unwisdom, urged the Ministry to reject the Address when it was drawn up. The lobbies of the House of Commons and the political clubs were then electrical with excitement. The leaders of parties almost came into personal collision with each other. Charges of “treason” were bandied about, when Tory partisans foolishly declared in private that the Queen was with them, and would never let the Radicals despoil the Irish Church. As for the Radicals, they retorted by saying that at the General Election when they marched to the polls, they would substitute Ebenezer Elliott’s hymn, “God Save the People,” for the National Anthem, “God Save the Queen.” The management of the business by the Prime Minister must have been maladroit indeed, when it raised such fierce and passionate antagonisms. But the question was--What advice did Mr. Disraeli really give the Queen when he saw her at Osborne? His own statement, on Monday the 4th of May, was so ambiguous that it further compromised the Sovereign, by dragging her into a war of factions. He said he had a constitutional right to dissolve a Parliament “elected when he was in Opposition,” and he had advised the Queen on the previous Friday to dissolve. To render this course easy he had tendered the resignation of the Ministry--an offer made, it is now known, without consultation with his colleagues. The Queen had asked him to give her a day for consideration. Then she had ordered him not to resign, but had given him permission to dissolve as soon as the state of public business permitted it. The vital part of the statement occupied ten minutes in delivery. In it the name of the Queen was mentioned thirteen times, and it was so used as to convey the idea that it was her Majesty, and not her Minister, who had decided that a Cabinet which had lost the confidence of the House of Commons should hold office in the teeth of a hostile majority. What made matters worse was that the Duke of Richmond in the Upper House said that the Queen, in refusing Mr. Disraeli’s resignation, had given him permission to dissolve “in the event of any difficulties arising.” Again, by the stupidity or unfaithfulness of her Ministers, was the Queen held up to public odium. It was immediately inferred from the Duke of Richmond’s statement that the Sovereign had delegated to her Minister the highest of her prerogatives--that of dissolving Parliament--not for a special occasion, all the circumstances of which had been studied by her, but in a vague general kind of way, to enable him to coerce the Commons of England, whenever he thought fit. All through the week passionate conflicts raged in the House, greatly to the vexation of the Queen, whose attitude had been misrepresented as unconstitutional. On Thursday, the 7th of May, the two last Resolutions on the Irish Church passed without a division.[283] In the debate, however, Mr. Disraeli got up a turbulent “scene,” by dropping quite casually a quiet sarcastic remark