sters could make no terms with the King short of
those which they had offered, and as the King did not see his way to
accept their conditions there was nothing left for them but to resign
office. Accordingly Lord Grey tendered his resignation and that of his
colleagues, and the King, after much indecision and mental flurry,
thought he could do nothing better than to accept the resignation, and
try to find a set of ministers more suitable to his {177} inclinations.
He sent for Lord Lyndhurst and entered into conversation with that
astute lawyer and politician, and Lord Lyndhurst advised him to send
for the Duke of Wellington. The Duke was sent for, but the Duke had
not much to say which could lend any help to the King in his
difficulties. Wellington saw distinctly enough that there was no
alternative but that which lay in the choice between reform and some
sort of popular revolution. We have seen already in these volumes how
Wellington preferred to accept Catholic Emancipation rather than take
the risk of plunging the country into civil war. In the case of the
Reform Bill he would have acted, no doubt, upon the same principle if
driven to the choice, but after the repeated and energetic
denunciations of reform which he had delivered in the House of Lords he
did not think that it would be a fitting part for him, even for the
sake of helping the sovereign out of his constitutional trouble, to be
the Prime Minister by whom any manner of Reform Bill should be
introduced. Wellington therefore strongly urged the King to send for
Sir Robert Peel, and declared that he himself would lend all the
support he possibly could to a Peel Administration. Peel was sent for
accordingly, but Peel was too far-seeing a statesman to believe that he
could possibly hold office for many weeks unless he yielded to the full
demands of the country, and his political principles would not have
allowed him to go so far as that. He did his best to make it clear to
the King that no administration but a reform administration could
stand, and that, if a reform administration had to be accepted, there
was nothing better to be done than to invite Lord Grey and Lord John
Russell back again to office.

Meanwhile the country was aroused to a fervor of enthusiasm in favor of
reform, which seemed only to increase with every delay and to grow
stronger with every opposition. Public meetings were held in
Birmingham of larger size than had ever been gathered