in Parliament ought to do such things as their constituents wish and direct them to do;' another, 'that a signed engagement should be exacted from every member that he would at all times and in all things act conformably to the wishes of a majority of his constituents, or would at their request resign the trust with which they had honored him.'-
CHAPTER IX. Demand for Parliamentary Reform.-Death of George IV., and Accession of William IV.-French Revolution of 1830.-Growing Feeling in Favor of Reform.-Duke of Wellington's Declaration against Reform.-His Resignation: Lord Grey becomes Prime-minister.-Introduction of the Reform Bill.-Its Details.- Riots at Bristol and Nottingham.-Proposed Creation of Peers.-The King's Message to the Peers.-Character and Consequences of the Reform Bill.-Appointment of a Regency.- Re-arrangement of the Civil List.
One of Pitt's great measures of domestic, apart from financial or commercial, policy having become law, it seemed in some degree natural to look for the accomplishment of the other, a reform of the House of Commons, which, indeed, after the conclusion of the war, had been made at times the subject of earnest petition, being one in which a far greater number of people had a lively interest than that excited by Catholic Emancipation. The Englishmen who had advocated that measure had been striving for the adoption of a principle rather than for a concession from which they could expect any personal benefit, since very few in any English or Scotch constituency were Roman Catholics, or desired to return a Roman Catholic representative. But thousands in every county, including the whole body of citizens of some of the largest and most flourishing towns, felt a personal concern in the attainment of Parliamentary Reform, as the measure which would give them, and which could alone give them, that voice in the affairs of the kingdom to which they felt themselves entitled, but which they had never yet enjoyed.
And before the end of the next session the prospect of the early success of their aspirations was greatly increased by the death of the King. George IV., who in his early manhood had attached himself to the Whigs with an ardor and ostentation altogether unbecoming his position as heir to the throne, had formally separated himself from them after the death of Fox in 1806, and had gradually come to regard their adversaries with a favor as exclusive as he had formerly shown to themselves. But the Duke of Clarence, who now succeeded to the throne, had always shown a leaning toward the Whigs, who of late had been commonly regarded as the reforming party. While the war lasted, and during the few remaining years of the reign of George III., no active steps toward Reform were taken in Parliament; but under George IV. more than one borough convicted of gross and habitual corruption, as has been mentioned, was disfranchised. Grampound was so punished in the time of Lord Liverpool, and its members were transferred to Yorkshire, so as to give that largest of the counties four representatives; and it may be remarked that this arrangement caused the Prime-minister to suggest an improvement in the details of an election-which was afterward universally adopted-when, in reply to a remark on the great inconvenience that was found to exist in taking the poll at once in so large a county as Yorkshire, he hinted at the possibility of obviating that difficulty by allowing polls to be taken in different parts of the county. And, since the Duke had been in office, two more boroughs, Penrhyn and East Retford, had also been disfranchised; though the Reformers failed in their endeavor to get the seats thus vacated transferred to Manchester and Birmingham. With the accession of the new sovereign, however, they became more active. They found encouragement in other circumstances also. Many of those who were commonly called the Ultra Tories had been so alienated from the Duke's government by the Emancipation Act, that they were known to be ready to coalesce with almost any party for the sake of overturning his administration. Moreover, as forty years before, the French Revolution of 1789 had caused great political excitement in England, so now the new French revolution of July acted as a strong stimulus on the movement party in this as well as in other countries; and altogether there was a very general feeling that the time for important changes had come. The Duke of Wellington was not blind to the prevalence of the idea; and, being by no means willing to admit that his own policy of the preceding year had in the least contributed to strengthen it, he conceived it to be his duty to discountenance it by every means in his power; but the steps which he took with that object only invigorated and inflamed it. As Prime-minister, he inserted in the speech with which the new sovereign opened his first Parliament in the autumn after his accession a general panegyric on that 'happy form of government under which, through the favor of Divine Providence, this country had enjoyed for a long succession of years a greater share of internal peace, of commercial prosperity, of true liberty, of all that constitutes social happiness, than had fallen to the lot of any other country of the world.' And in his own character, a few nights afterward, he added a practical commentary on those sentences of the royal speech, when, in allusion to Lord Grey's expression of a hope that the ministers would prepare 'to redress the grievances of the people by a reform of the Parliament,' he repudiated the suggestion altogether, avowing that the government were contemplating no such measure, and adding that 'he would go farther, and say that he had never read or heard of any measure up to that moment which in any degree satisfied his mind that the state of the representation could be improved or rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at that moment. He was fully convinced that the country possessed at that moment a Legislature which answered all good purposes of legislation to a greater degree than any Legislature had ever answered them in any country whatever.... And he would at once declare that, as far as he was concerned, as long as he held any station in the government of the country, he should always feel it his duty to resist any measure of Reform when proposed by others.'
