Stanley objected that all the property of the Church was sacred to the primary purposes of the institution, religious worship and instruction; while Ministers contended that those objects included education and benevolence, and admitted that as an establishment for the propagation of Protestantism the Church could not be defended. The second reading of the bill was carried by a majority of 37; and its authors contrived to add in committee, a clause authorizing an advance of £50,000 for educational purposes, in anticipation of the surplus to accrue from the suppressed benefices and improved management. Thus the bill went up to the Lords, who struck out all the appropriation clauses, by a majority of 97; and Ministers therefore abandoned it.

In the spring of 1836, the struggle upon Irish tithes was preluded by Lord John Russell's promised measures on English tithes and Dissenters' marriages. His plan for the commutation of tithes in England and Wales was easily carried. It provided for the extinction within two years of the right to exact tithes in kind, substituting for them a rent-charge, to be regulated by the average price of corn during the preceding seven years. Commissioners were appointed, with authority, in cases where the parties could not agree upon the commutation, before October 1st, 1838, to make a permanent award. Lord John's second measure consisted of two billsone of which permitted Dissenters to marry in places of worship duly licensed for the purpose, and relieved the public generally from the obligation of any religious ceremony; the second provided for the general registration of marriages, births, and deaths, as had been proposed by Sir Robert Peel.-Lord Morpeth was again in charge of the Irish Tithe Bill. The appropriation principle was not put conspicuously forward, but Ministers still professed a determination to stand or fall by its enactment. The debate this year took a wider range than previously; and evinced a growing perception, on the part of the Conservatives, of the necessity for extensive alterations in the Church of Ireland, but at the same time a determination not to yield a supposed principle. It is curious to observe the use made on both sides of this word; each seeming to consider the professed convictions of the other as things to be put in abeyance, or altogether laid aside as impracticable, at pleasure. Thus we find Lord Stanley at once conspicuous for his fervour in maintaining his own views, and urgent in advising the Ministry to give up their "abstract principle" for the sake of a great practical attainable good. On the 1st of June, his lordship moved an amendment to the second reading, the object of which was to preserve to the Church its undiminished revenues. After a three nights' debate, the amendment was rejected by 300 against 261. The Lords again deleted the appropriation clauses, and altered other clauses relating to stipends. This gave rise, when the bill returned to the

Commons, to a question of privilege, the lower House claiming an exclusive right over money bills; and on this point, without reopening the appropriation controversy, the bill was a third time thrown over.-A similar fate befel a bill for the reform of the municipal corporations of Ireland.— Near the end of the session, Lord John Russell introduced a group of bills founded on the reports of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In their entirety, they constituted a respectably comprehensive scheme of Church Reform, though essentially defective from the falsity that lay at the bottom of the Commissioners' recommendations- namely, an estimate of Church revenues at three millions and a half; which scarcely any believed to come near the truth. Of these bills only one was persevered with, and became law. It was thereby enacted that the bishoprics of Bristol and Gloucester, and of Sodor and Man, be united; and the sees of Manchester and Ripon created. The incomes of future bishops were to be kept down to certain sums named; no ecclesiastical dignity or benefice was in future to be held in commendam; and restrictions were placed on the renewal of ecclesiastical leases.

"Great would be the joy of the three per cents. if Spring Rice would go into holy orders," wrote Sydney Smith in his memorable sketch of the Melbourne Ministry. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer had surpassed his predecessor in ill-repute as a financier. In the session of 1836, however, he did one thing of very considerable though imperfect good-namely, the reduction of the newspaper stamp duty. During the period of the Reform agitation, there were a great number of unstamped newspapers in circulation; and the Government were indisposed either to take fresh business on their hands, or to embroil themselves with their supporters, by interfering with these unlawful publications. When political affairs returned to their ordinary, though widened channel, neither the producers nor the readers of these prints were willing to surrender them; but, in justice to the conductors of the legalized press, Government could not allow them to go on-and public morality required some interference with the locust herd of nonsensical or impure sheets that were abroad. A vigorous war ensued between the Government and the publishers. Among the latter, Henry Hetherington was conspicuous for his self-sacrificing resoluteness, submitting to repeated imprisonment and seizure of his stock in trade, and ultimately obtaining a decision in his favour from the judges. Mr. Lytton Bulwer was the appropriate and eloquent spokesman in Parliament of those who desired, on public grounds, a cheap and free press; and, supported by very numerous petitions, he gained from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a promise to surrender the stamp. Instead of its repeal, however, only a reduction from fourpence to one penny was effected-which, it was foretold by Lord Brougham and many others, would prove but a postponement of the con

