LORD JOHN russell's reform bill.

243

of June, 1831, Lord John Russell again moved for leave to bring in a bill to amend the representation of England, and the difference in the result obtained by the election is conclusively shown by the fact, that the votes for the second reading were 367 against 231. On the 13th of July it passed into Committee, and on the 7th of September, the bill as amended in Committee was reported to the House; the majority in favour of the motion for passing it was found to be 109, the ayes being 345, and the noes 236.

THROWN OUT BY

THE LORDS.

The Reform Bill next day was carried up to the Lords by Lord THE REFORM BILL. John Russell, attended by about a hundred of its staunchest supporters in the lower House. These gentlemen appear to have adopted the unusual mode of exciting the attention of the peers and giving to the function they were performing a striking and theatrical character, by accompanying the delivery of the bill to the Lord Chancellor with their own characteristic "Hear, hear." A cry of "order" recalled them to a sense of the presence in which they stood. In Doyle's contemporary sketch of Bringing up our Bill, this incident is referred to. Lord Chancellor Brougham stands at the bar of the House to receive it from the hands of the member who leads the deputation (Lord John Russell); behind him we see Lord Althorp, the Marquis of Chandos, and the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, who exchange signs with their fingers, showing that the proceeding does not altogether meet with their approval. In the background may be seen Sir Charles Wetherell, hated of the reformers of Bristol, looking as opposed to the measure as ever; the bill, as we know, was thrown out by the Lords in October, by a majority of 41. The same month, its enthusiastic advocate, the Rev. Sydney Smith, at a reform meeting at Taunton, compared the attempt of the House of Lords to stop the progress of reform to a certain fictitious Dame Partington of Sidmouth, who had essayed during the progress of the great storm to arrest the progress of the Atlantic with her broom. "The Atlantic was roused," said the wit; "Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington." Immediately after this speech appeared the sketch of Dame Partington and the

A DEAD LOCK.

Ocean of Reform, in which the character of the apocryphal and obstinate dame is sustained by that vigorous opponent of the Reform Bill, his grace the Duke of Wellington.

As the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill, it was necessary to begin de novo. Accordingly, on the 12th of December, Lord John Russell again moved for leave to bring in a new Reform Bill, which passed the third reading by a majority of 116 on the 23rd of March, 1832, and its second reading in the House of Peers, by a majority of nine, on the 14th of April. Then the fighting and opposition became once more as strenuous and as sustained as ever. On a subsequent division the ministry were left in a minority of thirty-five, whereupon Earl Grey proceeded to the king, and tendered to his Majesty the alternative either of arming the ministers with the powers they deemed necessary to carry through their bill (which really meant a power to create whatever new peers they might deem requisite for the purpose), or of accepting their own immediate resignation. the course of the following day the king informed his lordship that he had determined to accept his resignation rather than have recourse to the only alternative which had been proposed to him; and accordingly, on the 9th, Earl Grey announced in the House of Lords, and Lord Althorp in the Commons, that the ministry was at an end, and simply held office till their successors should be appointed. The Duke of Wellington attempted to form an administration, and failed—-and his failure left matters, the ministers, and the perplexed monarch, of course exactly "as they were."

In

At

The excitement occasioned by the Lords was tremendous. London, Birmingham, Manchester, and other large centres, simultaneous meetings were held to petition the Commons to stop the supplies. In the metropolis placards were everywhere posted, recommending the union of all friends of the cause; the enforcement of the public rights at all hazards; and a universal resistance to the payment of taxes, rates, tithes, and assessments; the country in fact was on the brink of revolution. At the meetings of the political societies, even in the leading journals, projects were openly discussed and recommended for organizing and arming the people; the

THE KING'S "EXPERIMENT."

245

population of the large towns was ready to be launched on the metropolis. "What was to be done-peers or no peers? A cabinet sat nearly all day, and Lord Grey went once or twice to the king. He, poor man, was at his wits' end, and tried an experiment (not a very constitutional one) of his own by writing to a number of peers, entreating them to withdraw their opposition to the bill."* The letter to which Mr. Charles Greville refers is evidently the following circular :

"ST. JAMES'S PALACE, May 17th, 1832.

"MY DEAR LORD,—I am honoured with his Majesty's command to acquaint your lordship, that all difficulties to the arrangements in progress will be obviated by a declaration in the House to-night from a sufficient number of peers, that in consequence of the present state of affairs, they have come to the resolution of dropping their further opposition to the Reform Bill, so that it may pass without delay, and as nearly as possible in its present shape.

"I have the honour to be yours sincerely,

"HERBERT TAYLOR."

