people whom the aristocratic Whigs had spoiled in their service-was created Lord Sydenham, and sent out to Canada. He found dissensions revived, and outrages recommencing. He persevered, however, in his predecessor's policy, and had the satisfaction of accomplishing a federal union of the two provinces.-Lord Durham died in July, 1840; and Lord Sydenham in September of the next year.

There is no party like the pedantic constitutionalists for arbitrariness in exigencies. The Whigs had always boasted, while in opposition, that a system of government like ours is equal to any demand upon it—for a second time within two years, they now presented to Parliament a suspension bill for immediate adoption. The Jamaica House of Assembly having declared that the Imperial Parliament had violated the inherent rights of the colony, Ministers proposed, by Mr. Labouchere, to put in abeyance, for five years, rights that had been enjoyed through two centuries. The substance of the ministerial proposition was, that in place of the Colonial Assembly voting supplies, the representatives of the Crown have authority to levy half-amillion of taxation annually. Even among those who were least disposed to sympathize with the truculence of the planters, this high-handed method of procedure was warmly condemned. Sir Robert Peel opposed it on grounds that won for him the support of many Liberals, as well as of his own compact followers, more than three hundred strong. He expressed the pith of his argument in a quotation from Mr. Canning: "No feeling of wounded pride, no motive of questionable expediency, nothing short of real and demonstrable necessity, shall induce me to moot the awful question of the transcendental power of Parliament over every dependency of the British Crown. That transcendental power is an arcanum of the empire, which ought to be kept within the penetralia of the constitution. It exists, but it should be veiled. It should not be produced in cases of petty refractoriness or temporary misconduct, nor, indeed, on any occasion short of the utmost extremity of the State." The bill was suffered to pass the earlier stages pro forma, that counsel might be heard against it; but when a division was taken (May the 6th), there was a majority of only five for the bill (294 to 289). On this, Ministers resigned. By the advice of the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel was entrusted with the formation of a Ministry. In that he was, of course, successful-he had no difficulty in finding men to serve with and under him, and there was nothing in the state of public affairs or the disposition of the country to render his success improbable. But having completed his political arrangements, the composition of the royal household demanded his attention. The constancy of Lord Melbourne's attendance upon the Queen had long been a matter of universal talk-her Majesty had actually greeted Sir Robert with the frank confession that she parted from her late Ministers with great reluctance.

Taking up the red book, he observed that the principal ladies of the Court were wives and sisters of his most decided opponents. He desired no change below that of the Ladies of the Bedchamber-he supposed that the ladies above that rank would retire of their own accord, and promptly. On intimating this to their royal mistress, it seems that surprise and objection were expressed. The next morning brought the following note :— "Buckingham Palace, May 10th, 1839.- The Queen, having considered the proposal made to her yestesday by Sir Robert Peel, to remove the Ladies of the Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings.” The reply was an explanation by Sir Robert of his reasons for the recommendation he had made, and a resignation of the authority entrusted to him. He stated the circumstances, and read the correspondence, in the House of Commons, thereby dispelling the absurd representations of the affair which had been eagerly circulated by Whig partisans, and were very effective with the sentimental portion of the community. — The Melbourne cabinet was restored, and the Jamaica bill passed in a modified form.

