than the stately and aristocratic Lord Grey. Grey
had simply to choose between encountering an uncertainty or undertaking
an impossibility, and of course he chose the former alternative. He
had to invite Brougham to take office, but the question was what office
it was {123} most advisable to ask him to take. Brougham was offered
the position of Attorney-General, the acceptance of which allows a man
to retain his seat in the House of Commons, while it puts him directly
on the way to a high promotion to the judicial bench. Brougham flatly
declined the offer, and seemed to be somewhat offended that it should
have been made to him. Then Lord Grey thought of offering him the
dignified position of Master of the Rolls, coupled with the exceptional
arrangement that he was still to retain his seat in the House of
Commons. Lord Grey was naturally very anxious to conciliate Brougham,
and looked with much dread to the prospect of Brougham breaking off
from the negotiations altogether and retaining his seat in the House as
an independent critic of the Ministry. Nothing could well be more
alarming to the head of the new Administration than the thought of
Brougham thus sitting as an independent critic, prepared at any minute
to come down with the force and fury of his eloquence on this or that
section of the new Reform Bill, and to denounce it to the country as
utterly inadequate to satisfy the just demands of the people. The
King, however, suggested, with some good sense, that Brougham as a
dissatisfied Master of the Rolls still sitting in the House of Commons
might prove an inconvenient and dangerous colleague.

Lord Grey thought the matter over once more, and began to see another
way of getting out of the difficulty. Why not give to Brougham the
highest legal appointment in the service of the Crown, and thus promote
him completely out of the House of Commons? Why not make him Lord
Chancellor at once? This offer could not but satisfy even Brougham's
well-known self-conceit, and it would transplant his eloquence to the
quieter atmosphere of the House of Lords, where little harm could be
done to the surrounding vegetation by its too luxuriant growth. In
plain words, it might be taken for granted that the House of Lords
would reject any reform measure, however moderate, when it was first
introduced to the notice of the peers, and therefore no particular harm
could come from Brougham's presence in the hereditary assembly. Bu