the moment
into the hands of Lord George Bentinck, a nobleman more renowned at
Newmarket than at Westminster. Once saddled with authority, Lord George
developed some capacity for politics; but his claims as a statesman were
never serious, though Disraeli, in the political biography which he
published shortly after his friend's sudden death, gives him credit for
qualities of mind of which the nation at large saw little evidence.
After long and tedious discussion, extending over some twenty nights,
the Free Trade Bill was carried through the Commons by a majority of
ninety-eight votes, and in the Lords it passed the second reading by
forty-seven votes. Croker--true to the dismal suggestion of his
name--promptly took up his parable against Sir Robert. He declared that
the repeal of the Corn Laws meant a schism in the great landed interest
and broad acres, in his view, were the only solid foundation on which
the government of the nation could possibly be based. He asked, how was
it possible to resist the attack on the Irish Church and the Irish Union
after the surrender of the Corn Laws? He wanted to know how
primogeniture, the Bishops, the House of Lords, and the Crown itself
were to be maintained, now that the leader of the Conservative party had
truckled to the League. Sir Robert Peel, he added, had imperilled these
institutions of the country more than Cobbett or O'Connell; he had
broken up the old interests, divided the great families, and thrown
personal hostility into the social life of half the counties of
England--and all to propitiate Richard Cobden. Such was the bitter cry
of the outcast Protectionist, and similar vapourings arose in cliques
and clubs all over the land. The abolition of the Corn Laws was the last
measure of Sir Robert Peel's political life, and he owed the victory,
which was won amid the murmurs and threats of his own followers, to the
support which his political antagonists gave him, under the leadership
of Lord John Russell, who recognised both the wisdom and the expediency
of Sir Robert's course.

Meanwhile the dark winter of discontent which privation had unhappily
brought about in Ireland had been marked by many crimes of violence, and
at length the Government deemed it imperative to ask Parliament to grant
them additional powers for the suppression of outrage. The measure met
with the opposition alike of Lord John Russell and Daniel O'Connell.
The Government moved the second reading of the