as recklessly
thrown out by the house of lords on party grounds. His public life, up
to the year 1835, was perhaps the most brilliant and the most useful of
the century, yet it was hopelessly marred in the end by a certain
eccentric vanity, and want of loyalty to colleagues, not inconsistent
with the higher ambition of leaving the world better than he found it.
For some years after his fall he retained his astounding energy, and
even his ascendency in the house of lords, where Lyndhurst, his only
possible rival, was astute enough to court his co-operation. Never was
his fertility in debate more conspicuously shown than in the session of
1835, while he was still nominally a supporter of the whig government.
The last stage of his life, extending over more than thirty years,
belongs to another chapter of English history; it is enough here to
notice that, whatever his political aberrations, he continued in his
isolation and old age to work zealously for those social reforms which
he sincerely had at heart. The popularity which had been to him as the
breath of life never, indeed, returned to him, and his figure no longer
occupies a foremost place in the gallery of our statesmen, but the
results of his noble services to humanity remain, and the memory of them
ought not to be obscured by the sad record of his failings.

The new Melbourne administration came in with unfavourable omens.
Russell failed to secure his re-election in South Devon, but a seat was
found for him at Stroud, and though the premier emphatically denied that
he had made any bargain with O'Connell, the Irish people believed it.
Accordingly, they received the whig lord-lieutenant, Mulgrave, with a
tumultuous procession, as if his advent portended the repeal of the
union and extinction of tithes. An attempt to solve the insoluble tithe
question was, in fact, among the earliest efforts of the government, and
Morpeth, as chief secretary, introduced a very reasonable measure,
differing little, except in details, from that of his predecessor. Like
other proposals for agrarian settlements in Ireland, it involved a
certain sacrifice on the part of the tithe-owner for the sake of
security, and a subsidy from the state to relieve of arrears the
defaulting and rebellious tithe-payers. Peel stated his intention of
supporting these provisions for commutation, if they could be separated
from other provisions for "appropriation," coupled with them under the
influence of pol