He

to the prosecution of the measure; and from these various considerations Lord John felt its withdrawal inevitable. announced his decision on July 4.

Four years had passed since Lord John had kissed hands as First Minister of the Crown. During those four years Ireland had passed through the greatest crisis in her history. She had almost continuously occupied the attention of Government and Parliament. But the measures which had been introduced had necessarily been dictated by the exigencies of the hour. Lord John had endeavoured to meet the crisis of famine by encouraging as far as possible local effort, and by interfering as little as possible with the regular course of trade. By his amendment of the Poor Law he had made the Act both efficient and sufficient, and thrown distinctly on Ireland the duty of supporting its own poor. He had striven to grapple with Irish disaffection by using the ordinary machinery with which the law had supplied him; and, when the gravity of the situation made exceptional legislation necessary, had preferred the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act to the measures of coercion to which previous Ministers had resorted. He had done something to remove one great grievance by extending the Irish franchise. He had desired to redress a grave injustice by the adequate endowment of the Roman Catholic religion. He had attempted to substitute a solvent for an insolvent proprietary by facilitating the sale of encumbered estates. He had proposed to remedy a galling wrong by controlling the right of ejectment, and by recognising the rights of the tenant in his holding. He had tried to relieve an over-populated country by devising a considerable scheme for the emigration of the people. He had wished to get rid of a symbol of separation by the abolition of the Viceroyalty. Some of these proposals were defeated in the Cabinet; others of them were modified or smothered by Parliament; some of them were attended indirectly with consequences which Lord John and the wisest of his contemporaries failed to foresee. Examined singly, some objection may be raised to many of them. Taken as a whole they would have failed, even if they

had passed, to redress all the injuries from which an unhappy country was suffering. But it may at least be said of them that, while no previous Minister had ever fallen on harder circumstances, no previous Minister had made so honest an effort to deal with the Irish question.

CHAPTER XXI.

IN PARLIAMENT AND AT HOME.

In relating in the two previous chapters the difficulties which Lord John had to encounter in 1848 and 1849, in connection with Ireland and foreign affairs, it has been impossible to give any detailed account either of the failures of one year or of the successes of the other. In 1848 everything conspired to make the session abortive. In the first place Lord John himself through much of the period was in such weak health that he was physically unable to exercise a commanding influence on politics; and in the next place attention was forcibly diverted from the measures announced from the throne to the terrible events which shook the Continent from Berlin to Paris, and to their consequences on this country.

Lord John, it must be recollected, was only feebly supported in the House of Commons. On the formation of his Ministry, Lord Palmerston, Lord Morpeth, Sir G. Grey, Sir C. Wood, Sir J. Hobhouse, Mr. Labouchere, and Mr. Macaulay all held offices of Cabinet rank with seats in that House. But Lord Palmerston mainly confined himself to the business of his own department; Lord Morpeth, Sir J. Hobhouse, and Mr. Labouchere were only occasional speakers; Mr. Macaulay lost his seat at the general election of 1847; and, though Sir George Grey and Sir Charles Wood were admirable in council and in office, the rapid utterance of the former and the temporary unpopularity of the latter reduced their influence in debate.

Thus the brunt of every battle fell on Lord John; and

though in readiness in debate he excelled all his contemporaries, the exertion was obviously too great for a frame which, never strong, was weakened by an illness whose effects he could not shake off. Conscious of his need for help, he made a strong effort to retain the services of Mr. Macaulay. In writing the admirable memoir of his uncle, which should be the pattern, as it is the despair, of biographers, Sir G. Trevelyan has omitted to notice that Mr. Macaulay, at Lord John's wish, remained a member of the Russell Cabinet, and enjoyed his easy office of Paymaster-General, for nine months after his defeat at Edinburgh; and that, when Parliament met, Lord John endeavoured to retain his services by suggesting that a vacancy should be made for him in Lord Zetland's borough of Richmond. The grounds on which this offer was refused are worth recording.

OXFORD, April 23, 1848.

DEAR LORD JOHN,-The proposal which you made yesterday took me so much by surprise that I could not come to an immediate decision. I have since thought the matter over fully. I will not say that my tastes and wishes may not, unperceived by myself, have biassed my judgment. But I can truly say that I have done my best to ascertain what is the right, honourable, and useful course; and the result is that I have determined not to be member for Richmond.

My

A few weeks ago I should have felt very differently. But the events which have lately taken place on the Continent and in this island have placed me and all of us in a new position. It will soon be necessary for you to deliberate seriously on the propriety of removing some evils and anomalies which the Reform Bill spared. What the issue of your deliberations may be I cannot tell. own opinion is that some concessions ought to be made with a good grace to the middle classes, and that, at the same time, all innovations dangerous to order and property ought to be firmly resisted. Now I feel that it would be quite impossible for me, as member for a pocket borough, to be of any service to my country in the approaching contest. On the one hand, if I should differ from the Government and from Lord Zetland, I should be bound in honour to take the Chiltern Hundreds. On the other hand, it would be impossible for me to speak with weight against violent innovations. I should make a very poor figure in opposition to a

new Schedule A, while sitting for a borough which would probably appear in a new Schedule A. I should be constantly accused of holding, as the nominee of a great nobleman, language very different from that which I had held as the representative of a hundred and twenty thousand people. In short, I should bring discredit on myself, and be useless to you.

The situation in which I am placed with respect to the question of the ballot is alone a sufficient reason for my determining not to come into Parliament at the present time and in the proposed manner. My opinions on that question have undergone some change, and perhaps do not now differ very widely from yours. But I feel that if I were now, on taking my seat for Richmond, to vote against the ballot, I should destroy my public character, and with it all my public usefulness. Two months ago there was no excitement in the country about organic reforms. If a motion had been made in favour of secret voting, I might have absented myself or divided silently with the Ayes, and no newspaper would have thought the matter worth noting. Now the case is very different. That at this conjuncture a member of your Cabinet should, on such a question, separate himself from all his colleagues would, in my judgment, greatly weaken your Government. Peel and Graham, Stanley and Disraeli, Hume and Cobden, would all join to deride and condemn a Ministry which showed such signs of disunion. If any of the Radicals were to praise me at the expense of my colleagues, I need not say that such praise would be more painful to me than censure. Yet, if I do not vote for the ballot, the universal cry would be, 'You declared for the ballot on the hustings of Edinburgh; you voted for it; you spoke for it. You never said a word about your change of opinion till a great city turned you out, and an aristocratical borough proprietor put you in.' And what could I say in reply? I am confident, therefore, that, if I now come into the House of Commons as member for Richmond, I shall very soon go out again. By so going out I should probably inflict a serious wound on the Government. By quietly dropping out of public life I inflict no wound at all.

The truth is that there is only one way of escape from all these inconveniences. I must therefore beg you to consider my resignation as final. I will call in Chesham Place on Tuesday, and give you my key.-Ever, dear Lord John, yours very faithfully,

T. B. MACAULAY.

The programme which Lord John sketched out for the