His thoughts and observations on weightier matters he kept for an article on the State of Parties in France which he intended to provide for the October number of the Edinburgh Review.  While he was still at Paris, this arrangement was rescinded by Mr. Napier in compliance with the wish, or the whim, of Brougham; and Macaulay’s surprise and annoyance vented itself in a burst of indignant rhetoric strong enough to have upset a Government. [See on page 142 the letter to Mr. Napier of September 16, 1831.] His wrath,—­or that part of it, at least, which was directed against the editor,—­did not survive an interchange of letters; and he at once set to work upon turning his material into the shape of a volume for the series of Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia, under the title of “The History of France, from the Restoration of the Bourbons to the Accession of Louis Philippe.”  Ten years ago proofs of the first eighty-eight pages were found in Messrs. Spottiswoode’s printing office, with a note on the margin to the effect that most of the type was broken up before the sheets had been pulled.  The task, as far as it went, was faithfully performed; but the author soon arrived at the conclusion that he might find a more profitable investment for his labour.  With his head full of Reform, Macaulay was loth to spend in epitomising history the time and energy that would be better employed in helping to make it.

When the new Parliament met on the 26th of October it was already evident that the Government was doomed.  Where the elections were open, Reform had carried the day.  Brougham was returned for Yorkshire, a constituency of tried independence, which before 1832 seldom failed to secure the triumph of a cause into whose scale it had thrown its enormous weight.  The counties had declared for the Whigs by a majority of eight to five, and the great cities by a majority of eight to one.  Of the close boroughs in Tory hands many were held by men who had not forgotten Catholic Emancipation, and who did not mean to pardon their leaders until they had ceased to be Ministers.

In the debate on the Address the Duke of Wellington uttered his famous declaration that the Legislature possessed, and deserved to possess, the full and entire confidence of the country; that its existing constitution was not only practically efficient but theoretically admirable; and that, if he himself had to frame a system of representation, he should do his best to imitate so excellent a model, though he admitted that the nature of man was incapable at a single effort of attaining to such mature perfection.  His bewildered colleagues could only assert in excuse that their chief was deaf, and wish that everybody else had been deaf too.  The second ministerial feat was of a piece with the first.  Their Majesties had accepted an invitation to dine at Guildhall on the 9th of November.  The Lord Mayor elect informed the Home Office that there was danger of riot, and the Premier, (who could