same, they "would
play to the gallery" instead of to the pit or boxes. He would, indeed,
have repudiated the maxim: "Everything for the people, and nothing by
the people"; he was fully prepared to place the house of commons in the
hands of the people, or at least of the great middle class, but he
regarded the crown and the house of lords as almost equal powers, and he
never doubted that property and education would practically continue to
rule the government of the country.

[Pageheading: _DRAFT OF THE FIRST BILL._]

When the whigs came into office they were singularly fortunate in the
high character and consistency of their chief, no less than in the
divisions of their opponents, whose right wing showed almost as mutinous
a spirit as their own left wing. Even between Wellington and Peel there
was a want of cordial harmony and confidence, yet Peel was the only tory
statesman of eminent capacity in the house of commons. The attitude of
the king, too, was not only strictly constitutional but friendly, though
it afterwards appeared that he relied too implicitly on Grey and Althorp
to protect him against the machinations of the radicals. The letters
written by his orders, though mostly composed by his private secretary,
Sir Herbert Taylor, display marked ability together with a very shrewd
and just conception of the situation. His loyal adoption of a moderate
reform policy was a most important element of strength to his ministers
at the outset of their great enterprise, and, if he afterwards held
back, it was in deference to scruples which several of them shared in
their hearts. Nor was the violence of the ultra-radicals, or the
scurrilous language of O'Connell by any means an unmixed source of
weakness to men engaged in framing and carrying a temperate reform bill.
Their firm resistance to extravagant demands reassured many a waverer
and showed how carefully their comprehensive plan had been matured. On
the other hand, they had to contend against difficulties not yet fully
revealed. One of these was their own want of administrative experience,
contrasting unfavourably with the statesmanlike capacity of Peel.
Another was the intractable character of two at least within their own
innermost councils--Durham and Brougham. A third was the inflexible
conservatism of a great majority in the house of lords, who, unlike the
people at large, clearly understood that the impending conflict was a
life-and-death struggle for political