of events at Bristol became more and more disconnected in the general mind with the subject of the Reform Bill, as facts came out which showed that other proximate causes of disturbance would have, no doubt, wrought the same effects, sooner or later, as well as the one which chanced to occur. The question which did, from that time, lie deep down in thoughtful minds was, how long our Christian profession and our heathen practice social and military combinations were to be supposed compatible, after a man, who united in himself the virtues of both, had been driven to suicide by their contrariety.

Our

It is necessary to note the social disturbances which followed upon the rejection of the second Reform Bill; but it is no less necessary to point out, that the turbulence of this, as of all seasons, is easy to observe, while no account can be given which can represent to the imagination the prevailing calmness and order of the time. Calmness and order present no salient point for narrative and description; but their existence must not therefore be overlooked. A truly heroic state of self-discipline and obedience to law prevailed over the land, while in Prevalence particular spots the turbulent were able to excite the of order. giddy and the ignorant to riot. The nation was steadily rising to its most heroic mood; that mood in which, the next year, it carried through the sublime enterprise which no man, in the darkest moment, had any thought of surrendering.

CHAPTER V.

THE preparations for the renewal of the struggle for parliamentary reform began immediately after the prorogation, and were of a very serious character on every hand. As might be expected from the protraction of the quarrel, each party went further in its own direction; and the King, whose station was in the middle, became occasionally irresolute, through anxiety; an anxiety which plainly affected his health.

On the 31st of October, the London Political Union held National Po- an important meeting, which was so fully attended litical Union. that the multitude adjourned to Lincoln's Inn Fields. The object of the day was to decree and organize a National Union, the provincial associations to be connected with it as branches, sending delegates to the central board. Thus far, all had gone well, as regarded these unions. The Administration had not been obliged to recognize their existence, while undoubtedly very glad of the fact. Whether their existence was constitutional, was one of the two great questions of the day. Hitherto, the government were not obliged to discuss it, in public or private, or to give any opinion; for, till now, the unions had done nothing objectionable. Now, however, the difficulty began. The less informed and more violent members of the London Union insisted upon demanding universal suffrage, and other matters not included in the Bill; while the wiser majority chose to adhere to their watchword, "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.”1 The minority seceded, and constiMetropolitan tuted a Metropolitan Union of their own, whose avowed Union. object was to defeat the ministerial measure, in order to obtain a more thorough opening of the representation. In their advertisements, they declared all hereditary privileges and all distinction of ranks to be unnatural and vicious; and invited the working-men throughout the country to come up to their grand meeting at White-Conduit House, on the 7th of November, declaring that such a display of strength must carry all before it. The government brought soldiery round the metropolis, had an army of special constables sworn in,— all in a quiet way, — and

2 Autobiography of a Working-man, p. 240.

as quietly communicated with the union leaders. On the 5th, the Hatton-Garden magistrates informed these leaders that their proposed proceedings were illegal.1 A deputation begged admission to the presence of the Home Secretary. Lord Melbourne saw them, and quietly pointed out to them which passages of their address were seditious, if not treasonable, involving in the guilt of treason all persons who attended their meeting for the purpose of promoting the objects proposed. The leaders at once abandoned their design. The ministers were blamed for letting them go, and taking no notice of the seditious advertisement; but no one, who, at this distance of time, compares the Melbourne and the Sidmouth days, can doubt that the forbearance was as wise as it was kind. What the offenders needed was better knowledge, not penal restraint, as their conduct in disbanding plainly showed. The peace of society lost nothing, and the influence of the government gained much, by the ministers showing themselves willing to enlighten rather than to punish ignorance, and to reserve their penalties, where circumstances allowed it, for wilful and obstinate violations of the law. The affair, however, alarmed the sovereign and the more timid of the aristocracy who had hitherto supported the reform

measure.

At the same time, Lord Grey was beset by deputations from all ranks and classes, urging the shortening of the recess to the utmost, and the expediting the measure by all possible means; and especially by inducing the King to create Peers in sufficient numbers to secure the immediate passage of the Bill through the House of Lords. All the interests of the kingdom were suffering under suspense and disappointment, and the popular indignation against the obstructive Peers was growing dangerous. This proposition of a creation of Peers was the other great question of the day.

