other, remain in office over the Session, no small difficulty would be
found in displacing it--lest, like the tree, which, when first planted,
may be easily pulled up, it should by and bye strike its roots downwards
and its branches outwards, and after a year or two no man would be able
to get it out of the ground. Hon. Gentlemen opposite know that I differ
very widely from them on many public questions, and probably at some not
distant day they may find it out in some act of severe hostility; but I
put it to the House, whether, out of doors, the reputation of the
present Government is not, in many respects, better than the last? Take,
for instance, the Gentlemen who come up from the country on various
deputations to the Ministers--the judgment of these deputations, without
an exception, is in favour of the manner in which they have been
received by the present Ministers, and of the way in which their
suggestions and requests have been treated. Now, this may be no great
matter, and I do not say that it is; but I make the observation for the
benefit of the Gentlemen who sit on these benches, because it is just
possible that they may some time have to receive deputations again. Then
take their conduct in this House. 'Oh, yes.' hon. Gentlemen may say,
'but they are a weak Government; they have not a majority, and they are
obliged to be very civil.' But what I maintain is, that every Ministry
ought to be very civil, and what I am prepared to assert is--and I ask
every man on this side of the House if he does not agree with me, for I
have heard dozens of them say it out of the House--that when the late
Government were in office civility was a thing unknown.

Take another point--for it is worthy of consideration by Gentlemen on
this side of the House, and I ask hon. Gentlemen who sit below the
gangway especially to consider it--look at the heritage of trouble with
regard to our foreign policy which the existing Government found on
their accession to office. Three months of what was going on upon the