Hardly had the Queen and the country ceased to rejoice over political, diplomatic, and military triumphs, than another painful Ministerial crisis had to be faced. Sovereign and subject were alike touched by the strange and dramatic coincidence of their trusted Minister, at the supreme moment of victory, falling, like Tarpeia, crushed, as if in requital for a great service to the people. On the 26th of June there was a Cabinet meeting to consider the hostile vote on the Irish Coercion Bill, and the Prime Minister went down to Osborne to confer with the Queen. He returned to inform Parliament, on the 29th, that Ministers had tendered their resignations, and only held office till their successors could relieve them of their posts. He also said that he would support Lord John Russell in all his Free Trade measures, and paid an eloquent tribute to Mr. Cobden, to whom he generously gave credit for organising the victory of the Free Traders. When he left the House he was followed home by a cheering crowd. The resignation of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues was a mournful incident in the Queen’s life. She had learned to respect and trust the Prime Minister and his colleagues, one of whom, Lord Aberdeen, had, by his gentle manners and cultured companionship, won the hearts of the Queen and the Prince Consort. The country, in the opinion of the Queen, was in a critical condition. One of the great political parties was shattered as a governing organisation, and her Majesty and her husband both knew how safe and valuable was the pilotage of those with whom, says Sir Theodore Martin, “they had grown familiar, not merely in the anxious counsels of State, but in the intimacies of friendship.”