evolution. I believe their object to be as impure as
the means by which their power has been acquired; and I denounce them
and their agents as unknown to the British constitution, and derogatory
to the honour of the crown." Mr. Buncombe's denunciation of the secret
influence behind the throne was followed by the explanations of Messrs.
Stanley and Peel, and Lords Morpeth, Milton, and Palmerston, as to their
reasons for joining or not joining the present government. But after the
house, as Mr. Brougham remarked, had heard a great deal, it was still
left nearly as much in the dark as ever, regarding the substantial
facts of the case which it was desirable should be known. The whole
transaction, he said was another illustration of Odenstien's remark to
his son;--"You see with how little wisdom the world can be governed."
It appeared that two members of the cabinet had been walking about in
uncertainty whether they belonged to the government or not; and the
head of that government was chiefly distinguished for carrying the
resignations of two of his colleagues in his pocket, and for an alarm,
when they should leave him, as to what he should do to provide himself
with new ones. As for the quarrel of the two resigning members, it was
endless, hopeless. Walls of brass were raised to divide the contending
parties for ever: to communicate with each other was impossible.
Communications were only to be held with a third person, and that third
person was not to repeat what either party communicated to him. Every
possible course ad been resorted to to avoid an explanation, although
" would have put an end to the difficulty altogether, is to the
explanations of Mr. Herries, said Mr. Brougham, they give me no
satisfaction. That gentleman's shining of his ground, first assenting or
not objecting to the appointment of Lord Althorp, afterwards protesting
against it, and then attributing the dissolution of the ministry to a
preconcerted plan on the part of others--all this left doubts remaining
in the public mind. There was still something untold which would have
explained the matter at once. The most important thing spoken in the
debate, he said, was the assertion of Mr. Huskisson, that he never
intended to say that he had got a guarantee for office in the new
administration before the old one was dissolved. No man had ever meant,
or supposed that he had stipulated for and obtained a guarantee, in the
legal sense of the words, set down in