ten pounds a year rent in boroughs, or in the counties owned
land worth ten pounds a year or paid fifty pounds rent. The immediate
result of this was to put power into the hands of the middle classes and
to give the lower classes high hopes, so that, in 1839, the Chartist
movement began, one demand of which was universal suffrage. The old party
names of Whig and Tory had been dropped and the two parties had assumed
their present appellations of Conservatives and Liberals. Both parties
had, however, learned that there was no rest for any ruling party except
a popular basis, and the Conservative party had the good sense to
strengthen itself in 1867 by carrying through Mr. Disraeli's bill, which
gave the franchise in boroughs to all householders paying rates, and in
counties to all occupiers of property rated at fifteen pounds a year.
This broadening of the suffrage places the power irrevocably in the hands
of the people, against whose judgment neither crown nor ministry can
venture on any important step.

In general terms it may be said that of these two great parties the
Conservative wishes to preserve existing institutions, and latterly has
leaned to the prerogatives of the crown, and the Liberal is inclined to
progress and reform, and to respond to changes demanded by the people.
Both parties, however, like parties elsewhere, propose and oppose
measures and movements, and accept or reject policies, simply to get
office or keep office. The Conservative party of late years, principally
because it has the simple task of holding back, has been better able to
define its lines and preserve a compact organization. The Liberals, with
a multitude of reformatory projects, have, of course, a less homogeneous
organization, and for some years have been without well-defined issues.
The Conservative aristocracy seemed to form a secure alliance with the
farmers and the great agricultural interests, and at the same time to
have a strong hold upon the lower classes. In what his opponents called
his "policy of adventure," Lord Beaconsfield had the support of the lower
populace. The Liberal party is an incongruous host. On one wing are the
Whig lords and great landowners, who cannot be expected to take kindly to
a land reform that would reform them out of territorial power; and on the
other wing are the Radicals, who would abolish the present land system
and the crown itself, and institute the rule of a democracy. Between
these two is the