In a day (he said) when all monopolies are denounced, I must he
permitted to say that, to my mind, the monopoly which is the most
intolerable and odious is the pretension to the monopoly of public
virtue.

The amendment was carried by a large majority. Lord Melbourne resigned,
and Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister. About the same time, by the
death of his father and his own succession to the peerage, the young
Lord's brief career in the House of Commons was closed for ever; no
Scottish peer being eligible, according to the commonly received opinion,
to sit in the Lower House. He appears, indeed, to have had at one time an
idea of pressing the question; but he abandoned this intention on finding
that it had been entertained twenty-five years before by Lord Aberdeen,
and given up by him on the ground, that the majority of the Scottish Peers
looked upon the proposal as lowering to their body, and as implying
inferiority on their part to the English Peers.

[Sidenote: Governor of Jamaica.]

At this time it seemed as if the fair promise of eloquence and
statesmanship had been shown to public life only to be withdrawn from it;
but a path was about to be opened, leading to a new field of action,
distant, indeed, and often thankless, but giving scope for the exercise of
gifts, both of mind and character, which can rarely be exhibited in a
Parliamentary career. In March 1842, at the early age of thirty, he was
selected by Lord Stanley, who was then Secretary for the Colonies, for the
important post of Governor of Jamaica.


[1] The family seat In Fifeshire.