l movement on the policy of an
Administration.

[Sidenote: 1835--Melbourne and the Irish Members]

From that time Brougham had nothing more to do with ministerial work.
He became merely an independent, a very independent, member of the
House of Lords. To the close of his long career he was a commanding
figure in the House and in the country, but it was an individual
figure, an eccentric figure, whose movements must always excite
interest, must often excite admiration, but from whom guidance and
inspiration were never to be expected. Even on some of the great
questions with which the brightest part of his career had been
especially associated he often failed to exercise the influence which
might have been expected from a man of such gifts and such
achievements. Through the remainder of his life he could always arouse
the attention of the country, and indeed of the civilized world, when
he so willed, but his work as a political leader was done.

The office of Lord Chancellor was left for a while vacant, or, to
describe the fact in more technical language, was put into commission.
The commission was made up of the Master of the Rolls, the
Vice-Chancellor, and one of the Judges. After a time Lord Cottenham
was made Lord Chancellor. Lord John Russell became Home Secretary, and
Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary. Among the new names on the list
of the Administration was that of Sir Henry Parnell, who became
Paymaster-General and Paymaster of the Navy, and that of Sir George
Grey, who was Under-Secretary of the Colonies, and afterwards rose to
hold high office in many a Government, and had at one time the somewhat
undesirable reputation of being the rapidest speaker in the House of
Commons.

King William must have put a strong constraint upon himself when he
found that he had to receive, on terms at least of civility, so many of
the men, as ministers, whom he had abruptly dismissed from his service
not long before. For a considerable time he put up with them rather
than received them, and maintained a merely official relationship with
them so far even as not to invite them to dinner. {253} After a time,
however, his Majesty somewhat softened in temper; the relations between
him and his advisers became less strained; and he even went so far as
to invite the members of the Cabinet to dinner, and expressed in his
invitation the characteristic wish that each guest would drink at least
two bottles of wine. When the