His speech upon this occasion occupied four hours in the delivery, and was an able and lucid exposition of his views upon the whole subject of the Catholic Disabilities. After stating that he had for years attempted to maintain the exclusion of the Catholics from Parliament and from all high offices in the government; that he did not think it was an unnatural or unreasonable struggle; that he resigned it from a conviction that it could be no longer advantageously maintained; and that he yielded to a moral necessity which he could not control, he went on to show the evils which had resulted from allowing this subject to be an open question in the ministry, maintaining that this principle of a neutral government must be abandoned; and that, in the existing state of parties and of public opinion, it would be impossible to form a united government on the basis of permanent and unqualified resistance to concession, with any prospect that such a government could hold its ground and administer the affairs of Ireland with satisfaction and success. He then explained at great length the details of the proposed measure of relief, answered some of the objections which might be brought against it, and concluded by moving that the House should resolve itself into a committee to consider the laws imposing civil disabilities on his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects. The motion was strenuously opposed, but was finally adopted by a majority of one hundred and eighty-eight. Every step in the progress of the bill was resisted with the utmost strenuousness by the High-Church party, headed by Sir R. H. Inglis, Sir Charles Wetherell, and others; the most violent abuse was heaped upon the head of Peel, and, as if the English language were not rich enough in vituperative epi

which differs in some important particulars from the account given by Lord Eldon on the authority of the king, and printed in Mr. Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, and in Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors. But it is much more probable that the venerable ex-Chancellor misunderstood the king, than that Sir Robert should have misrepresented the facts, especially as he wrote with Lord Eldon's memoranda before him. Lord Eldon says there were two interviews. Mr. Peel says there was but one. Lord Eldon says, that after the ministers "threatened to resign," the king told them to "go on." Mr. Peel says, that their resignations were accepted, and announced at a meeting of the Cabinet, and that it was late in the evening when they were requested to resume office.

thets, the classics were ransacked to furnish additional insults; petitions and remonstrances poured into Parliament from all parts of the country; and the waters of party strife were stirred to their lowest depths. But it was all to no purpose. The third reading was carried on the 30th of March by a majority of one hundred and seventy-eight. In the Upper House there was also an active but unsuccessful opposition; and on the 10th of April the bill finally passed by a majority of one hundred and four. Three days afterwards it was signed by the king; and thus this long and bitter struggle was at length terminated.

For no part of his public career was Mr. Peel ever more bitterly assailed than he was for his course upon this great question. Nor need we feel surprised that such should have been the case. The change in his policy had been so sudden and thorough, that men could not easily explain it, and were ready therefore to ascribe it to the most disreputable motives,

to declare that without justifiable cause he had betrayed the party which had supported him thus far through life, — that he had sacrificed his principles to his fears or his ambition. From all such charges Sir Robert Peel must stand acquitted. The course which he now took involved too great a sacrifice of his consistency to have been adopted without much hesitation, and a thorough conviction that it was the only course which he could take. In truth, under the circumstances in which he was placed, no other course could be justified or defended on any tenable ground. The country was in a position of extreme peril. The government of Ireland by coercion had been thoroughly tried, and had miserably failed. There was no other resource left, but to try concession; and this alternative Mr. Peel boldly met. For this decision he must be held in honor. But there is another part of his conduct which is justly open to animadversion. That he finally relinquished his narrow principles and bigoted notions is creditable to him; it is not creditable to him that he should so long have resisted the force of argument and of public sentiment. He had clung to the policy of the disabling laws till he was compelled to give it up by a stern necessity. His was a compulsory, and not a voluntary con

cession. And that his course was open to this objection he seems to have been aware; for at the close of his Memoir on the Roman Catholic Question, in speaking of the charges brought against him, he says:

"If it had been alleged against me that the sudden adoption of a different policy had proved the want of early sagacity and foresight on my part, if the charge had been, that I had adhered with too much pertinacity to a hopeless cause, that I had permitted for too long a period the engagements of party or undue deference to the wishes of constituents to outweigh the accumulating evidence of an approaching necessity, if this had been the accusation against me, I might find it more difficult to give it a complete and decisive refutation."

