session was sufficiently ambitious. The position of affairs abroad and the Duke of Wellington's published opinion forced the Ministry to consider the arrangements necessary for defence against invasion; the famine in Ireland, which had compelled the Government temporarily to suspend the Navigation Acts in 1847, brought the policy of those Acts prominently before the Legislature; the miserable condition of the large towns, where no adequate provision was made for pure soil, pure air, or pure water, gave urgency to the great question of Sanitary Reform; while the circumstance of Lord John's own election, connected as it was with that of a Jew, Baron Rothschild, as his colleague, raised a similar issue to that which Mr. O'Connell's return for Clare had brought to the front nearly twenty years before.

Thus four great measures of legislation and finance were fairly before Parliament. But, before February was over, the revolution in France and the fear of increased taxation at home, had entirely altered the situation; and a session which had commenced with a demand for greater armaments, and with the proposal of additional taxation, concluded with a general desire for retrenchment, and a serious effort to bring the expenditure of the nation within its income. This radical alteration in feeling, for which the Government could hardly be held responsible, disarranged the whole programme of the year; and the plans of the Ministers were further modified by the necessity which, as they conceived, was imposed on them of seeking special legislative powers to control turbulence and disaffection. Much of the time, which it was hoped would be available for discussing Navigation Acts and Public Health, was occupied with the consideration of measures of precaution of which the Crown and Government Security Bill and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act were the most striking. In these circumstances, the Bills which the Government had promoted early in the session could not otherwise than suffer. The Bill for Promoting the Health of Towns was, indeed, passed; the Bill for Removing the Disabilities of the Jews. was passed by the Commons, but summarily rejected by the

Lords; the Bill for repealing the Navigation Acts was abandoned.

Failures of this kind always throw discredit on a Government; and it so happened that the Ministry suffered in 1848 not merely from what it failed to effect, but from what it was compelled to do. The Protectionists had never forgiven the change which Lord John had made in 1846 in the sugar duties; they ascribed to it the severe distress which the West India Islands were enduring; and Lord George Bentinck, who had resigned his position as their leader, but who still retained all his antipathies to Free Trade, obtained at the commencement of the session a committee to inquire into the condition of the sugar colonies, and, by his own casting vote as chairman, carried a report recommending the virtual suspension of the Act of 1846 and the retention of a differential duty in favour of colonial sugar for the next six years. Lord John, though he disliked the report, unfortunately felt that he was powerless to defeat its adoption, and accordingly decided on proposing a compromise which gave a slight advantage to colonial sugar. The compromise was ill received by the more Radical members of the Liberal party: there was a universal expectation that the Government would be defeated on it, and the Cabinet formally decided to retire from office in that event.2 Unfortunately, too, the chances of defeat were increased by a circumstance which was so rare that it could hardly be foreseen-Lord John's own indiscretion. In the course of the debate Lord George Bentinck had accused the Colonial Office of wilfully suppressing an important despatch,

1 During the discussion of the Jewish question Lord John sent the following letter in dog-Latin to his wife:—

Sabbat, Maii 27.

Malus sum. Non tibi scripsi hesterno die. Gaudeo salute tua et prolis nostræ. Dies natalis Reginæ et concilium Cabinetti me constringit [sic] hodie ut non possum te videre usque ad noctem. Cras dies festivus et sanctus. Gaudeo. Non plus scribam. Pares Judæis infesti, populus infestus Paribus, faciunt caldarium piscium bellissimum. CONJUX DEVOTISSIMUS.

2 Lord Clarendon, writing on June 26, congratulated Lord John on his approaching fall.

and of denying its existence. Lord John warmly defended Lord Grey, and, nettled by the attack, went on to say—

These mean frauds-these extremely dishonourable trickswhich the noble Lord imputes to [men in high office], are not the faults and characteristics of men who are high in public office in this country. They are characteristics of men who are engaged in pursuits which the noble Lord long followed.

Warned by 'the burst of disapprobation from all sides,' Lord John attempted to explain that Lord George had himself detected a fraud of that nature respecting the age of a horse. But the House was in no humour for explanations; it persisted in placing its own meaning on Lord John's expression; and the prospects of a Ministerial success were evidently clouded by the indiscretion of the Prime Minister.

