Prophet and monarch both lived to see the fulfilment of the prophecy; and, among the many great men who laboured to accomplish it, none worked harder or strove more successfully than Lord John.

The new Parliament did not meet till November 15. The interval Lord John passed at Endsleigh, gaining, by fresh air and exercise, health for the coming struggle. During much of the time the Prime Minister was at Windsor, discharging deliberately and intentionally the functions of private secretary to the Queen as well as of Prime Minister.1 During that time he was in almost daily communication with Lord John, and deprecating in his letters the extensive changes which other men were advocating by the admission of Lord Durham, Mr. Charles Buller, or other Radicals, into either the Cabinet or the Ministry.2

ENDSLEIGH: September 9, 1837.

MY DEAR MELBOURNE,—It is certainly of no use to conceal the difficulty of our situation. I do not at all think, as some do, that the members of the new House of Commons will be more

steady to us than the last. On the contrary, the last was pledged to us from the first day, and stood to its pledge to the last. . There is another very serious difference. I never feared that we should not be able, as long as we maintained our principles, to prevent any serious inroad upon the constitution.3 But I always

1 Mr. Torrens seems to be unaware of Lord Melbourne's strong feelings on this point. But Lord Melbourne wrote to Lord John in reference to an attack of Lord Brougham's upon him: 'It appears to me to be highly to be desired upon constitutional grounds that the Queen should not have a private secretary. To obviate this necessity it is absolutely required that the Minister should be always near her, and it appears to me to be hardly fair or just that this should be represented as the result of a love of Court favour.' (December 17, 1837.) 2 'I have no personal objection to any man. But everybody, after the experience we have had, must doubt whether there can be peace or harmony in a Cabinet of which Lord Durham is a member.' (Lord Melbourne to Lord John, July 7, 1837.) 'Ellice wants to put in C. Buller. This, after what I have caused to be said to Lord Durhain about not wishing to give the Government a more Radical character at the present moment. . . would be impossible. (Ibid. July 18, 1837.)

3 Writing on August 10, Lord John had said: 'The sum total is perhaps that very old difficulty of Whig Administrations, that their friends expect them to do more than is possible; so that, if they attempt little, their friends grow slack, and, if they attempt much, their enemies grow strong.'

...

thought that the Whig party, as a party, would be destroyed by the Reform Bill, Their strength lay in certain counties and in close boroughs; the Tories, by the new construction of the House, were sure to beat them in the counties, and the Radicals in the open towns. . . At the same time, I do not think that the Tories, especially under so cautious a leader as Peel, will be forward to seize the government. A Tory Ministry, with three-fourths of Ireland, more than half of Scotland, and not less than 300 members of the House of Commons against them, would be far more weak and inefficient' than our own. . . . I confess I do not think that Ireland would at first be very dangerous to them, but I beg you to recollect what has happened with regard to that country. The attempt to govern on Orange maxims broke down in 1829 the attempt to govern by a neutrality between different parties broke down in 1834. Neither of these plans can be permanently re-established. Peel must either attempt conciliation and disgust his Orange friends, or support his Orange friends and produce general resistance-moral probably rather than physical. I remember you were the first person by whom I heard it said that Ireland would henceforth claim to be treated according to its importance as a branch of the United Kingdom. It has done so: and will do so and has a right to do so.

:

Yours ever,

J. R.

ENDSLEIGH: September 13, 1837.

MY DEAR MELBOURNE,—Whatever course we may take, no one can expect that we should carry either the Appropriation Clause or the Church Rate Bill in the present Parliament. With respect to the first, whether we propose it or not, I must say that I think the compromise proposed by the Duke of Wellington a very fair one, and that we should not be justified in keeping unsettled the three Irish questions unless the details were very unfair and unequal. As to church rates, we have proposed two Bills-one objected to by the Dissenters, the other by the Church. I do not think we are bound to revive these Bills or propose another till a better temper prevails. In the meantime we can propose our committee, but not till February. Reasons enough for this delay. Supposing such a course to be adopted, there remains to be considered the very narrow ground on which we stand. It seems to me that the greater part of those called Radicals are reasonable enough, and that they do not seek for grounds of difference. Witness the votes given by Grote, Molesworth, Warburton, &c., in favour of our policy in

Spain, which they all disapproved. Such being the case, we should do well to unite such people with us as much as possible, and, still more, to carry with us those Whigs who are Whigs in party and Radicals in opinion. There are two things which I think would be more acceptable than any others to this body-the one to make the ballot an open question,1 the other to remove the Tories from the political command of the army. . . . The late election has converted many to the ballot, and it is not now made a threat as it was last autumn by Molesworth. .-Yours ever,

J. R.

WINDSOR CASTLE: September 15, 1837.

MY DEAR JOHN, With respect to our future course, I mainly agree in all the first part of your letter . . . but I have a great dislike to making any alteration about the ballot. I have a great objection to a change in the grounds on which the Government was formed. I think our principle should be to hold the ground which we have taken, but not to occupy new ground rashly. I doubt, therefore, the policy of it as being an advance in a Radical direction; but, more than that, with the strong hostile opinions which, the more I think of it, I cannot but form, I hardly feel justified in giving the question such a lift as would be given it by making it open. I feel certain that it would be inoperative for the evils which it is intended to cure, and that it would produce many other evils from which we are at present free. . . .—Yours faithfully, MELBOURNE,

Lord John gave way. For some time further the ballot remained a question on which the members of the Ministry were all required to vote with the Prime Minister. Lord John incurred serious unpopularity from this concession; and Lord Melbourne's conservative dislike of change was probably instrumental in postponing secret voting for more than thirty years.

