ready in debate, swift to see and
to seize the opportunity of the hour. He was full of practical sagacity,
and his personal character lent weight to his position in the country.
In the more militant stages of his career, and especially when he was
fighting the battles of Parliamentary reform and religious liberty, he
felt the full brunt of that 'sullen resistance to innovation,' as well
as that 'unalterable perseverance in the wisdom of prejudice,' which
Burke declared was characteristic of the English race. The natural
conservatism of growing years, it must be frankly admitted, led
eventually in Lord John's case, as in that of the majority of mankind,
to the slackening of interest in the new problems of a younger
generation, but to the extreme verge of life he remained far too great a
statesman and much too generous a man ever to lapse into the position of
a mere _laudator temporis acti_. Lord John did not allow the few
remaining weeks of a protracted and exhaustive session to elapse without
a vigorous attempt to push the principle of Free Trade to its logical
issues. He passed a measure which rendered the repeal of the Corn Laws
total and immediate, and he carried, with the support of Peel and in
spite of the opposition of Bentinck and Disraeli, the abolition of
protection to sugar grown in the British Colonies.

Ireland quickly proved itself to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence to the new Administration. Lord John's appointment of Lord
Bessborough--his old colleague, Duncannon, in the Committee on Reform in
1830--as viceroy was popular, for he was a resident Irish landlord, and
a man who was genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people.
O'Connell trusted Lord Bessborough, and that, in the disturbed condition
of the country, counted for much. The task of the new viceroy was hard,
even with such support, and though Bessborough laboured manfully and
with admirable tact to better the social condition of the people and to
exorcise the spirit of discord, the forces arrayed against him proved
resistless when famine came to their aid. As the summer slipped past,
crime and outrage increased, and the prospect for the approaching winter
grew not merely gloomy but menacing. Peel had been turned out of office
because of his Irish Arms Bill, and Bessborough was no sooner installed
in Dublin than he made urgent representations to the Cabinet in Downing
Street as to the necessity of adopting similar repressive measur