w, Lyttelton, was invited to represent the
colonial office in the Lords, but had qualms of conscience about the
eternal question of the two Welsh bishoprics. 'How could the government
of this wonderful empire,' Peel wrote to Mr. Gladstone, 'be ever
constructed, if a difference on such a point were to be an obstruction
to union? Might not any one now say with perfect honour and, what is of
more importance (if they are not identical), perfect satisfaction to his
own conscience, "I will not so far set up my own judgment on one
isolated measure against that of a whole administration, to such an
extent as to preclude me from co-operation with them at a critical
period." This, of course, assumes general accordance of sentiment on the
great outlines of public policy.' Wise words and sound, that might
prevent some of the worst mistakes of some of the best men.

III

THE SESSION OF 1846

This memorable session of 1846 was not a session of argument, but of
lobby computations. The case had been argued to the dregs, the
conclusion was fixed, and all interest was centred in the play of
forces, the working of high motives and low, the balance of parties, the
secret ambitions and antagonism of persons. Mr. Gladstone therefore was
not in the shaping of the parliamentary result seriously missed, as he
had been missed in 1845. 'It soon became evident,' says a leading whig
in his journal of the time, 'that Peel had very much over-rated his
strength. Even the expectation of December that he could have carried
with him enough of his own followers to enable Lord John, if that
statesman had contrived to form a government, to pass the repeal of the
corn law, was perceived to have been groundless, when the formidable
number of the protectionist dissentients appeared. So many even of those
who remained with Peel avowed that they disapproved of the measure, and
only voted in its favour for the purpose of supporting Peel's
government.'[175] The tyranny of the accomplished fact obscures one's
sense of the danger that Peel's high courage averted. It is not certain
that Lord John as head of a government could have carried the whole body
of whigs for total and immediate repeal, Lord Lansdowne and Palmerston
openly stating their preference for a fixed duty, and not a few of the
smaller men cursing the precipitancy of the Edinburgh letter. It is
certain, as is intimated above, that Peel cou