,
except those of becoming members of Parliament,[265] or of the Privy
Council.

Generally speaking, few governments had enjoyed more of the confidence
of the nation than Peel's did in 1844; yet in this year it was exposed
to two remarkable mortifications. The charter of the East India Company,
as framed by Pitt in subsequent events, which has led to the entire
extinction of the political power of the Company, makes anything beyond
this brief mention of the transaction superfluous at the present time.

The other mortification of the ministry to which allusion has been made
fell upon it at home in the Parliamentary discussion of the
Prime-minister's financial measures, on which his judgment was usually
regarded as pre-eminent, and on which a large majority of the House was
generally disposed implicitly to follow his guidance. Sir Robert was
not, indeed, himself Chancellor of the Exchequer, that office being
filled by Mr. Goulburn, but it was certain that the Budget was inspired
by a deference to the Prime-minister's views. And, among the
arrangements which it proposed, one consisted of a relaxation of the
sugar-duties, which was regarded with dread by those interested in the
West Indies, as a farther step in the direction of free-trade, and as
depriving them of the modified protection which they were as yet
enjoying. To preserve that protection to them, Mr. Miles, the member for
Bristol, proposed an amendment which, after an animated debate, was
carried by a majority of twenty. Three months before, on the Factory
Bill and the question whether the hours of labor should be limited to
ten or to twelve, the minister had also found himself defeated, though
by a much smaller majority; but in that case the defeat had been the
less pronounced from the inconsistency of the votes on the different
limits.[266] And he extricated himself from that difficulty by
abandoning the bill altogether, and introducing a new one, not without
angry resistance on the part of Lord John Russell and other members of
the Opposition. They denounced such a manoeuvre as alike
unconstitutional and unparliamentary; while he, on the contrary,
insisted that the House had always jealously retained the right of
reconsidering its own decisions. In that instance, however, the
introduction of a new bill might have been regarded as the simplest mode
of harmonizing the variety of views which had been represented by the
discussion of and votes on the ministerial