ution would topple down in ruins. "A thousand
years have scarce sufficed to make England what she is: one hour
may lay her in the dust." In 1861 J. W. Croker wrote to his patron,
the great borough-monger Lord Hertford: "There can be no doubt
that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a republic,
and in Ireland to separation. Both _may_ happen without the Bill,
but with it they are inevitable." Next year the Bill became law.
Lord Bathurst cut off his pigtail, exclaiming: "Ichabod, for the
glory is departed"--an exquisitely significant combination of act
and word--and the Duke of Wellington announced that England had
accomplished "a revolution by due course of law." In some sense the
words were true. Political power had passed from the aristocracy
to the middle class. The English equivalents of Talleyrand--the
men who directly or in their ancestors had ruled England since
1688, had enjoyed power without responsibility, and privilege which
alike Kings and mobs had questioned in vain--were filled with the
wildest alarms. Emotional orators saw visions of the guillotine;
calmer spirits anticipated the ballot-box; and the one implement
of anarchy was scarcely more dreaded than the other.

Sixteen years passed. Property and freedom seemed pretty secure. Even
privilege, though shaken, had not been overthrown; and a generation
had grown up to which the fears of revolution seemed fantastic. Then
suddenly came the uprising of the nations in '48; and once again
"dissolving throes" were felt, with pain or joy according to the
temperament of those who felt them. "We have seen," said Charles
Greville, "such a stirring-up of all the elements of society as
nobody ever dreamt of; we have seen a general saturnalia--ignorance,
vanity, insolence, poverty, ambition, escaping from every kind
of restraint, ranging over the world, and turning it topsy-turvy
as it pleased. All Europe exhibits the result--a mass of ruin,
terror, and despair." Matthew Arnold, young and ardent, and in
some ways democratic, wrote in a different vein: "The hour of the
hereditary peerage, and eldest sonship, and immense properties,
has, I am convinced, as Lamartine would say, struck." Seventy years
ago! And that "hour" has not struck yet!

The "dissolving throes" were lulled again, and I scarcely made
themselves felt till 1866, when a mild attempt to admit the pick
of the artisans to the electoral privileges of the middle class
woke the panic-stricken ve