540
1850. it had been boldly spoken. The day after the Don Pacifico
Zr, 46. debate, Lord Palmerston was justified in speaking of himself
as having been rendered by it the most popniar Minister
that for a very long time had held kis office.
The confusion of parties made this sudden exaltation of
Lord Palmerston a very important event, and we may
believe that he was quite alive to the possibilities which it
opened to his ambition. Public life, as was said, Was
divided at that particular moment between statesmen with
out a party and a party withont statesmen. Lord Derby
and Mr, Disraeli had made a bold bid for power, but Lord
Palmerston foresaw that they could not keep it if they gob
it. The reforming Whigs of the type of Lord John Russell
had been steadily losing ground ever since their brilliant
trinmph twenty years before, and they were now lower iB
popular influence than they had ever been. The Manchester
school were out of the question. There was one statesman
only whose authority, and the clearness of whose sconvicbions,
 might have baulked Lord Palmerston’s rise, and havo
saved the country from the demoralization of the Palmer
stonien reign. This statesman, by a most disastrous destiny;
met his death the very day after he had protested with all
the cogent sagacity of his ripened experience against Lord
Palmerston’s unsafe poliey, and his mistaken impressions of
the honour and dignity of the country.
The death of Sir Robert Peel may without exaggeration
be described as ome of the most untoward incidents it
Cobden’s public life, as it was a dire and irreparable loss t0
the country. Cobden was instantly alive to the calamity:
“Poor Peel,” he wrote three days after the event, «1 have
scarcely yet realized to my mind the conviction that he will
never again occupy his accustomed seat opposite to my
place in the House. I at with him on Saturdsy till t#
V Mr, Ashley’ Life, ii. 161.

TURE,

THAR,