But Palmerston, though a fallen Minister, was not the man to sit meekly under such a mortification. As he said himself, he would soon give Lord John Russell “tit for tat.” His chance for retaliation came when the arbitrary acts of the Prince-President of the French Republic roused the fighting instincts of the English people. A wave of panic ran over the country, and it was asserted that as Charles Louis Bonaparte had founded his power by the sword, so by free use of the sword must he keep it. M. Berryer had expressed in the Chamber the taunt which was freely whispered through France, that the Prince-President’s aim was to establish an “Empire without genius and without military glory.” Surely, then, Englishmen argued, France under this unscrupulous usurper must be forced into war, in order to divert her attention from the bondage in which she is held by her Autocrat and his army. But if France must needs make war so that the French people may get military glory in compensation for civil liberty, a war on England, whose Press teemed with insulting criticisms on the brutality of the _coup d’état_, was of all wars the one most likely to be popular with the French soldiery. From such reasoning it was but a corollary that England was, as usual, utterly unprepared for attack, and a panic-cry was accordingly revived in favour of strengthening her defensive forces. Yielding to this cry, Lord John Russell introduced his celebrated Militia Bill, which organised a local as distinguished from a general militia--that is to say, a force whose regiments could be called on for service, not in any part of the United Kingdom, but only in their own counties. This was the weak point of the scheme, and the Duke of Wellington did not conceal his bad opinion of it. Fortified by the Duke’s moral support, Lord Palmerston assailed the Militia Bill of the Government with relentless ferocity. On the 20th of February he carried against the Government, by a majority of nine, an amendment in favour of organising a general instead of a local militia, and Lord John Russell resigned on the 23rd of February. Thus fell the last Whig Cabinet that has ruled England--all succeeding Liberal Ministries being either coalitions of Whigs, Peelites, and Radicals, or of Whigs and Radicals alone.