Such a request, coming from such a quarter, was not only weighty in itself, but necessarily implied after all that had taken place, that his Majesty suggested this course as the only means of avoiding the creation of a large number of additional peers. The majority of the House were thus placed in the unenviable position of being compelled to choose whether they would see a hundred members added to the number of their opponents to carry a measure which was hateful to them, or to abandon for a time their rights, privileges, and duties as legislators. They chose the latter alternative, and during the remainder of the discussion on the bill, not more than between thirty and forty attended at any one time. and this only, the bill was eventually carried.

By this means,

On these grounds John Doyle appears to have founded his theory that William the Fourth was a sincere convert to Reform.† In one

* Greville's "Memoirs," ii. p. 303.

This was the idea of all Tories of the day. The terrible effects of the Reform Bill were amusingly predicted by John Wilson Croker to the king himself; they have not of course been fulfilled. See "Journal of Julian Charles Young" (Memoir of Charles Mayne Young, vol. i. p. 231).

UNPOPULARITY OF
THE DUKE OF
WELLINGTON.

of the "sketches" he shows us his Majesty in the character of Johnny Gilpin carried along at headlong speed by his unmanageable grey steed "Reform." He flies past the famous hostelry at Edmonton, where his wife and her friends (represented by the Duke of Wellington and a party of Tories) are anxiously awaiting his arrival. The turnpike-keeper (John Bull) throws open the gate to let him pass, too delighted with the fun to think of any personal expense to himself, and conscious that if the gate is shut the inexpert horseman must come to unutterable grief. The bottles dangling at Gilpin's waist are filled with "Birmingham froth" and "Rotunda pop," in allusion to the stump oratory of the Birmingham Political Union and the Rotunda in Blackfriars Road. Hume and O'Connell, the ardent supporters of the bill, cheering with might and main, closely follow John on horseback; while Sir Francis Burdett and Sir T. C. Hob house, equally ardent advocates of Reform, join the cry on foot. The frightened geese with coroneted heads represent, of course, the peers, who had offered such determined opposition to the measure, while the old apple woman rolling in the mud is no other than poor Lord Eldon. The bird of ill-omen foretelling disaster is Mr. Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty. Later on the same year (1832), we find his Majesty represented as Mazeppa bound to the grey steed Reform, several of the Conservative members of either houses of Parliament doing duty as the wolves and "fearful wild fowl" that accompany the rider in his perilous course. In another satire, the king, supposed to have discovered his mistake, figures as Sinbad the Sailor, vainly endeavouring to shake himself free of the old man of the sea (Earl Grey), who however is too firmly seated on his shoulders to be disloged.

The Duke of Wellington's political convictions having prompted him to be among one of the leading opponents to the Reform Bill, he narrowly escaped serious injury at the hands of the London rabble. On the 18th of June, 1832, having occasion to pay a visit to the Mint, a crowd of several hundred roughs collected on Tower Hill to await his return; and on making his appearance at the gate he was hissed and hooted by the crowd, who followed him along the

Minories yelling, hooting, and using abusive language, their numbers and threatening demeanour momentarily increasing. About halfway up the Minories he was met by Mr. Ballantine, the Thames police magistrate, who asked him if he could render him any assistance; but the cool, courageous soldier simply replied that he did not mind what was going on. When his grace had got to about the middle of Fenchurch Street, one of the cowardly ruffians rushed out of the crowd, and seizing the bridle with one hand attempted to dismount the duke with the other, in which he would have succeeded but for the courageous conduct of the groom and a body of city police, who opportunely made their appearance at the time. The mob had now grown as numerous as it was cowardly; but by the exertions of the police, his grace was escorted through it and along Cheapside without sustaining personal injury. In Holborn, however, the rabble, growing bolder, began to throw stones and filth, and the duke, followed by the canaille, rode to the chambers of Sir Charles Wetherell, in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, where he remained, till a body of police arrived from Bow Street, by whom he was escorted in safety to Apsley House. To make the outrage more disgraceful, if possible, it happened on the anniversary of the crowning victory of Waterloo; the mob, forgetting in their unreasoning wrath the priceless services the great soldier had rendered to the nation, whilst the cowardly rascals who composed it were the very persons who could by no possibility be benefited by the provisions of the bill in which they professed to take so great an interest. On the night of the illumination which followed the passing of the Act, they broke the windows of his grace and other opponents of the measure; and in one of the contemporary HB sketches, Taking an Airing in Hyde Park, the duke is seen looking out of one of his broken window-panes. Before the end of the year he was visited by serious illness, and the angry feelings his opposition to the measure had provoked, and which had been gradually subsiding, were suddenly followed by a complete reaction in his favour. HB commemorates this in his sketch of Auld Lang Syne, which shows the happy reconciliation between John Bull and the hero of Waterloo.