19th. On that day, after all the
amendments had been negatived, it was arranged that the report should
be brought up on the 22nd; that afterwards the tariff bill should be
proceeded with, as far as possible, and continued on the following
day; and that on the 25th the corn-bill should be read a third time. In
accordance with this agreement the report of the corn-bill was brought
up on the following Monday, and the house went into committee upon the
tariff-bill. Several amendments were proposed and negatived, and
at length the opponents of the measure gave up the contest. On the
following day the bill was reported without amendments, and ordered to
be read a third time on Thursday with the corn-importation bill. Upon
the motion for the third reading of these bills several noble lords,
in opposition, urged their previous arguments, and entered their solemn
protests against them; but all opposition was futile: they passed their
final stage triumphantly, and on the morrow, Friday, the 26th, the royal
assent was given to them by commission, and they became laws.

Thus triumphed Sir Robert Peel. Yet with his triumph as a patriot came
his downfall as a minister. Simultaneous with these great and twin
measures, the corn-bill and the customs-bill, he had brought in a
protection life-bill for Ireland. The premier, in bringing in this bill,
was aware that the Whigs, who had supported him in his great free-trade
measures, would be to a man adverse to any coercive measure for that
country; and his only hope of success was that those of his recent
colleagues whom he had so grievously offended by striking the final blow
at their darling measure, the corn-laws, would forget their resentment,
and act according to their conscience, in a matter which, under ordinary
circumstances, and according to their usual policy, would have obtained
their hearty support. That hope was vain. They, his former stanch
adherents, considered that government had forfeited all claim to their
confidence, and therefore declined "to supply them with unconstitutional
powers." The protection life-bill was thrown out by the commons--the
Tories uniting with the Whigs, that they might crush a man whom they had
idolized--by a majority of seventy-three, although it was urged by stern
necessity, and enforced with the whole weight of a triumphant cabinet.
On the day after the triumph of the corn-bill and the customs-bill,
the premier went down to Osborne-house to tender