and ostentatious defiance of the Queen's title to the Crown. Accordingly, a very clever artist represented me in a caricature as a boy who had chalked up No Popery' 'No Popery' upon a wall and then run away. This was a very fair joke. In fact, I wanted to place the assertion of the Queen's title to appoint Bishops on the statute book and there leave it. I kept in the hands of the Crown the discretion to prosecute or not any offensive denial of the Queen's rights. My purpose was fully answered. Those who wished to give the Pope the right of appointing Bishops in England opposed the Bill. When my object had been gained I had no objection to the repeal of the Act.

During my temporary resignation of office, which took place in the month of February, 1851, on the question of Mr. Locke King's motion for an alteration of the County Franchise, Lord Aberdeen and Sir James Graham endeavoured to persuade me not to persevere with the Bill, but to be satisfied with Parliamentary resolutions asserting the rights of the Crown. I did not like to retire from the position I had assumed. But in substance the course suggested by Lord Aberdeen would have been as effectual and less offensive than that which I adopted.

A more serious question arose with respect to Lord Palmerston's conduct as Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Baron Stockmar, whose memoirs have been published,

seems to have acquiesced in the opinion that my conduct on that occasion was dilatory and undecided. My own judgment upon it is that it was hasty and precipitate. I ought to have seen Lord Palmerston, and I think I could, without difficulty, have induced him to make a proper submission to Her Majesty's wishes, and agree to act in conformity with conditions to which he had already given his assent. I felt it to be my duty to declare the political connection between Lord Palmerston and myself to be dissolved. But I felt at the same time that my Government was so much weakened that it was not likely to retain power for any long time.

Accordingly I took the first opportunity to resign office. On February 23, 1852, I announced the resignation of the Ministry in the House of Commons. Just before the resignation Lord Naas made a violent attack on Lord Clarendon, which I thought it my duty to rebut in the strongest language. On a division, the Ayes were 137, and the Noes 229majority 92.

Mr. Tierney used to say, as the fruit of his experience, that it was very difficult for a member of the House of Commons to attain high office, but that it was still more difficult to leave high office with credit on sufficient grounds. The latter is, in fact, the more difficult operation of the two. I cannot say that in breaking up my own Administration, or in leaving

Lord Aberdeen's Administration, or in leaving office in 1866, I have been satisfied with the reasons which determined me to give up the high position in which I had been placed by my Sovereign.

It may not be any loss to the reader if I give, in the next chapter, some observations on the course of the Executive Government of England since the Great Revolution of 1688.

CHAPTER V.

CONSTITUTION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.-CHOICE OF

LEADERS.

LORD MACAULAY has, in his review of the conduct of William Pitt, made a remark of so much importance, coming from such a man, that, if it be erroneous or overcharged, it ought not to be left without comment. I will give his remarks in full :

'Parliamentary government, like every other contrivance of man, has its advantages and its disadvantages. On the advantages there is no need to dilate. The history of England during the 170 years which have elapsed since the House of Commons became the most powerful body in the State, her immense and still growing prosperity, her freedom, her tranquillity, her greatness in arts, in sciences, and in arms; her maritime ascendency, the marvels of her public credit, her American, her African, her Australian, her Asiatic empires, sufficiently prove the excellence of her institutions. But those institutions, though excellent, are assuredly not perfect. Parliamentary government is government by speaking. In such a government, the power of speaking is the

most highly prized of all the qualities which a politician can possess; and that power may exist in the highest degree, without judgment, without fortitude, without skill in reading the characters of men or the signs of the times, without any knowledge of the principles of legislation or of political economy, and without any skill in diplomacy or in the administration of war. Nay, it may well happen that those very intellectual qualities which give a peculiar charm to the speeches of a public man may be incompatible with the qualities which would fit him to meet a pressing emergency with promptitude and firmness. It was thus with Charles Townshend. It was thus with Windham. It was a privilege to listen to those accomplished and ingenious orators. But in a perilous crisis they would have been found far inferior in all the qualities of rulers to such a man as Oliver Cromwell, who talked nonsense, or as William the Silent, who did not talk at all. When Parliamentary government is established, a Charles Townshend or a Windham will almost always exercise much greater influence than such men as the great Protector of England, or as the Founder of the Batavian Commonwealth.'1

From long experience in the House of Commons I think I am entitled to say, that in these remarks Macaulay is greatly mistaken. Charles Townshend and William Windham were listened to in the House of

1 Macaulay's 'Review of William Pitt.'