from his opponents before consenting to take office.
With such pledges he might have met the existing
Parliament, and have chosen his own time for a dissolu-
tion. Without them he would probably have informed
the king that he could not undertake the Government,
and have recommended him to recall Lord Melbourne.
On his return to England, however, he found matters
already in such a train that it was impossible for him to
recede, and equally impossible for him to postpone a
dissolution. Hence his position was altogether different
from that occupied by Pitt in 1784, to which it has
sometimes been compared. Not only had the reform of
Parliament transferred the centre of political gravity
from the upper House to the lower, but Pitt held a
dissolution in reserve, while Peel had already employed
that weapon when he found himself confronted with a
hostile and exasperated majority. The Opposition
indeed was neither homogeneous nor organically
coherent; it was united only in the determination
to make Peel suffer for the humiliation inflicted
on the Whigs by the king. It consisted of the
Whigs proper, who differed in little more than name
and party connection from the more moderate
and progressive of the Conservatives, including Peel
himself; of the Radicals, who were distrusted in the
country and discredited in the House of Commons, and
apart from the Whigs were incapable of standing alone;
and of the followers of O'Connell, whose whole policy was
based on the fact that his support was indispensable to
the recovery of power by the Whigs. On the other
hand, the supporters of Peel were almost equally divided.
The old Tory party, whose strength lay in the House

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