ought to have the courage of his opinion and to
vote as his conscience told him, without caring whom he offended.
Edmund Burke in one of his speeches tells us that the system which is
founded on the heroic virtues is sure to have its {132} superstructure
in failure and disappointment, meaning thereby that every system is
doomed to failure which assumes as its principle the idea that all men
can at all times be up to the level of the heroic mood. Some of us can
well remember the days when English statesmen still declared that the
compulsion of education was un-English, and that it ought to be left to
the free choice of the English parent whether he would have his
children taught or leave them untaught.

[Sidenote: 1831--Lord John Russell and the Reform Bill]

Lord Grey's Cabinet would have nothing to do with the ballot. With
this exception the draft scheme as submitted by Lord John Russell was
accepted by Lord Grey and his colleagues. Then it was laid before the
King, and the King, according to Lord John Russell, gave it his ready
and cheerful sanction. There were indeed some observers at the time
who believed that the King had cheerfully sanctioned the whole scheme
of reform as proposed, because he still confidently believed that
nothing but the wreck of the Ministry was to come of it. However that
may have been, it is certain that the King did give his full sanction
to the measure, and the Government prepared to introduce the first
Reform Bill.

It was arranged that the conduct of the Bill in the House of Commons
should be placed in the hands of Lord John Russell. This arrangement
created, when the Bill was actually brought forward, a good deal of
adverse criticism in the House and in the country. Some prominent
members of the Opposition in the House of Commons persuaded themselves,
and tried to persuade their listeners, that Lord Grey's Cabinet, by
adopting such an arrangement, showed that there was no sincerity in the
professed desire for reform. If the members of the Cabinet, it was
argued, are such believers in the virtue of reform, why do they not
select one of their own body to introduce the measure? Lord John
Russell was only Paymaster of the Forces, and had not a seat in the
Cabinet, and if he was taken out of his place and put into the most
prominent position it could only be because no member of the Cabinet
could be found who was willing to undertake the task. {133} The answer
was very clear, ev