Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/305

 1841.] Accession of the Queen to fall of Melbourne. 291 which was to be the dying bequest of one of the best and noblest of the statesmen whom it has produced. Next to the Canadian business, the most important and most interesting part of the proceedings of the session was the settlement of the Irish tithe question, and the humiliation inflicted by it upon the Ministry. On the izj-th of May Russell introduced a string of ten resolutions as a basis on which to found his new Tithe Bill. The main interest which these resolutions excited centred round the question whether they did or did not involve the principle of appropriation, to which the Government had solemnly pledged themselves and the House in 1835. The present resolutions were framed with such ambiguity that it was impossible to say what answer they furnished, but in his speech Russell had been understood to say that the great principle was abandoned. It afterwards became clear that the concession had really been intended, but the ministers hoped to be allowed to carry a bill which gave up the principle without a direct confession of the fact. Such an escape from their difficulty, however, neither the Tories nor the Radicals were prepared to permit. Immediately after the resolutions were moved, Sir Thomas Acland rose, in pursuance of a notice which he had given, and proposed as an amendment that the resolutions of the 7th and 8th of April, 1835, should be rescinded. In the debate which followed Ward, the great champion of appropriation, said that he had thought he descried in the resolutions the germ of the appropriation principle, but he was assured by Lords J. Russell and Morpeth that the principle was aban- doned. O'Connell, to the surprise of many of the Radicals, supported ministers in their proposition. Sir Robert Peel, to whom, as the writer of the " Annual Register " said, " the present occasion was one of no slight triumph," * rose to support Acland's proposition. He pointed out how the resolutions had been the instrument by which his Government had been overthrown, because he would rather lose office than sacrifice his principles, and now the very men who had
 * "Annual Register," 1838, p. 125.