darts. 'The hon. gentleman,' he said, has a perfect right to support a hostile motion, but let him not say he does it in a friendly spirit.' Then came some lines from Canning: 'Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe, Bold I can meet, perhaps may turn, the blow: Peel was commonly supposed to have treated Canning badly by his refusal to take office after the death of Liverpool. He had refused to be a party to Catholic Emancipation in 1827, and had ended by carrying it himself in 1829. The low mocking voice rose to remind him of his inconsistency. But the quotation had been apt, and the retort was therefore swathed in compliment. 'Quotation is a weapon the right hon. gentleman always wields with the hand of a master, and when he does appeal to any authority, in prose or verse, he is sure to be successful; partly because he never quotes a passage that has not previously received the meed of parliamentary approbation, and partly and principally because his quotations are so happy. The right hon. gentleman knows what the introduc tion of a great name does in debate-how important its effect and occasionally how electrical. He never refers to any author who is not great, and sometimes who is not lovedCanning, for example. That is a name never to be mentioned, I am sure, in the House of Commons without emotion. We all admire his genius; we all-at least, most of us-deplore his untimely end; and we all sympathise with him in his fierce struggle with supreme prejudice and sublime mediocrity -with inveterate foes and with candid friends. The right hon. gentleman may be sure that a quotation from such an authority will always tell. Some lines, for example, upon friendship, written by Mr Canning and quoted by the right hon. gentleman! The theme, the poet, the speaker-what a felicitous combination!' In the House cheer followed upon cheer. Irony had never been more keenly barbed nor more venomously poisoned. The ironist coruscated with naïve delight. There never was,' he wrote to his sister, 'an instance of a trip being succeeded by such a leap.' At Bradenham, when the news arrived, Isaac D'Israeli, blind and feeble, sat muttering again and again the biting triplet of the climax. His long experience of literature taught him how consummate was the art which had brought the innuendo to that most dexterous pitch of perfection; his father's heart must have told him that there was now, humanly speaking, no limit to the political prospects of his first-born son. So much for the huntsman and the hunt. What of the victim with whose blood the victory ran red? Peel, there can be no doubt, writhed under the assaults which fell with merciless insistence upon a spirit accustomed to deference and unaccustomed to defeat. For the story of the challenge, indeed, to which Froude gave currency after 'careful enquiry,' Mr Monypenny finds no better foundation than the intemperate zeal of Peel's brother. But feelings are not usually the less acute for being suppressed; and the Minister happened to be exquisitely sensitive both physically and mentally. He had besides but lately passed through one of those upheavals of long dormant opinion which bear hardly upon men as they grow older. Unusual anxieties of government lay upon his shoulders. And, perhaps most trying of all, he could find no words with which to avenge him of his adversary. For Disraeli, if at the first he had not his conscience clear, had in the end his quarrel just. Of Peel's relations with Canning there is a full and honourable explanation; his conduct in repealing the Corn Laws admits only of a stumbling defence. The famous phrases describing the Government as an 'organised hypocrisy,' and the Prime Minister as a great appropriation clause,' are remembered for their convenience, but were established by their truth. Peel, indeed, in moving language, threw himself upon the judgment of posterity, and posterity has generously responded to the appeal. But for all that, as a later Prime Minister has argued, his action was 'fatal to high principle in politics.' The betrayal of 1846 brought forth the betrayal of 1867; and Peel's critic exulted in a treachery to party which Peel had not been scrupulous enough to avoid. Also, it is true that things that are done hurriedly and under pressure of circumstance are seldom done wisely. Mr Monypenny contends that time has largely vindicated Disraeli's arguments. English agriculture, it is certain, has followed the narrowing path of his forebodings, not the broad highway of Cobden's assurances. And the thought of a colonial preference which he dimly foreshadowed has returned fifty years later encompassed with difficulty and embarrased with prejudice. His protests have lived to possess new meaning and to register lost occasion. Speech availed to discredit the Government; stratagem was required to overthrow it. Disraeli had gradually rallied the distracted squirearchy round the banner of Bentinck, and Peel was left dependent on the 120 Peelites and whatever assistance he could derive from the Whigs, the Cobdenites and the O'Connellites. Harassed by Irish unrest, he pressed forward at once rival methods of