STATE OF PARTIES AND ELECTIONS.
Queen Victoria ascended the throne at a period of perfect tranquillity. The popularity of the ministers was, indeed, declining, and they were surrounded with difficulties, partly from their own mismanagement of affairs, and partly from the position into which their eagerness for power had placed them. On the other hand the spirit of party was subsiding in the country: calm and impartial thinkers began to embrace a wider circle, yet it seemed clear that the administration could not have long existed had the late king lived a few months longer. His majesty had taken them back to his service with reluctance, and he was supposed to be on the watch for the first favourable opportunity of dismissing them. His demise, however, promised an increased stability to their power. Under their new sovereign they looked for a new order of things. She was believed to have been educated by her mother in principles and predilections favourable to their rule, and her countenance and support was expected to give not merely security, but popularity to their government. Nor did they fail to turn the event to good account. When pressed by their democratic allies to introduce organic measures for which they had no predilection themselves, it had been their practice to allege the king’s reluctance to proceed, as a reason for not falling in with their views. When, however, Queen Victoria ascended the throne, they eagerly declared their emancipation from the thraldom of an hostile court, and they proclaimed that the young queen had entered warmly into their views, and had espoused their political creed without reservation. Another considerable resource of popular appeal to the ministerial candidates was the alleged misdeeds of the new King of Hanover. Immediately upon his accession to the throne of that kingdom, his majesty had issued an ordinance, by which the then existing constitution was suspended; and it was thought this conduct of one who was an acknowledged leader of the Tories, might be represented to the disadvantage of that party. These, and other topics, were not without their weight with the multitude. Yet, with their assistance, the ministers had sufficient to do to maintain their previous position. By the end of July the elections for English cities and boroughs were nearly over, and the relative strength of parties was little changed as regarded the Whigs. In the county elections they underwent, indeed, a serious defalcation of strength; besides losing twenty-three seats, they failed in fifteen counties out of sixteen in which they endeavoured to substitute members of their own party for Conservatives. As for the Radicals, public opinion was still less in their favour: even Mr. Hume failed in being returned for Middlesex, and was driven to the necessity of appearing in the house as Mr. O’Connell’s nominee for Kilkenny. The Radicals, it is true, did not suffer numerically; but the absence of many of their leaders from the representation of important towns which they had hitherto represented, was significant of the waning popularity of extreme opinions. The loss, however, which ministers sustained in the English representation, was somewhat compensated by the returns of Scotland and Ireland. But while their numbers were not on the whole diminished, there was an evident falling off in quality. Their friends were not the representatives of such an extensive part of the population as they had been in the last parliament.