ich drove the Tories from power and compelled the King to send for
Grey. The distress in the country was universal--riots prevailed,
rick-burning was common. Lord Grey's prediction of 1793 seemed about to
be fulfilled, for the people, 'maddened by excessive injury and roused
to a feeling of their own strength,' seemed about to break the traces
and to take the bit between their teeth. The deep and widespread
confidence alike in the character and capacity of Lord Grey did more
than anything else at that moment to calm the public mind and to turn
wild clamour into quiet and resistless enthusiasm.

[Sidenote: LORD GREY AS LEADER]

Yet in certain respects Lord Grey was out of touch with the new spirit
of the nation. If his own political ardour had not cooled, the lapse of
years had not widened to any perceptible degree his vision of the issues
at stake. He was a man of stately manners and fastidious tastes, and,
though admirably qualified to hold the position of leader of the
aristocratic Whigs, he had little in common with the toiling masses of
the people. He was a conscientious and even chivalrous statesman, but he
held himself too much aloof from the rank and file of his party, and
thin-skinned Radicals were inclined to think him somewhat cold and even
condescending. Lord Grey lacked the warm heart of Fox, and his speeches,
in consequence, able and philosophic though they were, were destitute
of that unpremeditated and magical eloquence which led Grattan to
describe Fox's oratory as 'rolling in, resistless as the waves of the
Atlantic.' On one memorable occasion--the second reading of the Reform
Bill in the House of Lords--Lord Grey entirely escaped from such
oratorical restraints, and even the Peers were moved to unwonted
enthusiasm by the strong emotion which pervaded that singularly
outspoken appeal.

His son-in-law, Lord Durham, on the other hand, had the making of a
great popular leader, in spite of his imperious manners and somewhat
dictatorial bearing. The head of one of the oldest families in the North
of England, Lord Durham entered the House of Commons in the year 1813,
at the age of twenty-one, as Mr. John George Lambton, and quickly
distinguished himself by his advanced views on questions of foreign
policy as well as Parliamentary reform. He married the daughter of Lord
Grey in 1816, and gave his support in Parliament to Canning. On the
formation of his father-in-law's Cabinet in 1830, he was appointed L