mittee of inquiry to verify a statement of estimates, was in substance equivalent to a declaration that the ministry had lost the confidence of the House of Commons and was so understood by the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues. It was carried by a majority of 233 against 204-a majority in a very full house of 29 against the ministers. The next morning, the Duke of Wellington in the House of Peers, and Mr Peel, the ministerial leader in the Commons, announced that they had tendered to the king the resignation of their offices, which had been accepted. All important parliamentary business was of course suspended till the new administration should be completed. In the interval between the commencement of the debate upon the civil list, and its termination, Mr Herries introduced in the House of Commons the new schedule of duties upon the trade between the United States of America and the British Colonies in America. Upon which occasion he took credit to the ministry for their exemplification in this case, of the principle which Mr Huskisson had avowed, as fundamental to the commercial policy of Great Britain-not only of promoting her interest, but of depressing that of her rival. Upon one of the items, that of one shilling and two pence, on every quarter of corn imported from the United States to the West Indies, a division took place of 136 in favor of the duty to 36 against it. The bill was introduced to secure for British navi gation in this intercourse the whole benefit of carrying the article imported from the United States into the West Indies; an advantage which the minister expected to derive from the arrangement recently made on that subject with the American Government. On the 15th of November, the day of the vote against the ministry upon the civil list in the House of Commons, the Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst brought into the House of Peers the bill for the contingent establishment of a Regency, in the event of the accession to the throne of the Princess Victoria, daughter of the deceased Duke of Kent, presumptive heiress to the crown, before she should attain the age of 18 years. And thus terminated the administration of the Duke of Wellington, after a turbulent existence of little less than three years among the singularities of which is that the only act which will signalize it for the approbation of posterity, is an act of political apostacy from his own principles. The experience of all ages and of every region of the globe has proved that the principle of gravitation in physical nature is not more universal, than that of military achievement and renown to the government of the state Le premier qui fut Roi, fut un Soldat heureux - many of the most important qualifications for a commander of armies, are equally necessary for the ruler of nations, and the common judgment of mankind which always moves in masses, never fails to conclude that victory in the field, is the infallible test of wisdom in council. This inference has not always been confirmed by subsequent events, and military chieftains have not always proved the wisest or the best of civil governors. The Duke of Wellington, bred from childhood a soldier, and having passed through a military career of unrivalled splendor, or at least, success, had himself declared the consciousness of his own incompetency to the chief management of the affairs of the nation, within one short year before he had undertaken it. The opinion of his incompetency was not confined to himself. It was shared by all the distinguished statesmen of the realm, of all parties, but not by the great body of the people. He had received a liberal education at Eton school; had held many important civil offices; had conducted for a series of years the most important negotiations, and as a member of preceding administrations, and of both Houses of Parliament had the most familiar acquaintance with all the great concerns of the country, with all the forms of proceeding in the national councils, and all the principles upon which the government had for à long series of years been administered. The people could not believe that such a man was incompetent to hold the reins of Empire. energy, and of that the Duke of Wellington had a Benjamin's portion. In the conduct of public affairs, this quality is as indispensable in peace as in war. In both it may sometimes for a considerable period supply the place of discretion, but whoever at the head of the nation, relies upon it entirely will, as was said by his brother the Marquis of Wellesley of Napoleon, prepare for himself great reverses. " It Military command, essentially consists in the unobstructed exercise of the will, over the action of others. The tendency of successful command, is to inspire disproportionate self confidence, and impatience of control. produces a disposition to underrate the value of council, and sometimes an indisposition to receive it. Frederick the Great laid it down as a maxim, that a General who wishes to do nothing has only to call a council of war. Decision is the most efficient quality for the gain of battles, and when it has often been exerted with great success, it leads to an under estimate of deliberation, and an irksomeness at receiving advice. In the selection of his associates for the discharge of civil trusts, a military commander will, therefore, be apt to prefer subaltern to pre-eminent talents, and subserviency to his will, rathHe reer than a bold spirit and indepenceived them from the hands of dent judgment. Such was the Lord Goderich, voluntarily sur- character of the Duke of Wellingrendered by him, as unmanagea- ton's administration. The scanble by mere plain good sense and tiness of talent among his colhonest intentions. The quality leagues was a subject of general which had appeared to be most remark, and their submission to deficient in his administration was his will was not less conspicuous than their inability by the process of their understandings to form and sustain one of their own.This domineering temper was manifested throughout his whole ministerial career, and never more emphatically than in the peremptory declaration against parliamentary reform, which brought it to a close. To the general deficiency of talents in the Duke's administration, an exception must be made in behalf of Sir Robert Peel, definitively its leader in the House of Commons, a man far more competent for the head of a ministry than the Duke himself. There was for some time another exception in the person of Mr Huskisson, of whom, probably for that very reason,the Duke disembarrassed himself with as little of ceremony in point of form, as of delicacy in substance. In the correspondence which accompanied his expulsion from the ministry, the trampling of a more resolute purpose upon a more intelligent mind was exhibited in glaring light. The melancholy death of Mr Huskisson preceded only by a few months the Duke's ministerial downfal; and if his spirit could then retain any