y the part of opposition_; they
are not a government, for they don't maintain the law." He appointed me
to return to him to-morrow.'

The result of the general election was a slight improvement in the
position of the conservatives, but they still mustered no more than 315
against 342 supporters of the ministry, including the radical and Irish
groups. If Melbourne and Russell found their team delicate to drive,
Peel's difficulties were hardly less. Few people, he wrote at this
moment, can judge of the difficulty there has frequently been in
maintaining harmony between the various branches of the conservative
party. The great majority in the Lords and the minority in the Commons
consisted of very different elements; they included men like Stanley and
Graham, who had been authors and advocates of parliamentary reform, and
men who had denounced reform as treason to the constitution and ruin to
the country. Even the animosities of 1829 and catholic emancipation were
only half quenched within the tory ranks.[76] It was at a meeting held
at Peel's on December 6, 1837, that Lord Stanley for the first time
appeared among the conservative members.

The distractions produced in Canada by mismanagement and misapprehension
in Downing Street had already given trouble during the very short time
when Mr. Gladstone was under-secretary at the colonial office; but they
now broke into the flame of open revolt. The perversity of a foolish
king and weakness and disunion among his whig ministers had brought
about a catastrophe. At the beginning of the session (1838) the
government introduced a bill suspending the constitution and conferring
various absolute powers on Lord Durham as governor general and high
commissioner. It was in connection with this proposal that Mr. Gladstone
seems to have been first taken into the confidential consultations of
the leaders of his party.

CANADIAN SPEECH

The sage marshalling and manoeuvring of the parliamentary squads was
embarrassed by a move from Sir William Molesworth, of whom we have just
been hearing, the editor of Hobbes, and one of the group nicknamed
philosophic radicals with whom Mr. Gladstone at this stage seldom or
never agreed. 'The new school of morals,' he called them, 'which taught
that success was the only criterion of merit,'--a delineation for which
he would have been severely handled by Bentham or James Mill. Molesworth
gave notice of a vote of censure on L