William the Fourth not to
proceed to the City to visit the Lord Mayor, lest there should be
tumults.

On the 15th, they were defeated in the House of Commons, upon a motion
of Sir Henry Parnell, for a committee to inquire into the civil list;
and on the following day the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues
resigned; being apprehensive that the same majority would vote for the
principle of parliamentary reform in a day or two after, and not wishing
to virtually give up that question by going out after being beaten on it
in the House of Commons.

During the year 1831, while the discussions on the Reform Bill were
going on, the Duke made frequent speeches against the measure, and led
the opposition in the House of Lords in a manner quite consistent with
his declaration in November. In a speech he made on the 28th March,
explanatory of the causes of his resignation, he distinctly denied that
the reform fever was owing to that declaration, and asserted that it
was to be attributed to the effect on the public mind of the revolutions
in France and Belgium.

On the 10th of October, after the Reform Bill had been thrown out in the
House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington was insulted by a mob on his way
to the house. In the evening, the windows of his mansion at Hyde
Park-corner were broken. It is to be lamented that any class of
Englishmen were to be found so degraded as to be guilty of this
ingratitude.

Fortunately, the worst of the evil was averted, by the total
indifference of the Duke to all such demonstrations. The greatest men
have been despisers of mankind, of the swaying multitude, that is to
say, the unthinking, the headstrong, and the violent--not of necessity
merely, from that intrinsic superiority and natural antagonism which
forbid their commingling; but also, and with a more hearty potency, from
the experience which they, alternately the adored or the scorned, have
had of the inconstancy of the giddy people. In this light estimation,
indeed, of the judgment of their less worthy fellows, lies the secret of
their greatness and their strength. They ride towards their goal while
the stream tends that way, and when the course of the current is
diverted, they are not dismayed. Their scorn of the means leads them to
pass on by their own strength, or to rest secure on the foundation-rock
of our moral nature--principle, and the consciousness of duty done.

In April, 1832, on the motion for the second reading of the