Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/127

1815.] Dismissal of Grenville to the End of the War. 113 continued the most stringent provisions of the old law. It was opposed, but ineffectually only twenty-eight of the extreme opposition voting against it. Whitbread, who had become increasingly active and irritating to the Government, was of course in the minority, and so also was Lord John Russell, who had in 1813 been elected for the family borough of Tavistock. During the year 1814 a great misfortune befell one of the most able and most popular members of the small Radical party. Lord Cochrane, one of the members for Westminster, had been a brilliant, gallant, and successful naval officer. His professional prospects had been injured by a charge which he brought, but did not succeed in substantiating, against Lord Gambier, who had been associated with him in an attack upon a French force. Retiring, therefore, from the career in which he had done so much to distinguish himself and to serve his country, he devoted himself to politics, joining those members who were striving to increase the popular power in Parlia- ment. He was now charged with having been a party to a stockbroking fraud, and, being found guilty, was sentenced to a fine and to stand in the pillory. The latter part of the sentence was revoked, but he was by vote expelled from the House of Commons. His old constituents immediately re- elected him, and he continued his adhesion to his party. Years after, when Lord Grey was in office, the stigma upon him was formally removed. This was in 1830, when he was restored to his rank in the service ; and in 1847 Queen Victoria conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In 1851 he was vice-admiral of the White, and in 1854 rear- admiral of the United Kingdom, and he died in 1860, full of years and honour. The confidence of the constituents who were faithful to him in his hour of trouble, was as honourable to themselves as to their hero. Parliament, which had adjourned on the 2nd of December, met again in February, 1815. There were some debates as to the policy which had been adopted by the allies with regard to Norway and Genoa. The consideration of home questions I