, that
he considered himself now pledged to grant a large measure of Reform;
but the Duke found the task impracticable, and then, as the only means
of averting farther insurrectionary tumults, which bore no slight
resemblance to civil war, and might not impossibly end in it, the King
did at last consent to permit the creation of a sufficient number of
peers to insure the passing of the bill. But he could not overcome his
repugnance to the measure as a severe blow to the constitution--one
which would in effect be tantamount to the extinction of the
independence of the Upper House as a legislative body; and, thinking no
means unjustifiable that would avert the necessity of such a creation,
he conceived the idea of authorizing his private secretary, Sir Herbert
Taylor, to request the chief peers on the Opposition side to absent
themselves from the division on the third reading. It seemed to him, and
indeed to many of them, the only thing that could be done. Their
judgment of the character and eventual consequences of the ministerial
bill was unaltered; but they saw the violence of the public feeling on
the subject, and the danger to the state of too stubborn and
uncompromising a resistance to it, and, yielding loyal obedience to
their royal master's wish, they retired from the House without voting.
Those who remained passed the bill, and in the beginning of June, 1832,
it became law.

We have ventured in a previous chapter to call in question the propriety
of the conduct of the King's father, George III., in using his personal
entreaties to influence the House of Lords against the India Bill of Mr.
Fox. The transaction which has been related here is the second and only
other instance since the Revolution of a sovereign having recourse to
such a device to sway the votes of members of either House. But the
circumstances were so entirely different, nay, so diametrically
opposite, that an opinion of the impropriety of the sovereign's deed in
the former case imposes no obligation on the ground of consistency to
censure it in the later instance. The interference of George III. was
designed to thwart and defeat his ministers on a measure of which he had
not previously intimated any disapproval. William IV., on the other
hand, was exerting himself to support his ministers, not, as it seems
probable, without some sacrifice of his own judgment. His father acted
as he did to avert an inroad on his prerogative and independence, which