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814

LIFE OF CORDEN, [ema®

you intend to follow politics, and not eschew office, JO!
must in future be more exclusively a House of Common?
man.
“And then you must make up your mind to accep
certain conditions of things as a part of our English politics!
existence during your time. For instance, the Church and
Aristocracy are great realities, which will last for your life
and your song’. To ignore them or despise them is equally
incompatible with the part which I think you have the
ambition to play, and which IT am sure you are competent
bo perform. I remember that President Buchanan, the day
before he left London on his return to America, in the
course of & conversation over the tea-table, remarked : ‘1
leave England with the conviction that you are not yet able
to govern yourselves without the aid of your aristocracy.’
There are things to be done which you and I could make #
so-called Liberal government do, if we were out of the
Cabinet, without being held ineligible by the Court and
Aristocracy (with whom the most powerful part of the middle
class will be found sympathizing) to enter it, owing to any
extreme democratic designs. But we are comparatively
powerless if we can be assumed to be excluded from he
government by either our own will, or that of the ruling
class, owing to our entertaining revolutionary or fundsmentally
 subversive doctrines. One great object which I
should like to force our rulers, much against their will, to
accomplish, is the limitation of our armed force, in relation t¢
that of France. And this I will endeavour to promote, if I
am spared, and my present task is successful, by an appeal
to the French Government in the same unofficial way a8 1
am now at work upon another affair. But I feel convinced
that the great obstacle would be with our own ruling class.
“This could only be overcome by an honest party in the
House, of which you must be the head. My talking day®