blame upon himself, and on the second a ministerial remonstrance against his reflections on Glenelg, the colonial secretary, was read to the king by the premier. The king also objected strongly, in a letter to Melbourne of 19 Oct., to the reception of O'Connell at the table of the lord-lieutenant, more especially after his crusade against the House of Lords in the north of England and Scotland. Melbourne exonerated Mulgrave at his own expense. He was more successful in gaining the king's consent to the promotion of Pepys to the chancellorship, and compensation of Campbell by the elevation of his wife to the peerage (January 1836). In spite of the success of the Irish administration, the Irish Tithe Bill and the Irish Municipal Corporation Bill were again rejected by the Lords, and the debates on the Orange lodges damaged the government. On the other hand, the English Tithe Bill was passed and the marriage law reformed. As a whole, the session was a failure, and the appointment of Renn Dickson Hampden [q. v.] to the regius professorship of divinity at Oxford was most unpopular. On 22 June, too, Melbourne appeared as co-respondent in the case Norton v. Lord Melbourne in the court of common pleas. The verdict was for the defendant, and the king expressed his satisfaction (Torrens, ii. 188–92; Lord Campbell, Life, ii. 82–5; Hayward, Celebrated Statesmen, i. 379–80, where Melbourne is said to have twice reiterated his denial of the alleged adultery; see also Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah). At the close of the session Lyndhurst delivered a terrific attack on the ministry, and at a cabinet meeting of 9 Aug. Melbourne owned that it was doubtful if they could go on. There was a fresh quarrel with the king on the subject of Canada, as William IV was very unwilling to admit the electoral principle into the constitution of the lower province. William also raised serious objections to the enlistment of the British legion in the service of Spain. In Ireland the creation of the National Association by O'Connell aroused the protestants to a great indignation meeting at Dublin, and Melbourne with difficulty dissuaded Mulgrave from dismissing Lords Downshire and Donoughmore from their lieutenancies. In spite of the strong objections of the king, the Church Rates Bill was introduced on 3 March; but it received feeble support, and ministers had nothing but defeat before them, when on 20 June William IV died. Melbourne, who had managed him throughout with the utmost tact, declared him to have been ‘a being of the most uncompromising and firmest honour that ever it pleased Divine Providence to set upon the throne.’
At the general election the whigs were confirmed in power, and Melbourne assumed the position of adviser to the youthful sovereign, than which, as Greville remarked, ‘none was ever more engrossing, or involved greater responsibility.’ He spent the greater part of his time at Windsor, where he discharged the duties of the queen's secretary, and contrived to make his unconventional manners conform to a somewhat rigid etiquette (see especially, Greville, pt. ii. vol. i. pp. 145–9; and Stockmar, Memoirs, i. 377–391). ‘I wish,’ said the Duke of Wellington, ‘that he was always there.’ Meanwhile, rebellion was imminent in Canada, and Lord Howick (the present Lord Grey) strongly remonstrated with Melbourne for his apparent apathy (27 Dec. 1837). After the rebellion had been crushed, Lord Durham was sent out on a special mission, and Melbourne was compelled to remonstrate with him for giving appointments to men of damaged character like Turton and Gibbon Wakefield, as well as for the ordinance by which he banished some of the rebels and sentenced others to death. Hence he could only make a weak defence when Durham's conduct was attacked by Brougham in the House of Lords. The excuse he gave for his silence on one occasion to Russell was: ‘The fellow was in such a state of excitement that if I had said a word he would have gone stark, staring mad.’ Towards Durham after his resignation he was disposed to be more conciliatory (November 1838) than most of his colleagues. At the same time he was not afraid of him or his friends. ‘He should be alarmed,’ he wrote, ‘at the prospect of a stand-up fight with Cribb or Gully, but not of a set-to with Luttrell or old Rogers.’ Though at first averse to giving constitutional government to the French in Lower Canada, he finally consented to the union of the provinces, which was carried out by Poulett Thomson (Lord Sydenham).
Meanwhile, Melbourne's government had gained some credit by passing the Irish Poor-law Bill, in spite of O'Connell's denunciation of the measure (July 1838), which was neutralised by the abandonment of the Irish Corporation Bill, and of the appropriation clauses of the Irish Tithe Bill, which had hitherto been the cardinal principle of the administration. At the beginning of the session Melbourne had intentionally set Brougham at defiance, and, in the opinion of Greville, came out of the ordeal with tolerable success. In spite of the open mutiny of the radicals, the political state of affairs
