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As there was no doubt that these shafts were aimed at O'Connell, this last charge afforded him a fair opportunity of putting a stop to the abuse by bringing the conduct of the talented but eccentric judge before parliament; for, as there was no political case in the calendar, there was no excuse for the attack.

Mr. Littleton declared it impossible to refuse his consent to the motion; Mr. Stanley, lord Althorp, and lord John Russell expressed a similar view. Sir James Graham briefly but warmly dissented from his colleagues. He had come down to the house with the understanding that they meant to oppose the motion. He for one still retained his opinion, and had seen no reason to change it. As one who valued the independence of the judges and his own character, he must declare that if the motion were carried, and if, as its result, an address was presented to the crown for the removal of baron Smith, it would be a highly inexpedient - nay, more, a most unjust proceeding. The present would be the most painful vote he had ever given, since he felt it incumbent upon him to sever himself from those friends with whom during a public life of some duration he had the honour of acting; but feeling as he did the proposition to be one dangerous in itself, he conceived he would be betraying the trust committed to him if he did not declare against it." Baron Smith was ably defended by Mr. Shaw, by Sir J. Scarlett, and Sir R. Peel. On a division, the motion for a committee of inquiry was carried by 167 to 74, Sir J. Graham and Mr. Spring Rice voting in the minority. Next morning Sir James tendered his resignation as first lord of the admiralty, which was declined, and in the following week the vote was rescinded by a majority of six.

Although the resignation of Sir James Graham was not accepted, the breach effected by his speech and vote was by no means healed. His conduct was characterised as being not only an open desertion of his colleagues, but an unnecessarily pointed condemnation of them. The contrariety of principle and feeling between the two sections of the cabinet was still further displayed in the debate raised early in March by Mr. Hume and colonel Torrens on the corn laws. The proposition brought forward by Mr. Hume was ostensibly to get rid of the sliding scale, and to substitute a ten-shilling fixed duty, to be lessened by one shilling every year till the importation of corn should be entirely free. Mr. Torrens M'Cullagh remarks that not a fourth of the lower house were then, nor for ten years after, prepared to vote for free trade in corn; and in the upper house, not half a dozen votes would have been given in its favour. The members of the cabinet voted both ways on this motion, which was negatived by a majority of 312 to 155.

We have already seen that the differences in the cabinet reached the point of separation, and led to the secession of Sir James Graham, Mr. Stanley, and the conservative section, on the occasion of Mr. Ward's motion with reference to the appropriation of the Irish church revenues. The vacant offices were then filled up. But a month only elapsed when fresh differences arose in the cabinet, leading to further resignations, and ending in the retirement of lord Grey from public life. Again Ireland was the rock on which the cabinet struck and went to pieces. The Irish Coercion Act, which had been passed for one year only, was to be renewed, with modifications, for which purpose a bill was introduced into the lords about the middle of June. A large number of the liberal members of England and Scotland, as well as Ireland, required the omission of the clauses enabling the lord-lieutenant to suppress public meetings by proclamation - a power which lord Wellesley persisted in declaring he did not require, although requested by lord Grey to reconsider his opinion on that point. Lord Altliorp, Mr. C. Grant, Mr. Spring Rice, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Abercrombie sided with the viceroy. But their opinions were overruled in the cabinet, and they agreed to support the bill as it stood. Lord Althorp had very reluctantly yielded the point, more especially as the necessity for the extra constitutional powers was denied by the Irish executive and by the lord chancellor. Mr. Littleton, the Irish secretary, having indiscreetly made Mr. O'Connell aware of the division in the cabinet, and of the fact that several of its members were supporting the clause contrary to their convictions, the Irish leader used the knowledge thus obtained with tremendous effect. While sitting under the fierce invectives of his opponent, lord Althorp felt his position to be intolerable. On quitting the house, after a long and harassing discussion, on the 7th of July, he wrote to the prime minister, announcing this fact. Next morning there was a conference, after which lord Grey transmitted to the king his resignation, with that of lord Althorp; and on the recommendation of lord Grey, lord Melbourne was appointed to the office of prime minister, being succeeded in the Home Office by lord Dungannon; while lord Althorp, relieved from his obligation with regard to the Coercion Bill, consented to resume the post he had just resigned.

