of the Church.  At the beginning of the year the Government had been strong enough to throw out Lord Howick’s motion for a committee of inquiry into the causes of distress, which would have entailed a division upon the Corn Laws; but the strength of the Ministry was now seriously diminished.  Parliament was prorogued late in August; on the 5th Lord John left London, hoping that he had done with politics till next year.  The whole family moved down to Endsleigh, where, soon afterwards, his eldest stepdaughter fell ill of a fever.

Lady John caught the infection.  She had been living up to the limit of her energies, and her case proved a grave one.  They moved to Minto in October, and never again used Endsleigh as their country house.  By the beginning of 1844 she was sufficiently recovered to attend the House of Commons and to hear her husband speak upon the Irish question.  In this speech he declared himself in favour of putting Catholics, Anglicans, and Dissenters on an equality; not by disestablishing the English Church in Ireland, but by endowing the Catholics.  He summed up the political situation by saying:  “In England the government, as it should be, is a government of opinion; the government of Ireland is notoriously a government by force.”

    February 15, 1844

O’Connell arrived from Dublin—­much cheered by the crowd outside and by the Irish and Radical members inside the House.  John shook hands with him.  O’Connell said:  “I thank you for your admirable speech.  It makes up to us for much that we have gone through.”

Lady John’s next Diary was lost, and the first entry in her new Diary was written after serious illness.

    LONDON, February 2, 1845

I have found in illness even more than in health how much better I am loved than I deserve to be.  To say nothing of the unwearied care and cheerful watching of my dearest John, the children have given me such proofs of affection as gladdened many an hour of pain or weariness.  One day, while I was ill in bed, and Georgy by me, I told her how kind it was of God to send illness upon us at times, as warnings to repent of past faults and prepare for death.  Upon which she said:  “But, Mama, you can’t have done anything to be sorry for.”  No self-examination, no sermon, could have made me feel more humble than these words of a little child.

During the early part of the year, while Lord John was supporting in the House of Commons the endowment of the Maynooth College for priests and the establishment of colleges in other important Irish towns, Lady John was living at Unsted Wood, near Godalming, a house they had taken for the year.

Their constant separation was painful to both, and as soon as Parliament rose they decided to go to Minto.  There the state of her health became so alarming that, to be within reach of medical advice, they moved to Edinburgh.