of the services which he had rendered to the cause of Parliamentary reform, he was entrusted with the task of bringing before the House of Commons the Bill which the new Government proposed to introduce on that subject.

15. The Reform Bill. 1831. The Reform Bill was brought in by Russell on March 1, 1831. He had an easy task in exposing the faults of the old system. Old Sarum, which returned two members, was only a green mound, without a habitation upon it. Gatton, which also returned two members, was only a ruined wall, whilst

vast communities like Birmingham and Manchester were totally unrepresented. The proposal of the ministry was to sweep away sixty small boroughs returning 119 members, and to give only one member apiece instead of two to fortysix other boroughs nearly as small. Most of the seats thus placed at the disposal of the ministry were to be given, in almost equal proportions, to the counties and the great towns of England; a few being reserved for Scotland and Ireland.

franchise or right of

voting which had hitherto been confined to the possessors of a freehold worth 40s. a year, was conferred also on persons holding land worth 10. a year by copyhold, or 50l. a year by lease. In the boroughs a uniform franchise was given to all householders paying rent of 10l. a year.

16. The Bill Withdrawn. 1831.-The Tories were numerous

1 The copyhold is so called because it is a tenure of which the only evidence is a copy of the Court Roll of a Manor. It is a perpetual holding subject to certain payments. Leasehold is a tenure for a term of years by lease.

1831

POPULAR EXCITEMENT

903

in the House of Commons, and opposed the Bill as revolutionary. Many of them shared the opinion of Wellington, who believed that if it passed the poor would seize the property of the rich and divide it amongst themselves. In reality, the character of the voters in the counties would be much the same as it had been before, whilst the majority of the voters in the boroughs would be the smaller shopkeepers who were not in the least likely to attack property. The second reading of the Bill,' however, only passed by a majority of one, and a hostile amendment to one of its clauses having been carried, the Government withdrew the Bill and dissolved Parliament in order that the question might be referred to the electors.

17. The Reform Bill Re-introduced. 1831.-In times of excitement the electors contrived to impress their feelings on Parliament, even under the old system of voting. From one end of the country to the other a cry was heard of 'The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.' The new House of Commons had an enormous Whig majority. The Reform Bill, slightly amended, was again brought in by Russell, to whom a seat in the Cabinet had been at last given. In the course of discussion in the Commons a clause, known as the Chandos clause from the name of its proposer, was introduced, extending the franchise in counties to 50l. tenants at will. As these new voters would be afraid to vote against their landlords for fear of being turned out of their farms, the change was satisfactory to the Tories. Yet, after the Bill thus altered had passed the House of Commons, it was, on October 8, rejected by the House of Lords.

18. Public Agitation. 1831. The news of the rejection of the Bill was received with a torrent of indignation. Meetings were everywhere held in support of the Government. In the House of Commons Macaulay-a young man afterwards the historian of the reigns of James II. and William III.-urged the ministry to persist in its course. "The public enthusiasm," he said, "is undiminished. Old Sarum has grown no bigger, Manchester has grown no smaller. . . . I know only two ways in which societies can be governed by public opinion and by the sword. A government having at its command the armies, the fleets, and the revenues of

1 A Bill before either House is read a first time in order that the members may be enabled to see what it is like. In voting on the second reading members express an opinion whether or no they approve of its general principle. In committee it is discussed clause by clause, to give the House an opportunity of amending it in detail; and a vote is then taken on the third reading to see if the majority of the House approves of it in its amended form. It is then sent to the other House, where it goes through the same process.