troversy. At the same time, restrictions were imposed on the size of newspapers. The duties on paper for writing, printing, and other purposes, were, however, equalized at the reduced rate of three-halfpence per pound.Agricultural distress was the subject of several debates, but nothing perceptible came of the discussion. That kindred perplexity, the currency question, was forced upon Parliament by a money panic, communicated from America, and aggravated by a bad harvest at home. The joint-stock banks were the principal sufferers; and, after a committee had sat upon the subject through a great part of two sessions, an alteration was made in the laws affecting those establishments.

The repeated spoilure by the Lords of measures desired by the people and attempted by the Whigs, fed a hostility to the constitution and prerogatives of the upper House, which the English mind would be slow to entertain on theoretical grounds, and which might have died away with the cessation of the Reform agitation. In the recess of '35, Mr. O'Connell made a tour through the Northern English counties, and as far as Edinburgh, on purpose to agitate for a reform of the peerage; and very imposing were the demonstrations made. Mr. Rippon, one of the members for Gateshead, proposed, in the April following, the ejection of the bishops from the House of Lords, and obtained as many as 53 votes. Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Hume, and Sir W. Molesworth, gave notices of motions for abridging in several respects their lordship's prerogatives; but dropped them for that session. They had a reason for that abandonment. They were in possession of facts which were soon to create an astounding sensation on the public, and to effectually humiliate the peers. Those facts related to what was called the great Orange conspiracy. While Sir Robert Peel was in power, Mr. Hume, Mr. Shiel, and other Liberal members, pressed him with questions as to the reception of addresses to the Crown from certain illegal associations called Orange Clubs. The question was at last put in a shape which elicited from Mr. Goulburn an answer disavowing anything more than the formal acknowledgment of such addresses having been received. The unusual cheering that followed this statement seemed to give a very undue importance to the affair. But before the close of the session, Mr. Hume had obtained a committee of the House of Commons, and laid before it a vast and astounding mass of facts, showing the existence of a confederation headed by the Duke of Cumberland, as Grand Master, by nearly all the Tory peers, having the Bishop of Salisbury for grand chaplain, 145,000 members in Great Britain, 175,000 in Ireland, with branches in almost every regiment of the army, at home or in the coloniesthat in these associations, the deposition of the King in favour of his brother was regularly canvassed, and the idea of a physical force revolution perfectly familiar. Mr. Hume's evidence consisted principally of the cor

respondence of Col. Fairman, the confidential agent of the leaders, with his principals, extending over six or eight years. The Duke of Cumberland and Lord Kenyon disavowed full knowledge of his proceedings, and distinctly declared themselves ignorant of the existence of Orange Clubs in the army; with which the committee reported themselves unable to reconcile the evidence before them. Lord John Russell induced the House to pause before pronouncing on the Duke's conduct, to give him time to get out of the association; but as he did not do so, Lord John gave him up to the distinct censure of the Commons. During the recess of '36, it was resolved by certain members of the Liberal party to carry the matter through, by indicting the Duke, Lord Kenyon, and the Bishop of Salisbury, under the very law for the violation of which the Dorchester labourers had been transported. Eminent counsel were retained on both sides, the indictments were drawn, and everything was ready, when a principal witness on the side of the prosecution died from anxiety. As soon as the House met, Mr. Hume laid the whole case before it, and proposed an address to the King, which was unanimously agreed to in a milder form. The Duke of Cumberland immediately proceeded to break up the organization, and in a few days the thing was at an end. The peerage reformers renewed their efforts early in the next session. Mr. C. Lushington moved for the exclusion of the spiritual lords, received the able support of Mr. Charles Buller, and obtained 92 votes out of 289. Mr. T. Duncombe proposed the abolition of the peers' privilege of voting by proxy, which was defeated by a majority of only 48, and that consisting of officials and dependents.