Lord John stayed at Endsleigh till the beginning of

1 Writing to Lord Melbourne on August 11, 1837, Lord John forwarded to him a letter from Lord Brougham strongly objecting to the ballot being an open question. Lord John added: 'I had asked him whether he had said that ballot ought to be an open question, and, without expressing an opinion myself, said that I saw no disgrace in such a course generally, as Parliamentary Reform in 1782, Catholic question from 1812 to 1827, and many others, had been open questions.'

October. On the 11th of that month Lady John and he reached Bowood on their way to London; and at Bowood they found the Prime Minister, who, by a long-standing arrangement, had come thither to meet them. During their stay at Bowood the party was increased by Lord Glenelg, Mr. Sydney Smith, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Moore, and others. 'Sour kraut' journalists (to use Mr. Moore's epithet) speculated on the meaning of this great Ministerial conclave, while the party at Bowood laughed at these speculations and at Mr. Sydney Smith's boisterous humour.1

1 Moore's Memoirs, vii. 203. Mr. Sydney Smith at that time was in some dudgeon with the Whigs. He was sore at the neglect of his own claims, and he was angry at the proposed transfer of the capitular patronage to the Bishops which the Whigs were promoting. He had already published his attack on the prelates in his letter to Archdeacon Singleton, and he was probably meditating the pamphlet in which, after glorifying Lord John at the expense of his colleagues, he concluded by throwing him overboard with the rest. See Moore's Memoirs, vii. 224, and cf. ibid. p. 228. The passage which gave special pain was as follows: There is not a better man in England than Lord John Russell, but his worst failure [? feature] is that he is utterly ignorant of all moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I believe he would perform the operation for the stone, build St. Peter's, or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) the command of the Channel Fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the patient had died, the church tumbled down, and the Channel Fleet been knocked to atoms. I believe his motives are always pure and his measures often able, but they are endless, and never done with that pedetentous pace and pedetentous mind in which it behoves the wise and virtuous improver to walk. He alarms the wise Liberals, and it is impossible

to sleep soundly while he has command of the watch.' In a note to the passage he added: 'Another peculiarity of the Russells is that they never alter their opinions they are an excellent race, but they must be trepanned before they are convinced.' (Sydney Smith's Works, ed. 1840, iii. 114.) But, though Mr. Sydney Smith was sore at the neglect by his friends both of himself and his order, he had as little intention of quarrelling with them as he had hope of persuading them. In February 1837 he wrote to Lord John :

MY DEAR JOHN,--You say you are not convinced by my pamphlet. I am afraid that I am a very arrogant person. But I do assure you that, in the fondest moments of self-conceit, the idea of convincing a Russell that he was wrong never came across my mind. Euclid (dear John) would have had a bad chance with you if you had happened to have formed an opinion that the interior angles of a triangle were not equal to two right angles. The more poor Euclid demonstrated, the more you would not have been convinced.

Influenza, indigestion, and loss of patronage to the Bishops.

I shall have great pleasure in dining with you on Sunday.

I thought you had known me better than to imagine I really took such things to heart. I will fight you to the last drop of my ink; dine with you to the last

For at Bowood Mr. Sydney Smith was in the best of humour; and a later generation, born in a less fertile age, may regret that it can never have an opportunity of listening to such conversation as must have been sustained round Lord Lansdowne's dinner-table by the culture of Lord Melbourne, the full mind and terse phrase of Lord John, the boisterous gaiety of Mr. Sydney Smith, the refined and instructed wit of Mr. Moore, and the keen, if bitter, satire of Mr. Rogers.

From Bowood, Lord and Lady John went to Brighton, where the Queen was staying at the Pavilion, and where Lord Melbourne had already preceded him; and after a few days' visit, in which Lady John and he dined on two successive evenings with the Queen, he returned to London to prepare for the coming session. His speech at the Stroud dinner had been lately published as a pamphlet, and had been made the subject of an article by Mr. Croker in the Quarterly, of which the Duke of Bedford said that he had never read a more bitter, malignant, or rascally performance.' The article was the less deserved because Lord John had displayed at Stroud a marked moderation, and he was about to incur the indignation of advanced Reformers by reiterating the same moderate counsels. In the debate on the Address, after asserting that Lords Grey and Althorp had concurred in making the Reform Act extensive in the hope that it might be final, he went on to admit that the people of England were entitled, if they chose to do so, to reconsider its provisions. But he added emphatically

I am not myself going to do so. . . . It is quite impossible for me, having been one who brought forward the measure of

drop of your claret; and entertain for you, bibendo et scribendo, sincere affection and respect. SYDNEY SMITH.

33 Charles Street: Feb. 10, 1837.

A week later, after drinking Lord John's claret, he added: 'Don't go out of office. It is the greatest crime you can commit. The Whigs are the best Government which was ever in this country. You individually are rapidly rising in the opinion of the best people.'