ear, in sickness
and domestic sorrow, fighting the battle of Reform, I am led to the
conclusion that the weakness of the Ministers is of that sort which
makes it our duty to give them, not opposition, but support; and that
support it is my purpose to afford to the best of my ability.

If, indeed, I thought myself at liberty to consult my own inclination,
I should have stood aloof from the conflict. If you should be pleased
to send me to Parliament, I shall enter an assembly very different
from that which I quitted in 1834. I left the Wigs united and dominant,
strong in the confidence and attachment of one House of Parliament,
strong also in the fears of the other. I shall return to find them
helpless in the Lords, and forced almost every week to fight a battle
for existence in the Commons. Many, whom I left bound together by what
seemed indissoluble private and public ties, I shall now find assailing
each other with more than the ordinary bitterness of political
hostility. Many with whom I sate side by side, contending through whole
nights for the Reform Bill, till the sun broke over the Thames on our
undiminished ranks, I shall now find on hostile benches. I shall be
compelled to engage in painful altercations with many with whom I had
hoped never to have a conflict, except in the generous and friendly
strife which should best serve the common cause. I left the Liberal
Government strong enough to maintain itself against an adverse Court; I
see that the Liberal Government now rests for support on the preference
of a Sovereign, in whom the country sees with delight the promise of a
better, a gentler, a happier Elizabeth, of a Sovereign in whom we hope
that our children and our grandchildren will admire the firmness, the
sagacity, and the spirit which distinguished the last and greatest of
the Tudors, tempered by the beneficent influence of more humane times
and more popular institutions. Whether royal favour, never more needed
and never better deserved, will enable the government to surmount the
difficulties with which it has to deal, I cannot presume to judge. It
may be that the blow has only been deferred for a season, and that a
long period of Tory domination is before us. Be it so. I entered public
life a Whig; and a Whig I am determined to remain. I use that word, and
I wish you to understand that I use it, in no narrow sense. I mean by
a Whig, not one who subscribes implicitly to the contents of any book,
though th