influence he rightly attributed his rival’s success.  Lord Ashley was a well-known philanthropist, and his consistent support and patronage of many religious and charitable societies had naturally given him popularity among the Protestant clergy of all denominations,—­a popularity heightened in the case of the Evangelical and Calvinistic ministers by his Lordship’s strict Sabbatarianism and his belief in cold dinners on Sunday.  On the other hand, Mr. Roebuck was openly accused of private professions of skepticism in matters of religion; and this report, so dangerous to the repute of any public man in England, (where theology and politics so frequently cross each other,) considerably damaged his chance of success.  Lord Ashley, however, was in no way responsible for the rumor; and the difference between the conduct of the two during the contest was this, that Lord Ashley behaved like a gentleman and Mr. Roebuck did not.

During his retirement into private life, after this defeat in 1847, he wrote his work entitled “The History of the Whig Ministry of 1830,”—­a book in the preparation of which he is said to have received considerable and valuable assistance from no less a person than Lord Brougham.  Despite the aid that he received, it is amusing to find in his preface a characteristic vaunting of his entire difference with Lord Brougham about the character of King William IV.  “Lord Brougham,” he writes, “is accustomed to describe William IV as frank, just, and straightforward.  We believe him to have been very weak and very false, a finished dissembler, and always bitterly hostile to the Whig Ministry and their great measure of Reform.”  This is Roebuck all over.  He would infinitely rather argue that white was black than quietly coincide in any generally received opinion.

While on the subject of his writings, we will mention the book in which he vouchsafed to praise those whom he now so elaborately vilifies.  In 1849 he published an octavo volume of two hundred and forty-eight pages on “The Colonies of England.”  Speaking (page 84) of the vast and rapid progress made by this country, he says:—­

“We are led to inquire by what machinery, by what favoring circumstances, such a result has been brought about.  The people, be it remarked, are the same as ourselves,—­the original Thirteen States were the work of Englishmen.  English heads, English hearts, English hands brought those new communities into existence.  No longer connected by government with us, they nevertheless retained the characteristics of the race from which they sprang, and proceeding in the great work to which they were destined, they strode across the continent, the fairest portion of which they could now call their own.  In planting new settlements they were aided by our own people,—­the very elements out of which we endeavor to frame colonies, and with which we do produce sickly, miserable communities that can only be said to exist, and to linger on in a sort of half-life, without the spirit of a young, or the amenities and polish of an old community, and, above all, without any spirit of independence.”