ENGLISH PARTY LEADERS AND ENGLISH PARTIES. FROM WALPOLE TO PEEL. INCLUDING A REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE LAST AUTHOR OF BY W. H. DAVENPORT ADAMS, THE BIRD-WORLD," "THE MEDITERRANEAN," "WOMEN OF FASHION," ETC. "Statesmen, Who know the seasons when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet."-Tennyson. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. PREFACE. Ir is, perhaps, hardly too much to say that, to the "general reader," the political history of England during the last century and a half is a "sealed book." He knows, of course, that that eventful period has witnessed many political changes and some great legislative reforms; but of their details, or of the mode in which they have taken place and been carried out, it is safe to assert that he knows little or nothing. The various positions assumed by our two great political parties have never been clearly understood by him; for in our longer histories such topics as these are generally overlaid or obscured by the prominence and fulness given to the narrative of wars and negotiations, social movements and commercial progress. Even in Miss Martineau's "History of the Thirty Years' Peace," the story is told on a scale too large for ordinary readers; and Mr. |