TJJE SESSION OF 1836. 105 



case, or they ought immediately on the rejection of the first important 

 measure, namely, the Irish Corporation Reform Bill, to have tendered 

 their resignations. 



The latter step would have been as effectual as the other. The 

 party who had imposed the necessity of resignation on them must, as a 

 matter of course, have responded to the call of the King to supply the 

 vacant places of the Melbourne Administration. Well, and what then ? 

 Why, the accession of a Tory government under such circumstances 

 would have raised such a storm of indignation, from one extremity of 

 the country to the other, as would at once have scattered such a govern- 

 ment to the winds of heaven, and restored the Melbourne Ministry to 

 power, under such triumphant circumstances as would have deterred 

 the Conservative Peers for ever after from defeating any measure 

 which Lord Melbourne proposed and which public opinion demanded. 



In taking neither of these steps, therefore, Lord Melbourne has only 

 been unwarrantably trifling with the country. His conduct gives plausi- 

 bility to the charges brought against him both by his own friends and 

 by the Tories. The former charge him with pusillanimity, the latter 

 reproach him with a determination to retain power to the latest mo- 

 ment possible, at any sacrifice of principle and consistency. The 

 course he has pursued this session affords too much apparant ground, to 

 say the least of it, for the charges of both parties. 



The policy of Lord Melbourne this session has been as injudicious as 

 it has been undecided. His timidity has only inspired the Tory Peers 

 with fresh courage ; they now assume a bold front, and not only say, 

 but prove by their actions, that they will have their own way of it. 

 Their determination to resist every measure involving in it the principle 

 of any important reform is now declared openly, and in tones which 

 indicate that their " hearts are resolved and their hands are prepared/* 

 Had Lord Melbourne acted with the energy which became the occasion, 

 he would, as already mentioned, have had the whole of the people with 

 him. His pusillanimous conduct has not only emboldened the Peers in 

 their obstructive courses, but it has detached from his Lordship's 

 government the affections of the great body of the reformers in all parts 

 of the country. There are at this moment rumours abroad that Ministers 

 are again on the eve of ejection from office that, in other words, the game 

 of 1834 is about to be repeated. If so, Lord Melbourne will soon 

 have his eyes opened to the folly of the timid course of policy he has 

 pursued this session. He and his colleagues will not be again 



