from Wellington and Peel, who were strongly opposed to any change in the constitution of Parliament. 5. Lord John Russell and Parliamentary Reform. 18191828.-The cause of Parliamentary reform had suffered much from the sweeping nature of the proposals made after the great war by Hunt and Sir Francis Burdett (see p. 879). In 1819 the question was taken up by a young Whig member, Lord John Russell, who perceived that the only chance of prevailing with the House of Commons was to ask it to accept much smaller changes than those for which Burdett asked, and thought that, whilst it would not listen to declarations about the right of the people to manhood suffrage, it might listen to a proposal to remedy admitted grievances in detail. In 1819 he drew attention to the subject, and in 1820 asked for the disfranchisement, at the next election, of four places in Devon and Cornwall: Grampound, Penryn, Barnstaple and Camelford, which returned two members apiece, and in which corruption notoriously prevailed. His proposal, accepted by the Commons, was rejected by the Lords. In a new Parliament which met later in the same year Lord John proposed to disfranchise Grampound only, and to transfer its members to Leeds, thus touching one of the great political grievances of the day, the possession of the right of returning members by small villages, whilst it was refused to large communities like Birmingham and Leeds. The House was, however, frightened at the idea of giving power to populous towns, and in 1821, when the Bill for disfranchising Grampound was actually passed, its members were transferred, not to Leeds but to Yorkshire, which thus came to return four members instead of two. A first step had thus been taken in the direction of reform, and Lord John Russell from time to time attempted to obtain the assent of the House of Commons to a proposal to take into consideration the whole subject. Time after time, however, his motions were rejected, and in 1827 Lord John fell back on his former plan of separately attacking corrupt boroughs. In 1827 Penryn and East Retford having been found guilty of corruption, he obtained a vote in the Commons for the disfranchisement of Penryn, whilst the disfranchisement of East Retford was favourably considered. As this vote was not followed by the passing of any act of Parliament to give effect to it, it was understood that Lord John would make fresh proposals in the following year. 6. Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. 1828.-In 1828, after the formation of the Wellington Ministry, before the question of the corrupt boroughs was discussed, Russell was successful in 1828 LORD JOHN russell's sUCCESS 895 removing another grievance. He proposed to repeal the Corporation Act (see p. 585), and the Test Act (see p. 607), so far as it compelled all applicants for office and for seats in Parliament to receive the Communion in the Church of England. By this means relief would be given to Dissenters, whilst Roman Catholics would still be excluded by the clause which required a declaration against transubstantiation and which Russell did not propose to repeal. Russell's scheme was resisted by the ministers but accepted by the House, and it finally became law, passing the House of Lords upon the addition of a clause suggested by Peel requiring a declaration from Dissenters claiming to hold office or to sit in Parliament or in municipal corporations that they would not use their power to injure or subvert the Established Church.' It was thus made evident that Peel could not be counted on to resist change as absolutely as Sidmouth could have been calculated on when the reaction against the French Revolution was at its height. He was practical and cautious, not easily caught by new ideas, but prompt to discover when resistance became more dangerous than concession, and resolutely determined to follow honestly his intellectual convictions. 7. Resignation of the Canningites. 1828.-The ministry had been distracted by constant squabbles, and at last, in May, 1828, Huskisson and the other Canningites resigned, the ministry being reconstructed as a purely Tory ministry. The Tories were in ecstasies, forgetting that their leaders, Wellington and Peel, were too sensible to pursue a policy of mere resistance. 8. The Catholic Association. 1823-1828.—The main question, on which the Tories took one side and the Whigs and Canningites the other, was that of Catholic emancipation. That question now assumed a new prominence. In Ireland Catholic emancipation was advocated by Daniel O'Connell, who was himself a Roman Catholic, and was not only an eloquent speaker whose words went home to the hearts of his countrymen, but also the leader of a great society, the Catholic Association, which had been formed in 1823 to support Catholic emancipation. In 1824 the Catholic Association became thoroughly organised, and commanded a respect amongst the majority of Irishmen which was not given to the Parliament at Westminster. O'Connell's words sometimes pointed to the possibility of resistance if Parliament rejected the Catholic claims. In 1825 Parliament passed an act to dissolve the Association. The Irish were, however, too quick-witted to allow it to be suppressed by British legislation. They dissolved the Association, but started a new one in which the question of Catholic emancipation was not to be discussed, though the members naturally thought the more about it. In Parliament itself many who had voted for the dissolution of the Association voted for Catholic emancipation, and, in 1825, a Bill granting it passed the Commons, though it was rejected by the Lords. 