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CORN BILL.

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sion of perspective. As the artist combines material and thought without the intervention of any other medium, his creation would be perfect, if life could also be breathed into his work; and I quite understand and feel with the sculptor in the fable, who implored the Gods to let his work descend from its platform.

'We have an art, however, in which even this third element of creation-inward force and growth-is present, and which has, therefore, had extraordinary attractions for me of late years, indeed I may say from earliest childhood, viz., the art of gardening. In this the artist who lays out the work, and devises a garment for a piece of ground, has the delight of seeing his work live and grow hour by hour; and, while it is growing, he is able to polish, to cut and carve, to fill up here and there, to hope, and to love.'

Before the Prince returned to town, Sir Robert Peel's Resolutions had passed through Committee, and a Corn Bill, founded upon them, had been introduced. At each stage the breach with his former party grew wider and wider; and the Prince appears from the following letter to have viewed with obvious disquietude the state of confusion into which things were likely to be thrown, so soon as the settlement of the Corn Law Question should terminate the temporary alliance between the Minister and the Liberal party.

'Dear Stockmar,-We are in the midst of one of the strongest party conflicts, which is carried on by the aggrieved party with a bitterness, a fury, and want of common sense, which never perhaps had a parallel in history. Peel is the mark at which all shots are levelled, and of the 658 members of the House he has, all placemen included, only 112 followers, and of these the half contre cœur. This is sad, and makes everything very uncertain. Nevertheless, Peel has great majorities nightly. Still he is forced to avoid every question, which might array the Whigs against him, otherwise he is in a minority directly, for he is supported by them only in the Free Trade measure, and even there he gets side-blows not a few. I send with this one of his speeches, which is a real masterpiece.

'Buckingham Palace, 16th March, 1846.'

By this time Sir Robert Peel must have changed his opinion, that'the Minister who settles the Corn Laws is not

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DEFEAT OF MINISTRY.

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so easily turned out.' The party who were ready to assist him in that object were not likely to forego the opening offered to their ambition by the determined resentment of his former followers. Within a few days after this letter was written, speaking on the Second Reading of the Bill, his language plainly showed his conviction that the downfall of his Ministry was not far distant:

'I am not surprised to hear honourable Members predict to me that my tenure of power is short. Let these measures pass into a law. Suspend your indignation till then; and then it will be perfectly open to you to determine what measures you will adopt for the purpose of terminating my political life. . . . I assure you that I deplore the loss of your confidence, if I have unfortunately lost it; I deplore it more than I do the loss of political power. The accusations which you have preferred against me are on this account harmless, that I feel they are undeserved. If I could feel, if I could believe that I had been moved by corrupt motives and unworthy impulses, one-tenth part of the accusations you have levelled against me must have been fatal to my existence and my peace. You may think I have taken too great precautions against Irish famine; you are mistaken. Events will prove that these precautions were not unnecessary. The month of July will have established that these precautions were not superfluous.8 Sir, when I do fall, I shall have the satisfaction of reflecting that I shall not have fallen because I have shown subserviency to any party. I shall not fall because I have preferred the interests of party to the general interests of the community.'

No remarkable tactics were necessary, as parties then stood, to select the measure for putting an end to the Minister's political life. But a Coercion Bill, which had been introduced early in the Session in the hope of checking the alarming increase of assassination in Ireland, afforded the opportunity for such a combination in the House of Commons as was sure to place the Government in a serious minority. It had passed the House of Lords with the approval of the Whig leaders. In ordinary circumstances it would probably have been equally sure of success in the House of Commons. Interruptions of various kinds and a protracted debate so far delayed its progress there, that, by a singular coincidence, on the same day (the 25th June), on which the Corn Bill passed the House of Lords, the Coercion Bill was defeated in the Commons by a majority of 78. The incidents of that evening have been recorded in one of the most striking passages of Mr. Disraeli's Biography, to which reference has already been made, of the remarkable man who, with himself, had been

The best commentary on this is the following entry in the Prince's Diary: '22nd August, 1846. Beginning of Irish famine."

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RESIGNATION OF PEEL MINISTRY.

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mainly instrumental in bringing about this result. With the picturesque strokes of a master of imaginative description, he has shown us the Minister, as the Protectionists passed before him into the lobby-the men to gain whose hearts and the hearts of their fathers had been the aim and exultation of his life.' We see him, grave and motionless, 'with his chin extended, as was his habit when he was annoyed and cared not to speak,' as the result of the division was conveyed to him, and by it he knew that his reign of power was for ever at an end. But the sympathies of the reader of our own days are not with the men who had their brief hour of triumph in what they regarded as a just retribution for falsehood to the ties of party, but rather with the statesman who, at the sacrifice of his most cherished feelings, had done his duty to his country and his conscience, and by the measure which provoked his defeat had established a lasting claim upon the gratitude of the nation.

