parliament his slender majority
failed him.

_March 3, '57._--Spoke on Cobden's resolutions, and voted in
263-247--a division doing more honour to the House of Commons than
any I ever remember. Home with C. and read Lord Ellesmere's
_Faust_, being excited, which is rare with me. (_Diary._)

LORD PALMERSTON'S TRIUMPH

The repulse was transient. The minister appealed to the constituencies,
and won a striking triumph. Nearly all the Manchester politicians, with
Bright and Cobden at their head, were ruthlessly dismissed, and the
election was a glorious ratification not only of the little war among
the Chinese junks, but of the great war against the Czar of Russia, and
of much besides. This, said Mr. Gladstone, was not an election like that
of 1784, when Pitt appealed on the question whether the crown should be
the slave of an oligarchic faction; nor like that of 1831, when Grey
sought a judgment on reform; nor like that of 1852, when the issue was
the expiring controversy of protection. The country was to decide not
upon the Canton river, but whether it would or would not have Lord
Palmerston for prime minister. 'The insolent barbarian wielding
authority at Canton who had violated the British flag' was indeed made
to play his part. But the mainspring of the electoral victory was to be
sought in the profound public weariness of the party dispersions of the
last eleven years; in the determination that the country should be
governed by men of intelligible opinions and definite views; in the
resolution that the intermediate tints should disappear; in the
conviction that Palmerston was the helmsman for the hour. The result was
justly compared to the plebiscite taken in France four or five years
earlier, whether they would have Louis Napoleon for emperor or not. It
was computed that no fewer than one-sixth, or at best one-seventh, of
the most conspicuous men in the former House of Commons were thrust out.
The Derbyites were sure that the report of the coalition with the
Peelites had done them irreparable harm, though their electioneering was
independent. At Oxford Mr. Gladstone was returned without opposition. On
the other hand, his gallant attempt to save the seat of his
brother-in-law in Flintshire failed, his many speeches met much rough
interruption, and to his extreme mortification Sir Stephen Glynne was
thrown out.

The moral of the general election was undoubtedly a heavy shock