9. O'Connell's Election. 1828. In 1828 Vesey Fitzgerald, member for the county of Clare, was promoted to an office pre viously held by one of the Canningites, and had, consequently, to present himself for re-election (see p. 674). O'Connell stood in opposition to him for the vacant seat. All the influence of the priests was thrown on his side, and he was triumphantly returned, though it was known that he would refuse to declare against transubstantiation, and would thus be prevented by the unrepealed clause of the Test Act (see p. 890) from taking his seat in the House of Commons. 10. Catholic Emancipation. 1829.-When Parliament met in 1829 it was discovered that the Government intended to grant Catholic emancipation, to which it had hitherto been bitterly opposed. Wellington looked at the matter with a soldier's eye. He did not like to admit the Catholics, and had held the position against them as long as it was tenable. It was now, in his opinion, untenable, because to reject the Catholic claims would bring about a civil war, and a civil war was worse than the proposed legisla tion. He felt it, therefore, to be his duty to retreat to another position, from which civil order could be better defended. Peel's mind moved slowly, but it moved certainly, and he now appeared as a defender of Catholic relief on principle. To show his sincerity, Peel resigned his seat for the University of Oxford, and presented himself for re-election in order to allow his constituents to express an opinion on his change of front; and, being defeated at Oxford, was chosen by the small borough of Westbury. A Bill, giving effect to the intentions of the Government, was brought in. The anger of the Tories was exceedingly great, and even Wellington had, after the fashion of those days, to prove his sincerity by fighting a duel with the Earl of Winchilsea. The king resisted, but the resistance of George IV., now a weak old voluptuary, was easily beaten down. The Commons passed the Bill, throwing open Parliament, and all offices except a few of special importance, to the Roman Catholics, after which the House of Lords, under Wellington's influence, accepted it. The Bill therefore became law, accompanied by another for disfranchising forty-shilling freeholders in Ireland. These freeholders had been allowed to vote as long as their votes were given to the landlords; their votes were taken from them now that they were given to the candidates supported by the priests. II. Death of George IV. 1830.-Catholic emancipation was the result of the spread of one of the principles which had actuated the French Revolutionists in 1789, the principle that religious opinions ought not to be a bar to the exercise of civil or political rights. It was-as far, at least, as Great Britain was concernednot the result of any democratic movement. The mass of Englishmen and Scotchmen still entertained a strong dislike of the Roman Catholics, and it has often been said, perhaps with truth, that if Parliament had been reformed in 1829, the Emancipation Bill would have been rejected. The position of the ministers in the House of Commons was weakened in consequence of the enmity of many of their old supporters, whilst the opposition, composed of Whigs and Canningites, was not likely to give them constant support. In the course of 1830 the Whigs chose Lord Althorp as their leader, who, though he had no commanding genius, inspired confidence by his thorough honesty. Before the effect of this change appeared George IV. died unregretted on June 26. 12. William IV. and the Second French Revolution. 1830.The eldest surviving brother of the late king succeeded as William IV. He was eccentric, and courted popularity by walking about the streets, and allowed himself to be treated with the utmost familiarity by his subjects. Some people thought that, like his father, he would be a lunatic before he died. A new Parliament was elected in which the Tories, though they lost many seats, still had a majority; but it was a majority divided against itself. Events occurred on the Continent which tended to weaken still further the Wellington ministry. In France Charles X., having succeeded his brother Louis XVIII., became rapidly unpopular. Defying the Chambers, which answered in France to the Parliament in England, he was overthrown in July 1830 by a revolution which placed his distant cousin, the Duke of Orleans, on the throne. Louis Philippe, however, instead of taking the title of King of France, which had been borne by the preceding kings, assumed that of King of the French, as a sign of his adoption of a merely constitutional authority. He was, in fact, to be to France what William III. had been to England. Such a movement in a neighbouring nation could not fail to influence Englishmen, especially as there was a feeling now spreading in England in some respects analogous to |