n with a pledge, as the Peelites
understood, to confine himself during the session to business already
open and advanced, or of an urgent character. When Mr. Disraeli gave
notice of a bill to dispose of four seats which were vacant, this was
regarded by them as a manner of opening new and important issues, and
not within the definition that had been the condition of their
provisional support.[269] 'Lord John Russell came and said to me,' says
Mr. Gladstone, '"What will you do?" I admitted we were bound to act;
and, joining the liberals, we threw over the proposal by a large
majority. This was the only occasion of conflict that arose; and it was
provoked, as we thought, by the government itself.'

FOOTNOTES:

[256] 'He had told the Queen that he thought all the offices might be
filled in a respectable manner from among the members of the Peel
administration. On a subsequent day both Herbert and Cardwell made out
from his conversation what I did not clearly catch, namely that Lord
Aberdeen himself would have acted on the Queen's wish, and that Graham
had either suggested the difficulty altogether, or at any rate got it
put forward into its position.' Gladstone Memo., April 22, 1851.

[257] Memorandum, dated Fasque, April 22, 1851.

[258] Memorandum, Sept. 9, 1897.

[259] _Grey Papers._

[260] To Phillimore, Nov. 26, 1850.

[261] Greville, Part II, vol. iii. p. 369.

[262] _Georgics_, i. 493-7. 'Aye, and time will come when the husbandman
with bent ploughshare upturning the clods, shall find all corroded by
rusty scurf the Roman pikeheads; shall strike with heavy rake on empty
helms, and gaze in wonder on giant bones cast from their broken graves.'

[263] Affirmation bill (1883) and Religious Disabilities Removal bill
(1891).

[264] One of the most illustrious of the European liberals of the
century wrote to Senior:--

Ce que vous me dites que le bill contre les titres ecclesiastiques ne
menera a rien, me parait vraisemblable, grace aux moeurs du pays. Mais
pourquoi faire des lois pires que les moeurs? C'est le contraire qui
devait etre. Je vous avoue que j'ai ete de coeur et d'esprit avec ceux
qui comme Lord Aberdeen et M. Gladstone, se sont opposes au nom de la
liberte et du principe meme de la reforme, a ces atteintes a la fois
vaines et dangereuses que le bill a portees au moins en theorie a
l'independance de conscience. Ou se refugiera la liberte religieuse, si
on la chasse de l'Angleterre?--Tocqueville,