The opportunity for vengeance was not long delayed. The Corn Bill left the House of Commons on May 15. On June 25 it passed the third reading in the House of Lords, and the most momentous measure of Queen Victoria's reign awaited only the Royal Assent to complete it. On that very night the House of Commons were to divide on one of those Bills conferring extraordinary powers on the Executive in Ireland which it has been the fate of successive Governments to introduce--Coercion Bills, as they are called for short. The Protectionists perceived what lay in their power: if they threw their weight in with the regular Opposition and O'Connell's Irish Catholics, they could defeat their lost leader. About eighty of them did so: the rest stayed away and Ministers were left in a minority of seventy-three. Peel resigned: "he had lost a party but won a nation." He never returned to office, but, though he did not live to see it, the principles for which he fought and fell became those of the Conservative party. [Sidenote: Review of Peel's Administration.] During the five years of his last Administration he had restored equilibrium to the national finances. He turned the deficit of two millions to which he succeeded to a surplus of five millions in 1845. He carried the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth against the votes of half his own party, though it cost him the loss of his colleague, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone himself lived to abolish the grant, for it was he who ruled the whirlwind that swept away the Irish State Church in 1866, and the Maynooth grants disappeared with it. Peel's Administration must also be credited with a marked advance in legislation for the working classes. Lord Ashley (better known in later years as Earl of Shaftesbury) had obtained the appointment of a Commission to inquire into the employment of women in collieries: the horrible evils thereby brought to light, the infamous degradation of women and girls, harnessed like beasts of draught with a girdle round their waist--unclothed, unwashed, and sometimes hopelessly crippled--deeply moved the public mind, and the Act of 1842, prohibiting the employment of females in mines, passed almost without opposition. More prolonged was the resistance to the Factory Act of 1844, regulating the hours of labour of youthful persons. This beneficent legislation should not be overlooked in the glare of conflict over the Corn Laws. [Illustration: _Sir E. Landseer, R.A._} {_In the Royal Collection (by permission of Messrs. Graves)._ THE QUEEN, PRINCE CONSORT, AND PRINCESS ROYAL, AT WINDSOR CASTLE, 1843.] [Illustration: _F. Winterhalter._} {_In the Royal Collection._ HER MAJESTY RECEIVING KING LOUIS PHILIPPE AT WINDSOR CASTLE, October 8, 1844.