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a great majority for ministers, was not such as to give unmingled satisfaction to those who critically examined the returns. Many men who had been tried in the balance were found wanting, but in the general adherence to reform principles, the consequence of success, it was difficult to ascertain how far the adhesion was on principle. When nearly all professed to be reformers, just as in the general election, twenty years later, all professed to be free-traders, the ordeal was after, rather than before, the appearance on the hustings. It became a subject of interesting speculation whether the House of Commons would be led by the Whig ministers, or originate and press forward practical measures on which the ministry might be unwilling to hazard place and power. My comments on the position of affairs were, I believe, prevailing opinion:—

"The elections have been exceedingly favourable to ministers; the electors having, with few exceptions, rejected alike those candidates who would have opposed them on popular measures, and those who would have urged them onwards with a too hasty zeal. The country has thus imposed upon them a weighty responsibility. By returning members who will support them, it has given them the power to advance in every practicable reform, and by rejecting their opponents it has taken away from them every shadow of excuse for tardiness of movement in effecting public good. They may encounter obstacles from the throne, which is surrounded by those to whom a very rigid economy will be anything but acceptable; they may have opposed to them the unreasoning obstinacy of the House of Lords, where there is, as yet, very little of that enlightenment which has spread amongst the people; and they may be embarrassed by the entanglement of legacies from their tory predecessors in office; but they have got rid of the nominees of borough-owners, including numerous members sent to the House of Commons expressly to support the Bank monopoly, the East India monopoly, and the atrocities of the West India slave system, and of a considerable number of those whose business it was to support the corn-growers' monopoly. They have, in short, obtained a clear stage, and the country is disposed to see them have fair play; and if, under such favourable circumstances, and without the excuse that they are either opposed with factious pertinacity, or pushed on with imprudent