The passage of the Catholic Relief Bill had opened a dangerous schism in the ranks of the Tory party, and had greatly weakened the ministry. But they were to encounter other difficulties scarcely less formidable. Ireland still continued to be agitated; throughout England commercial distress everywhere prevailed; and no sooner had Catholic emancipation been carried, than new life was infused into the demand for Parliamentary reform. Added to all these causes of weakness, the death of George IV., in June, 1830, was another blow upon the Wellington ministry. But a declaration of the new king, William IV., that he did not intend to make an immediate change in the government, relieved them from any present feeling of insecurity. A month later, however, all England was thrown into a new excitement by the overthrow of the government of Charles X. of France, and the elevation of the Duke of Orleans to the throne. In a few days the general election took place for the first Parliament of the new reign, and resulted disastrously for the ministry. No cabinet minister, it was said, obtained a seat in any open and popular election; and many of the Tory members who were chosen were hostile to the existing government. Another, and not the least significant, indication of the popular feeling, was the election of Mr. Brougham as one of the members for the great county of Yorkshire, after an explicit declaration of his intention to bring forward a motion for a reform of Parliament. Every man in public life saw that agitation for Parliamentary reform would succeed that for Catholic emancipation.

It was while the country was in this feverish and excited state that the new Parliament met, and the Duke of Wellington made that memorable declaration in the House of Lords which sealed the fate of his ministry, and inaugurated a new era in the history of English politics. "I am fully convinced," he said in the debate upon the address, "that the country possesses a legislature which answers all the good purposes of legislation, and this to a greater degree than any legislature ever has done in any country whatever. I will go further, and say that the legislature and the system of representation possess, and deservedly possess, the full and entire confidence of the country." And, as if this language was not sufficiently explicit, the old warrior added, in reply to Earl Grey: "Under these circumstances, I am not prepared to bring forward any measures of the description alluded to by the noble Lord. And I am not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but I will at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, as long as I hold any station in the government of the country, I shall always feel it my duty to resist such measures when proposed by others." Nothing could have been more untimely than this uncompromising language, at a moment when the French and Belgian Revolutions were perceptibly weakening the power of the ministers, and the advocates of reform felt strong enough to attempt to free the representative system from some of the anomalies by which it was disfigured. It aroused a feeling of indignation throughout the country, which was still further exasperated by another indiscreet step of the ministry a few days later. The king, the queen, and the ministers had accepted an invitation to dine with the Lord Mayor at Guildhall on the 9th of November, a week after the opening of Parliament. Suddenly it was announced that his Majesty would not visit the city, and that the banquet was postponed; and it was stated, in explanation of this change of purpose, that the ministry had received information that the king would be insulted, and the prime minister's life would be endangered, if they attended the proposed dinner. Doubtless the fears were wholly unfounded; but the Duke had been hooted through Piccadilly, and he thought it prudent to pro

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tect his residence by iron window-shutters. rapidly as the panic increased; and for a time the public seemed as much alarmed as if the cry of an invasion by the French had sounded in their ears. They had scarcely recovered from their alarm, when the ministry was defeated in the House of Commons by a majority of twenty-nine votes, on a motion for a committee to examine the accounts connected with the civil list. The next evening, just a fortnight from the commencement of the session, the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel, now become Sir Robert Peel by the death of his father, announced in the two Houses that their resignations had been accepted, and that they held office only until their successors were appointed.

Earl Grey was immediately invited to form an administration, which he agreed to do upon condition that Parliamentary reform should be made a Cabinet measure. The condition was accepted; and this eminent statesman, who had been excluded from office through so many years on account of his unalterable devotion to liberal principles, at length became the head of an administration formed to carry forward the work which he had so much at heart. He had stood by the side of Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, at the impeachment of Warren Hastings; he had kept his integrity unblemished, through forty years of Parliamentary life; he had been found faithful among the faithless; and now he was in a position to do what even the great men at whose feet he had learned his first lessons in statesmanship had failed to accomplish. The men whom he called to his ministry were scarcely less distinguished for their talents and their zeal in the cause which they had espoused. Lord Althorp, a man of pure and lofty character, and possessing in large measure the confidence of his party and the country, was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the House of Commons. Mr. Brougham was raised to the Woolsack, and brought to the support of the ministry indefatigable energy, great oratorical powers, and an unrivalled versatility of talent. The Marquis of Lansdowne was made President of the Council, and Lord Durham, the son-in-law of the premier, was Lord Privy Seal. Four of the Canningites also held office, Lord Palmerston as