just returned
for Liverpool. Two trains proceeded towards Manchester on parallel
lines, and stopped at the Parkgate station. There several passengers got
out, and Huskisson was making his way to shake hands with the duke when
he was struck by a carriage of the other train, already in movement,
fell upon the rails, and was fatally crushed. He bore his sufferings
with great fortitude, but died during the night at a neighbouring
vicarage to which he was carried. He could ill be spared by his party,
for, though he was not the man to ride the storm which raged over the
reform bill, his counsels might have saved the whigs from the just
reproach of financial incapacity and have hastened the advent of free
trade.

[Pageheading: _WELLINGTON ON REFORM._]

The winter session of 1830 opened with an ominous calm. It was believed
that private negotiations were going on between the ministry and the
survivors of Canning's following, which might result in a moderate
scheme of parliamentary reform. These expectations were utterly
discomfited by the king's speech delivered on November 2. It has
unjustly been described as "the most offensive that had been uttered by
any monarch since the revolution". On the contrary, it was tame and
colourless for the most part, recording his majesty's resolution to
uphold treaties and enforce order in the United Kingdom, but welcoming
the new French monarchy in terms which Grey emphatically commended. It
gave offence to liberals by describing the revolutionary movement in
Belgium as a "revolt"; but what called forth an immediate outburst of
popular resentment was its significant reticence on the subject of
reform. This resentment was aggravated tenfold by the Duke of
Wellington's celebrated speech in the lords, declaring against any
reform whatever. The duke always refused to admit that this declaration
was the cause of his subsequent fall, which he attributed, by
preference, to his adoption of catholic emancipation. Speaking
deliberately in reply to Grey, who had indicated reform as the only true
remedy for popular discontent, the duke stated that no measure of reform
yet proposed would, in his opinion, improve the representative system
then existing, which, he said, "answered all the good purposes of
legislation" to a greater degree than "any legislature in any country
whatever". He went further, and avowed his conviction not only that this
system "possessed the full and entire confidence of the coun