ry was greatly weakened. The King, too, had become
greatly dissatisfied both with their general policy, especially in
regard to the Irish Church--which he took an opportunity of assuring the
Irish bishops he was unalterably resolved to uphold--and also with the
language and conduct of one or two individual ministers, to which it is
not necessary to refer more particularly; and when, on the death of Lord
Spencer, father of Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which
took place in November, 1834, it became necessary for Lord Melbourne to
propose to him a re-arrangement of some of the cabinet offices, he at
once dismissed the whole body of the ministers. It was a somewhat
singular step to take, for they had not been defeated in Parliament, and
he did not himself allege any special dissatisfaction with anything
which they had yet done, though he did apprehend that some of them would
press upon him measures disadvantageous to "the clergy of the Church of
England in Ireland," to which he had an insuperable objection; and,
moreover, that the subject would cause fresh divisions in the ministry,
and the resignation of one or two more of its most important members. He
had, indeed, six months before, given a practical proof of his distrust
of the ability of Lord Melbourne and the colleagues who remained to him
to carry on the government of the kingdom satisfactorily, by desiring
the new Prime-minister to enter into communication with the leaders of
the Opposition, "to endeavor at this crisis to prevail upon them to
afford their aid and co-operation toward the formation of an
administration upon an enlarged basis, combining the services of the
most able and efficient members of each" party.[234] Nor had he
relinquished the idea of bringing about such a coalition, till he
learned that both Lord Melbourne and Sir Robert Peel considered the
differences which divided them to be too deeply founded on principle to
render their union in one administration either beneficial to the state
or creditable to themselves. And it may be said that the letter in which
Lord Melbourne had in November announced to his Majesty the death of
Lord Spencer, and the necessity for new arrangements which that event
had created, by the expression that "in these new and altered
circumstances it was for his Majesty to consider whether it were his
pleasure to authorize Viscount Melbourne to attempt to make such fresh
arrangements as might enable his present