supremacy between themselves and
the commons--the greatest that had been waged since the revolutions of
the seventeenth century.

It was privately known that a committee had been empowered to draft the
bill awaited with so much impatience. This committee consisted of two
members of the cabinet, Durham and Graham, together with two members of
the administration not of cabinet rank, the Earl of Bessborough's eldest
son, Lord Duncannon, then chief whip of the whig party, and Russell, who
was second to none as a staunch and judicious promoter of parliamentary
reform. In spite of his vanity and petulance, Durham deserves the credit
of having drawn up the report, highly appreciated by the king, upon
which the projected measure was founded. It originally included vote by
ballot, and it is rather strange that on this point Durham was
powerfully supported by Graham, but opposed by Russell. It is still more
strange that Brougham, whose scheme of reform was locked up in his own
breast, was honestly disturbed by the radicalism of his colleagues and
specially objected to so large a disfranchisement of boroughs as they
contemplated. Upon the whole, however, the bill was the product of an
united cabinet, and received the express approval of the king in all its
essential features. The elaborate letter which he addressed to Grey on
February 4, 1831, betrays a sense of relief on finding that universal
suffrage and the ballot were not to be pressed upon him In declaring
that he never could have given his consent to such revolutionary
innovations, he insists strongly on the necessity of maintaining an
"equilibrium" between the crown, the lords, and the commons, as well as
between the "representation of property" and that of numbers.

The reform bill of 1831, which differed only in detail from the act
passed in 1832, cannot be understood without some knowledge of the
system which that act transformed. This system has been well described
as "combining survivals from the middle ages with abuses of the
prerogative in later times". The counties remained as they had remained
for centuries; Rutland, for instance, returned as many representatives
as Yorkshire, until in 1821 the two seats taken from Grampound were
added to those already possessed by Yorkshire. On the other hand, the
old franchise of the 40s. freeholders was more widely diffused since the
value of money had been greatly depreciated. Still, the influence of the
great county familie