43 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1855- such policy could permanently succeed, or were willing to accept the delay certain to follow the adoption of even an imperfect scheme. In this the depth as well as the clearness of public opinion was misunderstood. The people wanted not the appearance, but the reality of power in the Government ; and it was certain that in no other way could the dead-lock of parties be ended, and a Ministry constructed strong enough in public support to overcome the inertia of the Peers and make progressive legislation possible. For some time longer, however, the game of delay and compromise was to be played, and the establishment of the Derby Ministry was but another move. The new Premier, who knew exactly what his acceptance of office meant, did not evidently expect that considerations of political con- sistency would stand in the way of his obtaining colleagues, for, when he made his statement in the House of Lords on the ist of March, he said that he had applied to men as divergent in opinion as Mr. Gladstone, the Duke of New- castle, and Earl Grey, and was surprised to receive refusals from them all. The Government had to be formed, then, with no pretence of coalition which would give the sem- blance of Parliamentary support ; it was to exist avowedly on sufferance. This plan of governing without a Government, of con- verting the Cabinet into a mechanical administrator of the decrees of Parliament, was unexpectedly successful in one case of supreme national importance. The outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, and the means by which it had been sup- pressed, had made a change in the form of Government of that country inevitable. It was a conviction almost universal amongst others than members and dependents of the old authority, that the period of mixed, and therefore partially irresponsible, government must end, and that the nation must assume the direct duty of ruling the millons of subjects of its great eastern empire. On the I2th of February Lord Palmerston being then in office had moved for leave to bring in a bill to transfer the government of
