these together would add ninety-four
members from towns and counties which had a large population. To obviate
the great expenses to which candidates were exposed in bringing voters
to the polls (amounting to L150,000 in Yorkshire alone), the bill
provided that the poll should be taken in different districts, and
should be closed in two days in the towns, and in three days in the
counties. The general result of the bill would be to increase the number
of electors five hundred thousand,--making nine hundred thousand in all.
We see how far this was from universal suffrage, giving less than a
million of voters in a population of twenty-five millions. Yet even so
moderate and reasonable an enlargement of the franchise created
astonishment, and was regarded by the opponents as subversive of the
British Constitution; and not without reason, since it threw political
power into the hands of the middle classes instead of into those of the
aristocracy.

Lord Russell's motion was, of course, bitterly opposed by the Tories.
The first man who arose to speak against it was Sir H. Inglis, member of
the university of Oxford,--a fine classical scholar, an accomplished
gentleman, and an honest man. He maintained that the proposed alteration
in the representation of the country was nothing less than revolution.
He eulogized the system of rotten boroughs, since it favored the return
to Parliament of young men of great abilities, who without the patronage
of nobles would fail in popular elections; and he cited the cases of
Pitt, Fox, Burke, Canning, Perceval, and others who represented Appleby,
Old Sarum, Wendover, and other places almost without inhabitants. Sir
Charles Wetherell, Mr. Croker, and Sir Robert Peel, substantially took
the same view; Lord Althorp, Mr. Hume, O'Connell, and others supported
the government. Amid intense excitement, for everybody saw the momentous
issues at stake, leave was at length granted to Lord John Russell to
bring in his bill. No less than seventy-one persons in the course of
seven nights spoke for or against the measure. The Press, headed by the
"Times," rendered great assistance to the reform cause, while public
meetings were everywhere held and petitions sent to Parliament in favor
of the measure. The voice of the nation spoke in earnest and
decided tones.

On the 21st of March, 1831, Lord John Russell moved the second reading
of the bill; but the majority for it was so small that ministers were
compell