the year 1849. Do not compel the queen to dissolve Parliament."

The bill was passed by the House of Lords, as it had been by the House of Commons, and the triumph of Sir Robert Peel was complete. The displeasure of the conservative party remained unabated against him, however; and the Whigs had not abandoned their desire to complete by themselves the great work in which they had aided, under the flag of a leader foreign to their party, and but lately hostile to it. Upon the question of the repression of disorders in Ireland an alliance was formed between Lord George Bentinck, the Whigs, and the Radicals. Sir Robert Peel found himself in the minority, but Mr. Cobden had been careful to declare that his vote and that of his friends concerned only the bill in question, and affected in no degree the gratitude that the reform party felt towards Sir Robert Peel.

Four days later, the minister announced in the House of Commons that her Majesty had accepted the resignations of the Cabinet, and had directed Lord John Russell to form a new administration. Recapitulating the various questions that had occupied public attention during the past five years, he concluded as follows:

"I have now executed the task which my public duty imposed upon me. I trust I have said nothing which can lead to the revival on the present occasion of those controversies which I have deprecated. Whatever opinions may be held with regard to the extent of the danger with which we were threatened from the failure in one great article of subsistence, I can say with truth that her Majesty's government, in proposing those measures of commercial policy which have disentitled them to the confidence of many who heretofore gave them their support, were influenced by no other motive than the desire to consult the interests of this country. Our

object was to avert dangers which we thought were imminent, and to terminate a conflict which, according to our belief, would soon place in hostile collision great and powerful classes in this country. The maintenance of power was not a motive for the proposal of those measures; for I had not a doubt that, whether those measures were accompanied by failure or success, the certain issue must be the termination of the existence of this government. It is perhaps advantageous for the public interest that such should be the issue. I admit that the withdrawal of confidence from us by many of our friends was a natural result. When proposals are made, apparently at variance with the course which ministers. heretofore pursued, and subjecting them to the charge of inconsistency, it is perhaps advantageous for the country and for the general character of public men that the proposal of measures of that kind, under such circumstances, should entail that which is supposed to be the fitting punishment, namely, expulsion from office. I therefore do not complain of that expulsion. I am sure it is far preferable to the continuance in office without a full assurance of the confidence of this House.

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"I said before, and I say truly, that in proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit justly due to them. I must say, with reference to honorable gentlemen opposite, as I say with reference to ourselves, that neither of us is the party which is justly entitled to the credit of them. There has been a combination of parties generally opposed to each other, and that combination, and the influence of government, have led to their ultimate success. But the name which ought to be associated with the success of those measures, is not the name of the noble lord, the organ of the party of which he is leader. Nor is it mine. The name which ought to be and will be associated with the success of

1

those measures, is the name of one who, acting, as I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired, because it was unaffected and unadorned: it is the name of Richard Cobden.

"I now close the observations which it has been my duty to address to the House, thanking them sincerely for the favor with which they have listened to me in performing this last act of my official career. Within a few hours probably, that power which I have held for

the period of five years will be surrendered into the hands of another, without repining, without complaint on my part, with a more lively recollection of the support and confidence I have received during several years, than of the opposition which, during a recent period, I have encountered.

"In relinquishing power I shall leave a name, severely censured, I fear, by many who, on public grounds, deeply regret the severance of party ties, deeply regret that severance, not from interested or personal motives, but from the firm conviction that fidelity to party engagements, the existence and maintenance of a great party, constitutes a powerful instrument of government. I shall surrender power, severely censured also by others who, from no interested motive, adhere to the principle of protection, considering the maintenance of it to be essential to the welfare and interests of the country. I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honorable motives, clamors for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened with a sense of injustice."

When, four years later, all England wept the death of Sir Robert Peel, a committee was formed to open among the working-classes a penny subscription for the purpose of erecting to him a "Poor Man's National Monument," and Mr. Cobden proposed that in its inscription should be inserted this last sentence of the speech with which the great minister closed his official

career.

A

CHAPTER IV.

IRELAND.

T the moment when the ministry of Sir Robert Peel went out of office, famine was decimating the population of Ireland, and the Irish question agitated and distressed the sister kingdom. It was the culminating period of a long-continued anxiety and a constant solicitude. The Catholic emancipation had been lately accomplished, as was afterwards to be the trade reform, by the Tory leaders, Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, marching at the head of the Whigs; and with this triumph of liberty and justice, it had been hoped that the violent passions which distracted Ireland would be appeased. Sir Robert Peel had never lost sight of the plan conceived by Mr. Pitt, when, in 1800, he had accomplished the union of the two countries. The emancipation of the Roman Catholics, a fixed endowment assured by the State to the clergy of that faith, and the establishment of public institutions in which they might receive the education which either they now lacked or were forced to seek upon the Continent, were the three measures by means of which it was believed that the union of England and Ireland would be made genuine and effectual. Under the lead of Mr. O'Connell and his agitators, Ireland now demanded something very different: she claimed the repeal of the union itself, and, for the future, her own Parliament once more, and an independent national existence.

The task before the sincere friends of Ireland was most severe. They had to reconstitute the whole system of society,