as a
private member in 1782 and 1783, and as prime minister in 1785. But the
French revolution persuaded him that the time was not favourable to
reform, and he successfully opposed Grey's motion for referring a number
of petitions in favour of reform to a committee in 1793.

After this, a strong reaction set in, and the reform question had little
interest for the governing classes during the continuance of the great
war. It was never allowed to sleep, however, and in 1809, a bill
introduced by Curwen to pave the way for reform by preventing the return
of members upon corrupt agreements, actually passed both houses, though
in so mutilated a form that it was practically a dead letter. Still, the
cause was indefatigably pleaded by Brand, and Burdett, who in 1819 made
himself the spokesman of the violent reform agitation then spreading
over the country. Unfortunately, this violence, and the extravagance of
the demands put forward by the democratic leaders, were themselves fatal
obstacles to a temperate consideration of the question, and threw back
the reform movement for several years. In 1821, when Grampound was
disfranchised, it assumed, as we have seen, a more constitutional form,
and motions in favour of reform were proposed by Russell in 1822, 1823,
and 1826, and by Blandford in 1829. Had Canning placed himself at the
head of the movement the course of domestic history during the reign of
George IV. might have been very different. As it was, the number of
petitions in favour of reform sensibly fell off in the last half of the
reign, and its tory opponents vainly imagined that the movement had
spent itself. We now know that, in the absence of noisy demonstrations,
it was really and constantly gaining strength in the minds of thoughtful
men until it reached its climax at the end of 1830.

[Pageheading: _PUBLIC OPINION AND REFORM._]

The first act of the great political drama which occupied the next
eighteen months may be said to have opened with the fall of Wellington,
and the formation of the whig ministry. These events, together with the
success of the Paris revolution, supplied the motive power needed to
combine the great body of the middle classes with the proletariat in a
national crusade against the political privileges long exercised by a
powerful landed aristocracy. It is true that reform, unlike catholic
emancipation, had always appealed to broad popular sympathies, and had
been advocated by men like Grey and