published in 1836.

CHAPTER X

TRIUMPH OF POLICY AND FALL OF THE MINISTER

(_1846_)

Change of opinion, in those to whose judgment the public looks more
or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a
much smaller evil than their persistence in a course which they
know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always
to be watched with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon
its trial.--GLADSTONE.

Not lingering for the moment on Mr. Gladstone's varied pre-occupations
during 1845, and not telling over again the well-known story of the
circumstances that led to the repeal of the corn law, I pass rapidly to
Mr. Gladstone's part--it was a secondary part--in the closing act of the
exciting political drama on which the curtain had risen in 1841. The end
of the session of 1845 had left the government in appearance even
stronger than it was in the beginning of 1842. Two of the most sagacious
actors knew better what this was worth. Disraeli was aware how the ties
had been loosened between the minister and his supporters, and Cobden
was aware that, in words used at the time, 'three weeks of rain when the
wheat was ripening would rain away the corn law.'[172]

AN EXCITING DECEMBER

Everybody knows how the rain came, and alarming signs of a dreadful
famine in Ireland came; how Peel advised his cabinet to open the ports
for a limited period, but without promising them that if the corn duties
were ever taken off, they could ever be put on again; how Lord John
seized the moment, wrote an Edinburgh letter, and declared for total and
immediate repeal; how the minister once more called his cabinet
together, invited them to support him in settling the question, and as
they would not all assent, resigned; how Lord John tried to form a
government and failed; and how Sir Robert again became first minister of
the crown, but not bringing all his colleagues back with him. 'I think,'
said Mr. Gladstone in later days, 'he expected to carry the repeal of
the corn law without breaking up his party, but meant at all hazard to
carry it.'

Peel's conduct in 1846, Lord Aberdeen said to a friend ten years
later, was very noble. With the exception of Graham and myself, his
whole cabinet was against him. Lyndhurst, Goulburn, and Stanley
were almost violent in