once expressed his concurrence with
that view of the subject. But, from papers which were intrusted to him
for the execution of his great work, Sir Theodore Martin learned that
Peel had subsequently found reason to come to the opposite conclusion,
not from any change in his view of the relative importance of the
different departments of administration, but solely because "the amount
of work imposed upon the first minister in the House of Commons, in
addition to what he had to go through elsewhere, was too great for any
human strength. In the House of Lords the Prime-minister would escape
the necessity for being in a position to vindicate all the details of
administration, and to answer the multiplicity of questions on all sorts
of subjects, the putting of which has almost degenerated into a vice. He
had, therefore, come to the conclusion that it was there he ought to
be."[260] And, indeed, the subjects which demanded the care of the
minister, and attracted the attention of Parliament, were constantly
increasing in number, variety, and importance to the very end of his
administration. Not only were the financial difficulties of the country,
the depressed state of agriculture and commerce (the result of a
succession of bad harvests), sufficient causes for grave anxiety, but
the terrible war, of which mention has already been made, which we had
now been carrying on for nearly three years in Afghanistan, and which,
before the end of this very year, was about to be signalized by a
disaster such as had never before befallen a British army, threatened to
kindle the flames of war in Europe also, from the share which the
intrigues of Russia had had in fomenting the quarrel; and the same
danger was more than once in the course of the next five years imminent,
from the irritation with which France regarded us, and which, commencing
in Syria, while Lord Melbourne was still at the helm, lost no
opportunity of displaying itself, whether in transactions in the remote
Pacific Ocean or the old battle-field of the two nations, the Spanish
peninsula; and finally, these embarrassing perplexities were crowned by
the appalling visitation of famine, which, at the end of the fourth year
of the administration, fell upon Ireland with a severity surpassing any
similar event in modern history.

With all these multiform difficulties the new minister grappled with
unflinching courage, and with conspicuous success. Peace was preserved
abroad, and fi