But while this, which is the most essential, has also been their strongest point, on everything else, without exception, they have been almost powerless, and the House of Commons has run riot with an independence and waywardness and a caprice of which it would be impossible to find an example. The Government has had no majority on which it could depend, and it has never brought forward any measure which it could count upon carrying through. Obliged to withdraw many measures altogether, and to submit to the alteration of others till they became totally different from what they originally proposed, their defeats have been innumerable, and nobody seems to have the smallest scruple in putting them in a minority upon any occasion; at the same time it was very evident that the House of Commons was determined that they should continue in office, for whenever any vital question arose, or any vote which could be construed into a question of confidence, and therefore involved the existence of the Government, they were always sure of a majority, and the Derbyite opposition, while they were able to worry and insult them by partial defeats and by exposing their general weakness, found themselves miserably baffled whenever they attempted anything which had a tendency to place the Government in serious embarrassment. The whole conduct of the Session, and the relations of the Government with the House of Commons, presented something certainly very different from what had ever been seen before in the memory of the oldest statesman, implied a total dissolution of party ties and obligations, and exhibited the Queen's Government and the House of Commons as resolved into their separate elements, and acting towards each other in independent and often antagonistic capacities. Disraeli was always reproaching the Government with holding office on what he termed the unconstitutional principle of not being supported by a majority of the House of Commons, and of living from hand to mouth; but though this was a plausible topic, he knew very well that no other government could be formed which could exist otherwise, and that the House of Commons, while it buffeted the Government about _au gré de ses caprices_, was quite determined to keep it alive, and not to allow any other to be substituted for it. At present it is difficult to see how this state of things is to be altered, and time alone can show whether great parties will again be formed, and governments be enabled to go on as in times past, powerful in a consistent and continual Parliamentary support, or whether a great change must be submitted to, and governments be content to drag on a precarious existence, taking what they can get from the House of Commons, and endeavouring to strengthen themselves by enlisting public opinion on their side. PRECARIOUS TENURE OF THE MINISTRY.