clergy reserves, and in 1853 came into acute collision with Bishop Wilberforce upon this subject (see Lord Albemarle, Fifty Years of my Life; Life of Bishop Wilberforce, ed. 1888, p. 142).
When, in January 1854, parliament reassembled on the eve of the Crimean war, Derby criticised Lord Aberdeen's policy in regard to the eastern question. As it was his government which had recognised Louis Napoleon as emperor in December 1852, he might well claim, as he did, that in the government's place he would have shown such unquestionable cordiality towards France as would have persuaded the Emperor Nicholas of the unanimity of Great Britain and France while there was yet time for him to draw back. Disraeli used to declare that he knew of his own knowledge there would have been no Crimean war if Derby had been in office. Later on, however, when war appeared to be inevitable, Lord Derby gave the ministry an assurance of his general support.
When Aberdeen's government was defeated on Roebuck's motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the war, on 29 Jan. 1855, and resigned, Derby was sent for and endeavoured to form a ministry; but he told the queen that the assistance both of Palmerston and of the Peelites would be indispensable to him; and when, for reasons still obscure, he failed to secure them, he resigned the attempt. Russell was equally unsuccessful, and accordingly Palmerston became prime minister. Had Derby formed an administration exclusively among his own supporters, he would, as he explained to the House of Lords on 7 Feb. 1855, have found himself overthrown by the coalition against him of the divided sections of radicals, whigs, Palmerstonians, and Peelites. He forgot, however, or so conservatives have since maintained, that in that case he had still the resource of a dissolution, with the high probability of wide electoral support as the minister who was seeking to repair the blunders of the Aberdeen government. He attributed undue importance to the Peelites, and he thought the rout of the protectionists more complete than it really was; perhaps, too, he was personally not very anxious to assume again the burden of office. But though he was content with opposition his party was not, and it was greatly disheartened and disorganised for some years. Lord Derby resumed his old attitude towards the government in the House of Lords. He supported Lord Ellenborough's resolutions condemnatory of the conduct of the war; he attacked the terms of the peace of Paris in the debate on the address in 1856; he opposed the life peerage of Lord Wensleydale; he criticised severely Lord Palmerston's management of the lorcha Arrow question, and the government's conduct of the war of the mutiny in 1857; but during a great part of the year he appeared little in parliament. His health was impaired, his party was insubordinate, and on the whole he kept to his sports and his private life as much as he could.
When Lord Palmerston resigned in 1858, the queen again sent for Lord Derby on 21 Feb., who, after another ineffectual application to the Peelites, formed, with Mr. Disraeli, a purely conservative administration. ‘No one,’ says Count Vitzthum von Eckstädt (Residence at St. Petersburg, p. 276), ‘entertained fewer illusions than Lord Derby himself as to the possibility of forming a lasting government with the forces at his disposal,’ though Lord John Russell's support was secretly assured to him; but he saw that he could now do his party a service by accustoming its leading members to official business, and the nation to seeing once more an actual conservative ministry. He promised some kind of franchise measure, but he found himself in the first instance confronted with the disputes with France arising out of the Orsini plot; with Naples regarding the seizure of the Cagliari; with the United States in connection with the right of search in the course of the suppression of the slave trade; and with the difficulties connected with the Indian mutiny and the government of India. These questions were fairly satisfactorily concluded. Lord Derby's eldest son, Lord Stanley, succeeded to the India office when Lord Ellenborough resigned. The India Bill was passed. The disabilities of Jews in regard to the parliamentary oath were removed [see Rothschild, Lionel Nathan de], the various international disputes adjusted, and the colony of British Columbia founded. In 1859 Lord Derby introduced a Reform Bill, since the question of reform had already been mooted by Lord John Russell, and he did not wish the conservative party to appear as stubborn opponents of all reform. Accordingly he introduced a bill to equalise the town and county franchise, but on the clause disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders his ministry was in March placed by Russell in a minority of thirty-nine, and accordingly he dissolved parliament (April). Though he gained seats, he was still in a minority when the new parliament met. He was much attacked for his supposed support of Austria against France on the eve of the war of 1859; though the complaint of Count Beust, the Austrian ambassador, was (Memoirs, i. 178) that he had