On the 9th of July earl Grey made a statement in the lords, when the duke of Wellington disclaimed a 1 personal hostility in the opposition he had been obliged to give to his government. The lord chancellor pronounced an affecting eulogium on the great statesman who was finally retiring from his work, and expressed his own determination to remain in office. Lord Grey's popular administration had lasted three years, seven months, and twenty- two days, which exceeded the term of his predecessor, the duke of Wellington, by nearly a year and a half. Since 1754 only four premiers had held office for a longer period - namely, the duke of Newcastle, eight years; lord North, twelve; Mr. Pitt, upwards of seventeen; and lord Liverpool nearly fifteen years. Lord Grey, from the infirmities of age, declining health, and weariness of official life, had wished to retire at the close of the previous session, but was prevailed upon by his colleagues to remain in office. In delivering his farewell speech he was listened to with profound attention, and at one moment was so overpowered by his feelings that he was compelled to sit down, the duke of Wellington considerately filling up the interval by presenting some petitions.

Earl Grey had lived to witness the triumphant realisation of all the great objects for which throughout his public life he had contended, sometimes almost without hope. Catholic emancipation had been yielded by his opponents as a tardy concession to the imperative demand of the nation. In the debates on that question in the house of lords, lord Grey was said to have excelled all others, and even himself. The long dormant question of parliamentary reform was quickened into life by the electric shock of the French revolution of 1830, when the duke of Wellington, with equal honesty and rashness, affirmed that the existing system of representation enjoyed the full and entire confidence of the country. This declaration raised a storm before which he was compelled to retire, in order to make way for a statesman with keener eye and firmer hand, to hold the helm and steer the vessel in that perilous crisis of the nation's destiny. Throughout the whole of that trying time earl Grey's wisdom, his steadfastness, the moral greatness of his character, and the responsibility of his position, made him the centre of universal interest, and won for him the respect and admiration of all parties in the nation. Baffled again and again in the struggle for reform, undismayed by the most formidable opposition, not deterred or disheartened by repeated repulses, he renewed his attacks on the citadel of monopoly and corruption, till at last his efforts were crowned with victory. And well did he use the great power for good which the reformed parliament put into his hands. The emancipation of the slaves, the reform of the Irish church, and the abolition of the gigantic abuses of the poor law system, were among the legislative achievements which he effected. His foreign policy, in the able hands of lord Palmerston, was in harmony with his own domestic policy - bold, just, moderate, true to the cause of freedom abroad, while vigilantly guarding the national honour of his own country. After his retirement, lord Grey appeared occasionally in the house of lords. He died at his seat in. Northumberland, on the 17th of July, 1845, in the eighty-second year of his age. Few statesmen have ever left behind a name so pure. In youth he defied obloquy, and scorned the fascinations of power for the sake of the cause of liberty and right, to which he had consecrated his life. For that cause he laboured through many years with unfaltering devotion, when most of those who loved it had relinquished their efforts in despair. In old age he took the command of the army of reformers, and fought the battle of the constitution with obstinate determination, till victory crowned his efforts. His character was like a great tree, which grew up amid storms till it attained unrivalled strength and beauty, and when cut down leaves a void which for ages cannot be filled up. Such a man can have no successor. No character can rise up between him and posterity to fill the space and obstruct the view. Throughout ad ages of our history, a grateful nation will look back with admiration to lord Grey as the man who restored the temple of the British constitution upon broader and firmer foundations, at a time when revolution had threatened it with utter demolition.

On the 17th of July the new premier, lord Melbourne, announced a less offensive coercion bill for Ireland, which led to an animated debate, in which lords Wicklow and Wharncliffe, the duke of Wellington, and other peers strongly censured the conduct of the government for its alleged inconsistency, vacillation, and tergiversation. The new coercion bill passed quickly through both houses, and became the law of the land before the end of the month.

