details relating to the Episcopal revenues, to the right of the bishops to grant leases, and other matters of finance, which the ministers proposed so to remodel as to create a very large fund to be at the disposal of the state.  On this point the greater part of the ministerial scheme was wrecked for the time.  They succeeded in carrying that part of it which consolidated the bishoprics, and in inducing the House of Commons to grant, first as a loan, which was originally turned into a gift, a million of money to be divided among the incumbents of the different parishes, who were reduced to the greatest distress by the inability to procure payment of their tithes, the arrears of which amounted to a far larger sum.

But the assertion that any surplus fund arising from redistribution of the Episcopal revenues ought to belong to the state, not only called forth a vigorous resistance from the whole of the Tory party at its first promulgation, but, when the subject was revived the next year, and one of the supporters of the ministry, Mr. Ward, proposed a resolution that any such surplus might be legitimately applied to secular purposes, it produced a schism in the ministry itself.  The resolution was cordially accepted by Lord John Russell, but was so offensive to four of his colleagues, Mr. Stanley and Sir James Graham being among the number, that they at once resigned their offices.  The breach thus made was not easily healed; and before the end of the session other dissensions of a more vexatious and mortifying character led to the retirement of the Prime-minister himself.  All attempts to deal with the tithe question failed for the time, four more years elapsing before it was finally settled.  But, curtailed as it was, the bill of 1833 still deserves to be remembered as a landmark in constitutional legislation, since it afforded the first instance of Parliament affirming a right to deal with ecclesiastical dignities and endowments, thus setting a precedent which, in the next reign, was followed with regard to the Church of England.

Lord Melbourne succeeded Lord Grey at the Treasury; but every one saw that the ministry was greatly weakened.  The King, too, had become greatly dissatisfied both with their general policy, especially in regard to the Irish Church—­which he took an opportunity of assuring the Irish bishops he was unalterably resolved to uphold—­and also with the language and conduct of one or two individual ministers, to which it is not necessary to refer more particularly; and when, on the death of Lord Spencer, father of Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which took place in November, 1834, it became necessary for Lord Melbourne to propose to him a re-arrangement of some of the cabinet offices, he at once dismissed the whole body of the ministers.  It was a somewhat singular step to take, for they had not been defeated in Parliament, and he did not himself allege any special dissatisfaction with anything which they had yet done, though he did