49 to 37.]

[Footnote 269: See "Peel's Memoirs," ii., 173.]

[Footnote 270: It has been observed that till the Corn-laws were
repealed there had been no instance whatever of any person who had been
engaged in trade becoming a cabinet minister. Since that time there have
been several, some of whom only relinquished their share in houses of
business on receiving their appointments, and some who are generally
understood to have continued to participate in the profits of trade
while members of an administration.]

[Footnote 271: Alison, quoting the General Report of the Census
Commissioners, estimates the deaths caused by famine and the diseases
engendered by it at the appalling number of 590,000, and states the sums
advanced under different acts of Parliament to meet the emergency at
L7,132,268.--_History of Europe_, vii., 274, 276, 2d series.]

[Footnote 272: The same statesman who has previously been mentioned as
Lord Stanley, and whom the death of his father had recently raised to
the House of Peers.]

[Footnote 273: In 1853 he said to Lord Clarendon, speaking of a new bill
which he was pressing on Lord Aberdeen, then Prime-minister, "I am for
making it as Conservative as possible, and that by a large extension of
the suffrage. The Radicals are the ten-pound holders. The five-pound
holders will be Conservative, as they are more easily acted
upon."--_Life of the Prince Consort_, ii., 503. It was the same idea
that inspired some of the details of the Reform Bill subsequently passed
by Lord Derby's third ministry.]

[Footnote 274: "Life of the Prince Consort," iv., 395.]

[Footnote 275: "Life of the Prince Consort," v., 56.]

CHAPTER XIII.

Dismissal of Lord Palmerston.--Theory of the Relation between the
Sovereign and the Cabinet.--Correspondence of the Sovereign with French
Princes.--Russian War.--Abolition of the Tax on Newspapers.--Life
Peerages.--Resignation of two Bishops.--Indian Mutiny.--Abolition of the
Sovereign Power of the Company.--Visit of the Prince of Wales to
India.--Conspiracy Bill.--Rise of the Volunteers.--National
Fortifications.--The Lords Reject the Measure for the Repeal of the
Paper-duties.--Lord Palmerston's Resolutions.--Character of the Changes
during the last Century.

The frequency of ministerial changes at this time has already been
mentioned, and the first of them took place at the beginning of 1852,
under circumstances which throw some light on a question which has nev