esponse in favour of the measure was emphatic and overwhelming. The
country was split into the opposing camps of the Reformers and
anti-Reformers, and every other question was thrust aside in the
struggle. The political unions proved themselves to be a power in the
land, and the operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing
centres, though still excluded from citizenship, left no stone unturned
to ensure the popular triumph. Lord John was pressed to stand both for
Lancashire and Devonshire; he chose the latter county, with which he
was closely associated by family traditions as well as by personal
friendships, and was triumphantly returned, with Lord Ebrington as
colleague. Even in the agricultural districts the ascendency of the old
landed families was powerless to arrest the movement, and as the results
of the elections became known it was seen that Lord Sefton had caught
the situation in his dry remark: 'The county members are tumbling about
like ninepins.' Parliament assembled in June, and it became plain at a
glance that democratic ideas were working like leaven upon public
opinion in England. In spite of rotten boroughs, close corporations, the
opposition of the majority of the territorial aristocracy, and the panic
of thousands of timid people, who imagined that the British Constitution
was imperilled, the Reformers came back in strength, and at least a
hundred who had fought the Bill in the late Parliament were shut out
from a renewal of the struggle, whilst out of eighty-two county members
that were returned, only six were hostile to Reform.

On June 24, Lord John Russell, now raised to Cabinet rank, introduced
the Second Reform Bill, which was substantially the same as the first,
and the measure was carried rapidly through its preliminary stage, and
on July 8 it passed the second reading by a majority of 136. The
Government, however, in Committee was met night after night by an
irritating cross-fire of criticism; repeated motions for adjournment
were made; there was a systematic division of labour in the task of
obstruction. In order to promote delay, the leaders of the Opposition
stood up again and again and repeated the same statements and arguments,
and often in almost the same words. 'If Mr. Speaker,' wrote Jekyll,
'outlives the Reform debate, he may defy _la grippe_ and the cholera. I
can recommend no books, for the booksellers declare nobody reads or buys
in the present fever. The newspapers are furi