Long as the Queen was prepared for this event, she does not for that feel it the less painful. She is deeply grieved to have to part from those she has such confidence in; she trusts, however, that at no very distant period she will again see Lord John Russell in the office which he has filled so much to the satisfaction of both his sovereign and his country.

The Queen feels very grateful for Lord John's kind wishes for herself, and cannot conclude without expressing the lively interest she will ever feel in his personal welfare and happiness, as well as in his career in public life.

On the same evening Lord John announced the resignation of the Government in the House of Commons.

We began, on the commencement of Lord Grey's Administra- . tion, with the Reform Act. We ended by proposing measures for the freedom of commerce. With large and important measures we commenced; with large and important measures we conclude.

The change of Administration necessarily involved the adjournment of the House of Commons; and no material business was proposed till September 16. Lord John passed the intervening fortnight at Woburn; and, as after the resumption of business Sir R. Peel decided on merely dealing with matters which it was impossible to postpone, Lord John did not consider his own presence in London necessary. On September 26 he set out for Endsleigh, where he remained with wife, children, and step-children, till the latter half of November. At Endsleigh he learned the death of two old colleagues, both successively Governors-General of CanadaLord Durham and Lord Sydenham. Writing to Lord John on March 26, 1840, Lord Durham said

I sincerely rejoice in Thomson's success. He will have already told you that I contributed to it to the utmost of my ability.

He is a fortunate person in having at the Colonial Office one who has the ability to comprehend the intricate subject and the spirit to support him in his efforts to unravel it,

During his last illness, Lord Sydenham dictated his will to Mr. Dowling, one of his suite, bequeathing to Lord Johnthe sum of £500, of which I beg his acceptance as a remembrance of my friendship.

And he added-so Mr. Dowling wrote to Mr. Poulett Scrope, Lord Sydenham's elder brother

Dowling, Lord John is the noblest man it has ever been my fortune to follow.1

On leaving Endsleigh Lord John went to London. But he did not return to the old house in Wilton Crescent which he had occupied since the date of his first marriage. He entered the house at the corner of Chesham Place, which he had himself built, which was just completed, and which is now the property of his great-nephew, Lord Tavistock. After a few days' stay in London, Lord and Lady John proceeded to Bowood, joining a party which has already been commemorated both in the memoirs of Mr. Moore and in the diary of Mr. Greville. The greater part of January they passed at Woburn, returning to London towards the end of the month to meet the King of Prussia at a series of entertainments, and to prepare for the session of 1842.

1 The late Sir B. Hawes, on leaving the House of Commons in 1851 to become Deputy Secretary at War, wrote to Lord John, 'I have had the privilege of holding office under one whom for years I looked up to, and whom I never dreamed of knowing or serving; but whom, having known and served under, I can join in Lord Sydenham's admiration of in almost the same words.'

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CHAPTER XV.

IN OPPOSITION.

IT is not necessary to follow Lord John Russell's carcer during the first four years of the Parliament of 1841 with the care with which it seemed desirable to describe his conduct during the Parliaments of 1835 and 1837. In the one case he was the statesman who had framed and expounded the policy of the Administration; in the other he was only the leader of a disorganised Opposition, unable always to command the obedience of his nominal supporters.

At the commencement of 1842 Lord John did not venture on calling his political followers together. He was afraid that their meeting might disclose, and perhaps emphasise, the differences which existed among them; and he had to content himself with the private counsel of his own immediate friends instead of large gatherings of the various sections of the Liberal party.

His difficulties were increased by the conduct of his great opponent. The work which Sir Robert Peel had to do in 1842 was exactly suited to his knowledge and his capacity. The financial and commercial measures of his Administration were indeed open to the reproach that they were inconsistent with the principles which had usually been associated with the Conservative party. Discontented Tories could complain that Sir Robert Peel had caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes. But the measures of the Minister were framed with a breadth, and propounded with a skill, which no preceding financier, since the death of Mr. Pitt, had displayed; and, in consequence, if they elicited murmurs

from the Conservative back benches, commended themselves to the good sense of the country.

