n which side of the
line any town was to be found. And the aggregate result would be
ludicrously small as a measure of enfranchisement. Of such a
measure we could not approve. We did not wish to make at once so
wide a change as that involved in a genuine household suffrage
(always in our minds involving county as well as town), and we
could not fairly separate ourselves from Bright on such a point.
(3) So we adhered to our idea of an extension, considerable but
not violent, and performing all it promised.

But the Adullamite spirit went to work, and finding that the bill
had the popular recommendation of a great phrase [household
suffrage], combined with the recommendation to them of a narrow
sphere of practical operation, determined to support the principle
of the bill and abandon our plan, although our mode of operation
had been warmly approved at party meetings held at my house. The
result was in a tactical sense highly damaging to us. Perhaps we
ought to have recognised that the idea of household suffrage, when
the phrase had once been advertised by a government as its
battle-ground, was irresistible, and that the only remaining
choice was whether it should be a household suffrage cribbed,
cabined, and confined by the condition of personal ratepaying, or
a household suffrage fairly conforming in substance and operation
to the idea that the phrase conveyed. The first was in our view
totally inadmissible; the second beyond the wants and wishes of
the time. But the government, it must be admitted, bowled us over
by the force of the phrase; and made it our next duty to bowl them
over by bringing the reality of the bill into correspondence with
its great profession. This we were able to do in some degree, when
we reached the committee, for some of the restrictions included in
the measure were such as the double-facing liberal fringe did not
venture to uphold against the assaults of their own party. But the
grand question of compound householding, which was really to
determine the character of our legislation, was one on which we
could not reckon upon either the conscientious or the intimidated
and prudential support of our liberal fringe. The government were
beyond all doubt, at least for the moment, masters of the
situation. The question was raised, if not in its fullest breadth