XXX. 1834. years later, overturned the Government of the Citizen CHAP. King, and established the brief reign of "Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité" in its stead. We shall see anon whether this new Revolution proved more remedial in its consequences than its predecessor, and whether the class government of labour was found to be more tolerable in its effects than that of capital had been. CHAPTER XXXI. XXXI. 1832. 1. danger of ing of the Reform Bill. INTERNAL HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN, FROM THE PASSING So great was the change which had been introduced CHAP. into the constitution of Great Britain by the Reform Bill, that the liberties of the country, and with them the existence of the empire, stood in the most imminent peril Imminent when the victory was gained by the popular party. The the country contest had continued so long, the exasperation on both on the pass sides had been so great, the animosity excited so violent, the expectations awakened so extravagant, that there was no saying what length the people would go, now that they had got the power into their own hands. It was well known that the Radicals aimed at changes so great and sweeping-annual parliaments, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, paid representatives, and an equal division of electoral districts—as would entirely destroy the influence of property in the legislature, and leave the nation and its institutions entirely at the mercy of the extreme revolutionary party. The danger was very great that the new constituencies would, for the most part, return members of this way of thinking, or at least pledged to this course of action, and that their influence on the old ones would prove such as to give a majority of them too to the innovating party. Scotland, it was well known, had been completely revolutionised by the change: Ireland was XXXI. 1832. in great part led by Mr O'Connell, whose alliance with CHAP. the extreme Radicals was open and declared. To all appearance, a decisive majority of at least four to one would be returned for Ministers in the first elections under the new constituency; and if so, the whole institutions and liberties of the country lay at the disposal of a party who had recently forced through a decisive organic change in the constitution, by the threat of creating peers and the open coercion of the sovereign. 2. the Duke of and King. June 18. This public danger was forcibly illustrated by an event which occurred a few days after the Reform Bill passed. Assault on The Duke of Wellington had occasion to pay a visit to Wellington the Mint on the 18th June, the anniversary of the battle the of Waterloo, and as he was returning on horseback, attended by a single groom, he was recognised by a mob of several hundred persons who collected on Tower Hill to await his return. He was loudly hissed and hooted on his making his appearance, and the crowd continued to follow him, yelling and hooting, without the Duke paying any attention to what was going on, until in the middle of Fenchurch Street, when a man rushed up to him, and, seizing the horse by the bridle, endeavoured to pull him off his horse, in which he would have succeeded but for the intrepidity of the groom, who hastened to his assistance, and the aid of a small body of police who were passing at the time. The Duke still rode on, regardless of his danger, until he came to Holborn, when the mob began to throw stones and filth at him. He thereupon rode to Sir Charles Wetherall's chambers in Lincoln's Inn, escorted by a body of benchers, who gallantly rushed out to his rescue. He remained there till a body of police arrived from Bow Street, who escorted him home. The public alarm was increased by an assault on the King next day, when attending Ascot races, who was severely June 19. struck by a stone on the forehead, on which occasion he exhibited the hereditary courage of his race. Without doubt a political party is not legally responsible for the XXXI. 1832. CHAP. acts of the ruffians who may have espoused their side; but those who take savages into their alliance must bear the moral opprobrium, as the English did in the American War, of their misdeeds. The Liberal party had good reason now, all over the world, to blush for the acts of their followers, and the earnest they afforded of the ascendant which brute strength was to obtain over intellect in reformed society. In France they held Chateaubriand in chains, in Scotland they had hissed the dying Sir Walter Scott, and in England they had tried to murder the Duke of Wellington on the anniversary of the day on which he had saved his country. 1 Ann. Reg. 1832; Chron. 76, 77. 3. Immense power at the No one can have lived through that anxious period without being conscious that these dangers were anything disposal of but imaginary. They had been treated as such by the Ministers. Liberals during the heat of the contest; and every one was stigmatised as an "alarmist," while it was going on, who expressed any apprehension of danger to the country from the passing of the Reform Bill. But when the victory was gained, and the strife was over, the consequences of what had been done, and could not be undone, revealed themselves to the eyes, first of the most thoughtful and far-seeing, and next of the most powerful leaders of the Whig party. Obliged to laud the Bill on the hustings, and on all public occasions constrained to express before the world the most unbounded confidence in the wisdom and integrity with which their newly-acquired powers would be wielded by the people, they were in reality ere long not less impressed than their opponents with the most agonising presentiments. In the confidence of trustful friendship these apprehensions were revealed without reserve even to the most sturdy of political adversaries, forming a strange contrast to the Io Paans which they chanted in public for their transcendant victory. As the private correspondence of the Whig leaders at this period is gradually brought to light, the more clear does it appear how widely these apprehen XXXI. 1832. sions were entertained in their secret thoughts by those CHAP. who had been foremost in the battle. It is fortunate it was so, for such was the fervour of the public mind at the close of the contest that the great majority of the people would have supported the Government in any ulterior projects they chose to advance, how violent soever, provided only they had a tendency to depress still farther the Conservative oligarchy who had so long ruled the nation. There is too much reason to fear that a Liberal Government so disposed might have abolished the House of Peers, established universal suffrage, destroyed the Established Church, possibly dethroned the King, if they had been wicked or insane enough to have entertained such projects. Possibly the escape of the nation from the perils with which it was then on all sides beset is to be ascribed only to the good providence of God, which had destined the British empire to a more glorious end than to perish from its own infatuation. But, humanly speaking, there were several causes which concurred at this time in averting the danger, and of these the principal were the following: 4. the practical English I. The first of these, and without doubt the most important, was the difference between the constitution of Influence of the British mind and that of the French, Spaniards, and turn of the Neapolitans, in whom the sudden acquisition of political mind at this power had produced such fatal results. In these ima- crisis. ginative and excitable people the seizure of absolute authority, and confirming it by durable institutions in a particular party, was the great object of ambition, to the securing of which all their efforts from first to last were. directed. In Great Britain, however, a different set of objects engrossed the public thoughts. The Anglo-Saxon race, eminently practical and domestic in its disposition, was mainly bent on securing substantial and what may be called home benefits from its triumphs. The vague idea of liberty and equality, so powerful on the other side of the Atlantic, had little influence beside the English fireside. The English people were not less set than their |