Thus Lord John Russell found the difficulty of his own task increased by the dissensions of his friends and the capacity of his opponent. He had to face an army superior in number to his own, and he was uncertain whether he might not be exposed to a raking fire from his own flanks. The condition of the Whig party,' wrote no mean authority, 'was absolutely forlorn; it was spoken of as a corpse; it was treated as a phantom.' But the author of the 'Runnymede Letters' had at last learned the true merits of the statesman whom he had described six years before as an 'insect.' He added, 'With numbers scarcely exceeding one-sixth of the House, in a Parliament of their own summoning, the Whigs were sustained alone by the dignity of Lord John Russell.'

Three great measures were proposed by Sir Robert Peel in 1842. (1) He devised a new sliding-scale for corn; (2) he imposed an income tax; (3) with its aid he terminated the deficit which he had inherited from his predecessors, and concurrently revised the whole customs tariff. Lord John

fought the battle of a moderate fixed duty on corn against the new sliding-scale; and he argued that, if the duties on foreign timber and foreign sugar had been sufficiently lowered, the Minister could have obtained adequate revenue without resorting to so unpopular a measure as the income tax. each case he was unsuccessful. The new Parliament had been elected to support Sir Robert Peel; it was not likely to give his opponent a victory at the outset.

In

Obviously unable to make any impression on the House, in which Sir Robert Peel was supported by an overwhelming majority, Lord John did not think it necessary to remain in London till the end of the session. Parliament did not conclude its labours till August 17; but, on July 13, Lord John, with his wife and two children, left London for Minto. Mr. Vernon Smith wrote to him-

Your absence during the last part of the session has been much

lamented by all your friends as an injustice to your party and yourself. On the whole the session seems to have raised Free Trade principles to their zenith, and to have reduced the Whig party to its nadir. You are the only man who can give us a Resurgat.

Lord John remained at Minto till the middle of August, when he set out for Endsleigh, stopping on the way at Auckland Castle, Wentworth, Chatsworth, Gloucester, and Taunton. At Taunton, which the travellers reached on August 28, they were joined by young Lord Ribblesdale ; and at Endsleigh on the following day they found Lord Ribblesdale's three sisters well and merry. During the previous autumn at Endsleigh, Lord John had resumed his literary labours. Work, indeed, there was in abundance for him. Mr. Macaulay wrote to him, at the instance of Mr. Napier, the editor, to ask him to devote some of his leisure to the interests of the Edinburgh Review; and Lord Brougham was anxious that he should undertake a new work on the Constitution of England. Lord John, however, had other literary matters in hand. In the autumn of 1841 he seriously resumed the 'Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe,' which he had discontinued fifteen years before. In the autumn of 1842 he commenced (so Lady Russell has recorded in her diary) another work—a 'History of the Middle Ages,' which was never destined to be completed;1 while he concurrently undertook the task of editing the correspondence of his great-grandfather, the fourth Duke, writing the slight sketch of the Duke's career to 1748, which forms the preface of the first volume. Thus at Endsleigh he had

2.

1 The first part of this work was privately printed under the title of The History of the Principal States of Europe. The chapters in it are headed: 1. Italy in the Time of Lorenzo de Medici.' 'France in the Time of Louis XI.' Conquest of Naples.' 4. 'War 5. Commencement and Pro

3. 'France in the Time of Charles VIII. in Italy. Reign of Charles VIII., concluded.'

gress of the Reign of Louis XII.' 6. 'Pontificate of Julius II.'

It will be noticed that these introductory chapters suggest that Lord John was reverting to the intention, which he has himself told us he had formed more than twenty years before (see ante, p. 105), of writing the history of Europe from the commencement of the fifteenth century.

VOL. I.

2 C