Such uncompromising language was, not unnaturally, regarded by the Opposition in both Houses as a direct defiance, and the challenge was promptly taken up both in and out of Parliament. It happened that at this moment the ministry was extremely unpopular in the City; not, indeed, on account of his hostility to Reform, but in consequence of the recent introduction by the Home-secretary of a police force in London, on the model of one which the Duke himself, when Irish Secretary, had established in Dublin. The old watchmen had been so notoriously inefficient that it might have been expected that the change would have been hailed with universal approval and gratitude, but it met with a very different reception. Many of the newspapers which had not yet forgiven the passing of Catholic Emancipation made it a ground for the strongest imputations on the Duke himself, some of them even going the length of affirming that he aimed at the throne, and that the organization of this new force was the means on which he reckoned for the attainment of his object. No story is too gross for the credulity of the populace. To hear of such a plot was to believe it; to believe it was to resolve to defeat it; and at the beginning of November the government received several warnings that a plan was in agitation to raise a formidable riot on Lord Mayor's Day, when the King and the Duke himself were expected to dine with the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor even wrote to the Duke to suggest the prudence of his coming 'strongly and sufficiently guarded,' and the result of this advice was certainly strange. The Duke cared little enough about personal danger to himself, but he regarded himself as specially bound by his office to watch over the public tranquillity, and to do nothing that might be expected to endanger it. He was at least equally solicitous that a new reign should not open with a tumult which could in any way be regarded as an insult to the King; and, under the influence of these feelings, he took the responsibility of giving the King the unprecedented advice of abandoning his intention of being present at the Guildhall banquet. Such a step had an inevitable tendency to weaken the ministry still farther by the comments which it provoked. Even his own brother, Lord Wellesley, did not spare his sarcasms, pronouncing it 'the boldest act of cowardice he had ever heard of;' while the Reformers ascribed the unpopularity which it confessed to the Duke's declaration against any kind or degree of Reform; and, to test the correctness of this opinion, Mr. Brougham, who, in the House of Commons, was the most eloquent champion of Reform, gave notice of a motion on the subject for the 16th of November. Before that day came, however, the ministry had ceased to exist. On the preceding evening it had been defeated on a proposal to refer to a select committee the consideration of the Civil List, a new settlement of which was indispensable at the beginning of a new reign, and on the morning of the 16th the Duke resigned, not only advising the King to intrust the formation of the new cabinet to Lord Grey-who was universally recognized as the head of the Whig party-but recommending his Majesty also to be prepared to consent to a measure of moderate Reform, which, though he could not bring himself to co-operate in it, he was satisfied that the temper of the House of Commons, if not of the people out-of-doors also, rendered unavoidable.[216] The advice was taken. Lord Grey had no difficulty in forming a ministry in which the Whigs were aided by the junction of several of the more moderate Tories, who had regarded Canning as their leader; and from the very beginning Parliamentary Reform was proclaimed to be the one great object of his government. It would be more correct to call it a Reform of the House of Commons, since there was no idea of interfering with the House of Lords, even in those parts of it which were of a representative character, the Scotch and Irish peers. But, by whatever title the ministerial policy was designated,