66

It was in the course of his speech upon this occasion that Sir Robert Peel employed the famous expression, "Ireland was my chief difficulty." My difficulties were not Canada; my difficulties were not Jamaica; but my difficulties were, Ireland." But the difficulty of Irish administration was chiefly of a personal nature. The Normanby and Morpeth policy had certainly exercised its natural effect in conciliating the Irish people-but it is nearly as certain that its remarkable success was in part owing to a tacit compact between the Ministry and the O'Connell party in Parliament—a compact in which the distribution of patronage was concerned, and which another Ministry could not have continued. That which would have presented apparently the greatest obstacle to the working of a Conservative Government, their opponents had taken out of the way. The Whig Ministers had abandoned the appropriation clause! Through the first two months of the session of 1838, they said nothing about the tithe question. Sir Robert Peel at length questioned them on the subject, and was informed that they intended to place the matter "on a ground altogether new." The Opposition foresaw their triumph-disheartened friends could scarcely believe in their betrayal. Nothing but ambiguities could be got from Ministers, however, until the middle of May, when they were tested by a motion for rescinding the resolutions of 1835. They defended those resolutions, declared their convictions unaltered, but admitted that they had in hand a measure from which the principle so solemnly affirmed was omitted. Never, surely, did man pay more dearly for office than did Lord John Russell when he had that night to listen to Sir Robert Peel and Lord Stanley. Sir

Robert recounted, with undisguised and quite excusable exuitation, how he would have settled this question three years before, but was prevented on the plea of that very "principle" which his victorious successors now surrendered to a pretended necessity, no whit more urgent now than then. The House refused, by a small majority, to rescind the resolutions; but they voted down, a few weeks later, by immense majorities, a motion by Mr. Ward, re-asserting the appropriation principle. Mr. Grote said he believed this to be one of the most flagrant instances of tergiversation on record; others, not habitually so temperate as he, gave strong expression to the same feeling. The subjects of all this triumph and anger replied only in the deprecatory and dulcet strains of Lord Morpeth. With the aid of the Conservatives, Ministers obtained an easy victory over the Radical Opposition; the Lords accepted the fifth of the Irish tithes bills sent up from the Commons, and the Melbourne Government obtained peace at the cost of honour.

The same summer which beheld this ignominious abandonment of the principle, that the design of a Church Establishment includes the instruction of the people, beheld also a mournful illustration of the low degree to which that object had been accomplished in England. Almost within sight o Canterbury Cathedral towers, on the 31st of May, 1838, a battle was fought between the Queen's troops and the followers of a madman claiming to be King of Kent, and the Messiah of all England. Some years before, one Thom, a yeoman and maltster of Cornwall, had left his home, and set up an establishment in the county of Kent, under the style of Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta. He supported the assumption by wearing an oriental costume, by a generous style of living, and by an imposing presence. He soon became popular among the peasantry, and stood so well with the better classes, that in the year 1833 he polled 350 votes on the Conservative interest in an election for Canterbury. Shortly after, he was imprisoned in the county gaol for perjury; but indications of his insanity became so decided, that the Home Secretary (Lord John Russell) ordered him to be given up to his friends. In the opening of this year, he reappeared in Kent, to the delight of the rustics of Boughton and Herne Hill. He harangued them with a fervour that was to them eloquent. To the farmers he promised land rent-free-to the labourers, relief from the rigours of the Poor-law. He even added to his former assumptions, those of Divine attributes-assured his followers he was invulnerable to shot or steel, would prove their Saviour, and reward them with places in his kingdom. These lunatic pretensions gained extensive credence. On the morning of the 28th of May, about one hundred men and women attached themselves to his train, and sallied forth from the village of Boughton. They visited a number of places, and drew

many labourers from their work. A farmer thus incommoded, sent a constable on the 31st to bring back those of his men who were in the procession. As soon as the constable was pointed out to Thom, he shot him with a pistol, then stabbed him with a dagger, and threw the body into a ditch. The magistrates on hearing of this, sent off for the military. A party of soldiers arrived, and found the whole body in the depths of Bossenden Wood. As Lieutenant Bennett advanced at the head of his men, Thom shot him dead. The soldiers immediately fired, and Thom feil. But his followers crowded round him, and ten lives were lost, besides many being wounded, before they would disperse. The poor maniac was evidently dead, but a woman persisted in endeavouring to revive him with water, as he had bidden her, and for which she had followed him with a pail of water a long way. Others of his followers expected that he would rise up alive, or be taken to heaven on a cloud; and one of them assured the commanding-officer, they would have resisted any number of soldiers in their leader's defence, as they shared in his invulnerability; but they made no effort even to rescue the body of their prophet. Some of the prisoners taken were put on their trial; three were transported, and six suffered a year's imprisonment. It is said that for years after, this strange delusion lingered among the Kentish peasants.

