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Rh tration he stuck to his task, labouring at his desk all day, and brilliantly defending his chief in the House of Lords at night. 'To him more than any other man,' says Dr. George Smith, 'Great Britain owes its railway system.' 'He will be a very leading man,' wrote Charles Greville, apropos of the crucial debate in May 1846, 'for he is popular, pleasing, and has a virgin unsoiled reputation, nothing to apologise for, and nothing to recant: and he is a good man of business and an excellent speaker.'

Sir Robert Peel resigned in the following month, having first expressed his sense of Lord Dalhousie's services by appointing him Lord Registrar of Scotland. As the Dalhousie estates (his mother's property of Colstoun had descended to him heavily burdened) did not yield over £1500 per annum, this addition of £1300 a year was doubly welcome to him as a mark of friendship from his beloved chief, and as a material addition to his income. When Sir Robert Peel laid down his office in June, 1846, and Lord John Russell urged the young Earl to accept office under the new Cabinet, Dalhousie declined. Lord John had however marked him as a man likely to do credit to any Minister, and next year, 1847, pressed on him the Governor-Generalship of India. So splendid an offer to a young nobleman, only thirty-five years of age, is perhaps the best evidence of the respect which Dalhousie