Altogether seventy-one speakers joined in the debate. In the end the Reform Bill debate government obtained a second reading of the bill by a bare majority of one. The opposition had made a motion to withdraw the bill. After another prolonged debate this was carried against the government by a majority of eight. Parliament was dissolved as both Houses were on the point of carrying a motion asking the King not to consent to a dissolution. The Exciting elections elections which followed were turbulent in the extreme. Throughout England the reformers raised the cry: "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill." It was then that the custom of electioneering by means of processions and bands of music came into vogue. When the results of the Tories defeated elections were announced it was found that the Tories had lost more than a hundred seats. On the other hand a few of the most prominent supporters of the government suffered signal defeat, notably Lord Palmerston and Cavendish. On the Tory side, young Gladstone, then still a student at Oxford, came into notice by his warm speech against the proposed reform. Parliament was reopened with another hot debate on the all-engrossing bill. Cobbett's state trial It was passed to a second reading by a strong majority of 135 votes. Scarcely had this been accomplished when the government was embarrassed by William Cobbett's state trial for sedition. Throughout the trial the Attorney-General treated Cobbett with marked courtesy, speaking of him as "one of the greatest masters of the English language who had ever composed in it."

In truth Cobbett's pure, virile, racy, Saxon style, while it delighted men of taste, was also intelligible to the humblest commoner, and accounted in some measure for the tremendous popularity of his journal, the "Political Register." The government was unable to secure Cobbett's conviction and he was suffered to escape punishment by a disagreement of the jury. After this interlude the debate on the Macaulay Reform Bill went on. On the second night of the debate Thomas Babington Macaulay delivered his first reform speech. When he sat down he had taken rank among the best Parliamentary orators. "Portions of the speech," said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as anything I have ever heard or read. It reminded me of old times. The names of Burke, Fox and Canning during the evening were linked with that of Mr. Macaulay." The "Spectator" computed the number of speeches which were delivered in committee between the middle and end of July at more than two hundred. Sir Robert Peel alone spoke forty-eight times, while Wetherell, the Tory wag of the House, spoke fifty-eight times. Finally the Opposition was caught unawares late one night on September 19, when they could muster Commons pass Reform Bill but fifty-eight votes before the doors closed for division, and the bill was thus passed to its third reading. The Tories took pains to be present in force a few days afterward, when the final passage of the bill was moved. After a last passionate debate lasting through three days and nights the Commons passed the bill by a majority of 106 votes. That same night Earl Grey proposed the bill before the Lords. Addressing himself to the bishops he said significantly: "I specially beg the spiritual portion of your lordships to pause and reflect. If this bill shall be thrown out by a narrow majority and the scale should be turned by the votes of the prelates, what would be their situation? Let them set their houses in order!" These menacing words gave great offence to the clergy. The Duke of Wellington Rejected by the Lords spoke strongly against the measure. The bill was thrown out by the Lords after an all-night debate.

The immediate effect was a sharp decline in stocks. A few hours after the House of Peers adjourned at six o'clock in the morning, a run for gold began on the Bank of England. The simultaneous effort of the French to abolish their hereditary peerage was hailed as an omen of what was coming in England. Riots broke out all over England. The return to Bristol of Sir Riots in England C. Wetherell, one of the chief opponents of the bill, was made the occasion of ominous demonstrations. A riotous mob burned the mansion house over his head. Next, the Bishop of Bristol was driven from his episcopal seat. The mob fired the mansion house, the bishop's palace, the excise office, the custom house, three prisons, four toll houses, and forty-two private houses of prominent Tories.

No one was injured until the troops were called in to disperse the mob. Then a number of rioters were sabred and shot. About the same time riots broke out at Bath, Worcester, Coventry, Warwick, Lichfield, Nottingham and Canterbury. With difficulty Archbishop Howley of Canterbury was rescued from the hands of an infuriated mob. The Bishops of Winchester and Exeter were burned in effigy before their very palaces. The Bishop of London did not dare to hold services at Westminster. The news from France served to increase the alarm. Disturbances of a far more serious character were reported from Lyons.

Late in the year, after another rejection of the Reform Bill by the Lords, Reform Bill up again the bill was triumphantly reintroduced in the Commons. The question now was no longer, "What will the Lords do?" but, "What will be done with the Lords?" Rather than risk the threatening downfall of the House of Peers, the Ministers reluctantly determined to pack the Upper House by the creation of a sufficient number of new peers pledged to vote for the Reform Bill. A verse attributed to Macaulay ran:

What though now opposed I be,
Twenty peers shall carry me,
If twenty won't, thirty will,
For I'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill.

"Thus," as Molesworth, the historian of the Reform Bill, has put it, "amid the anxieties of the reformers on one hand, and the dread of revolution on the other, amid incendiary fires and Asiatic cholera spreading throughout the country, amid distress of trade and dread of coming bankruptcy, the year 1831 went gloomily out."

1832

THE new year opened in England with a series of trials arising out of the English sedition trials disturbances which followed the rejection of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords. A great number of rioters were convicted. Altogether, seven men were put to death at Bristol and Nottingham. The officers who commanded the troops during the riots were court-martialed. When Parliament reassembled, the Commons once more passed the Reform Bill and carried it up to the Lords. In the course of the renewed debate on the Reform Bill in the House of Peers the Duke of Wellington announced that he had reason to believe that the King did not approve of the bill. The statement was confirmed by Fall of Grey's Cabinet the King's refusal to create new peers wherewith to pass the bill through the Upper House. Thereupon Lord Grey and his colleagues resigned from the Ministry. The King accepted their resignation. Monster petitions were immediately sent in to the Commons from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and other great centres of population, urging the Commons to refuse the supplies until reform should have been secured. Once more stocks fell sharply. For the express purpose of embarrassing the King's chosen successors for the Cabinet, runs were made on the Bank of England, and on the savings banks at Birmingham and Manchester. The streets of London were covered with placards: "Go for gold and stop the Duke!" In the face of this Wellington impotent agitation the Duke of Wellington declined the King's offer to form a Ministry. Sir Robert Peel likewise declined. As a last resort Wellington consented to form a Ministry, but could not get together a Cabinet strong enough to stem the storm. The Iron Duke's popularity as well as the King's was at an end. When the King came up to London, accompanied by his sons, they were received with hoots and insults. Missiles were thrown at the The King humiliated royal carriage, and the Life Guards had to fight a way through the mob with their swords. The King was driven to the humiliating expedient of recalling his dismissed Ministers. William IV. now consented to create the required number of new peers. Lord Brougham gave mortal offence to the King by a request that he should put his promise in writing. With the King's written pledge in their hands the Ministers obtained an agreement from their opponents to pass the bill without further coercion. Early in June, at Passage of Reform Bill length, the Reform Bill passed through the House of Lords after a third reading. One hundred and six peers voted for it and only twenty-two against it. On this occasion Sir Robert Peel made a remark to which his subsequent change of front gave peculiar significance: "Whenever the government comes to deal with the corn laws, the precedent formed by the present occasion will be appealed to." The reform measure, as at last adopted, swept away 142 seats in the Commons. It gave to the counties sixty-five additional Changes effected representatives and conferred the right of sending members to Parliament on Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and thirty-nine other large towns hitherto unrepresented. The King showed his disapproval of the reform by peremptorily declining to give his assent to the bill in person. The Crown's sanction was given by commission. This ended all agitation for the time being.