CHAPTER X.

LORD GREY CEASES TO BE PRIME MINISTER-LORD MELBOURNE SUCCEEDS HIM-LORD MELBOURNE TURNED OUT-SIR ROBERT PEEL IN HIS TURN EJECTED-LORD PALMERSTON RETURNS TO FOREIGN OFFICE HIS POLICY IN REGARD TO BELGIUM, PORTUGAL, AND SPAIN.

Ir is dangerous for a Government to be too strong: Lord Grey's had been so. When the Reform Bill was passed, Whigs who were sanguine thought there would never be a Tory Government again. Lord Palmerston was rather of that belief; and undoubtedly it took some time for opinion to work itself round to the Conservative side. But the violent measures adopted towards Ireland had tried the minds of many of the Reform party. None liked so strong a dereliction from their general principles, and though some bowed to what they believed a necessity; others, less disposed to adopt expediency as the overruling guide of conduct, rebelled and went into opposition.

Parties of that kind are strong against a Government when they have the sympathy of a portion of the Government; and that was the case now. Lord Althorp, who had to introduce the Irish Coercion Bill, was in heart so opposed to it that he broke down in opening his case, and gave the opportunity to Mr. Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby) of jumping up from his seat, seizing Lord Althorp's notes and papers, and drawing from them the substance of one of the most eloquent speeches ever delivered in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell had not the same scruples as Lord Althorp with respect to adopting temporary

measures, however severe, for the maintenance of public and individual security; but he held that tranquillity in Ireland could not be permanent until the great mass of the Irish population were conciliated, and that that conciliation was to be sought through measures affecting the property of the Protestant Church Establishment in Ireland.

Many thought that both were wrong in the course they pursued-Lord Althorp in supporting a measure which his judgment did not sanction, and Lord John Russell in raising a theoretical question to which he could propose no other practical solution than the appropriation of a miserable sum which, after providing for all the requirements of the Protestant Church, might be spared for other purposes: a proposition limited to affirming that an imaginary surplus might be applied to an imaginary object. At all events, as Mr. Stanley's Coercion Bill led to the dissatisfaction of a portion of the more liberal supporters of Lord Grey, so Lord Russell's Irish Church views alienated another portion of the more moderate supporters of that minister.

The following letter best explains the causes which, according to Lord Palmerston's view, led to Mr. Stanley's and Sir James Graham's secession, and then speaks of other matters. The reader will remark the nice tact with which Lord Palmerston sees the precise position of the seceders-the impossibility of their uniting immediately with Sir R. Peel, and the probability of their doing so later:

Foreign Office: June 27, 1834. My dear William,—We have filled up our ranks again, and pretty well; and I think we are quite safe for some time to In the course of time Stanley and Graham may unite with Peel, and then there will be the materials out of which another Government may be formed. At present such a union could not take place without loss of character to all the parties

come.

This could be said with truth; but the Appropriation Bill, as it was then called, was the thin end of the wedge; and as such it was regarded by its advocates and opponents.

SECESSION OF STANLEY AND GRAHAM.

305

concerned in it. Our strength, however, is in the House of Commons; and though Stanley's loss will be felt in debate, yet on the whole the change has not diminished the number of our adherents, but, if anything, increased our strength for a division; because the great majority of the House is with us on the question upon which the split took place.

To me personally it is a great loss. Stanley, Graham, and Ripon were three of my most intimate friends; and though I am equally intimate with many who remain, and very well with all who have come in, yet I hate these sudden changes of private intercourse, more especially when the necessary course of official life makes one's official colleagues so much one's private companions. I regret to be thrown out of habits of intercourse with men I like and esteem so much.

The way they managed the thing was this: Stanley had unluckily stated some time ago (last year) in Parliament that he never could agree to any different appropriation of the surplus of Church property, and that whenever that question came practically to be considered he and his colleagues must separate. John Russell had said, about six weeks ago, that if ever a nation had a just grievance the Irish were that nation, and that grievance the Church, and that he would separate if this grievance was not speedily remedied. Durham and Co. immediately put their wedge into this crack. They got Ward' to bring the question on prematurely, to force us to a vote upon it; and when it was found that we should parry the blow, and have a majority on the previous question, an effort, which proved successful, was made to get Stanley and Graham to resign before

the debate came on.

