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A considerable number of useful measures were passed during the session of 1852, among which may be mentioned the Militia Act, the New Zealand Constitution Act, several measures of Law Reform, including the procedure in the Court of Chancery, and an extension of the jurisdiction of the County Courts. Lord Lyndhurst, reviewing the session, said that, " during the four months that had elapsed since Lord Derby came into office, bills of greater importance had passed than in any session since the commencement of the present Parliament."

On the 1st of July the Queen prorogued Parliament in person, and delivered a speech, in which she expressed her satisfaction at the "final settlement of the affairs of Holstein and Schleswig." The order for the dissolution of Parliament appeared next day in the Gazette. The general election, which took place in due course, left the state of parties very much as it had found it.

The new Parliament assembled on the 4th of November. Mr. Charles Shaw Lefevre was re-elected to the Speaker's chair without opposition. The Royal speech was delivered by the Queen in person on the 11th, when Her Majesty announced the existence of the most amicable relations with all foreign powers. The session was occupied principally with commercial matters and financial questions, with regard to which the majority of the House were at issue with the Government. This fact was brought to the test by a division, after a long debate, on the 10th of December, when the Government was defeated by 305 to 286. This led to the resignation of the Derby Cabinet. A coalition between the Whigs and the Peelites was next tried, with Lord Aberdeen as Prime Minister; after which the House adjourned to the 10th of February.

The Duke of Wellington, whose name has been so often mentioned in this history, terminated his long and glorious career at Walmer Castle, on the 14th of September, 1852, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. No Englishman ever received so many honours from his country. In 1809 he was raised to the peerage, and Parliament voted him a pension of £2,000 a year, for two generations, to sustain his dignity. In 1812 he became a marquis, and the sum of £100,000 was voted to purchase him an estate. In 1814 he became a duke. After the battle of Waterloo an additional grant of £200,000 was made, to purchase him a mansion and an estate. Foreign princes united with the Sovereign, and Parliament, and citizens of his own country, to honour and reward the hero, whom Talleyrand once called "the most capable man in England," and whom Mr. Disraeli, as leader of the House of Commons, designated " the greatest man of a great nation - a general who had fought fifteen pitched battles, captured 3,000 cannon from the enemy, and never lost a single gun." And he truly added, he was not only the greatest and most successful warrior of his time, but his protracted civil career was scarcely less splendid and successful; and when he died, "he died at the head of that army to which he had left the tradition of his fame."

The Queen was at Balmoral at the time of his death, and she immediately conveyed her wishes to the Government that his remains should be honoured Tith a public funeral. On the 15th of November Lord Derby proposed a resolution in reply to Her Majesty's message, which was unanimously adopted; and a select committee was appointed to consider the mode hi which the House might best assist at the ceremony. A similar course was adopted in the Commons. The public obsequies commenced when the remains were committed to the officers of the Lord Chamberlain, to be conveyed to the hall of Chelsea Hospital, there to lie in state.

The hall was arranged in the most appropriate manner, and everything was in keeping with the object. Black draperies, escutcheons, tattered and faded banners, the spoils of many victories, hung round the hall, which was lighted by wax tapers, in gigantic candelabra, while motionless Grenadiers, standing as mutes, marked the entrance to the chapel. Beneath an elegant canopy, upon a dais covered by a carpet of cloth of gold, stood the bier, and on this rested the gilt and crimson coffin which contained the remains of the hero. The pall was ornamented with escutcheons, and at the foot was a display of the insignia of the orders of knighthood, more numerous than any individual had ever before borne in England. The bier was surrounded by a magnificent silver balustrade, adorned with heraldic devices, and with the Field Marshal's batons of eight kingdoms.

The remains were deposited in the Hospital on the 10th. On the 11th, the Queen, the Prince Consort, and the Royal children privately visited the lying in state. The pensioners, the Life Guards, and Grenadiers were then admitted. On the next day, the nobility and gentry who had Lord Chamberlain's tickets only were admitted, to the number of 10,800; but many thousands of ladies and gentlemen, who had been waiting in their carriages for hours on a wet and stormy day, were grievously disappointed. The arrangements for the admission of the public were not satisfactory, and the consequence was dreadful confusion and crushing, attended in some cases with fatal consequences. At a very early hour in the morning, an enormous crowd pressed for admission. When the gates were opened, the tide of people rushed in like an inundation. Then followed scenes of the most fearful kind: " struggles for bare life, frightful shrieks, and screams of agony, such as will never be forgotten by those present. Women were knocked down, or fainted away; children were held aloft to escape suffocation; fathers and mothers strove in vain to recover those who had been torn away from them in the crowd; the multitude actually smoked like a heated hay-stack, from the pressure and strain upon individuals." Order was ultimately restored, and it was calculated that from 50,000 to 65,000 people passed daily through the hall. Three persons, two women and one man, lost their lives by the crushing on Saturday.

