was rejected; but they are now collected by the Home Secretary, on his own authority, and annually published.

We should exceed the proportional dimensions of our sketch of the career of Lord Brougham, were we so to enlarge our canvas in this summary chapter of our narrative, as to chronicle the judicially-expressed opinions which he uttered on the various great issues of party conflict which were raised in the last two decades of his life. We must content ourselves with noticing but one or two, that so we may leave a larger available space for, by comparison, a copious analysis of his utterances and doings in that field of social science which in his latter days he made peculiarly his own. For never was a great public theme of exposition and advocacy more closely allied with its expositor and advocate than were, in the years subsequent to 1855, Social Science and Brougham, the very Coryphæus of this great theme of his exposition, advocacy, and enlightened, associated, generous endeavour.

1850 chronicled one of the greatest debates of our Parliamentary history: it certainly was the greatest which has occurred in our times. It is best known as the Don Pacifico debate, and in it Lord Palmerston's whole foreign policy for twenty years was most splendidly assailed in both Houses, the assault being repelled in each House with equal brilliancy. In this magnificent passage of arms, in which the future historian will assign the highest places—and he will be unable, amongst the great gladiators, to assign the paramount palm-the names of Derby, Cockburn, Gladstone, and Palmerston himself will for ever stand out as the most conspicuous. Brougham took a middle course. He felt compelled to censure his

old colleague in the Reform Administration for what he considered his too decided and vigorous behaviour to the Hellenic kingdom; but pronounced a warm and evidently heart-felt eulogium upon the general conduct by the great future Premier of the foreign relations of England. It will be generally recollected that it was in this debate that Peel made his last speech. While, with Brougham, condemning those acts, instigated by Palmerston, in the Gulf of Argos, which were the immediate topic of discussion and animadversion, he at the same time, with Brougham, accorded a high meed of commendation to the general policy of the Whig Foreign Secretary; using these brief but pregnant words, "We are proud of him,” not "We are all proud of him," as they are generally reported; at least, if we may trust to the literal accuracy of Hansard. A few days passed, and Peel was no more. By men professing all shades of opinion, his eulogium was pronounced. The following were the concluding words of Lord Brougham's brief address :—

At the last stage of his public career, chequered as it was-and I told him in private that chequered it would be-when he was differing from those with whom he had been so long connected, and from purely public-spirited feelings was adopting a course which was so galling and unpleasing to them-I told him, I say, that he must turn from the storin without to the sunshine of an approving conscience within. Differing as we may differ on the point whether he was right or wrong, disputing as we may dispute as to the results of his policy, we must all believe that to the course which he firmly believed to be advantageous to his country he firmly adhered; and that, in pursuing it, he made sacrifices compared with which all the sacrifices exacted from public men by a sense of public duty, which I have ever known or read of, sink into nothing.

In the course of the Session of 1852, Brougham introduced and carried a very practical and useful bill, by the

provisions of which the period between the dissolution of a Parliament and the convocation and assembling of its successor was shortened from fifty to thirty-five days. In

the course of the speech which he made in support of the bill, he uttered the first of a series of powerful and earnest denunciations, to others of which we shall forthwith make reference, against bribery and corruption at elections. He expressed on this, as on future occasions, his belief that nothing effectual would be done until the Legislature made it compulsory upon every member of Parliament to explicitly swear on taking his seat that, neither directly nor indirectly, by himself or by his agents, had he received any votes purchased by bribery, or coerced by intimidation.

Speaking broadly, all Liberal measures which have been introduced during the recent long and almost uninterrupted rule of the Whigs and their more advanced allies have received the support of Brougham. Occasionally he opposed them, as when, after the conclusion of the Crimean War, he pronounced strongly against the continuance of the income-tax. He fortified his opposition to it by a precedent drawn from his own Parliamentary career. He stated that in 1816 he, in con

junction with Mr Baring, his trusty ally in the matter of the "Orders in Council," carried a reduction of six or eight millions in the amount of the income-tax; upon which the then Chancellor of the Exchequer withdrew his estimates, and framed new ones, on the principle of cutting his coat according to his cloth." All the groat measures of legal reform introduced by the Whigs, as, for example, their alteration of the law of divorce-or, rather, their cheapening the cost of obtaining divorce-the Bank

ruptcy Bill of Lord Westbury, and the Law of Limited Liability, found in Brougham a hearty supporter. He stood by Molesworth in his great scheme for making the colonies self-governing; by Russell, in his oft-reiterated attempts to open the portal of Parliament to the Jews; by those who were the advocates of a general improvement in convict discipline, and especially by the colonists who protested against the contamination of felon immigrants; by Milner Gibson and his zealous band of coadjutors in their arduous struggle to free printed knowledge from its last remaining shackle; and, although without any conspicuous emphasis, by Cobden and Gladstone in their noble work of advancing the great structure of Free Trade and enfranchised commercial intercourse between the nations of the earth.

Social Science: Establishment of Association for its Promotion ; Inaugural Address; Conferences at Birmingham, Dublin, London, Edinburgh, &c.--Diffusion of Useful Knowledge-Denunciation of Bribery-Co-operation-The Permissive Bill-Personal Incidents -Death of Lady Brougham-Brougham and Berryer-Pen-andink Sketch of Brougham in his Old Age-Brougham as an Author -Summary of his Career, Character, and Influence.

IN the autumn of 1855 it was suggested to Lord Brougham that he should take the lead in founding an association for cementing together all the branches of social economics, the growing and devoted study of which has been, perhaps, the leading phenomenon of our time, into one general and comprehensive whole. The fundamental idea of those pioneers who first projected the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, was to place reliance, in their investigations and the steps by which deductions were made from them, on the actual experience of social reformers, rather than upon a priori reasonings. They were to adopt, in a word, "mutatis mutandis," the method of that sister body, the British Association for the Promotion of (Physical) Science, of which Brougham himself was one of the leading and most useful members. The idea was at once heartily undertaken and supported. Various causes, the chief