might aid a better man.

CHAPTER III.

PARLIAMENT met on the 22nd January, 1846. The session was opened by her majesty in person. The pivot of the royal speech was Ireland; its frequent assassinations, and the deficiency of its principal crop. Remedial measures in both respects were intimated, and in both respects these suggestions exercised the greatest influence on the proceedings of the session. A general eulogy of recent commercial legislation was followed by a vague recommendation to consider whether the advantageous principles on which it had been founded might not be more extensively applied.

The debate on the address in the upper house was extremely bald. Instead of receiving those explanations which are usual on the change or the reconstruction of a ministry, and which the frankness of our parliamentary government not only justifies but requires, the Duke of Richmond was met by a strange