Coningsby | Page 5

through the Lower House, the journals
which were looked upon as the organs of the ministry had announced
with unhesitating confidence, that Lord Grey was armed with what was
then called a 'carte blanche' to create any number of peers necessary to
insure its success. But public journalists who were under the control of
the ministry, and whose statements were never contradicted, were not
the sole authorities for this prevailing belief. Members of the House of
Commons, who were strong supporters of the cabinet, though not
connected with it by any official tie, had unequivocally stated in their
places that the Sovereign had not resisted the advice of his counsellors
to create peers, if such creation were required to carry into effect what
was then styled 'the great national measure.' In more than one instance,
ministers had been warned, that if they did not exercise that power with
prompt energy, they might deserve impeachment. And these
intimations and announcements had been made in the presence of
leading members of the Government, and had received from them, at
least, the sanction of their silence.
It did not subsequently appear that the Reform ministers had been
invested with any such power; but a conviction of the reverse, fostered
by these circumstances, had successfully acted upon the nervous
temperament, or the statesman-like prudence, of a certain section of the
peers, who consequently hesitated in their course; were known as being
no longer inclined to pursue their policy of the preceding session; had
thus obtained a title at that moment in everybody's mouth, the title of
'THE WAVERERS.'

Notwithstanding, therefore, the opposition of the Duke of Wellington
and of Lord Lyndhurst, the Waverers carried the second reading of the
Reform Bill; and then, scared at the consequences of their own
headstrong timidity, they went in a fright to the Duke and his able
adviser to extricate them from the inevitable result of their own conduct.
The ultimate device of these distracted counsels, where daring and
poltroonery, principle and expediency, public spirit and private intrigue,
each threw an ingredient into the turbulent spell, was the celebrated and
successful amendment to which we have referred.
But the Whig ministers, who, whatever may have been their faults,
were at least men of intellect and courage, were not to be beaten by 'the
Waverers.' They might have made terms with an audacious foe; they
trampled on a hesitating opponent. Lord Grey hastened to the palace.
Before the result of this appeal to the Sovereign was known, for its
effects were not immediate, on the second morning after the vote in the
House of Lords, Mr. Rigby had made that visit to Eton which had
summoned very unexpectedly the youthful Coningsby to London. He
was the orphan child of the youngest of the two sons of the Marquess
of Monmouth. It was a family famous for its hatreds. The eldest son
hated his father; and, it was said, in spite had married a lady to whom
that father was attached, and with whom Lord Monmouth then
meditated a second alliance. This eldest son lived at Naples, and had
several children, but maintained no connection either with his parent or
his native country. On the other hand, Lord Monmouth hated his
younger son, who had married, against his consent, a woman to whom
that son was devoted. A system of domestic persecution, sustained by
the hand of a master, had eventually broken up the health of its victim,
who died of a fever in a foreign country, where he had sought some
refuge from his creditors.
His widow returned to England with her child; and, not having a
relation, and scarcely an acquaintance in the world, made an appeal to
her husband's father, the wealthiest noble in England and a man who
was often prodigal, and occasionally generous. After some time, and
more trouble, after urgent and repeated, and what would have seemed

heart-rending, solicitations, the attorney of Lord Monmouth called
upon the widow of his client's son, and informed her of his Lordship's
decision. Provided she gave up her child, and permanently resided in
one of the remotest counties, he was authorised to make her, in four
quarterly payments, the yearly allowance of three hundred pounds, that
being the income that Lord Monmouth, who was the shrewdest
accountant in the country, had calculated a lone woman might very
decently exist upon in a small market town in the county of
Westmoreland.
Desperate necessity, the sense of her own forlornness, the utter
impossibility to struggle with an omnipotent foe, who, her husband had
taught her, was above all scruples, prejudices, and fears, and who,
though he respected law, despised opinion, made the victim yield. But
her sufferings were not long; the separation from her child, the bleak
clime, the strange faces around