portion of earthly resentment, and had any consciousness of the latter event, it might be soothed by the recollection that it was his vote upon the disfranchisement of East-Retford, involving the question of parliamentary reform, which the Duke's political intolerance had punished by driving him from the highest councils of his country. On receiving the resignations of the Duke of Wellington and of Sir Robert Peel, the king asked them separately to whom he should apply to form a new ministry, and they both recommended Earl Grey. He was accordingly sent for at 5 o'clock on the 16th and received the royal command to form a cabinet-the king declaring that the Duke of Wellington had his undivided confidence when minister, and that it would equally without reserve be transferred to his successor. This declaration was well received by the public, and contributed largely to increase the personal popularity of the king. As an exemplification of the individual nullity of a king of England in the administration of public affairs it is remarkable. A transfer of un qualified confidence from a tory to a whig ministry, produced by a single vote for inquiry of the House of Commons upon a bill for the establishment of the civil list, if the king were in any case. responsible for his political principles would indicate little steadfastness of character. The king as Duke of Clarence had been an uncompromising tory, from the first explosion of the French Revolution. So sudden and total a change of principle, not merely with regard to a single measure like that of Catholic emancipation, but to a whole system of policy for the management of the affairs of the kingdom at home and abroad, would not have been tolerated in any responsible individual. In the king it was generally approved as an act of signal homage to the principles of the Constitution. The new Ministry was an Postmaster General, Duke of Richmond. SUBORDINATE APPOINTMENTS. Lord Chamberlain, Duke of Devonshire. Chief Commissioner of Woods and For- Master General of the Ordnance, Lieut. Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr Stanley. Vice President of the Board of Trade, Attorney General of Ireland, Mr Pen nefather. Paymaster of the Forces, Lord John Russel. Surveyor General to the Board of Ordnance, Sir Robert Spencer. In this list we find Mr Henry Brougham, transformed into Lord Brougham and Vaux, Lord Chancellor of England. The metamorphosis was not effected without some difficulty. He had come into the new Parliament, with highly augmented consideration, as a member for Yorkshire. His warfare during the interval between the two Parliaments against the ministry had been incessant, and he had come full charged with projects of parlia mentary reform, and for the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies. His attack upon the administration, in the first debate on the address in answer to the royal speech, had been vigorous and impressive, and the overthrow of the ministry had been attributed more to him than to any other man. It was foreseen that while he remained in the House of Commons,no administration could be safe without his aid, and it had been supposed that this could be obtained upon more moderate terms than it was found his own estimate of his importance required. Before the change of ministry had taken place, he had given notice of an intended motion for Reform of Parliament, and when the resignation of the ministers was announced by Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons, upon the postponement, with other business, of his motion, Mr Brougham said that as no change of ministry could affect HIM, he should certainly call up his motion, on the 25th. On the 23d he took his seat upon the Woolsack as Lord Chancellor, much to the surprise of the new opposition, and of the public, and not without severe animadversion. It was understood that Earl Grey would have preferred to retain him as the ministerial leader in the House of Commons, but that Mr Brougham could not be retained. The Peerage and the Woolsack, were a sine qua non to him, and he received all approaches of the new Premier with a lofty indifference, intimating significantly that he might not without hesitation accept the Peerage and the Chancery as equivalent for the representation of Yorkshire. These scruples were however not of long continuance; for on the 22d a patent of Peerage was made out, and the next day he presided in the House of Lords. Earl Grey upon presenting himself to that House as the head of the new administration, made a speech in which he declared that the principles of his government should be economy and retrenchment at home; non-intercourse with the internal affairs of other nations; and a Reform of Parliament in the House of Commons. These were now the popular doctrines of the British nation. Thenceforward, a new system of government was to direct the fortunes and regulate the affairs of the British Empire. But retrenchment and economy had been the avowed purpose of the preceding and indeed of all preceding administrations; even of the most extravagant and profuse. At one of the most wasteful periods of British history, when the annual provision for fifty millions sterling of expenditure was called for, from Parliament, a member of the ministerial board solemnly declared to the House of Commons that the Government never spent a shilling without looking at both sides of it. A standing theme and hackneyed boast of the royal speeches to Parliament was economy; and the common effort of the ministers, from time immemorial, has been to find out some paltry superfluity to curtail, and to blazon it forth as a sinking fund to the national debt. The retrenchments of Earl Grey will not materially differ from those of his predecessors, and as economy is always a relative term, resting not upon the amount of expenses but upon the circumstances and means of the expending party upon the collateral condition of others and upon the manners, fashions and customs of the times, he like others has found it more easy to promise in Parliament than to introduce it into the complex machinery of the Executive Government. The disclaimer of all interference in the internal affairs of other States is also a principle subject to much qualification. If by speaking of the king's endeavors to restore good government in the Netherlands the Duke of Wellington had intended to announce the determination to restore the dominion of the House of Orange in the Belgian Provinces, it was certain that object would not be further. pursued under the Administration of Earl Grey but the protocols of the five powers at London have too often and too imperiously dictated to the people of Belgium their own destinies to be rigorously reconcilable with the principle of non-intervention. The undoubted desire both of the Belgian and of the French people was the re-annexation of Belgium to France. It was also the unquestionable interest of both.Belgium is geographically part of France as much as the Depart |