Graham that he had made up his mind not to join any Government unless he was replaced in his post as Premier--an arrangement which would have simply perpetuated those divisions and dissensions in the Liberal Party that enabled the Tories to hold office. Lord Palmerston forecast the fate of the Government with wonderful shrewdness, when he said that the chances were they would fall on some mountebankish proposal for helping everybody out of the taxes, without adding to the burdens on the taxpayer.[58] The Queen’s Speech, so to speak, showed the cloven hoof of the Protectionists. One paragraph filled the Free Traders with the darkest suspicions. It ran as follows:--“It gives me pleasure to be enabled, by the blessing of Providence, to congratulate you on the generally improved condition of the country, and especially of the industrious classes. If you should be of opinion that recent legislation, in contributing with other causes to this happy result, has at the same time inflicted unavoidable injury on certain important interests, I recommend you dispassionately to consider how far it may be practicable equitably to mitigate that injury, and to enable the industry of the country to meet successfully that unrestricted competition to which Parliament in its wisdom has decided that it should be subjected.” Writing to his wife on the day after the debate on the Address, Mr. Cobden alluded to this paragraph as “a queer, tricky allusion to the Free Trade question,” which “brought on a sharp attack upon the Government last night, and as all parties are agreed to force the Disraelites, I hope we shall bring matters to an end soon.”[59] The great aim of the Opposition, without distinction of faction, was to force the Government to say, frankly and fairly, whether they did or did not accept Free Trade in its entirety. But in the meantime an event occurred which for the moment stilled the clamour of contending parties, and united the whole nation in one great wail of mourning. That event was the death of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle on the 14th of September. This mournful calamity had been long expected. But when it happened the people seemed incapable of realising it. “It was,” said Prince Albert in a letter to Colonel Phipps, “as if in a tissue a particular thread which was worked into every pattern was suddenly withdrawn.” Moreover, it broke the last link that bound the nineteenth to the eighteenth century. “He was,” wrote the Queen to King Leopold, “the pride and good genius, as it were, of this country; the most loyal and devoted subject, and the staunchest supporter the Crown ever had. He was to us a true friend and most valuable adviser.... We shall soon stand sadly alone. Aberdeen is almost the only personal friend of the kind left to us--Melbourne, Peel, Liverpool, now the Duke--all gone.”[60] [Illustration: WALMER CASTLE.]