Amidst a population which had once known freedom, and was still fit to be entrusted with it, such a state of matters could not last for ever.  Justly proud of the immense success that they had bought by their resolution, their energy, and their perseverance, the Ministers regarded the fall of Napoleon as a party triumph which could only serve to confirm their power.  But the last cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th of June, was in truth the death-knell of the golden age of Toryism.  When the passion and ardour of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small and disheartened faction, but with a clear majority of the nation led by the most enlightened, and the most eminent, of its sons.  Agitators and incendiaries retired into the background, as will always be the case when the country is in earnest; and statesmen who had much to lose, but were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front.  The men, and the sons of the men, who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.  Earl Grey, who forty years before had been hooted through the streets of North Shields with cries of “No Popery,” lived to bear the most respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed little from those for expressing which Dr. Priestley in 1791 had his house burned about his ears by the Birmingham mob, was now the popular idol beyond all comparison or competition.

In the face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes, and then to quarrel among themselves.  Throughout the years of Macaulay’s early manhood the ice was breaking fast.  He was still quite young when the concession of Catholic Emancipation gave a moral shock to the Tory party from which it never recovered until the old order of things had finally passed away. [Macaulay was fond of repeating an answer made to him by Lord Clarendon in the year 1829.  The young men were talking over the situation, and Macaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms in which the Duke of Wellington would recommend the Catholic Relief Bill to the Peers.  “Oh,” said the other, “it will be easy enough.  He’ll say ’My lords!  Attention!  Right about face!  March!’”] It was his fortune to enter into other men’s labours after the burden and heat of the day had already been borne, and to be summoned into the field just as the season was at hand for gathering in a ripe and long-expected harvest of beneficent legislation.