The Royal speech (1837) intimated that the Irish tithe question would again be submitted to Parliament, but Ministers chose first to put forward that of English church-rates. Just previous to the opening of the session, there had been réunions of reformers in the principal constituencies, at which the feeble policy of the Whig Government was severely criticized, and a determination expressed by the leading Radical members to give them henceforth only a conditional support. It was probably this, with the circumstance that the Dissenters were the most powerful and vigorous section of their supporters in the electoral bodies, that induced Ministers to put foremost a measure much wanted and likely to be carried. To Mr. Spring Rice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was committed the introduction of this scheme. It proposed to place the landed property of the Church under secular management, assuming that the additional yield would prove sufficient to defray the charges for which church-rates are levied, and leave a surplus for the general purposes of the Ecclesiastical Commission. The Church instantly took alarm at the proposition. The Archbishop of Canterbury assembled his suffragans, and fifteen prelates sent forth from Lambeth a declaration that whatever the Church's lands would yield, absolutely

belonged to her; that, therefore, if Dissenters were relieved by this method, it would be at the expense of the Church, against which their reverend lordships protested. Ministers vehemently resented this indecorous prejudgment by members of one House, of a scheme yet before the other branch of the Legislature; but the Church was stronger than the State even in that House where she is unrepresented—the Chancellor carried his bill by a majority of only five, and, therefore, dropped it. Mr. D. W. Harvey proposed the direct abolition of the impost; and was outvoted by 431. Lord John Russell moved for a committee of inquiry into the management of church lands, and obtained it by a majority of 86; but an amendment by Mr. Goulburn, pledging the House to appropriate increased revenues to the Church exclusively, was defeated by only 26 votes.—A second attempt to reform the Irish municipal corporations was defeated by the Lords in the name of the Church. The Conservatives assented, under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel, to the necessity of either abolishing or radically reforming the corporations, in which the rancour of sectarian exclusiveness was added to the corruption of official cliqueism, but were reluctant to establish what O'Connell boasted he would make of the new municipalities - "normal schools of agitation." The Government bill passed, however, by a majority of 80; but the Lords, under the direction of the Duke of Wellington, refused, by a majority of 86, to pass it till they knew what was to be done about the Church revenues.-Thus did the Whig policy of timid contrivance once more break down beneath them.

In the early part of the session, Lord John Russell introduced a series of bills for the further amelioration of the criminal code, reducing the number of crimes punishable by death to seven; and relieving the sheriffs from the obligation to execute murderers within three days of their condemnation. The Lord Chancellor introduced a second time a bill for abolishing imprisonment for debt, but could not get it through the Peers. Mr. Ewart succeeded in carrying, with the amendments of the Lords, a bill for affording persons put on trial for felony equal legal aid with other attainted prisoners.

One other measure, and that of urgent necessity, a poor-law for Ireland, was proposed by the Ministry. Mr. Nicholls, one of the English Poor-law Commissioners, had gone to Ireland a few months before, with instructions to report on the condition of its pauper class. The measure based on his report was an adaptation of the new English system to the peculiar circumstances of the sister isle. It was well received by all parties except the Irish landlords in either House, O'Connell standing neutral; and had reached its third stage in the Commons when an event occurred that put a stop to all legislation for the remainder of the year.

That event was, the death of King William the Fourth. It took place