AUTOBIOGEAPHY OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 461
prudent course. This earnest and polished invocation was made to include a scarcely concealed menace of the gravest character by which the Prelates were profoundly moved. It had, as was alleged, drawn from one of them, the fiery Bishop of Exeter, a declaration—whether on that floor or in a pastoral letter or in some other public form I do not now remember—that the course pursued by his Majesty's Government in their support of the Eeform measure was of a character well fitted to expose the stability of the Crown to danger. This imputed avowal was brought to the notice of the Lords by Earl Grey, during an excited stage of the debate,—I believe on the night before the final division 011 the Bill in the House of Lords. Pie denounced it vehemently and in scorching terms as eminently disloyal in its tendency, inconsistent with the allegiance due to the Throne from the Et. Eev. Prelate, as amounting, substantially to an invitation to insurrection, as a kind of moral treason and exhibited with eloquence and power the shocking impropriety of such a sentiment from one of the heads of the Church. The Bishop's bench was, at that time, directly behind that of the Ministers. Lord Grey soon turned round, thus facing the former and standing within a few feet of them, with the Marquis of Lansdowne on one side of him and the Duke of Eichmond on the other, both members of the Cabinet and both doing what they could to increase the excitement, by cries of hear! hear! which were re-echoed by the supporters of the Government and retorted by the opposition. The aroused Bishop had risen from his seat and Avithout symptom of flinching gave back to the Earl the fiercest glances of resentment and defiance.
This scene occurred at a late hour of the night—or rather an early hour of the morning—whilst I stood on the steps of the Throne, near the bench of the Bishops, the place assigned to the foreign ministers, and a more exciting one I have never witnessed.
Earl Grey was a man of noble stature and dignified address. My colleague in the United 'States Senate, Mr. Eufus King, had previously described him to me as being, upon the whole, the most imposing and impressive speaker he had heard in England. Such •was also the conclusion at which I arrived and altho' to my mind his idea) of an ultimate and superior obligation to his "order"— however chivalrous and unselfish the sentiment in him, the occasion of its utterance considered,—compromised the strict integrity of his whig principles, he was, without doubt, always and under all circumstances a patriot and an honest man.
The Duke of Wellington was not in power during my residence in England, and my intercourse with him was limited to a formal introduction and interchange of personal civilities when we happened to meet. He was nevertheless to me, of course, a subject of| Jo \ }|.M_ }U-'q |tii: i»q) o} }tt,KsU Apto ppH».)