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RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS.

shock, and that its continuance could not be of long duration.

On Monday, the 15th of November, when the chancellor of the exchequer, Mr. Goulburn, moved that the House of Commons should go into a committee on the civil list, which, according to a previous estimate, it was proposed to raise to the annual sum of £970,000; Sir Henry Parnell moved as an amendment, “that a select committee be appointed, to inquire into the various items connected with the civil list, and to report thereon."

After a long debate, the house divided, when the numbers were for the amendment 233, against it 204; thus leaving ministers in a minority of twenty-nine.

This terminated the political ascendancy of the Duke of Wellington; and, on the following evening, his Grace, soon after entering the house, approached the table, and said, "My Lords, I deem it my duty to inform your lordships, that, in consequence of what occurred last night in the other House of Parliament, I felt it right to wait this morning on the King, and tender his Majesty the resignation of the office which I hold; that his Majesty has been pleased to accept of my resignation; and that I continue in my present situation only till a successor shall have been appointed.”.

In the Lower House, a similar communication was made by Sir Robert Peel but a circumstance followed, for which it is very difficult to account. Lord Althorp, having suggested to Mr. Brougham the propriety and necessity of postponing a motion for parliamentary reform, which stood for that evening, the honourable and learned gentleman gave a reluctant assent in these remarkable words: "As any change of administration that may take place cannot affect me, I am anxious to take this opportunity of

stating, that, if I now put off the motion, it will be only to the 25th of this month, and no longer; for I shall positively bring it forward then, whoever may be his Majesty's ministers."

The next day, he repeated the same declaration upon Sir Mathew White Ridley's moving that the consideration of election petitions should be postponed till after Christmas, that time might be given for the completion of the administration.

Mr. Brougham expressed his astonishment at the motion, and the reasons assigned for it by the honourable member, that ministers would not be present. "For himself, he would say, that the house could do many things without their assistance; with every feeling of respect for the future ministers, generally speaking, he could have nothing to do with the administration."

The motion was negatived; and two days after, Mr. Brougham was gazetted as lord high chancellor of Great Britain, with a peerage. The other offices were thus filled: In the cabinet-Earl Grey, first lord of the treasury; the Marquis of Lansdowne, president of the council; Lord Durham, lord privy seal; Lord Melbourne, home secretary; Lord Palmerston, foreign secretary; Lord Goderich, colonial secretary; Mr. Charles Grant, president of the India board; Lord Auckland, president of the board of trade, and master of the mint; Viscount Althorp, chancellor of the exchequer; Sir James Graham, first lord of the admiralty; to whom was added the Earl of Carlisle, without office.

Members of the government, not in the cabinet, were these-Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Lord Holland; first commissioner of woods and forests, Hon. Agar Ellis; master-general of the ordnance, Sir Wil

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REFLECTIONS ON THE CHANGE.

loughby Gordon; judge advocate, Mr. Robert Grant; attorney-general, Mr. Denman; solicitor-general, Mr. Horne; lord-lieutenant of Ireland, Marquis of Anglesey; lord chamberlain, the Duke of Devonshire; lord steward, the Marquis Wellesley; master of the horse, Earl of Albemarle; paymaster of the forces, Lord John Russell; vice-president of the board of trade, and treasurer of the navy, Mr. Poulett Thomson; postmaster-general, Duke of Richmond; keeper of the great seal of Scotland, the Duke of Argyll; chief secretary for Ireland, Mr. Stanley; commander-in-chief, Lord Hill; chancellor of Ireland, Lord Plunkett; attorney-general for Ireland, Mr. Pennefather; joint secretaries of the treasury, Mr. Edward Ellice and Mr. Spring Rice.

On this extraordinary ministerial revolution, so pregnant with important consequences, we shall forbear giving any opinion of our own, but content ourselves with extracting the moderate sentiments contained in the principal journal of the age. "There has not been within our memory," says the Times of the 22d of November, "a resignation of an entire cabinet, upon which public opinion may be said to have borne so directly and so powerfully, as that of the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues. It must nevertheless be acknowledged, that in no instance was a change effected in public opinion so absolute, so obvious, and so sudden, as that which his Grace experienced within a single fortnight, which he had the misfortune to produce by his own words, and to disregard utterly until it struck and overwhelmed him.

"So long as the Duke of Wellington moved in harmony with the predominating spirit of the nation, he was the most popular of all public servants. Notwithstanding the murmurs of a bigoted and narrow-minded faction,