t all."'

Stress has been laid in these pages on the attempts of the Russell
Administration to deal with an acute and terrible phase of the eternal
Irish problem, as well as to set forth in outline the difficulties which
it encountered in regard to its foreign policy through the cavalier
attitude and bid for personal ascendency of Lord Palmerston. The five or
six years during which Lord John Russell was at the head of affairs were
marked by a succession of panics which heightened immeasurably the
difficulties of his position. One was purely commercial, but it threw
gloom over the country, brought stagnation to trade, and political
discontent followed in its train, which in turn reacted on the prospects
of the Government. The Irish famine and the rebellion which followed in
its wake taxed the resources of the Cabinet to the utmost, and the
efforts which were made by the Ministry to grapple with the evil have
scarcely received even yet due recognition. The Chartist movement, the
agitation over the Papal claims and the fear of invasion, are landmarks
in the turbulent and menacing annals of the time.

The repeal of the Navigation Act bore witness to Lord John's zealous
determination to extend the principles of Free Trade, and the Jewish
Disabilities Bill--which was rejected by the House of Lords--is itself a
sufficient answer to those who, because of his resistance, not to the
spiritual claims, but to the political arrogance of the Vatican, have
ventured to charge him with a lack of religious toleration. He himself
once declared that as a statesman he had received as much favour as he
had deserved; he added that, where his measures had miscarried, he did
not attribute the failure to animosity or misrepresentation, but rather
to errors which he had himself committed from mistaken judgment or an
erroneous interpretation of facts. No one who looks at Lord John
Russell's career with simple justice, to say nothing of generosity, can
doubt the truth of his words. 'I believe, I may say, that my ends have
been honest. I have looked to the happiness of my country as the object
to which my efforts ought to be directed.'

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _Life of Lord Palmerston_, by the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, vol. ii. p.
95.

[20] _Life of E. B. Pusey, D.D._, by H. P. Liddon, D.D., vol. iii. p.
292. Longmans & Co.

[21] Cobden described it as 'a Guy Fawkes outcry,' and predicted the
fall of the Ministry.

[22] See _Life and Work of the Seventh