detestation which partisans always feel for a renegade. In 1836
Charles Dickens, in his capacity of Parliamentary reporter, had
conversed with an ancient M.P. who allowed that Lord Stanley--who
became Lord Derby in 1851--might do something one of these days,
but "he's too young, sir--too young." The active politicians of
the sixties did not forget that this too-young Stanley, heir of a
great Whig house, had flung himself with ardour into the popular
cause, and, when the Lords threw out the first Reform Bill, had
jumped on to the table at Brooks's and had proclaimed the great
constitutional truth--reaffirmed over the Parliament Bill in 1911--that
"His Majesty can clap coronets on the heads of a whole company of
his Foot Guards."

The question of the influences which had changed Stanley from a
Whig to a Tory lies outside the purview of a sketch like this. For
my present purpose it must suffice to say that, as he had absolutely
nothing to gain by the change, we may fairly assume that it was due
to conviction. But whether it was due to conviction, or to ambition,
or to temper, or to anything else, it made the Whigs who remained
Whigs, very sore. Lord Clarendon, a typical Whig placeman, said
that Stanley was "a great aristocrat, proud of family and wealth,
but had no generosity for friend or foe, and never acknowledged
help." Some allowance must be made for the ruffled feelings of
a party which sees its most brilliant recruit absorbed into the
opposing ranks, and certainly Stanley was such a recruit as any
party would have been thankful to claim.

He was the future head of one of the few English families which
the exacting genealogists of the Continent recognize as noble. To
pedigree he added great possessions, and wealth which the industrial