In 1841 he accepted the office of Vice-President of the Board of Trade under Sir Robert Peel, afterwards becoming President as successor to Lord Ripon. In his address seeking re-election at Newark, he declared that the British farmer might rely upon two points—first, ‘that adequate protection would be given to him; secondly, that protection would be given him through the means of the sliding scale.’ In 1842 he was engaged in the preparation of the revised tariff, by which duties were either abolished or diminished on some twelve hundred articles. Greville writes in the March of that year that he had already displayed a capacity which made his admission into the Cabinet indispensable. In the course of the next year he became President of the Board of Trade and a member of the Cabinet, and the very first act he had to perform was to give his vote in favour of withdrawing the Bill providing for the education of children in factories, which had been violently opposed by the Dissenters on the plea that it was too favourable to the Established Church. In this connection we have the following curious story: A brusque but wealthy shipowner of Sunderland once entered the London office of Mr. Lindsay on business. ‘Noo, is Lindsay in?’ inquired the northern diamond in the rough. ‘Sir!’ exclaimed the clerk to whom the inquiry was addressed. ‘Well, then, is Mr. Lindsay in, seest thou?’ ‘He will be in shortly,’ said the clerk. ‘Will you wait?’ The Sunderland shipowner intimated that he would, and was ushered into an adjacent room, where a person was busily employed copying some statistics. Our Sunderland friend paced the room several times, and presently, walking to the table where the other occupant of the room was seated, took careful note of the writer’s doings. The copier looked up inquiringly, when the northerner said: ‘Thou writest a bonny hand, thou dost.’ ‘I am glad you think so,’ was the reply. ‘Ah! thou dost—thou maks thy figures well; thou’rt just the chap I want.’ ‘Indeed,’ said the Londoner. ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Sunderland. ‘I’m a man of few words. Noo, if thou’lt coom o’er to canny auld Sunderland, thou seest, I’ll gie thee a hoondred and twenty pund a year, and that’s a plum thou doesn’t meet with every day in thy life, I reckon—noo then.’ The Londoner thanked the admirer of his penmanship most gratefully, and intimated that he would like to consult Mr. Lindsay upon the subject. ‘Ah, that’s reet!’ And in walked Mr. Lindsay, who cordially greeted his Sunderland friend, after which the gentleman at the desk gravely rose and informed Mr. Lindsay of the handsome appointment which had been offered him in the Sunderland shipowner’s office. ‘Very well,’ said Mr. Lindsay, ‘I should be sorry to stand in your way; a hundred and twenty pound is more than I can afford to pay you in the department in which you are at present placed. You will find my friend a good and kind master, and, under the circumstances, I think the sooner