of the House of Commons. In this conjuncture of affairs, the Duke accepted the only alternative which presented itself, and withdrew along with Sir Robert Peel from the government. The accession of Lord Grey, with a carte blanche to make as many new peers as the urgency of the case might require, converted the probability of radical. reform into certainty. His Lordship having been appointed First Lord of the Treasury, Mr. Brougham was elevated to the Lord Chancellorship and the peerage, Lord Melbourne became Home Secretary, and Lord John Russell Paymaster to the Forces. The fate of the question was thus rendered certain. The Marquis of Anglesey was restored to the ViceRoyalty of Ireland, and Lord Hill was continued at the Horse Guards. In addition to their own increased strength, and the close alliance of the Roman Catholic party, who thus availed themselves of the earliest opportunity that presented itself of erecting themselves into the opponents of their illustrious benefactor, the Whigs had formed a close league, offensive and defensive, with the radical reformers, who assisted them most vigorously in doing the out-of-door work of agitation and intimidation. In spite of all these provocations, however, the Duke, although he fell, of course, into the ranks of the opposition, offered no factious hostility to such measures of the government as appeared to him likely to benefit the country. Had he condescended to act vindictively towards its members, their inexperience and rashness would have provided him with abundant means of impeding their movements. So far from availing himself of the temptation, however, he on several occasions came to their rescue, on questions on which they had been deserted by their own friends. On that of the appointment of a committee torevise the arrangement of the Civil List, and separate it from the expenses of the crown, he showed that the revenues of the crown were as much the property of the monarch, as the estate of any landholder was that of its proprietor, and deprecated the peddling reduction which had been proposed of the civil officers of the crown.

In the early part of 1831, the Duke of Wellington was visited by a severe domestic calamity, in the loss by death of his amiable Duchess. The King opened parliament with a reform speech, on the 14th June, and, as if to prove to the

Duke of Wellington that his personal esteem for him had undergone no diminution, presented him on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo with a magnificent sword, decorated with the royal arms, in addition to his own. His Majesty also honoured him with his presence at the Waterloo Banquet that year, sitting there at his right hand.

During the progress through the two Houses of the Reform Bill, the mob everywhere exhibited the most determined hostility to all who declined to take part in the popular movement; and the property of the Duke of Wellington had become once more the object of its attacks. Among other attempts to annoy him, a gang of ruffians, pretending to be poachers, entered his preserves at Strathfieldsaye, and deliberately commenced the extermination of his game; and one of his Grace's gamekeeepers was killed in his endeavours to protect his master's property. In London, the mob which formed the tail of the Corporation, when it repaired in procession to present a petition to the Houses of Parliament, resumed their attack upon Apsley House; and had it not been for its iron defences, would in all probability have done irreparable mischief. Having been driven away by the police, aided by the servants of the establishment, they proceeded to the statue of Achilles, in Hyde Park, which they attempted unsuccessfully to injure. With the exception of the houses of the Marquis of Londonderry, the Marquis of Bristol, and of Lord Dudley, no other violence was committed on this occasion. A short time afterwards, Nottingham Castle, the property of the Duke of Newcastle, was burned to the ground by a riotous pro-reform mob.

On the rejection of the Reform Bill by the House of Lords, the grossest outrages on property were committed in all parts of the country, and the Birmingham Trades' Union, some 50,000 strong, offered to march to London and place their services at the disposal of the reform party. Night after night, in their passage to and from the house of Lords, the persons of the noblemen who were among the opponents of the bill were outraged in the most disgraceful manner. The Duke of Wellington, however, undismayed by the storm of public indignation, persevered in his opposition to the last, and but for the protection occasionally afforded him by the better classes, might have been seriously injured by

the violence of which he was the object. That the system of action might be complete at all points, a patent of precedence was bestowed upon O'Connell (to the prejudice of a much better lawyer and more respectable man), although he had recently been prosecuted to conviction for sedition. On the re-introduction of the Reform Bill, in 1832, it obtained increased support, and, with the aid of a large number of new Peers pitchforked into the House for the purpose, was carried by a majority of nine.

On the sudden dissolution of the cabinet of Lord Melbourne, 15th of November, 1834, the king again sent for the Duke of Wellington, and requested his advice and assistance in the formation of a new cabinet, when his Grace recommended his Majesty to place Sir Robert Peel at the head of the Treasury. Sir Robert was at that time travelling in Italy; and until his return, the Duke was compelled to discharge the duties of Premier, as well as those of several other offices of the state; but soon after the opening of Parliament, the Whigs resumed office with increased strength, and with the Duke's retirement on this occasion, his ministerial duties ceased altogether.

