arried to Lady Fanny Elliot, second daughter of the
Earl of Minto, a union which brought him lasting happiness.

[Sidenote: 'A HOST IN HIMSELF']

Parliament met in the middle of August, and the Government were defeated
on the Address by a majority of ninety-one, and on August 28 Lord John
found himself once more out of harness. In his speech in the House of
Commons announcing the resignation of the Government, he said that the
Whigs under Lord Grey had begun with the Reform Act, and that they were
closing their tenure of power by proposals for the relief of commerce.
The truth was, the Melbourne Administration had not risen to its
opportunities. Its fixed duty on corn was a paltry compromise. The
leaders of the party needed to be educated up to the level of the
national demands. Opposition was to bring about unexpected political
combinations and new political opportunities, and the years of conflict
which were dawning were also to bring more clearly into view Lord John
Russell's claims to the Liberal leadership. When the Melbourne
Administration was manifestly losing the confidence of the nation,
Rogers the poet was walking one day with the Duke of Wellington in Hyde
Park, and the talk turned on the political situation. Rogers remarked,
'What a powerful band Lord John Russell will have to contend with!
There's Peel, Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham----;' and the Duke
interrupted him at this point with the laconic reply, 'Lord John Russell
is a host in himself.'

Protection had triumphed at the General Election, and Sir Robert Peel
came to power as champion of the Corn Laws. The Whigs had fallen between
two stools, for the country was not in a humour to tolerate vacillation.
The Melbourne Cabinet had, in truth, in the years which had witnessed
its decline and fall, spoken with the voice of Jacob, but stretched
forth the hands of Esau. The Radicals shook their heads, scouted the
Ministry's deplorable efforts at finance, and felt, to say the least,
lukewarm about their spirited foreign policy. 'I don't thank a man for
supporting me when he thinks me right,' was the cynical confession of a
statesman of an earlier generation; 'my gratitude is with the man who
supports me when he thinks me wrong.' Melbourne was doubtless of the
same mind; but the man in the crowd, of Liberal proclivities, was, for
the most part, rather disgusted with the turn which affairs had taken,
and the polling booths made it plain that he thought the