Late on the night of Wednesday the corpse was conveyed to the Horse Guards, escorted by a squadron of cavalry. The funeral procession took place next day. First appeared the infantry, six battalions, then the artillery, next the cavalry, five squadrons, and then in succession martial men on foot, pensioners, trumpets and kettle-drums, deputations from public bodies in carriages, persons connected with the late Duke's household, military dignitaries, judges, ministers and officers of state, archbishops, the Prince Consort and Her Majesty's household, in three carriages drawn by six horses each, officers connected with foreign armies, pall-bearers, the funeral car, which weighed twelve tons, drawn by twelve horses, and decorated with trophies and heraldic achievements, the hat and sword of the deceased being placed on the coffin. Then followed the chief mourner, the Duke of Wellington, accompanied by a long train of mourners. The Queen beheld the procession from the windows of Buckingham Palace, and again from St. James's Palace. The Lord Mayor and Corporation awaited the funeral procession at Temple Bar, and then fell into the line, the Lord Mayor taking precedence of the Archbishop of Canterbury within the city.

The coffin was borne into St. Paul's, where nearly 20,000 persons were assembled, including the peers and the members of the House of Commons, the Duchess of Kent, a great number of peeresses and other ladies. At the conclusion of the dirge the mortal remains were lowered into the crypt. " It is impossible," says the contemporary record, " to convey an idea of the singular solemnity of the spectacle. The organ, assisted by the wind instruments, breathed the intensely mournful passages of the Dead March in Saul, while the coffin with the coronet and baton slowly descended; and thus. the great warrior departed from the sight of men. A sense of heavy depression came over the whole assembly.

Prince Albert was deeply moved, and the aged Marquis of Anglesey, the octogenarian companion in arms of the deceased, by an irresistible impulse, stepped forward, placed his hand on the sinking coffin that contained the remains of his chief in many battles, and burst into tears."

Not the least impressive circumstance connected with this national homage to departed merit crowned with glorious success, was the conduct of the people of the great metropolis, of which the Earl of Derby, then Prime Minister, expressed his admiration in eloquent terms.

"Justice must be done," he said, "to another class - I mean the admirable temper, patience, forbearance, and good conduct which were manifested by the whole of these incredible masses. When we consider how large a proportion of the population of these United Kingdoms was for that single day crowded together in the streets of the metropolis - when you remember, as those at least remember to whose lot it fell to take part in the procession, and who saw it throughout its whole length and breadth - when you remember that on a line of route three miles in length, extending from Grosvenor Place to St. Paul's Cathedral, there was not a single unoccupied foot of ground, and that you passed through a living sea of faces, all turned to look upon that great spectacle - when you saw every house, every window, every house-top loaded with persons anxious to pay their last tribute of respect to the memory of England's greatest son - when you saw those persons (those, at least, within the streets) remaining with entire and unflinching patience, for many hours, in a position in which movement was hardly possible, and yet that scarce a single accident occurred to the most feeble woman or child amid that vast mass - when, throughout the whole of that length, not only was a perfect decorum preserved, and a perfect and ready assistance given to the efforts of the police and military, but there was no unseemly desire to witness the magnificent spectacle, no light and thoughtless applause at the splendour of that spectacle, and that the people of England, in the awful silence of those vast crowds, testified in the most emphatic manner the sense in which every man among them felt the public loss which England had sustained - I know not, my lords, how you may have looked upon this manifestation of public feeling, and good sense, and order; but I know this, that as I passed along those lines, it was with pride and satisfaction I felt that I was a countryman of those who knew so well how to regulate and control themselves; and I could not help entertaining a hope that those foreign visitors who have done us and themselves the honour of assisting at this great ceremonial, might upon this occasion, as upon the 1st of May, 1851, bear witness back to their own country how safely and to what extent a people might be relied upon, in whom the strongest hold of their Government was their own reverence and respect for the free institutions of their country, and the principles of popular self-government, controlled and modified by constitutional monarchy."