adjusted the rights and properties of our national industries in a manner
which would have prevented that fierce and fatal rivalry that is now
disturbing every hearth of the United Kingdom.

We may, therefore, visit on the _laches_ of this ministry the introduction
of that new principle and power into our constitution which ultimately may
absorb all, AGITATION. This cabinet, then, with so much brilliancy on its
surface, is the real parent of the Roman Catholic Association, the
Political Unions, the Anti-Corn-Law League.

There is no influence at the same time so powerful and so singular as that
of individual character. It arises as often from the weakness of the
character as from its strength. The dispersion of this clever and showy
ministry is a fine illustration of this truth. One morning the Arch-
Mediocrity himself died. At the first blush, it would seem that little
difficulties could be experienced in finding his substitute. His long
occupation of the post proved, at any rate, that the qualification was not
excessive. But this cabinet, with its serene and blooming visage, had been
all this time charged with fierce and emulous ambitions. They waited the
signal, but they waited in grim repose. The death of the nominal leader,
whose formal superiority, wounding no vanity, and offending no pride,
secured in their councils equality among the able, was the tocsin of their
anarchy. There existed in this cabinet two men, who were resolved
immediately to be prime ministers; a third who was resolved eventually to
be prime minister, but would at any rate occupy no ministerial post
without the lead of a House of Parliament; and a fourth, who felt himself
capable of being prime minister, but despaired of the revolution which
could alone make him one; and who found an untimely end when that
revolution had arrived.