Parliament met on the 3rd of February, and members, of course, could talk of nothing save the rupture between Lord Palmerston and the Ministry. The Queen’s Speech suggested, as topics of legislation, certain Reports of Commissions on the practice and proceedings in the Supreme Court of Law and [Illustration: HARNESSING THE BLACK HORSES AT THE ROYAL MEWS, BUCKINGHAM PALACE. (_After the Painting by Charles Lutyens, in the Possession of the Earl of Bradford._)] Equity, the reorganisation of the Government of New Zealand, and Parliamentary Reform. Why, asked the Tories, was there no allusion to agricultural distress? Was it not absurd to congratulate the country on the fact that remission of import duties had not diminished revenue, when revenue was only maintained by the unpopular and iniquitous Income Tax? Why was no notice taken of the open and ostentatious defiance by the Roman Catholics of the Act against Papal Aggression? For the tranquillity of Ireland the Government surely ought not to take credit, inasmuch as it was due to the exodus of the Irish people to America. As for Parliamentary Reform, Lord Derby declared contemptuously that there were not 500 reasonable men in the country who wanted a new Reform Bill. These criticisms, however, fell flat. The one question of the hour was, Why had the Foreign Secretary resigned? and explanations were given by Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston. “In all my experience,” says Mr. Greville, writing of this incident, “I never recollect such a triumph as Lord John Russell achieved, and such complete discomfiture as Palmerston’s.... Palmerston was weak and inefficient, and it is pretty certain he was taken by surprise, and was unprepared for all that John Russell brought forward. Not a man of weight or influence said a word for him, nobody but Milnes [afterwards Lord Houghton] and [Lord] Dudley Stuart. The Queen’s letter was decisive, for it was evident his conduct must have been intolerable to elicit such charges and rebukes; and it cannot fail to strike everybody that no man of common spirit, and who felt a consciousness of innocence, would have brooked anything so insulting.”[49]