the Duke of Wellington, mean the end of the connection; and as they felt, so they spoke and acted. They were separatists, not of good-will, but from necessity and the nature of things. Among the Whigs, an even more important process was at work. By 1850 the disintegration of the Whig party was already far advanced. Finality in reform had already been found impossible, and Russell and the advanced men were slowly drawing ahead of conservatives like Melbourne and Palmerston. After 1846, the liberalizing power of Peel's steady scientific intelligence was at work, transforming the ideas of his allies, as he had formerly shattered those of his old friends, and, of Peel's followers, Gladstone at least seemed to be looking in the same direction as his master--towards administrative liberalism. The {281} Whig creed and programme were in the melting pot. Now, what made the final product not Whig, but Liberal, was on the whole the increasing influence of the parliamentary Radicals; and in colonial matters the Radicals, who told on the revived and quickened Whig party, were pronouncedly in favour of separation. It is too often assumed that the imperial creed of Durham and Buller was shared in by their fellow Radicals. That is a grave mistake. One may trace a descent towards separatism from Molesworth to Roebuck and Brougham. In Molesworth, the tendency was comparatively slight. No doubt in 1837, under the stress of the news of rebellion, he had proclaimed the end of the British dominion in America as his sincere desire.[52] But he believed in a colonial empire, if England would only guarantee good government. "The emancipation of colonies," he said, in a cooler mood, "must be a question of time and a question, in each case, of special expediency ... a question which would seldom or never arise between a colony and its mother country if all colonies were well governed"; and he explained his language about Canada on grounds of bad government. "I hope that the people of {282} that country (Lower Canada) will either recover the constitution which we have violated, or become wholly independent of us."[53] It is not necessary to quote Hume's confused but well-intentioned wanderings--views sharing with those of the people whom Hume represented, their crude philanthropy and imperfect clearness. But Roebuck marked a definite stage in advance; for, while he was willing to keep "the connexion," where it could be kept with honour, he seems to have regarded separation as inevitable--"come it must," he said--and his best hopes were that the separation might take place in amity and that a British North American federation might counterbalance the Union to the south.[54] Grote's placid and facile radicalism accepted the growing breach with Canada as the most desirable thing which could happen both to the mother country and the colony; and Brougham directed all his eccentric and ill-ordered energy and eloquence, not only to denounce the Whig leaders, but to