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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
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LXXIII