enote: 1832--The third Reform Bill]

Lord Grey and his ministers still, however, held firmly to their
purpose, and the King, much as he may have disliked the whole reform
business, and gladly as he would have got rid of it, if it were to be
got rid of by any possible means, had still wit enough to see that if
he were to give his support to the House of Lords something even more
than the House of Lords might be in danger. Parliament was therefore
called together again in December, and the Royal Speech from the Throne
commended to both Houses the urgent necessity of passing into law as
quickly as possible the ministerial measure of reform. Lord John
Russell brought in his third Reform Bill for England and Wales, a Bill
that was, in purpose and in substance, much the same as the two
measures that had preceded it, and this third Reform Bill passed by
slow degrees through its several stages in the House of Commons. Then
again came up the portentous question, "What will the Lords do with
it?" There could not be the least doubt in the mind of anybody as to
what the majority of the House of Lords would be glad to do with the
Bill if they only felt sure that they could work their will upon it
without danger to their own order. There, however, the serious
difficulty arose. The more reasonable among the peers did not attempt
to disguise from themselves that another rejection of the Bill might
lead to the most serious disturbances, and even possibly to civil war,
and they were not {173} prepared to indulge their hostility to reform
at so reckless an expense. The greater number of the Tory peers,
however, acted on the assumption, familiar at all times among certain
parties of politicians, that the more loudly people demanded a reform
the more resolutely the reform ought to be withheld from them, and
that, if the people attempted to rise up, the only proper policy was to
put the people down by force. The opinions and sentiments of the less
headlong among the Conservative peers had led to the formation of a
party, more or less loosely put together, who were called at that time
the "Waverers," just as a political combination of an earlier day
obtained the title of the "Trimmers." The Waverers were made up of the
men who held that their best and most patriotic policy was to regard
each portion of the Bill brought before them on its own merits, and not
to resist out of hand any proposition which seemed harmless in itself
simply