Six days later (4th July) we find Sir Robert Peel writing to Lord Hardinge in India from Drayton Manor:-Lady Peel and I are here quite alone, in the loveliest weather, feasting on solitude and repose; and I have every disposition to forgive my enemies for having conferred upon me the blessing of the loss of power.' (Peel's Memoirs, ii. 310.) The Minister had adopted the only course open to him after the vote on the Irish Coercion Bill. On the 29th of June he announced that his government only held office until the appointment of their successors. The great measures of commercial policy were secure, for which alone he would have consented to encounter the odium and torture of the last six months. In the general disorganization of parties, an appeal to the country by a dissolution would only have prolonged the state of suspense from which the industry of the nation had already suffered. Many of the counties were alienated from him, and Ireland, incensed at his Coercion Bill, would have returned a compact phalanx of Members pledged to oppose him. In such circumstances a dissolution would certainly not give him a working majority with which to face a new Parliament. 'Anything,' said the Minister, 'is preferable to maintaining ourselves in office without a full measure of the confidence of this House.'

While Sir Robert Peel might well turn with a sigh of relief from the cares of office, noble though they were, to the not ignoble ease of a 'statesman out of place,' it would have

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LETTER BY THE QUEEN.

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been strange, had not the necessity for parting with a Ministry, who had served their Sovereign with such signal ability and devotion, awakened in the Queen and Prince a feeling of profound regret. The pain, which to natures such as theirs could never be otherwise than considerable, of separating from those with whom they had grown familiar not merely in the anxious counsels of State, but in the intimacies of friendship, was augmented by the feeling that for a time at least one of the great parties in the State was broken up. That it would come together again sooner or later was certain, but that it should do so under the same leaders was not to be expected. When the time came for the Queen to receive the Ministers on their taking formal leave, the trial on both sides was severe. Yesterday,' Her Majesty writes (7th July) to King Leopold,' was a very hard day for me. I had to part with Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable losses to us and to the country. They were both so much overcome that it quite upset me, and we have in them two devoted friends. We felt so safe with them. Never during the five years that they were with me did they ever recommend a person or a thing that was not for my or the country's best, and never for the party's advantage only. I cannot tell you how sad I am to lose Aberdeen. You cannot think what a delightful companion he was. The breaking up of all this intercourse during our journeys, &c., is deplorable. . . .

'Albert's use to me, and I may say to the country, by his firmness and sagacity in these moments of trial is beyond all belief.'

The feeling was reciprocal. In writing to the Prince Consort from Haddo House on 14th September, 1846, Lord Aberdeen says: I rejoice to learn that the marine excursion to Cornwall and Jersey was prosperous and agreeable. Although living contented in this remote district, I confess that in reading of Her Majesty's progress, I have sometimes wished to find myself on the Royal yacht, and even off the race of Portland!'

CHAPTER XVI.

Settlement of Oregon Question--The New Ministry--Birth of Princess Helena--Prince's Visit to Liverpool--Distress in Ireland--Remedial Measures--New House at Osborne.

6

'TWO HOURS,' Sir Robert Peel writes to Lord Hardinge in the letter already quoted, after the intelligence arrived that the Lords had passed the Corn and Customs Bills, we were ejected from power; and by another coincidence as marvellous, on the day on which I had to announce in the House of Commons the dissolution of the Government, the news arrived that we had settled the Oregon question, and that our proposals had been accepted by the United States without the alteration of a word.' The tidings awaited the Minister on his return from placing his resignation in Her Majesty's hands at Osborne. They might well be accepted as no slight consolation in the crisis of defeat, for they assured to his country the quiet possession of a magnificent tract of territory, and closed up a question which had more than once brought us to the verge of hostilities with America. Involving as the question did the disposal of the vast district lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, the omission to deal with it in the treaty between the two countries in 1783 had necessarily been productive of claims on both sides, which the pressure of emigration and the value of the country itself made every day more difficult to reconcile. By holding up a finger, war could at any time be produced about it,' Lord Castelreagh had said to Mr. Rush, the American Minister, in 1822.

6

Four years previously (October 20th, 1818) the two Governments had concluded a Convention, which left the territory open to settlers from both countries for ten years, and this Convention had been renewed for a further limited term on August 6th, 1827. But as the number of settlers increased this state of promiscuous occupation became fraught with danger, to avert which some definite arrangement for the partition of the disputed territory had become indispensable. The first step towards this was taken by the American legisla