to the effect that those who introduced the Resolutions after throwing the country into confusion, were already quarrelling over the spoil. Mr. Bright could no longer restrain himself. He accused Mr. Disraeli of now abandoning, for the sake of office, the Irish Ecclesiastical policy he had advocated twenty-five years before.[284] He had talked of his interviews with the Queen “with a mixture of pompousness and servility,” but he had deceived his Queen, if he still held the views which he advocated twenty-five years ago, and he had been guilty of a crime in skulking behind her authority, after he had pushed her to the front in a great party struggle. This turned the House into a scene of dreadful strife, and Mr. Disraeli retorted to the effect that Mr. Bright was not a gentleman. If Mr. Disraeli really desired to dissolve at this time it is strange that he missed this opportunity. Mr. Bright’s vituperation, together with the growing rancour of Mr. Gladstone and his supporters, might have enabled the Premier to plead the factious violence of his opponents as an excuse for a penal dissolution. But he did not dissolve. It was thenceforward clear that if it be a vital principle of the constitution that the Government must enjoy the confidence and support of a majority of the House of Commons, the country was without any constitutional Government at all. Though it was expected up to the last moment that the Queen would give an evasive reply to the Address on the Irish Church, her answer was a frank declaration that she did not desire her interest in the temporalities of the Irish Church to obstruct the discussion of a Bill for dealing with them. A Suspensory Bill, preventing the creation of new personal interests, was accordingly passed by the Commons, though it was rejected by the House of Lords. At length Mr. Disraeli, after the Whitsuntide holidays, agreed to dissolve Parliament in October, and Mr. Ward Hunt passed a Bill to facilitate registration, so that the lists of new voters might be made up on the 1st of November, the new writs for the General Election being issued on the 9th.