mancipation Act, that they were known to be ready to coalesce with
almost any party for the sake of overturning his administration.
Moreover, as forty years before, the French Revolution of 1789 had
caused great political excitement in England, so now the new French
revolution of July acted as a strong stimulus on the movement party in
this as well as in other countries; and altogether there was a very
general feeling that the time for important changes had come. The Duke
of Wellington was not blind to the prevalence of the idea; and, being by
no means willing to admit that his own policy of the preceding year had
in the least contributed to strengthen it, he conceived it to be his
duty to discountenance it by every means in his power; but the steps
which he took with that object only invigorated and inflamed it. As
Prime-minister, he inserted in the speech with which the new sovereign
opened his first Parliament in the autumn after his accession a general
panegyric on that "happy form of government under which, through the
favor of Divine Providence, this country had enjoyed for a long
succession of years a greater share of internal peace, of commercial
prosperity, of true liberty, of all that constitutes social happiness,
than had fallen to the lot of any other country of the world." And in
his own character, a few nights afterward, he added a practical
commentary on those sentences of the royal speech, when, in allusion to
Lord Grey's expression of a hope that the ministers would prepare "to
redress the grievances of the people by a reform of the Parliament," he
repudiated the suggestion altogether, avowing that the government were
contemplating no such measure, and adding that "he would go farther, and
say that he had never read or heard of any measure up to that moment
which in any degree satisfied his mind that the state of the
representation could be improved or rendered more satisfactory to the
country at large than at that moment. He was fully convinced that the
country possessed at that moment a Legislature which answered all good
purposes of legislation to a greater degree than any Legislature had
ever answered them in any country whatever.... And he would at once
declare that, as far as he was concerned, as long as he held any station
in the government of the country, he should always feel it his duty to
resist any measure of Reform when proposed by others."

Such uncompromising language was, not unnaturally,