[7] Palmerston in defeating Mr. Locke King’s motion for leave to bring in a Reform Bill committed a fatal error. The Cabinet originally meant to support the scheme, but to insist on raising Mr. King’s £10 county franchise to £20—which would probably have settled the Reform question for ten or fifteen years. As it was, by opposing the measure, and referring Reform to a Cabinet Committee, they disgusted a powerful body of their own supporters, who felt that the Whigs meant to shelve Reform altogether.
[8] Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll.
[9] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 155.
[10] Mr. Henley, one of the ablest members of the Tory Party, strenuously opposed his leaders on this question, and supported the vote of thanks to Lord Canning.
[11] It is more than probable that had the Tories been in office Napoleon III. would never have dreamt of pressing them, as he pressed Palmerston, to alter the law of Conspiracy so as to harass political refugees in England. In 1853 he sounded Lord Malmesbury on the subject, who told him, with manly firmness and frankness, that “Every country had its own subject on which no cession could be made. The Holy Places in the East was that of Russia, the refugees was ours, and it was useless to torment us about an impossibility, for no English Minister could alter the law at present.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 392.
[12] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, entry under date 21st February.
[13] See Letter of Prince Consort to Stockmar, Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIII.
[14] Her Majesty’s sanction strengthened the hands of the unconstitutional sections of the Radical and Tory Parties, who have of late years connived at the progressive usurpation of the functions of the Executive by the House of Commons, thereby laying the basis for “Home Rule” agitations in discontented Ireland, and in “neglected” Wales and Scotland. In the attempt to combine executive with legislative functions the House of Commons has virtually broken down.
[15] The Cabinet consisted of Lord Derby, Premier; Lord Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor; Lord Salisbury, President of the Council; Lord Hardwicke, Lord Privy Seal; Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Mr. Walpole, Home Secretary; Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary; Sir John Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty; General Peel, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Henley, President of the Board of Trade; Lord John Manners, First Commissioner of Works; Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control; and Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons.
[16] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 98. Soon afterwards, however, arrangements were made which enabled Sir E. B. Lytton to take the Colonial Office, Lord Derby going to the India Office.