1850.] Resignation oj Sir Robert Peel to his Death. 367 tinned disaffection in Ireland, and the distress caused there by another failure of the potato crop ; and it recommended an alteration or repeal of the navigation laws. This was not a vigorous programme, but the Ministry were not in a vigorous state. They had been from the first dependent upon the assistance of the Peelites ; and that support, given heartily until the policy of free trade seemed secure, was now, if not withdrawn, at least considerably relaxed.* Whilst this was the case with the leaders, it was natural that many of the rank and file, who had left the Conservatives under the influence of a national emergency, but were generally more in accord with them than with the Liberals, should gradually return to friendly relations with their old party. This state of affairs gave trouble to the ministerial army on both wings, for it encouraged the Tories on the one side, and the Radicals on the other, to renewed exertions. The Tories showed their sense of the improvement in their prospects by moving amendments to the address in both Houses, the two leaders, Stanley and Disraeli, taking the initiative. The amendments declared "That neither your Majesty's relations with foreign powers, nor the state of the revenue, nor the condition of the commercial and manufac- turing interests; are such as to entitle us to address you in the language of congratulation ; but that a large portion of the agricultural and colonial interests of the empire are labouring under a state of progressive depression, calculated to excite serious apprehension and anxiety." In the Lords the amend- ment was taken to a division, and the Ministry were only saved from defeat by the aid of the Duke of Wellington, and even by that help their majority was only two, the numbers being fifty-two to fifty. The attack in the Commons was less successful. It was opened by Disraeli, who marked and justified his accession to the leadership by a speech of great
- " The session of 1849 was remarkable chiefly for the neutrality of Sir Robert
Peel, and for the state of debility into which the Ministry, in whom no man reposed confidence, consequently fell." Doubleday's Political Life of Sir Robert Peel, vol. ii. p. 463.
