at once insisted upon.

Lord John Russell moved for a repeal of the corporation and test acts,
oppressions which goaded the dissenters, and which in themselves were
as profane as they were hypocritical. Of course the duke and Mr. Peel
resisted this, but the House of Commons carried the measure.

Instead of the duke and "his man Friday," as the wags of the day termed
Peel, resigning, as men of honour ought to have done, they resolved to
take up the measure against which they had voted and argued, and uttered
the most earnest warnings on the sacred ground of religion! The duke
carried the measure through the House of Lords!

A month afterwards a corn-bill, the first inroad actually effected upon
the protective system, was carried in the House of Commons. The duke
declared the repeal or modification of the corn-laws to be especially
wicked, as injuring the landed interest; nevertheless, he took up the
measure and carried it through. Corn might come in, if only Whigs and
Radicals could be kept out. Thus early, measures which Canning proposed
with consistency and honour,--and for proposing which these men hunted
him to death,--they inconsistently, and with a violation of principle
which lowered the character of public men, carried through parliament to
preserve the ministerial ascendancy of Peel and the party.

As the session advanced the spirit of reform both in and out of
parliament advanced. Penryn and East Retford were rotten boroughs, with
only a handful of constituents. The reformers demanded the transfer of
the representation from two such insignificant and corrupt places
to Manchester and Birmingham. The duke would not consent to the
enfranchisement of the two great centres of manufactures; he held fast
by the rotten boroughs. Huskiseon, Grant, Lamb, and Lords Dudley and
Palmerston resigned. Thus the Canning cabinet was expunged, and a pure
tory remainder formed the nucleus of a new ministry, which was composed
of Lord Aberdeen, Sir H. Hardinge, and Sir George Murray,--men in every
way immeasurably inferior to those who, no longer able to follow the
bigoted yet inconsistent and time-serving policy of the duke and Peel,
were obliged to resign office.

The state of Ireland now became alarming. The Roman Catholic population,
led by O'Connell, menaced insurrection, and a system of agitation was
maintained very effective, and very embarrassing to government. The
Roman Catholics knew that nothing would be conceded by