dinate situations, but no one came
forward as a leader. In the meantime Lord Ebrington's motion interposed
insurmountable difficulties in the way of negotiations. The new ministry
was of necessity to be sought for among the opponents of the bill;
office must be accepted in defiance of the lower house; and the utter
hopelessness of any change from a dissolution of parliament was evident
from the agitation already distracting the country. Lord Lyndhurst,
therefore, was compelled to inform his majesty that the commission with
which he had been entrusted had failed. The king was now reduced to the
necessity of renewing his intercourse with his former ministers. On
the 10th Earl Grey announced in the house of lords that he had that day
received a communication from his majesty, though of too recent a date
to be followed by any decided consequence. Both houses adjourned to
the 17th; but before the commons separated, a debate took place on the
presentation of the London petition, which for boldness of invective
and declamation was scarcely ever surpassed. It turned chiefly on
the supposed conduct of the Duke of Wellington, and some others, in
accepting office under the peculiar circumstances of that period. On the
17th, however, the lords had no sooner met, than the Duke of Wellington
and Lord Lyndhurst gave an explanation of their conduct in this matter.
The Duke of Wellington remarked:--"When his majesty found that he could
not consistently with his duty to the state, follow the advice of his
confidential servants, so little communication had he with men other
than his responsible advisers, that he had had recourse to a nobleman,
whose judicial functions took him almost out of the line of politics,
to inquire whether means existed, and what means, of forming an
administration on the principle of carrying into execution an extensive
reform. That nobleman communicated to me the difficulties in which his
majesty was placed, in order to ascertain how far it was in my power
to assist in extricating him from them. With this view, I thought it
my duty to institute similar inquiries of others, the rather as I was
myself as unprepared as his majesty for the advice which his ministers
had tendered, and for the consequences which had ensued from its being
rejected. On inquiry I found that there was a large number of most
influential persons not indisposed to support a government formed to
aid his majesty in resisting the advice tendered