On the 29th of January, 1834, his Grace was unanimously elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford, in succession to Lord Grenville, and lost no time in making himself acquainted with the laws and statutes which it had become his duty to administer; nay, is said very lately to have mastered the whole of the voluminous evidence given on the recent investigation into the laws, character, and conduct of the university. He seems to have regarded no appointment, honorary or otherwise, as a sinecure; but at any expense of labour, to have made himself acquainted with all the details which were calculated to aid him in the due administration of its duties. On the resignation of Lord Melbourne in 1839, his Majesty sent for the Duke of Wellington, and at his suggestion, commissioned Sir Robert Peel to form a ministry; but the resignation having been merely a feint, his Lordship resumed office almost immediately, and retained it until 1841, from which date Sir Robert Peel remained in office until the 2nd of July, 1846; when, having carried the great commercial question of free trade, he

once more resigned the reins of government into the hands of Lord John Russell.

On the final resumption of office by Sir Robert Peel in 1841, the Duke lent his hearty support to his government; and in 1843, on the death of Lord Hill, once more accepted the office of General Commanding-in-Chief, which he continued to execute until the day of his death. True to his favourite principle of expediency on occasions on which the great interests of his country were at stake, the Duke finally accepted, and even justified, Sir Robert Peel's Bill for the Abolition of the Corn Laws; and no sooner had the Reform Bill passed into a law, than he observed, that “he not only considered it to be his duty to submit to it, but to endeavour to carry its provisions into execution by every means in his power." During the years which have intervened since 1842, the Duke of Wellington continued to take an active part in nearly all the great questions which came before Parliament. He also devoted much time and attention to the consideration of the best mode of strengthening our coast defences, and seems to have experienced great uneasiness at the supineness which had been exhibited by successive governments in regard to them. To this subject he had frequently directed the attention of the public; and when the Prince de Joinville published a vade mecum for the invasion of England, he addressed an elaborate exposition of his views to Sir John Burgoyne, on the state of our national defences. The belief was among his latest impressions, that much remained to be done in the way of strengthening our coasts, ere we should be in a condition to resist a well-devised and vigorously executed attempt to invade our shores. The recent changes in France, the presence in that country of an enormous and well-appointed standing army, and the vigorous efforts which are making to augment its already splendid and serviceable navy, would seem to prove the necessity of making better provision for the defence of our extensive sea-board than has yet been made.

The French revolution of 1848, which drove the Orleans family from the throne and the country, appears to have impressed a comparatively small body of English Chartists

APPREHENDED OUTBREAK OF CHARTISTS.

415

(the dregs of their order) with the notion that they might make a similar experiment in this country with success; and under the tutelage of that crack-brained Irish reformer, Mr. Feargus O'Connor, they endeavoured to persuade the public, through their placards and the press, that they intended to meet 300,000 strong on the 10th of April of that year; thus creating for a time no inconsiderable alarm. True or false, it became indispensable to make provision for the emergency: then it was that the British Commander-inChief proved to demonstration that age had in no respect impaired his intellectual energies. Stealthily and unobserved, troops and cannon were stationed at all points of London and the suburbs, where danger seemed likely to arise; and such were the preparations, that had the Chartists persisted in their menaced attempt at insurrection, hardly a man would have escaped. Although the troops under arms were nowhere to be seen, they were known to be at hand in great strength; and so dismayed were the pot-valiant agitators, that it required only the police and the special constables to deal with them, and instead of bringing 300,000 to the field, they could hardly muster ten. Nothing, however, could have been more complete than the military arrangements of the Duke. This completeness was made a matter of reproach by the economists of the House of Commons, but his Grace had put in practice his old maxim, that prevention is better than cure, and that it was better to sacrifice a few thousand pounds in preparations that might prove unnecessary, than incur the risk of a popular outbreak, which might occasion the slaughter of many hundreds of men. Ignominiously defeated in their attempts to fright the isle from its propriety, the Chartists have ever since ceased to excite any alarm. On the occasion in question, indeed, the demonstration was confined almost exclusively to the Socalist Chartists—the very worst samples of the class.

On the 1st of May, 1850, Arthur, Prince of Wales, was born, and the Duke, at the request of her Majesty and Prince Albert, stood sponsor to him; and shortly afterwards occurred the lamentable accident to Sir Robert Peel, which deprived England of the greatest, and we may add one of the honestest statesmen of his age. The eulogium pronounced by the Duke of Wellington on his distinguished friend, will