his
qualifications to deal with the most intricate questions involved in
civil government were very little inferior to his military talents.
Passages from that speech will be found in the following pages. At the
time many of his views were ridiculed by those political economists who
were destined so soon to rise to power under shelter of the reform
question; but it will be seen that the improved experience of the
country after ten years' undisputed sway of those gentlemen, confirms
many of the chief conclusion to which the astute and practical mind of
the Duke of Wellington then led him. That speech, however, raised a
hornet's nest around him in the House of Commons. Among others, Sir
Francis Burdett made a personal attack on the Duke, in which he said
that his administration showed how correct was his estimate of his own
powers when he said he would be mad to think of being prime minister.
That illustrious individual, he said, had been treated with much
tenderness, because he had conferred the greatest benefits on his
country; but if his services had been great his recompense had been
great also. Mr. Brougham, also, made a most personal attack on the Duke
on the day before parliament closed.

In the mean while, George the Fourth died (on the 26th of June), and
parliament was dissolved. The new parliament, called by William the
Fourth, was opened by the king in person on November the 2nd. It was
decidedly unfavourable to the ministry, against whom were arrayed a most
talented and unscrupulous opposition. They swayed with almost absolute
power the great mass of the people, who hoped everything from
parliamentary reform, and had not as yet had experience of the
extravagance of such hopes. A part of the tactics of the whig leaders
was to excite personal animosity against the Duke of Wellington, who was
libelled as a sort of would-be military dictator, seeking to introduce
in civil affairs the iron discipline of the camp, and to ride rough shod
over a free people.

With the clamour for reform out of doors and in the commons, it was not
to be supposed that even the impassible Duke of Wellington could avoid
referring to the subject in the debate on the address. This he did, with
more candour than prudence, by his well-known declaration against
reform, and in favour of the existing system. It will be found at length
elsewhere. The excitement it produced was enormous: so great, that in
three days afterwards ministers advised