Althorp, Milton, and the like, I begin sometimes to
apprehend that you too may be among the fallers off. Lord Lansdowne
tells me, however, you continue quite staunch, and for his sake I hope
so.' But Lord John was not a 'faller off.' His eyes were fully open to
the anomalous position in which he in common with other members of the
party of reform had been placed under Canning and Goderich. Relief,
however, came swiftly. Lord Goderich, after four months of feeble
semblance of authority, resigned, finding it impossible to adjust
differences. As a subaltern, declared one who had narrowly watched his
career, Lord Goderich was respectable, but as a chief he proved himself
to be despicable. The Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister, with a
Tory Cabinet at his back, and with Peel as leader in the House of
Commons. Thus the 'great _debacle_,' which commenced with Canning's
accession to power--in spite of the presence in the Cabinet of
Palmerston and Huskisson--drew to an end, and a line of cleavage was
once more apparent between the Whigs and the Tories. With Wellington,
Lord John had of course neither part nor lot, and when the Duke accepted
office he promptly ranged himself in the opposite camp.

[Sidenote: RELIGIOUS EQUALITY]

Ireland was on the verge of rebellion when Wellington and Peel took
office, and in the person of O'Connell it possessed a leader of splendid
eloquence and courage, who pressed the claims of the Roman Catholics for
immediate relief from religious disabilities. Whilst the Government was
deliberating upon the policy which they ought to pursue in presence of
the stormy and menacing agitation which had arisen in Ireland, the
Protestant Dissenters saw their opportunity, and rallied their forces
into a powerful organisation for the total repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts. Their cause had been quietly making way, through the
Press and the platform, during the dark years for political and
religious liberty which divide 1820 from 1828, and the Protestant
Society had kept the question steadily before the public mind. Meanwhile
that organisation had itself become a distinct force in the State. 'The
leaders of the Whig party now formally identified themselves with it. In
one year the Duke of Sussex took the chair; in another Lord Holland
occupied the same position; Sir James Mackintosh delivered from its
platform a defence of religious liberty, such as had scarcely been given
to the English people si