Nothing ever did so well as the Quadruple Treaty: it has ended a war which might otherwise have lasted months. Miguel, when he surrendered, had with him from twelve to sixteen thousand men, with whom he could have marched into Spain, forty-five pieces of artillery, and twelve hundred cavalry. Had he dashed into Spain, and taken Carlos with him, there was only Rodil with ten thousand men between him and Madrid, and part of Rodil's army was suspected of Carlism. But the moral effect of the treaty cowed them all-generals, officers, and men ; and that army surrendered without firing a shot.

Metternich has, I hear, been foiled in his congress by the

The late Sir Henry Ward, G.C.M.G. He was successively Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, Governor of Ceylon, and Governor of Madras.

King of Bavaria. In the meantime he is taking his revenge upon Frankfort and Switzerland; on the former by military occupation, on the latter by a fresh shower of irritating notes, in the hope of goading her to something which may afford him a pretence for interference. France, however, declares positively that she will not stand any military interference in Switzerland, and as to any other it will be nearly of no effect.

With Russia we are where we were, bickering and on the point of a quarrel. The Lievens go away in a fortnight. I am very sorry on private grounds to lose old friends and agreeable members of society, but on public grounds I do not know that their loss will be great. They are to keep house at Petersburg for the sucking Czar, and the great Czar and his wife are to go to their evening parties whenever they like to drop in. It is a splendid existence, certainly, and with much more of liberty than generally belongs to a Russian courtier; but I believe the Lievens would both give their ears to stay here.

Of the following letters that of July 11 details the circumstances that led to Lord Grey's retirement and the momentary dissolution of the Whig Government a consequence, let it be observed, of the false position that Lord Althorp had taken up on the Coercion Bill. That of the 15th speaks of the reconstruction of the Cabinet under Lord Melbourne, and insists strongly on the fact that 'men might go out of the Government and come into it, but that those who came in would necessarily be of the same political principles as those who went out.' The assertion would have been true for some time to come, if Lord Palmerston had said that those who come in and stay in ;' but with respect to the mere coming in, a subsequent letter of November 16 contains a startling contradiction to the previous prophecy.

Mr. Littleton was Secretary for Ireland, and had confided to O'Connell that the Government, in renewing the Irish Coercion Act, did not intend to re-enact that part which related to public meetings. This was true, as far as the Irish Government were concerned, who were, however, subsequently overruled by a majority of the Cabinet. Mr. Littleton's object in thus communi

MR. LITTLETON AND O'CONNELL.

307

cating with O'Connell was to deter him from agitating on the occasion of the pending Wexford election; and, on the strength of the assurance, the great Irish agi tator had, in fact, caused the 'Repeal' candidate to retire. He was naturally indignant when the Bill appeared after all with the obnoxious clauses intact, and he told to the House of Commons the whole story of the Secretary's indiscretion:

Foreign Office: July 11, 1834.

My dear William,-You will see by the papers that Grey and Althorp have resigned, and that consequently, though no other member of the Government has actually done the same, the administration is virtually dissolved. The papers will explain the why and the wherefore of all this imbroglio; in two words, it may be stated to be this: that Althorp, having given up his own opinion about the clauses in the Coercion Act against the meetings, was willing to have proposed and supported those clauses as long as the fact that his own opinion was against them, was known only to his colleagues; but when, by O'Connell's betrayal of Littleton's indiscreet confidence, it became known to all the world that Althorp's own opinion was against the clauses, he felt it impossible to support them in the House; and as the Bill had been brought in with them in the Lords, he resigned. On the other hand, Grey, who long had thought of retiring, did not choose to continue in office after the loss of Althorp; and thus, the two heads having been cut off, the members have be come virtually defunct.

What the new arrangement will be I cannot pretend to foretell; as yet I am not aware that the King has sent for anybody to form a new Administration; what he would like would be to have a Government composed of a mixture of parties, thinking that such a Government would be the most secure; but such a Government cannot be formed. It is impossible that Wellington and Peel should unite in Government with the members of the present Administration, or they with him. A pure Tory Government would be swept away by the House of Commons, and if it were to dissolve, it would not find a new House more manageable. Stanley and Graham could hardly coalesce just now with Peel and Wellington. We then are driven back, by the insurmountable difficulties of making any other arrangement, to the necessity of endeavouring to re