ed by other
kinds of property. Placing in that respect the commercial and
manufacturing interest on a level with the landed interest, it made us,
in a farther and a somewhat different sense from that in which Napoleon
had used the phrase, a nation of shopkeepers.[270]

The repeal of the Corn-laws had another result: it divided the
Conservative party, and, as a necessary consequence, led to the downfall
of the ministry. The same session which witnessed its success in
carrying that repeal witnessed also its defeat on a coercion bill, which
they regarded as indispensable for the "protection of life in Ireland,"
where actual murders had reached the appalling amount of nearly three
hundred in two years. The ministry at once resigned, and Lord John
Russell had no difficulty in forming an administration, now that the
question of the Corn-laws was finally settled. It was, however, no bed
of roses to which the new ministry succeeded; the famine in Ireland
exceeded the worst anticipations; and, though prodigious efforts were
made by the government and Parliament to relieve it, though large sums
were placed at the disposal of the Lord-lieutenant, aided by
contributions from private sources in England to an enormous amount;
though the small remnant of the import duty on corn which had been left
on it by the measure of the preceding year was taken off, and the
navigation laws suspended, in order that no obstacle interposed to the
acquisition of food from every available quarter, it was estimated that
more than half a million of people perished through actual famine or the
diseases which scarcity brought in its train.[271] A severe monetary
crisis was one not unnatural result of this distress, so severe that the
Funds fell to a price below any that had been quoted for many years, and
the reserve in the Bank of England to an amount lower than it had been
at any period since 1828. And these difficulties had hardly been
surmounted when a new revolution in France overturned the dynasty of
Louis Philippe and established a republic. The revolutionary contagion
spread to Italy, where, indeed, the movement had begun. The Pope--Pius
IX.--who had but lately succeeded to the tiara, was forced to flee from
Rome in the disguise of a foreign courier, after his Prime-minister had
been murdered by the mob. Germany was scarcely less disturbed. The
administration of Metternich, who had governed Austria with authority
little less than absolute for near