flicting thoughts regarding what was likely to occur. And for himself-what would be his own position? Would he have any, or in the jostle and scramble of a change of parties would every post of honour be seized upon by some Lord or lacquey on the spot? Absent would he be forgotten?

The arrival of the next packet put an end to all doubtings and conjectures. The refusal of Lord Grey at the last moment to enter the Cabinet with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary, had rendered abortive Lord John's attempt to form an Administration, and Sir Robert Peel had resumed power with the whole of his colleagues, Lord Stanley and Lord Wharncliffe excepted. It seemed as though a new lease of power had been given to the Conservative Cabinet, and that upon the eve of triumphantly asserting their principles the Whigs had thrown away an opportunity not likely soon again to occur. As the indistinct echoes of the impending change died away, the exiled mourner sunk back into the apathy from which he had been but half aroused, and he seemed to be unwilling to contemplate the idea of returning home. During the first three months of 1846 he preferred remaining at Madeira, by the climate of which he was led to believe that the health of his

wife had been considerably improved. Her solicitude on his account did not permit her, however, to encourage the tendency to inaction which she saw stealing over his mind; and when at the beginning of April they learned from public and private sources that, notwithstanding all that had occurred in December, the continuance of Sir Robert Peel in office was daily regarded in England as very doubtful, Mrs. Sheil strongly urged upon her husband the expediency of returning to England. She well knew that for him there was and could be no mental restorative but that which had so long been the excitement and occupation of his life. She believed that his political career was not ended, and that a higher meed of recognition awaited his many services to his country and his party than he had yet obtained. Her affection rekindled his ambition. On the 22nd of April they sailed for Cadiz in a vessel named the Grace Darling, which at the time plied between the island and that port, whence they returned by the ordinary steamer to Southampton.

On his return to England he found the condition of parties wholly changed. The Treasury bench was still occupied by those who had for the two preceding years led the Conservative party; but the party fol

lowed them no longer. Acknowledged leaders they could hardly be said as yet to have any; for though, as was wittily said, Disraeli had invented Lord George Bentinck for the purpose, the value of the invention was hardly yet recognised, as for its cleverness in conception, and its intrinsic power it really deserved to be. Throughout the abortive debates on the abolition of the Corn Law in 1846, none but a man of genius could possibly have enlisted on the losing side anything like interest, or could reanimate a deserted cause.

In the debate on the second reading of the Irish Arms Bill, Mr. Sheil eloquently reviewed Sir R. Peel's career, and justified the Liberals in rejecting the coercive measure proposed by Ministers, and in uniting with the Protectionists in a course which would necessarily drive them from power. "It was his firm persuasion that the criminalities of Ireland ought to be attributed to the moral distemper, of which a Government utterly destitute of the confidence and support of the people never fails to be productive. He would have occasion to animadvert upon the policy pursued by the Prime Minister in reference to Ireland. It had often been his misfortune to have thought it his duty to do But in doing so he had never forgotten that it was to the right honourable gentleman himself he was

so.

indebted for the privilege of pronouncing his condemnation to his face. And as in his highest and most palmy state, when he stood at the head of that great Conservative party which it cost him so many years to construct, and which in a few months he had reduced to such utter dilapidation, he had always endeavoured to avoid the use of any phrase which could justly be considered as wantonly offensive; and now that the right honourable baronet had apparently undergone some temporary change of fortune-now that in his descent from the meridian, a cloud tinged, perhaps with light, but still a cloud, was passing over him -it should be his peculiar care that the language of strong animadversion should be dissociated from disrespect. He did not despair of the right honourable gentleman. He entertained a hope that he who had had the virtue and the courage to dash to pieces that Sliding Scale which cost him so much fruitless ingenuity to elaborate, would recant his Irish heresies at last, and to his celebrated inconsistencies would give a glorious consummation. Perhaps he had used an infelicitous expression. True consistency does not depend upon a servile subserviency to your own fallacies or to the passions of your party. The truly consistent statesman does not so much consider what

it has been his mistake to have done, as what it has become his duty to do. He does not look back at his own yesterdays, but looks forward to his country's glorious morrow. The welfare of that country is not his chief object, only because it is his only one. Fixing his eyes on that solitary point-bright, eternal, and unsetting-however the wind may blow, and however the current may set, by that immutable light he steers his apparently irregular, but in truth, undeviating course. Having performed the pleasurable office of hypothetical panegyric, he came to the discharge of a distasteful task, that of finding grievous fault with the Irish policy of the right honourable gentleman. When the Catholic question was adjusted, it could not be doubted that he was fully resolved to carry out the principle on which the enfranchisement of millions of his fellow-citizens rested; and that had he remained in power he would not have attempted to stunt the growth of that principle, or to impede its development into the obvious results into which it must at last inevitably expand. In his memorable speech, when introducing the Relief Bill in 1829, Sir R. Peel had enumerated the various measures of coercion enacted since the Union, and expressed a hope that the time for measures of that character had