The Queen sent for Lord Stanley, who frankly told her that he could not undertake to form a Ministry. He, however, said he would try to form one if Lord John Russell failed to reconstruct his defeated Cabinet. Lord Stanley’s motive for refusing office is to be found in the fact that there was a serious division of opinion among his followers, on the one question that was vital to their existence as a party. Some of the ablest of them, led by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, objected to any proposal to tax foreign corn, and yet if the Protectionists refused to do that, their _locus standi_ in the country was gone. Her Majesty next appealed to Lord John Russell to form a coalition with the Peelites. This project proved to be hopeless. The Peelites were bitterly opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and though Lord John offered to attenuate it to the verge of absolute nullity, they could not sanction it in any shape or form. Moreover, Sir James Graham was afraid that if he joined a Whig Ministry he might quarrel with Lord Palmerston, and Lord Grey was equally afraid that he might quarrel with Sir James Graham. The Peelite leaders also thought that before a Coalition Government could be organised with any chance of success, it must be preceded by co-operation in opposition, between the two parties to it, and hence they wished Lord Stanley to form a Ministry which, from its Protectionist policy, must needs have but a brief existence. This abortive attempt to form an alliance between the Whigs and the Peelites is memorable, because it was the first step that led them both on the path which brought them to the celebrated and fateful Coalition of 1852.