Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/405

 1855-] Death of Peel to Resignation of Aberdeen. 391 junction was impracticable. There must therefore be another Ministry on sufferance, not only without a majority in the House of Commons, but known to be opposed to the opinion of the country generally on the most immediately interesting political subject that of free trade. On this very question, which they were pledged to raise in some form or other, they were met by the combined hostility of all other parties, Russellites, Palmerstonians, Peelites, Radicals all were deter- mined to resist the change which the only possible Ministry were obliged to propose. The position was too confused and complicated to be permanent. The Radical free-traders, at all events, were determined that public opinion should be heard ; and on the 2nd of March the Anti-Corn Law League was revived at a meeting, when 27,000 was subscribed in ten minutes in order to support a determined agitation against any return to protection. Approaches had been made by the new Premier to Palmerston, but this question of protection made impossible a coalition, which else might well have been effected, for it was in free trade alone that Palmerston was a Liberal, and he was a determined opponent of any advance in the direction of Parliamentary reform. On the 2/th of February the new Premier explained in the House of Lords the policy which he intended to pursue. He did not disguise the fact that he was in favour of a duty on corn, but he did not propose to introduce any legislation on the subject until an opportunity had been given of a "reference to the well-understood and clearly expressed opinion of the intelligent portion of the community." There was to be no corn law until there had been a dissolution, but the Government were anxious to obtain a decision in favour of one. Of course the Tories would not proceed with the Reform Bill ; and as to education, which, Russell had said, ought to follow the extension of the franchise, Lord Derby " did not care for the mere acquirement of temporal knowledge or the development of the intellectual faculties, but for that education which was built on the basis of all knowledge the study of the Scriptures." For the promotion of such educa-