ham would effectively place himself at the head of the Peelites,
and that they would now at length begin to take an independent course of
their own. 'But it soon appeared that, unconsciously I think more than
consciously, he is set upon the object of avoiding the responsibility
either of taking the government with the Peel squadron, or of letting in
Stanley and his friends.' Here was the weak point in a strong and
capable character. When Graham died ten years after this (1861), Mr.
Gladstone wrote to a friend, 'On administrative questions, for the last
twenty years and more, I had more spontaneous recourse to him for
advice, than to all other colleagues together.' In some of the
foundations of character no two men could be more unlike. One of his
closest allies talks to Graham of 'your sombre temperament.' 'My
forebodings are always gloomy,' says Graham himself; 'I shudder on the
brink of the torrent.' All accounts agree that he was a good counsellor
in cabinet, a first-rate manager of business, a good if rather pompous
speaker, admirably loyal and single-minded, but half-ruined by intense
timidity. I have heard nobody use warmer language of commendation about
him than Mr. Bright. But nature had not made him for a post of chief
command.

It by and by appeared that the Duke of Newcastle, known to us hitherto
as Lord Lincoln, coveted the post of leader, but Mr. Gladstone thought
that on every ground Lord Aberdeen was the person entitled to hold it.
'I made,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'my views distinctly known to the duke. He
took no offence. I do not know what communications he may have held with
others. But the upshot was that Lord Aberdeen became our leader. And
this result was obtained without any shock or conflict.'[258]

II

BILL AGAINST ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES

In the autumn of 1850 the people of this country were frightened out of
their senses by a document from the Vatican, dividing England into
dioceses bearing territorial titles and appointing Cardinal Wiseman to
be Archbishop of Westminster. The uproar was tremendous. Lord John
Russell cast fuel upon the flame in a perverse letter to the Bishop of
Durham (Nov. 4, 1850). In this unhappy document he accepted the
description of the aggression of the pope upon our protestantism as
insolent and insidious, declared his indignation to be greater even than
his alarm, and even his alarm at the aggressions of a foreign sov