pacification-a Corn Bill and a Coercion Bill-and placed himself at the mercy of any casual combination of his numerous opponents, who were mostly hostile to one or other of the measures. Disraeli worked hard and without much scruple to secure revenge for his Tory companions. But they themselves were too honourable to oppose coercion if it were really required; and the Old Whigs, who really favoured a fixed duty on corn, were too much in the hands of Russell to oppose repeal. Coercion, however, does not wait upon convenience; and a Coercion Bill can hardly be honestly put forward unless it be promptly carried. This was the rock upon which Peel's Government ultimately foundered-as it happened, upon the very day that the Corn Bill passed its third reading in the Upper House. Peel had delayed the more urgent of his remedies to make sure of the passage of the other; and consequently revenge followed close upon the heels of betrayal. We do not need to recall the last unworthy scene in which Bentinck and Disraeli tried to make good the story of Peel's treachery towards Canning. The attack was the more ungenerous because the Minister had just refrained from making plain a far more serious blot upon his accuser's shield. Goaded at last by Disraeli's incessant taunts, he had expressed his surprise that, with such an opinion of his character and career, his critic should have applied to him for office in the spring of 1841. Disraeli rose and explicitly denied the truth of the accusation. 'Neither directly nor indirectly,' he said, 'had he solicited office.' This was nothing less than a deliberate untruth. His biographer maintains that he had temporarily lost his head. It is more certain that he had permanently lost his character. Peel had him now at his mercy; and a less magnanimous man than Peel would have felt that Providence had delivered his enemy into his hands. But Disraeli was spared the production of the letter; and it was left for a later age, when time had softened censure, to expose the wretched fact. There is indeed a story, to which Mr Monypenny alludes, that Peel passed the watches of the night that followed the denial in searching for the compromising document. But there is also another legend at once more agreeable, more likely, and more dramatic. It is said that, immediately after Disraeli's statement, Peel leaned forward and opened the despatch-box which lay before him on the table, raised for a brief moment a piece of note-paper, and then without a word returned it to a long oblivion. Whichever way we like to have it, here at all events the curtain drops with a certain sombre finality, though the play is not played out, nor the story told. Disraeli doubtless will come again; he will awaken new interest, excite new dispute and evoke new enthusiasm, as his character passes through new phases, developes new powers and pursues its infinite variety. But of the stagemanager we shall see no more; and it is with unfeigned regret that we take our leave of one who has toiled so faithfully and served us so well. ALGERNON CECIL. PENGE PUBLIC LIBRARY ( 230 ) Art. 11.-THE MAJORITY REPORT OF THE DIVORCE COMMISSION. 1. Report of the Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. Minutes of Evidence. Appendices. Five vols. London: Wyman, 1912. 2. The Divorce Commission. The Majority and Minority Reports Summarised. By the Secretaries to the Commission. Westminster: King, 1912. THE Majority Report of the Divorce Commission is in a special sense the work of Lord Gorell. Without any disrespect for his able colleagues or any disparagement of their useful assistance in matters of detail, it must be acknowledged that if Lord Gorell had sat alone, the Report, both in form and in substance, would not have shown any material variation, so far as its chief topicsthe multiplication of grounds of divorce and of Divorce Courts-are concerned. His long experience of divorce law and practice and his great gifts, especially a remarkable power of enthusiastic concentration, professional tact and rare personal charm, would have ensured for him signal influence in the conduct of any similar enquiry; but on this Commission, amongst those in general harmony with his point of view, he was the one dominant figure. If strong prepossessions are not disqualifications for the direction of an investigation which involved the exposure of pitiful human suffering, tending to upset the coolest judgment, Lord Gorell was in a unique degree fitted to be the Chairman. But the prepossessions were there-the outgrowth, be it said, at least as much of a warm heart as of reasoned conviction. The Commission was appointed on Nov. 10, 1909. Three years earlier, in 1906, Lord Gorell, then President of the Probate Division, in his considered judgment on the very important divorce case Dodd v. Dodd (L. R. [1906] P. 189 at p. 207) had taken the exceptional course of expressing, in an interrogative form, his own conviction of the necessity of divorce reform and of the direction it should take. We quote his words. 'It is not necessary for me now to express a formal and final opinion upon these serious questions, but the considera |