.
The great reform was carried by a parliament elected to support Lord
Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston detested reform. It was carried by a
government in a decided minority. It was carried by a minister and by a
leader of opposition, neither of whom was at the time in the full
confidence of his party. Finally, it was carried by a House of Commons
that the year before had, in effect, rejected a measure for the admission
of only 400,000 new voters, while the measure to which it now assented
added almost a million voters to the electorate.(153)

We always do best to seek rational explanations in large affairs. It may
be true that "if there were no blunders there would be no politics," but
when we have made full allowance for blunder, caprice, chance, folly,
craft, still reason and the nature of things have a share. The secret of
the strange reversal in 1867 of all that had been said, attempted, and
done in 1866, would seem to be that the tide of public opinion had
suddenly swelled to flood. The same timidity that made the ruling classes
dread reform, had the compensation that very little in the way of popular
demonstration was quite enough to frighten them into accepting it. Here
the demonstration was not little. Riots in Hyde Park, street processions
measured by the mile in the great cities from London up to Glasgow,
open-air meetings attended by a hundred, two hundred, two hundred and
fifty thousand people at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, showed that even
though the workmen might not be anxious to demand the franchise, yet they
would not stand its refusal. In the autumn of 1868 Mr. Bright led a
splendid campaign in a series of speeches in England, Scotland, and
Ireland, marked by every kind of power. It is worthy of remark that not
one of the main changes of that age was carried in parliament without
severe agitation out of doors. Catholic emancipation was won by O'Connell;
the reform act of 1832 by the political unions; free trade by the league
against the corn law. Household suffrage followed the same rule.

It was undoubtedly true in a sense that Mr. Gladstone was at the head of a
majority in 1866, and now again in. 1867. But its composition was
peculiar. Sir Thomas Acland (April 10, 1867) describes Mr. Gladstone as
hampered by three sets of people: "1. Radicals, who will vote for
household suffrage, but don't want it carried. 2. Whigs (aristocrats), who
won't risk a collision with the government, and hope that very