orders to drive first to Lord Albemarle's, the Master of the Horse. Lord Albemarle, who was breakfasting, started up on the entrance of Lord Durham, asking what was the matter. "You must have the King's carriages ready immediately." "The King's carriages! Very well; I will just finish my breakfast." "Finish your breakfast! Not you; you must not lose a moment. The King ought to be at the House." "Lord bless me ! Is there a revolution?" "Not at this moment; but there will be if you stay to finish your breakfast." This was enough; and in a wonderfully brief space of time the royal carriages drove up to the Palace. The King was ready and impatient; he walked with an unusually brisk step; "and so did the royal horses, in their passage through the streets, as was observed by the curious and anxious observers."

Now turn we to the Lower House. The picture it presented is thus described by a contemporary historian :

"It was crowded, expectant, eager, and passionate. Sir Richard Vyvyan was the speaker of the Opposition, and a very strong one. A question of order arose as to whether he was or was not keeping within the fair bounds of his subject, which was a reform petition, whereas he was speaking on 'dissolution or no dissolution.' The Speaker appears to have been agitated from the beginning, and there were several members who were not collected enough to receive his decision with the usual deference. Honourable members turned upon each other, giving contradictions, sharp, angry, even abusive. Lord John Russell attempted to make himself heard, but in vain: his was no voice to pierce through such a tumult. The Speaker was in a state of visible emotion. Sir Richard Vyvyan, however, regained a hearing; but as soon as he was once more in full flow, boom! came the cannon which told that the king was on his way, and the roar drowned the conclusion of the sentence. Not a word

more was heard for the cheers, the cries, and even shouts of laughter-all put down together, at regular intervals, by the discharges of artillery. At one moment Sir Robert Peel, Lord Althorp, and Sir Francis Burdett, were all using the most vehement action of command and supplication in dumb show, and their friends were labouring in vain to procure a hearing for them. The Speaker himself stood silenced by the tumult, till the cries took more and more the sound of Shame! Shame!' and more eyes were fixed upon him till he could have made himself heard, if he had not been too much moved to speak. When he recovered voice, he directed that Sir Robert Peel was entitled to address the House. With occasional uproar, this was permitted; and Sir Robert Peel was still speaking when the Usher of the Black Rod appeared at the bar to summon the Commons to his Majesty's presence."

Meanwhile, in the House of Lords, the Peers had assembled in unusual numbers. Brougham had left the woolsack, and the Earl of Shaftesbury had temporarily occupied the chair as Speaker. Lord Wharncliffe rose to move an address to the King, praying that he would not dissolve the present Parliament. The Ministerialists interrupted him; and no fewer than five peers were on their feet at once, each endeavouring to gain a hearing. At last, Lord Wharncliffe was permitted to make his motion, and it seemed possible that it might be carried by acclamation, when Lord Shaftesbury was compelled to vacate the woolsack by the appearance of the Lord Chancellor in a state of much excitement, and crying out, with strident voice: "I never yet heard that the Crown ought not to dissolve Parliament whenever it thought fit, particularly at a moment when the House of Commons had resorted to the extreme step of refusing the supplies."

Thinking he had effectually checked the course of the debate, Lord Brougham again disappeared. But no sooner was he gone, than Lord Shaftesbury was replaced on the woolsack, and Lord Mansfield was bitterly inveighing against the dissolution and the Reform Bill, when shouts were heard of "The King! the King! God save the King!" The large doors on the right of the throne were flung wide, and his Majesty, accompanied by the Chancellor and other great officers, entered the House, and took his seat. The Commons were summoned, and when they had arrived, his Majesty began :

My Lords and Gentlemen, I have come to meet you for the purpose of proroguing this Parliament, with a view to its immediate dissolution. I have been induced to resort to this measure, for the purpose of ascertaining the sense of my people, in the way in which it can be most constitutionally and most authentically expressed, on the expediency of making such changes in the representation as circumstances may appear to require; and which, founded upon the acknowledged principles of the Constitution, may tend at once to uphold the just rights and prerogatives of the crown, and to give security to the liberties of the people."

Thus was a great political peril—perhaps a revolution of portentous dimensions-happily averted.

II.

The new Reform Bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons by a majority of 136, on the 7th of July, and its third on the 21st of September, by a majority of 109. The great question then arose, as it has often since arisen, "What will the Lords do?" In

the Upper House, the crucial debate—that on the second reading-took place on the 3rd and extended to the 7th of October. On the last night of the debate, the Lord Chancellor delivered, in support of the bill, one of his finest speeches, in which he analysed, with a power of criticism he did not always exhibit, the arguments of its opponents, emphasized those of its supporters by a variety of illustrations, and concluded with an eloquent and dignified peroration:

"Among the awful considerations," he says, "that now bow down my mind, there is one which stands pre-eminent above the rest. You are the highest judicature in the realm; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, civil and criminal, without appeal. It is a judge's first duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this the exception? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes and fears hang? You are. Then beware of your decision! Rouse not, I beseech you, a peace-loving but a resolute people; do not alienate from your body the affections of a whole empire. As your friend, as the friend of my order, as the friend of my country, as the faithful servant of my sovereign, I counsel you to assist with your uttermost efforts in preserving the peace, and upholding and perpetuating the Constitution. Therefore, I pray and I exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold most dear, by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you-I warn you-I implore you—yea, on my bended knees, I supplicate you-reject not this bill!"

But, in spite of warning, remonstrance, and argument, the Lords threw it out by a majority of 41. A flame of wrath at once lit up the country, from John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End; and for a time the fate of the

Constitution hung in the balance. Various solutions of the difficulty were proposed; the most popular was the creation of a number of peers sufficient to outvote the hostile majority. This bold and revolutionary proposal, which involved a direct degradation of the dignity and authority of the Upper House, was made by Brougham, accepted by ministers, and urged upon the King, who very reluctantly gave a verbal assent. The Government then introduced their bill into the House of Commons, on the 12th of December, and it passed through its various stages with immense majorities. In the Lords, the indignation of the country and the threatened creation of new peers had not been without good effect; and on the second reading, ministers secured a majority of. nine. The bill then went into committee, where the facilities for "maiming and delaying a measure of great magnitude and intricacy" proved too much for the moderation and self-control of the Lords. The King, moreover, had receded from his original ardour in the work of reform, and refused to adopt the expedient by which a minority in the Upper House might have been converted into a majority. There was no alternative for Earl Grey and his colleagues but resignation; and the Duke of Wellington, with what his admirers called courage, but cooler critics audacity, stood forward to meet the storm. But he could get no colleagues in his Cabinet, no majority in the Commons, and no soldiers to fight for him in the streets; and it was soon clear that without fighting, and hard fighting, he could not prevent the people from carrying reform. The crisis lasted a week. Then the Duke resigned; Earl Grey was recalled; the King addressed a curious but significant circular letter to the Opposition peers; and on the 7th of June the