The Bill passed both Houses, the noble Lords preferring their coronets to their convictions. The Conservative defeat was complete and irreparable. 'Vengeance, therefore, had succeeded in most breasts to more sanguine sentiments; the field was lost, but at any rate there was retribution for those who betrayed it.' The desire of vengeance was human. Perhaps there was a feeling, more respectable, that if Peel was allowed to triumph some other institution might be attacked on similar lines; but it cannot be said that the occasion which the Conservatives used to punish him was particularly creditable to them. Ireland was starving, and Ireland was mutinous. Ordinary law proving, as usual, unequal to the demand upon it, Peel was obliged to bring in one of the too familiar Coercion Bills. Both parties when in office are driven to this expedient. The Liberals when in opposition generally denounce it. The Conservatives, as believing in order and authority, are in the habit of supporting the Administration, even if it be the Administration of their rivals. However discontented Peel might know his followers to be, he had no reason to expect that they would desert him on such a ground as this. His Coercion Bill passed the Lords without difficulty. It was read a first time in the House of Commons in an interval in the Corn Laws debate. A Conservative Opposition at such a crisis was at least factious, for there was danger of actual rebellion in Ireland. It was factious and it was not easy to organise. The opportunity was not a good one, but if it was allowed to escape a second was not likely to offer. Disraeli was a free-lance, and had opposed Coercion before. Lord George had committed himself by his vote on the first reading. But he had a private grudge of his own against Peel. They resolved to try what could be done, and called a meeting of the Conservative party. They found their friends cold. 'There is no saying how our men will go,' Lord George said to Disraeli. 'It may be perilous, but if we lose this chance the traitor will escape. I will make the plunge.' Lord George's avowed ground was that he could no longer trust Peel and 'must therefore refuse to give him unconstitutional powers.' On the merits he would probably have been defeated; but the main point was lost sight of in the personal quarrel to which the debate gave rise. Peel's conduct on the Corn Laws had revived the recollection of his treatment of Catholic Emancipation. When Canning, in 1827, was proposing to deal with it Peel had refused to join his Ministry on this avowed ground, and Canning's death was popularly connected with his supposed mortification at his failure on that occasion. Disraeli, as we have seen, had given Peel one sharp wound by referring to this episode in his career. Lord George dealt him another and a worse. The object was to prove that Peel's treachery was an old habit with him. He insisted that while he had