the bill from the hands of Lord John Russell. He then resumed his seat
on the woolsack, and communicated to the assembled peers the nature of
the message. Earl Grey moved that the bill be read a first time, and the
time was agreed to. On the 3d of October the premier addressed the House
in support of the bill,--a measure which he had taken up in his youth,
not so much from sympathy with the people as from conviction of its
imperative necessity. There was great majesty in the manner of the
patrician minister as he addressed his peers; his eye sparkled with
intelligence, and his noble brow betokened resolution and firmness,
while his voice quivered with emotion. Less rhetorical than his great
colleague the Lord Chancellor, his speech riveted attention. For
forty-five years the aged peer had advocated parliamentary reform, and
his voice had been heard in unison with that of Fox before the French
Revolution had broken out. Lord Wharncliffe, one of the most moderate
and candid of his opponents, followed. Lord Melbourne, courteous and
inoffensive, supported the bill, because, as he said, he dreaded the
consequences of a refusal of concession to the demands of the people,
rather than because he loved reform, which he had previously opposed.
The Duke of Wellington of course uttered his warning protest, and was
listened to more from his fame as a warrior than from his merits as a
speaker. Lord Brougham delivered one of the most masterly of his great
efforts in favor of reform, and was answered by Lord Lyndhurst in a
speech scarcely inferior in mental force. The latter maintained that if
the bill became a law the Constitution would be swept away, and even a
republic be established on its ruins. Lord Tenterden, another great
lawyer, took the side of Lord Lyndhurst, followed in the same strain by
Dr. Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury. On a division, there was a
majority of forty-one peers against the bill.

The news spread with rapidity to every corner of the land that the Lords
had defeated the reform for which the nation clamored. Never in England
was there greater excitement. The abolition of the House of Lords was
everywhere discussed, and in many places angrily demanded. People could
do nothing but talk about the bill, and politics threw all business into
the shade. An imprudent speech from an influential popular leader might
have precipitated the revolution which the anti-reformers so greatly
dreaded. The disappointed people fo