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Lord George Bentinch; A Political Biography
Lord George Bentinch A Political Biography Author:Benjamin Disraeli General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1852 Original Publisher: Colburn and Co. Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can... more » select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. Parliament met on the 22nd January, 1846. The session was opened by her majesty in person. The pivot of the royal speech was Ireland ; its frequent assassinations, and the deficiency of its principal crop. Remedial measures in both respects were intimated, and in both respects these suggestions exercised the greatest influence on the proceedings of the session. A general eulogy of recent commercial legislation was followed by a vague recommendation to consider whether the advantageous principles on which it had been founded might not be more extensively applied. The debate on the address in the upper house was extremely bald. Instead of receiving those explanations which are usual on the change or the reconstruction of a ministry, and which the frankness of our parliamentary government not only justifies but requires, the Duke of Richmond was met by a strangedeclaration from the Duke of Wellington, administered, to the astonishment of both sides of the house, by way of reproof, which, if it meant anything, meant that the government represented by the illustrious warrior had not received the accustomed permission of the sovereign to reveal circumstances which their oaths as privy councillors bound them without such sanction to keep secret. What made this more strange was that the prime minister in the lower house, followed by Lord John Russell, was at the very time entering into all the desired details, while Lord Lansdowne on the part of the whigs, and Lord Stanley on the part of his own " personal consistency and honour," felt bound to state, in the p...« less