ould be defeated; and the chairman of the
Birmingham union openly declared that it could supply two armies, each
of them as numerous and brave as that which had conquered at Waterloo,
if the king and his ministers required them in the contest with the
boroughmongers. Nor was the press idle in this critical state of
affairs; that daily supplied the fuel by which the excitement was kept
up, preaching, in some instances, doctrines subversive of all order and
government. Individuals who distinguished themselves in opposing the
change were attacked with every species of calumny that enmity could
invent; the property of the church and the rights of the peerage were
held out as illegally amassed treasures, which the people, in the
exercise of their rights, would soon have the pleasure of pillaging; and
pretended lists of the names of pensioners and placemen were circulated,
in which were to be found the names of men who had never received one
farthing from the purse of the state. Even parliament itself was the
object of incessant and absurd attack, and privilege seemed no longer to
exist.

Such was the state of the public mind when, on the 21st of March, the
second reading of the bill was moved. The debate lasted only two days.
It was commenced by Sir R. Vyvyan, one of the members for Cornwall, who
moved that the bill should be read that day six months. He declared that
the bill affected no interests of his own, but it was a measure full
of danger to the institutions of the kingdom, and which, therefore,
his conscience bound him to oppose. The motion was seconded by Mr.
Cartwright, who stated that Mr. Hume had actually written to the radical
reformers of Glasgow, entreating them not to say a word about the
ballot. Mr. Sheil, an Irish agitator, repeated the usual arguments in
favour of the bill, dwelling at great length on the disfranchisement
of the Irish boroughs at the time of the union, and the later
disfranchisement of the Irish forty-shilling freeholders, as justifying
in principle everything that was now proposed. He treated as ridiculous
the idea that the bill could be dangerous either to the crown or to the
aristocracy. There was variance between the logic of the non-reformers
and their sarcasms. The syllogisms were overthrown by their satire, and
their arguments evaporated in their vituperation. This bill would
wrench despotism from oligarchy, but it would not touch the legitimate
influence of property, and birth, and