the later days. No part of their parliamentary career before 1830 can compare with the great deeds which followed.

Last, but by no means least, almost like the chief figure in a pageant, comes the soldier-statesman Wellington, who brought to the government of the country, and the management of Parliament, the principles of strict military discipline. Discipline must be obeyed; waverers, as he esteemed the remnants of Canning's party, must resign or be expelled from the Cabinet; the king's orders must be paramount; above all, the trust conferred on himself must be defended to the very last, not to be renounced but by the king's own command. This singular theory induced him to drive Ireland to the very verge of insurrection on the Catholic question before he would yield a jot. Even then he did not think it necessary to resign. Just as he had accepted a defeat on the Test and Corporation Acts (1828), and consented to their repeal, so now he forced his unwilling Cabinet to bring in the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829). The part that Wellington played in Parliament up to 1832 was altogether disastrous to the country and his own reputation; but it was amply atoned for by the great parliamentary services of the after-years.

THE

CHAPTER XIX.

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

SECTION 1.-Early History (1745-1830).

HE question of Parliamentary Reform, which had been first aroused by Cromwell, was suffered to drop again at the Restoration, not to be revived till the year 1745, when Sir Francis Dashwood, a Tory,-afterwards Bute's Chancellor of the Exchequer, moved an amendment to the Address, advocating the reform of Parliament. It was also strongly advanced by the elder Pitt in opposition, though it must be confessed that he did absolutely nothing in that direction when he was actually in office. The question was brought forward again in different forms by the various sections of the Opposition under George III. as the true means of effectually curbing the corrupt power of the king. Wilkes, however, was the first to give actual expression to these views. In 1776, he introduced a bill proposing that additional members should be allotted to London, Middlesex, Yorkshire, and other large counties; that a number of rotten boroughs should be disfranchised and added to the county constituencies; that Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and other large towns should be enfranchised. This bill was, however, rejected, as were also a motion for reform moved by the Duke of Richmond in 1780, and two motions moved by Pitt in favour of considering the representation, in 1782, 1783. The Reform question, in fact, was as yet really in the hands of the extreme party led by Wilkes, Horne Tooke, and the Society of Friends of the People. The king was steadily opposed to it. Burke and the mass of the Whigs disliked the idea excessively; Fox only coquetted with it as yet, as seeming to open a way to break the power of the king and facilitate his own return to office. The only prominent public man who was sincerely anxious for the

reform of the representation was the younger Pitt, who had inherited his father's views. In 1785, therefore, he brought forward a bill which would have disfranchised thirty-six rotten boroughs, and admitted copyholders to the franchise, giving the seats gained to the large towns and counties. It also proposed to compensate the owners of the disfranchised boroughs—in fact, to buy them out. This bill was liked neither by the king nor the Whigs; and was, in consequence, thrown out. The outbreak of the French Revolution shelved the question almost entirely till 1809, when it revived once more under the auspices of Sir Francis Burdett and the extreme Radical party. Burdett's advocacy did the question more harm than good, nor was it till Lord John Russell, in 1820, took it up and identified himself with it, that it can be said to have come within the range of practical politics. In 1821, he succeeded in carrying a bill disfranchising Grampound, a very notorious Cornish borough, and from that date motions for reform of different kinds were moved almost every year, but without any success. The repeal of the Tests, however, in 1828-9, gave a tremendous stimulus to the Reform movement, and in 1830 it was generally felt that its advocates were within measurable distance of success. In 1830 the Bourbons were expelled from France without the popular rising being stained by any of the horrors which were supposed to be inseparable from a revolution. The quiet and orderly manner in which the events of these "Days of July" were accomplished proved quite a revelation to the English people. They saw that even a revolution was not necessarily accompanied by violence, and that an orderly reform might be effected without bloodshed. This awakening produced such a revulsion of public opinion that it was now merely a question of time, and no doubt the settlement of the question was considerably facilitated by the death of George IV. in June, which rendered a General Election imminent. The Duke of Wellington, however, the Premier, directly challenged the question by eulogising the state of the representation at the opening of Parliament. Mr. Brougham thereupon gave notice of his intention to move for reform. Before the day arrived, Wellington, defeated on the Civil List, had resigned, and Lord Grey succeeded him with a Ministry pledged to reform. A

bill was drawn up by the united efforts of Lord Grey, Lord John Russell, and Lord Durham, and the difficult task of piloting it through the House of Commons was entrusted to Russell.

