John cannot be comfortable. It is weak in the discordant
antecedents of the cabinet; they must all make some sacrifices and
work uncomfortably. It is weak in the support. I do not mean the
numbers, but the class of supporters. The Peelites are forty; they
will have the liberals on the one side and the conservatives on the
other. The whigs of the cabinet will be anxious to satisfy the
former; the Peelites (Gladstone especially) the other. They are
weak in their church views. The protestants look on those who voted
against the Aggression bill with distrust; the evangelicals on
Gladstone and S. Herbert with dislike. I don't pretend to be a
prophet, but it is always well to put down what you expect and to
compare these expectations with results. My conjecture is that
Gladstone will, before long, leave the government or that he will
break it up.'[281]

Long afterwards Mr. Gladstone himself said this of the coalition:--

I must say of this cabinet of Lord Aberdeen's that in its
deliberations it never exhibited the marks of its dual origin. Sir
W. Molesworth, its radical member, seemed to be practically rather
nearer in colour to the Peelites than to the whigs. There were some
few idiosyncrasies without doubt. Lord Palmerston, who was home
secretary, had in him some tendencies which might have been
troublesome, but for a long time were not so. It is, for instance,
a complete error to suppose that he asked the cabinet to treat the
occupation of the Principalities as a _casus belli_. Lord Russell
shook the position of Lord Aberdeen by action most capricious and
unhappy. But with the general course of affairs this had no
connection; and even in the complex and tortuous movements of the
Eastern negotiations, the cabinet never fell into two camps. That
question and the war were fatal to it. In itself I hardly ever saw
a cabinet with greater promise of endurance.

II

OPPOSITION AT OXFORD

Acceptance of office vacated the Oxford seat, and the day after
Christmas a thunderbolt fell upon the new chancellor of the exchequer
from his friend, the militant archdeacon of Taunton. 'I wish to use few
words,' Denison wrote, 'where every word I write is so bitterly
distressing to me, and must be little less so, I cannot doubt, to
yours