We come now to the first of two or three distinct periods in the Chartist movement (including under that designation all that passed for Chartism). This period stretches over the years 1838 and. '39. We find first on record, a great open-air meeting at Holloway Head, near Birmingham, on the 6th of August, 1838. Mr. Attwood, M.P., presided. Delegates from the working-men of London, Liverpool, and the towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, attended. The numbers present were estimated at fully 200,000. Mr. Scholefield-Mr. Attwood's colleague in the representation of Birmingham-and Mr. Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister, were among the speakers. The proceedings were orderly even to solemnity, commencing with a short prayer by the chairman. A petition for the enactment of the People's Charter was adopted. A few weeks later, a similar meeting was held at Kersal Green, Manchester; when Mr. Fielding, M.P. for Oldham, presided. The orator of the day was the Rev. J. Stephen, a Wesleyan minister, notorious for his fanatical opposition to the Poor-law. He rightly enough described the agitation as at bottom a "knife and fork question;" but, unhappily, soon got to suggest its settlement by pikes and bludgeons. The latter part of his speech, on this occasion, was garnished by such exclamations as these:-" Why have you left your arms at home? Because you are afraid ?”—to which, of course, the excited populace responded, "No, no!" The London Chartists held a noonday meeting in Palace-yard, Westminster; and suburban meetings in the

evenings in open places. As the winter drew on, these assemblages were not discontinued, but lit by torches, in the glare of which the timid saw all the apparatus of rebellion and incendiarism. On the 22nd of November, Lord John Russell desired the magistrates in the North to notify that such meetings were illegal; and in December, a royal proclamation warned all peaceful subjects to keep away from them. The Chartists replied that they had no place of meeting but the open air, and no time but after working hours; and the class of people who had it in their power to remove the former cause of complaint, did not do what they might-chapels were too sacred, town-halls only for rate-payers. On the 30th of December,

Mr. Stephen was arrested for very plainly hinting to a mob the burningout of an obnoxious magistrate at Ashton-under-Lyne. He was released on bail; and went about the country delivering, to immense congregations, sermons in which the denunciations of scripture against oppressors of the poor, were applied in entire forgetfulness of more pacificatory texts.-The Queen's speech, in opening the session of 1839, expressed regret that the people, in some parts of the country, had been excited to dangerous and illegal practices. Mr. Duncombe moved, as an amendment on the address, to inform her Majesty that the Reform Act had greatly disappointed her people, and that the time was now come for the extension of its benefits to all classes; which received 86 votes against 426. In April, Henry Vincent and others—a deputation of London Chartists to Devizeswere set upon by a mob brought into the town, and very roughly handled; shortly afterwards, Vincent was committed to prison, on a charge of uttering seditious language at Newport. In May, the National Convention -a body of delegates from the working men of Great Britain, probably as bona fide a representation as they ever enjoyed-commenced its sittings in London. Whatever may be alleged of the qualifications or motives of its members, it cannot be denied that it was decided and earnest in its reprobation of violence, and that the majority were under the influence of talented, honest, and temperate men. Under its superintendence, the National Petition was presented on the 14th of June. It purported to bear 1,200,000 signatures; and so enormous was its bulk, that it was literally rolled into the House by half-a-dozen Radical members. The House received it with respect; and consented to the suspension of a standing order, that Mr. Attwood might enlarge upon its prayer. On the 12th of July, he moved for a committee of the whole House to consider of its Five Points; but that was deemed too great a demand upon the indulgence of the People's Representatives-the motion was negatived by 235 to 189. A few days before there had broken out at Birmingham the first of a series of disturbances. The Government immediately sent down sixty of the London police, armed. Their interference greatly excited the populace, and