contest at Bath he was successfully opposed by Lord Ashley,
the present Earl of Shaftesbury. On this occasion he exhibited even more
than his usual bad temper and bad taste. He declined to accept Lord
Ashley's proffered hand; and in the chagrin and vexation occasioned by
unexpected defeat he uttered a rabid invective against the
Non-Conformist ministers of the place, to whose influence he rightly
attributed his rival's success. Lord Ashley was a well-known
philanthropist, and his consistent support and patronage of many
religious and charitable societies had naturally given him popularity
among the Protestant clergy of all denominations,--a popularity
heightened in the case of the Evangelical and Calvinistic ministers by
his Lordship's strict Sabbatarianism and his belief in cold dinners on
Sunday. On the other hand, Mr. Roebuck was openly accused of private
professions of skepticism in matters of religion; and this report, so
dangerous to the repute of any public man in England, (where theology
and politics so frequently cross each other,) considerably damaged his
chance of success. Lord Ashley, however, was in no way responsible for
the rumor; and the difference between the conduct of the two during the
contest was this, that Lord Ashley behaved like a gentleman and Mr.
Roebuck did not.

During his retirement into private life, after this defeat in 1847, he
wrote his work entitled "The History of the Whig Ministry of 1830,"--a
book in the preparation of which he is said to have received
considerable and valuable assistance from no less a person than Lord
Brougham. Despite the aid that he received, it is amusing to find in his
preface a characteristic vaunting of his entire difference with Lord
Brougham about the character of King William IV. "Lord Brougham," he
writes, "is accustomed to describe William IV as frank, just, and
straightforward. We believe him to have been very weak and very false, a
finished dissembler, and always bitterly hostile to the Whig Ministry
and their great measure of Reform." This is Roebuck all over. He would
infinitely rather argue that white was black than quietly coincide in
any generally received opinion.

While on the subject of his writings, we will mention the book in which
he vouchsafed to praise those whom he now so elaborately vilifies. In
1849 he published an octavo volume of two hundred and forty-eight pages
on "The Colonies of England." Speaking (page 84) of the vast and rapid