his irreconcilable friends, perceiving the futility of further
obstruction, absenting themselves from the chamber rather than
vote contrary to their consciences. Even after the reformed
Parliament had come into existence this arch aristocrat could see
nothing but evil in the outlook. He complained that the House of
Commons "had swallowed up all the power of the state," and he was
not far wrong. Still his loyalty to the crown, and his
determination that the government should be upheld kept him from
merely factious opposition and made him a useful servant of the
nation. The leader of the majority in the House of Lords, he
declined to use his position to thwart the purposes of the
popular House. "I do not choose," he said, in 1834, when the Poor
Law Bill was up, "I do not choose to be the person to excite a
quarrel between the two Houses of Parliament. The quarrel will
occur in its time; and the House of Lords will probably be
overwhelmed. But it shall not be owing to any action of mine." It
was in this year that a singular occurrence showed his unique
place in the confidence of King and nation. In November the King
dismissed the Melbourne ministry and called on the Duke to form
another. The latter perceived that no Tory but Peel could manage
the Commons, but Peel was then traveling on the Continent. The
Duke accordingly undertook to carry on the government alone until
that leader's return. And for five weeks he was the cabinet,
holding all the high offices--Treasury, Home, Foreign, and
Colonial--himself, so as not to embarrass his successor by making
appointments. The Whigs raised a great outcry against this one-
man power, but the people rather admired the industry of the
veteran who rose at six o'clock in the morning and went the
rounds of the departments performing the routine duties with the
greatest industry and fidelity and steadily refusing to use his