resorted to, yet in some
cases, such as to avoid a collision between the two houses, it might be
absolutely necessary. For many reasons he was averse to such a scheme;
but he believed it would be found that in a case of necessity, like that
which he had stated, a creation of peers would be justifiable, and in
accordance with the most acknowledged principles of our constitution. On
a division, the second reading was carried in favour of ministers by a
majority of nine, the numbers being one hundred and eighty-four against
one hundred and seventy-five.

After the reform bill had been read a second time, the lords broke up
for the Easter recess. Previous to their breaking up, however, the
Duke of Wellington thought proper to enter a protest against the second
reading on the journals. This protest embodied all the objections
urged against the bill; and it was signed by seventy-four other peers,
including the Dukes of Cumberland and Gloucester. The committee was
appointed the first day after the Easter recess.

DISTURBED STATE OF THE NATION.

{WILLIAM IV. 1832-1833}

The interval which elapsed before the reassembling of parliament was a
very memorable one in the annals of the country. Every association and
political union, tremblingly alive for the fate of the bill, was on the
alert, it being conceived that it was in imminent clanger of being lost
in committee. At Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee, as well as throughout the south
of England, meetings were held, at all of which resolutions were passed
expressing confidence in Earl Grey and his colleagues; and petitions
were got up to the king and the house of lords, beseeching them to
pass the bill unmutilated. In the counties of Warwick, Worcester, and
Stafford, all the associations agreed to meet at the foot of Newhall
Hill, and an immense assembly was collected on the day appointed, when a
petition to the house of lords was carried, "imploring them not to drive
to despair a high-minded, generous, and fearless people; nor to urge
them on, by a rejection of their claims, to demands of a much more
extensive nature; but rather to pass the reform bill into a law,
unimpaired in any of its great parts and provisions, more especially
uninjured in the clauses relating to the ten-pounds franchise." At
Birmingham, the council of the union declared its sittings permanent
until the fate of the bill should be decided. In t