tural party were therefore emboldened to renew their previous
tactics on the discussion of the budget, and to press for the especial
exemption of their class from a large proportion of the general
taxation. The budget had been previously introduced (on the 17th), in a
committee of ways and means. The income had exceeded the expenditure by
more than two and a half millions sterling. This fact left an opening
for the reduction of taxation, which the agriculturists had already
claimed in their own peculiar interest. They were prepared upon the 21st
of February, upon the order for going into committee on ways and means,
to make propositions, which, if carried, would appropriate to themselves
the two millions and a half of surplus as effectually as if the money
were taken and divided among them. Lord John Russell requested the
postponement of the order of the day to the 24th, intimating that he
was moved to desire this postponement for especial reasons. It was
well known that his lordship felt himself incapable of carrying on the
government against the attacks of the Protectionists, on one hand, and
the parliamentary reformers on the other. On the 24th Lord John informed
the house of this fact, and declared that he spoke "as the organ of a
government which no longer existed." Lord Stanley had been invited by
her majesty to form a government, but did not succeed, and she again
called upon Lord John to construct a new cabinet. His lordship informed
the house that he had undertaken the task, and requested an adjournment.
On the 28th the house resumed its sitting. It then appeared that Lord
Aberdeen had been summoned by her majesty to form a ministry, but his
lordship, Sir James Graham, and the Peel party generally, refused to
co-operate with Lord John in the ecclesiastical titles bill, the Peelite
section of both houses, especially its leader, Lord Aberdeen, being
committed to the new ecclesiastical party called Puseyites, who
sympathised with the efforts of the Roman Catholics to restore the
grandeur of their hierarchy. Lord Aberdeen dared not face the popular
feeling on that question. Finally, the Duke of Wellington's advice
having been sought by his royal mistress, he advised her, as the
best solution of the difficulty, to confide to Lord John Russell the
reconstruction of his ministry. The protectionist party determined to
oppose the government on every measure which afforded a chance, by small
defeat, of weakening its influe