In the spring of 1839 Napier assumed the command of the north of England. The first entry in his journal is significant. "Here I am," he writes on April 4th in Nottingham, "like a bull turned out for a fight after being kept in a dark stall." He had been in this dark stall for more than nine years. He had just arrived from London, where he had had many interviews with Lord John Russell and other governing authorities. That these glimpses of the source and centre of power had not dazzled his mind out of its previous opinions another extract from the journal will show. "Lord John Russell and the Tories are far more to blame than O'Connor in my opinion. The Whigs and the Tories are the real authors of these troubles, with their national debt, corn-laws, and new poor-law." The condition of England at this time was indeed precarious, yet it was inevitable. The remedy of reform, delayed until the last moment of an obstinate opposition, had excited hopes in the minds of the masses that could not be realised. "The poor you will have always with you." As well might the victim of hopeless disease expect to spring from the bed of sickness in perfect health and vigour after the first spoonful of his black draught as the deep-seated poverty of England look for cure in the black letter of the most radical statute; but there is the difference between making the best of the bad bargain of life and making the worst of it, and that is exactly the difference between the men who object to all change and those who hold that change must ever be the vital principle of progression.