The English dissenters were led, notwithstanding the difference in creed, to sympathise to a considerable extent with Irish catholics in their agitation against the church establishment. Church-rates were felt as a grievance, affecting the consciences as well as the purses of nonconformists. They wished to be relieved from the burden of supporting a church of whose services they could not avail themselves; and accordingly, during the session of 1834, many petitions were presented, praying for the abolition of church-rates, and for the separation of church and state, and the removal of the bishops from the house of lords. Dissenters felt particularly aggrieved by the tests which debarred them from obtaining university degrees, which, they justly contended, should be attainable as a matter of right on equal grounds by citizens of all denominations. Some of the restrictions were of comparatively modern date, and many members of the universities themselves were anxious that they should be relaxed. Thus a petition was got up at Cambridge, and signed by sixty-three resident members of the senate, which prayed for an abolition of religious tests offered to candidates for degrees in arts, law, and physic, and stating " that they were only seeking for a restitution of their ancient laws and laudable customs, since the restrictions complained of were imposed on the universities in the reign of James I., most of them in a manner informal and unprecedented, and grievously against the wishes of many members of the senate, in times of bitter party animosities, and during the prevalence of dogmas, both in church and state, which are at variance with the present spirit of the English law, and with the true principles of Christian toleration." This petition was presented by lord Grey on the 21st of March in the upper house, and by Mr. Spring Rice on the 24th in the commons; but no step was taken in consequence, till after the Easter recess, when colonel Williams moved an address to the crown, praying that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge should no longer act under the letters of James I. Mr. Wood moved an amendment to the effect that it was more advisable to proceed by bill, which was carried by a large majority; but before anything could be done, the exclusive spirit of both universities was roused to a pitch of violent excitement, and in the midst of the controversial storm, the quiet voice of reason could not be heard. A counter-petition was got up and signed by 258 members of the university of Cambridge, resident and non-resident, comprising eleven heads of houses, eight professors, and twenty-nine tutors. There was another signed by 755 under-graduates and bachelors of arts. They were both presented in the lords by the duke of Gloucester, and in the commons by Mr. Goulburn. A similar petition was presented by Mr. Estcourt from the university of Oxford. Mr, Wood moved the second reading on the 20th of June, when Mr. Estcourt proposed that it should be read a second time that day six months. He objected to it, because it would destroy the religious part of university education, which was the essential part; because it would thus tend to dissolve the connection between the church and the state, and by necessary consequence to the destruction of the established church. Mr. Herbert seconded the amendment, and with reference to the fact that protestants are agreed in the essentials of religion, and that there might be a scheme of religious education, embracing the leading doctrines of Christianity, in which all might safely concur, he said he doubted if this were possible. "He expected no advantage from so vague a system of theology, an emasculated kind of instruction in Christianity and morals, producing no feeling of confidence or reverence in the minds of its pupils. A bill like the present would operate as a direct exclusion of the clergy from the universities, and every parish in England would feel the consequences." Mr. C. W. Wynn was convinced that the present bill was but the first of a series of measures which, if not checked in time, must lead to the subversion of the established church, and the destruction of all our institutions. Mr. Potter, Mr. Ewart, and Mr. Spring Rice dissipated all the chimeras that had been thus conjured up by the advocates of monopoly, and presented in its true light the odious principle of exclusion, according to which the dissenter was told that, however obedient he might have been to the college authorities, however high the eminence he had reached, still he would not be allowed the symbol of his attainments, because he was a dissenter. The university of Dublin was not less orthodox because dissenters could obtain its degrees, and why should the English universities be destroyed by a process which had been beneficial at the other side of the channel? Mr. Goulburn contended strenuously for religious tests as a necessary condition for obtaining a civil privilege. But Mr. Stanley could not see why a man should sign the thirty-nine articles in order to obtain a literary degree, and he deprecated the idea that such a subscription should be regarded as a mere matter c: form. Sir Robert Peel was not yet prepared to carry out fully the principle of religious equality. The bill, he argued, would give to Jews, infidels, and atheists a statutable right of demanding admission into our universities. Dissenters had been freed from all civil disabilities by the repeal of the Test Acts, and the Roman catholics by the Emancipation Act; a vast change had been effected in the constitution of parliament by the Reform Act: and after all those concessions, were they now to be deprived of an established church? What was the essence of an established church? What but the legislative recognition of it on the part of the state? Parliament was therefore entitled to say to the dissenters, With that legislative recognition you shall not interfere. In a brief speech, full of sound sense, lord Althorp showed the absurdity of those arguments and apprehensions. The second reading of the bill was carried by a majority of 321, to 194. It was opposed by the speaker in committee, but having there received some amendments, it was read a third time and passed on the 28th of July by a majority of 164 against 75. In the lords it was denounced by the duke of Gloucester, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, who moved that it be read a second time that day six months. He was followed by the duke of Wellington, chancellor of the university of Oxford. Lord Brougham ably defended the measure, but in vain. The bill was rejected by a majority of 187 against 85. An attempt made by lord Althorp to abolish, church-rates, and to grant in lieu thereof the sum of £250,000 from the land-tax, to effect a commutation of tithes, and to allow dissenters to get married in their own chapels, was equally unsuccessful.