gn. He took up
the challenge, and was re-elected against a radical opponent by a
substantial majority. It was his last re-election for a borough which he
had represented for thirty years. In the Church-rate debate he rose from
the opposition side of the house, and lamenting his separation from his
old associates, did not spare them either reproaches or hostile
criticism.

Another desertion from the whig camp took place during this session, but
in an opposite direction. Roebuck, originally one of the philosophical
radicals, had become more and more violent in his attacks on his own
leaders, whom he accused of having deceived the people. According to
him, they were "aristocratic in principle, democratic in pretence," and
all the resources of his incisive rhetoric were exhausted in exposing
their incapacity, in a motion for a committee to consider the state of
the nation. This motion, so advocated, met with no support, and gave
Russell the opportunity of once more vindicating the wisdom of
moderation in statesmanship. But there were many besides Roebuck who
were eager to complete the work of the reform act by further organic
changes, and the notice book of the house of commons in 1837 embodied
several proposals of this kind. One was Grote's annual motion for the
ballot, on which an interesting debate took place. Among the others were
two motions of Sir William Molesworth for a reform of the upper house
and for the abolition of a property qualification for the lower house, a
motion of Tennyson, who had taken the additional name of D'Eyncourt, for
the repeal of the septennial act, and another of Hume for household
suffrage, overshadowing that of Duncombe for repealing the rate-paying
clauses of the reform act itself. Nearly all of these contained the
germs of future legislation, but they formed no part of the whig
programme, nor could any whig government have carried them against so
powerful an opposition, with an invincible reserve in the house of
lords, during the last session of William IV. Only seventeen public acts
were actually passed in this session.

[Pageheading: _THE DEATH OF WILLIAM IV._]

There were, indeed, other reasons for declining to provoke a grave
contest at this juncture. The king's health was known to be failing, his
death under the law then in force would involve a general election, and
no one could desire his successor, a girl of eighteen, to begin her
reign in the midst of a political crisis. In Ma