SECTION 2.-The Reform Debates (1831-2).

On the first of March, 1831, the day appointed for bringing in the Reform Bill, the state of the House and of its approaches testified to the intense interest with which the event was regarded by the public. The avenues leading to the House were all thronged with eager pushing crowds for hours before the meeting of Parliament, and through the long delay caused by the business on which the House was first engaged the crowd waited anxiously till nearly five o'clock in the afternoon. Then the doors were thrown open, and a tremendous struggle took place, which was conducted with so much noise and confusion that the Speaker threatened to order the galleries to be cleared if the tumult were not instantly suppressed. Order was restored by this threat, and then the mob of visitors settled themselves gradually and quietly into every nook and corner of the space allotted to them, until they were packed as close as the House could bear. There was but a thin assemblage of members as yet, but every unoccupied seat in the body of the building bore a label with a name on it, and it was only too evident that there would be a very full House later on. By six o'clock, in fact, when Lord John Russell entered, there was scarcely a single unoccupied place. He was received with a loud burst of cheering, which subsided as if by magic when he rose, and in a low voice and an almost deprecatory manner laid the scheme of reform before the House. He began by a slight historical sketch of the origin and anomalies of the representative system, and he drew a curious picture of the corrupt state of the franchise with marvellous skill. "A stranger," he exclaimed, "who was told that this country is unparalleled in wealth and industry, and more civilized and more enlightened than any country was before it, that it is a country that prides itself on its freedom, and that once in seven years it elects representatives from its population to act as the guardians and preservers. of that freedom,-would be anxious and curious to see how that representation is formed, and how the people choose their repre

sentatives to whose faith and guardianship they entrust their free and liberal institutions. Such a person would be very much astonished if he were taken to a ruined mound and told that that mound sent two representatives to Parliament; if he were taken to a stone wall and told that three niches in it sent two representatives to Parliament; if he were taken to a park, where no houses were to be seen, and told that that park sent two representatives to Parliament. But if he were told all this and were astonished at hearing it, he would be still more astonished if he were to see large and opulent towns, full of enterprize and industry and intelligence, containing vast magazines of every species of manufacture, and were then told that these towns sent no representatives to Parliament. Such a person would be still more astonished if he were taken to Liverpool, where there is a large constituency, and told, 'Here you will have a fine specimen of a popular election.' He would see bribery employed to the greatest extent and in the most unblushing manner; he would see every voter receiving a number of guineas in a box as the price of his corruption; and after such a spectacle he would be no doubt much astonished that a nation, whose representatives are thus chosen, could perform the functions of legislation at all, or enjoy respect in any degree. I say, then, that if the question before the House is one of reason, the present state of representation is against reason." With this eloquent appeal to the understanding of his audience, he proceeded to explain the ministerial scheme. He proposed to disfranchise entirely sixty-two boroughs containing less than 2,000 inhabitants; and to reduce to one member forty-seven others containing less than 4,000 inhabitants; to extend the franchise in the boroughs to all householders paying rates for houses of the yearly value of £10 and upwards, subject to certain conditions; and the franchise in the counties to all copyholders to the value of £10 a year, and leaseholders for twenty-one years, whose annual rent was not less than £50. These were the principal clauses of the bill. The 168 seats gained by disfranchisement were to be distributed among newly created boroughs and county districts, though not all the vacant seats were to be filled up,-in accordance with the opinion of ministers that the number of members in the House was incon