Clarendon (Lord
Lieutenant) was demanding a stringent measure of coercion. He did not get
it.... The two Bills [Sir Robert Peel's in 1846 and the Bill of 1847] were
so entirely different that to call them by a common name, though perhaps
inevitable, is also inevitably misleading" ("History of Modern England,"
Herbert Paul, vol. i, chap. iv. See also Walpole's "Life of Lord John
Russell," vol. i, chap, xvii.)

Subsequently, during the enforcement of the Act, the bitterness of the
attacks upon her husband, who, she knew, wished Ireland well, and the sight
of his anxiety, made her for a time less sympathetic with the Irish; but
she did not, and could not, approve of the Government's action at the time.
Among Irishmen, a Government which had first opposed a Tory Coercion Bill,
and when in power proposed one themselves, might well excite indignation.
Ireland was already in a state so miserable that the horrors of a civil war
with a bare chance of better things beyond must have seemed well worth
risking to her people, now the party which had hitherto befriended them had
adopted the policy of their oppressors.

On February 26, 1848, the news that Louis Philippe had been deposed reached
the House of Commons. "This is what would have happened here," said Sir
Robert Peel, "if these gentlemen [pointing to the Protectionists] had had
their way." The astonishment was great, and the fear increased that the
Chartist movement and Irish troubles would lead to revolution at home.

The immediate cause of the revolution in France had been Louis Philippe's
opposition to electoral reform; only one Frenchman in about a hundred and
fifty possessed a vote under his reign. "Royalty having been packed off in
a hackney coach," the mildest of Parisian mobs contented itself with
smashing the King's bust, breaking furniture, and firing at the clock of
the Tuileries that it might register permanently upon its face the
propitious moment of his departure. He had embarked the next day for
England, shaven and in green spectacles, and landed upon our shores under
the modest pseudonym of "William Smith." England did not welcome him. His
Spanish marriage intrigues had naturally not made him a favourite, and his
enemy, Palmerston, was at the Foreign Office. Two days afterwards Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte left England to pay his respects to the Provisional
Government. "I hasten," he wrote in memorable words, "I hasten from exile
to place myself under the flag o