ts and the
establishment of colleges in other important Irish towns, Lady John was
living at Unsted Wood, near Godalming, a house they had taken for the year.

Their constant separation was painful to both, and as soon as Parliament
rose they decided to go to Minto. There the state of her health became so
alarming that, to be within reach of medical advice, they moved to
Edinburgh.

The distress of the poorer classes throughout the country during this
autumn was terrible. It was to meet this distress, unparalleled since the
Middle Ages, that Lord John wrote from Edinburgh his famous Free Trade
letter to his London constituents, urging them to clamour for the only
remedy, "to unite to put an end to a system which has proved to be the
blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions
among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the
people."

Shortly afterwards he was called to London by the sudden death of his old
friend Lady Holland, and he had hardly returned when the news of Peel's
resignation reached him. Peel, thoroughly alarmed, had called a Cabinet
Council to consider the repeal of the Corn Laws. Lord Stanley, afterwards
Lord Derby, had strongly dissented, and carried several Ministers with him,
thus compelling Peel to resign.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

EDINBURGH, _December_ 2, 1845

I wonder what Ralph and William will say to John's letter to his
electors. It is what I have long wished, and I am delighted that
the chief barrier between him and the Radical part of the Whig
party should be knocked down by it. In short, _patriotically_
I am quite pleased, but _privately_ far from it; I dread its
being a stepping-stone to office, which, not to mention myself,
would kill him very soon. He has already quite as much work as his
health can stand, so what would it be with office in
_addition?_ However, I do not torment myself with a future
which may never come, or which, if it does, I may never see. I
forget whether I have written since poor Lady Holland's death,
which John felt very much. It is sad that her death should have
startled one as only that of a young person generally does; but,
old as she was, she never appeared so, and she belonged as much to
society as she ever did. Poor woman, it is a comfort that she died
so calmly, whatever it was that enabled her to do so.