Reflection, however, convinced the House of Commons that it could not afford to part with the only available Ministry. Lord John's compromise was ultimately adopted by a sufficient majority. This victory, won at the end of June, gave Ministers safety for the remainder of the session. Yet, if they were secure from defeat, they could not be said to be either strong or popular. They suffered in public estimation from the failure of all their measures, and the public omitted to notice the cause of this failure. Lord John at a very early period of the session pointed out the reason.1

There have been in the course of the last thirty years very great changes in the mode of conducting the business of the House. When I first entered Parliament it was not usual for Government to undertake generally all subjects of legislation. . . . Two great changes have since taken place. . . . The one, that . . . since the passing of the Reform Bill it has been thought convenient, on every subject on which an alteration of the law is required, that the Government should undertake the responsibility of proposing it to Parliament; and the other great change is that measures of all kinds are now discussed by a much greater number of members, and a far greater number of motions are made by individual

1 Hansard, xcvii. 969.

members, than was formerly the case. The consequence of these changes has been that . . . it is found impossible by any Government. to bring [measures of importance] on at a time when they can receive fair deliberation.

.

The time at the disposal of the Government was, in other words, no longer sufficient for its work, and business suffered, not from any fault of the Administration, but from a defect in the arrangements of Parliament.

The speech had no practical effect. It did not even induce an independent member to forego his right of occupying time by bringing forward an abstract motion on the Slave Trade. But it elicited one remarkable letter which in the light of later events is worth quoting.

...

PARIS, April 3, 1848.

MY DEAR JOHN,-In reading your speech the other day, upon the state of business in the House, I was more than ever struck with what I have felt for many years is the hopeless inefficiency of the legislative machine to work the accumulated business of the country. . . . The period must arise when the doctrine as to division of labour must be applied to legislation, as it has [been] to everything else; and laws must be prepared beforehand for the finishing hand of the whole House, instead of as now going through so many stages there. It would be very desirable if one could at the same time secure the preparation by the hands and in the manner where most knowledge of details could be procured-if, for instance, the Irish members met in Dublin two months before the regular session for the discussion of purely Irish measures; and that laws so prepared should be subject to only one decision, affirmative or negative, in the whole House. Some proposal, having some such basis, would satisfy all that was legitimate in the desire for home legislation in Ireland, but would preserve the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. .-Ever yours,

NORMANBY.

This remarkable suggestion was not adopted. Time continued to be wasted in unnecessary debates, till at the close of August Mr. Disraeli was able to make an obituary notice of the protracted session the theme of one of his most amusing and animated speeches; while Lord John, in replying

to it, repeated the argument which he had used five months before:

I must remind the . . . . House that the supposed duty of the members of a Government to introduce a great number of measures to Parliament, and to carry those measures through Parliament in a session, is a duty which is new to the Government of this country.

Let me call the attention of the House to the fact that the Ministers of the Crown are chiefly appointed to administer the affairs of the empire. And when we see that sedition in England has been met with a vigorous arm by the Secretary of State for the Home Department; . . that rebellion in Ireland has been suppressed by the measures taken by this House, and the energy shown by the Lord Lieutenant; . . . that revolution on the Continent has not shaken the institutions of this country. . . . I must say, as a member of the Government attacked, that the administration of the empire cannot have been so very defective.

No fair person will deny that there was force in the plea : though he may perhaps doubt, if it had been raised in 1822, whether Lord John himself would have thought that it would have entitled Lord Liverpool's Administration to a verdict of not guilty.

The members of the Whig Cabinet, however, were quite as sensible as the outside public that the events of the session of 1848 had not tended to raise the character of the Administration. Supported by an insufficient majority in one House, and confronted by a large majority in the other, it had not even the advantage which other Governments had derived from the advocacy of the newspaper press. The Times declaimed against it; the Chronicle, the traditional organ of the Whigs, had passed into new hands; and the cause of the Administration was left without a competent advocate. Lord Clarendon, who had already adopted measures with the same object in Ireland, was anxious that the Ministers should take steps to secure the support of a friendly newspaper. Lord John was too proud to involve himself in transactions of this character. However much he might have valued the defence of a newspaper if it had been voluntarily offered, he steadily