f a borough, like the proprietor of a
church patronage or commission in the army, had a right to his votes,
and to attack his right was simply confiscation of private property.
The next step might be to confiscate his estate. But even the more
intelligent Conservative drew the line at such a measure. Canning,
Huskisson, and even Peel might accept the views of the Utilitarians in
regard to foreign policy, to law reform, to free trade, or the removal
of religious tests, declaring only that they were obeying 'experience'
instead of logic, and might therefore go just as far as they pleased.
But they were all pledged to resist parliamentary reform to the
utmost. Men thoroughly steeped in official life, and versed in the
actual working of the machinery, were naturally alive to the magnitude
of the change to be introduced. They saw with perfect clearness that
it would amount to a revolution. The old system in which the ruling
classes carried on business by family alliances and bargains between
ministers and great men would be impracticable. The fact that so much
had been done in the way of concession to the ideas of the new classes
was for them an argument against the change. If the governing classes
were ready to reform abuses, why should they be made unable to govern?
A gradual enfranchisement of the great towns on the old system might
be desirable. Such a man as Huskisson, representing great commercial
interests, could not be blind to the necessity. But a thorough
reconstruction was more alarming. As Canning had urged in a great
speech at Liverpool, a House of Commons, thoroughly democratised,
would be incompatible with the existence of the monarchy and the
House of Lords. So tremendously powerful a body would reduce the other
parts of the constitution to mere excrescences, feeble drags upon the
new driving-wheel in which the whole real force would be concentrated.

That this expressed, in point of fact, a serious truth, was, I take
it, undeniable. The sufficient practical answer was, that change was
inevitable. To refuse to adapt the constitutional machinery to the
altered political forces was not to hinder their growth, but to make a
revolution necessary. When, accordingly, the excluded classes began
seriously to demand admission, the only question came to lie between
violent and peaceable methods. The alarm with which our fathers
watched the progress of the measure may seem to us exaggerated, but
they scarcely overestima