form to the rude hands of the lowest of the
people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they
are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and
blessed with profound peace."

On the 22nd of March the Second Reading was carried by a majority of one.
But directly afterwards the Government was defeated on an amendment in
Committee, and promptly appealed to the country. Parliament was dissolved
on the 23rd of April. "Bold King! bold Ministers!" wrote Sydney on the
25th. Popular feeling was now really roused. "The Bill, the whole Bill, and
nothing but the Bill" was the war-cry from Caithness to Cornwall. Lord John
Russell, who had brought the Bill into Parliament, was the hero of the
hour. He contested Devonshire at the General Election, and Sydney, who had
a vote for the county, met him at Exeter.--

"The people along the road were very much disappointed by his
smallness. I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown
out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the people. This
brought tears into their eyes!"

At this juncture Sydney composed (and published in the name of an imaginary
Mr. Dyson), a "Speech to the Freeholders on Reform"--

"Stick to the Bill--it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King
John made a present to the Barons. King William has made a similar
present to you. Never mind common qualities, good in common times. If
a man does not vote for the Bill, he is unclean--the plague-spot is
upon him--push him into the lazaretto of the last century, with
Wetherell[100] and Sadler[101]--purify the air before you approach
him--bathe your hands in Chloride of Lime, if you have been
contaminated by his touch....

"The thing I cannot, and will not bear, is this;--what right has
_this_ Lord, or _that_ Marquis, to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the
shape of Boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me? And how are
these masses of power re-distributed? The eldest son of my Lord is
just come from Eton--he knows a good deal about AEneas and Dido, Apollo
and Daphne--and that is all; and to this boy his father gives a
six-hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would give him a
horse or a double-barrelled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put
in--an admirable man;--he has raised the estates--watched the progress
of the family Road-and-Canal Bills--and Vell