Question of a

And seldom or never has there been a question more serious. Men saw now that the word " revolution," so often in the mouths of the anti-reformers, might prove to be creation of not so inapplicable as had been supposed; that, if the Peers. Peers should not come immediately and voluntarily, and by the light of their own convictions, into harmony with the other two powers of the government, it would prove true, that, as they were themselves saying, "the balance of the constitution was destroyed." Was it not already so? it was asked. Unless a miraculous enlightenment was to be looked for between October and December, was there any alternative but civil war, and, in some way or another, overbearing the Lords? Civil war was out of the question for such a handful of obstructives. The King,

1 Annual Register, 1831, p. 297.

Commons, and people could not be kept waiting much longer for the few who showed no sign of yielding; and it would be the best kindness to all parties to get the obstructives outvoted, by an exertion of that kingly power whose existence nobody disputed, however undesirable might be its frequent exercise. From day to day was this consideration urged upon the Premier, who never made any reply to it. It was not a time when men saw the full import of what they asked; nor was this a subject on which the Prime Minister could open his lips to deputations. He must have felt, like every responsible and every thoughtful man, that no more serious and mournful enterprise could be proposed to any Minister than to destroy the essential character of any one of the three component parts of the government; and that, if such a destruction should prove to be a necessary condition of the requisite purification of another, it was the very hardest and most fearful of conditions. Men were talking lightly, all over the kingdom, of the necessity of swamping the opposition of the Peers; they were angry, and with reason, with the living men who made the difficulty; and nobody contradicted them when they said that the extinction of the wisdom of these particular men in the national counsels would be no great loss: but they did not consider that the existing Roden and Newcastle, and Eldon and Rolle, were not the great institution of the British House of Lords, whose function shone back through the history of a thousand years, and might shine onwards through a thousand years more, if the ignorance and selfishness of its existing majority could be overcome on the present occasion by a long patience and a large forbearance. Lord Grey was the last man to degrade his "order," if the necessity could by any means be avoided. It was his first object to carry the reform of the Commons; but it would well-nigh have broken his heart to be compelled to do it through the degradation of the Lords. At this time, while, from his silence, multitudes believed what they wished, and confidently expected a large creation of Peers, it is now known that he had not yet proposed any such measure to the King.

The

Waverers.

One consequence of the prevalence of an expectation of a batch of new Peers, was the parting-off from the obstructive Lords of a large number who were called the Waverers. There is always such a set of people in such times; and greatly do they always embarrass the calculations of the best informed. These kept the issue in uncertainty up to the last moment. On the one part were the honest and enlightened Peers, who saw that the end of borough corruption was come. On the other part were the honest and unenlightened, or the selfish, who would not have our institutions touched on any

pretence whatever; and between them now stood the Waverers, hoping to keep things as they were, but disposed to yield voluntarily, if they could not conquer, rather than be put down by an incursion of numbers.

ical unions.

1

66

There was something unusually solemn in the meeting of Parliament on the 6th of December. It may surprise Gravity of men now, and it will surprise men more hereafter, to the time. remark the tone of awe-struck expectation in which men of sober mind, of cheerful temper, and even of historical learning, - that powerful antidote to temporary alarms, spoke and wrote of the winter of 1831-2. A government proclamation, issued on the 22d of November, with the aim of Proclamation putting down political unions, was found to be as against politineffectual as such proclamations always are against associations which can change their rules and forms at pleasure. It appeared strange that the ministers should now begin to make war upon the unions, when their policy hitherto had been to let them alone; a policy befitting men able to learn by the experience of their predecessors in the case of the Catholic Association. There was a general feeling of disappointment, as at an inconsistency, when the proclamation appeared. It has since become known, that the Administration acted under another will than their own in this matter. In December, Lord Eldon had an interview with the Duke of Wellington, of which he wrote, I sat with him near an hour, in deep conversation and most interesting. Letters that he wrote to a great personage produced the proclamation against the unions. But, if Parliament will not interfere further, the proclamation will be of little use, — I think, of no use." It was certainly, at present, of no use. National Union immediately put out its assertion, that the proclamation did not apply to it, nor to the great majority of unions then in existence.2 So there sat the monstrous offspring of this strange time, vigilant, far-spreading, intelligent, and of incalculable force, a power believed in its season to be greater than that of King, Lords, and Commons: there it sat, watching them all, and ready to take up any duty which any one of them let drop, and force it back into the most reluctant hands. A dark demon was, at the same time, brooding over the land. It chills one's heart now to read the cholera proclamations and orders of that year, and the suggestions of Boards of Health, to which men looked for comfort, but from which they received much alarm. Men were not then able to conceive of a mild plague; and what they had heard of the cholera carried back their imaginations to the plagues of the middle ages. Among many dismal recommendations from authority, therefore, 1 Life of Lord Eldon, iii. p. 163.

The

The

cholera.

2 Annual Register, 1831, p. 297.