was taken.  Lord Grey had no difficulty in forming a ministry in which the Whigs were aided by the junction of several of the more moderate Tories, who had regarded Canning as their leader; and from the very beginning Parliamentary Reform was proclaimed to be the one great object of his government.  It would be more correct to call it a Reform of the House of Commons, since there was no idea of interfering with the House of Lords, even in those parts of it which were of a representative character, the Scotch and Irish peers.  But, by whatever title the ministerial policy was designated, no one misunderstood what was intended; and as Parliament was, after a few days, adjourned over the Christmas holidays, the recess was spent by a sub-committee of the cabinet in framing a measure.

The great extension of our trade, which was the fruit partly of his wise commercial policy, and partly of the long war; the rapid and prodigious growth of our manufactures, developed by the inventive ingenuity of our mechanics and engineers, had given a consideration and influence to the commercial, manufacturing, and moneyed classes which could not be disregarded.  The land-owners, who had previously almost monopolized the representation, no longer constituted the wealthiest class of the community.  Pitt himself had raised a banker to the peerage.  More recently, men closely connected with the commercial classes had become cabinet ministers, one of whom had even subsequently sacrificed office to his feeling of the propriety of enfranchising a single town, Birmingham.  But there were other towns at least equal in importance to Birmingham which were unrepresented, and it was clearly impossible to maintain a system which gave representatives to boroughs like Gatton, Old Sarum, or Corfe Castle—­where the electors scarcely outnumbered the members whom they elected—­and withheld them from large and opulent manufacturing centres like Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield.  The enfranchisement, therefore, of these towns, and of others whose population and consequent importance, though inferior to theirs, was still vastly superior to those of many which had hitherto returned representatives, was so manifestly reasonable and consistent with the principles of our parliamentary constitution, that it was impossible to object to it.  And their enfranchisement unavoidably led to the disfranchisement of the smaller boroughs, unless the House of Commons were to be enlarged to a number which was not likely to tend to the facilitation of business.  Indeed, in the opinion of the framers of the bill, the House was already too large, and they proposed to reduce its number by upward of sixty—­a step to which it is probable that many of those whose opposition contributed to defeat it subsequently repented of their resistance.  Nevertheless, the line adopted by the Duke of Wellington’s ministry showed that there was still a large party to whom reform on a large scale was altogether distasteful;