nsented to adjourn, and the story was told, at the time, that when
Sir Charles Wetherell was leaving Westminster Hall with some of his
Tory colleagues he observed that a heavy rain was pouring down, and he
declared with a vigorous oath that if he had known of that in time he
would have treated the Government to a few more divisions before giving
them a chance of getting to their homes. The Bill, however, did get
into committee at last, and then the work of obstruction began again
and was carried on after the most systematic fashion. In committee the
opportunities were ample, for the case of each constituency which it
was proposed to disfranchise, or each constituency the number of whose
members it was proposed to lessen, had to be discussed separately, and,
of course, gave rise to an unlimited number of speeches. A committee
was actually formed to prepare, organize, and apply the methods of
obstruction, and of this committee no less a person than Sir Robert
Peel, then one of England's most rising statesmen, afterwards to be one
of her greatest statesmen, was the president. Sir Robert Peel was
himself one of the most frequent speakers in the obstructive debates,
and among his rivals were Sir Charles Wetherell and Mr. John Wilson
Croker, a man who has {164} been consigned to a sort of immortality by
a famous essay of Macaulay's and by Disraeli's satirical picture of him
as Mr. Rigby in "Coningsby." The committee of Tory members which has
been already mentioned arranged carefully, in advance, the obstruction
that was to be carried on in the case of each particular constituency,
and planned out in advance how each discussion was to be conducted and
who were to take the leading parts in it.

[Sidenote: 1831--Determination to pass the Bill]

Meanwhile popular feeling was rising more and more strongly as each day
of debate dragged on. Some of the largest constituencies were most
active and energetic in their appeals to the Government to hold out to
the very last and not yield an inch to the obstructionists. A fear
began to spread abroad that Lord Grey and his colleagues might endeavor
to save some of the main provisions of their Bill by surrendering other
parts of it to the Opposition. This alarm found expression in the cry
which soon began to be heard all over the country, and became in fact
the battle-cry of Reformers everywhere--the Bill, the whole Bill, and
nothing but the Bill. Great public meetings were held in