Page:A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland.djvu/53

 that he could not hope to obtain that degree of support from the House of Commons which is necessary for a constitutional minister.

Being defeated on the Irish Church he resigned, and Lord Melbourne resumed his position at the head of the King's Ministry. In 1835, 1836 and 1837, the Appropriation Clause, as it was called, was carried in the House of Commons; but the measure was always rejected by the House of Lords, and Lord Melbourne's Government consented in 1838 to carry the Tithe Measure, without the Appropriation Clause.

It was then made matter of reproach to Lord Melbourne, that as Sir Robert Peel had resigned on the Appropriation Clause, he, Lord Melbourne, had yielded this point, and not resigned his office. But as Sir Robert Peel had never possessed the confidence to obtain which he had dissolved the House of Commons; as the liberal Irish members had complete confidence in Lord Melbourne's Government; as the proposal of the Ministry on the Irish Church went somewhat too far for the English mind, and not nearly far enough to extinguish the Irish grievances, it seemed, upon the whole, to Lord Melbourne and his colleagues that we should only do mischief to Ireland by tendering our resignation.

This may still be a matter for controversy and party taunts.

But at the time the whole question was brought before the House of Commons by me, as the leader of the Government in that House. I moved on April 15, 1839:—