form,
might have put the peers on their guard and taught them the unwisdom of
accepting the imputation against them, and thus proving that they had
no sympathy with the cause of the people. But the great majority of
the Tory peers of that day had not yet risen to the idea that there
could be any {168} wisdom in any demand made by men who had no
university education, who had not what was then described as a stake in
the country. The voice of the people was simply regarded as the voice
of the rabble, and the Tory peers had no notion of allowing themselves
to be guided by any appeal coming from such a quarter.

[Sidenote: 1831--The Reform Bill in the Lords]

The agitation of which we are speaking had been going on during the
long reign of obstruction in the Commons, and there was no time lost by
the Government between the passing of the Bill in the representative
Chamber and its introduction in the House of Lords. On the evening of
the day when the Bill was passed by the Commons, September 23, 1831, it
was formally brought into the House of Lords and read a first time. It
has already been explained that, according to Parliamentary usage, the
first reading of any Bill is taken in the House of Lords as a matter of
right and without a division. The second reading of the Bill was taken
on October 3. Lord Grey, who had charge of the measure in that House,
delivered one of the most impressive and commanding speeches which had
ever come from his eloquent lips, not merely in recommendation of the
measure itself, but in solemn warning to the peers in general, and to
the bishops and archbishops in particular, to pause and consider
carefully all the possible consequences before committing themselves to
the rejection of a demand which was made by the vast majority of the
English people.

Lord Grey was a noble illustration of what may be described as the
stately order of Parliamentary eloquence. He had not the fire and the
passion of Fox; he had not the thrilling genius of Pitt; and, of
course, his style of speech had none of the passionate and sometimes
the extravagant declamation of which Brougham was a leading master. He
had a dignified presence, a calm, clear, and penetrating voice, a style
that was always exquisitely finished and nobly adapted to its purpose.
It would not be too much to say for Earl Grey that he might have been
the ideal orator for an ideal House of Lords, if we assume the ideal
House of Lords to be an