regard to the solid and permanent opinion of the
nation? We have had twelve parliaments since the Reform Act,--I
have a right to say so, as I have sat in every one of them,--and
the opinion, the national opinion, has been exhibited in the
following manner. Ten of those parliaments have had a liberal
majority. The eleventh parliament was the one that sat from 1841
to 1847. It was elected as a tory parliament; but in 1846 it put
out the conservative government of Sir Robert Peel, and put in and
supported till its dissolution, the liberal government of Lord
John Russell. That is the eleventh parliament. But then there is
the twelfth parliament, and that is one that you and I know a good
deal about [Lord Beaconsfield's parliament], for we talked largely
on the subject of its merits and demerits, whichever they may be,
at the time of the last election. That parliament was, I admit, a
tory parliament from the beginning to the end. But I want to know,
looking back for a period of more than fifty years, which
represented the solid permanent conviction of the nation?--the ten
parliaments that were elected upon ten out of the twelve
dissolutions, or the one parliament that chanced to be elected
from the disorganized state of the liberal party in the early part
of the year 1874? Well, here are ten parliaments on the one side;
here is one parliament on the other side.... The House of Lords
was in sympathy with the one parliament, and was in opposition ...
to the ten parliaments. And yet you are told, when--we will say for
forty-five years out of fifty--practically the nation has
manifested its liberal tendencies by the election of liberal
parliaments, and once only has chanced to elect a thoroughly tory
parliament, you are told that it is the thoroughly tory parliament
that represents the solid and permanent opinion of the
country.(76)

In time a curious thing, not yet adequately explained, fell out, for the
extension of the franchise in 1867 and now in 1884 resulted in a reversal
of the apparent law of things that had ruled our political parties through
the epoch that Mr. Gladstone has just sketched. The five parliaments since
1884 have not followed the line of the ten parliaments preceding,
notwithstanding the enlargement of direct popular power.

III

In August Mr. Gladstone submitted to the Queen a memo