From this Election the history of the Queen’s reign enters on a fresh phase. Underlying every party intrigue and combination there is henceforth to be detected an irrepressible though concealed antagonism between the Parliamentary Reformers and their opponents. In England, it is a curious fact that political parties always exhaust their ingenuity in veiling the real issue between them. When a Government is punished by dismissal, it is not dismissed for the blunder it has committed, but because it has done, or refused to do, something else, which is hardly hinted at in public, but which has offended a powerful body of its supporters. Palmerston was a Minister whose ardent, impetuous temperament, and confidence in his own dexterity, rendered him prone to commit blunders. A Minister of that type can go on blundering with impunity so long as he is supposed to be trustworthy on the one great question which lies closest to the hearts of that section of his supporters, who are prepared to sacrifice him for their cause. But whenever they discover that he is not to be trusted, they take advantage of his first mistake to combine with his enemies and overthrow him. In the new Parliament of 1857, it was therefore clear that Palmerston’s personal ascendency would last till the party of Parliamentary Reform discovered that they had absolutely nothing to expect from him, save open or concealed hostility. It was because the Queen did not grasp this fact that she was startled to find, a few months after Parliament met, how rapidly Palmerston’s popularity was waning. Prince Albert also, strangely enough, mistook the verdict of the country in 1857, as being one cast solely against “the peace-at-any-price people.”[316] On the 7th of May the House of Commons began the business of the new Session. On that day the Lord Chancellor read the Queen’s Speech, which, contrary to general expectation, did not contain any reference to Parliamentary Reform. It was, says Lord Malmesbury, “the lamest production, even for a Queen’s Speech, I ever read.”[317] However, it gave a soothing account of foreign affairs, and intimated not only that the main stipulations of the Treaty of Paris had been carried out, and that the Neufchâtel difficulty was in a fair way of being settled, but it announced the signature of a Treaty of Peace with Persia. The only subject for regret in our foreign relations was, of course, the war with China. The legislative programme was meagre in the extreme, for the only important Bills promised were, one relating to the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts over wills and divorce, and another to check fraudulent breaches of trust. The Address was carried with very little debate, the Radicals being satisfied to let the question of Parliamentary Reform sleep, because Lord Palmerston promised that during the recess the Cabinet would give the subject serious consideration. It was, in truth, a dull and uneventful Session.