speakers in the House. Specially noticeable almost from the first was the skill he displayed in reply. Macaulay, in an essay published in 1834, remarked that he seemed to pos sess intuitively the faculty which in most men is developed only by long and laborious practice. " Indeed, with the exception of Mr Stanley, whose knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembles an instinct, it would be difficult to name any eminent debater who has not made himself a master of his art at the expense of his audience." In the autumn of 1824 Stanley went on an extended tour through Canada and the United States in company with Mr Labouchere, afterwards Lord Taunton, and Mr Evelyn Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington. In May of the following year he married the second daughter of Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, created Baron Skelmersdale in 1828, by whom he had a family of two sons and one daughter who survived, besides three children who died in infancy. At the general election of 1826 Stanley renounced his connection with Stockbridge, and became the repre sentative of the borough of Preston, where the Derby in fluence has usually, though not invariably, been paramount. The change of seats had this advantage, that it left him free to speak against the system of rotten boroughs, which he did with great force during the Reform Bill debates, without laying himself open to the charge of personal inconsistency as the representative of a place where, according to Gay, cobblers used to "feast three years upon one vote." In 1827 he and several other distin guished Whigs made a coalition with Canning on the de fection of the more unyielding Tories, and he commenced his official life as under-secretary for the colonies. Whether the coalition arrangement would have proved stable had its distinguished leader survived is more than questionable, but It was entirely broken up by his death in August of the same year. Lord Goderich, who had been Stanley s chief at the Colonial Office, succeeded to the premiership, but he never was really in power, and he resigned his place after the lapse of a few months without venturing to meet parliament. During the succeeding administration of the duke of Wellington (1828-30), Stanley and those with whom he acted were in opposition. His robust and assertive Liberalism about this period sounds some what curiously to a younger generation who knew him only as the very embodiment of Conservatism. They can find little of the earl of Derby except his characteristic force of expression in the conviction uttered by Stanley, " that the old and stubborn spirit of Toryism is at last yield ing to the liberality of the age that the Tories of the old school, the sticklers for inveterate abuses under the name of the wisdom of our ancestors, the laudatores temporis acti are giving way on all sides." Even the most retrograde political party, however, makes distinct progress almost in spite of itself as the years pass on, and Lord Derby might very well have main tained that the Toryism he represented in his ma turity was not the Toryism he had denounced in his youth. By the advent of Lord Grey to power in November 1830, Stanley obtained his first opportunity of showing his capacity for a responsible office. He was appointed to the chief secretaryship of Ireland, a position in which, as it turned out, he found ample scope for both administrative and debating skill. On accepting office he had, according to the usual practice, to vacate his seat for Preston and seek re-election; and it must have been peculiarly mortify ing to one of his high spirit that, in spite of his family in fluence and growing reputation, he alone of all the members of the new ministry in the Lower House failed to secure his return. He was defeated, and the defeat was doubtless rendered more bitter by the fact that his opponent was the lladical "orator" Hunt. The contest was a peculiarly keen one, and turned upon the question of the ballot, which Stanley refused to support. He re-entered the house as one of the members for Windsor, Sir Hussey Vivian having resigned in his favour. In 1832 he again changed his seat, being returned for North Lancashire, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the House of Lords. Mr Stanley was one of the most ardent supporters of the great measure which has made Lord Grey s administra tion the most memorable of the present century. Of this no other proof is needed than his frequent parlia mentary utterances, which were fully in sympathy with the popular cry " The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." Reference may be made especially to the speech he delivered on the 4th March 1831 on the adjourned debate on the second reading of the bill, which was marked by all the higher qualities of his oratory. More than thirty years later, when he was premier, he was again called upon to deal with the question, and he had states manship enough to settle it on a permanent basis ; but the incertitude with which he then took what he himself in a well remembered phrase called " a leap in the dark " was in curious contrast to the clear conviction with which he advocated the earlier measure. Apart from his connection with the general policy of the Government, Stanley had more than enough to have employed all his energies in the management of his own department. The secretary of Ireland has seldom an easy task ; Stanley found it one of peculiar difficulty. The country was in a very unsettled state. The just concession that had been somewhat tardily yielded a short time before
- .n Catholic emancipation had excited the people to make all
sorts of demands, reasonable and unreasonable. As one result of that concession these demands were now permitted to be urged on the floor of the House by the most eloquent and the most widely popular representative Ireland has ever possessed, one, too, whose hatred of the " base, bloody, and brutal Whigs " seems to have totally unfitted him for judging Whig measures fairly. Problems of great practical difficulty in connection with the land and the church pressed for solution ; and the alarming increase of agrarian outrages demanded even more urgently the instant applica tion of vigorous measures of repression. Mr Stanley s con duct in these trying circumstances showed that he had the spirit that rises with difficulties. Undaunted by the fierce denunciations of O Connell, who styled him Scorpion Stanley, he discharged with determination the ungrateful task of carrying a Coercion Bill through the House. Parlia ment has probably seldom witnessed warmer or more per sonal encounters than those which took place about this time between the Liberator and the Irish Secretary, and seldom has an official position been more gallantly defended. It was generally felt that O Counell, powerful though he was, had fairly met his match in Stanley, who, with invec tive scarcely inferior to his own, evaded no challenge, ignored no argument, and left no taunt unanswered. The title " Rupert of Debate " is peculiarly applicable to him in connection with the fearless if also often reckless method of attack he showed in his parliamentary war with O Connell. It was first applied to him, however, thirteen years later by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton in the following passage of The New Timon ; " One after one the lords of time advance ; Here Stanley meets here Stanley scorns the glance! The brilliant chief, irregularly great, Frank, haughty, rash, the Rupert of debate." The best answer, however, which he made to the attacks
