ernment. The King, as usual on such
occasions, was flurried, awkward, and hot-tempered, and when he had
made up his mind to yield to the advice of his ministers he could not
so far master his temper as to make his decision seem a graceful
concession. Even when he announced that the concession was to be made
the trouble was not yet quite over. Lord Brougham thought it necessary
to ask the King for his consent in writing to the creation of the new
peers, and hereupon the wrath of the sovereign blazed out afresh. The
King seemed to think that such a demand showed a want of confidence in
him which amounted to something like an insult, and he fretted and
stormed for a while as though he had been like Petruchio "aboard
carousing to his mates." After a while, however, he came into a better
humor, and perhaps saw the reasonableness of the plea that Lord Grey
and Lord Brougham could not undertake the task now confided to them
without the written warrant of the King's authority. William therefore
turned away and scratched off at once a brief declaration conferring on
his ministers the power to create the necessary number of peers,
qualifying it merely with the condition that the sons of living peers
were to be called upon in the first instance. The meaning of this
condition was obvious, and its object was not unreasonable from the
King's point of view, or, indeed, from the point of view of any
statesman who was anxious that the House of Lords should be kept as
long as possible in its existing form. Nobody certainly wanted to
increase the number of peers to any great extent, and if only the
eldest sons of the living peers were to be called to the House of Lords
each would succeed in process of time to his father's title and the
roll of the peerage would become once again as it had been before.

{181}

[Sidenote: 1832--Passage of the third Reform Bill]

The political crisis was over now. When once the royal authority had
been given for the unlimited creation of new peers there was an end of
all the trouble. Of course, there was no necessity to manufacture any
new batches of peers. As the Reform Bill was to be carried one way or
the other, whether with the aid of new peers or without it, the Tory
members of the House of Lords could not see any possible advantage in
taking steps which must only end in filling their crimson benches with
new men who might outvote them on all future occasions. The Reform
Bill passed throu