Great Britain might possibly hold Ireland by the sword; . . . but to govern Great Britain by the sword, so wild a thought has never occurred to any public man of any party. . . . In old times, when the villeins were driven to revolt by oppression, when a hundred thousand insurgents appeared in arms on Blackheath, the king rode up to them and exclaimed, 'I will be your leader,' and at once the infuriated multitude laid down their arms and dispersed

Lord Palmerston: from a seated figure in Hayter's Reformed Parliament
in the National Portrait Gallery.

at his command. Herein let us imitate him. Let us say to our countrymen 'We are your leaders. Our lawful power shall be firmly exerted to the utmost in your cause; and our lawful power is such that it must finally prevail." It was a timely warning. Outside Parliament there were men who thought that nothing but force would bear down the resistance of the Lords. The Birmingham Political Union (see p. 899) held a meeting at which those

1831-1832

THE FIRST REFORM ACT

905

who were present engaged to pay no taxes if the Reform Bill were again rejected. At Bristol there were fierce riots in which houses were burnt and men killed.

19. The Reform Bill becomes Law. 1831-1832.-On December 12, 1831, the Reform Bill was again, for a third time, brought into the House of Commons. On March 23, 1832, it was passed, and the Lords had then once more to consider it. On April 14 they passed the second reading. On May 7, on the motion of Lord Lyndhurst, who had been Chancellor in Wellington's ministry, they adopted a substantial alteration in it. The ministers at once asked the king to create fifty new peers to carry the Bill, in the same way that the address on the Treaty of Utrecht had been carried by the creation of twelve new peers in the reign of Anne. The king, who was getting frightened at the turmoil in the country, refused, and ministers resigned. Wellington was ready to take office, giving his support to a less complete Reform Bill, but Peel refused to join him, and Lord Grey's Government was reinstated, receiving from the king a promise to create peers if necessary. On this Wellington, unwilling to see the House of Lords swamped by fresh creations, persuaded many of his friends to abstain from voting. The Bill met with no further obstacles, and, on June 7, became an Act of Parliament by the Royal Assent.

20. Character of the Reform Act. 1832. In its final shape the Reform Act absolutely disfranchised forty-one boroughs and took away one member from thirty others. Thereby, and by its alteration of the franchise, it accomplished a great transference of power, in favour of the middle classes in the towns. Though it did not establish a democracy, it took a long step in that direction.

21. Roads and Coaches. 1802-1820. The advent of the middle classes to power was prepared by a series of material improvements by which they were especially benefited. The canals made in the beginning of the reign of George III. no longer sufficed to carry the increased traffic of the country. Attention was therefore paid to the improvement of the roads. Telford, a Scotchman, taught road-makers that it was better to go round a hill than to climb over it, and, beginning in 1802, he was employed for eighteen years in improving the communications in Scotland and Wales by making good roads and iron bridges. The Menai suspension bridge, his best known work, was begun in 1819. He and another Scotchman, Macadam, also improved the surface of the roads, which had hitherto been made of gravel or flint, thrown down at random. Telford ordered the large stones to be broken and

mixed with fine gravel, and Macadam pursued the same course round Bristol. He declared that no stone should ever be used in mending roads which was not small enough to go into a man's mouth. Through these improvements travelling became more easy, and coaches flew about the country at what was considered to be the wonderful rate of ten miles an hour.

22. Steam Vessels and Locomotives. 1811-1825.—The first application of steam to locomotion was in vessels. The first steamboat in Great Britain, 'The Comet,' the work of Henry Bell, plied on the Clyde in 1812, and though Fulton in America had made a steam-boat in 1811, it is almost certain that he derived his ideas from Bell. It was not till later that a steam-engine was made to

Early steamboat : from the Instructor of 1833.

draw travellers and goods by land. Of many attempts, none succeeded till the matter was taken in hand by George Stephenson, the son of a poor collier in Northumberland. He had learnt something about machinery in the colliery in which he worked as a boy, and when he grew up he saved money to pay for instruction in reading and writing. He began as an engineer by mending a pumping-engine, and at last attempted to construct a locomotive. His new engine, constructed in 1814, was not successful at first, and it made such a noise that it was popularly known as 'Puffing Billy.' In 1816 he improved it sufficiently to enable it to draw trucks of coal on tramlines from the colliery to the river. At last, in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened for the conveyance of passengers as well as goods, and both the line and the loco