He was on his legs once again, and once only, during his first Session; doing more for future success in Parliament by his silence than he could have effected by half a dozen brilliant perorations.  A crisis was rapidly approaching when a man gifted with eloquence, who by previous self-restraint had convinced the House that he did not speak for speaking’s sake, might rise almost in a day to the very summit of influence and reputation.  The country was under the personal rule of the Duke of Wellington, who had gradually squeezed out of his Cabinet every vestige of Liberalism, and even of independence, and who at last stood so completely alone that he was generally supposed to be in more intimate communication with Prince Polignac than with any of his own colleagues.  The Duke had his own way in the Lords; and on the benches of the Commons the Opposition members were unable to carry, or even visibly to improve their prospect of carrying, the measures on which their hearts were set.  The Reformers were not doing better in the division lobby than in 1821; and their question showed no signs of having advanced since the day when it had been thrown over by Pitt on the eve of the French Revolution.

But the outward aspect of the situation was very far from answering to the reality.  While the leaders of the popular party had been spending themselves in efforts that seemed each more abortive than the last,—­dividing only to be enormously outvoted, and vindicating with calmness and moderation the first principles of constitutional government only to be stigmatised as the apostles of anarchy,—­a mighty change was surely but imperceptibly effecting itself in the collective mind of their fellow-countrymen.

 “For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
  Seem here no painful inch to gain,
  Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
  Comes silent, flooding in, the main.”

Events were at hand, which unmistakably showed how different was the England of 1830 from the England of 1790.  The King died; Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July; and in the first excitement and bustle of the elections, while the candidates were still on the roads and the writs in the mailbags, came the news that Paris was in arms.  The troops fought as well as Frenchmen ever can be got to fight against the tricolour; but by the evening of the 29th it was all over with the Bourbons.  The Minister, whose friendship had reflected such unpopularity on our own Premier, succumbed to the detestation of the victorious people, and his sacrifice did not save the dynasty.  What was passing among our neighbours for once created sympathy, and not repulsion, on this side the Channel.  One French Revolution had condemned English Liberalism to forty years of subjection, and another was to be the signal which launched it on as long a career of supremacy.  Most men said, and all felt, that Wellington must follow Polignac; and the public temper was such as made it well for the stability of our throne that it was filled by a monarch who had attracted to himself the hopes and affection of the nation, and who shared its preferences and antipathies with regard to the leading statesmen of the day.