though no particular credit can be given
to the monarch himself for that splendid fact. It is a melancholy
truth {158} that not one of these reforms would have been effected at
the time or for long after if those who suffered most cruelly from
existing wrongs had always been content to suffer in law-abiding
peacefulness, and to allow the justice of their cause to prove itself
by patient argument addressed to the reason, the sympathy, and the
conscience of the ruling orders.

{159}

CHAPTER LXXIII.

THE TRIUMPH OF REFORM.

[Sidenote: 1831--Obstructive tactics in the Commons]

The Reform Bill was, then, clearly on its way to success. It had
passed its second reading in the House of Commons by a large, and what
might well be called a triumphant, majority. Now, when a great measure
reaches that stage in the modern history of our Constitution, we can
all venture to forecast, with some certainty, its ultimate fate. We
are speaking, it need hardly be said, of reform measures which are
moved by a clear principle and have a strong and resolute band of
followers. Such measures may be defeated once and again by the House
of Lords, and may be delayed in either or both Houses for a
considerable time; but it only needs perseverance to carry them in the
end. Some of the more enlightened and intelligent Conservatives must
have begun already to feel that the ultimate triumph of the reform
measure was only a question of time; but then those who were opposed to
every such reform were determined that, at all events, the triumph
should be put off as long as possible. The House of Lords would, no
doubt, throw out the Bill when it came for the first time within the
range of their power; but it was resolved, meanwhile, to keep the Bill
as long as possible in the House of Commons. Therefore there now set
in a Parliamentary campaign of a kind which was almost quite new to
those days, but has become familiar to our later times--a campaign of
obstruction. After the second reading of the new Reform Bill there set
in that first great systematic performance of obstruction which has
been the inspiration, the lesson, and the model to all the obstructives
of later years. The rules and the practices of the House of Commons
offered in those times, and, {160} indeed, for long after, the most
tempting opportunities to any body of members who were anxious to
prolong debate for the mere purpose of preventing legislation. For
example, i